Down into Darkness

by David Lawrence

  Chris looked at him as if he ought to know the answer. ‘I didn’t want the fuss.’

  ‘Did you kill Bryony?’ Stella asked him.

  He had been expecting the question. ‘She was stripped naked and hung up in a tree’ – he turned the photo over – ‘she lost her eyes. Those aren’t her eyes. What happened to her eyes?’

  ‘Birds,’ Stella spoke softly.

  Chris stared at her a moment, then looked away. ‘Why would I do that to her? Why would I do anything to her? We were together, you know? We’d decided on that.’ He was doing everything but use the word ‘love’. ‘I’m not violent, all right? Ask anyone. Ask Melanie.’

  Stella and Harriman exchanged a glance. Chris said, ‘What?’

  ‘Melanie killed herself,’ Stella said.

  The tape rolled. Chris sat with his head down, his shoulders up, his arms folded, as if a chill had suddenly come over the room.

  He said, ‘Both. Both dead.’ After a moment, he said, ‘You don’t know. You know fuck all.’

  *

  Aimée lay spread-eagled and heavy. Woolf had made love to her long and hard, and she had taken it as evidence of his passion, evidence of his love. Now he was unloading items from the fridge and making a cold platter. She had bought beer and wine and food they might, she thought, cook together while they talked about the future.

  She heard the raised voices and rapid-volley gunfire of a TV show and got off the bed to walk naked into the kitchen. Being naked in front of him was a particular luxury. He was sitting at the table watching the show, and she leaned over him, her breasts grazing his back, to roll a slice of ham. On the screen were burning cars and civilians yelling and soldiers looking edgy. It might have been the news. She ate the ham; it was cold from the fridge; she took a swallow of his beer.

  He said, ‘I thought we could go away somewhere, take a break… Could you do that?’

  She said yes without thinking; then, ‘How long for?’

  ‘A couple of days; three, maybe.’

  She turned his face to hers and kissed him. ‘Of course; of course I can do that.’

  She went back to the bedroom and found a light robe. When she returned he was staring at the screen, his beer halfway to his mouth, a look on his face that was something like outrage. A man was talking politics, his subject war and the pity of war; also its inevitability. A caption brought up his name: Neil Morgan, MP.

  Aimée said, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘What?’ Woolf turned towards her quickly, his reverie broken.

  ‘Just the way you were looking at him.’

  ‘Who?’

  She gestured at the screen, though Morgan had now been replaced by a newscaster. ‘That guy.’

  ‘No.’ Woolf shook his head, thinking fast. ‘What guy?’

  ‘You looked upset.’

  He smiled at her. ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘Unpleasant thoughts…’

  ‘Just something I remembered I have to do.’

  He got up and put his arms round her, the smile still in place. ‘So it’s okay – you can get away? A couple of days.’

  She nodded. Already she wanted him again. That hunger, that fierceness of need, had never happened to her before. ‘Whenever you say.’

  ‘Soon,’ Woolf promised, ‘a week or so. Soon.’

  It was 3.30 a.m. when Sorley called. London was still awake, and so was he. Stella, on the other hand, had been asleep and caught up in a dream in which Delaney was on the deck of a ship throwing streamers while she stood on the dock, waving. The streamers were blue and white police-tape and printed with the words DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE. As she watched, the ship started to move. This happened in freeze-frame moments. Each time the ship was a little further off from the dock, and Delaney’s face a little less clear. Then it was night, and the moon was up; shadows danced on the water and Delaney stood beside her, looking at the ship, a dot on the horizon.

  He said, ‘Where are you sending me?’

  Sorley sounded as if he had surprised himself. He said, ‘I just realized what time it is.’

  Delaney half woke and said something. Stella got out of bed and walked through to the living space. She said, ‘Me too.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Stella. I sleep when I sleep and I wake when I wake; everything’s a bit fucked up.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Home, laid up, bed downstairs, Karen’s my night nurse and someone called Patricia is my day nurse.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Blonde, nice tits, gives good head.’

  ‘It’s pleasing to hear that you’ve emerged a new man.’

  Sorley laughed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was just curious to know what’s happening.’

  Stella gave him a short update. ‘I could send you copies of the crime reports.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be taking it easy: Karen’s on the case. A little light exercise, a little light reading.’

  ‘The reports are light reading, you know that.’

  ‘This third one –’

  ‘Martin Turner.’

  ‘It’s the same guy, is it?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘So we’re in trouble.’

  ‘It looks that way, yes. The tabloids certainly think so. We’re getting City Under Siege headlines: the New Ripper, that brand of shit.’

  ‘She won’t let me see the papers.’

  ‘She cares about you; she’s a good woman.’

  ‘Send me the reports,’ Sorley said.

  ‘Karen will intercept them.’

  ‘Use a courier. The day nurse is more respectful.’

  There was a little pause; Sorley sounded breathy. Stella said, ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Boss. Are you smoking?’

  ‘No, I’m not smoking.’ A snap in his voice. Then: ‘It was oxygen.’

  ‘Oh… Sorry, it sounded like –’

  ‘Oxygen,’ Sorley said. ‘DI Collier – they say he’s a good man.’

  ‘Have you met him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s a prick,’ Stella said. ‘Get well soon.’

  Stanley Bowman was making money, something he did well, and something he did all the time. If anyone were ever to devise a way of making money in his sleep, it would be Bowman. Just now he wasn’t sleeping because it was 3.30 a.m. in London, which meant it was 7.30 in the evening on the West Coast of America, and there was business to be done.

  Bowman was on the phone to someone who needed high-level contacts in Britain but couldn’t be seen to make them. Someone who needed friends in smoke-filled rooms, friends who had the right friends. Bowman was a trader. Sometimes he traded money, sometimes he traded goods, sometimes he traded information. About eighty per cent of his business was legitimate financial services and created a very effective shield for the other twenty per cent, which returned eighty per cent of his income. The maths were irresistible. He was an international version of Ricardo Jones, which was precisely why Ricardo’s activities on Harefield so pissed him off. If you use your perfectly respectable shopwindow businesses to collar a certain market, cut-price competition from trade minnows is a big irritation. It’s like the corner shop getting into a price war with Wal-Mart.

  The man Bowman was talking to sounded a little edgy. ‘We’re not sure things are proceeding as we would have liked.’

  ‘Wrong direction,’ Bowman asked, ‘or not fast enough?’

  ‘Well, we need a procurement guarantee by a certain point in time to make our quote viable.’

  Bowman laughed. ‘It’ll be viable. Listen, Britain manufactured its own Apache helicopters at a cost of forty million pounds a unit. Israel bought theirs ready-made from you guys for… what?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Right. It’s win-win. You just need someone to see sense.’

  ‘See sense?’ The American’s voice took on a sour edge. ‘The British military has a fleet of Mark 3 Chinook helicopters that still aren
’t operational, they’ve got tanks with communications systems that are thirty years out of date, they issue their troops with the SA80 rifle, which doesn’t like sandy conditions, for Christ’s sake; our problem is that the people we need to deal with have shit for brains.’

  ‘Did you speak to Neil Morgan?’

  ‘And paid him a hell of a lot of money.’

  ‘He’s the guy to plead your case.’

  ‘We had a couple of meetings, but not much was said. Now he’s avoiding us. We need you to talk to him – get things speeded up.’

  ‘I don’t really know him,’ Bowman explained. ‘I know about him. I know he’s a coming guy, and I know he likes money. Politics is a game to him, is what I hear; he doesn’t care about who builds what or how much it costs. Also, he has friends on the Defence Select Committee. They like to look after their own.’

  ‘Yeah, well, listen, I think we need you to talk to him. We need to see progress.’

  ‘I’m not happy about that,’ Bowman said. ‘I don’t think I can do that.’

  ‘Too much exposure?’ The American sounded amused.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘If I like? I don’t fucking like. We have an investment here, you know?’

  ‘I gave you a name,’ Bowman said, ‘and I made a few connections. I talked to people who talked to people who talk to him.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, it’s time to cut out the middle men.’

  ‘Look…’ It was Bowman’s turn to sound edgy. ‘I’ve done my job.’

  ‘And taken our money.’

  ‘Sure. For doing the job, like I said.’ A pause on the line. ‘For fuck’s sake, you can sell arms anywhere in the world. There are wars all over – what can I tell you? – people like killing each other. Helicopters, armoured cars, tanks, small arms, mines; it’s a growth industry. War is the new rock and roll.’

  The American sighed, as if he wasn’t getting his point across. ‘The big thing about the global economy? New markets. Expansion. Growth. The UK is prime for us. Go talk to Neil Morgan.’

  Bowman said, ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s a way.’

  Suddenly Bowman caught the smell of money on the air, heady, intoxicating. ‘There might be,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about that.’

  58

  There were theories that tied the early summer to icefall, to carbon footprints, to mud-slips and hurricanes on the far side of the world. Maybe that’s why London dawns and London dusks suddenly looked much the same: dusks were salmon-pink striation on grey-blue going to blue-black; dawns were the same pinks on deep blues fading to eggshell. It was as if the weather couldn’t tell day from night. The first, cool dawn wind – arriving before most London drivers cranked their engines and made their nose-to-tail cross-city trips – still carried a faint trace of cherry blossom.

  Outside, the pink and blue, that fragile scent; inside, four people grouped round a hospital bed. Since his meeting with Woolf on the day of the storm, Blondie had been dead to the world. Impossible to know, doctors said, the real truth about coma. Could Blondie have caught that whiff of blossom? Could he have been aware of these people at his bedside – mother, brother, girlfriend, best friend? The consultant had a little descriptive image he liked to use: he told them that Blondie had been going steadily downhill, a step at a time. For a man who is already deep, already down, those steps could only lead to the underworld. This was the picture the consultant wanted to convey.

  As the day brightened, as London picked up, Blondie descended further and grew fainter. There was an issue for the people at the bedside, and it involved life-support systems and switches. Images of dark descents gave way to hard-edged talk of brain-stem death and vegetation. Tears were shed. Feelings ran high. Finally, farewells were said, the switch was thrown, and organs were harvested.

  Blondie was said to have been the best son who ever—the best mate who ever—the most loving man who ever—It was agreed that he had a heart of gold, the same heart that was put on ice and sent by courier to an operating theatre where a woman waited who would put it to better use than Blondie ever had.

  The AMIP-5 squad who had caught the call to the Strip on the day of the storm registered Blondie’s death as an unwelcome statistic: Unsolved Murder No. 27. It was a page-nine paragraph in papers that were carrying banner headlines that featured a mad-dog killer at work in the city.

  Stella was walking into the squad room with an Americano and a chocolate muffin when she picked up a call on her mobile and heard her mother’s voice.

  There had been more than one letter marked ‘Personal’, and they had all gone the way of the first: dumped unopened. The voice wasn’t so easy to dump: not because it had authority, but because of the tremor it carried, the note of anxiety.

  Tina said, ‘Stell… it’s me.’

  Yes, it’s you. It’s you all right. It’s you, the absentee bitch. The tart. The drunk.

  ‘Did you see me that day? I waved at you.’ Stella was silent. ‘Stell?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘I wrote you some letters. I didn’t know the address, so I just put –’

  ‘Yes. I got the letters.’

  Stella had walked straight through to the women’s room. Both Sue Chapman and Pete Harriman had noticed her expression: ice under glass.

  ‘The thing is, Stell, I won’t be here much longer. We’re moving. We’re moving on.’ Stella was silent. ‘It’s weird being back on the estate, Stell, you can imagine.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Weird being back after all this time. What were you doing?’

  ‘Doing?’

  ‘At that woman’s place. She killed herself.’

  Stella tried not to think of it as an accusation; however, this was her mother speaking, and memory compelled her.

  ‘I know she did.’

  ‘She threw herself over the –’

  ‘Is there something you want?’ Stella asked.

  ‘It was seeing you. Seeing you made me think.’ Stella was silent. ‘I don’t know where we’re going, that’s up to him. It won’t be back to Manchester, but it could be somewhere like that.’

  ‘Is there something you want?’

  ‘Why don’t you come over, Stella? Before we go. Or I could pay you a visit, couldn’t I?’ Tina hesitated. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘The point being?’

  ‘I know I haven’t been in touch, Stell. Oh, listen – it’s not money, or anything. Not money. It was just seeing you –’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man you’re with.’

  Her mother gave a laugh of surprise. ‘It’s Ricardo. Still Ricardo. You know Ricardo.’

  ‘Never met him,’ Stella told her.

  But I’d like to: oh, yes. Angel Face…

  ‘I’ve missed you, Stell.’

  ‘You haven’t seen me in ten years.’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  ‘When are you there?’

  ‘All the time. All the time, Stella. Come whenever you want.’

  Stella flipped her phone closed and leaned against the edge of a sink. After a moment she put down her coffee and muffin, ran the cold tap and sluiced her face, reaching round to get a wet hand to the nape of her neck.

  I wish I didn’t know you. I wish I didn’t know your name.

  Maxine Hewitt and Anne Beaumont were in the video suite with James and Stevie Turner. It was called ‘secondary coverage’. People often remembered more about an incident after a short time had passed, after the trauma had lessened. A jumble became a pattern; someone half hidden stepped into the light.

  In this case the pattern refused to emerge; the shadowy figure stepped further into the dark. The boys seemed to have withdrawn into the strange, unsettling life they were now living: their mother sedated and always in need of the help of friends, they themselves living with grandparents who had long since lost the knack of childcare.

  Max
ine and Anne made remarks, asked questions, offered suggestions that they hoped might unlock a memory. The boys listened, answered, smiled agreement, but had nothing else to offer. After half an hour of this, the women left the room, the VTR still running, in the hope that the boys might say something to each other that they wouldn’t say to someone else.

  Later they watched the tape. Maxine said, ‘Perhaps we’re wrong. They weren’t looking out of the window when their father was attacked. Or else they saw something but didn’t know what it was.’

  ‘And still can’t decode it, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Anne shook her head. ‘I think they saw everything. That’s why they’re not talking. Significantly, there’s no denial. They’re not saying they saw nothing. If they’re asked leading questions about looking out of the window, about their father returning home, they’re silent. Here’s something else: they were looking out of the window, we know that. But they won’t even talk about that in a general sense. Did you see the cars going past? Was it dark? That sort of thing.’

  ‘They’re too traumatized to talk about it.’

  ‘That’s my guess.’

  The women watched the rest of the tape in case there was something they’d missed, some hint, some inflection, a stray word. The section of the tape when the boys had been left alone seemed to yield nothing. Stevie went back to his Game Boy. After a moment he showed the screen to James, who sat next to his brother to watch the game play out: two blond heads bowed in concentration.

  Silent Wolf moving through the city streets, a man in shadow, his rough justice a way of life, his methods falling to a pattern that even the boys could understand.

  Silent Wolf descending on the godless. James nudged his brother, Stevie nodded: tiny gestures that barely registered with Maxine and Anne. Two boys of the screen generation getting their daily dose of violence, balletic and bloody, and nothing new because they’d seen it all before.

  59

  Tina Mooney must have seen Stella’s car crossing the DMZ, because she opened the door as soon as the bell rang. She put her arms round her daughter; she left a leaf-shaped lipstick blot on Stella’s cheek. Stella remembered such moments: they had come when her mother was drunk, or else was apologizing for what drink could do. She stood with her arms at her side and suffered the kiss.