It Never Goes Away

by Tom Trott

  ✽✽✽

  Tessafrak’s South East office is in Chichester, in an industrial estate off Quarry Lane, near Quarry Lake. It had taken me an hour to get there, so I thought I’d earned the right to use the Sales Director’s designated parking space.

  I had changed into a smart suit and even gelled my hair to make it look like I really belonged there. The office was modern, but not ultra-modern, just up-to-date. Behind the curved, glass-topped reception desk sat a woman in her fifties with curly brown hair, a ruffled blouse, and a face that looked down on you from any height.

  I turned on the smarm and announced, ‘I’m here to see Mr Hillerman.’

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’ she asked, sceptically looking over her reading glasses.

  I flashed her a quick smile. ‘Not exactly.’

  She frowned. ‘He’s in a meeting right now.’

  I quickly checked my watch. ‘Then I’m late.’ I turned and started to jog up the stairs, ‘I know the way.’

  I heard her heels clacking behind me, but I was too quick. I took an educated guess and plumped for the door bearing the sign “meeting room”. It opened into a large room with large windows that overlooked the industrial estate. In the middle of the room was a large table, surrounded by leather chairs, in which sat old white men straight out of Central Casting. Except one: a slicked-back black-haired eel of a man at the head of the table. They looked up with surprise.

  ‘Good,’ I said as I regarded them all, ‘this should make it easier.’

  The fake-tanned eel-man seemed to find my interruption amusing. ‘Can we help you?’ he asked once I had failed to say anything more.

  ‘I’m looking for Rus Hillerman.’

  The receptionist arrived and pushed past into the room, placing herself in front of me like a shield. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Hillerman, he ran up here before I could stop him. Should I call security?’

  ‘That’s ok, Joan,’ the eel-man replied. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to make an appointment—’ he started to me.

  ‘It’s about Little Fawn Farm,’ I announced.

  The natural colour drained out of his face, leaving it orange, but the smile stayed where it was. It was quite unnerving. He span a gold pen around in his fingers. ‘My calendar’s not too full,’ he replied breezily, ‘why don’t you wait in my office?’

  Without a reply I stepped out of the room, the receptionist closing the door as she followed behind me. As she did I could just hear him address the other men: ‘nimbys, they come in all shapes and sizes.’ They laughed. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘This way,’ the receptionist announced through gritted teeth. I had thought I could charm her; what is it that’s so misleadingly flirtatious about looking over reading glasses? Instead she despised me; then again, gatekeepers always hate it when you get around them.

  She showed me into a spacious corner office not too dissimilar to my own. On his desk he had the cliché picture of his wife and two children on a beach. I wondered what kind of man liked to display a picture of his wife in a bikini for all to see. I didn’t wonder for long, I knew the type. On the walls were those pictures that say “success” and “triumph” with a picture of a man climbing a mountain above a motivational phrase with all the depth of a Petri dish. Beyond that his office was as nondescript as the view over Quarry Lake. I put my feet up on his desk and waited. The receptionist sat silently in a chair by the door, not trusting me to be left alone.

  ‘Have you worked here long, Joan?’ I asked her.

  She had been staring out the window and looked shocked that I acknowledged her existence.

  ‘Five years,’ she replied tersely, but not angrily.

  ‘Do you like it?’

  She looked even more confused that I was showing an interest in her. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is the pay good?’

  She paused before she spoke carefully. ‘Fine.’

  ‘A place like this they often make it up with benefits.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Bupa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nice. What else?’

  She sighed. ‘I’d better get back to reception.’ Then she got up and left me alone.

  I didn’t rifle through his desk, I knew there would be nothing interesting. Instead I just stared out the window. It took twenty minutes for him to find me, entering still wearing that sick smile and giving me a glimpse of a burly security guard outside the door. He unbuttoned his suit jacket, sat behind his desk, and pulled his shirt cuffs out from the sleeves. He didn’t comment on my feet. He took a silver toothpick from the top drawer of his desk and picked something out of his iridescent teeth, then he wiped the pick and put it back in his desk. He was still holding his gold pen, still playing with it in his fingers.

  ‘So who are you?’ he asked, still apparently amused.

  ‘My name is Joe Grabarz.’

  His eyebrows went up. They were so black I was sure he dyed them. ‘The detective?’ he remarked. ‘I’ve heard about you. Everyone admires what you did finding that girl.’

  I nodded thanks.

  ‘You mentioned something about a farm?’ he remarked as breezily as before.

  ‘I did, and all the colour that doesn’t come out of a tube drained out of your face. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’

  He smiled even more. ‘Is this the famous Joe Grabarz wit, or the famous Joe Grabarz grit, I’m being subjected to?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to explain what you’re talking about.’

  ‘How did I guess?’ I drawled. I leant back in the chair, pushing my feet even further onto his desk. ‘How does it work here? Do you get paid on commission for each drilling site?’

  He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘I suppose not, but I assume developing a new site would be quite a feather in your cap. You’re already South East Regional Director, but you’re only thirty-nine and I assume you have greater ambitions: a position in the London HQ, a place on the board, something conventional like that.’

  He kept smiling smugly.

  I continued: ‘But the NIMBYs down here are the most powerful in the country, after all, this is true-blue Sussex; so you haven’t managed to get any drilling sites up and running. Not even test-drilling. They’ve all been quashed, and the government won’t overrule their own councils. That makes you look pretty useless.’

  The smile was slipping now like a Post-it on a warm day.

  ‘I don’t know how it started,’ I continued, ‘whether you approached them or they approached you, but I’m guessing the latter. A man, tall, black, bald, smile about as fake as yours. What did they suggest? They owned some farmland on the Downs just north of Brighton, they would let you do a little test-drilling? All hush-hush of course, dead of night, that sort of thing. And if you get positive results back you’ll buy the land off them at double the going rate and can lobby the government to overrule the council. Which they will of course, it being as blue as a tomato.’

  The stick-on smile had fluttered to the floor, but he still didn’t speak.

  ‘I’m going to pay you a compliment and assume you didn’t know anyone would get killed,’ I told him. ‘Then again, I suppose for you it might be a good thing, you can use it to bargain down the price.’

  He scoffed without meaning to, then controlled himself.

  ‘Assuming the results come back positive,’ I added.

  There was a slight flicker of his eyes. I could read it like a book.

  I nodded to myself. ‘So they have come back positive. And it’s all just sitting out there under the chalk, waiting for you to extract it. But I guess it’s a long process, getting government approval. It’ll be months before you start your official test-drilling. I have to admit it’s a much more efficient system: knowing the stuff is there before you shell out millions to look for it.’

  He straightened-up in his chair. ‘An interesting fantasy, Mr—’

  ‘Oh
, come on,’ I interrupted him, ‘it’s too late for that. If you knew nothing about it, you would have interrupted me minutes ago. You wanted to know how much I knew, so you let me talk. From the moment I appeared you’ve been scared shitless, as you should be, because I bet you even let him meet you here. That receptionist of yours, Joan, she would probably remember him.’

  ‘I think—’

  ‘I’ll even come up with your story for you if you want. “He offered to drill the site himself,” how does that sound? It might even have happened that way for all I know. And then, when a private detective came snooping around he killed him, and you knew nothing about it. When you read a week later that someone had been killed on that land you made the connection and called the police. After consulting with a private detective: yours truly. It doesn’t sound like you’ve done anything illegal, or brought the company’s name into too much disrepute, you’ve even shown great diligence in hiring me. How does that sound?’ I flashed a smile.

  He stood up from his chair and marched to the door. He opened it and addressed the security guard:

  ‘Mr Grabarz is leaving now. Make sure he finds his way out.’

  The guard nodded. I held out my business card and didn’t take my feet off his desk until he took it.

  ‘Consider it,’ I told him, ‘for your own sake.’

  Then I buttoned up my suit and the guard followed me down the stairs and past the reception, where I gave Joan an obscene wink. Everything had gone about as well as I expected.

  ✽✽✽

  I was cruising the rented Kia back along the A27 when I noticed a black Vauxhall that had been in my rear-view mirror since Arundel. I sped up. I sped all the way up to ninety, and still it hovered the same distance back, as though attached to me by an invisible string. I slowed down, it slowed down. I changed lane, it changed lane. I moved back into the right-hand lane, accelerated, and when the coast was clear I braked suddenly, shot across the left-hand lane and over the verge onto the slip road into Southwick. It was dangerous, but there was no way they could follow that manoeuvre. I didn’t see it again after that. I headed for the coast road, and home.

  17

  Cold Water

  I drifted in a haze of sound and fury. A man screamed. Colours whirled in front of me like a badly projected film. I was watching it from a distance, all alone. The sound was muffled, tinny, they hadn’t set the speakers properly. Then the screen went black. I got up to tell an usher, but the lights were off and I couldn’t see where I was going, I tripped over a seat in the darkness. Then whiteness stabbed my eyes. Through squinting I could see my bathroom. I was on the toilet. The lid was shut, my clothes were on. Except my shoes. My right big toe poked through a shear part of my sock onto the cold stone floor.

  The raki bottle was in the sink, in ice water, little fingernails of former ice cubes floating on the surface. Pink ice water. Pink like rosewater. I threw up in it.

  My hands gripped the edge of the sink, they were pink too. Bruised. They hurt. I felt my trousers, they were damp. I had wet myself. I stared at a stranger’s face in the mirror and tried to remember something, anything. I went to Chichester. To Tessafrak. I drove back. The last thing I remembered was being on the A27. I tried to stand up straight and fell backwards into the bath, hitting my head on the china.

  I lay there for what seemed like an hour, legs hanging out, back hunched, neck bent. I could hardly breathe. I had red spots of blood on the inside of my hand. I felt the stitches on my scalp, but my fingers came away dry. With immense effort I managed to push myself up and roll out of the bath onto the floor. Phlegm dribbled from my mouth as I crawled for the door. It was shut. I had to hang off the doorknob to get it open.

  I crawled into the living room, groping until I could feel the rug under my hands, and pushed myself up onto the sofa. My head lolled over the back. I stared at the ceiling. The lamps were on. I slouched down a bit so my head would look forward. My chin rested down on my chest, pointed at the coffee table. I tried to blink away the fug, then hold in another chunder. Focus on the table. What is on the table?

  A glass. Two glasses. Not quite empty. A whisky bottle. An ashtray. A couple of joints. A resealable bag containing a small amount of “plant matter”. Cannabis, obviously. Paper straws. Razors blades. Cocaine. Something was wrong. I’ve never taken cocaine before.

  My laptop was open on the table, the screen paused. Porn. A really disgusting kind. I rested my head on my shoulder, looking up at the kitchenette. There was an open pizza box on the worktop. Empty beer bottles. Not even a brand I used to like.

  There was a cupboard opposite me, built into the far wall. I had never used it, it came as part of the fittings. The door was painted white like everything else in this posh, modern, minimalist, open-plan trap; but the simple wooden knob of a handle was smeared black. Black in this dim light but shiny. Like grease or oil. Except I knew it was blood. Even in that state I knew.

  I pushed myself up and staggered, but managed not to fall over. Swallowing more vomit I made it to the cupboard, but suddenly I knew better than to touch the handle. I should go to sleep. I should just go to sleep, and maybe when I wake up this will all be gone. Maybe this was a dream, I thought; it had been so long, I had forgotten what they were like.

  There was a thud inside the cupboard. A shifting of weight, something sliding, falling over. I took a step back. Then the doors burst open and something heavy fell against me, sending me backwards onto my arse and pinning me to the floor. The moment I tried to push it off me I knew it was a body. Pinned down I could only see the head, but I’d recognise that beard anywhere, even on a corpse. Ben McCready.

  The beard itched against my skin. I tried to shift. He was cold, like handling a raw chicken. I couldn’t push him off me just yet, so I laid my head back on the floor and stared at the ceiling. There was a strange light that flickered almost imperceptibly, like a broken fluorescent, but the only light should be coming from the lamps, and perhaps a little from the spotlights in the bathroom. I managed to slide out from under the body and to a window that looked over the boats. They were glowing. Blue. White. Blue. White. Jesus Christ!

  I sprinted to the front door and ran barefoot into the corridor, to the lift, and pressed the button. The display above showed “2” with the arrow pointing up. They were already on their way. I ran to the stairs at the other end of the corridor. I made it half a storey before I looked down the middle and saw hands ascending on the banister five storeys down. I leaped back up to the top and ran back in through my open door. I shut it and locked it. The chain too.

  I looked around at the carnage, at the corpse, at the rain battering the balcony doors, and had my stupidest idea yet. I unlocked the glass doors, ran out into rain, across the wet balcony, almost slipping, to the glass balustrade. I looked down over the cold, dark water. Rain dripped from my already sodden hair into the abyss. As I leant forward, gripping the steel handrail tightly, I could see the handrail of the balustrade of the balcony of the flat below peek out into the dark. It was this or nothing, now or never.

  I took off my belt and looped it through the handrail. Then before I had a chance to think it through any further I swang a leg over. As I straddled the balustrade I felt a sudden pang of terror, but I beat it down and swang the other leg over until I could push out on the glass like an abseiler. The glass balustrade was as wet and as cold and as slippery as ice, my hands were sweaty and every second I hung there my grip was sliding ever so slightly down the leather belt. I quickly worked my way down until I could feel the glass stop beneath my feet and the rendered wall begin. I looked down. Another pang of terror made me grip the belt even tighter, squeezing it further out my grasp, my hands as cold and white as Ben McCready’s and starting to numb.

  A few feet below me was the opening I needed to swing through. I slid my feet down the wall until I was hanging purely by my grip on the belt. The gap seemed unreachable; as far below me as the raging waters. I stared down into them and as I did they se
emed to swirl in the storm and open like a mouth waiting for me to fall. The waters crashed and spray shot up to lick my dangling feet.

  Thumping echoed through the rain. They were banging on my door. I slid my grip to the end of the belt, only half-deliberately. I could feel it disappearing from my hands, slipping out like a bar of soap. Finally I could get my toes under the lip of the wall, to the ceiling of the balcony below. I had to let go and fall inwards over the balustrade without hitting my arse on the handrail and toppling over backwards into the abyss, into the water, to my death. If I was going to survive I had to think about it and make sure I had the right momentum, but then I heard the bang and crack of splintered wood as my door was smashed in and I let go.

  My arse grazed the handrail, my feet smacked on the floor, and I crashed onto my hands and knees on the polished concrete. And I bit my tongue. I tried not to howl, but all things considered it wasn’t that bad.

  I could hear a constant ding-ding-ding above me, and leant out over the balcony to see the belt slapping against the glass in the wind. They were inside my flat now, I was sure of it. There was nothing I could do, so I turned to the flat I was now outside.

  I tried the balcony doors. They were locked. I peered in through the glass. No lights were on, not even the LEDs of a television or router. Just the smoke detector. That didn’t surprise me, most of the flats were second homes and holiday lets. I looked at the doors, they were the same as mine of course: glass double doors from top to bottom with a single lock in the centre. I didn’t have my picks with me, or my multi-tool, I didn’t have a thing in my pockets and I wasn’t even wearing shoes. There was only one thing for it: I had to shoulder barge it. The police would probably hear the shattering glass coming from the flat below them, but the only alternative was to wait for them to spot the belt and figure out what I’d done, and possibly die of hypothermia in the meantime.