It Never Goes Away

by Tom Trott

  Dash, dash. Dot, dash. Dash, dot, dot, dash.

  -- ·- -··-

  Using the paperclip I scratched the result into the leather armrest:

  MAX

  19

  The Astronaut

  The moment i woke I knew there was someone in the room. It took me far longer to remember where I was. There was a spilt mug at my feet, and a brown stain, still wet. Then I saw the scratched “MAX” under my fingers. The only light was coming from the spectral mist, white and ethereal and unnatural for this time of night. I heard breathing, rattling like a ventilator.

  ‘Wakey-wakey, Mr Grabarz.’

  I shot a look up at the chair opposite. Sitting in it was a man, of sorts, in a silver hazmat suit; the type with a large plastic window twice the size of a face. He wore yellow rubber gloves, black rubber boots, and behind the steamed-up window a goggled gas mask. He looked like the type of person you see on the news when there has been a toxic spill or a nerve agent, the type you see when it’s really bad news. In this light the only visible part of him was the glow of his eyes, which pierced through the two windows.

  ‘Quite an escape you managed. And here you are, of all places.’ He sucked in a rattling, pressurised breath. ‘You can’t keep a secret forever.’ His voice was muffled through the mask and suit. ‘I knew that eventually someone would find this place. I hoped it would be you. I didn’t think it would be tonight.’

  I pinched myself. It hurt.

  ‘...perhaps it was even necessary, even fate,’ he mused, ‘that at the end we would meet here.’ He refocused. ‘I always wanted to meet you, even thought about dropping in once or twice.’

  He seemed to wait for me to speak. I couldn’t if I wanted to.

  ‘...to thank you,’ he added.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Who are you?’ I croaked.

  The eyes glowed. ‘You know who I am.’

  I did know.

  I felt the room tilt toward him, I had to cling onto the chair.

  There was silence for a moment. I can’t call it anything else because I couldn’t see his face. Then another pressurised breath rattled through the gas mask.

  My heart raced, my breath shallow. It was the voice that did it, the face in darkness. It was all too familiar. Was this really him, the man I had convinced myself didn’t exist? The man I thought I created? I must have. The story was too unbelievable. Too ridiculous. I had taken one nightmarish incident and exaggerated it into a grand conspiracy. Exaggerated one ordinary criminal into a city-conquering supervillain. But like the grit at the centre of a pearl, there was a man at the centre of the myth. This was the same man, I knew that. But just a man. Just a man.

  ‘Nice place you have here,’ I told him.

  There was a movement in the mask, maybe a smile. ‘This is my shed skin.’ He looked around. ‘I come back occasionally when seeking perspective.’ He changed the subject, flicking like a feather in the wind: ‘I do very much regret having to hurt you, but you’ve been unusually obstructive this past week. Although I admit it’s been nice to see you back in the game. You know, I was thinking the other day, I wonder if Joe knows what quantum entanglement is?’

  My voice came from far off. ‘I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘It’s like you and I, linked across spacetime. I wonder when the entanglement occurred. Could you even tell me?’

  ‘You’re Max?’ I asked.

  ‘But of course.’ Now I could tell he was smiling.

  ‘Then what the fuck could you want to thank me for?’

  His breath wheezed this time, maybe it was a laugh. Then silence. I kept an earnest look on my face. The mask moved in the shadow behind the first window. Then there was something that could have been a sigh. I could sense a speech coming.

  ‘I started my criminal career when I was still a child. I didn’t know anything, but I learned quickly. I had rebooted my life, and I gave it a chance being as “gangster” as the rest of the children. I bragged, I wanted everyone to know my name. Stupid, like all the rest of them.’

  He breathed in and out a few times.

  ‘It was a meagre, pathetic existence. So I rebooted again. This time I told nobody my name. I would leave no trace. Nobody would ever know anything about me. In their minds I simply would not exist.’

  He paused for another breathing session.

  ‘Back then I couldn’t avoid meeting people in the flesh, but I determined they would learn nothing about me beyond what my actions demonstrated. But the children remembered me. And when the others needed a name to call me amongst themselves, they used the name the children had told them. So the children died. But still the name did not.’

  Another long breath.

  ‘So from my previous life I kept the name. That was all. If anyone dared speak it in my presence, they died. But still the name began to echo in the streets. I didn’t know how. Then word reached me that a young private detective was telling anyone who would listen. “Max, Max, Max,” it was all he could say. I thought no one would listen, so I left him alone, there was no reason to make him a martyr. But the story spread. I decided I would have him killed, or he would damage my business, rob me of my anonymity, something I prized beyond all else. But then the most remarkable thing happened.’

  There was another melodramatic pause.

  ‘People had always been afraid of me, of course, a simple demonstration was enough, but now people were afraid before they even met me. They were afraid of my name. And I can’t say I didn’t enjoy that. I was an urban legend, and I had a chronicler. Cervantes to my Don Quixote. You see, I was always me, but you created Max.’

  I stayed silent.

  ‘Since then I’ve known I’d have to sit down with you eventually. There’s truth that lives, and truth that dies. It’s important that you get the story right for when I’m gone.’

  ‘You’re going somewhere?’

  ‘Not yet. But soon.’

  I looked him up and down before I spoke. There wasn’t much to see, just a man, hidden somewhere beneath the layers.

  ‘I told everyone about you because I thought it was the best way to stop you.’ I shrugged. ‘Sorry if you thought it was anything else.’

  He didn’t seem interested, his thoughts were elsewhere. ‘Do you remember the first time you heard about me? I remember the first time I heard about you. I was incensed.’ The word was dripping with glee. ‘Do you want to hear the story?’

  I felt sick. ‘So you don’t remember me,’ I intoned.

  It had the desired effect. Every subtle movement of his body stopped. I saw the eyes flash in the darkness. ‘That’s interesting,’ was all he said. I imagined I could hear his brain ticking. After a minute, he commanded me: ‘Speak.’

  I didn’t.

  ‘Say something.’

  I didn’t.

  ‘Anything.’ He was quite calm.

  ‘Fuck you,’ I offered.

  There was silence again. His eyes glowed unnaturally in the darkness like the dial of a watch. His breathing was steady, the breathing of a panther waiting to strike. The eyes disappeared, shut for thought.

  ‘Voices are fascinating, don’t you think?’ His eyes were still shut. ‘There are people who say they never forget a face. I personally, always forget faces. I don’t even bother. What is a face? A luck of nature, a choice in facial hair or jewellery, a broken nose maybe, ethnicity, surgery. Trivial things. But a voice? A voice is everything: class, education, geography, family, friends, age, lifestyle, illness, emotion, strength, weakness, your voice holds so much history, so much identity, it is shaped and formed as you grow, absorbs every influence, and continues to change through your life. It is the reason I have rebooted my voice, built a new one from scratch. My identity is my own, I refuse to define it by others. But it is also the reason why I never, ever forget a voice...’ He smiled, finally opening his eyes. ‘...burglar.’

  He didn’t speak for a few minutes, he seemed lost in the memories of our first meeting; reviewing them, apply
ing the new knowledge to what he thought of me.

  ‘It’s always terrifying to find you have a blind spot,’ he mused, ‘but that is how we learn.’ He constructed some more thoughts. ‘If I was a Homo sapiens I might believe it was fate. Chaos theory spares your life, but leaves us entangled, connected forever, until we meet again thirteen years later. It’s good, I like it. Much better than you being some do-gooder, this being some tiresomely moral crusade. I much prefer that it’s personal between us. It heightens the drama, don’t you think? Makes the story so much more compelling.’

  His voice was entirely different to when we first met. Back then it was posh, ridiculously so, unless he got angry, then the mask slid open like the vent on a jet engine. Today it was the indistinct transatlantic voice of the super-rich. He was in transition; to what, I didn’t know. I didn’t much care either.

  ‘So if you want to set the story straight,’ I said, ‘you’re willing to answer some questions?’

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘Did you kill Clarence?’

  There was a beat. ‘That’s what you want to know about? I’m offering you a chance to ask me all the questions you wanted answered over these thirteen years, about my empire, how I managed to hide my identity, how I gained control over the old guard of criminals, Robert Coward and his ilk, and you want to ask me that?’

  ‘Did you kill Clarence?’

  He sighed. ‘Not personally.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was being a nuisance.’

  ‘I’ve been a nuisance for thirteen years.’

  ‘That’s different; you’re you: burglar-Cervantes. Not to mention I don’t like to kill members of my own species.’

  I scoffed.

  ‘It’s true,’ he insisted. ‘We’re Homo sapiens, so everyone says. “Sapiens” means wise. Wise humans. But we gained that status when we invented the flint axe. Now that we can split the atom and splice DNA, there are scientists who believe that we have reached a new classification: Homo sapiens sapiens. I just happen to disagree that all people should be awarded that status.’ He paused, itching one of his hands as best he could through the gloves. ‘Haven’t you always wondered why they still need to put “do not drink” on bottles of bleach, wondered why people still fall for telemarketers and political snake oil salesmen, why people think the moon landing was faked, ever wondered how they could be so stupid? How can they even be the same species? Well, they’re not. They are Homo sapiens. We are Homo sapiens sapiens. So I don’t shed any tears when they get killed.’

  ‘Uh-huh, who killed Clarence?’

  There was another charged beat. ‘You’re not asking the right questions.’

  ‘Who killed Clarence?’

  ‘I did. It doesn’t matter whose hands were on the axe: the same way I can pull the trigger on a gun I can pull the trigger on a person.’

  ‘You had him killed because he was snooping around the farm, looking into Tessafrak.’

  There was a cautious pause. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That will be obvious after I’m gone.’

  ‘What’s the plan with the farm, with Tessafrak?’

  ‘That will be obvious after I’m gone.’

  ‘You talk as though you’re going to die.’

  ‘Max will die. I will be reborn.’

  ‘Another reboot?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Why?’

  He didn’t mean to, but he extended his fingers, gesturing ever so slightly to the world around us. ‘So that I can leave all this behind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Isn’t that obvious?’ he asked, before admonishing himself: ‘No, you’re right. Get the story right.’

  He leant back in his chair. I could feel another speech building like a storm in the air.

  ‘Did you know we’re the same age?’ he asked. ‘We were both born into poverty, at the bottom of the heap. Where are the rest of the people we grew up with? Where are the people you were in foster care with? Still at the bottom of the heap. I refused to accept the lot I was born into, I was going to get what those at the top had got.’

  ‘Through crime?’

  ‘You think anyone got to the top any other way? Those “born rich”, their ancestors robbed and murdered. Those who get rich do it by exploiting others. You call me a master criminal, but the real masters are those who convince you they’ve done nothing wrong. Billionaires, oligarchs, it doesn’t matter, you only get rich by taking money out of other people’s pockets. Drugs, sex, fraud, theft. And if they don’t have money you spend their chemical energy and their lives instead of yours. And just as we used farm animals to till the earth, I use Homo sapiens to grow my fortune.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Just because you’re jealous of rich people?’

  ‘I’m not jealous of anyone,’ he snapped. ‘I just want the most I can get. Why would you want anything else? I have millions now, but pretty soon I’ll have billions. Then I can leave behind the cocoon of organised crime, of Max, and be just another billionaire relaxing on their private island, running the world from a telephone. I am social mobility. From nothing to everything before the age of forty, you have to admit that’s pretty impressive.’

  ‘Can’t you just be happy?’ I asked.

  ‘Happy? What does that even mean? The only people who are happy in the way you mean are morons.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m happy.’

  ‘No you’re not, that’s just an excuse. You’re smart, but you’ve wasted your life. There’s no reason you couldn’t have achieved what I have achieved. We’re the same age, don’t forget, and I’m up here and you’re down there.’

  ‘I’m doing all right for myself.’

  ‘It won’t last.’ He was certain of it. ‘In a few years your agency will go bust, sued into oblivion. Without me to spur you on you’ll become a drunk again, sleeping in your office, scraping a living off the desperate. You’ll die on the streets, one cold winter. You’ll die in the hole you were born in.’ He paused, then he gave out a little laugh. ‘Don’t take it personally; I like you, and you know I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.’

  I bit my tongue, resisted my first instinct. ‘Maybe I’m just a Homo sapien, because I don’t know what you mean by that.’

  ‘Yes you do.’

  ‘Explain it to me,’ I said through clenched teeth.

  ‘There’s no point in getting angry, Joe, it won’t change the facts.’

  It was my turn to laugh. ‘The facts? Yes, that’s a good idea, let’s stick to facts.’ I chuckled again. He didn’t like it. ‘I’m not a moralistic person, it would be hypocritical of me. Facts...’ I tried to control my anger. ‘The facts are that there are hundreds of dead people who would be alive if it wasn’t for you. The facts are you’ve profited from drugs and prostitution, kidnapping, trafficking, and who knows what other horrors. You justify it by saying that everyone else is just an animal, but it shows what kind of person you are that you would treat animals that way. The facts are you’ve made the world a worse place, so using the scale I use you’ve not achieved a thing, you’re actually in negative numbers. Now, I don’t claim to be a good person, but I do at least try not to be a bad one. And don’t take any of this personally, by the way.’

  ‘I know it’s hard to hear the truth, Joe,’ he purred.

  ‘Too hard for you. And you call me Cervantes; you know that Quixote was delusional. Quixote didn’t really exist.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘But Quixano did exist, the deluded old man who tilted at windmills.’

  ‘And which of us is him?’ he asked with a smile. ‘See...’ he gestured at me, ‘you deny everything I’ve done for you, but when we met you were a young thug, with no prospects of being anything other than an old thug; and here you are now, giving me literary criticism.’

  ‘You didn’t teach me to read.’

  He sighed. His fingers drew a pattern on the brown leather. The glow of the mist had faded now,
the magic of the night had disappeared. We had killed it.

  He spoke gently: ‘For the things you’ve said to me tonight, normally I would kill you.’ He shrugged. ‘But I don’t have a weapon on me, and there’s too much chaos theory involved in grabbing one of the knives from the kitchen.’

  A final rattling, whining breath screamed through the gas mask. He stood up. The glow of his eyes faded away. The performed charm and the playfulness was gone from his voice, replaced by the hard, dirty voice of his youth:

  ‘Joe Grabarz, maybe you have reached the end of your usefulness. Leave now. Run away, hide, become a drunk again... and in sixth months’ time when this is all over, and when you tell my story to the other drunks and the rest of the farm animals you can have the honour of telling them that I let you live.’

  20

  Previously...

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’ Darren asked.

  ‘That would be great,’ I replied, with the best smile I could manage.

  He hadn’t smiled yet, normally you couldn’t stop him. What did I look like? I wondered. I was still wearing the ridiculous clothes, still smelt of sweat and alcohol, was still covered in cuts and bruises. I looked like the fashion police had kept me overnight and not been kind about it.

  I was in an uncomfortably stylish chair in Andy’s flat in the small hours of the morning, just like the week before, but this time Andy wasn’t home.

  Darren brought my coffee. I thanked him. When he looked at me this time he was more sympathetic. He returned to the kitchen, but stopped in the doorway. He spoke with his back to me.

  ‘No questions asked, Joe, but you look like you need a shower and some clean clothes. I’ll leave some bits in the bathroom for when you’ve finished your coffee.’

  I waited five minutes, then took my coffee in the bathroom with me. He had laid out boxer shorts, socks, jeans, a black T-shirt, black hoodie, and even black gloves. For the second time that night I jumped in the shower and scrubbed myself clean. Whilst I dripped dry I stared into the mirror at my steamy reflection.