by Neil Cross
Kenny looked at the spray of blood on Paul’s brow.
Paul said, ‘Okay, so here’s what I’m going to do now. I’m going to call the police. And I’m going to tell them what you did.’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
Paul looked at Kenny and grinned. Then he reached into his pocket and took out a mobile phone. It looked comically small in his hand.
Kenny thought of Mary and Stever. He watched Paul Sugar, this man with his blood-flecked brow and his bright blue eyes.
He said, ‘Do what you want; call the police. It means you don’t get
the cottage. This place is worth a lot more than two thousand pounds.’
‘Not if I don’t get two thousands pounds today, it’s not. Money’s no good if you’re not around to spend it.’
Kenny took his hands from his pockets, shrugged. ‘If I can’t do it, I can’t do it.’
Paul crossed his massive arms and planted his feet wide. He tilted his head with a physician’s concern. ‘How long have you got left?’
‘I don’t know. A week or two.’
Paul made a remorseful face. ‘That’s much too long for my purposes.’
He flexed the fingers of his good hand. Then he stepped forward, grabbed Kenny and tucked him into a headlock.
Kenny kicked out. Things fell over: easels and jars and stacked paintings. Kenny clawed at Paul’s skin, grabbed at his clothes.
Paul tightened his elbow and Kenny’s field of vision began to redden, black at the edges. He clawed and scratched at that freckled, butcher’s forearm.
He could feel his fingers weakening, far away. His legs gave way beneath him, skidding around like a baby giraffe.
Paul knelt, taking Kenny’s weight as he collapsed, keeping him in the armlock, tightening it.
Kenny could smell Paul’s musty clothes, the pus and antiseptic of his bandaged hand.
Paul squeezed harder, grunting.
Kenny’s vision shrank towards a radiant terminal point.
49
Paul held on for a few seconds, making sure Kenny was fully unconscious. Then he stood, working through his options.
He searched the studio. Eventually, he found a ball of hairy string and used it to hog-tie Kenny; thumb-to-thumb and wrist to ankle.
He went to the kitchen, opening cupboards and cabinets with great awkwardness, using his elbows and feet to avoid leaving fingerprints.
In the cupboard under the sink he found a pair of Marigold gloves. He slipped one onto his good hand, using his teeth to finish the job.
Then he looked round Kenny’s room, feeling under the mattress, rummaging in the wardrobe, exploring the bookshelves. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, not even money. Searching just helped him to think.
Then he found the bathroom and went inside. He opened the medicine cabinet and saw Kenny’s painkillers.
Paul took the bottle from the medicine cabinet. He shook it. It made a dry, whispery, percussive sound that reminded him of primary school.
He left the bathroom, still thinking. The pills weren’t right. Paul didn’t even know if he could open the child-proof bottle using his one good hand.
He returned to Kenny’s wardrobe and opened it. He pushed the clothes to one end. There was only one necktie in there, a vivid purple paisley.
Paul began to knot one end of the tie, using his teeth. When he’d done that, he tested the heft and strength of the door knob.
He returned to where Kenny lay. He stooped, took a big breath, then grabbed Kenny by the collar and dragged him across the studio, through the kitchen, to the bedroom.
He took a break. His lower back hurt. Then he knelt, licking his lips with a quick tongue, and looped the necktie round Kenny’s throat.
He lifted Kenny, bundling him up, so that the other end of the necktie would reach the door handle. He began to tie the knot.
Then he heard a noise.
It had come from down the corridor, from a room at the dim end of the long hallway.
Probably, it was a cat. A dog would have barked.
Paul let Kenny go and straightened, taking a few moments to replay the last minutes in his mind. He realized that if someone was hiding in the room, they’d heard Paul use his name.
He listened, breathing hard. Then he crept up to the closed door of the last bedroom. It radiated a fearful silence.
He opened the door and stepped inside.
There was something wrong with the room. For a second, Paul thought it was the smell – like drains gone bad.
Then he noticed the timber fastened to the external windowframe, the radiator that had been ripped from the wall, an inch of amputated copper piping jutting from it. He noticed the upended kitchen chair with ribbons of duct tape attached to it. And he noticed the filthy, ragged man standing – crouching really – in the far corner.
Paul and the ragged man faced each other in silence. The room was full of their breathing.
At great length, Paul said, ‘Jesus Christ. Are you Jonathan Reese?’
The man didn’t speak. He just crouched there, watching Paul through white eyes.
Paul said, ‘What’s happening here?’
The ragged man’s voice was a thirsty whisper. Paul had to strain to listen. He was saying: ‘Are you the police?’
Paul felt a flash of merriment – not for Jonathan Reese, but at his own expense, for the clusterfuck that was currently his life.
He sized Jonathan up. He was in a bad way, swaying like a sapling.
Paul trod a cautious step closer. Just putting on the right expression made him feel compassion in his heart. Tears shone in his bright blue eyes, glinting in his big, hangdog face. ‘Jonathan?’
The ragged man stared at him.
Paul said, ‘I’m here for you. Your family sent me to find you. I’m here to take you home.’
The man was thin and blackened as if by soot.
Paul held out a tentative hand. It was still wearing the Marigold glove. ‘My name is Paul. I’m not a police officer. But I’m here to help.’
He stood a few feet away, keeping his voice low and sedative. ‘I know you’re scared. But the man who did this to you is unconscious and secured. The emergency services are on their way. You’re safe.’
The ragged man took a shambling step forward. He was crying – estuaries gleaming on his blackened face.
Paul kept the tender little smile on his face, the tears in his eyes, the compassion in his heart.
The man halted before him, cautious as a feral cat.
Paul lay a hand, light but firm, on the man’s shoulder. It was a father’s gesture, a coach’s.
‘Jonathan?’
The man tensed, as if about to be struck. ‘Yes.’
Paul waited until Jonathan’s bunched muscles unknotted under his hand and the strength began to go out of him. He was unmanned by relief.
Then Paul made a vice with his fingers and thumb, digging deep into the muscle beneath Jonathan’s delicate clavicle.
Jonathan’s eyes widened and he made a dry, hissing sound – like fine sand passing through an hourglass. One hand tugged without effect at Paul’s broad wrist.
Paul crushed harder.
Jonathan’s inky face grew monstrous. He was folding up, his knees giving way beneath him.
Maintaining his grip, Paul side-stepped and got on one knee behind Jonathan. He released Jonathan’s clavicle, tightened an elbow round Jonathan’s throat. He flexed his bicep.
Paul grunted with effort, brushing Jonathan’s ear with his lips.
Jonathan fought, but he was frail; it was just panic, a childish scrambling. Then he raised his left hand. In it was a small serrated kitchen knife with a red handle.
Jonathan used the knife to slash deep across the inside of Paul’s thigh, severing the femoral artery.
Paul wore an ogre’s face; spit and teeth and rage and humiliation. He looked at Jonathan with a terrible hatred. His inside leg was gobbeting blood.
He too
k a weird, lumbering step. His thigh was sopping. The stain widened and thickened. His trousers clung to him. In his astonishment and fear, he was mumbling urgent nonsense – admonishing himself, urging himself to do something. He clutched at his leg with his bandaged hand. Blood infused the dirty grey, made it black.
He trudged on. Big, flat feet. One shoe slurping with blood. He reached for the door. Stumbled and fell.
Paul dragged himself along the floor with his good hand. Soon he couldn’t move any more. He lay there, face down. He was making gobbling noises.
The bandaged hand hammered at the floor, enraged. It left flattened, bloody prints, like a child’s thumb painting.
Jonathan waited, doused in Paul Sugar’s blood. It shone on his face and in his hair. There were flecks of it on his teeth. He cleaned them with his tongue and spat on the floor.
Eventually, Paul stopped moving.
Jonathan picked up the knife. It had slipped in his hand when he slashed Paul across the thigh. There was a wound across the meat of his palm. He didn’t care.
He left his prison and stalked round the cottage, seeing much of it for the first time. He found Kenny hog-tied and helpless with a purple necktie knotted too tight around his throat. Kenny’s face was plum purple under white hair.
Jonathan stood over him.
50
Kenny saw the knife and then he saw Jonathan. He didn’t speak. It was difficult to breathe.
Jonathan croaked: ‘Who the fuck was that?’
Kenny coughed. His throat was sore. It hurt to speak. He spoke in a rasping whisper. ‘I don’t really know.’
Jonathan nodded, as if that made sense. He leaned on the wall. ‘He was going to kill us both.’
Kenny nodded, as much as he could.
Jonathan said: ‘Why?’
‘For the cottage, I think. I left him the cottage in my will.’
‘But you don’t know him?’
‘It’s a long story.’
Jonathan squinted at Kenny as if he were mad. Then he knelt, put the knife to Kenny’s eye. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘I know.’
‘Or about her.’
‘I know.’
‘So who the fuck are you? How did you know Caroline?’
‘We went to school together. When we were little.’
‘How little?’
‘Junior school.’
Jonathan cackled. It became a snarl, then a kind of howl. Blood was dripping from his sliced palm on to Kenny’s face. Kenny lay awkwardly on his side, his wrists tied to his ankles, unable to draw a lungful of air.
Jonathan pressed the point of the blade to the skin beneath Kenny’s eye. It made a pale indentation, pinkish at the edges.
He pressed harder. The tip of the knife slipped a millimetre into Kenny’s skin. Jonathan spoke in a low, confiding mutter: ‘Do you really want to know what happened?’
Kenny blinked. Yes.
Jonathan said, ‘What I think she did: she got on a train or a ferry and just never came home. I don’t know if she planned it, or if it was spur of the moment. I think that’s what she dreamed about, just running away. Whatever.’ He laughed to himself, privately. ‘She didn’t use her passport, so I always supposed she’d stayed in Europe. Maybe she got to Paris or Barcelona somehow. They were her favourite places. Or she said they were. Mostly, I think she liked the idea of them.’ He made a growling sound in his throat, like a dog about to bark. ‘You might think you loved her, or that you owed her something. But I really did love her. I fucked it up, but I loved her. Look what it got me. And look what it got you.’
Kenny didn’t know what to say, except: ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Kenny.’
‘Kenny what?’
‘Drummond.’
Jonathan ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘She never mentioned you. I never heard your name before.’
‘No,’ said Kenny.
They were quiet for a while.
Jonathan said: ‘How long do you have?’
‘Not very.’
Jonathan squatted there, thinking.
Then he cut Kenny free. He put his arm round Kenny’s shoulder and helped him to his feet.
They limped to the kitchen, supporting each other. Jonathan poured himself a glass of water. He drank it in one, then grabbed the edges of the sink and lowered his head as if about to vomit. He stayed there until it had passed.
Then he poured another glass and gave it to Kenny, who was standing braced by the wall. The rough string had bruised his wrists. Kenny massaged his raw throat, drank the water.
They stood together, looking out of the window.
Jonathan said, ‘Everything that happened here, nobody can know about it. None of it. I can’t let that woman ruin my life any more.’
‘No,’ said Kenny. ‘Me neither.’
51
Kenny called Pat, but she didn’t answer. Her machine didn’t even kick in. The line just rang and rang.
He tried four times.
He made himself busy. He heated some tinned chicken soup. Jonathan sipped a couple of spoonfuls but couldn’t keep it down.
Kenny left him to find some strength and went rummaging for everything they would need. Petrol in the red canister, a blue tarpaulin he found bundled up and mildewed in one corner of an outbuilding; the crowbar; a ball pen hammer that wasn’t heavy enough. The little fire extinguisher he kept in the back of the Combi.
He drove to the garden centre, leaving Jonathan to gather deadfall and leaves and other garden waste. Kenny limped round the aisles, buying a short-handled sledgehammer, more rolls of duct tape, some gardening gloves, a garden fork and several rolls of heavy-duty garden refuse sacks.
He returned to find that Jonathan had worked hard in the watery sunshine, labouring slowly to erect a broad-based bonfire, piling it with wood from the outbuildings and with smashed-up old furniture.
They entered the cottage together and worked in the last bedroom. They didn’t speak, communicating only with glances and gestures and grunts and, once or twice, a kind of bitter laugh.
They emptied Paul Sugar’s pockets of car keys, wallet and a blister pack of Dexedrine. Kenny removed the credit cards from the wallet, cut them up with kitchen scissors, put them in a soup bowl and burned them until they were molten and bubbling like caramel.
In the wallet there were no photographs or other personal items.
They knelt to unlace and remove Paul’s huge shoes. One was clammy with cooling sweat, the other was sopping full of blood. They cut off Paul’s blood-sodden clothes, leaving him in underwear and socks.
They worked together to tie a yellow tow rope around Paul’s chest and hauled him through the kitchen and out of the back door, as if dragging a boat to the edge of the water. He left a trail of faecal matter and blood.
They heaved and strained to drag the body on to the bonfire. Some of the structure collapsed beneath his dead weight. They remodelled the pyre around him.
Kenny doused Paul with petrol from the red canister. Then they piled more wood and kindling around him, even using some scraps of coal from a long-forgotten scuttle. Kenny poured petrol on the kindling, too. On top of all that they lay the clothing and heaps of dried-out summer leaf-fall.
Then Kenny got on his hands and knees with a lighted twist of paper. He lit the bonfire from its base, where there was no petrol. It took some time to get going, even using the fire-lighters. But when the pale flicker finally reached the petrol the fire roared like a living thing, grinning, licking it chops, softly growling.
As the bonfire smoked and popped, they wordlessly gathered more fuel to feed it. It needed to burn hot, for a long, long time.
Then, as Jonathan limped into the cottage, Kenny jacked up Paul’s car, removed the wheels and rolled them into the darkest corner of the furthest outbuilding.
He removed the number plates and threw them in the fast-moving brook, followed by Paul’s empty wallet
and car keys and shoes.
He rubbed the car’s bodywork, massaging it with handfuls of oily dirt, rubbing it down with an old towel. It was like ageing a painting.
From a drawer in the kitchen he took a carrier bag and returned to the car. He cleaned out the glovebox, under the seats and in the boot. He filled the carrier bag with an A–Z, a dog-eared map book, a squeezed-out tube of HC45 cream, an empty spectacles case, some fluffy boiled sweets, old pens and a paperclip.
Then he used a pack of kitchen wipes to clean each surface – paying special attention to the gear stick, the steering wheel, the door handles, the rear-view mirror. He stuffed the used wipes into another, now bulging carrier bag. He knotted the bag and binned it.
He siphoned the petrol from the tank into the red canister. Then he bundled up some newspaper, soaked it in petrol, threw it into the car and tossed in a match. He let it burn for thirty seconds before dousing the flames with the mini-extinguisher.
When it cooled, the car would look like it had been here for ever. He hoped the smell would dissipate soon; it ruined the illusion. He didn’t know how to remove the smell. It would have to do.
Kenny went inside.
Jonathan had mopped and scrubbed the floors with extravagant amounts of cold water and biological washing powder. The last bedroom smelled hot and clean, like a laundrette.
The sun was setting and the pyre glowed red, the smoke pouring into the darkening sky. Kenny and Jonathan winced in its wavering heat. They threw on more armfuls of leaves. The hair on their arms and their eyelashes singed.
They stepped forward and fed the sketches of Jonathan to the fire, one by one. The chronicle of Jonathan’s transformation was received by the flames: paper curled and blackened; moth-light ashes described a slow wandering spiral, circling in the coiling air, glowing briefly red at the edges, bright against smoke that was black with Paul’s heatrendered fat. It was sad and beautiful. It smelled of autumn, of barbecues and burning leaves and the passing of the summer.
Then Kenny and Jonathan sat at the border of endurance, watching it. The flames licked on the shadowed planes of their faces and made them pagan and unfamiliar.
Kenny called Pat, but there was still no answer.