by Mick Herron
He weighed it in his hand. The sugar tin was where Hannah had hidden small sums of cash. Bettany used to shake his head—the sugar tin? Please. But that’s where she’d kept her emergency fund, and where Liam had kept his too. Bettany shook his head again, less at the way things were handed down, and more at the fact that the police hadn’t found it. They must have been through the flat looking for drugs, if nothing else. Muskrat. Who thought up these names?
The coffee was ready. He poured a cup, left it black, carried it into the sitting room. Taking his raincoat off at last, he draped it over the sofa, then opened Liam’s laptop. It swam into life without complaint but asked for a password. After pondering this for a while, Bettany closed the lid.
A yawn caught him unawares. He hadn’t slept in—he couldn’t bring himself to perform the calculation. Too many hours. He hadn’t slept in too many hours. The coffee would help.
When the phone rang he at first didn’t realise it was his own, and once he had it took him a moment to locate it. It was in his raincoat pocket, and before he’d retrieved it, the ringing stopped. But in moving the coat, or else putting his weight on the sofa’s cushions, he’d released an aroma that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t much, a fading scent, but it caught him where he lived, raising hairs at the back of his neck. It was the smell of his son. The ordinary, living smell of Liam, of his soap, and his sweat, and of oils that had seeped from his hair as he sat here, head against the cushions.
The phone rang again.
“Mr. Bettany?”
He didn’t reply.
“Mr.—?”
“Yes.”
“It’s DS Welles, sir. You’re at your son’s flat, are you?”
“Yes.”
“I have his things. His effects.”
Effects was a policeman’s word.
“And I’m just outside. Should I—”
“I’ll come down.”
He waited two minutes, then did so. Welles was on the step, offering a brown envelope that might have come from the Revenue, or anywhere else that issued impersonal demands. Bettany took it in his left hand. His right was jammed in his pocket.
“Thanks.”
“Are you going to be all right?”
“I expect so.”
“Is there anyone—”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Of course. Here, I need you to sign this, sir.”
Bettany scrawled his name on the proffered form, I hereby acknowledge receipt, and turned back inside. Before shutting the door he said, “How did you know I was here?”
“Couldn’t think where else you’d be.”
Upstairs, he turned the envelope over. Objects inside it slipped from side to side. Eventually he ripped the seal and poured its contents onto the table.
A wallet, holding a little over thirty pounds, two credit cards, a supermarket loyalty card and a library ticket.
A set of doorkeys.
A chapstick.
A packet of tissues.
That was it.
He dumped everything on the desk next to the laptop and finished his coffee. Knowing it wasn’t a great idea, that it would give him the jitters, he poured a second cup anyway, drained it, and poured a third. That was the end of the coffee. He wandered the flat again, cup in hand. Everywhere was clean lines, clutter-free surfaces. A thin layer of dust was forming, exactly measurable, Bettany thought, to the day of his son’s death. There were no candles melting into wax-smeared holders, no knick-knacks acquired on holiday to forever take up space. No photographs, other than those on the fridge.
None of which were of Bettany.
He wouldn’t have expected any. He was surprised Liam had listed his number as an emergency contact—wouldn’t have been shocked to learn he was passing as an orphan. As Bettany recalled it, that had been the import of their last conversation.
It’s your fault she’s dead.
It’s cancer’s fault, Liam.
And why do you think people get cancer? You made her unhappy. You were a bastard to her, and to me.
There was a whole deluded industry dedicated to the notion that cancer fattened on the emotions, and not for a moment had Bettany believed his son had fallen prey to it. It had been a weapon, that’s all. A stick to beat him with.
Had he been a bastard? He’d been called worse.
One of the pictures of Liam was recent, taken indoors. His hair, always darker than his father’s, was cut short, and he wore a white collarless shirt, open at the neck. Half-smiling, half-serious, he seemed to be trying to impress the photographer with both sides of his personality. Twenty-six years old. Bettany unclipped it and carried it into the other room.
On the sofa he closed his eyes, photo on his chest. It was quiet. Caffeinated to the eyeballs, he didn’t expect to sleep but drifted anyway, memories of a much younger Liam overlapping with those of Hannah, distant snapshots that offered no clue to how badly things would go awry. It’s your fault she’s dead. There was no way in the world those words were true, and no way to unremember them.
The light through the windows had weakened when he stood and put his raincoat on. Leaving the flat, he went downstairs. When Greenleaf opened the door he was holding a paper napkin, wiping his mouth. He’d missed a fleck of grease that shone on his chin.
“Did you bring the key back?” he said.
“When was the rent paid up to?”
“I can’t remember offhand.” Greenleaf’s eyes glazed, as if he were engaged in a mental calculation he’d hoped would be overlooked. “I could work it out, refund the balance. Leave your address and I’ll post you a cheque.”
“No need,” Bettany said. “I’ll be upstairs. Until the rent’s used up.”
He didn’t wait for a response. Outside, he stood for a while by the patch of road where Liam’s life had ended. Nothing distinguished that space from any other. It was just where something had happened. Looking up at the building offered no stories either. Everything carried on doing what it had always done. Bettany put his hands in his pockets, and went walking.
1.7
Flea Pointer had a problem, a problem the size of a box, which was precisely what it was. Inside the box was an urn, squatter and rounder than she might have imagined, and inside the urn was Liam Bettany.
In life, Liam had been tall, limby—not a real word but his limbs had been noticeably long, his hands dangling lower than seemed plausible, his legs an obstacle in the workplace. As days wore on he’d sink lower and lower into his chair, allowing them to protrude further and further, and more than once, passing his desk, she’d nearly gone flat on her face. His response was always an apologetic grin.
She’d never really tripped, though. Never fallen.
Flea was in her studio flat in a canalside development near the Angel. Better apartments had more rooms and overlooked the lock, but Flea wasn’t complaining. Before this there’d been a series of house shares, most of which had degenerated into attritional warfare, the battlegrounds being bathroom and kitchen, and whose stuff was whose. She’d seen violence break out over a pint of milk. Now, when the walls felt like they were closing in, she heaved a sigh of relief they were closing on her alone.
Not quite alone at the moment, though. Liam was here too.
Her colleagues had taken off to a pub once the service was over, and were presumably still there, toasting Liam and celebrating small memories of him, like her own recollection of his troublesome legs. She had joined them for an hour before returning to the crem to take possession of the ashes, which she’d half-expected Vincent to do, though on reflection wasn’t sure why. Vincent had taken care of expenses, but he’d never realistically been likely to step higher than that. So here she was, and here Liam was too, in a box on her table, her friend.
There’d been a time when they might have been more than friends, but in the end—or before the beginning—Flea had decided this was a bad idea. So now, instead of memories of a romantic interlude, she was left thinking ab
out his long legs, and how they stuck out too far, and could easily have caused an accident.
Which evidently they had done, if not to her. She knew that ledge outside his window, with its low railing that came halfway up his calves. No wonder he’d gone over. If she’d been with him last week—and it wouldn’t have been the first time they’d sat out there together, getting high—she might have saved him.
On the other hand she might have been left sitting stoned on the balcony, looking down at his body, knowing her life was as irrevocably twisted, as bent out of shape, as he was …
Flea Pointer shook her head. Dreadful imaginings. And utterly selfish at their root, which she didn’t mean to be, not today. Not with Liam gone.
She’d miss his grin.
She cried again.
Afterwards, tears dry, the problem endured. Liam’s ashes remained on her coffee table, and fond as she’d been of him she didn’t want him as a roommate, even if arguments about the milk weren’t likely to arise.
The answer, of course, was staring her in the face. It was simply a matter of deciding whether it meant being disloyal to Liam.
Seeing Tom Bettany at the service had been a surprise. Because he hadn’t responded she’d assumed he’d not received her message, or had no intention of acting on it. Liam would have professed to believe the latter. When in full flow about his father—a man he insisted he didn’t like talking about—he’d revealed more than he intended, but given that on such occasions he was usually a little drunk or a little high, this was not unusual. Given that Flea too had tended to be one or the other, she couldn’t pretend total recall. But they hadn’t got on, that was an understatement. Liam had coloured their estrangement in Shakespearean terms, once claiming his father had killed his mother. That moment Flea did recall clearly, along with its pale-faced aftermath, when Liam threw up, luckily in the bathroom, then shakily admitted he’d exaggerated, that it hadn’t been an actual killing so much as …
And she remembered that too. The way he’d lacked words to state the case. Because, she suspected, when it came down to it, he’d been a boy who’d lost his mother too young, and needed someone to blame. His father fit the bill, that was all. The murder claim, like others he’d made, Flea put down to immaturity. And the fact that his father’s number was on his contact list at work indicated that at some level he’d known it too. Had understood there’d come a time when a bridge would need rebuilding.
Too late for that now.
Still grieving, still pained, Flea couldn’t deny she was also curious. Though she’d had no mental picture of Liam’s father, it nevertheless surprised her that he resembled a tramp, with shaggy hair and scarecrow’s beard, and clothes he’d been wearing a while. And, too, the wariness she’d noticed in homeless people. The way he’d checked out the crowd at the chapel, as if weighing potential threat. But he remained Liam’s father, the rightful owner of his son’s remains. Presenting him with them wouldn’t be an act of disloyalty to Liam but the opposite. And as much of a bridge as either could now hope for.
The solution, then, was a phone call away, but still Flea Pointer hesitated. She had no idea where Bettany was. Perhaps he’d already made tracks, was already standing at a motorway slip road, thumb in the air … She didn’t know why that image came to mind. He didn’t look the type to ask favours of strangers. Which meant he wouldn’t want them done unawares, she decided, and that conclusion reached, she looked for her mobile. Do it now. Do it now, and it was done. Her phone was in her bag. She made the call before second thoughts could persuade her otherwise.
1.8
Bettany’s walk had carried him three streets away to a pub with green doors and the promise of live music, though thankfully not right then. He bought a Guinness and a whisky chaser, paying for both from Liam’s stash. His son, buying him a drink. Two drinks. That gave him pause as he raised the Guinness to his lips.
He didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on it because his mobile rang.
Unknown caller, but it was Flea Pointer.
“Mr. Bettany?”
Who else would be answering his phone?
“How are you? I mean, are you …”
He got the impression she hadn’t planned this call.
“I’m fine,” he said.
He picked up his shot glass and held it to the light.
“I just—Mr. Bettany, I’ve got Liam here. Sorry, that was stupid. Liam’s ashes. I have Liam’s ashes.”
He didn’t reply.
“I didn’t know you were going to be there, so when we made the arrangements, I said I’d take them …”
He’d stood watching ribbons of smoke being torn from the chimney, and it hadn’t occurred to him to collect the ashes. What else had he missed?
“Mr. Bettany?”
He cleared his throat. “I heard.”
“So … well, if you want to collect them, or let me know where you are, I could bring them to you. If you want me to.”
“I don’t know where I am.”
“I’m not …”
“I’m in a pub near Liam’s. A green pub.”
Pause.
“Yeah, no, I know the one you mean. Look, give me ten minutes? I’ll join you.”
She seemed to expect a response so Bettany said, “I’m not going anywhere,” and ended the call.
It was more like twenty, and Bettany was on his second pair of drinks. The pub remained half-empty, with no music, no electronic clutter. He tried to recall his last afternoon in an English pub but the memories were a mish-mash, a garden, a wine glass in Hannah’s hand, Liam on a swing. Twenty years, easily.
The decades melted, and here he was.
Flea Pointer came in, her tote bag a Penguin Classic design, Brighton Rock. Knowledge of what it contained dried his mouth.
“Mr. Bettany?”
“Tom,” he said. “What are you drinking?”
“Maybe a mineral water?”
“You’re asking?”
“I don’t normally drink in the afternoon. And I already …”
“It’s not a normal afternoon.”
“Wine then. Red. Thank you.”
When he returned from the bar, she’d taken her coat off and put the bag under the table.
He placed her drink in front of her, and sat.
Flea Pointer had a face that at first seemed flawed, with a slight imbalance that could easily have a man staring at her to work out precisely what was off-kilter, whether it was her mouth turning up at one side more than the other, or her eyes falling askew. Before long he’d have studied his way into a belief in her face’s perfection. That was not how Bettany wanted this encounter to go. He continued his appraisal anyway, noting that she’d changed since the service, and now wore a dark-blue jumper that reached mid-thigh, and jeans tucked into brown boots. She’d tied her hair back, but a wisp fell across her forehead.
She was aware he was studying her, but trying not to show it. Concentrating on her wine glass instead, she adjusted its position on the beermat.
He said, “So you worked with Liam.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t actually know what he did.”
“Really? I mean—yes, sorry. I knew you weren’t speaking.”
She paused, but that wasn’t a space he planned to fill.
“Vincent makes video games. Shades?”
She’d already told him this.
“It was really popular. A big seller.”
“And Liam did this? Wrote computer games?”
“He was helping develop the vision.”
He could sense quote marks around the phrase.
“And you?”
“I’m Vincent’s PA. And kind of office manager. He’s … not great with staff.”
Bettany said, “How big is big?”
“Big?”
“As in big seller.”
“Oh. Huge,” Flea said. “Enormous. It made a ridiculous amount of money. Vincent went from being your standard issue
geek, writing code in his bedroom, to one of the gaming world’s heroes. There was even a movie.”
“They made a film of a computer game?”
“You don’t get out much, do you?” She touched his hand briefly. “I’m sorry, that was flippant.”
“What made it such a hit?”
Flea Pointer sipped her wine. The time it had taken her to get round to this, Bettany had finished his Guinness.
“What was good was, it was totally unexpected. It looked like an arcade game, you know? The kind where you have an animated character doing the same thing over and over. Like collect all the bananas a monkey throws before you end up completely covered in bananas … This doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”
“Pretend it does.”
“Okay then. As you know, there are two kinds of game.”
She flashed him a look, saying this. He guessed she might be dangerous, in the right circumstances.
“There’s the kind we’ve just been talking about and there’s the adventure kind, the shoot-em-ups. Basically, in the shoot-em-ups, your character has a gun and you have to kill all the aliens or terrorists or whatever before they kill you.”
“I grasped the concept with the name.”
“Right. So at first glance Shades looked like one of the first kind, a low-spec affair. Except there was more to it. There was another game hidden underneath, and once you cracked how to get there, you were in a different place altogether. Suddenly …”
“You were in a shoot-em-up.”
“The premise was that the world you started out in, the one where the characters just shop and do other boring tasks, was being controlled by this lizard race, and perhaps I should stop there? You’re not looking convinced.”