by Heidi James
‘Thanks for coming,’ I said.
‘Sure. You alright? You look terrible.’
‘Tired, that’s all. There’s a lot going on.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard. Can I get you anything? There’s a café out near the play park.’
‘No, it’s all right.’ I waited for her to speak. She cleared her throat. I watched as another car pulled up alongside us, but it was just a mother with a couple of small kids.
‘So, you’ve been fired?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not true though, is it, about the article? You didn’t invent or exaggerate the evidence?’
‘Of course I fucking didn’t. What do you think I am?’
‘I know, I had to ask. I’d really like to tell your side of it all, right some wrongs for you. I’d like to help.’ The car doors slammed shut next to us and the woman walked her mewling kids towards the play area, in spite of the rain. Desperation. ‘Pardon?’ Anna said.
‘Nothing. I didn’t say anything.’
‘I thought I heard you say… Never mind. Let me help you.’
‘I can’t talk about it. I’m not allowed.’ The rain had stopped.
‘Just give me your source, I’ll do the rest.’
I almost laughed in her face.
‘Listen, this isn’t easy. I respect you. You know that, right? And I want to help you, God knows you need it and I really do want to help. But, there’s more to all this, isn’t there?’
‘Of course there is, they’re setting me up. They know I’m right.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t think anyone will listen to you, not now, not unless you tell them where you got your information. The government has just announced massive new investment and jobs up North, it’s a triumph apparently. I’m surprised you haven’t heard.’
‘I’ve been avoiding the news. Anyway, what does that have to do with me?’
‘It’s all funded by the St Clair group: hundreds of new jobs, urban renewal, reinvigoration. ‘Britain Reclaims Manufacturing Glory,’ I think that was the Sentinel’s headline. Lord Sunbury is a hero. You can forget about proving your corruption theory now, I doubt even The Whistler will run it along with all the other nut job stories.’
‘Are you taking the piss? Is this true?’
‘Absolutely. But you have other things to worry about, don’t you?’
‘Like?’
‘Like Detective Burrell and your involvement in his murder.’
‘What?’ My head felt like it was being crushed in a fist. I couldn’t breathe: suffocating in her cramped car; the crap everywhere, her perfume too strong for such a small space, the rasp of her breathing. ‘Who said that?’
‘I heard it from the police, actually.’
‘The police?’
‘Yes.’
‘What the fuck is going on? Is this a conspiracy?’
‘I thought you said there wasn’t any conspiracy? “Conspiracy theories are for the ignorant”, didn’t you write that? I’m sure you did.’
‘Don’t play games.’
‘I want to help you.’
‘Like fuck, why are you doing this? I can’t believe it.’
‘This is my job. You know that, this is the world we live in. You help me and I help you. Quid pro quo. A story for a story. I’m following a lead.’
What was it Melanie said? Something about my needing romance and glamour and rags. She said I romanticised everything, that it wasn’t enough for me that life was mostly ordinary. Yes, she said that. Telling stories as if that will contain the mess of life. Stories.
‘Marcus?’ Anna clicked her fingers in front of my face.
‘What?’ I could see her, sitting cross-legged in my room, her face in shadow, hidden. Her voice remained. She’d warned me.
‘Did you kill Burrell?’
I shook my head.
‘Did you kill him?’
‘Fuck you.’ I reached for the door.
‘So, no then?’ she said as I pulled myself out of the car. Dizzy, unbalanced, the ground shifting under me. I staggered, out of synch with gravity, back to my car. Behind me, Anna rolled down her window, ‘I’m sorry Marcus. Really. And I’m sorry to hear about your old friend Charlie. Let’s hope he makes it.’ She reversed out and pulled away.
I got in the car, positive that I was being watched. I locked the door and used the mirrors to check around me. I didn’t want them to know that I knew. I had to get out of there carefully, without arousing suspicion. I checked the glove compartment for the locket. It was still there; they hadn’t moved it again. I could feel them watching, perhaps they were in the trees. Perhaps they had bugged the car and were listening. A helicopter chipped at the air above me, then angled out in the direction of the North Sea and shrank from view.
It was that easy to break me, that easy to disorient me like a blindfolded child at a party game. I wasn’t the person I’d always believed I was. We are a tale we tell ourselves: editing, adding, mythologising, and of course we do it to each other too. It’s hard now to imagine why I believed so completely in my ability to be objective, to see the truth and only the truth; it took me all that time to realise that I only saw what I wanted to, what served me. Perhaps that is an admission of guilt. But at that point I was the subject in another author’s narrative and I was afraid, and lost.
So I called Callum. I called him at the station, getting put through from the switchboard, so he’d have to take my call. I called him because if the police had told Anna that they suspected me, or if Charlie had told them what had happened, and they knew that Anna was meeting me, which I believed they did, or would, then if I didn’t call it would be obvious that I knew. I might’ve been losing my mind, but I knew how this works. I’d upset the wrong people and they were out to get me. There would be no escape.
‘What have you said to the Press?’
‘Marcus? Is that you?’
‘What have you said?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t play games, Callum. I’ve just seen Annabelle Walker from the Messenger. She told me that I’m your suspect. She asked me if I’m a murderer.’
‘Marcus, whoa! Slow down. What are you talking about? I don’t know anyone called Annabelle.’
‘She’s a journalist from the Messenger and she was at the press conference with me when we met.’
‘With you? I don’t remember her.’
‘Well it doesn’t fucking matter, what matters is she said the police had told her I was a suspect.’
‘She said what? When?’
‘Just now. She was very clear she had information from you.’
‘Wait, wait let me talk to someone about this. I’ll get to the bottom of it and call you back, alright? What was her name again?’ I told him and he disconnected the phone. He sounded genuinely disconcerted, but I couldn’t be sure. What had Charlie told them? There couldn’t be anything to tie me to Steve. How could there be? I turned the ignition, and pumped the gas pedal, the car revving, a big, normal sound. I drove.
Trying to put the details of that night in order. Evidence. Actions. Consequences. Was there any evidence? Had we covered our tracks? I couldn’t think. I couldn’t remember. It was all so long ago, and I was innocent. I’d done nothing wrong.
Callum called back just as I arrived back at my mother’s, sounding worried, calm. Genuine.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Not really. I want to know what’s going on.’
‘I called the Messenger and they say there’s no Annabelle working there, they’ve never heard of her and they’ve sent no one to speak to you. No one has said anything to the press, Marcus. Alright?’
‘I spoke to her just forty minutes ago. Face to face.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do say so. I was just sat in her c
ar. I’m sure your surveillance team can corroborate that.’
‘My what team? Marcus, you’re not making any sense. Are you sure you are OK?’
‘I’m fine. I just need someone to be straight with me, because nothing adds up. How did she get my number for a start?’
‘Right. Listen to me. You’re under a lot of stress, right now. Come into the station tomorrow and we can sort all this out? Come in around two p.m. Yes?’ I could hear the din of an office behind him: voices, clatter, keyboards tick-tacking.
‘Why tomorrow? Why not now? What do you need to do before then?’
‘Marcus, get some rest. Come tomorrow, we’ll talk then.’
‘I can’t tell you anything else though. I don’t know anything about Steve Burrell.’
‘Tomorrow, OK? Then it will all be over.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. Everyone was lying. Everyone.
‘Go home and rest. Take care.’
He’d gone. Everyone was lying. But those were the facts, as I thought I knew them.
February, 1990
‘I’ve bought us tickets to the Valentine’s Day disco.’
‘That’s so funny. Do you have any idea how tacky they are? A disco ball and flashing lights set up in the school hall with a dodgy DJ and the teachers watching our every move.’
‘It will be fun!’ He took the maths textbook from her lap and flicked back a few pages, read the pencil notes she’d jotted in the margin and handed it back to her. ‘Take our minds off all this revision.’
‘You’re not wrong there.’ She sat up straight and flexed her spine, pressing her belly and chest out like a sail caught in the wind. Stretching her arms up overhead. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘What do you want? I’ll get us something.’
‘I don’t mind, anything. Surprise me.’
When he walked back into the study, the tray of cheese on toast and bourbon biscuits balancing on one arm, she was standing by the window staring out at the garden.
‘The most important thing we need to decide now, of course,’ she said, turning around, ‘is what to wear to this night of debauchery.’
Mel wore two white lacy slips, one over the other, that she’d bought from the charity shop for fifty pence each, with black tights, pink stiletto heels and a tweed jacket. He wore loose jeans, a t-shirt with Elvis on that Mel had customised by sewing a bow tie under Elvis’s chin, and grey suede Vans that Mel had chosen for him, his Kurt Cobain necklace around his throat. They both had black eyeliner smudged around their eyes and sticky coats of mascara clumped on their lashes. They were standing outside the off-licence in the cold, waiting for a willing adult to take their ten-pound note and buy four cans of Tennent’s Super and a packet of fags. They’d already asked a couple of blokes, one old enough to be their dad, his belly hanging below his jumper, and one in his twenties with long hair in a ponytail. They both said no, though the old bloke had at least given them a fag each and asked Mel if she had a boyfriend.
They were about to give up when Darren Shine pulled up in his brother’s car, Happy Mondays blaring from the stereo. He wound down the window and turned the volume down.
‘What’re you two doing?’
As always Marcus looked to Mel for direction and she shook her head at him, no.
‘Waiting for someone to get us some beer,’ Marcus said. Mel tutted and blew smoke from her nostrils in two long thin streams.
‘What?’ Darren said as he squinted through the orange haze of the street lamp.
‘We want beer, and don’t have ID.’ Mel snapped. She was starting to shiver.
‘You got cash?’ Darren got out the car, leaving the engine running and walking over.
‘Of course.’
‘What do you want then?’
‘What does it matter? You’re not old enough to get it, you’re not old enough to drive that car.’ Mel chucked her cigarette on the ground and crossed her arms tight over her chest.
‘You’re freezing. Wait in the car and I’ll get you your drink.’
‘Are you sure?’ Fed-up and freezing Marcus was willing to risk trusting Shine, even if Mel wasn’t.
‘Yep.’
He looked at Mel but she just shrugged her shoulders and turned away.
‘OK. Four cans of Super T and a packet of B&H please.’ He gave him the cash.
‘Right. Get in the car then, I won’t be a minute.’
They climbed into the souped-up VW Golf, Mel in the back, Marcus in front. An exhaust pipe fit for a Ferrari throbbed and shook under them, warping the go-faster stripes stuck on the paintwork. A pink plastic rosary dangled from the rear-view mirror.
‘This is not a good idea.’
‘It’s fine. He’s being nice. Anyway, we weren’t getting anywhere waiting outside were we?’
‘No, I suppose you’re right.’ Clutching her hands around her knees, she looked like a little girl. A little girl dressed in her mother’s petticoats playing at being a woman. But then she pushed her hair back over her shoulders and turned towards him, the streetlight catching the curve of her cheek and lip. She seemed so much older to him then, as if none of this was new to her, or that’s how he felt, while he was excited, nervous, buying booze, going out and dressing up. Sitting in the car, the heater blowing hot dusty air in his face, waiting for Darren.
‘Alright?’ He yanked the door open and passed over a carrier bag with the beer. ‘Your change is in there.’ He slid into the driver’s seat and revved the engine. ‘So where now?’ He turned to Mel in the back and reached his arm across the back of the front seats. A large gold sovereign ring almost covered the knuckle of his little finger.
‘We’re going to the Valentine’s thing at school. You?’ Marcus could smell his Kouros aftershave mixed with the scent of washing powder on his clothes. The gristly machine of his heart pumped hard in his chest, like a piston in a cartoon blowing steam.
‘Supposed to be meeting Jenny there, ain’t I? Let’s drive up the back of the barracks, drink this lot and then go up the school. Yeah?’
‘What about the gavvers?’
‘What about them?’
‘If we get pulled you’ll be in trouble.’
‘Nah, we won’t get pulled. They’ll think it’s me brother, and everyone loves him.’
It was true. Darren’s brother was local celebrity, an amateur boxing champ about to turn pro. He was always in the papers, posing with his belts or his blonde girlfriend or with a massive cheque that he was donating to the kid’s home or the police benevolent fund. Darren was right: they were safe in the reflected glow of his brother, Mikey. As long as they didn’t piss Mikey off, that is.
The old army barracks was up on top of the hill overlooking the town and the wide turn of the river as it opened up into the estuary. Built for the Napoleonic war and left vacant and boarded up in the 1970s, the crumbling brick walls were topped with rusty razor wire. It stood next to common land, mostly used by dog walkers and kids. At night it was used by older kids to fuck and drink and get stoned. It was a part of town that was new to Marcus, despite living there all his life, like pretty much everything since he’d started at Danner Comp.
The moon was high and full, but in the murky sky it was as gelid and sticky as egg white, casting almost no light. He opened the beer and Darren turned the music up.
‘D’you like this band?’
‘Yeah, it’s alright.’ He began nodding his head in time with the beat.
‘What about you, Melanie?’ Darren had twisted in his seat to look at her, draping his arm across the seats again, his fingertips close to Marcus’s neck.
‘Primal Scream ain’t bad. I like this one, it’s catchy.’
‘You both like that American grunge shit, don’t ya?’ He pressed his shoulders back into the seat and raised his hips, pushing his right hand into the pocket of his jeans and p
ulling out a small plastic bag.
‘Yeah,’ Marcus said, ‘But I like this too.’
‘Yeah, this lot are proper up for it, not ponces,’ he said, then leaned over to the glove box and took out a torn packet of Rizlas. He extracted two sheets and licked one, his thick tongue sliding down one edge, before sticking the sheets together at right angles. Marcus gawped as he rubbed his fingers together at the tip of a cigarette, leaving a line of tobacco on the middle of the rolling paper. Then he looked back at Mel to see if she was shocked too, but she was looking out the window, her head nodding to the beat, a can of beer in her hand.
Pinching his thumb and index finger together, Darren sprinkled the weed onto the tobacco just like Marcus’s mother added herbs to her stew. He almost laughed at the domesticated little gesture, but held it in, pressing his lips together. Darren picked the papers up between both thumbs and fingers and began rolling the spliff back and forth, getting it tighter and cylindrical. Back and forth, back and forth he rolled, then he tried to tuck one edge under so he could roll it up, but it wouldn’t work. Back and forth, back and forth, he tried again and again.
‘Fuck! Hands are too fucking cold. You do it,’ he said, extending his warm hands in Marcus’s direction.
‘I don’t know how to,’ he blushed.
‘Pass it over,’ Mel said and took it in one hand. ‘And the Rizlas, these are worn out.’
She laid the scrappy lump of papers and weed in her lap, extracted the Rizlas, licked and stuck them together in a second, put the fresh geometric papers in her lap, tipped the weed and tobacco into one hand, picked up the Rizlas, transferred the mixture back into the papers and had the whole thing rolled up and licked shut in a couple of seconds. She finished by tearing a piece of the Rizla packet off and rolling it into a filter and pushed it into the end.
‘There you go.’ She handed it to Darren.
‘Shit! Not bad. You get first go, you rolled it.’ He held it up and admired the perfect joint that she’d made, then handed it back with a lighter.