Tattletale

by Sarah J. Naughton

  And then, without warning, the door behind us opens and a man walks in. For a moment he is just a shape in the darkness, but at once the whole atmosphere in the room changes.

  As the light flicks on Mira starts, her shadow jumping on the wall.

  A big, Eastern European man, dressed in heavy work clothes, his black boots crusted with cement, a rucksack slung over his shoulder. He’s in his early thirties, at a guess, with a broad, flat face and fair hair cropped so short he is almost bald.

  How can he have come up without us hearing? Unless he was trying to be quiet, to catch us doing something wrong.

  I glance at Mira. All colour has drained from her face.

  But when I turn back to the man, I see that he too is as white as a ghost and he’s staring at me with an intensity that makes my heart pound, his eyes passing down my body, then up to the parka’s fur trim around my neck. Is he going to hit me?

  He’s blocking my exit and there’s nowhere to go but back into the flat. I finger my phone in my pocket.

  ‘What do you want?’ His voice is low. The thick accent, so familiar these days, is suddenly threatening.

  How much has he heard?

  ‘I was just helping your wife with this heavy box.’ My voice is steady and I force myself to meet his cold gaze. Surprisingly, he doesn’t seem able to hold mine, and his grey eyes flick away. ‘Can’t be long now until the baby comes. You must be very excited.’

  He glances at his wife and she stares back at him with wide dark eyes. She’s afraid of him. Does the bastard beat her up?

  ‘Thank you, thank you, it was very kind of you,’ she gabbles, trying to herd me to the door but he doesn’t move to let me past. The hands hanging by his side are large and rough.

  I straighten my back to let him know that he isn’t scaring me and the parka rustles softly.

  Then something in him gives. His shoulders sink, his head drops, and we both press ourselves into the wall as, without another word, he stalks up the hall, wafting the smell of sweat and dust.

  Kicking open the inner door, he crosses the room, dumps his bag on the sofa and kicks off his boots, sending chunks of cement skittering across the floor. Then, as if I’m not there, he starts undressing, dropping his bomber jacket where he stands, then pulling off his T-shirt before disappearing from sight. A moment later I hear the characteristic drone of the shower pump kicking in.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mira murmurs. ‘He would be very angry if he knew what I had told you.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I manage, but I’m barely listening. I don’t even glance at Jody’s door as I make my way back across the landing and into the flat, where I close the door and lean against the wood, breathing heavily in the darkness.

  I don’t know what it means yet, but I know what I saw.

  As Loran undressed I caught a glimpse of a tattoo just peeping from the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms. A tattoo of rearing hoof and the feathery tips of a mane, inked in red.

  Loran is Redhorse.

  The stereo is on too loud for her to hear what they’re saying, so she just gazes out of the window at the terraced houses flashing past. Felix’s friend is driving too fast, occasionally slugging from a can of lager. So is Felix, and he already seems drunk, though the other one doesn’t seem to be affected by it. Occasionally he glances at her in the mirror and waggles his eyebrows. She thinks he’s trying to be funny so she smiles, but when his eyes go back to the road she shuffles along the back seat, out of his line of vision. The car’s in a disgusting state: fast-food cartons litter the footwells, the upholstery is stained and clotted with mud, and CDs and magazines are scattered on the seat and the parcel shelf. The front covers of the magazines either feature bare-chested muscular men or almost-naked young women. The lower half of one of these front pages has torn away to reveal an article entitled: “Potting the Brown – honest, love, me knob slipped!” The picture is of a woman’s buttocks in a G-string. It makes her feel sick.

  This boy is Felix’s oldest friend. They’d been at nursery school together and only separated when Felix got into the grammar school. The other boy’s parents had sent him to a private boys’ school specialising in sport, but the two of them play rugby every Sunday morning for the local club. He is much bigger than Felix, as if a cursor has been put in the corner of a normal nineteen-year-old and then dragged out a bit.

  Today is Monday and Felix’s parents won’t be back from their long weekend in Whitstable until the following morning, so both boys have bunked off school for a bit of fun. They persuaded her to join them and for a while she was flattered, but now she just wishes she was at school. Back at the house they made no attempt to include her in the conversation; in fact, they positively excluded her, whispering and giggling in corners like seven-year-olds.

  She gets out her phone to check the time.

  ‘No phones!’ the big one barks and thrusts his arm between the seats, beckoning with his fingers for her to hand it over.

  She does so automatically and regrets it immediately. She has always been too biddable. To her horror he throws it straight into Felix’s lap.

  ‘Any dirty selfies?’

  ‘Felix, please.’

  She watches helplessly as he scrolls through the shots of the rooftops she took from her bedroom, the dead Red Admiral butterfly, and the unsuccessful attempts to capture the full moon. She squeezes her eyes shut and waits, but when it comes, the explosive jeer makes her start from her seat and the inertia-reel snaps tight across her chest.

  ‘What are you, a fucking stalker or something?’ Felix shouts over the music.

  ‘She’s probably got a pair of your skiddy pants under her pillow!’ the other one bellows.

  She makes a dive for the phone but Felix whisks it out of her grasp. On screen is the close-up of his face that she took when he fell asleep on the sofa.

  ‘Ahh, bless,’ the big one coos. ‘Ook at iddy biddy Fewix!’

  ‘Piss off!’

  Her breath is speeding up. In a minute she will cry, which will either antagonise or encourage them.

  But then a worse thing happens. Felix has carried on scrolling through the pictures and now he comes to one she has forgotten she even took.

  ‘Shit,’ says Felix, holding the phone out for his friend, who snatches it and stares at it even though he should be concentrating on the road.

  ‘Gross,’ he says, tossing the phone back again. ‘You got some disease or something?’

  She had been trying to get a picture of the scars on her buttocks and thighs, to see if they would be visible if she wore boy-leg bikini bottoms instead of the Bermuda shorts she habitually wears on their family trips to the pool on Saturday mornings. They were. They fanned out from the inadequate strip of fabric, still livid purple, despite the doctors’ promises that they would fade to white.

  ‘Self-harmer,’ Felix says, dismissively.

  She is about to correct him – he knows at least some of the things that have happened to her – but changes her mind. Self-harming is something this other boy can get his head around. The other stuff isn’t.

  ‘Wow, you really are fucked-up, aren’t you?’ he says, craning his bull-neck to try and catch her eye in the mirror.

  ‘Drop me off here,’ she says suddenly.

  She waits, with her fingers poised on the door handle, for the car to slow, but it does not.

  ‘Let me out,’ she says, her voice rising. ‘Please!’

  ‘Ah, come on,’ Felix says softly. ‘Let’s just forget it, mate. Let her out.’

  ‘Keep your hair on,’ the friend says, but his tone is gentler. ‘I’m only messing with you. Look, we’re there now.’

  And now it’s too late – they’re driving through the gates of the rugby club.

  30. Mags

  He was screwing my brother while his wife was pregnant.

  And now she’s trying to protect him.

  At least, I assume that’s what the notes were for, to deflect attention away from him and onto
Jody. And there’s only one reason I can think of that he needs to be protected.

  If he pushed Abe.

  Mira knew he was having an affair but she thought it was with Jody. Maybe Abe threatened Loran that he would tell her the truth. A heterosexual affair she might be able forgive, but a gay one? Especially as she’s a devout Muslim. She would leave him. He would lose his child.

  So he pushed Abe over the stairwell to keep him quiet, and Mira saw him do it.

  She said he was at the boxing club the night Abe fell and I rack my brains to think of the name Derbyshire told me.

  Stone’s.

  I look it up on my phone and find an address. North from here, in the no man’s land between Crouch Hill and Hornsey, places I never knew existed before. I check my phone app and find a bus that runs from the high road.

  Stop. Think.

  Do I really want to get into this?

  Jody’s one thing – a mentally unstable, rather pathetic young woman, physically weak and easily intimidated. But Loran is something else. If he did push Abe then he’s capable of anything, and clearly his wife is scared of him. He could simply kill me and then head back to Albania. Am I prepared to risk that just to find out the truth?

  But have I ever risked anything for Abe? Isn’t it about time I did right by him and ensure that whoever hurt him is caught and punished?

  I scroll through my phone contacts for Derbyshire’s direct line, but then I hesitate. With only a few porn photos and some sexy texts to go on, who’s to say she’ll do anything?

  I need more.

  I’ll just have to be careful.

  Checking the address one more time I let myself quietly out of the flat and head downstairs.

  There’s no sign of the gang and for once Gordon Terrace is busy with people returning from work. Under the dull orange street lights the faces look sallow and ill. No one gives me a second glance. A woman in the baggy, chequered trousers of a chef lets herself out of a front door and I hear a snatch of the boisterous family life going on within. She closes the door and walks down the path, looking tired.

  I follow her to the high road.

  The bus stop is crowded and I ease myself into a gap beside a pushchair with a listless toddler staring at a tablet.

  It’s getting colder. Under the canvas of the Converses my feet are numb. I wiggle my toes and stamp my feet, smiling at the toddler who glances up at me with blank eyes. The eyes of her mother, who is arguing with someone on the phone, telling them that it’s not fucking acceptable.

  The rush hour traffic is heavy. Nose to impatient tail. Checking the bus app to see if it’s close I see a text has come through from Daniel.

  I’ve told Donna I can’t try again because I’ve met someone I care about. I know it’s tough with your brother but if we take it slow …?

  I’m seriously not in the mood.

  I told you I didn’t want a relationship.

  The bus arrives and I get on. Instantly too hot in the parka, but feeling somehow protected by its bulk, I find a seat at the back. Heat is pumping from vents by my calves and the shudders of the engine pass straight through my spine, but at least no one can sit behind me.

  I realise that I am scared. It’s an unfamiliar feeling. An unpleasant one.

  The buildings thin out as we turn off the main road and we speed up, past rundown housing estates and warehouses with all their windows broken. The few cars parked by the kerb are scratched and dented. Some have crude signs offering them for sale at a paltry few hundred pounds. The pavements start emptying out, leaving only the drunks and the elderly and a few hurrying schoolboys. The street lights cast their faces in a gritty orange glow.

  As we draw nearer to the gym the bus and a car behind us are the only vehicles on the road. If I thought the area around St Jerome’s was bleak, this place is infinitely worse.

  Perhaps all this fuss I am making is for nothing and Derbyshire was right all along. Perhaps Abe did kill himself. If I lived here, I would.

  I hear the rumble of trains before I see the bridge.

  Stone’s Boxing Club is set into the arches beneath. Surrounded by a concrete forecourt, the door is a slab of metal, its windows protected by metal shutters. The effect is almost comically macho. I presume Mira has never been here, because surely even she couldn’t miss the fact that this is a gay gym. To my relief, just above the main door is a CCTV camera.

  I get out and the bus roars away. The burgundy hatchback that was following us turns into a side street and I am left completely alone under a street lamp.

  I take out my phone to photograph the place and see another text from Daniel.

  Message received. Over and out.

  I stare at it for a moment, wondering whether to reply. It’s so quiet that the sudden thunder of a train passing overhead makes me start. The silence resumes, but for some reason the hairs on my back are prickling. I turn again, but the street is deserted in both directions. Then I notice a man smoking outside a pub a little way up the road. A squat, drab building with an ugly case of concrete fatigue, its incongruously pretty name is the Blue Mermaid. As I watch he tosses the butt into the road and goes back inside.

  The sooner I’m out of here the better.

  I take the photos and pocket the phone, then, pulling the coat tighter around me, stride up to the metal door and hammer on it with my fist.

  An ugly teenager opens it. His vest and boxing shorts reveal a physique far too bulky for his years. Steroids probably. Perhaps he’s hoping to distract attention from his underbite and acne, but the effect is just orcish.

  He looks me up and down with an expression of distaste.

  ‘I want to speak to the manager.’

  ‘Stanley!’ he shouts, then waddles away, his thighs so big his legs don’t scissor properly. As he opens a door at the end of the corridor there’s a sudden cacophony of animal noises – grunts and squeals and roars, added to the slaps and thuds of impact.

  Did my brother come here? I wouldn’t have thought it was his scene, but then a beautiful black man emerges from the same door and pads down the corridor to the water fountain. I avert my eyes from his buttocks, clad in shorts so tight they look painted on. Fair enough, Abe.

  A wiry man who must be in his seventies at least emerges from a door to my right. His tracksuit is halfway between street style and PE teacher. He’s even got a whistle.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I need to talk to you about my brother, Abe Mackenzie.’

  We enter a little office that looks out over the rings. Beyond the glass men are sparring, pummelling punch bags, running at each other with giant plastic pillows, and dancing around like ballerinas, all the while looking intensely, aggressively serious. I stifle a laugh.

  ‘Sit down, please.’

  I lower myself into a rickety wooden chair with a cracked red plastic cushion, oozing foam. He sits behind the metal desk, his back to the glass.

  ‘How can I help you?’ His voice is expressionless. I’m already the enemy and I don’t think feminine charm is going to cut it here.

  ‘I need to see your CCTV footage from the night of my brother’s accident.’

  He looks at me steadily. ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to know if Loran Ahmeti was here at the time, as he claimed to be. I have reason to believe that he might have been involved in the accident.’

  ‘You speak like the police – only you’re not.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why should I hand over the footage?’

  ‘Firstly, because I’m asking you nicely, and unless you’re trying to protect him for a reason, I don’t see why you’d be reluctant. Secondly, I’m a lawyer, and if I decide to bring a private prosecution against Mr Ahmeti you will be called as a witness. If you can’t then produce the CCTV footage of the night in question, the judge will want to know why you’ve deleted it. I imagine they will want to look more carefully at your business.’

  We stare at one another. It was just a punt but I�
��m pretty sure this place is not completely above board. There’s the illegal steroids, for starters.

  ‘What if I say it’s not working?’

  ‘Then I’d be inclined to call the police right now.’

  He sighs and pushes his chair back, gazing across at the men slogging it out in the ring.

  ‘Loran and Abe were close,’ he says. ‘I don’t see why he would hurt Abe.’

  ‘Lovers have rows. Don’t tell me he’s not capable of it.’

  ‘Controlled aggression,’ he turns back to me, ‘is not the same as violence.’

  ‘Do you have the footage or not?’

  He hesitates, then gets up.

  I follow him down the main corridor and he unlocks a door that leads into a storeroom. A black-and-white screen displays the front entrance of the gym, so still it might as well be a photograph.

  The scene vanishes as he flicks out the disc from the machine on a shelf beneath.

  ‘You’re lucky.’ He holds it out to me. ‘There’s fifty-four days on there, and it only goes up to sixty before we overwrite.’

  ‘You’re going to let me take it away?’

  He holds my gaze. I guess his faded eyes must once have been a quite startling blue.

  ‘Abe was one of ours. I don’t believe anyone here would ever have harmed him, but if they did, I want them caught. Whoever they are. Tell me what you find.’

  ‘I will. Thank you.’ I slip the disc into my pocket and reach for his hand. His grip is crushingly firm.

  It’s only as I step back onto the cracked concrete and the metal door clangs shut behind me that I realise I should have stayed inside and waited until the bus was near. Pressing my back against one of the metal grilles I check the app. Twelve minutes. Shit.

  There are no new messages from Daniel. That’s that, then. It’s what I wanted, I suppose. His fault if he’s screwed up his chance with Donna.

  Nervously I glance across at the Blue Mermaid. The strains of ‘Babooshka’ drift across the pavement. No one is outside, but now I notice that although the place is a complete dive, someone cares about it enough to decorate it with hanging baskets. The pink, yellow and white flowers draw my eye: they’re the first flowers I’ve seen outside the hospital.