by Matthew Ross
I stepped out to block his path; he approached, getting a bit too close for my liking, virtually touching me, squaring up to me toe-to-toe like a boxer.
‘That’s a nasty eye,’ he said. ‘Rough night, was it? What’s her name?’ His crew laughed sycophantically at his jibe. ‘You know your trouble? You and your mate, you need to toughen up.’
My mate? Did he mean Tommy? I heard the pack laughing, I saw him sneering, I felt the burning on my face and the trembling through my fingers.
‘You need a bit more fight in you.’
I swung and my fist connected with his jaw, his head jerked back on impact, I’d put a lot of power and anger behind the punch, but his low squat centre of gravity kept him firmly upright, I may as well have punched a tree.
The box dropped from my grip as I lunged at him with both hands and this time he went over, flat on his back in the mud. I reached out, grasping for a weapon, and pulled a shovel out of someone’s hands who cursed at me in a language I didn’t recognise. I stood over Blunt and raised the shovel skyward ready to smash in his thick, primate skull but paused on the down swing, not long, only a second but it was long enough to feel strong arms dragging me backwards. I was disarmed by the shovel owner, who snatched it back, shouting foreign swears as he walked away.
I was held tight unable to move, the rage numbing any pain my injuries might have been screaming at me from being gripped so tightly. Blunt got up, wiped the mud from his hands against his shirt. He looked at me and then launched, his teeth bared and eyes wide, ready to inflict maximum damage. Thankfully, his brother Gary stepped in the way, grabbed him and with the help of another member of their crew pulled Blunt away from me. The way Gary spoke to him and calmed him down was definitely for Blunt’s benefit rather than mine. Luckily, Blunt was out on licence, if Gary hadn’t stopped him, he could quite easily have been back inside by the end of the day. But I had no doubt that if it hadn’t been for that, Gary would have stood aside and let him rip me limb from limb.
We both stood facing each other, squirming within our restraints. He was desperate to break free and batter me. I now regretted starting this and was quite glad of the restraints, but kept up the pretence.
‘What’s all this about?’ said Gary to me, over the sound of his brother’s animalistic grunts of anger. ‘You better have a good explanation because we can’t hold him much longer.’
‘I told him you’d get your money. Told him Friday.’
‘We already know that. But what are you doing here? Today?’ Blunt twisted and writhed in his brother’s arms, his face red and contorted with fury.
‘Look at me! Just look at me. And my friend, clubbed to death. Over a bad debt? I told you Friday. We had a deal.’
‘Whoa! Wait right there’ said Gary, ‘You think… you actually think that’s something to do with him, us?’
Gary was staring directly at Blunt as he spoke, maybe it was a sibling thing, maybe he was seeking reassurance from his younger brother. As if understanding, and to give the reassurance sought, Blunt stopped resisting and his body lost its tension, the veins in his neck faded from view and his complexion returned to normal.
‘So, you came here… what… for revenge? To kill him? An eye for eye?’
As he spoke Gary realised that the heat had evaporated from the situation and gestured for me to be released.
‘No’ I said, the adrenaline was still streaming through me, my hands were pulsing and I could hear that I was shouting, ‘I’m here to give you this.’
I picked up the box that had been kicked over in the melee and threw it at Blunt. As it dropped to the ground in front of him the lid opened and banknotes fell into the mud at his feet.
‘Take it! Take it and leave me alone. This ends now.’ The guy previously restraining Blunt was now on his knees scooping the loose notes back into the box. He passed the box up to Gary who looked inside and then passed it to Blunt who peered in at the contents.
‘We need to talk,’ said Gary. ‘You lot, eat, I’ll be along in a minute,’ and he ushered his crew inside the mess hut, then beckoned me to walk with him back to the van.
‘Thanks for that, we appreciate it,’ he said to me. ‘I can calm him down, convince him it was a misunderstanding, anyway you know what he’s like, there’s nothing he likes more than a good tear-up so you probably made his day. But you’ve made a big mistake coming here. You can’t go shooting your mouth off, Mark, accusing us of things in public.’
We’d reached the van. I knew this would be the part where he warns me off and tells me he’ll let the psycho chimp off the leash to kill me next time, but no, he surprised me. He checked with me the day Tommy was murdered. He was correct. It had been all over the news, it was a big event in the Towns so of course he’d be aware of when it happened, but I think he wanted me to verify, to take ownership of the date. He then pulled out his phone and began scrolling through his photos. Dozens and dozens of pictures of him, Blunt and their crew in green boiler suits and crash helmets in amongst lots of other similarly dressed men.
‘Look, see, we were all go-karting at Buckmore Park for—’ he searched and then pointed at a face in a picture. ‘His stag do’. The time and date was embedded in the phone’s memory and he was right, they had been taken at roughly the same time Tommy was bludgeoned.
I sat in the van watching Gary walk away, back to his brother, relieved that he’d been there with his cool head, otherwise things could have got very nasty for Blunt, very nasty indeed – he might have got my brain matter all over his shirt.
So, Blunt hadn’t killed Tommy and hadn’t gone back on our deal, he was waiting patiently until Friday as promised. I’d made a big mistake. It suddenly struck me just how big a mistake I’d made and I quickly pulled out my phone and dialled in panic, hurry up and answer, hurry up and answer. Voicemail.
‘Anthony, Mark Poynter, listen, Anthony it’s about my money. You need to call me back. Trust me, this is urgent. Call me back. Bad things will happen if you don’t.’
I’d got it all wrong. I had no idea who killed Tommy or why, but I’d set Hamlet on to Chapman believing he lay at the root cause of all of this. Yes, he was a slimy weasel who hadn’t paid what he owed, but he wasn’t the first and he certainly won’t be the last. I’d made a mistake. Tommy wasn’t killed because of Chapman’s debt, but unless I could call off Hamlet quickly, Chapman was going to pay for my mistake.
22
When they came mob-handed into the café, the girls behind the counter disappeared out the back double quick, thinking it was a raid on illegal foreign workers, but then suddenly it was me surrounded and being led out.
I’d never been in an interview room before and now I’m back again, second time in the same week, the same cabbagey fart smell hung in the air. Nobody so far said a word to me, all I could assume was Senia was still intent on fitting me up for Tommy’s murder.
If they were keeping me isolated to frighten me – it was working. The only way to counter the giddiness I felt was to sit very still, very upright. And breathe slowly, in through my nose, out through my mouth, to keep the rising nausea down. I felt a desperate need for the toilet so tried my hardest not to think about it. No matter how much I rubbed my hands together they wouldn’t warm up.
After the longest thirty minutes I’d ever endured, Senia burst into the room slapping a folder on the tabletop between us. A po-faced woman in a black suit followed behind. Her gentle action of closing the door contrasted Senia’s powerful entry.
‘I want a lawyer,’ I said, hoping my voice didn’t break.
‘What for?’ asked Senia, sitting back in his seat, crossing one leg over the other, unbuttoning his suit jacket, draping his elbow over the empty seat beside him.
I struggled for an answer, grasping for words but none came. Eventually the best I could manage was, ‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? He doesn’t know,’ said Senia to the woman. She’d chosen to stand by the door, a bully’s smile began
to curl under the sullen cast of her eyes. Senia’s mocking wasn’t over yet. ‘Mr Poynter, this is what is known as a Voluntary Attendance, and you have not been arrested. When you were cautioned you were given the opportunity for legal representation, but we only have a few questions for you. Do you need a lawyer to answer a few questions for you? Or would you rather we cut to the chase and arrest you?’
I was out of my depth and didn’t know what to do. The age-old instinct took over, tell them nothing. I looked straight at Senia, breathing slowly, hoping my trembling wasn’t too noticeable. He stared straight back. Eventually, thankfully, he broke the silence.
‘That’s quite a bruise. You look terrible, what happened?’
‘Fell off my bike.’
‘Nasty. You want to be more careful.’
‘I won’t be doing it again.’
‘Now, you’re no doubt wondering why you’re here.’ If he was expecting a reply, he didn’t get one. ‘No? Well, we’re going to look at some photographs, and then we’re going to talk about them.’ Again, no response. ‘Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.’
He opened his folder, pulled out three photographs and laid them on the table face-down, giving each a little twiddle at the corners and a tweak at the edges until they sat perfectly straight and level with each other, a trio of white, blank rectangles neatly in a row. He tapped on the first one, ‘Let’s look under here shall we?’ He was playing with me, his take on the Find-The-Lady three-card trick. With an exaggerated gesture he flipped it over.
‘Now, we’ve all seen this before haven’t we? Oh, I don’t think I mentioned, we didn’t find any fingerprints on your hammer, none at all.’ I didn’t like the emphasis he placed on the word ‘your’.
I glanced down to a head and shoulders close-up of Tommy. I looked past the vicious head wound exposing bone and jelly by concentrating on the elasticated white cover over someone’s shoe caught in the background of the picture. The photographer caught Tommy in sharp focus in the foreground, the shoe behind him was a softly blurred white cloud floating him off to Paradise. Despite best efforts to resist, my eyes naturally kept drifting from the vague to the clearly defined. There was a very thin diagonal stripe of stubble on his cheek about half an inch long where Tommy had missed when shaving, funny, I don’t recall noticing it when we sat and talked that morning but then, I guess, his face had been animated, full of movement and laughs and tall tales.
‘So, without any fingerprints, we don’t have any further leads. But here’s something new you might be interested in.’
He turned the second photograph. Chapman’s sallow, flabby face. Lifeless, the skin white, the lips red, his Mr Punch nose curling down towards his chin – well the first chin at least. His head had been propped on a small pillow, the flash of the camera off the stainless steel tabletop beneath him resembled a white sun against a cold grey sky. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t speak. The darkness around the edges of my vision suggested that my head was trying to black out but I fought against it, trying to regain control over my own body.
‘I’m assuming you recognise this man? Mr Anthony Chapman, you do know him? Now, this is a strange one, Mrs Chapman comes home from a business trip to find him dead in his favourite armchair, assumes her dearly beloved had a heart attack and calls an ambulance. It’s only when she’s on the phone and notices that the kitchen door has been forced open that it becomes a suspicious death and it crosses my desk. So, what do you know about this chap?’ Again, his questions were met with absolute silence.
‘Nothing to say? Well, we checked his phone, and weren’t we surprised to hear your voice, only three days ago you left the following message: “Anthony, this is important, I want my money, you’ve got until Thursday night…”.’
His delivery was robotic and emotionless, twisting the words totally out of context.
‘“…I can’t take responsibility for whatever happens.” Now that sounds very ominous to me, does it you Leigh?’
The woman nodded her agreement. Leigh, I wondered, first name or surname?
‘In fact,’ continued Senia, ‘I’d go so far as to say it sounds downright threatening. So, Mr Poynter, where were you the night before last?’
My head was throbbing. The blood pulsed hard and rapid across my temples, fast track on the Aneurysm Express. My heart bounced inside my chest like a caged animal desperate to burst out. Still I remained silent, I turned away from the photographs on the table and looked straight ahead. Directly in my eyeline was the thin silver chain around the woman, Leigh’s, neck, above her white blouse. I held on to the vain hope that concentrating on a neutral point in the distance like that would calm me down. Fine silver links held a pendant at the base of her throat, in the shape of a feather, or was it a fern, its slender central spine curved naturally and diamond-adorned fronds sprouted either side in a herring-bone layout. A copper couldn’t afford diamonds, they had to be zirconas. The flashes and sparkles in the light were quite hypnotic, quite pacifying; relaxing thoughts of swimming pools on sunny holidays filled my head. The beast in my chest began to fade, the drumming at my temples slowed to a comfortable halt, all change all change this train terminates here.
‘Still with us Mr Poynter?’ said Senia, rousing me from my meditation. ‘Because we have one last piccy for you.’
He flipped my mind when he flipped the photograph. I glanced down. Something didn’t look right, I couldn’t at first work out what was wrong, like an optical illusion it needed a second look and a squint and a moment or two to process what I was seeing.
Sally! It was Sally. Sally. Sally, from the club. My Auntie Val’s niece, my cousin, sort of, but family nonetheless. Sally who looked so content arched up to face the bright blue winter sky. Sally, excited for the future. Sally.
Only it wasn’t Sally, not that Sally, this Sally was inert, this Sally was unresponsive, this Sally was empty of any energy, any vitality, anything that made Sally my Sally.
I began to dry-retch. Senia immediately recoiled, and drew back his shiny shoes from the potential splatter zone. I composed myself. The woman passed me a thin plastic beaker of water, and a tissue which I used to wipe my mouth.
It was a struggle, but I found my voice and I asked Senia how and why. As I spoke, the photograph became clearer. Sally was slumped forwards on the floor, her leg jutted out at an unnatural angle. Surrounding her, an almost black outline where her blood had soaked into the pale carpet. Her visible arm was cut several times and her hand slashed twice with tramlines carved either side of her knuckles. Her back and shoulders were cut and hacked, an ugly crude gouge ran from nose to ear. But despite these awful, horrendous wounds it was clear what had killed her. A thick open tear sliced her neck apart, so deep it was almost as though her head was hinged from her body. It gaped wide apart, edged by raw stems of flesh.
I turned the photograph over, grateful to meet its plain white back once again. My eyes prickled, I could sense tears welling, but I wasn’t going to give Senia the pleasure of seeing me weep. I diverted my gaze to the ceiling until the sensation went away.
Senia produced another photograph from his folder and laid it on the table. It was a natural, unposed photograph taken of the subjects, unaware. I looked closer, it was me, me and Sally, the other day, outside the club sitting on the wall, she’s holding her new red phone, I’m smiling, she’s laughing. It must have been when she was making that daft kitten-face picture of me. I didn’t know what to say and looked up at Senia hoping for an explanation.
‘We’ve had you under surveillance. I did tell you last time we spoke that you were a person of interest Mr Poynter.’
I was emotionally exhausted, but at the same time anger coursed through me. My hands began to tremble. The flashpoint bubbled up towards the surface. I felt abused and manipulated. Then it suddenly occurred to me, of course, the silver Mondeo I’d been seeing around. I tried to compose my words but was struggling to express myself in a way that wouldn’t get m
e into more trouble. I was biting down on my rage when Senia leaned closely in towards me. It took everything I had to stop me smacking him in the mouth. He knew it and he laughed, right in my face.
‘So, Marky Mark, as you can see, I have got three suspicious deaths all occurring within the same week and the only common denominator is you! Now, where were you the night before last?’
23
The slam of the door behind me made me jump. I was disoriented and groggy. The night was damp and cold and I didn’t have a jacket. My shoulders hunched by reflex to keep out the chill. I decanted my possessions from the plastic bag – wallet, phone, keys, loose change – and as I snapped the buckle shut on my watch, I saw that it was almost ten o’clock.
I’d been held for over nine hours; did it really take them that long to check my story? I’d told Senia exactly what he wanted to know and he wasn’t happy about it. He’d shown me the surveillance photo his snoops had taken of me and bragged they’d had me under observation, but he looked ready to explode when I told him I had a cast iron alibi, where were his snoops then? Someone somewhere will get a roasting tomorrow I’m sure.
However, as alibis go, five hours in an Accident & Emergency bed is pretty solid. I guess it checked out, as I was woken up fifteen minutes ago, my valuables returned and then shoved out the back door to rejoin the rest of the world.
My phone’s dead, brilliant! I’ve absolutely no idea how I’m going to get home. The van’s parked up miles away on a pay and display, I’m bound to have got a ticket, brilliant! And now it’s started to rain, brilliant! Everything is so fucking brilliant!
I started walking in the direction of the nearby university campus, my hands bunched up inside my sleeves to keep them warm, a habit I’ve always had. My dad used to say it made me look like Dennis Law. He loved Dennis Law ever since he sent Man United down. I figured there must be a pub or a coffee shop or something open for students that will have a payphone then I can call for a cab. Maybe I could ask for Devinder? Then I can apologise. I’d promised him he wasn’t going to be drawn into anything, but I had no choice other than to give his name to Senia. I felt a bit guilty about that now.