Dead Pretty (10 page)

He could see no way of locking the two men in so he just turned and ran. They were not the type who could get up that easily, let alone move quickly, and he was the man with the guns. He didn't trust the lift so he took the stairs, two at a time, almost crashing into each turn in the staircase, his nose streaming, eyes watering and head thumping. Not very heroic at all. If they came down in the lift and were waiting for him at the bottom, it would all end quickly.

They weren't. There was no one around. He was out on the street, with barely time to conceal the weapons before he ran. It's hard to run and not look conspicuous but he tried it anyway, without glancing back. The air-conditioning of the penthouse was quickly blown away by the heat, and his clothes began to stick to him again. He could go back to the flat, wait for Stellachi to come to him, but it was a place where his future had ended. Kelly's place was out so he didn't know where the fuck to go. Three people had died, he was a killer on the run and he wasn't even sure what day it was any more. Maybe Saturday. The last few days had been a lifetime. He'd killed a man, but it seemed outside of him, a necessary action on his road to retribution. Even so, he was not a natural, and Mark knew he never would be.

A black cab was passing and Mark instinctively struck out a hand. It was empty and it stopped. Mark told the driver to take him to Kelly's pub, it was all he could think of, and sank into the back seat. The guns felt heavy, one in the jacket, the 9mm in his waistband.

Mark knew Dungeness a little, a job had taken him there once. A strange, flat, windswept place, with lots of sky and light, existing in its own space, as if it belonged to another time. Wooden chalets everywhere, holiday homes for the odd, but a power station as well, the old and the new bumping up against each other. He'd been watching some actor guy, a dick who'd made the job easy, and had thought that Lena would like it there. Maybe they could take a spin down and he'd show her around. Well, she was there for good now. With the fishes, as Angelo said. Feeding them. She'd never surface. Those bastards would have made sure of that.

Mark wasn't sure if he was talking to himself. He caught the glance of the driver as the man checked him over. For a moment he thought this might not even be a taxi and felt for the automatic. The nerve was stretching him to breaking point, he was jumping at shadows, but no, the guy was thinking nothing at all, except maybe if Mark was a good tipper. They hit traffic. It would take more than a few minutes to get to the pub. Mark stretched out and tried to control his breathing. There were specks of blood on his shoes, like dark freckles. Man-made uppers with man-made blood.

Chapter Seven

Angelo talked about souls. Something Mark hadn't thought much about since Shane disappeared because he didn't think he could afford to. What you were here for, where you came from, if you went anywhere when it was over, such thoughts had rattled around his head once, but he'd crushed them out, because there could never be any answers, not for him. His mother Julie had startled him a few months after Shane's disappearance, by banging on about religion, she went from saying there couldn't be a God, not after Shane, to talking about how the good were taken young. He'd worried about her, about the way her head was going, but then she stopped mentioning it. At least to him. As far as he could tell, God-squadders seemed to be making up for some loss, something that had been taken from them or that they didn't have in the first place. Lonely people, crazy people, people looking to fill an emptiness. People like Julie.

Lena had always worn a small silver cross, only taking it off when photo shoots demanded it, but they hadn't talked about it much. She told him once she wanted to believe in an afterlife that would be better, a heaven, but shared his cynicism. That was when he thought he knew her, knew who she was, and thought that they had a long future stretching before them.

‘Nine-fifty, mate.'

They were outside the pub. In this condition Stellachi could pick him off without ruffling his bottle-blond hair.

‘I said that's nine-fifty,' the driver said.

He probably thinks I'm an afternoon drunk, Mark thought. A moneyman on a liquid lunch. He gave the guy a ten and went into the Queen's Head. Kelly was coming out of the toilet and walked straight into Mark.

‘Mr Richards. I wondered where you got to. There was an accident outside your place. Hit and run. I was comin' out the bookies down the street, and seen the crowd. If you don' know wha's happened I got some bad news for you.'

Mark let him tell it. About his shock at seeing it was Tony. About how sorry he was, and how awful it must be for Lena. Then Mark told him he already knew. They sat down at the usual corner table and Kelly got some drinks. While Kelly got served Mark rubbed his shoes along the side of a chair but the freckles wouldn't go away. They needed to be washed off. Kelly returned, and downed half his Guinness in one draught.

‘I'm glad you know about it, Mr Richards. I knocked the flat, got no answer. Does your woman know?'

‘Yes. The police got in touch with her. With us. She's gone away, to be with the family.'

‘Oh, that's good. You ain't going, like?'

‘I got things to do.'

Mark wished he hadn't said
us.
The word sounded so lost now. Kelly stared at Mark over the top of the glass.

‘Wha's going on, Mr Richards?'

‘Hmm?'

‘You're miles away. First you wanted that car, then I had to go into the flat for Christ knows why and now Lena's brother is not long dead. You in deep shit or somein'?'

Deep shit is right, Mark thought. And I've just sunk further into it.

‘You're asking questions again,' Mark said.

‘I know, but, well, I don' wanna be dragged into nothing messy. Been on my mind all weekend.'

So it
was
the weekend.

‘Spent all that money yet?'

‘No, not yet. Look, I'm grateful for that, like, you always been good to me, but I can' handle nothing heavy mind.'

Mark smiled at the thought, and was amazed that he could. And it was a smile, even if it had to force itself onto his lips, not like that cold slit he'd seen on Stellachi's face.

‘An' there was something going on outside my place too,' Kelly continued. Charlie McKee told me earlier. Blokes fighting, he said. Hard-looking bastards. Said one of them looked like you, but he couldn't be sure.'

‘Best to be sure,' Mark murmured. ‘Relax, Kelly, there's nothing for you to worry about. I'll be going away soon.'

‘What, for good, like?'

‘Maybe.'

Kelly was relieved but also disappointed. Mark had been a major source of beer money in the last two years, and maybe the closest thing on the street Kelly had for a friend. The Irishman took out his tobacco tin and shakily managed to make a roll-up. Like the tin this man was a relic of another age, Mark thought. Like the old men who'd littered the valley when he was a kid. Bench-ridden, or standing on the steps of their front doors, all smoking the same hand-made fags, trying to relieve the tedium of retirement without money. Chests wheezing, coughing up the phlegm of their working lives, their eyes always on the lookout for someone else's action, something they could tie into and share, if only for a minute of two. Wistful watchers of the young. Other kids on the estate had always derided them, and worse, but Mark often stopped to talk, even on the way back from a job. They had no edge, no rivalry, ten minutes chat with the aged was like taking a warm bath. A tiny slice of security in his mean life.

‘How old are you, Kelly?'

‘Uh?'

‘How old?'

‘Oh, I dunno, 'bout fifty-four, five, I reckon.'

He looked at least ten years older. Mark had never given Kelly's life any thought, past or present, but now he wondered. He knew so little about anyone apart from Julie.

How did it feel now that he was a killer? Not much different, but when he pulled the trigger to blow Agani away he did feel another emotion, not fear, guilt, or remorse – he'd long since conquered them – but a king size stab of fucking desolation that told him that this was the extreme act of a man on his own. Someone who no longer had anything to lose. Something akin to self pity welled up in him, and he had to crush it out quickly, kill it with more action, or it would paralyse him.

‘What was it like, where you came from, originally?' Mark asked.

Kelly was pleased with the attention, but also suspicious. No one asked him questions like this.

‘Donegal. Nice place, if you like space and not many people, and if you're not piss-poor, like. My lot were. Most of them got out in the old days, when the spuds rotted. I came over when I was a kid, working on the motorways. Loads of us done it. Lived in caravans, followed the work. Lived like gypsies we did. That's when the drink really started. I had the money, see, and there was not much else to do. Not when you looked like me, anyway.'

‘Haven't you ever gone back? Gone home?'

‘Nah. Been too long now. ‘Sides, there's nothing for me there. The Kellys are strung out all over. I'm not in touch.'

‘Would you say your life's been normal?'

It was Kelly's turn to smile. He gulped the rest of his beer quickly and rubbed the back of his hand over his face.

‘There ain't no normal life, Mr Richards. Ain't you worked that one out? There's just life. Look, what's wrong, Mr Richards? You've never talked to me like this before.'

‘Make me a fag.'

‘You what?'

‘A roll -up.'

Kelly's hands were trembling even more than usual. Mark knew he was making him nervous. Kelly was more used to caustic abuse, he could cope with that, it established his place in the world. He thought he was being set up for something, that Mark was drawing him into something dangerous. Maybe I am, Mark thought, just by being with him, but he needed the company, someone to hang onto while he came to terms with what had happened in the last few hours. And in the last few minutes he'd seen something different in Kelly, the hopeless derelict was still there, the life waster, but he sensed a spark of something else. Maybe even intelligence. Lots of stuff lay hidden under Kelly's rancid surface, Mark could see that now. Finding your woman slaughtered and blowing someone away did wonders for perception.

Mark drew on the smoke. It was like coming back to an old friend. He sucked it in like a kid experimenting, letting it fill his lungs, sear his chest, and make his eyes water. His body recognised the old habit but did not welcome it. It was all he could do not to splutter out a cough. Not very impressive for a hardened killer. All the old habits were coming back. His time in London was being blown away fast. Perhaps Lena was a dream, his steady life here a dream, his new found non-violence and lack of vices just a thin veneer on the skin of the real man. The one inside who was talking to him now.
Psycho Eyes
. He took another drag and drew out a speck of tobacco onto his tongue and this time he didn't splutter. The nerve liked it. It had another thing to work on and tapped out its approval. Kelly was still smiling.

‘Not used to it no more, Mr Richards?'

‘Can I come back to your place?' Mark asked.

‘What, now like? Wa' for?'

‘I need to get some rest. Don't want to go back to the flat.'

‘This accident's really got to you, haven't it? I didn't realise you was so close to the guy.'

Mark shrugged. He put a twenty into Kelly's moving hand.

‘Give me your key and you stay here. Have a few more drinks.'

Kelly did what he was told.

Mark leant over Kelly as he got up.

‘There might be people asking for me, but you know how to keep your mouth shut.'

Kelly's mood changed instantly, and he became a weasel again.

‘What, the old bill?'

‘I doubt it. No, you'll know these if you see them.'

‘You can count on me, Mr Richards.'

Mark doubted that he could, not if Kelly really knew what was going on. He walked out of the dense atmosphere of the pub into a similar one in the street. The dregs of a long day were settling into the last of the heat. Cities at this time always felt coated with dust, and the collective tiredness of a few million souls. He knew he should be more vigilant, they knew about Kelly, they knew about the flat, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was too fucking tired and at least he'd taken them by surprise. Angelo had to report back to Amsterdam, that would be tricky, telling them their boss had been blown away in front of their eyes, by someone they had never heard of. At least they'd take him seriously from now on.

Kelly's bed-sit stank, of him mainly, body odours laced with old booze, old tobacco, unwashed clothes, a going-nowhere-never-been-anywhere kind of smell that rang bells for Mark. He pushed the door to the shower room open; the place wasn't big enough for a bath. The toilet was right next to it. He thought of trying to freshen up but thought again when he saw the lank shower curtain and the once white wall tiles, now multi-coloured with assorted stains. There was a cheap metal cross over the washbasin, rusting at its edges, and a cracked mirror seamed with dirt.

Mark sat down on the same chair he'd used before, looked out through the same jammed window and saw the same nothing in the street. They were probably cleaning the penthouse now. Putting Agani into something that would pass as a body bag. No one would have heard the gunshots, places that pricey had good soundproofing and incurious neighbours. It might be Dungeness for Agani too, sinking down to the bottom in his girlie gown. He might lie close to Lena, Mark hated the thought of that, but there was a kind of justice in it.

Mark was asleep in minutes, thinking of lost baby brothers, thinking of Lena that first time they met, when he went back to his grotty flat like an excited kid.

‘Wake up, Mr Richards.'

Something was tugging at his shoulder. Mark pushed himself up quickly, catching Kelly by the throat and smashing him against the wall.

‘Mr Richards, for fucksake! It's me, Kelly.'

For a moment Mark didn't know where he was. He could have been back in the valley, being woken up after a drinking session by Daniels, the one snotty mate he'd had back on the estate. Mark's face was inches from Kelly's and he saw the terror in the man's eyes. Kelly carried around the smells of the bed-sit with him, only more concentrated. They didn't mix well with Mark's pounding head. He slackened his grip, then released him, smoothing down his winter overcoat as an afterthought, which frightened Kelly even more.

‘Jesus Christ,' Kelly said, ‘jumpy or what? You frightened the crap outta me. Like I said down the pub, you're not right, Mr Richards. Not right at all.'

‘What's the time?'

‘'Bout half 'leven. You been asleep all this time?'

‘Must have been.'

If Angelo had come for him it would have been like killing a baby. Maybe this was what he wanted, maybe he didn't care any more.

It was raining heavily. A summer storm had emptied the street as Mark watched water make rivulets in the gutters, washing down assorted crap to the drains, where most of it gathered in pyramids of paper and plastic. A couple of kids hurried past, the boy trying vainly to protect his girl against the sudden rain. He had his arm around her and a hand raised against the sky.

‘Why don't you go home Mr Richards? You don' wanna be staying in a dump like mine, specially at a time like this. If you take my advice you'd go and find that woman of …'

Mark stopped him with a raised hand. Kelly lurched away from him as sharply as he could manage.

‘Don't worry, Kelly, you're not going to get a slap. I'm not a monster, you know. I just don't want to hear that right now.'

Kelly looked unconvinced and Mark was lying anyway. What he really wanted was to tell Kelly everything. He wanted to badly. It was crazy, but the need to unload was great. The confession thing that Lena had talked about. He understood it a little now.

‘Was anyone sniffing round for me,' Mark asked, ‘in the pub?'

‘Nah, just the usual Saturday night traffic.'

Mark made a decision. He'd go back to Wales for a few days. Try to take stock, get his head into some sort of shape. Let them come for him there, if they wanted. Despite his years away he still knew it better than anywhere else, and it might give him an edge.

‘Can I stay here the rest of the night, Kelly? I'll be off first thing.'