Dead Pretty (13 page)

‘You two having a nice chat,' Julie said.

‘Can I use the shower, Mam?' Mark asked. ‘It was a bit of a rush, catching the first train down.'

‘I can see that. I didn't like to say. You could do with a shave too.'

Mark took the holdall with him. He showered, then shaved, looking at the face of a murderer. He'd finally got there. It was the eyes that were different, they'd always been hard, inward-looking, brooking no interference, but there was another quality there now. He didn't have the words to explain it, but he knew that they had changed, even as he stared at himself they seemed to be looking elsewhere. Looking at too much knowledge. It had taken him a long time to learn not to think back too much, Lena had helped him with this, but now all that forward movement was lost. Lena, then Agani, had told him the truth about his life, and its past. Maybe her loss was an overdue punishment for losing Shane.

Mark started to think about Stellachi. The man's image was fixed in his mind now, and he wondered if Stellachi would be doing the same with him. His face in that Rome photograph was gaunt, the smile a joke, the eyes button-dead. There was no excess weight on him, his body would be bone hard, heart and brain the same, and he would have enjoyed his work with Lena. Why else do it? But it had got Agani killed, other people in the organisation wouldn't like that. Stellachi would be under pressure, as much as a man like that ever could be. Mark would be hunted down, and Stellachi would have others to call on besides Angelo and the big man. Let them come, Mark thought, as he shaved off the last of his dark bristles. Let them all come, for I'm also hunting them. He knew that, in the end, it would come down to him and Stellachi. A matter of need for each of them. Maybe Stellachi would have another look round the flat, he'd have lots of images to study. Mark was glad he'd taken the one of him and Lena.

‘Have you gone to sleep in there?' Julie rapped on the door. ‘Come on, the day's half over already.'

She was excited, Mark realised. This was the first time he'd been anywhere with her and another man. At the age of thirty. The thought of Carl as another
uncle
brought the hint of a smile to his lips, though his face was dark, tired, and set in determination. Tight lines stretched from his eyes, and he'd managed to cut his chin. Killers might already be on their way from London, and he was about to go for a trip with his mother and her boyfriend. To the seaside.

Julie led the way and Mark blinked in the sunlight. There were plenty of people about, and he tried to check everyone out without Julie noticing it. Carl glanced at him a few times. His car was parked at the back of the flats. It was an old Merc, a geriatric version of the one Tony had. It was even the same colour, if you looked closely through the dirt.

‘Bought this off an hairdresser,' Carl said. ‘It's like me, old, but goes well.'

‘Plenty of room in it,' Julie said, ‘where do you want to go, Mark? Carl don't mind, do you, Carl?'

You poor bastard, Carl, feet under the table with Julie, a nice Sunday, and I show up. And he knows something is going on. Something more than the end of a relationship. I'm looking around like he did on the streets of Belfast.

‘Wherever,' Mark said.

‘How about down to the Gower, we went there last weekend, didn' we, Carl? I'd never been before. Can you believe it?'

Course I can, Mam. We never went anywhere, remember. I didn't make one school trip. Being banged up in Portland was my first real trip, in the back of a police van, looking through the bars at my first close-up view of the sea.

Mark had glimpsed the sea from the tops of the local hills, like some peasant from another time who never left the village. That grey sliver of channel that looked like molten lead in the sun had been part of his landscape, a vital but unknown part.

Julie was living a little, grabbing at a tiny slice of life that had mostly been denied her – and he was putting it in danger. This was one reason to be glad Carl was with her, that she might gain a little happiness was another. Mark told himself that Angelo and the others would not want any trouble here. Carl would make it awkward for them, and they had nothing to gain from it. He kept telling himself this.

As Mark sat in the back of the car like a kid, the image of Stellachi knocking on Julie's door was a powerful one. The bogeyman calling, if ever there was one. He ran his hand over the worn leather of the seat and let himself drift into an uneasy sleep. Before he shut his eyes he caught Julie's, looking at him in the vanity mirror, and, for once, they weren't full of questions, or pain.

She gave him a shy smile, and thought she had a family back.

Chapter Eight

For Mark, the day became increasingly dreamlike. As Julie became more attentive, and Carl quite friendly, Lena, Stellachi and death lay somewhere else, on another road that he'd left behind. His head tried to repair itself and in one brief moment of relaxation he saw how life might have been for the Richards, in another time, another place, and with Shane.

They drove down to the beaches of the Gower, Carl's old Merc smooth and reliable. Julie chatted away about not much, clearly relieved that there was no problem between her two men. This was another major change in her life. Mark thought she might have been glad that, in her eyes, he was single again. She'd been overawed that time he'd shown up with Lena. Her looks, accent, work, told Julie he was moving away big time, the estate just a bad memory from an increasingly distant past. Deep down, with all the crap cut away, he was still
her little Mark.

They stopped near a virtually deserted beach, marked by cliffs divided into three rocky points. Julie had already been here with Carl. As they walked down from the nearest parking place she nudged Mark in the back.

‘Never imagined places like this when you were little, eh?'

‘Oh, I
imagined
them, Mam.'

As Carl walked on ahead Julie lowered her voice.

‘You know I always wanted to take you on trips, but it was hard to get off that estate with no money, no car. And all the other stuff.'

‘That's all in the past, Mam. We're okay now, aren't we?'

‘We could have been here with Shane,' she murmured, ‘he'd be about starting Comp now.'

He expected her voice to break and tears to come but Julie remained calm. She'd grown a lot since he'd been in London. Mark sensed a confidence in her that had not been present before and Julie was going to need it.

‘Do you ever think about Daniels?' Julie asked quietly.

Daniels' short life ended with his face in a bag of glue. Mark was just sixteen, and his friend's death had made sure his late teens were rough and wild. Or rougher and wilder. The passing of Daniels taught Mark that someone like him had to fight for everything in this world. Mark had never called Daniels by his first name, no one had, and he couldn't remember it now. He hadn't thought of him in years but would never forget that last image, Daniels' dead eyes the same colour of the sky above him as he sprawled in the dirt of their back lane. Lena's face joined Daniels', then Shane's, they swirled around in a vile mix and each one accused. Then he saw Stellachi knocking on Julie's door, introducing himself as Mark's friend, his hard face creased with that thin smile. Oozing charm and malice, as Julie invited him in.

‘Mark?'

‘No, not too much, Mam.'

‘You all right? You're shaking a bit.'

‘No problem. It's the shock of all this fresh air.'

Carl waited for them to catch up.

‘Quite hot, innit? There's a pub up the top there if we walk over the beach and up the other side.'

‘Okay, Carl, lead on,' Mark said.

Mark scanned the beach. It was too hard to get to for many people to be here. A few couples were dotted around, kids chased balls, a few dared the edge of the sea. He realised the headache had gone and the nerve had stopped throbbing.

They crossed a small river that fringed the beach, and fed into the sea, Carl helping Julie over a causeway of stepping stones.

Julie was enjoying the day, while Mark ran a few ideas for his survival through his head. He wouldn't hire a car, but he'd get up to the valley tomorrow on the train. First, he'd have to buy some gear. He wanted to be isolated, to find a place he knew well, where he could take stock of all that had happened, and which he could defend. He'd already taken the decision not to tell Julie anything. It was impossible to unload this now Carl was around, but he was taking a chance. A big one.

‘Let's have Sunday lunch,' Julie said, ‘my treat. I'm earning quite good money at that factory now, Mark, with my bonus an' all. The girls there are all right, too. They don't pry as much as the ones back home.'

‘No, I'll pay,' Carl said,' since Mark came down special, like.'

Mark had waited thirty years for an
uncle
to offer him anything. It was strange to hear Julie refer to the estate as home. Life there had been a grind punctuated by short, illusory spells of hope, more like little stabs than spells, glimpses of lives others led, which he'd paid for with the proceeds of his crimes. Illicit money had been his collateral for happiness, what he'd thought was happiness. Yet it
had
been home, the only one they'd known, and he still felt just a touch of kinship with it. A pride in its roughness and the way it clung onto life without an even break from anyone. Now they'd both got away, even if his new life had been ripped apart. Losing Shane had been the spur they needed. Maybe it was true something good comes from the most desperate of acts, yet Mark found it hard to think this way about the killing of Lena – or Agani, for that matter.

‘You're quiet,' Julie said.

‘Was I ever anything else?'

‘No, not really. Look, things
are
all right, aren't they? Was it that serious with Lena?'

‘I don't know. Maybe not. It's over anyway.'

‘Maybe you should stay down here. Plenty of nice girls around, 'specially for a boy as fit as you. There's a few in the factory that would …'

‘Thanks, Mam, but no thanks. I like it up there, believe it or not. I like the fact that no one knows me. All right, everything is fast and cold, but you are left alone, if you want to be. Like we never were.'

He was talking in the present about feelings that were no longer there.

‘Aye, I know what you mean. I'm only a few miles from that hilltop but it could be on the bloody dark side of the moon now. It's so different down here.'

Julie breathed in deeply, ‘Look at it. Everything's so clean.'

‘The air was just as fresh in the hills.'

‘You and your hills. You were always on them.'

‘Well, not always, Mam. I was in plenty of houses as well, wasn't I?'

Julie laughed, and dug him in the ribs.

‘You were a right little rogue, but don' bring that up, 'specially in front of Carl. That's all over and done with   isn't it?'

‘Aye, over and done with.'

Carl rejoined them. Mark knew he'd been pacing on ahead to give them a chance to talk. He appreciated that. There was something solid about Carl he liked; he'd seen stuff too and his eyes were the proof. They were a firm brown, set slightly back in his head, alert, but also a little lost, as if they were looking back on something that couldn't be forgotten. Mark wondered if he'd killed anyone when in the army, and the answer was probably yes. How quickly Julie's world might shatter if she knew each of her men had pulled the trigger, but only one legally.

‘Me and Julie had a nice Sunday lunch here the other week,' Carl said, pointing to the pub they were approaching. ‘Good grub and not too pricey.'

The pub was trying to stay old, a hand painted wooden sign swung in the breeze outside, and the seabird on it was painted a bright blue. Suddenly Mark wanted tradition, all the stuff Lena had disapproved of, and he'd never had. He thought of beef and Yorkshire puddings like the condemned man he probably was. Julie had tried the odd Sunday lunch when they had been flush, but often they'd disintegrated into rows and incrimination. The Richards family rituals. Mark knew just enough about the Bible to be aware of the Last Supper. Maybe this would be his Last Dinner, at least with Julie.

The pub wasn't too busy. Summer had tailed off and kids were back in school, and what was left were mainly pensioners, people with time on their hands, and finding it harder and harder to spend. Julie was right. This world was so different to the one they'd lived in. It reminded him of the Cotswolds, that Christmas with Lena. Lena had used a word to describe that place,
genteel.
He'd looked it up when she was away. It meant cultivated, elegant, refined, words that had one thing in common, none of them had played a part in his life before she came along.

Mark insisted on buying the drinks.

‘I'll only have the one pint,' Carl said,' I'd be knackered if I lost my licence.'

‘Get me a pint of lager,' Julie said.

‘It'll be almost as big as you, Mam.'

‘Oi, don' be cheeky. Women drink pints now, or haven't you noticed? My boy's old-fashioned really, Carl.'

They took a corner table, shown there eagerly by a man with a Midlands accent. Mark sat with his back against the wall.

‘Have you noticed they're always from over the border in places like this,' Carl muttered. ‘Never our own.'

‘Oh, don' start that again,' Julie said. ‘Carl got this thing about the English, Mark. Bloody racist he is, sometimes.'

Mark smiled but didn't take sides. Not liking outsiders, afraid of losing driving licences – things like this sounded so tame now, so normal. That word ‘normal' kept cropping up in his thoughts. What had Kelly said, that there was no such thing. Maybe the old scally was right, but there was such a thing as extreme life, and he was heading there.

*

Kelly heard his arm snap before he felt any pain. Shock protected him for a moment, then it came. It surged through him like some mighty fist and his bladder lost control. He would have passed out had not Angelo jerked him back.

‘No, my friend don't go to sleep.'

The big man said something in a language Kelly had never heard before.

‘
My
friend says you are not a man at all, you wet yourself like a child, and you stink like an animal. What use are you to a man like Richards?'

Kelly knew he was making noises, whimpering, then a high pitched keening as Angelo prodded his busted arm, but they didn't seem to be coming from him. They were coming from far away, as if they were outside his body. They sounded like his mother shouting at him, and his father coming in through the front door with his belt in his hand.

‘I don' know nuttin, right,' Kelly managed to shout out. ‘Nuttin about Mr Richards, nuttin about fuckin' nuttin.'

The big man stood behind Kelly's chair, his gorilla-like arm about to close around his neck. Angelo waved a finger.

‘A drink, Kelly, that's what you need. That's what you do, isn't it. Drink?'

For the first time since he'd fallen from a scaffold and smashed both ankles Kelly did not want one. Angelo picked up the bottle and pushed it towards his mouth. Kelly squirmed until the big man held his head. It would be so easy for this one to snap his scrawny twig of a neck.

Kelly thought his bowels might have joined the bladder. This had to be a fucking dream, he'd wake up at any moment. If he did, he'd swear he'd lay off the booze. This was a warning, maybe from the Almighty himself.

Angelo began to pour. Some of it went down Kelly's throat, forcing him to swallow, some onto his chest. He was wet top and bottom now. The drink hit home immediately. It recognised familiar territory and mixed with last night's load. The pain in Kelly's arm turned from white-hot to dull fire.

‘That's right,' Angelo said, ‘good, Kelly, good.'

Angelo stopped pouring, as Kelly coughed and spluttered, his eyes trying to focus. Angelo held his head, and turned it towards the window.

‘Look, the sun is out. Another fine day. See how soft and white the clouds are, how blue the sky. Life is always worth living, even for you. Where's Richards? What is his name, Mark? Where's Mark, Kelly? You know you want to tell me.'

‘I never call him Mark,' Kelly murmured. ‘I dunno where he is. I never know. Look, I just done a few jobs for him, now and then. He's a private dick.'

‘
You
done jobs?'

‘Yeah, me.'

‘What could
you
possibly do?'

Despite the crippling fear, and the pain that pulsed through him, Kelly had a flash of defiance, an echo of old, pre-drink times.

‘I'm not fuckin' useless. I'm good for getting stuff, and watching out for things.'

‘Ah yes, like a rat in a sewer.'

‘I got a car for him last Friday, that's all. He said he wanted a motor. He gimme a few quid.'

‘What did he say when he stayed here? Why did he stay, Kelly?'

‘Nothing, I dunno why he stayed. It didn't make sense. I thought he might have had a ruck with his girlfriend. Look, I said, he never told me nuttin. Look at me, for fucksake. Why should he? I didn't want to know. I only want to be left alone, an' he fuckin' should have.'

‘But he has a nice apartment, a lovely woman. What was he doin' here, in this cess pit?'

‘Jesus Christ, what you wan' me to say? I'll say anything. He's gone back to the flat, he's gone back to Wales. He's gone to fuckin' Buck House to see the queen.'

‘Have another drink.'

Again the liquid poured down. A river to oblivion. Kelly had heard that somewhere, deep in his past. Maybe in church, when he'd gone as a kid, parents each side of him, like guards. When he'd stood in the cold, damp, musty atmosphere to hear all the frightening stuff about hell, damnation and burning in the fire. Their local priest was a throwback, with talk to match.

Most of the whisky was gone now. It had taken over him, he was hardly aware the men were there and the pain was in some distant place, but as Angelo tapped his head softly, and spoke in a soothing voice the terror came back. It was reaching a peak, and he was finding it hard to breathe.

‘I believe you, Kelly,' Angelo said softly. ‘I too think Richards has gone back to this Wales.'

‘It's you he's running from,' Kelly said, ‘isn't it, you fucking bastard. You and this other ape.'

‘So, there is a little spirit somewhere still inside you,' Angelo said. ‘We won't hurt you no more.' He nodded to the big man.