Before the Fire (10 page)

Stick could hear the roar in his head. The world felt suddenly fragile, as though if he moved it might shatter into tiny shards.

‘Why?’ he asked.

Mrs McKinley had a white leather handbag over her shoulder and kept opening and closing the big gold clasp.
Click. Click. Click.
‘They’ve found things.’ She nodded.
‘They’ve found things in his flat.’

Stick wanted to throw up. ‘Why did he kill him?’ he asked. ‘Who is he?’

‘And then they charge him, and then –’ she let out another little laugh – ‘and then they do a post-mortem. Another one.’ She looked at Stick. ‘I
don’t know why they have to do that.’

He couldn’t look at her. Stared instead at the blue metal grid of the balconies; bikes and mops and plants and furniture pressed against frosted glass; rows of pleated net curtains. He
remembered the first time he visited Mac, standing high up on the fifth floor, throwing peanuts down into the street.

‘And then if – if it all – I don’t know. But then they release him,’ Mrs McKinley said.

Stick’s head cleared for a second. ‘They can’t release him. A murderer?’ The word sounded wrong – like he’d just made it up.

‘My boy,’ she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘They release my boy. The funeral will be Wednesday.’ She nodded. ‘That’s a good day. Wednesday.
Isn’t it?’ She looked at Stick, waiting for him to say something.

He tried to smile, tried to say, yes, Wednesday’s fine, but what came out was, ‘Owen Lee? Owen Lee killed Mac? Who the fuck’s Owen Lee?’

‘And I’m going to town to buy a dress.’ She grabbed his elbow, tight enough to hurt. ‘A dress for my boy’s funeral. Can you believe that? I don’t have
anything black.’ She drew in little gasps between the words.

Stick thought of his mum at Sophie’s funeral, in a neat black dress. His dad in a suit Stick had never seen before or since. Stick in his school uniform with a black tie around his neck,
walking behind his parents. They wouldn’t look at him, or at each other, wouldn’t hold hands – each of them close up together and entirely on their own.

Mrs McKinley leaned her face closer to his. ‘You’ll come.’

‘Sorry?’

She was nodding now. ‘You’ll come and help me choose. You’ll know what he’d like.’

Stick felt the panic under his skin. ‘Mrs McKinley, I can’t, I’m sorry.’ He shook his head and tried to step back, but she was still gripping his elbow.

‘I need you,’ she said. ‘To help me choose.’

‘My mum might?’ Stick said. ‘Or your sister. They’d be good for that, wouldn’t they? They’d be better than me at that.’

She was shaking her head.

‘I don’t know anything about dresses, Mrs McKinley.’ He could lie – tell her work had taken him back on and he had to go down to the site, but before he could, she said,
‘I need you,’ again, and he remembered her standing in the flat, staring out of the window and him creeping off like a coward.

‘All right, then,’ he said, and managed to smile this time. ‘I can drive if you like.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s half a week’s rent to park down there.’ She sounded, for a moment, like herself again. ‘We’ll get the bus. I’ll
pay.’

So they walked across the grass at the back of the Queen’s, dodging the dog shit and bits of broken glass, Mrs McKinley half leaning on his arm. He took her the long way around and she
didn’t seem to notice, except that once they got to the stop she said, ‘Do you think it hurt? Do you think he suffered? Rob said probably not, but I don’t know.’

Stick stared across the road towards Paget Street. ‘No,’ he said. It was like his voice was breaking all over again – couldn’t trust it. He swallowed. ‘It’d
be quick, I’m sure. They say it doesn’t hurt.’

They say it doesn’t hurt straight away. They say it’s like being punched and sometimes you don’t even notice until you see the blood. It must hurt after a bit though, once your
brain’s caught up with what’s going on. And Mac hated blood, turned green and woozed about at the sight of it.

‘Who’s Owen Lee?’ Stick asked.

She didn’t answer him.

‘Mrs McKinley?’

She blinked and looked at him as though she’d forgotten he was there. The bus turned up before he could ask again.

They sat downstairs, Stick by the window staring out at Rochdale Road unravelling like a slow, jerky film. Past Paget Street; past the school and the car park and the storage place; past the
fenced-off flats waiting to be knocked down. They’d got inside one of them once. Mac’s mate Faisal was always breaking into empty houses. Camping out with a couple of spliffs, a tab of
acid, cans of cheap lager. He slept there sometimes and no one seemed to bother much about it. He’d broken into the Rochdale Road ones and Mac and Stick had gone to meet him in one of the
ground-floor places – the windows boarded up and the electrics off. It smelt of damp, and piss, and weed. Faisal lounged on a tattered-looking sofa, a fag crackling red between his lips.

‘I could kill the pair of you and no one would find you for months,’ he said, laughing. They sat and smoked and talked about every case they could remember where people had been
murdered and then built into walls, or buried in cellars, or hidden in lofts, to be unearthed years later as skeletons with bits of rotting flesh still clinging on.

‘Did the police say why he did it?’ Stick said.

He thought she hadn’t heard him, but when he turned to ask again she said, ‘He won’t tell them anything.’ Her voice shook. ‘Wrong time, wrong place, they say. They
don’t think he knew him.’ She looked at Stick. ‘You don’t know him, do you?’

Stick shook his head.

Mrs McKinley scraped a fingernail over her jeans. ‘There was an argument on the bus,’ she said quietly. ‘Maybe it was the dressing-up. Some men get –’ she hesitated
– ‘bothered about things like that, don’t they?’ She sniffed and wiped her hand across her face. ‘He just liked a joke though, Iain, didn’t he?’

Stick leaned his head against the window and tapped one foot on the floor. He thought about Mac’s bed covered with shirts and shorts, flowers and flip-flops and plastic sunglasses. If he
could go back, he’d wear the lot – leave nothing for Mac.

Mrs McKinley put her hand on his thigh.

He froze.

‘Makes me nervous,’ she said. ‘When someone jiggles their leg like that.’

‘Sorry.’

She left her hand there –
one, two, three, four
– and then the bus lurched to one side and she pulled it back onto her own lap.

‘Would you look at my nails,’ she said, holding up both hands. ‘I’ll have to get them done, for Wednesday.’

‘He wouldn’t mind,’ Stick said. He kept his gaze on the floor, tried to keep his leg still.

Saturday afternoon in town. It reminded him of being a kid. Crowding down Market Street with his mum, begging for sweet money; later with Mac, smoking weed and laughing at the
guys with their white-painted faces, pretending to be made out of stone; spending Stick’s dad’s money on cider and fags. Stick called it guilt money; Mac said he should stop being a
cunt and have some gratitude.

‘Would you look at that,’ Mrs McKinley said, stopping by the curved brick wall of the Arndale car park and pointing at a red circle of metal with white writing on it. ‘Food
riots. 1757. Four died. I did not know that.’ She stood there staring at it, like she’d forgotten she was in town, like she didn’t realise she was in the way.

Stick and his mum used to come to the Arndale Centre on the weekend, when he was twelve or thirteen. A tenner to spend on whatever he wanted, if he’d been good enough and his mum had the
cash to spare. Traipse round the shops and then a McDonald’s for lunch. His mum sitting and watching the girls – she’d always fix on one, about the age Sophie would have been, and
watch her hungrily. Stick would see and say nothing, sit chewing his burger and feeding fries into his mouth, his stomach clenching.

‘Are we going Arndale?’ Stick asked and she looked at him like she was surprised he was there next to her, waiting.

‘Harvey Nichols,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been in.’

Stick shrugged and followed her along the side of the Arndale Centre, keeping his eyes left and holding his breath as they passed Dantzic Street and the Printworks. Owen Lee. Who the fuck was
Owen Lee? Maybe he’d been in the bar, staking Mac out like a psycho. Maybe he’d seen Stick stumble into the toilets with the girl in the blue sequinned top. Maybe Stick had seen
him.

Harvey Nichols was in the posh bit of town – by the tarted-up Corn Exchange and the open area with the sloped concrete benches and a dug-out stream of water, the whole place full of
pale-grey stone and massive glass windows. A security guard in black trousers and a black shirt narrowed his eyes as Stick walked towards the door, but he didn’t say anything. Inside, the air
was choked with perfume; the lights so bright everything glittered.

Mac’s ma seemed to shrink a little next to him.

‘You sure this is where—’ Stick said.

‘He was a good boy.’

‘Yes.’ Stick stretched out the word. ‘But—’

‘Least I can do is wear something decent.’

Stick followed her through islands of make-up, where women in white doctors’ coats fussed about with pots and brushes. Up three steps and then an escalator into the women’s section.
Stick kept his eyes fixed on the thick grey carpet.

‘There aren’t many clothes, are there?’ Mac’s ma said.

It was pretty empty, with short silver rails arranged at angles. Mac’s ma walked from one to another like she was in a trance. Stick followed, head down, listening to the coat hangers
clack as she picked things up and then put them back again, tutting.

‘What do you think?’ She held up a black dress made out of shiny material, with a low neckline.

Stick felt himself blush. He shrugged.

‘A bit slutty?’ She put the dress back and pulled out another. ‘This one?’

It didn’t look that different.

‘You find me one, Kieran.’

Stick grabbed the first black thing he saw, except it had shoulder pads and silver studs around the neck and sleeves. He thought about the girl, J, with the stud in her top lip. He’d gone
back to the space a day or two ago but she hadn’t been there, or if she had she’d hidden herself away somewhere.

‘Do you think?’ Mac’s ma said.

Stick shoved it back on the rail. He needed Mac. Mac could do this kind of thing. He’d dance round the shop fetching things, chatting up the assistants. He’d try a bloody dress on
himself if they let him.

‘They need to get him to confess,’ Stick said. ‘Need to pull his fingernails out or something. Mrs McKinley, the police must have said something about why he did it?’

She just shook her head.

‘There’ll be a court case though? He’ll have to explain?’

‘That’s right.’ She half smiled.

Stick picked out a long-sleeved, plain-looking dress and held it up.

‘Have they got it in a sixteen?’

He fumbled with the label. ‘It’s an eight.’

‘Who’s an eight? Look if there’s another one.’

He looked, but couldn’t find her size.

‘Will you ask someone for me?’

Stick chose a shop assistant who was wearing a bright-orange dress and yellow shoes. She didn’t react as he walked up, and he felt his cheeks colour.

‘Have you got a sixteen?’ he said.

She took the dress off him, looked at the label then looked at him.

‘It’s for her.’ Stick gestured to Mac’s ma with his head. The assistant didn’t even look over. ‘I’ll go and see. We don’t always stock the larger
sizes.’

She stalked off and Stick stood with his head down, shuffling his feet against the pale-grey carpet, which was stained from people’s shoes – a bit of mud here, something spilt
there.

She came back with two dresses and held one out to him. ‘You’re in luck.’

He snatched it and retreated back to Mac’s ma. ‘They’re not nice in here.’

‘They’re just bored, the loves,’ she said. ‘Standing around all day, nothing to do.’

Mac’s ma worked in a care home. Wiping old people’s arses all day, Mac used to say. They must have given her a week off.

‘Come on, I’ll try this one, and I’ve found another.’ She draped both dresses over her arm and walked to the changing rooms.

‘He’s helping me choose,’ Mac’s ma said to the woman at the entrance, and then she laughed like she was a girl, like she was drunk. Stick pictured himself inside a
changing cubicle with her. There wouldn’t be enough room for the two of them, not without touching. Stick swallowed hard.

‘I’ll wait here,’ he said.

‘Don’t go anywhere. I need you to tell me.’

‘It’s all right,’ Stick said. ‘I’ll be here.’

And then she was gone and it was just him and the woman, who turned her back on him, started picking clothes off a pile on the table next to her and putting them back onto hangers. It was too
hot, too bright. They should have gone to Primark.

He heard a cough and looked up to see Mac’s ma in a dress that was too short and too tight. He glanced at the shop assistant and saw her hide her smirk. Bitch.

‘Did you try the other one?’ he said.

Mrs McKinley’s face fell a little. ‘You’ll wait here?’

‘Sure.’

The next dress was a bit better, but what the fuck did he know?

‘I look fat, don’t I?’ Her voice wobbled.

‘You look nice,’ he said, then blushed like an idiot.

‘It’s three hundred quid.’

‘Fucking hell,’ he said, before he could stop himself. The assistant snatched in a disapproving breath. Stick lowered his voice. ‘I mean, it’s expensive isn’t it?
For a dress.’ She didn’t have that kind of money, he knew that. He thought of the euros still rolled up in the sports bag in his room. Even all of them wouldn’t buy the dress.

‘It’s for Iain.’

‘But he’s—’ He stopped himself. ‘Don’t you think somewhere cheaper would be just as good?’

She smoothed her hands over her hips. The dress had a low V-neck and he could see the top of her tits. He tried not to look.

‘I haven’t worn black for years,’ she said. ‘I used to. When that excuse for a husband was around.’ She let out a little laugh. ‘Soon as I got rid of him I
started wearing colours. Tells you something, that does.’