Crusher (18 page)

All this was running through my head—and other places—as I went outside to empty the scrap bins from the lunch-time rush. Eccles was very keen on recycling, and all the food waste had to be set aside for composting, and the other garbage sorted into glass and cardboard and plastic. After carefully flattening some fruit boxes with my size ten trainers I piled them into the massive aluminium hopper under the window of Eccles’s office. As I dropped the lid and dusted my hands I heard a voice I couldn’t place at first, with a high-pitched laugh that sounded more like a sneer, from inside the office. It came to me at last: McGovern’s fixer, James. A hand reached out to shut the window, and when I saw the sleeve of a chef’s jacket and the chunky Rolex on his wrist I knew Eccles was in there too. It was a warm day but clearly he didn’t want his conversation with James to be overheard.

Eccles’s office window was about two metres from
the top of the steps that led from the back yard up to the rear doors, and its sill was about the same distance from the ground. But in the corner nearest the steps an extractor fan was mounted in the window, to vent the little kitchen fitted into this end of Eccles’ office. I skipped up the steps, clambered over the handrail, gripped the rail with my right hand and stretched my left foot out to rest on a waste pipe emerging from the wall just below, currently dribbling hot water into the drain. I grabbed the sill of the office window with my left hand, pressed my back against the brick and held my breath to listen to the voices coming through the extractor vent.

“… mostly it stays up north, visiting the Normandy and Brittany markets for local produce and game. Twice a week in the summer.”

“Is the van marked?” That was James’s voice again.

“It has the logo of the restaurant on it, if that’s what you mean.”

“Customs must give you a hard time about bringing in all that booze and dodgy meat.”

“We don’t buy booze and the meat’s not dodgy. And we’re part of the European Community anyway, so …”

“So your van doesn’t get stopped?”

Eccles’s voice faded away. He seemed to have finally realized what James was getting at. Bit slow of him, I’d thought. “Not often, no.”

“How often?”

There was another pause. I could imagine Eccles tapping the arm of his specs on his perfectly straight white teeth.

“Once a fortnight, maybe. I’d have to ask Christophe, my buyer.”

“That’ll be fine,” said James. His words implied a shrug, as if he suspected Eccles of dragging his feet. The same van did the same run every week filled with smelly pâté and runny cheese, and Customs waved it through. I was beginning to see how investing in an upmarket restaurant might appeal to the Guvnor.

The waste pipe under my foot started to bend. It was only plastic, and the hot water running through it had softened it. I clutched the window ledge harder and tried to take some of the weight off my left foot.

“When’s the next trip?” said James.

“Not for a fortnight. Christophe’s on holiday, and we have enough fresh produce laid up.” Now Eccles was obviously lying, and in danger of getting a slap. Or worse.

“That’s perfect,” said James. “Let us have the keys and let us know where it’s parked, and you’ll have it back by the end of the week.”

“What does Mr. McGovern want it for?” There was another brief pause.

“You didn’t really just ask me that, did you?” The smirk was gone from James’s voice.

The waste pipe under my foot snapped and my foot flailed, kicking the aluminium hopper so hard it rang like a gong. My left hand didn’t have enough grip on the windowsill and it slipped free. I nearly wrenched my right arm out of its socket hauling myself back to the handrail, but eventually I grabbed it with both hands and stilled and stood there, my heart racing, bent over the rail. I was trying to hear if my presence had been registered, if James had heard me kick the hopper or the loud hollow
ponk
when the waste pipe snapped off. Where it had broken, the steaming water now gushed and tinkled noisily, like an incontinent baby. But nobody came to the window, and the door to the kitchen didn’t open. I swung myself back under the handrail, tripped down the steps and retrieved the slops bin I had come out with. I was worried about Eccles; if he’d been dumb enough to invent any more reasons why James couldn’t do whatever he liked with Eccles’s van, James might decide to stop asking nicely. I could always blunder into Eccles’s office, like I’d got lost on my way to the toilets. It might put them off their stride … or James might decide it was one accidental appearance too many. Fuck it, I thought, and opened the door that led to the office corridor.

Eccles was coming back down from the public area as if he’d just shown his visitors out. His face was empty and neutral, until he saw me standing there. He frowned. I donned my best gormless potwasher’s grin.

“Everything all right, Chef?”

“You can’t come through here in your overalls, Finn,” he said.

“Right, Chef. Sorry.” I had to stop myself from tugging my forelock as I backed out.

When I emerged James was standing in the yard. Shit, I thought, how did he get back here so quick? And what was he looking for?

“All right?” he said. His wide toothy grin made my skin crawl. “How’s the job working out?”

“Great,” I said.

“Money OK?”

“Great. Thanks.” I wished I could stop saying
great
, I sounded like a moron. Although maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. “Tell the Guvnor I’m really grateful,” I added.

James gave me a look. Either he didn’t like being asked to run errands or he didn’t like being reminded that he had a boss to answer to. He looked at the broken waste pipe, the down section leaning away from the wall, the water steaming and gurgling from the broken lip. “How long’s it been like that?”

I shrugged.

James nodded up at Eccles’s window. “He needs to watch out. Looks like a health and safety hazard to me.” He smiled, then turned and walked out of the yard, whistling.

Back home that night I chucked my coat onto the sofa, took my phone out and checked it again. It looked like Zoe wasn’t the sort of girl to text every thought that went through her head, or a stream of smileys and LOLs. She knew how to play it cool. So did I—I hadn’t checked my phone more than a hundred times that evening. At about seven she’d sent:
Cant cu tonite. Sorry. x

Pity
, I’d texted back.
X

Nothing since. Now I was worried that the capital X had been coming on too strong. Then I decided to stop worrying. I plugged the phone in to recharge, slogged up the stairs, scrubbed my teeth, checked for zits and collapsed into bed.

I woke around two. I’d heard the front door softly close—Dad coming in from the pub, I’d thought sleepily.

That’s what woke me up properly. I remembered that Dad was dead, and that whoever killed him had
taken his keys … and I still hadn’t got round to changing the locks. So who had opened the door? Or had I dreamed it?

I held my breath and lay there and listened. And heard nothing. A ticking from somewhere—probably the battery-powered clock on the wall by the front door—and a police siren distorting as it sped along the raised section of the motorway three streets away to the north. The deep rumble of a goods train, or a late-night landing at Heathrow.

I pulled the sheets back, dropped my feet to the floor, lifting them at the last minute so they made no sound as they touched the rug. I stood, and the ancient floorboard under the rug creaked, as I should have known it would. I stood still. And heard nothing. It was bloody cold. Now I was up I wanted to piss.

I headed for the bathroom and pulled the string. The clack of the ceiling switch resounded through the house like a pistol shot, and the light flickered on sullenly. I hated those economy bulbs Dad had fitted—they never seemed to get bright enough. I finished, shook, tucked it away and flushed the bog. The gushing echoed through the house, and mixed in with the echo down below was a sort of scuffle, as if someone had tripped on something. I reached for the string and pulled it, and the
bathroom light flicked off, and I stood there motionless for thirty seconds while my eyes re-adjusted to the dark. Silence again. There was a cricket bat in the cupboard under the stairs, I remembered. Right now that seemed like a really stupid place to keep it.

I started down the stairs, this time placing my feet carefully, trying to remember where each step creaked and to avoid that part. I made it to the bottom almost without making a sound, and stood there by the front door, feeling the slight draught of cool night air on my bare feet. I was holding my breath and listening, and I could still hear nothing, and I wondered if the sound of the front door closing had after all been part of a dream. Or maybe it was the reality, and all the rest had been a dream. Maybe Dad had come home and woken me up, and everything I thought had happened in the last week had never happened.

But the living room was empty, and the table was bare, apart from the unread bills still scattered on it. No crappy old laptop, no pile of notes, no Dad. The movement behind me was so stealthy it might have been a spider’s scuttle but I heard it all the same and
turned and registered the hand rising under my jaw and slapped it away, and whatever it was that hand had been holding flew across the pitch-black room and hit the wall, and at the same time a sledgehammer hit me in the solar plexus, driving all the breath from my body. Instinctively I raised my arms to block, just in time to catch a smashing blow to my curled fists, aimed at where my cheekbone would have been if I’d doubled over like I was meant to. The figure in front of me was slight and lithe and fast and he pressed forward while I retreated, desperately trying to catch my breath. He was whacking me above and below, trying everything to get me to drop my guard. A jolt of pain from my right kneecap nearly made my leg buckle—he’d stamped on my knee, but his aim had been off in the dark, or I’d have been on the floor screaming by now. I registered a bigger movement and realized he was aiming a roundhouse kick at my head.

I stepped forward so the toe of his boot went behind my head and his shin cracked my ear. Lifting my arm, I grabbed his raised leg and held it, pushing him off balance while I drove my free fist into his balls. I heard him grunt through gritted teeth, and with a twisting wriggle wrench himself free. In that instant I knew I was really in trouble; anyone who could take a punch like that to the nuts and not go down puking had had serious training.

He was a shadow in the dark now, both feet planted on the floor, in a slight crouch with one leg behind him, his knees bent and his arms loosely raised in a karate stance. His hands were black shapes, like he was wearing leather gloves. We were both in the dark, but it was my living room, not his, and when I stepped to the left and feinted he stepped to the right and collided with the corner of the table. In that instant I closed in, landed a jab to his solar plexus that made him gasp and followed through with a left to his jaw, but he pulled his head back just enough to stay clear, grabbed my arm as it went past and pulled it into a lock.

I hadn’t learned all my fighting at Delroy’s and I knew what was coming next, so before he could break my arm at the elbow I drove my weight further forward, pushing both of us off balance, so the table cut into the backs of his thighs and tilted him back. I pulled free and stepped back, but he closed in, and as I looked up I saw the shape of his head pulling back, and instantly lowered mine. His head butt didn’t connect with my face but our foreheads collided, and my head seemed to ring like an anvil, and stars whirled in the darkness.

I managed to break free but he recovered quicker. Before I could raise my block again his foot flashed up into my chest in another hammer blow, then flicked down and came up again, connecting directly with my chin
and rattling the teeth in my head as I stumbled against the fireplace. I saw his hand reach out to grab the urn with Dad’s ashes, and I knew he was going to smash it over my head, and the sheer bloody cheek of it made me yell and dive in and grab him close.

The vase went flying somewhere, our legs tangled and we fell to the floor in a grunting writhing heap. I tried to use my weight to pin him down but it was like wrestling with a wiry psychotic octopus on coke. He switched from karate to close combat, palm-heeling me on the nose, and I didn’t know a blow to the kidneys from a range of ten centimetres could hurt so much. Somehow he writhed from under me to behind me, both of us on our knees, and his arm snaked round my throat and started to squeeze, and the blood thumped in my head and those bloody stars reappeared, white bursts against orange. I clawed backwards at his arm and his face, hoping to rip a nostril, but he pulled his head back. His other arm was pushing my head down and forward. Bite him, I thought, but there was nothing to bite, and I could feel myself weakening, consciousness slipping away. I dropped my hand to the floor to push myself up and felt something cylindrical and plastic under my fingers. When I scrabbled to grab it my fingers touched a cold hard wire, and nearly bent it before I recognized what it was—what I’d knocked from his hand.

Lifting the syringe, I drove it deep into his forearm and pushed home the plunger.

“Scheisse!”
he yelled—more in indignation than in pain—released me, and leaped to his feet, plucking the empty syringe from his arm and flinging it aside. I saw his hand slip round to the small of his back and I scrambled to my feet, desperately trying to scrape together the last dregs of my energy as he brought his fist back round. The blade of a long, broad knife gleamed faintly like a ghost in the dark, and my left hand grabbed the wrist of the hand that held it, and my right hand punched him in the throat with all the strength I had left. I felt the gristle of his windpipe collapse under my knuckles, and the iron tendons in his arm flex and flinch and sag; he dropped to his knees, choking and wheezing, and fell forward, his jaw slamming into my bare toes.

It hurt like hell, but I barely felt it. I clutched at one of the dining chairs, dragged it out, and collapsed onto it, and sat there, bent over, my elbows on my knees, shaking with adrenaline, for what felt like days.