Dead Money (12 page)

"I don't know what else to do, I really don't. You sound insane."

She shook her head. The desserts arrived. I watched her eat a few mouthfuls before I started myself. The pear tart looked good, but it was tasteless. I took a sip of wine to get some feeling back in the inside of my mouth.

"Are you seeing someone else?" she asked.

"Don't be daft."

I should've just told her the truth. It was a perfect opportunity. I could've put a bullet in the head of this marriage, but I didn't. Mostly because I was tired, and the last thing I wanted to deal with now was an emotional woman. So I played innocent, but not outraged, and we carried on with the meal.

One thing I couldn't let go, though: "There used to be a time you trusted me."

She didn't answer.

"There used to be a time you didn't go through my pockets."

"I told you why I did that."

"The dry-cleaning. And if you think I believe that, Cath ..."

She fixed me with a sad stare. "I never felt I had to before, Alan."

I didn't answer her this time. I didn't think anything I had to say would sink in with her, so I kept quiet. She could play the martyr in her head as much as she wanted, but she wasn't making me feel guilty. I hadn't done anything wrong. She was the one going through my pockets and looking to spoil the most expensive meal I'd had this week. That took a special brand of selfishness.

She must have known that, because just after the coffees and petit fours were set down in front of us, she apologised.

I waved it off. "It's okay. Let's just leave it for now, though, eh?"

The coffee was bitter and hot. It was also, for the first time in a couple of days, good. It perked me up after the wine slowed me down. I must have been in a good mood because the bill looked reasonable. She didn't say much for the rest of the night. I wouldn't say she seemed preoccupied, because it wasn't like she was thinking, more just zoning out. That was fine by me, The less conversation the better. I had thinking to do, myself.

Like how to patch things up with Lucy. I knew she was playing funny buggers, and I wasn't going to be the one to back down first, but I couldn't help but wonder what she'd do otherwise. She was a good-looking girl. I wouldn't have been in this position if she wasn't. And as such, she could probably break it off with me and have her pick. Indeed, there was a significant and paranoid part of me that was convinced she'd bedded one of her flatmates at some point – in my kinkier moments, even the little feminist – but that might just have been the product of an overactive imagination belonging to a bloke who'd never had to share a house with anyone he wasn't supposedly having sex with.

I could wait her out, I was positive of that. But the question was, did I really have to do that, or would a phone call in a couple of days suffice? Fact was, I had treated her like shit this past week. She probably should have taken priority over Beale. Actually, no, there was no probably about it. I enjoyed myself more in her company then I ever had in Beale's. And was I really about to lose that company because I was too pig-headed to admit I was wrong?

If Cath hadn't been sat in front of me, I'd have called Lucy there and then. Instead, I had to hold my tongue and wait out the rest of the meal.

We left late. She got her own coat and her own door. Closest I came to touching her was a hovering hand on the small of her back as I guided her out of the restaurant. She wrinkled her nose when she got in the car, the same way she did when she got in to come over here. It was the dog smell. I'd gotten used to it, but I knew it was still pervasive. I lit a cigarette to kill it, and her look of disgust went from being directed at her general surroundings to a more specific me.

I didn't care. I smoked that one, and I smoked another one after it, and I didn't crack a window because it was cold outside. Twice she started to say something, and twice she caught herself.

Good girl. Resistance was futile.

We got home and she went straight into the shower. I poured myself a nightcap and stared at Buttons. Buttons stared right back. Would've done that all night if I hadn't gone to bed. I lay there in the dark. After a while Cath came in. She lay down next to me, but at a distance. I could feel the tension, but it didn't make any difference to me. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, it was two in the morning and my mobile was ringing
The Muppet Show
.

I blinked and swung my legs out of bed. My feet hit carpet, but not before one of them hit something wet. I hopped through to the living room and saw that Buttons had been up to his usual bollocks. Leaned over and snatched my jacket off the chair, removed my mobile as I hopped back through to the bathroom. Toilet roll took care of most of the shit, but I still needed a rinse.

"Hello?" I said, and switched on the taps full blast.

A voice, quiet on the other end. Someone saying something, but I couldn't make it out over the water. I turned off the taps.

I recognised the voice, but not the volume. It was Beale.

"Les? Speak up, mate."

He coughed down the phone. Then he said, so clear it was as if interference had been lifted: "I think I killed Stevie."

12

What's the old joke? A friend will help you move, but a
good
friend will help you move a body?

Yeah, well, it wasn't so funny when someone took it to heart.

The shit on my foot was the least of my problems. Second least was driving knackered.

So he thought he'd killed Stevie. Not good. In fact, almost the dictionary definition of bad. I had Chet Baker playing in the car. He was singing about his funny valentine. It was gentle, it was soothing, it was—

Stevie was dead. And Beale was sure he'd done it.

He didn't go into any details over the phone. He'd always been paranoid about mobiles, and probably with good reason. I didn't think I'd be comfortable discussing the murder I'd just committed on an open line, either.

Check them off, one by one.

He was probably drunk. He sounded drunk. So it probably wasn't as bad as he thought it was – let's face it, it couldn't have been much worse. Chances were, Stevie was just unconscious and bleeding.

That, I could handle. And from what I recalled of Stevie, it wasn't like the lad didn't deserve a good hard slap. My thinking was, the cocky little bastard probably tried to put one over on Beale and Beale had decked him for his trouble. Stuff like that had happened before and as long as Beale was equal parts naive and bolshy, it would happen again.

See, I
knew
this game was a bad idea from the get-go. Told him, too. Told him a few times. But see Beale, once he got an idea in his head ...

Beale and his missus bought their house when the area was unfashionable. As far as I was concerned, it still was. Passing new-builds on both sides, I saw little touches here and there – different paintwork, a little carved house number sign, an unkempt but otherwise fertile flower bed next to the driveway. I knew Beale's house from the end of the cul-de-sac. It was the only one with the lights still on.

I parked the Rover behind Beale's Mondeo. Someone had taken a key to the paintwork. Even in the dark, I could see the mess. The curtains in the living room window moved. I listened to Chet for one more verse, then throttled him. I needed to approach this calmly. No point in rushing in there looking to blame. But still, if this was just another one of Beale's drunken scrapes, I had a few places he could go to, and number one was Hell.

I got out of the car. The front door opened. Beale's bulk filled the doorway, but I couldn't see his face. As I approached, he whispered at me to get the fuck inside.

"What's all this about, Les?"

He flinched at the sound of my voice. He grabbed my arm and pulled me into the hall. Once inside, he closed the door quietly behind us. I smelled alcohol, a mixture of stale and recent. Smelled that on Beale before, but tonight it had a different, much more worrying connotation. His face was yellowish, his eyes bugging out of his head. Spittle had crusted in the corner of his mouth.

But his clothes were the main feature here.

Blood was spattered all over the front of his shirt. Not enough to make me think he'd cut anyone's head off, but certainly enough to get me worried considering that Beale looked relatively unscathed. One of the lapels of his jacket had been torn halfway down. His left jacket pocket had suffered a similar fate. The only damage to Beale was his knuckles, scuffed red raw and apparently bleeding.

"What did you do?"

He stared at me, struck dumb. He was trembling. Only time I'd ever seen him do that was the morning after a heavy night before. But this wasn't the DTs. This was something much worse.

"Les, what did you do?"

He looked at the floor. Shook his head. He was breathing through his mouth. Every exhalation worried the spit that strung his lips together. The door to the living room was open, but I didn't want to go in there without a heads-up.

All he said was "I'm sorry. I'm so fuckin' sorry."

"Why're you sorry?"

"I'm sorry." Looked like a slapped kid building to a sob.

I asked him again what happened, but he'd lost the will to speak, regressed into muttered replies that weren't even real words, punctuated with short, sharp catches of breath like he'd cried himself daft.

I'd never seen him like this before. Not on his worst day. And he'd been drinking, but I got the feeling that whatever drunk he'd been rolling on was long gone. Now it was hangover and regret and fear.

I pushed past him into the living room.

Beale's wife left him all the chintz. Flowers everywhere, and badly maintained. It looked like your granny's flat after she'd been dead a week. Cushions littered the place, frilly odds and sods sat in corners like lace rats. I expected him to have dumped all this shit by now, but he'd obviously been busy shitting the place up instead. Nothing otherwise looked out of the ordinary.

And then I saw Stevie.

There was an archway that led to the dining area. Through that archway, next to a table scattered with poker chips and empty beer cans, ashtrays and crushed cigarette packs, a leg was visible. Motionless for as long as I stared at it. Something metallic in the air, mingled with ammonia. I felt Beale come into the room behind me, but neither of us said anything.

As I moved into the dining room, the rest of the scene came into view. The dining room had been trashed. The chairs that had previously surrounded the table looked as if they'd been flung back in a sudden blast. What looked like a cocktail cabinet against one of the walls had been brought to the floor, and glass crunched underfoot as I approached Stevie, or what was left of him. The blood that looked to swallow the cream carpet had come from him. Stevie lay in a crumpled, twisted heap, propped up against the back wall, his chin to his chest. Blood streaked and dried on his uniform shirt, his arms buckled and open in a freeze-frame shrug.

"I'm sorry, Alan."

He thought he'd killed Stevie.

I thought he was right.

"Christ." I bit the inside of my cheek. Panic balled in my chest. "What did you do?"

Behind me, Beale made sound that could've been him trying to hold back either tears or vomit.

I whirled round. "What the fuck did you
do
?"

He was further away than I thought, slumped in a chair and staring for a thousand yards through the far wall, eyes like glass. Miles away and then right here, drifting from one to the other and then back again, moment to moment.