Dead Money (14 page)

"Where we going?"

I didn't answer him. Instead, I got behind the wheel and started the engine.

We headed for Salford, for the canal. I figured if it was good enough for some smelly old dog, it was certainly good enough for Stevie. On the way, I found myself glancing in the rear view more than usual. Something nagged at me, like there was something behind us, something following, and I just couldn't see it properly through my swollen eyes. As street lights flashed over the car, every now and then I was positive I saw the bin liners move.

But they weren't. Stevie was dead as Diana. There was no getting around that.

Beale was looking at me. "Alan."

I leaned forward and put Chet back on. He sang about getting lost, and a trumpet came in after a couple of bars and kept Beale quiet.

It was around here somewhere, I was sure of it. All I had to do was focus on my goal, blur out the peripherals and concentrate.

I stopped at traffic lights and stared straight ahead. Pretty sure it was just over these lights and another five minutes. Everything was going great, I told myself. Not long now and it'd all be over. Keep a cool head and everything would turn out fine and dandy.

In the rear view, I saw a police car. At first I thought it was just my imagination messing with me, but then Beale tensed. His eyes were big and frightened. I didn't say anything. Let him stew. I checked the clock on the dashboard. Some casinos were still open, so as long as they didn't look at us for too long or smell my breath, we'd be alright. I didn't think they would. We weren't scallies, we weren't obviously trouble, so they wouldn't bother with us.

I caught my reflection in the mirror. My face was streaked with blood.

No, it was fine. Say it again: they wouldn't bother with us. We were just two average blokes. Two average blokes, one of whom was sporting a broken nose, both of them with blood on them and a dead body in the back. I watched the police car in the rear view. They were giving nothing away, maybe because they had nothing to give away, but I wasn't sure.

There was blood in my mouth. I stopped chewing the inside of my cheek.

Looked back at the lights. Willing them to change.

Wasn't as if there was much traffic on the road this early. Sat here for, what, five minutes now, and I thought I'd seen maybe one car go past. Normally I would've been out of here, but that police car had me frozen in a tableau of responsible driving.

Watching the light. Wondering why it didn't change. Maybe it was broken.

Chet Baker went from soothing to annoying. I killed him in full voice.

This was all Beale's fault. I wanted to lean over and lamp him for putting me in this position. None of this would've happened if it hadn't been for Beale and his temper. It was his temper that put a Chinese lad to the floor, got us banned from the Palace. It was his temper that killed Stevie. And it was his temper that put me in this car with a dead body and two coppers watching every move I made—

The chirp of a siren. I froze. That was it. They were pulling us over. We were fucked.

"Alan."

"Wait, I need to think."

Beale prodded me. "Alan."

"What is it?"

He pointed at the green light. I pulled away from the junction, revving slightly more than I should have, but it got us clear and down the road before the police had a chance to wheel that siren any more. Once I was positive they were gone, I reached for the bottle of vodka and took a drink, just to steady my nerves.

When we arrived at the spot where I'd dumped the dog, it wasn't there. And for a moment, I allowed myself the comfort that the stuff with the dog didn't happen. It was just some paranoid drunken lucid dream. Or maybe it was an omen, an augur of tonight, a dry run for dealing with a corpse and a fat albatross who was currently vomiting in the bushes.

I lit a cigarette and leaned against the car. Rain dotted the Regal and I smoked it dry. Once the nicotine mingled with the last of the alcohol, I actually started to feel pretty good until I heard the yell from the bushes.

Turned to see Beale staggering out. "There's a dead
dog
back there."

Alright, so maybe I had hit the dog.

"You should see it."

"Already seen enough for one night, Les." I ditched the cigarette and approached the slope. The cement glistened. I wondered how slippery it would be with this drizzle. We'd have to get all the way down to the water. Couldn't dump Stevie the way I'd dumped the dog. We had to make sure he was down and that he stayed down. What little I knew from late night Channel Five was that when a body is submerged for any period of time, it became bloated with gas and had a tendency to float. Hadn't thought about that until now, so we'd have to find some ballast from somewhere.

I opened the back door to the Rover and looked at the man-sized parcel. I didn't know how much ballast we'd need, so I reckoned we'd just pile it on until our fingers bled. Beale came up behind me. I moved. Didn't need him breathing down my neck, especially when that breath stank of vomit.

"Who knew Stevie was at yours tonight?"

"Only us that were there."

"And that was?"

He had to think. Didn't bode well. "Me, Ahmad, Stevie, Dougie and Phil."

"What about the other one?"

"What other one?"

I couldn't remember his name. "The big lad. He was there the last time."

"Martin?"

"That's the one. He there?"

Beale shook his head.

"You sure?"

"Yes."

I wiped my nose. Might've bought us a little time. The only people who could put Stevie with Beale were dealers and Ahmad. Depending on how scared they were at being sacked or banned respectively, they wouldn't be too quick to point fingers in the event of Stevie's disappearance. After all, dealers dropped out of view all the time. The turnover in those places was incredible. One night they were dealing doubles at a club in Bolton, the next they'd snapped and thought they could make a go of it in London. I couldn't be too sure about Ahmad, but I wagered that a life ban for fraternisation notwithstanding, a successful businessman wouldn't want to be seen caught up in a murder.

I nodded to myself. "Alright, you grab his legs, and we'll put this scheming bastard in the drink."

We pulled Stevie out the back of the car and struggled across to the top of the slope.

"What d'you want to do, just roll him down?"

I shook my head. "The bags'll get caught on something. We'll have to go down ourselves."

We positioned Stevie so Beale had a decent foothold, one on concrete, the other in the mud and grass. I had all the weight at my end, so if we eased our way down slowly and sideways, we should be okay.

"I don't like this, Alan." Beale hefted Stevie in his hands. His foot slipped, but he caught it quick enough,

"We'll be fine, Les. Just focus and keep it slow."

And that was when Stevie decided not to be dead.

14

Beale screamed like he was being attacked. The noise echoed out like a nightmare.

I was laid out against the cement, staring at the stars, my eyes as wide as the swelling would allow and my heart smacking against the inside of my chest like a Salvation Army tambourine. A sharp pain in the back of my head told me I'd hit concrete on the way down. I pushed myself upright and felt sick.

"Get him off us, get him off us, get him off us."

I wished Beale would stop screaming. It was dark down here, but it wasn't a bloody vacuum. People could still hear. I pushed myself down the slope at an angle. I thought I could make out movement down by the water's edge.

Beale screamed again.

"I'm coming. Shut the fuck up, will you?"

I hit the concrete footpath heavily, a step away from a nosedive into the canal. I steadied myself, waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Beale was on his back, the bin liners pinning him to the ground. He scrabbled at the concrete, trying to pull himself out from under. About all I could see of him was his frightened moon face.

I had to blink. Stevie writhed inside the plastic, jerked and spasmed. The thinner liners around his head sucked and billowed as he struggled for breath.

"Jesus." It was the only thing that came to mind, and oddly fitting given what I was seeing was a resurrection.

"Get him
off
us!"

I didn't want to move. Stevie was dead. I was positive he was dead. He'd
looked
dead.

"Alan!"

I dropped to muddy knees and rolled the bags off Beale, who scrambled off to one side and lay there knackered. He couldn't take his eyes off Stevie, his mouth open. "What do we do now?"

There was a horrible sucking sound, the plastic crinkling against lips, the jagged wheeze of a barely drawn breath.

"You said you killed him."

"I said I
thought
I'd killed him."

"You didn't take a pulse? Try and wake him up, something like that? Christ's sake, how hard did you hit him, anyway?"

All the time, the desperate underscore of whistling plastic.

Beale ran a hand over his balding head. "I don't fuckin' know, do I?"

I looked down at the bundle. Stevie had started to wind down. I thought about my steering lock. I thought about climbing back up to the car, retrieving the lock and coming down here to finish off what Beale had started. A couple of swift, sharp blows to the head should do it.

A muffled animal noise came out of Stevie. The black plastic puckered around his mouth and nipped in. The poor bastard was trying to gnaw through the bags.

Beale couldn't watch anymore. He turned away, both hands clutching fistfuls of his jacket.

A tooth ripped through the black plastic, white in the gloom. The ragged noise stuttered hard, short breaths rasping against the bags. Something wet poked through the hole, trying to make it bigger, get some more air in. His tongue.

And all I could think of was:
Come on, Stevie, give me a great big lickery kiss.

I couldn't take my eyes off him. It was like watching some strange creature being born. Another tooth appeared. That roaming tongue, the way the plastic had vacuum-formed itself to the rest of Stevie's battered face, it was mesmerising.

Beale stumbled up next to me, a hand over his mouth.

I placed my foot on Stevie's side. I felt his ribs battle my shoe, felt him fighting for air, felt him clawing at what little was left of his life.

I did the decent thing, the only thing that seemed right and moral at the time.

I pushed Stevie into the canal.

15

Phil, Dougie, Beale, Ahmad and Stevie. And now Beale came to think about it, Ahmad had one of his entourage with him, an Asian lad with one of those tracks shaved into his eyebrow, but he didn't play. Before Ahmad arrived, Stevie set out the plan of action for the night. Beale was to be their point, he was their big spender and he had to act like one. Whenever Stevie gave him the nod, they would all raise but Beale would be the main culprit.