Dead Pretty (4 page)

Mark turned off his phone before Kelly could respond. He knew he'd do what he was told, no matter how pissed. Fear and greed always worked a perfect pincer movement on Kelly.

A plane was going over above, it was low, about to land somewhere. It fought against the motorway noise and won, for traffic was thin now. Planes had been one of Mark's favourite sounds as a kid. Especially if they were really high up and he could hardly see them, just trace their vapour trails with his keen eyes, and hear the faint drone of engines as they tracked across his section of sky. He'd be on the hillside somewhere, hands behind his head, maybe rare sun on his face, watching them until the trails spread into white feathers, to be taken by the clouds. The planes were a comfort, they spoke of other places, other possibilities, things he might do one day. They meant people escaping, like he escaped to the hills, which were right for him, which understood his need to get away; within minutes of having been amongst people he could walk alone. Since he refused to fly, Lena would never have understood this childhood fondness. The one job he'd done abroad, in Holland, he'd had to drive and take the ferry, making things awkward and annoying the agency by the time taken, but it was that or nothing. He couldn't get his head round the thought of being in that small capsule, many thousands of feet above the earth and completely helpless. His system rebelled against the thought of putting himself into anyone else's hands so completely. Lena had started to change that.

Mark went into the services, needing to freshen up. This was part of his territory now, he'd become an urban man, something he'd once despised. He'd grown used to rush and bustle, it was where the work was. When he first started working as an investigator they often sent him around the country looking for people, it had amazed him how many people were hiding. Society had a secret inner layer of dodgers, everything from murder to debt, and service stations were the points on his search map. Their grim food, the ability they had to match the worst of his moods, had always told him how alone he was and how like the people he chased. Worse off, maybe, for he needed them, and they could certainly do without him. Then he met Lena and when he moved in with her his perception began to change. Night time places didn't get to him so much, usually they told him he was on his way home, job finished, and their plastic emptiness made the journey sweeter. He'd had someone to go back to, but she was gone and Mark was back to the original thoughts. In the rest room he threw some water into his face, and heard someone throwing up in one of the cubicles.

Mark went back to the car and turned the radio on again. Still nothing. He found some music, nothing he could recognise, but that wasn't surprising, for he'd never taken much interest in it, old or modern. It was one of the traits that had marked him out years ago. When the kids on the estate had gone on about the latest band, they were met by blank stares and lack of interest on his part, but what played was good for this time of night. A cowboy crooner wanted his woman back. You're not alone there, mate, Mark thought. All the adrenaline had drained out of him. The shock of this day was turning to tiredness, he felt like he'd never slept and it was hard to think straight, or think at all. The motorway was practically empty now but blue lights were approaching rapidly. He tensed, and wondered where Kelly had got the false plates from, but the squad car was past him, travelling on fast.

Mark hit the edge of London at first light, the pale yellow light of late summer that forecast another hot day. He parked up the car. The police would run a check on the plates and find they were from something stolen years ago.

He went into the first café he saw open, and had more coffee and grease. There were a few truckers eating with him and one guy who looked like he'd been clubbing all night, maybe gone straight from work for he had that kind of suit on, fat, blue tie still around his neck, but at a crazy angle, as if it was attempted to garrotte him. He fingered it nervously as he ate. The man was about Mark's age and ate the same breakfast. Their eyes met briefly, his registering consolation, the solidarity of the lonely, the loser. That sad git thinks I'm like him, Mark thought, that we've both been on the pull and failed, that we are on our own, then was guilty to be even thinking like this less than a day after he'd found Lena. Anyway, he
was
on his own. Never more so.

There was an overhead television in the café, turned on even at this time in the morning. The local news came on. Lena would have to be on it. She'd
have
to be the main story. But again nothing. Mark was baffled. She couldn't still be there could she, her murder undiscovered? That thought chilled him to his stomach. He'd heard sirens approaching, but they were always present on London streets. His panic, and the voice on the phone, had directed them to the flat, and he'd run away without waiting to find out if they were coming for him or not. The voice knew what had happened, the voice knew he was there. The voice wanted him to run.

The headache that had been threatening all night began in earnest, he felt it kick-start a vein above his right eye. It began to throb, insistently, like a finger tapping against his forehead, then the pain spread until it had all of his head in its grasp. A band tightened around his skull and tried to crush it. He tried in vain to cast it off, he tried in vain to think of a plan but there was only sludge in his head, and at its core a pain that he could scarcely dare acknowledge. He had to keep it under wraps until all this was over. The headache might turn into a migraine, which was the last thing he needed. He had them three or four times a year, when all he could do was shut down his body and wait for them to go. He'd been lucky with the work for they usually came on when he was inactive and waiting for Lena to come back from a job. He didn't like time on his hands, too many thoughts jostled for position in his head. Mark bought a large bottle of water from the man behind the café counter.

‘Know how you feel, mate,' the man said, ‘I was the same at your age.'

Mark walked through north London suburbs. The sun was out now, but not yet too warm on his face. Early morning people were about, milkmen, a postman delivering letters to affluent houses in leafy streets, people walking to the nearest tube. He joined them.

Mark went straight to Kelly's. He needed somewhere to think, and maybe sleep, even Kelly's squalor would do. He knocked the door for some time before Kelly appeared. A night-before smell appeared with him. Booze, curry and strong body odour. Kelly smelt like a pub at ten in the morning. Despite the weather he stood and shivered in his thin vest, his ribs standing out like the bars of a cage. He sniffed the morning air and blinked in the light as he scratched his stubbly face; he'd never looked more like a weasel. Mark pushed past him into the bed-sit. More smells greeted him, even more pungent.

‘Christ, Kelly, how can you live like this?'

‘Like what? You gimme a start, Mr Richards. This is early for me, like.'

‘You amaze me.'

Mark brushed junk from the one chair and sat on it. He was dog-tired, even in this festering den sleep threatened to overwhelm him.

‘Wassup?' Kelly said. ‘First the car, now you here. Not your style, Mr Richards. Look, I don' want no trouble. Don' mind doing the odd favour for you, but I don' want nothing heavy   and you look like it's something heavy.'

Mark went straight to the window and tried to force it open, an action it wasn't used to. It had stuck fast with layers of paint.

‘Careful, Mr Richards, don't bust it.'

‘It's been quiet, you said.'

‘Yeah, nothing happening here. Why, what you expecting to happen?'

‘Never mind.'

‘You still got that car?'

‘You know better than to ask me questions. Don't worry, it's not outside.'

Mark took in the nine stone waste of space that Kelly was and felt embarrassed that he'd had to turn to someone like this. Loners always had a price to pay, at one time or another, and his was now, and he was as far away from a plan of action as ever. Tony came back into his mind. There were something badly wrong there, and Tony's farewell was ringing bells in his head. He sounded a bit like the voice on the phone, but maybe this was desperation talking, and the thumping pain in his head.

‘You OK, Mr Richards? You look like you had a better night than me.'

‘Get dressed,' Mark said. ‘You might think of getting washed too, if you can remember how.'

‘Leave it out, Mr Richards. Look, I don' want to be doing nothing today. As I said, it was a bit of a rough night, like.'

‘It was your usual night, and you
will
be doing something today. I just want you to sniff around a bit. You're the best for that and there'll be a few quid in it.'

Kelly stiffened a little with pride at what he thought was a compliment. Mark had learned that praise was almost as useful as threats with Kelly, especially if linked with money. He threw a twenty at him, and it was caught and hidden in one action.

‘Come on then, get your arse together.'

Twenty minutes later they were out on the street. Mark saw their reflection in the shop window under Kelly's place. It looked like he was in charge of a funfair gimp. Kelly, about half his size, struggling to keep up with him, his wiry red fuzz standing up brush-like on his head. The overcoat made him look like some nocturnal animal hurrying to get underground before it got too light.

They cut through the small park opposite the flat and stood by the railings. Mark could see their front door. He still thought of it as
theirs.
Kelly was right, all was quiet. There was no young copper standing guard outside, fidgety and bored, no activity at all. The nerve over Mark's eye went into overdrive. He wanted his eyes to close, but if he shut them he saw images of Lena. A freeze-frame history of yesterday took over. Finding her, finding her like that, the voice on the phone, his flight. His ineffective action since. He felt sick, and held onto the railings.

‘You're not well, Mr Richards. I'd get some kip if I was you. Your missus home, is she? Cracking looking girl, she is.'

Mark's hands screwed up into fists, an echo of the childhood rages he thought he'd conquered for good. For a moment he wanted to smash Kelly, and toss his pathetic body over the railings. Sensing danger, Kelly stepped back, ready to bolt.

‘Look, Mr Richards, what we doing here?'

Mark breathed deeply and regained control. He searched for the key to the flat and put it in Kelly's hand.

‘All I want you to do is to go over the road, let yourself in, look round the place, then come back and tell me what you see.'

‘Wha' for? I don' get it.'

‘You don't have to get it. Just do it.'

Mark helped Kelly on his way. The man didn't want to be part of this but was more afraid of Mark than the situation. If he found Lena, Kelly would be out of there like a shot, puking on the road, and thinking Mark a killer. He should find Lena, the dead didn't get up and walk away. Things were going on here Mark didn't understand, but everything he'd learned over the last ten years told him she wouldn't be there. That voice on the phone had wanted him out. It had known he'd run, the stupid knee-jerk reaction of the kid from the wasted estate. That estate, and his time on it, was still in his blood  
they'll think it was you.
That had been enough for him to take off, minutes after finding Lena, the one woman he'd ever really cared about. Mark Richards, the street-wise hard man, had left her, and ran out blindly, and nothing had been gained from it.

The sun was well up now, and it punished him. It told him that this would be another long day, and so would the next, and the one after that. All of them would be long, until he found out why Lena had been killed and who had killed her. Until he put things right.

Kelly was not inside the flat for long. He came out calmly after a few minutes. Mark knew the answer but asked the question anyway.

‘Well?'

‘Nothing, Mr Richards. Everything was OK there. Tidy, like. Letters on the mat by the door. Look, I don' know what I'm s'posed to be looking for anyway. You never tell me nothing. Lovely place though, innit? Can I go now, I gotta get a bit of breakfast.'

‘Give me the key back.'

Mark pulled Kelly close to him as he handed over the key, and went through his pockets. Kelly squirmed like an eel, saliva escaping from the stumps of his teeth but he did not dare pull away.

‘Leave it out, Mr Richards. I'd never nick nothing off you. ‘Specially with you stood outside.'

‘You can't help yourself. None of us can.'

‘You don' half talk funny sometimes. Look, why don' you come down the café? You look like you can do with a few coffees.'

‘No, I've got things to do. Off you go.'

Mark held onto Kelly's coat as he tried to turn.

‘One last thing. What have you done today?'

‘Today? I haven't even got up yet, Mr Richards.'

‘Okay, then. Keep your mobile close and keep it on. I might need you in a hurry.'

Kelly almost stood to attention as he listened to Mark's instructions, like a soldier in some ragbag army. Then he winked, nodded, tidied his ragged overcoat and was gone, fading effortlessly into the street.

Mark walked across to the flat, and let himself in. It was not easy to push the front door open, and he stood on the threshold for a moment, shaking. That smell had gone, but another had taken its place. A light fragrance had been sprayed around, he recognised it. Jasmine, Lena's favourite.

Mark picked up the mail at his feet, one for him, and three for her. Nothing important. His hand tightened around a bill, and started to twist the envelope. It should have been the neck of whoever had been here. His shirt was starting to stick to his back, his forehead was damp, and the nerve was active. It wouldn't let him go, not until this was over. Maybe not even then. The temperature had been pushing thirty for days, as a poor summer went out with a bang. Much too hot for him, even on a good day, and this wasn't one. Lena loved the sun, and laughed at his nanny warnings of its dangers. She tanned easily, while he stayed in shadow whenever possible. They shared a small rooftop with other tenants, but it had become Lena's private suntrap. She should be there now, waiting for him to bring her up something cold.