One of Us (9 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Been talking to Fat Paul, haven’t I? The driver. He was telling me you were banging on his car, shouting the odds, demanding to see Corgan, all over some tart.”

I stared at him. He looked confused. I stared more. He looked puzzled, then the lightbulb switched on and he looked apologetic.

“Some woman,” he said. “Sorry. Didn’t mean anything, just what she does, you know.”

“What he makes her do,” I said.

He shrugged, drank some more wine. “I dunno. Bit of both, I reckon. Good money for her, isn’t it? She isn’t kept on a leash, from what I hear, she can come and go if she pleases. If she wanted to run, she could.”

“And you say I am the child lost in the woods,” I said.

“You what?” He had drunk quite a lot. I did not bother explaining myself.

“He hurt me, you know,” I said after a little while. “Corgan.”

Daniel looked horrified. “Shit, I told you, I warned you. Fuck, I didn’t know. You’re lucky you’ve still got a face, Anna. Don’t push it again with him. Trust me.”

“Thank you for your sympathy.”

He flung his arms out wide, nearly knocked the bottle off the table. “What do you expect me to do? Go round to his now and challenge him to a duel?”

“No,” I said. “I am not expecting you to do anything.”

“Look, if I could, I would,” Daniel said. “For you, I would. You know, I really like you Anna.”

“Does he have many like her?” I asked. “Like Elena?” I did not want the conversation to turn to drunken declarations of feeling. What people say when they are drunk does not mean much, anyway. And also, I had drunk a lot too, although not as much as Daniel, and I was not used to it. And I did not want to say anything that I did not mean, either. Or would not mean after, when I was sober. What is it you want from me, Daniel, I thought. But I knew, deep down. And I think that I liked what it was that I knew.

“There’s lots of girls,” Daniel said. “What Corgan does. Moves people from here to there, there to here, him and his right-hand men. Like Nicky, you met him? He’s a fucking twat, he is. Thinks he’s it. Arse. Always putting me down. Shit, I thought there was enough for another glass in there. Hey, mate, can we get a pair of brandies, please?”

“Not for me,” I said. “I have to work later. And you are not driving, not with what you have drunk.”

“Ah, go on, live a little,” Daniel said. “Loosen up. We’re having a nice time, roll with it.”

“No, no brandy.”

“Whatever, let ’em bring two anyway. If you don’t drink it, I will. Anyway, like I say, Corgan doesn’t get involved with the girls. But Elena, she’s different. You picked the wrong girl there, Anna my darling, from what I’ve been hearing. Couldn’t have made a worse choice to wind up Corgan.”

“He has feelings for her?” I could not believe that Corgan would have feelings for anyone. He did not feel, only existed, only fed. I could not think of him as a person. But then I thought: that is what he does. He does not think of anyone as a person, just as profit, or an obstacle, or a stepping stone. Do not be like him, Anna.

Daniel laughed. “Some skanky...sorry, sorry, yeah. But come on, course he isn’t interested in her like that. If he was, he’d have her, end of. Simple as that. No, it’s much more than that. He values her much more than that, from what I hear.” The brandies came, and he tossed one back, said ahh, smacked his lips as if he was kissing air, and then started on the second without offering it to me.

“Why?” I had to stay focused. It would have been so easy just to give myself over to this lazy afternoon, the drink, his long fingers. But I could not afford to waste the chance.

“Why what? Oh shit, this was meant to be yours, wasn’t it—you sure—ah well, waste not, want not.”

“Why Elena?” I said patiently.

“It’s all part of the big game,” he said. “They think I don’t know any of this, but I fucking do. Sometimes I think they forget I’m there.”

“And this game, it is...”

“Control,” he said. “It’s all about control. Who does Corgan work for?”

“The Ukrainian.”

“Yeah, him. And Lomax, you heard of him? Who does he work for?”

“The Ukrainian?”

“Exactly. He plays Lomax and Corgan off against each other, stops either getting too big for their boots. He knows they fucking hate each other. But he won’t stand for any crap from them either, because he doesn’t want any attention drawn to the business, or anything to interfere with it, which is why Corgan was shit scared it would get out that one of Lomax’s men shot Kav.”

“I don’t understand—why would that get Corgan into trouble, but not Lomax?”

Daniel grinned, enjoying the fact that he knew these things and I did not.

“You don’t understand because you don’t know where Kav was or what he was up to when he got himself shot. And neither does the Ukrainian, which is how come Corgan is still in a job and breathing.”

“This is all very interesting,” I said. “But what does any of it have to do with Elena?”

“Ah, Elena. She does something special, you know? She’s not like the others.”

“I know,” I said, but he thought that I was just agreeing with him.

“Christ knows what, golden showers, BDSM or something for the freaks, who knows. But something specialised, yeah? Sort of thing the punters won’t get everywhere. So they keep coming back, because whatever it is she’s good at it. And one of them, one of Elena’s, he keeps coming back. I heard Nicky and Corgan talking about it. Think I’m not there, sometimes, they forget I’m even in the fucking room. ’Cept when they want something, of course, then it’s Danny this and Danny that like I’m some fucking errand boy. Mate, mate, two more of these? In one glass, though this time. Nice one.”

“I have to go soon,” I said. “Really. Work.”

“Ah, shit,” he said. “Mate? And the bill? Cheers. Don’t you worry, Anna, this is all on me. You’re worth it, this has been well worth it. You’re some woman, you know that.”

“I am something,” I said. “But you were saying? About Nicky and Corgan talking.” I was like a cat, after a bird. I crept closer, it fluttered a bit further away, chasing a worm, not even knowing I was there.

“What? Ah yeah, that. Look, I shouldn’t tell you this sort of stuff. Bad for you to know. You’ve already had one run in with Corgan. What you don’t know can’t hurt you, and all that. Not your world, Anna. Not your world.”

“It is now,” I said. “Thanks to you.”

Daniel looked offended, leaned back, and nearly tipped his chair over. “That’s a bit harsh, when we’re getting on so well. I’ve said sorry, haven’t I? How many more times?”

“I will tell you when it is enough,” I said. “But it will not be for a while yet. Anyway, Elena. I’m part of all of this now, Daniel. I thought you were someone I could share thoughts with.”

“I am, I am,” Daniel said. “I can be sensitive too. At least as much as...yeah, well, let’s not go there. But still, Corgan wouldn’t want me to be telling the world about this, so let’s just forget it, eh?”

“I understand,” I said. “It is fair enough. I mean, if Corgan had told you about this—whatever it is—if he had told you about this—which he didn’t—he would have told you to keep quiet about it, and you would have had to do what he says. I am sure it happens often, you must know so much.”

Daniel laughed, but it was not to do with anything being funny. “Yeah, right. All the time.”

I said nothing. The waiter brought us the bill, and cleared the dishes and glasses away. Daniel sat staring at the tablecloth for a moment or two, then he turned the bill over, looked at it briefly, pulled out some notes from his pocket and dropped them on to the table.

“Come on then,” he said. “Could do with some fresh air.”

We left the restaurant, and paused on the pavement outside. It did not seem like we had been in there for long, but it had been lunchtime when we went in, and now the sky was almost dark.

“I have to go to work,” I said. I did not want to.

“Skip it, go on,” Daniel said. “You know you want to. Your lovesick mate will cover, he won’t mind, he’d do anything for you. Go on, phone in sick.”

“And do what instead?”

“Come back to mine, open some more wine. I’ve got some really sweet hash, nice and smooth. Bit of music, bit of a smoke, we’ll watch the stars come out and chill together. Just you and me.”

“I have to wash my hair before work,” I said. “Sorry.” I was tempted. My mind said no, but my body said other things. “Not today, Daniel. Not yet.”

“But I’ll be lonely, Anna, how can you leave me like this?” He clung to a lamp-post, and made sad eyes at me.

“By walking along this pavement. See, it is easy. Maybe not for you, the amount you have drunk.”

He tutted, and swayed towards me. “Next time, then.”

“Maybe.”

“Hey, hey, I got a maybe out of Anna. Got to go down as a result, that. Round it off for us then, let me kiss you goodbye.”

“You can’t buy me with a dinner, Daniel.”

“Bollocks to the dinner, I thought you might want to kiss me because I’m just so fucking gorgeous.”

“It is all I can do to resist,” I said. “Anyway, you have two things to do for me.” I was getting good at changing the subject when it turned to something awkward. First Sean, now Daniel. I felt like a bullfighter, always waving the red flag, over here, over here, anywhere but there.

“Anything.”

“One thing, you must promise me you will not drive home. Not like that.”

“Done. I’ll get a cab, pick the car up tomorrow. Jesus, hope the other one’s that easy. No way am I driving like this.” He shook his head, as if I had just said something very foolish.

“Good,” I said. “And the second thing is, finish telling me what you know about Elena.”

He shook his head. “Christ, you don’t give up, do you, you’re like a dog with a bone. What’s it to you anyway, why do you care so much about finding out?”

I smiled at him. “Because you don’t want to tell me. And making you is fun.”

“Women. Jesus. You can’t breathe a fucking word of this. To anyone, understand? Man, I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“It’s OK,” I said. “I understand. If you’re afraid of Corgan...”

“Fuck off,” Daniel said, getting so excited that he nearly fell over. “I’m not afraid of him. You think I’m afraid?”

“Well...”

“I can find out his fucking secrets, he should be afraid of me. What I know, what I can find out...man. My ticket out of this life, Anna. One of Your girl’s punters, one of the regulars, he’s a business associate of Corgan’s. Nasty bastard called Budden. He loves her, he does, whatever it is she does, he doesn’t get nowhere else, and Corgan, he wants to keep Budden sweet, oh so sweet, because you know what Budden is?”

“Tell me.”

“Opportunity,” Daniel said. “Like I said, it’s all about control. If Budden decides he wants in, well, Corgan won’t need the Ukrainian, ’cause Budden’s got his own contacts, out in the Baltics. The Ukrainian won’t like it, but he won’t be around to complain, know what I mean? And with the Ukrainian gone, Lomax is fucked, wouldn’t last a day. Control, Anna. Budden creaming off the profits and providing his contacts, but Corgan up at the top, his game.”

Daniel swayed across the pavement, leant on his car.

“So you want to know why Elena is important?” he asked. “I’ll tell you why. ’Cause she pleases Budden. And as long as she does, she’s special to Corgan. That’s why you’re looking after her, not like you’re doing that for all the girls, is it? Anyway, breathe a word of this, and we’re both fucked, so forget it all.” The fresh air seemed to be making Daniel more drunk than the brandy had. “But remember this, Anna: one day what I know is going to be my ticket out of this life. Roll of cash, set up in business somewhere, you know, legit, above board. Start all over again. And all I need is some proof, something to take to the Ukrainian or Lomax. And then you watch Daniel fly.”

“You would sell Corgan out?”

“What, you sticking up for him?”

“Of course not,” I said. “But you would be taking a big risk.”

“Worth it,” Daniel said, “all I need is something concrete, and it’s bring on the good life for me. And anyone who comes with me.”

I do not think that you could do it, I thought. You talk now Daniel, with the brandy inside you, but I do not think that you would have the courage to take on a man like Corgan.

“There, told you too much already, now will you give us a kiss?”

I smiled at him. “No,” I said. “But I will let you buy me dinner another time.”

It was only when I was walking away that I realised that I had said dinner, and not lunch.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I was sitting on my bed, mending a hole in the sleeve of my coat, and thinking about how once I would have just given it away and bought a new one, when I heard shouting and doors banging. The door of my room burst open, and a young man with short dark hair stuck his head in and looked around.

“Get out,” I said. “You can’t just come in to our room.”

“Can’t I, love?” he said, not even bothering to look at me. “I knocked, could have sworn you said come in. And you are?” He had a terrible rash on his neck where he shaved. Good, I thought. I hope you cut your throat next time. I ignored him.

“Don’t give me cause to look at you more closely, because you’ll regret it. One more time, what’s your name?”

“Madonna.”

“Yeah, you wish.”

“And you are? A pervert? Looking for women’s underwear to steal? Shall I start shouting that you are trying to touch me?” I thought of the time a boy who lived near us threw mud at me because he thought it was funny. Aleksey came tearing out of our house, chased the boy and caught him before he had taken ten steps, and dragged him back and pushed his face in the mud until the boy looked as if he were made of clay. You would not have let me be spoken to like this, I thought. Aleksey smiled and shrugged: I am not here any more, sis.

Another man, older, pushed past him so he could look into the room too. Both men were wearing suits, but the younger man wore his like he wore his flashy watch.

“Sorry miss,” the older man said. “Anthony? Show some respect will you?”

The younger man flushed and looked angry.

“Go down, help Jane on the next floor.”

“But—”

“Go down, help Jane on the next floor.”

The younger man looked even angrier, but he went all the same.

“Sorry,” the older man said. “I think that he wanted to join the police but they turned him down because he was too short, or too stupid, and he spends half his time with us pretending that wasn’t so.”

“I thought you were the police.”

“UK Borders Agency,” he said, and showed me a card that I did not bother looking at. “Can you help us out, miss? We’re looking for some people that we’d really like to speak to. One of them is a Miss Alice Omwayo, and we’ve had some information that she lives in this building.”

“Never heard of her.” I was scared that he would ask to look at my papers. Scared that Corgan had lied, and they would not stand up to scrutiny. Scared that they would, but the fact that they were temporary would make them start some investigation into my case, start them looking at my past. I did not want them to do that. I could not let them do that.

“I’m sure not.” He wandered around the room, looked at the photos on the wall. “Nice kids.” I said nothing. He walked to the door, changed his mind, looked back in. “And you are...?” I said nothing.

“Hmm,” he said. “Thank you for your help, miss. Should you see the Alice Omwayo that you don’t know, could you tell her that she needs to talk to us, straight away? Easier that way, than the other. She’s a little overdue talking to us.”

I said nothing.

“Until we meet again, then. Sorry about the lad.” He left the room. After about another half an hour, they left the building. A Yemeni woman I did not know well, who lived on the floor below, left with them. She was in tears. The young man was grinning, holding his hand behind her back to move her forward, but not quite touching her. He did not need to. The older man did not show any emotion at all. A policeman waited for them by the front door, looking bored. One of the other women had phoned Alice at work, and she did not come back home that night, or the next. She came back the day after that, and when I saw her she was sitting on her bed and every time a door closed somewhere she flinched as if she had been hit.

~

“My turn,” I said. When you are poor, whose turn it was to buy the coffee was very important. You did not want to miss your turn, even if you could not afford it. Because that meant that the other person would pay twice. And in Sean’s case, I knew that he would. It was fortunate that I had him trained well enough now to stop being a gentleman and arguing with me that he should buy them. He looked as if he was about to say something, but then he just laughed, and went to sit at one of the plastic tables in the window. I went to the counter, and the bearded man behind there winked at me while he steamed the milk for the customer in front.

You would think that we both saw enough of places like this, but it was where we often went. There were not many other choices that did not cost a lot of money.

We started off going to a pub near the burger place. At first, it was good. It had not been done up and turned into a shiny bar where all the drinks were much more expensive and everyone spent their time looking at everybody else. It was dark, and the walls were the colour of old smoke and the rough fabric of the seats was splitting. We sat in a dim corner that smelt of old beer and even older wallpaper, and no-one looked at us and I felt that we were hidden away from the world.

But then some men started drinking there every day, hard men with old faces who drank every day, all day. They watched me all the time, and before long they started saying things to Sean. They asked him if he had been with me yet, if he was not a queer, and could they take turns too? Sean stared back at them, but not for very long, because I kicked him hard under the table. The landlord made himself busy somewhere else, because he was scared of these men, and also because they spent more money than we did. After a few days of this, more and more each day, I just said, “Shall we go somewhere else today, for a change?” and Sean said, “Yeah, why not,” and we never went back to the pub again.

“Yeah, but you’re all right, aren’t you,” Sean said, stirring sugar into his coffee. I had just told him about the raid. “I mean, it’s the whole point of what you’re doing for that bastard, isn’t it? You work for him, he’s given you papers and stuff, means you’ve got nothing to be worried about.”

I shrugged. I very much wanted Sean to shut up. He did not understand; he kept going on, as if I was stupid.

“Seriously, if what you’ve been given is the real deal, then what’s the problem?”

What do you know, I thought. You’re born here, this is something you have never had to think about. You do not know it all Sean. And what you do know, is only what I have told you, and that is not all that there is.

“Yes I have the papers, and yes I have sold my soul to get them, but that does not mean I want to put myself in a place where they look at them close. Look at me close. Besides, I do not trust Corgan, and do not want to take the risk.” I would not want them to look at me close, I thought, because I know what they would find, but I did not say anything. Could not.

Sean looked as if he was about to argue, but then he saw the look on my face and he had the sense to stop talking. I felt bad, because I knew he did not understand, could not understand, and if I did not share my secrets with him, how could I blame him? But as usual, when I felt bad I also felt angry, so I carried on making my angry face and he carried on shutting up.

“You know what,” he said, after a little while, and I thought to myself, if you are going back to this like a dog to its bone, I am going get up and walk out, but then he said, “You know, if you’re worried, you can stay at mine. If you like.”

I looked at him, finished off my coffee, did not say anything.

He made a face, apologised. “Sorry. It was just a thought. I’d have kipped on the couch, you know, I didn’t mean—”

“I have not said no, yet,” I said. “Give me a chance. And it’s your turn to buy the coffee.”

Sean got up and went over to the counter, looking back at me every so often and then pretending that he had not been looking at me at all, that he was just checking the view out of the window, seeing if it was raining yet, who it was who had just come in the door. I sat and while Sean ordered I tried to decide what I was going to do.

I wanted nothing more than to get out of the hostel for a while. I could not have the authorities prying into my life, asking questions, holding everything up to the light. I had given up so much of myself to get these papers, and now I had them I was still scared that they would not be enough. Staying at Sean’s would give me a couple of days without jumping every time I heard a door bang. But I did not know whether or not it would bring its own problems. Even now, there were times when Sean looked at me a moment too long, but then dropped his gaze when I made eye contact with him, or when we brushed against each other in the kitchen and we both apologised at the same time, too much, too quickly. I liked Sean, very much. He was sweet, and he was funny, and he knew how I worked inside my head better than many men I had met. He was thoughtful and did things for me, and when he was not around, I missed him. But maybe not enough. Not quite enough.

If it had been someone else, I might have given in and thought that it was worth a risk to become closer. Maybe getting into bed would mean the death of a friendship, but there would be some good times before then, and some sleepless nights and lazy, slow mornings with the sun shining in through the curtains and nothing to do but each other. If a week, or a month, later we both moved on to someone else, well it was good while it lasted, and anyway, the way he ground his teeth at night would be starting to annoy me. But with Sean, I did not want to take that risk. I could not take that risk because I did not want to lose the best friend that I had. And I could not take that risk because I knew I held it in my power to break Sean in two, and that scared me.

“You going out dressed like that?” my father had asked me once, when I stopped to kiss him before Aleksey drove me to a party.

“I’m not a child,” I said.

He shook his head. “I can see that. And so can the world. Anna, it is no time since you were a little girl, and now look at you. God help the boys of this place. You will leave them for dead. Ah yes, you will break some hearts.”

I did not know whether to be cross or pleased, so I kissed him on the top of his head and pulled his beard at the same time.

“There you go,” Sean said, and put two coffees and a Kit-Kat down on the table between us. I smiled.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking.”

“I could see that.”

“Nothing important,” I said, even though it was a lie. “Can I stay for a night? Please?”

“Course,” Sean said, grinning. “As long as you like. Be glad of the company.”

I took a breath. It had to be done. “Just one thing...just to be clear—”

“Oh fuck off,” Sean said. “If you’re about to say what I think you’re going to say. Because you don’t need to, all right? You don’t need to.” He had gone red in the face, had picked up his teaspoon and was turning it over and over in his fingers.

“Sorry,” I said. And I was. For so many things. I took a drink of my coffee, to hide my face, and burnt my mouth.

~

Sean lived in the upstairs half of a thin terraced house squeezed in the middle of a dozen others. He had a front room, which was a boy’s mess of books and magazines and CDs all out of their cases, and a tiny kitchen which was spotless and clean and very tidy. As was the bathroom. There was a bedroom too, but I did not ask to see in there in case it said the wrong thing, and Sean did not offer to show it to me, probably for the same reason.

That evening we talked about many things, but we did not talk about each other. I talked about those parts of my life that I wanted to, and Sean did the same with his, but we did not talk about both of us in the same sentence. We were very careful to keep that separate.

We drank cheap wine, and Sean prepared pasta, tuna and beans. I stood in the little kitchen while he chopped onions and wiped at his eyes with the back of his wrist.

“It’s what I’d do, if I had more money, more time,” Sean said. “Cook. Properly, you know. Expensive ingredients, the proper equipment. I like cooking, always have, but it gets a bit soul-destroying when it’s all bargain bags of pasta and dented tins because they’re cheaper. Mind, this is a full-price tin of tuna for you, not a dent in sight. Hope you appreciate it.”

“I am honoured,” I said. “Is it in date too?”

“Just about,” Sean said. “You cook much? Back home, I mean?”

“Yes,” I said, and I could smell apples baking, and rich winter soups with anything and everything that came to hand, and fresh bread rising in a corner of the big kitchen, and Mischa the dog farting in his sleep in his basket in the corner. “My father and my brother were hopeless. We had a woman who came in to cook, ever since my mother died, but it was not the same, you know. At least, I think it was not. I was only six when she died, and I am not sure sometimes if I remember things, or I just remember things that were not, or stories that I was told about her. Anyway, as soon as I was old enough I learned to cook. I used to cook a lot, when I was around. I think my father liked it.”

“Oh. Cool,” Sean said, and I knew that he was regretting that he had brought the subject up, worried that he was making me sad, reminding me of the life that was not mine any more.

“It’s OK,” I said. “Really. It is good for me, sometimes, to talk about back home.”

Sean smiled, a thank you. “I never know...”

“I know. It is the same with me and with everything that has happened to you. Sometimes I want to say something but I never know if it will upset you, embarrass you.”

“We’re a right pair, aren’t we?” Sean said, and I laughed and agreed, and then the expression that made some kind of couple of us hung in the air between us and he went back to chopping onions and I went back to my white wine.

By the time that we ate, I felt quite drunk. I ate lots of the pasta, to soak up the wine, but then Sean waved another bottle and my mouth said yes before my brain could say no. What the hell, I thought. This is what you do with friends. And we are friends.

“Um, yeah, I hope so,” Sean said, standing looking puzzled with a corkscrew in one hand and a bottle in the other. I was more drunk than I thought.

When we had finished eating I stood up to do the dishes, and Sean told me that if I tried, he would throw me out onto the street. He piled everything in the sink, and ran hot water over them.