Rubbernecker (21 page)

34

TEA WAS A
curious time.

Kim made toast for herself and for Lexi, who wore the kimono. Patrick hoped that that meant she was Kim’s guest now, not his. Everything had gone so horribly wrong all at the same time, and he had neither the time nor the inclination to make cheese sandwiches or to sleep on the floor.

The three of them sat in the front room and watched some bright, noisy show with glove puppets and a robot, while in the kitchen Jackson slammed the cupboard doors. Patrick flinched at every bang.

‘Jesus Christ.’ Kim rolled her eyes and yelled, ‘Could you make any more noise in there?’

‘Sure!’ he yelled back and threw what sounded like cutlery into the sink.

‘Child,’ muttered Kim, and ate her toast.

‘Where did
you
go last night?’ Lexi asked Patrick. She had her feet tucked up beside her on the couch and Patrick noticed that the kimono – although a better fit on her than it had been on Pete – still showed an awful lot of thigh.

‘Out,’ he said.

‘Out where?’

‘He won’t tell you,’ said Kim. ‘Patrick likes secrets, don’t you, Patrick?’

Kim was an idiot. Patrick didn’t like secrets at all – especially
today
. The thought of never knowing the secret of Number 19 made him want to kick the TV.

‘Ooh, I love secrets!’ said Lexi. ‘I want to know. Tell me!’

He didn’t tell her. Let her find her own secrets at the bottom of a bottle. Someone – probably Scott – would stumble on ‘heart failure’ and claim they’d established cause of death, and then probably win the Goldman Prize for best student, when it should have been
his
. He hadn’t found his answers. His quest had failed, and without it he was lost.

More than lost.

Emptied of hope.

From the corner of his eye he could see Lexi crane her neck to try to make him look at her. ‘Tell me,’ she sang. ‘Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me …’

Kim tutted. ‘He won’t; he’s such a killjoy.’

‘Nah,’ said Lexi. ‘He’s just playing hard to get.’

‘He’s playing it very well,’ said Kim and they both shrieked with laughter, showing soggy toast in their mouths, like washing in a machine.

Patrick glared at the robot on the TV. It was trying to take a cake out of a cardboard oven, but it kept crushing the sponge with its metal fingers. The glove puppets were giggling and pointing, but the robot didn’t understand what it was doing wrong, or why the cake kept crumbling through its hands.

Like meat crumbs falling out of the flesh-cake that was Number 19.

‘I went to see your dead father,’ Patrick said.

Kim giggled, but Lexi stopped laughing and said, ‘What?’

‘Last night, I went to see your dead father. That’s my secret. We’ve been cutting him up for months. He’s all in little bags now.’

‘That’s sick!’ said Kim, and giggled uncertainly.

‘What?’ said Lexi again. Her face had become ashen, and the toast she held in her hand had flopped sideways on to her bare
knee
and stuck there, Marmite side down. Patrick had the sudden, uncomfortable notion that being knocked unconscious off a swing with a broken nose was nothing compared to the shock drawn so nakedly on Lexi’s face that even
he
could read it.

‘What do you mean?’ she said through trembling lips.

‘You wanted to know.’ He shrugged, somehow wanting to make it
her
fault. He picked up a magazine from the arm of the chair.
Art Forum
.

Lexi turned to Kim. ‘What does he
mean
?’

‘Nothing,’ she said uneasily. ‘I mean, he’s a med student, but … Nothing, I think.’

‘What do you
mean
?’ said Lexi again. ‘What the fuck do you
mean
?’

Patrick didn’t look at her and wished that she would stop looking at him. He wished now that he hadn’t said it, but the glove puppets were so cruel! Why not just
help
the robot? Why did they have to laugh?

He threw
Art Forum
at the TV and walked out.

He was at the foot of the stairs when he heard Lexi coming, making a noise like a cat in a bag being thrown from a train. He turned and she slapped his face so hard that he fell backwards on to the stairs. She didn’t stop. She was a crazy animal flailing on top of him, slapping, scratching, gouging – and all the time howling with rage and profanity, while Kim screamed ‘
Jackson! Jackson!
’ over and over again.

Patrick covered his head and drew up his knees. He planted a foot in Lexi’s stomach and shoved her away from him. She crashed backwards into the front door, then curled into a ball and started to cry in huge, open-mouthed gasps.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Kim. ‘Jesus
Christ
.’

‘What the
fuck
is going on?’ said Jackson, running from the kitchen.

‘I don’t know,’ said Kim, and started to sob too. Jackson put an
arm
around her and she turned into him, pressing her toast into his shoulder.

Patrick sat up slowly and touched his nose; there was blood on his fingers and his heart was beating so hard he could see the pulse twitching under the skin of his thumb.

This felt bad.
He
felt bad, although it brought him no satisfaction to recognize it. He frowned at Lexi, hugging herself on the dirty hall carpet, and – out of nowhere – thought of his mother the night the policemen had taken him home and made him beans on toast. Wailing on the floor.

The two things felt connected but he didn’t understand why.

Why?
That was the question. That was
always
the question, and always would be unless he took control and solved the puzzle.

To find out why somebody died, you have to consult the living
.

Professor Madoc’s words came back to him unbidden, and cleared his head in an instant. He got up and went over and squatted down beside Lexi.

‘Just leave her!’ said Jackson, and Kim echoed him. ‘Leave her alone, Patrick!’

But he didn’t leave her. He needed her.

And maybe she needed him.

He didn’t know how to start, so he started awkwardly. ‘My father’s dead, too.’

‘Good!’ yelled Lexi, and a string of snot swung from her nose and attached itself to the carpet like an escape rope.

‘He was hit by a car,’ Patrick continued.

‘Good,’ said Lexi again, but with a lot less feeling.

‘I don’t know what happened to him or why,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve tried, but I just can’t understand it. But
your
father—’

He stopped to think.

Slowly Lexi sat back on her heels to look at him, her arms clamped around her midriff and her face streaked with black tears and silver snot.

‘What? What about him?’

Patrick closed his eyes. He rarely spoke without knowing what he was going to say, but here he’d set off without a map, unsure of the footing ahead, or of where he might be heading. He had no evidence. He had no expertise. He had nothing but a missing peanut and the strangest feeling in his gut that was so strong he couldn’t ignore it, despite its lack of logic.

‘What
about
my father?’ Lexi insisted.

Patrick opened his eyes and they were all staring at him, so he looked away from them and at the grubby woodchip wallpaper before he could speak again.

‘I think
your
father was murdered.’

35

‘I’M PREGNANT,’ SAID
Tracy Evans.

Her reflection looked perturbed by the news.

‘We’re going to have a baby,’ she tried again, and flashed her teeth, but it wasn’t the same as smiling.

Her face was getting round. She turned sideways and stood on tiptoes so she could see her stomach in the bathroom mirror. She stroked the gentle swelling there, frowning at her reflected hands. Even though it had been nearly four months since she’d peed on a stick, it was hard to believe there was a baby inside her. A tiny stowaway, riding her belly, stealing her food and pumping her blood … Even harder to imagine that whatever was growing inside her now was going to come out of her some time next June, come hell or high water …

Frightening.

Tracy chewed her lip.

She hoped Mr Deal would be happy. Raymond. His name was Raymond, but she couldn’t get used to it. Raymond, not Ray – he was quite firm about that – but the name rarely came easily to her lips, and never to her mind when she thought of him.

Which was often. Too often – she recognized that, but she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t sure why it was; she only knew she had never felt this way about any of the over-eager youths she’d slept with before, but – strangely – now felt no desire to sleep with again.

She saw Mr Deal three nights a week. He picked her up from work and took her to his home. Sometimes she stayed over. The house was like something from a magazine – white and spotless, with real art on the walls, where you could see actual brush marks if you cocked your head in the right light.

There was a steep spiral staircase and a bidet in the bathroom. On her first visit it had given her the opportunity to ask about whether they had children.

‘Why would you say that?’ Mr Deal had frowned.

‘Because there’s a kiddy’s toilet,’ said Tracy, and Mr Deal had laughed at her on and off for the rest of the evening. When Tracy had pressed him to explain how it worked, he’d told her to Google it.

Then they’d had sex. As usual.

Tracy looked into the mirror now and wondered when it was that she’d stopped thinking that an evening without a quick shag was an evening wasted. Now there were moments – just moments, mind you – when she took just as much pleasure in watching him eat food she had cooked, or smelling the side of his throat when they embraced. He didn’t use aftershave but he used coal tar soap, which reminded her that sometimes childhood had not been such a bad place to be.

On the four nights she didn’t see Mr Deal, she had no idea what he did. When she asked he just said, ‘Nothing much.’ Those were nights when Tracy had started to wonder, and to worry. Men were very easily led, and she didn’t want some slut luring Mr Deal away from her …

She’d begun checking his phone and his laundry when he was out of the room.

She’d stopped taking the pill at the end of August.

And
this
was the consequence.

Tracy stroked her belly again. She would have to work faster than she’d initially planned.

But she thought that if Mr Deal felt the same way about her as she might be starting to feel about him, then everything would be just fine.

36

‘I DON’T WANT
to go in.’

Lexi stalled at the bottom of the driveway of the house on Penylan Road.

‘OK,’ said Patrick, and started up the gravel by himself.

‘Wait!’

He turned.

‘Are you going in anyway?’

‘Yes.’ Of course he was. Why would he
not
? It was what they’d come here for, wasn’t it?

‘Well, what am I going to do?’

‘I don’t know. What?’

‘I don’t know.’

Then why was she asking him? Patrick shook his head in confusion. ‘OK,’ he said again, and carried on to the front door. By the time he lifted the heavy brass knocker shaped like a lion, Lexi was beside him again, biting her lip nervously.

‘How do I look?’ she said suddenly.

Patrick looked her up and down, then shrugged. ‘
I
don’t know.’

She glared, but it was wasted on him.

The door was opened by a dumpy woman in jeans and a big cardigan.

‘Alex,’ the woman said warily.

‘Hello,’ said Patrick firmly. He had prepared his opening lines
and
didn’t want to be diverted. ‘I need information about Mr Galen. Can I come in?’

The woman looked at Lexi. ‘Are you going to cause trouble?’

‘No,’ said Patrick.

‘I was talking to Alexandra.’

‘Who’s Alexandra?’

‘She is.’

Lexi crossed her arms and fidgeted, and Patrick leaned away from her to avoid accidental contact.

Lexi finally said, ‘No,’ and the woman opened the door and let them both in.

The house was about ten times bigger than any house Patrick had ever been in.

The dumpy woman looked at him and said, ‘I’m Jackie.’

‘I know,’ said Patrick. ‘Your ceilings are very high.’

‘Yes, they are,’ she agreed with a strange look.

She led them into the front room, and an old mongrel hauled itself off the rug in front of the blazing fire and gave a token bark.

‘Ssh, Willow. Friends.’

Willow wagged apologetically and came over to lick Patrick’s hand.

Patrick smoothed the dog’s head. ‘Soft,’ he said.

Jackie smiled and pointed to the couch. ‘Have a seat.’

Patrick sat down, but Lexi didn’t. Instead she wandered around the room, looking at things as if taking an inventory.

The room was like something from a magazine.
Art Forum
or something else. It had decorated ceilings and pale-pink walls, and a big white fireplace.

On the mantelpiece was a photograph of Jackie and a man with a snowy mountain and blue sky behind them. The man was smiling with teeth Patrick knew very well. It was Number 19, on holiday.

Patrick tried to imagine him in this room now, but couldn’t
make
him alive. Every time he tried, a cadaver clicked bonily into the room on zombie legs, or lolled, stiff and orange, on the couch, leaking fluids on to the chocolate leather.

‘How are you, Alex?’

Lexi shrugged.

‘You look well.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Lexi.

‘Are you going to introduce us?’

Lexi shrugged again, but said, ‘This is Patrick.’

‘How do you do?’ said Jackie.

‘Do what?’ he said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Ignore him,’ said Lexi. ‘He’s … you know.’ And she made her fingers whirl around the side of her head.

‘Oh,’ said Jackie. ‘Well, I’m glad you came, Alex.’

‘Are you?’

Jackie flinched and Patrick noticed that Lexi had picked up a small china ornament – a shiny stag on a knoll of purple heather. He also noticed that the French windows at the back of the house had a pane of cardboard where the glass had been broken. It looked uglier from the inside than it had from the garden. He wished now that he hadn’t handed Lexi the stone. He didn’t know why she had done it; Jackie seemed nice – not what he’d expected. Somehow he’d thought she’d be wearing leopardskin.