Something You Are (23 page)

Disappointment was the first thing I remembered feeling when I came around. That, and a horrible attack of nausea. I'd almost hoped that had been it. Everything seemed like too much effort now, even breathing, through this level of pain.

I opened my eyes. I was lying in a hospital bed; I could feel the bars either side of me, but the ceiling wasn't right. It was dark, and too high.

When I moved my hands and tried to sit up I realized I was hooked-up to an IV line, going into the crook of my arm.

‘It's important to get enough fluids,' someone said.

I started.

‘When you have concussion.'

It was Felix Hudson, sitting next to me in a different coloured golfing jumper.

‘Where are we?' I said, too tired to acknowledge fear.

‘A safe place.' Felix smiled at me, creasing that scar across his cheek. ‘Tristan used to be a medical student. You're being well looked after. He's outside if you start to feel woozy, the dust in here aggravates his asthma.'

‘Tris…'

‘You may recognize him. Though not well, I imagine.'

I found some moisture in my mouth. ‘Your messenger boy?'

‘He leaves my notes but he is much more than that. More qualified than you, I dare say. Did you like them, by the way?'

My coat was gone.

I lifted my head to get a better look round the room, but I felt sick and lay back down. There was a persistent nagging ache at the front of my skull.

‘Why have you been following me?' I asked.

‘I could ask you the same question.'

‘Did you kill Emma Dyer?'

‘Emma Dyer…' He said the name softly, as if she was a distant memory to him. ‘She had such pretty cheekbones, a lovely structure.'

‘Matt said you killed her.'

‘I know.' He smiled. ‘If you're as good as people say you are, you'll have worked out he was lying by now.'

I was too weak for conversation, so I just stared at him.

‘Do you want me to tell you the story?'

Placing his accent was impossible. He was well spoken, could pass for a southerner, but he spoke with the
self-conscious
finesse of someone who had learnt English as a second language.

I gave the IV line a gentle tug, but knew I wouldn't stand a chance if I tried to make a run for it.

After a small hesitation, I met his eyes and nodded. ‘OK, I'm listening… but I want you to answer a few questions.'

A nerve under his scar twitched. ‘Of course.'

‘Was it you who sent photos to Edie Franco?'

Twitch. ‘Yes.'

‘And told Geoff Brinks that it was me who grassed him up?'

‘Yes.'

There was anger, at him, but mostly at myself, for allowing myself to feel this fear. Roman Katz scared me, with the way his lips moved like wrinkled leaves when he spoke, but this guy scared me more.

‘Why?' I asked.

‘Why do we do anything in life?' he replied, spreading his hands. ‘For fun.'

‘Huh, fun?'

‘But it
is
fun. Your job is fun, just like mine. If I were to lean forwards right now and stick a knife through your throat, you wouldn't be able to react in time to stop me. You're not seriously telling me that isn't fun?'

My eyes flicked down to his hands, but they were folded across his knee. It annoyed me that he had seen my discomfort.

‘Once you've listened, you leave me alone,' he said.

‘What if you're not telling the truth and I can't leave you alone?'

He looked at his hands, at his perfectly manicured nails. A lot about his attitude reminded me of Mark, but without any of Mark's humanity. He answered my question with a question.

‘Do you know what lye is?'

I swallowed. ‘It's, er… a bleach, right?'

‘If I or, more accurately, if Tristan were to pour it directly down your throat, it would corrode through the walls of the stomach. Your stomach acids would, effectively, do the rest of the work on your internal organs. I've never seen it injected before, but I imagine the results must be fascinating. I wonder, does it corrode straight through the walls of your veins?'

I felt sick, and looked at his hands again, thinking of Mackie's slit throat.

‘Sounds… bracing,' I said, lip curling.

He smiled. ‘People have been known to throw themselves through plate-glass windows in their death-throes after drinking it. Of course… there's nothing like that here.'

I thought of Matt, throwing himself through a window… The man outside, puffing on his inhaler. I imagined that the
eyes behind his glasses were as blank and reflective as his lenses. I'd rather have died looking at Brinks than him, waiting for my own stomach acids to eat away at me.

‘Go on then, keep talking,' I said.

‘Matt wanted you to kill me, to make sure I never tracked him down and tied up the last of the loose ends. It's rather ingenious really, the complexity of the story he must have come up with to paint me as a scapegoat. What angle did he go for? A witness story? The people trafficking? Some kind of illicit affair?'

‘Trafficking. He said she saw a nasty shipment and that you shot her when she wouldn't stop screaming.'

‘Inventive. He had a talent for thinking on his feet.'

It crossed my mind that he might just kill me anyway, if he was all about the fun. After all, he had killed Mackie without hesitation. It was the sort of thing Mark would do, tell someone a story they would never be given the chance to remember.

‘Why did he kill her?' I asked. ‘Assuming he did kill her? It wasn't Kyle or anything?'

‘No, no it wasn't Kyle… Matt killed her on one of their pick-ups, of a shipment. It was a shipment of
drugs
, I might add. Kyle told me they had been arguing in the car, about the girl being pregnant.'

I wondered how he would know that if he weren't telling the truth.

Keeping my eyes on his face, I gave the IV line another tug.

‘Kyle told you?'

‘He was… distraught. Matt would have hidden it but Kyle panicked, came running to me. Stupid boy, he should have known I would send them on their way. I found it almost insulting that they would ask for my help over such a petty domestic dispute.'

‘What did Kyle say?'

‘I don't think he was lying. He said they were arguing in the car. Apparently she had got rid of the child, and Matt reacted badly. He was convinced it was his, to the point of delusion… as Kyle put it. It escalated and when they got out of the car, she said some things that incensed him and he shot her.'

As I ran through the scene in my head, he sighed.

‘Stupid, impetuous behaviour.'

‘Impetuous…' I looked at him, grimacing as a spasm of pain crossed behind my eyes. ‘Shooting a sixteen-year-old girl is
impetuous
?'

He shrugged. ‘Extremely. But then I should never have trusted them to hide it properly. Kyle especially was weak. It was only a matter of time before I could see him tearing up the floorboards to reveal the beating of her hideous heart…'

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He grinned at me, mocking my ignorance, and continued. ‘Disguising it as a sexual assault was so crude. Disgusting.'

‘Why are you telling me this? What's in it for you?' I tugged on the IV line again, harder.

‘Well, you'll leave me alone. Not that it hasn't been fun, Nic, but I could do without the trouble.'

A trickle of blood ran down my arm but he didn't notice. So long as he kept his hands where I could see them I had estimated I could either make a run for it, or deal with him before the nutcase outside heard anything.

I gritted my teeth against the headache. ‘OK… So where's your proof?'

‘Where's your faith?'

‘Are you fucking joking?'

I believed him. I believed him more readily than I had believed
Matt. Everything that Daisy had said fell into place with his story. It made sense, whether he was going to kill me or not.

‘Who do you believe?' One of his hands came off his knees and into his pocket.

It was too late to make a difference. I tightened my grip on the IV with a shaking hand, ignoring the blood, ready to rip it out.

‘Is Brinks dead?' I asked.

The voice that answered came from behind me.

‘I suspect a broken arm and fractured collarbone.'

I lashed out, instinctively, to my right.

Tristan caught my wrist, and gently waved a clear bottle. ‘Careful, this is highly corrosive. Wouldn't want to spill it.'

Mackie's vacant eyes…

I couldn't stop watching the bottle, so close to my face. It was the first time I'd been able to take a good look at him and I was surprised. Tristan did look like a medical student; wiry, bespectacled, young and baby-faced but with an intellectual's frown.

He dropped my arm and peered at my head. ‘Just checking your stitches… Oh, and that's going to scar, if you rip it out like that.'

I wiped the blood away, and when I touched my forehead I could feel the faint ridges in the spot where it had hit Brinks's front door. I felt short of breath, as if I was having an anxiety attack.

‘If you're going to kill me,' I said, holding the crook of my arm, ‘can you just get it over and done with?'

‘You think I'd waste my expertise on a corpse?' He looked at me with disdain and wheeled the drip out of the way so that he could scrutinize my stitches more closely. ‘Can you hold still?'

I jerked my head away from him. ‘Can you get a bedside manner?'

I heard Hudson laugh. ‘It would be more trouble to kill you.'

‘You killed Mackie.'

‘I don't have time for traitors, plus you're more useful to me… I'm counting on you to find Matt first. I've heard you have your ways.'

I glanced at Tristan.

Hudson leant forwards. ‘I don't want to be enemies, Nic. I don't like making enemies.'

My stitches twinged whenever I tried to frown. If I agreed with him, at least for now, he might let me go. I remembered my bag, left at Brinks's house, and sat up.

‘I need my bag,' I said. ‘And my car.'

‘We have your bag. Tris will drive you back.'

I dared to feel relief as the idea of there being a tomorrow, and a next week, began to materialize in my mind. ‘Well, then I'd like to go now, please.'

‘Do you think I'm telling the truth?'

‘It makes sense.' I couldn't bring myself to agree wholeheartedly. ‘As long as I can move back home without any more interesting mail.'

Tristan was indicating that he wanted to check the IV line, and I held out my arm.

‘You need rest and an ice-pack,' he said.

‘You don't
fucking
say?' I replied.

Hudson smiled. ‘I'm glad we're on the same wavelength.'

It took almost forty-five minutes to drive back to Brinks's house, and for most of it I was blindfolded. Neither of us spoke until I could see again, and when I caught my reflection in the rear-view mirror I was almost luminous.

‘Why did you drop out of medical school?' I asked.

Silence.

‘Did you get convicted of something?'

He craned his neck to read a road sign and didn't reply.

‘Just wondered…'

It puzzled me that someone who had had the chance of a real profession had ended up here, with me. I wondered how he had fucked everything up.

‘What makes you think I dropped out?' he said.

I looked at him and he was smiling to himself, out through the windscreen. He had an odd, slightly autistic way of speaking.

‘How did you meet Felix?' I asked.

Brinks's house came into sight.

‘I'll drop you here,' he said. ‘You shouldn't really be driving.'

‘Yeah, thanks, I'll be fine.' I opened the door before the car had even stopped.

‘Wait.'

I turned back; he was holding out an A4 envelope.

‘What's that?'

‘Your proof. I took them just in case.'

I took it off him and he reached over and shut the passenger door without a word. As I tried to say something the car pulled away. Not once had he bothered to meet my eyes.

I didn't look at the envelope until I got back to the flat. For a while I just sat down, without even taking off my coat and shoes. Then I stood up, pulled my suitcase down and left it lying open on my bed. When Mark came in I was folding shirts.

He stood in the doorway and went to say something about the suitcase, when his gaze alighted on me.

‘Fucking
state
of you!' he exclaimed.

I was too tired to explain. ‘Walked into a door.'

‘Are they stitches?' He came forwards, peering at my face.

I held out the unopened envelope.

‘What's that?'

‘Don't know, proof. You look first, I can't…' I shook my head, which was still aching. ‘I almost don't want to know any more.'

He took the envelope and I avoided his concern by continuing to pack.

Taking the hint, he sat down and opened it.

After a few moments of pretending to be absorbed by a blazer, I heard him take a breath.

‘What were you expecting to see?' he said.

‘It's bad, isn't it?'

‘I'd give it a solid twelve out of ten.'

‘Fuck…' I took off my coat, sat down and held out my hand for the contents. ‘Go on, hit me.'

When he didn't reply I looked at him; he was staring at my shirt. I had forgotten it was covered in bloodstains, along with my forearms. There was also a bruise from the IV line.

‘Mark, it's fine, it's not even mine,' I said.

He raised his eyebrows and then handed me the A4 photos with a grimace. ‘How's a bit of casual necrophilia in the afternoon?'

The first photo was taken from behind a metal structure. It looked as if they were still at the docks. Matt and Kyle were dragging a body towards the boot of a car, a body wearing a black and white striped top and boots. I could only see Matt's back but Kyle was crying.