To Fight For (13 page)

He tightened his fists until the veins popped out. Fuck him. Let him suffer for once.

‘Shut the fuck up, Joe.'

‘She hates you for what you're doing,' I said, turning the knife as much as I could, enjoying the pain I was causing, ‘the people you're dealing with, the kinds of things they do to children, to girls like her daughter. She hates you and you can't stand it and she wants you to save me because I saved her daughter and you've got to do it for her—'

He shot up suddenly, the chair flying backwards and clattering a dozen feet away.

‘Shut the fuck up,' he shouted.

Everything went quiet. Even the light seemed to stop making its flickering noise.

Eddie's hand had moved towards the inside of his buttoned jacket. I don't know if he was even aware he was doing it.

I knew everyone in the cafe would be staring at us, but I kept my eyes on Eddie, on his eyes, which were full of fury. I'd never before seen him lose his cool.

Christ, he was really hurting. He must've loved her and she was ignoring him, pushing him away, punishing him for what he was doing. And it was eating him up inside, the acid of despair corroding his guts so that he couldn't keep it down any more, and now he was spitting it out at me.

Then, as quickly as it came, his anger went. He smiled, but it was a strained, forced smile.

‘You're not an idiot, Joe. I know that. Leave it be. Get out of town. I'll make sure you won't get hurt. Okay?'

‘And Glazer? The DVD?'

‘Business. That's all.'

The old lady said something then. She spoke softly to the man opposite her. What she said was, ‘Who are you?'

He gazed at her with sadness. That's what it's like, I suppose, decades of life together and you end up not knowing the person sitting opposite you.

I stood to go. Eddie put a hand out and grabbed mine.

‘Joe,' he said.

But I'd had enough of it all by then. I pulled my hand back.

‘Fuck yourself, Eddie. And fuck Dunham too.'

He nodded, and his face was grim, his eyes suddenly dead.

‘Alright,' he said, very quietly. ‘You want it like that. Fine. I gave you a chance. Now you ain't got one. We want that DVD. Give it up or you'll get hurt.'

So, there it was. He'd chosen a side.

Tina opened the door and stared at my chest. She took a step back and looked up. Her face was washed-out, her eyes wide and red-rimmed. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

‘Remember me?' I said.

She nodded and swallowed.

‘Yes,' she said finally.

It'd been a few weeks since I'd seen her. Back then, I'd been looking for Paget and had been led to Tina's place, where he'd holed up for a while. Glazer had been here too, which was why I wanted to see her again.

Cole's men had been looking for Paget too, and they'd beaten me here, and then beaten her for information.

Her injuries had healed. Her hair looked bright and fresh, not that dark, lank blonde that I'd seen on her before, but she still looked thin and pale, still too frail, as if the blood didn't flow through her veins but, rather, fled from them.

After what had happened to her – first Kenny Paget appearing out of the blue, then Bobby Cole's men – I thought she'd run away screaming when she saw me. Instead, she didn't seem surprised that I was there. Maybe nothing surprised her any more.

‘I need to talk to you,' I said.

‘About Kenny?'

‘In a way.'

She stood in the doorway, and now lifted one hand to the frame, as if to steady herself.

‘Did … is he …?'

‘He's dead.'

She blinked, then stood back.

‘Is that why you came here? To tell me he's dead? I could've read that in the papers.'

‘It won't be in any papers.'

‘Oh.'

‘And that's not why I came here.'

‘What do you want then?'

‘Can I come in?'

She didn't answer me but just turned around and walked away from the open door.

It was Tina who'd told me that Brenda had got hold of a copy of the film to use in evidence against Marriot and Paget.

‘Brenda was a fool,' Tina had said. ‘She thought she could out-think them, outsmart them.'

And it was Tina who'd told me that Brenda thought she was safe because she'd hooked up with some hard man, some monster.

Me.

She led me down the narrow hallway and into the small lounge. The ceiling was only a few inches above my head. I could've punched a hole through and reached right into the rooms upstairs.

The place was neat enough, but the building was cheap, one of those prefab places, made of cardboard and only meant to last a few years but somehow standing half a century later. I wanted to smash it all down, just to get some room to move.

The children's toys had gone but the photos were still there, scattered about. There were the newer ones of her grandchildren that she wasn't allowed to see, and the old faded ones of her own kids who wouldn't come to visit.

She didn't look old enough to have grandkids. She was in her late-thirties, early forties, though, so I guess that made her old enough.

The TV was on, some woman droning on about fashion while models modelled clothes and some poncey bloke standing next to them nodded away like it was important. Tina dropped onto her sofa and picked up the remote and killed the TV. I sat opposite her.

‘What's your name?' she said. ‘Did you tell me? I can't remember.'

‘Joe.'

‘Joe. Yes. Is that it? Have you got a last name?'

‘Yeah. Lots.'

‘Right. So, Joe, what do you want?'

‘I want to know about a man, Michael Glazer. He came over when Paget was hiding here a few weeks back.'

She nodded. ‘Fat bloke. Bald. I remember him. But I didn't know him.'

‘I need to find him.'

‘You need to? Why?'

‘He was the one Brenda sent the DVD to. He was a copper, still is. He was the one who told Marriot.'

She curled up, hugged her legs. Brenda used to do that sometimes. We'd be in bed, or she'd be on the sofa and I'd know she was hurting. It was in that way she hugged her legs, as if she was closing herself up, becoming as small as possible.

‘You and me,' Tina had said. ‘Her saviours.'

She creased her forehead and looked like a kid trying to spell its name.

‘How do you know about this Glazer?'

‘For someone who doesn't care, you're asking a lot of questions.'

‘You want me to help you murder a man,' she said. ‘Why shouldn't I ask?'

‘You wanted me to murder Paget. You weren't bothered about questions then.'

‘That wasn't murder. That was justice.'

‘It was revenge. You should know that.'

She was quiet for a while, holding onto her legs.

‘Yeah, well …'

‘Kill him,' she'd said to me before. ‘Kill him.'

Paget had been her pimp, back when Brenda had been alive. I could only imagine the hatred she bore for him. She wasn't like Brenda, whose anger with Paget and Marriot was a driving force. No, Tina's fury burned inside her, ate her up. She was more like me, I suppose.

Then, for a moment, it wasn't Tina I was looking at, but Brenda, and she was looking at me, waiting for me to do something, to save her. And I couldn't, though everything inside me screamed to.

‘What do you remember about him? Glazer?' I said.

‘Nothing.'

‘You must remember something.'

‘Look, he only came here a couple of times, when Kenny was here.'

‘What did they talk about, Glazer and Paget?'

‘How would I know?'

She didn't want to talk about Paget. Maybe she'd talk about Brenda.

‘Why did Brenda give him the DVD? Did she tell you?'

She thought about that.

‘I remember she said she'd heard about some police operation. A girl's name.'

‘Elena,' I said. ‘It was called Operation Elena.'

‘And there was this copper. Was that him? Glazer?'

‘Yeah. Did he ever mention where he lived? A girlfriend?'

‘No.'

‘Think. Mary something.'

‘I told you. No.'

‘Don't you want to get them all?'

‘I don't care,' she said, but the tremor in her voice made the lie clear.

She had it too, I thought, that bitter black blood that flooded her body, that rage, that regret.

Maybe she knew that I knew it. Anyway, she picked up the remote and flicked the TV back on. There was a programme about cooking now.

‘I can't help you,' she said. ‘Please go.'

‘I'm just trying to understand what's going on,' I said. ‘I feel like I'm in a maze.'

She looked up at me, her lips pale.

‘It's not a maze,' she said. ‘It's a tunnel. The further in you go, the darker it gets. Turn back now. Please. Turn back, for everyone's sake.'

She turned to stare at the TV, and I watched her watching it and saw the tears gather in her eyes, and I thought she was a lot like Brenda, and completely different.

I went to Brenda's flat a few days after she'd been murdered. I had a key. I could've gone any time, but I'd waited. I knew the law might be all over it, looking for something to lead them to the killer. I had to avoid the police, sure, but that wasn't what had stopped me going. I didn't like the law, but I wasn't scared of them. I wasn't scared of anyone. To fear someone, you must fear the worst they could do to you. The worst had been done to me. Even death didn't seem something to fear.

I climbed the concrete stairs, sweating in the late afternoon heat, swallowing the smell of piss in the stairways, the dampness of the air. The higher I got, the more it closed in on me so that it was like the whole block had died when Brenda had, and I was breathing in its foul decay.

I remembered the first time I'd walked those steps. Then it had been cold, now it was hot. That was how long it had all lasted. We'd been together only as long as it took the weather to change.

By the time I got to her floor, I was soaked with sweat. I don't think the heat had anything to do with that, though.

As I trudged along the walkway, it felt to me that I was carrying some massive weight, felt like my legs wouldn't get me there. A woman came out of a flat a couple of doors up from Brenda's. She lit a fag and tossed the match over the handrail. Then she saw me and dragged on her fag and watched me walk towards her.

She was somewhere in her forties, fat, with spiky black hair and a round, chubby face. Her mouth was a bitter thing, thin-lipped and wrinkled. It didn't fit her face and made her look like she'd spent most of her life disapproving of others.

She had a thing for black. There were thick black marks around her eyes, and she wore a tight black T-shirt and black leggings, which showed off the rolls of fat. She would've looked better if she'd worn a sack.

‘She's gone,' the woman said as I stopped in front of Brenda's front door.

I put my key in the lock and turned it and opened the door, and smelled Brenda on the air. Something inside me cracked a little more.

‘I know,' I said.

I went in. The woman came to the door.

‘Who are you?' she said, peering in.

I turned away from her. I didn't think I could stop from falling apart, and I didn't want anyone to see that.

‘A friend,' I said.

She laughed at that.

‘Lotta friends she has.'

There was an edge of viciousness in that laugh. I felt the muscles in my back tighten. She must've sensed danger because she said, ‘Nice girl. I like her.'

She kept talking about her in the present tense. Didn't she know Brenda was dead?

I went through into the living room. I could see Brenda sitting there, at the small table, cigarette in one hand, glass of vodka in the other, smiling slyly as she took the piss out of me. I never minded her doing that. I'd have given anything for her to be there doing it again.

Instead she was gone and the place had been smashed up. The sofa had been ripped open, white stuffing spilling everywhere, like a creature with its guts hanging out. The curtains had been torn down, the TV had been broken apart, the china shattered.

Everything I saw was destroyed. They'd left Brenda's home ruined, as if they wanted to destroy her utterly, and me with her.

Of course, I didn't know then who they were. All I knew was that she'd been killed in an alleyway, and the coppers said it was a john, some unknown man who'd wanted to kill a woman, and had chosen Brenda.

I blamed Marriot for Brenda's death, but only because she'd worked for him. Only later did I find out he'd had her killed. Only later did I make him pay. Much later.

I looked over to where the bookcase had stood. Now it was on its face, books opened up and cast around, like dead birds littering the floor. I saw the book I was after. It was one about the battle of Trafalgar. I'd given it to her a couple of days after we'd met. She'd shown me her print of Turner's
The Fighting Temeraire
, one of the saddest pictures she'd ever seen, she told me.

‘That beautiful ship,' she said, ‘and it's being dragged in to be pulled apart. Its time is up.'

She didn't use a bookmark, so she used to dog-ear the pages. I opened the book and found the last page she'd read. It was page sixty-two. She hadn't even got to the start of the battle. She'd never get there, would never find out about the
Temeraire
. That poor old ship, as she called it, as she called me.

I looked around for the print and found it on the floor, the glass broken, the frame snapped. I pulled the picture away, looked at it. There was a tear across the sky, where Turner had burned the clouds.