Touched (8 page)

‘Hey!’

He hesitated. Tess had now started to run; he was not sure he could catch her.

‘Hey man, what you playing at?’

He turned, a man and a women were walking towards him, the man a little way in front.

‘What are you doing?’ the man said. He was black, quite short, in a business suit, white shirt no tie.  For a moment Dan feared a confrontation, violence even. He realised that the man was holding something in his hand.

‘I wasn’t …we were just talking…she…’ Dan pointed vaguely off into the distance but then he saw what the man was holding.

It was his camera.

‘If you don’t want it we’ll give it a home,’ laughed the woman.

‘Thanks,’ said Dan, taking the camera off the man, who looked at him oddly.

‘You alright?’ he said, ‘Why did you start to run off like that?’

‘Well I was following…’

He turned to look along the quayside but Tess was nowhere in sight.

Thursday night

Dan parked his car in its usual spot. He was almost at the flat’s outside door, remembered that he had thrown some shopping in the car that lunchtime. Nothing special, just some cleaning stuff that he had put in the boot. Lifting up the hatch he grabbed the carrier bag and was about to shut it again when he saw something that caught his attention. Curled up, as innocent as a sleeping snake was the rope he had used to tow a broken down
neighbour to a garage the previous weekend. He’d quite forgotten it was there but now he’d seen it, it refused to be banished from his mind.

He had bought it in London, bought it for an entirely different reason. He had come close to using it then, had sat with it in his hands in the lonely hours of 3 a.m., feeling the course roughness on his skin, letting it talk to him, thinking through his options. He hadn’t used it then, not that he had decided not to as such rather it was just feeling that the moment wasn’t quite right. It was only postponement not a rejection.

It was hard to shut the boot on it. Even as he trudged up the stairs he could hear the song of the rope, the serpentine tongue that whispered in his brain.

*

@
fear_me_now Twitter Account

Tweets: 127

Followers: 302

@
fear_me_now:
I can hardly bear to talk to anyone at work. Their minds are so dull, their conversations banal, their plots and schemes pathetic

@
fear_me_now:
I want to slice them, butcher them like the pigs they are. Oh to hear them squeal, feel their warm blood on my hands

@
fear_me_now:
I may have to satisfy myself elsewhere. There is no reason why I should sacrifice my freedom for these worthless excuses for people

@
fear_me_now:
I will take out a girl. And, of course, when I say 'take out' I mean it in the permanent sense

@
fear_me_now:
I met a candidate today. Blonde hair, all curves, tight, short skirt, selling herself the welsh whore

@
fear_me_now:
She should receive my full attention, all of my 'charms'. I want to get to know her inside and out

@__________:
you're a boy aren't you? No wot u mean though. Not that yud do it 4 real rite?

@
fear_me_now:
That is where you are wrong and where I am different from all of you out there.

@__________:
Oh yeah right. You wouldn't do nuffin

@
fear_me_now:
I would and I have

@__________:
Bullshit

@
fear_me_now:
I do not need to justify myself to you. I know that I have felt the hot blood of a betrayer on my hand

@
fear_me_now:
She will not betray anyone else

@___________:
Straight up? Where? Wen?

@
fear_me_now:
The last time was six months ago. I will not say where but it is not hard to guess

@___________:
The last time? U mean theres more than one? Bloody hell, what about the filth?

@
fear_me_now:
The police are far too stupid to find me. They haven't got a clue. Not joined up the dots. They don't even know I exist

@___________:
Surely they will have noticed all the ded bitches around

@
fear_me_now:
They see the ones I want to see. The rest are just the dregs. No one cares. No one misses them

@
fear_me_now:
I dispose of them like trash. All they are to me is potential evidence. I am careful. There is never any trace of me

@
fear_me_now:
Not that they are very good at finding the remains of course.

@___________2:
Bet you're a cop

@
fear_me_now:
Spare me. I'm far, far too clever to be one of those

Chapter Six

Friday Morning

‘

Earth calling Dan, Earth calling Dan. Call for Mr Daniel Jackson.’

Dan looked up into the amused faces of Boris and Hannah.

‘Ah it lives,’ said Hannah.

‘What?’ said Dan.

‘For the third time, are you on for a drink tonight?’ said an exasperated sounding Boris.

‘Sorry, I was miles away.’

‘We noticed.’

‘So, who is she?’ said Hannah raising a questioning eyebrow.

‘What? Who?’

‘Who is she?’ said Hannah again, ‘There has to be a girl involved somewhere.’

Dan looked at her feeling slightly stunned, wondering if all females were psychic.

‘I was right!’ she said triumphantly, ‘C’mon tell all.’

‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘But there is a girl?’ Now Boris was joining in.

‘Well, yes…sort of. Oh I don’t know, I’ve only met her twice and each time…well she has…’ Dan paused, wondering how best to explain this, ‘just, well, vanished on me.’

‘And you’re trying to work out why your ageing but still boyish charms aren’t working on her
knicker elastic?’

‘Boris!’ Hannah shook her head in exasperation.

‘What?’ Boris looked genuinely surprised, ‘What did I say? Anyway, sounds a perfect excuse to have a bender to drown his sorrows. You on?’

Dan sighed. He actually wanted to say no, he wasn’t sure he wanted company but then he also was aware how insular he was getting, how much he was turning in on himself and that this was simply not healthy. The others were trying to be helpful, he shouldn’t shut them out. It would be good to have some company other than himself for once.

‘Yeah, sure, count me in,’ he said.

‘Great! That’s the spirit. You know what they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get pissed and eat curry!’

Dan smiled, ‘What time are we meeting?’

‘Straight from work. Has to be.’

‘But my car’s here,’ Dan protested.

‘Don’t worry about that. Leave it here.’

‘You can pick it up in the morning,’ said Hannah.

‘Or in the afternoon,’ said Boris grinning.

‘Or Sunday,’ said Hannah.

Friday Evening

Dan had been trying to read the night's twitter feed on his Blackberry but gave up as his fingers were totally uncoordinated. It was quite quiet on line anyway.

Pissed by 8pm, he thought. Oh well done.

He should have known better. Drinking with Boris was a dangerous pastime.

It wasn’t so much the volume, it was the pace that he started drinking at, that was the thing that got you. As soon as he had delivered the first round (Boris, to give him his due, always got the first one in) he had drained his glass and was looking politely but thirstily at the dregs, obliging someone else to finish theirs and get the next round in, fighting their way through the Friday night scrum at the bar. This would be repeated again and again and suddenly you were drinking at his pace. Then the sod would almost stop, sipping his pints and storing them up. It was almost biblical; there was definitely some feast and famine thing going on. The trouble was it took a while for his drinking partners to notice, they would be in the rhythm by this stage, slightly too fuzzy headed to notice that the pacemaker had pulled over to the side of the track. No they were too far down the slippery slope that would end up with some of them cuddling a kebab in the early hours of the morning.

Dan was with them. Drinking beer too, oh that was bad news. He just couldn’t handle the volume any more. He was fine with G&T’s and wine, he could drink all night, but beer got to him.

So here he was at 8pm feeling no pain at all but with a nasty nagging feeling in the sober part of his mind that this was not going to end well.

He had reached the stage where he kept losing the thread of conversations, where it was too much to make the effort to strain to hear what people were saying. The pub was huge yet packed, the noise poured over him. He wasn’t even sure he knew where he was. Somewhere on Deansgate he knew that. They had been in Bar 37 but they had left there an hour before.

The noise level seemed to swell. It was like white noise now. You needed to shout to hold a conversation and had to really concentrate to understand what people were saying around you.

Concentration implied you had to have a working mind of course.

Dan grinned to himself at this thought. He just found it ridiculously amusing and couldn’t stop himself.

‘What’s tickled you?’ yelled Jenny in his ear.

There were seven of them now. Boris, Hannah and her boyfriend Greg, Jenny, Martin and Craig, the latter two surveyors from rival firms. They had all met up in Bar 37 and had moved on together when they had tired of the crush and conversation there.

‘Nothing, just a silly thought,’ he shouted back at Jenny leaning close to her so she had a chance of hearing. Now she was this close he had realised just how pretty she was and she certainly had curves in all the right places. Perhaps she was slightly too plump for the current vogue but she had a sweet smile and was definitely starting to hit all the right buttons with him.

‘Any plans for the weekend?’ She had leant even closer to him. He could feel the heat of her body and her perfume filled his senses. He found himself becoming slightly aroused.

‘Nope. Just the usual weekend chores. Shopping, cleaning the flat,’ he yelled back.

‘Same here. It’s a glamorous, exciting life isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. Living the dream! Nothing else planned?’

‘Nah, nothing special. Might go clubbing though, tomorrow night. Fancy coming?’

Dan groaned inwardly. He really hated clubs and the club scene.

‘Yeah, OK,’ he found himself saying.

‘Great!’ she shouted back, ‘I’ll give you a call. Can I have your number?’

Dan passed over his card and got hers in return. As he put it away in his wallet he saw Hannah give them both a self-satisfied look from her side of the table, confirming Dan’s suspicions about what she was up to.

‘I see you’re ready for another!’ Steve grabbed Dan’s glass and had dived into the crowd before he could protest.

This night was shaping up to be a very long one.

Friday Night, 11 pm

Several hours later, Dan sat fuzzy-headed over a
Jalfrezi, trying to persuade some of it onto a keema nan. It was proving extremely hard.

He gave up on that for a moment and took a sip of his beer. Cobra. At least he could taste it, it was built for curry.

Alongside him Martin was arguing about football with Steve, the former being on the Blue side of the city, the latter the Red. Martin was teasing Steve about his team’s American owners and the mountain of debt they had brought with them whilst Steve was taunting City about being a Sheik’s plaything that he would soon tire of. Dan had heard it all before, countless times and neither argument had got more or less convincing with age.