Two-Way Split (16 page)

"Gone up in the world?"

She nodded."Ben's lieutenant."

Pearce picked up his mobile and handed it to her. "Want to try him again?"

9:56 am

Eddie closed the toilet door with his foot. He fastened his belt as he walked along the short corridor and opened the sitting room door. Sinatra was singing "L.A. Is My Lady."
Eddie joined in briefly, breaking off when he saw the gun. He swiped it off the table, knocking Carol's handbag spinning. It toppled, dropped to the floor, and he said, "What's my gun doing here?"

The sitting room was long and high-ceilinged. An empty settee hugged the opposite wall and matching blue director's chairs sat at each end of an oriental rug. Towards the window, dark-stained floorboards shone under the glare of a pair of tasselled Art Deco table lamps. Flames from the gas fire flickered in the draught he created as he walked past.

Carol had her back to him. She opened the heavy, green curtains and stared out the window, dragging for an insanely long time on her cigarette.

His voice rose. "Hey, I'm talking to you."

She turned slightly and raised her eyebrows. "It's going to rain." She picked a glass ashtray off the floor and placed it on the window ledge.

"Carol, why's my gun here?"

The hand holding the cigarette brushed at something on her skirt. When he moved towards her she blew an endless stream of blue-grey smoke at him. He said her name again and repeated the question.

Her breasts swelled and lifted as she inhaled again. She tapped ash into the ashtray, exhaling curls of smoke through her nose.

He strode up to her, grabbed her upper arm and aimed the gun at her head. "Why was this lying on the table?"

Her eyes were cold as pebbles. "Let go of my arm, Eddie."

"You think I won't use it?" He flicked off the safety. "Answer the question."

"Have I been a naughty girl?" She tilted her head and gave him a wide-eyed innocent look.

He dug his fingers further into her bicep. "Just tell me what you were doing with the gun."

"Sticking it down my knickers," she said. "Isn't that what you'd like? Rubbing my crotch with it. Getting all hot and wet and turned on." She ran her tongue over her upper lip. "Feel," she said, prising his fingers from her arm and guiding his hand downwards.

"We don't have time," he said. "Robin'll be here any minute."

She kissed his throat as she slid his hand over her skirt. "He's not here now."

"Hang on." He turned the weapon's safety back on. She kept a tight hold of his left hand, now high on her thigh under the skirt, while he reached over to place the gun next to the ashtray on the window ledge.

At the outset she had said, "I'd be happy if I never had sex again." Eddie had dared presume that Robin was an inconsiderate lover. Later, she'd quashed that particular theory when she said, "When I orgasm, all I feel is rage."

He looked at her now and wondered what had caused this change in her feelings. Was it when he squeezed her arm? Or when he pointed the gun at her? Was this her response to physical danger? To become aroused? It certainly looked that way. This was new to him. New and not altogether unpleasant.

He hadn't imagined it would be like this. In fact, most of the time he believed it was never going to happen, and now that it was, he was having trouble accepting the evidence of his own senses. But yes, he was going to, they were going to…

At first, he was aware of a prickling sensation. Then, a vague sense of heat, a burning pain which very quickly became intense. He cried out. The back of his hand was on fire. He tried to move it and her grip increased. He looked down between her legs. She'd hiked up her skirt. He watched in astonishment as she ground her cigarette out on his hand. She threw her head back and laughed. Yelling in her face, he wrenched his hand away and the dead cigarette butt fell on the floor. She reeled back a few steps.

"Jesus." He was too puzzled to do anything but stare at her. His hand throbbed and shaking it didn't help.  "Jesus." He turned and headed for the kitchen. In front of the door he turned round and walked back to her. "I don't get it," he said.

She had her back to him again, forehead pressed against the windowpane.

"What was that for?"

She started swaying her hips, stretched her arms over her head and pressed her palms against the glass. Sinatra crooned along to an early-eighties guitar and synthesizer funk backing track.

Eddie reached past her gyrating buttocks and snatched the gun off the ledge. He noticed her eyes were closed. Only Carol could look out of a window with her eyes shut. Not that there was anything to see. Directly opposite, empty flats. Below, empty yellow washing lines strung across four poles in an empty shared garden surrounded by tenements. In this flat, if you wanted a view, you looked out the bedroom window. He gave Carol a final glance, tucked the gun under his belt and went to the kitchen.

The cold water eased the pain, but when he moved his hand away from the flow, the stinging heat returned almost immediately.  He put his hand back under the tap and left it there while he decided what to do about Carol.

She was unpredictable, hostile, violent. Which might be tolerable if he was getting a shag every now and then. But she wasn't giving out so much as a sniff. In bed, on that solitary occasion, she'd slept on her own side, not touching him, as if she was another bloke forced through circumstances to share his bed.

He ought to tell her it was over. Soon. Come to think of it, why hang about? He'd tell her right now, right this minute, before he changed his mind.
I'm not interested, Carol. You're bleeding mental.

He turned off the tap and tried to dry his hand with the dishtowel. His scorched skin complained when he put pressure on it. He threw the towel on the counter and flexed his fingers.
It's over. I've taken all the shit I can take from you. Look what you've done to my hand. Look at it. It's over. No, don't argue. It's over.

"How's your hand?" She had crept up behind him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and her interlocked blue-nailed fingers hovered millimetres above his groin.

"Hurts like a mother."

"Let me put some cream on it."

"There's something—"

"The way I feel about you…" She unlocked her fingers and pulled on his arm. When he faced her he saw her eyes had misted over. "Sometimes it scares me." She held his wounded hand in hers. "Sometimes I lash out without thinking." She raised his hand to her lips and kissed the place where she'd burned him. "Forgive me?"

Eddie blinked. The heat of her lips had intensified the ache in his hand. It was exquisite. He wrapped her in his arms and held her against his chest.

She snuggled into his neck, lips brushing his throat. She said, "I think Robin knows about us."

10:06 am

Pearce said, "Well?"

"Joe-Bob says it'll be no problem getting the ammo. Unless he phones back to say otherwise, we're meeting him at lunchtime."

"We?"

"He knows me. He wants me to go along."

"Fair enough. But why does it have to be Joe-Bob?" Pearce said. "What about Ben?"

"You got a problem with Joe-Bob?"

"I've always had a problem with drug dealers."

"Tough. Ben can't make it." Ailsa studied the back of her hand. "He's not feeling so good. Last night somebody decided to bounce his head off a metal pipe." She turned her hand over and examined the lines on her palm. "So it's Joe-Bob or nobody."

10:18 am

Pearce was about to head for Cooper's flat when his mobile rang. Instinctively he thought,
Mum.
Then he remembered she was gone, stabbed by the fuck in the balaclava. He squeezed his fist, felt her blood running through his fingers and propped his elbows on the kitchen table, trying to stop shaking inside.

Ailsa passed the phone to him.

He clutched it too hard. "Hello."

Silence.

"Hello". No answer. He didn't play this game. He hung up. Ailsa was looking at him. He shrugged. The phone rang again. "Speak," he said.

"Don't hang up."

Something sharp and thin and white-hot stabbed his gut.

"It's me. Julie."

The bitch who had set him up. The bitch who had walked away with an engagement ring worth a grand. More than that, though. She'd walked away with his pride. He said nothing. The searing pain in his stomach was incredible.

"Pearce? You there?" She sighed. "Look, I just wanted to, um… Look, I heard on the radio, you know, about your mum. I just kind of, well, in the circumstances—"

Ailsa mouthed, "Who?"

He breathed through pursed lips. "Little bitch who robbed me," he said.

"Why did she do that?"

He breathed in. "She's a worthless piece of shit."

"Pearce, you arsehole, I'm trying to—"

"Shut your mouth."

"Who are you talking to?"

"Not you, Ailsa, sorry."

"Who's Ailsa?"

"A friend. You want to speak to her?"

He handed Ailsa the phone, then paced up and down the kitchen while Ailsa and Julie introduced themselves to each other. Gradually his stomach settled. Ailsa wasn't saying much, just listening, occasionally frowning, nodding, shaking her head. He stopped at the table and held his hand out for the phone. Without a word, Ailsa handed the phone back to him.

Julie was saying, "—'cos, as I said, I doubt if the dumb bastard could get it up anyway."

"Stop it," he said. "Don't you ever—"

"Oh, you again. Limp dick."

"Fuck you."

"You wish."

"Where's my money?"

"For God's sake, Pearce, give it a rest. You'll never see your money again. I've got it. Well, actually, I've spent most of it already. You gave me the receipt, Dickhead. You want to know what I've bought?"

"You didn't have to do that."

"Do you? Huh? Want to know what pressies I've bought myself?"

The pain lanced his gut once again. He screamed into the phone, "My mother is dead and you're still alive, you fucking bitch, you fucking crap fucking piece of shit. It can't be like this. It can
not
be like this."

"I didn't kill her. Don't blame me."

Ailsa plucked the phone out of his hand and spoke into the mouthpiece. "Leave him alone." She turned the phone off and laid it on the table. "Pearce?"

"Shit." He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand.

She waited a moment before asking, "Who was that piece of bitch-piss-fuck-crap-shit, or whatever it was you called her?"