Everything I Found on the Beach (20 page)

Hold called up the number and asked about the car and the woman called to her son and the son said it was still up for sale. He said it didn't have the MOT for much longer, and could probably do with new tires and Hold said it didn't matter about the MOT and the tires. Hold took down the directions the boy gave him.

He went down onto the main road that ran parallel with the inner harbor and walked along until he came to the taxi place he'd noted earlier. It was grubby looking. The sort of place you'd associate with much bigger towns.

He went in and asked for a car and one of the guys inside got up from one of the chairs. A few of them were watching a television set mounted up in the corner like in a takeaway.

They went outside and Hold got into the taxi and the driver repeated the name of the place and Hold gave him the directions again. He didn't want to talk. He could feel the roll of money in his pocket. That was the last of it. “It'll get me through,” he thought. The driver had an air freshener plugged into the lighter socket and it stank out the car and he turned on the radio just low enough for Hold not to hear.

“Suits me,” said Hold. He didn't want to talk. It was like he had lost the habit of discussion in this strange
singular place he'd come to. It felt like longer. “It's just two days,” thought Hold.
The old life was way gone.

They drove out of the town past the thick train lines and over the bridge and peeled right off a roundabout through continuous estates of houses. To the sides of them in the evening light the fields showed flatly between the settlements and the dipping sun spread in the grease of the window so it was like looking through a thin, painful cloth.

They came into another estate of houses and Hold counted off the turnings until they reached the place. “This is it,” Hold said.

He paid the driver and the car went away and Hold walked past the red Fiesta in the driveway and up to the door. The boy came out and they went over the car. The documents were in the dash.

“Will you take one-seventy-five?” Hold asked the boy. He made a show of looking at the tires and kicked them absently.

“That's fine,” said the boy.

By the time Hold started back, the sun had gone down.

He drove the car into town and took out the documents and put them into a bin and went over the car again. Then he went back to the room and plugged the phone in to charge and lay back on the bed, below the stag
scenes, listening to the sporadic traffic. He thought of the dead Pole. The words in his head.
Checkham.

He got up and took two of the big anti-inflammatories and went over things in his mind. “You've thought of it. You just have to wait. You've thought of everything now. You just have to wait for the call. It will come.” He took the bag out from the wardrobe and sat there, just looking at the rabbits and waiting.

The phone rang just after nine o'clock. Hold didn't say anything, he just picked it up. He was sitting on the bed looking out through the window. For a while the other man didn't say anything either. Hold looked across at the glow coming off a kebab shop sign across the road. Then the man spoke.

“It'll happen tomorrow afternoon.”

“Where?”

“We'll tell you where.” Hold could feel the voice lick out at him, taste him. Hold was focusing in on the pause, trying to discern anything he could. It was like watching for movement.

“We'll have your money. Ten thousand minus the cost of the boat we lost. You'll get seven thousand.”

Hold's head spun. He waited, trying to sound flat but there were waves of adrenaline in him.

“Ten?” The blood pounded his ears.

“Seven. You lost the boat.”

Hold tried to hold the spin down, the glow from the kebab shop seemed like it was dropped in water, blurring. “Come on, come on,” he was saying to himself. The “seven thousand” kept sounding over and over into his head. He saw in his mind the clear picture of the dead Pole and the phone in the boat. For
ten
thousand.

“I know how much these packets are worth,” he tried.

“Find another buyer then.”

“Maybe,” said Hold. For a moment he'd lost focus, was dangerously thrown. He had no idea what he was doing. He tried to put this convincing threat in his voice to unnerve the other man.

“What do you think this is?” There was a horrible, tangible, calm violence. “Who do you think you're dealing with here? You think we're amateurs?”

The man's nerve held. He was rhythmic, calm.

“They're worth a lot more,” said Hold.

“
They
are. But the job isn't. That's how it works.” The voice paused. “You think the guy that delivers leather sofas charges the cost of the sofa?” The voice paused again. It was almost gentle, didactic. A tired giving out of knowledge. Hold could feel the miscalculation, the short-sightedness sink into him.

“It's worth ten thousand, minus the boat you lost.” Again, the voice was giving Hold time to fill up with the cold facts of it. “And the life of the other guy's family.” That was the final little trap.

Hold felt a blip of anger. Of sheer dizzying comprehension.

“If you do anything to—”

“What?” The voice railed finally. “What? You'll come for me? Grow up. You might get past one guy. You might kill the next flunky along. You think you'll get to me?”

The voice went quiet again.

“It's nothing to do with them.”

“Make sure it isn't.” The phone stayed quiet. Then it went dead.

Hold just sat there with his head in his hands and couldn't think.

The two men walked past the policeman onto the ferry over the gangplank and handed over their landing cards and went into the boat. The passengers inside were spreading out to explore the levels of the boat. It was stuffy inside and smelled like someone was trying to cover up some other smell. There wasn't any moving air in it. Already you could hear the thrum of the huge engines and the noise of the vehicles loading on downstairs.

The two men went up to the top lounge and took seats and looked over the port and out to the sea. There was a chop coming to it and the little white crests showed up in the light that spilled out into the bay from the port now in the dark. The big man was sure the ferry was the wrong way round to start the journey.

Out on the dock a JCB worked in floodlight, moving stone, picking through the boulders like it had intelligence, and the dust of the moved stones whirled in the light like moths about him. The way the machine looked deft was like the big man making a cigarette. The lounge smelled of stale pubs and the chairs swivelled and tilted back and forth. There were big No Smoking signs everywhere inside.

Stringer got up without saying anything and went down a deck to the bureau de change and got some pounds and came back and gave some to the big man. The bar was filling up with people and some of the people were drinking already, and some were looking over the snack menu. There were children running about like in a park. The lounge was really high off the water.

When they were under way Stringer went off to the gambling area and in a while came back and said, “Let's go eat.”

They went down to the restaurant level and ate. The restaurant was like a service station restaurant. From the middle of the restaurant where they sat you couldn't see anything but the dark sky and its oddness in the lights of the ferry. The windows were all scratched with salt like there was a glaucoma to them.

They were coming out and gathering, like birds dropping in to roost at dusk, starting to line the end of the street. He slowed the car down. He had a plan, and he'd kind of
snatched at it. He had no idea how this went. He slowed the car right down and pulled in to the curb, and after a moment a girl walked over. She stood while he wound down the passenger window and leaned in and asked him if he was looking for business. She wore a short skirt and a puffer jacket. He looked at the black puffer jacket like the Pole had worn. He noticed when she leaned in how lank the hair looked.

“Any foreign girls?” he asked. The puffer jacket had prompted this quick thought. He looked in the mirror. Behind him the girls were writing down his number and the time in their notebooks. There were about six girls now. They were smoking and chewing gum and looked cold. There was none of the American glamour to it.

“Ani!” the girl called over and walked away.

The girl called Ani walked over.
A
. “Another
A
,” he thought. It was like a strange sign. She was pale and underfed and when she leaned in he saw the cheekbones and he said:

“Where are you from?”

And she said, “Europe.”

He said, “Get in,” and she opened the door and looked him up and down and then she made some signal to the other girls and got in and shut the door.

“Checkham,”
he said. “What does it mean?”

She looked at him.

“Is it a name?
Checkham. Vrooj prosser checkham
?”

“I don't know.” Her accent was thick.

“Is it the way I'm saying it?”

“I don't know what you're saying,” she said.

She looked round onto the back seat, at the cooler with the rabbits, and he saw on her bare legs the roughened red skin of the knees and the bruises at the tops of her thighs disappearing under the skirt. He didn't feel anything for her.

“What do you want to do?” she said prettily. “You're good looking.” She was wearing a denim jacket and she took it off and he could see the small red bra through her shirt and the points of her breasts pushed forward as she leaned to get the jacket off in the seat.

“Who runs you?” he said.

“What?”

“Who runs you? Who runs the girls?” She began to get scared.

“Don't get out of the car,” he said. He said it really factually and she sat back.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Are you police?” She said police like two little words.

“No, I'm not police.” He held up some of the money in his hands. “Put the jacket back on,” he said. He could see the goosebumps on her arms.

He gave her a twenty.

“Who runs you?” he asked. He looked dead at her. Her face was like the woman from the phone photos. Colder, hungrier, younger, but like her. The structure was the same.

“I don't understand,” she said.

“Who is in charge of you? Who is the boss?”

“We look after each other. Girls,” she said. It was cold in the car. “I don't understand.”

Hold waited, looked at her.

“Where can I buy drugs around here? Cocaine?” The other girls were now looking at the car that hadn't moved. He gave her more money.

“No drugs,” she said. “Clean.” He could feel that her nerves were up. The other girls were coming up to the car.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Europe.”

“Where?” He was looking at the bone structure. The wide apart eyes.

“Europe,” she said.

She grabbed the jacket and got out of the car and left the door open like it was practiced. She was holding the money.