Fan (20 page)

Sunday afternoon in the flat. He spends the time sprawled on the sofa, absorbing a western he’s seen a dozen times. Sunday afternoon recovering from the debacle of Friday, drifting in and out of consciousness.

A fucking train wreck.

When the phone rings he ignores it. He knows it’s Jen but he has nothing to say. He can’t find the words. He can hardly fucking think for fuck’s sake. When the film ends he walks to the window, looks out at the darkness, at the orange street lights, at the dullness and drabness.

He drops back on the sofa, flicks through the channels, one – two – three – four. The phone rings again and he ignores it again. He can feel the change in himself but he doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He pulls on his jacket, walks down the stairs and out into the night. He makes his way to the Chinese, orders a takeaway, makes his way home again. He thinks about the barmaid, about Hope Close, about blue-and-white tape flickering in the breeze. He thinks about the all-nighter, the rave.

And still there’s nothing on the TV. He takes the food to his room, sticks the stereo on, picks at the takeaway. He’s not fucking hungry. He looks at the clock. 7 p.m. He picks up the phone. Some of the lads are heading to the pub, then to T-Gally’s for a smoke. He doesn’t want to go but he doesn’t want to stay in either. He can’t go to Jen’s. He hasn’t got what it takes. He drags his sorry arse to the pub and then he drags it home again. There’s a fracture in his landscape. He can feel it widening. It’s the same with how he feels about Jen.

Perhaps.

Maybe.

He isn’t certain.

He isn’t certain about anything.

He’s done next to nothing all day. He climbs into bed, sticks the TV on and lays there seeking out something to occupy his busy mind. And there’s nothing, just him in darkness,
thoughts of Jen in his head, thoughts of the American girl, legs, dancing and dancing and dancing. For the first time he feels the aching in his thighs and calves.

The minutes tick into hours, Summer rain falling on the dark town, running in torrents from the guttering, flooding the street.

CID in the office when he turns up on Monday morning, a great herd of the bastards milling about the place, taking blokes off left, right and centre for statements. He waits his turn, struggling to focus on the frame, the street names and numbers collecting in black clots, his nervous hands quivering, his heart a fucking jackhammer.

He notices Spence looking him up and down. Spence, ever the observant.

‘Bloody hell,’ says Spence. ‘You’d best confess and put them all out of their misery.’

He shakes his head, grits his teeth.

‘It’s not something to joke about,’ he says, knowing he’s waving a great fuck-off red rag, inviting an onslaught.

But Spence doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t do anything either. He just leans back on his perch, sucks in his cheeks, starts humming a little tune.

Boot fucking Hill.

Finchy tries to switch off to it, takes one breath and then another but it’s no fucking good.

‘What are you going to say?’ he asks Spence. ‘What are you going to tell them?’

‘About what?’

‘About who she was seeing, who she was involved with.’

‘Nothing to do with me,’ says Spence.

‘So you’re going to say nothing? What if no fucker says anything?’

‘There’s nothing to say, unless you know something I don’t.’

‘I don’t know anything…’

‘Tell them that, then,’ says Spence.

‘But I’ve heard stuff. We’ve all heard stuff.’

‘Not me.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘All I know is where they found her and who delivers up that way. I’ll have to tell them that, I suppose.’

Spence grins.

They turn up in the row then, four of them. Two minutes later Finchy finds himself in a side office with a big moustached bastard and his pal, tells them what he knows, tells them more than he knows, tells them stuff he doesn’t have a fucking clue about. He can’t help himself. Everything just drops out of his mouth. Through the window he sees Spence leaving the office down the hall, sees Robbie Box head in after him, sees Robbie Box come out and Dave Hunt go in. Through all of that the big moustached bastard asks him questions, checks his notebook, treads over the facts. He tells the bloke none of it is fact, just hearsay, just office chatter. He tells him until he’s blue in the face but the bastard goes over it anyway, again and again and again.

It takes him forty-five minutes to get out of there.

When he arrives at his frame the place is empty. There’s just him with his back to a dozen CID, sharing jokes, sharing notes, sharing their discoveries. He is physically shaking from top to toe. It’s all he can do to prep the rest of the round, all he can muster to bag up and make his way down the row of frames to the exit, where he stands shivering on the ramp, his head a swirling fucking vortex.

Throughout the round he goes over it all, trying to piece together tiny smithereens of memory, unable to see any patterns, any configurations at all. The previous weekend is a black hole. Friday into Saturday. Pills and thrills. And then what? Everything sucked into a fucking black hole.

Except dancing and beat, an American girl with perfect skin. And legs, he can remember the legs.

He’ll never forget the fucking legs.

He runs into Spence at the breakfast van, him with his bacon and egg bap, Spence with his coffee. Part and parcel of the morning these meetings, when the mail’s not too heavy, when Finchy can get down there. Not Spence. Spence is always there. It’s written into his daily schedule. Just like the ribbing he delivers Finchy every fucking morning.

‘Eh up,’ says Spence. ‘Look who it isn’t. ‘

Robbie’s sat on the steps of the market cross, newspaper on his knees, grease dripping from his sarnie, his lips smeared with egg. He hardly bats an eyelid.

‘You were in there a long time,’ says Spence.

‘What’s that?’

‘In the office, with CID. Must have had a lot to say.’

Robbie perks up. Robbie grunts. Robbie senses something.

‘They kept asking me questions,’ he says. ‘Everything I told them led to another one.’

‘Aye, well I told you to keep your mouth shut.’

‘I didn’t tell them anything important,’ he said. ‘Just the
same things over and over. It was my walk after all. They wanted to know what I’d seen.’

‘But you didn’t see anything.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And you didn’t tell them anything?’

‘Why are you so bothered?’

‘I’m not,’ says Spence. ‘I’m just watching out for you. You open your mouth it’s you who’ll get it.’

‘Who from?’

‘From the fuckers you land in the shit, you daft bastard.’

‘Fuck me,’ says Robbie. ‘You’ve not been snitching.’

‘Have I fuck,’ says Finchy. ‘I don’t know anything to snitch about.’

‘No fucker knows anything but some bastard knows everything,’ says Spence.

‘You know more than me,’ says Finchy.

‘Judging by this morning I’m not so sure,’ says Spence.

‘I didn’t tell them anything,’ repeated Finchy.

‘I’m not saying you did,’ says Spence. ‘I’m not saying you did.’

All of this outside the breakfast van in the market square.

All of this.

The flat’s quiet, dead of sound until the news kicks in with his alarm clock. Finchy wakes slowly, dragging himself from dark places, hearing a doorbell ringing, dreaming of bare white flesh, tangled red hair, slugs and snails. Fucking spiders. He walked right past the spot, right fucking past it and was oblivious, too comatose to take anything in. He isn’t ever going to take one of those bastard beans again.

‘… barmaid who had just finished her shift…’

He can see her as clear as day in that short skirt, white legs that go on forever, marching home in the early hours, always with somewhere to go, not fucking knowing, not seeing.

But why would she know? Why would she see?

Nothing ever happens here.

Not here.

Everything happens somewhere else.

‘… police following several leads…‘

A stranger’s hands at her neck, her heels kicking and flexing, her fingernails scratching and scraping. Running out of breath, running out of time, running out of life.

He hears the doorbell, realises he hasn’t imagined it, pulls himself out of bed and over to the window, yanks it open and looks down on the street. There are two of them. One is the moustached fucker who interviewed him at the depot.
They’re in the street outside his flat, in their suits, the moustached and the non-moustached. His heart rate doubles despite himself.

Fuck.

What are they doing at his flat?

He imagines a pair of hands dragging the body across the car park, into the undergrowth, into the slugs and the snails, the spiders and the flies. He imagines happening across her on the way home from his shenanigans with the American bird, him with his blood up, his head, his body, his whole being at the will of a substance he has no control over, his own hands doing those things. It’s fucking absurd but they’re here, aren’t they, here to see him again, to ask their questions and scribble their notes.

They spot him.

‘Inspector Mayhew and Inspector Ritson. Can we come in?’

Fucking shouting that in the street.

Curtains already twitching.

He nods, doing his best to look nonchalant, shitting himself. There are two detectives from the murder squad on his doorstep for fuck’s sake.

‘I’ll come down,’ he says. He grabs his jeans and polo shirt, wets his hair, his face, tries to look casual. Casual is best. Casual is always best. He descends the two floors to the foyer, hears the clocks, the dozens of clocks, chiming half past the hour. He opens the door. The bird across the street is at her window. He shoots her a glance and she backs away.

Into the shadows.

‘Through here,’ he says to Mr Moustache and Mr Notebook.

He leads them up the steep stairs, on to the first-floor landing.

‘Nice place,’ says Mayhew, says Mr Moustache. ‘Really nice.’

It isn’t a nice place. It’s a fucking flat above a clock-menders. It has orange lino flooring in the kitchen and a sink that’s seen better days. The living room sofa’s bright fucking yellow, something he picked up for free from a bloke who was skipping it. The carpet has stains on it. The windows don’t fit properly. They rattle in their frames when the wind blows and upset the neighbours. The paint needs a fresh lick. And it’s always too cold or too hot, never just right.

‘A few questions. On what we spoke about,’ says Mayhew.

He nods. His throat’s parched. He can feel himself trembling.

‘You said you knew the victim…’

‘Knew of her. I said I knew of her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She was a barmaid in the Bell. She served me drinks. I recognise her from there. And the Crown.’

‘You frequent the Crown.’

A statement, not a question. He has to clarify that. Slippery bastards.

‘No. I’ve been there. It’s the postie pub, right opposite … you know where it is.’

Mr Notebook scribbling. Mr Moustache staring out of the back window, down into the yard.

‘Is that yard attached to this place?’

‘No, that’s for the flat downstairs.’

‘So that’s not your shed then.’

‘No.’

‘And you can’t access it from this flat?’

‘Not unless you climb out of the window or over the back gate.’

‘And do you?’

‘Do I what?’

‘Climb out of the window.’

‘No.’

‘What about the gate?’

‘No. I’ve no need to be out there. I store my bike in the passageway. That’s all.’

‘Right. And how long have you lived here?’

‘A few months. Since January.’

‘Nice place,’ says the other one, says Mayhew. ‘I could do with a place like this myself. How much?’

‘£400.’

‘For a room?’

‘For the whole thing.’

‘Got a bathroom?’

‘Of course.’

‘Can I have a look? I like a bathroom.’

‘Down the hall,’ says Finchy. ‘I’ll show you.’

‘No need,’ says Mayhew. ‘I’ll find it.’

Mr Notebook hovering about the place, while Mr Moustache waffles on about the benefits of a bath over a shower from somewhere deep within the flat. Somewhere deep within ‘his’ flat.

‘The first pub. What did you say its name was again?’ Mr Notebook adds, pen poised.

You know fucking damn well what its name is.

‘The Bell. Everybody’s favourite.’

Mr Notebook scribbles away.

‘Were you there last Friday, then?’

Finchy shakes his head.

‘Blokes at the PO say you’re there every weekend.’

Fucking tossers.

‘I stayed in,’ he says.

‘On a Friday. A young lad like you.’

No. I went to an all-nighter. I took a fucking E, possibly two. I might have fucked an American bird from the college but I don’t think I did. I can’t remember a thing about Friday. Not a fucking thing except waking up at the bottom of the stairs in a fucking heap. And legs. I remember legs.

‘I was knackered. I wanted to watch the game in peace.’

‘What game would that be?’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘Liverpool Arsenal…’

‘Right,’ says Mr Moustache. ‘Classic.’

Finchy nods in silence.

‘You’re a fan then?’

He stares at them blankly.

‘Of football,’

He nods.

‘I’m a Forest fan,’ he says, to clarify, to set the fuckers straight.

Mr Notebook grits his teeth.

Mr Moustache grits his teeth.

‘So you stayed in, on your own, all evening?’ asks Mr Moustache.

‘Yep.’

A lie. A barefaced lie.

‘No girlfriend?’

‘Not at the minute.’

‘Right. Because…’

‘We broke up.’

‘You’re not still seeing her?’

‘Sometimes. She comes over. It’s complicated.’

Does he look as guilty as he feels? Are they serious? Do they really suspect him of strangling a barmaid and dumping her semi-naked body in a patch of undergrowth beside a kiddies’ playground? Do they really suspect him of that?

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

‘Blokes at the PO say you arrived at work looking like shit last Saturday.’

‘I told you. I was knackered.’

‘Looked like you’d had no sleep.’

‘I slept. I slept too long. That was the problem.’

Mr Moustache reappears.

‘How many bedrooms?’

‘Eh?’

‘This place? How many?’

Mr Moustache, still going on about the fucking flat, about the benefits of a two-bed, one-hundred-year-old shell in some dark side street of some floundering town.

‘Two,’ says Finchy. ‘Both upstairs.’

‘Just you?’

‘No. There’s my flatmate.’

‘Was he in last Friday?’

‘No. He works at the supermarket.’

Raised eyebrows at that little fucking detail.

‘Nights,’ he says.

‘On weekends?’

‘He does all sorts.’

‘Nights?’

‘Nights.’

‘Rough hours?’

‘Nine till six, something like that.’

Mr Moustache looks at Mr Notebook, then he looks at the stairs

‘Right.’

More fucking scribbling as they climb the second flight of stairs, to the landing, the little space outside the bedrooms. One door open, one door closed.

‘Is he in?’

‘I think so. I don’t know. I haven’t looked.’

‘And this is your room?’

He nods.

‘May I?’

He nods again, thinking ‘No, you fucking can’t, you moustached cunt. Why the fuck would you want to?’

‘Not en-suite then.’

‘Er, no.’

The bed a mess. His postie uniform heaped on the chair. The room stinking of sweat and farts and day sleep. Teacup
on the stereo, tea stains, a few scattered biscuit crumbs.

‘Did we get you up?’

‘It’s the early mornings,’ he said.

‘What time do you start work then?’

‘Half five, something like that. Depends on the job.’

‘Rather you than me,’ says Mr Moustache. ‘I’m all tucked up then.’

He turns to Mr Notebook. ‘Aren’t you?’

I bet you fucking are. Tucked up together. You moustached bastard.

‘And you deliver to Hope Close?’

He nods.

‘You said there was nothing in the bushes when you cycled past?’

‘I didn’t see a … I didn’t see anything. No.’

‘So there might have been something there but you didn’t see it?’

‘There might have been. I don’t know.’

Silence.

‘That row of houses. That’s where your round starts, isn’t it? By the kiddies’ swings?’

Finchy nods.

‘I can’t remember what number was first that day. I might have skipped a few. I wish I hadn’t … you know … to save those kids from…’

Mr Moustache tries the door to his flatmate’s room. It’s locked. He knocks. There’s no answer.

‘He must have gone out,’ says Mr Moustache. ‘Isn’t that a pity?’

They descend the stairs again, head to the living room, to the yellow fucking sofa.

‘It was free,’ he says, to explain.

‘Nice,’ says Mr Moustache.

No, it fucking isn’t. It’s a fucking embarrassment.

Three blokes. One yellow sofa. Mr Notebook endlessly
scribbling. Over the same ground as before. White skin. White legs. Always striding. Always purposeful. In a fucking rush. Bar job to bar job.

The Bell and the Crown.

The Crown and the Bell.

Blokes bored of their wives. Drinkers. Smokers. Dirty bastards.

‘These men…’ says the one with the notepad.

Dirty drink-addled bastards.

He looks up, puzzled.

‘When we chatted at the depot. The men you mentioned…’

‘Common knowledge,’ he says. ‘I don’t know any details.’

‘Only she lived with her boyfriend. You know that?’

He shrugs.

‘Rumours, then,’ he says. ‘Blokes talking in the canteen. The blokes are always talking. You must know yourself. Nothing but rumours…’

‘These were ex-boyfriends?’

‘I don’t know. Yes. Probably. Like I said, it’s mostly just talk and rumour. Bravado. You know.’

The cunt knows but he isn’t saying anything.

‘You mentioned some names.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Arnie Burrows?’

‘So I heard. Maybe. Ages ago.’

‘Ages?’

‘A year.’

‘A year. Not ages then. What about Bob Harris?’

‘Nobber? Definitely a rumour. He’s got kids. And he’s been ill.’

‘We heard. Heart attack at his age. You wonder how these things happen.’

The fucking kings of inference.

Nobber Harris. The Crown, before a late, after an early. Each visit totting up.

Veins hardening. Liver shrinking.

Pint upon pint. Fag upon fag.

‘And the other?’

‘Some bloke who left the depot. I don’t remember his name.’

Another silence. Just the pen, scribbling.

‘So you didn’t go out Friday?’

‘No.’

‘You stayed in and did what?’

He shrugs.

‘Watched TV?’

‘I’m asking you.’

‘I think so.’

‘Anything good on.’

‘I don’t remember.’

Porn in the corner, stacked under the newspapers, if they care to take a peek.

Tell them about the American bird. Just fucking tell them.

Tell them what? Tell them he walked her back to the college. Tell them he’s no idea what her name is. Tell them she’s fucked off back to the States already. Fucking convenient that. Tell them he wandered back through town in the early hours, that he doesn’t remember how he got home or what the fuck he did on the way. Tell them about the legs? Tell them those things?

‘You didn’t go out on Friday and you didn’t see anything on Saturday morning?’

‘No.’

‘And you can’t throw any light on these boyfriends?’

‘Only what I’ve told you. But not boyfriends. Just rumour.’

‘Well then. Thanks for having us.’

‘And thanks for showing me around the place. Just what I’m looking for.’

Right. Sure.

Down the stairs, to the door. The clocks in the shop chiming the hour. The dozens of clocks. He watches them climb into
their blue Sierra, watches them sitting there, talking, Mr Moustache at the wheel, Mr Notebook scribbling into his little black book. He closes the door and climbs the stairs to the kitchen, sticks the kettle on. His flatmate appears in the doorway, hair lank, eyes bloodshot, skin as white as a corpse.

‘Good fucking job they didn’t see you,’ says Finchy. ‘They’d have arrested me for your murder instead.’

‘Was that the fucking police? I thought it was the fucking police.’

‘CID,’ says Finchy.

The kettle’s coming to the boil, steam clouding the window.

‘Fuck,’ says his flatmate. ‘Fuck me.’

He turns and heads in the direction of the bathroom then he turns around again.

‘Are they coming back?’

‘I hope not.’

‘Right. Because I’ve got a pot of beans on my fucking stereo.’

‘I thought you were going to bury them.’

‘Not much point now, eh? They’ll be digging up out back looking for clues.’

Finchy chucks a tea bag in a mug and pours in the water, the steam licking at his face, tiny splashes scalding the backs of his hands. Then he repeats the process for his flatmate because what else are friends for? He drifts across the hall to the lounge, rests the mug on the fireplace and drops down on to the sofa. They have to get a new one. Fuck me do they. And they need to get rid of the porn and the fucking pills. They most definitely need to get rid of the fucking pills.