Graft (17 page)

S
ol rolls
into work with two stale butties and a sad story. He managed an hour's sleep at best, folded against the wall alongside his occupied bed.

For a time, the sky lightening, he'd watched Y sleep. Seemingly she trusted him enough to relax and return herself to some base state: a mammal with basic needs, organs to nourish. He listened intently to her every breath in terror she'd simply stop or change rhythm, or begin to relate something awful – cropped phrases, dream excerpts, glimpses of a subconscious path to some greater truth he didn't want to confront. From the draught that swept over his skin, he realized Y's feet were exposed to the cold, so he rearranged the sheets. As he did, he wondered if the act made him caring or simply reflected his selfishness. In some way it was enough to convince him he'd earned his sleep.

Y was still snoring when he left. He wrote a note for her, stacked a few more cans, left paper and a pen.
Don't panic
, he wrote on it.
I'll be home soon.

He didn't write:
Everything must seem normal
.

He didn't write:
Denial is how I survive
.

Back at the workshop, Sol finds Irish dismantling the Lexus, most of its panels stripped away and arranged in neat rows. The lights seem doubly bright. Seeing the car again – its innards, knowing what it brought – makes Sol gag.

“Time you call this?” Irish says.

“No,” Sol says, swallowing hard, arm over the Lexus roof. “It's sold, you bastard. Christ's sakes, Pete. We've
sold
it already. It has to go. We have to get rid.”

Irish stops working. His breath hanging on the thin air. “Pete? Up yours as well, Solomon. What's the fucken craic here? You seen the clock have you? I come in this morning to a shit-tip – paper, rags, drawers hanging out, insane drawings on the table through there. And here's a kicker for you: we're running on reserves today since some fucker wrecked the gennie and got in the back door.”

Sol barely registers the information. “It's sold,” he carries on. “The Lexus is sold. You need to rebuild it – it has to go.”

“Bollocks it does. You talking about, sold? You turn up acting all banjaxed – and what? We've got two grand in this motor, if we're sensible. At
least
that. And don't you Christ me, man – you gonna tell me what your problem is? Why're you're all wet like that? Look at you, man. Look at the state of you.”

Sol can smell Irish's warm, working body – gamey and rich. Lingering cigarette smoke a layer above. The question hangs: tell him about Y? Or attempt to hide her forever?

“We got an order in.”

“For this?”

Sol needs to sit down. All his connections feel loose. “Aye,” he says. “And a frigging battle tank.” Sweat rolls, a line down his temple. “Modding a car for some runners. Wilbers, maybe. They want fridges in there, God knows what else. I called Miss Wales – got most of the materials on order. Steel. Plating. Same guy bought the Lexus as part of the deal – not a bad price. So just stick it all back together, and give the engine a tickle while you're at it. Then we're done. We're done.”

Irish shakes his head. “Just like that? And this buyer of yours – hefty was he? Nagging type? Only you had someone round first thing today as well.”

Sol pales. “Who? Not the council…”

Irish barks a laugh. “
Council
? Sweet Mary our Holy Mother on high. We're the last of their bleeding worries. Why d'you spend all that time filing numbers off if that's how you're gonna react? Come on, man. Don't fill your pants on me. When's the last time we got raided? Half this city's on our books!”

“You jacked this,” Sol says, tapping the Lexus. “Jacked it. That's plenty of reason to get paranoid.”

Irish shakes his head. “You need to chill your beans, man. The guy didn't even sniff at it. He wants you – says he's a friend of hers.”

“Whose?”

“Hers. Melanie's. Jeff he's called. Shaking like a shitting dog he was. Jeff with a J. I said you weren't about, but you'd be in later. I goes to him, “You want a brew?” and he looks at me like I've just shot his mam and fed her to the fucken cats. I said I had to nip out for some bits and pieces – that I'd say he called. Then the second I turn my back for a pen, he's gone again. Not even a bye.”

“Mel?”

You stupid prick –

“
Aye, Mel. What's up with you? Least that's what he tells me. Seemed no reason to lie. Like I said, he'll call back for a chat.”

Sol's head is spinning. He must look ill. He knits his hands – tries to pull the splitting seams together. “Was he on his own?”

“On his own?”

“This Jeff. How did he get here?”

“Jesus, Solomon. He had legs.”

“I'll… I'll call her then.”

“Colour you've gone at the thought of it, maybe you ought to bury her.”

Sol ignores him. “He look handy, this Jeff?”

“
Handy
? What? He was stocky, sure. Though now you mention it, he wore sunglasses. What's with people who wear sunglasses inside? What's that about?”

Sol bites his thumb. Could be anyone, this line of work. Even a pity referral from her. But there's always a but – and if you add Sol's panicked call to Mel into the equation, it can't be coincidental.

Prick –

“
Anyway,” he says to Irish. “Gonna need you over in Liverpool for this Ferrari.”

Irish shakes his head. “You hear what I said about the back door? You know we actually pay to use the spare gennie, don't you? Someone got in here.”

“What? The door…”

Someone broke in not long after he and Y left.

“
You're going spare for this car, but you don't care about a break-in.”

Sol sits down where he is.

“Mate,” Irish says. “What's going on? Get yourself up.”

“I'll sort it!” Sol snaps. “I'm owed favours. I'll fix it.”

Irish looks unsettled now. “Fine. Well I've wedged a car next to it for now. And we're flipping a coin for the Ferrari.”

“It's fine. You go.”

“Don't be a fucken lush,” Irish tells him. His throat is red – the signal he's getting annoyed. “We don't work like that.”

“No,” Sol says.

“Heads or harps?”

Sol's guts are turning. Fifty-fifty he gets found out because he left Y alone in his flat while he goes walkabout. Fifty-fifty it all comes down.

He thinks:
You shouldn't be here.

He thinks:
Why've you left her?

“
Call it then,” Irish says, visibly impatient. “Before you start being a pain in my hole proper–”

Sol does his best to hold it together. “Heads.”

The coin spins, catches light. Every particle of dust, rust – every speck suspended in the workshop's dead air – seems to glitter.

The slap, the turn, the call:

“Harps!”

And Sol's high is instant, invigorating. He stands up, rushing. “Do us proud,” he says, grinning. “And listen: you still got room at home?”

“The shed?”

Sol nods wildly.

“Sure.”

“Take it there – work on it there as well.”

“I think you need some kip,” Irish tells him. “Sort your head out. You honestly want this Ferrari at mine?”

Sol clutches his head. “Makes… makes more sense. Need space for the metal when it comes. Never mind the base rig.”

“You mean you want me out your way?”

“Not at all–”

“Time's the pickup?”

“See how you get on today.”

“In the truck?”

“No – you'll have to go by train.”

“Bollocks I will,” Irish spits. “
Train?
Is this the fucken catch?”

“It's getting better,” Sol tells him. Another lie. “Armed escorts now. They had it on the news…”

“Better hope the bastard drives then. Or you're paying for my return and a trailer to go with it.”

“It runs. They swore on that.”

“Fine. But–”

“You're a star,” Sol cuts in. He points to the Lexus. “You've just got to sort this.”

Irish shakes his head. “You've lost the plot, I swear it.”

Sol goes to the entrance and closes the rollers halfway. Maybe. Maybe.

The day drags after that. Sol tries to work. A little groundwork for the conversion project, blueprints on a bank of cold stainless worktops. Working out which bits go where. The machine tools they'll need to hire. He annotates each panel with material lists, thicknesses, dimensions, stacked question marks about welds. The deeper he goes, the more he can forget.

Now and then he looks across the workshop. Odd sounds – unfamiliar shuffling noises – momentarily distract him, but he puts them down to tiredness, the backup generator. For a good few minutes, he watches Irish working methodically through the Lexus parts. He can't bear to think of the break-in, its implications, so he thinks instead of Irish's train journey – of the stories he'll return with, the way he'll tell them. He's dimly aware he owes his partner an apology.

But the unsaid things needle him. Who's he really fooling? Even if he pretends last night didn't happen, Y finds her way in: reminders of her face emerge through the materials of this place, glinting edges, the kerning of every word in the paperwork. A seeping guilt.

He thinks:
Why've you left her?

Countered by the truthful answer:
Because you hope she'll be gone when you get back.

Sol stops working. The disparity between today and yesterday is concentrated, overwhelming. How much had changed overnight? It's all muddled up. All spiralling.

Irish finishes up on the Lexus. “It'll be Liverpool first thing,” he tells Sol, pulling on his coat. “Unless I get blown up, harvested for organs or shot.”

Sol just about manages a goodbye. When the door rolls closed, Y burns into his thoughts with fresh intensity: her knees pulled up under her chin, the stringy spit on her feeding tubes. The sound of her cicada-clicking. The very fact she's over there on his sofa, in his tracksuit perhaps, with a damp-smelling towel nearby in case her stomach can't handle any more tinned stuff.

Why did he think it was reasonable to leave her? To go on like normal?

His responsibilities are washing up like shoes after a shipwreck.

So Sol puts on his jacket, grabs the truck keys. But before he can go back to her, there's someone else he needs to see.

R
oy arrives
outside Sol's workshop. By now he's soaked through to his bones, and the rain's still falling heavily.

Riding his luck, he hauls himself over a perimeter holo-board – one of the dead units round the side. He kicks and tears a ladder into the plastic mesh that wraps the advert optics, then shins right up it. Hardly subtle, but who cares when you're spurred on by the lunatic singlemindedness you get from a few pints and an impulsive idea.

He drops into the yard. Revolver out. Two steps and a heartbeat and he's blinded by a trespass strobe that backlights the cloud cover like a flak cannon. He falls against the wall. Each time it fires – its filaments pinging – the rain is stilled, petrified by the flash, leaving Roy caught swaying in a field of cold static.

He waits. He watches. He counts.

The lamp dies. Just as he'd hoped, it's blown itself – drawn too much power at once.

Squinting – a neon tear through his vision – he crosses the yard. There's a beware-the-dog sign on the roller doors. Padlocks and sliding bolts layered up.

But then he doesn't intend to get in through the front.

The faint hum of a generator brings Roy round the back: a flaw he'd clocked on his first visit. Close to the generator enclosure, which is bricked onto the workshop, there's a door with rudimentary electronic locks.

Roy grabs the fibre wires lined in from the holo-boards that Sol's tapping for the workshop's power, and yanks their sealant out of the wall. The bundled thread slides easily, thick as his forearm, though he's wary of the cable's live end slipping straight into his hand. After a slight snag, a crack and fizz, the generator dies. Almost immediately, the backup kicks in.

Roy laughs and keeps pulling. Soon enough the live end emerges through the hole, dragging chunks of cavity insulation. He holds it out at full extension, the way you hold a snake, and piles it into the door's mechanism. A sparkle, and abracadabra: the mechanism shorts out. The locks hiss and the door cracks ajar. He sticks his head in.

He looks left to see his Lexus, its glossy outline, boot lid up –

Looks right –

And hears something coming.

Roy bursts inside. In haste he trips over himself and bowls headfirst into the side panel of a Transit van. It gives. Both hands up, balance gone, he slips on the cold-greased concrete and down towards the inspection pit – his ankle caught between the pit's edge and the footplate of the Transit, and the rest of him in torsion, rotating the other way. A terminal crack – a skull at the point of impact – and it's done.

Above, a fox flits carefree through the workshop.

S
ol takes the work truck
, mind's eye fixed on a little blip moving across his own map of Manchester – the UI from an old routing app somehow internalized.

As he goes, it's all Mel, a depthless anxiety at seeing her. He's done so much to subdue her hold, to store those memories in some shoebox of the soul, pack it into the corners. But now she's centre stage again. A life he denies to himself has come crashing into focus.

Through the racing lines of quiet roads, the truck's rattling bulk against the rain, she floods back, inundates him. A beach marriage – theirs, more like someone else's now – at the Gower Peninsula off Swansea. Wind, salty kisses. Falling into bed together, happy or resentful, silent or desperate, but together. The possibility of her death in hospital. Running reds through the city to be there, a cracked reflection of now. And his earliest memory of them: a beach with lines of headless fish, his father's laughter, and Mel's socket, a voided space.