Painkiller (14 page)

‘Ah-ha!’ She produces a bunch of silver foil packets from a rustic pot and fans them out like a set of playing cards. I can see what they are, but she makes a big show of reading the names on the packets. ‘Uppers, downers… all the greats. These could really get a party jumping…’

I narrow my eyes. ‘Those are my pills.’

‘
Quelle surprise
.’

‘Where did you get those?’

‘I had a little chat with Dominic, ages ago. I picked his brains and your medicine cabinet, in the case of such an eventuality…’

‘I
thought
there were some missing! When did you do this?’

‘I told you. Ages ago. Let’s not get bogged down by little details. Now you said you had reasons? Reason two?’

‘My mouth guard. I have to have my mouth guard. When I’m sleeping, the pain makes me grind my teeth together. If I don’t wear my mouth guard at night, I would grind my teeth to a fine powder within a month.’

‘Gosh. What… you mean something like this?’

She’s standing by a chest of drawers, and she opens the top one, producing a familiar orange plastic box, about the size and shape of a powder compact. She opens it and shows me and, sure enough, there’s a semicircle of plastic and metal, like a dental brace.

‘Now where did you get that? I don’t even have a spare. They cost a fortune.’

‘Dominic went to your dentist and got a copy made.’

‘When did he find the time to do that?’

‘Does it matter? Now, any more excuses? Reason three?’

‘Well I can’t sleep on the sofa…’

‘I have a bed.’

‘I can’t take yours.’

‘I have a second bed.’

‘I don’t want to be rude, but it would just cripple me if I tried to sleep on a saggy old bed. Or even any kind of bed that’s not well sprung. Sorry, but that’s the way my body works now.’

‘I
said
I have a bed. Follow me to the boudoir.’

She takes me upstairs, and throws open the door of her spare room. On the bed is a shiny, plastic-wrapped mattress. ‘One orthopaedic mattress. One careful owner. Which happens to be you.’

‘You bought this for me?’

‘Yep.’

‘Angelina! I’ve got one of these. It cost us a thousand pounds, and that was years ago. How much did this set you back?’

‘Mon, I spend thousands of pounds on useless crap every month. At least I’ve spent my money on something
useful
for a change.’

It’s several seconds before I realise I’m weeping, and I just can’t stop. Her kindness has reduced me to a blubbering heap. Angelina takes hold of me, her arms looping under my armpits, and she gives me a gentle squeeze. I bury myself into her bony chest.

‘Please stay,’ she whispers in my ear.

I nod into her bosom.

‘Good girl, you know it makes sense. Now extract yourself at once; you’re making my minuscule tits wet, and I don’t want them to shrink.’

I ring Dominic. I put it off until the last minute; until I’m sure he’s about to go to bed. I even call his mobile rather than using the land-line, because I know it’s more likely to go to voice-mail and I can avoid speaking to him direct. The truth is, I don’t know how I’m going to react if I hear his voice. Whether I’m going to cry with love at his thoughtfulness, or scream at him for spying on me.

Surprise! He picks up. I stammer, and eventually say: ‘Hello, darling, it’s me.’

‘Hello. Where are you?’

‘Angelina’s. I’ve decided to stay over tonight.’

‘Oh, OK.’

‘Is that all right?’

‘It’s fine. Absolutely fine. More than fine, it’s great. You have fun.’

‘I will.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘You’ll be OK?’

‘Oh yes, Angelina’s going to take good care of me. She’s got all the things you gave her; the pills, the mouth guard… It was sweet of you.’

‘It was her idea. And her money.’

‘It was sweet of both of you.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re having a girlie night. I’ll just go to bed and rent myself a horror movie.’

‘You do that.’

‘OK, night then.’

‘Night night.’

‘Love you lots.’

‘No, love
you
lots.’

‘You hang up.’

‘No
you
hang up.’

‘No
you
hang up.’

‘No you —’

‘Brrrrrrrrr.’

And then he hangs up for real.

Fifteen minutes after Monica left, Dominic was downstairs at the keyboard, looking up his favourites.

Fifteen seconds after that he was staring at the crude blocky website of ED’S SHEDS.

The website was dark green, with ugly old-fashioned writing, like it had been vomited out by Pac-Man. And it displayed really ugly-looking sheds at ridiculous prices. No one in their right mind would think of buying a shed from it. Which was precisely the point.

He entered the chatroom, headed GARDEN FURNITURE, and saw with a thrill of recognition that Arnie Terminator was there, waiting. He was the only other person in the chatroom.

Dominic typed:

Then almost immediately came the response:

There was a pause, probably no more than fifteen, twenty seconds, but Dominic’s heart was pounding so much it caused his hand to jump and move the cursor across the screen.

More letters spilled out across the screen.

Dominic rested his fingers on the keys and, with an extreme effort of will, started to type.

Another pause. Then:

Dominic typed a word.

A name and a postcode flashed up. Dominic googled it and printed up a map.

He wondered if Monica would go through with the treatment. He knew by the way she glared at him from the bed that she would try and go through with it, whatever he said. There was the look of the old Monica in those eyes. Even though her head was embedded deep in the pillow, they seemed to glow with that old fire; that single-minded determination.

Dominic got in his car and off he went. The moment he got there, to Woolwich, he thought he had made a mistake. The car looked horribly conspicuous, parked alongside the carcasses of ruined shops with fly-posters on their boarded-up windows, like pennies on the eyes of the dead. He got out and made sure it was locked, clicking his keyfob off and on several times, making absolutely sure he saw the yellow flash from the lights. Even so, he looked back at it, as if sure he’d never see it again.

The pub was tucked behind a DIY warehouse, completely dwarfed by it. The only thing that could be seen out of the filthy windows was a sheer wall of corrugated metal and a gigantic logo of a criss-crossed hammer and spanner. The inside of the pub was tiny, crammed full of chipped furniture, faded chairs and tables, a darkened jukebox and a fruit machine that caught the light. He could see it was smeared with a thousand thumbprints.

The whole place was utterly filthy and he walked in like the worst kind of tourist, clutching his bag in both hands and hunching his shoulders, trying not to come into contact with any part of the insides. The only clean thing was the huge television on the wall which was showing American football. The television was very loud, swallowing up all the conversations. He went up to the bar, where an old fat woman stared at him with dead eyes.

‘Pint of…’ Dominic surveyed the brands, and he couldn’t find any he liked. ‘Lager, please.’

The woman got him a pint of something, pulling the pump low so she bent over and showed him a wizened cleavage, no bra. Ashamed, Dominic averted his eyes. She put his pint in front of him and he gave her a fiver and got his change. The whole transaction was conducted without a word.

‘Mr Wood?’

There was a man behind him. He was quite smartly dressed, in a full suit, white shirt and a pencil-thin tie. The only evidence that he belonged here, and not in the city, was a pair of muddy Doc Martens and a wispy beard that clung for dear life under his chin.

‘Hello?’ Dominic must have sounded taken aback, because the man looked uncertain.

‘Mr Wood. Yeah, It must be you, yeah. It’s you. It is you, guy. Yeah!’ He was persuading himself that Dominic was his contact, and by the end of his sentence he had convinced himself.

‘Nice to meet you in the flesh, Mr Wood. Drink?’

From the way he nodded to the bar, it was obvious the man was asking for one, not offering to buy one. Dominic got him a drink and they sat in the darkest corner, next to the dead fireplace.

‘Um… Nice to meet you too… Um…’

‘Arnie, Mr Wood.’

‘Arnie. As in Arnie Terminator.’

‘That’s it.’

‘I thought it was just a name you used. Your web name.’

‘Of course it is.’ He shook his head, like Dominic was an idiot. ‘I like to keep it simple. You carry on calling me Arnie and it stays nice and simple, don’t it?’

‘Fine.’

‘So. To business.’

‘Just to say, when I wrote all that stuff about gardening equipment, I didn’t mean garden equipment.’

‘Geddaway.’ Arnie’s sarcasm was thick and theatrical. ‘You were shitting me all along. I’ve got two sheds and a wheelbarrow in my boot, all ready to go.’

‘You know what I want to buy.’

His head bobbed low. ‘I
know
that, guy, I did get it. Fair play to you for finding my Yankee buddy on Facebook.’

‘Yes. Well I have connections. People who know stuff.’

‘Bully for you, guy, knowing stuff is very important. Well, he’s allowed to sell as much… garden furniture… he can lay his hands on. Lucky Yankees. Any Brit who enquires, he sends my way.’

Arnie’s eyes flicked from right to left and back again.

‘Now this is what we do, Mr Wood. I leave in five minutes, and you count slowly to twenty in your head – you can do that, right? And then you leave, and you take a left, a right, and a right, and you go to the red car with the Snoopy stuck to the car window. That’s my trademark, cos Snoopy looks out for the snoopers. Right? OK, we clear?’

He tried to get up to leave, but Dominic put his hand firmly on his shrunken fist.

‘Wait. I have to tell you why I need the gun.’

‘I don’t want to know, guy.’

‘I need to talk about it.’

‘Too much information.’

‘I have to tell someone. If I can’t tell anyone, then I’ll fall apart. If I fall apart then I won’t need the gun. Do you understand?’

‘OK, OK…’ Arnie shrugged and sat down again, glancing at his watch. ‘The meter is running. Tell me why you need the gun, professor.’

‘It’s my wife.’

Arnie raised his eyebrows as if to say ‘and?’

The words tumbled out of Dominic’s mouth, strange and alien. He couldn’t believe them even as he was saying them. ‘I can’t cope with her. She’s in a lot of pain, and she’s impossible to live with, and I thought I could cope with it but I can’t. And I know I shouldn’t hate her, but I do.’

‘Yeah, well, women, eh? Can’t live with ’em…’

‘The thing is, she’s not going to get any better. And I have to think of myself. I have to think of the life I want to lead. I’ve done everything I can for her. Everything. And I’ve got no hope left. I tried so hard. I searched so hard for a treatment to make things better.’

‘Right. OK. If it makes you feel better, we can call this a treatment, right, prof? You are just buying a “treatment” off me, and when you apply that “treatment”…’

Arnie aimed a finger at his head and cocked his thumb.

‘… she’s not going to feel any pain no more. So, good on you, mate. You’re doing the right thing. This is for her, right? For her own good.’

Dominic didn’t answer. Partly because he had tears in his eyes and his Adam’s apple had got wedged in his throat. ‘Huh,’ he sobbed at last. ‘This is how lonely I am. I’m confiding in my own arms dealer…’

‘Shh!’ Arnie waved his finger in front of his mouth, fanning spittle across the table. ‘Don’t be so facking obvious!’

Dominic pouted. ‘You’re the one who just put a finger to his head.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s different.’ Arnie didn’t explain how it was different. He crossed his arms and hunched over the table, eyes flicking to the television.

‘I sympathise, I do. I take my hat off to you, man, I really do, but… Look… I know I’m cutting my own throat by saying this… I mean, far be it from me to give a smart guy like you some advice, prof, but there are better ways to do shit like this… Guns can be messy… You know, you could… make it look like, y’know, a suicide…’

Dominic shook his head. ‘I can’t do that. There’s an insurance policy. A big one. She commits suicide and I won’t get a penny.’

‘Oh yeah, I get you. Now you’re making sense. But if some burglar was to break in and get surprised, and he got a bit trigger-happy…’

‘I can see you’re way ahead of me.’

‘Man, I was way ahead of you the moment you said “It’s my wife”.’

‘I have to think of myself. Of my life and my future, long term. It’s just sometimes we have to do things that – on their own – seem unpleasant, but you have to do them, for the bigger picture.’