Why We Die (12 page)

So there was little point clinging to the safe side of everything. Survival was a lifetime project, and bound to fail in the long run. Most things had sharp edges, if you used them wrong. Machines were unreliable. People turned nasty, sometimes first chance they got – look at Bob Poland. Even children couldn’t be trusted; were basically walking germ factories, primed for use inside forty-five minutes. And even here, even now, some idiot was leaving a service station with his door not properly closed. Zoë tooted him, then put him out of mind.

She was heading for Totnes, because that was where Price’s thugs hailed from.

‘Tell me about them,’ she’d said last night to Win.

‘It’s not like we’re best mates. I generally wait in the car.’

‘But you met them?’

‘Once or twice. Talked to one of them. If the others are madder than him, I’m happy we’re strangers.’

‘And he’d be . . .?’

‘Arkle.’

‘What’s his first name?’

‘Arkle,’ Win said. ‘What you have to understand is, they’re not your average family.’

She stopped and bought a sandwich in a layby. Of the other customers, the lorry driver was obvious (he had a lorry); salesmen were never difficult to pin down, and the youngish guy, who was tall and acne-splashed, and wore jeans with a blue/white check that had probably looked good in the shop, was definitely a student. That established, she paid them no attention. Zoë was not paranoid, exactly. But she liked to know who was closest at any given moment.

Technically, she reminded herself, she didn’t have to be here. All she had to do was give Sweeney the names, and then all he had to do was give her five grand. Already, she was thinking of it as her money . . .

Win had said: ‘Their old man ran this gravel merchant’s. Been in the family for generations kind of thing. You think there’s money in that?’

‘Probably.’ Unless you were rubbish, of course, though that was pretty much the universal rubric.

‘Except old man Dunstan – that was his name – didn’t have children. So his firm was going down the tubes, as far as the family bit was concerned. Do you have kids?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Zoë said. ‘Price told you this, did he?’

‘Some nights he likes to talk.’ Zoë must have signalled a false understanding, because Win added: ‘In the car, coming home from wherever. Business trips. Says he doesn’t want me dozing off at the wheel.’

‘I can see how that might spoil his evening,’ Zoë agreed. ‘And he talks about these Dunstans?’

‘He likes to think he’s an expert on human nature,’ said Win. ‘Most men think that, don’t they?’

There were probably a couple of realists out there as confused as everybody else, but it was kind of rare to hear it admitted.

‘So anyway, he adopted three boys. To be the sons in Dunstan & Sons. If you can’t beat ’em, fake it, sort of thing.’

‘And one was called Arkle?’

‘Arkle, Baxter and Trent. What he did was, he kept their actual surnames, only he stuck his own on the end.’

‘That’s cold.’

Win shrugged. ‘What I’ve seen of Arkle, it could be arctic, he’d not notice. My boss breaks the law, okay. But he does it for the money.’

‘Whereas Arkle does it for kicks.’

‘Arkle does it because it’s what he does. And if it’s what he’s doing, why should anybody stop him?’

A law unto himself. They were the hardest kind to break.

Zoë said, ‘Sounds like old man Dunstan made some unwise choices on his one-stop shop for progeny.’

‘They weren’t babies when he took them on. They’d been kicked round various foster homes, and God knows what. You hear stories, don’t you?’ Win finished her tea. The cup looked ridiculously small in her hand. ‘The old man died last year. They folded the business about five minutes later. They still use the place, though. There’s an office, like on a building site? One of those cabins, up on scaffolding.’

Dunstan & Sons. A gravel merchant’s. It didn’t sound hard to find.

It had been late when Zoë got home, and the drive from London had left her cross. She ate a half-hearted sandwich, drank a large glass of wine, and went to bed, to be woken half an hour later by a talentless yoyo in the house opposite, murdering an electric guitar. Broken sleep was irreparable in Zoë’s world, so she left her bed, poured more wine, fired up the Internet. She found no mention of Dunstan &Sons. What she did find was a street map of Totnes, which she printed. It was handy when decisions were reached with no conscious effort needing to be made.

After that she shut everything down and sat in the dark for a while, waiting in vain for her brain to stop churning. Random thoughts were their own special torture; circulating endlessly, arriving nowhere.
Contents under pressure
: we should have that tattooed on our foreheads at puberty. Zoë must have slept at last, curled on the sofa, because that’s where she was when she woke.

She drank coffee, showered and dressed, catching herself in the mirror halfway through: black pants, white bra – zebra underwear: something Joe said twenty years before. It was strange how such fragments kept recurring, like shrapnel working its way to the body’s surface years after the wound had apparently healed.

In the car, it occurred to her that it was her last day for use of the Beetle – another reason, if she needed one, for heading off to Totnes now.

Other people’s accidents and sandwich stops apart, she was there before she knew it.

It was a bright day, not long past morning, and the sun caught glass everywhere she looked. To establish her bearings, Zoë headed up the High Street; found herself having one of those near-bodiless experiences in which every detail is brilliant and every surface shines. The wheels on a passing pushchair. The multi-coloured frames on a teenager’s shades. When she crossed the road to examine a bookshop window, and had to wait for a van to pass first, she could have sworn she saw the driver’s eyes flash – a shaven-headed man with a smile tight as a shark’s.

The books were all hardbacked; their titles embossed and glittering. Even as she read them the sun slipped behind cover, and the words faded to drab, cluttered cliché.

Zoë checked her map, though she was good at holding streets in her head. She knew where she was, and where she needed to go. Heading back down the hill, she passed an alternative grocer’s, whose noticeboard she paused to browse: ‘Bleed beautifully with hand-crafted moon pads.’ A surprisingly tasteful illustration went with that. And, ‘Rediscover the traditional art of ear-coning, under a trained therapist.’ What? When she’d finished, she moved on, replaying in her head the rest of her conversation with Win: ‘Where did Price find them anyway, if they live in the West Country?’

‘He met Arkle in a Soho club.’

Chains and chokers, Zoë thought. Women leashed or leashing.

But Win said, ‘Not Arkle’s usual stamping ground. He hasn’t much use for women, and I don’t think he drinks.’

‘Obvious place to hang out, then.’

‘There was a reason he was there, but I don’t remember. Oz – my boss says he knew straight off he’d found talent.’

‘But you think he bit off more than he can chew?’

‘I don’t think it’s him doing the chewing. Arkle’s got a look to him, like everybody else is a victim. They just don’t know it yet.’

‘Your boss is hardly an innocent though, is he?’

‘We’re not going there.’

And Zoë supposed she knew what Win meant by this; knew, anyway, not to go poking it with a stick. Love took different forms, and one of them obviously dressed in black leather, and looked like a fairground attraction.

‘What about the other pair?’

‘Trent’s the runt of the litter. Drinks. Doesn’t look much, but probably vicious when cornered.’

‘I know the type.’

‘And Baxter’s the brains. Part West Indian by the look, and handsome with it.’ She glanced away from Zoë, momentarily distracted.

‘But looks aren’t everything.’

‘I’ve never spoken to him. Watched him on their cabin landing once, making a phone call. What’s that stuff, supposed to be really hard? They make statues from it.’

‘Obsidian?’ Zoë guessed.

‘Might be. Anyway, that’s him. Hard as . . . whatever. I think he could be cruel if he wanted.’

‘His gang robs jewellery stores. They fire crossbows at passers-by,’ Zoë reminded her. ‘I doubt the RSPCA’s planning on canonizing him any time soon.’

‘I just meant he’s not somebody I’d want to know better.’ Win picked a paper napkin from the table and carefully began shredding it. ‘So what do you do next?’

‘Me? I pass this on to my client. All he needs are the names.’

‘And he tells my boss, who realizes the Dunstans are blown. So he distances himself from them.’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘He – Price, he’s not going to like it when your client suggests he retrieve the gear. He can hardly tell him he’s already got it.’

‘Do I care? They’re all crooks, Win, Sweeney included. On the scale of things, he’s paddling down the shallow end, but the stuff the Dunstans took from him was stolen in the first place. And the only reason your boss knew Sweeney had it was, he’s a fence himself. This way, Price may lose a little capital, but he gets to understand the Dunstans are bad news. If he cuts them loose, he’s ahead of the game.’

‘He’ll probably tell Sweeney it’s not his problem.’

‘Then Sweeney learns a hard lesson. But I still get paid.’

‘And what about the Dunstans?’

‘What about them?’ Zoë agreed.

‘You think, if my boss ditches them, they’ll head back to the straight and narrow? Back into the cement business?’

‘Stories I’ve heard, the cement business is anything but.’

‘That’s not what I’m asking.’

‘I know.’ Zoë looked around the café. They were the only customers, and the staff were getting edgy: sweeping corners, stacking plates. The evening light had a silvery shade. She looked back at Win. ‘Maybe I’ll have a word with whoever’s investigating the Oxford end. Not that I’m Miss Popularity there.’

Win didn’t nod; didn’t say anything.

‘What?’

‘You don’t seem the type to let them get away with it, that’s all.’

‘How would you know what type I am?’

‘That thing with the scissors? That was pretty cool.’

‘Are you trying to play me, Win?’

Win shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter to me. And all you want is to get paid, right?’

‘If I’m looking for the moral high ground . . .’

‘You’ll what?’

I won’t look for the space occupied by a thieving fence’s gopher, Zoë didn’t say. She fished in her pocket for a note to pay the bill. ‘If you’re that concerned, there’s a payphone in the corner. Maybe you could call the cops yourself.’ She’d have thrown Win a coin, if that hadn’t been a Bob Poland trick.

Win laughed: a high-pitched, strangely airless laugh. It was like listening to Minnie Mouse choke on a fishbone. ‘You think that’s what I’m after? You have your slow moments, Zoë.’

‘Yeah, right. Tell me, Win, does your boss get to hear about this? Or does it stay between us girls?’

‘What does?’

‘This idea you’ve got to rip the Dunstans off.’

A sudden gust of wind rattled the window. Win smiled a long slow smile.

Zoë crossed the square at the foot of the hill; double-checked the map in her head, and headed off into narrower backstreets. Most towns were the same at heart: rivers and brick; war memorials, clocktowers. She almost felt at home here, the way she almost did where she lived, and might have described this next street before turning into it: the row of narrow terraced houses with tiny front yards leading down to basements; the high wall on the opposite side with wooden gates set into it: a wall that hinted at industrial machinery behind. The gates didn’t open often. This wasn’t intuition so much as the rust on the padlock binding them shut. There was a small door in the left-hand gate. And parked on the kerb opposite was a van she recognized, though it took a moment to work out why –
a shaven-headed man with a smile tight as a shark’s
. It had passed her as she walked through town. She’d seen the driver’s teeth.

Looking at it more closely, she could make out painted-over writing on the side.
Dunstan & Sons
.

So: that would be Arkle.

From here, she could see the cabin in the sky; a tin box perched on scaffolding, its windows blank squares. Zoë guessed they were meshed over, easier to see out of than into, and if Arkle were up there he might be wondering what she was staring at. She crossed into the lee of the wall, and walked the length of the road and back. There was nobody around, though she could hear voices inside the yard. The sign above the gate also read
Dunstan & Sons
, written as imitation scrollwork, as if in invitation to posterity. Zoë stopped and crouched where the gate hinged to the wall; looked through the gap into the yard, where a man in white jeans and black jacket stood, caught in the act of raising an arm as if to fend off a projectile. When she shifted focus she saw Arkle was there too, and even as she watched he fired the crossbow he held.

iv

What he liked was the sound of the bolt hitting home. Wood was good. Glass, too: a bolt could punch through glass with a noise like somebody opening a coke can. Metal was noisier, but had less stopping power than you’d think. Arkle had once spent an afternoon taking potshots at an abandoned car, and found few points outside the engine block the bolt couldn’t carry straight through. Flesh was a whole other story. It didn’t make a noise that compared to any other kind. On the other hand, it didn’t offer much resistance either.

He fired and the bolt whipped past Whitby, and buried itself in the wooden upright behind him. The margin was a couple of inches, which it seemed Whitby thought way too narrow because he went white, and looked ready to puke.

‘I hardly ever miss what I’m aiming at,’ Arkle said.

Whitby didn’t say anything.

‘Course, I sometimes hit other things too. If they’re in the way.’

Back at Kay’s dad’s, Arkle thought he’d found a prowler: someone nobody was going to get upset about when Arkle bounced him round the garden. But then the guy said he’d come looking for Katrina, and Arkle had backpedalled, let go of him; had even dusted him down, though he’d barely dusted him up yet. ‘Katrina?’