Black Teeth (27 page)

‘
Even if there was no money
…'

Those blue eyes hold on me, screwing their conviction into my head.

And it does occur to me that what I'm about to do is sabotage everything. Everything. My arrangement with Tyan. My
relationship
with Tyan. All it would take is for Beth to go to Rudy and it's bombs away…

‘There is no insurance,' I say, looking to each of her ears quickly, then her eyes. ‘Rudy believes it, but it's all made up. I made it up.'

44

Her eyes shrink in half. Something seems to happen in her mouth.

‘Bullshit.'

‘That's how I met Rudy. On Friday. I was pretending to sell him insurance. And he bought it because he doesn't know any better. It's not real. It's pretend. It's what I did to get close to him.'

Her head shakes. I'm not sure if she knows it's shaking. She laughs. I've just revealed myself to be the Great Satan.

‘No way. I saw it. The contract. Fortunate Insurance.'

‘Printed off their website.' I point to her laptop. ‘I can show you if you like.'

‘Come on, there's—'

She cuts herself off, looks around the room for the third umpire, finds only white walls.
There's what?
No way Rudy would fall for that? No way
she
would fall for it?

‘Didn't you notice it was stamped with tomato sauce?'

‘I…' She gazes at the ceiling. ‘There was a name on it. Anthony Halloway. Anthony Halloway from Fortunate Insurance.'

‘Rudy thinks that's me.'

Beth reels, away from the door and into the kitchen. White hands take hold of the laminate counter and her head sinks below her shoulders.

‘You're saying there's no policy.'

I want to comfort her, stop myself from wanting that.

‘None at all.'

She's stuck in that hunched position.

I pick up my tea, not because I'm thirsty but because accepting her hospitality is about all I can do for her.

‘You…' She trails off. Then she sighs like she's stuck on a crossword question. Head gently wobbles.

After several seconds I take another hit of tea and then I figure she's waiting for me to leave. With one more glance to her motionless frame, lit by the naked globe that hangs above her and her long, slow breaths, I leave and shut the door gently.

Plodding down the stairs it occurs to me that Beth knows everything now. After all this lying and sneaking, she is
in the loop
. Except she doesn't know about my special relationship with my client. She doesn't know just how I'm getting paid.

Outside it's as cold as I'd expected and in the shadow of the driveway it is darker. I bury my hands in my pockets and shuffle toward the gate.

The first bottle hits. On the concrete to my right.

‘Fuck
yooooooo
.' A torrid shriek.

She's out on her balcony, just a shadow two storeys up and I barely recognise the voice, see she's holding a beer bottle. It winks at me in preparation.

‘Fuck
yooo
. Ya lying piece a
shite
!'

She lets fly and I have to duck. It breaks into angry pieces across the concrete and scatters among the council bins. From such a height she gives these missiles phenomenal velocity.

‘Ya
cunt
, ya!'

Despite the danger I have to stop, perfectly still and facing her. Not to show her my defiance, but to be sure I'm hearing her correctly.

‘Ye gote a
tiny fuckin wully
,' she announces to the other flats and houses, or at least, what proportion of them can understand words screamed in such a solid Scottish brogue. ‘Jason Ginaff 's gote a
tiny pencil dick
!'

It's surprising. Not that she's unimpressed with me, but that she's willing to end things so bitterly.

I don't see her launch the next bottle. It crashes against the gate behind me and I flinch, cower, raise my hands because there might be more I can't see.

‘Ye fuckin lying
cunt
!'

My defiance evaporates. I hurry to the gate, crushing glass beneath my shoes and I almost trip on the knob of a bottle end but I make it and lurch through the wooden shield and shut it closed even as another bottlesmash pierces the quiet and raindrops of stinking glass crackle inches from my head.

I'm safe. For good measure, I run.

45

All the way to Tyan's house, I'm managing the heartbreak. Though, to be clear, you feel this sort of thing in your stomach. Acidic and squirming like an alien pregnancy, sired by that alien voice, so jarring against a backdrop of eucalypts and southern stars. Tyan's angry words come back to me:
Who is Elizabeth Cannon?

All the way to Tyan's house, I'm wondering what will happen. She might go to Rudy and tell him I'm a fake. Either by full-frontal confession, including how we slept together, or, more likely, by way of an elaborate fiction that few people would believe but one of those people is Rudy.

On the other hand, she doesn't want me counter-confessing: telling Rudy that she's a fraud, that she only came clean with him because the insurance is a fraud. That she seduced me, and she did that so as to nudge along Rudy's impending suicide mission.

All the way to Tyan's house, I consider telling this to Tyan. Beth is officially a wildcard now, and he'd want to know about that. But it would mean telling him I outlined our plan to a third party. He wouldn't like that. I resolve not to tell him.

It's almost ten when I pull up on Suttle Street and Tyan's Kia sedan is there in the driveway but no lights burn inside the house. Ringing the doorbell doesn't alter that and after I ring again I still get nothing. My next option is to go round the back and I stomp my feet all the way, partly because it's cold, partly so Tyan doesn't think I'm Rudy sneaking up on him.

At the end of the drive is a garage door and a stone path that
breaks right between another shed and the back of the house. It ends with an arched entry to a small enclosure and I see nothing but black within. Beyond the garage is a grey lawn that demonstrates the size of Tyan's block and culminates in a garden bed I can barely make out for the darkness.

I stomp along the path to the patio, find myself among pot plants and creepers lit only by the moon and my phone. Tyan's back door glowers like a monolith, its surface a ratty kind of tin that shudders as I try the handle, then rap against it.

‘Tyan!'

If Rudy has come tonight, if he felt hurried by our altercation yesterday and caught Tyan off guard and somehow overpowered him and right now Tyan is learning the true meaning of hubris, then this door would be open and unlocked, right?

Then again, no one is answering.

At first, I only lift up the doormat out of curiosity: this is where Rudy said he found a key. If he has come, if I'm too late to stop him, then it might not be here.

It's here, amid the patterns of dirt you find under doormats that haven't been moved for decades. I realise I can go inside and check that everything is okay. It's running the gauntlet, the gauntlet being a twitchy Glen Tyan with a gun. But we have to talk.

I unlock the door, hold the key with my shirt so as not to leave a print, return it to its nest under the mat and step inside yelling, ‘Tyan! It's me, Jason!'

My makeshift flashlight reveals a vestibule, cobwebbed work boots and waxy sneakers. Boards creak and thunk beneath me as I make my way to the next door.

‘Tyan!' I yell again, knock.

No answer.

The handle turns and I pull on the door with the flesh of my pinkie, feel the reek of cigarettes slap my face, catch sight of the sink and then a barren kitchen counter. I'm about to step through when I realise where I am.

My stomach flips. Can't help a gasp.

Bending down, pointing my phone at my feet, I see nothing. It
doesn't seem to be there, which is how fine it is, because then I make out where it's tied to the nail in the doorframe.

‘Better watch out,' a dry voice says from the dark.

I shudder back, frightened twice over.

‘Hello?'

A long sigh in reply.

‘Didn't you hear me knock?'

‘Yep,' he grunts. ‘Wanted to see if you'd…you'd trip it.'

I lean gently through the door and my phone reveals a thick haze of tobacco smoke and Tyan sitting at the kitchen table, grinning sleepy-eyed, a bottle of something and a glass tumbler before him.

‘Come on, then.'

I step over where I think the line is and hope for the best. The green shine box is there, ominous like the home of his pet tarantula, though the weapon within supposedly only shoots blanks.

‘You know, if Rudy sets this thing off on Friday, he'll just turn and run.'

‘Yeah, yeah,' Tyan says, already impatient. ‘I'll pack it into the corner. It's fiddly, so I haven't…haven't done it yet. Shut the door.'

‘Can I turn a light on?'

‘Over there, the hall switch.'

He means the switch on the other side of the room. I edge my way over and it lights up the hallway, provides a quantum of light for the kitchen.

It's whisky. The bottle on the table.

‘You're just sitting in the dark, drinking?'

Another equivocating grunt.

‘You know what they say. If you're thirsty then it's too late!' Tyan cackles to himself then bellows: ‘Sit down!'

Tyan quickly interprets my hesitation and says, ‘I'm not drunk. I'm not drunk.' He says it twice, which means he's drunk.

I pull out one of the ancient vinyl seats and lean on the table as I drop down.

‘I came to tell you that I've changed my mind. I'm in. With Rudy…I mean…' I search my words. ‘Taking out Rudy, like you said this morning. I agree.'

‘Mmmm,' Tyan groans. It's possible he doesn't remember our conversation this morning.

‘But I want to be clear…I'm only agreeing to this because it was Rudy who killed his mother, not Piers.'

Tyan groans again. ‘That's bullshit.'

‘Did you know he'd threatened to kill her, three days before she died?'

He doesn't respond. Maybe he's trying to remember.

‘It's the only scenario that makes sense. He killed her and hid the vase in Piers's workshop and that's why you found it there.'

‘He was a fucking kid—'

‘Which is why you didn't suspect him.'

‘Fuck me,' he says, goes to speak, belches, continues: ‘Why the fuck would he be sore at me if he's the one who fucking…fucking…'

‘Because he's nuts. It's how he hides from himself what really happened.'

‘There's a reason they call me the Polygraph, you know.' I register his use of the present tense. ‘Piers lied from the word go. Fucking… lied about everything. It was obvious. Believe me, mate…' He leans forward theatrically, head wobbling. ‘I know what cunts look like when they're guilty.'

‘I don't want to argue,' I say, reeling from the stink of booze. ‘I'm just saying, he killed his mum. So I guess I don't feel sorry for him like I did before.'

Tyan pours himself another generous shot and declares:

‘What a load of old cobblers.'

He drinks, wipes his mouth and says, ‘Now listen. I want to tell you something.'

‘Yeah?'

‘Did you bring cigarettes?'

As if that's something I might do.

‘No. Sorry.'

Tyan thinks on this.

‘Fucking…' He touches his pockets like he's looking for his wallet. ‘Nothing's open now, I suppose.'

‘What did you want to tell me?'

Tyan hums with confusion, then appears to remember. ‘Right. Yeah. I'm telling you this because…I'm just telling you.'

‘Okay.'

‘This is fucking ages ago.'

‘Okay.'

‘There was…You know Malcolm Lau?'

‘No.'

‘You remember him?'

‘No.'

‘Good. It's good you don't remember. He was a paedophile. A real fucking…Anyway, he was on the news.'

Tyan drinks again. I wonder if this is going to be a long story.

‘He had a trial. In two thousand aaaaaaand…' Tyan jolts his head forward, as if trying to fling the memory to the front of his brain, ‘…three?'

‘Okay.'

‘And the trial…He didn't go down. He was up on these…indecent act with a minor, these…It was fucking…He was a nonce. A disgusting bastard. You need to remember that.'

I say nothing now. Tyan doesn't need encouragement.

‘And he had this scar on his belly. And the victim, who fucking got up in court, and that is fucking hard to do…This kid's fucking twelve and gets up there in front of everyone and says that the bloke who assaulted him had a scar on his belly. And then Malcolm got up in the box, and he showed the court the scar on his…here, on his stomach,' Tyan points to his appendix, jabbing himself hard with a finger. ‘Here. And he
still
got off. Fucking bullshit.'

Tyan slumps on the table. In other circumstances, he would slump like this because he's exhausted. Tonight, he's just getting comfortable.

‘Now I used to drink a lot. As in, a lot.
Farts
stunk of booze. And the Lau case wasn't mine, I never worked in…fucking…not sex crimes. But he got off and I was, I dunno. I was tight as fucking…of course I was…Right?'

‘Sure.'

‘So what would you do?'

‘What would I
do
?'

‘Yep.'

‘If I was…drunk?'

This seems to frustrate him and he waves at the air, or maybe at me.

‘I found out his home…home address. I looked it up. I got his LEAP file. I got his address.'

‘Right.'

‘And I went there.'

‘Right.'

‘And I shot him.'

46

All of a sudden we're drenched in light. I flinch and raise a hand in protection, but Tyan doesn't move. He grunts. It's only the light from a small window in the house next door, but it comes on like a Nazi spotlight compared with the darkness before.