Crusher (13 page)

“Hey,” she said. “Got a light?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Don’t smoke.”

“So I can’t bum a cigarette, then?”

“Why do you need a light if you don’t have any cigarettes?” I said.

She pulled her hood back, shook her hair free, looked more closely at my face, and grimaced.

“Oh, shit,” she said. “It’s you.”

Last time we’d met Andy had claimed she was hogging the best seats in Max Snax and sent me to throw her out. What she was doing in my street at one o’clock this morning I had no idea, but rather than leave her there I invited her into my house, and she shrugged as if she didn’t care one way or the other. She came in all the
same, though, and now she stood in the middle of my living room, hugging her parka tightly around her.

“It’s colder in here than it is out there,” she said.

“I know. You want a hot drink?”

“Can’t you just turn the heating on?”

“Sure,” I said. I went to the boiler in the kitchen, flicked the switch and listened for the
tick tick whumph
. When I came back into the living room she was flicking idly through the window envelopes on the table addressed to my dad. I was pretty sure they were bills, and they’d been piling up for the last few days, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to open them. I’d never have made head nor tail of them anyway.

“My name’s Finn, by the way,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “I heard you might have some weed. Or some sniff.”

“Who told you that?”

“So do you or don’t you?”

“I have beer,” I said. “That’s it.”

“I’ll have a beer, then.” Still hugging her anorak about her, she let herself fall backwards onto the sofa. The fake leather creaked and farted as she sank into the clapped-out cushions. I didn’t move. She glanced up like she was wondering what was holding up her order, met my eye and looked away. “I’m Zoe,” she said in a small voice.

As I fetched the second-last can of beer from the fridge
I saw that if she asked for anything to eat I was stuffed. All the fridge held was half an onion wrapped in cling film and going mouldy, and an empty margarine tub. I really would have to resign myself to going shopping.

“So how’s business in the glamorous world of high-speed catering?” Zoe called from the other room. I returned and handed her the can.

“Same old. Sorry, all the glasses are dirty,” I said.

“Where are your parents?” she asked as she pulled back the tab and took a slug.

“My mother left a long time ago. My dad’s dead.”

“Really? Wish mine was.” Her childish bravado irritated me. She had no idea what it meant.

“He was murdered. A few days ago. Funeral’s on Monday.”

“Shit.” She looked embarrassed. I suspected that didn’t happen very often. “Sorry, I mean.” She took another swig. Now I felt childish, as if I’d been boasting.
My dad’s deader than yours
.

“I don’t work at Max Snax any more,” I said. “They fired me. I was actually glad, because I hated the bloody place, but I never had the bottle to quit.”

“So what are you doing now?”

“Washing pans in a restaurant.”

“Doesn’t exactly sound like a promotion.”

“Money’s better,” I said.

“Aren’t you having one?” She held up the can.

“I’m too knackered,” I said. “And I don’t drink that much anyway.”

“I should go,” she said. But she didn’t move.

“Aren’t your folks wondering where you are?”

“My dad doesn’t give a shit,” she said. “And the feeling’s mutual.”

“So where does he think you are?”

“At a friend’s.” She shrugged again. I wondered how bad things must be at home if she’d rather be sitting in the house of a total stranger with nobody knowing where she really was.

“What were you doing in Max Snax anyway?” I said. “At that time of the morning? Have you been excluded from school or something?”

“I was just bunking off. You don’t think I’d wear that shit-brown uniform if I didn’t have to? Why don’t you put some music on?”

“Hi-fi’s knackered.” I yawned.

She put the can down, as if she really meant to leave, but still didn’t get up off the sofa.

“Thanks for this,” she said. “I really should go.”

“Want me to call you a taxi?”

“No thanks. Don’t have enough money anyway.”

“What were you going to use to buy drugs from me?”

“Why do you have to ask so many bloody questions?”

“It’s my house,” I said.

“Use your fucking imagination,” she said. But she couldn’t meet my eye. She had the shameless slapper act off pat, but it was still an act.

“In that case, I’m really sorry I don’t have any weed,” I said. “What do I get for the beer?”

“Sparkling conversation.”

I laughed, and she joined in, and we sat there giggling like kids for a moment.

“Where are you planning to go?” I asked. “If you turn up at home this time of night, it’ll just make your dad more suspicious.”

The giggling evaporated. “What do you care?” she said. The tone of her voice made it sound like she said that a lot.

“You can crash here if you want,” I said. “On the sofa. I can leave the heating on for tonight, down low. There’s a spare quilt upstairs.” It was on Dad’s bed, but I wasn’t going to offer her his bed. I didn’t want her in his room, though I didn’t mind her downstairs. In fact, I had to admit, I quite liked her being there. I didn’t want to say so, though. I thought it’d sound lonely or lecherous or creepy, or all three, and I wasn’t any of those. Was I?

“No thanks,” she said, testing the sofa with her shoulder blades. “This thing’s all lumps. What’s it stuffed with, newspaper?”

“Suit yourself,” I said.

“Can’t I sleep in a bed?” She looked directly at me, with her head tilted slightly to one side. I was pretty sure she didn’t mean my dad’s bed. I was tempted, of course; you couldn’t make out much of her shape under that big parka and those jeans, but I remembered those legs from last week. Even the way she swigged beer from a can was distracting, and she had the face of a sulky, scolded angel. But I felt I was being taken for granted, and I didn’t like that. I could feel a serious objection building in the region of my crotch, but I overruled it.

“Take it or leave it,” I said.

“OK,” she said meekly. I wasn’t sure if she was relieved or offended.

“You want the quilt?” I said.

“Yes please.”

“What about a toothbrush?”

“Do I get a bedtime story as well?”

I snorted. She took the piss so well you couldn’t help but admire it.

Dad’s quilt was one of those cheap thick numbers as stiff and bulky as an inflated airbed, and I nearly tripped coming down the stairs because I couldn’t see over the bundle in my arms. Finally I staggered into the living room and dropped it onto an armchair. When I looked
up Zoe was wriggling out of her jeans. Her long legs were smooth and pale and I glimpsed a lacy thong under the tail of her T-shirt. I found myself wondering if her bra would match but she looked up and caught me staring, and flicked the hem of her T-shirt down so it covered her bum. I scratched my forehead as if trying to think of other bedding to bring her but really to disguise the fact I didn’t know where to look. It was a pretty crap disguise.

“I’ll leave early,” said Zoe. “That way I’ll be home before my dad wakes up. I really don’t need his shit right now.”

She pulled her hair back with both hands into a ponytail, arching her back. I couldn’t help noticing how the pose made her breasts stand out, and what truly fabulous breasts they were. She was doing it on purpose, I realized. It was like showing a quiz-show contestant the prize he could have won if he’d played his cards right. Now the objection from my trousers was so vigorous I could have pole-vaulted across the room. But the signals were all mixed up, and I liked her, and I didn’t want to blow this.

“There’s your quilt,” I said redundantly.

“Night.” She pulled it off the armchair, wrapped it around her and wriggled down into the sofa, punching
a threadbare cushion into a pillow. That mound must be the curve of her hips …

Christ, I thought, and headed for the stairs. “Sleep well,” I said. I switched the light off in the front room, left the light on over the stairs, and headed for the bathroom. I’ll skip the details, but I wasn’t in there long, and went to bed glad I hadn’t taken her up on her offer, if she’d been making an offer. She would have been seriously short-changed.

That day I’d been for a run, visited my dad’s body at the undertakers, followed Elsa Kendrick home and worked a seven-hour shift on my feet at the Iron Bridge, and still I couldn’t sleep. Today two different women had propositioned me. Or sort of had. For the best part of a year I’d been wearing the beige polyester uniform of Max Snax, a passion-killer more effective than leprosy, and in that time no woman had even checked me out, that I’d noticed. Before that I’d never had a girlfriend for longer than six weeks. Boxing and running and working, I didn’t get to meet many girls, and I didn’t go out of my way to find any. Yeah, Trudy in the kitchen of Max Snax used to grab me when I walked past, but she was a round, cheerful woman of indeterminate age who would grope anything, including sacks of potatoes.

I’d lost my virginity at fourteen when I was high on something, or drink, or both, to a girl with long fair hair and a bored expression. I was the third of four guys in a queue. She was legal, just about, but it wasn’t an experience I looked back on for inspiration. But I once heard some guy on the radio talking about how after his wife had died all these women descended on him to offer solace, usually physical. I couldn’t remember if he’d taken any of them up on it—maybe he was too polite to say—but I found myself wondering if the same thing happened to guys who had lost their fathers. I wished I could talk to Dad about it, and then I remembered he’d gone, and I’d never be able to talk to him again about anything, unless you counted prayer. I wasn’t sure if I did count prayer but I was damn sure he didn’t. He used to call it “talking to your invisible friend.” Even if I did try praying to him, and he could hear me wherever he was, he’d pretend not to, just to be proved right. That thought made me smile.

Dad, why are these women chucking themselves at me? I could imagine him snorting. Well then, why do I
think
they’re chucking themselves at me?
They’re like buses
, Dad would have said.
Nothing for ages and then three come along at once
. Typical of him, stupid gags and no answers. I thought about it some more, without referring it to my dad. Maybe they wanted something.
Maybe just a shoulder to cry on, or someone to listen to them.
That’s what your mother used to say
, a voice that might have been Dad’s piped up.
All any woman wants is for you to listen
. Maybe, I thought. But why do they want
me
to listen to them?

I didn’t hear her leave; in the morning the quilt was neatly rolled—or as neatly as it could be rolled—and left on the sofa. She’d scribbled something on the back of one of the unopened bills with a red pen. Her handwriting was so bad the letters wriggled and swapped places without my messed-up brain having anything to do with it. Eventually I worked the message out, though.

According to the movie
Raging Bull
—a favourite at Delroy’s gym—Jake La Motta the boxer used to get his wife to work him up into a sexual frenzy before a fight and then pour ice down his shorts. The theory was that he’d work out his frustration in the ring. I finished my run so fast that morning I was back shortly before I left. I went into my press-ups and curls, trying to think about anything except Zoe wearing not much but a T-shirt, even if that meant worrying about money instead.

If this new job lasted I wouldn’t have to worry, I thought. I’d never worked evenings before, apart from the few times I’d done a double shift at Max Snax and come home too wrecked and smelly to train properly. Evening shifts—especially ones that paid as well as last night—would suit me a lot better. After the boxing club had closed down I’d never known what to do with
myself in the evenings anyway. Telly was mostly crap, going to the cinema cost money, and reading had never been my favourite pastime.

Then it occurred to me that the job couldn’t last. If it didn’t take me closer to the truth about who killed my dad, I’d just have been taking favours from McGovern. And although I’d saved his kid’s life and all, it probably wasn’t a good long-term strategy to be in any sort of relationship with McGovern, or even appear on his radar.

I was on my sixth set of curls, the burn blazing hard in my abs, when the doorbell buzzed. A brief hope flared it might be Zoe, but I smothered it immediately—I’d probably never see her again—and deliberately took my time opening the door.

DS Amobi stood there modelling the latest smart-casual look for the ambitious urban police officer. Another man stood at his shoulder in the standard-issue blue suit and beige mac TV detectives always wear and hardly anyone ever does in real life. His bland face was hard to place … Of course, it was Jenkins, the DC who’d attended the inquest.

“Mr. Maguire,” said Amobi, “we wondered if you could spare a few moments?”

“Here, or down the nick?” I said.

“Here is fine,” said Amobi. “It’s just a routine call, a
progress report on the course of our investigation.” Jenkins stood there like a shop-window mannequin sent to make up the numbers.

I looked down the path. “Where’s Prendergast?”

“DI Prendergast has several other cases to supervise,” said Amobi smoothly.

“Do you have any progress to report?” I said.

“Would it be possible for us to come in?” If he’d bowed Amobi couldn’t have appeared more eager-to-please and amenable. He seemed to be the new breed of copper, well-versed in PR, devoid of the second-hand swagger younger cops unconsciously learn off the older hands. It made him that much more dangerous and hard to read.

I stood back and held the door open. They entered, Jenkins nearly colliding with Amobi’s back when the senior officer stopped to wipe his feet. From the look of Amobi’s shoes my mat probably left his soles dirtier than they were to begin with. Amobi moved inside and Jenkins wiped his feet in turn, but without much enthusiasm.