Dead Money (13 page)

I wished I could be that calm. But then he'd had time to find his happy place. I broke away and went into the kitchen. I looked for a drink. I deserved one. There were some cheap piss-lagers in the fridge. In the cupboards, I found a bottle of no-brand vodka. I took a belt and leaned against the sink, closing my eyes against the bitter punch of heartburn. When it was over, I sucked my teeth dry and stared at the lino as I tried to figure out what to do.

I looked up to see Beale stood in the doorway, watching me. Staring at me with these stupid cow eyes like I was going to make everything better. I took the bottle to hand and another couple of swigs. I needed the burn in my chest otherwise I'd be screaming at him, and as much as I wanted to do that, I couldn't. I needed my hands to be numb and my limbs loose, or else I'd slam this bottle into his fat neck and keeping doing it until it smashed and tore his windpipe open.

I ran my tongue over my teeth and looked at the floor because I didn't dare look at him. "What happened?"

"You were right."

I raised my head, took another drink. "About what?"

He was shaking more than ever now, his belly heaving over his belt. "It was a set-up."

"Stevie did it?"

"Yuh-yeah." His voice stuttered out of him like a child's cough. I knew he was going to throw up, but I didn't move out of the way. He wanted to spew, he could do it on the floor.

"So?"

"I just ... You know me." An attempt at a smile.

"Les."

"I lost it. I'm so sorry."

"Where's the rest of them?"

"Gone."

"They all left before you did it?"

Beale nodded.

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Take me through it."

He started to say something, but his face crumpled into a bawling mess before he could get the second syllable out. I waited him out, drank some more. I could feel the booze kicking in, detaching me. It was the only way I could maintain focus. And what I focussed on now was Beale's repugnant piggish features contorted into a paroxysm of self-pity. He wasn't sorry he'd done it. He was just sorry he'd have to deal with the consequences.

"You know what, fuck it." I pushed away from the sink. "You don't want to tell me what happened—"

"I did."

"Beat by beat. You don't tell me that, you don't tell me
exactly
what happened here tonight, then I can't help you, can I? So what am I here for, then?"

"Please, Alan ..."

"Please Alan what? Please Alan come round and tell me it'll be alright? Fuck that, Les. I told you not to get involved with this, I fucking
warned
you and you didn't bother your arse to listen. So now I've got your undivided, old son, you better get this in your head – you're fucked. And I'm leaving."

I made a move. Made it halfway across the kitchen before something exploded in my face and I stumbled, legs out from under me, backwards. Hit the lower cupboards hard, ended up on my arse. My tailbone ached, my eyes streamed, and the throbbing pain and sticky top lip told me that Beale had just broken my nose.

I blinked back the water in my eyes. Looked up to see Beale rubbing his raw hand.

"I'm sorry, Alan."

Saying that so much, I wondered if he knew what it meant. I held one hand up to my nose, tipped my head back and blood leaked down the back of my throat instead of down the front of my shirt. My lip felt tight as the blood there began to congeal.

So this was it, my spot between the rock and the hard place. I could try and leave and get a good dose of what Stevie got, or I could stay here and help clean up a mess I didn't make. I reached up, blinked the water out of my eyes, grabbed a tea towel with a picture of a kitten on it and pushed it against my nose.

"I need help, Alan," he said.

"Yeah." The tea towel grew warm and wet in my hand. "I know you do."

13

Think like someone else. Think like someone who would know how to deal with an honest-to-God, dead-as-you-like, bleeding, stinking, already-stiffening corpse.

Nope. Nothing. Panic hit me like a heartbeat, threatened to freeze me to the spot, render me catatonic for the police when they inevitably arrived. Time to convert negative energy into something more positive, just like all the gurus said, even though I'd have bet my balls to a ha'penny they didn't have this situation in mind.

"How many more bin bags you got?"

Beale shrugged. "Another roll. I don't know."

"Find out. Bring as many as you can."

I told Beale we'd have to work fast if we were going to dump Stevie before day break. And we wanted to do that. Because if we didn't, then Stevie would be bunking at Beale's for the day, and once the central heating kicked in, he'd be stinking the place up by noon.

Beale chucked me another roll of bin liners and stood watching me. I could barely see him, my eyes already swollen from the broken nose. The bleeding might have stopped, but there were a couple of jumbo shiners in the post. And I saw enough to know that he was doing precisely bugger all to help.

"Snap out of it," I told him. "Come and help me."

I threw him some bin liners, ripped open some of my own and continued to wrap Stevie. A shallow grave was out of the question. Beale's garden was paved over, and neither of us had a shovel to hand. Plus, I had no idea where to stick him. There wasn't exactly an abundance of remote greenery around here.

So we had to wrap him and dump him. There was no other choice.

Beale laid the bin liners on the body.

"Fuck's sake, Les, what's that supposed to do?"

"What do you
want
me to do?"

I cracked out a length of parcel tape and ripped it off the roll with my teeth. "Grab his hands."

Beale didn't move. I was crouched over Stevie. There was a dark red gritty smear on the wall where his head had been. Now he was laid out on his back, face up. I waited for Beale to grab his hands, looked at him.

"I can't."

I held the strip of tape out in front of me. "What d'you mean?"

"I can't touch him."

"Didn't have much trouble touching him before. If you hadn't touched him in the first place, you wouldn't have to touch him now, would you?"

Someone had to be strong here. Someone had to be in control.

"Swear to God, Les, you don't grab his hands, you're on your own. I mean it."

Beale wasn't going to hit me again, not now. The fight had drained out of him. He crouched and looked down at Stevie and swallowed.

"All I need you to do is hold them in place while I tape them up, alright?"

He swallowed again. He touched Stevie's wrist. Then clenched his jaw and brought both of Stevie's wrists together. I moved in to twist the tape around them, binding them tight. The tape creaked and screeched as I wound it round, then tore it off with my teeth.

"Good. Now the ankles."

That was easier on Beale; he didn't have to touch skin.

With Stevie's ankles bound, I could afford a breather. I leaned back and wiped the grime from my forehead. I shook out one of the other bags and pulled it over Stevie's legs. I tossed another bag to Beale. "Over his head, as much as you can."

Beale did what he was told. The bag hung loose until I grabbed it and pulled it down. I taped up both of the bags, and ripped open a couple more.

"We need to lift him up. You take his shoulders, I'll take his legs."

On the count of three, we lifted, and I nudged the ripped bags underneath before we laid him back down.

"Alan—"

"Not long now, Les. Hang in there."

He didn't have much choice. We folded the plastic up over Stevie's waist and chest and I got to work with the rest of the parcel tape, cracking it tight over the bags. Every time I touched the carpet, my fingers brushed something wet. I hoped it was blood as opposed to where Stevie evacuated himself. Once the body was secure, or as good as, I stood, my knees giving it the snap, crackle and pop. I picked up the bottle of vodka between two fingers. I took a large swig, coughing a little but holding every last drop in. I couldn't afford to waste alcohol, didn't matter how much it hurt. My nose had started to kill me and my eyes were rapidly closing.

"Is that it?" asked Beale.

I looked behind me. As far as I could tell, it was still dark outside. Four in the morning, so I figured we'd have an hour or so before the sun came up. So we were good.

It was better now I couldn't see Stevie's face. It was better now I had a decent blood alcohol level. I was even daft enough to start thinking that we'd actually get away with it. A man only hit what he aimed at, after all.

I picked up the tea towel I'd used to stem my nosebleed and wiped my sticky hands on it before tossing it to one side. I nodded at the body. "Which d'you want, top or tails?"

"We're moving him?"

"You want to leave him here?"

Beale frowned. He looked slow. "How are we supposed to move him?"

"I thought we could use the power of our minds, Les."

He looked up.

"We pick him up," I said, "and we put him in the car." There was a brief stab of panic as I realised that we'd have to take my car. Beale's was boxed in and – with that fucked up paint job – memorable, and moving it would be more trouble than it was worth. We needed to be gone five minutes ago.

"What if people see?"

I took the bottle over to the window, tugged at one of the curtains. "Then we come back and kill them. I'm going to go and open the boot, okay? You get yourself sorted."

I went out the front. Rain spotted my cheek as I surveyed the distance from door to car. I walked quietly over to the car, opened the driver's side, threw in the bottle of vodka and opened the back door. There was no point in popping the boot. Stevie wasn't a dog, so we would've had to break something to fit him in there. The back seats would have to do. I took one last look around – no lights burning in this cul-de-sac – then I went back inside.

We flipped a coin to choose ends. True to my luck so far tonight, I got the heavier, smellier end. It took us a few seconds of gentle testing to get used to the weight, and Beale started wheezing almost as soon as we started moving. Hit a snag on the way out of the living room, me moving too quickly and Beale lagging behind, and Stevie got stuck in the doorway.

"Come on, Les."

Beale shook his head, leaned against the wall. I could feel Stevie slipping out of my hands. "I'm sorry, Alan. I can't do this. It's not fuckin' working."

I would've lost my rag with him if the door hadn't been open. "Pick him up."

"I can't."

"Pick him up right now."

Beale took on the look of a fat kid at sports day, his face crimson with exertion and emotion. Tears welled up in his eyes as he bent over and hauled up Stevie's bottom half. "Sorry."

We heaved the bundle out of the door and once we hit fresh air, Beale got his second wind. A few steps later, Stevie was in the back and I'd closed the door. I leaned against the roof of the car. "Okay, get in."