Flu (13 page)

    "No, it's not like that at all," Karen protested.

    Pat simply smiled, looking back at his book. Why the hell it was so interesting, Karen didn't know. She squinted to read the title. It seemed to be some crime novel of some sort. Of no interest, whatsoever, to a girl like her.

    In days gone by, Karen's main literary diet had consisted of a couple of magazines that she picked up at her local Christian bookshop or church, as well as the various trashy magazines that the newsagent stocked. She couldn't remember the last book she'd actually read. She remembered studying a few novels and poetry books in school, but she had never actually read for pleasure. Her friend had once lent her some 'chick lit' book - something about a young marketing executive in Dublin, or something. She had managed to get through about eight chapters or so of it, before deciding it was a little bit too steamy for a girl like her and politely returning it.

    Karen got up from the sofa and walked to the window of the living room-cum-kitchen, a journey she had already travelled about seventeen times that day. She sighed again, this time not checking to see whether Pat had clocked it or not. This one was natural.

    Looking down, her eyes met an all-too-familiar sight. There they were… The dead, as she and Pat referred to them. Ten floors down, they looked like the little action figures her brother used to play with when he was a lad. Loose-limbed and awkwardly posed. Every now and then, they'd move. Shuffling about, as if controlled by some drunken puppeteer. She hated them, all of a sudden. She hated every last one of them. She wished that some great big bomb could be used to wipe them all out, just like in the movies. She pondered asking Pat if he knew of such a bomb, but immediately decided not to. It was a stupid question, and she knew it. Born out of boredom, alone. Immature and scantily thought through. The kind of question that a man like Pat would laugh off, at best, or frown over, at worst.

    "I need to get outside," she said suddenly, without even realising she'd said it out loud. She looked towards Pat, gingerly.

    Pat looked over his glasses again, book still in hand, tea cup still at the ready.

    "Seriously," she persisted, "I'm going mad in here."

    "Well," said Pat, "you know why you can't go out." His voice was patronising. It wasn't dissimilar to the kind of voice that a young mother would use to tell a toddler off. It frustrated the hell out of Karen, and she felt her face reddening with rage.

    "I DO know," she said, suddenly animated, "I'm not stupid!"

    "Well, then, don't act -"

    "Just shut up!" she shouted, looking at him sternly. "I'm sick of being patronised all of the time! I'm sick of being the stupid little girl, the… the naive one, here!" She beat upon her chest in complete frustration. "I've been practising shooting every day. I saved your life that time, remember?!"

    "Yes, of course I remember," Pat replied, calmly. He still held his book aloft, as if planning on returning to read it once this little 'tantrum' was all sorted out. "But, I don't think any of that means you can safely leave the building."

    "I know," Karen said, dejectedly, suddenly calm again. She returned to the sofa, setting herself down.

    "And with all the food and stuff we have from the other flats -"

    "I know!" stressed Karen, frustrated by Pat's common sense and annoyingly calm resolve. "I'm just bored and really claustrophobic, that's all."

    She sighed loudly, looking over to Pat. He had returned to his book, contentedly reading as if it were a Sunday afternoon. Moments passed as she watched him read the way a dog would watch someone eat. She tried to will guilt onto him, force it down his throat with her tireless, melancholic gaze. She noticed him look up, clock her staring at him, then look back to the book.

    She sighed again, this time even louder than before. Pat looked back at her, shaking his head and smiling when he noticed her still looking at him. She was trying to do her best puppy eyes.

    "Wait there one second," Pat said, a resigned look drawing across his face. He removed his glasses, only used for reading, setting them on the side of the chair. He disappeared into the hallway, where Karen could hear him fumbling in the pockets of his coat. It reminded her of her grandfather, how he would fumble in his pockets for change whenever she had wanted a comic or some sweets. Eventually Pat reappeared, smiling. "Follow me," he said simply.

    Karen paused, suspiciously looking at him like a girl awaiting a birthday surprise.

    "Come on," he said, seeming quite upbeat for a man like him. "Seriously, you won't want to miss this."

    Karen got up, following him towards the door of the flat. They exited into the main corridor of the tenth floor, moving along towards the stairwell. The corridors were getting dirty, grimy, and she made a mental note to clean them at some stage. That would pass the time, if nothing else. They climbed until they reached the top floor of the tower block. A maintenance door could be seen, at the opposite end. Karen had never had any reason to wonder what or where the maintenance door opened onto, but she was about to find out.

    Pat tried a couple of keys in the lock before finding the one he needed. He opened the door into a small, dark storeroom. He proceeded through, looking back towards Karen.

    "Come on, it's safe," he said, smiling mischievously at her as if they were doing something wrong. He reminded her, suddenly, of her brother when she had been young. He was always leading her to forbidden places. Big houses with long, winding gardens and foreboding gates. Quarries with steep, treasure-laden cliffs. Anywhere there was a 'No Trespassing' sign and the taste of danger.

    She followed him, cautiously. Her curiosity had been pricked, that much was for sure, but another part of her felt more than a bit uncomfortable when he acted out of character like this. Karen suddenly realised that she knew nothing at all about Pat. Not really. And, for the briefest of moments, as she spotted a warning sign saying 'Authorised Personnel Only' that scared her. Maybe even more than the dead scared her. But then it was gone, again, and he became Pat the Protector. Pat the Provider.

    (Pat the father?)

    She had never really known her father. He had left her mother when she was a little girl, not even at school. She had vague memories of raised voices coming up the stairs at night. Her mother's high-pitched and panicked. Her father's deep and heavy. And then he was gone, and she never heard his voice again. In fact, she never heard
anything
about him, again. It was as if he had
never
been there. As if she had imagined him all along - some character in a movie of her life, as opposed to the real thing.

    Pat pushed his way through a few discarded tools and boxes, clearing the way for Karen. Reaching backwards, he took her hand, gently leading her through the dark, musty room. His hands felt as lined and creviced as his face looked. Like dried-out newspaper left in the sun. Karen felt a weird, nostalgic pleasure in those hands. It reminded her of being smaller, younger. Of trips down town with her grandfather, the main paternal influence in her life, prior to meeting Pat.

    They reached a metal ladder at the back of the small room, leading up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Pat quickly climbed the few steps, unsealing the trap door to reveal the most beautiful blue sky Karen had ever seen. A warm wind blew through as Pat poked his head outside.

    "Is this enough of the great outdoors for you," he shouted over the wind, smiling.

    Karen laughed, deliriously, like a child at Christmas. She climbed, quickly, up the steps, accepting Pat's hand to help her out onto the roof of the apartment block. The feel of the wind against her face was mesmerising. It rushed through her light clothing, touching every part of her. Tickling the tiny hairs on her skin like a thousand feathers. The glare of the naked sun was delightfully blinding, the taste of fresh air alive in her mouth, nourishing her very body and soul while it filled up her lungs, again and again.

    She drank it all up as if with a straw. She stood on top of the roof, closing her eyes and stretching her arms wide.

    She felt almost free.

Chapter Ten

    "So where have you guys been?" Lark asked, crumpling his fifth can of beer and throwing it onto the patio floor, "You know, since it got bad…" The can rattled along the floor to rest by the cop's shoe. Lark had thrown it with indulgent abandon. As if on the street, right beside the cop. As if to rile him.

    Norman fixed Lark with a gaze that may have spelled a night in the slammer, once upon a time.

    "We've been around," he replied, guardedly. He sat his beer down, forcefully, as if to make a point. As if to call time on the discussion before it even started.

    "Around where?" pressed Lark, smirking. The beer was going down well. It was the first time in quite a while that he'd felt relaxed enough to drink. Ever since the last time he'd seen a cop, actually. Maybe this cop, but the jury was still out on that one and would probably remain out. There was no way to tell the difference between them, at the best of times, never mind when they were wearing those fucking yellow suits.

    But he was feeling the boozy bravado all too common after can number four, and nothing scared him. Especially when it came to dealing with the pigs.

    "Like I said, we've been on the move," said the cop, more sharply.

    "Hey, any more booze?" McFall interjected, laughing nervously at the growing tension. He was clearly trying to lighten the mood, change the subject and keep things from blowing up. But Lark
wanted
things to blow up. He was in the mood for a row.

    "Sure," said Norman in answer to McFall's question. But he held his eyes on Lark. The big cop was a player, that much was clear. Lark didn't even blink. It was like a test of resolve or strength of character. The two men, the chalk and cheese of humanity, searching each other's eyes and faces for signs of weakness.

    Lark was keen to find out just what the fuckers had been
really
up to. He'd never trusted cops in the best of times. He knew they'd been up to
even more
no-good just before it had all gone to shit. But what were they doing now? Something about these two just didn't add up. They were too friendly, maybe. Too ingratiating.
Was there something they weren't saying?
Lark thought. Maybe. Or maybe he was just being his usual, miserable, pessimistic self. After all, they were hardly cops anymore, were they? Just a couple of blokes with guns and uniforms. All the rules and regulations they used to uphold were mere lines on a page, now. Those dead fucks out there, lumbering around Belfast today, could hardly care less about any of their rights or violations. The old law had no relevance to them. No potency.

    "So, where's the other beers, then?" Lark said, finally blinking and breaking his stare.

    Norman continued to stare at him, smiling in celebration of his little victory. In the end, Lark had felt threatened by him. He was big, strong and nasty looking. He could likely crush Lark with one hand. And with no rules or regulations to follow, no one to report back to or answer to, Lark realised that the slimmest bit of restraint left in this cunt was all but gone.

    But there was something else.

    Lark remembered
exactly
where he knew the cop from. Maybe it was the booze that had cleared the fog from his mind, sparking some circuit that had been made dormant through one too many snorts. Either way, he was sure where he knew this particular pig from, and just how much of a cunt he really was.

    It was one of those nights where things weren't so easy to remember. A hell of a bender out with the lads. He was staying with Chalky Charley that night. An odious little twat who was only useful to know because of the amount of snort he seemed able to get his grimy little hands on. Lark had been kicked out of yet another apartment, having missed a couple of months' rent. He had trundled on home, only to find the locks changed and his stuff in bin bags on the road. Charley offered to put him up for the night.

    The two of them were approaching Charley's place, when Lark noticed a formidable shape standing outside his door. A cop, still in full uniform. He was convinced now that it had been Norman.

    "It's okay," Charley had said, noticing Lark's discomfort.

    He'd strolled up to the cop in that way he often did. All gangsta-like. As if he was a six-foot-tall black man, as opposed to a five-foot dweeb. But that was always the problem with dealers - more often than not, they had an inflated image of themselves.

    The two of them had a conversation. The cop got angry, though, and immediately started beating the shit out of Charley. Now, Charley wasn't much of a fighter at the best of times, but he went down hard when the cop started on him.

    Lark didn't know what to do. He looked around, but there weren't a lot of people about. The few who did happen upon the scene quickly turned and walked in a different direction. No one wanted trouble. Lark sure as hell didn't want trouble, either. Eventually, he had to do something, though, because the cop looked like he was going to kill Charley. He was on the ground, straddling Charley as if about to fucking scalp him.

    Lark had cursed to himself, moving closer to the scene.

    "Look, man…" he said, "I think he's had enough. I'm sure he deserved this and all, but maybe leave him alone, now, eh?"

    Norman had looked up at Lark, smiling. Lark noticed that Charley's blood was smeared all over his face and uniform. It was as if he'd been at a pie-eating contest, odds-on favourite to win. He drew his handgun, still smiling at Lark, aiming it at poor Charley's head. He held the gun there for long moments, before sliding it, slowly, back into his holster. He ran one hand into Charley's coat, pulling out a stash of coke in a clear plastic packet. Still smiling, still holding Lark's gaze, he slowly rose to his feet.