Love Story, With Murders (41 page)

I first met Lev when he was an itinerant martial arts teacher. I used to pay him for tuition, then stopped. I’m not sure whether this is the sort of thing that requires payment. But
I’ve put three thousand pounds in cash in the kitchen drawer. Lev can have as much of that as he wants.

He takes
the documents, studies them briefly, then he says, ‘You want me to find him? Or what?’

I don’t know what the ‘or what’ means exactly. I don’t know how far Lev would go. But I say, ‘No, just find him. I need an address, that’s all.’

‘Okay.’

He nods. A dismissal. We talk about other things. Smoke. Make more tea. Lev has an iPod now – he never used to – and uses it to bend my hi-fi to
his will. Russian music. The wild
steppe and an infinite melancholy.

At some point we get hungry. There are peas and oven chips in the freezer. The fridge and cupboards yield up pesto sauce, crackers, some slightly bendy carrots, two eggs, some bacon that is
turning an oily purple with age, and a jar of lumpfish caviar which my dad brought me thinking it was the same thing as caviar-caviar.

I say I’ll make supper. Lev says he’ll take a shower.

I don’t think there’s a recipe which involves the ingredients I have, so I just cook the things that need cooking and put everything out on the table.

Get another bag of weed from the potting shed in case we’re set for a long night.

Lev comes down. Wet hair. Jeans. T-shirt sticking to his back and chest because he hasn’t dried
himself properly. Bare feet.

And then – we’re not alone.

In the opening to the living room, a man is standing.

It’s Buzz. Storm clouds rolling round his head. A deep-bladed anger between his eyes.

I’ve never seen him like this.

He does drop round from time to time, even on my nights off. He never stays for long and only drops by if he’s in the area, but there’s no rule that
says he’s not allowed here.
I’m sure he’d have knocked before using his key, because he’s a polite boy and because he knows I like my space. But I’ve only just come in from the garden and though Lev
would certainly have heard any knock – Lev is vigilant even in sleep – he wouldn’t necessarily have thought that someone’s arrival demanded any action on his part.

Lev dips a bendy carrot in
lumpfish caviar and eats it.

His eyes are watchful, but they always are. He is completely calm, but he always is.

Buzz studies Lev. The evidence of his recent shower. Our obvious intimacy. The bags of weed on the table. Marijuana smoke and violins.

And suddenly, there’s an ugly biology here too. The biology of rutting stags. Silverback gorillas battling over harems. Wolves snarling
for supremacy.

And I know what Buzz is thinking. He’s figuring that he’s taller, stronger, younger, fitter. That’s he’s an ex-paratrooper. That he could give Lev a kicking.

And he can’t. He really, really can’t.

I follow the template of my own biology. Stand up. Say, ‘Buzz, no. This isn’t what you think it is. Buzz, this isn’t anything.’ I can hear my own voice high and shrill.
Too
high and way too shrill.

‘Really? Because I was thinking that there was a Class B drug being consumed on these premises.’

‘Fuck’s sake, yes, I smoke dope. Buzz –’

‘And little Mr Pretty here –’

‘Buzz, please –’

He steps up close to Lev. I don’t think he is going to hit him, but he’s certainly threatening to do so. He’s being deliberately invasive. Testosteroney.

And Lev
reacts. Effortlessly. Sweeps Buzz’s legs from under him. Gets a shoulder underneath Buzz’s falling chin. Rams Buzz’s body hard against the wall. The move ends with Buzz
in a neck-and-arm-lock, and I find myself thankful that Lev chose to moderate his reaction to this extent.

He can do worse than this. He can do very much worse.

I dance around being uselessly feminine, but this isn’t
about anything I do or don’t say. The male hormones need to find their balance first.

Lev, retaining a grip on Buzz, says, softly, ‘Please be a little careful and we can all talk like respectable people.’

Then he steps away. Buzz is shocked and has probably taken a bruise or two, but he’s not injured. Not really.

I say, ‘Buzz, I smoke dope. Not often, but I do. This is Lev. He’s a
friend. My martial arts teacher, or used to be. He has just taken a shower. That’s all. We have never had
sex. Never. Not once and I’ve known him for six years now.’

We tiptoe back from the precipice.

Buzz gets up, rubbing his neck and his knee. He is still furious, but there’s a bewilderment here, which may yet be just as injurious. He looks at Lev with different eyes. Wondering what
kind of man this is.

Looks at me differently too, I expect. My colleagues at Cathays love to tease me about a couple of incidents in my past. A man whose knee I dislocated and whose testicle I ruptured. Another man
whom I kicked in the head and threw off a cliff. It’s been assumed that I achieved those things by accident almost. That a petite woman of no great strength or fitness could
do these things
only by fluke. Some fleeting combination of time and circumstance.

Now that Buzz has met Lev, he might just revise that opinion. And this was Lev gentle. Lev the peace-maker.

I say, ‘Can we talk? Can we all just sit and talk?’

My voice sounds unreal, even to myself.

Lev ignores me.

Talks to Buzz and says, ‘Come.’

Takes Buzz outside, shows him the potting
shed. My marijuana plants. My heat lamps. My bags of weed. My cubes of resin. The little seedbank which allows me to grow the sweetest weed in all of
Pontprennau.

I don’t go with them. Just sit at the kitchen table wondering if I still have a boyfriend.

When Buzz comes back, his eyes are filled with questions.

I say, ‘When I was in recovery, half in Cotard’s, half not, marijuana
was one of the few things I could rely on to calm my mind. I don’t smoke very often these days. Maybe once
a week. Two or three times if I feel my head is in a bad place. And one day, maybe, I’ll give up completely. But for now, I still need this. Maybe I always will.’

‘So it’s medicinal?’

Buzz’s voice is hoarse. Like he lost it in an attic somewhere, and has only just found it, rusty
and cobwebbed, like an old key.

‘Well, not always, obviously.’ I gesture at the table. At Lev. ‘It can be social too. But not often. I grow my own so I don’t have to buy it. And I never sell
it.’

I add that last bit, because Buzz’s police mind needs that information. A police officer who sells drugs deserves jail. A police officer who purchases drugs needs to be dismissed. An
officer
who grows her own drug supply for primarily medicinal reasons – even Buzz has a separate category for that.

‘You could have told me.’

‘Really? Do you really think I could have done?’

Buzz doesn’t answer. He’s no idiot, but in the last few minutes he’s uncovered an assumed infidelity, discovered that his girlfriend is a drug user, been slammed painfully
against a wall, and is now
starting to wonder just how much violence his possible future wife is herself capable of.

Gentle Jennies don’t go to these places. This is not the Fiona Griffiths he wants me to be.

The possible future mother of Buzz’s possible future children stands waiting to hear their father’s verdict.

It doesn’t come. Lev says, ‘You are David Brydon, yes?’

‘Yes.’ The same rust. Cobwebs.

‘David, I think we go to the pub now. You and me.’

And all of a sudden, the biology flips again. To a place I’d not thought possible.

I’m standing in the room, not two yards from either man, and I’m not there at all. There’s some male-to-male thing being exchanged which bypasses me completely. I think Buzz is
trying to make sense of Lev. To find the fighter in that unremarkable exterior.
Lev is figuring out Buzz. Both men have been soldiers and they are soldiers again now.

Their eyes are military and I am not really here.

I think I say something, but my voice is without sound. Unimportant.

Buzz says, ‘Okay.’

He puts out a hand. Lev takes it. Shakes it. Their eyes are still hard, but it’s that masculine hardness which carries no personal implication. Which just
is.

Buzz, remembering that I exist, half-turns to me and says, ‘You’ll be okay, babe?’ but it’s not a question and my nod isn’t an answer.

They leave.

I eat bendy carrots and throw away the bacon because it’s too old to eat.

Eat some egg and some caviar and some crackers with pesto. Throw away everything I haven’t eaten.

Tidy up a bit. Smoke, but with no real pleasure. Turn
off Lev’s music, which is driving me nuts. Put on Annie Lennox, because that’ll drive him nuts.

They’re still not back. How long can it take to drink a pint of brown liquid?

I’m bored enough and agitated enough to clean the kitchen. Then hoover the living room. Dust it, for heaven’s sake. Then decide I have to stop cleaning in case I pop an artery and
turn into my mother.

Start to
text Buzz, but cancel without sending.

What the fuck can they be talking about?

I think about ironing something.

I don’t, but do remove limescale from the shower screen.

Pluck my eyebrows.

Walk downstairs, then walk back up again.

This is not going well. I am having feelings, but I don’t know what they are. I’ve got exercises for times like this – breathing exercises, mindfulness
– but I’m
too agitated to do them. And maybe I don’t want to do them. Maybe I want these feelings. Want to let them be whatever they are.

I’m just walking downstairs to fetch the hoover when I hear Lev and Buzz outside. I sit on the stairs waiting for the door to open.

I am the possible future mother of Buzz’s possible future children.

Sitting on the stairs. Waiting for the door
to open.

Buzz and I. We’re okay, I think. I’m not sure, but I think so.

When he and Lev came in, they were best buddies. Backslappy and beery in Buzz’s case. Quiet but emphatic in Lev’s.

I realised I was desperate for a joint. Needed to sit there and smoke with both of them in the room, but I wasn’t at all sure that wouldn’t break the mood.
But Lev just sparked up as
normal. Buzz watched, lips compressed, but not saying anything. When Lev passed me the joint, I sucked on the damn thing like it was an oxygen line dropped to the sea floor. Both men laughed at me.
When I realised what they were laughing at, I laughed too.

They arrived back hungry and I’d thrown most of the food away. But I hadn’t thrown the oven chips away,
so I cooked them. There was also some tinned mackerel, a jar of korma sauce,
some stale mini-pretzels, a tube of tomato paste, any crackers I could plausibly rescue from the bin, and some more bendy carrots. Lev inspected the feast I laid out and said solemnly to Buzz,
‘You’re a lucky man.’

More laughter. I redden, but with pleasure. That is the first time I think maybe this could all
be OK.

They eat oven chips, tinned mackerel, bendy carrots, and Buzz sportingly puts korma sauce on his fish. He pretends to like the result.

It’s okay. It feels okay.

But then I want them both to go. I want them out of my house with an urgency I don’t dare express.

Luckily, Lev, he’s a nutcase too. Like me. He knows what it’s like to have problems with your head, doesn’t need
me to tell him. After a while, he just gets his things, takes a
couple of bags of weed, and leaves. I wave a weak goodbye from the kitchen table.

‘I will send you text,’ he says.

I give him a thumbs-up.

Buzz wants to take me back to his place and give me a good seeing to. He needs to assert his own proprietorship. And I want that too. In an only slightly different universe, that
would be my
choice too. But I need space and say so. Put my arms round his lovely neck, find the muscles of his lovely back, and say I’ll see him tomorrow.

He understands. I think he does. He says so anyway.

I ask if he’s all right. I mean emotionally. I mean him-and-me. I mean weed on the kitchen table and a cannabis plantation in the potting shed.

But Buzz just rubs his head where
Lev slammed it against the wall, and says, ‘You might have told me the guy was Spetsnaz.’

Spetsnaz:
the umbrella term given to the Russian special forces. I think Lev worked in their Vympel counter terrorist unit. First as an operative, then as a trainer. But I don’t
really know. Lev has never told me much. It took me four years before I even knew for sure that he was Spetsnaz. I bet Buzz
got there before he found the bottom of his pint glass.

I say, ‘You didn’t give me much of a chance.’

‘No.’

And then we kiss.

And then kissing isn’t enough.

And then Buzz is carrying me upstairs and dumping me on the bed and before very many seconds pass he is indeed giving me a good seeing to. And, I like to think, I reciprocate in a way likely to
generate few complaints.

Afterward, we lie panting beside each other.

‘Any more secrets?’

I think about the gun in Pembrokeshire. The knife behind the bed. My special relationship with Rhiannon Watkins. My visits from Ali el-Khalifi. The amisulpride in the bathroom cabinet. The full
story about McCormack’s jaw and the data leak from Barry Precision, and all the other details that can matter a lot to people
like Buzz. But none of that stuff seems very significant. Not
right now.

‘I think it is possible that my father used to be involved in some kind of crime.’

‘Really? You think?’

‘And I haven’t yet got you a Christmas present.’

He has his hand on my belly. Buzz is a fit lad and he eats his greens. He’s been known to recharge, reload, and fire, two or three or even (once) four times
in the same night. I can see
him wondering whether tonight might be one of those nights.

But it isn’t. I need my space and say so.