The City Trap (18 page)

‘Still as charming as ever, I see.’

It had been in the back of his mind, somewhere, that Bertha Turton would turn up on his doorstep. There could be no direct connection. He felt sure she couldn’t have known. But like Vin St
James, Ross had thought that Bertha would come prying about the loss of the daughter whore. One more headache in what was becoming a migraine world.

‘So, Bertha, what is it I can do for you? Need a new outlet for your secretarial skills?’

‘You’re not that far off actually, Ross. I am looking for a new outlet but word-processing wasn’t what I had in mind.’

Ross kept his mouth shut. There was a determined edge to Bertha’s voice which he didn’t like. He noticed, too, that she was wearing what seemed like expensive clothes. A cream and
brown kit with padded shoulders and a gold necklace that looked full carat. Maybe she wasn’t just a mousy nobody in a council flat any more. Ross decided to feign compassion.

‘I was very sorry to hear about Claudette, you know.’

‘I’m sure you were, Ross.’

‘Really, when it happened, I thought about you, us, the fun we had before the shit hit the fan.’

‘Jesus, Ross, the way you –’ Bertha suddenly stopped herself. She took a cigarette out of her bag and lit up. She gave Ross a hard stare.

‘Sod this conversation. I never pushed it, the question of who the guy was, but it could well have been that out of the fun we had, Ross, out of the fun came Claudette.’

‘Now wait –’

‘You wait. The point has to be made that Claudette may have been your daughter. The fact that has to be faced is that you may have killed your own flesh and blood!’

‘Jesus, fuck. You stupid bitch, who d’you think you are, coming in pointing the bleeding finger? I haven’t killed anyone!’

‘I’m onto you, Ross. I know what it’s all about and I reckon you owe me, twice over now, and you’re going to pay!’

‘This is a ridiculous conversation.’ Ross stood up abruptly. He felt his whole body clench as he walked a few steps to stand looking out of his small office window.

‘I’m not going to let go of this,’ Bertha said to his back.

Ross ignored the comment. He had a view of tarmac and the grilled roller doors of an empty industrial unit. It seemed a strangely comforting view compared to what was behind him. A black cloud
in a confined space and the walls moving in. An ex-lover still resentful and out to get him. He smiled to himself. The way to conduct a conversation with the past. The way to face up to its
unwanted and ugly return. He let his eyes focus on the horizontal lines of the warehouse doors as if he was watching a malfunctioning TV.

‘Bertha,’ he said wearily, ‘I don’t care what you think or suspect me of, and I certainly don’t care about things that happened way back. So let’s cut that
shit out. You’ve come here – you haven’t changed I’m sure – you’ve come here with some angle so you might as well spit the bleeder out and then we can
talk.’

‘Yeh, it’s probably best to keep it impersonal. Strictly business, as you used to say when you screwed around. I want back in, Ross. I want my cut of what I had before. The escort
business – girls, punters, files, the lot. I’ve got money and a backer, and you know, full well you know, I could run things far better than you.’

Ross sighed loudly. Bomb the bleedin lot, he thought. Exterminate and scarper . . . but where the bloody hell to?

‘Very interesting, Bertha, funny even,’ he said aloud. ‘So tell me, why should I give this crap more than a few seconds thought?’

‘Huh, I used to stroke your balls, Ross. Now I can cut them off.’

* * *

It was his first venture out of the squat as Fred Stray. All very alarming. The two spliffs he’d smoked seemed to have given him no protection. Jerry felt like a child out on
the streets alone for the first time. He stood in the dark shadows of the old house and tried to work out which way to go. This was strange territory. A zone of the city where he was already lost.
The solid trees presented the first problem. Trunks large enough to hide a man. Foliage dense, matted and eerily fissured with streaks of light. Jerry tentatively moved forward towards the
pavement. The windows of the houses became apparent. The eyes of the street. Some brazenly shining, others pitch black and threatening. He almost retreated but a comforting thought eased its way
into his fretful mind. Some kind of past remembrance of when the snow was thick and pavements had to be abandoned. A time when, as a child, he’d followed the thin lines of tyres right up the
middle of the road. It seemed to present a solution. Jerry lowered his head, stepped between parked cars and imagined he could see tracks leading off into the night.

Mouse had given him the idea. They seemed to have hit it off straight away and she’d visited his room for a number of chats.

‘You can’t just sit and mope,’ she said. ‘Brooding is a kind of living death. This bleedin room could end up a coffin. You’ve got to get it out of you, Stray, be in
the world in whatever way you can.’

Jerry got the stutters bad then. He could hardly get any words together other than, ‘What the f-f-fuck w-was out th-there in the f-f-first p-place!’

A spark of anger glinted in Mouse’s eyes and she kicked out in Jerry’s direction with a heavy boot.

‘Don’t be such a defeatist runt! What is there? Well, for one thing there’s the shitbags who killed your woman. Are you going to let them just fester? You may not be able to do
much, but you could do something, even if it’s just kicking in a few car lights.’

Mouse was all for action, hyper-action almost, and she didn’t seem to give anything a second thought. This, Jerry could just about see, was the kind of influence he needed, though the
thought of him doing something seemed remote. Dope and depression just meant more dreams and anxieties laid out face up on a carpeted floor. But Jerry fought the urge to wallow. He did see the
possibilities offered by a violent act, the frustrations it could purge. So, that evening, with the darkness down and the streets empty, Jerry got off his arse and went out for a dry run.

It all went smoothly at first. There were no cars or people about. Walking down the middle of the road, he felt a sense of freedom and a kind of immunity. This enabled him to think, to think
positively and not to brood. He vowed to seek revenge, any act of revenge, big or small, against those who had killed Mary. He didn’t know what he could do or how. He thought that maybe Mouse
would help, and that out of it would come a new direction to his life.

This unexpected glimpse of optimism made him smile, but it was short-lived. The bright glare of headlights and a loud horn shocked him back to reality. He had to jump for the pavement as a car
accelerated past. Someone inside the car shouted, ‘Yer stupid fucker!’ Jerry felt disorientated. The front door to a house opened and he saw a burly silhouette looking out at him. He
began to rush along the pavement. He became conscious of the trees and of the strange dripping noises they made. Then he ran and came to a stretch of parkland. The blackness was inviting. Jerry
crept in.

He stalled. An animal, a dog maybe or a fox, was standing on the grass in front of him. Two eyes, glinting with streetlight, yellow and malevolent, were staring right at him. And then it came.
The snow, grey snow this time, filtering through the darkness like ash from the death-throes of a fire. Jerry collapsed.

19

‘This is a shitty job, you know that, Des. Goes completely against my principles.’

‘I surely know it, Liam.’

‘I mean, this is smut, tacky smut and it’s not very well done either.’

‘Well, the fifty quid should at least ease the pain.’

‘You’re corrupting me, man.’

Liam was arranging a set of lights over a table in the resource centre’s photography room. One of Liam’s offspring was also there, fiddling around with drying spools and bits of old
film. Des kept a cautious eye out, prepared to believe the kid would wreck the place.

‘The thing I’ve got to do is not get any reflection or shadow. Difficult when you haven’t got all the right gear.’

‘Don’t worry too much, as long as you get the basics.’

‘You mean the faces and the fucking.’

‘Perfectly put.’

There was a sudden crashing noise behind them. Des raised his eyes to the ceiling. Liam didn’t even look up.

‘Stop pissing about, you stupid bugger!’ he shouted.

‘But I’m bored, Dad!’

‘I told you to do a bit of drawing on the table over there.’

‘Bloody hell! Them’re dirty pictures!’ The kid had poked his head around Des and was ogling at Sir Martin’s happy hour.

‘Get back to that table and mind your own business!’

Des eased the boy out of the way and gave off one of his hard-man stares. It did the trick. He turned back to Liam, wondering whether he’d chosen the right person for the job. ‘This
gonna be much longer?’

‘Ten minutes at the most.’

While Liam fretted over getting the lighting right and set up a camera stand, Des sat at a worktable, one eye on the kid, and pulled out an envelope. He addressed it to Miranda. Then he wrote
out a cheque for the cost of her windscreen and began to write a note to go with it. His intention was to send off one of the snapshots too as a form of insurance in case the worst should happen.
He hadn’t really dared to think about the ‘worst’, but he was aware that this was the sort of thing you were supposed to do. Sending it to Miranda was awkward, though. She could
well trash it, or come back and complain he was trying out emotional blackmail.

‘
In the event of something happening to me
. . . What is this, Des? What tricks are you up to now?’

Des cringed. Maybe deep down he did see it as a way of getting back in with her?

He gave Liam’s restless kid a scowl and finally wrote: ‘Just keep this safe, yeh? No comebacks. Show it to Errol if you feel the need.’

Pretty lousy, but it would have to do. By then Liam had finished shooting copies of the prints. Des took one and put it in the envelope. The other he stashed in his shirt.

‘So how long you reckon then, Liam?’

‘I’ll get the negs processed now, mate, the sprog willing, and then leave them to dry. Some time this afternoon I’ll print them up for you.’

‘No one’s gotta know about this.’

‘Fifty quid’ll keep me quiet.’

‘You could be in danger if someone did find out.’

‘Jesus, don’t put the shits up me, man. It’s just an odd job on the side, right?’

‘If it makes you feel better, and a fifty quid bonus if it works out OK . . .’

‘Wow. Now did I put a film in the camera or not?’

Des walked back to Argent Street.

He kept his head low, following a trail of chewing gum, the odd spot of phlegm and the usual stirrings of litter. He was trying to think of his next move but felt at a loss. Constanza seemed the
main candidate to check but he hadn’t come up with much that made a direct connection. He wondered whether he should go back to Pauline and her psycho bodyguard of a boyfriend. She at least
knew more than she’d let on. The prospect didn’t enthral him and was soon forgotten. On the corner of his street, a Jaguar sat waiting, and as he approached, its rear door opened wide.
Des knew what was expected. He calmly sat in the back and got a whiff of real leather. He realized that maybe he didn’t need to search but that those involved would surely come to him. And
there was one, the thinly clipped moustache and the seriously grey face presenting Des with another move.

‘Following me, are you?’

‘I was going to call, but then I saw you in the street, looking like a washed-out derelict wandering about.’

‘It’s what it does to me, thinking.’

‘Huh-uh, and what has this thinking come up with in terms of my offer?’

‘Ah, well that one’s slipped away, got lost a bit.’

‘You’d be a fool to turn it down. This business, it’s not yours, is it? This is just a job for you with a pay day at the end of it.’

‘I didn’t say I’d turned it down, Sir Martin, just somehow mislaid the thought of it. But you’re wrong about it being just money. The itch –’ Des began to
scratch at his armpit ‘– this bleeding itchy curiosity thing, it gets to you. You want to know answers and you know you can’t stop scratching till you do. It’s bad, no doubt
about it; it throws money out the window.’

Des looked out of the window. The presence of a Jag in his neighbourhood was attracting some attention and he felt somehow that being in it wouldn’t do his reputation any good. Sir Martin
stopped leaning around in his seat and focused on the rear-view mirror instead. The burnt eyes seemed more threatening that way.

‘I suppose I could tell you all you want to know. It would just be hearsay since there’s no proof. Perhaps that can be the deal, McGinlay? I’ll give you the money, name the
names and you return the photos?’

‘That is tempting, I must say.’

‘So?’

‘I’d have to speak to my client first.’

The brow in the rear-view mirror furrowed and the dark eyes became intense.

‘I’m getting extremely annoyed with you, McGinlay. You don’t seem to realize the clout I have. I can get the police to remove your licence. I can get the media to ignore those
photos. I can get you killed if need be. So let’s stop the prevarications, shall we? I want the photos by the end of the day or else I do all I can to finish you. That plain
enough?’

Des certainly found the gaze intimidating. He was looking at power and a sense of fear began to rise in his gut. He knew also that this was just a play; it was the force of a privileged
personality and the substance of the threat could well be less strong. Even so, Des struggled to give as good as he’d received. He smiled as casually as he could and opened the car door.

‘Be careful now, Sir Martin. Think who’s got most to lose. You corner me, what the fuck do I care if we both go down?’

Des eased out of the car and felt the relief of cool air on his sweating face.

* * *

‘So how c-come I never see you eat?’ Jerry said as he lay back on the bed stark naked.

‘Guess I don’t have much of an appetite. I mean, food, you don’t know where the stuff comes from, do you?’