The Cutting Crew (22 page)

Now, she lifted the paper carefully to her lips, licked the edge and began rolling something that was close to being the perfect joint.

Rob's flat was cheerfully untidy. Most of the computer crap was on and under the desk opposite the bed, but there were also piles of clothes on the floor, and leftover plates from the pizza he'd cooked them for lunch. The carpet was dark green, but everything above floor level was pale. The walls were beige; the curtains, cream; his bedspread, yellow. She kept telling him that yellow was the most depressing colour to decorate with, but he didn't take much notice.

Since he seemed to be quite a miserable guy she'd thought he might be interested, but apparently not.

She finished rolling. It was one of the benefits of seeing Rob that she got to smoke some of the dope she brought for him. The arrangement was a relatively complicated one. They didn't know each other well enough to be friends, exactly. On the surface that's what they were, but it was a pretence: she wouldn't have been here if he didn't help with her artwork. He was a nice enough guy and she liked him, but the world was full of nice guys and he wasn't that nice. And without the dope and the sex, he probably wouldn't have been helping her either. And yet they were both fond enough of each other to skirt around these issues.

'Ta da!' She held up the finished joint, turning it around for him to admire.

He smiled at her, kind of sweetly.

'You're so good at that. I wish I could roll as well as you.'

'I'll teach you.'

'You will?'

Alison shrugged. 'Yeah. If you like.'

She thumbed the wheel of her lighter, scraping the flame into life, and then singed the end of the joint, turning it slowly so as to burn it on all sides. The end settled into a dark, smoking bunch, and then she drew on it. It glowed red; crackled a little.

'Where are you going tonight?' he said, watching her.

She took another hit.

'Snail,' she told him. 'I can't remember the address. There's a clipping and some stuff in the envelope.'

'A newspaper clipping?'

'Yeah.' She touched away some ash, rolling the tip of the joint against an old cigarette butt in the dish Rob kept by the bed in lieu of an ashtray. 'It's in the envelope.'

He opened it up to look while she kept smoking. Rob actually didn't smoke that much, so she'd bring him an eighth and they'd smoke a few joints, but she always ended up getting the lion's share of whatever she rolled. God only knew what he did with the rest after she'd gone, but she figured that he sold a little to his friends, smoked a little himself. It didn't really matter.

' "Snail",' he read. 'What a lovely area.'

'Yeah.'

'You going on your own?'

She shook her head. 'Don't worry - I'll ring Jamie. Get him to escort me.'

'Okay.' He read a little more. 'Sharon Cooper?'

'Yeah.'

Alison remembered the article. The girl had got into a row with her boyfriend, which was common enough in that area. Snail was more of a separate shanty town than an actual part of the city and most of the buildings were makeshift - or had started off that way when they were built. The usual rules of planning didn't necessarily apply to parts of Snail: it was all shacks and huts and corrugated roofs, and great iron bins that were set burning in place of proper streetlighting. Half the residents were gypsies; the other half, you couldn't tell. While Bull spread out from the north-east, Snail curled at the south-west corner of the city like a dusty afterthought.

It was all poverty. There was a lot to argue about there.

Rob read the article and said: 'Her boyfriend killed her.'

'He was drunk. He punched her and she fell. She hit her head.'

'It was an accident.'

'It's certainly a moral grey area,' she agreed. 'Here.'

She passed him the joint, and he took it a little awkwardly, as though it might break. The first few drags were always painful for him because he wasn't really used to it. Alison watched him, half amused. What the fuck had Rob done with his teens? He'd been such a good boy, she thought, and deep down he still was. That was why this whole arrangement worked.

He only took a couple more drags, and then he passed it back to her. It was two-thirds down; she'd smoke a bit more and then offer him the end, which he'd turn down because it was too much effort and too hot for him. Now, he lay down on his back with his arm behind his head and his eyes closed, and he said: 'Fucking hell.'

She looked at his naked body. He had a pretty good body.

She said, 'You're stoned?'

'Oh yeah.' He nodded to himself.

She raised an eyebrow and kept smoking the joint, feeling her body melting away a little. But she didn't stop watching him. His cock looked warm from the sex they'd already had, like he'd scrubbed it for too long in a hot bath.

'You're too easy,' she said.

'Hmmm.' He had his eyes closed. 'That's me.'

Alison finished the joint herself and creased the roach out in the dish.

'Come here, then, easy man.'

She moved down the bed, lifted one leg over him and sat down on his lap, feeling him against her. That got his attention. He opened his eyes and smiled up at her, giving her the same look he always did: a combination of excitement, pleasure and slight fear, this time blurred a little by the fuzzy red warmth of the gear. She liked that look. His cock uncurled slowly underneath her, nudging her, and so she rested her palms on his chest, lifted up a little to allow it space. When it was hard enough, she reached under her and took hold, and then eased back down onto him.

'Oh god,' he said.

He closed his eyes. She smiled, feeling genuine affection for him, and she began to rock back and forth. With one hand, he reached out and touched her hip. The other tentatively cupped her breast.

She leaned down harder against him. He needed encouragement.

The first time Rob had ever kissed her, he had actually asked her permission. She upped the tempo, rolling her hips against him.

'Come whenever you want to,' she told him, and then closed her eyes as he tensed underneath her.

Twenty minutes later, Alison made the call.

Jamie was having his photograph taken. The curved lens, reflecting tens of circles of light, was close to his right eye; the camera beyond it was black and mottled and still. Keleigh's visible eye was scrunched shut as she centred the lens and prepared to take the photograph. Jamie was anticipating the flash: steeling himself for the burn in his iris. That was when his mobile rang on the other side of the room.

'Fuck.'

Keleigh moved away. Jamie blinked a few times.

'Go on,' she said.

'I'm sorry.'

He stood up, moved over to the table and picked up the phone.

The display was flashing, telling him that it was alison.

Jamie looked up. Keleigh was pacing on the spot - she'd probably guessed who it was going to be. He looked back at the display and just held the phone, willing this problem to vanish.

Alison had mentioned that Halloran couldn't go with her tonight and had told him that she'd phone him later. Not asked him, of course; just said she'd call.

Keleigh stopped pacing and stared at him.

'So, are you going to answer that?'

'Hmm,' he said. 'Not sure.'

Did he really want to speak to Alison right now? If he did then she'd ask him to go with her tonight and he wouldn't be able to say no. She knew that, too. Not so long ago, he wouldn't have hesitated and, even now, his instinct was to press green, say yes, of course. But he'd also slowly figured out that doing nice things for someone wasn't necessarily going to make them like you, especially if they were only asking because they thought you would. So for a few weeks now he'd been torn. Would Alison like him more if he was less available or willing? Very probably not. And did he really care deep down anyway?

He hadn't even answered the phone, and his mind was occupied with her. Filled with the little thrills of anticipation that wafted along like perfume with thoughts of her.

Some time soon, this was going to have to stop.

He pressed red.

'No,' he said. 'Going to leave that one.'

'Was it Alison?'

'Yeah.'

'I wonder what she wanted.'

He nodded, even though Keleigh had managed to sound so utterly couldn't-give-a-fuck that the meaning had doubled back on itself. And she'd been there when Alison and Damian had come round that morning for the art meeting, and so she knew exactly what Alison wanted: an escort. But Keleigh could be strange like that. She was very different to Alison - quieter, more considered, a little more serious and intense - even though the two of them generally got on well. It was the same with all four of them: they were all different, but that helped shape the dynamic and give the group and the project more force. The only area where Keleigh showed any real animosity to Alison was when it came to her treatment of Jamie.

He liked to think he was pretty self-aware, and he knew that he was drawn to Alison for the obvious reasons - her looks and her manner - but also for not-so-obvious reasons that were more about him than her. And it was the latter that found him increasingly interested in Keleigh as well. When she was dismissive of Alison and protective of him, he felt warm inside.

'You gonna ring her back?' she said.

'Not at the moment.'

'Good,' she said. 'You're learning. Assume the pose.'

'Okay. I'll just turn my phone off.'

'Even better.'

Alison would leave a voicemail message, which meant his phone would ring again in a couple of minutes. Jamie held down red, feeling both stupid and vaguely empowered, and after a second his display went blank.

'Right.'

He sat back down on the chair, blinked a couple of times and then stared straight ahead. Keleigh knelt down in front of him. The camera filled his right-hand vision again.

'What colour are you going to do me?' he said.

'Don't know yet. Hold still.'

The camera was digital, and she would manipulate the image afterwards. The resulting printouts, stuck onto walls and walkways, showed irises in shades of yellow as strong as the sun, and greens as vibrant as the grass beneath it.

'Because I'm thinking purple might suit me,' he said.

'I think it would.'

- flash

Half an hour later, we were making our final preparations.

The reason that Carl Halloran couldn't accompany Alison that evening was that he was booked into a hotel in Mouse, which is as small and incongruous an area as its name would suggest. In the south-west of the city, it's a neither-here-nor-there sort of district: terraces and back-to-backs; a few shops and bars; low-budget hotels. It's a cheap place for tourists, who flock to the city every summer for the annual boxing event and at other times for reasons of their own. On that day, Halloran was holed up in a two-star shit-hole in the north of the district. It had a blue neon sign hanging down outside, running from the third floor to the first, and the rest of it stretched up in a dilapidated six-storey tower drenched in melted snow. We'd been inside already to scope it out. The rooms were nice enough. Thin corridors and lots of stairwells. Easily accessible fire escape. We had our evening pretty much planned out.

Three nights earlier, the post office in Turtle had been robbed: the one that Harris lived almost next door to. It had been owned by a middle-aged couple and they lived above it. Someone had broken in after dark, held them at gunpoint and made off with an unspecified amount of money. Before leaving, he had tied the couple up and shot them. Growing up in the area, I had known them well enough to speak to, and I'd been shocked by the casual and unnecessary brutality of their murder. Nobody had seen anything, but we put out the usual feelers and eventually we got a name back. Carl Halloran. He was a small-time criminal, moving stuff around for people, and the rumour - from a good source was that he'd run up debts and incurred some penalties. He'd paid those back in the last twenty-four hours, mouthed off a little too much, and now he was lying low.

Not fucking low enough. At eight o'clock that evening, the four of us went in and took him down hard. There was nothing we needed to know and nothing we needed to discuss. The rooms on either side of Halloran had been booked out in false names so as to secure a little privacy, but it really didn't take much time or effort.