The Fly Guy (13 page)

Chapter Twenty

Lucy is submerged in a dark dreamless sleep when the knock on Franz’s door comes. She hears it dimly, as if it is a memory she is trying to recall but keeps slipping away. Franz is at the door, just in his underwear.

Lucy opens her eyes and leans over the arm of the sofa to see the shape of a huge man in the hallway. It’s not Gregor. Her throat constricts and her stomach drops. Why is Gregor not here? Who has come for her?

Franz is asking the same questions to the man at the door. The replies come in a soft lilting accent. It is a voice which offers words rather than putting them down. She relaxes immediately. It’s Spike.

Franz lets him in, turning around and calling, “Lucy, wake up sweetie, your chaperone is here, and it’s Spike, you lucky girl.” Spike squeezes down the narrow hallway and through the door. Lucy lies back on the couch and pulls the blanket over her.

“Lucy, I’ve come to get you. Gregor’s been delayed,” he says, “and won’t make it home tonight. He sent me to get you.”

“You’re taking me home?”

“Well, no. Gregor doesn’t want you at his house alone tonight.”

Spike is too big for the flat, his head nearly touches the ceiling and the table and chairs next to him look small and fragile.

Franz steps from behind his huge frame and looks up to him.

“Well, she can just stay here.”

“No, she has to come with me.”

“Is that okay with you, babes?”

Lucy nods.

“Okay, just close the door on your way out. Goodnight, sweetheart.”

Franz leans down and gives her a kiss on the cheek. As he squeezes past Spike he runs his hand across his chest and says, “Nice to see you big boy.” Spike is eyeing everything in the room, the phone and the box of weed on the table, the cheap prints of old cigarette advertising on the wall, the bookshelf stuffed full with fashion magazines.

When Lucy sits up and asks why Gregor can’t come and get her like he said he would, he looks surprised and says, “I thought you might know by now that with Gregor, it’s really best not to ask, it’s always complicated. Don’t worry,” he says, “where we are going is safe. Trust me.”

In the car she says, “Spike, you would tell me if anything had happened to Gregor, wouldn’t you?”

“Don’t worry,” Spike says, “he’s fine, this is just a precaution. You know how protective he can be.”

Lucy looks out the window at the passing streets, so quiet at this time, so many shadows which now hide so much, but in a few hours in the daylight will have lost their mystery. She tells herself that there hasn’t been enough time since the message for anything to have happened. Anyway, she thinks, Stranstec always likes things thoroughly prepared. He will move in on Gregor, but when he is ready, and not until he is sure it will work.

Lucy says, “Can you put on some music?”

Spike turns the radio on and the car is filled with the sounds of tinny electric guitars and drum beats which sound like a fly in a can. Lucy remembers the first time she saw Stranstec.

* * *

He was sitting obscured by a cloud of cigarette smoke. The desk in front of him was piled high with forged documents: passports, birth certificates, and work permits. She had heard the men in the truck talk about him, call him the captain. She put her papers on the table. He took them, scanning. Through the fogged-up window she could see the lights of waiting vans. The two girls who went before her were getting into one of them.

She said, “I’m not going to be a prostitute.”

He looked up at her, the cigarette dangling from his lip.

“Listen,” he checked the papers for her name, “Marketa, is that your name?” She nodded. “Marketa, sweetie, when you see the difference between what your sisters get paid for sucking a cock good and what the poor bitches who clean and serve and slave all week get, you’ll be on your knees asking me to give you a letter of recommendation.”

“They’re not my sisters. Let them do it.”

Stranstec leaned back in his chair and put the cigarette out in the full ashtray. “Whatever, but if you came to this country to make good money, then …”

“That’s why I came. And I will be rich. I will not have to spread myself for ten men a night to do it when I can do it for one. One who counts. Like you, I like you.”

Stranstec sat back in his chair. “You don’t know me.”

“And you don’t know me. But you do like me, don’t you?” she said.

“Your English is very good, Marketa. What age are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“And why are you here?”

“To make myself.”

“To make yourself?”

“To make me who I want to be.”

A shout came from behind the door. “Boss! Another coming in!”

She said, “Can we come to some arrangement? You and me?”

He shouted back, “Wait!” He stood up and walked around to her, taking her by the arm, and led her back through the door she had just come through. There was a line of girls, all looking scared and unsure, and she passed their eyes without meeting them. Stranstec led her into a small narrow kitchen and said, “You will have to wait here. This will take a while. There is tea and coffee. Nothing to eat, or, wait …” He reached up into one of the door-less cupboards and pulled down a packet of biscuits. Then he left her and closed the door.

She turned the tap on and held a cup beneath the flow of water, but her hand was shaking too much to hold it steady. She leaned against the worktop and tried to calm herself. It had worked. He was going to take her.

Since she was a young teenager she had known she had a power that she could use. When she was fourteen she saw a phantom appear in the eyes of the principal of her school as she stood in front of him and played with the hem of her skirt. She learned that she could summon that black spirit into the eyes of men, and now when she had needed it most, she had done it again.

That was how she got together with Stranstec. He had put her in an apartment and gave her money once a week. At first he used her only for short, almost apologetic, sexual visits, but as the weeks passed, he began to stay for longer, talking, making food for them both, bringing movies for them to watch together. He would bring marijuana for them to smoke or cocaine for them to snort, occasionally he’d arrive with a new outfit for her and a handful of speed tablets.

She used the money he gave her to go to English lessons and attend computer classes. She bought a laptop and downloaded all of the ’30s swing jazz music she could. She would dance around her city apartment in her pyjamas, spinning around with her eyes closed following the deep loose sound of the double bass.

She started to know the city. She had her favourite café, her favourite bar, her favourite cinema. Stranstec spoke of his plans to get rich. She wanted to go to university. She had seen her mother work two jobs, cleaning and stitching in a garment factory, and still have to come home every day to a cold leaking shell of a house without enough for the three of them. She had seen her father, rich with a thousand melodies, sicken and starve. She wanted to be comfortable, educated, always have enough.

One day Stranstec told her he was going to leave his wife. The movie they had been watching had just finished. It was an evil spirit that moved from person to person who was responsible for the murders, which was why every time the detective caught a new suspect, they could never remember what they had done, and another sickening sadistic murder occurred somewhere else. It could never be stopped. She was lying across his lap in the darkness of the front room of her little flat as the credits rolled on a shot of the detective walking away into the city when he told her.

“There’s something new coming to the street. It’s going to be big. One of my contacts gave me a sample and will be able to get me a bag. It’s going to make somebody a lot of money, and I can be that somebody. But I’ll need your help.”

She sat up and faced him. He brushed her hair back away from her face, over her ears, and leaned close to her.

“You’re the only one who can do this, but once it’s done, I can leave Julie, and we will have enough to go wherever we want and do whatever we want to do.”

“What about the girls?”

“I’ve been tired of running girls for a while now, you know that. Ever since I found you I’m tired of sending scared sweet faces to vans waiting in the cold. Since I’ve been with you I don’t want to do that anymore, and here’s my chance, our chance, to get out. At least with drugs, people have a choice. They choose to take or not to take, and this stuff, Spiral, a lot of people are going to want to take it. I’m serious, this is going to hit big.”

“What is it you want me to do?” she said and he took her hands and told her.

He told her all about Gregor, and how he could get her to him. Gregor is a powerful man, and dangerous, but he knew how to play him. First there was Archie, but he would be no problem for her, that would be the easy part. He would set Archie up for Gregor to come. He wouldn’t be able to resist her. She would have to stick exactly to the plan, right to the end. It might take some time, and during that time Gregor could not suspect a thing. When he did come and get her, Spiral would be his and they could do whatever they wanted.

“And you promise you’ll leave Julie? It will be just you and me?”

“I promise. Just you and me.”

“Ok, I will do it. But I will have to not be me. I will have another name. Lucy.”

“Lucy?”

“Lucy. It was what my daddy called his saxophone. Lucy.”

“When you go to Archie, you will have nothing, like you just came from the van. Okay? Like you never met me. You’ve got to forget that you met me.”

The last time she had seen Stranstec, he had kissed her and held her close.

“You’ve changed my life,” he said, “and now you can change both our lives forever. Be careful. Just stick to the plan, and I will come and get you. Remember who you are. Lucy. Lucy. Remember, you have nothing, you are nobody. You are nobody. Lucy.”

* * *

She tells herself this again as she sits in the passenger seat and watches the empty shadowy city pass by. Remember who you are. Nobody. Now she’s glad it was Spike and not Gregor who picked her up. She would not even allow herself to think of Stranstec when Gregor is with her, for fear that Gregor can see straight through her, straight to the images that now run through her mind. Just the thought of being in his car now makes her feel suddenly uncomfortable and vulnerable, as if she has just realised she is naked.

She looks at Spike, his massive bulk, his big arms extending to the steering wheel, his head nearly touching the roof of the car. She can see why Gregor entrusts him with so much. He doesn’t ask him to deceive, though. It’s hard to imagine Spike lying. Lucy looks at the scorpion running from his collar bone, up the side of his neck, its tail curling around behind his ear. She imagines it carries messages from his body straight to his brain. The messages don’t get corrupted. There is a directness, an uncomplicated physicality that Spike possesses.

But if Gregor wanted to hurt her, he wouldn’t send Spike to do it. When she heard Gregor talking on the phone to Spike he didn’t say,
You’ll have to take him out
, he said,
I’ll have to take him out
. She had seen Gregor’s eyes as he cut into Archie’s ear and the blood erupted over his blade. She recognised that excitement, that flash of pleasure in him when Archie screamed, because she felt it too. It was a rush of adrenaline, like an electrical current activating every molecule in her being. Gregor had seen it in her. She wonders where Gregor is now. She imagines him leaning over a cowering figure, pulling the knife away, blood on the blade.

The car passes shop fronts, shutters pulled down, lights off, homeless asleep in doorways. What she has to do now is forget about the message and re-inhabit the frail, helpless inconsequential Lucy; the nobody he took from the squalid flat that night. As the buildings get higher, she asks, “Where are we going?”

Spike replies, “You’ll stay with someone I know. She’s nice, you’ll like her.”

***

Chapter Twenty-One

The running got easier. The steady rhythm of his feet and the quickening of his breath liberated his mind. He knew exactly where he was going—Paxton, past Scott and Barry, to Wyatt, Macintosh, Foster, and back to Paxton. He knew exactly what he would see—the new dark tarmac streets, the thin squashed red brick houses topped with grey tiles, the green of the small patch of grass, the brown fence holding the countryside at bay.

By the time he got back to the house, often running the route twice, passing the same woman and her dog or pram, he would shower and shave. After his showers he had started spending time looking at himself in the long bedroom mirror. He noticed his waist was slimmer, his legs were toned. He spent time looking at his face from different angles, lifting his chin, turning his head, to see if the double chin which he had noticed once his beard was gone was receding. He thought it was.
If I keep this up,
he thought,
I might change completely.

After drying off he would sit down and type. He tried now to move the story forward, tried to remember what it was he had done in those short stories for
Noire
which had started this process, and sat down in his upstairs back room,
Ready now,
he thought,
ready now to get to grips with this story.
His breathing as he sat in front of the glowing screen was fuller than before, he thought, as if before he started running he hadn’t been doing it right. His note-taking was more elaborate now. He tried to write every idea that ran through his head. The walls were becoming crowded, pages with diagrams, words underlined, and timelines with red marker points for crucial plot interventions.

Alison was still late getting back from the city. There were always meetings or extra paperwork which kept her at the office. Martin promised her he would take her out somewhere,
They needed a night out together,
he said. On this day, as he stood in the shower, watching the white soap slither down his slimmer, toned legs, he thought of a night at the opera. He stepped out of the shower and put a towel around himself, and went straight into his writing room. He had just booked two seats at the opera for them when his phone rang. His hair was still wet and as he looked at the call display drops fell and obscured the name.

It was Ozzy.

“It’s safe to go back in the water,” Ozzy said. “Billy’s gone.”

“Billy’s left ICE?”

“Not left, he was fired.”

“That’s fantastic news! Rob finally saw sense or what?”

“No, well, Billy was off duty and drinking in the bar and he came on to Sophie a bit heavy.”

“Like how?”

“Nothing he hasn’t done before—commenting on her tits, standing way too close—that kind of thing.”

“Yeah, so? He’s been doing that to staff since I was there.”

“Yeah, but Sophie has got together with Rob, so now it’s not just harassing a member of staff, it’s coming on to the boss’s piece.”

“Ha! So Rob got rid of him!”

“He’s gone.”

“Great! That’s cheered me up. Billy never was much good at following what was going on around him. Did he not know they were together?”

“Apparently not. And get this, he cried when Rob fired him.”

“Ha! Even better!” Martin unwrapped the towel from his waist and started drying his hair with one hand while talking. “So let’s hope whoever takes his place in the chain isn’t such an idiot, although I do think you’d have to look pretty hard.”

“Well, not quite as bad, but no angel either.”

“Who? Do I know them?”

“Me.”

“You? Rob’s put you on duty manager?”

“Yup. Watch out ICE, there’s a new boy at the helm.”

“Well, you have done your time. That’s great, man. So do you get to boss people around now then? Has the power gone to your head yet? Have you shaved the pirate ’stash into something a bit neater and more central?”

“Not yet. Marty, come back to the club, man, even for a few shifts, I’ll sort it for you. You should come back. How do you manage it, not working? I mean, don’t you get bored?”

“We should hook up again, it’s been a while, just let’s not go back to the Sugar Club. Let’s find somewhere else to go.”

“Oh, yeah, that was the last time wasn’t it? I haven’t been back since, although I did hook up with a cracking brunette that time if I remember right. Pity her husband was there, too. Yeah, there’s a thing, Zoe’s off the scene.”

Martin’s breath froze. He stood up and half sat down for a second, pausing there with his legs bent then sat slowly down, his bare damp skin slowly sticking again to the seat.

“What, you stopped seeing her then?”

“Everybody stopped seeing her.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Nobody’s seen her for weeks, she’s gone right off the radar. Her family have been putting photos of her all over the place, in the city, on the Internet. Missing.”

Martin stood up again. He had the towel over his head and he pressed the towel to his hair, slowly rubbing from his neck to his forehead.

“How long ago?”

“Eh, weeks ago, I guess just after all that shitty weather, yeah, just when the sun came out, she was gone. I had the police at my place.”

“The police?”

“Yeah, but it was just routine, I mean, the girl that she whacked in the Alabama ended up pressing charges, so they were looking for her in relation to that, assault charges. That’s why everyone reckons she’s gone to ground.”

“Are you worried?”

“Worried?”

“Yeah, worried, I mean, she was pretty stuck on you, wasn’t she? Isn’t it odd that she hasn’t contacted you?” He was walking around the room, dry now, naked but for the towel which he moved from over his head to his shoulder.

“She’s probably stuck on someone else. She was getting a bit clingy anyway. It’s only her family who have made a big deal with the missing persons thing, and she didn’t give much of a shit about them anyway. People come and people go, man, it’s not always a big dramatic thing.”

“You don’t think anything’s happened to her then?”

“I think anything could have happened to that chick. She was nuts, yeah?”

“Yeah. She was.” Martin was facing away from the door, with his back to the computer screen, with the towel over his shoulder, looking out the back window. The trees were coming on, their lower branches spreading and their tips reaching higher. Martin thought of the space beneath them, the unseen hollow.
There could be someone sitting, hunched there, looking straight at me right now,
he thought,
and I wouldn’t see them.

***