The Fly Guy (20 page)

“How long were you following me?”

“Today.”

“Just today?”

“Just today, and well, yesterday, too.”

“Today and yesterday.”

Henry can see him think, can see him run through his movements in his mind.

“Not a lot to see. One kiss.”

“That’s all I need.”

“An easy job for you.”

“Suits me fine, I don’t like things complicated.”

The landlord is back, putting two tumblers of whiskey in front of them with a clunk and a splash. He picks up the note Henry has left out on the table and puts it in his back pocket as he wobbles around to the front of the bar and starts to collect glasses.

“What’s your name?”

“Henry. Henry Bloomburg.”

“Spike, but you already knew that.”

They sip from their drinks. The light in the bar feels like it is the same light that has always been there, it has never been released. It has aged and yellowed, and it infuses everything in the room with its sickly glow.

“So you’re a private investigator then?”

“Uh huh.”

“Aren’t you going to ask?”

“Ask what?”

“About what you’ve seen?”

“I’ve just seen a situation. Now, like I said, my job is over.”

“Do you know who I work for?”

“I know it’s not a chemicals company.”

“What about the police?”

“What about the police?”

“Don’t you report to the police?”

“The police didn’t employ me. Your wife employed me. She didn’t want to know who you work for, what you move around, why you do what you do. She wanted to know who you’re sleeping with.”

“And now she knows. Have you got a wife?”

“No.”

“Girlfriend?”

“No.”

“So are you in love right now?”

“But we’ve only just met.”

Spike smiles. Henry finds it odd. He wouldn’t have expected the Scorpion to let down his guard, but then it happens all the time. Henry always sees that people are aching for an opportunity to rest their defences, even if it’s just for a moment. They both drink.

“So are you? In love with anyone right now?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me who I love?”

Henry sighs and swigs. There are others in the bar, Henry saw them when he walked in. Men in a huddle around a table, two guys drinking by themselves at the counter. A couple in the corner, a woman in her forties and a guy in his late teens.
Everyone in here has a story,
he thinks,
but it looks like most of their stories are over. They may be sensing a change, but it’s the ending getting closer. This is a place where endings happen, slowly.

“Spike, it makes no difference. If you tell me it’s your wife or if you tell me it’s your daughter, it makes no difference. Tomorrow I’ll get a call from someone else who wants an answer to something. Some part of their lives they can’t control, something under the cover. You know? They feel it in the darkness but can’t pull the cover back. They’ll pay me to go sneaking around and find whatever it is and then I’ll start again.”

Spike puts his head in his hands again. Henry considers him. He looks close to tears. He’s like a child who has been awoken and found himself in the body of a warrior and seen death for the first time.

“Do you know who you love?”

“No. I was with Maya, but I don’t know if it’s love now. I don’t know what it is with Kayleigh. I don’t know.”

He drinks some more and looks into Henry’s eyes. Henry can see his outline tremble in the old yellow light, as if the signal is fading.

“So what have you seen? How much do you know?”

“All I care about is answering Maya’s one question. My part is over.”

“Is Maya at home now?”

“I don’t know. I called her mobile.”

“How much does Maya know?”

“I just told her about you and Kayleigh.”

“And you just saw us kiss.”

“That’s enough. I saw the kiss.”

“Fuck.”

Henry swigs back his drink.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it. Spike, I don’t know what love is, but I’ve seen a whole lot of trouble it causes. It’s not always a good thing, it’s not always a bad thing. I’m glad I’m not in it. Love makes a mess.”

Spike is shaking his head. As Henry goes to stand up, Spike rises and towers over him pulling a gun from his jacket and pushing it to Henry’s temple in one swift brutal motion.

“I can’t let you go.” All of the rigidity has returned to Spike’s muscular form, his mouth has tightened. Only his eyes betray him, they are flooded with grief.

Henry sits back down, his hands up. “Spike, your broken heart doesn’t matter to me. My job is done. Don’t do this. Let me go. I’ll walk away and you’ll never see me again.”

Spike pushes the barrel harder against Henry’s head.

“You’re coming with me. We’re going to take a drive. Get up.”

They stand and Spike sticks his gun into Henry’s side. He scans the bar as they walk toward the door. No-one is looking up except for the barman who gives a drunken thumbs up and pours himself another drink. The big four-by-four is parked on the street. Spike opens the passenger door, grabbing Henry’s gun from the inside of his jacket before pushing him in.

“Climb across, you’re driving.” Spike follows him, getting into the passenger seat.

“Put the belt on,” Spike says.

Henry clips the belt in place. Spike keeps the gun trained on him as he starts the engine.

“We’re not going far. Go to the river.”

They start to drive away from The Bucket O’ Blood, down the abandoned streets of the docklands.

“Spike, you don’t want to kill me. I bought you a drink.”

“Don’t try and fuck with me. I don’t know how much you know. You’re a loose end.”

“Do you think I won’t be missed? Spike think about—”

“Shut up or I shoot you now you piece of shit!”

Spike’s head is reeling. The thought of Maya putting the phone down with his name and Keyleigh’s ringing in her ear is making him feel sick. This puny fucker has brought everything tumbling down. Who knows who he is really working for. He might be playing him. He needs to be extinguished. Now.

“Turn in here, right, behind that building.”

Henry swings the car off the road to the right and then pushes the accelerator to the floor. Spike shouts and Henry’s heart races, his nerves set alight as he grips the wheel and braces himself back against the seat. The derelict building looms before them as Henry speeds the car toward it. He takes his hands off the wheel and pulls them back just as the passenger side of the four-by-four smashes into the corner of the building.

There is smoke and airbags. Spike is thrown toward the windscreen squashing the plastic of the airbag, bursting it with his weight. The gun is gone from his hand and Henry sees him turn with a fire in his eyes, as if his body will explode through his skin. The metal around Spike is bent and pushed in, the seat has lurched forward and Spike can’t move properly. Henry unclips his belt and lunges across, grabbing Spike’s neck and finding the ridge between the muscles. He presses as hard as he can, squeezing the nerve. Spike struggles and gets an arm loose, pushing it to Henry’s face, but in a matter of seconds his eyes close and he is unconscious. Henry clambers out of the car and runs into the shadows of the docklands.

***

Chapter Twenty-Nine

On Monday Alison drove Martin back to the Spiral building. When Martin indicated where to turn off and they turned off onto the main avenue of the Crown Estate, Alison said, “Oh my God, I never knew all this was here, it’s huge! How long does it go on?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t get to the end. We’re going to the M estate.”

“It just goes on and on.”

When they turned into the M estate and the brown brick building loomed in front of them, Alison drove right up to the glass doors at the front.

“I’m just going to let you out here. This is further out than I thought, I’m going to be a bit late. Have you got everything? Bag? Money? Phone?”

“If I hate it, I’ll make my way home.”

“Hey, you won’t hate it, it’s just daunting. Remember me on the rooftop? You helped me. Remember what you told me then? Just call me later. Good luck.”

Martin got out and walked through the door. He walked down the corridors to the C wing of the building.

He got in the lift to go up to level three and guessed that the others in the lift were probably going to the same training course as he. They all had laminated cards around their necks. No-one was making eye contact.

He thought again about when he met Alison on the rooftop. What had he told her? He couldn’t remember. Should he have a laminated card around his neck? Maybe you were supposed to pick them up at the main reception. When the lift stopped he followed the others to a big conference room where they all showed their cards to a woman in the doorway. She was in a suit, smiling like an air hostess holding a folder, nodding as everyone walked in and took their seats at desks with a monitor and keypad. Martin stopped when he got to the door and the woman looked at him expectantly.

“I, em, I don’t have a …”

“Ah, Mr. Tripp. Martin Tripp,” she said, “I have your identity here.”

Martin took the laminated card and placed it around his neck. He took a seat and waited for the seminar to begin.

* * *

Alison and Andre stood over a map of the docklands. Each plot was marked off, and where there was interest or planning either from them or another firm, it was marked on the map. The plots which they were developing were marked off in red. Alison’s groundwork had reaped rewards and there was already competition for some plots. Alison told Andre what tack she had used; the grand vision of giving the city back a space which it thought it had lost to the shadows and building it back to be the shining beacon of success. Reclaiming what was originally the heart of the city, recreating the hotspot for commercial, residential, and leisure industries. This was the future and it was going to be big, bright, and profitable.

“Hell, I’m so glad I employed you,” Andre gushed. “You could sell me shit for my shoes and I’d tell you to keep the change.”

“We have a problem though.” Alison pointed to a small square on the map bordered in black. “This guy won’t sell up.”

“Won’t sell up? I’m surprised he can stay open.”

“Well he’s turned down offers and won’t even have a meeting.”

The door opened and Andre’s wife came in. Alison took a side-step away from Andre. Andre put his arms out and said, “Just in time, we were about to break for lunch. Join us, we’ll go somewhere nice.”

Cassandra walked to the table and looked at the map, marked off into different coloured shapes. Some were long rectangles, some squares, some
L
-shapes. Her heels made her taller than either Alison or Andre and she cast a thin shadow over the plots as she leaned over the table.

“Is this the docks? My god, I thought they’d built enough in this city. What else is there to build?”

Andre stepped next to her and put his arm around her, squeezing her close and talking into her neck while she grimaced, the sides of her mouth pulling the edges of her eyes down.

“They’ll always think of something else. And for as long as they do, we’ll keep helping them build it.” He looked up at Alison. “Speaking of which, there’s going to be another Acre development out where you are. Gold this time, I think, right next to yours. Now, where to for lunch?”

* * *

When Alison picked Martin up from outside Spiral, he sat into the car just as the rain began to come down.

“I’m going to need a car,” he said as he put his seat belt on.

Alison smiled and clapped her hands. She had been anticipating him getting in the car and telling her how he would never go back there again. Instead all the way home he told her about the programming they were being shown. He said it wasn’t complicated at all, just required common sense and the ability to read instructions properly. He had found which section he would be working in as of next week and had talked to some of the guys. They seemed alright, he said. Alison asked what he would be printing.

“The guys were talking about stuff they’ve been doing. Assembly instructions for furniture warehouses; no words, just pictures. Stickers for ladders. ‘Not this side.’ ‘Danger—do not climb this side.’ You know, mostly just a few words and pictures. That kind of thing. It seems like a natural place to start, I suppose, you know, to learn the ropes.”

“I’m so glad. Oh, my god, I thought you were going to come out hating the place.”

“I’ve never been in a place like that before. It’s like an ant colony, lots of movement, people scurrying around, all for the greater good. I’m just taking it all in right now.”

As they joined the motorway and the spray rose around them Alison said, “Well, you should take this car. I’ll go back to taking the train for the moment.”

By the time they got home there was water spreading over the New Acre roads. Martin held his jacket over them both as Alison unlocked the front door. They prepared dinner together and sat and ate it before going into the front room and turning the TV on.

“Aren’t you going upstairs tonight?” Alison asked.

“No, put on whatever, I’ll watch whatever you want to,” Martin said.

Alison flicked through the channels until she got to a programme about professional catwalk models living together.

“Haven’t you seen this one before?” Martin said.

“Not this one, this is series six. One of the girls in this series reminds me of Cassandra, you know, Andre’s wife?”

“Oh yeah, which one?”

“That one.” Alison pointed at the TV.

The model was on a shoot, near the sea. She was holding the reins of a mottled grey horse wearing a gypsy shawl and looking wistfully to the horizon. There was a photographer fluttering around her telling her how wonderful she looked and then encouraging her to move the hood of the shawl down to reveal her hair.

“For some wind dynamic,” the photographer said, “that’s it, beautiful, beautiful.”

The model turned her head this way and that, and the wind blew her blonde hair this way and that while the camera
click-click-clicked
. The horse gave a neigh and a shake of boredom.

“I can see how she might remind you of her, yeah, but she doesn’t look like her.”

Alison put her head to one side. “You don’t think so?”

“She looks like what Cassandra would like to look like, or maybe what she thinks she looks like.”

“You don’t like her, do you?”

“Cassandra? Maybe we just don’t have anything in common.”

“We had lunch today. She was talking about the work she does in the city. She’s involved in setting up kitchens for the homeless. She was talking today about the kitchens having to be moved because of council regulations and all the trouble and bureaucracy that moving kitchens involved.”

“Charity? Maybe I had her down all wrong. Maybe she just really hates opera.”

“Well, she doesn’t have to work, Andre’s got enough for them both. I think she must be a really strong woman, if just to put up with him all the time. But that must take something, setting up and running kitchens for the homeless.” Alison moved over and put her head on Martin’s shoulder.

“Have you heard from
Noire
?”

Martin grunted. “They want more rewrites. They advised me to revisit the original Henry stories and draw from them. But they’re going along with it, they say the writing is good.”

“Oh, well no wonder you need some mindless TV time.” She kissed his cheek. “Well, I’m glad you do, it’s much comfier with two on the couch.”

Martin kissed her back and she turned the volume up as the programme came back on. There had been no contact with
Noire
since their reaction to his first draft, since they said this is not the story we wanted. Alison shifted on the couch. The models were lining up for another shoot, all dressed in dungarees and mining hats with lamps on, their pouting chiselled faces smeared with dark make-up. Martin’s mind went back upstairs into the back room, to Lucy.

He could see the door of the writing room open and Lucy walking out, down the stairs and standing in front of the TV, the glow of the screen pulsing behind her, shining through her skirt so he can follow the line of the inside of the thighs. She has her bare feet planted apart and her arms crossed. She is looking at him as if he’d promised her something and then forgotten about it. She uncrosses her arms and puts her hands on her hips, putting her weight on her right leg and cocking her hip out. She raises her eyebrows, looking straight at him, waiting for him to remember.

***