The meanest Flood (2 page)

As he walked Diamond Danny pulled on two pairs of latex gloves.

God encourages the things that please Him, and those that He doesn’t favour He destroys. This is how He is. Remember the flood? The magician had little time for people who believe that God is kindness and light. God is a planner and an engineer; He is an ambitious magician and He doesn’t mind too much if some of His tricks go wrong. He can rest on His laurels for a while, on His reputation. He was in the right place at the right time and He managed to pull off a few stunning illusions. But you must have heard?

The house was nothing, a between-the-wars construction of red brick. Since it was built all the woodwork had been replaced at least once. It had single-glazed windows and no damp-course to ensure that it met the English standard of cold and draughts and a tendency to mould around the skirting boards.

The front door was painted red and the upper half was a single pane of glass. But at the rear of the house it was dark and whoever wanted to enter could do so undetected by one of the neighbourhood insomniacs.

The magician, of course, knew this already. He had been at the back door of this building twice before. Once during the day and once at the dead of night. There was a simple lever lock which the magician could open with a matchstick in a few seconds. There were bolts on the inside of the door, at top and bottom, but both of them were stiff from lack of use and a couple of attempts to paint them out of existence.

The occupant of this house had no worries. She didn’t imagine that someone would wish to enter her home and harm her. She slept soundly. She slept as soundly at night as she did during the day. Her life was a dream.

We are all magicians now. Even the plodding policeman is a sorcerer these days. Recently Danny had seen on the news that a twelve-year-old rape case had been solved through the extraction of DNA from a speck of dandruff. Truly amazing. The perpetrator of the rape was now a fifty-year-old grandfather, but at the time of his crime he was only thirty-eight. For the years between he was a card hidden in the pack until - hey, presto - the conjurors of the forensic department found him curled up in a test tube.

The magician was not particularly interested in this woman. The female in the house, sleeping in the front bedroom. She was not the trick, only a component of it. He needed her but she was not an end in herself. She was neither the rabbit nor the top hat. She contributed to the illusion by the way she distracted the eye. She was a cipher who only took on the appearance of reality when she was removed from it.

The streetlights sent a pale glow through the windows of the house. The magician had a torch but he didn’t need to use it. The kitchen was neat and tidy, all the surfaces had been wiped clean and there was a suggestion of pine disinfectant in the air. The living room had a fitted carpet and floral curtains that were closed against the night. There was still enough residual light to see the photographs on the mantelpiece: a studio portrait of an old couple, probably her parents, and one of the old woman alone, taken some time later with an Italian mountain in the background. There was another of a small girl with pigtails, something old-fashioned about it, perhaps the silver frame.

The magician removed his overcoat and laid it on the worn Chesterfield. He slid his weapon from the inside pocket and weighed it in his hand, took a moment to wonder at the balance and beauty of the polished hilt.

He removed his remaining clothes, folded them neatly and placed them on top of his overcoat.

When he was naked he ascended the stairs and waited for the instant when he would hear the woman’s breath for the first time. She lived alone but all possibilities had to be taken into account. She could have a friend with her, a man or a woman. Either possibility would increase the night’s workload but nothing would distract Danny from his main purpose. He had waited a long time for this. He was committed. Professional integrity was at stake.
Abracadabra. Katha.
Behold the woman; first you see her, then you don’t.

Her bedroom door was ajar. On the landing there was a red dressing gown draped over the handrail of the banister. The magician stood in the open doorway and surveyed the scene. She was sleeping with the bedside lamp on, perhaps over-concerned with bogeymen and things that go bump, nyctophobic. Her dressing table was by the window. There was a chair on one side of the double bed and her clothes had been placed on it, neatly folded. Oh, symmetry.

On the other side of the bed there was a small cabinet with a couple of books on its polished surface. There was a picture on the wall, a reproduction of one of Hockney’s swimming pools. Below it there was a small television on a black metal trolley.

This was not an impressive room. If you could choose, you would not choose to die here. But all the choices that this lady had ever had were finally tumbling down to zero.

She was lying on her side with her arms out of the quilt. Her hair was cut short and had been freshly washed, auburn with subtle highlights. Her shoulders were covered by a peach-coloured nightgown. There were freckles on her chest. She was breathing deeply and there was some activity going on beneath her eyelids. Over the area of the bed there was a canopy of confined bodily odours, something the woman unknowingly shared with the world. If she were awake she would open the window.

The magician brought her to life by pushing her on to her back and climbing on top of her. He straddled her chest, pinning her arms by her sides with his knees. There was a moment when they were face to face. An instant of awareness that she was not dreaming. Her eyes were the size of fists and her mouth opened wide to scream for help. The messages bombarding her brain and the rush of adrenalin combined to throw her system into chaos. What should have been a scream fluttered to a whimper. She begged for reason and to be spared pain. ‘Who are you? What do you want? Please don’t hurt me.’

The magician had bought the bayonet in an antique shop in Finchley years before. At the time he’d thought vaguely of incorporating it in his act. It had only been used once since the war, as far as he knew. It was forty centimetres long with a wooden handle which was engraved with the German eagle. The blade came to a sharp point and had a blood groove that spanned its entire length. It was a functional tool but it had a certain elegance and was originally used as an accessory to a dress uniform. If it had had the original scabbard it would have been worth serious money as the blade was mirror-bright.

The woman’s initial wriggling and pleading gave way to more violent movements as she realized that her salvation was entirely in her own hands. The magician gripped her tighter. He took her spare pillow and covered her head and chest.

Diamond Danny held the bayonet aloft with both hands. Bringing it down forcefully he stabbed her once through the pillow, correctly estimating the point at which her heart lay pounding.

He ran the cold tap in the bath and rinsed the gore from the blade of the bayonet. He used her hand-towel to dry it, glancing at the bottles and containers of shampoo and conditioner, the nail varnish and lipsticks, powder and eye-shadow. The tricks of the feminine trade. Three different brands of perfume and an economy bottle of green makeup remover from the Body Shop. He looked in the mirror where her face appeared each morning and evening and the glass reflected his own image without a hint of sentimentality.

He washed away the blood that spattered his upper body and he put the plug in the bath and blocked the overflow with what was left of the woman’s cotton-wool pleats. She wouldn’t need them anymore and she’d possibly be pleased that someone had found a use for them. He turned on both taps and one by one emptied the bottles and containers of lotions into the bath.

He didn’t return to the bedroom. All was quiet in there. He descended the stairs and dressed himself. He buttoned his overcoat against the night air. He placed his hat on his head and had a look around. There was the sound of water splashing into the tub, must be getting close to the top by now. And all those essential oils mixed together, filling the house with their aroma; they reminded him of his mother, not close to the end when she was old, but when she was younger, while Danny was still a boy. Lovely smell, delicious, made you picture tropical climates, soft fruits, birds of paradise and a life of magical ease and everlasting enchantment.

Two hours later Danny edged his car into the garage and went into his house. He took the bayonet from his pocket and placed it back in the cabinet with his other little-used accessories. He drank a glass of cold water while standing at the sink and walked upstairs to the bedroom.

Jody was sleeping on her side of the bed and the magician stripped off his clothes and crept in beside her, pulling her towards him. He wrapped his arms around her. ‘Flawless,’ he said. ‘Went like a dream.’ He nuzzled down and took her designer nipple between his teeth, letting his eyes close and the world fade away around him.

Diamond Danny Mann, whacked after a busy day.

2

That morning Ruben Parkins finished his milk-round at 7.50 and went back to his flat to clean up and change his clothes. Ruben was going to spend the whole day with his girlfriend and when he got in the shower he sang ‘Everything I Do, I Do It For You’, modulating his voice like Bryan Adams, crooning away in a deep bellow with the water from the sprinkler splashing around his head and shoulders.

Ruben was a good guy and he was feeling good about it. What made him feel so great, apart from the woman and the fact that he was in love, was that being a good guy was something he hadn’t been before. Well, not for a long time.

He’d been cute as a kid. There were photographs his mother had kept and his auntie Sarah had a couple still, showing Ruben as a toddler, maybe a bit older, up to the time he started school. Dumb little kid with big eyes like a bush-baby, looking around wondering what the world was all about. When he saw those photographs Ruben could remember what it was like back then, when eye-level meant just above his mother’s knees. There was an overhang to the Woolworth’s counters in those days and little Ruben used to walk under it without banging his head. If he wanted to see what the grown-ups were looking at on the counter his mother’d have to lift him up.

The violence had started when he got to school. Ruben wasn’t bigger than the other kids but one of the first things he’d learned was that if he was going to hold his own he’d have to pack a hefty punch. He had a talented straight-right. The gym teacher said he could be a fighter if he wanted. He’d have to learn to block other people’s punches, and do the little dances that pro boxers did, but he’d always have that killer punch. No one could teach him any more about that. It was a gift from God.

There’d been times after he’d left school when Ruben had wished he’d listened to the gym teacher and taken the fighting lessons. The main time he’d wished he’d listened was when he got himself banged away on a GBH count for breaking a nightclub bouncer’s neck. What was unfair about that whole eighteen-month stint was that none of it was Ruben’s fault. The guy had been a jerk-off.
Anybody
would have broken his neck if they’d been in Ruben’s position that day. If they’d drunk the same amount of booze, if they’d lost half their wages on the last race at Kempton Park and if the slag they were supposed to be getting married to had run off with her own cousin. And then, to cap it all, they’d had to listen to a load of garbage coming out of the jerk-off’s mouth, saying the place was full when he was ushering his own mates through the door on the QT. Fuckin’ Italian into the bargain; nose like a parrot’s perch.

So. Feeling good. Eighteen months banged away all done and finished with. The milk-round in the bag. Nicely showered and padding around his bedroom buck naked, freeing a new pair of leopard-skin skimpies from their cellophane bag.

Ruben nodded at his reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the wardrobe door. Not an ounce of fat on him; all muscle and bone. Those black hairs on his chest and forearms and on his thighs and legs. He half-turned to see the same hair spread over his back, glistening across his shoulders. He adjusted his lunch-pack inside the skimpies, enough in there to keep a harem happy. Or a convent if they wanted a holiday from chastity.

What he’d planned was to get to Kitty’s house around 9, 9.30, by which time she’d have dolled herself up and be waiting on the doorstep. They’d drive over to Harrogate and have breakfast in one of the posh cafes there. Then they’d shop, which was what Kitty liked to do more than anything else. They’d spend a couple of hours wandering round buying new clothes, whatever took the woman’s eye. She’d see he wasn’t a skinflint, which was the reason she’d got rid of her last boyfriend, and she’d see he had some earning power. That he could earn legitimate money from the milk-round, didn’t need to go back to a criminal lifestyle.

She already knew he was a good lover, that he could get to the parts the other guys in her life couldn’t reach. And she’d got to him, too. The only woman he’d ever met who had made him sit up and think. The one woman who had made him change his way of thinking about the world. Ruben had always said that he was number one, that no one else even came in close second. But now that he’d met Kitty Turner he no longer thought like that. She was number one and Ruben was prepared to do anything for her.

He put on his leather strides, sky-blue socks and new black slip-ons. He found his way through the packaging of a white polyester Double Two shirt, removed the pins and plastic clips and slipped it on. A silk tie the same colour as his socks and a brown suede jacket with his snake-skin wallet in the inside pocket made Ruben feel like the master of the universe.