Two-Way Split (19 page)

"Fine." Kennedy's heart was thumping. He hung up. He let out a long breath and waited. When the phone rang a few seconds later, he said, "I find what you're proposing morally repugnant and I feel it's my civic duty to inform the authorities of your intentions."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

"Tell them. You don't know what I'm proposing."

Kennedy said, "Pearce is going to get in touch with you. If he doesn't, I guess you'll get in touch with him. Shouldn't be too hard for someone in our line of work." His boss was silent at the other end of the phone. "Either way, you're going to let Pearce know that you have the name of his mother's killer. How am I doing so far?"

"You can't prove anything."

"I don't need to. Just by telling the police, I'll ruin your plan."

"Go on. What's my plan?"

"To sell Pearce the information."

"The man's fresh out of prison. It says so in today's
Scotsman,
even if it doesn't mention what he was in for
.
He doesn't have a job. He doesn't have any money."

"Interesting you remembered that snippet of useless information but you couldn't remember his name."

"Some things stick."

"They do, don't they?"

"Don't say it."

"Will I carry on, then?"

"This is ridiculous. Okay, I'll play. How's Pearce going to pay?"

"Setting aside the fact that Mr Pearce might have come into an inheritance, there's also the issue of the stolen money."

"Are you suggesting—"

"Absolutely." Kennedy's throat tightened but he managed to keep his tone level. "In return for Greaves's name and address Mr Pearce is going to locate the loot and hand it over to you."

His boss laughed. It sounded forced. "Supposing – for argument's sake – supposing he agreed. Why would I do this? I don't need the money."

"On the contrary. You desperately need the money."

"The business is doing well."

"The business is bollocksed and you know it. If the business is doing well, why didn't you pay me last month?"

"A temporary cash flow problem. I told you."

"Temporary, my arse. What about the drinks machine? Why's that gone? Suppose that's temporary, too?"

"You wouldn't go to the police, would you?"

Kennedy didn't reply.

"Okay. Shit. How deep is your moral repugnance?"

"Make me an offer."

"Twenty percent."

"Deeper than that."

"Thirty."

"Still wracked with guilt."

"Forty?"

"Keep going."

"Forty-five?"

"Come on, you can do it."

"Fifty, you bastard."

"Now I feel a wave of peace washing over me. Fifty percent, I can live with."

"You bastard."

"You told me that already. One more thing."

"You bastard."

"I want to be there when you meet him."

"What for?"

"We've agreed on a fifty-fifty split, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I'd like to know how much I'm getting fifty percent of."

10:44 am

"You're back." Carol moved away from the window. Faint birdsong drifted up from the garden below.

Robin was disorientated. He had fallen asleep and woken up with a terrible headache. "Where's Eddie?"

She described the sequence of events from the moment Don had arrived to the point where Eddie struck Don with his gun butt.

Robin put his hand to his head and wished he hadn't.

"Eddie took your keys. Went to see if you'd left the money at home." She sat down on the couch and took out her cigarettes. She offered one to Robin and he accepted. She lit it, then lit her own.

Robin said, "So Eddie just left you here on your own?"

"Technically, he left me here with Don."

"You felt safe with Don?"

"Don was out cold."

"Not for too long."

"Eddie left me the gun."

"Where is it?"

"Secret." She formed a gun with her fingers and aimed it at Robin. "I promised Eddie I wouldn't play with it. Unless I had to. Bang, bang." She blew on her fingertips. "'Bye, 'bye, Don."

Robin muttered, "I can't believe Eddie left you on your own. Does he know how dangerous Don is?"

"He didn't want to." She put her hand on Robin's leg. "I had to persuade him."

"Excuse me," Robin said, tapping his fingers on the back of her hand. "I need you to let me go to the loo."

"Robin." She fetched an ashtray and sat down again, putting her hand back on his leg. "Do you have any idea what's happening to you?"

His resolve almost disappeared. His thigh glowed under the warmth of her hand.
She is on top of him, lust contorting her flushed face. Sweat trickles between her naked breasts. She moans as he slides inside her. Her mouth twists in a sneer and she cries, "Eddie."

"Got to go," he said, getting to his feet. She didn't stop him.

He closed the sitting room door, walked to the bathroom, opened the door, gently closed it again and crept to the bedroom. He eased the door open. Some of Eddie's clothes hung over the back of a chair. A pair of black trousers, a white shirt, a sock. He tiptoed over to the bed. A nightdress lay on top of the quilt. Robin picked it up. He didn't recognize it. It smelled freshly laundered, but it didn't smell of Carol at all. He pulled back the quilt and looked for stains. White sheets. It was hard to tell. He let the quilt fall back. Only one pillow was indented. Over by the little sink a glass propped up two toothbrushes. One blue, one purple.

He bent over and sniffed each pillow in turn. He folded the nightdress and placed it on top of the pillow on the left. He thought he detected the slightest trace of White Musk. His face was wet. He moved to the dresser. On top of it, in a bowl cluttered with feminine paraphernalia, was a photo of Carol in her late teens, wearing a low-cut black dress, black sunglasses, large gold hoops in her ears, short unpainted fingernails, unsmiling. He wondered who had taken the picture. He turned it face down on the dresser. An adjustable oval mirror on a wooden base reflected part of the bed, a night table, Eddie's trousers, Eddie's jacket, Eddie's sock, a chair with the sleeve of Eddie's shirt dangling over its back.

The short scissor blades cut slowly through the cotton. The repetitive opening and closing action of fingers and thumb caused a dull ache in his fingers. By the time he'd finished, his hand was throbbing and the pain was making him angry. He placed the scissors back in the bowl. With stiff fingers, he tied a knot in the severed shirtsleeve. When he pulled the ends tight, the fabric felt strong. He relaxed, snapped his wrists, relaxed, snapped his wrists. He imagined standing behind her, the shirtsleeve wrapped around her neck, the knot crushing her windpipe. He imagined hearing her cough and splutter, stumbling backwards as she gasped for air. He wiped his face on the cuff of Eddie's sleeve, rolled it up and stuffed it in his pocket.

He needn't have bothered.

When he returned to the sitting room, she was standing in the alcove gazing out of the bay window at the tenement block opposite. She had put on a CD. She behaved as if she lived here. Her head was lowered and her hips were rolling with the music. Louis Jordan was singing "There Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens."

Robin fumbled for the strip of cloth in his pocket. Sweat on his forehead gathered and cooled and began to itch as he edged past the bookcase, past the spot where Don's unconscious body must have fallen, beyond the part of the floor covered by the rug and onto bare floorboards that creaked the moment he set foot on them.

Still she didn't hear him. Her head stayed down, slowly moving from side to side as she listened to the music.

He shifted his weight and shuffled a step forward, wrapping an end of the sleeve around the knuckles of each hand. Another step. The cotton was stretched tight enough to trampoline a bullet. He couldn't do this. He couldn't bring himself to kill her. She was no more than four feet away now, the hem of her skirt rising on the right as her left knee bent. He inched closer, the ringing in his ears drowning out the song on the stereo. Closer. Still closer. He could feel the heat of her body.

His heart hammered in his chest. He heard this morning's newsreader saying, "…has died."  
Has died.

Robin looped the makeshift ligature around her neck. The instant Eddie's sleeve touched her neck she yelled. Instinct launched her forward, away from her attacker. A waft of White Musk haemorrhaged from her skin.

She croaked, "Robin." She lurched forward, one foot dangling in midair as he held her back. "Help.
Robin
."

He slid the cuff end of the sleeve over the shoulder and pulled it through the gap underneath, as if he was tying a shoelace. She cried out. He pulled both ends until the muscles in his arms burned. He dragged her back towards him, fingers whitening as they gripped the fabric. The pain in his right wrist flared and he struggled to hold on.

"I know about you and Eddie," he said in her ear. For a moment she was still. Then a quiet growl came from her throat and she lunged forward. Quickly, he changed his grip. The pain eased momentarily. "Please be still," he said as he crushed her throat. The pain flooded back and his vision blurred as tears welled in his eyes.

She struggled for a while longer, silent now, her cries choked off. Eventually she sank to her knees.

He pulled harder, crying out as pain tore at his fingers. Her hands clutched feebly at her throat and he jerked his wrists sideways, again and again, until her hands fell away. He yelled as he made one final effort to force her to be still. Her arms jiggled puppet-like by her sides. He held on. In his right arm every muscle, every sinew, every tendon was on fire. Still he held on. Her arms stopped moving. He waited. Longer. Finally he let go. Her head cracked off the floor when she fell forward.

At last she was still. It was over.

He stumbled towards the CD player, his legs barely supporting him, and turned it off. In the silence he said, "What have I done?"

Nobody answered.

Robin sat on the floor, massaging his fingers. He stared at the body. There was something he had to do now, but for the moment he'd forgotten what it was. After a while, he stopped rubbing his fingers. It was doing no good. He dragged himself towards her, stretched out his hand and touched the back of her knee. His hand slid up her leg and his fingers stroked the bare flesh of her thigh. She was cold. Her skin felt like wet clay. Standing up, he placed one foot either side of her and wriggled his hands underneath her stomach. My God, she was heavy. It was as if somebody had filled her tiny frame with cement. Because of his sore hand, he had to bear most of the weight with just his left. Breathing hard, using his right hand as a guide, he rolled her onto her back.

Her forehead had hit the floor hard. Around the left temple and under the eyebrow a swelling had already begun. A canopy over her closed eye. Blood had congealed in her left nostril and the tip of her tongue protruded through pale blue lips.