The sitcom started to wear on him quickly. Everything was too clean, the characters too fresh and neat. And one of them was called Theo, same as the dickhead who used to bully Tim at school. He wanted to smash their buoyant faces, see how perfect they’d be then. Welcome to the fucking real world. He turned off the TV before his brain got the chance to blame the device for what it had just been subjected to. Something else Brad had said he had a habit of doing. Nothing was ever Mick’s fault. Maybe it wasn’t: nobody knew him these days, certainly not Brad fucking Smithfield. In part, he knew, it was his own fault. He kept his emotions internal as best he could, never talked about himself, his tastes, likes, dislikes, any of that shit. But the one thing he couldn’t keep in check was his anger because it was like a disconnected part of him, something out of his control. Everybody in his orbit had witnessed it; he knew it defined him in their eyes. And it was too late to do anything about that.
Brad and Dave often ribbed him about his anger, but what did they know? Dave had a wife, and Brad had a fucking boyfriend. Dave had a mortgage and plans for kids, and Brad had that pathetic dream about opening a bar in Thailand. What future did Mick have to look forward to, apart from more pain? They knew nothing about what it was like to be in Mick’s shoes. Most men would have sunk into a whirlpool of despair, while others would have migrated to a monastery in Tibet: you coped how you could. Mick’s way was to be, as Brad had put it, angry at the entire world. But it beat shrinking into nothing, or casting aside your entire life for something new. Both were weak responses to life’s cruel whip. Plus, it gave him that push needed to go and get what you wanted. Case in point: Grafton.
He finished the tea and dumped the cup in the sink: hard, from a distance, so that the thing made a noise. Mick liked noise because it was the opposite of silence. He liked to slam doors and play his rock music loud, and if the bitch next door banged on his wall to complain, well, he liked shouting right back at her. That certainly made him feel better. In fact, he probably got angrier if she didn’t respond.
I’m sure you hope so.
That damn thing in his head couldn’t be ignored. And why bother? He couldn’t fool himself. Fuck the plan to blame Ramirez and all that scenery. Fuck what Grafton’s wife could tell the cops. If Grafton was watching the world above from his fiery pit in Hell, there was only one way to hurt him. And Mick hadn’t finished dancing yet.
Where the fuck was Król?
He dressed quickly and slid out a cardboard box from the cupboard under the stairs. It was marked ‘Loyalty Box’. Inside, plastic food bags containing his treasures; his favourite items that came in handy to force loyalty from others. The latest addition had gone in last night: Grafton’s blood-encrusted wedding ring.
He found the label he needed (date: four months ago; place: Muswell Hill; name: Mohammed Iqbal) and hauled out the bag. He took a photo of the item inside with his phone and carefully placed the bag in the box, the box in the cupboard, the key to the cupboard in his pocket.
At the front door, with the handle in his fist, he paused. He was being too hard on himself. He had a future planned, didn’t he? He pulled out his phone, loaded Facebook Messenger, and sent a quick note to Alize:
Morning, Babe. Hope you are well. Can’t wait to see you.
He slotted the phone away, already feeling better. ‘See you later, Tim,’ he called out, then left.
Eighteen
Mac
Mac was halfway to his car when his phone trilled. He expected an update on the triple murder, but Gondal told him about a ‘Body in a shed in Longlands. An old dear left her husband fixing his remote control plane late into the night, and he wasn’t in bed when she woke up. She found him dead in the shed the next morning, door wide open and a lot of stuff missing. Strangled, she says. I sent Berry and Smith and I’m gonna head over in a mo. You want to spare time off the Grafton case for this one?’
‘I’ll be right there,’ Mac said, and thirty minutes later his car was parked on a patch of gravel outside a corrugated iron shed. He took vinyl gloves from his boot. As he was slipping them on, an old chap exited the structure with a cloth, a small plastic bag and a spray cleaner. He looked nervous.
‘What is it, Barry?’
Barry said: ‘There was some activity last night. Some cheeky upstarts on motorbikes, those off-road things. Racing about. I chased them off, and I got the registration plate of one. But I was too late to—to…’
He didn’t look like he fancied continuing, so Mac took the cleaning supplies and prompted him. A minute later, Mac knelt on grass still damp from last night’s rain, churned by tyre tracks everywhere, and saw that Barry had been right. A large crack in the headstone, on the left side, extending down from the top and slicing in half the W in his ex-wife’s name.
VVENDY
His phone trilled while he was scraping a week’s worth of grime from the headstone, but he ignored it. He returned the call while he was trekking back to the groundkeeper’s shed. Gondal told him not to bother attending the Longlands scene because the dead guy hadn’t been strangled at all. Barry and Smith suspected a heart attack. Mac hung up, met Barry on the path and returned his cleaning supplies. The groundskeeper apologised again.
‘Don’t worry about it. Not your fault. I’ll order a new stone. See you next Thursday.’ They shook hands, but when Barry considered the deed done and tried to pull his back, Mac kept hold and said: ‘I should report these silly bikers before they hurt someone next time. Did you say you got a registration?’
Nineteen
Karl
Karl woke. A good start, since it meant he’d survived the night. But the cold light of day brought a harsh reality. His next thought: police.
Lying in bed, he grabbed his phone and again searched for newsworthy events around the area of Tile Kiln Lane in Bexley. But he closed the Internet before anything could load. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t care. It wouldn’t change what was going to happen in the next few minutes.
He got up, went into the bathroom, and made the call.
And hung up after two nines. Calling the cops would officially stamp him as part of this, whatever ‘this’ was.
It was only six in the morning, which, he figured, was too early to call the shop. Katie was still asleep on her back. He pressed the covers around her belly to form a hump and imagined a little baby boy in a tent, which lightened his mood a little.
There was no time for a shower. He settled for flattening his wild hair with a wet palm, then slipped on black trousers and a white shirt with Sunrise Electronics stitched on the chest. Katie was starting to stir, so he returned to the bedroom.
‘Tea?’
‘Of course. Immediately.’
‘Soon as Michael’s here, I get the pamper treatment.’
‘We’ll ask Jane if that’s okay.’
‘He’ll want his daddy to be pampered.’
‘I’m sure she will.’ She closed her eyes again, and in that moment of being effectively shut out, Karl’s worries returned. He kissed his wife’s cheek and went downstairs to make tea. But before the tea, he made the call.
It rang.
Get out, he was going to tell Liz Grafton. Go home, or go to the cops, but just go. Not his business. He’d done enough for her. He wanted her gone by the time he got to work.
It rang.
And she had to pretend that they’d never met, he’d remind her. Some other guy had picked her up. She’d never heard of Karl Seabury or Sunrise Electronics.
It rang.
Of course it did: he’d told her not to answer the phone, hadn’t he? She was probably at the loft hatch, staring at it.
Maybe not, though. Maybe she had gone, and he’d find a note in her place that said she’d spoken to her husband, all was fine, the attack was a prank, thanks for the ride, see you around.
Katie thumped downstairs. He hung up the phone and moved away from it before she saw him and asked what he was doing. She entered the room wearing a nightgown and a smile, and he smiled back. He remembered the tea and went into the kitchen to make it.
He started to fill the kettle and took a moment to think. He had no choice now but to go to the shop as if it were any normal workday and deal with whatever happened when he got there. He heard Katie enter the kitchen.
‘Remember there’ll be traffic jams, so don’t be back any later than twelve. Nails at one.’
‘I’m a white van man, Katie. We invented traffic jams.’
A minute later, tea in hand, she announced that she was going for a bath, pecked his cheek and vanished. His own tea was gulped down before the stairs had stopped creaking. He yelled goodbye around a mouthful of toast and almost pulled the nail out of the wall when he grabbed his keys, so eager was he to get to the shop and erase his worries.
Twenty
Król