Читать книгу DEAD SILENT - Neil White - Страница 20

Mike Dobson drove slowly around the Mill Bank area of Blackley, an eye on his mirror for the police. The streets ran through mainly open spaces now, from which rows of terraces had long since been cleared, ready for the urban regeneration that had never happened. The grass grew long and wild, nature reclaiming the land, fluttering through those piles of bricks and grit that hadn’t been taken away by the diggers, security fences stretching along their edges, protecting the tyre-fitters and builders’ merchants with jagged silver spikes.

There were still some rows of houses, but the windows were mostly blocked by steel shutters, awaiting the attention of the bulldozers. Water trickled onto the street from one, the pipes ripped away by scrappers, and the walls hosted the garish scrawls of graffiti artists.

The streets were busy with women though, the balmy weather making it easier to work, but the roads were quiet, traffic still too light. Mike’s car bounced into the potholes as he crawled along and the women peered into his car, smiling, their teeth browned by drug use and decay.

But he didn’t want them. He was looking for someone else.

He did a couple of circuits before he saw her, standing on a corner, well away from the other girls. He felt a small tremor of anticipation. It had been a couple of months now, but whenever he went looking she was the one he sought out. She was different from the rest—nicely spoken, almost polite, a couple of wrong turns in her life bringing her to this point—but it was her looks that drew him. Her hair was long and dark and she had an easy smile, but it wasn’t just that. She looked like Nancy and, whenever Mike saw her, it was like Nancy was back, from the way she tossed her hair as she walked, to the provocative rise of her eyebrows when she smiled.

He slowed down as he reached her. She bent down to peer into his car and he leant across the passenger seat, puffing slightly as his stomach strained against the seatbelt.

‘Looking for business?’ she drawled, as she pulled her hair back over her ears. Nancy used to do that.

‘Don’t you remember me?’ he said.

She shook her head.

‘That’s okay,’ he said, and then opened the car door. ‘Get in.’

She climbed in and put her bag on her knees. It was gaping open and Mike could see the packet of cigarettes squeezed in next to the baby wipes, her tools for the evening.

As he set off towards his usual place, the site of an old factory, now reduced to a concrete patch and dark shadows by the redbrick viaduct that overshadowed the town, he said, ‘I just thought you might remember me, that’s all.’

‘Why would I?’

‘Because I treated you nicely,’ he said.

She paused for a few seconds, and then she asked, ‘How many times?’

‘With you?’ He blushed. ‘Not many.’

She didn’t respond to that, and he guessed that she wasn’t interested in idle talk. As the car crunched slowly to a halt, just the dark walls ahead of him, she asked, ‘What do you want?’

‘Something more than this,’ he said quietly.

‘What do you mean?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing, it doesn’t matter.’ And then, ‘Who are your regulars?’

‘Taxi drivers mainly,’ she said. ‘And men like you, who don’t like their wives any more.’

He looked down at that, suddenly ashamed, and picked at his fingers. ‘Take off your top,’ he said quietly.

‘An extra fiver for that.’

He nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Full sex?’

He nodded again, his cheeks red.

‘Thirty quid,’ she said.

‘It was forty last time.’

‘Call it a loyalty discount,’ she drawled.

He got out of the car to sit in the back. She clambered in there with him, climbing between the gap in the front seats, and slipped off her T-shirt. She looked thin and pale, her skin mottled, her bones too visible in her shoulders. Her fingers were grubby and her nails bitten short.

The leather car seat was cold on his backside as he pulled down his trousers. He felt ridiculous, exposed, his eyes darting around, watching out for the police. The car was filled with the noise of the condom wrapper being torn open, and then he gasped and closed his eyes as her hands worked it onto him.

She climbed on top of him and tears squeezed out between his eyelids, part shame, part relief. Then she started to move up and down quickly, functional, passionless, getting him from start to finish, her hair brushing against his face, the seat creaking beneath him.

He ran his hands along her back, felt her naked skin under his fingers, the ridge of her spine, the fine hairs in the small of her back, and then he leant forward to kiss her. She moved her mouth out of the way and shook her head, going faster, and then it came at him in a rush…just a release, nothing more.

She climbed off him too quickly and stepped out of the car to put her knickers and T-shirt back on. He pulled at his trousers and then tossed the condom and wrapper out of the car window. As he clambered out of the back seat, puffing and wheezing from the exertion, he went towards her, to touch her hair, but she pulled away and smoothed her skirt instead.

‘I need to go back,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk if you don’t want to take me.’

‘No, I’ll take you,’ he said. ‘I’d like to spend more time with you.’

She looked wary. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It isn’t just about this,’ he said, and he gestured around him, at the car, at his lap. ‘I want something more.’

She looked away and thought for a few seconds. ‘I’m not going to your house.’

‘No, it’s not that,’ he said, and then he sighed. ‘This will sound stupid, but it’s about feeling someone in my arms, someone who will hold me. I can make it better for you, more than this.’

She folded her arms and looked at him. ‘That would be expensive.’

He took a deep breath. ‘I know, I know. I’ll come and find you when I can arrange it.’

She didn’t say anything for a few moments, and then she said, ‘I’ll walk back, it’s okay.’

And then he was alone again. His breathing returned to normal, and he climbed back into the driver’s seat and started the engine, the noise loud in the shadows around him.