Читать книгу Blood is Dirt - Robert Thomas Wilson, Robert Wilson - Страница 8

I ran like a wild man through the trees looking up and down and all around until I was dizzy and freaked at finding myself in the imagery sequence of a sixties TV drama. I walked back to the car and drove home, trawling the streets like an idiot, hoping for a sight of Napier. Everybody was African apart from four huge sailor types who’d washed their hair in beer and, now that they were fragrant, had their rods out casting for some dangerous sex.

The lights were on at my house, our house. I parked up behind Heike’s year-old Nissan Pathfinder, a car that came with her job, a job that came with a housing allowance to pay the rent. I sat with my forehead on the steering wheel and worried at the Napier Briggs fiasco like a cat with a dead mouse trying to pretend there’s still some life in it.

I went upstairs to our part of the house and found a single place setting on the dining-room table with an empty bottle of Bourgogne Aligote beside it, which was better than our usual Entre-Deux-Mers. With Heike’s smarter salary we’d moved off the paint-stripper gut rot from tetrapaks and we didn’t drink whisky called Big V any more. It was minimum Red Label now.

Heike was asleep on some cushions on the floor, a half-full ashtray next to her head and a tumbler with melted ice in the bottom with nearly a full bottle of nothing less than Black Label by the chair leg. Were we celebrating? I took a right turn into the kitchen and found the lamb tagine on the stove and lit the gas underneath it. I went back into the living room and snitched the Black Label and poured myself a good two fingers. I stirred the tagine and found some cold cooked rice in the pot next to it.

‘I waited and I waited for the birthday boy,’ said a tired voice from the door.

My birthday! Goddamn. Hit forty and go senile. What year is it?

‘How old am I?’ I asked her reflection in the window.

‘Come on, Bruce, it’s not all that bad.’

‘Forty-one?’

‘There you are – mind like a steel trap. What happened to you this evening?’

‘I got held up.’

‘What’s new?’

‘I lost someone.’

‘Someone you’d already found?’ asked Heike.

‘Worse. Someone who was right bang next to me.’

‘Jesus,’ she said, as sympathetically as possible. ‘They beamed him up?’

‘As if, Heike, as if. And who’s “they'', anyway?’

She shrugged and concentrated on fitting a cigarette into her holder.

‘I drank your share of the wine,’ she said, lighting up.

‘I saw.’

‘I started on your birthday present too.’

‘The Black Label? Yeah, thanks. I mean for the present.’

‘Don’t mention it. How’s the foot?’

‘It’s OK. I haven’t thought about it.’

‘In the heat of the moment?’

‘Right.’

Too scared?’

‘Maybe.’

She sighed. A birthday treat. Most other times she’d have hardened up, cool as marble, no give at all until the whisky loosened off her throwing arm. Heike didn’t like my job, but it had nearly got her killed one time which was why she’d put me out to that kennel down the road. She kneaded my shoulder and turned me round. We kissed. My hand went up her bare back. She didn’t bother with a bra after her evening shower. I cupped a breast and ran a thumb over the nipple. She tensed and backed off.

‘Eat first. Shower. Then I’ve got another present for you. Two, in fact.’

I finished off the tagine. Heike and I shared the second bottle of Bourgogne Aligote. I was about to join my Black Label but Heike pushed me off to the shower. I cleaned up and sat on the sofa in a towel. Heike dropped some ice into my glass and splashed another finger over the top.

‘Birthday treats,’ I said.

She shrugged her eyebrows and sat behind her knees in a corner of the sofa. She sipped her Scotch and smoked at me.

‘What about these presents then?’

‘Gerhard wants to meet you,’ she said.

‘Who’s Gerhard?’

‘Bruce,’ she said, her voice taking on a serrated edge. I raised an eyebrow. She reined back. ‘Gerhard Lehrner. He’s my boss. The new one.’

‘That Gerhard. Right. The new one. I’m not used to hearing his name.’

‘How many Gerhards …?’ She stopped herself. ‘Forget it.’

‘Come here,’ I said, lunging at her.

‘Not yet,’ she said, inching her feet back.

‘Gerhard’s going to stay in the office tomorrow afternoon. He wants to talk to you about a job when there’s nobody else around,’ she said. The glass of Black Label stuck to my lips. I sat up straighter and looked her in the eye. No kidding.

‘You’ve been telling him about my charitable soul,’ I said.

‘How long did it take?’ She smiled. I stroked her big toenail. She twitched it away.

‘I didn’t tell him about your charitable soul, in fact. I told him what a complete bastard you are. And you know, he’s interested.’

‘He’s got some poor people need kicking.’

She laughed this time. Appealed to her, that, a man with gout kicking a poor person. The suffering.

‘He’s got a job for Medway and Bagado Investigations. He’s looking for someone who can’t be fobbed off, who doesn’t have the word “no” in their language, who will run something to ground and go down the hole after it and …’

‘Above all, someone who’s …’

‘Cheap.’

‘Thanks for the write-up,’ I said, and took a measure off the Scotch.

‘He tells me it could be dangerous. So you better listen to what he has to say before you say yes.’

‘Well, there’s never been any harm in listening.’

‘Then why don’t you do it to me?’

Our eyes connected. Our whisky glasses hit the table together. She stretched a foot out and undid my towel with her toes. She kicked it away and toyed with what she found underneath until I was gritting my teeth. She sat astride me, yanking her skirt up around her waist and took hold of me with a surprisingly cool palm. Watching herself as she did it she lowered herself with infinitesimal slowness until our lips drew level.

‘Better?’

The tension went out of me and I sat back and let Heike do all the work.

I woke up at 6.30 a.m. with too much light in the room because, in the urgency of the moment, closing curtains had been the last thing on our minds. Heike’s arm was across my chest and the phone was ringing. I was too content to answer it. It stopped.

Heike’s hand slipped down below the sheet line and came across some eagerness she hadn’t expected which made her start and look me in the corner of the eye.

‘Is that for me?’

‘More presents.’

She bit me hard on the shoulder so that I yelped. I rolled over her and she gripped my hips with her hands to steady me on. The phone started ringing again.

‘Shit,’ she said.

I thrust, but she held me back. The phone banged on.

‘Come on,’ I said.

‘It’ll stop, for Christ’s sake.’

‘No. I can’t stand it.’

I dropped on to my knees and waited. And waited. And waited.

‘Answer the damn thing and get back in here.’

I stormed into the living room and yanked the phone to my ear.

‘Bagado here. Sorry to disturb you. He’s been found.’

‘Who?’

Who do you think?’

‘I don’t know. Who are we looking for?’

‘Napier Briggs.’

‘Where is he, the bloody idiot?’

‘Down on the railway tracks. He’s dead, Bruce. Dead as the sleeper he’s lying on.’