Текст книги "Blood Men "

Автор книги: Paul Cleave

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chapter twenty-three

I haven’t seen my father’s handwriting in twenty years. He used to help me with my homework. We’d lie down on the floor in the living room with the TV going but the volume mostly down, discussing why bees collected honey or how seven wouldn’t divide into twelve. He’d write things down for me, he’d read over my assignments and jot down ideas in the margins, other times he’d take notes out of whatever books I was searching through for answers. He has this elegant printing style, where the letters don’t bleed into each other, each one separate, easy to read, easy to recognize even after all this time. He always wanted me to be the best that I could at school. Those days come back to me, the smells of my mum baking something, or cooking dinner, the TV going, laughter, warm weather, a dog barking, school uniforms, life.

Another car pulls into the parking lot. It’s a rundown Mercedes, the type that isn’t old enough to be classic, but nowhere new enough to be cool. There’s a long scratch running along the bottom of the passenger side. A guy, maybe around twenty, steps out of it, his dreadlocks bouncing.

“Hey, bro, what up?” he asks, tilting his head upward as he does so. I immediately hate him. His T-shirt is full of holes and has I ATE AT THE BLEEDING BUDGIE all in capital letters across the front of it. No picture, no further explanation, maybe there’s a punch line on the back, but I don’t look. He realizes his mistake in speaking to me because I ignore him. He shrugs and heads in through the glass doors.

The air in the car is so hot it almost curls the paper my dad gave me. I wind the windows down but it doesn’t help. I read it over a couple of times and think about what it means.

LISTEN TO THE VOICE. SHANE KINGSLY. 23 STONEVIEW ROAD.

I drive home, but the only voice speaking comes from the radio. The news comes on but the announcer ignores the bank robbery and doesn’t mention anything about the men being caught. I end up pulling in behind another slow-moving truck so I take a different way home, getting caught instead at a set of roadworks where the street has been ripped up and there’s dust and dirt in the air. There are exposed pipes and wiring and machinery but nobody around, the workers off for the Christmas break, the roadworks now in limbo until sometime next month. Tiny bits of gravel shoot out from beneath the tires of the car ahead of me, hitting the windscreen but not chipping it. My cell phone rings. I recognize the number.

“You went to visit your dad again,” Schroder says. “Want to tell me why?”

“He’s my dad. I don’t need a reason other than that. And I certainly don’t need to give a reason to you.”

“You sound different, Edward.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You sound like you’ve been thinking about things, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like the kind of things you’ve been thinking.”

Somehow I think Schroder is the kind of guy who might like what I was thinking—problem is I can’t share with him. “Are you ringing to tell me you’ve caught the men who killed my wife?”

“We’re working on it.”

“I thought so. So why are you calling, other than to bust my balls for visiting my dad?”

“To remind you not to get any bad ideas.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“I think you do. I think you’re so lost right now you’re turning to your father for advice, and trust me, he’s the last person you want to be turning to.”

“I keep thinking if you spent less time worrying about my life, you’d spend more time on catching the people who ruined it.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Edward.”

“To who? Nobody knows who I could do anything stupid to anyway!” I say, and I hang up. He doesn’t call back.

Back home I sit at the dinner table and smooth the piece of paper out, pressing it flat against the wood, pushing my fingertips and palms onto it as if ironing out the wrinkles. My house is still empty. No shadows, no presence, my wife even less here today than she was yesterday. I have a name and an address and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. Not once did I even think of giving that information to Schroder when I was on the phone, and weighing it up now I’m glad I didn’t. It wasn’t Schroder’s wife who got killed. Does that mean I’m listening to the voice?

I listen for it now. There’s nothing.

I can’t go through what I went through last night. Can’t drive to this man’s house and . . . and what?

Let me help you.

And there it is.

“No,” I say, and the word sounds empty in my empty home.

We can do this.

“No.”

Then let me do this for you.

I go online and search for Shane Kingsly. He shows up pretty quick, he’s made the news on and off his entire life. Nothing big—not in the taking-a-life way of being big. He’s done plenty of shitty things. Plenty of theft convictions. He has some assault charges, and a couple of drug possession charges. Not all the statistics are here to tell me how many years he’s spent in jail on and off. His last sentence was for two years after he held up a service station with a shotgun. It doesn’t say when he was released from jail, but it must have been early for being a model prisoner—which I guess is easy to do when there aren’t any service stations or shotguns in prison. This man was one of the six, but he wasn’t the one who planned it. Is this the man that killed Jodie? He may well be.

When the phone rings it’s my father-in-law.

“When are you coming to pick Sam up?” he asks. “She misses you.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” I hear myself saying. I’m on automatic now. “I’ve been busy. I’ve been at the police station all morning.”

“Do they have . . . any news?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you okay, Edward? You sound weird.”

“I’m fine. Can I talk to Sam?”

“Sure. Hang on a second.”

“Daddy?”

“Hello, honey. Daddy-Nat and Gramma taking good care of you?”

“We’ve been putting up a Christmas tree,” she says. “They let me help. It was so cool. Will Santa bring something for Mummy this year?”

I sit down, my legs weak. I suddenly realize that I have no idea where our cat is. I can’t even remember the last time I saw him, and I’m not even sure if I’ve been feeding him or if he’s even still alive. Jesus—the monster didn’t get him when I was drunk, did it?

“Daddy?”

“Not this year, honey. I’m going to come and see you, okay? Tell Daddy-Nat and Gramma that I’m on my way.”

“Okay, Daddy,” she says, and hangs up without another word.

I pack some of her clothes. Jodie bought a bag for this a couple of years ago as occasionally Sam spends the night at her grandparents’. I find a couple of toys, and I figure it ought to be enough. Everything else—pajamas, toothbrush, et cetera—are at Nat’s house.

The sun is still blazing bright, the day isn’t as hot as it was a few hours ago but I still drive with the window down. Christchurch weather has the ability to turn on a dime. There are bus stops full of people all waiting to go somewhere, tourists with backpacks half the size of them visiting the Garden City, mums with baby carriages and bags full of shopping. Every mailbox outside every house is jammed full of supermarket and store brochures. Kids on front lawns are running through and sitting on top of sprinklers. I pass hedgehogs flattened by cars and dogs walking freely along sidewalks, sniffing at fast-food bags dropped in the gutters. I’m in control the entire drive, and I’m in control when I pull up in the driveway and step out. Sam comes and hugs me, and leads me inside to show off the Christmas tree. It’s the same tree they have every year. I smile at the tree and say how good it looks, but the truth is I’ll probably never enjoy Christmas again.

“You look like hell,” Nat says, and I guess he’s right—I haven’t really checked.

“Can I fix you something to eat?” Diana asks.

“Sure, thanks,” I say. I don’t think I’ve eaten anything since the boxed cereal yesterday.

I spend a couple hours at the house. I fit in well enough, but it’s like I’m an outsider the entire time, and even though my in-laws try hard, I think this may be the last time I visit them—other than to drop Sam off or pick her up. I can’t be here with them, and I don’t know why. They don’t blame me for what happened, but their pain and loss are written all over their faces. I don’t need to see that, not now, perhaps never again. After dinner we sit out on the porch, me and Nat, him drinking a beer and wondering why I don’t want one too.

“Listen, Nat, can you watch Sam again tonight? There’s something I have to do.”

He takes a long swallow of beer before answering. “You know, Eddie, I’m not kidding when I say you look like hell.”

“I know.”

“The only thing you ought to be doing right now is taking care of what family you have left.”

“That is what I’m doing.”

“Uh-huh. And how exactly are you doing that?”

“Can you take care of Sam or not?”

“Of course we can, Eddie, you know that. I’m just worried you’re thinking of doing something stupid.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Something. Stupid.”

“I’m only helping the police with a few things.”

“You’ve got a daughter who needs you. I’m not telling you to let go of what happened, but you have to let the police do their job. A man needs to know what his priorities are.”

“I know. You’re right. It’s only for tonight,” I say, “I promise.”

“Okay, Edward. And don’t worry, I won’t hold you to your promise,” he says, and finishes off his beer.

chapter twenty-four

I sit in my living room with the curtains closed and the stereo off and the TV off and the phones off. I’m sick of the world. Sick of my phone—sick of messages left by reporters and the psychiatrist I used to see years ago and by people wanting to check up on me. I stare at the TV as if it were on. In the beginning I can see my reflection, but the later the day becomes the harder it gets to see. I have nothing to do but wait for it to become dark. I stare at the Christmas tree and once again I think about taking it down, but once again I decide to leave it up for Sam. The sun comes in through one of the living room windows, it climbs up the walls as it sinks toward the horizon, reflecting off the shiny balls and bells on the tree. It moves over a photo of Sam, over a wedding photo of me and Jodie, it reflects across the room, orange light, weakening, and then it’s gone.

I keep waiting.

Darkness settles in. An hour goes by. I switch on the TV and there’s a New Zealand–made show about psychics on. They’re trying to solve the crimes the police haven’t been able to. A short time ago this kind of thing disgusted me. People were making money off the misery of victims—from the psychics themselves to anybody who had anything to do with the shooting of the show. Women were raped and murdered only to have their story re-enacted and retold by psychics trying to make a quick buck, and the TV-viewing public loved it—or at least enough of them did to keep making the show. But now I think of it differently. If the police can’t do their job, maybe the psychics can. Before I can change channels, the front of the bank appears, then two side-by-side photos, one of my wife, one of the bank manager. Jonas Jones, the main psychic on the show, sits down at an office table that may or may not be inside the bank, closes his eyes, and, surrounded by burning candles, tells the public that the stolen money is still in Christchurch, hidden, somewhere near water, which is a great feat considering Christchurch is on the edge of an ocean. No wonder psychics aren’t winning the lottery every week.

Midnight comes and goes.

I get changed at one o’clock. The shirt has dried out from last night and is stiff and scratches at me and smells the same as it did this morning. I drive through the early-Thursday-morning streets, most of them deserted until I get toward town, where there are sparks of life from the drunk and disorderly. In suburbia Christmas lights flash at me from windows and roofs and trees, the dark air illuminated by the reds and yellows as well as the pale light from the moon. If Jodie were alive it would all look fantastic. Instead it’s gaudy and cheap, the decorations coming from sweatshop factories in third-world countries. It makes the people in these houses seem desperate to cling to happiness.

If map reading was one of Darwin’s tests for survival of the fittest, I’d have been screwed long ago. It takes me a while, but I manage to find the address. Draw a straight line on a map and plot the neighborhoods on it, and they go steadily downhill, nice homes near town, okay homes further away, homes that can only be improved with the introduction of a Molotov cocktail further out again. This is where the map takes me, into a neighborhood you’d normally see on the news where the insurgents are fighting off an invading army. I keep a steady pace, not wanting to risk slowing down. I pass beaten-up cars, old washing machines parked on the sidewalk, random pieces of timber, split-open rubbish bags with waste spilling out. The street I want isn’t any better. Every yard is covered in brown grass and dog crap. Half of the streetlights don’t work. Only a few of the homes have fences, and those that do have about a quarter of a fence at most, every third or fourth paling stolen or used as firewood. A few years ago a neighborhood like this wouldn’t have existed. There were bad areas but not to this extent. Study the line I plotted on the map, and you’d see this neighborhood is spreading, it’s like a virus, touching other suburbs, infecting them, finally consuming them before moving further on. Gerald Painter’s wife is right to move her family away. They live maybe five kilometers from here in a nice street with nice cars and nice trees, but it’s only a matter of time before the virus parks up outside their house and moves in.

I drive past the house I want, my heart racing, my palms sweaty, but all I’ve come to do is see the house, maybe catch a glimpse of Shane Kingsly, then drive home and . . .

Well, drive home and do something. I don’t know what. Maybe phone the police. Maybe go to bed. Maybe write his name down next to Dean Wellington and the life insurance guy.

Then why is Sam’s bag still in the backseat?

“I forgot to take it out,” I say. The killing kit is still stuffed inside.

Then why’d you get changed?

“How about shutting up?”

I park a few houses down under a busted light, this time on the opposite side of the road, this time with the house ahead of me so I can keep watch. That’s the plan. Sit for a while. Watch for a while. Then leave.

Yeah right.

Immediately I realize the problem. This isn’t the kind of place I can sit for a while. I stand out here. Soon one of the neighbors will come to mug me, or kill me. I’ve seen all that I can safely see, and now it’s time to leave.

Like hell it is. Let me help you.

“No.”

Fine. Have it your way. Let the men who did this to Jodie go free. Go back to your life and move on. It’s not long until you hear that from everybody you know. Move on.

“What do you need me to do?” I ask.

We climb out of the car. I turn a three-sixty looking for somebody, anybody, but there is nobody. I grab Sam’s bag and carry it tightly.

We move onto the edge of the property. The dry grass crunches underfoot. I hunker down and pull on the hat and the gardening gloves and take a knife out, then move closer to the house. There are no lights on inside. None of the houses in the street have any Christmas lights. Santa doesn’t even know this place exists. Kingsly’s house is government subsidized, maybe sixty years old, made from wood siding that hasn’t seen fresh paint in all that time. The guttering is covered in dark mould and sags in places where it’s all cracked and busted. There are clumps of grass growing out of it. There is a run-down car parked up the driveway, another one on the lawn, and if you combined all the bits that worked you’d have a car that probably wouldn’t get you anywhere. I slowly approach the house and try to peer in through the windows. I can’t see a damn thing.

I head easily around the side of the house, walking slowly, careful in case there are dogs here, but so far nothing has barked at me. I thought a neighborhood like this would have a thousand dogs. Maybe the virus got them.

I look through the back windows and get the same result. The back door is locked. I don’t know how to get inside. I guess knocking on the door is the way to go.

No it’s not. We don’t know how many people are inside. We don’t know who will answer. It’s easier than that. Just follow my lead.

There aren’t many places in the backyard to hide, but I find a gap in a mangle of hedge that’s overgrown in the corner. We move toward it, searching the ground for something to throw. I take aim and fire a stone hard up onto the roof. It thumps heavily, and I duck in behind the hedge, the branches scratching at me and snagging my clothes. I stay absolutely still. Nothing happens. I throw a second stone twenty seconds later.

A light comes on inside the house. Just one light in a bedroom. Could mean the other bedrooms are empty. Could mean the others are better sleepers. A few moments later I can hear the front door open. Twenty seconds after that it closes, and not long after that the back door opens. A man, silhouetted by the hallway light, steps into the backyard. He’s wearing pajama bottoms and nothing on top. Tattoos that probably have violent stories behind them climb up his body from under the waistband. He’s skinny and tall and looks like he’s spent too many years in jail and the rest of them on drugs. He takes a customary glance over the backyard, shrugs for his own benefit, then goes back inside. I wait until the lights go off, then I wait another few minutes, then I throw a third stone, same speed, same place, same kind of sound.

The light comes on much quicker this time. Still just the one light. Front door. Nothing. Then back door. He walks out into the yard.

“Fuck is out there?” he asks, and he probably asked the same thing out the front and got the same answer, but he’s probably thinking he’s talking to a cat or a possum.

We don’t answer him. He doesn’t walk far, stays near the door, wondering if the sound was an animal, or a pinecone falling from somewhere. Only difference between this time and the last time is this time he’s carrying a flashlight. He’s not using it as a flashlight, though, he’s using it as a weapon. It’s not even switched on. It’s black and steel and about the length of his forearm and I figure if he had a better weapon he would have brought it out here. Nobody brings a flashlight to a gunfight. He heads back inside. The light goes off. Silence.

We give it ten minutes this time. Long enough for him to think the sound isn’t coming back. Long enough that he might be falling asleep again.

This time the lights don’t come on. The front door doesn’t open. Only the back door, and it’s fired open quickly and he storms outside, the meat of the flashlight slapping into the palm of his hand. He’s dressed this time, black jeans, black top, black everything.

“Who’s out there?” he yells. “That you, Reece? This ain’t funny.”

He moves deeper into the yard. He switches on the flashlight and spotlights random areas. He passes it over the hedge but he doesn’t squat down or move branches aside or come any closer. He doesn’t circle behind it. He thinks whatever is being thrown on his roof is either some random event or it’s being thrown from outside his yard. He walks one way, then the other way, and he comes back to the doorway and he stares out toward us awhile without seeing us, then he closes the door. His bedroom light turns on and off, but he’s not in there, he’s waiting inside the doorway, waiting for the next sound, ready to burst out at a second’s notice.

I move away from the hedge, slowly, confident slow movement will be less likely to draw his attention in case he’s watching from the window. I put more distance between the house and us, backing into the neighboring property, a similar house in similar disrepair, same warped wood siding, same dirt-packed yard, probably the same kind of person living inside. I keep the hedge between me and Kingsly. I head slowly down the side of the next-door house and make it back out to the road. My car is still where I left it. All the wheels are still on it. I figure it’s like winning the lottery out here. I move to the front of Kingsly’s house and walk up the pathway, staying low, moving slow. I stick the bag on the path halfway between the house and the road. I reach the front door and squat down and take a few moments to calm down, drawing strength from the monster.

I knock. Twice. Two loud, heavy knocks. Footsteps pound down the hallway. I run, staying low, back to the side of the house before he gets the door open. I can hear him saying something but I’m not sure what, something that sounds like “what the fuck.” I reach the back of the house and put my hand on the door handle and trust in Kingsly’s desperation to get outside as fast as he could. Sure enough, the handle turns and the door opens. I can’t see a thing inside. The hallway has a bend in it, so I can’t see Kingsly either. He’s outside. I can hear him walking around out there, asking who’s out there, when he should be asking an entirely different question. He should be asking who’s in here. I close the door. I head into the bedroom where the light was turning on and off before, using my hands to lead the way, almost tripping on rope lining the floor. Kingsly stays outside for another minute before returning to the hallway. The front door closes.

We wait in the dark for him to come into the bedroom.