Crime

  Lance Dearing. Think like a cop. How did he think? What was his game?

  It makes sense that Dearing’s a cop. The armlock is a standard polis move the world over. The voice: full of easy authority.

  Lennox knows that he ought to have suspected straight away. Even if it was the first time he’d been the recipient of the lock, the fact he didn’t twig tells him just how ill-equipped he is for this.

  Tianna’s lips quiver. — Are we runnin away from the po-leece, or jus Lance?

  A good question. — Just Lance, he ventures. — Your mum wanted me to take you to Chet’s, not leave you with anybody else. So I don’t care if he’s a cop; that’s what I’m going to do.

  That seems to placate her, so Lennox converses in broken English with the driver who confirms what he’s suspected about the lot of the Miami cabbie. — No way I work nights. I have family. My boss he too goddamn mean to get bulletproof glass fitted!

  Lennox hears a roar and looks up, sees a plane coming in to land. Wonders how many men Lance Dearing, with or without his badge, has shot.

  10

  The Best Shake in Florida

  ALL THOSE TIMES she’d sat practising denunciations, honing them to intensify their devastating impact. The number of times you’ve let me down, Ray. Change? You’ll never change. You can’t. You’ve said it yourself: you are what you are. I’ve been taken for a mug again. And now, in the bed of this stranger, all that rehearsal has been laid to waste.

  The sleeping man next to her. Breathing lightly, not quite a snore; harmonised with the almost silent air con. He’d gotten up in the night to dispose of the condom. Like he had the first two. As if it would be unseemly for her to set eyes on it. But she had noticed the blood on the last one, when he’d discreetly pulled it off his exhausted dick. Trudi had taken that as her cue to get up, use the bidet and insert the spare tampon she kept in her bag. A corrosive-looking patch of her blood on his sheets; she’d felt its wetness as she’d climbed back in, perceiving herself as soiled. What have I done? Because it dawns on Trudi Lowe, in a violent, uncompromising shock of clarity, that Ray Lennox, her fiancé, is ill.

  Mentally ill. In a way that transcends the habitual stupidity, selfishness and weakness of men. Submitting to a rising panic, she slips from this stranger’s bed, struggles silently into her abandoned clothes, and sneaks from the apartment. Emerges into a sumptuously furnished and planted common area of the housing development. An understanding concierge, a small, nimble man, who looks and moves like an ex-flyweight boxer, calls her a cab to take her back to the hotel. They chat for a while, and when the taxi arrives he links arms and escorts her – like a father with his daughter on her wedding day, she fancies – up a staircase to a split-level exit that emerges into a palm-tree-lined street on the other side from the bay. Strangely, it doesn’t feel weird or intrusive, the man moving with a controlled grace and no sense of sleaze. The cab is waiting and she climbs in with gratitude.

  Her guilt fades as she thinks of Lennox. Anxious but determined, she will trade him night for night, event for event. Oh, you met some people and went to a party? Funny, so did I. How was yours? Good. Mine? Oh, not so bad.

  She needs to be there, to suck down some more pain if that’s what it takes. The wild infidelity she’d enjoyed much of the night excites and repels her. Reaching the hotel room she feels a relief mingled with a horrible sadness and anger that he’s still not in, what the fuck, but she gratefully heads straight for the shower, to wash her real-estate man away. There is no message indicator light on the phone. No note. The bastard hasn’t even called. Hasn’t been back. Good, she thinks as she lies back on the bed and feels a pulse between her legs. A big man, hard and strong. Fuck you, Lennox.

  You haven’t got a fucking clue what guys are like.

  But what if – if Ray Lennox is in a hospital, or dead in an alley?

  Trudi sits up. The room still Rayless. My Ray of sunshine. Even in hushed and sullen depression, his presence makes everything haphazard and chaotic, like an electrical storm without the sound of thunder. His tendency to overcomplicate life makes her sad; that arbitrary switching from sullen alienation to passionate engagement. What is the point?

  A lurid sun whites out a section of the pallid blue sky. One eye closed for the glow that hits his profile, his unaligned nose points the other across the street to a row of brightly painted homes with their broken, uneven yards. A fuzzy-haired man, wearing a filthy yellow shirt, pushes a shopping cart at a slow, uniform pace, his head bowed into its contents, only occasionally looking up as traffic zips, roars and grinds along to the intersection. A series of concrete planters filled with eucalyptus trees have been positioned in front of a cinder-block office building, to prevent people parking there. Tianna sits on one of them, legs crossed, reading the magazine on her lap. Lennox tracks the bum with the cart, following the man’s line of vision to a sign:

  BARCLAY AND WEISMAN

  WE WILL GET YOU COMPENSATION

  FOR YOUR INJURIES

  Close by the office entrance, a discarded old tyre with a dead pigeon inside its black circle makes Lennox feel somehow cheered, as if it shows local wildlife’s determination to resist the incursion of the ubiquitous temperate bird. He stretches and yawns, pulls his shirt from his skin. Feels his upper body draw breath.

  Inside the office: T.W. Pye feels the padded chair creak under his corpulent frame as he collapses into it. He sucks on the super-sized Coke and chomps into the Big Mac as grease runs through his sweaty fingers, down three wobbling liver-spotted chins that sprout like truffles from under his mouth to the top of his chest. Now forty years old, Pye has been chronically overweight since his teens, due largely to an addiction to franchised fast food and cola. He has recently come to see that this has robbed him of health, vigour and sexuality. He’s never enjoyed congress with a woman he hasn’t paid for.

  Now his sassy defiance is crumbling in the face of this compulsion, the resulting breathlessness, chest and arm pains, and the soul-crushing depression and anxiety attacks that plague him in the night. Most of all, it is undermined by the relentless flood of information. Coming at him from all angles, telling him in unequivocal voices: the stuff he was reared on is killing him. He can’t switch on a TV without some smug liberal nutritionist notifying him that he’s the draughtsman of his own ruination.

  The world, or the part of it that comes into contact with him, will pay for this. The Qwik Car Rental franchise’s reputation as a less stringent operator than the bigger players ensures that Pye’s customers are often desperate people in a hurry. He gets at least one police inquiry per week. But T.W. Pye loves to ask questions; enjoys his sense of power over his more hapless patrons. The phone on his desk rings out shrilly just as Ray Lennox walks into his empty office. An incongruous nightclub-red velvet rope herds the non-existent customers into a utilitarian line. Pye sets down his burger, picks up the phone, cursorily regarding Lennox in petulant disapproval. — Hey! Gus! How’s it hanging? Who in God’s name is this skinny-assed faggot …? — Yeah … sure do, Gus …

  Lennox regards the obese man, shifting his stare to the image of a busty girl, obviously silicone-enhanced, who bursts out of the yellow two-piece swimsuit from the calendar on the wall behind him.

  — Strange, Gustave, mighty strange. Sure thing, buddy. Bring em by tonight. I’ll be home.

  Impatience blazes in Lennox as he meets Pye’s gaze. In the instant that follows a reciprocal abhorrence is conceived.

  — Till tonight. See ya, Gus. Pye lets the receiver slide from his hand on to its cradle. Thickset eyes regard Lennox in cheery malice. — Now, he says, breaking into an obsequious grin.

  — Need a car. Going to Bologna.

  — Nice, smiles Pye, as Lennox hands over his licence. He regards it for a few seconds, holding it up to the light like it was a high-denomination banknote. — Ain’t plannin on crossin the state line, are you?

  — No. Bologna, Florida. Just need it for two days.

  T.W. P
ye dips his head, feels his smile slowly extending out towards the limits of its treachery. — Only we can’t give you no car if you’re planning on crossin the state line, not with you bein a foreigner n’all. New rules: war gainst terror. The big boys, Hertz, Avis, they’ll be able to help you out there.

  — No state line. Bologna, Florida, Lennox repeats, uneasy in the role of supplicant. — Two days max.

  — Well, I got me this Volkswagen Polo. Pye’s smile holds up, even as a trickle of sweat rolls from temple across cheek, like the slow slash of the psychopath’s razor. — European. Economical. Ought to appeal. Where you from?

  — How much? Lennox pulls out his platinum Visa.

  Pye sits back, scowls, coughing out rates, terms and conditions. Lennox motions in stony accord, as the door swings open. Tianna breezes in, her jacket hooked round her finger and draped casually behind her. She beats the magazine on her leg in imitation of him. Pye takes in the indigo shorts and mustard tank top with its sparkling slogan. Sees the rangy, bony limbs coming out from them. He responds with a predator’s leer; eyes narrowing, face tightening and draining of blood. Lennox catches that stink of torpid lust, causing his teeth to grind together again.

  Pye senses this reaction and turns to him, feigning polite nonchalance as Tianna rocks against the desk. — Your daughter? he enquires.

  Lennox glares at him in mute menace. His hands grip the edge of the counter. The bad one beset with an urgent, broken pain, which he fights down.

  — He’s my Uncle Ray, Tianna intervenes sweetly, turning to Lennox in a disturbing air of conspiracy, — Uncle Ray from Skatlin.

  — Thought you had an accent, Pye unctuously declares, smiling at Lennox, then Tianna.

  — Everybody’s got an accent, Lennox says evenly, easing off the grip, enjoying the incremental receding of the pain. — You got the keys?

  — C’mere. The obese clerk rises and wheezes round the other side of the counter. Lennox and Tianna follow him across the harsh brown carpet tiles, some bone-breakingly loose, that cover the concrete floor. The frosted-glass door, set in a fake-walnut partition, is grimy and caked with scum at the handle. Lennox is loath to touch it; he senses that doing so would be like removing Pye’s dick from his trousers and pointing it at porcelain half a dozen times a day.

  They go down a corridor, through two sets of wedged-open fire doors, out to the lot. On their way, Lennox sees it on the wall, listing returned cars: another whiteboard institutionalising idiocy, pornographically displaying the predictable meanderings of thought. He wants to rip it down.

  From a distance, the board snaking round the walls of the Serious Crimes Unit office resembled a nursery-school representation of the Mardi Gras. It had become festooned with data to the point that it almost assumed sovereign sentience. The fluorescent highlighter pens and markers, the photos and Post-it notes, produced a garish effect inconsonant with the grim tale: the death of Britney Hamil. There was a manifold, slightly offensive quality in the way Drummond and Notman kept it so meticulously attractive.

  Then the whiteboard at Robyn’s; wiped clean. Despite all the coke, they’d been together enough to remove everything, every contact name and number. Only Dearing, only a cop, could have been so meticulous and premeditated. Only a cop, or a villain.

  And now here he is, driving away from a weirdo at the car hire, with a young girl, a kid he doesn’t even know. But I’m fleeing from the nonces and they’re in pursuit. That stoat at the car hire, could he know Dearing? Perhaps it’s a network. Nonces everywhere: a freemasonry of paedophiles. Nonce-craft.

  It’s ridiculous. His judgement is shot to pieces. He is in over his head.

  But kids need protection. Sex offenders: they have to be stopped. It’s why he’s a cop, the unambiguous, unerring certainty of that particular crusade. Nonces made being a cop real: a workable and justifiable life. This time it isn’t about enforcing ruinous, antiquated laws, or protecting the property of the rich. It really does become the straightforward battle between good and evil, as opposed to that mundane norm of trying to stem the consequences of poverty, boredom, stupidity and greed.

  Now they are in the hired Volkswagen, Lennox cagily driving along a wide boulevard in steady traffic. The girl silent next to him, smouldering, chewing on her bottom lip. Stuck in a side lane, they are siphoned on to a freeway. Realising he doesn’t know where he’s going, Lennox comes off at the next exit. — So how far is this Bologna place?

  Tianna’s head is in the copy of Perfect Bride, the bride’s dress rendered grubby by his prints. — It’s a long drive.

  — How many hours?

  — I dunno, maybe two or three. Maybe longer.

  Fuck. He had to find a garage. A gas station. Buy a map.

  Eminem’s ‘Like Toy Soldiers’ plays on the radio. The chorus sets a shuddering wave of emotion coursing through Lennox. His hands whiten on the wheel. The right one stings again. That cunt is a fucking genius, he thinks, almost choking with emotion. Tears well in his eyes. We all fall down.

  Britney’s body, cold and lifeless. Bruises all over it; especially the throat. Bulging eyes, frozen in her last moment of pain and terror. To wrench the soul from a child in that gruesome manner was the most foul, evil transgression he could think of. Mr Confectioner. So cold.

  He thinks about Britney in the morgue, looks at Tianna in the car seat. Wonders what Johnnie – and, for all he knows, Lance and Starry – had planned for her. Not the same as Mr Confectioner with Britney, surely. But he’s a foreigner in a hired car with a child who was all but a stranger to him. Shedding light on his actions to a cop if he’s pulled over will be as hard as explaining them to Trudi.

  Tianna evaluates the man driving her. Both of them outlaws, on the run from Dearing. Chet would never let Lance put her away though, that was for sure. Neither would Scots Bobby, she thinks. She wonders what would happen if he tried to touch her. Recalls Vince, his doughy-faced kindness, the slowness of his caresses, those reassuring words as she stifled the urge to cry, endlessly welling and dying in his soft, ladylike hands. That’s the sort of monster this one would be, transformed by a black venom seeping through his veins to make his eyes glassy and deafen his ears; not like Clemson, always an inimical force, with that crinkled smile suggesting a swarm of torment, and whose stare could bring a pack of wild dogs to heel. She closes her eyes to see Scots Bobby clearer. Heard around the world. She flicks them open and asks, — So we really gonna go to Chet’s?

  — At Bologna? Yeah, I suppose we are.

  — Awesome, she says, surprised at her unexpected sparky enthusiasm.

  — I’m gaunny find a petrol station, a gas station, get a map of the area.

  Tianna chews her bottom lip thoughtfully. — A petrol station, she parrots, finding this amusing.

  — Do you know his house number? Your mum gave me this address, but there was no number, he places Trudi’s notebook, with his scribblings, on her lap.

  She studies it and shakes her head. — He kinda stays on a boat. It’s pretty awesome.

  Lennox looks at the address again. A low clunk of belated recognition in his upper body; there was no house number because it was a boat. It’s there in his own accusing scrawl: marina. For some reason, he’d imagined that term would signify nothing here: just real-estate jargon for a housing development that was at least a few miles from water. Despondency settles on his shoulders; he’s a bad cop, still ignoring the obvious, prone to daft flights of fancy. The ‘getting results’ myth was exactly that, and his distant promotions had been gained through playing organisational politics, choosing the right master to serve at the right time. The sides of his face start to colour. — I also need to find an Internet café, soas I can get the Jambos result for the Scottish Cup, he explains, meeting her blank look. — Hearts. It’s a football team: what you call soccer. Do you like soccer?

  — I guess. I used to play.

  — Why did you stop?

  — I dunno. It’s kinda lame. I don’t get it, all t
hat offside stuff.

  — It never fails to amaze me how lassies never get the offside rule. It’s so straightforward; the principal attacking player has to be at least level with the last defender when the ball is played through, otherwise you’re offside. However, if the most forward attacker is deemed by the official not to be interfering with play, as in the case of, say –

  — Whoah! My brain’s kinda crumbling!

  Lennox laughs and considers American sports. Baseball is the big one. He’s never been to a game. He recalls a drunken conversation in Vegas with an earnest American frat boy and an old Irishman, a GAA stalwart. The Yank kid had proclaimed that the hardest thing in sport was to hit a fast-moving ball with that bat. The old GAA boy had gurgled like a choked drain in dismissal, telling them that in Irish hurling, they had to catch the ball with a stick, control it and run at speed with it while a bunch of nutters tried to chop them down. Lennox thought of the version of the game they played in Scotland, with bigger sticks. Kingussie and Newtonmore battling it out for the Shinty World Series. — What about baseball? The Merlins. Called so because they’re magical, no doubt.

  — It’s the Marlins.

  — Like Marilyn Monroe?

  — M-A-R-L-I-N-S, she spells out, screwing up her face, but she’s smiling a little. — They’re fish, you know, like … swordfish, I guess.

  Lennox nods, suddenly aware of his need to concentrate on the strange roads, the traffic and caffeine jangling his nerves. He’s far from comfy changing lanes; trucks clank along, convertibles dart past with an arrogant flourish and SUVs rumble by with slow menace, the unstable nightclub bouncers of the automobile world.

  Tianna is thinking of when she played T-ball in the park. Those polyester tops and pants they wore always smelling so good. How she was going to make the softball team. Momma sat in the bleachers, hair pulled through the back of the baseball cap, shirt and jeans tighter than the other moms, busy eyes flirting under the visor. Then one day another face appeared beside her; Vince, with his big easy smile. Then they were in Jacksonville, then Surfside, then down here, heading south all the time, like they’d be driven into the ocean. Pushed into soccer with the enthusiastic Latina girls, the game taking place around her. Momma watching on, hair shorter, face puffier, as she tried to control the ball while looking out for the next other by her lone parent’s side.