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  ‘You tell me,’ she said, and went back to working her thighs, wafting them like the arms of a bellows, as if the Skeats theme had run its course. She seemed to think we could simply move on now, get back on with things, as if no fissure had just opened in the earth. I did my best to behave as if she was right. I slid my hand past the rim of her stocking and over her tattoo and felt the radiant heat of her core well before I reached it. I peeled the satin there to one side. She slammed her legs shut again, but this time she did it to keep me in, not shut me out. She thrashed back against me so hard that I almost took it as a sign of resistance, until I remembered who she was. Her eyes were closed. It wasn’t me she was interested in. It was the concept of me: the man on the edge. But I wasn’t on the edge any more. I was off it, and plunging. Rancid images were in my head. I shoved back at her hard, matching her violence stroke for stroke. I thought if I got savage enough I could blast Jade right out of my system. It wasn’t working. The movies in my head weren’t stopping.

  I retracted my hand and said, ‘Stay there,’ and left the room before she could argue the toss. It was a shitty move. Even I could see it. But the inferno in my skull had to be dealt with. I went to the sink and aimed liquor at an empty glass. Some of it landed in there and some didn’t, so now my hand burned with that too. As a rule I don’t shake. I was shaking now. Jade and Skeats. It was so rank it had to be true. I pictured his terrible golden head doing terrible things. I drank. I sucked in air, like some thrashed boxer between rounds. I remembered something Jade had told me about Skeats. She’d told me she’d never met him. Somebody was telling me a lot of lies. Unless it was everybody else, it was Jade.

  When I returned to the bedroom Missy was still there. She didn’t look happy, but she was still on her back. It takes a lot to change a woman’s mind, once it’s made up. This time I went round to her side of the bed. I moved with purpose. My mind was made up too. I wanted to do anything with it except think. I’d finally been put in an animal mood. Her skirt was still pooled around her waist but her legs had gone back to being closed. I prised them back open and unclipped her right stocking and rolled it down her leg and off her foot. When I went to unclip the left one she lifted herself slightly off the mattress, and I saw something high on the rear curve of her thigh. I spent a moment hoping it was another tattoo, but I didn’t hope it with much energy. I knew what I was looking at, because I had seen it before. It was a pair of raging grape-coloured bruises. Each one had a pulsing maroon nucleus, then a dirty yellow fringe, then a ragged black circumference made by a set of teeth, and a gnarled and nasty set of teeth at that.

  ‘Who did that?’ I asked her.

  ‘Who did what?’

  ‘Who bit you?’

  ‘Are you serious?’ She dropped herself back on the mattress, obscuring the view.

  ‘I’m dead serious. Who did it? What’s his name?’

  ‘None of your fucking business.’

  ‘Actually it is. Whoever he was, he put the same marks on Jade.’

  ‘They’re lovebites, you idiot. They all look the same.’ Her legs were still open, but I sensed we were riding an ebb tide.

  ‘Lovebites don’t make you bleed.’

  ‘Depends how much he loves you,’ she said viciously. ‘You’re showing your age, Ray. You sound like a prude.’

  ‘I’d rather be a live prude than a dead whore.’ I wanted to slap some sense into her. If I didn’t do it with words I’d have to do it with my hands. And I wasn’t that kind of guy, not quite yet.

  ‘So what are you saying, Ray? You saying this guy’s going to kill me?’ Where Jade had irony, Missy just had sarcasm. The difference depressed me, deeply.

  ‘Actually I am, if that bothers you.’

  ‘And you reckon he killed her too?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘You playing detective, Ray?’

  ‘Someone’s got to.’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘The guy who did it to me wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  She thought that ended the discussion. I let her think it. I put my hand on her stockinged shin. She didn’t look wholly appeased. I slid my fingers past her knee. She shut her eyes. I kept sliding. She gave a bit of a shudder. When I got to the first bite I put a finger on its crimson bullseye and pressed down hard. She flinched and yelped. And then she shut her legs again, with what finally looked like conviction.

  ‘Fuck you,’ she said.

  ‘No, fuck you. Who did it? Was it Skeats?’

  ‘For God’s sake.’

  ‘Was it Vagg?’

  ‘Please. You think I’m fucking my way through the scrawniest old hacks in the book biz?’

  ‘Tell me his name and we’ll move on.’

  ‘Move on? I don’t fucking think so.’

  ‘Fine. Just tell me his name.’

  ‘I could say it,’ she said, ‘and it would mean nothing to you at all.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing about him. He’s a lot less fucked up than you are.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it. Next to this guy I’m pretty normal. Say his name.’

  ‘If he killed her, why didn’t he kill me?’

  ‘He didn’t kill her either. Not the first time.’

  ‘Ever occur to you she might have slept with a few guys who didn’t kill her? Maybe even a lot?’ She was smiling. She was having fun. This would not do.

  ‘You want me to tell you what he did to her?’ I said. ‘I saw her dead, remember. You want to know what she looked like?’

  Out in the main room my phone started ringing. For once in my life I wanted to answer it.

  ‘If you get that,’ she warned me, ‘I’m out of here.’

  We had reached a new low. Missy was giving me tips on phone etiquette. ‘I thought you were out of here anyway,’ I said, and walked out and got the phone.

  A muffled male voice on the other end said, ‘How’s your face?’

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘You know who’s asking,’ he said.

  A cap of ice closed over my scalp.

  ‘How’s your face?’ he said again. The line sounded tinny, the way phones used to sound, as if the wire was up in a high wind somewhere, swaying.

  ‘How’s yours?’ I said.

  ‘Last time I saw yours it didn’t look so good.’

  My ribs pulsed where he’d kicked them. I wanted to be alone with him. I walked the phone outside, to the deck.

  ‘What were you looking for in that house, Saint?’ he rasped. ‘What did you think you’d find?’

  ‘You worried I found it?’

  ‘You’re the one that should be worried.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘They’re going to arrest you. You’re going down.’

  ‘Christ, I know that.’ That ice on my skull was melting. It was occurring to me that my nemesis might be a fucking fool. ‘Tell me something I don’t know, pal. Say something insane. Prove who you are.’

  He said nothing for a while, and I got more of that airy sound. I started thinking he’d gone for good. Then he said, ‘Raiding a dead girl’s bedroom, Saint. That’s sad stuff. Sounds to me like you’ve got problems. Maybe what the papers say about you is true.’

  ‘It is, except the man they’re talking about isn’t me. It’s you.’

  ‘No, Saint. It’s you. Most of it’s you.’

  I waited.

  He said, ‘Looked to me like all you found was a pair of panties.’

  ‘You think so? You sound nervous. You should be. I found something else.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll come round one night and look for it.’

  ‘Please do. I’ll be waiting. I had fun the other night.’

  ‘Really? You didn’t seem to.’

  ‘No, I genuinely enjoyed the violence. Didn’t you? Or did it boi
l your vibe a bit, taking on an armed man instead of a naked woman? Bit of a change of pace for you there. Not your usual scene at all.’ For the first time all day I felt glad to be alive. I wanted this freak with way more lust than I’d been able to muster for Missy. I had problems all right, thanks to this shithead.

  ‘Who do you think I am?’ he said.

  ‘I’ll know soon enough.’

  ‘No you won’t.’

  ‘Yes I will. They’ve got your DNA.’

  ‘Maybe they do. So what? I’m not on file, Saint. I’m nobody to them. I don’t exist.’

  ‘You will,’ I said. ‘Soon.’

  ‘She wasn’t what you thought she was, Saint.’

  ‘And what did I think she was?’

  ‘She manipulated people.’

  ‘Christ, pal. I’ve worked that part out. You’re not much of an adversary, whoever you are.’ He kept leaving silences. I kept filling them so he’d stay on the line. ‘Is this really all you’ve got? You talk in clichés. You’re meant to be the man who destroyed my life. Live up to it.’ Still that airy sound, that high arid whistle from the line or from him.

  ‘She used people, Saint.’

  ‘Is that why you killed her? Did she use you?’

  ‘How did things go with Missy?’ he said.

  That cap of ice returned to my skull.

  ‘Why do you ask? She a friend of yours? She is, isn’t she?’

  ‘Did the camera guys leave without her? Did she stick around for a drink?’

  ‘You bit her, didn’t you?’ I asked him.

  But the line was dead. I walked inside and put the phone back on its cradle. I went into the bedroom. Missy was gone.

  I showered and wrapped my wounded body in a towel. I stood in the glow of the laptop and uncapped the thumb drive and slid it haggardly into the machine. That fool on the phone had fed me a major tip. There was something in her house that scared him. That was why he’d gone back there, with his key. Maybe it was why he’d killed her in the first place. Maybe he didn’t even know what he was afraid of. Maybe he thought he’d know it when he saw it.

  Well, I knew what it was. It was the drive. It had to be. It was the drive, or whatever she’d put on it. I’d heard the fear in the freak’s voice. He was even more scared of her secrets than I was.

  When the password field appeared I stabbed in some new ideas. Skeats. Jeremy. Golden Boy. Show pony. Fraud. None of them worked. I can’t say I minded that. It would have been foul to learn that he’d penetrated her life at password level. It was foul to think he’d penetrated her at all, but I’d gone past hoping it wasn’t true.

  The wide white field of the encryption box stared back at me. For one more night I was out of ideas. The locked drive was getting to be an emblem of my hijacked life. I wished I’d never found it. Since I had, I couldn’t give up on it. I had to hack away until it yielded up its bitter dram of revelation. Each time I didn’t crack its code I felt guilty relief. Did I really want to know one more of her secrets, even if knowing it would save my skin?

  I shut the laptop’s lid and took my drink out to the deck. I leant on the rail and communed with alcohol and the night. I thought about Jade and Skeats. Did it mean anything? It meant an atrocious amount to me, but did it mean anything wider? Might Skeats have killed her? I had borne witness, often enough, to the butchery he could inflict on a piece of prose. I had grieved mutely at a career’s worth of his literary crime scenes: all those bloody stumps of newsprint where living language used to be. But did he have murder in him? I had to doubt it. He was a philistine and liar and clown, but he wasn’t a killer. He lacked imagination, for one thing. He lacked the verve for the solo project. Anyway, it wasn’t Skeats I’d met in her house, or talked to on the phone. The man in the house was a criminal of a different kind: nuggety, effectual, crackling with vicious energy. His head had tasted of sweat, not mousse. He got things done.

  I went inside and got my phone. I came back to the deck with it, dialling Skeats. He didn’t answer, which didn’t shock me. I put the phone down on the rail and wondered if he’d call back. He had no reason to, beyond the dictates of basic civility. I therefore didn’t like my chances. I listened to the night. Its silence was so pure it felt ominous, fragile. Some huge and drastic noise seemed bound to shatter it at any second. Perhaps it would be me, howling uselessly at the trees. When Missy had asked me about loneliness I had dodged the question. TV cannot bear too much reality, and neither can I. But the truth was this. Until Jade walked up my front steps I didn’t know what loneliness was. Until then I was alone but I liked it. Now I was alone and hated it, but no woman in the world could fix it, because no woman in the world was her. Until she came I was all scar tissue. I was cauterised, insulated. I was numb. Now that I wasn’t, I saw that numbness had a lot to be said for it. The best thing that ever happens to you will also turn out to be the worst. Just give it time. I stood there against the rail and wished I’d never met her. I’d never wished that before, and I didn’t wish it lightly. But the news about Skeats had broken me inside. Until tonight, I had thought that I’d had her and lost her, and that had felt bad enough. Now I knew worse. I’d lost her all right, but I’d never really had her. Whoever I’d had, it hadn’t been her. The girl I knew wouldn’t have touched Skeats with a barge pole.

  I looked at the sky. It was starless and cloud-smudged. The air on my skin was freezing but I let it bite. I was closing in, I felt, on a moment of clarity. Of course she wouldn’t have gone near a man like Skeats – not unless she’d had some wicked reason to, the way she’d had with Vagg. I seized this thought and tried to tame it. It made my skin tingle. Yes, there was a stench here that reminded me of the Vagg angle. With that old villain her motive had been clear enough. He had cash. But Skeats – what on earth could she have wanted from the stubbled Osric, from the sun-kissed musketeer? I sniffed the question hungrily, like a dog circling a henhouse. I was zeroing in on epiphany. Why Skeats? The man had so little to offer that the question answered itself. She’d wanted his influence. It was all he had, so it was all she could have seen in him. Skeats wasn’t a man. He was a position. He was a job title in cutting-edge threads. She hadn’t wanted him. She’d wanted his column inches, his industrial juice. It was the same thing she’d wanted from me, on my humbler scale. With Skeats the scope for literary graft must have been nearly limitless.

  I was thinking usefully now. If she’d fucked him without desire I could take it, just about. And she had. I was sure of it now. I knew it with mathematical certainty. The angle was clear: she’d done it so Skeats would give her books an easy ride. I tried to remember the last time he’d let me loose on anything published by Bennett and Bennett. I couldn’t, except for the Vagg book. But that one could be left aside. There had always been something odd about it. Vagg apart, it had been a long, long time since a piece of Bennett product had come my way.

  By now I was back inside, refiring the laptop. I logged into the paper’s archives. I pulled up all the reviews run by Skeats in the last six months. I filtered the list for books published by Bennett. I combed the filtered list for hostile or even mildly negative reviews. It was a lonely search. Apart from me on Vagg, I was looking at wall-to-wall blow jobs. Skeats had channelled her books to his most abject soft-soap artists, with Barrett Lodge kneeling at the vanguard. Why the trend had ceased with the Vagg book I didn’t know, for the moment. It was the one review that didn’t fit. Otherwise the pattern was flagrant, once you went looking for it. But who was going to look for it? Who was going to blow the whistle? Jade? Skeats? Bennett and Bennett? What was being harmed apart from literature? What was being destroyed, apart from the sacred covenant between writer and reader?

  I rang Skeats again. Again he didn’t ring back. To kick things along I sent him a text that said: I know about you and Jade. It didn’t take long to work. The fuse burnt for about thirty seconds, then the phone exploded into life. I pi
cked it up.

  ‘Raymond.’ He was feigning joviality, badly. ‘I think you just texted me something by mistake.’

  ‘Nice try, but I’ve just worked out what the two of you did.’

  ‘The two of who?’ A dumb man playing dumb is a sad thing to listen to. But the chronic liar doesn’t go down without a fight. ‘Ray, I’m genuinely not with you.’

  ‘You and the late Jade Howe. The fixed reviews and the fucking.’

  There was a very long silence. I knew what it meant. It meant I could scrap my last lingering hope that it wasn’t true.

  ‘Have you told the police?’ he said.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Don’t. Please.’

  ‘I think we should meet.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘And this time we’re sitting inside.’

  7

  He got there before I did. He was sitting inside, all right. He was as hidden from the street as you could get without sitting in the kitchen. For once he had no craving to be seen. There was a black leather satchel down near his feet. He put it up on the table as I sat. The move looked rehearsed. He wanted me to ask him what was in the bag. When I didn’t, he started telling me anyway.

  ‘A peace offering,’ he said through a queasy smile, reaching for one of the buckles.

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I’m running this.’

  ‘Sure.’ He raised a conciliatory palm. ‘Sure.’ Returning the bag to the floor. ‘Later, maybe. Whatever you say.’

  He was afraid of me. Good. He waited for me to speak. For a while I left him in suspense. His eyes drifted to my forehead, to that red third eye of mine that won’t stop weeping. A waiter turned up with some water and a big plastic smile. He was primed for banter. When he got close enough to see that we weren’t, the fake smile turned into a real wince. He left the water and beat a wordless retreat. Skeats hunched towards me. His breath was rancid with fear.

  ‘My marriage means a lot to me, Ray,’ he couldn’t help muttering. ‘My kids. My wife.’