Ruth Rendell - Portobello

'Christ.'

'You can have a beer.'

When Fize came back Ian was sitting on the edge of Gemma's cream-coloured sofa as if it were made of thin ice. He had never been there before and was no doubt feeling the way Fize had when he first met Gemma and was invited back, that he had come into the showroom of a furniture shop. Everything was clean and brushed or polished, there were flowers in a vase and magazines placed in a perfect stack on the coffee table. He had got used to it but it was going to take Ian a while.

Ian took the can from him reluctantly. 'Haven't you got nothing stronger?'

'No.' Fize was beginning to feel so tense he could hardly breathe. Every muscle in his body was taut. 'Listen to me, mate.' He took a deep breath. 'Listen to me. It's about Lance.'

Ian took a bigger swig of lager than Fize would have thought possible. 'What about him?'

'He's in jail.' Fize hesitated.

'Surprise, surprise. I know that. So what's new?'

'Look, mate, will you just listen to me? He never done that. I mean burning down old Gibson's house. Burning that Romanian guy. He never done it. He wasn't there. You know that and I know it. They could put him inside – I mean, keep him inside – for like fifteen years, maybe more if he don't admit to doing it. And he can't admit it on account of he never done it.' Unaccustomed articulate speech was taking its toll on Fize, exhausting him. 'We done it, me and you. We got to go to the filth and tell them, mate. We got to.'

Ian stared. 'You're barking.'

'How're we gonna feel when he's sent down for maybe years and years and we're whatever -' Fize searched for words '- free, we're free?'

'Me, I'm going to feel great.'

'I'm not. If we don't tell them now we'd have to then. We can't let the poor sod go down when he never done it. It's out of order.' 'Is there any more of this gnat's piss?'

Fize fetched it, flipped the lid off the can. Beer foamed over Ian's jeans.

'Fuck you!' Ian shouted, jumping to his feet.

'It's only beer, for God's sake.' Fize was getting angry now. 'It'll dry. Listen, we gotta go to them and tell them. Like first thing tomorrow. Like tonight, if you want.'

'If I want? Now you can do the listening.' Ian approached him threateningly, the can in his hand held like a weapon. 'You forget all that. Leave it out. It's bollocks, all of it. You better if you want to keep on the right side of me.'

Courage came to Fize from somewhere. That which he had dreaded no longer seemed so undoable. 'If we tell them it'll be good for us. They'll do what they call take it into account. We did do it, mate, we did set the place on fire.' He was aware that Ian had set down his beer can and was standing with his hands closed into fists. 'If you won't,' he said, 'I will. I'll go it alone.'

'You what?'

Ian's voice was quieter and more menacing than Fize had ever heard it. For some reason he thought back to the evening he had braved Lance and Uncle Gib together, asking for the money for Gemma's tooth. He had had courage then and it had worked. But of course Ian had been with him then, not against him…

'I'll go it alone. I gotta, mate. I gotta live with myself.'

'Then I'll have to stop you, won't I?'

Fize saw the knife pulled out of Ian's jeans, the gleam of its blade, which he had thought might be a gun. It was just as lethal a weapon, a small knife with a long thin blade. The blade glittered in the light from Gemma's table lamp. Fize backed away. They stood confronting each other, the way male animals do, quivering before one of them makes a move. Ian made the knife in his hand shift a little, a teasing movement, pointing at Fize, then letting it droop. He crouched slightly as if getting ready to spring. Fize made a gasping sound in the back of his throat. He snatched up Ian's beer can and flung the contents in his face.

Ian's scream couldn't have been louder if it had been acid Fize had thrown. He swore and scrubbed at his eyes, the knife still clutched in one fist, giving Fize a moment to escape in. Fize sprang, kicked over a chair and tried to open the front door, but his hand was shaking too much to move the latch. He felt the tip of the knife touch his back, right by his spine, and he felt it pulled away as Ian drew his arm back to strike. Twisting round, Fize kicked out, the knife glittering in the air between them. Then, somehow, he stumbled and Ian was upon him. He clutched the upraised arm, forcing it back, and sank his strong young teeth into the hand that held the knife. Ian yelled and dropped his weapon, giving Fize the chance to scramble to his feet. His mouth full of bitter, iron-tasting blood, he threw himself at the front door once more and this time he got it open.

He was out of the flat, running down the concrete stairs, almost at the foot of the first flight when Ian caught up with him. Ian's breathing was terrible, like an engine or a crazed animal. He grabbed Fize's shoulder, swinging him round, and as he hit out wildly to defend himself, Fize felt that thin blade sink slowly into his chest. Not like a wound but like a blow he felt it, a punch to where he thought his heart was, and then, as his legs buckled and he fell, nothing more.

Abelard had fallen asleep on the couch in Gemma's mother's living room. Gemma picked him up and wrapped him in a blanket. It was only 9.30 but her dad had said he'd take her home in his car if she'd come now. When she was in the back seat and Abelard on her lap – against the law but who would know? – her dad counted out a fifty-pound note, two twenties and a ten and thrust them into her hand. 'For the boy.'

'Thanks, Dad, you're a star.'

He dropped her at the kerb alongside the yellow concrete wall and Gemma carried her son up the steps, through the swing doors and on to the stairs. In later life she never ceased to be thankful that the little boy was fast asleep in her arms when she found what lay on the first landing in a pool of blood. For Abelard's sake, by a superhuman effort, she controlled her scream and it came out only as a gasp. Blood was no longer flowing, she noticed that, her legs trembling. She stepped over the body, let herself into her flat with a shaking hand and, once inside, the boy half awake and grizzling, she dialled 999.

His night passed in a series of strange dreams, one following fast on the other, and each more bizarre than the last. Ghosts came into these dreams and reptiles, figurines from the gallery that came to life and walked about while Ella wandered among them, more beautiful and far less sweet and good than she was in life. Chocorange (or Oranchoco) laid mosaically, paved the floor like a cocoa-brown giant's causeway. The dream to wake him up, shivering under his piled blankets and two duvets, was the mermaid in the fishpond. This was no goldfish bowl but water and weeds behind a glass wall as in an aquarium and the mermaid with her golden scaly tail, beating against the glass, had Ella's breasts and Ella's face.

He sweated, soaking the bed. When Carli arrived in the morning he asked her to change the sheets while he shivered in the next room, wearing a dressing gown with two blankets draped shawllike over his shoulders. A jug of water and two bottles of the sparkling kind were brought up to him. He wanted a bath but was too weak to attempt it. Dr Irving arrived at lunchtime, though he hadn't given advance warning of his coming, bringing with him the Evening Standard.

'Where's that lovely fiancée of yours? She not looking after you?'

Where anyone else would have said they'd split up, Eugene said, 'We are no longer engaged.'

'Oh, dear, I'm sorry to hear that. Very sorry. I may as well take your temperature now I'm here.'

Eugene submitted to this. His temperature turned out to be a hundred and one. 'Or something around thirty-eight, I suppose, if you go in for all this Celsius rubbish. I don't suppose you've got much appetite?'