Graham Hurley - Cut to Black

To J-J.s relief, getting back into the Old Portsmouth apartment block was no problem. Daniel Kelly was standing in his first-floor window, visibly anxious, and the street door yielded at once to Eadie Sykes's touch. She led the way upstairs, carrying the camera box and a lightweight tripod. J-J followed with two lights on stands and an armful of cabling.

Daniel met them halfway down the hall. Pale and sweating, he blocked the path to his flat, ignoring Eadie. J-J looked down at his outstretched hand.

"What's going on?" It was Eadie. "Someone like to tell me?"

J-J edged past Daniel, fending him off with the light stands. When the student pursued him down the hall, he made an awkward bolt for the open door at the end. The flat smelled of burning toast and the air was blue with smoke. J-J dumped the light stands and the cabling in the lounge, reaching the kitchen in time to rescue the grill pan. Two slices of Mighty White were on fire and he smothered them with a washing-up cloth. Daniel stood in the door, oblivious to this small domestic drama.

"Where is it?" he kept saying. "Where's the gear?"

J-J had tipped the remains of the toast into the sink. The grill pan hissed beneath the cold-water tap. He turned back to Daniel and began to sign, tapping his watch. Maybe an hour, maybe two, but soon, I promise. Then came a movement in the lounge next door and Eadie appeared behind Daniel. She was staring at a plastic syringe and a battered old spoon readied on one of the work surfaces. Daniel was still demanding an answer. It wasn't hard to connect the two.

"You scored for him?"

J-J shook his head.

"Then how come…?" She'd spotted the belt Daniel would need to raise a vein. "Are you out of your mind?"

The student turned on her, angry now. He hadn't a clue who she was but this was his flat, his property. She had absolutely no right to barge in or pass judgement. He'd thought J-J was interested in realities, in what it meant to make certain decisions, certain choices. If that was still the case, no problem. If it wasn't, he could go and poke his camera into someone else's life.

Eadie blinked. Few people ever talked to her like this.

"We came because I understood we were invited," she said. "And it's my camera. Just for the record."

She looked witheringly at J-J, then stepped back into the living room.

Through the open door, J-J watched her beginning to unpack the Sony Digicam. Daniel ignored her. He demanded to know what the guys at Pennington Road had said. He asked whether there was any point trying them on their mobile number. Curiously, thought J-J, he never once mentioned the money.

"You ready, guys…?"

It was Eadie again. Calmer now, she wanted to know where Daniel would like to sit, the spot where he felt most comfortable.

"Comfortable?" The word raised a bitter smile. "You really don't have a clue, do you?"

"You're right. That's why we're here. Chair by the TV be OK?"

Daniel shrugged and turned away, shaking his head. Then he began to hug himself, rocking backwards and forwards, his body hunched, his eyes shut, a man caught naked in a bitter wind.

"They drop it off by car," he muttered. "They ring the bell three times and I just go down." Daniel looked up at J-J, those big moist yellow eyes. "You'll stay with me? Help me?"

J-J nodded, easing Daniel gently out of the kitchen. Maybe an hour or two in bed might help.

Back in the living room, Eadie had set up the tripod and the camera.

Lights ringed the armchair beside the TV and now she was arranging a line of books on the shelf behind.

"Daniel," she said brightly, "I think we're about ready. That OK with you?"

The student paused, looking blankly at the waiting film set "Anything." He began to shiver again. "I don't care."

The interview, according to the time code generated by the digital camera, started at 17.34. Eadie Sykes, after the earlier bump in the road, was determined to smooth out any differences between them. She was grateful for Daniel's trust. What they were about to do was enormously important in all kinds of ways and she wanted to repeat what J-J had doubtless already established: that this was Daniel's video, Daniel's views, Daniel's life, and no one else's.

"You understand me, Daniel?"

In the camera's viewfinder, J-J watched her big freckled hand reach out. The student shuddered under her touch. The way he kept moving in the chair meant holding the shot wider than J-J would have liked, though it felt a mercy to be able to spare him the usual close-up.

"You want to start by telling me how it all began?" Eadie might have been talking to a child.

Daniel stared at her, uncomprehending. It was hot under the lights, and his big waxy face was bathed in sweat. Eadie prompted him again, an edge to her voice this time, and slowly he began to claw his way backwards through his life, picking up fragments here and there, trying to tease some sense, some logic, from the decisions he appeared to have made. Strangely enough, thought J-J, the very effort this involved seemed to ease some of his pain.

He'd first tried smack in Oz. He was staying in a youth hostel in Queensland big place, popular with students. He'd plenty of money but he'd chosen the youth hostel because he was lonely. A backpacker from Dublin had scored some heroin in Brisbane and sold him enough for an introductory smoke.

To Daniel's surprise, it was no big deal. He'd felt pleasantly sleepy, maybe a bit queasy afterwards. He certainly had no great desire to repeat the experience and remembered asking his new Irish friend what all the fuss was about. Given a choice between smack and a good bottle of Hunter Valley Chardonnay there was, he said, no contest.

A couple of years later, give or take, he'd tried it again. By now he was back in the UK and this time it was very different. He'd fallen in love with a dropout student from Godalming, a girl called Jane. She was already developing a sizeable heroin habit and had a real mistrust, almost a hatred, of straights. Just to stay alongside her, talk to her, be with her, meant using smack. To Daniel, it had seemed a price worth paying.

Within a couple of months Jane had dumped him for a failed rock musician. All Daniel was left with was a broken heart and a four-wrap-a-day heroin habit. Oddly enough, the smack helped. It was at this time that he stopped smoking it and began injecting. Injecting was a buzz. All his life he'd been afraid of needles but now, to his great satisfaction, he couldn't wait. There was an art to it, a right and a wrong way. He always used a sterile works. He always washed the spoon in boiling water. It was, he said, almost sacramental.

He turned his head away from the camera, wiping his face with the back of his hand. Eadie had visibly relaxed. For weeks, she'd been hunting for a junkie, any junkie, who was prepared to make a stab at an interview. Finding someone as articulate and self-deceived as this was manna from heaven.

"Sacramental how?"

Daniel seemed surprised by this voice beyond the lights, this sudden intrusion. He shifted in the chair again and began to scratch himself.

"I had respect for it," he said at last. "It held my life together. I could depend on it. It was my friend."

"Smack had become your friend?"

"Yes."

"Your best friend?"

"My only friend." He closed his eyes. "People don't understand about heroin. Treat it right and it looks after you. You can rely on it.

You know what I'm saying?"

"I think so, yes." Eadie was picking her words with care. "Tell me how you feel at the moment."

"Horrible. Cramps. Pains. Everything." His eyes were still closed.

"And heroin?"

"Heroin will take the pains away. That's what it does. It makes it possible to be me again. It gives me peace. A peace he was staring into the far distance now, his face a mask 'so vast it's like waking up in some cathedral. It's huge. It's yours. It belongs to no one else.