Kevin Brooks - Dance of Ghosts

It was too dark, and it happened too quickly, for me to get a look at them, and I didn’t get to hear their voices either, because they never said a word. They just piled into me — kicking, punching, stomping … all in furious silence, and all I could do was lie there and take it. After a while my body didn’t seem to belong to me any more. It was just a thing, a lump of meat, and whatever was happening to it was happening a long way away.

I don’t know how long the beating lasted — probably no more than thirty seconds or so — and I have no recollection whatsoever of the kick to the head that finally knocked me out … all I know is that some time later I woke up in the alley, slumped against the wall, covered in blood and hurting like hell.

I was cold and wet.

It was raining again.

I checked all my pockets, but nothing was missing. Wallet, phone, keys, money … it was all still there. As I took a deep breath, sucking down the ice-cold air, I felt something bubbling in the back of my throat.

I coughed, bringing up blood.

It hurt.

I spat it out.

‘Fuck,’ I said.

Then I leaned over and threw up.

I drove home via the back roads, keeping to a steady 40 mph all the way, and somehow I managed to get back without crashing the car or getting stopped by the police. Lights were showing in the windows of Bridget’s flat, and her boyfriend’s car was parked outside the house. And when I went inside, I could hear the sound of soft music playing upstairs.

I let myself into my flat, went into the front room, and poured myself a glass of whisky. I drank half of it, topped it up, then lit a cigarette and went into the bathroom. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was surprised to see that my face wasn’t too badly mashed up. There was an ugly red swelling on the side of my head where the first punch had landed, a deep gash above my left eye, and a nasty-looking cut on the bridge of my nose. But apart from that, and a split bottom lip, it was nowhere near as bad as it could have been.

I drank more whisky and leaned in closer to the mirror, my attention drawn to a very faint indentation in the swollen red skin on the side of my face. When I looked even closer, I could just make out the outline of a ring-sized skull embedded in the broken skin. For some reason, I found myself smiling for a moment … but it didn’t last long. Smiling hurt too much.

I turned to one side and cautiously examined the back of my head. It didn’t feel so good — bruised, swollen, painful to the touch — and when I took my hand away it was thick with blood. The rest of my body felt pretty bad too — my belly, sides, shoulders, legs … everything ached like hell. I opened the cupboard over the sink, found some painkillers, and swallowed them down with a mouthful of whisky. Then I turned on the shower, running it as hot as it would get, and as the steam built up, misting the mirror and opening my pores, I got undressed and looked down at my beaten-up body. It was a mess — bruised all over, swollen and discoloured, the skin cut open and red-raw in places — but, again, there didn’t seem to be any serious injuries.

I finished my cigarette, dropped it in the toilet, and got into the shower.

I stood there for a long time, ignoring the pain as the hot water rinsed all the blood and dirt from my skin, then I turned the shower to cold for as long as I could bear, which wasn’t long, then I got out and carefully dried myself, put on my ratty old dressing gown, went back into the front room and sank down into the armchair beneath the high window.

Another glass of whisky, another cigarette …

I looked at the clock.

It was just gone midnight.

Rain-mottled street light filtered in through the window, lifting the darkness just enough to show me the shapes of things. Shelves, furniture, walls. Things. I glanced up at the clock again, watching the second hand sketch its slow, blind circle …

A moment in time — gone.

And another.

And another.

And another …

The seconds passed, taking too much away.

Taking nothing.

I was tired. Drunk. My head was throbbing. I wanted to close my eyes and not open them again until everything was all right. But I knew that nothing was ever going to be all right.

I didn’t want to think about anything — Anna Gerrish, her mother, her father … Genna Raven, the silver-grey Renault, the faceless men who’d beaten me up. I didn’t want to wonder who they were or why they’d attacked me. But what else did I have to do?

Just as I was starting to think about it though, muffled sex sounds began lumping down through the ceiling. Rhythmic creaks, oomfs and moans … the sounds of coupling bodies.

Bridget and Dave.

I turned on the television, cranked up the volume, and searched through the channels until I found something I didn’t mind too much. It was an old film, a Western — either Rio Bravo or El Dorado . I can never remember which is which. This was the one with John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Ricky Nelson … not that it really mattered. I set the volume loud enough to cover the noise from upstairs, filled my glass with whisky, and drank myself to sleep.

At some point during the night I must have got up out of the armchair, turned off the television, and got into bed. I have no recollection of doing it, but when I woke up in the morning, the television wasn’t turned on any more, and I was definitely in my bed, and — as far as I knew — no one else had been in my flat. So it must have been me.

It was still quite early, not quite seven o’clock, and the grey light of day was only just beginning to creep through the windows. The rain had stopped, but the air was damp and cold. A blustery autumn wind was rattling the glass in the kitchen window.

My body had stiffened up during the night, and it took me a while to get out of bed and start getting ready for the day, but after I’d been through the usual routine — bathroom, coffee, painkillers, cigarette, toast, eggs, coffee, cigarette, bathroom — well, I didn’t actually feel any better, but I certainly didn’t feel any worse.

For the next half-hour or so, I busied myself doing not very much, then at eight o’clock I called Ada at home.

‘What?’ she answered bluntly.

‘And a very good morning to you, too,’ I said.

‘What’s good about it? And why are you calling me so early?’

‘I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be coming in this morning, that’s all. Is it OK if I leave everything to you?’

‘You always leave everything to me.’

‘Yeah, I know. I just meant — ’

‘I know what you meant, John,’ she said gently. ‘Of course it’s all right. Where are you going to be if I need to get in touch?’

‘I’ve got a meeting with Bishop at 11.30, and I want to try and see Cal before I go.’

‘Bishop called you then?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He’s a nasty fucker, isn’t he?’

‘Yep.’

I heard her lighting a cigarette. ‘So how did it go last night? Did you find anything at Anna’s flat?’

I gave Ada a brief rundown of what I’d found out about Anna — the heroin, the prostitution, the possibility that her father might have abused her — but I didn’t mention anything about the Renault or the beating.

‘So,’ Ada said when I’d finished. ‘What do you think it all means?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Apart from the fact that her life was a fucking mess.’

‘Yeah, I suppose …’

‘Why are you talking like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘All lispy and puffy.’