Andrew Gallacher: Snake Jaw

He pulled up in the car park outside The Greenhole Tavern, a gunmetal grey building with a faux balcony draped in fluorescent banners advertising bands he’d never heard of. He walked across the gravel lot to the side entrance and disappeared inside.

His eyes took a moment to adjust to the dark. The place housed few patrons: men in their work clothes with mud up to their shins, glancing around disinterestedly. A large man with a ginger beard and long, filthy hair stood behind the bar drying glasses and placing them on an overhead rack. Gill approached the man.

“I’m Detective Gill from the local police. I’m looking for a young woman named Vanessa Moore.”

“Vanessa hasn’t shown up for work for a couple of weeks now. As far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t work here anymore.”

“What was the first day of her no-show?”

The man turned around and walked over to a piece of paper with the staff roster on it. He ran a dirty finger over a column and came back.

“Last Saturday. That was a week and a half ago. It’s stupid because she was begging me for more hours, said she needed the money, so I put her on four nights this week and she ain’t shown for one.”

“Her mother suspects she’s gone missing.”

“Doesn’t surprise me, a girl like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s a looker. Got a huge set of tits on her.”

“So you’re saying it’s no surprise that somebody would kidnap her?”

“She’s not the kind of girl to stay away from bad news. Which is a shame, with her kid and all.”

“Do you know of anybody she was involved with?”

“Not by name. The dish hand, Adam, he’s friends with her, but he hasn’t seen her just the same.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“You can do whatever you like, Detective. He’s out back” The man pointed to a doorway at the back of the bar.

Gill walked into the kitchen and followed the sound of banging dishes. At the end of a narrow hall a young man was hunched over a sink, elbow deep in brown water. He looked up at Gill and then at the wall in front of him.

“I’m with the local police. I’m looking for Vanessa Moore. Your boss tells me you knew her. What’s your full name, kid?”

“Adam Hellier. I did know her.”

“Have you spoken to her recently?”

“Only at work, haven’t seen her otherwise.”

“What do you mean by you ‘did’ know her?”

Adam stopped what he was doing and looked at the wall in front of him again.

“I don’t know. Did I say that?”

“Yes, you did.”

“What I meant was, we hung out a bit when she first started here, but then she got pregnant and always worried about money. She kinda withdrew.”

“How old is her kid?”

“I dunno. She’s a baby. A year?”

“Has the father been around?”

“I don’t think so. I remember her telling me he lives a few towns over. Doesn’t want anything to do with it.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“To be honest, I really didn’t have a lot to do with her.”

“Well, if you hear anything let me know.”

Gill took his card from his jacket and Adam grabbed it with wet rubber gloves and stuffed it in his pocket and then got busy washing again. Gill went back to the bar and got the barman’s attention.

“I’m off. If you hear anything, call the station and ask for Detective Gill.”

“Sure thing.”

Vanessa was hungry and her baby, Heather, was famished. When Vanessa became a mother it was the one thing she swore to never let happen, but it did — her baby went unfed. She opened the pantry door and looked at the gutted selection of food on offer. Everything left in there was the same stuff her mother had bought her when she moved out of home a couple of years earlier. Stuff she was told she could use to make meals, but had never, to that day, bothered to cook. Chicken stock, canned tomatoes, pasta, an assortment of herbs and spices. There must be something I could make of this junk , she thought. She took some pasta from the pantry and opened the pack and took out the knot of edible wire. She then dropped it into a nearby bowl and boiled some water. When the water boiled she poured it over the pasta and let it sit. She left the kitchen and went to the living room where Heather sat on the old couch, sucking a dummy and looking confused. Not crying for a change.

She was a cute baby, Vanessa observed, nothing like her father. She would grow up to be as pleasant on the eye as Vanessa, though Vanessa’s looks were beginning to wane. Gotta stop smoking , she thought.

She sat beside Heather and stroked the top of her head.

“I’d date any crappy guy right now just to help pay the rent.”

Heather didn’t reply.

“Mummy’s doing it tough, girl.”

She got up from the couch and went back to the kitchen. She took a fork from the drawer and placed it on the lip of the bowl and drained the water into the sink. The noodles looked like a handful of wet, gray hair ripped from the scalp of a dying old woman.

“This is what it’s come to,” she said aloud.

She squeezed the last of some tomato sauce over the noodles and went back to the living room. She forked at the meal and ate it in awkward mouthfuls. She turned the television on and watched some ads. Heather began to cry at the sight of food but refused to eat any. Vanessa picked up the phone, turned the television off, left the room and called Adam.

“Hey. I need to score some stuff.”

When Adam arrived he kissed her on the cheek and she let him into the living room. She grabbed at his pockets with flirtatious fingers and he told her to slow down.

“I should have told you on the phone: I need to pay you later if that’s ok?”

“Vanessa, you’ve done this a few times now.”

“I know, but I’ve always paid.”

“I had to chase you down on pay day and demand it.”

“Things are just really tough right now. But I’m getting more shifts at work.”

“So I’ll hopefully see more of you?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re so beautiful, ‘Ness.”

Vanessa shied away from him. “Can we get high now?”

Moments later Vanessa sucked the smoke from the burnt smack into her lungs and she thought about her face, her skin, how Adam was a dish hand and didn’t earn enough to be worth her while, plus he was younger. She didn’t like younger guys. She missed Benny, Heather’s father. She sat back on the couch and five minutes passed and soon she wasn’t awake, but not really asleep either.

“’Ness?” Adam said. He looked around the room, at Heather sitting under the waft of smoke hanging in the dense air. He smiled at the baby and the baby smiled back.

“’Ness, you awake?”

He left the room and went to her bedroom. He opened the top drawer of her dresser and took out a bra. He looked at the cup size on the tag.

“E’s,” he marveled, his heart beating.

He put the bra back and left her room and returned to the lounge. Vanessa’s eyes were open.

“I thought you’d left,” she said, her voice sounded forty years older.

“Nah, just went to the bathroom.”

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

Adam sat down beside her. He looked at the baby. “I want to sleep with you.”

“But we’re just friends,” she said.

“I know. Just for fun. And you won’t have to pay me for the drugs.”

Vanessa smiled and looked at Adam from the corner of her eye. “That’s prostitution, Adam. I’m not a prostitute.”