Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

Nothing.

‘I’m willing to accept,’ Bliss said, ‘that all Victoria said to you was that she wanted to punish the girls. Maybe a broken arm, flattened nose? On previous evidence, Victoria doesn’t do knives, so nothing life-threatening… which obviously you wouldn’t’ve gone along with anyway, seeing corpses don’t require accommodation and how useful those girls were to you for errands and stuff. And anyway, you could come over all mumsie when they got back… bathing the wounds, applying some of your old herbal remedies – think the world of you after that.’

‘You en’t getting me on this.’

Goldie was up in a corner of her chair, her eyes blacker than the bald twat’s on the box. Bliss smiled.

‘When d’you last see her? And don’t say you can’t remember, Goldie, because selective memory syndrome, we’ve gorra treatment room for that at Gaol Street. You want to get dressed, apply a smudge of lippie, or go as you are?’

Goldie didn’t move.

‘Cured already, then,’ Bliss said.

‘I gived you a name. Thass all I knows.’

‘Not interested in what you know, I’m open for conjecture, rumour, gossip. That’s why I’m on me own. What’s the latest word on Victoria, Goldie?’

‘New boyfriend.’

‘I heard that, too.’

‘Big Pole.’

‘Yeh, he’d need one. He also got a name?’

‘They’ve gone. Left the country.’

That was a jolt.

‘Where’ve they gone, then?’

‘Dunno.’ Goldie shrinking back. ‘Dear Lord, I don’t know. I ever finds out, I’ll tell you.’

‘Tell me now, Goldie.’ Bliss stood up, snatched the remote and snapped off the sound. ‘Where you do think they might’ve gone?’

Tossing the remote from his left hand to his right, Goldie leaping up.

‘Geddout! Juss geddouter my hotel!’ And then – Mother of God – she was ripping open her robe. ‘You don’t get out, look, I’ll say you was messing with me!’

‘Aw, Goldie -’

‘Should’ve brought a woman copper with you, ennit? Wasn’t smart enough, was you? Now get out!’

Making a lunge for the remote, Bliss holding it over her head. Never seen her like this before. Victoria must really’ve put the shits up her this time. Bliss jumped back and…

‘Hello…’

He stepped behind the sofa, switched the set off completely this time, and the noise didn’t stop, a party buzz. Under his feet. Under the white carpet. A party under the carpet.

Bliss smiled.

‘And you never invited me, Goldie.’

‘All right…’ Goldie pulled her robe across her chest. ‘They’s taken a car across to France.’

‘Kind of car?’

‘A red one.’

Bliss felt a tingle in both hands.

‘Where’s the door to the cellar, Goldie?’

‘ No! ’

‘All right, do it the long way, I’m not fussed. Gwenllian Cecilia Andrews, I’m arresting you on suspicion of-’

Goldie marched across to the TV, switched it on, prodded around till the sound went up, way higher than it was before.

‘They just rented it off me, thass all!’

‘The cellar?’

‘I don’t ask no questions. Nobody can afford to ask too many questions these days.’

‘Where is it, Goldie? Where’s the door?’

‘They made me, ennit?’ She was up close and her voice had gone small and tight. ‘Threatened me, see. Threatened to torch me out if I didn’t let ’em ’ave the cellar, again and again, so I just sits tight and turns up the telly till they’ve-’

‘ Where? ’

‘In the yard. Steps down, for the coal.’

‘Ta.’

‘But I’m tellin’ you… you go down there on your own, Mr Frannie, you’re fuckin’ dead, you are.’

‘I’m not planning to go down there, Goldie. That would alert your little friend outside. I’m assuming there’s a more discreet way in, from the house. Maybe more than one – must’ve been three cellars at one time.’

‘Please… go away…’

But were her eyes saying, don’t go away?

Well, well. Bliss folded his arms.

‘Tell you what, let’s both go down.’

‘Like fuck I will. You should’ve had her by now. Useless, the cops.’

Bliss followed Goldie into the kitchen, with its big shiny chip fryer and globe lights that made your head ache, then through into a utility room with two washing machines and three steps down to a door at one end.

‘That’s it?’

Goldie staying well back. Bliss sensed she wasn’t unhappy now. If anybody was listening they’d reckon she’d done everything she could to get rid of him, all the same knowing – as she would – that the harder she tried to get him out the more he wouldn’t want to go.

The noise was like what you could hear coming out of Edgar Street when Hereford United were actually winning. Maybe more like Anfield, really. Anfield underground.

‘Put the lights out,’ Bliss said.

‘You don’t wanner do this. Not on your own.’

It made sense. He stood watching his iPhone, waiting for Karen to call him back, or Darth Vaynor. Left messages for both. The bloating noise was making him physically irritated, like a rash, his palms hot but dry as dust, his head fizzing with static. A roar of what sounded like approval made the door shake and Bliss’s guts jitter.

Goldie said, ‘You go back. Leave me your number. I’ll call when they’s leaving.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Bliss smiled. ‘Just so nobody gets nicked on your premises.’

‘Least you can do.’

‘Piss off, Goldie.’

Bliss pocketed his phone, turned the key, eased the door open a crack, then slid out onto the top step where the fetid atmosphere picked him up like oven gloves.

Five steps down there was a concrete platform, a bloke on it, hunched over a substantial videocam on a tripod, pointed down into the circle of light made by big lamps, like in a dope factory.

Which it wasn’t. Nobody wanted to watch grass grow. This would be the kind of video you only found on the Internet, and maybe some gutter cable channel.

Bliss flattened himself against a wet brick wall and saw that it was an actual circle down there, inside a metal barrier, waist-high, like a giant sawn-off-drum. Maybe sixty people around the metal ring. All men, as far as Bliss could see, except he could hear a woman’s voice, high and whiny, like a bandsaw when it first touched the wood.

‘ Finish ’im, boy! Get fuckin’ stuck in, you bastard, we en’t got all night! ’

Now he saw her, taller than many of the men. Saw her black-gloss lips working.

‘ Go for the eyes, go for the eyes, that’s it! ’

Was it his birthday?

Bliss started to laugh, and then he was coughing on the smoke and the fumes of booze and sweat and nasty, twisted excitement at what was going on under the hot lights: the flapping and the stabbing, the spinning and circling, the darting head-to-head, peck-and-thrust, like some savage ballet in sandy dust and scattered twigs and roars and little jewels of flying blood. One of the cocks had the other one against the barrier, stabbing with its reddened beak. In his rattling beanbag head, Bliss heard that voice again.

That’s a bugger, we’re… gonner have to do the other one now.

The cameraman must’ve heard him coughing and turned, and Bliss raised a hand – ‘You’re all right, pal’ – and the man turned back to his camera, and it was all like slow-mo after that.

Some bloke catching the movement from the floor and looking up and nudging his mate, and he was looking up, too, but that was all right, Bliss didn’t think he’d ever nicked either of them. Smiling kindly at them, wondering how he was going to stop this and contain them. Contain her. Probably needing to get back-up, get on his phone.

It was only when more eyes were raised that it occurred to Bliss that, not only was he the only feller here in a suit and tie, he’d been doing – in this same suit and tie – a fair bit of telly these past couple of days. His was a face they all realized they knew from somewhere. So when the cameraman turned for a quick second glance, something inside Bliss snapped like old rotted elastic, and he pushed himself back against the wall, brought up his left knee and slammed the sole and heel of his shoe into the cameraman’s back.