Jon Grimwood - End of the World Blues

As for the boast about buying the place, maybe she would; but that wasn’t what this was about. Her brothers always said take control from the start. How better to make this woman nervous?

Half a dozen oils hung from one wall. A glass dildo sat in a glass cabinet next to a Benin fetish mask. The dildo featured a spiral of cobalt blue along the shaft, like vapour trails within glass. The African mask had gold studs hammered flat around the edges and looked as old as the glass looked new.

“Murano,” said Sylvia.

“Of course,” said Neku, wondering if Sylvia meant the mask or the paperweight. Stepping back, Neku looked around more openly. It was hard to imagine how anyone could make money from the objects on display. At least, that was what Neku thought until she asked Sylvia the price of the mask. Buying it would take a substantial slice of the money Neku had left with Mrs. Oniji. One wouldn’t have to sell too many objects like it to pay the bills.

“Can you tell me what happened to Mary?”

“She killed herself.” Sylvia hesitated on the edge of saying something else. “I don’t know why…” Whatever she’d been planning to say, Neku guessed it wasn’t that.

“Boyfriend trouble?”

Sylvia shook her head.

“Money?”

The other woman sighed. “Look,” she said. “Do you two want a coffee? We close at 3 pm on Sunday anyway and there’s a place on Goodge Street…”

Neku let Charlie take her hand on the way back from the café. He did this almost casually, his fingers having brushed hers a few seconds earlier; by accident, she’d thought at the time.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Neku, “I’m fine.” There were obviously a dozen things Charlie wanted to ask her about their visit to the Canterville Gallery, but he kept his peace and said nothing. Neku was impressed. Discretion was a valuable commodity in any man.

“So,” Charlie said. “Are we going home now?”

Home …her fingers pulled free as Neku tripped on his word and Charlie stepped out of her reach.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” said Neku. She could almost feel his sideways glance, which slid away when she turned to him. So she took Charlie’s hand again, smiled, and bent her head, listening as he began to talk about some incredibly good band due to play in a basement in Camden. As Charlie’s words trailed to a halt Neku realised he’d been inviting her out.

“Sounds good,” she said.

He smiled the rest of the way back to Mary’s flat. “Wow,” said Charlie, as they turned under the arch and he saw the flower boxes, black front doors, and tiny white-painted houses that made up Hogarth Mews. “Cool place.”

“Not bad,” Neku admitted. Pulling the key from her back pocket, Neku opened the front door to find Sophie doing something complicated to a racing bicycle in the hall.

“This is Charlie,” said Neku.

“Hi,” said Sophie, offering her hand; which meant the first thing Neku had to do on reaching the flat was find kitchen paper so Charlie could clean bike chain grease from his fingers.

“She’s an artist,” said Neku.

Charlie nodded sourly, as if he’d suspected as much.

There was cola and milk in the fridge, fresh bread in a wooden box next to the sink, and a bowl full of pears and bananas on the tiny work surface. Rice and spaghetti had been stacked by the box. Kit had even found instant noodles that came with sachets of miso soup. The only flaw was the fridge being warm, because the electricity still needed to be turned back on, and gas resolutely refusing to hiss from the range.

“You’ve been cut off?”

“No,” said Neku. “We’re waiting for it to be turned back on.”

Neku should have been able to read his expression. She’d have been able to read him if he was one of her brothers. All the same, it was only when Charlie mouthed we that his scowl made sense.

“I share with a friend,” she said. “It’s his flat.”

“Right,” said Charlie. “I see.”

No, you don’t… instead of saying this Neku took a Coke from the fridge and a couple of wineglasses from the cupboard and led Charlie out onto the roof, where her mattress aired in the sun, her pillow rested against the side of the little wooden hut, and her sheet swung gently from a washing line in the breeze. Having dumped her shoulder bag in the hut, Neku returned with a notebook, her ink block, and a brush.

So young, she thought, watching Charlie’s eyes flick from mattress to hut to pillow. “You thought Kit and I…”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did,” Neku said.

Charlie wasn’t good at sulking. In fact he lasted less time than it took a wineglass full of diet cola to lose its bubbles, which was barely any time at all. “Okay,” he said. “Maybe I did.”

Neku smiled.

“Can I ask you something?”

She nodded, wondering which of the dozen questions it would be.

“Are you really planning to buy that gallery?”

“No,” Neku said, dripping flat Coke onto a saucer and grinding her ink block into the liquid until it was thick enough to use. She drew a circle, because she always began everything with a circle, then began to note down everything she could remember from her conversation with Sylvia No-last-name. “I was lying…”

Charlie looked sweetly shocked.

“Unsettle people,” said Neku. “It’s one of the first rules of control. Unsettle them and they’ll answer your questions or do what you want because they’re too busy being unsettled to close down or object…My brothers taught me that.”

“You have brothers?” Charlie asked. Which was the point Neku burst into tears. And that was how Kit found them. Neku on her knees, an abandoned brush on the tiles in front of her, and a boy, all curly blond hair and bat-wing cheek bones, frozen with embarrassment as he tried and failed to comfort her.

“Meet Charlie,” said Neku through bitter sobs.

Charlie tried to shake hands.

“What did you do?”

Charlie let his hand drop. “I asked Neku about her brothers.”

“Brothers?” Kit said.

Kit was the one to see Charlie out, offering his hand at the last minute, if only to tell the boy that he didn’t hold what had happened against him.

“See you some time,” said Kit.

Charlie nodded doubtfully.

When Kit got upstairs the shower was running and there Neku stayed, washing away whatever it was she needed to wash away with an hour’s worth of cold water. She came out of the room shivering and wrapped in a towel, trailing wet footprints onto the roof garden, where she spent the rest of the afternoon, plugged into her MP3 player, with a pile of Japanese police files, a notebook, and a cup of coffee Kit had got from a local café cooling on the tiles in front of her.

The first two times Kit went to see her, she looked up politely and waited, going back to her papers when she realised he was just fussing.

“You knew this woman…Mrs. Kate?” she asked, when he came out a third time, still fussing, with a bowl of takeout noodles and a fork, because he’d been unable to find wooden chopsticks. She took the noodles without comment, placing them next to the coffee.

“Kate’s mentioned in there?”

Neku nodded. “Who gave you these files?”

“Major Yamota,” said Kit. “They’re to do with the fire at Pirate Mary’s. I wasn’t allowed the ones to do with Yoshi.”

“I wondered about that,” Neku said, crossing something off her list. “Most of these are statements from the fire officer, the first policeman on the scene, the paramedic who gave you a sedative. There’s a forensic report from the Police Scientific Bureau, but there are other papers not to do with the fire.”