Graeme Cameron - Normal - The Most Original Thriller Of The Year

This is the other reason I stay away from hookers: there’s always some knitworn do-right from the Prostitutes’ Collective taking down numbers. Decades without a glitch, and then I’m undone by a needless whim in a moment of weakness. It’s an age-old story, and one of those things that always happens to someone else. Fuck me, I’m an idiot.

Gun. I can get to the gun, no problem. In the time it takes this Fairey to cross the kitchen, I’ll have torn open the cupboard and swiped aside the oven cleaner and the bin bags and he’ll be staring down a twelve-gauge barrel, eyes widening, trying to shake his head, trying to form the word no with his cotton-wool tongue and his cracked lips while his mind clouds with terror and despair and thoughts of his plump wife and gurgling babies and everything he didn’t tell them before he left for work today. And his accomplice will make it to her feet in time to take a faceful of blood and skull and brain, and she’ll raise her hands to shield her eyes and let out a shriek of fear and surprise, and she’ll trip on the chair as she runs for the door, and I’ll stand on her neck as she sprawls on the floor, and she’ll look up at me like a stunned rabbit, and her breathing will turn shallow and frantic and she’ll whimper, “Please, no,” and I’ll think about the floor and what it’ll cost to repair and I might let her get to her feet. I might haul her up and escort her out to the fields behind the house where the topsoil’s loose and the stains won’t show. I may even let her run for the car, see if her comfortable shoes offer any practical advantage. Or to hell with the floor, I can be in Belgrade by nightfall.

Okay, breathe. Slow down. Think it through. They’re only a pair, and drones to boot. Whatever they suspect, they only suspect. There’s no mob with machine guns abseiling from the roof. No one’s kicking down doors or crashing through the windows. They’ve got nothing to go on. It’s just a man with a cheap suit and fucking great feet asking a single, simple question. For Christ’s sake, he hasn’t even asked it yet. And if the question’s that hard to answer, well, there’s room for them both under the barn.

Keep calm. Keep smiling. Eye contact. No sudden movement. Maybe raise an eyebrow, as though listening intently. Which one? The right. No, the other one. All right, then, Ronald McFuckingdonald. I’m ready for you.

“And we think you’re potentially an important witness,” he said.

Oh?

* * *

“You own a white Ford Transit,” he informed me, a statement with which I could only reasonably agree. “Showed up on cctv on Queen Street at 3:11 a.m. That’s about two hundred yards and fifteen minutes from where Kerry was last seen,” which certainly made me Idiot of the Week, but was far from a smoking gun. Fairey flipped a seven-by-five print from his jacket pocket: a six-month-old mugshot, Kerry sullen and bedraggled and black-eyed, eight inches of dark roots chasing the tail of a home peroxide. “The blond’s gone,” Fairey continued, “but the expression hasn’t changed. Maybe you remember seeing her? Talking to someone, getting into a car?”

I took a moment to think, considering the farthest distance to which I could remove Kerry in the shortest possible time. Finally, I shook my head. “I wish I could help,” I said. “I just don’t recognize her at all,” which was actually not all that far from the truth. Even after a week of cold turkey and cage fighting, she looked nothing like the harridan in the photograph.

“You’re quite sure?” Green asked. Something in her eyes told me my acting was flawed. Before I could reassure her, however, Fairey shot her a look that told her he’d be asking the fucking questions, thank you very much, all but striking hers from the record.

“You Batman?” he said, returning the mugshot to his pocket and flipping out a notebook in its place.

“I’m sorry?” I replied.

“Insomniac?”

Green rolled her eyes. “Get to the point,” I said, forcing her to hide a smirk.

Fairey smiled graciously. “What were you doing driving around the red-light district at three in the morning?”

Finally, a question I could answer truthfully. “I was on my way back from the seaside,” I told him. “I spent the evening with...” With what? “A friend?” Accurate description or not, I’d said it aloud and it was in Fairey’s book.

“Name?”

“Annie.”

“Annie...?” He stopped scribbling, looked up at me expectantly.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Surname?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Address?” He laughed.

I recited it as well as I could remember.

“I take it you only recently met?”

“Yes, that night,” I confessed. “We...you know. Just talked.”

Green’s hand fell away from her mouth, and she stared at me in undisguised bemusement. Like her, I had no idea why I’d said that.

Whatever, Fairey seemed unconcerned. “I understand,” he said with a dismissive wave. “Listen, how about we take a quick look at that Transit, and then we’ll let you get on with your day?”

I liked the sound of the latter, at least.

The van was empty but for the load straps and a large, plain cardboard box. On the top of the box was a folded woolen blanket. “Box of blankets,” I said.

“May I?” Green preemptively ignored her superior’s silent admonition and stepped up onto the load bed.

“Be my guest.” I smiled, mentally locating the garden fork hung on the wall three feet behind me.

“Thank you,” she said, rubber soles squeaking against the steel floor as she strolled over to the box, squared her jaw and carefully lifted one corner of the blanket. Finding another beneath it, she lifted the second blanket to reveal a third. “Box of blankets.” She nodded.

“What’s under those blankets?” Fairey asked, indicating what was quite plainly a sheet-draped car occupying the opposite side of the garage.

I heard Green nudge the box with her foot as I turned. “My car,” I said, sounding rather unnecessarily uncooperative even to myself.

“Looks like an Interceptor,” he decided, unperturbed.

“Good guess,” I conceded.

“Mind if I look?”

I don’t know why he bothered asking; he was already across the garage and peeling back the covers before I could utter, “Knock yourself out.”

Green hopped down from the back of the van. “We’ll be here all bloody day now,” she remarked, nevertheless casting an appraising eye over the Jensen’s scruffy gray flank as she swept past. Quite rightly, she was unimpressed.

I followed her to the threshold, where she gazed out beyond the house to the barn midway across the field. “Nice place you’ve got,” she noted. “What’s in the barn?”

“Flatbed trailer, workbench, assorted lumps of wood, a fiberglass speedboat without an engine,” I informed her. “Tours are free if you want one.” Maybe not Belgrade. Maybe somewhere warm, like Las Palmas or Santo Domingo.

She stared a moment longer, then shook her head. “I’ll take your word for it,” she said, reaching into her jacket pocket and pulling out a pack of Juicy Fruit. “If he’s off the clock, so am I.”

Fairey had found the bonnet unlatched and was staring aghast at the jumble of disconnected wiring within. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said.

Green and I made a show of checking our watches. Clearly, we both wished I were alone.

“If you do happen to think of anything that might help us—”

“I’ll be sure you’re the first to know.” I shook Fairey’s hand as I walked him out of the garage; his grip was decidedly limp and more than a little clammy.

He nodded. “And get that engine fixed.”

I gave him a weary salute as he and Green walked back to their car. Waited until Fairey had one leg inside before calling after him. “Actually, there is one thing,” I said.