Michael Smith - One of Us

Captain Ray Hammond, LAPD.

I closed my eyes.

‘She killed a cop,’ Deck said. ‘Better still, take a look at the last line. I wouldn't even have remembered the piece, except for that. Guess who's in charge of the case?’

I read it aloud, the words like the sound of a heavy door being triple locked. ‘Lieutenant Travis, LAPD Homicide.’

I looked slowly up at Deck, suddenly properly afraid. Up until now, the situation had merely been disastrous. Now it had sailed blithely into a realm where adjectives didn't really cut it any more. It would have taken a diagram to explain, one showing the intersection of a creek and some shit, and making clear the lack of any implement for promoting forward propulsion.

Deck stared back at me. ‘You're fucked,’ he said.

I crashed at six. One minute I was sitting on the sofa talking to Deck, next thing I was out. I'd been awake for forty-eight hours, and my brain was carrying more than the usual load. I was too exhausted to dream much, and all I could remember when I woke up a little after nine was another image of the silver car from the end of Laura's memory. I was standing by a road, I don't know where, but it seemed familiar. On either side was swampy woodland, and the road stretched out straight to the horizon, shimmering in the heat. Something hurtled towards where I was standing, moving so fast that at first I couldn't tell what it was. Then I saw that it was a car, the sun beating down on it so hard that it almost looked as if it was spinning. As it got closer it began to slow down, and when it drew level I woke up.

I didn't know what it meant, other than that part of my brain was evidently trying to get some things in order, and had been since Ensenada. I wished it well. My mind wasn't exactly razor-sharp before it became a flop-house for other people's hand-me-downs, and I now had far more pressing things to worry about.

‘She's moving,’ Deck said.

I stood at the bedroom door and waited impatiently while Ms Reynolds stirred towards consciousness. It looked like it was a long journey, and it took a while. Now that I was properly awake, panic was beginning to resurface, but I didn't poke her with a stick or anything. For the time being I was still hoping the whole situation could be resolved amicably.

Eventually her eyes opened. They were pretty red, a combination of hangover and the remnants of having been in shock. She stared at me for a while without moving.

‘Where?’ she croaked.

‘Griffith,’ I said. I had a glass of water in my hand, but she wasn't getting it just yet.

‘How?’

‘I brought you here.’

She sat up, wincing at the pain in her arms. She must have temporarily forgotten what the source might be, because when she looked down and saw the stitches her lips tightened and her face fell: a small and private look of sorrow and disappointment. I couldn't tell whether this was because it had happened, or because it had failed.

I gave her the water, and she drank.

‘Why would you do that?’ she asked, when she'd finished.

‘You were going to die otherwise. As it is, you're not allowed to go bungee jumping. Want some chicken soup?’

She stared at me. ‘I'm a vegetarian.’

‘Right – your body is a temple. Full of money-changers like vodka and smack.’

‘Look, who are you?’

‘Hap Thompson,’ I said.

She was out of the bed with a speed I found frankly impressive, though once on her feet she swayed alarmingly. ‘The front door's locked, and the windows don't open,’ I added. ‘You're not going anywhere.’

‘Oh yeah? Just watch me,’ she said, as she pushed past and swished out into the living room. Deck looked up, and she glared at him, face pale. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Deck,’ he said, equably. ‘Friend of Hap's.’

‘That's nice. Look, where are my clothes?’

I picked my coat off the end of the sofa and fished in the pockets. Two bras, a pair of panties, and a dress of some thin green material. I held them out to her. Laura looked at me as if I'd offered to crack a walnut between my buttocks.

‘And?’

I shrugged. ‘It's all I could carry.’

‘And my purse is where?’

‘Back in the hotel room.’

‘Are you some kind of monster? You kidnap a woman and don't bring her purse?’

Deck grinned at me. ‘She's real friendly, isn't she?’

Laura turned on him. ‘Look, fuckhead – do you mind if I call you that? – kidnapping's a federal offence. You guys are lucky I'm not on the phone right now, talking to the police.’

‘Memory dumping's a crime too,’ I said. ‘Not to mention murder. You and I both know the last thing you're going to do is get in touch with the cops.’

Her eyes went blank, and she did a good impression of total lack of recall. ‘What murder?’ she said. For a moment it was hard to believe this was someone I'd fished out of a bloody bath in the small hours. She looked like the kind of bank manager who could make you shrivel to a raisin with a raised eyebrow. Either Woodley had done a superb job in patching her up, or she was as tough as all hell.

‘Nice try,’ I said, holding her eyes, ‘but it's not going to work with me. I do this for a living. You lost the event itself, but you still know what you lost. You'll remember seeking me out, and you'll remember why.’

‘You took the job. You got paid.’

‘You lied. And I only got a third of the money.’

‘I'll get you the rest.’

‘I'm not sure I believe you have it, and I don't want it either way. Don't worry – you'll get a refund. Judging by last night, it looks like the dump didn't really work out for you anyway.’

Laura glared at me, then marched over to the front door. She gave the handle a tug. It was, as advertised, locked. ‘Open this door,’ she commanded.

‘Coffee?’ Deck asked me, poised with kettle in hand over in the kitchenette.

Laura kicked the door, nearly toppling herself over in the process. ‘ Open it.’

‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘Think I've got some mint mocha left somewhere.’

She stomped back to me. I thought I was going to catch a slap in the face, but she just snatched her clothes and banged off into the bathroom, where she slammed and locked the door. I decided ‘tough as hell’ was the answer to my question.

‘She going to be okay in there?’ Deck asked.

‘Unless she can break the window and absail ten floors.’

‘No,’ he said, patiently. ‘I mean – okay .’

I knew what he meant. ‘I think so.’ I suspected that trying to kill yourself first thing in the morning, with a hangover and two men annoying the hell out of you, was a different affair to doing it in the small hours with no-one around.

Deck found the coffee, poured it into a cafetiere. I used to have a coffee machine like everybody else. You tell them where the coffee beans are, and how to use the tap, and it's ready whenever you want it. But through a design error the hole the coffee comes out of is rather closer to the machine's posterior than you would hope, and after seeing the little biomachine squatting over a cup, grunting with effort, I tend to go off the idea of a hot beverage. When it goes wrong, as they invariably do, the result tastes very strange indeed. Mine got sick, with what I suspect was the coffee machine equivalent of food poisoning, and I just couldn't have it in the house any longer. I put it in the alley behind the building late at night and it was gone the next day. Maybe it made its way down to Mexico to be with its comrades. If so, it must have been in a different group from the ones I'd passed on the way to Ensenada. They tend to hold grudges, apparently, and between them they could easily have forced me off the road. Maybe they just didn't get a good look at my face.