The kid handed over the keys without looking at Erik’s face. He nodded.
Erik unlocked the car. “Get in the back — all three of you. I don’t want any of you fuckers in the front with me. And try not to dribble on the upholstery.” He watched them squeeze carefully onto the back seat, three unwise monkeys, and got in the front, then started the car. It took them less than three minutes to get to Grove Drive. The garages stood in a row opposite the waste ground beyond the primary school. Seven squat, graffiti-covered buildings, none of them ever used to park a car. They were all utilised for storage instead, and the police turned a blind eye to whatever was kept inside, and to whoever rented them. Nobody cared about this place, as long as there was no serious trouble. Things ticked over in the Grove; crimes were done; people got paid; the status quo was maintained.
The black hole kept on sucking, hungry for more.
“Which one?”
Beggy spoke, but quietly. “The third one from the left.”
“Get the fuck out and show me.”
They all climbed out of the car. Erik waited until they were walking towards the garages, and then he got out, too. He locked the doors and followed them across the footpath and onto the tired grass verge, wondering what the fuck could be so important that Hacky would disturb him and ask him to come here. He’d known all along that it must be something major; the kid was too afraid to fuck with him over trivialities.
Beggy bent over and unlocked the up-and-over garage door. He opened it and the three of them stepped back in the same movement, as if they were afraid of what was in there. They stood and waited for Erik to move.
“You going to tell me what I’m here to see, or do I have to guess?”
Beggy shook his head. Hacky coughed; a harsh dry sound. The nameless third member of the group looked away, trying to pretend that he wasn’t here. He hadn’t spoken a word so far and didn’t look like he was going to change that habit any time soon.
“Well?”
“You do it,” said Beggy. “I can’t go back in there… I’ve seen enough.” He was pleading, not ordering, and Hacky nodded.
“You’re more afraid of whatever’s in there than you are of me?” Erik took a couple of steps forward, interested now. He was standing close to Beggy. The kid nodded, but didn’t raise his head. The footpath was obviously fascinating; he was inspecting it like it was the most interesting thing he’d seen so far that day. The acne scars on his throat were livid, bright red welts. They looked painful, like aggravated wounds.
“Okay, I’ll show you.” Hacky moved reluctantly into the shadow of the garage, his slim body swallowed by darkness. The other two young men stepped to the side, away from the open door.
“Don’t go anywhere,” said Erik. He walked forward, stooping at the waist to get under the garage door, and looked around.
There wasn’t much in there. In fact, it looked like someone had recently moved a lot of stuff out. Streaked dust marks decorated the internal surfaces; cobwebs had been disturbed in the corners. The oil-stained floor was scuffed in places, as if heavy objects had been pushed or pulled across it. Erik seemed to recall that Beggy’s father was some kind of low-level fence, so he probably used this place to store stolen goods that he couldn’t keep inside the house for some reason: furniture, plasma screen televisions still in their cardboard boxes, perhaps even a few large car parts that were too heavy to shift on his own.
A stack of rolled up carpet off-cuts had been pushed up against the wall on the left hand side. The right hand wall was clear, but someone had set up a small camping table, upon which there was a red and black tartan plastic flask and a set of pornographic playing cards. Erik walked over and looked down at the cards. They were vintage 1970s, showing scenes of blank-eyed women copulating with drugged farm animals. Nice.
He looked up and watched Hacky. The kid was staring at a large rectangular object covered by a dark, stained tarpaulin sheet. He was fidgeting; he shuffled his feet, picked at his fingernails, bit his bottom lip.
“Is that it?” Erik indicated the sheet.
“Yeah. It’s under there… under that cover thing.” He licked his lips. His eyes were wide. The gloom inside the garage had made his pupils dilate, unless he was strung out on drugs, despite what he’d said earlier.
“Take the fucking thing off, then. Show me what you’ve got.”
A strange kind of tension had entered the garage with them. Erik knew that he should be losing his temper by now. The kid was stringing this out, making a fucking meal of the situation. But there was an atmosphere between these concrete walls that made him cautious. There wasn’t any actual danger here — of course there wasn’t, not for him anyway. No, not danger: something else, a sense of… weirdness. Something here was not entirely right. That was the only way he could think to explain what he felt.
Then he realised what it was: he felt like he was being watched. He was experiencing that sensation of eyes upon you when you walk across a room; the sense that someone is peering at you but you can’t see them, not yet. A painting’s eyes following you across a gallery floor; or the heat of a person’s gaze burning a hole in the middle of your back from across a room.
Watched.
He was being watched.
Hacky bent over and tugged at the end of the tarpaulin sheet. He did it half-heartedly at first, as if he really didn’t want the sheet to come off, but then he used both hands and pulled hard, shuffling backwards as he did so. The sheet slid away, dropping to the floor. Beneath it was a large glass tank with a heavy lid, the kind of container that was used for keeping tropical fish, or exotic lizards.
“What’s the story with that tank, then?” Erik didn’t move.
Hacky stepped further away, not taking his eyes from the tank. “Years ago, when I was little, I used to keep snakes in there. I had a couple of pythons. Dad got hold of them from some mate. The police came and took them away. They weren’t legal, like…” He kept staring at the tank. “Dangerous, they reckoned…”
Erik paused for a moment, unwilling to move closer to the tank, and what might be lurking inside it. The shadows kept its contents hidden; all he could see was a large dark glass receptacle, with something bulky nestling behind the glass. It could have been discarded clothing; it might have been a dead animal. A cat or a dog.
Then the thing moved: a slight twitch, like a muscular spasm.
“It’s alive,” he whispered.
“We thought it was dead,” said Hacky. “We found it down on Beacon Green, in a little ditch, half-covered by leaves and shit. We were looking for a bag of pot we’d stashed there a few nights ago.” Still he stared at the tank. Whatever was in there coiled lazily, moving a little like one of the pythons the kid had claimed to have owned before they were seized by the authorities.
“What is it?”
Finally Hacky looked away from the tank. He turned to face Erik, and his features remained in shadow. His mouth barely moved when he spoke. Darkness writhed across his face like tar. “Honestly, I haven’t a fucking clue.”
Something thumped wetly against the other side of the glass, shifting again inside the tank. There was a moist slithering noise as it adjusted its position.
“Fucking hell,” said Erik, and his feet moved forward as if they weren’t under his control. He wanted to stop them but they refused to obey. He was walking towards the tank, and the living thing that was imprisoned inside.
“Is it one of those snakes of yours?”
Hacky didn’t answer. He’d already gone back outside, too afraid to stay and watch.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS LUNCHTIME and Marc was craving a protein fix. He’d been drinking a lot lately — much more than usual — and seemed to exist with a constant hangover, seeing the world through a thin layer of gauze. He hoped
