Fell Purpose

have a CCTV camera trained on the car park,’ Slider assured him. ‘We have the tape.’

Carmichael felt the need to express some feelings about the fascist state and Big Brother surveillance before he could go on. In the end, Slider prompted him. ‘You picked her up, and took her back to your flat?’

‘Yeah,’ Carmichael agreed, though his mind was evidently still on his political grievances. ‘Free country? Don’t make me laugh.’

‘To your flat,’ Slider prompted. ‘And did what?’

‘Had a drink. Put some sounds on. Talked a bit. I had a smoke. She was sort of wandering about. Restless.’

‘Nervous?’

He shrugged. ‘I dunno. Maybe. She was in a funny mood all right. I thought she wanted to get it on – I mean, I thought that was why she phoned me in the first place. We had a bit of a cuddle, but when I started kissing her she pulled away. Then she said she wanted to go to the fair. I thought she was playing hard to get and we’d do it later, so I didn’t care. Girls like to play games like that. But she was hot stuff in bed. You wouldn’t think to look at her, but she was all over me when we went out together. Tore the clothes off me, practically.’

‘Did she love you? Was she in love with you?’

The question seemed to surprise him, as if love didn’t normally come into his calculations. ‘She was mad for me,’ he said at last doubtfully, making a distinction. ‘Couldn’t get enough.’

Slider left that line for the moment. ‘How do you know Oliver Paulson?’ he asked. Carmichael looked surprised and uneasy. ‘Who?’

‘Chloe’s brother. You met Zellah through him. Chloe, Zellah and Sophy were at his flat one day and the five of you went out to lunch. Surely you can’t have forgotten him?’

‘Well, why shouldn’t I know him?’ Carmichael tried, unconvincingly.

‘A bit out of your normal circle, isn’t he? An ex-public-schoolboy City dealer with a million-pound flat in Notting Hill.’

‘And I’m a kid from a sink estate, yeah, I get it,’ he said bitterly.

‘You’ve obviously bettered yourself,’ Slider said. ‘You’ve got a nice pad in Ladbroke Grove, an expensive Harley, nice clothes, posh friends. What’s your secret?’ Carmichael only glowered. ‘I told you I wasn’t interested in the drugs thing, so let’s just get it out of the way, shall we? You knew Oliver Paulson because you were supplying him with drugs.’

A pause, and then, with a kind of sigh of release, Carmichael said, ‘He contacted me through a bloke in a pub I know. I got him charlie, and then CK when they went over to that. A lot of ’em changed over because they said it interfered with work less, when they’re doing it three–four times a week, like most of these City whizzes, instead of just weekends. I don’t care,’ he shrugged. ‘I charge ’em the same for Calvin Klein, and it costs me less. They could get ket cheaper on the street, but they don’t want to get their hands dirty, and they know they can trust me. So then Olly put me on to some other friends of his and I’ve made a good thing out of it. I do parties and everything. Some of ’em contact me before they even ring the caterers. It’s meant I could give up the risky end of the business, and good riddance. I never liked hanging about on the Woodley South, standing on corners with all those scag dealers and crack heads, and the stupid bloody gangstas with their knives and attitude. I hate that bloody place!’ he cried with sudden vehemence. ‘I wouldn’t ever go back there, ever, if it weren’t for my mum.’ He turned his gaze to Slider, and for a moment a younger Mike Carmichael looked out from his eyes, a scared and uncertain boy who had been left to fend for himself, in a fast-moving and dangerous world, by the inexplicable withdrawal of his mother. ‘I’ve tried to get her out, but she won’t leave. And I’ve tried to get her off the shit, but she won’t even try. The only thing I can do for her is make sure she doesn’t get in with any of the really dangerous dealers, or get hold of shit that’s cut with something that’ll kill her. That’s why I get her the stuff – because she’d go somewhere else if I didn’t, and end up dead, or worse. I give her money and try and make her eat and take care of herself. What else can I do? I mean, what am I supposed to do? You tell me!’

Slider resisted the call to sympathy and the urge to ask himself what he would have done in the same circumstances. His habit of empathizing was both one of the strengths of his character and one of its weaknesses, and he knew it. Instead he asked, ‘Did Zellah take drugs?’

‘No, she wasn’t interested. She thought it was stupid to mess with your brain like that. Mind you, she had a brain, not like those friends of hers. I don’t think they even knew how clever she was. She tried to hide it from them, but it came out all over the place – to me, at least. I noticed. She was, like, brilliant. She could have been a rocket scientist if she wanted. But she was one messed-up kid. Didn’t know what she wanted. Except sex. She liked that.’

Slider thought of the drawings, of the bleak poem, of what Markov had said of her. ‘Do you think she had doubts about her sexuality?’ he asked.

‘Doubts?’ Carmichael stared. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘A lot of young people go through a phase of wondering about their . . . orientation.’ He hated using the word, but he couldn’t think how else to phrase it. ‘Sometimes they try to hide it from themselves by going too far in the other direction.’

‘You mean, did she pretend to like sex because she was secretly a lezzer?’ he said brutally, and then laughed. ‘No chance! That girl was a natural in bed. Who told you that crap?’

‘I was just speculating aloud,’ Slider said. ‘Trying to understand her.’ On an impulse, he said, ‘Do you know Alex Markov?’

To his surprise, Carmichael said at once, ‘Yeah, he’s one of Oliver’s mates. I met him at Olly’s. I sell him stuff, too. They call him the Magic Marker, because he’s an artist and he used to be into psychedelics, speed, mushrooms and that, when he was at college.’ Slider smiled inwardly at this derivation of his sobriquet. Magic Markov indeed! ‘Olly bought a painting off him once.’

‘Have you been to his house?’

‘No. I take him the gear at Olly’s or we meet in a pub. He’s married and I don’t think his wife knows he does drugs. She’s a top nurse on shifts, so they don’t see much of each other. I don’t think they’re getting on, to tell you the truth. Olly says it’s a good lesson in why you should never get married.’ Carmichael seemed to be enjoying himself now, was becoming almost garrulous, as if he had forgotten why they were having this conversation. ‘Why do you want to know about him?’

‘No reason. Let’s go back to Sunday. So you and Zellah went to the fair.’

The elation dropped away. He gave Slider a resentful look, like a person realizing he had been duped. ‘I didn’t want to go. I mean, that’s kids’ stuff. But I thought if it put her in the mood . . .’

‘You went on your bike?’

‘Well, we weren’t walking,’ he said, as though that was out of the question, though it was not much more than a mile.

‘You seemed to be having fun there, according to witnesses.’

He shrugged. ‘Oh well – it was all right. I didn’t mind it. And she was having a great time, screaming her head off on the rides and hanging on to me.’

‘Did you notice a funny-looking little man watching you or following you?’

‘I didn’t notice anyone. I wasn’t looking at anyone except Zellah,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Skip it. Go on – you said she was having fun.’

‘Yeah at first, but then she starts going quiet, and then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, she says I should go because she’s meeting someone else. I say who and she says another man.’

‘You must have been angry,’ Slider suggested.

‘You kidding me? I couldn’t believe it. I tell her she can think again about bloody that, when I’d picked her up, and then paid for all those rides. I said if she was just using me for transport I’d snatch her bald-headed. I wasn’t having her treating me like a chauffeur, the cow!’

‘But it was a bit late for a second date, wasn’t it? Everything would be closing round about then.’

‘What are you talking about? It was only about ten o’clock. Most parties don’t start until then. And all the pubs had extensions.’

Slider had to tread carefully. ‘It was later than ten o’clock when you had your row with her. It was nearer midnight. The evening was over.’

‘It wasn’t midnight. I’m telling you. We’d only been at the fair an hour, an hour and a half maybe. It couldn’t