Not Dead Enough

One of Branson’s eyes opened, partway, like a whelk in the safety of its shell. ‘Whatthefucksupman?’ Then he put his hands to his head. ‘Shit, how much did I drink last night? My head is like—’

Grace held up the mug and the capsules. ‘Brought you breakfast in bed. You now have two minutes to shower, get dressed, swallow these and grab a bite from the kitchen. We’re going to work.’

‘Forget it. I’m on sick leave. Got another week!’

‘Not any more. Your therapist’s orders. No more sickies! You need to get back to work now, today, this instant. We’re going to see a dead body.’

Slowly, as if every moment was painful, Branson swung himself out of bed. Grace could see the round, discoloured mark on his six-pack, some inches above his belly button, where the bullet had entered. It seemed so tiny. Less than half an inch across. Terrifyingly tiny.

The DS took the pills, washing them down with the water, then stood up and tottered around in his boxer shorts for some moments, looking very disoriented, scratching his balls. ‘Shit, man, I got nothing here, just these stinky clothes. I can’t go see a body dressed in these.’

‘The body won’t mind,’ Grace assured him.

6

Skunk’s phone was ringing and vibrating. Preeep-preeep-bnnnzzzzz preeep-preeep-bnnnzzzzz. It was flashing, slithering around on the sink-top, where he had left it, like some large, crazed, wounded beetle.

After thirty seconds it succeeded in waking him. He sat up sharply and, as he did most mornings, hit his head on the low Luton roof of his clapped-out camper van.

‘Shit.’

The phone fell off the sink-top and thudded on to the narrow strip of carpeted floor, where it continued its fuck-awful noise. He’d taken it last night from a car he’d stolen, and the owner had not been thoughtful enough to leave the instruction manual with it, or the pin code. Skunk had been so wired he hadn’t been able to figure how to put it on silent, and hadn’t risked switching it off because he might need a pin code to switch it back on. He had calls to make before its owner realized it was missing and had it disconnected. Including one to his brother, Mick, who was living in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and kids. But Mick hadn’t been pleased to hear from him, told him it was four in the morning and hung up on him.

After one more round of shrieking and buzzing, the thing fell silent: spent. It was a cool phone, with a gleaming stainless-steel case, one of the latest-generation Motorolas. Retail price in the shops without any special deal would be around three hundred pounds. With luck, and probably after a bit of an argument, he’d get twenty-five quid for it later this morning.

He was shaking, he realized. And that black, undefined gloom was seeping through his veins, spreading to every cell in his body, as he lay on top of the sheets in his singlet and underpants, sweating one moment, then shivering. It was the same every morning, waking to the sensation that the world was a hostile cave that was about to collapse on him, entombing him. Forever.

A scorpion walked across his eyes.

‘FUCKSHITGETOFF!’ He sat up, whacked his head again and cried out in pain. It wasn’t a scorpion; it wasn’t anything. Just his mind jerking around with him. The way it was telling him now that maggots were eating his body. Thousands of them crawling over his skin, so tight together they were like a costume. ‘GERROFFFF!’ He squirmed, shook them off, swore at them again, even louder, then realized, like the scorpion, there was nothing there. Just his mind. Telling him something. Same way it did every day. Telling him he needed some brown – or some white. Oh, Jesus, anything.

Telling him he needed to get out of this stench of feet, rank clothes and sour milk. Had to get up, go to his office. Bethany liked that, the way he called it his office. She thought that was funny. She had a strange laugh, which kind of twisted her tiny mouth in on itself, so that the ring through her upper lip disappeared for a moment. And he could never tell whether she was laughing with him or at him.

But she cared for him. That much he could sense. He’d never known that feeling before. He’d seen characters talk about caring for each other in soaps on television, but had never known what it meant until he’d met her – picked her up – in the Escape-2 one Friday night some weeks – or maybe months – back.

Cared for him, in the sense that she looked in from time to time as if he was her favourite doll. She brought food, cleaned the place up, washed his clothes, dressed the sores he sometimes got and had clumsy sex with him before hurrying off again, into the day or the night.

He fumbled on the shelf behind his twice-bashed head, stretched out his thin arm, with a rope tattoo coiled all the way along it, and found the cigarette pack and the plastic lighter, and the tinfoil ashtray, lying beside the blade of his flick-knife, which he always kept open, at the ready.

The ashtray spilled several butts and a trail of ash as he swung it across and down on to the floor. Then he shook out a Camel, lit it, lay back against the lumpy pillow with the cigarette still in his mouth, dragged, inhaled deeply, then blew the