He entered. Admittedly the place had an enticing smell. It was furnished with a number of tables, each with computer terminals. A single saddo sat at one, and a couple of men in bad jeans, bomber jackets and baseball caps sat at another, by the front window. Could they be plain-clothes cops, surveying the passers-by? He looked at them again and decided not.
He walked to the rear of the shop. There was a drinks menu on the wall and beneath it a display of cupcakes, a carrot cake and assorted panini under a glass counter. Behind the counter stood a bored-looking woman in her twenties, with a face that might have been prettier if it wasn’t caked in make-up and her blonde hair hadn’t been styled by Medusa, he thought.
‘I’m looking for 23A Western Road,’ he said.
‘Uh-huh. You’ve found it.’ She sounded like she’d rather be defrosting a fridge or watching paint dry than having to talk to him, or anyone. She had two black sticks in her hair. Tooth wondered for a moment how she would feel having them stabbed through each of her eyes.
‘I’ve come to pick up mail for my girlfriend, Jodie Bentley. She also uses the name Judith Forshaw.’
‘Uh-huh.’ She tapped a keyboard beneath his line of sight. Then after a moment looked back at him with nobody-home eyes. ‘Do you have her passport and password?’
Tooth gave her a smile. His best smile. ‘I guess she forgot to tell me I needed them.’
‘What’s your accent?’ she asked.
‘American. Midwest. Wisconsin.’
She startled him by smiling. ‘It’s cute.’
‘You think so?’
She nodded.
‘Know what I think?’
She shook her head.
‘You need someone to fuck your brains out.’
She smiled again. ‘That’s so cute. Know what I think?’
Tooth leaned forward, with the smile of a piranha. ‘Tell me?’
‘You’re a nasty little perv and a lech. Go fuck yourself.’
She pointed up at the ceiling. He followed her finger and saw the CCTV camera that was right on his face.
He cursed. Shit, shit, shit. Fucking jet lag. How the hell had he not looked for cameras when he’d come in? Instantly he turned and walked away, in confused fury. As he reached the door he heard her call out, in a big, loud, phoney Southern accent.
‘Y’all have a nice day now!’
Without turning round, he raised a hand and gave her the bird with his middle finger.
‘That the size of your dick?’ she called after him.
Tooth stepped out into the drizzle. He was fuming. Tiredness had made him screw up and potentially be noticed.
He turned and stood for a moment, fighting his urge to storm back in. But that wasn’t why he was here. It wasn’t why he was paid to be here.
He strode angrily away.
39
Sunday 1 March
While Rowley lay fast asleep, snoring beside her, Jodie was wide awake in bed, in their luxurious cabin, sitting up with her laptop balanced on a pillow, feeling the gentle motion of the ship rocking her in the light swell. Taking stock.
The daily ship’s programme for tomorrow lay in front of her. The shore visit lecture; line dancing class; carpet bowls; craft class with Jill and Mike; bridge lessons; keep-fit classes — one in particular had made her grin, titled, ‘Sit and Get Fit!’ The evening highlight was the comedian Allan Stewart.
But she wasn’t interested in any of the items. She was totally focusing on the plans she had made for her future, all those years back. The rich man Cassie had said she would marry only in her dreams. Well, there was one rich man who might be dreaming right now, judging from his rapid eye movements. And this time tomorrow she would be married to him. Sure, her right to inherit could be challenged by his family, but whatever the result she would be coming away with a handsome chunk of change after he died. All he had to do was make it through the night.
Then from tomorrow, with a ring on her finger and the marriage certificate signed, she could make her move. She looked at him. Mouth open, droning snore, drool running from the corner of his mouth, that same self-satisfied expression that so much reminded her of her father.
God, how I would love you dead!
She found a diary entry she had made way back in her teens — and, like all her old diaries, had scanned into a password-protected electronic document for safekeeping.
This entry, she remembered, must have been just before the time she’d put a nine-inch diameter Colombian Huntsman spider in Cassie’s bed. The spider was totally harmless to humans, but both Cassie and her parents had a major sense of humour failure over it. And over the snakes and frogs — all harmless — that she liked to let roam free around her room.
All her arachnids and reptiles — even the ones her parents had actually bought her (at her request) for birthday and Christmas presents — had been confiscated, this time permanently. Afterwards she wrote:
There are a lot of myths about snakes — in particular about the venomous ones. Listen. The saw-scaled viper is called the world’s deadliest snake, because it kills more people than any other. In India alone it kills 58,000 people every year — 13,000 more than are killed in car crashes in the United States!
But it’s not actually the world’s most venomous snake — that title goes to the Belcher’s sea snake — one bite has enough venom to kill one thousand people! But because it lives in the waters of South East Asia and Southern Australia, it rarely bites humans.
The black mamba is pretty cool. It’s the world’s fastest snake — it moves at twelve miles per hour and its bite can kill in thirty minutes. The king cobra can kill an elephant in an hour. The inland taipan can kill a human in fifty minutes.
I love that!
So many people are scared of them. Not me, though. No snake ever told me I had a hooked nose, no snake ever told me I had no tits. I don’t judge them and they don’t judge me. They need me to feed and water them. In return, they do me favours.
I feel they should be rewarded for services rendered. But how do you reward a snake? What do they appreciate? Food, shelter, water? Sometimes I think when I come back in the next life, I’d quite like to be a snake. Much less complicated. Did you ever see a snake look in a mirror and pull a face? Did you ever see a snake that had a complex about how it looked?
Me neither.
40
Sunday 1 March
Tooth stood by the beach, in front of a row of shuttered Victorian arches, staring morosely through the rain out to sea. To his right was a large building site, with a central structure partially covered in scaffolding, out of which rose a construction like a huge spike soaring into the sky. A hoarding had a futuristic architect’s drawing of something that looked to him like a spaceship and the wording i360. It reminded him of the Space Needle in Seattle.
A short distance out in the sea stood a rusting mass of girders, all that remained of what had once been the West Pier. Over to his left was the Brighton Pier and a short way along the shore, past the pier, what looked like a large wheel. He smelled rotting weed and boat varnish. He found seaside resorts in the rain depressing. This place reminded him in a way of Coney Island, where he’d once spent ten days in winter waiting for a man he’d been paid to torture and kill to show up. He didn’t think there was a more depressing place on earth than Coney Island in the rain.
A new smell hit his nostrils, the aroma of a grilling burger or maybe French fries, that was making him feel hungry, despite the large room-service breakfast he’d eaten less than a couple of hours ago. He turned towards Brighton Pier, walking past a closed, gaily painted hut boasting the legend, in white letters on a turquoise strip, BRIGHTON SHELLFISH AND OYSTER BAR.