She looks at her mother’s face and the eyelids flicker open. Her eyes are acorns, too; highly polished, and smoothed down as if by a steady, nimble hand wrapped in emery cloth. Her mother’s mouth hinges open and vomits a stream of filth: dead bugs, the gnawed bones of small mammals, and hundreds of tiny wood-dwelling isopods that move in a single wave across her pale face, forming a crisp brown mask.
She drops to her knees and throws her arms around her mother’s neck, basking in that fountain of grime. Her mother’s skin feels rough as bark, and cold as all the lies she has ever told.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FRANCIS BOATER WAS used to waiting. He had been waiting for something good to happen for his entire life, and still the much-anticipated event was yet to arrive. Whatever it was — and Boater didn’t really know what that thing might be or where it would come from — he was still waiting.
“Is she gonna be long?” He stared at the skinny barman, flexing his massive chest in a way that he knew intimidated people. Boater used his bulk like other people used words: he hid behind it, communicated with the mass of gone-to-seed muscle that had turned to heavy fat. He couldn’t remember a time when he had been anything but big — but at least when he was younger, in his early twenties, his physique had been hard and knotted, like a stocking filled with conkers. Now that he was in his forties, he looked like an ageing mountain — or, as he thought on bad days, a stockpile of lard.
“I’ll just go and check.” The barman — what was his name again? Terry? Trevor? Some soft-shite student-type name, anyway — put down the glass he’d been cleaning and hurried through into the back room, where he vanished up a narrow flight of wooden stairs.
“Fucking bitch,” said Boater, necking almost his full pint of lager. He knew about bitches: knew them well, in fact. His mother had been the biggest bitch of all, and she had created what she lovingly referred to as her Own Little Monster when she fucked with his mind during childhood. He remembered coming home often to find her rutting on the sofa with strangers; sometimes she’d even told him to stand and watch, staring at him as her latest beau thrust into her, his eyes closed and his wet mouth pressed against her neck. On these occasions, her smile was like a razor: sharp and dangerous.
Even with intelligence as limited as his, Boater knew that the woman had deliberately twisted him, turning him into what he was today: an enforcer, a man who enjoyed hitting people more than he did simply touching them; a violent sociopath more comfortable in a fight than a lovers’ embrace. Yes, even he was aware enough to realise these facts. He’d read enough true-life crime books, and seen too many documentaries on men of violence not to know the limits of his own broken mind.
He glanced around the bar, willing someone to give him a wrong glance, or speak out of turn about him to their drinking partners — a word passed behind a raised palm, a glance held too long or not long enough. But there were no takers; everyone knew who he was, and even if they didn’t, his musk was strong enough to scare them. He was a fighter, a warrior, a barely caged tiger. He was Monty Bright’s top man, and his reputation went before him like a sword thrust into the darkness.
“She’ll be just a couple of minutes.”
Boater turned back to the bar, glaring at the stupid little bastard who’d come back with the message. Boater hated the bloke’s thin forearms, his pale skin unsullied by prison tattoos, and the keen brightness in his eyes. “Another pint. Now.”
The man scurried the length of the bar to use the pump farthest from Boater. This made him smile. Other people’s fear always did.
He drank his next pint more slowly, and felt the alcohol dull his rage. No doubt it would flare up later, after a few more beers, some cheap shots, and whatever drugs he could score during the course of the evening. But for now he felt calm and easy. He was out on a promise, and the girl he was waiting for was just about worth the delay.
A few minutes later she came sashaying out from the doorway behind the bar, wearing a skirt so short that it looked more like a belt, a little leather jacket over the top of a low-cut vest top, six-inch heels, and an orange tan from a bottle.
“You look great,” he said, leaning towards her and almost swallowing her in his bulk.
“Ta. You look fucking massive, but that’s just how I like them.” Her smile was plastic, a warped Botox grin, and her eyes were as flat and lifeless as those of a sex doll.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here. I hate this shite-hole.” He grabbed her tiny hand, swamping it in his warm flesh, and dragged her towards the door.
“Hey, my dad loves running this place. It’s his private little hidey hole from the world. Just him and the hardcore drunks.” She began to laugh, almost manically, and Boater was confused about the reason why. What was funny about the words she’d said? He just didn’t get it, but he rarely got anything these days. Sometimes he felt that the work he did, the life he had led, made him different from everyone else. Another kind of human; one not entirely in step with the others he saw around him. A man apart; a breed not fit for the company of others.
“Where are you taking me, then?”
They emerged from the grotty little pub under the Tyne Bridge. Boater glanced up, at the steel and concrete underside, and for a fleeting moment he realised that the sight represented the prison bars of his life. Then, shaking off such idiocy, he thought about how he was going to shag this bitch until she screamed. Maybe leave her blackened and bruised; her own private tattoo, to remember him by. Where was he taking her? Right up the arse, that’s where.
“Well?” her voice was starting to get on his nerves; it sounded small and tinny, like a faulty tape recording.
“I thought we’d have a little dodge along the Quayside for an hour, and then go back to Far Grove for a few beers and a smoke with my mates. I can score some good gear there — something that’ll keep us going all night.”
She laughed again. The sound grated on his nerve endings. “I like it when you keep going all night, Fran.”
It was starting to rain; the charcoal sky looked like someone had slashed it repeatedly with a knife, showing the flat blackness beneath. The clouds were low and heavy, lumbering like pregnant beasts, and the air was turning cold. Boater ducked into a pub doorway, losing his grip on the girl’s hand for a moment, and made his way through the hot, sweaty crowd to the bar.
They had two drinks, and during the time it took them to finish he realised that he was already bored of this girl. He didn’t even know her name; she was pointless, just another way of wasting time as he waited for that good thing to appear — the event that he knew, deep inside, would never happen, not even if he lived for a million years. Where had he even met her, anyway, this plastic sex toy? He reached inside his memory and plucked out an image: she owed Monty Bright some money, and had taken the option of servicing him once a week to bring down her payments. Growing tired of her, Monty had given Boater permission to take her on, and it had all clicked into place.
It happened all the time, this trading of bodies. Monty got sick of them fast, and he passed them on to his men. This time it was Boater’s turn, but each moment he spent in the girl’s company was another inch towards the thought of killing her — one more step along the road to oblivion.
He was glad when his mobile phone rang. It pulled him up out of the swamp of his thoughts, made him realise where he was and who he was with — another empty vessel, a cast-off he was about to use as a receptacle for his dead dreams and his dull desire.