I parked up, got out of the car and stood in the warming morning sun for a few minutes, letting it sink into my skin and bones.
When I passed another pile of cigarette butts, each smoked down to the filter, lying on the kerb outside my flat, they carried new meaning. A health warning. I looked all around me for anyone who might have left them, then kicked them out into the street. If what Parrs had told me was true, it seemed possible, even likely, that I was being watched. The enemies I’d made had deep pockets and they could afford to wait for my next mistake. My mind went back to the man I’d seen, a few days before, watching me when I’d left The Temple.
I opened the flat and went to make myself a drink. The bottle I’d been chipping away at was empty, but I didn’t remember finishing it. I looked at it for a moment before opening another and pouring a strong one, which I barely felt. I paced the room. The message from Parrs had been clear. My next mistake would be my last. Somehow, far from feeling trapped, I felt free. He’d described a sequence of events – my becoming undependable, my becoming unemployed, my becoming unprotected – that felt inevitable.
Like a clarification.
Once I’d paused, let it sink into me like the morning sun, I felt much more certain about where I stood. Who I was and what I’d do next. I thought about the arrogance of Oliver Cartwright. I didn’t have the full story between him and Sophie, but I was certain he was using her body, her youth, her sex, against her. Using my own past, my own job against me. Gliding through life like my exact opposite, untouched by consequence or cause and effect, while the rest of us drowned in it.
I picked up my keys and took another drive.
7
As a younger man I’d habitually snorted methamphetamine. There’s no point saying whether I did so to excess or not. In some cases I’d taken it until my nose bled. I’d taken it until I couldn’t remember my own name. I’d seen and heard things as a result that I knew to be impossible, and had long, animated conversations with people I knew to be dead. Occasionally this altered perception still bleeds through into my sober life, rendering events and people as more grotesque, or more beautiful, than they could in reality be. Occasionally, my surroundings become altered almost beyond comprehension, peopled with living ghosts, phantoms and sirens.
I’d managed to kick by acknowledging privately that my abstinence likely wouldn’t be permanent. I told myself that the next relapse would be different, though. Sensible. I’d take time out, draw the blinds and relax into it. Fully recover afterwards and wait another six months before I used again. And because this fantasy was what made my day-to-day sobriety possible, I nurtured it.
At irregular intervals over the course of a year, I’d withdrawn small amounts of cash, which now added up to something more substantial. It would cover the tracks of how I paid for drugs if financial forensics ever looked closely. Before leaving my flat I’d gone to the bathroom and stared into the mirror for a moment, feeling my face warp and alter, even as I unscrewed the fixture and pulled it off the wall. I’d taken the black carrier bag that had been hidden, pressed flat behind it, and carried it to the car with me. Inside was the cash I’d saved and a simple lock-pick set. Drugs, burglary and lies. My only inheritance. Now, little more than an hour later, the bag was burning a hole in my pocket.
It was still early, but the city was already bustling, and the heat felt incredible. Half weather, half malice. I was running down a Chorlton Street rumour. When I arrived, the coach station was busy and I walked inside, into a feeling of inescapable, repeating history.
I’d always come here when I was running away.
Usually with a pocket full of saved or stolen cash that had never quite been enough. As a boy I’d vanished from foster homes with this as my destination. The only fixed idea in my head. Sometimes I got as far as the next city, sometimes I was back in care before they noticed I was gone. I remembered oblivion nights, sleeping outside, waiting for the doors to open, and all of my first kisses, with girls, with drink, with drugs. I remembered running away here as a teenager, with the first love of my life, and coming to outside the next morning. The girl and the money were both gone, and she’d written a Dear John letter on my left hand in red biro.
I found myself walking through all those old faces, now. Organized, optimistic people, taking trips. Reluctant, frazzled travellers, following work or family on to the next place. Stiff-limbed rough sleepers trying to look respectable enough to use the toilets, where they’d wash up as much as possible before being moved along. The endless ebb and flow of a major city. And unmistakable in the throng, all of the lovers running away.
I took a seat facing the payphones, a rarity these days, and watched as a man raked them. He was a dilapidated, raw-faced destitute, walking painfully on one crutch. He pivoted to move, seemingly having lost the use of one side of his body, and there were so many tattoos on his neck that it looked like he wore a collar. When he reached a phone he felt inside the change slot then threw himself to the next one. Once finished, he exited the building, disappeared from view for a minute and reappeared at the door where he’d started. I watched him repeat this circuit a few times, always glancing over his shoulder in what a casual observer might have thought a twitch. When he next exited I stood, crossed the room and stuffed my rolled-up banknotes into the change slot of the first payphone.
I sat down and waited.
The man laboured back into the station thirty seconds later, wincing from step to step. When he put his hand into the coin slot, his face betrayed nothing different from the norm, and he palmed the cash with a dexterity that was impressive to see. He carried on, disappearing for another minute. When he came back around there was nothing outwardly different about him. He painfully approached the payphones, checked the slots and clicked out of the station on his crutch. I went to the first phone, picked up the receiver and dropped in a coin. I dialled my own number and let it ring. When there was no answer I hung up and heard the change fall into the slot. It didn’t make the precise rattle you’d expect, but a muted thud, as though on to something soft. I put my hand into the slot, took the bag that the man had left and exited the station.
There were street dealers I knew, both personally and professionally, but I couldn’t use them. First of all, I’d needed something harder than speed. Secondly, I’d needed total anonymity. In this case, someone’s word or discretion wasn’t good enough. I sat in the car, feeling the weight of the powder in my pocket. I’d always believed that there was more to me, my personality, than people saw. That one day I might surprise them with a good turn, an unexpected act of kindness. The Stromers of the world would re-evaluate me as a person. Parrs and Sutty would see me as someone who could be trusted, relied upon, perhaps even promoted. I moved the rear-view mirror so I couldn’t see myself and pulled out into traffic. Sometimes you confound expectations, sometimes you grow into the thing that people think you are.
8
I drove to the Quays and parked outside Imperial Point, Oliver Cartwright’s building. When I killed the engine it was with a feeling of inevitability. Like I’d reached a destination that I’d been heading to for a long time. Everything outside the car was quiet, still, bathed in light, but inside it I was tapping my fingers on the dash, looking up at the building.
Cooking my brain.
I hadn’t sampled the coke in my pocket, but felt a buzz in my left leg, a contact high just from knowing it was there. I felt the right-hand pocket, the outline of the lock-pick set. I took a breath, climbed out of the car and approached the entrance. I buzzed 1003 and waited.