Girl Seven (11 page)

Alexei stared at me. I didn’t know how to interpret the smile on his face. I just prayed that he cared more about the money than he did about his dislike of me.

‘You think this is... how do you say it...? Leverage?’ the driver said suddenly, impassive behind his sunglasses. He had the same accent. He raised his face to the overhead mirror to address me from behind the lenses. ‘Take away your face and your body, your smart mouth and that hole between your legs and what power do you have over anybody, really?’

I was desperate for Alexei and Isaak to miss the fact that he had a point.

Forcing myself to remain calm, I glared at him past a sweep of my hair and said shakily, ‘I have more power to get the things you want than you do.’

My breathing was audible.

The driver’s eyes were front again, completely indifferent to my false bravado.

A siren passed us in the distance.

I realized I was sprawled against the corner of the car and I made a more conscious effort to sit up straight, even with Isaak encroaching into my space.

The decision was with Alexei, but I felt that if I said any­thing else I would most likely talk him into killing me just to shut me up. These guys weren’t exactly feminists. A woman talking back at them was probably more offensive an idea than gutting me in the back of a parked car.

I noticed Alexei had been chewing gum when he took the small white ball out of his mouth and stuck it in the drinks holder.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK, Miss Ishida. You have our attention. You may explain. You have one minute.’

I began talking for my life. ‘I can get into the houses for you, where they keep their money. I’m a girl. Some of the dealers even know me. There’s no way a gang of you will be able to get in and out without leaving traces of a struggle. All I would have to do is ask... or make up some story, and most people would let me in.’

I deliberately avoided looking at the knife. If I did I’d start to fall over my words.

‘Think about it,’ I said, trying to appeal to their logic rather than non-existent reason or emotions. ‘I could get in, find what­ever I need to find and get out without any sign of forced entry. If I was disguised I wouldn’t draw any attention to myself. What were you lot going to do? Wear balaclavas to the front door? Imagine, I could get in and out and you wouldn’t even have to leave a fingerprint. No one could ever connect you to it.’

‘Think that is your minute gone,’ Isaak said, eyes on his brother.

I clenched my fists. ‘You know it makes sense. Let me live and I can do the legwork for you. What have you got to gain by killing me anyway? You wouldn’t even have tried. You wouldn’t even know what you could be gaining. All you’d be doing is leaving evidence around for people to find later.’

Isaak snorted. ‘This is ridiculous.’

‘No, it’s not,’ the driver said.

‘You’re going to listen to a stupid
girl
?’

‘Shut up!’ Alexei snapped. ‘
You’re
being a stupid girl! Do you not hear what she is saying?’

‘And you trust her?’

‘What’s the worst that can go wrong?’ I cut in. ‘I fail, I get killed? Just a longer way around to the same ending... except if I don’t fail you reap the benefits.’

Alexei turned to the driver and they conversed in Russian.

Isaak shouted something but was reprimanded.

I shut both eyes, desperate to speak again but not wanting to push my luck any more.

Alexei mixed his Russian and English for a moment, and then addressed me.

‘You know, if you are lying, we will kill you, and it will not be as quick as the death we were going to afford you now.’

I nodded. ‘What does it matter if it’s between you or some­one else? What reason would I have to lie? To give myself, what, an extra week? An extra month?’

It was lucky, I realized, that they all thought I was dim-witted because of my gender. They probably didn’t think I had the mental capacity to lie at this point, and I would just be begging for my life like a typical weak female in movies.

‘Alex, you don’t believe this bullshit?’ Isaak spat.

‘Isaak,’ Alexei gestured at me, ‘what can she do? Are you really that scared of her?’

Isaak fell silent, but glared at me.

I tried not to look too smug, but I hoped my expression was pissing him off.

‘We will be watching you,’ Alexei said. ‘In the meantime, you will wait for our instructions.’

Isaak rolled his eyes but said nothing further.

‘Now, get out.’

I had to regain control of the situation somehow. If I let them leave it like this they’d never listen to anything I had to say again, so I didn’t get out right away. Instead I looked at Alexei and said, ‘I want a passport’.

‘You
what
?’ Isaak looked at me as if I’d said I’d wanted to publicly defecate.

‘Well, I assume if I’m still holding up my end of the agree­ment you’re both going to uphold yours?’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘I can’t get to Japan without a fake passport, can I? Noel will just have me followed. You think I’m stupid?’

‘You f—’

‘All right.’ If I wasn’t mistaken, I thought I saw Alexei wink as he said this. ‘That is fair.’

‘I’m going to want to see proof of it.’

Isaak drew back a fist. ‘Get the fuck out
now
, before we change our minds!’

I put my hands in the air and retreated back into the corner. ‘Fine! Fine, I’m going.’

The driver unlocked the doors and Isaak pushed me out so hard that I fell to my knees in the road outside, scraping my hands. I got up, shaking, as the car pulled away.

Across the street a woman was walking her dog but all she had done was quicken her pace.

I looked over my shoulder for the vehicle but it was too far away to read the number plate.

I lay awake for most of the night in the living room with the light on, trying not to count, trying to meditate instead, medi­tate myself to sleep.

Everything I’d said in the car had been from panic and now I couldn’t see a way out. It was only going to afford me an extension at best. I was certain they’d kill me when I was no longer useful to them, but I’d have to deal with that when it came to it. Until then, all I could do was plan ahead as much as I could and be prepared.

I began to think of other times in my life when I’d had to convince people to do things for me. It had never been difficult. Getting into a drug dealer’s house wasn’t going to be the hard part, but what the fuck was I going to do once I was in there?

I’d need a gun: it was the only weapon you could defend yourself against other guns with.

It was still and clammy and silent outside. I kept sweating.

Every so often I’d think back to reading Noel’s emails and feel like shit, even though our perverted sex triangle was the least of my problems. The last time I was feeling this down Noel took the day off work and took me to an art gallery.

It had been a novelty to be taken anywhere in public. Not that I’d minded...

I sat up, sick of my thoughts and wondering if I had any sleeping pills.

My phone rang.

It was five past three and the Caller ID said ‘Mark’
.

‘Aren’t you concerned about waking me?’ I answered.

‘Well, if you were asleep you wouldn’t answer. You don’t sound very tired.’

I shrugged. ‘No, no I’m not tired. What are you calling about?’

‘Are you free for a prison visit at some point?’

‘What?’

‘Can you come with me to a prison sometime?’

‘Um... Well, yeah, I work evenings. Wha—?’

‘Nothing’s set in stone yet but I’m waiting on the name of the kid that shot the Williams boy. Even if his death is unconnected I thought it wouldn’t hurt to double-check, and I thought you might want to come if you want to stay informed about everything?’

I couldn’t help smiling. ‘And the perfect time to call and ask about this is three in the morning?’

‘I just got home, I don’t keep regular hours like you
working girls
.’

‘OK.’

He paused. ‘You sound sad.’

‘Well, my... family were killed in this machete incident. You might have heard about it?’

A dark laugh. ‘Fine, but if you have any reservations about what I’m doing, I’d really like you to tell me. It’s your job, not mine.’

‘No, I’m fine.’

I thought about asking him about the Russians. He did work for some, after all. But I was still too shaken by the day’s events to talk about them. If I told him about the Russians Mark might find himself with a conflict of interest and decide to pull out.

I cleared my throat. ‘Call me tomorrow if you end up going to the prison.’

‘Have you ever been to a prison before?’

‘No.’

‘Fascinating places, from a strictly anthropological point of view. Brings out the base instincts in people. I’ve heard prison guards take bets on arranged fights and then “accidentally” fail to lock up certain cells. Something about uniforms, or cramped hierarchical environments.’ A pause. ‘I’ve never been asked to go after someone inside a prison before, but sometimes I plan how it might go... for the challenge.’

‘Mark... It’s three in the morning.’

‘Sorry. Point taken.’

I rubbed my eyes. ‘Thanks.’

‘Sleep well,’ he said, before hanging up.

I was alone in the room again.

There was no point staying awake all night chewing my lips to shreds so after a while I turned the light out and went to sleep.

I couldn’t help wondering if the Russians had planted some­thing in the flat to watch me. It seemed plausible: plausible enough an idea for me to torture myself with. But at that moment I couldn’t be fucked to look.

I wasn’t sure that I loved Noel, not properly. Not in the way that people were meant to love and care about each other, but the one time I thought I might have done was when he took me to the art gallery.

It was the National Portrait Gallery. Lucian Freud. He walked me around, not because he particularly liked art, but because he knew I did. It was the only time he ever really deviated from his routine for me.

‘Had an eye for the larger lady,’ he remarked.

‘He liked the way they moved.’ I tried to put it in a way that he would understand. ‘Look at the skin; there’s so much texture in the different shapes, so much shade. It’s much more interesting than a skinny human body. It’s like a landscape.’

He pulled a face. ‘I know you’re into this kind of thing, love, but you know... this guy was almost certainly a massive raging sex offender.’

I snorted. ‘Well, yeah. Maybe.’

‘I mean, that one of his kid on the floor.’ Noel shook his head. ‘Not right. Not right in the head. If I had a daugh­ter I wouldn’t... Fuck, I’d take the face off any guy who looked at her like that. It’s all... urgh, look at it, it’s all sexual and wrong.’

It was the first time I’d heard him talk about kids. He was godfather to both of Ronnie’s but he’d never shown much interest in having children himself. I was dying to know if he’d ever talked about it before. Had he wanted them? Did Caroline want them? I wanted to know everything about Caroline. Sometimes I thought that I was more fascinated by her than I was by Noel. I wanted to know what it was that made him love.

I nudged him. ‘Are you trying to say I’m not right in the head for liking this?’

‘You... You’re not right in the head, no, but that’s fine because I fucking love your head, it’s beautiful.’ He kissed my hair. ‘I’m your head’s biggest fan. I’d go see your head headline Wembley.’

‘Nice one.’

‘You see what I did there?
Headline
?’

‘Get off.’

But I loved it when he spoke to me like that. I just wasn’t able to do it back.

We walked around and around for something like four hours.

Noel stopped in front of one painting, perturbed.

‘What’s up?’ I asked, stopping beside him and slinging an arm over his shoulder.

‘That’s freaky.’

I read the title: Man with a Feather. It was a self-portrait, but the colours were flat and the arms were too long. Behind the man stretched a body of dark water, with stepping stones, and a house. The house should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t, because the windows were full of the same dark water. In one was the silhouette of a crude bird. In the man’s hand was a feather.

‘I don’t know, it’s probably the least rapey thing in here.’

He couldn’t help smirking. We loved the word ‘rapey’. Daisy used it a lot. Everything to Daisy was ‘a bit rapey’.

‘Yeah but... he’s just stuck out there, isn’t he, and those things are in his house. Those things are all in his house.’

He stayed in the same spot for a long time, looking at that painting, but that wasn’t what scared me. What scared me were the painted women: textured and trapped inside the frames, beneath the ominous shadow of the painter. The longer I looked at these women, the more I thought about my own situation. It was then that I decided I’d never be owned by somebody, because to be owned just put you in a painting. It trapped you for the rest of your life, looking out at the world with dull eyes.

That night Noel offered to pay for a flat for me, a flat of my own. I turned him down, and I turned him down every night he offered after that. I barely so much as let him buy me a drink.

He pretended to be exasperated by it but I knew that he wasn’t. He liked it.

It was only now that I realized it was because it reminded him of Caroline.

I met up with Mark late in the morning and he was shaking his head by way of greeting. He’d requested that we meet at a nearby library, which I found odd. But then Mark was so thoroughly odd sometimes that I felt able to dismiss it. The outside was grand and stone, with something Latin written across the entrance. There were a couple of alcoholics sitting on the steps outside.