Long Time Dead

Chapter 4

I LEFT HOD AND HIS grand plan to simmer. Grabbed a dusty cushion off the floor, drop-kicked it against the wall and sat. My mind was swimming. I knew I was at the end of my rope. A prayer away from the grave. The trembling began again in my chest. The whole cavity felt suffused with fire – like hot coals had been shovelled into me. I knew only one thing would cool it: if I didn’t have a drink soon the bats would be back, swooping me, clearing the way for the vampire monkeys that always followed them. I started to shake. My head hurt – worse than usual – and a cold line of sweat was forming on my spine. I looked at my hands; they were in an all-out flap. Tried to sit on them but it only made my whole body tremble. Oh, sweet Lord… get me a drink before I die.

‘Gus, look… I’ve never asked you for anything before.’ Hod approached again, looming over me. ‘I really need this.’

I looked up to meet his gaze but his head was turned the other way. Like Bogart’s beggar in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, he just couldn’t ask another man for help and look him in the eye. I felt an enormous weight of responsibility descend on me. Hod needed me, but I also needed him.

I said, ‘Right, do as I say, no questions, and I’ll see what I can do.’

He turned to me. ‘Okay.’

‘Go out that door, down those stairs, and bring me back a bottle of scoosh.’

‘Gus… I-’

‘Hod, if you don’t I won’t last the fucking night!’

He looked down on me, dark eyes pleading, then the resigned face, well-worn by the loved ones of alcoholics, appeared.

He went for the door.

As he left I was suddenly surrounded by the blackness. I knew the hallucinations were coming back. I sensed them creeping up on me, like a child who expects nightmares. I had felt pain, real and emotional, in equal measure in my life, but this was a new form of hell. But then, hadn’t my life turned down that track since Debs had left?

I had kept off the sauce, the bottle was corked and would have stayed so for good… if she had. We’d already split, separated and divorced, went our separate ways but something drew us back together. Love is a strange thing – can anyone ever understand it? Comprehend it, even? Not us. We were marionettes in its hands. Dragged dancing through some surreal times, but now the music had stopped. The lamps expired. We might both long for those headier days when we’d meant something to each other, but they were gone. Now we only wrought misery on ourselves; too much had happened, too many hurts. Neither of us had space left in our hearts for any more of that.

But endings, I don’t do well.

My father threw himself into the bottle when his playing days came to a close. The mighty Cannis Dury, the hard-as-nails match winner, the sweeper with the silver studs. He never lost his desire to fight, he merely swapped his opponents – battered his wife and children into submission instead.

My brother Michael, dead and gone. Another end met unfairly. But what could I have done? Me, a washed-up loser. A hack who hadn’t had a decent byline in the best part of a year. A burned-out fuck-up who’d stumbled upon a line digging about in people’s dirty business. Gus Dury, he’s yer man… Used to be a good investigative reporter, one of the best… Now he’s the go-to guy for rooting out any half-dodgy caper in the town. Cheap too. Ply him with scoosh and he might just forget to charge you.

I appalled myself. I had gone beyond self-loathing; I no longer recognised me. This trembling, incoherent wreck of a man was no one I knew. No one I wanted to know.

The room grew dark.

Cold.

I heard the suck and wash of the tide, lapping at the beach.

A man in a black cape walked into the room. I couldn’t see his face, but I sensed he was smiling. He held out a storm lantern. The light dazzled me, near burned the retinas out my eyes.

‘Ah, get that the fuck away!’ I yelled.

My arms flapped about my head.

The man spoke, but I couldn’t comprehend him.

The light burned, right into the core of my being. I could see nothing but bright white light. Burning. Searing into me. And then, the bats came. Far off at first, but getting closer, louder. They swooped. I could feel the rush of the wind they travelled on. I could hear their wings, their screeching. I opened my eyes, their teeth… I saw their pointed, bloodied teeth-

‘Gus, Gus, it’s me, Hod!’

A slap across my face. Beads of sweat fell from my fringe. My eyes smarted. I couldn’t breathe. I was panicked, kicking out with my feet, flailing arms like a lunatic.

‘Gus, get a grip!’ Hod roared. His hand on my shoulder shook me into submission. In an instant everything seemed still, becalmed. My vision returned, the room was bright again. I could see the whisky bottle in Hod’s grasp; snatched it up.

I twisted the cap in my mouth and spat it out. My teeth stung but the sweet smell of whisky took away the pain. I felt my dry, dead body coming back to life; at the throat at first, then in my chest and the pit of my stomach. Clarity, a moment like no other. My head began to still. My hands stopped flapping. I began to settle. I could feel my heart beating; it was a strange sensation, otherworldly. But I was alive. And that was something.

Hod helped me up, took me to rest on the window ledge.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘What for?’

That was a stupid question if ever I’d heard one. ‘Look, I know you’re in a bad way here, mate… I’m not saying I’m doing any better – Christ, worse probably – but I’ve got yer back.’

Hod pressed out a weak smile. ‘Thanks.’

He eased himself off the window ledge, took out some papers from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘I got this drawn up.’

Looked like a contract, same lettering as on the cards was on the headed notepaper. Gus Dury, Private Investigator.

‘Oh, Christ.’

‘Gus, we need to do this right. We need to let this Laird woman see we mean business.’

I read the contract; it was a straightforward terms of engagement. He was hitting her for £400 a day, plus expenses.

‘Jesus, aiming high, are you not?’

‘She wants the best… The best charge.’

‘I thought there was a reward?’

‘There is, we have to show her we mean business, though.’ Hod spun on his heels, broke into a trot as he headed for the bedroom. He returned with a large Oxfam bag in his arms. He opened it up, fished out a tweed jacket.

‘Here, get this on.’

‘You’re kidding!’

He shook his head. ‘Do I look like I’m fucking kidding?… I spent my last fifty sheets on this. Put it on, Gus, it’ll help you look the part.’

‘No way! I don’t do tweed!’

‘Why not?’

‘For the same reason I don’t buy Happy Meals – not my style.’

Hod lifted up the jacket, showed me the arms. ‘Get it on, Gus… You’re not going to meet Gillian Laird looking like some washed-up fucking jakey.’

‘Hod, think it’ll take more than a new bit of Harris to pull that off.’

His look of defeat said it all.