Post Mortem, Gary Bell [best fiction novels .txt] 📗

‘You working my case?’ he asked hopefully.

I cleared my throat as I took the empty seat opposite him, alongside Zara. ‘Officially: no. Miss Barnes is an excellent barrister. You’re in superb hands, I assure you. I’m here today as more of an adviser regarding any second chance you might have in applying for bail.’

‘Mr Rook is sort of like my informal mentor,’ Zara added. ‘He has a great mind for this and I was hoping, Andre, that you might be able to go through the night of your arrest once more with him. See if anything jumps out this time.’

He leaned forward, dumping his chin onto his fist, looking disappointed and exhausted. ‘So, you’re not here to get me out of this? I’m not going home?’

‘Not today,’ I said regretfully. ‘Let’s hear what happened to you first.’

‘I’m only here cos of a bad resolution.’

I blinked between him and Zara. ‘A what?’

‘New Year, man,’ he explained. ‘All I wanted was to shift some timber.’ He patted one hand across his shrunken, boyish gut. ‘Careful what you wish for, innit?’ He laughed hollowly at that, flashing the gold tooth, but winced when the ripple effect of movement came to his swollen eye. ‘New Year’s Day I started running. Couldn’t last ten minutes at first, but a couple of days in I was pushing it to, like, half an hour every morning and night. I ain’t no Mo Farah, but it was all right. Headphones in, beats on. Started round Upton Park, few blocks either way, then down to Central Park after that. Four days it lasted. Some resolution.’

‘Beats any of mine,’ I said, weighing my gut with both hands.

He half grinned. ‘Thursday night I was thinking of going up West Ham Park, but when I stepped outside there was bare fog coming in. Couldn’t see shit for shit by seven o’clock. I should’ve gone back inside, stuck to the PlayStation, but man don’t quit like that. So, I went down Barking Road way, sticking to the lights on the pavement, taking it slow towards Canning Town. But the cold, all that damp in the air, it … does something to me, you get me?’

‘I’m not entirely sure that I do.’

He hesitated, glancing towards Zara. ‘I had to take a piss, man.’

‘Ah.’ I swallowed back an inappropriate smile. ‘Well, when you’ve got to go.’

‘Straight up,’ he muttered. ‘So, I was on, like, the last stretch of Barking where it’s all takeaways, Turkish barbers and shit, looking for somewhere to stop. Alleyway or something … That’s when I noticed something booky coming at me through the fog.’

‘Booky?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘like, suspect, you know?’

‘Suspicious,’ Zara clarified. ‘A car.’

‘That’s it!’ He snapped his fingers at her appreciatively. ‘Feds creeping at me, eyes locked all the way. Then another car, this one full of undies. Undercovers, I mean. They was moving like one of them convoys or something. Lurking. Couldn’t have been going more than five, maybe ten miles an hour. That got me nervous.’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What did you have to be anxious about?’

He frowned as if I’d just asked the most ridiculous question in history. ‘Black youth like me, running streets in the dark with his hood up. What d’you think?’

‘They stopped you?’

‘Nah, man. They just doubled back and passed me by again.’ With one sweeping hand, he mimed the slow, almost leisurely passing of the cars to his right. ‘By then I was busting, but there was no way I was stopping to slash with them around. That’s when I saw this pub at the traffic lights ahead, sign all lit up through the fog. Princess Alexandria. The Alex. Just stuck there on the corner, nothing special about it, but all bars got to have facilities, right?’ He stopped for a moment, closed his eyes and shook his head introspectively, contemplating his own misfortune. ‘Swear down,’ he said, ‘it sounds like bullshit, I know, but that is all I went in there for.’

‘What happened at the pub?’ But I could already guess.

He sighed, tipping his head back, illuminating the colourful blotches in his flesh. ‘Straight away, I knew something was badly wrong in there. It was just, like …’ He fumbled for the word, rapping his fingers across his half of the table.

‘Booky?’ I said.

Another half-smile. ‘No doubt. That place was quiet, man. I ain’t never seen no roomful of n— uhh, people so silent. There was these boys in there. Cold-looking, edgy, heads down. But as soon as I walked in they looked about ready to bounce up out of them seats. I’m telling you, they were waiting for something.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Do? I was about to piss into my Nikes, man. I just sprinted for the toilet. Soon as I was done, that’s when it happened. I was standing there at the sink, thinking I’d wait more than a minute for them feds to move on, when the door goes blam!’ He thrust his palm forward to demonstrate the impact. ‘Truthfully, I thought this was it. You hear about it every day. Man walks into the wrong place and gets himself merked. It was this moment of, like, clarity. This is it, I thought. You try to lose a couple of pounds and get yourself cheffed up in a shithouse. They came in, these boys, all of them, only instead of clocking me they just started piling into them cubicles.’

‘What were they doing?’

‘Turning pockets out. Flushing. I couldn’t see much, but the ones at the back of the line were pulling out bricks of dope, man. Serious shit. Only problem was, they weren’t too wise. They kept yanking that fucking chain till the system backed up and the armed feds stormed in and cut us down, yours truly included.’

‘Sounds like you had quite the night,’ I said. ‘Enough to suggest that jogging is bad for your health, anyway. You’re being indicted on a conspiracy charge, then?’

‘No,’ Zara replied, turning to the loose case papers she’d brought. ‘They’re aiming