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

the keys from one finger, I overshot the building’s main entrance and began to lumber the box down the narrow steps that descended to basement level. ‘Come on then. Prepare yourself for the opulence of a silk’s abode.’

Inside, with box and bags dumped onto the carpet, Zara took a moment to fully appreciate the entire 140 square feet of space: the clothes dumped over the free-standing rack, the slump in the middle of the folded futon, the faded records above the stereo. ‘I bet the letting agents described it as cosy, didn’t they?’

‘You know something?’ I said. ‘I believe they did.’

I opened the box and unfolded the metal dog crate into the corner by the door to the bathroom. Zara emptied shopping bags onto the short worktop in the kitchenette. A tweed collar and lead, tins of the softest food we could find, scented plastic bags.

With the room as prepared as it was ever likely to be, Zara followed me back up onto the pavement outside. It was kickout time at the girls’ school round the nearest corner, and the street was swarming with pupils in pink shirts and burgundy sweaters. When I lifted the dog out of the passenger seat, a cluster of the girls gawked with big doe eyes.

‘Aww!’ one of them cried. ‘Look at the cute doggy!’ Then the dog glanced towards them and I heard subdued shrieks as they bolted off down the road.

With one hand, I patted the dog’s ragged ear. ‘Happens to the best of us, girl.’

She accepted the flat slowly, looking frantically from corner to corner with her hackles raised. Then she began to sniff around in tight circles. I might never have showed it, but all my former misgivings were instantly overcome when the remains of her tail started to bounce from side to side.

‘See!’ Zara cried, jumping on the spot and clapping her hands. ‘She loves it!’

‘I think you might be r—’ I began, until the dog trotted into the middle of the room, lowered the back portion of her body and urinated onto the carpet. ‘For Christ’s sake.’

‘Ah, yeah,’ Zara said, ‘you’re probably going to want to buy some kitchen roll for that.’

As I blustered for the bathroom, my phone began to vibrate in my pocket. I checked the screen and didn’t recognise the number. I thought it might be the animal hospital.

‘Hello?’ I answered, tossing a loo roll out from the bathroom into Zara’s waiting hands.

‘Elliot?’ Straight away, I knew it was her. ‘This is Lydia Roth.’

‘Oh?’ This caught me off guard, and I quickly cleared my throat, perhaps a little louder than I’d meant to.

‘I just wanted to tell you what a thrill it was to finally meet you this morning.’

‘A thrill?’

‘Absolutely,’ Lydia replied softly. ‘It looks like we have quite the case on our hands, doesn’t it? I was thinking we could discuss it further. Perhaps one evening this week?’

I could see Zara craning her neck to eavesdrop from where she was blotting the wet patch out of the carpet, which made me stumble through the rest of the short conversation.

‘Who was that?’ Zara asked after I’d hung up a minute later.

‘Solicitor in my smuggling case.’

‘Work then?’ Even from behind, as I watched her carry the bunched-up paper through to the loo to flush it, I could tell that she was smirking. ‘Didn’t sound like work.’

‘I think …’ I paused, trying to work out exactly what I thought. ‘I think she just asked me out for a drink … Only to discuss the case, I’m sure.’

‘Really?’ Zara turned round, grinning. ‘Is she hot?’

Before I had chance to think of a reply, I heard a drizzle of liquid and turned to see the dog marking another area close to my stereo. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’

At least Zara found it amusing.

Zara rushed off to make her meeting at the bank – she was trying to extend her overdraft, again – and I was left alone with the dog and some leaflets on pet ownership I absently flicked through. After several minutes I discarded the brochures onto my joint bedside/coffee table and opened the drawer underneath. It was here, close to where I slept, that I kept my wedding ring. At least I didn’t carry it around any more, a habit that had almost got me killed not so long back.

Things were undeniably better than they had been even six months ago. I was better. Looking over that lost time now was like reflecting on a long drive, the sort where you sporadically tune in to find you’ve been paying no attention whatsoever for the last thirty miles or so – you’ve been on autopilot, and if that autopilot had failed you’d have crashed … but you didn’t, somehow, and now you’re closer to your destination for it. There was a common diagnosis for the blackness that had engulfed those eighteen months, but it was a word that men of my age and background were still not in the habit of using.

Instead of just sitting around, overthinking Lydia Roth’s brief phone call, I managed – after some time – to get the collar around the dog’s neck and take her out for a walk. It was slow going along the pavement, with the dog cowering at every passing motor and distant siren, but Regent’s Park was only a corner away. We stepped out of urban bedlam into tranquil greenery and walked a while in agreeable silence. It made a fine change, being out in the fresh evening air, until the dog left a royal mess on the royal lawn and I remembered that I’d left the plastic bags at home.

I needed to get my head into my case. Unfortunately, it wasn’t only my case on my mind. There was Andre Israel, and what he’d told me about the flow of drugs in and out of Wormwood Scrubs. These so-called E10 Cutthroats.

I got back from the walk before the sun went down and waited for the last of the rush-hour traffic