A Heart in the Right Place Read online

  “He’s saving the planet by counting bits of plastic in the sea. Don’t you watch his vlog?”

  Aside from the annoyance of hearing a septuagenarian using the word vlog proudly, unironically and correctly, Nick couldn’t think of anything worse than watching his stronger, braver, smarter, older brother prance about the world and show off how much he really, really, really cared about the environment. Nick was snidely aware Simon’s planet-prancing was confided to sun-kissed paradises with western hotel facilities. Simon would not be found crawling through the rubbish tips of Mumbai or dragging Saga Ullansdottir into the chemical wastelands of the former Soviet Union.

  Saga – Scandinavian, bred from pure Aryan stock, as sleek, as tall and as much fun as an IKEA wardrobe – was Simon’s life partner. Not girlfriend; not wife. The pair of them were too damned on-message for that kind of patriarchal nonsense. Saga and Simon: fit, bronzed, existing on a gluten, lactose and cruelty-free diet, living a life so bloody pure and carbon-neutral they practically hovered above the world; too fucking amazing to taint it with actual footprints.

  As his mom filled him on all the details of his brother’s life he had so assiduously avoided, Nick searched through the piles on his desk for the picture boards to the Kirkwood presentation, so he could either destroy the evidence, or work out what he could salvage. He was sure he’d flung them down here yesterday, after the fiasco of the presentation—

  He realised his mom had stopped and there had been a question.

  “Sorry?” he said.

  “I said, how is Abigail?”

  He swept a pile of papers onto the floor in the hope this one final dramatic act would uncover the Kirkwood picture boards, but no such luck. He swivelled round on his chair.

  Abigail was stood on the other side of the glass partition to his office, one of the Kirkwood picture boards pressed up to the glass with one hand, holding her belly with the other as though rocked with uncontrollable mirth. It was the NICE BANGERS, MISSUS! picture board. It was embarrassing to behold and wasn’t even the worst of them.

  “Great,” he muttered.

  “Is she?” said his mom.

  ChunkyMunky Marketing had always praised Nick’s out-of-the-box thinking, had trusted him with some big clients and let his judgement lead the way; soon forgotten when words like inappropriate and completely unprofessional were being bandied about after his latest presentation.

  The Kirkwoods were looking to expand, and make an impact on the national market after moving their base of operations from a small farm business in some backwater place called Dalwhinnie to a bigger facility in the Scottish Lowlands. Expansion or not, selling sausages was not an easy job. No one had been excited by sausages since the Seventies. Any advertising campaign would have to be a bit lateral, a little bit edgy, even a little controversy baiting. Greggs had drawn a lot of media attention with their nativity scene featuring a sausage roll in place of the baby Jesus. Poundland’s captioned photo of an Elf on the Shelf teabagging a Barbie doll (with an actual teabag) had courted outrage and amusement in equal measure.

  Nick had decided to tap into a bit of that. He’d done a load of work (browsing internet memes) and commissioned a photo shoot. Somehow, the copy writer had taken his light-hearted commission and turned it into a pornographic horror; presumably reacting to her own relationship problems. Nick had fallen victim to one of his own worst habits: a tendency to leave things until the last minute. Instead of having the captioned photos a week ahead of time, he’d left it so late he didn’t see them until the morning of the presentation. As he reviewed them he knew in his heart of hearts the tone was wrong; very wrong. As he saw it, he was faced with only two options. He could brazen it out and risk losing face, or he could postpone the presentation and definitely lose face. It seemed worth a shot. Mistake number one.

  Mistake number two, with the benefit of hindsight, was failing to research the people involved at Kirkwood. The most rudimentary internet search would have revealed Mary Kirkwood was an old-fashion Presbyterian, founder of a women’s refuge and a staunch anti-pornography campaigner. Had Nick known this, he might not have presented her with a picture of a woman raising a fat sausage to her red glistening lips and captioned:

  SHE ALWAYS ENJOYS MY SAUSAGE IN CIDER.

  He was in such a hurry to get it off the board when Mary Kirkwood gasped her outrage, he’d clicked on to the next slide showing a man holding a sizzling Kirkwood sausage, very clear at groin height with the words:

  YOU CAN’T BEAT MY MEAT. YOU’RE WELCOME TO TRY.

  Nick’s feeble protests that the Kirkwood’s wild boar sausages were clearly visible in the photos really didn’t improve things. He’d screwed the pooch, jumped the shark and shafted the sausage account good and proper. And Abigail pinched the evidence from his desk to have a good laugh. That her silent laughter was clearly not meant as mockery only made Nick more irritated.

  “Yes, mom, Abigail is fine,” he said. Still no longer my girlfriend, still coping with it far better than I am, but still fine. “Just fine.”

  He turned his back on Abigail, giving her the finger as he did. He intended it as a cheeky gesture, as jokey and in-jokey as her window-gurning, but it immediately felt mean and miserable. He instantly regretted it.

  “She going with you this weekend?” asked his mom.

  “No, no. It’s just me and dad.”

  “Thought I should check. Your father wanted to know.”

  “And how is he?”

  The pause on the line struck Nick like a physical blow. How is he? was the wrong question. Nick’s dad only had his own imminent death to worry about, and good old Tony Carver regarded that minor inconvenience with the same pragmatic stoicism he viewed every unavoidable event. Diane, on the other hand, was having to contend with the loss of her husband, the loss of – Nick balked at the phrase, knowing nonetheless it was true – the love of her life.

  “And you?” he added lamely.

  “Yes,” she said, simply. “And everything’s sorted for this weekend?” There was now a note of worry, a lack of trust. Nick was prepared to bet she didn’t ask Simon if he’d brushed his teeth or pack clean undies before jetting off to the Seychelles or wherever it was he’d gone.

  “Yes, yes, all sorted,” he said. And then, the walls of his own worry gave way, involuntarily added, “I’ve got one thing to sort.”

  “What?” she asked, not exactly tutting but with a tut definitely built into that one syllable.

  “The present. I just wanted to buy him something nice. I ordered it on-line but…”

  “You didn’t leave it to the last minute, did you?”

  “I most certainly did not,” he replied passionately. “The blasted post office have—”

  “Well, you should call them.”

  “It’s not so simple.”

  “Is there a phone number?”

  “Um. Um.” He cast about his work desk as though a phone number for the post service was going to conveniently materialise. “I did knock.”

  “Knock?”

  Nick didn’t want to go into it. He swivelled round in the chair.

  The incriminating Kirkwood picture was propped at an angle between glass and carpet. Abigail was gone. He didn’t know where.

  “I’ll sort it,” he said to his mom. “I’m sorting it right now.”

  As Nick stared at his phone he wondered if there might be something else he could do. He went to the Brandwood End Facebook forum and wrote a quick post.

  HI, DOES ANYONE KNOW THE PEOPLE AT 42 LANGOLLEN DRIVE? I’M TRYING TO GET IN TOUCH. IT’S URGENT.

  Unleashing the local busybodies. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier?

  5

  At the Conway Street tower block, Finn watched Adam picking carefully through the bits of litter and mysterious stains in the stairwell.

  “We still don’t have a plan,” he said, not for the first time.

  “No,” she agreed. “You said I’m supposed to use a particular tool for
this job. Do you have that?”

  Adam handed her a slender knife in a leather sleeve. It was silver, shiny and very sharp. It wasn’t a surgeon’s scalpel; not quite.

  “And I’ve got to use this why?”

  “Because those are the instructions,” said Adam. “You have any medical training?”

  “No,” said Finn, slipping the knife inside her jacket.

  Adam huffed irritably. “Tell me one thing then: who’s going to speak when we go to the door?”

  Finn stopped at the turn of the stair and looked at him. Was this stuff important? “Do you want to speak?” she asked.

  “I can.”

  She gestured ahead. “By all means, take the lead.”

  “Right… Right.” He stepped past her. “Yes, I will.”

  The flat was on the fifth floor. There was the ammonia stink of stale piss in the hallway. Finn looked at the door: it was shabby, with a piece of chipboard nailed over the upper panel. Paint was peeling from the bottom edge. She ran her foot along it; more paint and damp wood came away on the toe of her Moncler boots. The piss stink briefly intensified.

  Adam gave a firm knock, brushing at his knuckles with a look of distaste. “I can speak,” he said to himself.

  A few moments later the door was opened. The man on the other side was short and unshaven, wearing a grey hoodie and jogging bottoms; the kind Americans called sweatpants. He probably did more sweating than jogging. It looked like his four main food groups were lager, cigarettes, porn and Jeremy Kyle. He probably supplemented it with cheap cider as one of his five-a-days.

  This was not Oz, Finn could see. Adam had reached the same conclusion. “Oh, hi. We’re looking for Oz. Is he in?”

  The man shook his head and was closing the door even as he was mumbling, “No, man. He’s gone down the Asda, like—”

  Finn stepped into the gap, slammed back the door and shoved past the fat scruff.

  “Eh! Eh!” he exclaimed. “You can’t do that. You the bizzies? The social? You need a warrant.”

  Finn ignored him and checked the flat. There were two bedrooms, unoccupied. She had to fling wide the scrappy curtains in one to be sure there wasn’t someone hiding beneath the crusty mound of duvet on the bed.

  “This is my home!” protested sweatpants.

  She turned to him, held up her Polaroid. “Name?”

  “What?”

  She took his photo. “Name?”

  “Wait, man. I’m Shaun.”

  “Where’s Oz?”

  “I need to see some ID.”

  She ignored him, pushed out into the cramped hallway as she shook the photo to dry it. Adam was checking the bathroom.

  “Some people,” he muttered. “You should see the state of the toilet.”

  She ignored him and went through to the lounge. It was less a lounge and more of an Aladdin’s cave; one from a version of the story where Aladdin uncovered a hoard of stolen electronics, tanks of exotic pets, and the remains of a month’s worth of takeaways. A large cage sat in one corner: a dog crate for the world’s biggest dog. It was empty. The room stank. Piss, alcohol, rotting food, Shaun’s reeking body odour, and the musk of a dozen animals all fought for dominance.

  “Where’s the dog?” said Finn.

  “What?” The man looked at a ginger cat sat in the doorway to the kitchenette. It licked its paw, making it abundantly clear this shithole had nothing to do with him.

  Finn kicked the cage. “The dog!”

  “He’s gone.”

  Shaking her head, Finn casually inspected the stacked boxes of electronic white goods.

  “It’s all legit!” whined Shaun.

  Finn flipped a box open. Down the side of a plastic toaster was a silica gel sachet, usually included to absorb minor quantities of moisture. This sachet was filled with methamphetamine. She didn’t get involved with the distribution side of the business, but she knew this was one of the ways they shipped the drugs over from Ireland.

  “Oz,” she said, simply.

  Shaun had a bottle of vodka in his hand. He took a mouthful. He was nervous and jiggled like he had the DTs or was going to piss himself. “Who the fuck are ya, eh?”

  In a plastic vivarium behind his head, a bearded dragon pawed at the side.

  “You said Oz has gone out somewhere?” said Adam, stepping inside the lounge, blocking the exit.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” said Shaun. There was a slur in his voice: a note of drunken bravado. That would need sorting out, quickly. “But you—” He gave Finn a wet-lipped leer.

  She reached down and gently took the vodka bottle from his hand, maintaining eye contact as she lifted it to her lips. She took a swig, unimpressed by its quality, before smashing the bottle over Shaun’s head. He slumped against a wall of boxes, barely staying upright.

  “I cannot believe you did that,” said Adam.

  “Chair.”

  “Seriously, you drank from that filthy bottle? This whole place is disgusting beyond words!”

  “Chair,” she repeated, pointing to a dining chair. It had one splintered leg repaired with parcel tape. A tape gun, which had been used to reseal some of the open boxes, was on the threadbare seat. Adam handed it over. Finn hauled the semi-conscious Shaun into the chair.

  She went into the kitchenette. The cat leapt aside. Finn opened the drawers to see what knives Shaun had in. It was the lucky dip of wet work. Crap kitchens were better than fully stocked ones: more pleasantly challenging with dope heads than, say, well-to-do rogue accountants. A cutlery drawer in a place like this would have a very limited selection, an invitation to get creative. She once had to do a four hour torture session with nothing but a plastic spatula and a potato masher. This cutlery drawer— Her hand hovered between a short fruit knife, a lever-armed corkscrew, and a fork with a bent tine. Of course, she could use the blade Adam had given her to extract Oz’s heart, but Finn enjoyed variety in her work.

  A toaster on the counter matched the ones in the boxes in the lounge. A white kettle clearly came from the same range. Shaun and Oz had been sampling the goods. Further along the counter was a chopping board on which were a pile of open sachets, a razor blade, a tube of glue and two pots of white powder. Someone was clearly in the process of exchanging silica gel for silica gel.

  “Put the kettle on,” she told Adam.

  He tutted, looking through cupboards for clean mugs. “I’m going to have to wash up if we want a drink. Not that we have time.”

  Finn ignored him grumbling about the filthy dishcloth, taking the corkscrew and toaster back into the lounge. Shaun was mumbling groggily. Finn took Shaun’s left hand, inserted it into the toaster and strapped it in place with a dozen circuits of the tape gun. Shaun wasn’t waking, not quite yet. He was like one of the giant insects or slumbering toads in the translucent tanks by the wall. Not aware; not focussed.

  The kettle came to the boil. Adam rinsed a trio of cups, rubbing them gingerly with his fingertips under the tap, all the while pulling a face. Finn picked up the kettle, carried it over to Shaun and poured the contents into his lap.

  His screaming made Adam drop the mugs. “For fuck’s sake!”

  “Awake now?” Finn asked. “Focused?”

  Shaun screamed, tried to stand, to pat and waft his parboiled groin. He saw the toaster taped to his hand and screamed some more. Finn pushed him back into the chair with ease.

  “Shush, now,” she said.

  Shaun grunted and yowled and cried. Finn opened up the corkscrew. “Be quiet or I’m going to have to cut your tongue out.”

  The screaming immediately subsided into a terrified mewling. The ginger cat jumped onto a stack of boxes and watched with interest.

  “Are we actually having a cup of tea?” said Adam. “I’ve cleaned cups now.”

  Finn paid him no mind. “You are a naughty man, Shaun,” she said.

  Shaun’s mouth was an unhappy rectangle, the freeze frame of a toddler who had just let go of its balloon. “Is this about c
utting the meth?” he sniffled.

  “I bet Mr Argyll doesn’t know about that,” she said. “Yet.”

  “Shit.” Adam noticed the chopping board of drugs on the kitchen side and began taking pictures with his phone.

  Finn took out her black Sharpie and wrote on the latest Polaroid. “Shaun. S. E—”

  “H,” said Shaun, keen to please. “S. H. A—”

  “U. N,” finished Finn. She blew on the drying ink and sniffed. The scalding water had brought out the stink from his filthy sweatpants. She went to the large lounge windows and threw them wide. A cold city wind blew in, but did nothing about the smell.

  “Where is Oz Bingley?” she asked.

  “Oz?” said Shaun. “I thought this was about the drugs.”

  “It’s not about the drugs,” said Adam.

  “You don’t get to know what it’s about,” Finn told Shaun. “You’re low life. You know, from a philosophical and scientific point of view. I’m deeply into my science. I have no evidence you are even a conscious being.”

  “What is she on, man?” Shaun said to Adam, pleading.

  “Is that a yay or nay on the tea?” Adam asked Finn, ignoring him. “Our schedule is already slipping dangerously.”

  “In times gone by,” Finn continued conversationally, “people didn’t believe animals had thoughts. Or even feelings.”

  She picked up the cat and threw it out the window. The cat yowled, and flailed, and vanished. Shaun yelled something and tried to stand. Finn punctured his shoulder with the tip of the corkscrew and pushed him into the seat again. The toaster taped to his hand clanged against the chair leg.

  Adam went to the window and looked out.

  “You fuckin’ bitch!” sobbed Shaun. “What d’you do that for?!”

  “Are those words?” mused Finn “Or just the noises made by a robot. A meat robot”

  “Ya fuckin’ threw it out the window!”

  “You did,” agreed Adam. “You threw the cat out.”

  “How can we know I’m not the only thinking and feeling being here?” Finn said, inspecting the creatures in the tanks. “How can I get to the heart of what you are, Shaun, and know we’re—” she waved the corkscrew in front of his eyes “—communicating?”