Sharp scratch, p.17
Sharp Scratch, page 17
He caught her arm and sweat gleamed across his skin. ‘I’ve been looking through the evidence.’
‘And?’ She felt her whole future teeter on the edge of a precipice.
He pulled out a plastic bag. Inside was something small and white. Her wrap of speed.
‘Look, it’s not a habit I—’
‘Where’d you get it?’
She shook her head, annoyed. ‘It’s one of the reasons I lost it with Rikki. He virtually planted it on me.’
‘You put on a pretty convincing act of hating his guts.’
‘It wasn’t an act.’
‘So what was it? A bribe to give him the porter’s job?’
‘What? No chance. I didn’t even know he’d applied. Edith interviewed him a few days later. It was all signed and sealed by the time I found out.’
‘You do realise if Brunt finds out, he’ll probably lock you up.’
She silently cursed Rikki to hell and back. Her future looked like a long dark tunnel to nowhere. And then she looked up at Diaz and wondered what the hell was going on. He wasn’t behaving like his usual uptight self. And after all that blather about safeguarding evidence here he was, waving the stuff in front of her.
‘OK,’ she said slowly. ‘So what do I have to do to get it back?’
The question hung between them as ‘Suffragette City’ sent everyone around them rushing back to the dance floor. Suddenly they were standing alone in the darkness.
He shook the little bag in front of her. ‘First, let me try this psychometric test of yours myself. I need to understand it.’
‘You take the test? Christ’s sake. OK.’
‘And second. Give me the suspects’ results as soon as you get them.’
‘You don’t give up do you? What if I can’t?’
‘The evidence in this bag gets written up and reported to Brunt on Monday.’
She looked at the white powder. He was giving her a chance to escape a criminal record and keep her career. There was no contest. Fuck the Psychological Society.
‘And is that it?’
‘And help me destroy the evidence.’
This time he was eyeing her from cool, narrowed lids. Destroy it? There could only be one way. Even if she had to take a load of speed with Diaz, it had to be her way out. Jasmine would be staying happily with her mum most of Sunday. She’d have had time to come down before she picked her daughter up.
Yet something in her gut made her hang back. She recalled what Doctor Lehman had said, after asking if she trusted Diaz. ‘We can be attracted and repelled at the same time by those who are not good for us.’ Some instinct had held her back from the moment she’d met him. Sure, she’d picked up that they got on pretty well, that speculating on this killer was exciting. She could feel it now, as he watched her, unblinking.
But sometimes, you don’t act rationally, she decided. Sometimes you’re forced to confront that tar-black pit in your stomach. Like a snake shedding skin, she felt her own secret self emerge and flex its nerves. She swivelled and stretched up to whisper into his ear.
‘Why are you risking everything for this?’
He slung his arms around her neck, pressing his body against hers, radiating heat.
His breath was hot in her ear. ‘Sometimes the law needs to be bent to a new shape.’
A bent copper. Not just ambitious, but bending the rule book. She tried to read his mind by studying his familiar features; his hair was ruffled, his lips moist. When he dipped his mouth to try to kiss her she got it at last. At first she pulled back, uncertainly. Then she thought, why not? If they’d met in any other way they’d probably be together by now. And surely all the wrongdoing was on his side? He was the police officer while she was just a helpful witness. Whatever rules he was breaking were a million times more serious than anything she was doing.
And then she told her brain to bloody well shut up. And she let him kiss her and kissed him back and it was better than she expected, all because it felt so wrong.
But still, it sounded like the devil whispering in her ear when he clasped her bare arm and pulled her down onto a saggy settee and said, ‘Here. No one’ll see us.’
‘OK,’ she said, as he offered her a line of speed as if she were choosing an ice cream, and not an irreversible twist in her life’s path.
Bubble after bubble of hysterical giggles surfaced and popped in her throat. Whatever Rikki had given her, it was like nothing she’d ever had before.
‘Pretty trippy,’ she said.
Diaz nodded with a spaced-out smile. Hearing Gothenburg starting up, he took her arm and she followed, oblivious to her earlier worries about the others seeing them together. Squeezing into the mass of fans, she gasped as the exertion triggered another wave of the chemical. The edges of the room had started to loom and recede; the floor was trembling like a living heart. A moment later the soar of fluidly melodic bass and the crack of drums charged her heart with explosives. Ben Rowlands reached for the mic and the room hushed. That night he sang like a voice from the other side of an abyss, communicating pain and a dreadful understanding. The first number ended and there was a pause for cheers and whoops of acclamation.
The singer stood alone, silhouetted in the white stage lights, the smoke of a cigarette twisting to the ceiling. As one of Zeb’s surging riffs from ‘The Dead Letter House’ shook the air, the new guitarist worked up to a crescendo, eyes closed, seeming to channel Zeb, their dead hero. She closed her eyes and sank into visions of prophets and haunted eyes. All the while the music spoke to her: Zeb was a martyr with terrible knowledge that spoke through his music, telling of what lay across the gulf, on the other side, in the void.
Time flashed by on tramlines different from the everyday slog of minutes. Suddenly they were outside, the cold air drying the sweat on her skin, and for a second she wondered who she was and what she was doing. Diaz had hold of her arm and they were weaving through a bunch of bizarro night people on the pavement. Dark-socketed tower blocks crowded above them. There were lights moving fast.
‘Watch out! A bus!’ someone shouted. And looking up, there it was, a crazy double-decker lightship careering towards them down Oxford Road. With an electric jolt she launched herself out of its path onto the pavement. She and Diaz giggled hysterically, clutching hands.
‘I’ll give you a lift home,’ Diaz said. And she turned back to the canine gleam of his teeth and followed him into the darkness.
Carefree Nonplanfulness
Question 34: I seem to make the same errors in judgement over and over again.
A. True
B. Uncertain
C. False
High score description (option A.): Difficulty in planning ahead and considering the consequences of one’s actions, absence of forethought, blaming others.
From the queue at the taxi rank Rikki watched as a seriously stoned couple nearly went under a bus. Bloody hell, the blonde was Lorraine and the dark-haired bloke was that tough-looking copper he’d seen around hospital. Now that was very interesting. He watched them walk hand in hand through the little park at All Saints. He wasn’t quite sure how to do it yet, but he was going to bleed that scrap of knowledge dry.
He was pretty chuffed all round. The gig had been a dream, and according to Lily there was talk of a tour. And whatever Lorraine said, Lily had a soft spot for him and would keep him in the band. He fingered the plaited leather bracelet she’d knotted around his wrist the first time they’d slept together. And tonight he’d even made twenty quid from a big lump of incense he’d passed off as Moroccan hash to some gormless student. Up the road, the clock on the Refuge Building announced half eleven, so he was in good time for his meeting. Right on cue, a cab pulled up and he slid into the back like a playboy.
Lolling back on the slippery leather, Rikki turned his mind to the prospect of finally meeting Diggers. As the vehicle trundled and lurched over the invisible inky waters of the Irwell, up Chapel Street and past Salford Uni, it came back to him where the nickname Diggers had come from. When he’d been in hospital and seeing the world through the mirror suspended above his face, he’d listened to a programme on telly about people sailing off to live in Australia. There had been jokes doing the rounds about Ten Pound Poms being so desperate to reach the sun that they’d happily dig their way down through the centre of the earth to get there. Yeah, it was coming back to him now … Wasn’t that the reason he’d never seen Diggers again, because the boat ticket and everything had been booked? Again he felt a revelation dangling just beyond his reach. Well, he’d find out what happened tonight. Maybe the trip to Australia had gone wrong? After all, Diggers was back again. Well, all the more reason to get something massive out of tonight’s meeting.
Up on the hill the hospital glowed into view, the main arteries of its corridors phosphorescent in the night.
‘Pull up round that side road, mate,’ he told the driver, directing him to the black hulk of the computer suite. It would be better if no one spotted him. As soon as he got what was due to him he was going to be out of here.
He looked around for his Army and Navy bag. Shit. He hadn’t picked it up; he’d tucked it inside his bass drum before he left the Students’ Union. Well, no one would find it in there. Christ, he’d only gone and left his photo of Harris Ward in it too. He’d wanted to show Diggers that picture. Hold on. On second thoughts, it was probably best to keep the photo back for the time being. He’d already had a few copies made at Supasnaps as his insurance policy, in case Diggers didn’t deliver the goods. Yeah, it was a tough call for old Diggers, but why should he care? His own life had been murder, too.
He paid off the taxi and headed to the deserted computer suite. It was as silent as outer space in there at night. He’d checked the place out on his last shift, and no one ever came round after the doors were locked at five-thirty. And tonight, well, maybe the moon was all blacked out or something but he had to feel his way forward like a blind man. He found the porch, groped towards the door and found it helpfully ajar. Diggers had to be inside, waiting for him already. Straight up, he was actually looking forward to their little reunion.
Clumsily, he shuffled into the main room. A faint, colourless light penetrated the windows, revealing gleaming shapes draped in thick polythene. Furniture. Then a figure stepped out from nowhere, shining a torch into his face with a painfully fierce beam.
‘Get that fucking thing out my eyes,’ he yelled. The beam swung down at an angle.
‘Diggers can’t make it.’
Rikki blinked at the figure warily. The stranger was a theatre orderly or something, judging from the scrubs, cap and mask. And whoever it was, it was not Diggers. Jesus, what a let-down. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Like I said, tonight’s a bad night for Diggers. But I’ve brought you a present.’
The figure set the torch on a desk so it cast eerie shapes onto the ceiling. A hand in a surgical glove offered Rikki a large plastic carton. He squinted to read the label. Morphine sulfate: 500 high-dose 200mg tabs.
‘Nice,’ he said coolly. ‘But where’s the rest?’
The figure didn’t move but Rikki felt two eyes watching him forcefully.
‘I haven’t got it yet. Have you got the photo?’
‘I’ll bring it next time.’
Weird. The voice was the same as the person he’d phoned but muffled by the mask. So the person who had said they were Diggers on the phone was not really Diggers. Now they were face to face, he realised the voice he’d spoken to had never actually been the one he remembered as a boy. This whole situation was totally screwed.
Rikki rattled the tub in his hand and grinned at the masked figure. He was pissed off now and he needed to demonstrate who was in charge. He was taller and younger than this waster. ‘I need five hundred quid for starters.’
‘For starters? So when does it all stop?’
‘Do you think I’m thick or something?’ he roared.
He made a grab at the orderly’s wrist and twisted it backwards, pulling as hard and fast as he could. A grunt of pain emerged from behind the mask. Rikki exulted, gaining a wrestling lock and raising his free hand to pull the mask down. His victim’s head whipped back and forth like a maniac. A heavy theatre clog kicked hard against Rikki’s shin. Rikki began to pummel the orderly, who cowered beneath a series of blows. Somehow the lid of the morphine carton flipped off and pills flew into the air like hailstones.
‘So,’ Rikki grunted, feeling a surge of triumph as his boots crunched across the polka-dotted carpet. ‘If you’re not Diggers then who the fuck are you?’
He became aware of a hand sliding serpent-like across his torso, under his jacket, snaking across his back.
‘Ow!’ Pain spiked into his body. He knew that sensation well; a jab followed by a deep and unstoppable rush, like a gush of hot lava.
‘Get off me!’ Rikki flung his assailant away from him and twisted around helplessly, contorting his neck to try to see what had punctured him. He reached round to grab at it but before he could, his knees concertinaed to the floor. The two eyes above the surgical mask resolved as belonging to a familiar face, one he’d often seen around the hospital. The whole situation was just bizarre.
For a few glorious seconds he was aware of the figure in green towering above him. Then like a tidal wave the anaesthetic powered through his bloodstream, halting his respiration and snuffing out his precious consciousness, as his head crunched onto hundreds of tiny hard discs scattered across the carpet.
Transliminality
Question 35: I have experienced an altered state of consciousness which I believe utterly transformed the way I look at myself.
A. True
B. Uncertain
C. False
High score description (option A.): Large volumes of imagery crossing the threshold from the unconscious to conscious mind, magical or paranormal ideas, mysticism, identification of meaningful patterns, creativity.
Still unsteady from the gear, Diaz parked at the address he’d scribbled down from Lorraine’s witness statement. He hadn’t checked it out along with the other suspects’ homes and for a moment, he wondered if he should have. In this part of Salford, the urban sprawl petered out to slum clearance: nothing but rows of crumbling houses as ugly as sin. Across the way, a skeletal church blotted out the stars. As he got out of the car a figure stepped forward and eyed him up, as thin as a girl but with an ancient sunken face.
‘Lookin’ for business, chuck?’ she croaked.
‘No, love. Take care.’
‘Poor thing,’ Lorraine muttered. ‘What a life.’
He wondered why Lorraine lived here, in this landscape of streetwalkers and blasted brick dust. Yet above them the streetlights were like golden planets in the infinite beauty of space.
It was hard to believe he was actually out at midnight on a Saturday night, a free agent, taking a good-looking bird home. Jesus, he’d wasted all those nights watching Blankety Blank and 3-2-1, vegetating on the settee like an old geezer. He’d even caught himself daydreaming as he watched those army recruitment adverts. He could quite fancy losing himself in a desert or a jungle, where drill and discipline would wipe out a million questions. Then reality would hit back. With his luck he’d probably end up as target practice in Northern Ireland.
And now he was here, with the feeling he could be eighteen again, or even fifteen, from the way his blood was hammering. They stopped at a grim-looking little terrace and Lorraine opened the door. Next thing, he was standing in the dark while she uselessly clicked the light switch.
‘I think it’s those, what d’you call ’ems? Blast. I was supposed to get some.’
She was absolutely out of it, puzzling over the non-functioning light switch.
He also searched for the word like a hand groping in sawdust. Then he remembered. ‘The meter? Is that it?’
She started giggling. ‘Yeah, yeah. You got some money?’ That set her off again, doubling over with laughter. ‘I didn’t mean it like that! Not like, “You looking for business, chuck?” God, I’m not that desperate!’
That started him laughing too, as he uselessly searched through his trouser pockets for a fifty pence piece. ‘Shit. I haven’t got one either.’
‘You’re no good then.’ It was starting to hurt to laugh now, but it felt good, like he was getting rid of all that wound-up tightness at last.
He investigated the red glow in the fireplace and she appeared with a couple of candles that they set alight. It was like igniting a spell: the little pools of radiance trembled like a furnace deep underground. Earlier, when he’d been driving, he’d daydreamed their arrival like a classic movie scene, that he’d throw her against a wall and they’d tear each other’s clothes off. Yet now, after he’d walked into this magical cave, he wrapped her in his arms and they started to talk. He told her how he was keen to go places with the force; to climb over the heads of has-beens like Brunt. There were rumours of secondments to the police college at Bramshill and that had links to America. It all tumbled out of his mouth, exposing the real him far more than physical nakedness.
‘What makes you do your job?’ she asked.
His answer surprised even himself. ‘My mum and dad died so I was brought up by my granddad Rocco in Ancoats. Little Italy, they called it. I was a bit of a runt. I had to toughen up to survive. You’ve got no choice when there’s a ring of rock-hard Irish lads after your guts. It was a good lesson. When Granddad died, I was put in a kid’s home for a few years. Had to look after myself. Now I bloody love it when I collar some thug and see him go down.’
‘So I guess when I test you it’s going to show you’re happy in your work,’ she murmured. He nodded.
‘Hey, you never even told me your name.’
‘Diaz,’ he teased.
‘No, idiot. Your other name.’
