DAY 1
TUESDAY 18th OCTOBER, 2016
1: 13:20-14:20
THAT’S THE THING about reality: you don’t know it’s there until it’s gone.
On that cold, bright autumn afternoon I knew precisely where I was, turning the corner into the paved area that housed my lockup. I knew when, fifteen minutes late, which was the reason I was walking fast. I knew why I was here, and who I was here to see, and there he was, Billy, leaning against the metal door and glancing up from his watch. I knew all this with the unwavering certainty you know the things that keep you going, minute by minute, hour by hour, the things you never question. I knew Billy wouldn’t mind my lateness – he’d kept me waiting plenty of times himself – but I didn’t want to push it. Billy was useful to me. And I trusted him more than I trusted anyone else in the world.
That might have been a low bar, but Billy was the only person who knew who I’d been before I became Lisa Atkins. And even that trust had its limits. One step at a time.
I liked Billy, too, but liking people for the sake of it was a luxury I couldn’t afford. The trust was the important thing. I trusted him to give me a good price. I trusted him not to turn me in when the police caught up with him, which happened a few times a year and hardly cast a ripple across his life. Crucially, I trusted him not to rob me, because if he went down that road he knew I’d destroy his life in minutes. If he was going to rob me, he’d have to kill me. And Billy wasn’t a murderer. He was many things, was Billy, he was one long chain of lies and thefts and the occasional minor act of violence. But nothing in that chain told me that he was the kind of man who’d add murder to the list.
“Sorry,” I said. “Lena was out. Had to hang around waiting for her.”
Lena looked after Simon, when I needed it. It wasn’t anything formal. But she had the time, more often than not, and I had the money.
Billy nodded. He’d grown that goatee back, the same goatee I’d laughed at the first year I’d moved into the squat, the same goatee that had gone up in a blaze of fire and Sambuca the night before I’d left. He was a world of years older than last time I’d seen that beard, more serious-looking, a few extra pounds, a few new lines on his face.
The beard still looked stupid.
“Don’t worry about it. So.” He pulled his coat tight around him, despite the shelter, and cast a cautious look across the units. The look was no more necessary than the coat. There was one approach to the lockup, and you could see anyone coming for the last twenty yards, which was one of the reasons I’d chosen the place, but Billy liked to play the part. “What you got for me, babes?”
“Usual stuff, Billy. Nothing exciting. Few phones –”
“New iPhone?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, no. Cheap crap. Handful of consoles, some VR rigs, DVD players –”
“No one wants a DVD player these days.”
I laughed. “Don’t give me that, Billy. You could sell a bloody Betamax if you put your mind to it.”
He smiled and dipped his head in a modest bow. “Anything else?”
“Few LCDs. Some aftershave and perfume – the expensive stuff –”
“Tom Ford?”
His eyes had lit up. I shrugged.
“Think so. Not sure. I’ve had most of this stuff for months. Some of it a couple of years. Don’t really remember everything that’s in there.”
“Well, let’s take a look then, right?”
I passed him the key, and a moment later the door was open and he was rubbing his hands, muttering as he took a mental inventory of the various items I’d acquired back when I’d been happy to work the small-time jobs.
I stood behind him and let him do his thing, walking around piles of electrical equipment and crates of scent, occasionally picking something up, turning it over, nodding and muttering again. Twenty minutes later he backed out, turned to me and smiled.
“I’ll take the lot.”
I smiled back, a small smile that concealed the bigger one I was smiling inside. For Billy this might be just another business deal. For me it was closing the door on that small-time life for good. I told him he could hang on to the key until he’d picked the goods up. I didn’t plan on needing the lockup again.
Back when I’d started all this, cloning cards, hanging around outside deserted suburban houses for half a dozen mobile phones in someone else’s name, back then I’d filled the lockup every couple of months, and each time Billy had emptied it in a week. The guy had a gift for selling, and since I had a gift for getting things without paying for them, we’d been a good team for a while. But it had been six months since I’d run a change-of-address scam, and there was too much CCTV around the bank machines these days to risk anything there. Once Billy had shifted this haul, there would be nothing left for him to sell.
I hadn’t missed the tension that crawled up my spine each time I went to retrieve data from a card machine, a tension that crept all the way up to my mouth and sometimes left me physically sick with nerves. I hadn’t missed standing shivering outside empty homes, and the suspicious looks I got from delivery men when I just happened to be stepping down the path the moment they arrived. I hadn’t even missed the shopping trips, to be honest, because there are only so many TVs you can lug halfway through London before your back starts to hate you for it, and I’d never been one for expensive perfume anyway.
I’d miss working with Billy, though.
I was home half an hour later, in the front door and up two flights of stairs, which took me past my own flat but left me standing outside Lena’s. I’d texted her the moment I left the lockup, so I knew she’d be expecting me. I raised my hand to bang on the door, and paused when I heard voices.
Michal was home.
I let my hand drop and stood there for ten long seconds, doing nothing, staring at the door and steeling myself for what was on the other side of it, and then I shook my head and knocked. Michal made me nervous, his long silences and short bursts of incomprehensible conversation with his wife, the way he’d greet me with an inexplicable hostility and then ignore me until I was gone, his boxer’s build and boxer’s face. But I’d never seen a bruise on Lena. Michal was a miserable bastard, and either a tough guy or someone who wanted to look like one, but there was no need to fear him. And besides, Simon was in there.
Michal opened the door, grunted at me and stepped aside. Lena was kneeling on the floor, chattering softly to Simon, who was grinning at her in apparent delight.
“Mummy’s here,” I said. He sprang up, trotted over and reached for my arm.
“We went outside,” he said. “On the roof.”
“The terrace,” added Lena.
Lena and Michal had the roof terrace, if you could call it that. A three metre square patch of flat roof they’d put rails around and covered with cheap AstroTurf, all at their own expense. I’d tested it myself, the first time Lena had told me about it. I’d climbed the flimsy-looking ladder (but it seemed to handle Michal, so it would handle Simon). I’d leaned against the rails, applied a little force, imagined Simon hurling his body against them, and pushed harder, Lena smiling quietly as they remained stubbornly in place.