12

What's the old joke? A friend will help you move, but a good friend will help you move a body?

Yeah, well, it wasn't so funny when someone took it to heart.

The shit on my foot was the least of my problems. Second least was driving knackered.

So he thought he'd killed Stevie. Not good. In fact, almost the dictionary definition of bad. I had Chet Baker playing in the car. He was singing about his funny valentine. It was gentle, it was soothing, it was—

Stevie was dead. And Beale was sure he'd done it.

He didn't go into any details over the phone. He'd always been paranoid about mobiles, and probably with good reason. I didn't think I'd be comfortable discussing the murder I'd just committed on an open line, either.

Check them off, one by one.

He was probably drunk. He sounded drunk. So it probably wasn't as bad as he thought it was – let's face it, it couldn't have been much worse. Chances were, Stevie was just unconscious and bleeding.

That, I could handle. And from what I recalled of Stevie, it wasn't like the lad didn't deserve a good hard slap. My thinking was, the cocky little bastard probably tried to put one over on Beale and Beale had decked him for his trouble. Stuff like that had happened before and as long as Beale was equal parts naive and bolshy, it would happen again.

See, I knew this game was a bad idea from the get-go. Told him, too. Told him a few times. But see Beale, once he got an idea in his head ...

Beale and his missus bought their house when the area was unfashionable. As far as I was concerned, it still was. Passing new-builds on both sides, I saw little touches here and there – different paintwork, a little carved house number sign, an unkempt but otherwise fertile flower bed next to the driveway. I knew Beale's house from the end of the cul-de-sac. It was the only one with the lights still on.

I parked the Rover behind Beale's Mondeo. Someone had taken a key to the paintwork. Even in the dark, I could see the mess. The curtains in the living room window moved. I listened to Chet for one more verse, then throttled him. I needed to approach this calmly. No point in rushing in there looking to blame. But still, if this was just another one of Beale's drunken scrapes, I had a few places he could go to, and number one was Hell.

I got out of the car. The front door opened. Beale's bulk filled the doorway, but I couldn't see his face. As I approached, he whispered at me to get the fuck inside.

"What's all this about, Les?"

He flinched at the sound of my voice. He grabbed my arm and pulled me into the hall. Once inside, he closed the door quietly behind us. I smelled alcohol, a mixture of stale and recent. Smelled that on Beale before, but tonight it had a different, much more worrying connotation. His face was yellowish, his eyes bugging out of his head. Spittle had crusted in the corner of his mouth.

But his clothes were the main feature here.

Blood was spattered all over the front of his shirt. Not enough to make me think he'd cut anyone's head off, but certainly enough to get me worried considering that Beale looked relatively unscathed. One of the lapels of his jacket had been torn halfway down. His left jacket pocket had suffered a similar fate. The only damage to Beale was his knuckles, scuffed red raw and apparently bleeding.

"What did you do?"

He stared at me, struck dumb. He was trembling. Only time I'd ever seen him do that was the morning after a heavy night before. But this wasn't the DTs. This was something much worse.

"Les, what did you do?"

He looked at the floor. Shook his head. He was breathing through his mouth. Every exhalation worried the spit that strung his lips together. The door to the living room was open, but I didn't want to go in there without a heads-up.

All he said was "I'm sorry. I'm so fuckin' sorry."

"Why're you sorry?"

"I'm sorry." Looked like a slapped kid building to a sob.

I asked him again what happened, but he'd lost the will to speak, regressed into muttered replies that weren't even real words, punctuated with short, sharp catches of breath like he'd cried himself daft.

I'd never seen him like this before. Not on his worst day. And he'd been drinking, but I got the feeling that whatever drunk he'd been rolling on was long gone. Now it was hangover and regret and fear.

I pushed past him into the living room.

Beale's wife left him all the chintz. Flowers everywhere, and badly maintained. It looked like your granny's flat after she'd been dead a week. Cushions littered the place, frilly odds and sods sat in corners like lace rats. I expected him to have dumped all this shit by now, but he'd obviously been busy shitting the place up instead. Nothing otherwise looked out of the ordinary.

And then I saw Stevie.

There was an archway that led to the dining area. Through that archway, next to a table scattered with poker chips and empty beer cans, ashtrays and crushed cigarette packs, a leg was visible. Motionless for as long as I stared at it. Something metallic in the air, mingled with ammonia. I felt Beale come into the room behind me, but neither of us said anything.

As I moved into the dining room, the rest of the scene came into view. The dining room had been trashed. The chairs that had previously surrounded the table looked as if they'd been flung back in a sudden blast. What looked like a cocktail cabinet against one of the walls had been brought to the floor, and glass crunched underfoot as I approached Stevie, or what was left of him. The blood that looked to swallow the cream carpet had come from him. Stevie lay in a crumpled, twisted heap, propped up against the back wall, his chin to his chest. Blood streaked and dried on his uniform shirt, his arms buckled and open in a freeze-frame shrug.

"I'm sorry, Alan."

He thought he'd killed Stevie.

I thought he was right.

"Christ." I bit the inside of my cheek. Panic balled in my chest. "What did you do?"

Behind me, Beale made sound that could've been him trying to hold back either tears or vomit.

I whirled round. "What the fuck did you do?"

He was further away than I thought, slumped in a chair and staring for a thousand yards through the far wall, eyes like glass. Miles away and then right here, drifting from one to the other and then back again, moment to moment.

I wished I could be that calm. But then he'd had time to find his happy place. I broke away and went into the kitchen. I looked for a drink. I deserved one. There were some cheap piss-lagers in the fridge. In the cupboards, I found a bottle of no-brand vodka. I took a belt and leaned against the sink, closing my eyes against the bitter punch of heartburn. When it was over, I sucked my teeth dry and stared at the lino as I tried to figure out what to do.

I looked up to see Beale stood in the doorway, watching me. Staring at me with these stupid cow eyes like I was going to make everything better. I took the bottle to hand and another couple of swigs. I needed the burn in my chest otherwise I'd be screaming at him, and as much as I wanted to do that, I couldn't. I needed my hands to be numb and my limbs loose, or else I'd slam this bottle into his fat neck and keeping doing it until it smashed and tore his windpipe open.

I ran my tongue over my teeth and looked at the floor because I didn't dare look at him. "What happened?"

"You were right."

I raised my head, took another drink. "About what?"

He was shaking more than ever now, his belly heaving over his belt. "It was a set-up."

"Stevie did it?"

"Yuh-yeah." His voice stuttered out of him like a child's cough. I knew he was going to throw up, but I didn't move out of the way. He wanted to spew, he could do it on the floor.

"So?"

"I just ... You know me." An attempt at a smile.

"Les."

"I lost it. I'm so sorry."

"Where's the rest of them?"

"Gone."

"They all left before you did it?"

Beale nodded.

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Take me through it."

He started to say something, but his face crumpled into a bawling mess before he could get the second syllable out. I waited him out, drank some more. I could feel the booze kicking in, detaching me. It was the only way I could maintain focus. And what I focussed on now was Beale's repugnant piggish features contorted into a paroxysm of self-pity. He wasn't sorry he'd done it. He was just sorry he'd have to deal with the consequences.

"You know what, fuck it." I pushed away from the sink. "You don't want to tell me what happened—"

"I did."

"Beat by beat. You don't tell me that, you don't tell me exactly what happened here tonight, then I can't help you, can I? So what am I here for, then?"

"Please, Alan ..."

"Please Alan what? Please Alan come round and tell me it'll be alright? Fuck that, Les. I told you not to get involved with this, I fucking warned you and you didn't bother your arse to listen. So now I've got your undivided, old son, you better get this in your head – you're fucked. And I'm leaving."

I made a move. Made it halfway across the kitchen before something exploded in my face and I stumbled, legs out from under me, backwards. Hit the lower cupboards hard, ended up on my arse. My tailbone ached, my eyes streamed, and the throbbing pain and sticky top lip told me that Beale had just broken my nose.

I blinked back the water in my eyes. Looked up to see Beale rubbing his raw hand.

"I'm sorry, Alan."

Saying that so much, I wondered if he knew what it meant. I held one hand up to my nose, tipped my head back and blood leaked down the back of my throat instead of down the front of my shirt. My lip felt tight as the blood there began to congeal.

So this was it, my spot between the rock and the hard place. I could try and leave and get a good dose of what Stevie got, or I could stay here and help clean up a mess I didn't make. I reached up, blinked the water out of my eyes, grabbed a tea towel with a picture of a kitten on it and pushed it against my nose.

"I need help, Alan," he said.

"Yeah." The tea towel grew warm and wet in my hand. "I know you do."