I looked at the carnage. At Sonny’s corpse, at Daddy bubbling his last around the amateur tracheotomy that Rick had performed on his throat, and at Rick himself, doubled up on the floor, still breathing but with a sound that was anything but healthy.
Fuck me, I thought. How am I going to explain all this?
I managed. Just about.
Rick was still alive, but bleeding badly from the.38 special exit wound in his back, and not so badly from the entrance from his belly. I dropped the Colt, ripped the ropes from around my ankles, took off my jacket, then my shirt, and ripped it in two. I wadded up one half and stuffed it in the hole in his back and covered the hole in his front with the other half. Then I stepped over Daddy’s and Sonny’s bodies and went to find the phone.
I needn’t have bothered. Some concerned citizen had heard the shots and called the police. As I picked up the receiver I heard the scream of a siren in the street outside, followed by the slamming of doors and a buzz from the entryphone. I went into the hall and buzzed back and met the coppers at the flat door with the gun dangling from my left forefinger by its trigger guard. The first copper took the empty Colt gingerly from me, and I told them to call an ambulance. They did.
The first copper went on into the flat whilst the second put me against the wall and searched me.
The ambulance arrived within minutes, which was a minor miracle, closely followed by a couple of detectives who took me down to West End Central to get my story.
I told it pretty well as it had happened. I just left out one part, and told only one lie.
I left out the part about going to King’s Cross that morning, and started my story with my tour of the Dilly where I met Rick. And I said that the gun belonged to Daddy and was at the flat when I arrived, and he’d pulled it on me. Like I said, I’d stripped and cleaned it that morning and I always wear a pair of cotton gloves when I do, so’s I leave no prints on the mechanism inside or on the cartridges. My fingerprints were on the outside, but so what? You’d expect them to be if I’d used the gun to shoot Daddy and Sonny, and there was so much blood on the weapon by the time we’d finished wrestling for it, that I doubt if forensics could get decent impressions anyway.
I reckoned the squatters at the house at the Cross wouldn’t be big on reading newspapers or watching TV news and only Wayne and Duane had seen me with it earlier. And if they did tell, it was just my word against theirs.
The police called up Douglas Himes at the hotel and he confirmed hiring me, and Rick lasted long enough in ICU to tell his part of the story, before he died the next day.
The police seemed to be quite happy about getting two chicken hawks off the streets. And as for Jimmy and Rick. There’s plenty more like them arriving every day at London’s mainline stations, for the cops to worry about them overmuch.
Well, I assume I explained everything. It’s over three months now since Christmas and everyone seems to have forgotten about the incident.
Almost everyone.
Mona Himes called me up a couple of weeks back to thank me for my help. She was crying before she’d said a dozen words.
Whilst I listened to her sobbing, someone put the phone back on the hook.
I don’t think it was her.
RECONSTRUCTION by LIZA CODY
Josie Farraday wore a brown leather jacket with a green silky lining. They gave me one just like it. It wasn’t hers. I didn’t want to wear hers. I don’t like other girls’ clothes. I like mine to be brand new. Other girls’ clothes smell like other girls. I don’t want to smell like Josie Farraday. Not tonight. Not ever.
So I was glad when they told me I didn’t have to wear Josie’s clothes. I had to wear clothes just like hers but they didn’t have to be hers.
Caro is jealous of me. She says she isn’t, but she is. She said, ‘You’ll be on telly. Everyone will see your face. You’ll have to do your hair like Josie. Ugh.’
I was worried at first. Caro said, ‘You’ll be wearing dead girl’s clothes, Miss Show-off. The clothes she died in. Bet you hope they washed the blood off.’
Then Caro said, ‘Blood never comes off. You can scrub and scrub but it never comes off. Not completely. You’ll be wearing it next to your skin and some of it will rub off onto you and then it’ll be on you forever. You’ll be tainted with a dead girl’s blood for ever and ever.’
So, when the lady policeman came to see me, I said, ‘Will I have to wear Josie Farraday’s clothes? Her actual clothes?’
And she said, ‘No no, not her actual clothes. Her actual clothes are still at the forensic lab. Besides they were badly damaged.’
And my mum said, ‘Please, officer, do you mind?’
And the lady policeman said sorry.
I wonder if they’ll let me keep the leather jacket. It’s quite nice. It looked horrible on Josie, but that was because Josie wore it with a blue skirt and black porkpie shoes. Josie was a terrible dresser. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a brown jacket and a blue skirt. Except that’s what I’m wearing now.
Caro couldn’t come. Her dad wouldn’t let her. She’s furious.
She said, ‘You have all the luck.’
I said, ‘Being like Josie Farraday? I wouldn’t call that lucky. She was boring. A nothing.’
Caro giggled. She said, ‘Well, she’s certainly a nothing now.’
But when we ran into those reporters by the school gate, Caro said, ‘We’re all ever so sad. Josie Farraday never did anyone any harm. We’ll all miss her.’ And the reporters wrote it down. Every word. They didn’t ask me anything.
But I’m here and she isn’t. I’m going to be on TV and she isn’t. That’s why she’s jealous.
She said, ‘You’ll fall over and make a fool of yourself. You always do something silly. I could be a better Josie Farraday than you could.’
I said, ‘But you’re fair.’
She said, ‘I’m blonde actually. I could dye my hair.’
‘You’re too short.’
‘I’m petite. I could wear high heels.’ And Caro stood on her toes to bring herself up to Josie Farraday’s height – my height – and she tiptoed across Cleaver Square trying to look like Josie Farraday.
I said, ‘Don’t, stupid! Josie’s mum’s looking at you out of the window.’ She wasn’t, but I wanted to shut Caro up, and immediately she put on a sorrowful expression and started to walk properly.
There were three reporters outside Mrs Farraday’s door.
Caro said, ‘Don’t stare.’ Then she said, ‘Shall I tell them you’re going to be the new improved Josie Farraday? Shall I?’
‘Don’t you dare! I’ll kill you.’
‘Shall I tell Mrs Farraday? Maybe she’ll have you in for tea. Maybe she’ll put you to bed in Josie’s bed, and never let you out again. She’ll cry and slobber all over you. And she’ll say, “Here’s my little girl back from the grave. I’ll never let you out of my sight again.’”
I said, ‘Shut up, Caro. You can be so immature – it’s unbelievable.’ And I walked off quickly.
The Farradays have a pink front door with a brass door knocker like a dolphin.
At night, even with all the TV lights, the door looks grey and the brass knocker looks like iron and the dolphin looks like a shark. In fact, it’s worse with the TV lights, because although the light bits are bright and clear, the dark bits go solid black. They disappear altogether.
The shadows from the trees are so black they look like great long cracks in the paving. You could imagine walking into one, falling and tumbling like a diver, all the way down to the core of the earth.
I stand with my back to the TV van. The lady policeman gave me some hot chocolate in a plastic cup. It burned my hands, but my feet are cold.
She said, ‘Don’t be nervous.’ And she went away.
I’m not nervous, or I wasn’t before I saw Mrs Farraday.