Mort Catchprice walked round the edge of the Big Mack truck feeling its chalky duco. It was a shitty vehicle for a Catchprice to have, an offence to anyone who cared about how a car yard should be laid out – its wheels were crooked, it dropped oil on the gravel, its front tyres were half scrubbed, and it was parked bang smack beneath the rear spotlight.
Mort’s shoulders were rounded and his hands hung by his sides. He walked round the side of the old lube into the dark alleyway which led to his empty house.
Sarkis Alaverdian lay on his back in his bedroom with his arm flung out and an open copy of Guide to Vehicle Sales at Auction This Week on his broad bare chest. His mother tried to remove the book but he began to wake. She turned off the overhead light and knelt at the foot of the bed. Dalida Alaverdian prayed that Zorig might still be alive. She prayed that she would get a job. She prayed for Mrs Catchprice and the prosperity of Catchprice Motors.
A little after midnight Vish let himself into the Spare Parts Department, cut off the burglar alarm, and walked through the tall racks of spare parts through the car yard and up the stairs to his grandmother’s apartment. She was waiting for him in the annexe, dressed formally in the suit she had worn to her husband’s funeral.
‘Are you game?’ she asked him.
‘I’m game,’ he said, but he was frightened, by the suit, by the manner, but more by the realization that she had probably been standing alone in the dark here for an hour or more.
‘I don’t want your life ruined by this,’ she said. He did not ask what ‘this’ was. He followed her across the creaking floors to her bedroom. ‘You can go back on the milk train when it’s done.’
In the half-dark bedroom she knelt in front of her old mirrored armoire.
‘Gran what are we doing?’ he said.
From the armoire floor she produced shoes, slippers and a pair of men’s pyjamas.
‘Do I have to explain it to you?’ Granny Catchprice asked. Her mood was odd, more hostile than her words suggested. She threw the slippers and pyjamas into the corner. She pulled out a roll of something like electrical wire, striped red and white.
‘Well yes,’ he said, ‘I think you do.’
The dog took the slippers and brought them back. It jumped up on Vish’s back. He slapped its snout. The dog snarled and then retreated under the bed with the striped pyjamas. When Vish looked up he found his Granny looking at him. Her mouth was sort of slack.
‘It’s Vish,’ he said.
‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘I do know who you are.’
‘You said you were closing down the business if I came.’
‘I know I’m just a stupid old woman, but why don’t you look in front of your nose.’ She nodded her head towards the open armoire door. Vish could smell camphor but all he could see inside the armoire was some item of pink underwear. ‘It’s at the end of your nose,’ she said. She gave him an odd triumphant smirk that did not sit well with her cloudy eyes. It was the first time he ever thought her senile.
She winked at him. It felt lewd, somehow related to the ancient underwear which she now – smiling at him all the time – lifted. Underneath was a beautiful wooden crate with dovetail joints.
‘I’m just a silly old woman,’ she said. ‘I know.’
If he had been able to pretend he did not know what he was up to, that time had passed. The word was on the box: Nobel.
‘Well,’ she grunted and stood, indicating that he should lift it out.
Vish had always imagined gelignite would be heavy, but when he picked up the box its lightness took him by surprise. Sawdust leaked from it like sand and gathered in the folds of his kurta.
They opened the box on Granny Catchprice’s unmade bed. Its contents smelt like over-ripe papaya.
At half-past two Maria, who had dozed off in the middle of her Visualizations exercise, opened her eyes and saw Benny Catchprice standing at the foot of her bed.
At two-thirty-three, Vishnabarnu and Granny Catchprice began to lay the first charges in the structural walls of the showroom beneath her apartment. They had the main overhead lights turned off, but the lights in the yard cast a bright blue glow over their work. Granny Catchprice was on her knees at the east wall. She had a chisel and a hammer and she was looking for the place where the electrician had brought through the power cable thirty years before. Later there was a rat hole there – she remembered it.
‘How are we going to get them out?’ Vish said. ‘I don’t want to murder anyone.’
‘There’ll be no trouble getting them out. By jove,’ she laughed. ‘You’ll see them running. Here give me that stick.’
The rat hole had been plugged with mortar and paper. A bodgey job, but now it made a perfect place to pack the gelly.
‘You’ll get the blame,’ he said. ‘They’ll know it’s you.’
Of course – he looked like Cacka. She always knew that. It struck her in a different way tonight – when he repeated back to her things she had already told him. That was Cacka all over.
‘Blame me,’ she said. She cleared the mess from the hole with the chisel and jammed the gelignite without any concern for the ancient material’s stability. ‘Blame me. It’s mine, that’s what they forget. It was my idea. It’s mine to do with what I like.’
‘Gran, I think you sold your shares.’
‘One thing I learnt in life, you’ll always find people to tell you you can’t do what you want to do.’ She wiped her sticky hands on her suit jacket. ‘Help me up. My knees hurt.’
She found another hole against the skirting board but it was not substantial. The gelly would have done nothing more than blow the skirting board off.
‘You’re going to have to go down under the floor,’ she told him. He had that square head and those lips. ‘The bricks are old handmade ones, so they’re soft,’ she said.
‘Gran, do you really mean to be this drastic?’
‘It’s not hard, you can knock a brick out with a hammer. What you’ve got to do is pack it tight.’
‘How do you know they won’t get hurt?’
‘They won’t be there,’ his Gran said. ‘We’ll tell them and they’ll leave.’
‘They’ll call the police,’ Vish said.
‘Police!’ she said, and clipped him around the ears.
She was thinking of Cacka.
‘Please, no,’ Vish said. ‘Maybe this is not such a great idea.’
‘You coward,’ she said, hitting him again. She shocked herself with the strength of her blow, the pleasure of it. She pulled up the trap door beside the salesman’s office. She gave him the flashlight. ‘You leave the police to me. I never have a problem with police,’ she said. ‘You get down there, filth. I want a stick every three feet, and when you’ve done that you come back to me and I’ll teach you how to use the crimping pliers.’
She sat down then in the swivel chair behind the Commodore brochures. She lit a Salem and drew a long rasping line of smoke down deep into her lungs. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth and let the smoke just waft away. The dragon lady. She grinned. Perhaps she was too angry to be actually happy and yet a certain amount of anger or irritation had never been incompatible with Frieda McClusky’s happiness. Revenge, retribution – these were pepper, curry. She smoked her Salem in long deep drafts and enjoyed the slow abrasive feeling. I’m not dead yet. She had been duped, yes, but she was alive and he was dead. She had a plan. She was always the one with the plan.