Read Online Dust and Desire by Conrad Williams - Free Book Online Page A

week – so I sat in the Saab drinking illegally hot coffee from a cardboard cup, waiting for Keepsies to open. I asked myself some tough questions, there in the car, while I blistered the pulp of my lip. Chief among them: Joel, what the fuck is going on? I asked that of myself a few times, with increasing volume, but I didn’t scare any answers out of myself. A goodish-looking woman, a cry for help, a missing brother, a botched cosh job, a burgled flat, and a goodish-looking woman vanishing into thin air. She was the key, I reckoned. If I found her then everything would slowly unfold like a scrunched-up ball of cellophane. I hoped.
    I was startled out of my thoughts by Keith tapping the plastic stirrer from his own cup of coffee on my window. I got out and we shook hands. He asked me – through mouthfuls of his chicken and mayo sub, as we crossed the road to his warehouse – how things were going, and I said fine. He nodded grimly. He knows exactly what I’ve got locked up at his place, and it’s all credit to him because I could probably get him closed down if the police ever found out. I signed his register and left him at reception, telling him I’d only be a couple of minutes. Then I wandered off to find my cubicle, fishing the unmarked key from my pocket.
    In the cubicle was a scuffed brown-leather briefcase and a larger container, one of those solid Samsonite suitcases from, I believe, their Silhouette range. Very attractive silvery appearance, like brushed steel. I used another key to unlock this and took from it a paper envelope that contained three hundred pounds in twenty-pound notes. I skimmed off a hundred and folded it into my wallet. Replacing the envelope, I turned my attention to a soft canvas bag. From this I retrieved a gun, a 9mm Glock 17, the kind of weapon used by the police, and a box full of shells. After a long deliberation, I put the gun and the bullets back. Guns scare the shit out of me.
    Then I thought about the bashing I’d been given and took it out again. I had never fired it in my life. In fact I don’t know much more about that gun other than it makes a loud noise and kills people. I don’t know its history (I don’t want to know its history) but it has probably a very ugly past, since I came across the weapon in the bedroom of a teenage runaway who had overdosed on pure heroin. I thought the mother of the boy would be shocked enough by his death and his habit without discovering that he was carrying firearms around with him, too.
    There’s other stuff in the bag. Things I wouldn’t get shot at or arrested for. Pictures of Rebecca and me. Pictures of Sarah and me. Pictures of the three of us together, looking happy. I inspected one of them before I locked the cubicle and went back to Keith at reception, to sign out. Three smiles, all on the same 6x4: me, Rebecca and Sarah sitting in the garden in Lime Grove, just as the sun was going down. I can almost smell the buddleia, as well as the perfume on Rebecca’s throat. But whenever I see these photographs, whenever I think about those times, I’m not smiling.
    * * *
    I motored over to York Road, stopping off at my flat to check that Jimmy Two had done the work I needed. The makeshift door and padlock combo now looked more secure than what had preceded it.
    Inside the vet’s were three women, all of them collecting age hard, as if it was a hobby, and holding toy dogs on their knees in various states of tartan and shiveriness.
    ‘Morning, ladies,’ I said and, leaning on the receptionist’s desk, asked if Dr Henriksen was in.
    ‘I’m in, but I’m busy,’ she said, stepping out of her surgery. She was wearing a pair of surgical gloves which makes sense. But I wouldn’t have said anything either if she’d come out with a pair of goalkeeper’s mitts on. You don’t question the methods of people in medicine. Somehow, you just don’t. She was also wearing a short black skirt and a pair of barely black nylons that made a noise