Free Deadfolk by Charlie Williams Page B

of voice and shifty of eye. No one else were near, but too careful is summat you can never be.
    ‘Aye. Find Baz all right?’
    ‘Shhh. Do us a favour, will you? I never told you about Baz. All right?’
    His eyes narrowed. ‘Funny, I reckons you did.’
    ‘I knows I did, but I wants you to reckon I didn’t. Gettin’ us?’
    His eyes narrowed until they was more or less shut. ‘Why would I reckon summat like that?’
    I knew what he were getting at. I pulled out my wallet, hoping to fuck that he’d be happy with what were in it. I had a last loving feel of the five sheets lying therein, then palmed em and put my hand on the bartop. ‘Cos you’re a businessman,’ I says.
    He licked his lips, greyish tongue brushing the lower reaches of his tash, then turned about and served another punter. I were sweating. I could feel the notes getting damp under my hand. I wondered how long they could stay there without turning to mush. But Nathan came back and nodded at my untouched pint. ‘Payin’ fer that, are you?’ he says, and winked at us.
    I handed him the notes.
    He walked to the till, counting em, then stuck em in his back pocket when he saw the other punters was busy drinking and not paying him no mind.
    I drank the lager, hoping that that were that, far as that went.

     
    I were fair worn out when I got home. Swede were, anyhow. It were plain to us that deciding on a final resting place for Baz at this stage might well be a mistake. I didn’t want to dump him somewhere and then go back a couple of days later, when I could see straight, to shift him somewhere else. And besides, there were no hurry.
    I had a cellar, see. A big bastard of a cellar that went down two levels, getting cooler with each one. In fact the cellar were as big as the upstairs, and I’d often thought about putting a little gym or a pool table down there. But I never ended up doing that. Never had the money, and couldn’t be arsed even if I had. Weren’t really my house. It were me old man’s, though he were long dead. I only dossed there.
    But Baz’d be all right down there, for now.
    I hauled him out of the boot by the armpits and lugged him down the stair. His mashed face were all dry and caked and puckered round the edges, like raw meat left outside on a hot day. He were getting heavier and all. I promised meself, as I sat him up in a corner of the bottom cellar, that when I brung him back up again it’d be in at least ten bin liners.
    I didn’t hang about at home. There were still a fair bit of afternoon left before I were due at Hoppers. Be a pity to waste it. I ain’t the sort to be holed up all hours like a hermit. I likes to get out there amongst em. And besides, I didn’t fancy spending much time under the same roof as Baz. He smelled manky at the best of times, and being dead weren’t liable to change that.
    On the way out I noticed my shaking hands. I went to the kitchen and took a big swig out of the whisky bottle I’d lifted out of Hoppers a couple of weeks back. It went down my neck like molten lava and settled in a warm pool somewhere in me guts. When I opened my eyes again my hands was steady. I wiped my eyes and took another swig, just to be on the safe side.
    I got back in me car and took the usual route across town. I were starting to feel all right.

     
    ‘What?’ she says after I’d rung the bell.
    ‘S’me, ennit. Let us up.’
    ‘Who’s you?’
    ‘Me, you dozy cow. Let us up.’
    ‘Fuck off,’ she says. But that were just her way. The door clicked.
    I pushed it open with my boot and went upstairs.
    ‘What the fuck happened to you?’ she says. ‘White as a glass o’ milk, you is. Sick or summat?’
    She were sitting on the bed in her black undies. Maybe she’d been waiting for us. Maybe she’d just been getting dressed. It mattered not a jot to me. She were there, is all. And there were a bed. She saw the look in my eyes and showed us the one in hers. I pushed her back on the bed. She bounced back