Free Dust and Desire by Conrad Williams Page B

know somebody who knows me – which makes us virtually related. Let’s go on holiday.’
    ‘I think you’ve had enough to drink. Why don’t you put your pint down and leave.’
    ‘Kara Geenan,’ I said.
    There might have been the slightest hardening of his stare, but he handled it beautifully.
    ‘I said you’re drunk,’ he said. ‘Leave. Now.’
    Punters were now clearing a space at the bar. Maybe they’d seen this kind of thing in here before. What was he going to do? Lash me with his Chubbs? The gathering silence helped clear my head a little. He was coming around the bar and, up close, I could see he was no slouch. What I had perceived as flab was really part of a very hard gut. There was no give anywhere on him. He didn’t try to look dangerous, like the soft ones do. He looked laid-back and affable. Which obviously meant he could twist me into pretzel shapes without breaking sweat.
    He took my hand and very gently manoeuvred it up my spine until I was bent double with pain. He got down low too, and murmured something in my ear. Then he let me go and I acted like a good boy and went outside. Five minutes later he was where he promised me he’d be.
    The taxi rank on the corner of Regency Street and Horseferry Road was quiet at this time of night, this no-time in between people going out after work and stumbling home once the bars and clubs are closed. A couple of cabbies were taking advantage of the slow period to catch up on their red-tops or their zeds. A fine rain had begun to fall, and was misting the scuffed cellulose of the taxis like hoarfrost. Nathan was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the moon as it skidded along the roofs of the apartment blocks on Victoria Street. I stretched, feeling blackspots of pain break out all over my body, and waited for something to happen.
    ‘She’s nothing to do with me,’ he said at last.
    ‘Why so defensive?’ I said.
    ‘I’m not being defensive. I just don’t want any trouble.’
    ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘she’s plenty to do with you. She’s a looker. She’s been seen at your boozer, stuck to your arm like a plaster cast. I don’t want the sticky details. I just need to find her. Is she at your place?’
    ‘Why do you need to find her?’
    ‘She owes me money, and an explanation. In that order.’
    Nathan sighed. He dropped his gaze and stared at me. I must have been a bit of a come-down compared to the moon, but I was touched. ‘I haven’t seen her for a couple of days,’ he said, and he sounded like someone glad to get it off his chest. ‘She was staying with me. She got a job here first, serving behind the bar, and we hit it off. Couple of weeks later she had an argument with her landlady about rent, and I said she could stay here. We’ve got some spare rooms. But she didn’t end up using any of them, if you get my drift.’
    I nodded. ‘Where was she before she turned up on your doorstep? Did she say?’
    ‘Liverpool. She wasn’t shitting me, though she’d have been wise to after what she did, little bitch. There was a ticket from Lime Street Station in her bag. And some of the numbers on my phone bill were 0151 jobs.’
    ‘When was this?’
    ‘She got a job with me tail end of summer, about three months ago.’
    ‘And she’s moved out, has she?’
    He nodded again, his jaw firm. ‘Without telling me. And she took the folding stuff from the safebox, too. About four hundred pounds, the little cunt.’
    I thanked him and tapped on the window of one of the cabs, feeling too drunk to drive. ‘Maida Vale,’ I told the taxi driver, and crawled into the back seat. My head was at that precarious state where only sleep or more booze would placate it. And my cheek was hurting where I’d bit it at the mention of Liverpool. Liverpool, for fuck’s sake .
    ‘Hey,’ Nathan said. ‘You find her, you let me know where she is, okay?’
    ‘Of course,’ I lied.
    Dr Melanie Henriksen lived in a split-level flat in a smart