The Zombie Room Page 2

  ‘Is this a “will you still respect me in the morning” kind of thing?’

  ‘Maybe. I’m just asking if this is only for tonight or something more than that.’

  This situation he’d been in more times previously than he could count; but when Mangle told her that he very much wanted it to be more than just tonight, it was perhaps the first time he’d actually meant it.

  An alcohol and Ecstasy comedown usually left Mangle with a patchy memory of the previous evening and a feeling like dirt under his skin, but seeing Vicky curled up against him when he awoke filled him with an invigoration akin to the first caffeine hit of the day, and vivid memories of the previous night.

  He reached over Vicky and pulled his wallet out of his pants pocket to check how much was left for cab fare home, and winced at what he saw. There was no doubt he wanted to spend time with Vicky, but dates cost, and the last thing he wanted to do at 27 was take her to his place all the time and listen to more of his parents’ bullshit. By their reckoning, he should be working for a well-renowned company, with a pension plan, a house and a wife squeezing out grandchild number three by now. He understood that they had sacrificed a lot to pay for his private school tuition, and now expected a return on their investment, but he simply wasn’t interested in the idyllic life they had pictured for him, or in being a trophy they could show off among their social circle.

  Mangle’s usual course of action was to get the latest girl to pay for almost everything, claiming late payment of his wages. After a few weeks the girls would tire of the excuse, but by then Mangle had usually grown tired of them and begun looking around for the next pretty face. But this time he was determined to do it right.

  Derek ‘Decker’ Rankin stood on the corner of Cleethorpe Street, smoking a cigarette and trying his best to look inconspicuous. He’d earned a modest amount of credibility already through various initiations, but if this went smoothly then he reckoned he’d no longer have to live life as a thug and low-level drug dealer. Brian, John and Tony weren’t exactly a gang – that just sounded soft. They were a bunch of entrepreneurs who looked out for each other and got things done.

  At 18, Decker was a lot younger than the other three, but even as a scruffy kid running around the streets he’d known their reputation as people you just don’t mess with. All three had served stretches inside, but so far the law had never been able to put anything worthwhile together to keep them there.

  Decker too had served time, in a young offenders’ institute, which he’d tell anyone who asked had been like a holiday. In truth it hadn’t been unbearable, and it helped to raise his street profile no end when he got back out. The downside was that it had brought him up onto the police radar and he’d been questioned a few times since for crimes he’d had nothing to do with.

  Decker took another drag from the cigarette and flicked the butt against a passing car; it bloomed into a shower of sparks that rained down the side. The brakelights lit up and the car began to slow, but seeing Decker unmoved, the driver had second thoughts and drove on.

  Gary Bilaney had wronged the guys in some way. Exactly how, wasn’t important. Decker had been told to teach him a lesson. He slid a hand into his coat pocket and ran his fingers over the cold steel of the utility knife, the fresh blade exposed and locked into position to save time. He’d replaced it before he left home, and tested it on a thick sheet of cardboard. Don’t kill him, just cause some damage, preferably on the face so people will know. Those were his instructions. He’d been told the spot to wait at and the time to expect Gary to get off the bus, returning from work.

  Decker checked his watch. Looking up again he saw the bus making its way slowly around the tight corner at the bottom of the road. A greasy burger wrapper blew against his leg. Decker absently shook it free without taking his eyes off the bus.

  The air brakes wheezed as the bus came to a halt, and a few passengers disembarked: an old man in an oversized brown coat mumbled to himself as he walked; a young woman struggled off unassisted with two toddlers and a pushchair. And lastly there was Gary.

  He was around 30, reasonably well built, certainly bigger than Decker’s more moderate frame. He had on well-worn overalls with work boots and had light brown hair worn in a crew cut. He stopped on the pavement to light a cigarette as the bus juddered uneasily away from the stop, coughing out a cloud of acrid fumes.

  Decker strode purposefully across the street towards Gary, forgot to check for traffic and was startled by a car horn that blasted as the driver braked sharply to avoid hitting him. His attention switched back to Gary, who now watched him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Decker’s hand went back into his pocket, thumb and fingers rubbing intently on the handle of the knife as if it were a lamp about to release a genie and grant him three wishes.

  Gary dropped his cigarette onto the ground and his lips moved silently, as if trying to select the right words to get him out of the unfolding situation.

  ‘N-no,’ was all he managed to stammer. ‘It was a big mistake, I didn’t even mean to do it – you tell them.’

  Decker had the knife half out of his pocket now, just a few paces from using it. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. It should be straightforward: just cut him a few times and run. But the rising feeling of nausea inside him was debilitating. His eyes darted left and right, checking no witnesses were close enough to be able to pick him out of a line-up, and then fixed intently on Gary.

  Gary had planted his left foot backwards at a 90 degree angle. Was he adopting an aggressive stance to fight back, or was he about to bolt? Decker’s nerve ends sang with tension and he swiped his left cuff across his forehead. He stopped in front of the larger man, whose lips were still moving, but Decker couldn’t make out what he was saying over the rush of blood pumping in his ears.

  Even afterwards Decker couldn’t have explained the feeling. It wasn’t physical fear: he’d been in enough street fights to know that even without the knife he could probably handle the guy. There might not have been a lot of Decker but he could take care of himself. It wasn’t fear of getting caught either. There was no one anywhere near now, and after it was done he’d vanish down the twisting maze of alleyways and back streets, and he knew Gary would never talk.

  The thought of dragging the cold steel blade across his face, separating warm flesh as easily as he’d slit the cardboard earlier that day, made his stomach turn over again and he had to swallow the surge of bile that rose up in his throat. Decker had twice in the past used a knife on someone, and never felt like this. Both times he’d been the one who was attacked. Was that the difference this time? Attacking a defenceless man, disfiguring him?

  Decker held the knife out in front of him, gripped tightly in his shaking palm. He felt hot and his face tingled; a high-pitched almost electric whine was now all he could hear. He pulled his arm back and swung forward in a low arc.

  Gary cried out as blood spilled onto the pavement in coinsized drops, like a handful of loose change.

  ‘Get out of here,’ Decker yelled, or thought he did. He couldn’t be sure over the incessant ringing in his head.

  Gary turned, cradling his blood-soaked forearm with his left hand, and fled.

  Decker staggered a couple of steps, heard a clatter as the knife fell from his hand onto the pavement. He looked down and saw blood on his hand, on his sleeve, on the pavement and across the blade of the knife. Gathering his wits he stooped to pick it up, and ran.

  *****

  Tazeem stepped spritely up the three red brick steps and into the Mosque to attend Friday prayers. It was considered a compulsory part of a Muslim man’s life, but attendance for Tazeem in recent times had become more sporadic than his elders approved of.

  The walls inside the Mosque were painted pale yellow and adorned with plaques of verses from the Qur’an, in Arabic calligraphy. A rack of leaflets and newsletters hung on the right-hand wall, and shelving already holding many pairs of shoes was to the left.

  Ta
zeem quickly removed his shoes and made his way to the male ablutions to perform wuzu, the ceremonial washing that took place before prayer. He completed the specific routine and walked through to the prayer hall, picking up a spare head covering as he went in.

  The prayer hall was a large wide room almost completely devoid of furniture. The floor was covered by a red carpet designed to provide individual prayer mats for the worshippers. Various other prayer mats and Qur’anic texts hung on the walls. The domed niche or mihrab in the wall ahead marked the direction of Mecca, showing worshippers where to face whilst praying. Sitting below it, leading prayers, was the Imam. Because the prayer hall had to face towards Mecca, the Mosque had been built at a different angle to the other buildings on the street outside.

  Tazeem found a spot towards the far corner of the room next to his friend Latif, and joined in with prayers. Latif was a short man with a rather square shaped head, whose shifty looking eyes were due to an astigmatism he was too proud to wear glasses for, and in sharp contrast to his affable nature.

  Once concluded, the Imam Omar stood and faced the room to begin his sermon or khutbah. He paused long enough to take in the faces in congregation before him. Tazeem felt the expressionless gaze linger on him for barely a second, but knew his presence had been noted.

  *****

  ‘I saw your cousin Ermina with Sadiq again yesterday,’ Latif said quietly as they walked towards the hall after prayers. ‘They looked pretty friendly.’

  ‘Do you think there is anything in it?’ Tazeem asked, trying not to look concerned.

  ‘I don’t know, my friend, but she would be wise to steer clear.’

  ‘What are you two whispering about?’ Sadiq asked in anything but a whisper as he strode confidently between them.

  ‘Nothing,’ Tazeem answered, as he returned his head covering on the way out.

  Tazeem had gone through school with Latif and Sadiq, and for years they had been very close. Now at 23 they all had different pursuits, social groups and seemingly work ethics. But Friday prayer at the Mosque would often see them reunited if only for a brief period.

  Latif was currently in the process of buying his second business and looked in no mind to slow down his acquisitions. Tazeem worked long hours in family-run shops and oversaw redevelopment of rental properties, but so far had nothing other than a small house in the suburbs he could class as his own. Sadiq, however, never seemed to work any steady hours but was never short of cash, which he’d splash around on his frequent nights out at casinos and nightclubs.

  ‘Were you talking about me? My ears should be burning, yeah?’ Sadiq grinned, putting an arm around each of their shoulders.

  ‘So what if we were?’ Latif said angrily, and shrugged him off.

  ‘I’m glad to see you made an appearance today, Tazeem. Friday prayer is compulsory for all Muslim men and your absences recently do not meet approval,’ the voice of Imam Omar boomed from behind, taking all three by surprise.

  Tazeem considered telling Omar he had been attending other mosques while working away, but lying to the wily Imam was pointless; his eyes could pierce and shred the fabric of a lie as easily as a pin passing through a balloon.

  Tazeem and Latif retrieved their shoes and left the Mosque, while Sadiq lingered in the doorway, talking jovially with some of the others.

  ‘I don’t know how Sadiq manages to convince old grey-hair of his righteousness without any feeling of compunction,’ Tazeem said, as they walked back to the car park.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Latif nodded. ‘Even though I’ve done nothing wrong, standing near Omar brings on a feeling of much guilt. Sadiq is without doubt lacking a social conscience.’

  Tazeem let the matter drop. He could identify with Latif ’s misplaced guilt around the Imam, but a social conscience was not something that he paid particular attention to. He said goodbye to his friend and climbed into his eight-year-old silver Mercedes, then drove off to one of his family’s stores to put in an afternoon shift.

  Tazeem relieved Mavis, a local alcoholic who took shifts at short notice, happy to receive payment in alcohol. He took his place behind the cash register. There were a couple of customers browsing towards the back of the store but no one required immediate service. He took out his wallet and withdrew a number of credit cards bearing different names. Picking two at random, Tazeem reeled off around 30 Lotto scratch cards from their display cases on the counter and rang them up at the till, using the credit cards.

  This was a low-risk scam he’d run successfully for a while. He’d fraudulently apply for the credit cards at addresses of properties where he was overseeing repair work, then use the cards a few times to buy large numbers of scratch cards while working at various shops. He was under no illusion that this would bring about great riches or early retirement, but the extra cash made his life a little easier.

  Tazeem pulled out the silver taweez locket that he wore on a chain around his neck, left to him when his father died. He didn’t believe in superstition, but using the partly serrated edge to scratch away the foil coating revealing the numbers and symbols beneath had become a part of the ritual for him. Mavis waved at Tazeem to attract his attention. She’d retrieved her coat from the stockroom and now stood beside the door holding up two1 litre bottles of Smirnoff for his approval. He nodded and she left, cradling the payment for her shift.

  Before long a scattering of silver shavings had gathered beneath his chair. The winning cards he filled in with false names and addresses, and mixed them in with other cards awaiting collection by the lottery company. He took the amount he’d won from the till; money for old rope.

  2

  National Day celebrations were in full swing by the time they arrived at the stadium. Usually they queued for hours to get decent seats, but Tatiana’s father managed to call in a favour and had got them reserved seating right next to the presidential podium. He was a hard-working and very principled man, although not particularly smart, and certainly would never provide his family with any great wealth. She knew he would always do right by them, put food on the table, clothes on their backs and provide well intentioned morals to live by, but Tatiana found his frustratingly narrow-minded views clashed with her own opinions so much that she often felt oppressed and claustrophobic. His point-blank refusal to allow her to go out with her friends after the celebrations was no exception.

  Her father’s pride grew along with the excited roar of the crowd as they entered the main arena. He stopped momentarily to breathe in the atmosphere, as the warm proximity of so many people mixed with the inviting smell of cooked food from vendors, and patriotic music played over the public address system.

  He affectionately patted her younger brother Eski’s shoulder, and walked on. Tatiana’s mother linked arms with her and they followed a few steps behind. Her mother didn’t have the same interest in politics as her husband, and tolerated rather than supported his passion. The most important issues for her happened within the home, while political promises rarely seemed to deliver anything tangible, as far as she could see, that directly influenced their lives for the better. Her father began to sing along with many other men in the stadium. He looked expectantly at Eski, but the boy was too young to recite the words from memory.

  The presidential grandstand, to the left of the entrance, was slightly elevated. Virtually all of the seats were taken, but her father calmly proceeded through the crowd, confident that his friend would not have let him down. Sure enough, four adjoining seats close enough to the grandstand to reach out and touch, remained unoccupied by anything other than reservation place-markers. Her father beamed as he ushered his son along the aisle, her mother next, then Tatiana, and finally he took his seat.

  A speaker bolted to a wooden post on the walkway a few rows in front buzzed and crackled. Tatiana winced and covered her ears. Grumbled complaints from nearby spectators indicated it was likely an on-going occurrence. Nothing would spoil the day for her father, though, who had got to his feet a
nd was clapping and singing to the next song.

  A large workman in dusty blue overalls jostled his way through the spectators gathered on a dividing walkway between blocks of seats. The exuberance of the crowd did little to lift his visibly sullen mood; Tatiana found his indifference rather curious and continued to watch his approach. He had a burly physique, with a thick muscular neck, and the scowl he wore made his features scrunch up like a fist. He carried a heavy-looking grey toolkit that was scuffed and dented along one side, and wore big black boots.

  He stopped at an electrical circuit box at the foot of the post, put down his toolkit and opened up the box. He fiddled around inside with various tools, during which time the speaker continued to pop and fizz, eliciting louder protestations from the crowd. Tatiana felt almost an affinity with the man. No wonder he looked miserable, having to work on a holiday and receiving nothing but complaints for his efforts. After another moment the sound cleared and static-free music once more poured from the loudspeaker. An ironic cheer and a smattering of applause failed to lift the man’s spirits as he began to pack away his tools.

  Tatiana continued to watch as he took a cylindrical metal device from the bottom of his toolkit and placed it within the circuit box. He closed the outer door, but not far enough to lock it, stood, picked up his tools and hurried back the way he had come.

  Tatiana thought this peculiar. She looked around her, but nobody seemed in the least concerned. She assumed it must be a gadget to prevent further interference. Reasonably placated by this, she glanced around and smiled at the happy faces. The workman had stopped at the far end of the walkway and was looking back in the direction he had come from. Perhaps he’d forgotten one of his tools, she thought, and was considering whether to go back now or just to get it later. Whatever his dilemma, he’d started back towards them. Again he put down his tools, but this time stepped tentatively toward the circuit box, in the manner of one approaching a vicious dog. He knelt, teased open the door and reached inside.