Reckoning Point, стр. 24
But the inspectuer deems him not worthy of a reply and the officers begin to filter out of his apartment. Lev is incensed and he jumps up, grabs Fons by the arm.
“You can’t just leave my door like that, you can’t just break in here with no good reason and then just go on your way!”
Inspectuer Fons shakes Lev’s hand off his arm and fixes him with a steely glare. “A young woman is dead, Mr Abramov, a woman who kept company with you last night. That gives us jurisdiction to do whatever we need to do.”
Lev lets his hand fall to his side and he slumps back onto the sofa.
“Don’t leave town just yet, will you sir?” Inspectuer Fons narrows his eyes at Lev, glances around the room and then exits the apartment, leaving the door sagging sadly on its one remaining hinge.
Lev does his best to jam the door closed and retreats into the kitchenette where he selects a beer and cracks it open, wishing as he drinks that he had something stronger.
He does remember her name, it was Cilla, but he’d forgotten it until just now. He moves to the window and opens it, sees the Inspectuer still on the balcony walkway, talking into a mobile phone, another officer at his side. Without stopping to wonder whether it is wise drawing further attention to himself, he calls out to him.
“Who sent you here? I only moved in a couple of days ago, how did you know where to locate my home?”
The young officer mutters something unintelligible and Lev notices that the Inspectuer jabs the officer in the ribs. The young man clamps his mouth shut, his face red, and Lev glares at the Inspectuer before slamming his window closed.
Someone has been talking about him. He’s pretty sure it’s not one of the girls; after all, they more than anyone understand the need for discretion.
No, it must be someone else and he’s pretty sure the officer out there said that it was a doctor. But Lev does not know any doctors here, he’s not registered with any surgery or healthcare plan and as far as he is aware there are none that know of him, either.
Feeling very exposed all of a sudden, Lev yanks the blinds closed and retreats in relative darkness to the safety of his couch.
23
ROLAND
20th February 2000
It had been almost a month since I’d seen my old friends. They didn’t come looking for me, and I didn’t rock up at their apartment like I usually would. I wanted to punish them, well, Miles anyway. I couldn’t forget the chicken incident. I couldn’t forget how he made me feel.
Anyway, it didn’t matter, I was too busy working for Mark Braith to spend time talking nonsense with my old Irish friends. I didn’t need them anymore; Mark was my friend now.
He was a very different type of friend though, he never cracked jokes or played silly tricks like they did. I’d never seen him smile or laugh. But when I was with Mark I felt very grown up. I liked the way that everyone respected him, and in turn, when I was with him, they respected me too.
He started giving me more important jobs. After a while I wasn’t simply his ‘runner’, I was promoted. He showed me how to cut the cocaine and mix in other ingredients to make it go further. Mark bought his cocaine already processed, but it was pure. Snorted like that it would kill you, he told me. So of the hefty one pound bags in their original form, we would turn those into a further twenty four pounds of street cocaine. It was very easy, really, not too different to the cake baking that Mother did in her kitchen. Weigh this, sieve that, add talcum powder, baking powder or, for the higher paying customers, crushed up Ritalin. It wasn’t only cocaine; that was his sweetener, the equivalent of Mother’s midday sherry. He got his heroin as Brown Heroin Base, one step before it’s ready to be injected. Soon I was adding the ammonia solution and then hydrochloric acid, packaging it up when it was ready after resting for an evening and delivering it out to the people.
I always checked my measurements over and over, paranoid about scooping the wrong weight of something or other in and inadvertently killing someone, but Mark soon stopped this.
“It’s not necessary,” he said, almost gently while fixing his piercing blue eyes on me. “These people buy knowing the risk, as long as you’re not putting too much of the brown stuff in and depleting me of my profit, it’s okay.”
In response to his pep talk I got quicker, but still I tried to check I was putting the right quantities in.
My pay was haphazard to say the least. He paid me when he remembered, which was usually when he noticed I’d stopped coming by cab or bus and was walking instead, like the sight of me trudging up the road reminded him that I’d likely run out of money.
One morning he paid me handsomely. As soon as I came in the door he was in the hallway, an orange juice in one hand, a brown envelope in the other. I greeted him as usual, with a pathetic half bow that was more just dipping my head to him.
He didn’t reply, just drained his juice and then handed the empty glass to me.
I took it, halfway through shrugging my heavy coat off, and stood stupidly, one arm still in my coat, the other holding his glass.
“Pay day,” he said, his voice even more gravelly than usual.
And then he stepped forward, plucked a big wedge of notes from