The man with the black moustache and the scar was lying on the floor of the bedsit, bloodied and beaten, his nose a nub of red putty. One of his wrists was broken, misshapen like an overripe fruit about to burst. Frank and Jiff stood impassively in one corner, looking on as Mason showed Daniel and Rosie into the room. He clicked the door shut behind them, then turned to survey the room, tutting disapprovingly. A cheap desk splintered and thrown on its side. The bed upturned and the stripy mattress ripped down its centre with a knife. A lamp on the floor, its white shade askew and the bulb peeking out.
Mason picked up the leather briefcase, which stood beside Frank, and scowled as he judged its weight.
‘How light?’
‘A couple of hundred quid,’ said Jiff.
‘He’s just a chancer, boss,’ said Frank. ‘Thought he’d won the lottery when he found it.’
‘Not stupid though,’ said Mason. ‘Didn’t blow it all in one go. Or else we would have heard about that.’ He pursed his lips. Then trod slowly down on the man’s broken wrist, making him cry out.
‘I’ll go easy on you, Mr Gates. You’ve had a bad day already by the looks of things. Ten per cent interest. Daily. That’s what you owe me now. It’s my money, you see.’
He picked up a chair and positioned it squarely in the centre of the room and sat down. He flicked open the locks on the briefcase and stared at the money. Thin bricks of notes, each one with a yellow rubber band around it. There were two spaces.
He felt underneath the money and found a slim black box. He flicked the small silver switch in its top right corner back and forth and then gave it a shake and listened to something rattling.
‘Did you break the transponder?’
The man lying on the floor gurgled something. Coughed. Spat a string of blood. And then he shook his head because even such a small word seemed to be beyond him.
‘No, I expect you didn’t,’ said Mason, looking round the room. He lobbed the broken transponder at Frank. ‘Buy British next time.’
Snapping the briefcase shut, he smiled to himself as he drummed his fingers on the leather top. When he looked up at Daniel and Rosie, he stared at them for some time. Neither of them knew where to look. Not at Mason. Or at the man gasping on the carpet or the gloved black hands of Frank and Jiff standing still as rocks.
‘You see what I can do when people disappoint me?’ said Mason.
Daniel nodded slowly. So did Rosie.
‘Well then,’ said Mason. He stood up and plucked a small brown teddy bear off a shelf with a red ribbon around its neck on which a tiny bell was attached and shook it close to his ear. When he lobbed it at Rosie, the bell rattled when she caught it. ‘A memento. So neither of you forget.’
When they came back out into the alley where Mason’s BMW was parked, there was no longer any evening sun because a mist was curdling in the street, blocking out the sky and slowly deleting the buildings around them.
In the car, Mason laughed and joked with Frank and Jiff who were sitting in the front seats. The BMW smelt of white leather and cologne and beer because Mason was sipping from a bottle of Bud, which frothed against the glass every time he took a sip.
Daniel let down the window and smelt the mist and the wind funnelling down the street. He pushed his head out until all the men’s voices had disappeared in the roar so he could be alone with his thoughts . . .
. . . the hope he had for what he and Rosie might be able to do to help his father . . .
. . . the man lying on the floor in the bedsit . . .
. . . Lawson.
He thought he heard Rosie’s voice above the drone of the wind and looked back. But she was facing straight ahead, beside him, with her eyes closed. She looked older, as if time had played a trick on his memory of her. When she opened her eyes, Daniel smiled, but her lips stayed fixed, like two pink rods. So he took her hand in his and held it.
Mason popped the lid off two more bottles of Bud and thrust one under Daniel’s nose and waggled it, making the beer fizz white as it rose in the neck.
‘You’re one of the gang now.’
He held the bottle out until Daniel grabbed hold and took a fizzy swig and all three men cheered. And then Mason made Rosie drink from the other one too.
When they pulled up, they could barely see Rosie’s house through the mist. But they could all tell it was big and white, with a gravel drive that set it back from the road.
‘Looks nice,’ said Mason. ‘What does your dad do?’
‘He’s a doctor,’ she said quietly.
Mason nodded as he thought about that. Gave her a nudge with one of his big arms. ‘But not a cancer doctor?’ And he laughed out loud like it was the punchline to a joke.
Rosie kept blinking at him, something ticking in her jaw, until she looked away, tucking a curl of hair behind her ear.
Mason grinned. ‘I said you’d learn to be scared of me, Rosie, didn’t I? Didn’t I say that, boys?’ Frank and Jiff grunted and nodded. ‘Maybe I’m a psychic too. Come to think of it . . .’ Mason tapped his great bald head, his brow furrowed, then raised his hands like some TV evangelist about to preach a great truth. ‘Yes, I can see it. I can see the future for both of you. Now you’ve found my money, you’re going to get me what I really want. The antique flask that Lawson promised he was going to track down. And you’re both coming with me tomorrow to look for it.’
‘I can’t,’ mumbled Rosie.
Mason grunted. He plucked the brown teddy bear from Rosie’s lap and waggled it, making the bell around its neck jingle.
But Rosie shook her head. ‘I have my first chemotherapy treatment tomorrow.’
‘What time?’
‘All day. They have to do blood tests and then they make up the drugs the same day, which takes time, and then I’m given the infusion. It’s non-negotiable.’
Mason cricked his neck. Sighed. Looked at the teddy bear and shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think she’d lie. Naughty bear for thinking such a thing.’ He cuffed the teddy’s head. ‘You wouldn’t lie, Rosie, would you? Not now we have an understanding?’
He paused when Rosie reached across Daniel and clicked open the door. Quickly, she took Daniel’s head in her hands and kissed him. He tasted apricots and peppermint. Her hair smelt of ginger. When she hugged him hard, she whispered something quietly so no one else would hear.
‘Ten o’clock tomorrow with your dad.’
All four of them watched her blurring at the edges as the mist rolled round her until she was drifting towards the house like a ghost.
Mason pinged his electric window down and shouted, ‘You forgot teddy!’ They heard the front door slam shut. ‘They’re touchy, these psychic types,’ said Mason as he rolled the window up. ‘Or maybe it’s just the tumour.’ He patted Frank’s shoulder and they pulled out on to the road, and drove through the mist in silence until they pulled up in Daniel’s street.
‘She in, do you think?’ asked Mason.
‘Who?’ Daniel felt something in his throat and couldn’t swallow it down.
‘Your aunt.’
Daniel looked at his feet and tried to think of something else.
‘Maybe.’
‘I should meet her.’
‘Not sure you’d want to.’
‘Beat your balls, does she?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well then.’ And Mason drummed his fingers on the leather seat beside him as if it helped him to think. Eventually, he produced a mobile phone from the inside of his jacket pocket. ‘Give me a shout if you need anything. I’m under M. For Mason.’
‘I’m not sure I will.’
But Mason kept the mobile in his palm, and Daniel took it and put it in his pocket.
‘Anything,’ repeated Mason. ‘Remember, you’re one of us now.’ And Frank and Jiff in the front seats growled as if in agreement. ‘Keep the phone with you,’ said Mason as Daniel opened the door and got out of the car. ‘I’ll be in touch about the flask.’ And then he leant across and slammed the door shut and the BMW drove away into the mist.
As Daniel walked in the direction of his house, he heard the shriek of an animal. A metal bin crashed to the pavement and a lid rolled somewhere like a giant penny and clattered to a stop. In the silence afterwards, Daniel waited in the mist, his breath soundless and white, wondering what was happening until a fox appeared suddenly on the pavement in front of him, its damp fur bejewelled and the white of its throat roughed with the damp.
The creature sniffed the air and blinked and then trotted away, its shoulders like pistons under its pelt. Its brush twitched before it disappeared into the mist as if adding the finishing touches to a brand-new world in which everything had been painted out except for Daniel himself.