Graft by Matt Hill Page A

jewel-like orbs that shatter the light and send rainbow chips sprawling, vibrant, across the chipboard panelling. They’re astonishing.
    Jeff stares back at her. The effect is hypnotic.
    She turns to Jase. She says: “A month.”
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    K illing wasn’t always so easy. Roy had to learn. And when you learn, you make mistakes.
    Roy had messed up one job in a big way. And sometimes, spellbound by insomnia, he replays the error on whichever ceiling hangs above him.
    It was a dark and stormy night…
    The client had turned up at last orders with a pre-agreed codeword. Roy remembers him being nervy, wan, rank with bad health.
    â€œGrab a pew,” Roy said. “Make yourself cosy.”
    The man sat and picked at his cuticles.
    Roy pushed his peanuts across the table. “What’s mine is yours. What can we do for you?”
    Lover spurned. Love rival. Love rat. It wasn’t the point; he didn’t remember this – the details didn’t matter. “There’s business to be had in the sorting of squabbles.” That’s how the Reverend put it. Even then, even with his mind falling apart, and the Reverend applying pressure to a certain part of him, he agreed; saw that clear as day. The collapse was the opening. Its yawning tract was actually a foundation. And sitting there, even with so much lost, even with so much of what made them civil gone or going, Roy understood there was a living to scrape out from the cracks.
    Naturally the client had concerns, for which Roy had stock answers: No trace. Don’t be daft, I’m in with the right people. Nah, the cars always go to the scrappers afterwards.
    And then – only then – had the envelope been passed under the table.
    â€œ Jesus, I feel like I’m in a film,” the client said.
    A wink from Roy. “You could be,” he told him. “You could well be.”
    A ringing bell broke the moment: “Last orders!” the barman sang.
    The day after the meeting, Roy stole a large estate car and drove hard to Leicester. Over the Woodhead, windlashed, through the holes punched into England’s twisted spine. Down through the M1 barricades, through gun checks, patdowns, all under drone watch. The odd rebel staging post, untouchable enclaves. He cruised past armoured convoys, citybound in the opposite lane.
    People say it’s bad now, but it was really bad back then.
    Unusually, Roy didn’t need to bribe anyone at the city’s ringroad. The inner checkpoints were also clear. And then he was parked outside the mark’s hotel, where the local operation ran a valet service which doubled as security. Nothing to do with courtesy: just practical; preferable to carjacking, the fastest-growing business of their time. Roy smiled, handed over the key. He wore leather gloves, a gift from the Reverend, and kept an eye on the car’s rear lights as they illuminated a route towards another vehicle to steal.
    Roy was tired after all the driving. It should’ve been the first warning. But he was also bolstered by how easily he smarmed the receptionist. He went in bleary, slower than usual, but still remembered to pulse the reception camera. Then, after deliberately catching a lift two floors too high and walking back down the stairs, heart beginning to clap, he shorted himself into the mark’s hotel suite, found the bedroom, and got a surprise. A nasty scene:
    Not the mark, but the mark’s wife.
    And their child.
    Roy remembers all this through the details and the smells. She was in the shower, and she was singing. The little boy was on the bed, propped up on scrawny elbows with his feet dangling off the end. A lovely looking lad, he was, with superheroes on his pyjamas. The scent was sweet Sudocrem and shampoo. Steamed mirrors. A rose-patterned carpet and a golden chandelier. Leicester’s interminable, siren-shot night. Curtains that looked so insubstantial in the breeze.
    Roy ducked into the room.