And The Hunter Home

They dredged Harry's body from the sea on a Sunday, a month to the day after he'd disappeared. Babs and I were there when the police called round to Erica's to tell her that they'd found a body.

'You want us to come down with you?' I said. Erica shook her head.

'You've done enough already,' she said. 'I'll be fine.'

'Call us,' I said.

We watched through the front window as the squad car drove away.

'She's holding too much in,' said Babs. 'It's unhealthy.'

'People deal in different ways.' I handed her a gin and tonic. 'It doesn't always have to be emotional incontinence.'

'And you're qualified to make that judgement?'

'No, but...'

'Do me a favour. Leave the mental health diagnoses to people who know what they're talking about, ok? A little learning and all that.'

Her bangles rattled as she raised her glass. I walked to the fireplace and watched her watching me in the mirror. The ensuing silence said all there was to say.

*

Erica sat in the front row at the crematorium, flanked by her brother on one side and Zack on the other. The boy looked uncomfortable in his ill-fitting suit. His resemblance to his late father was uncanny.

The turn-out was decent. Harry had been well-liked. I saw a good number from Schwartzhammer Gorman, the investment house he had worked for; also, several from the Yacht Club which, given the manner of his death, was fitting. The Commodore delivered the eulogy, ending with a quotation from Stevenson:

"Home is the sailor/Home from sea/And the hunter home from the hill."

The afters took place in a nearby Radisson. It was an interesting choice by Erica. Did she know what Harry used to get up to there? I used to tell him that he was shitting on his own doorstep but for him, that was half the thrill. All the women he went for were whorified parodies of Erica. Tall, long dark hair, pale skin...I said it to him once but he laughed at me.

'What about a guy who marries a shrink?' he said. 'What's that all about? Who's he really trying to fuck?'

I used to pretend to disapprove of his philandering. It made for a good double act, moralist versus rake.

'You're so fucking precious. You should get a blow job from a hooker in a shitty hotel room. Then you'll see.'

I watched Erica and Zack accepting condolences. Black silk and nylon. Black gloves and patent leather. Her outfit wouldn't have looked out of place on one of Harry's sluts. Babs had written her a script for Xanax but it was hard to tell with Erica. A literary agent by profession, she had an inscrutable Gallic surface that made her impossible to read. I used to think that she was arrogant.

'That's how people are in France.' Babs was a Francophile and was reasonably fluent in the language.

'This isn't France,' I said.

'You're not wrong there.'

But Erica was okay once you got to know her. She was actually rather shy. Crowds spooked her, hence the tranquilizers.

She smiled as she saw me approaching.

'Your Dad would have been proud of you today,' I said to Zack.

'Would have been a first.' He reddened, avoiding eye contact.

'Zack...' One word from his mother was enough.

'I'm going for a smoke,' he said.

'I'm sorry,' said Erica.

'It's okay. It's too much for a boy his age to have to go through. How are you?'

'I don't know.' She was looking at me but I wasn't sure if she was seeing me. Her pupils were huge, acid black. 'I don't know how I feel. I must be abnormal.'

'It's the most normal thing in the world.'

'We ate here once,' she said. 'Harry had steak. The pepper sauce gave him the shits.'

'You couldn't take him anywhere,' I said.

'Zack...he thinks Harry was murdered,' said Erica. 'He's invented this whole scenario. I can't talk to him.'

'He's in shock,' I said.

'Oh shit, the boat...' Erica looked at me. 'Can you...I don't think I'd be able...'

'Leave it with me,' I said. 'I'll go down to the marina tomorrow.'

Zack was sitting alone in the smoking area as we were leaving. I wanted to say goodbye but decided to leave him be. He looked like he didn't want to be disturbed.

*

It was straightforward death by misadventure according to the cops. The yacht was found anchored about a mile out in Umber Sound, a sport's fishermen's haunt. There was no evidence of foul play. The deceased had elevated levels of alcohol in his bloodstream and traces of Lidocaine were found on a bedside locker in the stateroom. He got high, drunk, fell in and drowned. Case closed.

The cop I spoke to told me that they were finished with the boat.

'Nice vessel,' he said. 'I have a sixty footer.'

I wasn't sure if he was referring to his boat or his cock. It was the same thing anyway.

Harry had bought the yacht three years before with a particularly obscene bonus. ('God bless the good ship Male Angst and all who sail in her.' Babs was a cynical landlubber ). He was like a five-year old the day he showed it to me for the first time.

'Zack and me can go fishing,' he said.

'Come off it, man,' I said. 'It's a floating fuck palace. Admit it.'

'What can I say? Nice girls love a sailor.'

'Whores love. Hal, this is a fucking nice boat.'

He was doing a lot of charlie at the time. The lap-dancers and escorts he solicited were all into it and Harry used it as a sweetener. How had we failed to notice how fucked up he had become? You rationalize away a lot of it as joie de vivre or whatever. And Harry had been such a bore on the topic of how in control he was...

A broken strip of blue and white crime scene tape clapped in the breeze on the marina. Erin go Bra was written in gold upon the stern of the yacht. I was more Irish than Harry was (which was not at all) but that didn't stop him playing up the vague connection on his mother's side. The IRA, the Fighting Irish, to Hell or to Connacht...he used to get on to the potato famine around his third or fourth drink.

'They died eating fucking grass!'

He would stare at us in outrage while everyone tried to ignore his belligerent gut. He also held strong views on the Hunger Strikes. Erica used to bitch him out about his weight but he didn't see the joke.

Zack thinks he was murdered...Zack wanted him to be murdered, I thought and went below deck. In the galley, Penthouse's Miss September smiled at me from over her shoulder. Her eyes were Viagra blue, histrionic. I walked through to the stateroom which smelled of rotting citrus and lube. Harry only drank gin and tonic while at sea. Sliced lime rather than lemon. It was classier.

The bed had seen some use. It was stripped bare, its grey marble headboard a cave painting of palm prints. I tried to think practical thoughts...I'll winterize it for her...but all I could see was fingers – gouging flesh, clawing at bed-linen, being inserted into one orifice or another... I touched a brown stain that vaguely resembled a map of Britain and Ireland upon the befouled matress before rubbing my arms as the ghost of old carnality walked through me.

I sat down and gazed at the tits on the mermaid in a framed etching on the wall, shifting as I felt what I thought it was a loose spring at the back of my thigh. I slipped a hand beneath me. It wasn't a spring but there was something there. I scrabbled at an eroded portion of mattress, widening it until I could fit my hand inside. A flash drive. Erica might like to see what's on it, I thought, before remembering where I was. Best if I had a look first.

*

'Ride the fucking cock.' Harry was wearing wraparound shades and nothing else. The black chick astride him in reverse cowgirl winced. I paused the video at a frame in which I could see both of their faces. Harry wore a schoolboy's sneer. She managed to convey both anxiety and boredom.

I had found the five minute .avi hidden among the files in a folder called Projections. Projections was work-related, like all the rest of the material on the drive, apart from a couple of sea-faring .jpegs. I went back and looked at one of Harry and a man who looked vaguely familiar, then clicked back to the video. It was probably the same guy but it was hard to tell because of the static camera. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with his back turned, getting blown by a woman who was out of shot. I hit play. Harry threw the girl off him and took her by the hair. I'm gonna come in your fucking mouth, he said to the camera. The other man looked around and I paused the scene again. It was definitely the guy from the photo. Where had I seen him before?

The clip ended a few seconds afterwards and I minimized the window. Babs' study was as quiet as the rest of the house. Saturday mornings, she swam, went to yoga and shopped. I had left my laptop in work and the only other one in the house was hers. I liked creeping around her study when she wasn't in. It made me feel like a sex offender.

My cock was like a brick inside my sweat pants as I crossed to the window. Across the road, Erica's jeep was parked in the driveway of her house. I had stood in the same place a little earlier and masturbated as I watched her unloading shopping bags. Her shades were similar to those that Harry was wearing in his fuck movie. Perhaps it was the same pair. A little memento of the dear departed...But Erica didn't strike me as the sentimental type. I hadn't seen her cry once.

Babs was over there a lot recently. It was all under the guise of being supportive but I knew better. She was on the therapist hustle. Get 'em young. If she snagged Zack now, she'd have him for the rest of his life. I had seen her do it dozens of times. It was strange that she had never tried with Harry. An actual sociopath living across the road and she had been as indifferent as the rest of us. I knew that she had never liked him. He offended her sensibilities on numerous levels. His deregulated amorality, his philistinism, his low-level misogyny...I used to imagine them fucking. That it was such a highly implausible scenario didn't make it any less horrifying.

I returned to the laptop and clicked on the .avi again. Huge, oiled black tits. Harry was fucking bareback as well. Whores will let you do it if you pay them enough. Virus baiting, Harry called it. His line of work made him prone to recklessness. I took a screen-grab and zoomed in on the girl's face, thinking that she looked like Erica in blackface. Who was the other girl? I'd have to go through the thing frame by frame...

*

I had a meeting with my accountant on Monday morning. His office was in the new financial hub by the docks, a few streets away from where Harry used to work. Back in the eighteenth century, the port had handled a different type of commodity, still alluded to in some of the placenames – Jamaica Gate, Gold Coast Quay, the ironically titled Freeman's Market, where they used to buy and sell the slaves before shipping them to the States. It was all different now. The district had undergone a New Jerusalem makeover, all crystal towers and spatial harmony. I had always thought it felt haunted, especially at night when emptied of all industry. Vast windswept squares, the abstract sculptures at their centres rendered sinister under illumination. Harry owned some apartments by the waterfront but complained that he couldn't shift them. Nobody wanted to live there and I didn't blame them.

Schwartzhammer Gorman had an entire square to itself. Harry and I used to drink in Captain Moonlight's, a plastic Irish bar on the corner of the plaza, and I dropped in there after my meeting. It was mid-morning quiet when I entered, bracing itself for the lunchtime rush. As usual, the soundtrack was a continuous loop of maudlin and crapulent ballads.

I bought a coffee and sat outside, squinting in the low October sun. The entrance to the Schwartzhammer Gorman building was directly in my line of sight and I monitored it like a corporate spy. They came and went continuously, through the doors and up and down the steps outside. Navy blue, charcoal grey, briefcases, laptop bags, umbrellas...The monotony was what made the woman stand out. She was black, dressed in a violet trouser suit that became more livid as she approached. Immersed in her Blackberry, her heels beat out an irregular rhythm, an out of kilter funky drummer. She looked up as she passed and I averted my eyes, pretending to be reading the freesheet I had found on my table. Rhianna leered up at me from the page. Well, shut up and drive. It was her. The woman from Harry's video.

I waited a moment before setting off in pursuit, unsure as to what I had in mind. It was natural to be curious, wasn't it? Besides, the insolent roll of her hips and ass was mesmerizing. You'd be hard-hearted to blame a man.

I followed her to the quayside where she entered a hotel and gave it a minute before going in after her. The foyer was jammed with conference delegates on a coffee break. I was just another suit among many. They smelled of middle management – bottle bath, vinegar, incipient heart failure - and shot hostile looks in my direction as I pushed my way past them. I reached the door of the bar and spotted a shiver of violet heading towards a table by the window. A woman stood up and they greeted each other with air kisses.

Erica...

I stepped behind a potted rubber tree before she noticed me...

A waitress looked at me oddly and I asked her for the bathroom. Down the stairs, to the right. Walking was difficult and not only because of the brute erection hobbling me. I needed to shit. Out of nowhere and desperately, like a block of knives had been upended in my bowels. As had happened to the previous inhabitant of the cubicle I went into, by the smell of things. I hadn't even time to lay down some baffling paper. Swooning in the marrowfat and poached egg ripeness of hydrogen sulphide, I exploded into the bowl, soiled backsplash splattering my arse. Soft, thick, rancid. The water beneath me disappeared beneath a heap of brown sludge. My boner twitched, oblivious to the stench. Less than ten strokes was all it took. The jism atop my shit in the bowl reminded me of Cadbury's Marble.

Fucking bitch...

The gasp came from the cubicle next to mine. His woman or the reticent contents of his colon? And which was the bigger pain in the arse?

I said nothing to Babs when I got home that evening. Before dinner, I checked out Schwartzhammer Gorman's website. There. Liberty Destouches. Client Services Administrator. Maybe her and Erica was just a French exile's thing. Maybe Babs knew something...

'She hasn't got many friends,' I said.

'Who?'

We were at the dinner table. Babs had a migraine coming on and had been monosyllabic up to that point.

'Erica,' I said. 'Apart from us, I mean.'

'I can't eat.' She pushed her plate away. 'I might go to bed.'

'Is it bad?'

She nodded.

'She and Harry didn't socialize much together,' I said.

'Try not and wake me when you come up.'

'Get to bed.'

I washed the dishes and sat down with a bottle of wine in the kitchen. Zack thinks he was murdered...I thought it through. Erica had told the cops that Harry had gone to sea alone that day. What if she was lying? Her and Liberty could have worked the thing out in advance...a tranquilizer added to his drink, a nudge overboard as they were buffeted in the swell...Erica stood to gain a fortune. Perhaps Harry had been blackmailing Liberty with the sex film. Perhaps it was corporate manoeuvring on her part. Both of them had something to gain from his death.

The thought of a criminal conspiracy made me hard. I went to the front room and stared through the front window at Erica's house. I had to know more. Would she think it odd if I showed up unannounced? Fuck it. We were neighbours. It was what neighbours did.

'Oh. Hello.' If she was surprised to see me, she didn't show it. She brought me into the front room.

'Excuse the mess,' she said. There was a laptop on the coffee table surrounded by stacks of manuscripts.

'You're busy,' I said. 'I can call back.'

'Nonsense. Sit.'

I filled her in on some inconsequential boat-related stuff, the only pretext I could come up with for calling over. She didn't buy it. She was wearing an old letterman sweater that was several sizes too big, tartan pyjama bottoms and a face of partially removed make-up. Her hair was unkempt and dull, pulled back in a loose ponytail. She looked tired but amused. I always made her laugh, she said. With or at me? I never could tell.

'How's Zack?' I said.

'He goes out.' She stroked her forehead. 'I don't know where goes.'

'He'll be fine.'

Erica was smiling.

'You're an optimist. So different from your wife,' she said.

'They attract. Opposites, I mean. Or so they say.'

She unfolded her arms and stretched, baring her stomach for a moment. I crossed my legs.

'I was down the Quays this morning,' I said. 'The accountant's. I thought I saw you.'

She shook her head and my cock lurched. Not a trace. She was a good liar.

'Do you want a drink?' she said.

'If there's a bottle open...'

She went to the kitchen and returned with two glasses of white.

'I went into Captain Moonlight's while I was down that way,' I said. 'I was feeling sentimental.'

'The Irish...' Erica shivered. 'Poor Harry. He was a romantic. Cowboys and indians. Some little boys refuse to grow up.'

'It was part of his charm,' I said.

'Did you know about his whoring?'

Hoo ring...The question, out of nowhere, threw me. After a slack-jawed instant, I said, 'I'm not going to lie...'

She was standing at the mantelpiece with her back to me, looking at me in the mirror.

'Did you ever go with him?'

'I don't like that world,' I said.

'Of course not.' I didn't like her tone but I ignored her. It wasn't surprising that she had such a low opinion of men. Her husband, her son...liars, weaklings. Why would I be any different?

'He told me that he liked African girls...' I said.

'Get the fuck out.'

She upset her glass as she swung around, splattering the mirror with wine.

'Erica...' I stood up, both intimidated and aroused by her sudden anger. Her fingers were taut, squeezing imaginary handgrips.

'He smelled of them,' she said. She had regained her composure as quickly as she had lost it. 'Cristal and diarrhea. He thought he'd cleaned it off, but I could still smell it.'

'He was a fool.'

'And I'm a fool.'

'I didn't say that.'

I took a step towards her, into the white noise that had been cranked up in the space between our bodies. She inhaled and drew herself erect.

'You're just like him,' she said.

'Is that so strange?'

I moved into her personal space, sensing the irresistible attraction/repulsion of her body heat. Her teeth behind her parted lips looked ready to draw blood. She tried to speak but my mouth crushed her words. I unfastened her hair, as dark and as heavy as the last mouthful of water that Harry had sucked down, and let it spill over my hands. My breathlessness against Erica's mouth mimicked his dying moments. Screaming lungs, oxygen deprivation – Erica's embrace was as remorseless as the ocean's. My desperation was trifling compared to hers. She could have swallowed the universe.

'Has it been long?' She held my face in her hands. She knew. Babs and I wore our sexlessness like scarlet letters.

'Some days I want to die.' I pulled her sweater over her head and smoothed her bra straps from her shoulders.

'I see you looking at me.' Her breath was hot against my ear as she wound her pelvis against mine. 'From your window.'

'I can't help myself,' I said.

'You never could...'

We had been moving backwards and had reached the sofa. I fell backwards, pulling her down with me, scattering a pile of manuscripts. Dogs, she called them. Unpublishable dreck. She squirmed against me, drawing out my cock and rubbing its tip against the flesh of her belly. I found her slit through her knickers and she whispered something in French into my mouth...Mourir, or amour, maybe...death or love. Even I understood that much. Her cunt was soft and moist, like chewed gum. My fingers crushed her open and she looked at me with something like hatred. Was I about to fuck a murderer? The thought almost made me come. She smeared a trickle of seminal fluid back into my pisshole and shifted her hips until our bodies were correctly aligned. It was impressive, a whore's manoeuvre, the type of move that Babs often tried and never failed to make a balls of. My wife fucked like someone with muscular dystrophy. When we used to fuck, that is. The fruitless striving after the climax that eluded her every time. The apologetic exchanges...I'm sorry, did you want me to...no, it's fine, but could you just...Erica had nothing to say and neither did I. There is more than one way of communicating with a person.