White Death. Daniel Blake

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       9

      There was a crowd of perhaps twenty people outside the main door of Kwasi’s apartment block by the time Patrese returned there, and they weren’t part of the Hallowe’en parade. As Patrese got out of his car and walked toward the building, large lenses swiveled to follow him for a moment before being lowered. The photographers clearly deemed him of little interest. Fine with him.

      The toothpaste-ad doorman was standing just inside the door, eyeballing the posse of reporters with a sailor’s determination to repel boarders. Patrese didn’t want to have to flash his badge in case the reporters saw and clocked who he was, but Toothpaste Man recognized him from earlier and unlocked. Patrese slipped inside, checking out the nameplate on the man’s lapel: BEN SHERWOOD.

      ‘Thanks, Ben,’ he said. ‘I’m Franco Patrese, FBI. You know why they’re here?’

      ‘Saw it on the news. Damn shame.’ Sherwood gestured toward the reporters. ‘Freakin’ vultures.’

      ‘They’re only doing their job.’

      ‘Flockin’ round when someone’s dead, waiting to get fed. Like I said. Vultures.’

      ‘Any of them tried to get in?’

      ‘Not yet. They can try all they want. I know all the residents by sight, and if I don’t know you, you ain’t comin’ in.’

      ‘Good man. I’m going back up. You have any problems, give me a shout.’ Sherwood had a pad on his desk; Patrese jotted down his cell number.

      ‘Will do. I’ll ring up to Mr King, let him know you’re on your way.’

      Kwasi was waiting at the door of his apartment. Behind him, a phone was ringing.

      ‘Been like that the last twenty minutes,’ he said.

      ‘You answered any of them?’

      ‘First couple of times. People jabbering about my mom. I hung up.’

      ‘Good. Let me deal with this.’ Patrese walked over to the phone, crouched down and pulled the jack from the wall. The phone stopped ringing.

      On Kwasi’s fifty-inch plasma TV, Fox News’ Chris Wallace was interviewing a young woman with limpid eyes and a cascade of black hair. A caption appeared as she spoke: INESSA BAIKAL, US WOMEN’S CHESS CHAMPION.

      ‘What it means for his title defense, no one can yet know,’ she said. ‘For a world championship match, you need to be at your absolute peak, total concentration. Even for someone like Kwasi, who’s so good at shutting things out, you have to ask: Will he be in the right frame of mind? Could anyone be in the right frame of mind after something like this? He’s so strong, mentally, but this is so … so awful.’

      ‘You know him better than most,’ Wallace said. ‘You used to date him, is that right?’

      ‘That’s not right,’ Kwasi said from beside Patrese.

      ‘You want to switch over?’

      Kwasi shook his head. ‘Everyone got an opinion about me. I’m used to it.’

      On the TV, Inessa said: ‘Date him? A couple of times, sure, but nothing too serious.’

      ‘How will he be dealing with this?’

      ‘Badly, I think. They were so close, Kwasi and his mom. They were inseparable. I— I can’t imagine what he must be going through right now.’

      Kwasi had had enough. He picked up the remote and muted the sound. Inessa talked silently on.

      ‘No, bitch, you can’t imagine,’ Kwasi said to her image. ‘You know shit about me, you know shit about chess. So shut the fuck up.’

      Patrese pointed at the caption. ‘Says she’s the national women’s chess champion.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘So she must know something about chess.’

      ‘She knows nothing about chess. She’s a woman.’ There was real anger in Kwasi’s voice now. ‘National women’s champion means fuck all. You know her ranking? She’s the 812th best player in the world. She knows nothing about what it takes to be world champion. And she knows nothing about me.’

      ‘You don’t think women are good at chess?’

      ‘I know they’re not good at chess.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Too emotional. Chess is rough and hard. You have to be a man to win. Control your feelings, be a machine. You let feelings and emotions in, you’re fucked. The only women who can ever play well are those who change their character, suppress their natural instincts, take on a man’s qualities. And she’ – he flicked his hand dismissively toward the screen – ‘she’s too busy lying round on the beach in her underwear, doing photoshoots for fashion magazines and pretending she’s a model.’

      Wow, Patrese thought: it was like listening to some bitter old misogynist of a bachelor uncle rather than a black kid with dreadlocks. He wondered how many of Kwasi’s sponsors would drop him in a heartbeat if they heard him talk this way. And he wondered, too, what exactly had happened between Kwasi and Inessa.

      Probably not the best moment to ask.

      Kwasi and Regina had been inseparable, and now she was dead. In the circumstances, a little spleen was no bad thing.

      Kwasi stared at Inessa, who was giving a coquettish smile as Wallace ended the interview.

      ‘Bitch,’ he spat.

      Thinking that it might prove a welcome distraction, Patrese took Kwasi up on to the roof to watch the parade. Hallowe’en on Sixth Avenue wasn’t a bunch of schoolkids dressed up as zombies and trick-or-treating: it was a three-hour extravaganza like nothing else on earth, apart perhaps from Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

      In fact, Patrese remembered, the 2005 parade had been a gathering point for those New Orleans residents living in airport hotels near JFK after Hurricane Katrina, having been displaced from their homes two months before by that iconic catastrophe through which Patrese had hunted another serial killer. СКАЧАТЬ