Last night’s dream, for once, was different, but no less chilling than the one that had been replaying daily for weeks. Grafton survived the attack, his body parts were reattached in the cottage, and that very same night he walked right on out into a garden full of cheering fans. Weirdly, the worst part was that somehow his suit had managed to avoid getting a single drop of blood on it. Pristine and white, as always.

As a man who craved control, Mick couldn’t let even an errant part of his own mind make decisions he didn’t like. So he lay there and imagined Grafton once again in that garden, but now his sea of admirers fell silent and parted, and Mick stepped forward to grab the bastard by the neck. He squeezed and the night darkened, and he squeezed and daylight broke over the cottage, and years might have passed before Mick became satisfied.

I’m sure you hope so.

But the vision flickered out when pain took over. He realised he’d been digging his fingers hard into his thigh.

He grabbed his mobile, which said it was six in the morning. He got as far as loading the Internet before he stopped and laughed. His brain must still be waking up because he’d been about to check the news for Grafton’s superhuman recovery. Idiot.

He stopped laughing when he realised he’d had no missed calls or texts during the night. No word from Król. He got out of bed and padded naked into the bathroom. In the mirror, his face was tired and angry-looking. He couldn’t blame the dream. It was a face he wore a lot these days. He was about to brush his teeth when he caught sight of them. Yellow, getting worse. He hadn’t brushed them ten times in the last year, and thought fuck it now. What good would it do? Who was he trying to impress?

His jaw was hurting. He’d developed a habit of grinding his teeth, even while asleep. He had a Swan Vestas matchbox full of mints, which helped, and popped a couple into his mouth. Then he went into his son’s bedroom, and threw back the covers. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead. Breakfast.’

---

He entered the kitchen. A bowl of cornflakes was slid onto the table for Tim. For Mick, it was a fry-up, which was quick and convenient and all he seemed to eat these days, especially when working the streets. He’d stopped caring about cholesterol levels a long time ago. He put the kettle on and moved to the living room. In a corner, out of sight of the window, was a freestanding torso punching bag in realistic pink. It had a rope tied around the badly frayed neck, and a thousand slashes and holes from the knife now sticking out of its shoulder. The ruined picture of Grafton’s face had slid off during the night and lay on the floor. He stamped on it, then tore it up and put it in the bin. He should have covered it in tape to preserve it because he didn’t have many pictures left, and the hunger would be back time and again.

I’m sure you hope so.

He stepped up to the window. The sight of his neat lawn always made him relax. Even after the dream, even after the lack of contact from Król, it still worked.

Silence, though. Silence had the opposite effect. The house had been silent these past three years, and he’d never become comfortable with it. He put the news on TV while he waited for the kettle, just for noise.

His interest was instantly piqued when he saw police cars behind a cordon and a large warehouse. The news ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen said:

And that was as much as he could bear to see before jabbing a finger hard into the remote to change the channel.

He flicked through channels until he heard canned laughter. An American sitcom. He took a breath to calm himself. He sat on the arm of his sofa and tried to concentrate on the TV. This was what Brad meant: his inability to relax, to do normal things. He got his cup of tea and sat on a sofa cushion, not on the arm. Curled his feet under him and cradled the cup. Just like a normal person. But it felt unnatural. He tried not to think about Król. Tried to concentrate on the TV, but it was no good. He couldn’t do it.

Where the fuck was Król?

The sitcom started to wear on him quickly. Everything was too clean, the characters too fresh and neat. And one of them was called Theo, same as the dickhead who used to bully Tim at school. He wanted to smash their buoyant faces, see how perfect they’d be then. Welcome to the fucking real world. He turned off the TV before his brain got the chance to blame the device for what it had just been subjected to. Something else Brad had said he had a habit of doing. Nothing was ever Mick’s fault. Maybe it wasn’t: nobody knew him these days, certainly not Brad fucking Smithfield. In part, he knew, it was his own fault. He kept his emotions internal as best he could, never talked about himself, his tastes, likes, dislikes, any of that shit. But the one thing he couldn’t keep in check was his anger because it was like a disconnected part of him, something out of his control. Everybody in his orbit had witnessed it; he knew it defined him in their eyes. And it was too late to do anything about that.

Brad and Dave often ribbed him about his anger, but what did they know? Dave had a wife, and Brad had a fucking boyfriend. Dave had a mortgage and plans for kids, and Brad had that pathetic dream about opening a bar in Thailand. What future did Mick have to look forward to, apart from more pain? They knew nothing about what it was like to be in Mick’s shoes. Most men would have sunk into a whirlpool of despair, while others would have migrated to a monastery in Tibet: you coped how you could. Mick’s way was to be, as Brad had put it, angry at the entire world. But it beat shrinking into nothing, or casting aside your entire life for something new. Both were weak responses to life’s cruel whip. Plus, it gave him that push needed to go and get what you wanted. Case in point: Grafton.

He finished the tea and dumped the cup in the sink: hard, from a distance, so that the thing made a noise. Mick liked noise because it was the opposite of silence. He liked to slam doors and play his rock music loud, and if the bitch next door banged on his wall to complain, well, he liked shouting right back at her. That certainly made him feel better. In fact, he probably got angrier if she didn’t respond.

I’m sure you hope so.

That damn thing in his head couldn’t be ignored. And why bother? He couldn’t fool himself. Fuck the plan to blame Ramirez and all that scenery. Fuck what Grafton’s wife could tell the cops. If Grafton was watching the world above from his fiery pit in Hell, there was only one way to hurt him. And Mick hadn’t finished dancing yet.

Where the fuck was Król?

He dressed quickly and slid out a cardboard box from the cupboard under the stairs. It was marked ‘Loyalty Box’. Inside, plastic food bags containing his treasures; his favourite items that came in handy to force loyalty from others. The latest addition had gone in last night: Grafton’s blood-encrusted wedding ring.

He found the label he needed (date: four months ago; place: Muswell Hill; name: Mohammed Iqbal) and hauled out the bag. He took a photo of the item inside with his phone and carefully placed the bag in the box, the box in the cupboard, the key to the cupboard in his pocket.

At the front door, with the handle in his fist, he paused. He was being too hard on himself. He had a future planned, didn’t he? He pulled out his phone, loaded Facebook Messenger, and sent a quick note to Alize:

He slotted the phone away, already feeling better. ‘See you later, Tim,’ he called out, then left.