‘Problem?’ he said.
‘Have you asked her if she knows Ben Jackman?’
‘Yes.’
‘And? Does she?’
‘She says she doesn’t. But she’s dicking me about.’
‘And are you? Its Loubie isn’t it? Do you know where Ben Jackman is?’ She shook her head. ‘So let her go. Let’s move on. We’re wasting time here. He could have switched drinking holes, so we need to check the Drunken Duck. Then we’ll pay a visit to the riverside bars.’
Barney stepped back, letting go of Loubie’s singlet. ‘She tried to hit me with a bat,’ he said. He reached forward to straighten out her top, but Loubie slapped his hand away.
‘Watch it, girl. You don’t go assaulting this member of Ostere’s law. He don’t like it.’
‘Get out, Barney,’ Wynona said. He turned on his heel, pacing like a soldier on parade, grabbed his hat and jacket, and marched out of the pub. Wynona smiled at Loubie. ‘You all right?’
Loubie nodded. ‘What you want with Ben?’
‘The Man wants to see someone swinging, and he’s volunteered Ben for the role.’
The two girls turned to face the back of the pub. Ben raised his glass. ‘But he’s okay here, for sure. No way we’re going to be telling on him.’
‘No, he needs to get out of town and I’m going to need your help convincing him to go.’
‘He won’t leave Ivan. You can’t leave Ivan, coz the man’s incapable of…anything really.’
The girls looked at the lump of lard asleep on the table beneath the front window. His red bloated face lay flat to the wood with a lifeless, bloodshot eye watching the bar.
‘Ivan will survive. Ben won’t. Barney will realize he’s living here soon enough. Besides, I might have a job for Ben that will take him out of Barney’s clutches. I just need your help pushing him to take the work.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because I said so. Because I need more time to gather evidence and find witnesses willing to stand up and defend him. And because you’re a right old thief, and I’ll tell Ivan why his till is always down if you don’t help me out.’
Loubie opened her mouth to protest, but Wynona raised her truncheon, ready to strike. ‘Because you’ll get a cut of the money if you go with him. Just make him go, Loubie.’
Loubie rubbed at the red welts Barney had left on her arm. ‘What’s Ben supposed to have done? What if I vouch for him, like, if he needs an alibi?’
‘He’s wanted for killing two coppers just before Christmas. The men who actually did the killing are dead. Good thing for the world at large, but no help for Ben. He’s wanted because the Man wants to replace the image of the Mayor’s lynching by the Christian Clan. You can join him, for sure. My guess is the Man won’t mind hanging two folk.’
The television above the bar crossed to a live news report. The girls watched the muted images. Children, faces blackened, led a donkey pulling a cart. Two taller children held picks over their shoulders. One child stared with a vacant expression at the camera. Mucus smeared his face and gunk leaked from his right eye. A child dressed in a thin, flimsy shirt drank from an oily water bucket. Smog smeared the scene beneath black clouds. Monks in cassocks and armed soldiers ensured the children didn’t dawdle before the camera.
‘Terrible. Just awful,’ Wynona said. She placed her truncheon back in her belt, touched her cap to the lads by the pool table and took her leave.
Loubie rubbed at the tiny white marks scarring her arms and shook her head in horror. ‘You wouldn’t wish that on anyone’s life. We got to be grateful, us? Whatever you say about the Man, he don’t let that stuff go on.’
‘That’s the Lowlands,’ Tommy said. He sipped at his cola. ‘That’s happening in this country. The Man sucks.’
Chapter Three
Max is a dog’s name, eh?
Max Meldrum sat in a high-backed, leather chair with a clear plastic mask covering his skeletal face. Two oxygen bottles stand strapped to the beige wall behind him and hiss in the moments quiet. The mask mists with each rasping exhalation. His stick-like fingers grip the padded armrests with fearful intensity. An overpowering aroma of antiseptic saturates the room.
He sat at a large, chestnut desk. A single lamp craned forward and spotted the figure sitting before him. Winston, Max’s man-servant, stood over the scrawny shoulders of the battered man. Long limbs with scabs festering on the forearms hugged at a bloodied chest. He cowered before Max’s boggle eyed stare. Winston’s elegant fingers massaged with vigor, delving deep and searching for his heart. Puffy, reddened eyes winced with each probe of his upper body. Abrasions decorated his cheeks and blood leaked from his right ear. His head wobbled against Winston’s exertions. His shoulders hunched as Winston lifted him and shook, rattling his bones before dropping him. Fingers, lined with dirt, touched at the strands of bloodied hair sprouting from his chest. His head fell forward and he moaned in pain. Winston retreated to the shadow of the blood red drapes.
‘You see,’ Max said. The mask muffled his thin voice. His right hand leant behind to the large knob on top of the oxygen cylinder. The hiss died and the mask slipped from his face to hang against his thin, flabby neck. ‘We hired you to find my daughter.’ Perspiration beaded on his forehead. He reached forward, pointing a crooked finger at the man. His breathing paused, his life on hold as his body summoned the strength to inhale. Winston stepped forward and adjusted the lamp so its beam focused on the battered face. ‘But you haven’t found her. We paid you to bring her here. You said you had her.’
The battered man opened his bloody lips to speak and a pink bubble of saliva escaped.
Winston stepped forward and slapped him across the back of his head. ‘You was asked a question.’ His deep voice boomed in the quiet.
The man’s head remained bowed with eyes screwed shut as a spasm of pain wracked his body. ‘She said you’re an animal and she’ll never come back to you.’ Another slap rocked his head.
Max held up his hand and Winston took a step back.
‘I found her, when every Gypsy in the Lowlands was looking for her, but she won’t come back for you. Never.’ He peered at Max and shrugged to signify an end.
The door to the room creaked. Winston turned to the noise. Again it creaked, inching inward. A child stepped into the room. Winston strode forward, his bulk blocking the child’s view of the bloodied man. The child wore baggy shorts and a blue bib tied about his neck. He sucked hard at his thumb. Winston stopped and squatted before the child.
‘What’s up, little fella?’ he asked.
The child stared wide-eyed at the old man fumbling with the ties to the oxygen mask. His hand pushed the feeder cup toward Winston. He smiled at the child, took the item, and patted his head. With care he turned the child and offered a gentle push on the bottom. The child tottered forward toward the corridor, turning to gaze at the cup before Winston closed the door.
‘Winston,’ Max said. He struggled to turn the knob on the oxygen cylinder. ‘We need to sort this out. The Gypsies are taking the piss. Fuck Claudia. She’s chosen her path, but I don’t want them getting access to the child. This waste of space has cost us dear, so we need someone in the Lowlands. Today. We need that child back here. Only in this house is the child safe.’
‘I’ve been talking to people,’ Winston said. ‘We have someone in mind.’
His long fingers reached for the man’s shoulders. They dug deep into the muscle and squeezed. The man yelped as Winston lifted him and shook his body a second time. ‘What about this sorry arse?’
Mad Max’s thin hand gave a dismissive wave. ‘The tide should be in on the river Ost. See if he likes to swim.’
Chapter Four
Jackie Says Go
Ben stood in the shadows of the old brewery with his hood shrouding his face. The wind played with the corrugated iron atop Blacky’s crooked shed. Coals glowed red in the furnace, but the fires outside the rusted council sheds lay dormant. Donkey had fled the
stables, and the tatty sofa facing the furnace no longer housed the hound.
Ben took a tentative step into the compound. He followed the old brewery wall and allowed the darker shadow to hide his approach. A marble tombstone stood proud against the brick wall bordering the allotments. Ben bowed his head in respect for a man who hadn’t deserved to die. The image of Nab digging his own grave played heavy with Ben’s guilt. He hadn’t helped his friend, choosing to hide while Nab dug his own grave. But he hadn’t expected the bullet. Nab was hard. It took more than a bullet to kill Nab. That’s what he’d thought, but the men with the guns, the Black Hats from the East End, had no qualms about testing Nab’s grip on life. Ben still remembered the clatter of the spade on the ground as Nab folded into his final resting place.
Deeper into the allotments, a strip of wild garlic marked another grave site. Ben’s best friend had been battered and dumped there last Christmas. His killer had never been found because the law decided Ben was good for the crime.
The old oak tree bent in respect. Wind ruffled the tangled mess of weeds and flowers. A dog barked. Ben stepped away from the oak tree as a larger beast screeched loud and long. He turned his back on the killing field, happy to leave it to the dead.
His boots crunched against the gravel, the rich aroma of burning coal drawing him to the furnace.
‘Ben,’ a voice called.
He stepped back from the bright furnace, ready to run from the voice. A tall, lean shadow stepped out from the stables and approached the blacksmith’s furnace.
‘Tommy, you bastard,’ Ben said. ‘What you doing here?’
Tommy stood a good six and a half feet and lacked any real meat to his frame. His straw Stetson sat back off his forehead and the long leather coat was buttoned against the cold. He walked on bandy legs and held his hands out wide of his hips, ready to draw on any danger willing to cross his path.
‘Me mum’s doing me head in so I keep away. Every minute I spend in that house she wails about Billy and why I didn’t save him, you know. She can’t let it go.’
‘And she’s blaming you?’ Ben asked.
‘She keeps on about the bloody detail. Who would do this? Like I can answer that question except to say they wore black hats. Then she wants to know why. I don’t know why. Who knows why? Because the men were bad men, I tell her, but it’s like she’s asking me to return her faith, you know? She’s seriously religious, me mum is, and she’s always asking the man upstairs for help and shit, but she’s lost it with little Billy dying. What do I tell her? God got distracted.’ Tommy shrugged. ‘You know, I’m not feeling good about Billy’s death meself. Why didn’t we stop it?’
Young Billy Two Guns had died the same night Ben and Tommy witnessed Nab dig his grave by the old brewery wall. Black Hats from the East End invaded Ostere during the Christmas week looking for stolen booty. They were responsible for the two bodies found in the allotments. But they also caused little Billy’s death. They forced Billy Two Guns to tap dance on Blacky’s furnace, a curious torture technique that offered no results as Billy had no relevant information to offer. Little Billy danced a fair jig, and the quality leather shoes helped fend off the fire, but Blacky’s furnace burnt bright and hot that night. Tommy sat with Billy in Western General later that night and held his hand while Billy shut his eyes and stopped with the breathing.
Ben found the Black Hats’ booty and used it to exact revenge. He’d garnered a borough’s worth of delinquent children to bait the Black Hats. They set the ambush at the local school and battered the Black Hats into extinction. It had been a massacre. ‘Horror at Ostere Academy,’ the papers cried. ‘Oh the poor children,’ the parents wailed. They wanted the school closed and the grounds dug up and replanted. It didn’t happen. There was no money in the Man’s budget to meet their demands. The school board did replace the drinking fountain. A child had been splashed with blood from the tap the morning after the massacre and was still receiving counseling.
Tommy sat on the arm of the sofa. He rolled the half-chewed cheroot in his mouth and spat at the furnace, smiling at the loud sizzle.
‘You avenged his death, eh?’ Ben said. ‘There’s not much more you could’ve done. You got to stop asking the questions, eh? There’s a shitload of stuff we could’ve done different, but the Black Hats are dead. We won, so you got to be happy. Well, feel avenged. Doesn’t your mother see that?’
‘I didn’t tell her about me shooting Peg Leg. How do you tell your mother you shot the man who killed your brother? I mean, Peg Leg was hard, you know. And he was a Squaddie, so I don’t want it known I shot a soldier. They’re like gods, aren’t they? Me mum and me are close, but I don’t tell her stuff like that.’
Tommy slipped onto the sofa beside Ben. Their long legs stretched out to the glow of the coals. Heat burned at their boots and radiated through their limbs. Ben pulled a bottle of Cognac from the depths of his long black coat and nudged Tommy with his elbow. ‘Old times,’ Ben said.
‘I miss this place,’ said Tommy.
‘Why, I mean really? We cooked some right ropey crap on the griddle. That Pete the Nose would turn up with animals older than dinosaurs to cook. You needed to wear gloves and the smell cured all hunger pangs. ‘Char it to death,’ he used to say. ‘So long as it’s cooked through it’ll be fine.’ And look at this bottle, Tommy. This is quality gear. We drank Drano when we lived here.’
‘Yeah, but it was you and me, Billy Two Guns and Pete the Nose, and the Winos. Where have the Winos gone?’
The two lads looked to the rusted council sheds. Empty oil barrels lay on their sides, cold and forgotten.
‘They gone,’ Ben said. ‘Gumless Garth got garroted by a Slotvak a month back and they all scarpered south looking for sun.’
A cry broke up their recollections. Movement of brush and the cracking of twigs had both lads off the sofa and moving into the shadows of the shed.
‘Nothing’s changed,’ Ben said in a hushed tone. ‘It’s still shit scary back there in the allotments, eh?’
He leant back to rest on the door to Blacky’s shed, but fell through the empty opening. ‘Jesus,’ he cried. ‘Who broke the damn door?’
Tommy picked the door off the dirt and leant it against the wall to the side. He poked his head inside the dark cold interior. ‘Someone’s trashed Blacky’s shed.’
Ben stood and dusted the dirt from his trousers. He glanced at the shambles inside the shed. ‘How can you tell? It’s seriously dark in there and Blacky’s never been tidy.’
A figure appeared at the fence separating the allotments from the narrow lane.
Ben grabbed Tommy’s coat and pointed at the man. ‘Feral Man cometh.’
‘What’s he want?’
Feral Man stepped over the fence and strode toward the two boys. His heavy tread shook the ground. A whiff of illegal product wafted about his figure. From his rear, Donkey appeared with the hound at its heels.
‘What’s going on?’ Ben said.
Feral Man stopped by the furnace, his large gnarled hands soaking up the warmth from the coals. ‘Bad times.’
Ben and Tommy joined him as the forest ejected two more figures from its depths. Blacky, a man mountain with thick, knotted black hair and the stride pattern of a giant approached the fire. The small figure belonged to Jackie John, leader of the Projects, a wiry nervous man prone to anger and an atrocious knowledge of the King’s English.
Ben smiled at Jackie as he stepped into the red glow emanating from the furnace. He bowed in respect to his old teacher. ‘Jackie John,’ he said. ‘Long time, no see. You all right?’ Ben nodded at Blacky. ‘You’re shed’s a tip.’
‘Ben.’ Jackie John’s greeting carried little warmth. ‘Been looking all day for you. You bringing grief to us all.’
‘How do you figure?’
‘My soldiers fight for good. Now soldiers fight to protect you.’
Ben shook his head in denial. ‘No way are your problems my concern.’
‘Today t
he army came here,’ Feral Man said. ‘They have beaten Mr. Blacky bad.’
Ben turned to Blacky and the big man shrugged.
‘I can’t see any dents,’ Ben said. ‘Are you all right?’
He shrugged again.
‘They talk of torching our property with fire breathing drones,’ Feral Man added. ‘We have to give you up or lose our land.’
‘Drones don’t do dragons,’ Ben said.
He turned to Jackie. ‘You want me to hand myself in? You think I should hang for crimes I didn’t commit?’ Jackie slapped at his thigh with his riding crop. Ben took a deep breath, watching the crop as he pressed on with his point. ‘Is that what your new order is going to stand for? We all got to stand in line because Jackie says so. I thought we wanted rights and freedom. But I’ve got that wrong, haven’t I? We’ve given up on the struggle, forgotten the downtrodden, because it’s getting tough and dangerous. The Man’s getting angry and we don’t want to be dissing the Man, eh?
‘Is this another example of that tired old mantra the end justifies the means? Chuck Street Boy out into the cold, tethered and gagged for collection. He’s served his purpose. His martyrdom will be remembered, of course. They will write songs about him that will be sung for inspiration.
‘Fuck you.’ He stabbed his finger into Jackie’s chest. ‘I’m not putting my hand up for this. They bludgeoned Marvin to death here.’ He pointed into the allotments. ‘And I was in the square when it happened, and you, Jackie John, you prick, are my witness.’
He shoved Jackie in the chest, but the man stood firm, his dark eyes cold to Ben’s words. ‘And Black Hats murdered Nab,’ Ben continued. ‘They shot him in the act of digging his own grave and Tommy here is my alibi. Two murders I…didn’t…do.
‘Eh Tommy?’ Tommy nodded to his statement. ‘And the massacre at Ostere Primary, rumored to be committed by me alone. For that atrocity I have the suspended class of year fuck knows, children, who can vouch for me not shooting a soul. All these crimes, eh, all of them, I didn’t do. But you want me to walk into a station, hold my hands up and confess. You may as well fit me for the noose now and lynch me on the old oak tree by Nab’s grave, eh?’
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