Manchester Slingback

by Nicholas Blincoe

  ‘Like you’d know.’

  Johnny left with a dirty cackle, following behind Jake as they headed back to the bar. The DJ had just put on a Hazell Dean track and there was a rush for the pocket-sized dance-floor.

  As they stood back to let the stampede pass, Jake said, ‘You didn’t say, were Sean and Fairy mad at me?’

  ‘What do you think? They reckon that money had their names written on it. They’d been humouring the old bastard all night.’

  ‘Fairy wasn’t humouring; he’d fallen in love. You know what he’s like for those old school Quents.’

  Johnny shuddered. ‘Jesus, I saw the guy. I’m no expert but he was on his last legs. If Fairy went down on him, the guy would have pegged out. I’m not kidding.’

  ‘So I saved him.’

  ‘You saved them both. Saint Jake, that’s you.’

  Half of the men in the bar were up on the dancefloor, now. Even spilling out to the sides to dance on the carpet. Over on the raised hearth where Johnny had been sitting, a couple were up on their feet and jogging to the music. Standing for the anthem, their hands in the air. And, just to their side, there was Kevin Donnelly. He wasn’t moving, just looking confused with a hard-bitten, no-tears look on his face, a bottle of beer in his right hand and two others in his left.

  Johnny pointed over at him, ‘Your boy’s missing you.’

  Jake said, ‘What do you make of him?’

  ‘Sad fucking case. He works the Bus Station, doesn’t he?’

  Jake nodded, ‘Pure psycho-bait, you can tell just looking at him.’

  The relief on Donnelly’s face when he saw them walk over – Jake thought it could melt a heart: even his, if anyone wanted to try and find it. What millions of prehistoric years did to fossils, amphetamine did to his heart in seconds… pure ventricle calcification. He should sell his body to science, let everyone else sell theirs to trade.

  Donnelly passed over the spare bottles. Johnny apologized for keeping him waiting. Saying, ‘Cheers,’ as he held up his Pils bottle for a unification clink. ‘This is a Welcome Home Me party.’

  Jake said, ‘Mr Manchester. Cheers.’

  *

  Over the next hour, Johnny told them about Berlin. One story: an old German queen he’d seen walking down the Kurfürstendamm in pink leather hotpants and matching biker’s jacket and cap.

  ‘The geezer had to be sixty.’

  Jake said, ‘Did you go over the Berlin Wall?’

  ‘Nah, I didn’t understand that bit at all.’ But he told them he’d visited a back room in a bar and seen stuff that would make your eyes pop… or water. ‘You imagine what the cops would do, they find that stuff happening in Manchester? They’d call in the fucking army. Probably the Salvation Army, too, knowing Anderton.’

  Johnny had already heard about the raid on the Zipper Store from Fairy and Sean. He asked if Jake had seen it.

  Jake told him, ‘Some. I walked away.’

  ‘Fairy said it was that same Inspector again, on the spot to personally supervise the operation.’ Johnny couldn’t remember his name. ‘Pascoe?’

  ‘John Pascal. What did Fairy say about him?’

  ‘He claimed he was wearing a sandwich board: he’d got Repent You Bum-Boys, The End Is Nigh written on it.’

  It was almost plausible. It could even be a quote from the speech he’d give at the press conference in the morning. Opinion was divided on Pascal, whether his preacher-man style was an act to win promotion or whether he was serious when he spouted warnings of hellfire and damnation in his Manchester Evening News interviews. Whatever, the city was being pushed to extremes: a council hooked on Marxist-Leninism, and a police chief convinced he was overseeing Sodom and Gomorrah. There was a rumour that said Anderton wanted to be the next chief of the Royal Ulster Constabulary where there was a better class of god-fearing Protestants.

  Johnny said, ‘I heard Anderton wants new body armour for his men: steel-lined keks to protect their backs.’

  Jake had enough speed inside him to top that line. He could have gone all night, spraying out God’s Cop rumours, high on amphetamine-fuelled wit. But the DJ was spinning out a new song that demanded a change of mood, ‘Zoom’ by Fat Larry’s Band, and he wanted to get up there and start dancing.

  ‘You up for it?’

  Johnny didn’t need asking. He was already across the floor; shugging, frugging, negotiating elbow space between the high-stepping clones doing their cowboy-style dance.

  Times like these, they really needed Sean, a genuine soul devotee but with a sense of humour. It was Sean who taught them the Zoom dance, a dumb-show illustration of the lyrics beginning with a swoop of the hand zooming down like an airplane, and back up to the eye for the love-at-first-sight lyric. Johnny wasn’t doing badly, though. He was catching every move on the beat and keeping a straight faraway face, the way Sean did it. The trick was to get the mock-seductive look of a black American soul singer: eyes hooded, lips just slightly apart in a pouting smirk.

  Jake was cracking up, as he always did, doing the Zoom. It put him a beat out of step and he had to hurry to the rhyme – boom! – miming his heart exploding out of this chest with love. He and Johnny fell into synch. Kevin Donnelly danced alongside but didn’t try to follow the moves; he just kept to the beat in a quiet, unshowy way. You needed to look down at his feet to know he could really dance: a series of natural soul-boy steps, perfectly done.

  This was the end of the night, at least as far as Bernard’s Bar. Johnny had zero money and though they could have hustled a few drinks, Bernard’s was basically a couples place and even the few men cruising the area were really looking for soul mates. They weren’t stupid enough to believe they could put a down-payment on a romance for the price of a beer. Jake bought one more round and let Kevin Donnelly buy another and that was it.

  Somehow – maybe the frayed ends of his nerves after his night in the police station – Jake was feeling wired by the time he hit the street. Wired and frayed, like an electric cable whipping through the Manchester drizzle. You could practically see the sparks as he charged Albert Square. Johnny ran beside him. Kevin Donnelly dribbled along, fifteen yards behind.

  Chapter Five

  Fifteen days after the death of Kevin Donnelly, but only four hours since he heard the news, Jake Powell was sober and suited; wearing a dark tie, a dark overcoat. Nothing strictly funereal but it felt sombre enough. He had an overnight bag at his feet, a polystyrene cup of Euston cappuccino large in his hand. The coffee was whack.

  The arrangement they made before DI Green left for his hotel was they would meet by the papershop at 9:15. Jake was there early, Green was running late. If Jake wanted confirmation, he could take a look at the electronic flip-board above his head: the Manchester train was leaving at 9:30 whatever happened. Maybe Green needed his sleep, maybe he’d miscalculated how long a five-minute taxi along the Marylebone Road could take in rush hour… but he’d arrived now. For the past few minutes he’d been padding across the mouth of the double shopfront, twisting the strap of his wristwatch and pulling at a Rothmans. Jake was wondering how much longer it would be before the man recognized him. He was cutting it fine.

  Finally, it happened. Beginning from a dead start, fifteen yards away, Green came pounding across the station floor, shouting: ‘Powell? That you?’

  Jake nodded hello.

  The guy looked like a seizure case. ‘How long you been wearing specs? I didn’t fucking recognize you.’

  Jake shrugged. ‘I wear glasses during the day, contacts at night.’

  ‘Well get another fucking pair. I been walking round the last fifteen minutes. Didn’t you see me?’

  Jake said, ‘The train’s about to leave.’

  The platform at Euston stank. It was years since Jake last headed north and he had forgotten the smell. It was something specific: flat and dull but strong. He didn’t know why the other stations should smell different. And, as usual, once he caught it, he remembered two other smells, both of them
breweries: the McEwan’s plant opposite his old flat in Hulme and the Boddington brewery next to Strangeways prison. There was a link there: the Manchester-bound train, the Manchester smells. You didn’t have to be a Proust to dig it, though it would be lost on Green. Running for the train, the man had enough problems breathing. There was no way he could smell anything.

  Jake kept pace with him, thudding down the ramp and running along the side of the carriages. The first four coaches were all First Class. Green didn’t even look at them. He certainly didn’t notice Jake drop back a pace and side-step into the No Smoking carriage. As Jake passed through the swish inner doors and bobbed down the aisle, he watched Green struggle along the platform outside. It was a kind of dumb show, the man passing breathlessly in and out of the frames of the sealed glazed windows. But, as Jake found his seat, it took a slapstick turn.

  Green’s mouth was already open, grabbing the oxygen he needed to power himself along, but now his mouth began to remould, getting ready to speak. And as it moved into conversational gear, Green began to turn his head, casting a look to his side. And because he couldn’t see Jake, the look arced further and further until his head was facing backwards and his feet were pegging for the front. It couldn’t last. Green went into a jelly-roll spin, dropping his old blue sports bag to the platform as he stopped and took a good hard look around.

  Jake’s seat was on the platform side of the train. By the time Green spotted him, Jake had emptied his coat pockets onto the table and was stretching to stow his bag on the luggage rack. Green stared up, no more than three feet away but separated by the double thickness of the window. The glass muffled all sound, but Green had easy-to-read lips.

  ‘The fuck you playing at?’

  Jake’s ticket was in his inside pocket, tucked into an embossed envelope. The idea behind the envelope, he guessed, was to give First Class passengers a sense of added value. He slipped the ticket out and flashed it at the window: let Green have a good look before he folded it away again.

  At a guess, Green was saying: ‘You infantile little twat.’

  Jake smiled and mouthed: ‘See you in Manchester.’

  Green stood on the platform with his crummy sports bag at his feet and a copy of the Mirror in his hand, and said: ‘You know you’re impressing no one, you git.’

  Emphasizing the words by beating on the window with the rolled-up newspaper.

  A whistle started blowing somewhere up the platform. Green wavered, the paper caught mid-whack as a uniformed guard came jogging by with one arm raised in the air. Watching from inside his coach, Jake believed he could see the cogs turning as Green tried to gauge the time, looking up the platform and turning back to Jake. Then he grabbed his bag and hauled off, really gunning for it. Jake watched, thinking: You thought I’d spend another three hours listening to you? Still, it was a childish trick.

  Then, as Green disappeared around the curve of the platform, Jake noticed for the first time: with his anorak and his old sports bag, the man was dressed exactly like a schoolkid. How could that happen, a man goes through his whole adult life without ever putting any more thought into his clothes than his mother did on his first day at school.

  As the train moved off, Jake made a pile of his things, all of it reading matter: a newspaper, a magazine and a paperback. By the time the steward came round with his trolley, he had finished The Times, which he neither liked nor disliked and bought because he had a theory: every empty decision he made, in some way it kept him saner; closer to having an open mind, becoming a floating voter. Although The Times was cheaper than the other broadsheets, so perhaps it just made him a price-sensitive consumer.

  There were two other passengers in this short stretch of First Class: a bearded man who was working on a laptop and a woman Jake recognized from a soap – Coronation Street in fact. Jake was third along the steward’s route. When the man arrived, he asked for a coffee and got a cup poured from a stainless-steel pot: presumably ground and percolated because there had to be some kind of First Class dividend. The stuff tasted like real coffee.

  ‘Anything else, sir?’

  Jake nodded. ‘Yeah. If a fat guy comes asking where I’m sat… tell him I’m in a no-smoking compartment. I want that stressed.’

  ‘Yes, sir. No smoking.’

  Jake nodded. That was it. He was paying for the room: room to breathe, room to stretch.

  He dumped the paper and opened his magazine, flicking through to the fashion pages. If he ever lost his job at the casino, maybe he should try modelling. How would that be? One of Green’s first plays, last night, was to talk about Jake’s job security. Asking, for instance, how it looked: ‘A casino manager kicking shit out of his customers. I was just wondering?’ The man had a point; it could be time for a vocational shift. Looking at the featured models, Jake guessed he was older than most of them, but not all… these weren’t the kind of stripped kids used in the women’s mags. And it was a fact: Jake looked like a model. He had people, strangers even, come up and tell him. He believed them.

  Years back, in a kind of post-crisis blind, Jake started wondering if his whole appearance was an illusion. That what he thought were his good looks were nothing but a self-delusion. Maybe he’d spent so long staring so hard at himself in mirrors, he’d put a gloss on his worst features. Now, even after he’d taken to wearing thick-lensed, black plastic specs, it didn’t matter. He still got mistaken for the alpha-model male… Mr Fuck-Up disguised as Mr Fuck-You.

  Another time, he wondered why he never let himself go. If he didn’t, it was because the idea of leeching into a slob was just another route to self-obsession; not only disgusting but somehow arrogant and a definite kick in the teeth for anyone who wanted him around their bed or their life. All round, he was happier if he looked clean, neat, together. His game-plan, so far as it went, was just to walk and act as close to normal as he could. If he felt no real connection with the guy trailing him across the mirrors of men’s rooms or appearing like a ghost in the train window as an InterCity flew by on the opposite track, it wasn’t like he could wish him away. Any more than he could help noticing the man looked all right and dressed better. Maybe he shouldn’t become a model. If he could pick the suits and set up the shoots for these magazines, then that seemed like a job with a little more dignity. He could do it, he was sure.

  Jake was staring at a spread: specifically the cuff on the trouser leg of a woollen suit. The material was so thick and soft, the hem had become bulky and eye-catching. At least it caught Jake’s eye, used to staring at minutiae and trying to postpone the moment when he had to face the full picture. The only reason he never thought he was a thirty-four-year-old burn-out was because he’d been posing as a burn victim since he was sixteen. He once read somewhere that a sure sign of clinical psychosis is when a patient starts repeating the words ‘black, dull, empty’ over and over. Jake tried it for five minutes. It sounded okay but it would, wouldn’t it? He didn’t know if he was feeling it for real.

  *

  The train paused in Stoke, less than forty-five minutes from Manchester Piccadilly. When DI Green tapped on the window, he caught Jake off-guard, deep into InterCity auto-analysis. As Jake snapped to, the first thing he saw was Green’s grin. The man looking cheerful, holding two tins of McEwan’s Export and a Scotch egg. Half a minute later, he reappeared in the aisle, rolling between the seats. So unsteady on his feet and so loud as he sat. Jake was only surprised it took him so long, thinking he would have just flashed his shield or whatever it was called, and promoted himself to First Class.

  ‘How you doing? Comfy?’

  Jake nodded, Fine. He didn’t know how the other two passengers felt. Both of them, the laptop man and the soap actress, had looked up. Green stared back at the woman, a brief look of panic on his face until he recognized her.

  ‘Fuck me.’ The words coming in a rushed hiss, sotto voice. ‘You’re not going to believe this: I thought it was a friend of my ex-wife’s.’

  Jake believed. He had t
hought the woman was a friend of one of his aunts. That was the trouble with soap stars: they were only recognizable obliquely, through a chain of association.

  Green popped the top of a McEwan’s and took another look round as he settled down. He found the No Smoking logo, top centre of the window. ‘Nice touch, Jake. You think, because I can’t have a cig, you’ve got a psychological advantage?’

  ‘I’m feeling okay.’

  ‘Yeah, well it’s the impression you’re working on. You did all right last night, didn’t you? Holding onto your decorectum while I’m doing my best to monster you.’

  It was true. Green charged the flat like a stud bull, sure he was packing a savage wad.

  ‘The way you clobbered that guy, you could be looking at GBH easy.’

  Jake shrugged. Maybe.

  ‘Oh, easy. But say you got a good lawyer and managed to pull a provocation deal. Even line up a few character witnesses and play the previous-of-unblemished line…’ Green paused, like it was worth a thought. Though the only thing he was chewing over was his Scotch egg. ‘You never know, it might have worked. It would have been a good laugh at my expense, anyway. Seeing it’s my fault you don’t have a record already, me being such a self-sacrificing twat when it comes to my snitches. The embarrassment of incidents from your past – I could have written a classic charge sheet. What do you reckon?’

  Jake shrugged again.

  ‘And how would that go down on a gaming-licence application?’

  ‘Bad,’ said Jake. ‘But when it comes to casinos, any kind of criminal record is a bar, no matter what the charge. If I got one now, I’d be through.’

  ‘What, back counting cards or spinning that roulette job? Busting your gut in one of those stupid waistcoats, the oldest kid croupier in the West End?’

  ‘Something like that.’