by Jeff Gulvin
The Wasp drove past Camden Palace and onto Eversholt Street. Ninja watched the road ahead of them, blinking with his one good eye. Behind them a siren blared and a fire engine hurtled towards Kentish Town. The Wasp grinned in the mirror. ‘Mickey Blond-hair,’ he said, ‘set fire to his mum again.’
McCague got up to leave. Vanner sat where he was. McCague looked down at him, hands in the pockets of his coat. ‘You sticking around then?’
Vanner grunted.
‘Don’t get shitfaced. And think about it, Vanner. You need the job. What else are you good for?’
When he was gone the silence descended from within. Vanner looked at his empty glass. Three people forced themselves onto the bench that McCague had just vacated. He glanced at them. The men, cropped hair, T-shirts and tattoos. The girl smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. One of the men stared at him. He stared back. The man leered at him.
‘Want a picture?’
Vanner stood up. ‘Choosy what I put on my walls.’
Outside the rain fell in sheets. It cooled him, only his head sang with beer and with whiskey and too long in the confines of the pub. For a moment he leaned on the wall.
Across the street, Ninja sat straighter. The Wasp started the engine.
Vanner walked in the rain, coat over his arm, jacket plastered against his flesh. A car drove slowly past him and turned off behind the Parcel Force building. Vanner put on his coat and got wetter. He shrugged his shoulders and crossed the road. At the corner, he paused where the Parcel Force depot butted the station. Buildings blistered the skyline beyond it: the three towers topped in yellow and red and blue when the light of day fell across them. He needed to pee. He stepped round the corner and moved into the shadows.
He felt rather than saw them, a presence in the lee of the wall. He zipped up his fly and for a moment he stood where he was, trying to penetrate the gloom with eyes wearied by drink. A figure stepped towards him. He was holding something long and heavy. Vanner’s head cleared. He could not see the face, dark or hooded or something. He stood a moment with his arms hanging at his sides, and then from behind him, the sound of metal pulled against metal.
All at once he was sprawling, hands out into puddles. A foot against his spine. He rolled to his right and a crack rang out on the pavement. He kept rolling and was stopped by a second kick that knocked the breath from his body. He tried to get up. If he got up he could fight. But as he raised himself something heavy and wooden came down between his shoulder blades.
Scrabbling now, crablike; two dark figures circling him. He rolled away from them, smashed against a dustbin on wheels and half-squatted. The one with the bat moved towards him. The other held something too, but it was shorter and thinner and curved. Breathing hard now, Vanner launched himself at the bat, catching the assailant and bowling him over backwards. He lost his footing, the drink and the rain on the concrete. Where was the other one—the kicker? He could not sense the kicker.
And then he was in his face. Vanner half-standing, the smell of damp cloth in his nostrils. Hooded. The eyes: something odd with the eyes. He felt something blunt in his gut and doubled once more. He could barely see them. They moved around him so quickly. Darkness on their side.
Escape. He could not fight them. He searched the gloom, back the way he had come. Path blocked by the bat. The blade arcing towards him, up and down and scything the air by his face. He dodged right but it cut him, nicking his shoulder and slapping off his upper arm. Again he was against the dustbin. Wet metal on his back. The blade came once more. This time he moved left and the bat clapped against his forearm. Pain shot to his shoulder and he forced down a cry. He kicked out, high and to his left and caught something. A grunt. Staggering feet. A gap. Vanner dived for the gap, right arm dangling, bone chafing the flesh. He tripped and threw out both hands in front of him. As he fell so the blade came down and scored the length of his back.
Hands and knees now, hugging his right arm to him. Blood, like salt in his mouth. A glimpse of his reflection where street light blackened the puddle. He could hear the sound of their breathing. Then headlights, sudden and brilliant in his eyes and feet retreating away from him.
Two
JANE’S FACE FLOATING ABOVE him; dark hair, stripped away from white cheeks and the blood red of her mouth. He reached into darkness and she faded. Opening his eyes, he felt the ache of his body.
The nurse had her fingers about his left wrist and was looking at the upturned face of the watch, pinned against her breast. Vanner could smell her. He closed his eyes and he breathed.
‘Back with us?’
He opened his eyes again. Young face, smiling at him. He looked beyond her to the window and the sky, bright now with stars.
Some time later he opened his eyes again and the lights were sharp against them. An old man lay asleep in the next bed to him, face all sagging and grey; toothless mouth hanging open. Hospital. Rain and night and a bat and a blade. He touched chapped and swollen lips with a dry tongue. He was thirsty, desperately thirsty.
The pub: faces all mixing and blurring and weaving in and out of his head. How many beers? How many whiskeys? He remembered McCague. A DI’s job in the Drug Squad. Australian barmaid all lipstick and chest and those two at the table. He frowned, seeing the old man’s face in the bed next to him and not seeing it. He tried to roll over but pain shot through his back. His arm throbbed, encased in an inflated bag. The nurse glanced at him. ‘We’ll do that soon,’ she said. ‘Be more comfortable for you.’
Vanner watched her and said nothing. Three other beds beside his and the old man, a sixth but that one was empty. Beyond the lights, night blanked the city.
He woke and it was morning. Two men in suits sat beside the bed. He looked for the nurse but he could not see her.
‘Feeling better, Guv?’
Vanner glanced at the speaker: youth still in his face. ‘Look like a copper, do I?’
‘They didn’t take your wallet.’
He pushed himself into more of a sitting position, ignoring the tearing sensation in his back. His tongue filled his mouth. He looked at the jug of water by the bedside. ‘That fresh?’
The constable shrugged.
‘Get me some. Will you?’
The constable poured some water into a plastic beaker and passed it to him. ‘You want any help?’
‘No.’ Vanner drank, spilling it from the sides of his mouth. It was warm and it tasted of plastic. But it was wet and it soothed the heat in his tongue.
‘Took a bit of slap, Guv.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘What’d they look like?’
‘Don’t know. They had hoods on.’ Vanner looked from one of them to the other. ‘Where you from?’
‘Fennell Street.’
‘Who’s your Guv’nor?’
‘McKinley.’
‘Don’t know him.’ He moved his arm and pain bit from his shoulder.
‘You didn’t see their faces then?’
He tried to think back. It was more of a blur than it had been. ‘IC1,’ he said. ‘One of them at least.’
‘You could tell?’
‘His eyes.’ He bunched up his face. ‘Something odd about his eyes.’
‘You saw them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Up close?’
‘For a moment I did.’
‘But IC1?’
Vanner nodded. ‘He was, almost certainly.’
‘Well, that’s a start at least.’
Vanner looked at him then. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Jenkins.’
‘It wasn’t a mugging, Jenkins.’
‘Do what, Guv?’ Jenkins sat forward.
Vanner motioned with his good hand. ‘You said yourself, they didn’t take my wallet.’
‘They were disturbed, Guv’nor. Car came round the corner. Picked you up in the headlights.’
Vanner shook his head. ‘They had no intention of taking my wallet. Or if they had it was an afterthought.�
�
The two constables exchanged glances. Jenkins stood up. ‘We’ll leave you in peace, Guv. Talk to you again a bit later.’
McCague came in that afternoon. He pulled the curtains round the bed and sat down. Vanner looked at the curtains. He was sitting up now, his back against three pillows. ‘What d’you do that for?’
McCague looked round. ‘Don’t know really. More private I suppose.’
‘Open them,’ Vanner said. ‘Claustrophobic enough as it is.’
McCague opened them again and sat down. Vanner looked at him. ‘No grapes then?’
‘You’ve had enough already.’
Vanner grinned. ‘Grapes and malt and hops.’
‘Exactly.’ McCague moved his bulk in the chair. ‘Who d’you pick a fight with?’
‘If I knew that I wouldn’t be in here.’
‘Walking home?’
Vanner nodded. ‘Couple of blokes fancied it in the pub after you left. Skinheads. Tattoos and that.’
‘Give you trouble?’
‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’
‘You think it might’ve been them?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Told Fennell Street? It’s their job.’
Vanner laughed. ‘What, those two who were in this morning?’
McCague looked at him. ‘You were a DC once.’
Vanner held his eye then and McCague’s gaze did not waver. ‘You were well out of it last night.’
Vanner twisted his mouth. ‘Tell me about it. Sober—I’d have been able to see them.’
‘No idea who they were?’
Vanner shook his head. ‘One of them had a knife.’
McCague raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re telling me he did. There’s thirty-seven stitches in your back and your shoulder’s split to the bone.’
Vanner glanced at his broken forearm. ‘Other one had a bat.’
‘You didn’t get a look at them?’
‘Too dark. They had hoods on.’
‘Black or white?’
‘The hoods?’
‘The bodies, you prat.’
‘One was white I think. Funny eyes.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Vanner made a face. ‘Can’t tell you. Something odd that’s all. I only saw for a second.’
‘You told that to Fennell Street. About the eyes, I mean.’
Vanner nodded. McCague got up then. ‘I’ll come and see you again,’ he said. ‘By the way, I phoned your old man. He’s coming down tomorrow.’
Later that evening the nurse came back. She came over to his bed and rearranged his pillows, the weight of her breasts on his arm. ‘Have you eaten anything?’
Vanner shook his head. ‘Don’t fancy it.’
‘Maybe tomorrow then.’
‘Maybe.’
She stood straight, hands on her hips, arms bare to the elbow, the skin fine and soft and warm. ‘You shouldn’t drink so much. Last night we had trouble finding blood in your alcohol.’
He smiled at her. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Valesca.’
‘Beautiful name.’
‘Thank you.’
He looked at her. ‘I’ll try to remember. About the drink I mean.’
‘Do that.’ She smiled then. ‘Too much drink spoils your looks.’
‘So that’s what’s been wrong all these years.’
He watched her check the other patients and then he lay back with his eyes closed. Her’s had been the face he had seen when he woke up. But before that, drifting in and out of sleep or coma or just unconsciousness, it had been Jane. When he closed his eyes now he could see her as if it was yesterday. Weakness, he told himself. It was weakness. The past closed in when he was weak. He felt it now, deep in his gut, a sensation he had not been aware of in a long time. He felt alone. People around him, but as alone as he had ever been. Alone was okay, alone was normal. But this alone—this was almost lonely.
He could not sleep. Maybe it was the drugs or the pain in his back or maybe it was the ghosts of his past as yet unaccounted for, that drifted in and out of his head. Last night, the night before, whenever. Sitting in that pub until he could barely sit at all. And then the chilled March rain on his face and the desperate need to take a leak. Two hoods in the darkness and his wallet still in his pocket.
The following afternoon his father came to see him. Vanner was half-dozing, the clatter of cups shook him from the pillow. He looked up at his father, tall and white-haired and dressed all in black.
‘You look like a priest,’ Vanner said.
‘I am a priest.’
His father sat down and looked at him. He placed a bag of fruit on the side table. An orange rolled from the bag and dropped onto the floor. He bent to pick it up and when he straightened their eyes met. He sat back in the chair. ‘You okay?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Much pain?’
‘Had worse.’
‘Bad enough though eh?’
Vanner nodded.
Silence between them; a strained dullness as if both of them had things to say but neither could remember how.
‘How’s Anne?’ Vanner asked him.
‘Worried about you.’
Vanner smiled. ‘There’s nothing here that won’t mend.’
‘Two of them?’
‘Bat and a blade between them.’
‘You were lucky.’
‘I was pissed, Dad.’
‘Then you were very lucky.’ His father looked about the room and then back at him.
‘Mugging?’
‘What?’
‘Just a mugging was it?’
Vanner pulled his mouth down at the corners. ‘I’ve still got my wallet.’
‘What then?’
‘I don’t know.’
Again silence between them. His father said: ‘When do they let you out of here?’
‘They haven’t told me. Soon, I hope. Can’t take much more of this lying around.’
‘What’re you going to do? You can’t exactly fend for yourself.’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘Anne doesn’t think so.’ His father looked at him. ‘I don’t think so. Come up to Norfolk. Better to recuperate up there than down here on your own.’
Vanner looked at him for a long moment, then finally he nodded.
His father drove. Vanner in the passenger seat, sun against the windscreen. Silence, save the drone of the old engine, as they moved along the country roads with the tang of the sea drifting through the crack in the window. His father looked sideways at him. ‘You okay?’
Vanner nodded.
‘Small car. No good for your back.’
‘I’m okay, Dad.’
So many memories. These roads, so often travelled, younger days when his mind was stretched and hopeful. He tried to sit back in the seat but the bandages that swathed his middle restricted his movement, tightening the breath within him. His father seemed to sense his discomfort.
‘When do the stitches come out?’
‘They haven’t said. I’m supposed to check in with a GP up here.’
‘You can use McMahon. He’s a good man.’
They drove on. Vanner watched the gnarled and beaten skin of his father’s fist as he clutched the gearstick. The trees were full of leaf, the fields ripening with the freshness of the wind and the fall of the sun across them. Everywhere he looked the countryside bloomed with life and yet all he saw was wilderness. His shoulder ached, his arm itching interminably under the confines of the plaster cast.
‘Anne’ll have food ready.’ His father made the comment as if to break the weariness that stretched, chiselled but unworked between them. Vanner said nothing, thought nothing, looked out on abundance and saw nothing.
‘Will you take the job?’
‘Job?’
‘DI’s job in the Drug Squad. McCague told me about it when he phoned. Good man, McCague. On your side, right through that other business.’
‘I don’t k
now,’ Vanner said.
His father looked at him then, as fathers do, with confusion and uncertainty, as if to say something, but yet nothing to say. Vanner stared through the windscreen. Father’s thoughts. Son’s thoughts. Family. Why did he have so much difficulty with family? There had been no family to speak of: only his father and churches and the army. Uniformed men and drinking and laughing and fighting. They came closer to the coast and Vanner rolled down his window to smell the familiarity of the sea. Gulls cried: he could see them in the distance against the flattened line of the horizon. The city left behind, the emptiness of the life that was his there. Now the sea seemed to beckon him, a distant reminder of some other kind of life that he had known, long ago. The scent of her: she had never been here; but now, as he drew closer, he could smell her.
His father got his bag from the boot and Vanner adjusted the sling on his shoulder. Anne came down the steps, her feet crunching on the gravel drive of the rectory. The sun had dipped behind the house and the weight of it all seemed to descend upon him.
‘Aden.’ She reached up and kissed him, cupping his cheek with her hand.
‘Hello, Anne.’ He avoided her eye, looking beyond her into the house: the width of the hall; the wood panels of the floor, reminding him of the empty house he had bought and left behind. Gently, his father kissed Anne. Vanner watched him, glimpsing the unspoken warmth that passed between them. Anne smiled at him and nodded towards the open doorway.
‘Go on. I’ve made up a room for you.’
Lips curling back over a red and dripping tongue. Red eye. White face. Half the devil looked back at him. He hummed as gently he wound the mangle, one strip through and then tearing slowly at the perforated edges that Cready had ruled when the paper was still soaking. One clean sheet of acid squares. Hundreds of laughing faces.
He wore a cycle mask over his face, the type used by those brave enough to risk the stench of the city. Eyes wide, blinking against the strength of the alcohol that sloshed now in the trays. His head thumped but that might have been with the music that drummed in his ears. He cut fifty sheets then went through to the main floor and closed the door behind him. Stripping the mask from his face, he drank from the bottle of water.
Earlier today, as he had paid more cash into the box, he had questioned whether this was in fact the right way. For the moment at least, logic told him that any other way was too dangerous, and as yet wholly unnecessary. No point in taking risks for risk’s sake. The first rule of any business. The existing policy had been a calculated strategy: to do other would be to launch into the unknown. That was before Saturday though. With Saturday so many things had changed. He stood now with the heat of crystal soaked in alcohol buzzing in his head, and contemplated the difference. His hand had been forced: that was how it had felt and that was no good to him. He would have to consider alternatives.