Fearless

by Jessie Keane

  ‘It’s forgotten,’ said Josh, although he knew it wasn’t; Shauna never let an insult rest.

  ‘I got two kids, you know. Love ’em to bits. A girl and boy. Both at private school, going on to great things I hope. So, anyway. Andrew likes a bit of rough, fancies himself a gangster, although he ain’t, not really. It’s a game to him and I keep telling him it’s dangerous, but will he listen? No, he won’t. He keeps a luxury yacht down at Poole and goes over to Spain and Amsterdam, sometimes to Ireland too – as I said, that’s a real soft target – taking the money out to pay for the coke he gets there, loads of it, tons of it. And for some time he’s been dealing in the club and enticing the wrong sort of people in. Makes the decent punters nervous, and they stay away.’

  ‘So . . . get rid of him. If it’s a personal relationship, end it. Call it a day,’ said Josh.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Dave.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I had that conversation with him. I said, stop it or it’s over. Go and have your fun elsewhere, I don’t want this kind of trouble.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said, “I’m not stopping a fucking thing. And if you ask me to again, I’ll tell your wife. I’ll tell Phil how her ever-loving husband likes to take it up the arse from a posh boy.” ’

  ‘Christ!’ said Josh.

  ‘Yeah. Which would mean I’d lose a lot. I mean, a lot. Phil would cane me for as much as she could get. I know that woman and, believe me, she can be vindictive. She’d take my kids away from me. Turn them against me, tell them things about me that would make them sick to their stomachs. She would blacken my name around town. Tell everyone I’m an arse-bandit. Ruin me in business.’

  ‘So you’re in a bind,’ said Josh. He could understand where Dave was coming from; he was a father himself and the thought of anyone trying to take his little boy away from him made him want to tear someone’s head off.

  ‘You can say that again.’ Dave sank his head into his hands, ruffled his thin hair so that it stuck out like a rumpled baby’s. In that moment, Josh thought Dave was the most pathetic spectacle he’d ever seen. Scared of his wife. Scared of his boyfriend. Scared of what might happen if he just let things slide. Scared of what would happen if he didn’t. Poor bastard.

  ‘You’re a tough nut,’ said Dave, staring at Josh. ‘I can see that. Grew up rough and had it hard, yeah?’

  ‘That’s about right,’ said Josh, thinking of life in the camp, Dad always at him when he was small, hammering him with his fists.

  ‘So what would you do? In this situation?’ asked Dave.

  ‘I think Andrew’s got to go.’

  ‘Go?’

  ‘He can’t be allowed to blow the whistle, tell all to Phil. She’ll fuck with your finances, lose you your kids and make you look bad with your mates. He can’t be allowed to go on dealing in your club. So yes – I’d say he has to go.’

  ‘That sounds sort of permanent,’ said Dave with a nervous laugh.

  ‘Sounds like what you want.’

  Dave’s nervy grin faltered and fell from his face. ‘Yeah.’ He swallowed. ‘But . . . you wouldn’t do it anywhere near the club, would you? Keep me well out of it. He goes down to Marbella in April, you could do it there.’

  Josh’s eyes widened. ‘Wait on. I didn’t say I would do anything.’

  ‘I’d pay well,’ said Dave.

  ‘No – what?’ Josh was shaking his head. Facing a man head-on in a fair fight was one thing. This was something else. ‘What are you saying here? You want me to warn him off?’

  Dave hesitated. Then he said: ‘No. I want this thing settled.’ His eyes met Josh’s. ‘I want this permanent.’

  ‘You want . . .’

  ‘Yeah, I want him gone.’

  ‘Christ. Well . . .’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty thou to make it go away,’ said Dave, his eyes suddenly pleading.

  ‘You what? Just wait a fucking minute . . .’

  ‘All right! Five hundred thou,’ said Dave in desperation.

  Josh’s jaw dropped. He didn’t know what to say.

  Dave was nodding. ‘That’s right. Half a million quid to get rid of my problem. How does that sound?’

  Josh thought of Shauna, always pecking his head over the next purchase. This was bad, what Dave was asking of him. The idea of it sickened him. But it would pay better than anything else. Better than anything he’d ever done. It would buy them a house. A future. Everything.

  ‘He’s already set it up for us,’ Dave was saying quickly. ‘It would look like a drug deal that’s gone wrong.’

  Josh was shaking his head. No. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t.

  Could he?

  52

  Shauna was surprised when Josh said he had to go away for a couple of days, but he gave her fuck-all in the way of detail.

  ‘Where to?’ she asked.

  ‘Not far. Got a fight lined up. That’s all I’m saying, Shaun.’ That’s all she got off him these days, the silent treatment. Maybe he was cut up over the news of his mother dying, but she didn’t think so. She knew they had been far from close.

  ‘What about the funeral?’ she asked.

  ‘I ain’t going.’

  Josh had given Linus Pole money, more than Shauna thought they could afford, to sort out his mother’s burial and headstone. Josh went about the place scowling, and he was making some mysterious purchases. Shauna kept quiet, but she was curious by nature and when he was in the bath she went to the wardrobe where he’d put the latest stash of secrets, and had a look.

  The thing – whatever it was – was in a cream gabardine-type bag and when Shauna tried to lift it, it was heavy. There was a drawstring at one end. She pulled it loose, and put her hand in. Felt cold metal. Frowning, she rummaged inside and drew out a big Magnum pistol. She looked at it in astonishment. Then she drew out the other item inside the bag. It was a shotgun, both barrels sawn off. Carefully, she tucked both guns back into the bag, retied the string and closed the wardrobe door.

  Later, when Josh came out of the bathroom, she said: ‘Josh, it was sad about your mum. Really sad.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But what we got to do now is, we’ve got to go on, put our old life behind us. Forget about all that.’

  ‘I know.’ Josh thought of Claire and felt his heart wrench in his chest. Yeah, his old life was gone. She was gone. So what did anything matter any more, really? He had a job to do, and he was going to do it. Look after his family, even if he did still sometimes yearn for what he’d lost.

  Next day, Josh kissed his wife and son goodbye, loaded his holdall into the car and then drove away.

  His mood was grim. All right, he didn’t care about his mother. He never had. But her passing had been a milestone for him. She was his last link with the camp and the life he had lived there. It was all a memory now, gone and forgotten. No . . . not forgotten.

  Josh knew he would never, ever forget Claire – and he hoped she was somewhere fine and well and happy. As to his own life, now Shauna was right – he had to go on with it. So he’d phoned Dave Houghton and said he’d do the job. But he insisted he’d pick the time, and the place. Marbella was out. He wanted to do it here, in this country. He wrestled with his conscience over taking the job, but they needed the money, badly. The bills were piling up fast, red bills, and people had started coming to the door demanding payment. And Shauna never let up about the lifestyle she wanted. So it was up to him to provide for his family, to embrace this new life even if it wasn’t the one he would have chosen, even if he would have been so much happier back at the campsite, with Claire.

  Dave had given him a picture of Andrew Meredith and told him that Andrew had a place down in the New Forest, miles off the beaten track, where he often spent weekends. It should be perfect. Josh studied the photo. Andrew was good-looking. Golden-haired, sleek, tanned and with the prosperous patina of wealth all over him.

  Discreetly, Josh sussed out Meredith�
��s place and then parked up well away from it under cover, avoiding the tourist hot spots, the campsites and hotels. He slept in the car overnight and breakfasted on the sandwiches Shauna had cut for him, then watched Andrew take his morning jog and worked out the best spot along the route at which to do it.

  He waited out that day and another night, finished up the last of the sandwiches and the last drop of tea in the flask, then took out the holdall. He loaded the sawn-off, and when Andrew came jogging out next morning on to the track through the mist-shrouded scrub and gorse, he followed.

  At the chosen point, Andrew paused, hands on knees. Josh could hear him breathing heavily.

  ‘Hey,’ said Josh.

  Andrew turned, half-smiling. Saw the gun. The smile dropped from his face. ‘What . . .’ he started.

  Josh fired. The sawn-off took most of Andrew Meredith’s good-looking head away, and his corpse fell back on to the yellow gorse in a shower of dark blood.

  Before Andrew even hit the ground, Josh was gone.

  53

  ‘How’d it go then, Josh?’ asked Shauna when he came home.

  She had the TV news on, and the newscaster was talking in solemn tones about two trains colliding somewhere abroad. Then they started talking about a shooting in the New Forest, the police were looking for leads. He went over and switched it off.

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ said Josh. He felt dirty, and sick.

  ‘You won, didn’t you?’ It was a statement of fact more than a question. With that idiot Cloudy gone out of his life, Josh always won. He was king of the gypsy fighters, after all. Looked his opponent square in the face, battled it out like a man.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, and went on upstairs to clean up.

  It played on Josh’s mind for days afterwards. Knocking someone out in the ring, that was one thing; doing strong-arm stuff on doors in clubs and sorting out bolshy gits in bars, that was OK. But this, blowing somebody’s head off, taking their life, that was something else. He found it hard to sleep, and he was off his food. It surprised him. He was tough as old boots, usually.

  ‘What’s up with you, Josh?’ Shauna asked him on day three. ‘You’re not right.’

  They were having beans on toast at the kitchen table, and baby Connor was in his high chair throwing most of his food on the floor and up the walls. Normally, this amused Josh no end, but today he was uninterested.

  Josh put his knife and fork down and looked at Shauna. He had to talk about this to someone, or go mad.

  ‘I’ve killed someone, Shaun,’ he said.

  Shauna stared at him. ‘You what?’

  ‘I’ve killed someone,’ he repeated.

  ‘What, in the fight you mean?’

  ‘There was no fight.’ He felt sick and he looked it, too. He had a gypsy’s natural-born toughness; he was never ill. But when he’d looked at himself in the shaving mirror this morning, he’d hardly recognized his own face.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, worried.

  It all poured out of Josh then. About going to Dave for a job cleaning up the club, but it had amounted to much more than that. He told Shauna about Dave’s relationship with Andrew, and the trouble that was causing, and that the trouble had to stop – or Philippa was going to crucify Dave in the divorce courts and he was going to be ruined.

  ‘We agreed I’d do the hit,’ said Josh finally, while beside them baby Connor gurgled and played with his dinner. Shauna was still as a statue, listening.

  ‘He paid you? How much?’

  Josh looked up at his wife and saw the ugly glitter in her eyes: money. That was what this meant to her, snatching someone’s life away. It meant a pay cheque.

  ‘More than I’ve ever made before,’ he said. ‘More than I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Josh . . .’

  ‘It’s upstairs. Under the boards.’

  Shauna sprang to her feet and raced up the stairs. Josh grabbed the baby out of his high chair, wiped his chin with the bib, and followed more slowly, carrying Connor with him. When he got to their bedroom, Shauna was on the floor with the carpet pushed back and the board up. There were notes scattered all around her and piles more of them stuffed down in the gap under the floorboards.

  ‘How much?’ she gasped, looking up at him, her eyes alight with avarice.

  ‘Five hundred thousand,’ said Josh, thinking of Andrew Meredith’s head blowing off his body in a meaty red shower.

  ‘It’s a fucking fortune!’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Josh, and turned and left the room. He went downstairs, put Connor back in the high chair and sat there at the table with his half-eaten plate of beans in front of him. He pushed the plate away. Connor grizzled. Presently Shauna came back down and sat and looked at him.

  ‘You feel bad about it,’ she said.

  ‘What do you think?’

  She stretched across the table and grabbed his hand. ‘Look, Josh. You did a job, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  She was nodding. ‘You did a job, and you’re supporting your family with the money you’ve earned from it.’

  ‘Blood money.’

  ‘Don’t look at it like that. We could buy a palace with five hundred grand,’ said Shauna, glancing around their modest but ultra-clean kitchen.

  ‘Yeah. I suppose we could.’

  Shauna’s voice was gentler, softer now. Almost hypnotic. ‘We’re all just passing through, Josh,’ she said. ‘Life is short. You didn’t do a bad thing because that man was bad. He was a problem and you got rid of him. You did what you had to do.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Josh sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  But deep down, he didn’t believe it. What he did believe was this: that the better part of him had died the night he lost Claire. And now? He didn’t even know himself. Not any more.

  54

  ‘Happy then, Shaun?’ Josh asked his wife.

  It was two full years since Josh had fought Matty O’Connor. Two years since he’d lost Claire. Shauna had every reason to be happy, Josh thought. He’d bought this place in Henley-on-Thames, not a quarter of a mile from where Dave and Philippa Houghton lived, with a chunk of the money from the shooting. Cash on the table. The view from all the rear-facing windows was nearly identical to the view Dave and Philippa enjoyed.

  Of course there was a small risk of flooding, the estate agent had been straight with them about that, but like Dave and Philippa’s place the house itself stood up on a slight slope, so it was safe enough. The agent said that it certainly wasn’t enough of a risk to deter anyone from buying such a beautiful house.

  The place had everything. An indoor swimming pool. A gym for his training. Six bedrooms, four bathrooms, a kitchen you could play a game of cricket in and a lounge as big as a barn. It wasn’t exactly homely, but Shauna was made up with it and had been eating into the money again as she furnished the place as grandly as she liked. Christ, she liked the high life, his wife. Before long they had interior designers poncing around the place as Shauna’s vision of how they should be living took shape. All she ever seemed to do these days was thumb through copies of Homes & Gardens, exclaiming over sofas and footstools and all that shit, then poring over swatches of fabric and carpets.

  Oh, and when their anniversary rolled round, Shauna made a huge fuss about it. He wished she wouldn’t. For him, truthfully? It was just another year gone, with the wrong woman beside him.

  Money was no object now; the sky was the limit. Since the big payout for solving Dave’s problem, he hadn’t done any more work of that sort. He didn’t want to. Shauna had got a blond mink coat out of it and strutted around the bedroom wearing that and nothing else, a big grin on her face. But Josh felt sick to see it – luxury, bought with dirty money. He’d disposed of the sawn-off out in the Solent, tossing it into the waves from a mate’s fishing boat, but he’d kept the other yogger, the Magnum, taped it ready-loaded to the inside of the wardrobe in their bedroom, for security. For himself, he’d rather fight an army
hand-to-hand than fire a gun at them, but he had Shauna and the baby to think of.

  Not yogger, he mentally corrected himself. Gun.

  Shauna would rip him an extra arsehole if she heard him calling the gun that. But he missed the old language. Missed the old ways. And he knew that he’d trade all this grandeur, in the blink of an eye, for that brand-new van he’d bought for him and Claire to live in. He’d happily exchange all the posh dinner parties with their stuck-up neighbours for a single evening by the camp fire, cooking game caught fresh that day over an open flame while one of the old timers played a tune on the mouth organ.

  Ah, shit. What was the use of even thinking about it?

  Linus Pole’s boys had solved the drugs issue in Dave Houghton’s club and things were returning to normal there. As for Josh, he kept fighting, people coming at him with challenges at Linus’s fairground, big bets being laid, and so he was quids in. He never lost. It didn’t even enter his head that he ever would.

  55

  Months passed and still Josh suffered bad dreams over Andrew Meredith’s death. He couldn’t seem to shake off the night-time horrors. He would wake sweating, guilt scorching through him like molten lava. He’d killed a man for the worst of reasons – to get money to keep Shauna happy and their heads above water. He was cursed, bound for hell. He hadn’t even had the decency to attend his own mother’s funeral. And he should have. He knew that.

  Without telling Shauna, he drove off one day and headed down to Winchester, to the big church where the gypsy graves were. Alone, he walked among the gorgi gravestones, the grey ones, the plain ones, until he reached the corner where his own kind was buried.

  You couldn’t miss it.

  Gypsy families always paid out a fortune on honouring their dead. All the headstones here were lavish in the extreme; bigger, taller, carved out of black granite and with the names of the deceased etched in gold. Intricate carvings of horses and lurchers had been fashioned all around each loved one’s name.

  The flowers on each and every grave, although artificial, were replaced without fail every year with new ones, so the sun never bleached out their vivid colours of scarlet, turquoise, green, yellow or bright orange. All the gypsy families – Shauna’s lot, the Everetts, Claire’s kin, the Milos, and his own, the Flynns – were clustered together here, all the plots paid for, reserved. His own included. Mum had told him that once, long ago, when she wasn’t off her head on the gin. She had been laid to rest here, beside his bully of a father. And one day Josh would rest right beside them.