Copacabana: International Crime Noir: Liverpool - Rio de Janeiro

by Jack Rylance

  Ester had a long history of being forgiven, a genius for placating men. She possessed the power to stop a legitimate grievance dead in its tracks and steal its thunder. She could make this grievance roll over, offer up its soft exposed underbelly, and beg to be stroked. She would stroke this underbelly and tease out a stupid happy all-forgiving look from its owner. You might have thought you had her bang to rights but all it took was one audacious laugh and she was suddenly home free. It was escapology of a high order and yet the secret of it was to remain herself at all times. Ester’s was a velvety defiance.

  It was pointless to try and keep tabs on Ester or arrange dates well in advance. She could occasionally be reached by mobile phone, but it was just as likely to ring out indefinitely, or be turned off, or even answered by one of her friends who claimed not to know where she was. Probably at these times she was with another man, although it still didn’t bother Pete as he presumed that money was changing hands, and this remained a form of indemnity; protection.

  On these nights, Pete did his own thing. First, he would meet with the Cabral crowd early on (at night they migrated a mile up the road and took a table outside of HELP and continued there with their lengthy conversations until one or two in the morning), but it was after these men had finally chosen to retire that Pete came alive, ready to visit his favourite stomping ground and take up with that other social circle of his, the local hoodlums at the kiosk: bandits, traffickers, muggers, bank robbers, crazies, street characters, plus a number of hookers who had clocked off work and were ready to unwind. This was the underworld on show, anything but furtive, openly sunning itself in the breaking dawn. It was one of the places where you could still take the district’s pulse, even at six, seven, eight am, and find it strenuously active, if highly irregular.

  Pete got along with these people just fine. He had true crossover appeal. These kiosk regulars noted a generosity which wasn’t interested in buying their goodwill and couldn’t be taken for granted. This confidence attracted them. A number of these people had nothing to lose, neither did Pete, the difference was that he seemed to have arrived at this decision of his own accord instead of having it thrust upon him. If anything this made him more dangerous still and they spotted the knife-edge in his eyes. At times it made him look like a spooked raptor, which helped explain how and why he was welcomed into their fold.

  Although Ester did not put a stop to these nights altogether – it was not that type of relationship – they were a lot less frequent when she was around. Spending the night with her was a much different experience. Yes they got drunk together, but it was always a delight. He never went too far. There was always a celebratory aspect to these occasions. Although Pete could believe his luck in being with her, he was always thankful for it. He had finally reached that age.

  Not only was Pete painfully aware of what he would be missing out on by letting Ester go, he was also miserably confident of what would happen instead. There would be plenty more room for his grievances and he would soon increase the number of heavy-duty nights when he embraced cachaça and cocaine. Inevitably, his guilt would rear its ugly head and go on the attack and turn on Pete himself. The reasons for this guilt never came into focus and yet they were startlingly vivid. They returned with a vengeance, as a powerful blur. It was as though he was being attacked from behind by ghosts. Pete never once confronted this guilt in earnest. To do so would have required him to act in person instead of running through his mind.

  At such times Pete did not value his own life. He mumbled about death and how he did not fear it. Instead he talked about welcoming it in. It was a type of sloth. The very worst kind. He felt as if he had no great discoveries left to make regarding himself, and that this, in turn, made it impossible for him to be greatly surprised by anything he discovered outwardly. Anything at all. It meant that the whole world was strictly limited, stuck in its ways.

  If there was an answer to this crisis then it lay in reckoning with Vincent and Totsy for real; taking the opportunity to try and silence them for good. The chance was likely to present itself before too long and by seizing on it Pete knew he might finally answer to himself. Perhaps it was the best chance he would ever have of making his life anew and yet it was also a wild notion. Not sensible at all.

  He hankered after this confrontation.

  He hated this idea.

  Chapter Eleven

  John had located the nearest McDonald’s. He found its presence slightly reassuring and it was where he often went to take lunch now. The restaurant was only a mile, a mile and a half away from the apartment, but still he considered this distance too far. His apathy was strong enough that he considered this trip an achievement – it required John to brave the heat, the crowds, unforeseeable threats.

  After three weeks in Rio de Janeiro, John was no closer to quantifying the city’s dangers the way he could back home. In Liverpool he could walk into a pub, or even along the street, and sense impending trouble with relative accuracy. He was attuned to local proceedings and this afforded him a degree of safety. But here in Copacabana he felt as if danger might come from any direction, at any time, without any warning. Worse still, these potential dangers were not just random any longer. There was now the possibility that he would be targeted at any moment.

  John reached the front of the queue and asked for “A Big Mac and a coke.” A minute later the plastic tray was passed to him and he carried it over to an empty table, hurriedly unwrapped the burger, held it in both hands, and took his first mammoth bite.

  John found this whole experience amusing. Fancy eating Big Macs in Brazil! The problem was that he had nobody to tell, nobody to surprise or impress with this fact. This observation deserved an audience and it was depressing to keep it to himself.

  With half of the burger left to eat, John’s new mobile phone beeped in his pocket. He took it out hastily and smeared ketchup on its little screen and then swore at himself for doing so.

  The message could only be from Pete:

  U alright Lad?

  Yeh, Ta, U?

  Fine, Pete replied.

  Now John raised his one pressing need: Can you get us some more weed?

  Thirty seconds later, No problem.

  Nice one. Ta

  John tried not to contact Pete every day. He was mindful of the frequency. And even when he received a text message such as this, he did his best to keep the exchange brief. In truth, it was becoming easier for him to give Pete time and space because the two of them were struggling to connect; their conversation rationed by what little they had to say to one another. As a routine, it did not work. Their talk all sounded forced, a mere attack on silence. Theirs was one of those friendships best served by lengthy absences and lightning visits.

  John’s favoured attempt for filling up this silence was to relate what he’d seen on Cidade Alerta, Brasil Urgente, all those real crimes shows with their murders, robberies, kidnappings. John spoke of these things with breathless excitement as if he was recapping an adventure film, but Pete did not want to hear about these incidents. “It’s no worse than home,” he answered repeatedly. He would not have a bad word said against Brazil.

  John remembered what Pete had said at the kiosk when he was off his head: “England is diseased. Rotten to the bastard core. You’re best off out of it.”

  “Yeh,” he’d answered. But he did not believe this last point. John knew his life in Liverpool had not been all that great and yet he definitely wanted it back. It was the only city that mattered to him. Everywhere else was somehow out of bounds, unimportant, regardless of what he found there. So no wonder Rio affected him like it did. It was a stark, alien, threatening alternative. John could not stomach its exoticisms. He felt mismatched here.

  Worse still, he was no longer sure that Pete would hit upon a solution to the Vincent and Totsy problem. He doubted whether Pete was dealing with it on the quiet, with secret excellence, so that at some point he would bring this threat to a close with a curt farewe
ll.

  “It’s done.”

  “What?”

  “It’s all taken care of. You can go back as soon as you like.”

  “Nice one, Pete.”

  Instead it occurred to John that they were both absolutely screwed. He felt as if Pete was trying to avoid the threat as much as himself, discount the possibility that Vincent and Totsy – or people known to them – would soon turn up and start asking questions, looking for results. Still John didn’t ask Pete directly for news of any progress. He did not want to rule out the possibility that he was mistaken. He preferred to keep his slender hopes intact.

  John finished his burger, slurped the last of his coke. He thought about Pete’s contention that Brazil was no worse than home when it came to crime. To answer this question, it would be necessary to consider the actions of Vincent and Totsy – and those who worked for them – as it was they who had raised the bar and set the new standard.

  In recent years they had taken over. Their power was now unrivalled. You did not want to cross them if you valued your life. It was better to not even mention their names. Anything was possible if they thought you’d misbehaved.

  Whenever John thought about Vincent and Totsy, he was led back to that time he’d witnessed both men at close quarters. He must have been twelve or thirteen. They had called round at his mother’s to fetch Pete one morning. There they had sat in the front room and drank the tea that Jeanette made for them especially while waiting for Pete to finish his shower. This hospitality was the first sign that something was wrong: usually his mother served notice to all her guests that they should help themselves. You know where the kettle is, she would say, whether they did or not. But with Vincent and Totsy, she suddenly became the perfect hostess, and this was a first. John distinctly remembered Jeanette treating them differently to everybody else. For once, she held her tongue as well. It was a glaring omission and it made her seem strikingly subservient.

  The silence rolled on. Both Vincent and Totsy were clearly comfortable with it. It remained at their beck and call. On any other occasion Jeanette would have felt the need to break this spell, but this time she submitted to it also, and therefore it felt as if this silence was violating their home.

  Neither Vincent nor Totsy looked at John the whole time they were there. Unlike Pete, there was no effort to win him over. They stared at nothing in particular, dominated the room without saying a word. It was a frightening serenity. The cost of challenging it was doubtless great.

  Every so often one of them would bring the cup of tea to their mouths and drink it noiselessly then place it back on the saucer without a sound. It was as if they were trying to outdo each other in terms of delicacy – looking to perfect this simple task.

  Finally Pete had come down the stairs and broken up this tension. Vincent and Totsy started smiling at him, stood up slowly. “Right then, let’s get going,” Pete said, already moving towards the front door, eager to usher them out.

  This memory had mushroomed in the last couple of weeks. John went back to it time and time again, picking at its salient points, knowing full well that a large part of the protective spell cast by Pete’s name had always resulted from his association with Vincent and Totsy. This was what occurred to people when they heard it. This was what gave them cause for caution. It was why they said nothing further and walked away. Pete was a proxy for their menace.

  In one way, it was Vincent and Totsy who had been protecting John all these years. Now they were more than likely to destroy him.

  It was true John had not known the money was theirs, and yet who else would own that kind of cash and leave it outside of a bank? Nobody for miles, he realised now. It would have been obvious if he’d stopped to think about it, but he hadn’t stopped at all.

  Looking back, there’d been other signs that change was afoot. Riley, Robbo, Topper and Bim had started working for somebody, John knew that much, although they would not tell John who this somebody was or what the work consisted of. They preferred keeping him in the dark. Because of this, John began to drop hints of his own: showing willing to drift away and leave them to it. For a time he thought they might take him up on this offer, but then he’d got the call and they’d insisted on meeting up with him at Riley’s. The rest was history. They had freed John up to do this very stupid thing.

  Vincent and Totsy were known locally for dividing up their goods, housing them all over the city. Their drugs and money and guns. People were paid or simply threatened into acting as caretakers. There were was no end of storage space available.

  Perhaps leaving the sports bag with Riley was a test to see if he could be trusted to do this thing, and if so, there’d be some kind of reward. Happily for John, Riley had failed. John had fucked this up for him. It was, after everything, a victory.

  He had fallen in with Riley, Robbo, Topper, and Bim at the age of sixteen. This was not a crowd John ran with, so much as ran after. It amused them that he lagged behind, struggled to catch up. Between them all they saw to it that he never belonged, although they were not free to chastise him to the extent they would have liked. It was Pete who set these limits by remaining close to John. Theirs was a binding friendship. It meant there was a line which none of these lads could cross for fear of the consequences. The threat from Pete was reliable and so they operated on the safe side – restricting themselves to verbal ridicule, talking endlessly behind John’s back, assuring themselves that things would not always be so.

  He was only capable of aggravating them.

  Although John had never been in any of their good books exactly, in all the years he’d known them, Riley was always his most insistent critic. He greatly resented the restraint that he was forced to show on account of who John knew. He was nowhere near content with taking the piss. He very much wanted to fuck John up.

  Sat on the plane, bound for Rio, John had addressed Riley and the others in his mind, bitterly triumphant. He insisted that they reconsider their point of view. “So who’s the daft twat now?” He asked them, in absentia, attributing new motives to his crime. He decided that he’d done it to answer all of his long-time critics and their claim that he would never amount to much.

  Instead of watching the in-flight movie, John had followed the plane’s progress on the screen in front of him: the small white marker crossing the bright blue sea. He studied the number of miles left to go, along with the hours and the minutes. He could not get enough of these calculations. They supported the theory that his dreams were coming true.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sat at a café table, Pete spread open Jornal Do Brasil to its entertainment pages and scrutinised the listings with the gravity of a man looking to kill an afternoon. But all the matinee performances on offer could be divided into two categories: those films he’d seen already and those he didn’t care for.

  He thought about going to the beach instead. Taking himself off to Ipanema, hiring a deckchair, topping up on his tan. In such cases he would lay there under the sun with his MP3 player on, listening to downloaded tunes – mostly Northern Soul – slipping in and out of consciousness. Then, each time he awoke, Pete would slowly take his bearings and become immensely satisfied by surveying the many sights that counted in the beach’s favour. They struck him as golden for the shortest while.

  Looking at his watch, Pete decided that it was too late in the day for any such excursion. Instead he would read his newspaper in its entirety then wander down to Cabral and check if anyone else was there.

  A waiter brought over Pete’s glass of Acai and a spoon to go with it. He loved this thick gloopy drink. The sheer consistency was invigorating. It was semi-solid, packed with goodness, almost a meal in itself. He began to scoop it up now, his lips staining burgundy, coloured with the berries that slipped icily down his throat.

  With one hand, Pete turned away from the cinema listings and browsed the property pages instead, purely out of interest. It would now be possible for him to buy an apartment in Copacabana with tha
t stolen money. Theoretically, he could do what he should have done in the first place if he’d had any sense. Invest in bricks and mortar.

  While Pete was burning through his finances back home, Vincent and Totsy were already buying up property around Smithdown Road and renting it out to students. Pete now attempted to calculate what these same terraced houses would be worth today. The net gain was no doubt extraordinary. You were looking at an 500% percent profit in ten years, never mind the ongoing income. The decision had made astronomical good sense and turned them into property magnates as well as everything else.

  Pete could have followed suit in his more modest way. Vincent and Totsy had paid him well for his troubles, but he’d hardly saved a penny of this money, preferring to spend it wildly, seeking to gratify himself, unable to contain this urge. The wealth continued to trickle down from the pair of them – and it was enough to keep Pete in that manner to which he’d grown accustomed – but he eventually reached a point where it hardly pleased him at all. At least not on these terms. By this stage, Pete desperately required his independence.

  In 2001 he was sent up to Glasgow for a couple of months to liaise with associates of Vincent and Totsy and help set up a shipping route. Liaising is mostly what Pete did. He followed their orders and put them into his own words and threw in the odd joke. His role was hardly important. He was like a minor diplomat, the toast of Outer Mongolia, yesterday’s man.

  While staying in Scotland, Pete met a man called Bobby Moyles and they quickly became good friends. Moyles was a successful Glaswegian in his fifties who was big in the leisure business, with a portfolio of restaurants, bars, and nightclubs all over the UK, beginning to stretch into Europe as well. What united these businesses, as far as Pete could tell, was that they all had a certain amount of style.