Copacabana: International Crime Noir: Liverpool - Rio de Janeiro

by Jack Rylance

  Pete had shared this belief, which is why they’d been well suited, but his life had never been under threat to such a degree, and now that it was he found her resolve terrible. This was the moment for her to slip up and for her realism to subside. Instead, it did no such thing. It only conspired with his own blunt manner. She had already come to terms with Pete’s offer. He could see that in her face. Her affections were amoral, fleeting, exasperating, precious.

  “Will I see you again?” She asked.

  “Maybe.”

  Pete sensed that she was ready to pick up the bag and leave immediately. “You have to go now?”

  “Yes.” Perhaps she was frightened he might change his mind, keep the money instead.

  “You can’t stay for an hour?”

  “I can’t.” She did not try to explain why.

  “Twenty thousand reais for fifteen minutes of your time, without even taking off your clothes. That must be a record, Ester, even for you.”

  She shrugged. His words were only helping her. “Do you really want me to have this money, Pete?”

  “I’ve told you, it’s yours.”

  Ester bit her lip, debating what to do next. Then she walked past the bag, came up to Pete and put her arms around him and squeezed him tight. She was charmless at the last. She’d had the audacity to take him at his word: Just take the money and go.

  But the change was not as sudden as all that. There’d been a subtle retraction in Ester’s feelings since she’d returned from Italy, although Pete only accepted this now. She’d spent the last month slowly withdrawing her affections, bit by bit. Pete saw this in hindsight, after the fact. He’d reached the end of his time for pulling off this kind of stunt.

  The truth hit him forcefully. He had stopped cheating middle age.

  Chapter Sixteen

  After Ester had left, Pete headed over to Frank Delaney’s place with the sports bag in tow, intensely conscious of the task at hand. He was putting his affairs into as much order as they were ever likely to go.

  Frank opened the door to his sixth floor apartment, welcomed Pete inside. They walked beyond the entrance hall and into the bright clean lounge; took up two adjacent armchairs. Frank nodded down at the bag. “So that’s the cause of all this trouble right there?”

  “Don’t know about that, but it certainly hasn’t helped matters any.”

  “Two hundred grand?”

  “One hundred and ninety five at the last count.”

  “Fine. I’ll throw it in the safe.”

  “Thanks for this, Frank. I appreciate it,” Pete said. He found Frank’s calmness admirable. He had come to believe that this total lack of bluster was the mark of a man. It meant that he was able to turn up at Frank’s door without embarrassment or anxiety and be guaranteed this help. More than that, Pete was confident that it pleased Frank to offer it. He was a firm ally, possessed of that stubbornness which is invaluable in a friend.

  “So they arrived when?” Frank asked.

  “A couple of day ago, as far as I can tell.”

  “And what now?”

  “Now I’m going to try and stick it to the bastards.”

  “And then what?”

  “After that, it hardly matters.”

  Frank nodded. “Which makes it sound like you’re pretty pessimistic about the whole business.”

  “I am. Yeh.”

  “Why don’t you get someone else to stand in for you? You could afford a hell of a lot of dirty work with all the money you’ve got here.”

  Pete shook his head slowly, firmly, and saw off any further argument. “I need to do this myself.”

  “OK, and what do you want me to do if you don’t come back?”

  “I want you to call John and get him to meet you here. I want you to give him fifty grand and tell him to leave at once.”

  “And go where?”

  “I don’t know. Timbuktu.”

  “What about the rest of the money?”

  “Keep it, give it away.” Pete was centred on his showdown. All else was immaterial. He didn’t want to bother with any other details. Like most acts of bravery, this one required obliqueness. He was misrepresenting the future in order to make his way there, save himself for the moment, and that which needed to be done.

  “Alright,” Frank said. “If that’s what you want.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The end arrived on a Friday evening. The last time all three of them had gone out drinking together was six years earlier, but Vincent and Totsy suddenly insisted on doing it again. This meant that change was afoot. The event had some kind of meaning which Pete was obliged to figure out for himself.

  The bar they had chosen to meet in was the type of place Pete hated: the brutal dance music pumping out of the speakers, the scrum at the bar, the scrabble for drunkenness. It was downmarket and cheesy, part of a world he had distanced himself from. He belonged a mile up the road among the solicitors, football players, property developers; the success stories of every stripe. “What the fuck are we doing here?” He asked.

  “We’re on a team building exercise, lad. It was either this or white-water rafting in the Lake District and we know how you don’t like to get your feet wet.” It was Vincent who explained.

  “Why don’t we at least go to The News Bar?”

  “Listen to Champagne Charlie,” Totsy said.

  Another drink arrived. Pete’s sense of expectation grew. They had something important to disclose, and he was only waiting to learn of it. In the meantime, this venue bombarded his nerves. You could hardly move for pissheads, or think for the banging tunes. Again Pete remonstrated. “Can we not get off somewhere else?”

  Vincent turned to him. “Who do you think it is that keeps you in Paul Smith blazers? It’s all these spotty herberts in here, nipping off to the gents every five minutes to stick bugle up their nose…You owe these young drug users an enormous debt of gratitude.”

  “Alright, then how about I buy a round of alcopops for the whole lot of them and then we can call it quits.”

  Totsy shook his head soberly. “You see that’s your problem in a nutshell right there. Calling it quits is never as easy as you’d like to think.”

  Pete looked back at him. “Do you want to spell it out, Totsy? Exactly what you’re trying to say.”

  But Totsy didn’t want to spell it out just yet. He was happy to bask in the noise, the commotion, Pete’s ignorance.

  Pete had seen the young man coming from twenty yards away: returning from the bar, a pint in each hand. He was wearing a lime green shirt which looked ridiculous. On approaching the spot where they were stood, the surrounding crowd eased slightly, but as he tried to hurry through the gap it closed on him and he lost control of the drinks. A quarter pint of lager left one glass and flew threw the air. Half of that liquid spattered the sleeve of Vincent’s shirt from cuff to elbow. The fabric was now covered in big brown spots.

  It was an understandable accident – there was hardly any room to move – and the man had started to apologise immediately, but he was already too late. Vincent put his hand up. It was not to announce that the apology was accepted. He was simply explaining that it had no worth.

  Pete could still picture the young man’s face, its fright sinking in quickly. He was alert to the dangers, arrested by them. If he did not know who Vincent and Totsy were exactly then he suspected their calibre. He had a good idea of what he was confronted with straightaway. There was nothing he could say or do to change matters. He had caught them on exactly the wrong evening.

  Now the young man changed tack by staring down at the floor, exhibiting the hopeless desire to blend back in with everything else. Finally he walked away very very slowly, as if attempting to put distance between himself and a fragile mechanism which he’d already disturbed.

  Pete tried intervening. “You don’t get this kind of bullshit up the road. Let’s get off now, like I said. Go somewhere decent.” But neither Vincent or Totsy deigned to reply. Rather they
stood there, staring after the young man, transmitting his fate. They had no time for Pete’s counsel. If anything, it only incensed them.

  The young man returned to his own table, and the presence of his girlfriend, and began explaining the situation to her quietly, telling her not to look over at the men. She responded by looking over at once. He then tried to prevent her intervening when she expressed that same desire, but she shook him off, pulled away, and strode over to the three of them.

  The young woman was highly drunk, cross-eyed with it, her signals all mixed up. “Right. OK. Listen here. I want you to know something…” But what she wanted them to know was never made clear. It was as if she wanted to argue her man’s case, but also suggest there was no need for any such appeal, in fact it was they who should be apologising. Vincent and Totsy and Pete. Her approach was all jumbled. It was half plea, half threat.

  Totsy heard her out impassively, and when she’d finally stopped talking, he delivered his verdict: “You and your big stupid mouth have gone and sealed his fate. Your fella is absolutely fucking done for. Now he doesn’t get to leave.”

  Pete could still remember her face at that moment, the way in which Totsy had put a end to its rising hostility. She had looked back at him closely, as closely as she could manage, until she no longer dared to explode. Instead the woman turned and fled and tried looking for help.

  Vincent and Totsy’s resolve was absolute now. Pete had seen this look on their faces perhaps five times before. It meant that they had already set course and there was no way to deflect them from it. The destination was tremendous violence. What was new about this situation was their aim. He had never seen them target so pathetic a character on such a ridiculous pretext.

  The man’s girlfriend had gone and buttonholed a bouncer. Pete had watched her frantic mime from distance, enacting what had happened so far, accusing Totsy and Vincent and himself. She kept jabbing one finger in their direction. Soon enough the bouncer followed her lead and looked across and saw who he was dealing with. Totsy waved back at him. The bouncer was clearly mortified. He was a huge muscular giant, not half as stupid as he looked.

  All the while, the young man hovered just behind his girlfriend. A figure of terrible indecision. Maybe he could have sneaked away at this point. Instead he just stood there. Spellbound. As though waiting in vain for permission to up and run.

  The young woman half turned and introduced the bouncer to the wronged party in this whole affair. The giant responded by stepping forward without hesitation, grabbing hold of the young man’s shirt with both hands. It was less an accusation and more of a judgement. His girlfriend screamed out. “But he hasn’t done a fucking thing! It’s them you should be asking to leave! Tell him, Carl…” But the young man said nothing for himself, aware he had no right to appeal. Nor did he resist as the bouncer kept hold of a handful of fabric and started marching him away.

  Vincent and Totsy took this as their signal and set off from the corner in response, trailing after the bouncer swiftly, while Pete followed behind them, throwing his voice in their wake. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s leave it.”

  The bouncer carried the man towards a fire exit at the back of the building as his girlfriend scrabbled after them. He kicked the door open with his boot and physically launched the young man outside – lifting him up and then throwing him to the ground. The door led out onto a patch of wasteland. There was nothing there except a few large wheelie bins, one abandoned car.

  When Vincent and Totsy followed on behind, the bouncer had held the door open for them as a matter of courtesy, inviting this young man’s destruction. Pete stepped outside as well. Vincent then told the bouncer to shut the fire exit behind him and he did as he was asked, drawing the curtains on proceedings.

  Now the young man was trying to pick himself up off the floor, his green shirt muddied, scraped, torn at the shoulder. His girlfriend was leant down at his side, helping him to stand. “You know what,” said Totsy, staring down at them both. “You might as well stay there.”

  The young woman looked up and scanned Totsy’s face and knew what was coming. The knowledge jolted her into action and she sprang to her feet, launched herself with gusto: arms flapping, eyes screwed-up, performing blind panic. In response, Vincent took casual aim and used one punch to knock her out cold, then turned his attentions back to her boyfriend. The man was now up on his knees. He wanted to help his girlfriend, and looked at her longingly, but he was too petrified to move towards her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m fucking sorry.”

  “You are sorry,” said Totsy. “You’re one truly sorry bastard.” Then the two of them crowded in on him and started taking his life apart, holding nothing back. Pete could tell this by the way in which they wound up their first punches and plunged them into the man’s face, demonstrating a willingness to go too far.

  Pete’s instinct was to grab hold of one of their arms and stop its progress, and yet he knew this would not work, and his mind cautioned sternly against it. And so he stood there and did nothing, playing his part by keeping perfectly still, partaking in this act by not opening his mouth or laying a hand on Vincent or Totsy. They would not have listened. They would only have shrugged him off. If he had tried to intervene a second time, they would have turned on him as well. Pete knew this – just as he was certain that he would not have stood a chance against their combined violence – but it remained a shocking defeat and later it sickened him that his common sense had prevailed.

  All he did was hope that they would tire of their punishment, but this did not happen until the man was nearly dead. They were showing Pete how it was done. They were also showing him what they were made of, what he had always known to be true – that there was no end to their malevolence. It was the hilarity which haunted him most afterwards. Vincent and Totsy laughed out loud throughout the attack. It was as if they were cracking a joke by caving in the man’s skull. Worse still, their assault had nothing to do with the heat of the moment. It was not the result of any rage. The whole thing was obscenely premeditated. They had decided Pete was of no more use to them. Now they were sending him off in style

  Pete would never know all this for sure, and yet he could find no other reason for their actions. It was the only theory that made any sense. They’d wanted to stop him in his tracks, preserve his defeat, put him in a place of their own devising and then keep Pete there forever. How could he take himself seriously after this? Maybe this was why Vincent and Totsy had laughed all the while. They were letting Pete in on one joke in particular: he was not the man he’d long believed himself to be or that others supposed.

  It took two or three minutes, packed tight with violence, for the life to be pummelled out of this man. It was a mesmerising feat and Pete did not look away. His stance was voyeuristic, soul-destroying. He was able to witness the woeful fragility of flesh and blood, skin and bone. Finally, they left their victim for dead, unmoving, in a bloody heap. Pete looked on, transfixed. It took the words of one of his employers to bring him back round.

  “Come on, Peter,” said Vincent. “It’s time to go.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  His romance with Ester concluded, and with the money in Frank Delaney’s safekeeping, it was time for Pete to give himself a send off. He called John up and reminded him that it was exactly six weeks since he’d first landed in Rio, suggesting that they meet up at eleven pm in order to celebrate that fact.

  As on the first evening, it was Sobre As Ondas they retired to first, the wide terrace given over to the same stock characters as always, establishing their nightly marketplace of desires. John, for his part, looked no less wary of this overall phenomenon than the first time he’d encountered it.

  “Anyone would think you’d rather have stayed in,” Pete said. “Judging by your sorry face.”

  “No. It’s not that,” John answered.

  “What is it then?”

  “Only the season finale of Lost is on at eleven. But it’s alright, I’ll ca
tch the repeat on Friday.”

  Pete smiled, shook his head. John was becoming ever more reclusive as time went on: embedded in his apartment with the twin crutches of cable television and marijuana propping up his solitary existence in this strange, strange land. Faced with John’s obvious reluctance to be there, Pete suddenly felt the pull of a very old urge: to entertain the kid. Put on a show. See if he could still generate amazement. To this end, after his second caipirinha in quick succession, Pete looked around theatrically, conspiratorially, then dragged his chair forwards. “I’ve never told anyone this story before, but now seems as good a time as any to spill the beans…”

  With that he was off and running, finding his flow. He spoke of a bungled robbery, a bent copper, a private jet to Spain. He painted a delicious picture for John to enjoy in all its outlandish detail. It helped that Pete was nervous, trying to bury this fact, eager to distract himself. This meant that he did not stop at this one tale. It led him over into another. And then another one again. In the process Pete talked up a blue streak, raking over the past, writing his own testimonial. He leapt from year to year, recounting a great many of his former feats, spurred on by John’s reactions to them. The kid was leant forward hungrily, his mouth falling open every so often, prompted by sheer wonder; hanging on every word as the secret history of Liverpool was revealed to him in detail, illuminating the only city in the world which would ever hold his interest. And it pleased Pete greatly to cause this reaction, and to reignite that fervent adulation he had prompted many times before.

  Antonio the waiter returned to the table again to replenish their drinks. “A caipirinha for Pete, and a beer for John,” he said in English, placing the drinks down.

  “Bloody hell, Antonio’s started using your name!” Pete replied. “That means you’re an old hand now, lad. That makes it official.”