Crusaders

by Richard T. Kelly

  ‘Oh, come on, this is just – can we get a serious –?’

  Todd, though, had taken to doling out his literature among the seated.

  ‘Take a sheet and pass it on there. Have a look. Some of it’s Register of Interests – not all, mind. No, he’s not doing badly for an opposition man. Consultant to TronTech Computer Systems. Where are they from, eh? Crooksville, Ohio, how about that? Twenty-five grand a year he gets for that …’

  Pallister was looking to the sound desk, making cut-throat motions, but the burly technician appeared as if wilfully hard of hearing. Indeed the room had taken on a murmuring attentiveness, a sense of their own money’s worth that Gore had not seen all day, and from which Todd seemed to draw sustenance in the manner of a stand-up comic.

  ‘Now, what do you suppose TronTech get for their money? You think they won’t come knocking if he’s ever in office? “Computer in every classroom”, indeed. I’ll bet they’ve a fancy for a nice fat contract out in Crooksville.’

  It was becoming, Gore supposed, a security situation. But where was the security? Blonde Tessa was by the entrance and throwing fraught glances into the corridor. Susannah was out of her chair.

  ‘Then you see he gets ten grand off Hart-McGrain oil, you know that Mr Salter, don’t you? Another ten off Hook Millard lobbyists in London. And – oh yeah – his researcher’s a lad on secondment from Hook Millard and all. How’s that work? Well, you might want to look at who he speaks up for, when he bothers to speak – all his early day motions, whose interests concern him.’

  Susannah was attempting to budge down the row in the midst of which Todd was holding court. Gore no longer knew where to look.

  ‘Aye, I tell you, they all want a piece of this man. They’re buying shares in him.’

  Now Susannah was tugging, wrenching, at his microphone arm.

  ‘Oh, and this lady here’s his spin doctor, another old hand from Hook Millard. And guess what? That’s her little brother sat up there on the platform. The vicar there, the little nodding dog.’

  The flush Gore felt in his cheeks was like a slap. Two large men in Blackwater uniform were at last bustling through the lounge entrance.

  *

  As they filed from the stage Gore believed he could see extraordinary tension in the MP’s mouth and across his broad blue woollen shoulders. Susannah darted to his side, and Gore heard the clenched exchanges.

  ‘I thought you had the accreditation in hand.’

  ‘He only nabbed some other bugger’s badge.’

  ‘Well, you’ll give the paper fucking war, right?’

  Now they were spilling out into the tight halogen-lit corridor – and there, appallingly, was Todd, alone and loitering, blithe and untroubled. Gore saw his sister hasten to step before her client, only for the MP to wave an irritated hand, a swatting gesture.

  ‘The spoiler, eh? Spoiling for a fight, are you?’

  ‘Martin, I’m not blaming you for trying to stuff your bank account, just be honest about it, man.’

  ‘Away and pour another drink, Paul.’

  ‘Only if you’ll join us, man. I’d always get one in for an old comrade.’

  ‘Get knotted, you snide prick.’

  ‘Aw well now, you’re getting personal, I might take offence …’

  Pallister seemed ballistic now, a hair’s breadth short of squaring up.

  ‘Come on then, let’s have it. Let’s have you. Let’s see it.’

  But Susannah, yet more incensed, was grabbing and pushing, a little dynamo, exerting enough pressure to hustle Pallister past and out and away toward the lobby. Gore gave Todd a second glance, but the stare he received in return was loaded only with jubilant enmity.

  *

  He made his way down more dim and ashen-mauve corridors, past more monochrome photography of moody cranes and pulleys and derricks, until he found Room 102. Within, the wounded man sat on the bed over a bottle of red wine, in his creamy shirt and loosened crimson tie. ‘You’ll have a glass with me, eh? Go on. Sit down.’

  Gore remained on his feet. The long drapes were half-closed against the view to the Tyne, blue light was exuded by a broad flat television tuned to the local evening news. One of Todd’s glaring news-sheets lay semi-crumpled atop the queen-size duvet. Rock music blared from a micro-system. Pallister set down one remote control and clicked at another, fruitlessly. ‘Here, would you kill that for us and all? Bloody racket.’

  Gore did as he was asked, and took up the glass that was poured. The MP was studying the screen, his eyes seeming to burn then cloud over. An item on ‘Forward to the Future’ was introduced, an anodyne script that Gore imagined his sister might have approved. He glimpsed himself in one brief shot. Otherwise it was Pallister who dominated the highlights package, foursquare behind a lectern, making emphatic shapes with his hands. The man himself grunted, and the bulletin passed on to a report on the installation of CCTV cameras on an estate in Wallsend. Pallister did not attend to his guest, continuing to take unsmiling swigs from his glass. ‘Tough on crime. That’s bollocks for starters. You can’t be tough enough. Not if you did it all day long. Our hands are tied. Everyone’s in somebody’s pocket, you never get to the top. Just streams running into the same cesspit. You can’t shut off one and say you’ve drained the swamp.’ He snapped off the television at last. ‘The underworld, John. Always there. Never goes away. When you think, but – it’s almost got a right. Being as it’s half the world. Half of me, half of you. It’s got to have its day and all. Hasn’t it? I don’t have to tell you that, do I? Can’t tell you anything.’

  Pallister was looking at him fully now and some buried fierceness was wresting to the surface. Gore wondered if there wasn’t something inadvisably inciting about his very presence.

  ‘Susannah said you wanted to talk?’

  ‘Aye. Sit down but, for God’s sake. Stood there like a bloody teacher.’

  Gore lowered himself unamenably to the opposite edge of the bed.

  ‘No, I’ve been thinking about that sermon of yours. When I came to your place. I mean, most of it was balls, no disrespect. But that one thing you said – how the revelation didn’t happen in the past? Once and for all time?’

  Gore nodded.

  ‘Right. So let me ask you this. See if you find yourself changing your mind on things – is that cos you’re a slippery sod? Or is it cos you’ve kept your eyes open? Seen how the world changes?’

  ‘It depends, I suppose, on the circumstances,’ said Gore, and sipped his Merlot.

  ‘Huh. Put it this way, then. Do you believe in one law, everlasting? Or is it about the greatest good of the biggest number? I ought to know, see. I marked enough fucking essays on it.’ He picked up Paul Todd’s rap sheet between finger and thumb, chuckled without mirth. ‘One thing I’ve learned, for sure. You only get one go in politics. You have to show one face, say one thing. If you look like you’re in two minds on anything – you get murdered. But the trouble with the other, see – you get held to things.’ The sheet, discarded, fluttered back to the bed.

  ‘I don’t know that I follow you, Martin.’

  ‘Whey, man. You know what I mean, you heard it. These self-righteous arseholes, drives me spare, they think they own the Party. Think they bloody invented it. It’s all talk, man.’ He was on his feet and grasping for the bottle, voiding it into his bulbous glass. ‘That’s the brilliant thing about talk, you never have to do owt about it. Just keep singing the old tunes. Preaching the old sermon on the mount.’ He stood over Gore, his rugby physicality reasserted. ‘So, what? It’s not quite to your liking, how we do things? Well, somebody has to actually do it. You reckon you’ve not got skeletons in your closet? Fine, you stand where I am for one fucking minute, see how you like it.’

  This towering fury ought to have been daunting, Gore knew. And yet he felt himself calm, deliberate, in no mood to be browbeaten. ‘I think the charge on you, Martin, is not what you do or say but what you’re paid for it.’

  Pallister se
emed to absorb the blow. It stilled him momentarily, at least. ‘We all serve somebody, John. Tell you this much, you’ll not hear me saying socialism’s a dead loss just cos it’s died a bit in me. Better men than me’ll keep flogging it. Good luck to ’em. Me, I’ve come to other conclusions. Based on my experience. And I wish a few others would look a bit harder at themselves before they line up to stick the fucking knife into me.’

  He seemed replete, or emptied, and sat himself once more upon the bed, at a remove from Gore. ‘Now come on. We need a proper think now, you and me. About today. The board, the project. What we’re going to do.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t know what?’

  ‘I’m not sure any more that I should be part of this. What do you need me for anyway, Martin? I don’t see what use I am to you.’

  ‘John, the whole – I mean, my purpose was to be of use to you.’

  ‘Why, though?’

  ‘Why?’ The MP’s dejection appeared to have hit a record low.

  ‘And there was me thinking we got on.’

  ‘No, really. That’s hardly an unreasonable question. Yes, we’ve talked. I don’t know you’ve listened to anything I’ve said. Either that or you feel just this contempt for it. But it seems like you’ve already made up your mind.’

  ‘And you haven’t?’ Pallister stared at Gore, then down to his crotch.

  ‘Whatever, then, fine. Tant pis, piss off, whatever you want, John.’

  And Gore did not tarry. He stepped out into the corridor, there to find Susannah pacing, phone in her palm. Without pleasantry she rolled her eyes, pressed past him, and let the door swing hard behind her.

  Book Five

  MELINDA

  Chapter I

  VENDETTA

  Thursday, 14 November 1996

  ‘Who called, Steve?’

  ‘I telt you, man, one of wor lookouts.’

  ‘Aye, who but?’

  ‘What’s it to you, Shack man? D’ye hear me askin’ you how you got the motor? It’s nowt to dee wi’ ye.’

  ‘Fuck off, man, I’m sat here, aren’t I? That makes it wor business and all.’

  Shack was driving them, true. But were his hand not on the wheel – were the night and the Coast Road not rain-lashed and treacherous – then Stevie might have lunged from the back seat, seized him by the throat, jabbed a thick digit into his eye. Anything to silence the yack, jam the squawking frequency. This blinded resolve to cavil and quarrel every last little matter had gotten far past a joke.

  ‘I’m telling ye, Brian, ye divvint need to knaa every fuckin’ thing.’

  ‘And I’ve telt you a million times, man, it’s not just about you.’

  ‘Pack it in, will ye’s?’ Thus Simms, riding shotgun, as if to bang heads and boss matters. But the stern look on his big backward face was worse than comical. Stevie heard the rattle in his voice.

  ‘Fuck off, Simms, man, I’m talkin’. Naw, this is my business, Steve, you make it my business.’

  Business, yes. A lovely business this was, sat thighs-pressed-to-crotch in a cold stolen car on a piss-rainy night, haring down the Coast Road toward Whitley Bay, nursing an ex-copper’s pistol in a bag. Stevie stared out of the window at Battle Hill and Holy Cross flying by in the dark. Memory came unbidden of something read years before in Black Belt magazine, some kung fu master preaching how he learned to moderate his heartbeat, depress his body temperature, by pure exertion of will. It had sounded like bollocks, but richly fantastic bollocks, in the near-supernatural style some martial arts guys had when it came to talking about fighting. And Stevie had come to picture himself as one who could store great drums and barrels of unease about his internals, shifting them from chamber to chamber when needed – head to heart to gut to lower intestine. Tonight, though, he was not in possession of the full grip on himself. A kind of heartburn was throttling his chest, reflux like hot ashes in his throat.

  ‘That’s it, man, there.’

  A revolving sign on metal legs declared the turn-off to the left for some god-awful retail park forecourt. Shack eased down, turned the wheel. A quiet night – no more than a dozen vehicles scattered unattended around a space for several hundred, this at a few minutes shy of nine o’clock. Looming up on all the four sides were darkened hangar-sized outlets bearing household names – Gala Bingo, Asda Dales, Carpet Rite, Argos. Tucked into the furthermost corner, with pedestrian access to the road, a glaringly lit windowed hutch, BARZINI’S RESTAURANT & TAKEOUT.

  ‘Park us close, man, just not so the windows can see wuz.’

  ‘Aye, I knaa.’ Wincing, Shack cruised them to a prudential standstill and killed the engine. They sat for a moment, Stevie mulling over the grim vantage from his back seat. It was in much the same sort of innocuous all-hours supermarket lot that he had waited on Fitzy’s hooky pal to deliver him his package. A sort of a joke, it seemed, that car parks should be so integral to the process of putting men into the ground.

  There was movement outside Barzini’s. ‘There’s the lad,’ he murmured, a scrap of reassurance. The lad was muffled and bulky in helmet and waterproofs, loitering by his bike-stand and the restaurant dump bins arrayed at the side of the hutch. Unstrapping his headgear, he gave a thumbs-up to the car.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell,’ muttered Shack. ‘Mackers, aye?’

  Ignoring him, Stevie wrested his hold-all up to his lap – old faithful, his cracked and careworn orange Adidas gym bag, fifteen years of service. He unzipped it and withdrew the swaddled package, unwrapped the oily cloth, lay bare the dulled blue-black barrel. Shack stared fixedly ahead but Simms fidgeted and stole glances.

  ‘Simms, man, gan on in there, will ye? Do us a quick recce.’

  ‘What do ah do?’

  ‘Just look out the gadgies for wuh, where they’re sat at. Order summat, y’knaa, pizza or summat, then get yer’sel back out. Be cool about it, but, aye? Divvint hang about.’

  Simms slammed the door behind him. Rain was thrumming still, smearing itself across the windshield, the floodlights of the forecourt flared out and blurred orange amid the inky darkness. Stevie wrapped fingers snugly round the pistol grip. Shack’s gimlet eyes were on him now.

  ‘Browning, is it, aye? Is it the high power?’

  ‘What you sayin’?’

  ‘Is it the high-power pistol? Did he tell you, the copper? The trigger, did he say it was double action?’

  Stevie grunted. ‘I just slide this top bit, right? Then I cock it, then I’m just firing then, aren’t ah?’

  ‘Your clip but, is it full?’

  ‘Aye. He telt us it was.’

  ‘Did you check, but? Aw, give us it. Give it here, man. Yer safety on?’

  Stevie conceded. He hadn’t wanted any meddling – had wished for the device to stay primed just as it had been passed to him. But Shack knew well enough how to rattle his cage.

  Shack fiddled and finicked, then there was a click and the magazine dropped from the butt into his palm. He pondered its contents. ‘Aye, them’s yer soldiers …’ Reinstating the clip, he shifted the weapon from hand to hand below the dashboard, then retracted its slide and cocked it. ‘Not bad. That old cunt in Dunblane used one of these, y’knaa? Mighta had a couple on him, even.’

  Stevie accepted its safe return.

  ‘You’ll want to use both hands, mind? It’ll kick on you. It’s not so big but there’s a canny bit power in it.’

  Shack and his own square-inch of expertise. Would he speak once more of Darwin and Goose Green? Or the one about the ‘execution’ on the road out of Zagreb, back in his bodyguarding days? But Simms was bundling back in, wrenching the door shut.

  ‘Aye, it’s them. Them uns from the Gunnery, aye? It’s them.’

  ‘All three of ’em?’

  ‘Two of ’em.’

  ‘Two. Where?’

  ‘Right up at the front windie.’

  ‘How many’s in? In the whole place.’

  ‘I never counted, man.’

  ‘J
ust guess, what you saw.’

  ‘Aw, there’s maybe ten? A dozen? Few twos. Aye, and like a family?’

  ‘Fuck it,’ Stevie winced. A leaden heaviness had settled on him, about his shoulders, in his thighs, his boots. Shack shifted his whole body to face backward. ‘Steve, man, see them bullets he give you? They’re all soft-tips. You hit them cunts wi’ those and they’ll not even gan out the other side.’

  ‘If I hit ’em.’

  ‘Just fuckin’ get right up to them, man, I’ve telt ye. Both hands.’

  ‘Aye I heard you.’

  ‘Steve man, fuck sake – you wouldn’t still be walkin’ if they thought like you think. Your bairns’d be goners and all. Right? You hear that, Steve?’

  ‘Shut yer hole, man.’

  *

  He was walking now, covering tarmac at least, cleaving the air with purpose, the rain easing, the black wool balaclava hot on his face, and it was all getting to be out of his hands and into the realm of timing and how his luck was laid out. He rounded the rear of the brick hutch, past the bins, and saw the back door yawning open, pinned back by another bin, just as promised. He pushed on and in, no let-up, passing straight through the kitchen, some little short-order cook exclaiming in his direction yet instantly shushed by another.

  Through, to the fluorescent light of the restaurant and round a serving counter – call it a dozen bodies right enough, Simms wasn’t wrong – and before him a lass in black skirt and white rayon shirt, blithely bearing beer bottles and glasses on a tray. He fell in step behind her. And there they were, clear as a stain under the lights, he had heard them before he saw them – Chief Numpty, yes, and the little Squirt, their feet in the trough by the long window, their shiny coats over their chairs, great plates of meaty pizza spread before them.

  You, Stevie, are fucking dead.

  He was bearing down, and the people now staring at him and ceasing their chatter vanished from his mind as from his eye-line. He reached into his leather, wrapped fingers round the Browning grip.