I turn to look at him, removing my shades so that he can see my eyes.
‘I’m going to bring him back.’
‘You’re going to…’ Confusion and indignation give way to desperate hope. ‘How?’
‘That’s my concern.’
‘I don’t understand. Who are you?’
‘I’m in a position to help, that’s all. I can’t say any more.’
‘And what’s in it for you? What do you want, money? How do I know you’re not part of this?’
‘I’m not. And I don’t want money. But I do need two things from you.’
‘What?’
‘First, that you follow my advice and don’t tell the cops.’
‘Christ, I haven’t even told my wife yet.’
‘And second, that when I return your son, you forget I ever existed.’
‘If you return my son, I’ll remember you for the rest of my life.’
‘No doubt, but you don’t need to tell anyone, do you?’
In tracking kidnappers, knowing whodunit is far less crucial than knowing where they are, but if you know enough about the who, ascertaining the where is a straightforward – if sometimes necessarily messy – process. In this case, it is enough that I know the Balban brothers, not having much of a portfolio, prefer to invest their disposable income in concerns yielding a more immediate dividend: to wit, sex and charlie; or more accurately, hookers and charlie, given that the concept of Risto or Miko getting laid without paying for it is known in most cultures as rape. I know also that they are unlikely to be indulging in the former vice while they have a houseguest, so consumption of the latter is bound to increase by way of compensation.
I call several local suppliers, with whom I have, shall we say, a rapport, and run message-boy Miko’s description by them. Arturo at the casino (where he is by far the busiest dealer), confirms a portly source of much recent custom. I make a business proposition and we arrange to meet within the hour. Upon my instruction, Arturo rings the mobile number Miko gave him and offers him the drugs equivalent of a fire-sale: he tells him he’s having to get off the island in a hurry, and as he can’t take his stash with him, the whole lot is available at a knock-down price, for a limited time only. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Miko goes for it with all the restrained dignity of a piranha, agreeing to a meet early this evening. I pay Arturo the shortfall in the price arranged with Miko, plus a little more for his trouble, then head for a tool-hire outlet in the industrial area of town.
I watch Miko emerge from a BMW and approach the casino, walking as ever like a gorilla bursting for a shite. He’s dressed in an evening suit in an attempt to look inconspicuously respectable, but given that primate gait and his mangled features, the jacket and tie in between look sufficiently incongruous that he might as well be wearing a T-shirt stating ‘In-bred gangster trash’. I watch him enter the casino, then try his car door and find it unsurprisingly open. It’s a common conceit among these criminal also-rans that people – especially their fellow crooks – are somehow aware of how baaad they are and would therefore never dare fuck with their person or their property. I lie down in the rear footwell and prepare to disabuse Miko of both presumptions.
He returns inside ten minutes, giggling like a kid who’s raided the candy shop. I wait for him to place his prize in the glove compartment and reach for the ignition before spiking him in the neck with a hypodermic full of thiopentone. He reacts reflexively with a slap, thinking the jab is an insect bite, by which time the agent is already in his blood and my silencer in his face.
‘Sweet dreams,’ I tell him.
Miko awakes to find himself strapped securely to a steel table in a low-ceilinged, windowless room. We are in the cellar of my villa, in the hills overlooking the port, but Miko doesn’t know this. Nor does he know that he’s about to become nostalgic for the hospitality of those Russian soldiers.
He comes round slowly, groggily at first, but sharpens up very quickly as he takes in his surroundings and realises the circumstances. I remain behind him at the head end of the table. If he strains his neck muscles he can see me, but for now he is scanning the cold stone walls, bare but for cobwebs, and the ancient, dustbound workbench to his right. On it sit a rusted but serviceable vice, a power-drill, an electric paint stripper, a hacksaw, a boombox and a feather duster. His breathing accelerates and his arms test the restraints. I’m guessing it’s not the duster that’s spooked him, but some people do have awfully ticklish feet. You never can tell.
Predictably, he asks who I am, trying it in French, English and Spanish.
‘Let’s save time and just lay our cards down on the table, Miko,’ I say. ‘I want to know where Risto is holding the boy.’
‘How do you know my name?’
‘I know a lot more than that. Most relevantly, I know that I would be insulting you to assume you’d give up your brother without first undergoing some quite unnecessary prolonged and excruciating pain. Equally, you would be insulting me if you thought I’d believe anything you said before that, so allow me to treat us both with all due respect.’
His eyes flit to the workbench again and he swallows, a look of determination fixing upon his features. Then I wheel the gas tanks from behind the table, into his line of sight, which is when he starts to squirm and whimper. I flip down the visor on my protective mask and press ‘play’ on the boombox. The sound insulation here is fine, but I find screaming to be very disconcerting while I’m trying to concentrate. I fire up the torch as the music starts. It’s Neil Young and Crazy Horse live: not strictly my cup of tea, but I thought it appropriate, though I doubt Barry Sheen here gets the gag. The album is called ‘Weld’.
I stand back when I am done, waiting for Miko’s hysterics to exhaust themselves. There is a strong smell of burnt meat filling the room. I’ve read medical staff distastefully describing the odour of charred flesh, and I imagine it must be pretty rank by the time you get it down to Casualty, but right now it’s not a kick in the arse off barbecued chicken. The steel in the lower half of Miko’s left leg is now fused with my table. It’s not a very professional-looking job, and the table will never be the same again, but Miko is going to have a bugger of a time going anywhere without it.
‘So, Miko. Bearing in mind that you have a lot more metal in those legs of yours, do you feel like telling me where Risto is holding the boy?’
He is hyperventilating wheezily, but I can tell he is summoning the breath to speak. I lean closer and he tells me the name of a villa outside Fornel, about forty minutes away on the road to the airport. I get him to repeat this then reach for a drawer under the table.
‘Time for me to leave you, then,’ I say. ‘But before I do, one more thing. Don’t take it personally, but it struck me that you just might be lying, you know, maybe to buy yourself time so that you could forge an escape. No pun intended.’
I produce two syringes and lay them on the workbench where he can see them: one containing clear fluid, the other a pale blue liquid. I pick up the clear one and inject its contents into a bulging vein in his forearm.
‘This is dihydromertile silicate,’ I tell him. ‘It’s slow-acting, so you won’t feel anything for a while, but it will stop your heart and your lungs completely in about two hours. I know you weren’t paying much attention on the trip here, so I should let you know you’re in an abandoned farmhouse in pretty much the middle of nowhere, and I’m afraid there’s little chance of someone stumbling across you and coming to the rescue inside the time you’ve got left. However, on the upside, the blue syringe contains a neutralising antidote: monohydrate dosamide, and I’m going to leave it here. This is the deal: I go to Risto and, to avoid an unseemly squabble, I offer the location of this farmhouse in exchange for the kid. He saves you, I save the boy, and we’re all happy. Unless, of course, you’re lying, in which case I administer the antidote and we listen to Neil Young all night long.’
Miko closes his eyes, steadies his breathing, and in a broken whisper tells me where Ris
to really is.
The villa is set, rather picturesquely, in a sprawling vineyard, with high hedges thoroughly obscuring the building and its gardens from the road. As I turn into the vine-flanked avenue, the headlights of Miko’s Beamie flash across a curtained window. Thus prewarned, Risto emerges impatiently from the front door just as I pull up, silenced Glock out of sight beneath my open window. I shoot him in both legs before he can speak, then step out of the car and kneel on top of his writhing body, patting him down for weapons. I find a nine-mill and a stiletto.
‘Were you expecting someone else?’ I say quietly to him. ‘Anxious times when family goes missing, aren’t they? Where’s the boy?’
He looks up at me, his eyes barely able to focus for the pain. ‘Fuck you,’ he manages to splutter.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll find him myself. Can’t expect you to help me with a bullet in your balls, can I?’
I let the remark register for a second. He pulls a single key from his trouser pocket and lets it drop on the flagstones.
‘Thank you.’
I find the boy tied to a bed, gagged and urine-soaked. He flinches as I approach, and I remember I am carrying the Glock.
‘It’s okay. I’ve come to take you home.’
I remove his bonds. He looks uninjured but remains terrified. When he speaks, his voice is lower and more croaky than I expect, due to dehydration.
‘What about the bad men?’ he asks.
‘They’re very, very sorry. They won’t be doing it again.’
‘I want my mummy.’
I lift him up with my left arm, raising the gun again with my right.
‘I’m sure they do too,’ I say.
I carry him with his face rested on my shoulder, and tell him to keep his eyes closed until we are in the car. I fasten his seatbelt and turn on the engine, then climb back out again.
‘I’ll just be a second. I’m going to get you a drink, okay?’
The boy nods, still trembling.
I drag Risto inside the house and out of sight. With the lights on in there, he is able to get a better look at me. The surgery is still making me hard to place, but I oblige him with a lingering stare into his eyes until he recognises mine.
‘My God. You’re… you’re…’
‘Not any more. I’m just a concerned parent.’
I put four bullets in his brain then head for the fridge and grab a Coke for the kid. The boy obediently keeps his head down as we near the agreed rendezvous. I drive past the bench where we spoke this morning, then double back, checking the dimly lit sidestreets for any concealed cop cars ready to swoop in. It looks as though the father has been true to his word. He’s sitting there, looking expectantly at the Beamie, as he will have done at every other car that has passed since he arrived.
He springs to his feet the moment his eyes meet mine. I stop the car but don’t get out, merely reach back and undo the kid’s seatbelt. The father opens the door and hugs his son, both of them crying. I look away.
‘There must be something I can do for you,’ he says.
‘There is. I told you.’
When I get back to the villa, the first rays of sun are still loitering with intent behind the hills, the air pleasantly crisp before the heat starts to build once more. I drop Miko’s bargain charlie in my safe then go down to the cellar to find the man himself. The scene does not disappoint. He is dead, face-down on the floor, an empty syringe lying discarded beside him. As I anticipated, he has freed himself from his restraints through brute-strength and desperation, but with his leg welded to the table, was only able to reach the hacksaw, not the hypodermic. He has proceeded, therefore, to amputate his own foot, before injecting himself with weed-killer in a misinformed attempt to neutralise the harmless saline solution I gave him earlier.
It’s uncool to laugh at your own jokes, but I can’t help it. Maybe I’m getting whimsical now that I’m technically a generation older; and I know I wasn’t around for the punchline, but you have to admit it was a belter.
I go back upstairs, grab myself a cold one and sit outside to watch the sunrise. It feels like a new beginning.
I think I’m going to enjoy being good.
Playground Football
(The following article has been vigorously cut-and-pasted all over the web since being posted on www.blackandwhitearmy.com in July 2003, but as nobody’s clipboard had quite enough room for two little words – my name – I thought I should set the record straight by giving it an official home here. It was written in two parts for The Absolute Game during the early nineties, and remains arguably the truest work I have ever penned.)
Duration
Matches shall be played over three unequal periods: two playtimes and a lunchtime. Each of these periods shall begin shortly after the ringing of a bell, and although a bell is also rung towards the end of these periods, play may continue for up to ten minutes afterwards, depending on the nihilism or ‘bottle’ of the participants with regard to corporal punishment met out to latecomers back to the classroom. In practice there is a sliding scale of nihilism, from those who hasten to stand in line as soon as the bell rings, known as ‘poofs’, through those who will hang on until the time they estimate it takes the teachers to down the last of their gins and journey from the staffroom, known as ‘chancers’, and finally to those who will hang on until a teacher actually has to physically retrieve them, known as ‘bampots’. This sliding scale is intended to radically alter the logistics of a match in progress, often having dramatic effects on the scoreline as the number of remaining participants drops. It is important, therefore, in picking the sides, to achieve a fair balance of poofs, chancers and bampots in order that the scoreline achieved over a sustained period of play – a lunchtime, for instance – is not totally nullified by a five-minute post-bell onslaught of five bampots against one. The scoreline to be carried over from the previous period of the match is in the trust of the last bampots to leave the field of play, and may be the matter of some debate. This must be resolved in one of the approved manners (see ‘Adjudication’).
Parameters
The object is to force the ball between two large, unkempt piles of jackets, in lieu of goalposts. These piles may grow or shrink throughout the match, depending on the number of participants and the prevailing weather. As the number of players increases, so shall the piles. Each jacket added to the pile by a new addition to a side should be placed on the inside, nearest the goalkeeper, thus reducing the target area. It is also important that the sleeve of one of the jackets should jut out across the goalmouth, as it will often be claimed that the ball went ‘over the post’ and it can henceforth be asserted that the outstretched sleeve denotes the innermost part of the pile and thus the inside of the post. The on-going reduction of the size of the goal is the responsibility of any respectable defence and should be undertaken conscientiously with resourcefulness and imagination.
In the absence of a crossbar, the upper limit of the target area is observed as being slightly above head height, although when the height at which a ball passed between the jackets is in dispute, judgement shall lie with an arbitrary adjudicator from one of the sides. He is known as the ‘best fighter’; his decision is final and may be enforced with physical violence if anyone wants to stretch a point.
There are no pitch markings. Instead, physical objects denote the boundaries, ranging from the most common – walls and buildings – to roads or burns. Corners and throw-ins are redundant where bylines or touchlines are denoted by a two-storey building or a six-foot granite wall. Instead, a scrum should be instigated to decide possession. This should begin with the ball trapped between the brickwork and two opposing players, and should escalate to include as many team members as can get there before the now egg-shaped ball finally emerges, drunkenly and often with a dismembered foot and shin attached. At this point, goalkeepers should look out for the player who takes possession of the escaped ball and begins bearing down on goal, as most of those involved in the scrum
will be unaware that the ball is no longer amidst their feet. The goalkeeper should also try not to be distracted by the inevitable fighting that has by this point broken out.
In games on large open spaces, the length of the pitch is obviously denoted by the jacket piles, but the width is a variable. In the absence of roads, water hazards or ‘a big dug’, the width is determined by how far out the attacking winger has to meander before the pursuing defender gets fed up and lets him head back towards where the rest of the players are waiting, often as far as quarter of a mile away. It is often observed that the playing area is ‘no’ a full-size pitch’. This can be invoked verbally to justify placing a wall of players eighteen inches from the ball at direct free kicks. It is the formal response to ‘yards’, which the kick-taker will incant meaninglessly as he places the ball.
The Ball
There is a variety of types of ball approved for Primary School Football. I shall describe three notable examples.
1) The plastic balloon. An extremely lightweight model, used primarily in the early part of the season and seldom after that due to having burst. Identifiable by blue pentagonal panelling and the names of that year’s Premier League sides printed all over it. Advantages: low sting factor, low burst-nose probability, cheap, discourages a long-ball game. Disadvantages: over-susceptible to influence of the wind, difficult to control, almost magnetically drawn to flat school roofs whence never to return.
2) The rough-finish Mitre. Half football, half Portuguese Man o’ War. On the verge of a ban in the European Court of Human Rights, this model is not for sale to children. Used exclusively by teachers during gym classes as a kind of aversion therapy. Made from highly durable fibre-glass, stuffed with neutron star and coated with dead jellyfish. Advantages: looks quite grown up, makes for high-scoring matches (keepers won’t even attempt to catch it). Disadvantages: scars or maims anything it touches.
3) The ‘Tube’. Genuine leather ball, identifiable by brown all-over colouring. Was once black and white, before ravages of games on concrete, but owners can never remember when. Adored by everybody, especially keepers. Advantages: feels good, easily controlled, makes a satisfying ‘whump’ noise when you kick it. Disadvantages: turns into medicine ball when wet, smells like a dead dog.
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