The London Pigeon Wars

by Patrick Neate

  ‘Look…’ This was Freya and she sounded pompous. ‘It's a simple deal. You've got the guns and we've got the money. If you don't like it, we'll take our business elsewhere.’

  Kush smiled broadly. ‘Yeah? Motherfucker! Check you out. What's your name, darling? I'm Kush.’

  He held out his hand towards her. She looked disconcerted and backed off a step. ‘Freya,’ she said.

  ‘You don't want to shake my hand, Freya? That's a shame. I like a woman who talks tough, know what I mean?’ He looked at Karen. ‘Eh, Kaz?’

  Tommy began to whimper and then cry and then it took just seconds to explode into a full-blown tantrum. Emma tried to shush him as she rocked him back and forth but his screams seemed to tear the night like it was a thin satin sheet. The sound wound the tension tighter and then tighter again.

  ‘Do you mind shutting your baby up?’ Kush said. ‘Fuck, Kaz! What are you trying to do to me?’

  ‘Let's just make the exchange. I know you've brought them and I've got the money right here. Last time I saw you, you said you'd help me out. You remember? “Anything I can do.” That's what you said. So did you mean it or not?’

  ‘All right! All right! You trying to make me feel guilty? You know I'm a man of my word.’

  Karen knew her ex-boyfriend was enjoying every second of this; revelling in the control. His cue-ball head wrinkled and flattened as he played out every little game he wanted. She glanced at Tom. His hands were deep in his pockets and he was staring at the ground, nudging a pebble with his foot. Emma had walked a little distance away and was urgently cooing to her baby. Karen caught sight of her face and it was haggard, desperate. Freya looked, frankly, terrified. To their credit, both Kwesi and Tariq were trying to maintain some kind of front; albeit with a lot of Dutch courage and not much conviction. And Murray? He was still hovering at the back, his face completely shadowed by the hood. What was he playing at? She could have used a bit of support.

  Kush opened the rear door of his car on the driver's side and pulled out a black sports bag. He laid the bag on the bonnet and unzipped it. ‘Sigs and a Delta,’ he said. ‘Quality hardware.’

  Tom shuffled forward and peered inside. There were three guns, all right. Two of them were dark, dull and threatening but the third was a shiny silver, the kind of thing James Bond might carry. Tom felt like he should say something but he didn't know what. In the end it just slipped out: ‘Nice.’

  Kush glanced at him with unconcealed disdain. ‘You ever shot a gun?’

  Karen, relieved and eager to get this over with, took the envelope of money out of her handbag and handed it to Kush. He took it without looking at her. His gaze was still trained on Tom, who was doing his utmost to meet it.

  ‘What's this?’

  ‘Six hundred.’

  ‘Six hundred? What for?’

  Now he turned to her and her heart plummeted. She saw a familiar flicker in his eyes – an aggression, a macho thrill – and she suddenly knew it was all about to go wrong. ‘Like we agreed,’ she prompted.

  Kush nodded, opened the envelope, checked its contents and slipped it into his coat pocket. ‘Right you are, Kaz,’ he said. ‘Trouble is, things just got a lot more pricey.’

  For a moment nobody said anything; silence, punctuated only by Tommy's occasional whimper. Then Karen managed, ‘What?’

  ‘Look at it from my point of view.’ Kush looked up at the sky and rolled his fat neck. ‘I didn't know you were going to bring the world and his wife – let alone his kids – now, did I? I mean, think about it: you turn up on your own and there's not much risk for me, you get me? “My girl Kaz isn't going to grass me up.” That's what I thought. Though, judging by your expression, I might've had that wrong too. And then you turn up with all these motherfuckers? Well. You can see my concern. I don't know what you're going to do with these shooters but, judging by the state of you lot, it's fifty-fifty to go pear-shaped. And that's a whole lot of motherfuckers who recognize my boat, you get me? You're asking for what you might call a considerable leap of faith and that costs a considerable amount of money and, let's be frank, I reckon you lot can afford it.’

  ‘Look…’ Karen began. Then, ‘Sorry… But…’

  ‘In fact, to be honest with you, I'm quite tempted to walk away from this shit right now. Six hundred notes? Not a bad night's work. You can call it my consultation fee and put it down to experience, know what I mean?’

  Karen desperately looked around her friends – Emma, Freya, Kwesi and Tariq. Surely one of them would say something? But they all looked as bewildered and defeated as she felt. She didn't look at Murray because, by now, he was standing so far back that he was right at the fringes of her vision. She didn't look at Tom because she knew he was shit in situations like this; or, rather, she knew he was shit in situations that, compared to this, were a walk in the park (and not a car park at that). After all, for all his stated desire and attempts (both successful and failed) to look after her, he was, essentially, a coward.

  And yet it was Tom who spoke; Tom, who'd failed to stand up to Kush once before, who'd just come out of therapy, who saw this, however absurdly, as yet another Moment of Truth (they were coming thick and fast). ‘We've paid you the money so just give us the fucking shooters…’ he said. ‘Guns.’

  Kush's mouth slowly peeled into a wide grin. ‘Motherfucker!’ He annunciated the word precisely, loaded with admiration and irony. ‘Aren't you the surprise package? So why should I do that?’

  In spite of himself, Tom found that he was slowly moving forward. He felt a bizarre detachment, the same kind of lightness he'd experienced a few days previously after his last session with Tejananda, as if he were floating. In this moment of abstraction, he considered it somewhat ironic that, at this potentially most definitive of moments, he should feel so overtaken by events. ‘Because that was the deal,’ he said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Because you're not going to take our money.’

  ‘No?’ The grin had thickened into a scar on Kush's face. ‘And why's that, then?’

  ‘Because I'll take that bag off you myself.’

  Karen said, ‘Tom! Don't be stupid. Forget it.’ And Freya, who'd lost any semblance of composure, stretched a squeal into a word that sounded something like ‘Please!’

  ‘Yeah? You going to be a hero?’

  Kush opened the flap of his coat and placed his right hand on the butt of the gun that stuck out from the top of his jeans. It was a perfectly executed movie moment and Karen knew that Kush loved it. But she knew too that he wasn't to be messed with; he was way too unstable to be trusted to behave rationally when he had a weapon in his pants. She hissed, ‘Tom!’ but he was still, slowly, approaching the gangster. Tom glanced at her sideways and she saw a flash of panic on his face. It was as though he couldn't stop himself, as though his feet were on coasters. He felt – or was this just informed by location? – like a runaway shopping trolley heading for a smash.

  For an instant, Kush looked uncertain, like he didn't know what to do next. But he did have the gun, after all, so he pulled it out and trained it on Tom's forehead. That stopped Tom, all right. And Freya let loose a curious strained scream like a holed balloon and Kwesi exclaimed, ‘Goodness me!’ like the privately educated son of a diplomat that he was (because, as Karen observed some months later, in extreme circumstances people generally revert to type).

  Freya's whines set the baby off again, too, and now Kush, for all his confidence, was beginning to feel more than a little rattled. He turned to Karen, though his gun was still ready to pop a hole in Tom's head. ‘What you want them for?’

  Karen saw no reason to beat around the bush. ‘It's a bank job,’ she said.

  ‘A bank job?’ Kush exclaimed and he started to laugh again. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. ‘What are you doing to me, Kaz?’ he spluttered.

  The gun still raised, he made a move towards the bag. It was time to get out of here. Easy money but now it was time to go. But then he saw t
he geezer strolling towards him from the back of the group. Of course he'd sussed him earlier but he hadn't given him too much thought since he hadn't said anything and was just hovering in the shadows. Now, however, this geezer was approaching and he dropped his hood and Kush said, ‘Fuck!’ and automatically shifted the gun's aim and backed away a step or two.

  ‘You all right, china?’ Murray said.

  Karen looked between them. She didn't know what was going on. She knew that, with the state of his face, Murray's appearance was somewhat gruesome. But it wasn't like Kush had never seen cuts and bruises before and, besides, in this half-light Murray didn't look nearly so bad. Nonetheless she admitted that there was something in Murray's manner that made ‘fuck’ seem like a reasonable response. It was as though Murray had flicked a switch and turned on the full force of his personality and it was as dazzling as the bathroom light at three a.m. There was an almost tangible calmness about him; his movements seemed to have a swaggering rhythm of their own, his gaze was like glue and it can't have just been her imagination that granted his whole being some kind of aura of perfect otherness, as if he were a touched-up photograph. In fact, she realized that she hadn't seen this full extent of Murray's charisma for years; certainly not in this time he'd been among them. She realized that all the flashes he'd shown – at Freya's party or Kwesi's gig, say – had been no more than that, flashes; like tracer fire preceding the main assault. Because this? This was different.

  Kush said, ‘Long time.’

  ‘True, true,’ Murray smiled. ‘How long's it been?’

  ‘Must be ten years. Looks like you took another beating.’

  ‘What goes around comes around, china.’

  ‘What's that supposed to mean?’

  Murray shrugged. He was now closer to the sports bag than Kush himself and he was looking inside. Again Kush had his eyes pointing one way and the gun another. Again he was staring at Karen and he looked strangely disconcerted. ‘You said you weren't seeing this motherfucker!’ he said. ‘That day we met. I thought you were with that posh cunt.’ He spat the words like pellets.

  Karen was completely bemused. ‘What?’

  ‘That day we met,’ Kush said again and then his eyes darted back to Murray. His voice took on an odd mollifying quality. ‘It's Tom, right?’

  ‘No, china. Murray,’ Murray said. ‘And these are replicas.’

  ‘What? What you talking about?’

  ‘I said these are replicas. I used to work in a toyshop, china. You think I don't know toys when I see them?’

  ‘They're reconditioned. They shoot bullets. What more do you want?’ Then to Karen. ‘After all these years, Kaz. You still seeing him?’

  ‘Seeing who?’ She didn't know what was going on.

  ‘You sure it won't blow my hand off when I fire it?’ Murray was reaching into the bag. Now Kush fully turned his attention to Murray and jabbed his gun repeatedly at him, like it was an extension of his index finger. ‘You keep your hands to yourself!’

  Murray was smiling. Smile number two: the power smile that lets you know exactly who's in charge. ‘I've got to check the merchandise, china.’

  ‘I said keep your hands up!’ Kush was just a couple of yards away from him and his expression was stretched with a panic Karen hadn't seen before. His hand was flexing, tight around the grip of his gun. The others were frozen. Freya's face was a cartoon of terror. Tariq and Kwesi were dumbstruck like kids in front of B-movie horror. Even Tommy was silent, clutched tight to Emma's chest. Tom murmured, ‘Murray’, and just for a second Murray glanced at him and the brow above his good eye jumped up and down as if to say, ‘Are you ready for this?’

  Murray's right arm hadn't moved an inch. It still hovered over the sports bag. ‘Why are you so surprised to see me?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ Kush's gun hand was quivering. ‘Are you fucking crazy? Just back off.’

  ‘I thought we were doing a deal. I just wondered if you knew.’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘Knew what you did. Ten years ago. I mean, I can see it in your face, china. You've been trying to forget. But you know, all right.’ Murray leaned forward and dipped into the bag.

  ‘No! Just back off. Back the fuck off.’ Kush's voice cracked and leaped an octave.

  In that frozen second, Karen thought he sounded like a pleading child in the grip of a playground bully. In that frozen second she felt the collision of forgotten terror at his hands and visceral overwhelming hatred. In that frozen second, the only thing that moved was a dark object that dropped through her line of sight so slowly it seemed to flicker like cine film.

  It was impossible to tell which pressed the fast-forward button – the impact of the dead pigeon crashing on to the BMW's windscreen or the gunshot that rang out an indistinguishable instant later. Time suddenly accelerated into a chaos of images that later, in private, they each reassembled into their own personal collage. There was Freya, screaming and hysterical and being shushed by Tariq. There was Emma, sitting on the Tarmac, rocking the baby as she rocked herself, her face washed out and pallid. There was Murray, stock still with the gun hanging against his thigh. There were Tom and Karen checking Kush's corpse. When they turned the body and saw the gory mess of the face, Karen gasped and Tom covered his mouth. God knows what this reconditioned replica fired but it certainly wasn't a clean bullet. There was Kwesi running to the edge of the car park before dropping to his knees and spewing acrid whisky puke all over the place. Then, remembering some newspaper story he'd once read about a criminal conviction based on DNA in vomit, he took off his jacket and began to desperately mop at the puddle.

  Each of their individual collages contains some of these snapshots and not others but one image unites them all. Because they all looked up when they heard the cacophony above their heads and saw the living blanket of pigeons tear itself apart and fly off alone, in pairs and groups to north, south, east and west and up and down.

  Some months afterwards, when Tom propounded his theory of farce, he probably had his own collage of these moments after the shooting unrolled in his mind's eye: Freya's unruly hair wet with snot and tears, the stomach-turning, bloody offal where Kush's right eye used to be, Kwesi's jacket dripping pungent puke and the ubiquitous pigeons. But he didn't admit it to Karen, of course.

  If he had, he might have been surprised to hear her come up with an admission of her own. Because her explanation of Tom in terms of his white-collar background (though it certainly had roots in her experiences of college and, in fact, every day thereafter) was distilled that very same night.

  Specifically, Karen discovered that for all her friends' uselessness in the face of real danger and for all their tendency to fret about the rights and wrongs later (even if only in terms of abstract questions), their thick-skinned capacity to cope in the immediate aftermath was breathtaking. Sure, there was a couple of minutes of tears and tiffs, retching and rebuke, but thereafter the level of no-nonsense practicality and quickfire justification was impressive and spoke, she thought, eloquently of the twirtysomething, middle-class trick of locating yourself at the very centre of your moral universe.

  At the height of her hysteria, Freya shouted at Murray, ‘You shot him! Oh god! You shot him!’ and they all turned accusing eyes in his direction.

  But then Murray said, ‘He pulled the trigger first. His gun jammed. What was I supposed to do? Wait for him to have another go?’ And they all accepted that explanation without further question.

  Tom said, ‘Right. That's right’, and none of the rest knew whether this was a confirmation of Murray's version. And none of them asked.

  Tariq said, ‘So what do we do now?’

  There was barely a pause before Emma replied, ‘Do? We don't do anything. We get out of here. No one's seen us. No one knows we're here. It's just another dead drug dealer.’

  Tom did briefly try and protest: ‘Hold on. Somebody's died.’ But he was drowned out by Freya: ‘Emma's right. Let's go.’ He looked to Karen but
she just shook her head. She couldn't pretend to feel something she didn't.

  Kwesi had found a Sainsbury's carrier bag and dropped his sick-sodden jacket inside. He said, ‘What about evidence? What if we've left evidence? Tyre tracks. That kind of thing.’

  Emma, who was probably the coolest of the lot of them, managed a chuckle. ‘A Mazda and a Volvo parked outside Sainsbury's? Big deal.’

  Tariq went to the car and took a pair of driving gloves from the dashboard shelf. Slipping them on, he strode purposefully across to the corpse and, crouching over it, rummaged through the coat pocket until he found the envelope of money. Straightening up, he handed it to Freya in a businesslike manner. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now we can go.’

  In fact, the only clue that they'd had an evening in any way out of the ordinary came in their refusal to meet Murray's eyes. This wasn't about whether they blamed him or not, merely that he was the main connection (aside from the body, of course) with what had happened. So they couldn't look at Murray any more than they could look at Kush's bloody wound.

  Only when they were getting into the cars did they even take notice of what Murray was doing and, with their chatter, but for the merest hint of solemnity, you might have thought they were leaving a pub. Emma was taking Kwesi and Freya. She was fretting about finally getting Tommy into bed. He'd be a nightmare tomorrow. Kwesi had asked to sleep on the sofa. Freya wanted to call a cab from their house. ‘I'm a businesswoman these days,’ she said.

  Leaning on the passenger door, Tariq saw Murray holding Kush's black sports bag. He shook his head. ‘You're bloody joking, aren't you?’ Then they were gone.

  Tom had already started his engine. Karen called to Murray, ‘Come on, Muz. We should go.’ Her tone was gentle. He had his head tilted back, contemplating the black and empty sky.

  ‘I'll make my own way, china,’ he said. Did she really hear his voice break? Did she really see his Adam's apple bob in his throat?

  ‘Come on, Muz,’ she said again.