SuperJack

by Adam Baron

  ‘A waste?’

  ‘Pointless. Mere physical gratification.’ She was looking in the mirror, and after unzipping the back she let her dress fall to the floor. All of a sudden I didn’t want to go anywhere, but she was only putting her bra back on. She smiled when she saw me looking. ‘Mmmm. Maybe later. If you’re a very lucky boy. In the meantime, I went to the Playroom last week. Why not there?’

  She was talking about the latest media hang-out, a club on Beak Street populated by jowly forty-something blokes in generic black Paul Smith suits and coke-thin women so insecure and miserable, the only way they can cope with life is by standing around in exclusive bars trying to make other coke-thin women feel insecure and miserable.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, racking my brains. The only places I could think of were illicit drinking holes below porn shops and dodgy cab offices, run by well-connected crack dealers who make sure there are only two spliffs and a lump of black around when a hundred policemen come charging through the door. Hardly Sunday evening with your girlfriend.

  ‘Why don’t we pick Nicky up from the Ludensian, take him along?’

  ‘Okay,’ Shulpa said, after a second or two.

  Shulpa was being slightly hesitant and I understood why. As I have mentioned, Nicky is, for want of a better phrase, my best friend. He also happens to be Shulpa’s elder brother. I find this situation slightly weird and I know that Shulpa does too, if only for the fact that while she tells me she loves her brother, up until now she’s never really hung out with him.

  ‘It feels odd,’ she tried to explain to me, when we first started going out. ‘Sitting in a restaurant with you and him. It makes me feel young, like a baby sister not a woman. I mean, I like the fact that Nicky’s my older brother. I’m not sure I want him to be my friend instead.’

  I understood how she felt but I hadn’t seen Nicky in a while and there was also the fact that he was a member of a place in town where we could go for a quiet drink, without having to elbow our way through to a bar and then shout to be heard over music so loud and monotonous you would think it had been invented by Ainsley Harriot. I hoped he’d be up for it, or else there’d be one or two people at Nicky’s Shulpa could talk to, and we’d end up staying there. I knew that the only way I’d be able to deal with the Playroom would be to drink too much and I had to be up by seven. Shulpa did too but, in the months I’d known her, I’d never seen her evince so much as a slight groan the morning after, even though she was one of those women who could, and very often did, put away more than a roomful of sailors on their last day of shore leave.

  Nicky’s bar is only a ten-minute walk but as we were probably going on after I thought we’d take the car. My old brown Mazda was slumped right outside and I opened Shulpa’s door for her and walked round the front. As we took the short drive down the Farringdon Road to Smithfield I glanced across at Shulpa, sitting in the seat beside me. The seat had a long slash across the back, caused by someone who had been keen to put a long slash in me, and on the dash in front of her she’d put the remains of the sandwich that had been my lunch, which she’d decided not to sit on. She hadn’t found a place for the still half-full styrene coffee cup that had been next to it, though, so she held that between her legs, trying not to spill any. Her legs themselves were very much in evidence, Shulpa having zipped herself back up into a tight black dress that was definitely not Sunday night and made it pretty clear to anyone who was interested that she was not coke-thin. Usually, quite a few people were interested.

  It’s only five minutes down to the Old Ludensian. Now that I thought of it I was glad we’d come out again but I was hoping we could persuade Shulpa that a drink or two at the bar with Nicky, Chet Baker and a couple of the staff for company was enough. Shulpa could flirt with Toby, the head barman, while Nicky and I stacked the chairs on the tables and then we’d sit around over a bottle or two.

  I left the Mazda double-parked at the widened-out bottom of St John Street, making sure that both the cars inside of me had enough room to get out. The night was mild for February and I left my coat on the back seat. I took the coffee cup from Shulpa, the sandwich off the dash, and put them on the roof while I locked up. There was a wastepaper bin on the pavement and I dropped both items into it, managing to get some of the coffee on my hands. I wiped them on the bottom of my jeans, turning my head to look towards the Old Ludensian across the broad, quiet street. It was about eleven by now and the lights were up. There didn’t appear to be many people left in the bar. While I was still wiping my hands dry Shulpa, who hadn’t bothered putting her coat on either, hugged her arms together and skipped across the empty street. I stood up and followed her towards the door, wedged open to encourage the last of the stragglers to make their way home. I was ten yards behind Shulpa and I expected her to keep on going straight through, but instead she stopped. She hesitated in the doorway and took a step back.

  Coming up behind her I could hear shouting. One man shouting over what sounded like a Macy Gray track. I moved past Shulpa and through the door. The full, bright lighting showed me there were only two customers left in the Old Ludensian, both standing a few feet back from the deep, mahogany bar. The bar runs fifty feet down the left-hand side of the room, facing a wide, treated-brick archway leading into a broad space filled with tables and chairs. I could see Toby, wiping tables in there. Nicky was standing behind the bar in front of the two men.

  It was one of the two customers doing the yelling. I was too late to get the gist of his argument because just then he finished his spiel. I was, however, in time to see his right hand go back behind his head. It went back quickly and came out quicker and only then did I see that he was gripping a bottle of beer in it, like a club. I only saw it in his hand for a second. It didn’t stay there any longer.

  I didn’t have a chance to move. The beer gunned out of the neck like a Catherine wheel as the bottle rushed towards Nicky’s head. For a split second it was sure to hit him but it tumbled over his shoulder, smacking into the mirror behind him. There was an instant explosion, an eruption of glass and beer that burst back from the mirror. It wasn’t just the bottle that had gone but the huge mirror too, with its heavy gilt frame. What followed was a shattering thunder, an avalanche caused in crystal, fragments crashing down, glasses flying, bottles going over, glittering shards of glass leaping back up from any hard surface like trout flashing from a running stream. When they were still, the whole place seemed awash with glass.

  Shulpa took a breath. I couldn’t see Nicky. A duck had taken him below the level of the bar. I was still frozen, my arms were encased in amber. It seemed like seconds. Then they broke free. Without thinking I moved quickly towards the two men, focusing on the one who had thrown the bottle, the nearest to me, checking him out to see if he held anything else. He didn’t, not that I could see. The men had both stepped back when the mirror went but now I saw the closest to me moving towards the bar. Neither of the men had seen me standing in the doorway but as I approached them they turned. To my right I could see that Toby had turned as well, a cloth in one hand and a bottle of spray cleaner frozen in the other.

  I stopped about three feet from the nearest guy.

  ‘Nicky!’

  I didn’t get a reply. He must have been right under the mirror.

  ‘I think we leave now. Out of the way.’

  ‘Nicky, you okay?’

  My eyes moved towards the bar where I could hear movement, followed by glass shifting, falling to the floor.

  ‘Hey, fucker, out the way. We’re leaving.’

  His voice was calm and insolent, with an accent I couldn’t place. I looked back to him.

  ‘I don’t think so. Not just yet. Toby, get upstairs and call the police…’

  I blocked the guy’s path as he came forward and he took a step back. He was about my height, sporting blow-dried hair, a shiny 80s-style double-breasted suit and loafers with a gold strap. He had a scar from a harelip covered by a thin, shaped beard which he probably thought ma
de him look like George Michael. He stepped forward again but again I moved in front of him. He shook his head as if I were very stupid.

  ‘I’ll give you chance, get out the fucking way.’

  He was running both hands back through his perm. I wasn’t going anywhere. I looked him in the eye so he’d know that.

  I heard another movement from behind the bar and my eyes must have strayed again because suddenly he was on me, filling the gap between us, getting me off balance before I could take a step back to steady myself. His hands were twisted into my shirt, trying to move me aside. I grabbed hold of his wrists and found myself right up in his face. He looked bored, inconvenienced. Beyond him I noticed his friend, noticed him for the first time. His friend was huge, a dark brooding block carved from Prince of Wales check and hair oil. His smooth brown face was big as a bell. I had a dull, plummeting feeling. I knew I had to deal with the chatty one pretty damn quickly and then look for something heavy. Very. The guy was twenty-odd stone and none of it was flab.

  Two hands were gripping hold of my shirt, trying to send me sideways. I let them do it, turning their owner with his own weight, shuddering him into the wide brick arch. It sent some breath out of him but he was still there. He tried a knee in the groin, but I turned my thigh against it. I dug a short left at his kidneys but only got his ribcage and he managed to get a butt in, his hands back on my shirt again, his hard, thin forehead connecting under my cheekbone. At any time I expected his friend to come on. I jammed the guy up against the brickwork again which loosened his hold, and then I pushed his wrists into his lapels. I got a good pivot in and wheeled him round, smacking his face up against the opposite arch. A rose of blood flowered from his nose. I forgot about him. I was looking round for his chum when a voice boomed out from the door.

  ‘That’s enough.’

  It was deep and clear and instantly commanding. I looked up. The big guy had simply walked by us, like a teacher past a fight in the playground, going to get his cane. He was standing in the doorway, his back to the night, practically filling the frame. It wasn’t a cane he was holding, though. He had Shulpa’s neck clamped tight in a hand the size of one of Nicky’s dinner plates.

  I kept an eye on George Michael and stepped back from the archway. Shulpa was frozen. She was looking at me. The guy’s other hand was round her waist, pulling her to him. Next to me the smaller guy turned to face me, not bothering to stem the flow of blood from his face. He took a step, halving the distance between us, glass fragments snapping beneath his loafers.

  ‘Forget it.’

  The voice from the end of the bar stopped him and though he looked resentful he turned towards it. Then he walked up to the bar. Nicky was standing behind it now, his face like chalk.

  ‘Wanker.’

  The guy spat at him through bloodstained teeth. Then he walked the length of the bar and out of the door without looking round. His friend stood for a second, taking a measured, hard look at Nicky. He still had hold of Shulpa’s neck, like a lion with a rabbit beneath its paw. His eyes turned to mine. He brought his other hand up from round Shulpa’s waist and there was a blade in it. He held it up until it found a light. Then he fanned his other hand open. He ran it slowly along Shulpa’s naked shoulder. She tensed as he moved it inside her bra. He bent and kissed the side of her neck, his eyes still fixed on mine. Then he took his hand away and stepped back slowly, out of the door, pulling it closed behind him.

  We all of us stood for a second. The mirror had crashed down on top of the stereo and the bar was silent. No Chet Baker tonight. Then Toby seemed to come alive, hurrying to Shulpa to see if she was all right. I went to her too but she was fine, just stunned.

  ‘Quick,’ I said. ‘The police.’

  I reached for the door, got it open and rushed outside. I saw the two guys, across the road, getting into the BMW I’d taken great care not to block in. I ran towards it but I was too late. I turned back into the doorway.

  ‘Tell them it’s a dark blue Five Series. Heading up St John Street…’

  Nicky wasn’t paying any attention to me. He was asking his sister if she was sure she was okay, and picking pieces of glass out of his hair. There was blood in it, staining the deep black like the feathers of a dead crow.

  Chapter Eleven

  He was breathing. I moved the phone from beneath his cheek, turned it off and put it in my back pocket. He was in the shadow of the van and I couldn’t see much. I didn’t know whether or not to move him but I had to see if he was bleeding, whether there was a flow I needed to staunch. I said his name a few times without getting anything back. As gently as I could I turned him over and got my hands underneath his arms.

  I had an image of Draper, his big, smug, semi-famous face telling me his name. If this had anything at all to do with Draper I was going to get to him before the police did and he wouldn’t be able to play with himself let alone with Villa. I braced my knees and took Nicky’s weight. He came to as I pulled him over to the garage. He let out a cry and made a feeble attempt to struggle until I told him who I was. I heard him begin to retch, and put him down. I helped him over onto his side, then his knees. He began to throw up. He was only wearing a suit, now ripped to shit, and I put my jacket round his shoulders as he heaved his way through it, hugging his sides as he did so. I waited, impatiently. It was still pitch black and I could barely make out his face, I had no idea what sort of state he was in. I didn’t find out until I’d managed to get him into the light of the garage, one arm over my shoulder. I half dragged half carried his tall, lean frame into the light and propped him up against the left rear wheel of his Audi.

  Now I could see him. He’d been given a very thorough makeover but it hadn’t made him pretty. He was minus some teeth, which explained the blood in his throat, and the rest of his face was chopped meat, complete with a knife slash running from his left eye straight down to his jaw. It looked pretty deep. I pulled off my fleece, then my tee-shirt, bunched it up and got him to hold it against the cut. I pulled my fleece back on and asked him for his car keys.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To take you to the hospital.’

  ‘Just get me upstairs.’

  ‘Uh uh. That cut looks bad. You’ll need stitches. Probably broke some ribs too.’

  ‘I don’t care. Just get me upstairs. I’ll go later. Billy, it’s important. I have to do something.’

  ‘Listen—’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Billy! I’ll go later, I will.’

  I let out a breath and helped him up. I wasn’t happy about it, but up in his flat was better than out there in the cold. I’d take a better look at him and then get him to Casualty if I had to beat the shit out of him again to get him there. With his arm over my shoulder we made it round to his building and I got him through the back door. I pressed the button, glad there was no one around as we waited for the lift. When it came we stepped in and I propped Nicky in the corner as we waited for it to rise to five.

  The lift in Nicky’s building is so slow it’s hard to tell which direction it’s going. Minutes seemed to go by. I spent them shaking my head, mad at Nicky, angry with him for getting himself beaten up, madder for refusing to go to hospital. But if I was mad at him, I was boiling with rage at myself.

  * * *

  After I’d run back into the Old Ludensian that night Nicky had refused to call the police. It was just a couple of arseholes, he’d said, standing beneath a newly exposed section of framed brickwork. They were just pissed arseholes and they were gone and that was all he cared about. I argued with him but with every passing second there was less and less point.

  ‘Please, Billy, I mean it, forget about it. Anyway, you sure you’re okay?’

  I was, though I knew I might have a shiner the next day, and so was Shulpa, though she did go very quiet. Toby fetched his fleece and she hugged herself into it, shivering nonetheless. Nicky’s head was still bleeding, though, so Shulpa took him upstairs to clean it. When they came back Toby and I were sweepi
ng up the jigsaw of glass from the floor and the bar top but Nicky wasn’t having any of that either.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Leave it. I’ll do it tomorrow.’

  I didn’t argue. Nicky pulled a bottle of Old Granddad from the shelf and took it to a corner table. Toby turned the lights down and we all had a good go at it. All the while I wanted to ask Nicky what had really gone on but I didn’t. At about two the whiskey was gone and then so were we, driving the short distance back to Exmouth Market. Shulpa stayed quiet. As we lay in bed, however, she turned to me, as soon as the light was out. We made love in a way we never had before. It wasn’t fun or wild, we hardly moved, but there was an intensity to Shulpa’s need of me, of my body inside her, that was almost frightening.

  ‘Fuck it away,’ she said. ‘Fuck it all away.’

  I held on to her, running a hand through her thick black hair. It was very dark in my flat and as Shulpa held on to me I stared at the shapes there, all gradually emerging like ships through fog. I saw the look in Shulpa’s eyes, from the other end of the bar. I saw a huge hand, clamped onto her breast, a steel blade up against the heart-shaped birthmark on Shulpa’s slim, pretty neck.

  * * *

  I got Nicky onto the sofa and handed him the phone. I sat on a chair across the spacious room and watched him. Nicky dialled, waited awhile and then began to talk. I didn’t know what he was saying because he was speaking Bengali. He went on for about five minutes, a conversation that got increasingly heated. He began coughing at one point and had to stop, and I could hear a very irate voice on the other end, shouting at him, yelling his name. Nicky finished his fit and carried on, repeating one phrase over and over. Eventually the conversation calmed down. Nicky replaced the receiver. Then he just leaned on the coffee table, supporting himself with one arm. He stayed that way, taking deep, painful breaths.