SuperJack

by Adam Baron

  Yes, this was really happening.

  There were some croissants in my fridge, the kind you make yourself out of a roll, which you see in the supermarket and buy and then realize how little like croissants they taste, until six months later when you buy them again. I made four and ate them all, listening to the news on Radio 4. They had it now. The woman recently reported to have been having an affair with married footballer Jack Draper had been found dead, in her flat. A spokesman for the Met with a voice flatter than most parts of Holland, confirmed that they were treating the death of model Alison Everly as suspicious, but would give no details of how she had died. I could understand his reticence. When pressed the spokesman admitted that no arrests had yet been made and when pressed further he told the reporter that the police had not spoken to Mr Draper about the incident but were, understandably, very keen to do so. They had not, however, managed to locate him yet.

  On my way down to King’s Cross I passed at least five newspaper boards flagging Alison Everly’s murder, all with Draper’s picture on the front. It had snowed again, but already the inch or so of white on the ground was salted and trodden, blackened by tyres and exhaust fumes. Everything seemed very distinct from everything else, as though the city weren’t quite put together properly. I didn’t know if it was the snow or my state of mind. The sky was a thick heavy grey, dirty as a mail sack.

  I looked up from my watch to see Sally’s Renault among the snarl of traffic inching its way towards me along the Pancras Road. When she was level she pulled up onto the broad pavement outside the pub, and gave me a short wave. Then she drove round the back. Within a minute she had reappeared, minus the car, and she apologized for being late.

  ‘You look like you’re waiting for this place to open.’ She nodded towards the pub behind me.

  ‘The last few days I’ve had, don’t be surprised. I’d happily sit in there for ever.’

  ‘That bad, huh? I thought you sounded a little tense, shall we say, on the phone last night. Why don’t you come downstairs and tell Auntie Sally all about it?’

  ‘Thanks. I never had an aunt like you, though. All four of mine had moustaches. Which you don’t.’

  ‘No, thankfully. At least not yet. And if I was your aunt, then a certain evening last year would have been even more of a mistake, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, blushing slightly, ‘I see what you mean.’

  Sal unlocked the outside door and I followed her down the steps towards the gym. The occasion she was talking about had been eight months ago. It was the night that for various reasons the dam of our friendship had broken and we had ended up in bed together. We’d both been equally surprised by this, Sal because she’d had no physical contact with men for some time, and me because I’d never dreamed I’d end up pulling the clothes off my boxing coach. We’d both worked hard to wall the dam up again pretty quickly after what had happened but the knowledge of what we had done still hovered around us sometimes, like a patient flyweight looking for his chance.

  I waited as Sal unlocked the door at the bottom of the steps and then followed her into the empty gym. I’d never been there in the daytime and was surprised at how quiet the place was. Our footsteps and voices rang hollow and tinny in the space that was usually so full of noise. Sal flicked on the master switch, flooding the room with a hard yellow light, and I looked round the square room, smaller-seeming with no one working out in it. I saw how the carpeting was old and worn. The ring in the centre looked shabby. The scuff marks on the floor and the sag of the ropes gave it a tired feel, as if it had had enough. The walls that I’d thought were cream were actually an old yellow. The place needed voices, colour, movement, the squeak of boots on canvas, Sal’s voice belting out above the beatbox at warm-up. I found it vaguely distressing to be there, like visiting the house you grew up in, and I wished I’d asked to meet Sal somewhere else. But it was too late. I followed her into the office where she bent down and turned the switch on a gas heater.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Instant, or I can put the machine on if you want fresh.’

  ‘I can wait.’

  ‘For caffeine? You’re a strong man. Normally I need it now now now. But I’ll wait with you. Sit down.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  I took my jacket off and sat on a heavy, old-fashioned office chair with a cracked leather seat, watching as Sally opened a tin of coffee and found some filters. My fight coach and friend was dressed in a sleeveless fleece, a black roll neck and crisp blue combat pants, all snug enough to show that she still did a fair amount of training herself in between putting me through the wringer. Her hair was down, a straight sweep of black running to her shoulders, laced with the occasional embroidered strand of silver. On her left wrist she wore the heavy silver bangle I’d found at Spitalfields in December and given her for Christmas. I’d never seen it on her and it looked good. I wondered if she’d done that on purpose.

  I’ve known Sal ever since wandering into the gym one wet October night five years back to ask her some questions about a missing kid. Back home in Dundee the kid had been a member of an amateur boys’ boxing club, and I’d thought he might have been drawn to boxing gyms in London, and Sal’s was the third I’d tried. As it turned out it was the things that were happening in the boys’ club that had driven the lad away from Dundee, so he was hardly likely to go in search of more of the same. But Sal had helped me out in various ways and we had become friends. To begin with I just wanted somewhere to train, and I spent a month or so simply using the machines and the free weights. Then Sal put some gloves on me and suggested I had a go at the bag. For tension relief, nothing more, she assured me. But it wasn’t long before I was eating up Ali biogs, doing more sit-ups per week than I’d done in my entire life, getting better at skipping than a ten-year-old girl and learning different ways not to get my teeth knocked out. At the time I had no idea why I’d taken to the sport so fast and five years later, while I’m a good deal better at it, I’m no nearer an answer. The adrenalin rush is higher than tennis, say, but maybe my love only continues because nothing bad has happened to me in the ring. I’ve never seen any negative consequences, to me or anyone else. I’ve never even had my nose broken, something I suspect Sal of urging a couple of the boys to remedy as soon as possible.

  Sal unzipped her fleece and turned the heater down. She knew I wasn’t there to gossip but somehow it didn’t seem right to begin until we were both set with our coffees in front of us. As the machine heated up she perched on the edge of the table and asked me how I was getting along with Shulpa.

  I saw her in the frame of the door again, her face frozen. I hadn’t thought about Shulpa. What might happen if she got involved in this. They already had Nicky’s mother’s address and Shulpa was a lot nearer. The thought stopped me. I knew I had to keep her well clear.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Fine.’

  ‘And you’re over the other one?’

  I smiled. Sal is a remarkably frank woman. When she has a thought you don’t have to be David Copperfield to know what it is. She’ll tell you. I thought about what she’d asked me. I saw a pair of green eyes, shining like wet grass. I blinked them away.

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘Yeah. Really. I keep thinking that I can’t be, it hasn’t been long enough, not after everything we went through. But I think I am.’

  Sal raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. ‘Do you ever see her?’

  ‘No. I keep expecting to run into her, visiting Luke especially, but I never do. I think she’s stopped going.’

  ‘That’s a shame. She was lovely, really lovely. Do you want to meet her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘You could just call her.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know, Sal.’

  The coffee was dripping down into the jug and Sal washed out two cups. I was glad she didn’t go any further with her questions than she had. Sal had met the girl she was talki
ng about a few times and had told me before that she’d liked her. She’d never said it, but she wasn’t a particular fan of Shulpa, something which I tried not to let worry me, or add to the doubts I sometimes had myself. I knew that Sal had reservations about our relationship and I also knew that they were to a large degree based on Shulpa herself. Women tended not to take to my new love. But they also went further than that. Sally just thought that with Sharon I’d done that thing, that amazing thing they write a lot of books and make a lot of films about. She thought I’d found the person who was right for me. And if you’d asked me at the time I would have been the first to agree with her. But then I did that other thing they write a lot of books and make a lot of films about. Once I’d found her I lost her again.

  However much I wanted to change the subject I didn’t ask Sal about her love life. Sally’s husband died, what, ten years ago now, and she’s long since abandoned her attempts to replace him. Instead she puts her energies into running the boxing gym that was his passion and carrying on various aspects of the business that was his livelihood. Until now I’d never delved into that. It was an area of Sally’s life that, very early on in our friendship, we had both instinctively decided not to visit. I didn’t ask when I saw her break off from training to go into her office with the kind of characters who were always going to get picked out of a line-up, whether they were at the scene or not. I pretended not to notice if a couple of the boys happened to be missing from training, leaving Sally tense, overly buoyant, until they showed up later and she calmed down. I never judged her and I knew she didn’t think I did, and nor did it have anything to do with the fact that I used to be on the other side. I just, quite simply, didn’t want to get involved.

  That, however, was what I was there to change.

  * * *

  Sally pulled her fleece and sweater off and I wondered where to begin. When she turned back to me her face, smiling and soft before, had hardened to a seriousness, a weight I hadn’t often seen. It surprised me. It was the same face, broad, strong without being manly, the same full, generous mouth, each fine line round her eyes a chapter in her life story. But it was different. It was like stepping into the ring with the friend you’ve just loosened up with, looking at him behind his guard. It just wasn’t Sal any more.

  Sal folded her arms over a copy of the Sun, Jack Draper’s face on the cover. I moved my eyes away from it and set myself. It took me ten minutes to tell her what Nicky had got himself into. I tried not to miss anything out. I didn’t make it sound any better than it was, or any worse for that matter, just giving her the facts. The Maltese guy, buying the bar, the suitcase full of cash and the way I’d found him. Sal sat there all the while, her feet drawn up to her chest, nodding or shaking her head, looking straight at me. She knew Nicky, having met him a couple of times at the Ludensian, and she liked him.

  ‘It took me a while to realize that the charm was actually genuine, though,’ she’d said, after leaving the bar one night. ‘He’s got a very rare quality. He really does like people, doesn’t he? How many people do you ever meet in London who even ask you anything about yourself, let alone go ahead and listen?’

  Sal winced when I told her what they’d done to Nicky, the muscles in her face tightening, but she nodded at the same time, as if it was a natural event. A logical result given the events that had preceded it. It made me wonder something that had never before occurred to me – if she’d ever put in motion anything like that herself. I told Sally what the two guys had promised to do to Nicky’s mother and then what they said they’d do to him. Again she nodded, as if there was no other way it could go.

  When I’d finished she leaned forward, her lips pursed and her eyes narrowing.

  ‘So, who’s got it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I picked up my coffee and drained the cup. I was glad I’d waited.

  ‘But you intend to find out?’

  ‘If I can. That or find a new place to drink. And someone to drink with.’

  ‘And it was under his bedroom floorboards, you say? At the Ludensian.’

  ‘So he tells me. One day it was there, the next, nada!’

  ‘I hate to say it but I will. Fucking idiot. And these guys, they’re not going to give him any breathing space?’

  I shook my head. ‘Do you know them? A Maltese outfit?’

  A wary, worried look came over Sally’s face. We’d never spoken like this. Strange as it seemed to me, it was obviously weird to her too. I could see her wondering how much I assumed about what she did, how much I knew. I could also see her asking – does he really want to go there?

  ‘Of them,’ she said after a second or two. ‘They’re pretty quiet, normally, these days at least. They used to run Soho, in the 60s, strange as that might sound. They take a lot of money off their own – there are more Maltese in London than you’d think. They’re into smack pretty heavily, though not at street level, several bookies, a casino, probably somewhere behind the odd shady property deal here and there. They’re reputed not to take kindly to being interfered with – but you already know that. I’ll ask around and get more. As far as I know there’s only one Maltese outfit in London now.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problem. Is there anything else I can do?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I sat forward and nodded. ‘There is. There’s a very, very big thing you can do.’

  * * *

  Sal’s expression didn’t change for a long time. She pursed her lips.

  ‘Are you sure you want this?’

  ‘It’s the only way. I need to buy him some time.’

  ‘You do know it’s not just him who’ll be in debt, don’t you?’ There was an appeal in her voice that said, ‘Please, think about this.’

  ‘You’ll be connected to it, you’ll be in it too, Billy.’

  ‘I’m aware of that. But he’s my friend. I’m not going to sit back and let someone waste him.’

  ‘You know he could just mortgage his bar?’

  ‘In a week? And have the money ready? I’m going to get him to do that anyway. But for you, not for them. I don’t think they’ll wait for that. They’ll think he’s trying to chisel them.’

  ‘It’s a lot of money, Billy.’

  ‘And his bar is worth more, a lot more. He’ll raise the money on it, just not straight away. It’ll take a while.’

  ‘Even so. It’s a lot of money. I wouldn’t be able to get it all myself. Not this quickly. I’ll have to put it together, and that means there’ll be people other than myself who’ll want it back. And they’re not as nice as me, Billy, if you know what I’m saying.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘It’s not just the Maltese who play rough.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, Sal.’

  ‘I’d hate to have to come to you and ask you for money you didn’t have.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I can see why Nicky would need to – but you? Are you sure you want anything to do with this?’

  ‘I am. Nicky’s a wreck, he can’t do shit. Get me forty-five grand and it gives me three weeks to help him. Nicky will mortgage his bar and we’ll pay you back out of that, if I can’t find out what happened to the stash he had. The rest of the cash from the mortgage will go to the Maltese.’

  Sal thought about it but I could tell she didn’t like it. She was looking for a way to say no. But the business was fine, she couldn’t see anything wrong with that. It was me, being in it. She didn’t want me to cross the line my foot was resting on.

  ‘I wouldn’t ask, not if I could think of another way. There is no other way.’

  ‘And he’ll agree? To mortgage the Old Ludensian? He won’t like it, not after building it up the way he has.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘he definitely won’t. But I don’t see that he has any choice. This way, if I can’t get the money back, he might lose it, everything he’s ever worked for, paying these guys off. But that’s okay. The other way he keeps his bar. He just loses his mother, then
the back of his head.’

  Sally let out a long breath and nodded. She lifted her shoulders, pretending she was simply thinking figures, cash flow, whether the deal made financial sense to her. She knew she couldn’t persuade me.

  ‘It sounds okay, I suppose,’ she said eventually.

  I sat back in my chair, relieved. Relieved and excited in a way I couldn’t understand. I had a tight feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was in it now. I felt an instant and intense connection to Nicky, as if the rest of the world had faded away, like two guys on horses in a John Ford flick. I thanked Sally and asked her when I could have the money.

  Sally told me she’d sort something out soon and then we sat, trying to pretend that I hadn’t just become a name in her little red book. We talked about this and that. Sally’s arms were folded over Jack’s face but she didn’t mention Draper, having no idea I had anything to do with him. We were a little more like we usually were but Sal was still distanced from me. I think she wanted me to be sure I knew I’d crossed the line. I did know that but I hoped that in three weeks’ time or less, I would be able to some degree to step back over it again. The atmosphere stayed brittle. There was now another fighter hovering in the air between us, but this one a little more deadly.

  ‘Why are you so keen to help him out?’

  ‘I told you. He’s my friend. Naturally I want to help him.’

  ‘Of course. But there’s helping, and doing this. Why take it all on yourself?’ I didn’t say anything. ‘He must have other friends.’

  Again I was silent.

  ‘Don’t tell me you blame yourself!’ Sally laughed and I looked away from her.

  ‘That’s ridiculous. And you know it.’

  ‘I should have stopped it.’

  Sally’s chin went towards her throat. ‘Your friend chooses to be a prize jerk, how can that be your fault?’

  ‘I should have known,’ I said quietly. ‘No, I did know. I assumed Nicky thought more of me. I assumed he trusted me enough to let me in. But he didn’t. And I left it two whole weeks without making him tell me.’