Booze and Burn

by Charlie Williams

  ‘Dunno,’ I says.

  ‘Not you. PC Jones, how many lives he got?’

  Jonah unfolded his arms and rubbed his face, saying: ‘Wha? Who?’

  ‘Cat. How many lives he got?’

  ‘What cat?’

  Big Bob didn’t seem happy. He looked up and started turning his head.

  ‘Nine, Chief,’ says Plim. He didn’t even have to rub his face.

  ‘Thank you, PC Palmer,’ says Big Bob, relaxing a bit. ‘What were I sayin’?’

  ‘You can’t see how he can get around it this time, Chief.’

  ‘How many lives you got?’

  I looked at Plim and waited.

  ‘Hoy,’ shouts Big Bob at us. ‘I’m talkin’ to you.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I says. ‘Well, let’s have a look here…how many’d the cat have?’

  ‘Nine,’ says Plim.

  ‘Nine, eh?’ I says, rubbing me chin, which were getting right beardy. ‘Nine, eh…’ I says again. But it weren’t like a question this time, it were me thinking aloud. I’d always hated grillings with the coppers, and this here were typical of one of em. Always asking hard questions, they was. Why couldn’t they start easy for once? ‘How’s that, then?’ I says.

  Jonah looked at Plim. You could hear him thinking Aye, ow’s that then, PC Clever Bollocks? I could see trouble between them two later on, down the pig club.

  ‘I’ll answer that,’ says Big Bob, making Plim and Jonah and meself jump. ‘Cat’s got nine lives cos he’s lucky. You been lucky and all, Blake. You been this lucky,’ he says, showing how thick the folder were. ‘But that’s that. No more luck. What happens when a cat lost his nine lives?’

  Jonah looked at everyone else, then goes: ‘Dies, don’ he?’

  ‘No.’

  Jonah went red-faced and an inch shorter. Plim smirked at him. Big Bob leaned forward on the table, making it creak. ‘He goes to Mangel Jail,’ he says. ‘And he stays there.’

  I dunno what I did then but them two by the door came over and held us down. All I knew were the inside of my head, which were just then showing us the Deblin Hills at sundown and the view south from the crest of the East Bloater Road. Then you got a view of Hoppers on a good night, punters laughing and drinking and that. Last of all you had Hurk Wood, clocked from overhead like you was a crow. I’d never been partial to Hurk Wood, as you well knows, but the thought of never seeing her again were too much for us. It were Big Bob who slapped us this time.

  ‘Hoy,’ he says. ‘We’ll have less o’ that. Where’s yer pride, eh? Call yerself a man?’ He went back round the table and sat on his chair, making it groan. The hills and the wood and the Hoppers and the East Bloater Road faded into grey fog. Then lines drew emselves up and down the fog until it were a big stone wall going up and along and backways and frontways forever and ever amen.

  Goodbye, Royston Blake, says Mangel.

  ‘Goodbye, Mangel,’ I says back.

  ‘Wossat?’ says Big Bob. ‘Anyhow, as I were sayin’ there, it’s Mangel Jail for you, and let that be an end to it.’ He got up, winked at us, and pissed off out the door. The light were off when I opened me eyes. I closed em again.

  I dunno how long, but some while later I noticed that the light were on, except different this time—less harsh and more shadowy like. I went to flex me arms and found I could lift em. I stretched me legs and all and they went straight out in front of us. In fact no bit of us was strapped down now. So I got up.

  There were summat on the table, summat that hadn’t been there before. Or perhaps it had been there and I’d not been paying heed. It were a length of rope, wound up tightish.

  I picked him up and shook him loose. About four or five yards he were, clean and sort of white and never used, by the looks of him. Not a bad bit of rope, all in all. I got hold a bit in each hand and yanked. Strong and all. Tow a motor if you wanted it to. And if I’d found it out there on the street I’d have took it home with just such a usage in mind. But I weren’t out on the street. I were in here.

  And I were headed jailward.

  I sank to me knees, the thought of it all coming down on us like a sack of rubble chucked off a roof. But I didn’t stay there . Crying only makes matters worse, and ain’t right for a feller to do anyhow. I blinked the tears back and held my head high.

  And noticed the hook in the ceiling.

  Heavy duty one, it were. Iron. Half inch thick and curled right the way round. I could have swore it hadn’t been there before. Fuck knows how they could have put it there short notice, mind. I could see how they might have dumped a rope on the table but not put a hook up there and plaster around it. I looked down at the rope, which were still in my hands. I looked at the hook again, three foot overhead. I stood on the chair and pulled down on the hook with me thumb. It were firm all right. Then I got started on the rope.

  Five minutes later and I had a noose hanging off the hook. If I tippy-toed on the chair, I could get me swede through it. And that’s what I done.

  Don’t you shed no tears, mind. Not over me anyhow. It’s Finney you ought to cry for.

  ‘Soz, Fin,’ I says, tightening the rope.

  Who’d save him from Doug now? Even if Doug let him go, he’d be fucked. With me gone there were no one to look out for him. But I couldn’t let that stop us. He’d be fucked anyhow, what with me going to jail.

  ‘We had some laughs, eh?’ I says, trying and failing to think of some of the laughs we’d had. I wished I could recall some, mind. I wanted to end it all on a laugh. You dies laughing, you dies happy. I ain’t never heard no one say that before, but it sounds all right, don’t it?

  ‘Heh heh,’ I says. ‘Heh.’

  I kicked the chair from under us.

  I hanged.

  ‘Gggggnh,’ I says.

  18

  THE OUTSIDER WITHIN

  Steve Dowie, Crime Editor

  [This article was found on Steve’s desk after we heard the sad news of his passing on. We’re putting it here as a tribute to the man and his work. So here’s to Steve Dowie, the crime editor who fell foul of the thing he loved writing and editing and going on about most.]

  Malcolm Pigg, Chief Editor

  Someone answers the telephone at Hoppers, but it is not Nick Nopoly. At least he says it is not him. He will not say who he is. All he says is ‘He ain’t in.’

  So Nick Nopoly will not speak to me. Nor will he return my calls. That does not leave much for me to write about.

  Being an outsider, little is known of his background. Rumours abound. Some say he is a gangster in hiding, like his predecessor James Fenton. Others say he is a deserting soldier, an escaped lunatic, the messiah…a combination of the above. What he did before slipping into Mangel, only he can know. What he has done since arriving here we can try to piece together.

  For write about Nick Nopoly I must. The trail leads to him and goes no further. And since he will not tell me about himself, I can only write what I have found out.

  Early sightings of him date back five or six months. He was first noticed hanging around the Forager’s Arms, alone at first but soon never without Nigel Oberon and Roderick Slee, both residents of Norbert Green and better known respectively as “Nobby” and “Cosh.” (Oberon and Slee have appeared on these pages several times in the past in connection with violent and sexual offences. They escaped conviction for the most serious of these, which involved the disappearance of a young girl fourteen years ago.) It is at the Forager’s Arms—a pub notorious for its indulgence of underage drinking—that Nopoly sowed the first seeds of ‘Joey.’

  With his intimidating retinue, Nopoly gained unhindered access to Mangel’s roughest corners, including the amusement arcade. Here he established a network of dealers who took the drug and sold it wherever young people could be found, including schools. It was not long before Joey achieved the saturation it enjoys today.

  Where Hoppers fits into all of this remains a mystery. Drugs can be sold anywhere in Mangel, and already are. Tu
rning a pub into a drug den is equivalent to turning a profitable business into a loss-making one on paper, since the main interest is no longer legal drinks but illicit drugs. But Hoppers is no ordinary pub. Unsavoury as its history is, Hoppers is the natural hub of Mangel social life. Swapping its sturdy, mature, beer-drinking clientele for youthful yet moribund addicts seems a move calculated to destroy the very fabric of Mangel society.

  ‘Fffffh fffng,’ I says.

  Come on, I were thinking. Fucking hurry up will you? But it were getting hard to think now. The rope were squeezing the life out of us, but it weren’t half taking its time about it.

  Then it all ended.

  It were like summat snapped inside of us and I were thrown out into the sky. I flew through the clouds like a plane or a bird going very high. Then I landed hard on summat, which I took to be the place where deadfolk goes. It weren’t a bad place, so far as I could see, but the floor were hard and I smacked my head on it. And it were cloudy all about so I couldn’t see nothing anyhow. Someone were lobbing rocks at us and all, one of em hitting my head and a big one landing on me poor hand.

  I’d changed my mind now and decided it weren’t such a nice place after all. And to be frank with you I wished I’d held on for a bit and gave Mangel Jail a look. Especially when I heared summat coming.

  I were thinking it must be the rock-lobbing feller. Or perhaps it weren’t a feller at all but a monster or summat. Whatever it were, I didn’t like the sound of him, shouting and bawling like that. I crawled off the other way and hoped for the best. I could hear more than one of em now, grunting and roaring. I felt about for me monkey wrench, but I were wearing some other feller’s clothes now and it weren’t there. A big hand got hold of my ankle. Then the other one.

  I screamed.

  I know screaming’s for birds but I weren’t in Mangel now, were I? I were in fucking Deadfolkland or summat, and normal rules weren’t applying. ‘Aaaargh,’ I says, wondering when they’d chop me legs off. I knew they would. Getting back at us, them monsters was, for all the bad things I’d done in life. It were useless to fight. I couldn’t beat monsters, could I? And there were nowhere to run.

  I lay still and tried shutting it all out.

  That’s a trick I’d learned as a youngun. You goes right back into your swede and tells yourself them arms and legs ain’t you, that gut ain’t yours, and the arse back there is just a cushion or summat. Works a treat when you gets it just right, no matter how hard your old man’s pinging you. Stay like it for hours, you can, even blocking out all the verbal if you goes back far enough into your swede. That’s what I done, blocked out all the roaring and rough handling them two monsters was giving us. Weren’t till one of em put a fag in me gob and lit it that I came out for a peep.

  Big Bob, wernit?

  And the other two.

  ‘Woss you doin’ here?’ I says. Then I worked it out for meself:

  I weren’t in Deadfolkland no more.

  Big Bob looked at us like I’d just pissed in his mam’s kitchen sink. Plim and Jonah was looking up at the ceiling. I did and all. There were a big hole up there and a big dark empty space beyond it.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ I says to meself, realising what must have come to pass. A fucking miracle, it were. ‘Well, lads,’ I says, puffing on the smoke and rubbing me sore neck where I’d hanged meself dead just now. ‘Ta for that.’

  Jonah put a cup o’ tea in front of us and got a broom from outside the door. Plim were already picking up big bits of plaster.

  ‘Right, then,’ says Big Bob, sweeping some dust and crap off the table with his big hand and putting another folder atop it. This one were black. ‘JOEY,’ it says on the front in big letters not faded at all. ‘Remember that cat we was on about?’

  ‘No,’ I says.

  He didn’t like that. His little gob tightened up like a belly button. I hadn’t meant to piss him off, mind. I just couldn’t think what cat he were on about.

  ‘I’ll spell him blunt for you, shall I? You been saved. Rescued. Brung back from the dead.’

  I looked up at the hole in the ceiling, shaking me swede, and says: ‘I know.’

  ‘You don’t know,’ he says, rubbing his face. ‘You dunno the half of it. Seems you’ve got friends in high—’

  ‘I does,’ I says, coughing a bit cos Jonah were just then kicking up a lot of dust around us with his broom. ‘I does know I been brung back from the dead. I were in Deadfolkland, right, an’ you and the lads reached in and hoiked us out through that hole up there, savin’ us from them monsters an’—’

  ‘Shutup and listen for once,’ he yells, banging his big fists down.

  ‘You ain’t in the clear, you know.’

  I tapped him on the shoulder and says: ‘Fag.’

  He flinched, the motor swerving.

  ‘Hoy, watch yer steerin’,’ says Plim to him.

  ‘I says “fag,”’ I says, tapping him on the shoulder again.

  Jonah turned his head sideways. ‘Fuckin’ get off us.’

  ‘Hoy,’ Plim says again. ‘Pack in flobbin’ on us, will yer?’

  ‘I never flobbed on you.’ Jonah turned into the Wall Road and put his foot down.

  Plim wiped the flob off his face. ‘You bloody did.’

  ‘Fuckin’ never.’ Jonah glared in the rear-view at us. ‘He shoved us.’

  ‘I fuckin’ never,’ I says. ‘Fuckin’ did.’

  ‘Giz a fuckin’ fag.’ I dangled me paw over his shoulder.

  After a bit of nothing Plim says: ‘Give him a bloody fag, will yer.’

  ‘You give him a fag,’ Jonah says, brushing us off his shoulder.

  ‘You bloody knows I don’t smoke,’ says Plim. ‘Give him his bl—’

  ‘All right. Fuck sake.’ Jonah rummaged around and lobbed one back at us. I squinted at it in the light spilling in from the street lamps. It were quiet out. My watch says half midnight. The fag were a benny. Every fucker were smoking bennies these days. ‘Fuckin’ bennies,’ I says.

  ‘You complainin’? Giz it back, then. Come on.’

  ‘I ain’t complainin’. I’m just sayin’, ain’t I? Giz a fuckin’ light, eh.’

  ‘Woss you sayin’?’ He lobbed the lighter hard over his shoulder, just missing us and pinging off the back window.

  I found it on the back ledge atop an old woolly jumper. ‘I’m just sayin’ “fuckin’ bennies”. Crime, is it, sayin’ “fuckin’ bennies”?’

  ‘You cheeky fuckin’—’

  ‘Bloody shut it, the both of yer.’ You could tell Plim were losing it a bit, wringing his hands and rubbing his fat thighs like that. Never could handle folks rowing, him. ‘Blake…’ He craned back to face us, wafting fag smoke away from his fat head. ‘You knows what to do, right? We drops you on the corner an’ you goes round back. Sure you don’t want us to get you inside?’

  ‘I telled you—I works alone.’

  ‘“I works alone.”’ Jonah taking the piss there.

  ‘Aye, I fuckin’ does work alone. I don’t need no bum-boy mate like you does.’

  Jonah braked hard, throwing Plim out of his seat and smacking his face on the screen.

  ‘You bloody twat,’ says Plim to him. He were still losing it but not so bad now. You could tell the knock had done him good. He stopped rubbing his face and turned it to me. ‘All right, what do you do once inside?’

  I shrugged. ‘Go for a piss.’

  ‘Come on, Blake.’

  ‘All right all right.’ I couldn’t help it. Plim and Jonah was a couple of pissy-arse fuckers from school. Me and the lads used to walk all over em. I couldn’t believe how low I’d sunk, to be working with em on a job.

  A fucking police job.

  ‘I goes inside and hides,’ I says. ‘No lights cos we’re takin’ em by surprise, like. When he comes in, I does him. I does Nobby and Cosh an’ all.’

  ‘You don’t have to do Nobby an’ Cosh.’

  ‘Aye, but Big Bob says it don’t matter, right? Says the to
wn’d be better off without them two.’

  ‘You gets Nopoly first, though, all right?’ Jonah was staring at us in the rear-view. ‘Make sure you gets Nopoly first.’

  ‘Why? Who cares who I does first, if I gets your one?’

  Plim were confused and all. ‘Aye, PC Jones. Why?’

  ‘Cos…cos fuckin’…you know, cos no matter what happens after you fires that shot, you’ve done the job. Right? You get one o’ them others first an’ they might get you.’

  I were clocking him in the mirror now. ‘My job, though, ennit? An’ I does it my way. All right? I’m the pro here.’ Cos it were true. How many folks had they topped?

  ‘Just get Nopoly first. I’m tellin’ you…’

  ‘All right, PC Jones,’ says Plim in a nice soothing voice. He says to me a bit gruffer: ‘Then what?’

  ‘Dunno,’ I says. ‘I fucks off home, I suppose.’

  ‘Wrong. You comes down Strake Hill and meets us in the car park, bringin’ the weapons in that holdall. Right?’

  ‘Aye, all right.’

  Jonah says: ‘An’ you stay away from that bar.’

  ‘Woss you sayin’? Sayin’ I can’t do a job proper?’

  ‘I’m sayin’ don’t get pissed while yer waitin’.’

  ‘Who says I’m gonna?’

  ‘Just stay away from the fuckin’ bar.’

  ‘Yeah, fuck off.’ I hated Jonah. You’re meant to feel sorry for tossers like him who can’t help emselves,but I fucking hated the cunt. I don’t reckon he liked us, neither.

  ‘Right,’ says Plim, rubbing his fat little paws. ‘Here we are then. Blake? Good luck.’ He stuck a chubby paw out to us.