“So you’re seriously going to travel to a racecourse and not put up any money? You’re really going to do that?”
“Well, I’m not going to do it in such a way that anyone sees.”
“Oh, come on – what does that mean?”
A wide grin came to his face, one filled with admiration for his cleverness. “You’re going to put them on for me.”
“What?” I spluttered out half my drink. “Are you bloody kidding me? I can’t do that. They’ll see through it in less than a heartbeat.”
“Relax.” He placed his hand on my arm, peering up at me with his eyes as wide as he could make them. “I’ve scarcely ever been to Kempton. It’s a whole other crew down there. They probably work for your eyetie-taff friend in some way or other, but they don’t know me and they don’t know you. We’ll be fine.”
There was no way I could keep the scepticism from my face.
“I said relax, mate.” He laughed cheerfully. “I’ve got this nice little bonus your mate Luca doesn’t know a thing about. I kept it off the books of his accountant friends. If I can turn it into something bigger then I can get the bastard off my back all the quicker. My money will be my own again, Joe, I can buy back my car, pay you back some of the dosh you’ve lent me. You got to trust me, luck is on my side, I just know it!”
“What if it isn’t?” I asked. “What if you lose it all?”
He shrugged. “Then I’ll walk away. Don’t worry about it, though, I promise you I won’t get in any deeper. If things start going south, you can tap me on the shoulder and we can both walk away. Get some more drinks and drown our sorrows. What do you say, mate? Come on, Luca needn’t ever know we left London.”
It was a conversation we had late one Friday night, Archie plotting what he could do – what we could do – the following morning. The kind of conversation that should have been wiped from the memory after a couple more drinks. But once Archie had this idea in his head, once he was confident it would all work for him, there was no way he was going to let go of it.
Undoubtedly I should have sobered up and told him the next day how cracked I thought he was. That there was no way I was going to go hold his hand and act as his proxy at a bloody racecourse. But such was the thickness of booze in my bloodstream right then, it would have taken a week to get me anywhere near sober.
There are scientists who say that booze kills the brain cells. I was walking bloody proof of that theory right then.
Rather than going home and thinking better of it, I slept on Archie’s sofa and we started drinking again almost immediately the following morning. He took me to some dank watering hole at Elephant and Castle. The place was tucked away in a basement down a grey concrete alley, and I don’t know what time it shut or opened, or even if it shut and opened at all. It was perfectly possible it stayed open all the time, a permanent Venus flytrap to catch the most desperate drunkards in society. When we got there it was broad daylight, but the place had the look and smell of still holding on to last night’s dipsos, while shipping a whole new set in.
There were large canvas paintings of nudes across the walls, I remember that much. Duchesses from some former generation with their wigs all made up nice, beautiful necklaces and bare breasts rendered in brushstrokes. The kind of painting which would never make it out of the backroom of The National Gallery. I recall staring at them while still burping from last night’s booze, even as I helped myself to another. But despite the unwashed and dazed state I was in, I still recognised that it was probably a bad idea to go to the racecourse. My third drink of the morning in front of me, I even said as much.
“You’re such a worrywart, you know that?” Archie reached up and slapped my back. He didn’t just exude confidence, he positively vibrated with it. “What’s the worst that could fucking happen?”
The worst that could happen was that I’d realise Eden didn’t love me and the two of us would break up. That had already happened. So he was right – what thing more terrible could really happen?
Archie might have been in a ridiculously reckless mood that day, but so was I.
We filled a White’s Lemonade bottle with some proper Russian vodka and just about made the train we wanted from Waterloo. Then we rode in the first class compartment all the way down to Kempton, sprawled over the seats, our feet up as if it were a Sunday afternoon in our own living rooms. We talked loudly and joked crudely and waited for a guard to come and throw us out, but he never appeared. I don’t know if he was having a fag or a cup of tea elsewhere, but he never bothered us. We just continued to drink and be merry. That bottle was nearly empty by the time we got off into the drizzle at Kempton.
In his head, Archie had the whole afternoon sorted:
“That bastard McGuinness never goes to Kempton. It’s a well-known fact about the man. The bastard never goes to Kempton. Neither – as a pretty hard and fast rule – do any of the other bookies the bastard pals around with. It’s neutral territory, a safe place.
“Still, I got to be careful – obviously it pays to be careful – in case the wrong pair of eyes does manage to see me. Although, I got to say, that’d be a sign my luck has really sailed out to sea if that fucking happens. That’s why I need you to be here, mate. I can walk around and see all the horses, check out what kind of form they’re in, try to make use of the various tips I’ve heard. Then I’ll slip you the cash, point you in the right general direction and you can actually make the wager.
“It’s genius, ain’t it? My fingerprints will be nowhere near it. Even if word does get back to your friend Luca or one of his thugs that I’ve been seen in the vicinity, they can just ask any of the bookies at the track. None of them would be able to say I went near them. It’s brilliant, even if I do say so my-fucking-self!”
I’d never been to a racecourse with him before. It was like he became a bigger man with every stride towards the place. He’d worn a smart check woollen suit and lifts to make him look taller, but it was more than that. It was the confidence of his step, the way he held his head high. His entire posture altered, like he was entering a world where he was king and no jibe about his height was going to alter that. He was going where he belonged.
Clearly, he’d been planning and contemplating his trip to the racecourse for a couple of days. He just needed to get me at the right moment, when I was soft enough in judgement to agree to go with him.
For a little while I even believed all that he spouted. We were going to have a great day, watch a few races, win a bit of money and – who knows? – maybe hook up with a girl or two. We were going to have a cracking day, he assured me, a really good day.
He was a fool. We were both fools.
Luck wasn’t with Archie. It had given up on him long ago.
We’d only been through the turnstiles about fifteen minutes before Archie, by my side, went completely still. The colour drained from his skin, his mouth hung open. He’d only just been chortling, but now it was like he was choking on his own stupid merriment. His fearful eyes were locked on a tall, thin man with receding red hair and an unhealthy grey tint to his skin.
Without a word being spoken, I knew this was the disaster Archie had assured me would never happen.
McGuinness had been standing trackside, leaning on the black metal rail, waiting for the next race. But now he glared at us with puffed-out, furious eyes. Though his expression was incredulous, he had clearly suspected this day would come, no matter what Archie had promised Luca. With a scowl cut deep into his features, he raised himself to his full height and hissed. That’s the only way I can describe it. His arm stretched out and he pointed at us – pointed at Archie – and howled from low down in his throat, a rasp of alarm and fury.
“Bastard fuck!” intoned Archie.
Then he turned and ran.
Even in the few films we’d worked on together, I’d never seen Archie move so fast. This Archie was a sprinter. With me hot on his heels, he pelted towards the exit. As if his disappearance was going to so
lve anything, as if we could save ourselves by just running away.
This McGuinness, though, was faster. He had longer legs and sheer white rage powering him. I glanced back over my shoulder and his teeth were like fangs.
Already there were a couple of lackeys with him, running at his heels. I’d thought of stopping and knocking McGuinness down, letting Archie get away because there was no way the bookie was going to see him out of two blackened eyes. But the men with him were even larger and I was hardly going to take on all of them.
Besides, the one person we would really have to answer to in all this was Luca, and he’d snap my limbs just for sport.
Outside the racetrack was a taxi, freshly arrived; it had just dropped off a chubby married couple out for a nice day trip. Certainly they were going to have a nicer day than ours. We jumped in and Archie barked for the driver to just put his bloody foot down. Of course, we knew there was no way we could hang around the station waiting for whenever the next train was. That would just be piling stupidity on top of stupidity. So after the shortest of debates, I had the driver take us all the way back to London, all the way back to my digs in Pimlico. Using up nearly every penny of Archie’s lovely bonus as we did.
Not that that mattered any more.
Even Archie knew that. Sobriety had hit us both like a sudden sickness.
He sat beside me, trembling and sweating. “You will look after me, mate, won’t you? He’s your friend, ain’t he? You will find a way to look after me, won’t you? Won’t you?”
Chapter Sixteen
Luca Llewelyn made me a strong cup of coffee right after he smashed my face in.
I was on the floor looking up at him as he did, blood dripping from my nose. I could already feel my jaw swelling up, but what I really felt at that moment was amazement at how unruffled Luca was. Of course, I’d gone down easy, but he knew I was going to go down easy, so made sure he hit me with all his force anyway. But then he’d stepped over me to the kettle and the old coffee jar and made us a mug each as if he’d just come in from an afternoon stroll. His hands weren’t even shaking.
He’d arrived with two men. A perfectly polished green Austin Countryman pulling up with a screech of tyres that was practically a roar of intent. Archie and I were sat in my front room. We hadn’t been there that long; McGuinness must have headed straight to a phone box as soon as we left the track. I was trying to calm Archie down, tell him I’d find a way to stop Luca doing serious injury. Sat on the edge of a messy sofa, he didn’t look convinced, but then I knew that I didn’t sound all that convincing.
The check woollen suit no longer made Archie look bigger. Instead it seemed like he was dressed in clothes belonging to another man, one with broader shoulders.
I watched out the window as, with a careful quietness that seemed terrifying, Luca and his two cohorts got out of the car. Luca was a gangster, so he wasn’t in any way small, but the two blokes he was with made him appear like a circus dwarf. They were a collection of scars on top of scars, and with a twist in my gut I thought of how much Eden would enjoy seeing them,
Luca walked up to our front door, jaw clenched in determination, banging it three times with his fist.
“Don’t let them in!” hissed Archie.
I stared at him. We may have been hidden behind the net curtains, but surely he couldn’t still believe there was a way back now, a way we could get out of this without taking our knocks. Luca was here and he was getting in. It didn’t matter to him in the slightest whether the door stayed on its hinges or not.
“I’ll deal with it,” I whispered to him again.
He didn’t believe me, though. I could tell he didn’t believe me.
As I moved to the front door, trembling right to my bones, I heard Archie behind me. While I was desperately trying to think of ways to make it up to Luca, Archie was heading to the back door, yanking it open and disappearing into the afternoon.
Maybe it was for the best. Despite any soothing sound I might make, there really was nothing I could do for him now.
Five minutes later I was sprawled on the kitchen floor.
Luca put my mug – the most badly chipped one, I noticed – on the counter above my head. Tentatively, and with his nose wrinkled in distaste at the aroma, he took a sip of his. Obviously he didn’t like it, but polite as he still was, he swallowed it and didn’t spit it back out. There was no way I could afford the kind of coffee Luca Llewelyn liked. He probably bought his at Harrods.
Setting down his own mug – the best of the lot – next to the cooker, he leant back and stared at me with an expression that was a little bit of pity mixed with a big chunk of contempt.
“You need to get your shit together, boy!” He pointed his finger sharp in my direction.
I nodded once. Even though it hurt my face, I made sure he could see me nod.
“You’ve been moving in the wrong circles, haven’t you? I’ve heard about your nights out, the kind of venues you’ve been visiting, the kind of no-mark life you’ve sunk to, boy. Those kinds of circles are ones friends of mine operate in. They’re circles for big men, not for children dressed up, like you. So, I’m going to tell you this once – just the once, before I wash my hands of you – you have to raise your beak, straighten your shoulders and sort yourself out.”
He was calling me the English ‘boy’ rather than the Welsh ‘bach’. I knew that to a son of a proud West Wales father, using the English was an insult all by itself.
I nodded again and then stared him in the eye. Just about holding back the tears of shock that I’d actually brought myself to this. “Where’s Archie?” I asked. “Did you get him?”
“Not yet, but we will. Don’t you worry about that worthless little turd, though. The important thing right now is that you listen to me, boy, because if you don’t I can’t answer for the consequences.”
His eyes were harder than I’d ever seen them before, much crueller, but then I’d never before been on the wrong end of one of his glares.
Still, I couldn’t help myself. “Are you going to hurt him?” I asked.
“Of course we’re going to hurt him!” he snapped. “We’re going to break that ungrateful shit into pieces. But as I say, you need to put that midget out of your mind. You need to pick your friends more carefully, boy. Some people we keep around because we like them and others we keep around because they’re useful to us. I don’t care how much you like that dwarf, I guarantee he ain’t any use to you any more. But put him out of your mind, because we need to talk about you and what you’re going to do. Because you keep going on this way, I’m going to get the same big blokes to break you, too.”
Again I nodded, only this time I stayed silent. Let him know that I was listening.
He stared down at me with his arms crossed, enjoying making me wait. “You came to me and asked for something and – against my better judgement – I gave it to you. Even though I could tell it was probably going to piss itself, I gave you that favour. Rolled it out to you because I trusted you.
“Now if that shit, Sandibanks had gone to a track by himself, I’d have probably shrugged off your connection with him. Obviously a favour would still be owed, in fact it would have tripled in size, but you’re not your brother’s keeper, are you? And if I couldn’t get across the utter dreadful consequences to the little shit, then what hope did you really have of doing it? But for you to go there with him? What are you? Dim? Soft in the head? You must have known that I’d find out, boy, and when I did I’d come here and make you bleed. Seriously make you bleed.”
Still I didn’t say anything. Still I just stared up at him.
And Luca did something I’d not seen him do in all the years I’d known him: he truly lost his temper.
“What the bastard fuck is wrong with you?” he screamed. “Your fucking bird leaves you and you fall apart like this? She’s a piece of skirt, a fancy piece and all that, but still just some skirt. There’s other skirt out there, get your hands on some of that and pull
yourself the fuck together! Instead you just lose your mind? You’re going to get yourself killed, boy, and the way you’re going I’ll quite happily do the killing myself!” He slammed his boot into the front of the oven, denting the metal. Then, trying to get himself back under control, he pushed his hands through his thick grey hair. “So, she gave you the heave-ho? That happens to blokes. Get over it and move on.”
I shook my head. “It was the other way round,” I told him. “I broke up with her.”
There was a moment when he just blinked, surprise and bafflement on his face, and then suddenly – incredibly – he burst out laughing. Full belly laughs that echoed around that poky kitchen. He’d gone from filled with rage to filled with humour in an instant. Both of them terrified me.
“So that’s it, is it? Well, that’s just priceless! You walked away and now, because you’re such a pride-filled idiot, you can’t bear to go back. Do you want some advice? Not that I owe you anything, you understand, but just because I hate seeing such stupidity in the wild. If you’re hurting like this, then she’ll be hurting too. If I let you walk out of here today – and that’s still actually an if, boy – then all you really need to do is go over to her place and it’ll be easy to win her back. And if it stops you being such an idiot then it will be worth it.”
I sniffed once and felt blood drip back into my throat. “Please let me do that. I’ll get myself sorted, please. I’m sorry, Luca, I really am sorry. I know I messed up.”
He stepped across the kitchen and poured his coffee down the sink, as if he couldn’t bear the stench of it any more. “Yeah, you did, boy. You really did.”
“Please let me walk away from this, please. I’m going to turn things around, I’ll get better – I promise. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”
He stood, arms crossed, and regarded me for a good minute. His face was a mask of judgement and menace.
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