Richard was bursting to get out of the house but he was relieved that his hangover was surprisingly mild. He’d fought the tedium of the previous night’s New Year’s Eve party by getting sloshed and perking himself up with a few sneaky puffs of wacky-backy in the toilets with a glamorous Eastern European waitress. But it wasn’t the drink that gave him stiletto-in-the-forehead headaches these days.
He decided to skip shaving, his hands were still a little shaky, but he splashed aftershave on his face to mask the smell of the previous night’s booze which was seeping through his pores. The face in the bedroom mirror wasn’t exactly what you’d call handsome, he thought, but neither was it particularly ugly. A bit shop soiled, though. Still, his blond, wavy hair and blue eyes still managed to soften his face, he hoped.
Then again, he was a kick in the arse off forty and teetering on the precipice of a mid-life crisis. What did he expect? He was lucky, though, in that, unlike most of his mates, he hadn’t developed a beer belly, even though he knocked back plenty of the stuff.
The fake, black Hugo Boss suit fitted him almost as well as it had fifteen years ago when he’d bought it in Bangkok. The fact that he still wore it pissed off Camilla no end, of course, which was an added bonus.
Richard straightened his tie in the bedroom mirror, and headed downstairs.
‘Oh, and Richard. Could you pop into Muji in Carnaby Street and get some of that string stuff?’ shouted Camilla as he reached the bottom stair.
‘Eh?’ he said.
‘You know,’ said Camilla. ‘Muji? The Japanese shop?’
‘Yeah, I know the shop,’ said Richard, ‘but what string stuff are you going on about?’
‘It was in Australian Elle Magazine? I showed you!’ said Camilla. ‘It makes the plant pots look more rustic? Muji should be open for the January sales today but I don’t think it’ll be too busy.’
He grunted an extra loud affirmative but he was already on his way out of the door.
‘And no bloody Chardonnay, okay?’ shouted Camilla as he slammed the door behind him.
He supposed he should have gone through the motions and asked Camilla a little more about who was going to be at tonight’s dinner party but the weight of numb indifference overwhelmed him. Probably the usual hodgepodge of fourth tier media tossers and middle management wankers, he guessed. Pasty-faced, salad munching marketing consultants prattling on about their spoilt, whinging kids.
‘Morning,’ he shouted to Batty Betty. ‘Happy New Year!’ Betty ignored him, as usual, and continued putting a row of dolls in bandages and slings. He unlocked the car and wiped a load of red cabbage from the roof of the white Mercedes. This always pissed him off. Why did they put that stuff in kebabs if no one ever ate it?
Richard got into his car, moved his stainless steel briefcase onto the passenger seat and opened up the glove compartment. He took out a fist-sized hip flask that was engraved with a picture of Lenin. He thought about taking a swig of vodka and then he put it back. Drinking in the morning – especially when he had to drive across the river to Wineworld – probably wasn’t the best idea in the world. The filth would be crawling all over the city looking for drivers that were still topped up from their New Year’s Eve shindigs. Easy pickings today.
He decided that he’d dump the car and head off for a pint or ten later, though. The booze helped him keep his life at arm’s length. He thought of the WC Fields line: ‘She drove me to drink; it’s the one thing I’m indebted to her for.’
He opened a packet of L&M menthol cigarettes, took out a cancer stick and lit up. He took a big hit and gazed up at his three storey West London home.
It was a grade eleven listed building. A former laundry that had been converted into a recording studio. And although there were only him and Camilla living there, it still felt claustrophobic, suffocating.
One of his old mates had referred to it as Xanadu – like the cavernous house in the film Citizen Kane; stuffed with ‘the loot of all the world’ but containing nothing Kane’s wife ‘really cared about’. Well, many a true word spoken in jest.
He finished the cigarette, stubbed it out in the ashtray, buckled up and started the Mercedes’ engine. He switched on the radio. Dexy’s Midnight Runners were blasting out ‘Burn It Down’ as he pulled out of the driveway into Saint Peter’s Square. Not a bad idea, lads, he thought. Not bad at all.
Richard turned into Chiswick High Road and headed south down King Street towards Hammersmith, past the rows of Polish newsagents, dentists and delis. It was a cold, granite coloured morning. He stared out of the car window, barely focusing on his journey. Outside the cheesy nightclub that used to be the Hammersmith Palais were four young lads made up to look like a youthful version of Rolling Stones. They pushed a Mini Cooper along the road as an excited Japanese film crew filmed them.
He relaxed a little as he crossed Hammersmith Bridge. For a while he drove aimlessly, listening to music. Fourteen years of this, he thought. I don’t remember breaking two frigging mirrors.
FOUR
‘Right annoying fucker though, that Half-Pint Harry. Eh, Kenny? Non-stop motor mouth, he was. Gob-shite Geordie twat,’ said Big Jim as they put the body in the Jaguar’s boot and slammed the lid shut.
‘He wasn’t a Geordie,’ said Kenny, resting on a barrel and wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
‘Eh?’ said Big Jim, as he took the hose pipe and sprayed water around the garage.
Kenny grinned.
‘Half-Pint Harry. He wasn’t a Geordie, was he? He wasn’t from Newcastle. He was from Sunderland, James. He was a Mackem, wasn’t he?’ Kenny said.
‘What’s a fucking Mackem when it’s at home?’ said Big Jim.
‘A Mackem is to a Geordie what a Canadian is like to an American. Like margarine to butter. Like Spurs to Arsenal. A bit like a decaffeinated Geordie,’ said Kenny, chuckling to himself. He coughed up a lump of phlegm, spat and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
‘The North’s all the fucking same to me,’ said Big Jim. ‘Never been further north than Dagenham, myself. And I didn’t like that much.’
‘I wholeheartedly agree,’ said Kenny. ‘Mushy peas, black pudding, Pease -pudding, fishy-wishy-fucking-dishy. I usually start to hear the banjos from Deliverance as soon as I get north of Finchley.’
Big Jim wasn’t listening, though. He was rubbing a pair of black tights between the fingers of one hand and scrutinising a pair of black patent-leather high-heels like they were a magic eye painting. He grimaced.
‘Not too keen on the plan, then?’ said Kenny with a grin as he dropped his trousers.
‘Do we have to?’ said Big Jim, looking in pain.
‘This clobber is our best front door key,’ said Kenny, as he clumsily stripped to his leopardskin Speedos. ‘The staff is bound to be half asleep with hangovers today. Bit of a drag, I know,’ he said, with a wink, and then struggled to pull a gold sequined dress over his flaky, bald head.
***
‘Did you go The Lord Albert last night, George?’ said Lynne Calloway, before using The Picture Palace’s complimentary pen to snort a tiny hill of cocaine. New Year’s Day wasn’t exactly the best time for her to be at work, especially so early in the morning. She knew she’d need a little lift. She’d had a pretty good night down at The Brixton Hill Arms the night before but she was feeling the consequences now. Her voice was hoarse from the amount of karaoke she’d done.
She passed the pen to Gorgeous George. It was mass-produced shit and the Brixton Hill address had been misspelled. But then Mrs Clarkeson was such a cheap bastard. The jewellery-stroke-antique shop had made money hand over fist in the past few years but they still cut costs wherever they could. The building was fantastic, a converted cinema from the beginning of the twentieth century, and the retro stuff they sold went for a packet but Mrs Clarkeson wouldn’t fork out for staff coffee or even CCTV.
‘You what?’ said George, bolting upright and wiping his nose.
‘The Lord Albert
. That pub over Notting Hill Gate. Did you go there?’ said Lynne. She steadied herself against an expensive antique book case. She was getting a bit of a hot flush. Maybe the coke was dodgy. It had been cheap but it was all she could afford on her wages.
Lynne had been the manager at The Picture Palace for ten years now and had only had one pay rise. She felt trapped working there but there she was in her mid-forties, divorced and under-qualified. She didn’t exactly have a bucket-load of choices.
‘Oh, I did,’ said George, ‘but it was completely dead. About as much fun as Morrissey’s stag night.’ He took a big snort of Charlie and shook his head. ‘It was a real elephant’s graveyard. I felt like that kid in The Sixth Sense: I see dead people.’ He winked at Lynne. ‘Oh, I did get a gobble in the toilets, though.’
Lynne grimaced as she checked her make up in the mirror and pushed up her breasts, her best asset, she thought.
‘Somewhere to park your bike,’ said George looking at her cleavage.
Lynne tossed back her dyed red hair dramatically.
‘Sure you don’t want me to turn you straight, George?’ she said, almost rubbing her breasts in his face.
She was only half joking. George was a good looking lad. Tall, blond, athletic and almost half her age. And he was always immaculately dressed. She wouldn’t even have minded those piercings. He was certainly a cut above the rough and tumble types she met in her local, with their beer guts and Bobby Charlton combovers. However, George was as gay as Gordon, unfortunately.
‘Mmmm,’ said George. ‘Well, maybe if I can flip you over and play your B-side!’ he guffawed, loud and vulgar, as Lynne battered him with a feather duster.
GUNS OF BRIXTON
FIVE
‘Winter wonderland, eh, Jim?’ said Kenny. The streets of South East London were overflowing with beer cans, fast food wrappers and the red cabbage that they put in kebabs. A convoy of rattling dustbin vans raced down the Old Kent Road.
‘Gives the bin men a bit of double-time, though, eh?’ said Big Jim. ‘Hardest job in the world that. And what respect or thanks do they get?’
‘Very empathetic of you to think that, Big Jim,’ said Kenny.
‘Who are you calling pathetic?’ said Big Jim, sitting upright. He scratched his head under his long, straight blonde wig.
‘I was just saying that you’re the milkman of human kindness, Jim,’ said Kenny.
Big Jim was deep in concentration, adjusting his red velvet ball gown.
Kenny held the steering wheel in his left hand and checked his make-up in the mirror. It was a good job he’d shaved that morning, he thought. The stubble still showed, though. He adjusted his curly blond wig as he pulled up at a Pelican Crossing and waited for a staggering smack head to wobble across the road with a bottle of White Lightning. He could almost hear the shell-suit crackle.
Kenny usually loved driving in London on a Bank Holiday. There was almost no traffic, leaving the city to the real Londoners like him. But today was New Year’s Day and it was like a scene from The Walking Dead with the overspill from the previous night’s parties still wandering the streets.
He raced down the Walworth Road and swerved around the Elephant and Castle roundabout, narrowly missing a group of rat-boys being chased by a fat, red faced Santa Claus. He glanced up at the bright red statue of an elephant with a castle on its back that stood outside the gaudy, pink shopping centre and he started to feel nostalgic.
‘Remember the sixties, James?’
‘Just about,’ said Big Jim, ‘They say if you can remember the sixties … something or other.’ He opened up a can of Irn Bru and handed one to Kenny, who made a disgusted face. ‘I don’t know how you can drink that Scotch shit, James. Like drinking bubble gum, isn’t it? Full of all sorts of chemicals and crap. I’ll stick to my Tizer.’
Kenny held the steering wheel with one hand as he picked up a can of Tizer from under the driver’s seat and opened it. He gulped it down and burped loudly.
‘I needed that. I’ve got a throat like a nun’s knickers.’
Big Jim, ever the Catholic, tutted.
‘Yes, the swinging sixties. Those were the days. The good old days, eh? August Bank Holiday Monday. Brighton Beach, eh? Mods versus Rockers. Kicking ten bags of shit out of those little twats on motorised hair driers,’ said Kenny.
‘Happy days,’ said Big Jim.
Kenny sipped his can of Tizer, glanced down at the fading spider-web tattoos on his hands and remembered a drunken night at a Brighton tattoo parlour that then segued into the time he first met his wife, Deborah. Ex-wife now, of course.
Forty years ago now. Or more. There’d been a lot of booze under the bridge since then, he thought.
***
Mica Paris was singing about her one temptation as Richard walked into Wineworld and he was, as always, taken aback by the wondrous sight he beheld. Wineworld was located beneath the arches of a Victorian railway viaduct in Waterloo and was stacked with row upon row of wines from around the globe.
It was usually jam-packed but today customers were few and far between. Richard resisted the urge to put his hands on his hips and whistle as he gazed upon the bottles of booze, tempting him like a parade of high class hookers.
A tall, serious looking woman in a crisp white blouse and tight black skirt walked over to him. The sound of her black high heels clip clopping on the concrete floor echoed around the cavernous room. She smiled.
‘Pretty impressive, huh?’ she purred in a warm, Scottish accent. ‘Looking for anything in particular?’
‘Do you happen to sell wine...Donna?’ said Richard, noticing her name tag. He flicked back his fringe, he hoped, flirtatiously.
‘We might have some,’ she said, with a forced smile. ‘Anything in particular?’
‘Chardonnay, Donna,’ he said. ‘Loads and loads of bloody Chardonnay.’
***
Big Jim frowned as he scratched at his legs.
‘I think I’m allergic to these here nylons, Kenny,’ he said.
‘Should have shaved your legs, like I did, then, shouldn’t you?’ said Kenny.
Big Jim pouted.
‘’Ere, Ken. I heard you say that Half-Pint Harry was a factotum? What’s a bleedin’ factotum when it’s at home?’ said Big Jim.
‘Well, I’ll tell you, James. It’s someone who deals with problems. Sorts stuff out. Bit of this. Bit of that,’ said Kenny.
‘Not so much of the other?’ said Big Jim.
‘Indeed, James,’ said Kenny. ‘Now, you see, the bloke Harry sorted stuff out for is a bit of a wheeler-dealer. An entrepreneur, although some people call him a gangster. And he is a right head the ball, with it. His name’s Captain Cutlass. Well, that’s not his real name, course. His bona fide name’s Jordan but no one calls him THAT these days on account of that model bird with the plastic knockers.’
Big Jim instinctively fiddled with his padded bra.
‘You see,’ said Kenny. ‘Cutlass was originally a sea coal baron, which means he had a bunch of geezers who drove jeeps down to the beach at low tide and dug up coal to sell. He made a packet, he did. Not that he needed it. And after he got out of the sea coal game, Cutlass made a mint smuggling foreign booze and ciggies into the docks. He used to stand at the front of one of the boats waving this massive friggin’ sword about. Hence the nickname. Although I think the sword was actually a rapier, come to think of it.’
Kenny slowed down as he passed the blue, concrete block that housed Brixton Hill Police Station. The grim looking building with iron bars on its windows brought back memories of past kickings received.
‘I almost forgot. Grab a bunch of them little lovelies James,’ he said. He threw a well-stuffed wallet to Big Jim who opened it up and pulled out a wad of cash. ‘Take half and give the wallet back to me.’
‘What’s this?’ said Big Jim.
‘More leaves than you’d see in a cabbage patch, eh?’ said Kenny. ‘Help yourself. Half-Pint Harry doesn’t exactly need it no mor
e.’
‘Won’t Mad Tony want this, Ken?’ said Big Jim, an edge in his voice.
‘What Tony doesn’t know won’t hurt him, James, will it? He doesn’t give a toss, anyway, as long as he gets that back,’ said Kenny. He gestured over his shoulder toward the glinting briefcase in the back seat.
‘That’s his Holy Grail. His Golden Fleece. His Ark of the Convent.’
‘If you say so, Kenny. As long as Tony doesn’t find out. But what if that Captain Custard starts asking Tony about Harry?’ said Big Jim. ‘He’ll be wanting his Totem back, won’t he?’
‘Don’t you even think about that,’ said Kenny. ‘Mad Tony and Cutlass go way back. Once Tony gets his mitts on this briefcase he won’t care about anything else. He’s been going on about getting it back since God was a nipper, so hopefully that should keep him sweet.’
Big Jim shrugged and tugged at his balls. The tights tore and one of his balls popped out of the hole. He flushed and pulled down the hem of his dress.
‘And after we do this next little job and we get rid of Half-Pint Harry we can head off down the Blue Anchor for a gargle, eh?’ said Big Jim. He fiddled with his bra strap and adjusted his long, blonde wig in the mirror.
‘Great minds drink alike, James,’ said Kenny, as he swerved the Jaguar into Brixton Hill Road.
SIX
Lynne wiped the cocaine from her nose and looked up as a shining black Jaguar pulled up outside the shop.
‘No bleedin’ way! Customers at this time of the morning? I can’t believe it,’ said Lynne, quickly putting on an extra layer of make-up. ‘It’s bleeding’ New Year’s Day. We’re supposed to be shut.’
‘Now, you know that Mrs Clarkeson says that we have a no closing policy, Lynne. Tight twat, that she is,’ said George.
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