by Danny Hogan
© Danny Hogan 2010
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
First published in Great Britain by Pulp Press
All paper used in the printing of this book has been made from wood grown in managed, sustainable forests.
ISBN13: 978-1-907499-40-1
Printed and bound in the UK
Pulp Press is an imprint of Indepenpress Publishing Limited
25 Eastern Place, Brighton, BN2 1GJ
A catalogue record of this book is available from
the British Library
Edited by Catriona Watson and Nicola Davies
Cover design by Alex Young
www.brainofalexyoung.com
For Alex
1
So there I was pissing blood from a big, fuck off stab wound in my side. Ava, my wife, seemed frozen in a state of shock as I clamped my hand to the bleeding gash just below the ribs in my right side, and fell back against an elaborate poster advertising the latest film release. Something for kids with robots in it.
We had just been queuing up for the pictures, see. That’s all it was. Two people just off to enjoy a peaceful night with no bother.
Some idiots just had to start. Me, I’ve always been bigger then your average fella and it seems to encourage these sad acts to have a go.
It seems like a lifetime ago I left those gates wanting a clean break. To leave that life behind and be a good productive person, but no, some sad acts had to start something, to prove a whole load of nothing.
There were four of them. Skinny little bastards with their clothes hanging off them; no style at all.
They were laughing and jeering and saying stuff. The other people in the queue were looking on in horror.
Nobody seemed to be doing anything about it though. I wanted to give it to them. Give it to them, but good.
I looked over to my wife and she must have seen what I was thinking. She shook her head, her lips quivering and tears streaming down her face.
‘Look lads,’ the words came from me with difficulty. Not near enough breath and my throat was dry and felt like I had sandpaper stuck in my craw. ‘I’m done here, you won. Get out of here before the old bill turn up.’
‘We own the Feds,’ was all he said. His voice was full of pride in his inability to articulate properly.
For a moment the old things started to come back. The pain ebbed away and I felt normal for all of a second. Then a flash of rage was sunk by a numbness. A cold numbness. My mind was on autopilot now. Filling up with all that stuff that was drummed into me. Terrible stuff. But I caught myself. I had promised Ava. She was not a demanding woman, but when she wanted me to tow the line she made it crystal clear that if I wanted to be in her life then to defy her was not an option. She did this in as few words as possible and never raising her voice. That’s what I liked about Ava, she didn’t dick about.
For moment though I stared into the youth who was holding the blade’s eyes and he stared into mine, he smiled the whole time. It was a mean, cold smile
I could tell this was just nuts to him, he was not fearful, not at all. Though he should have been.
‘Look,’ said Ava, her tone calm and holding her hands out to get attention but to indicate she meant no harm at the same time. ‘Please just leave and let me get some medical attention for my husband. The police are coming. They’re on their way, I can hear them. You best go now.’
It was then that I saw one of them produce a nickel plated cannon which looked too big in his small bony hands. I remember seeing the name Elaine tattooed between the joint of his index finger and thumb. He held the gun against Ava’s head. ‘Did you not hear me, we ain’t afraid of no police.’
He levelled at me and paused for too long.
The police sirens roared in the distance, getting nearer, causing him to jolt and I felt the first hint of relief for what felt like ages. He was dithering about and looking at his mates. For the first time he looked a little nervous.
All of a sudden I became aware of the dumb plebians looking on in horror. The families, teenagers, the denizens of Brighton. Naturally none of them were willing to lift a finger. I could see one of the nerds behind the till of the cinema hunched behind the cash register quivering like a bitch with the phone cord leading to where he was, and hoped he was calling for the cops or an ambulance or both.
For one lovley moment he seemed to retract the weapon but then swung the barrel to the back of Ava’s head and pulled the trigger.
2
That was about as much as I remember about that. For a long while I couldn’t go out and see anybody. Sure, concerned friends called and checked on me and what-not, but I just didn’t want to see a damned soul.
When I did go out, I could not bear to see other people happy. They were everywhere I went. Smiling, happy, grinning like idiots. Laughing, joking, on their way to pubs. Couples giggling together. It made me sick, I tell you. I wanted everybody to feel the same grim misery and emptiness as me.
It was a savage winter that year and Brighton seemed to have transformed into a block of ice. Especially in the Kemp Town area where they must pay less council tax or something, because the gritters didn’t seem to want to go there. I saw a businessman going to cross the road with some boiling coffee in his hand. He caught a bit of ice and did a river dance, trying to maintain dignity for a precious moment before panic set in. In one unreal move he totally slipped, doused himself with the boiling brew, bounced his bonce of a parked car’s boot and landed face first with a smack on the ice. That made me smile. A heap of expensive suit on the floor in a pool of coffee and claret, a real work of art.
I thought a lot about Ava. How we met, how she changed me for the better. How she realised that I was not just some dumb thug and had given me a chance, opening up a whole world of opportunities that would otherwise have been unavailable to me.
Months passed and all I seemed able to do was look at a lot of TV and eat rubbish. Ava had always made sure I had more greens than meat. Well she weren’t here now.
The police had no leads and they didn’t seem particularly bothered about telling me such.
Some old friends, real heavyweights from back in the day called me up periodically to arrange for something to be done, but, believe it or not revenge was the last thing on my mind. It wouldn’t bring Ava back.
The only social contact I had was with the fella who lived in the room next door, Amos. He worked for the council every day and at the weekends his two young kids would visit. He was always smiling and friendly. The funny thing was it didn’t bother me.
The daily anxiety and pain was beginning to take its toll and I started drinking heavily.
One day I forced myself out of the house and made it to the pub across the street. It’s called something else now but then it was known as the Arctic. And that is when the drinking started. I began to hang around in pubs guzzling as much booze as I could in an effort to quiet the voices in my head. The other drinkers and bar staff took the piss out of me everywhere I went for the fact that I was always muttering to myself.
Back in the day they would never have laughed. But this wasn’t back in the day. This was now and I was old, tired and hurt. A wounded beast at the mercy of lesser creatures.
It was inevitable that I would start reeling off all the old stories, like a sad act to anyone who would listen. As inevitable as it was that anyone w
ho listened thought I was bullshitting. Which bloody irritated me, no end. Sometimes I felt the anger build up towards whoever it was that was taking the piss out of me through the haze of stale beer and nausea. But it was like Ava was there during those moments, willing me not to do nothing as she would often do when she was alive. I’d start blubbing at this point, stuffing my public image even further down the toilet.
Out of all the things that irritated me most, was people used to disbelieve that I was a damn good dancer. That made the fuckers laugh all right. A big oaf I may have looked but I was a graceful sod on my toes. It had been a good few years ago, I was just walking down the street, trying to get my head around a job I had back in those bad old days. At first I barely registered the person who handed me a flyer, as perambulated away with the demons as I was. Then I noticed the incredible looker that had just handed me this A5 paper with all this stuff printed on it. Slender and graceful she was in a vintage dress and peroxide blond hair done up like Marilyn. She smiled at me, I believe I attempted a smile back. I looked at the flyer, garish thing it was, with pin-ups and sailor tattoo flash and figures dancing all over it. If I remember rightly there was an image of a fat old Elvis on it but I could be wrong about that. The words, which were done up like the billboard of one of those old Technicolor films was advertising jive lessons at the local church. Jive lessons, indeed, I remember thinking to myself. The looker said something, I can’t remember what, but the gist of it was to come down and have a go. It was the sound of her voice that I remember, not what she said, it was quiet, subtle yet confident and assured. Oldschool.
Well that was that, I was sold. I turned up in the hopes I could get hold of this fine piece. I turned up and I reckon my nerves went as I just stood around the edges of the hall for a while wondering what the fuck to do, while couples spun around like they’d been doing it their whole lives. There were young’uns, old’uns, media type twats with beards and glasses and snooty looking rockabilly chicks. Well the looker must have took pity on this big oaf in the corner looking like a rabbit stuck in headlights, as she partnered herself up with.
‘My name’s Ava.’
I remember her saying that all right.
Well with the carrot on the stick that was Ava, I turned up regularly, I got good, we did a few events and it wasn’t long before me and Ava were branching out and starting up our own classes which we taught at the town hall. And then we got married.
But now the mugs stick on something Michael Jackson or something, start clapping in time, laughing and jeering, the bloody landlord of my local with ponytail and bucked teeth shouting out at me to “bust some moves then”. Bust. I would look at their heads, the bar top, a jaw, a half-empty pint glass, an arm, a nearby door, a body, the large bay window, a throat, a tray, a nose, the fire extinguisher and put it all together. The sound of crunching bone and the laughter turning to squeals. Those thoughts would have to do. Ava would never forgive me.
And it was during one of these times me, in a pub full of cruel, laughing twenty-one year olds playing MC Hammer and clapping in time, that another one of Ava’s inspirations came upon me.
‘If you don’t like it, do something about it… Without resorting to violence. You’re better than that,’ she would say.
I put my drink down, and made my way to the door. As I did so I felt a balled up paper or coaster or something smack me on the back of the head. I stopped, but caught myself and carried on. I was going to make some changes.
3
It took a little while to break some bad habits. But I got myself together eventually, and hired a function room above a pub off of London Road a month in advance. I printed off flyers and went to Rockabilly and 50s nights and handed them out.
A lot of people seemed interested, especially these snooty girls with their retro looks and authentic dresses and makeup. Showing off more tattoos than young ladies their age should have. But if truth be told I couldn’t tell if they were taking the piss or not.
You could have blown me over with a feather for on the first night five of these girls came down. That was five more than I was expecting. But there were no blokes, so I had to go to the pub downstairs and recruit some that weren’t too pissed or off-putting for the ladies. Must have done well as the next week a few of them had dragged their fellas along, or at least, fellas they knew and a few more birds. The week after the word must have gotten out as we were packed out. But this brought me a little bit of an internal struggle as one of the newcomers was something else.
With jet-black hair, green eyes and paper white skin, not to mention a body that looked like one of those old Cadillacs personified, she was one hell of a woman. The fact that she always wore those old-fashioned bullet bras did my gentlemanly concentration no good at all.
I felt a pang of guilt just looking at her.
Turns out she was this stripper, though she’d beat you if you ever called her that, who went by the name of Eloise.
The name rung a bell and she seemed to recognise me as her pretty but hard face broke into a smile when she saw me. Then I remembered this she-devil of little girl, the daughter of my old mate Mark Murphy, the notorious cobblestone fighter.
We got to reacquaint pretty well after that. But no more than that for a variety of reasons, least of all because in my mind I was still married.
Well on one of the drinks we went on after class there’s me snivelling and I say to her, ‘I’d kill myself but I just ain’t the type.’
‘Life is a gift, Joe. These wasters are undeserved of it, is all. You should do your best to try and live the rest of your days good and happy. It’s probably what your wife would have wanted.’
Eloise spoke these words, but you could tell she weren’t comfortable with expressing emotions. Just like her old man.
I gulped down another drink as I thought about what Eloise had said.
‘At the pictures too, of all the damned places; sacrilege,’ she added, shaking her head.
I turned to her and could not help getting an eyeful of those pointy tits heaving slowly as she breathed, and the way her bottom lip quivered slightly after she said something. I felt a pang of guilt, and tried to drown the sense of betrayal with another drink.
She looked concerned for a moment and I thought that I’d been rumbled.
‘My old man used to tell me stories about you, like weren’t you working for the services or something at some point?’
‘What, with my record?’ I said, wanting to talk about something else sharpish because I could see where this was going.
‘Well still, things I heard. Could you track the people that killed your wife and do’em?’
I looked at my pint long and hard and turned it slowly in my hands.
‘Well, one thing, I’m old – things have moved on and I ain’t the man I used to be. The other thing is that Ava wouldn’t want it, and to be honest, it wouldn’t bring her back anyway.’
She looked at me, but I’ll be damned if I could tell what she was thinking.
‘I ain’t got the stomach for revenge,’ I said.
She stuck a bit gum from a packet of Nicorrettes in her mouth and kept on looking at me as she slowly chewed. Well unnerving it was, the look in her eyes.
‘It’s probably just as well,’ she said, manoeuvring the chewed gum to inside the top of her lip with her tongue. ‘Brighton couldn’t handle a man like you going mental.’
4
When I first saw the lad meandering about in front of me I didn’t think anything of it, other than the fact that I found his cocky swagger mildly annoying. He received a call on his mobile phone and talked way too loudly on it, which was another thing that grated my nerves. Then I noticed that the clothes hung off his skinny frame in much the same way as those worn by the murders of my wife. This wasn’t anything special as most of the young idiots seemed to lack a sense of style these days.
It was when he turned side-on from me that I saw the tattoo between his index finger and thumb, Elaine.
>
My heart seized and every organ in my body seemed to freeze.
The geezer turned to look, he had a shaved head and a face like a rat. I could see then that he recognised me, but it was too late.
I should have felt angry but I just felt weak and began to get very tired. The fucker smiled at me and I couldn’t do anything. He mumbled something in his phone and began to laugh. I should have done something, said something but energy was seeping from me. I turned back and to go home and then heard a voice shout behind me.
‘I ain’t responsible for my actions,’ his voice sounded snide and mocking. ‘The doctors said so. Ain’t got enough MAO-A in my system, he said. Predisposes me to violence. Ain’t my fault is it?’ Then a long mean laugh.
I kept walking.
I felt something hit my back so hard that I fell to the ground. I looked and saw a rock scuttle across the pavement. I tried to get up but the wind was knocked out of me.
‘It ain’t my fault,’ he shouted at me from about thirty yards away.
Back in my day we didn’t need excuses.
I managed to get up and saw the prat walk towards me, slowly at first, grinning as he went. Then he sped up and I could see the intentions on his face.
It seems that I was the one who was not in control of my actions now, as I began to run in the opposite direction. I could not believe myself. I must have been in primary school the last time I ran from someone. And this specimen, too!
Running was a hell of a struggle with no breath in me, but I made it around the corner and knew that a few yards and my house would be in sight. I could hear my own heartbeat as if it had been forced behind my eardrums and was trying to thump a way back to my chest.
I could see a cop car ambling down the road towards me as if it owned the place, and the thundering footsteps behind me slow down. The abusive shouting tailed off to. I kept going as I knew my place was around the next corner and, if I was lucky I could make it there without the runt seeing where I lived.