You Can't Make Old Friends

by Tom Trott

  ‘Anyone try my door this morning?’

  ‘No one yet.’

  I squatted down next to him, avoiding sitting down as I didn’t want to get a wet arse.

  ‘Now,’ I said, in a probably too patronising tone, ‘are you planning to go to the shelter tonight?’

  ‘I always plan to go to the shelter, boss.’

  ‘That doesn’t really answer my question, Lenny.’

  Someone passing chucked a pound coin in his general direction, it rolled to a stop in front of us. He nodded towards it, as though I was welcome to it.

  ‘I can’t take money off you. I’m not that desperate yet.’

  ‘It’s not mine.’

  ‘He was giving it to you.’

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m not a beggar, chief, I just haven’t got anywhere to live. When they’re not chucking coins at me they’re frowning at me. People frown at me sitting around here, but where do they want me to be? The only place they don’t frown at me is the shelter, but that’s only open at night. They frown at me in the library, they frown at me in Churchill Square, as though I’ve got somewhere to go but I’m choosing to clutter up the street. It’s a job I want from them, not charity.’

  I just nodded, what was there to say?

  ‘The storm is going to be twice as bad tonight, you need to be in the shelter.’

  He didn’t completely ignore it, but he changed the subject to his favourite one.

  ‘Did you know that there’s not a single piece of the world that white folk haven’t ruined?’ This was his way of trying to get me to leave him alone. ‘India, Australia, America, Africa, the Middle East-’

  It worked. ‘Alright, alright, Lenny, I’ll leave you alone.’

  I stood up, scooping up the pound in the process.

  ‘But I’ll be back.’

  I unlocked the outside door and jogged up the stairs to my office. Inside I hung Rory’s coat on a coat hook rather than throwing it over a chair. Not because it was Rory’s, but because there comes a time to do things properly. I threw the phone receiver in the air and caught it before I dialled. I was in that mood. After all, I was calling Monica Todman.

  The phone rang for some time on the other end. Finally, the receptionist told me she wasn’t in the office. Being a detective, I had already sourced her home number so I called that. This was answered very quickly by a male voice.

  ‘Todman household,’ was the utilitarian answer. I pictured an odious butler in full period dress.

  ‘Monica Todman, please.’

  ‘Miss Todman is busy, can I take a message?’

  ‘Tell her it’s Joe Grabarz. She’ll take my call.’

  ‘She is not to be disturbed, sir.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I don’t care if she’s eating, drinking, or under the covers, she’ll take my call. Go get her.’

  I could hear him thinking, then I sat on hold for an annoyingly long time. The hold music sounded like a four-piece jazz band trapped in a steel box. Eventually the torture stopped.

  ‘Joseph?’

  Just her voice, divorced from her body, her face, style, or her dripping Old Fashioned was enough to make me feel gooey inside.

  ‘Hello, Monica.’

  ‘You’ve caught me in the bath, Joseph.’

  I prayed it was true, and on cue I heard the sounds of water swishing around her thighs.

  ‘Lucky me.’

  I pictured her barely concealed behind convenient bubbles. Steam rising. A silly long brush to scrub her back with. I needed to stop.

  ‘You’ve got news?’ she asked.

  ‘Put in an anonymous tip on the building site. The police will find a store of prescription drugs. No doubt they ship them in there before routing them out to other locations to be divided and sold. So some days they’ll be there, some days they won’t, but if you go in the day after a delivery you’re guaranteed to score.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘I don’t know, the packets were in French.’

  ‘I see.’

  There was silence for a moment. All I could hear was the crackle of soap bubbles bursting.

  ‘You’ve delivered for me, Joseph.’

  ‘So you’ll drop the lawsuit?’

  ‘It would be a nice excuse to see you again.’ If she was the type of woman to giggle she would have.

  I’ve found the best thing to do with comments like that is to ignore them. It makes them work even harder. ‘And you’ll pay my fee?’

  Water swished, she was adjusting herself. ‘Why did the police blacklist you?’

  None of your business, I thought.

  When I didn’t answer she asked, ‘Is it personal?’

  ‘Sort of,’ was my response.

  ‘I want to know anyway,’ was hers.

  ‘I punched the Chief Superintendent.’

  ‘Joseph,’ she had a scolding tone.

  If it’s possible to convey a shrug audibly then I did, ‘It was going to happen eventually.’

  ‘You know…’ more water swished, ‘you can come round and jump in the bath with me if you like.’

  I could, you know. I knew her address, I didn’t even have to be invited.

  ‘Ask me again another time.’ Literally any other time, Monica.

  ‘I’m not used to being turned down.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not.’ I changed the subject back, ‘Pay my fee.’

  There was that space again where a giggle would be, then, ‘You must be joking.’ And she hung up.

  Damn. I hadn’t expected that development. One part of me in particular told me I’d enjoy chasing her for money. The rest of me thought it was very inconvenient right now.

  But at least that was sorted. I wasn’t being sued anymore. There was just one more thing I wanted to be sure of before the evening, so I opened up the blood work that Price had given me.

  It was Rory’s blood alright, but I already knew that. I was interested in the toxicology report. It was broken down rather simply by the doctor for the simple police officers: “Blood alcohol content: 0.07—No illegal substances found.”

  That settled it. Rory was clean, and pretty much sober when he died. He had passed my final test. He deserved my help, no doubt. I will make it stop.

  I slumped in my chair. It was only late afternoon, and I had nothing to do until the evening, so I decided to go walkies.

  It was between four and five and the Lanes were still full of people, even if most of the jewellers had started taking things out of the window displays, ready for locking up. Lenny was gone though. Good, he had listened to me after all.

  Harry was just coming out the shop where he worked, and spotting him I asked him for a quick drink in The Bath Arms. This was when he told me all about young Bobby, about his father, and all that stuff.

  Afterwards, I walked out and down through the Steine. The bells of St. Peters were ringing the changes, which is always a strangely provincial sound to hear in such a bohemian city. But it was nice. Almost quaint.

  By halfway up Elm Grove I couldn’t hear them anymore. Then I was up at the top, in the shadow of Brighton General Hospital. The central clock tower struck seven as I passed it, but I could barely read it in the gathering darkness. The hospital was once the old workhouse, and the place still gave me the chills. It’s grey, stained walls had once contained how many screams? How many desperate people unlucky enough to be born poor in that century? How many people with mental illnesses that were misunderstood? Had any of my relatives been trapped in there? Or born in there? I didn’t know. I would never know. I can’t, but if you can, check their birth certificates for 250 Elm Grove.

  It wasn’t Brighton’s first workhouse, but certainly it’s last. For some years after the First World War it became the Kitchener Indian Hospital, to nurse those unlucky Indian soldiers who had fought to protect our empire. The Hindus and Sikhs who didn’t survive were cremated on a funeral pyre on the Sussex Downs. Just nor
th of Patcham you can see the small, domed Chatri monument that marks the spot, sitting serene and solitary in the middle of the hillside. After that the building was back to a workhouse for a decade, then it became the hospital it is today.

  I continued up towards the racecourse but took a left along Tenantry Down Road and scrambled over the fence into the allotments above the cemeteries and crematorium. Andy kept an allotment around here and I knew he kept a lawn chair in the little lockup.

  I planted it down next to his runner beans, just over the fence from the gravestones in the cemetery. Once, on a whim, I decided to see if I had any family buried here, but there was no Grabarz. If that was even his real name.

  Right now I sat and watched the sun set over my favourite view of the city. Admiring the curves where Richmond Road and Roundhill Crescent are carved into the hill through which the railway line cuts a tunnel. You can see as far as Shoreham power station and beyond from here. The only thing ruining this view now was the tower of the i360 viewing platform that was still under construction and currently a title contender for World’s Most Pointless Tall Pole.

  I had fallen in and out of love with this city so many times. There are a load of things about it that piss me off, especially when people act like the place is perfect. It’s not perfect. But every time I see this view I’m reminded of what the city really means to me. It’s home.

  I had been raised by so many families, passed from one to the other, that it felt as though the city had raised me. It was my mother and my father. And if someone hurt it, it was as though they had slapped my mother across the face. Right now, my mother and father had a drug problem, and I was going to do everything I could to make it better. This was my city. My city.

  Sitting in the allotment, frost growing on the vegetables, amongst the smell of crisp, damp air, underneath what was going to be a storm, amazingly, I fell asleep.

  I dreamt of the time that Elaine came and asked me to find Rory. That offended, disappointed tone, ‘I don’t have any money, Joe.’ And the look she gave me as she left. Contrary to what she thought of me I didn’t just ignore her. I did care. And I dreamt of when I went looking for him.

  I used an old school photo to trawl the pubs he used to drink in. Then the ones he didn’t. In a complete dive the landlord nodded, and gestured to a table in the corner. There was Rory, sitting alone. He looked up and gave me the smile that he always did. I remembered that smile and I gave the one I always gave back. But he wasn’t looking at me. Three men pushed past me: the bear, the weasel, and a third, shorter man. I had found him. He hadn’t changed. He didn’t want to know me. I didn’t want to know him. And I would save his mother from ever meeting this Rory. They hugged and joked as I slinked backwards into the darkness.

  13

  Thick as Thieves

  it was pitch black when I woke, and it took me five seconds to remember where I was and what I was doing. Then the salty night air grabbed me by the throat, and shook me a couple of times before it let go.

  When the wind paused for a few moments the night seemed silent and still, but I knew it was an illusion, another huge storm front was set to batter the coast in just a few hours. The beating fist of Storm Joseph, and he wore brass knuckles too.

  As I climbed over the fence out of the allotments, and headed down Bear Road toward the Roundhill area, I could feel the wind picking up, like God was gradually turning up the dial, and every house I passed began to draw their curtains, turn up the heating, and turn up the volume on their TVs. Cavemen retreating deeper into their caves.

  Through the gyratory and up the other side, the wind became a bully that pushed and shoved you around, so that you couldn’t walk in a straight line. It was more like a group of bullies, a bully circle if you know what that is. And if you don’t know what that is, it’s exactly what it sounds like. More and more people hurried into warm, steamed-up pubs and restaurants. There’s never anywhere quite as cosy as a softly lit pub with a drink in your hand, food in your stomach, and a storm outside the window. It’s just a shame when you have to leave.

  The word was that Coward’s men still drank at the Roundhill pub where I had seen them two years ago. Apparently it was quite well known amongst junkies, Lenny had told me. They knew to avoid it if they owed money.

  The Roundhill? I remembered it was a dive then and thought it was probably still a dive now. And it was.

  From the outside I knew the type of place: a place where fat, balding men came to play pool and darts and drink cheap lager and cheap bitter. This was not somewhere that listed the wine with tasting notes and served lovely organic beef burgers in toasted brioche buns. This place was for men whose jobs were slowly destroying their knees and their backs. Men who were paid cash-in-hand and only reported small change to the taxman. The sort of place that anywhere else would casually ignore the smoking ban, but in Brighton even the tradesmen are starting to vape.

  It used to have big glass windows, like a shopfront, that were peculiarly clean, probably the only clean thing in the place, that gave walking past it the feeling of passing a natural history exhibit. ‘Here we have three old men playing pool whilst another hacks his guts out onto the carpet.’ I always thought they did this to discourage new people from entering the place. But now they had replaced them with frosted windows, I guessed they needed the business.

  I pushed my way in through the frosted front door, etched with the word “saloon”. Ironically or not, I couldn’t tell.

  Inside was just as I had feared. It smelt of sweat, smoke, dogs, and possibly even urine. My ears were assaulted by the clack of pool balls on pool balls. People screaming at football on the telly. Gambling machines played irritatingly high-pitched renditions of popular game show themes. And from every corner came that irritating banter-laugh that men do to assert their masculinity, just in case anyone was doubting it.

  A few people looked at me, it must have been obvious to them that I wasn’t a regular, for starters I wasn’t wearing the uniform. Polo shirt, rugby shirt, football shirt, it didn’t matter but as long as your top was made for doing sport and your belly meant you couldn’t see your shoes then you were one of them. I wasn’t one of them, but the place was so noisy that their brief moment of interest wasn’t registered by anyone else.

  In a corner that was half table, half booth, already with a few empty pint glasses, sat the bear, the weasel, and the short, third man, the only other people in the place under forty-five. I sauntered up to them out of the mob. The place was so packed they didn’t even notice me until I spoke.

  ‘It’s Toby, isn’t it?’

  I was speaking to the weasel, but of course they all looked up. I must have been quite a sight, with my bruised face, because I saw the bear mouth, ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Remember me?’ I asked.

  ‘You broke my nose,’ Toby said slowly.

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that. Mind if I take a seat?’

  ‘Yeah, I do a bit.’

  I looked between the other two, ‘Why don’t I buy us all a drink?’ and before they could answer I was at the bar.

  Two men in front of me were holding a third one by his arms and punching him. I would have done something but the landlord was busy watching and laughing. I couldn’t afford to get on his bad side, yet. I also thought the guy being punched was laughing, whatever that meant.

  I distracted him long enough to order, ‘One lager and three more of whatever they’re having,’ as I gestured to the corner.

  Normally I don’t drink beer anymore but the spirits looked shit and anything fancy might get me lynched.

  ‘Three lagers and one snakebite.’

  He pulled a couple of the beers and then made the unholy half and half mix of lager and cider that really marks you out as a chav. He added a dash of blackcurrant at the end. Technically this made it a snakebite and black, but I wasn’t about to point out his mistake.

  He got the last nonic ready to pull my lager, but then I decided that I didn’t give a shit
what they thought, I don’t live my life like that.

  ‘On second thoughts, make mine a shandy,’ I said.

  The two men suddenly stopped punching the other one, as though they had heard an usual sound, and all three looked at me with a smarmy grin. It was as though I had turned up in drag.

  They loosened their joints, leaning on the bar, doing an impression of relaxation. This was a game for them, a chance to take the piss is what they live for.

  God, I hate being a man sometimes. We’re such a pathetic, posturing, insecure sex. It’s irritating when women say “he’s only a man, dear” or “they’re men” as an explanation, not only because it assumes all men are like that, but because it’s giving them an excuse. It’s saying “they’re men: they can’t help it”. I’m a man, and I can tell you right now: they can help it.

  ‘You know this isn’t Revenge, right?’ the leader of the pack asked. Revenge is the gay club in Brighton, if you didn’t know.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘Revenge has women.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s just a bit of a penis festival in here.’

  ‘Yeah, well you’re the one drinking the shandy.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I replied. ‘And you’re the homophobe who won’t shut up.’

  The landlord used the brief silence that followed to ask, ‘Was it lager or bitter you wanted?’

  ‘Bitter,’ I answered.

  He dutifully poured me a bitter shandy, lemonade in first, which is correct.

  I had managed to scrabble together my last fifteen quid, which with the pound from Lenny was only just enough thanks to Brighton prices, and picked up the four pints.

  ‘Enjoy your shandy, princess,’ the wise guy shouted as I moved away.

  ‘I will, sexy,’ I shouted so that everyone who wanted to could hear me, ‘I’ll meet you in the alley later, and don’t forget to pay me this time. This hot piece of ass isn’t yours for free.’

  Even with him behind me I could feel the heat of him turning as red as an embarrassed homophobic idiot. Amazingly there are still even areas of Brighton that civilisation hasn’t reached yet.