2. That old dear in the gift shop was Jim’s mum
3.
4. Because I’m black
Number four you’ve always got to consider from the day you’re born until the day you die. Especially in a town like this. Even when people are being alright to you, you never know what’s going on behind their pasty foreheads.
Numbers one and two, they could go fuck themselves if those were true.
Three I didn’t even want to think about, let alone say out loud.
I couldn’t.
If you say the words, they might come true.
I looked around the pub instead, recognising three or four of the ten or so in there, all of them acting like I didn’t even exist. Wankers. I should have known I was only here on sufferance.
No, they weren’t wankers really.
You couldn’t blame them.
I’d have expected more to be in at this time though. Half six and no one was at the fruit machine. Early evening, Tyrone was normally on it, pissing away whatever he hadn’t lost down the bookies at lunchtime.
I was wasting my time here. I knew I should admit that and go look elsewhere, but something kept me on my stool... something small and pink and shaped like a pyramid, I realised when I finally spotted it a couple of tables away. I only knew one person who could fold an empty crisp bag that way, and she did it with her prawn cocktail flavour every Thursday when I met her in here.
I went straight out the main door, not even looking back at the non-wankers who you couldn’t really blame. As I went round the side I started getting a sick feeling in my guts, like someone was playing a bass guitar in there. I wanted to shit and puke at the same time, shout and punch walls because I knew what was happening here and I was powerless to fix it just now.
The toilets at the Rose and Crown are outdoor ones. You reach them from the back door but I didn’t want the non-wankers to know I was there, so I went round the side. There were two cubicles in the bogs and one was closed and locked. I climbed on the wash basin and leaned over the partition, looking down at Tyrone, him of the fruit machine. He was picking his nose.
‘I got shit on you,’ I said.
He jumped and made a little noise, then his nose started bleeding. I think he’d rammed his finger too far up it. ‘Look what you done!’ he said, looking at me. ‘What did you do that for? You made me... erm...’
‘You got two chances to give me the right answer. Fail once, you get the small forfeit. Fail twice, the big one. Get past ’em both and you’re a winner.’
‘I dunno nothin’ about no—!’
‘Who’d she leave with?’
I didn’t know for sure that she’d left with anyone, of course. She could have waited ages and then split, gone down her pal’s house and no harm done. But she might not have.
‘Who?’
‘You know who.’
‘I don’t! I—’
‘My Kelly!’
‘Your Kelly? Who the...? Oh.’
‘Yeah. Oh. Who’d she leave with?’
‘Honest, I dunno, Leon.’
I reached down and grabbed him by the hair. It was a bit short and well greasy, but I got enough of a grip and slammed his face against the door, saying: ‘There’s your small forfeit.’
I don’t think he heard that over his own screaming.
I grabbed his hair again and he shut up.
‘Second chance: who’d she leave with?’
He gave me his doe eyes. Actually they were more like a frog than a doe. A frog with blood all over his chin.
‘What’s the big forfeit?’
‘Like I said, I got shit on you.’
‘What shit?’
‘I work at Destiny, Ty. I see everyone come and go.’
‘Eh?’
I was on sabbatical, it’s true. But you would be too if you’d maimed a VIP punter. Didn’t mean I wouldn’t be back there when this all blew over. Business is business.
‘Don’t play the thick one with me, Ty. You want me to tell your mum what you like to do?’
‘You stay away from my mam!’
He folded his arms and looked away in a sulk, breathing hard through his mouth. I could crack him in ten seconds. You watch.
‘I can draw a diagram. Cindy told me all about it. By the way, she went in last week and had the full operation. Know what that makes her, Ty? 100% woman... sort of. I suppose you won’t be so interested in her now, eh?’
‘Fuck off, you nutter!’
Maybe just over, eleven seconds - fair play.
I reached down and wiped a drip of blood off his chin, then wiped it on the white door amongst the footy teams and pictures of cocks and who shagged who.
‘Who’d Kelly leave with?’
He looked at where I’d scrawled his blood, his breathing slowing as he said, almost so you couldn’t hear:
‘Carla?’
5.
LEVEL 1: BREACH IN PROTOCOL
1. Record breach in security log inc. date, time and security personnel on shift
2. Appropriate tools obtained from security cabinet
3. Lock cabinet again after tools obtained
4. Investigate breach without delay
5. If no danger found, personnel responsible for false alarm to be reprimanded/penalised
6. If danger found, escalate alert to appropriate level
Best if I just say what happened back there at Destiny, with the VIP and shit. This was a couple of weeks ago. I’d popped out for some fags, over at the garage. Dennis Tamar was behind the counter and we chatted about footy for a while. Dennis had Everton down for relegation but I said not a chance, not unless Rooney got injured. I picked up a couple of other things while I was there too, fireworks and stuff. It was bonfire night, and I knew Kelly’s mum wouldn’t be doing anything to mark the occasion, being obsessed with health and safety. That kid would be a wet lettuce if it was just her mum, I swear. But she had me too, and no way was I going to let her grow up soft. One way or another, I’d make sure she had a proper bonfire, sparklers and everything.
I’m not really supposed to leave the premises. There’s no saying what might happen and who might come in while I’m gone, but this was quite early - about three in the afternoon - and I’d never known a lairy punter at that time. Lairy is a by-product of alcohol, and the only drinkers that time of day are your committed ones, who are more interested in drink than sex. So I wasn’t surprised when I got back and found the place all quiet.
Not even Carla was in her office. I checked the computer - only one girl was in just now, that new one. She was up in Room One, but I couldn’t see if she had a punter there or not. I shook my head: this constituted a Level One breach of protocol. The amount of time I’d spent getting this security system set up and they don’t even use it right. All they have to do is type their number into a keypad when they go in the room, then flick the switch to green or red depending on the punter situation, thereby letting muggins downstairs know who’s where and what they’re up to. How hard is that? But still they messed it up. I could see a couple more training seminars being in order. They’d moan, sure. They’d whinge and whine and call me Gareth out of The Office. But they’d soon stop that if a punter went violent on them, oh yes. They’d be reaching for that red button and thanking the god of prostitution that their security man had gone to all that trouble for them.
I sat down at the computer, running through the Level One procedure in my head.
6.
Took me all of thirty minutes to get Carla’s address. I thought that was quite good, bearing in mind this is a woman I do not get along with and only ever see in a purely business capacity. To give you the full picture, I fucking hated her. Something about her just got on my wick and stayed there, pinching and biting it. Listening to her was like poking darts in your ears, and looking at her was like scratching your eyeballs with that nail-file she was always using. To be fair, I did understand the point of her. You need someone like that running a brot
hel. Just like you need someone like me handling security. As much as I hate to say it, we were a good management team.
I don’t know why I was shocked, finding the place and seeing what a dump it was. True enough: she was a brothel madam, and you picture them living in tacky mini-mansions with pink curtains and a fountain in the front garden. But Graven was the owner of Destiny, not her. He paid her a wage, just like me. And it wasn’t like she could just hand in her cards and find a better paid position. Besides a couple of Chinese ones that kept moving camp before you could hit them, Destiny was the only knocking shop in town.
She could like her salary or lump it.
And let’s be clear, here: Graven don’t take kindly to being lumped.
Which explained the crumbling town-house on Green Hill, chest-high weeds out front and five rusty doorbells beside the front door. I pressed number three, which I’d been told was Carla’s.
Then I leaned on it.
What was I doing? The way I guessed it, Carla had taken Kelly off and handed her over to Graven, who was holding her somewhere, planning on using her as bait to force me to do some horrible thing in penance for my fuck-up. Which I’d gladly do, if it got Kelly free. There was no way Carla herself would be holding her. Carla was no different to Graven’s men, doing what he says or else. But she still wouldn’t want to face me right now. Glancing out her window and seeing me come along the road, she’d be out the back and down the fire escape in a shot.
I went round the back.
In a shot.
No way had she come down this thing in a hurry. Not without half the neighbourhood knowing about it anyway. I’m no expert on fire escapes but even I knew scrap iron when I saw it. Two or three tons of the stuff in what looked to be two thousand moving parts. What wasn’t rusted solid was loose and rattling like a bag of change. There’d have to be some serious blaze going on for any sane person to set foot on this heap of nails, let me tell you.
I set foot on it.
The doors on these old lodging houses are shit. I’m no housebreaker and even I had it open with no more fuss than a little scattering of white paint flakes on the floor. You didn’t get a number round the back but I knew straight away it was Carla’s. I could smell her. When you work in a house full of hookers, you learn about perfume, mouthwash and all kinds of fragranced detergents. I don’t know what scent Carla used, but it reeked.
No one in.
For one so organised in her working life, I’d never have guessed she was a such a slob at home. Bed unmade, clothes on the floor, empty wine bottles all around, bins overflowing and no sign of a Hoover. This wasn’t just turning a blind eye to filth and disarray, we are talking a concerted effort to achieve it. It was like she was making up for the po-faced order of her job by having chaos at home. I hoped it was working out for her. I knew it was good for what I had in mind. A domestic setup as relaxed as this means a good chance you’ll find some evidence. You can always do with evidence.
I mean, you can’t take anyone’s word for anything.
I started rooting around, grimacing as I slid a plate of half-eaten chow mein off a pile of papers. Most were bills, the rest made up of sun-bed sessions offered at two for one (a month free if you renew your health club membership NOW), a letter from the NHS asking her to come for a smear (dated eight months ago) and various final demands. A letter from a solicitor looked like it was to do with divorce proceedings, but I ignored it. I’d never been able to understand legal stuff and I had no hope now. And besides, it was nothing to do with abducting a girl on behalf of a vindictive crime boss. So I looked elsewhere.
I was starting to give up hope of finding anything more interesting than a smiley face mug with five week’s worth of penicillin growth in it when I found the box, under the bed, obscured by a black nightie with what looked like spunk stains on it. It was only a shoe box but you could see it was special. The sides were repaired with yellowed Sellotape and endless flowers had been doodled on the top in blue biro.
I knew the sort of thing I’d find inside, and I wasn’t wrong: old letters, photographs, sentimental knick-knacks. I struggled to imagine Carla with a sentimental bone in her body, but there you go. One snap was of a younger Carla in a wedding dress, smiling and looking like the whole of human experience lay before her. The photo had been cut in half to get rid of the groom, leaving a tanned hand grasping Carla’s bare white shoulder. There you go: even icy bitches like Carla can have a past where things were different. Other photos were of her at school, out on the lash with her pals as a teenager, ripping up her L-sign next to a red VW Polo.
I went to close the lid. Carla was becoming like a real person in my mind, and I didn’t want that. She was the enemy right now, the one who’d snatched my kid, and the last thing I wanted was a twinge of sympathy for her. But another picture caught my eye and I paused, picked it up. It was the most recent one of Carla, by the looks of it, but still a few years old. She was sitting on Darren’s knee.
Darren?
I was pinned to the spot for a moment, I don’t mind saying. This did not compute. Darren was one proposition and Carla was another, and never the twain shall rub shoulders. Or so I thought. But like I said, only for a moment was I flummoxed. Everyone knows everyone in a town like this, and sooner or later they’re going to shag them or fight them. Mind you, I had Darren down for fighting her.
Under the photo was a diamond engagement ring. I looked at it, rubbing the 22ct gold between my fingers, thinking back to when me and Jane had got engaged. But only for about five seconds. I was here for evidence, remember?
One last scout around the grottier corners of the flat and I found it. I stared at it for ages, hardly breathing at all. Everything around me was silent. Nothing existed except me and this evil little fact.
It knocks the wind out of you, reality does.
7.
There is a song by Michael Jackson called “She’s Out of My Life”, and it means a lot to me. Around the time me and Jane split, it was all I heard in my head. You’d think that would turn you nuts but this song didn’t. It’s a special song, and fitted my situation like Michael Jackson’s glove fitted his hand. But it wasn’t about Jane. I didn’t give much of a shit that she was out of my life after the initial trauma. It was about Kelly, my little girl. It’s about every quiet moment that could have been filled with her. And they were filled with her, those lonely moments. You close your eyes and swear you can smell her hair. You see her soft, light brown face, clear blue eyes. Sapphires in the desert, Jane called her when she was a baby: the perfect mix of white and black, cold and warm, her and me. We looked down at her as she slept, all new and sated on mother’s milk, and wondered how she would turn out. I still do.
Then I open my eyes.
Sounds odd, what I’m about to say, but until me and Jane split I hadn’t really thought of myself as having a daughter. I knew Kelly was mine, of course, but I didn’t feel the connection. When she was born, I didn’t feel no different. I didn’t go around acting like a dad, and that’s because I wasn’t one inside.
I’m painting myself as a bit of a bastard here, but I’m not. The difference between me and a bastard is that I can look back and see it, point at that period of my life and say I was no good. Right up until the point when I found that leaving Jane meant leaving Kelly as well, in the end.
It cuts like a knife.
That’s what the injunction was about. Jane stopped letting me see my own daughter, so I’d had to go round and throw gravel at the window like a lovesick teen. And that’s what I was, in way (although I was in my twenties by then). Any good father would be lovesick if they weren’t allowed to see their kid. Like I say, cuts like a knife. Which is probably why I ended up crashing that house party with a machete.
It wasn’t for Jane or Kelly. Don’t be stupid. It was for him, that toe-rag of a boyfriend Jane was knocking around with. And I wasn’t going to use it. Of course I wasn’t.
I mean, come on.
What do yo
u think I’m capable of?
I just wanted to scare him, let him know that there was already a family here - broken though it may be - and that he was walking on thin ice. One foot wrong and you’re under. And by a foot wrong I mean try and replace me as her dad. Or try and turn Kelly against me. Or anything, really. There was a long list of potential wrong feet he could step into, and I’d be there waiting for him if he ticked a box.
So the machete was to help him, really.
Keep him on his toes.
But I needn’t have worried too much. Kelly was a good girl. She knew what she was about and where she came from. Love between a child and her father does not recognise injunctions, curfews nor threats. She stayed in my life, and it had stopped cutting like a knife.
Only it was starting again now.
I didn’t know where she was.
But I knew one thing. If someone had hurt her, touched her or upset her in any way, I’d show them what cutting like a knife feels like.
Starting with Carla.
8.
They must have known I was coming. I could tell as soon as I stepped inside the Eagle. Every punter in there carried on drinking and ignored me. One or two looked up but didn’t bat an eyelid. And that smelt wrong to me. When I walk in a pub around here, people bat eyelids. Especially in a pub like The Alma. Someone must have tipped them off. They’d all had a chat about it and decided to play it calm, act like nothing’s up. And if you don’t believe me, hear what the barman said when I went up and ordered a Famous Grouse and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps from him:
‘I see you’re back.’
See? So I’m not paranoid. I can judge situations and read between lines.
I looked over my shoulder, craning my neck to get a view down there. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s good that you can see my back. ’Cos I can’t, for the life of me.’
Graven Image Page 2