by Ray Banks
Baz raises his head, his eyes half-closed. He's either knackered or piss-drunk. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter, considering the place is heaving now, the early liquid lunch brigade out for the afternoon. I find him at the same table he used to occupy with Mo and Rossie. Back to the wall, good view of the rest of the pub, it was originally a position that mirrored Morris Tiernan's seat in the Wheatsheaf. But now that Baz is the only one here, and the drinkers on either side are seeping into the spaces that Mo and Rossie used to occupy, he's become a bloated ghost. Still off to one side, as if he's still waiting for Mo to come back, shoulders bunched up at his ears, one hand protective of his pint. Last time I saw him, those hands were bandaged. Now when he shows his palms, I can see the scar tissue shine like plastic.
“You got a stick,” he says in a low slur. “What happened to you anyway? I heard something like fuckin' popped in your brain.”
I don't answer, don't react. Make it obvious to him that he's not going to wind me up. Instead, I clear my throat and say, “I asked you a question, Barry.”
He tightens his fingers around his pint, takes a large swallow that spills out and leaves his lips wet and shining. After he puts the glass down, he looks at me straight, his eyelids still heavy. “Last time I saw Mo, you threatened to kill him.”
“Really,” I say.
“Remember that?” He's genuinely interested.
“Yeah. I remember.”
Mo was slumped on the carpet right where I'm standing now, his hands up over his face, a large blood bubble from the wad of chewed meat that used to be his nose and top lip. And I stood over him with broken, bloody hands.
“I see you anywhere near Paulo, near the lads that go to his place, near the club, near me, I'm going to kill you on sight.”
I look at Baz's scarred hands, see blackened walls and the sick grin on Mo's face that meant him and his two mates were behind it all. But he's still lying, having a pop at me because he's pissed up and amused at the state I'm in. Reckons I'm a far cry from the bloke who dragged Mo Tiernan over a table and beat him until my knuckles broke.
“You haven't … seen him. Since then?”
“Who?” he says, squinting at me.
Still playing games.
“Mo.”
“Ah, Mo.” He shifts in his seat, taps the side of his pint glass. “Aye, you're right.”
“So, when?”
“I need a slash,” he says.
Baz knocks his pint into a wobble as he tries to pull himself from behind the table. A guy in a tweedy jacket with the smell of years-old whisky sweat on him shifts towards me as Baz lurches past. I make the mistake of putting a hand on the guy's arm, and my fingers come away damp. With what, I don't want to know.
“Baz,” I say as he moves towards the toilets.
He doesn't answer, pulls a face as if he's thinking about knocking me down, and as he does his skin creases, showing wrinkles that weren't there the last time I saw him. Now I see him moving, I notice the weight on him, too, and I wonder how long it's been. Can't be any more than five months, but there's been some damage done in that time.
When I look up, Baz has already gone, headed for the gents. I get up, head to the short corridor that houses both sets of toilets, and I lean on the old cigarette machine. I'm not about to follow him in. Bad memories associated with that particular pisser, and I like the idea of being out in the open just in case the drink makes Baz handier than usual. That way, at least I've got plenty of witnesses.
Just like when I beat the shit out of Mo. Some of whom are in this afternoon, and they remember me. Something about that incident managed to stick well into their otherwise booze-blasted memory. Looking around the Harvester, I realise that Baz wasn't the only one around here to get older and fatter. They never were a pretty bunch in here, but now it's definitely a pub you walk into drunk for fear of seeing who you're drinking with. The bloke in the tweed glances at me over the rim of his lager. One eye is haemorrhaged and swollen, a dispute ended with a single blow; his nose is a burst strawberry well past its sell-by. When he catches me looking at him, he attempts a Paddington stare. Then he puts down his lager and shouts something at me. I don't make out the words. Sounds like he's barking.
“What'd you say to piss Hamish off?” says Baz.
I put a hand on his chest, nudge him back into the corridor. There's a fizz behind his eyes that tells me he didn't just have a slash.
“When did … you see him?”
“Fuckin' hell, you know what you sound like?” He tilts his head to one side. “You sound like a right fuckin' joey.”
“I know.”
Baz was never like this before. Out of the pair of Mo's lads, it was Rossie who acted the hardcase; he was the one more likely to go aggro on you. But with Rossie absent, Baz seems to have bristled right up, bent himself all out of shape to project an image he needs a wrap of speed to maintain.
And I know why: Baz was the butt of the trio. Used to be, because Mo was the one in charge, he'd put Baz under his boot more often than he'd give him a voice. Now Mo's gone, Baz has had to build himself up like he doesn't need the bloke anymore.
But it's a cowboy job — Baz's problem is he thought he had something to say only while he was forbidden to say it. Now he realises, he's just as fucking useless as Mo told him he was.
“You dealing?” I say.
“Eh? What'd you say, Mong?”
“Speed. You dealing?”
“You got cash on you, maybe I am.”
Shake my head. “You take over, Baz?”
Baz sticks his tongue under his bottom lip, breathing through his nose. “Take over what?”
I grip the handle of my walking stick, lean into him. Smell the booze on his breath. “You and Mo, Baz. Did it not … work out?”
He flinches back, the speed prickling at him. “You what?”
“You know. Mo's gone. You're selling. What happened?”
Baz backs up further, looking at me with wide eyes. There's a smile that keeps trying to sneak its way onto his face, but he won't let it pitch tent because his brain is too busy sifting through possible answers and because Baz is such a thick bastard, it could take a while, even with the speed kicking in. He starts working his mouth, chewing invisible gum. I watch him, blocking his exit back to the main bar, the only close sound the intermittent flush of the urinals.
“What you saying?”
I stare at him. He knows only too well what I'm saying. Wants me to repeat it so he has an excuse to kick off.
“What, that I had summat to do with Mo, is that it?”
“He dead?”
His eyes shock wider for a second. “I didn't say that.”
“Don't fuck about.”
He breathes through his teeth. I can almost hear his heart thumping in his chest. That wrap was a tough one, ripped the water out of him, as he smacks his lips. The only thing he wants right now is a pint, and I'm hardly in a position to get in his way for long. He knows that, too.
“Fuck off.”
Baz steps forward and my first instinct kicks in, which is to stand firm. He slams me into the wall, the impact knocking the wind from me. As I peel myself from the wallpaper, I can't do anything but watch him march out into the main bar.
I take my time, stare at the swirls on the carpet until I catch my breath. Once I'm mobile, I swing out after him, arrive at the bar just as Baz gets his pint. He picks up the glass, raising it to his mouth as I double-grip my walking stick and swing at him.
The rubber end of the stick catches the edge of his glass, whips it out of his hands and into the bottles lined along the back bar. There's a terrific crash, shit lager spraying the bar, Baz and anyone within a four-foot radius. The landlord, a fucking bull of a man with more tattoos than skin, shouts: “The fuck d'you think you're playing at?”
I'm staring at Baz. Fucking fearless. Bring it on.
He turns to me, sucking beer from his thumb, looks like some giant psychotic baby. Thoughts churning, he's trying
to work out what to do, whether to give in to the simple chemical urge to break me down quick and nasty.
“Talking to you, you fuckin' cunt.” The landlord again, getting closer. “The fuck you think you are, you spastic fuck, come in here—”
“Morris Tiernan,” I say.
I don't need to see the landlord to know he's stopped in his tracks. Don't need to hear him to know he's wondering what the hell Morris Tiernan has to do with his wrecked back bar. But he's not about to ask any questions. I might as well have said Candyman five times into his cracked bar mirror.
“He wants to know.” I take a breath. “Where his son is.”
The landlord doesn't say anything. Neither does Baz, but he's gone grey and he's stopped staring at me, started staring through me. And with the speed well in his system by now, those thoughts have jumped the rails, become full-tilt paranoid.
“We need to talk,” I tell him. “Like fuckin' adults.”
He looks around him as if he's just sobered up after a fortnight drunk, wondering where the fuck he's ended up. I dig around in my jacket pocket, find my cigarettes and hold the pack out to Baz.
“You want a smoke?” I say.
Baz looks at the Embassys, pitches a sigh, and reaches for the pack.
“Outside, lads,” says the landlord.
“I know.”
Baz reaches for a cigarette, and I nod towards the doors. He trudges out into the street, and I'm not far behind.
9
INNES
“So where's Rossie?”
The rain has eased off to a shower, but it's still cold enough to prompt a shiver from Baz as he sucks on a filter round the Harvester's “beer garden”, which is basically a trestle table and an outside ashtray. He rubs his nose as he contemplates his answer. We seem to be the only things moving out here. The houses across the way look abandoned, but someone has to call this place their local.
“You never talked to him, then,” he says.
“Don't know … where he is.”
“He's out of it.”
“Left town?”
“Left the game,” says Baz. “Been looking for an excuse to fuck off since he started knocking off that skank up Cheetham Hill.”
“You keep in touch?”
“Last I heard, he was working full-time in fuckin' Currys.”
“Making them?”
“The shop. In the Trafford.”
Never expected Rossie to go straight, and I certainly never expected him to go into a job-type job. Which makes me think it wasn't just the skank who made him leave. “What about Mo?”
Baz breathes smoke down through his nostrils as he plucks the cigarette from his mouth. “I don't know. He was bad.”
“What's that mean?”
“Since his dad chucked him out, y'know, he was just doing bad. Wasn't right in the head most of the time, that thing with his dad just like fuckin' turned it up. I've known since first school, right, but I swear to God I never seen so bad as after his dad cut him loose. That was like the final fuckin' straw. You know, Rossie told us Mo didn't even know who his mam was? I mean, Mo always reckoned it was this one bird, but she was already long gone by the time he could ask any questions.”
“Gone?”
“Dead or left.” Baz pulls a face. “Doesn't matter which, does it? But my fuckin' point is, you forgive him a lot of the shit he did 'cause, y'know, what else was he supposed to fuckin' turn out like, you get me? Tapped at the source. So it's no wonder he did what he did.”
“Like his sister.”
“Half-sister. But yeah, that.” The orange glow on the end of his cigarette bobs as he moves his head. He blows some more smoke. “I never said it was legal or nowt like that. I'm just trying to give you some background on it, 'cause I know you didn't look at that whole thing the same fuckin' way we did.”
“How'd you see it?”
“Just that Mo loved her.”
“Fuck off.”
“Nah, see, different fuckin' ways of seeing it. And you never saw him when it was going on. It was true love to him. Didn't matter that they was fuckin' related.”
“Yeah, I know this. True love. Okay.”
“And when she went and fucked off with that bloke, you got to understand, he's already got this shite with his dad, not thinking he's up to snuff, now his fuckin' bird's pulling the same. Y'know, plus he's never been right in the head in the first fuckin' place … it was never going to end well.”
I glare at him. “You think?”
“All I'm saying, you want to blame anyone for what's happened, don't fuckin' put it all on Mo. And if owt's happened to him, then it's probably not deserved that much.”
“What has … happened to him?”
“I don't know.”
“Last time you saw him?”
Baz takes a long drag on the cigarette, then another, until there's the smell of burning filter in the air. He pulls the butt from his mouth, flicks it into a puddle. He points to the pub. “In there.”
“When?”
“Couple month back.”
That's about right. “Was Rossie there?”
“Just me and Mo.”
“And?”
“And, what else do you do in a fuckin' pub?” He spits at the pavement. “We were drinking, and he was in a fuckin' state, wasn't he? He was talking about his dad, which he usually did when he'd had a few.”
“How?”
“Like the usual.” Baz moves his shoulders. “Like he was going to show his dad that he wasn't a fuck-up, and did I know that Uncle Morris treated him like shit his entire life, never gave him a chance to stand up, work on a bigger scale. Course I fuckin' did, it was all he ever talked about when he had a couple pints in him. And then he started talking about Rossie, and wondering where he was, so I told him he was working in Currys. He said we should go and fuck him up, him and his missus. And I said I wasn't going to fuckin' do that. Rossie was a mate, wasn't he? Then he got all fuckin' lairy with us, started on that I was a fat, useless cunt.” Baz sniffs, his eyes wide and glazed. He looks up at me, shrugs again. “Usual shite.”
It was. Any time I'd spent around the three of them, it was always Baz that got the shitty end of the stick. And I can only think Mo was well and truly hacked off to be left with Baz as company.
“So I told him to fuck off,” says Baz. “I wasn't taking his shite anymore, I couldn't be fuckin' arsed with it. And then he was like, he didn't need us anyway, I was a fuckin' baby, slowing him down.”
“He had plans?” I say.
“Mo always had plans. You know that. This time, he was going on about a proper job, something that would bring in the cash. Then he wouldn't have to spend his time in a shithole pub with a fuckin' braindead sidekick. That's what he said, anyway.”
“What d'you mean … proper?”
Baz shuffles closer into the smoker's alcove, peers at the dark grey sky. “I don't know, do I? Fuckin' Mo was always going on about Amsterdam, wasn't he? Reckoned he knew this bloke over there was going to hook him up a fuckin' distribution deal over here. Nobody in their right fuckin' mind would risk that much for three quid fuckin' pills, know what I mean? You're gonna bring in the Class As, you might as well bring in smack, get a better mark-up and the same fuckin' time if you're nabbed.”
“You setting up?”
“Me?” Shakes his head, wipes his nose. “Like fuck. You got another ciggie?”
I hand him the pack. He pulls out an Embassy, grunts his thanks, then sparks it with a disposable lighter.
“You not in … business, then?” I say.
He glares at me through a cloud of smoke. “Not like that, nah. Not like a proper fuckin' big-time job. I punt on if I get it, the usual. You know. Nowt fuckin' changes with me, mate. I'm the last proper gangster in Manchester.” He laughs, and as he winds down, I hear the wheeze tacked on the end of it. “I'm in with Tiernan, but way fuckin' down the totem, know what I mean? Out of sight, out of mind. One thing I learned being with Mo.”
/>
“That's it?”
He nods, blows smoke out the side of his mouth. “He tried calling us once after that. I didn't talk to him.”
“And you haven't … seen him? Anywhere?”
“Not since, no. I told you.”
“Where's he living?”
Baz scratches at the corner of his mouth, picks at some dry skin there. “I know where he was living.”
“That'll do.”
“Might not be there now, like.”
“Last known's good.”
“Out at Miles Platting. He had this squat in Sutpen Court, used to kip down there sometimes.”
“Write it down.” I hand him a bookie pen and a bus ticket. “Thought he had a flat.”
“Yeah, he did,” he says as he scrawls on the ticket. “But he sold it. Y'know, after what happened with his old man—”
“He sold it?”
He hands me the address. “Said he didn't want to live where his dad could get to him. Just because he wanted to kill his fuckin' dad, reckoned it was the other way around an' all. And the way he told it, he needed the money.”
“For what?”
“Didn't ask. Just thought he needed it for this proper job he was talking about. Like fuckin' seed money or summat.”
“And?”
“And, I don't fuckin' know, do I? Either he did it and he's fucked off, or summat happened to him and he didn't.”
“You try to find him?”
He doesn't answer, turns his face away. When he breathes out, smoke spills out of his mouth, seems to go on forever. Then he closes his mouth, and the muscles in his jaw twitch like insects under his skin.
“Baz,” I say.
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
He thinks about it, takes another drag on the cigarette. Sucks his teeth and turns back to me.
Then he says, “Because I realised that I was better off without that cunt in my life.”
10
DONKIN
So yeah, I was hungry by the time I got out the station, kind of miserable into the bargain. On top of that, it was pissing down, so I had to stay in the entrance to light my cigarette. Glad I did, mind, because I got to see the jam sandwich rolling in up front, and who happened to be in the back seat but Paddy Reece, his face all knotted up.