by Luke Delaney
‘I see,’ King slowly nodded his understanding before changing the subject. ‘D’you have a new mobile phone yet?’
‘I ain’t got no money for a mobile,’ O’Neil tried to convince him.
‘Don’t fuck me around, Dougie,’ King warned him. ‘You’re a drug addict and a thief. You couldn’t exist without a phone.’ O’Neil shuffled around, looking anywhere but at King. ‘I’m not interested in where you got it from,’ King told him, ‘if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘Fine,’ O’Neil gave in and pulled a smartphone from his back pocket.
‘Show me the number,’ King demanded. O’Neil did as he was told and pulled up the phone’s number – showing it to King who programmed it into his own device. ‘Good,’ he said, looking O’Neil up and down before speaking again, a troubling question forming in his mind. ‘You know what, Dougie – drugs have destroyed your life. You live like an animal, like a pig, yet I don’t hear any regret in your voice.’
‘Regret?’ Dougie looked confused. ‘Why would I regret it? It’s the best thing in the world. Better than anything. If I won the lottery tomorrow I’d buy a fucking huge pile of crack and brown and smoke that bastard until I was dead. Nothing can touch it.’
‘You’re a sad individual, Dougie,’ King told him. ‘Now get out of my sight.’ O’Neil stood nodding – his eyes still wild with the fantasy of huge piles of drugs – just for him. Eventually he realized that was all it was – a fantasy – and started to walk away. ‘When Mooney calls you,’ King reminded him, ‘you call me.’ O’Neil mumbled something over his shoulder and disappeared around the corner.
King stood shaking his head – trying to forget the desperate sadness that was O’Neil, when he heard his call sign coming over his radio. Despite the distortion he recognized Renita’s voice immediately.
‘PS 42 receiving?’ she asked. ‘PS 42.’
He grabbed the mouthpiece that was clipped high on his body armour and replied. ‘PS 42 receiving. What is it, Renita?’
‘Just seen someone you’re interested in,’ she told him, ‘out and about on the Grove Wood.’
‘Who?’ he asked bluntly.
‘Everton Watson,’ she replied. ‘Gladstone Way, heading towards Millander Walk.’
‘Keep an eye on him,’ he ordered. ‘I’m on my way.’
As King strode along the passageway of Millander Walk he spotted Watson swaggering straight towards him looking cocky and self-assured, as if he couldn’t be touched. He wore one of his collection of elaborate tracksuits, all affiliated to either an American NFL team or an American basketball team and always with a matching baseball cap. He approached King as if he hadn’t seen him – not even glancing his way as they drew almost level. But he burst to life when King stretched a powerful, muscular arm across his chest and stopped him in his tracks, dancing up and down on his toes as if he was about to start a boxing match. King ignored his posturing – confident he could incapacitate the slim eighteen year old with one punch if he had to.
‘Mr Watson,’ he smiled unpleasantly. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
Watson maintained his aggressive approach, having seen it cause more than one lone policeman or woman to back down in the past, but already he was beginning to think this one was different.
‘What you hassling me for, man?’ he complained vociferously, hoping to attract the attention of anyone else on the estate who might rally to his cause. ‘I ain’t done nuffing.’
‘Maybe not in the last five minutes,’ King snarled at him. ‘But you owe Her Majesty some time behind bars, Watson. Been having things too good for too long.’
‘I ain’t afraid of you,’ Watson bluffed, moving close to King, spitting the words into his face before a hand landed on his chest and pushed him backwards, spinning him around and slamming him into the wall. ‘You’re out of order,’ he managed to complain, but his veneer of courage was fading fast as King easily controlled him with only one arm.
‘I thought this was going to be difficult,’ King whispered into his ear, ‘but you’re making it easy for me.’
‘What you talking about, man?’ he asked, confused and increasingly concerned. ‘Who the fuck are you, man? TSG?’
‘Shut up,’ King ordered as he began to pat Watson down, his hand dwelling on his rear trouser pocket. ‘Got something for me?’
‘I ain’t got nothing for you,’ Watson answered, his face twisted with doubt.
King held up two fingers next to Watson’s face. Pinched in between them was the small paper fold he’d taken from Vicky Richards, the female heroin addict he and Brown had stopped outside Astill’s block. Watson began to struggle to escape. ‘That ain’t mine, you cunt,’ he screamed. ‘You planted it, man. You fucking planted it.’
King leaned all his weight into Watson’s back and pinned him to the wall, squeezing the air from his struggling lungs as he whispered in Watson’s ear. ‘Have that on me. For all the flats you screwed, but never got caught for. Time to pay your debts, Watson.’
‘Wait,’ Watson tried desperately. ‘I don’t do none of that shit, man. People will know you stitched me up.’
‘Then if you weren’t going to use it yourself,’ King smiled, ‘you must have been planning on selling it, eh?’
Watson attempted to break free, but it was useless. He scanned the walkways for someone who might help him escape, but they were deserted, although he could feel dozens of eyes peering from the surrounding windows – too scared to come to his rescue or even shout token obscenities at the hated Old Bill. It was an ominous sign – a sign that King had fear on his side. In a place ruled by fear, he who wielded it was king. ‘That shit ain’t mine,’ he almost begged.
‘Then have it your own way,’ King told him, pulling his quick-cuffs from his belt and bending Watson’s arms behind his back – fastening them tightly around his slim wrists. ‘Possession with intent to supply it is.’
‘Fuck you,’ Watson expelled the last of his defiance.
‘You need to learn to play the game, Everton,’ King told him loudly, hoping that anyone listening would hear what he had to say. ‘You owe, Watson. You’ve been screwing people’s houses for years and getting away with it. Taking the few precious things people around here have so you can afford expensive clothes and have the latest phone and best drugs, while the people you’ve screwed are left afraid in their own homes. You’re vermin, Watson, and you owe. You owe everyone you’ve ever stolen from. You’ve been getting away with it too long. Nobody round here escapes justice any more. Not even you.’
King arrived home later than he’d hoped, but was relieved to see he’d beaten Sara back. He dumped the two heavy bags of shopping on the small kitchen table and quickly tried to massage the pain from his shoulder away, promising himself some painkillers and alcohol once he’d got dinner underway. He’d barely seen Sara the last couple of weeks and had decided to try and make it up to her by preparing a decent meal for them both. They could sit and talk and he could try to anchor himself to her normality and softness – pull himself away from the seductive excitement of life on the estate. Cooking something for a partner was something normal people did and he hoped his mind would lose itself in the task in front of him and allow him to forget his pain, the estate and his increasing doubts about his own future. A normal night with Sara would surely slay his doubts and remind him of how much he had – how happy and content he was and that it was only a matter of time before the incident felt like nothing more than a distant memory – like something that had happened to someone else.
He tipped the items from their bags and selected what he needed, moving between the cupboards and pans to the fridge. He washed and chopped and threw things into hot water and oil. As he wiped a mixture of sweat and steam from his brow, the door opened and Sara stepped inside, a look of shock spreading over her face as she slowly closed the door behind her, the beginnings of a smile forming on her mouth.
‘Dinner,’ he told her. ‘On me.’
‘Wow,’ she replied, moving slightly nervously into the flat, as if she’d expected something even more unexpected than King cooking dinner. ‘And to what do I owe this?’
‘Just thought it’d be nice,’ he answered. ‘I haven’t seen you much lately. Thought we could sit and have a proper dinner. There’s a bottle of white in the fridge and red on the table. Why don’t you get us both a glass?’
‘Two bottles?’ she questioned. ‘Trying to get me drunk?’
‘Probably,’ he shrugged – the mischievous smile that she’d missed so much returning to his eyes and lips.
‘So, Mr Master Chef, what you cooking?’ she asked, kicking off her shoes and heading for the cupboard where their few glasses were kept and then the fridge.
‘Some chicken thing with some sort of pasta,’ he told her – stirring his pots and battling with the clouds of steam. ‘It’s a new recipe I made up while I was walking around the supermarket trying to work out what to buy.’
She pulled a face of concern. ‘Sounds delicious,’ she told him, pouring two large glasses.
‘By the time we’ve finished the bottle I don’t suppose we’ll care too much what it tastes like.’
She handed him a glass and they toasted each other before kissing briefly and gently. Sara spun away and slumped onto one of their few kitchen stools, sipping her wine and rubbing her feet. ‘Well,’ she told him, ‘it’s just nice to have you at home, although I have to admit a decent meal’s a bonus.’
‘You look worn out,’ he told her.
‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘A bit knackered, I suppose. I’ve been given a couple of new probationers to puppy-walk. God, they’re so keen they’re wearing me out.’
‘Listen to you,’ he teased her, ‘three years in the job and already an old sweat.’
‘Yeah well,’ she said, ‘you grow up quickly working Newham.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ he said casually, but Sara misunderstood.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized. ‘I know you do.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ He tried to make light of it, but only made the atmosphere tenser. Quickly he moved them on. ‘Someone senior must think you’re doing something right to put you in charge of probationers.’
‘More like I’m the only one prepared to do it,’ she answered. ‘No one else wants anything to do with them – poor bastards. How are they supposed to learn anything and stay safe if no one will show them?’
‘They’ll learn,’ King told her as he stirred the pans, ‘or they’ll quit.’
‘Or they’ll get hurt,’ she reminded him. He just shrugged. ‘Still, the hours I’ve been putting in look almost civilized compared to you.’
‘I know,’ he agreed. ‘Sorry. It’s the Unit. We’re so busy. You can hardly take a step on the estate without tripping over someone doing something they need to be nicked for. Once we get it sorted out things’ll calm down – although the overtime’s been nice. Not like we don’t need the money.’
‘Tell me about it,’ she agreed. ‘Our credit cards are looking bad, Jack. We’re paying a small fortune in interest and the car’s going to need insuring again in a couple of weeks. I don’t know how we’re going to pay it. Maybe we should sell the car – get some cash in?’
‘I’ll get the money,’ he promised. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘How you going to do that?’ she asked, shrugging her shoulders. ‘More overtime?’
‘If I have to,’ he told her. ‘Never short of overtime opportunities working the Grove Wood.’
‘You’re on accelerated promotion,’ she reminded him. ‘You don’t need this. We don’t need this. We’ll manage well enough when you get promoted again. I might even try for sergeant myself or better still quit and get a job that pays proper money. You just need to concentrate on getting the next rank and then we won’t need the overtime. Until then we’ll just have to do what we can. One of the reasons I thought we could work was because you’re on accelerated promotion. No shifts. Normal hours. Enough money so we don’t have to kill ourselves working extra hours. Two cops both working different shifts can be a bit of a nightmare. Hardly allows for a healthy relationship and you’ve already been on that bloody estate long enough.’
He narrowed his eyes and shook his head with confusion. ‘Why does everybody keep saying that?’
‘Saying what?’ Sara asked disinterestedly.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he answered, shaking his doubts away. ‘I wasn’t planning on spending the rest of my career on that dump of an estate anyway,’ he reassured her as he poured the boiling contents of a pan into a sieve over the sink. ‘The SMT are talking about moving it to another estate anyway. If that happens I’ll quit the Unit and look for something nine-to-five. Let me just see out the next couple of weeks until that happens.’
‘Good,’ she smiled. ‘It makes sense, Jack, because this isn’t good for either of us. I miss seeing you, you know. Feel like I’m either at work or sitting in this flat on my own worrying about you.’
‘You don’t need to worry about me,’ he smiled. ‘I can take care of myself.’
‘I know,’ she said before sipping her wine, as much to buy a few seconds as anything. ‘But after what happened I do worry you jumped straight back into the deep end too soon.’
‘Best way to learn to swim, isn’t it?’ he tried to be jovial. ‘Jump in the deep end and swim or sink.’ He immediately regretted his words. Sara stared at him in silence – her eyes wide open with concern. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he tried to recover.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No,’ he told her, trying to salvage the mood and slay the fear he saw in her eyes. ‘Bad comparison.’ Suddenly it was his turn to feel fear as the shadows of his nightmares crept from the corners of the room and invaded his mind. He feared for the good and kindness that Sara represented – that somehow it would be destroyed if she stayed close to him for too long. The incident had changed him, whether he’d wanted it to or not – it had. He couldn’t come back from that and be exactly the same person he’d been before. He wasn’t growing back to the people who’d been most important to him before the madman pushed a knife into his back – he was growing further away from them, his life-changing experience cocooning him from their everyday lives. But he didn’t want to hurt Sara or anyone else he cared about, although he now knew almost beyond any doubt that he was slipping away from them. He felt a lump in his throat as she suddenly felt quite unreal – as if she didn’t really exist, like a fictional character he’d been watching on the TV for years, a distant thing of pretend. He was filled with a terrible sense of dread that he was going to hurt her – to fill her life with pain. Whereas all he wanted to do was make her happy, although he wasn’t sure he knew how to any more. Preparing the meal instantly felt futile and pointless. He clenched his fists tight so she couldn’t see the slight trembling of his hands.
‘Just don’t push yourself too hard,’ she warmly warned him. ‘OK?’
‘I understand,’ he managed to say, but his heart was filling with sadness as he looked at the pretty blonde-haired young woman sitting in front of him sipping golden liquid from a thin glass. He desperately wanted to want the life she had planned for them, but something inside of him screamed that it wasn’t what he was looking for any more. Perhaps it never had been – a life of boring domesticity with a wife forever pressurizing him to go further, be more successful. No doubt soon she’d want children. And work – as little more than a bureaucrat – endless hours of pointless meetings and indecipherable management-speak, while all the time the streets would be tempting and tormenting him. Suddenly the estate seemed a bright place where people lived their lives on the edge. A place where a wrong look at the wrong person could get you stabbed or your head caved in with a baseball bat. A place where life was cheap, like a war zone, but because of it every moment of survival was to be celebrated and lived to the full – not wasted on future plans and aspirations. Just lived, there and then. A place where alcohol, d
rugs and sex were used extensively from a young age – not perhaps, as he’d first thought, to dull the miserableness of their existence, but to further heighten and intensify the adrenalin of living life so close to the edge so much of the time. At home with Sara, he’d started to feel like he was just acting out a role – playing the part of the person he used to be. The estate was where he became his true self. Sara, his parents and his friends were people he’d left behind in another world. He still felt strong residual feelings of love for Sara, yet they were intangible and ethereal – like feelings he had for the long-dead pets of his childhood.
The estate made him feel not just alive, but powerful, and it felt good. Sara was talking but he wasn’t hearing a word she said. Instead his thoughts turned to one particular person on the estate, although he wasn’t sure why. The brown curls of Kelly Royston’s hair hanging perfectly over the curved bones and muscles of her shoulders. Her skin the colour of caramel, radiating warmth and softness. And her eyes, so dark they were almost black, shining out from her young, wise face. She was beautiful – her streetwise toughness and the danger she represented making her all the more desirable. He forced her from his mind as he realized Sara was talking directly to him – repeating the same question over and over. Kelly’s image slipped into the darkness of his subconscious as if she was disappearing beneath a black pool of tar.
‘You all right?’ He finally heard Sara’s question.
‘Yeah,’ he managed to answer. ‘I’m fine.’
9
King sat alone in the canteen drinking a strong, foul-tasting coffee, trying to get the confusion of the previous night’s thoughts out of his head – telling himself he’d just been tired and that Sara’s nagging had made him suffer some sort of temporary delusion. Yet still he could barely wait to return to the estate and stalk the walkways and alleys. And if he saw Kelly, no doubt her reality would be a pale imitation of how he imagined her. He was just about to leave when Marino came up behind him carrying a polystyrene cup.