To Fight For

by Phillip Hunter

  All the while we talked, there was a hole there, in the air, between us, between our words. We both knew what that hole was, we both pretended it wasn’t there, but I felt it pulling me in.

  We moved onto booze. I went down to the offy and got some beer for me, some mixers for her. She already had plenty of gin and vodka. The smell of Tina’s G and Ts took me back to Brenda. After a few beers, I was feeling a bit drunk. I’d started out sitting on a chair, opposite Tina. Then I moved to the sofa. Then, somehow, she was nearer, and I could smell her perfume and, Christ, it was the same as Brenda used.

  Every now and then, I’d close my eyes, smell her cigarette smoke, her gin, her perfume, and I’d think I was with Brenda. But then I’d open my eyes and see a thin, pale blonde woman with huge eyes, instead of a thin, black woman with huge eyes and a huger smile. The pain would hit me. She saw it.

  ‘You loved her, didn’t you?’

  I didn’t have an answer for that. I didn’t know what love meant. I had nothing to compare it with.

  ‘If I could, I’d swap my life for hers,’ I said. ‘I’d tear the world apart to give her a minute more life. I’d tear myself apart too.’

  ‘That’s love,’ she said.

  Was it love? Could it be? It felt like fury to me. Maybe that was as close as I could get to love.

  She moved closer to me.

  ‘I loved her too,’ she said softly.

  She moved closer still, so that she was touching me. I wondered about that and thought it must’ve been the drink. What else could it have been?

  ‘You said you were tired,’ I heard her say, though her voice was even softer now, fading into the air along with the rest of her.

  She pushed herself into me, reached her hand out to touch mine. I didn’t move my hand. I wanted to, and I couldn’t.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Tired of what?’

  It was a good question. I don’t think I knew exactly. I just felt that I couldn’t go on. My blood was running thin. I thought about what Browne had said to me once, ‘You want to vent your fury, your wrath, like some god who destroys everything, innocent and guilty, anything to serve your will.’

  ‘Rage,’ I said to Tina. ‘I’m tired of the rage. There was a time, not long ago, not long at all, when I wanted to set the world on fire, when I wanted blood, everyone’s.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I don’t know any more. I don’t think I know anything any more.’

  ‘Could you stop? I mean, just give it up?’

  Could I?

  ‘Brenda used to talk about it, about me stopping, about us going away somewhere, starting again. I would’ve done, I think.’

  ‘But?’

  I knew I shouldn’t drink, what with all the pills Browne kept giving me. But I didn’t care. It felt good to not care. At least my head wasn’t hurting. It was buzzing a bit, but that was okay. Wasn’t it?

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You alright? You were saying why you couldn’t stop, with Brenda.’

  ‘Was I? Yeah, Brenda. She wouldn’t stop. I asked her to a couple times. She wouldn’t, and wouldn’t tell me why. I know now.’

  ‘Because she wanted to get Paget and Marriot.’

  Paget and Marriot. They were dead, weren’t they? I could see their blood on my hands. What did they have to do with Brenda? What was the question? Who was I?

  ‘Joe?’ Brenda said.

  But it wasn’t Brenda. It was someone else, some slim pale woman with Brenda’s smell.

  I said, ‘Yeah. No. I mean, she did, but she wanted to protect the children. It was always about them, more than Paget and Marriot, more than her. More than me.’

  I closed my eyes, and I could feel Brenda next to me. My head was floating away. I could smell her. But I knew something wasn’t right about that and I didn’t dare open my eyes. I felt her arm on my chest, her head on my shoulder.

  It’s not real, I told myself. Keep your eyes closed, I told myself. Just for a moment.

  But I opened my eyes, looked for Brenda, saw blonde hair, white skin.

  ‘Joe,’ she said.

  I felt her breath on my chest.

  ‘She couldn’t stop herself,’ I said. ‘It was in her nature, I suppose.’

  ‘It was suicide.’

  ‘Maybe. It was something she had to do.’

  ‘She’s gone, Joe.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I know you cared about her, but you’ve got to leave it behind you. It’s all in the past. It’s gone.’

  Gone. Was the past ever gone? My past was all around me, all through me. It was in my blood. It was my very life. I’d turn a corner and face it. It controlled me. Could I let it go?

  We were quiet for a while. I drank my beer and, when I finished, Tina got up and went and got me a refill from the fridge. When she sat down again, she didn’t make any pretence. She folded herself into me.

  I felt good. I felt free. Dunham had Glazer, would do a deal with him, or kill him or whatever.

  And I …

  I pushed away the thought of my failure. Well, I tried to.

  ‘It’s gone,’ she said again. ‘For both of us.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you care about anything, Joe? Anyone?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Could you? I mean, could you care for me?’

  I thought she must’ve been taking the piss. Why would she want someone like me?

  But her hand was on my chest, and her face was looking up at me and her eyes were so big, so pleading.

  ‘I could be her for you,’ she said.

  I reached my hand out, touched her cheek. But I didn’t know if I was touching her or Brenda. I didn’t know.

  And I don’t know if I cared. Part of me hated myself for that. Part of me didn’t care.

  I was going back again, or I was going forwards, just to go back. Or something. I was lost, wherever I was, whenever I was.

  I no longer knew what I was. I’d been confused before, sure, but I’d always known what I was, at my heart; I was the machine, the Killing Machine. I’d fought a war, battles, a hundred men. I knew that world. I knew rage and pain.

  But this …

  I was lost.

  She leaned forward, brushed her lips against mine.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  We lay on our sides, facing each other. We hadn’t spoken for a long time. I felt okay, no tiredness in my limbs, no fuzziness in my head, just some pain here and there. It was alright.

  But there was a part of me that wasn’t there. It was a small part, but it nagged at me and whispered in my ear and told me that this was all a lie, even if I wanted, for now, to believe in it.

  After a while, she ran a finger along my brow. Her finger traced the line of an old scar. I’d forgotten it was there. Her finger moved slowly, tracing my history, my path through life. Her finger was like a drop of rainwater sliding down a window.

  ‘You’ve got a lot of scars,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s this one?’

  ‘Fight.’

  ‘Fight,’ she said, trying the word out. ‘And this one?’

  ‘Knifed.’

  ‘Knifed. Just that? Knifed?’

  ‘Just that.’

  ‘Tell me about it?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not? Scars are interesting. Each one has a story.’

  ‘Scars are damage, that’s all.’

  Her hand moved to my shoulder, and the scar there, still raw. Then to my back where her hand moved in a kind of zig-zag.

  ‘What are these ones?’

  ‘Shotgun.’

  ‘And this one?’ she said, moving it back to my torso.

  ‘Fight.’

  ‘Fight. Shotgun. Is there any part of you that’s not scarred?’

  ‘Somewhere, probably.’

  ‘Seems like it’s only scar tissue holding you together.’

  ‘That’s what Browne says.’


  ‘You talk like you don’t care.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘And this one? Sorry.’

  ‘It’s alright, just tender still. That was Paget.’

  ‘When you …’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She was quiet for a while, moving her finger over my scars, as if, in the still of the night, in the darkness, she was reading my body, finding out what I was.

  ‘I remember Brenda talking about you, well, about this fellow she was seeing,’ she said. ‘She called you the Killing Machine. All these scars; looks like you were the one getting killed.’

  ‘I’m still here,’ I said. ‘It was a joke between us. That was my nickname in the ring. I never used it. She used to take the piss out of me. That’s all.’

  ‘The Killing Machine,’ she said.

  Brenda used to smile when she said that, a spark in her eyes. Tina’s voice was flat, though. There was no smile in it.

  She sighed, gave up tracing the scars and flattened her hand on my stomach.

  ‘I thought I’d escaped all this. I thought I’d found a small, quiet, boring place to do small, quiet, boring stuff. I thought I’d forget, or I’d be forgotten. But then Kenny came back, and you and all the rest of them. Everything came back. You don’t ever escape. Life is the killing machine.’

  I said, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is there a way out, Joe? Could there be?’

  I’d been asking myself that.

  ‘I dunno.’

  She got up on one elbow. I looked at her face, it was wreathed in shadow. Her eyes were black holes.

  ‘There could be, couldn’t there? We could leave here, start again somewhere. You and me. I’d give it all up if you could. You said you were tired of it. Are you really?’

  She sounded like Brenda. Or, at least, the words were the same, but with Tina there was an edge to her voice. It sounded like desperation.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  She slept, her body resting on mine, her leg and arm across me, as if she was trying to stop me from leaving.

  I heard a slight snore, felt her body rise and fall in slow rhythm. And, while she lay on me, thoughts lay in my mind, and pulled me into their depths.

  The way she’d talked, I wondered if I could put everything behind. Could I hide here? Then, when the heat was off, go somewhere, with Tina, maybe? Could I take off, start again, as Brenda had wanted us to do?

  I thought about that girl I’d seen at the bus stop, the one with the twins. I thought of the bloke with them. Could I be like him? How did I know he hadn’t once been like me? Could I have a future? Other people did, why not me?

  But, then, other people weren’t on a death-list, they weren’t wanted by the law, by mobsters, by anyone with a gun. Other people hadn’t killed, hadn’t seen death at close hand, hadn’t had people they’d cared about cut to death, shot to death.

  I tried to imagine myself as a free man. I tried to think how it might be if I could’ve sat in that cafe – with those two redheads on the other table – and not been wanted by half of London, and not felt old and ugly and tainted by death.

  I tried, but it was no good. Once, maybe, escape could’ve happened. With Brenda it could’ve happened. I could’ve hung up my gloves, my guns. We might’ve made a go of it somewhere, away from London. We might have had a family.

  But Brenda was dead and that was why it could never happen, no matter how much I wanted it. It didn’t feel right. Brenda was dead, and I’d failed and I could try to pretend as much as possible, try to ignore that dark hole and make plans and whatever. But, at the back of it all, I had a debt to settle. I had something I had to do. Even back at Browne’s place, knowing it was all over and waiting with an empty gun for them to come and finish me off, even then it felt wrong. I just wasn’t that kind of person. I couldn’t give up. I was a machine, after all.

  I got carefully out of the bed and started to dress.

  ‘Are you going?’

  I turned, saw Tina resting on one elbow, her hair falling in front of her face, hiding it in a curtain of silver strands.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have to.’

  She nodded.

  ‘It’s suicide,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But it’s something you’ve got to do, right? It’s in you, part of your nature?’

  There was a mocking edge to her voice.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Don’t you care, Joe?’

  Don’t you care, Joe? That was what she said. Don’t you care, Joe? That was what I said to myself as I buttoned my shirt.

  ‘No,’ I told her. ‘I don’t care.’

  I was damning myself. I knew that. And, no, I didn’t care.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Tina was right. It was in me, part of my nature. Fuck, it was my nature. Browne knew that.

  Suicide, Tina had said about Brenda’s need to fight it to the end. Yeah, that was it. Suicide. A death wish.

  Once you understand, it doesn’t matter.

  Fuck it.

  Anyway, I realized there was one person who could help me get to Glazer. One person, who could and would help me. Just one, and it was Eddie, of all people, who’d told me.

  I called Ben Green.

  ‘I told you I was out, Joe.’

  ‘I know. Dunham’s got Glazer. I’m going to fuck Dunham up and I want your help.’

  He swore, called me every name under the sun. Then he hung up.

  He came back to me ten minutes later.

  ‘She’s in their London house,’ he said. ‘With their daughter. But not Dunham. He’s somewhere else. Dunno where. Nobody does. And I don’t know why his missus ain’t with him, or out in the country where she could be safer. And the kid too.’

  I knew why. After what had happened with Paget, I wondered if she’d ever set foot in Dunham’s country pad again. I couldn’t ever imagine her going in that room again. It must’ve taken days to clean it of the blood and gore. And she’d hate Dunham for what he’d done.

  ‘Only,’ Green said, ‘she’s not alone. She’s got a handful of bodyguards. So you’re not going to get close to her. Unless you phone her up.’

  I had thought that Dunham would have someone with her, but not a whole bunch. That was going to make things difficult.

  Still, as Green had said, I could always try phoning.

  He’d given me the number for the London house and I dialled it. It rang, and I tried to figure out what to say to her. Then a man’s voice answered and I hung up and cursed myself for a fucking idiot. What if I’d said something? What if my voice had been recognized?

  I was going to have to do it the slow way.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  I was in the doorway of a small cafe, opposite the school, but on the same side as the car, about twenty yards behind it.

  It was a small place, one of those village tea shop type things, with lace tablecloths and china teapots that they brought to you on a tray. We were still in London, but the people here didn’t want to be a part of the city. They wanted to think they were in a small market town in the country.

  It was open for breakfast trade, and I’d gone in early and bought some grub and a cup of tea. I’d had a paper with me and I’d pretended to read it. After a while they got the idea I was just a bloke starting his day. I’d gone out front, telling the waitress I was going for a smoke. There was a small courtyard out back, she’d told me. I said I was waiting for someone and wanted to make sure they didn’t miss me.

  So, I stood there and waited and smoked a few tabs from the pack I’d bought earlier. Then the car came by, on my side of the road, and slowed and stopped out of my sight, a dozen yards or so away from me.

  I heard the car doors open, and slam shut. Then they walked past me, Dunham’s wife and daughter. I pushed myself back in the doorway. They crossed at a zebra crossing, and walked past the iron railings separating the playground from the street.

  Dunham’s wife kissed her da
ughter on the cheek, said something to her and swept some of the girl’s golden hair aside. The girl wandered off, her satchel slung over her shoulder and her eyes glued to the phone in her hand, reading some text or playing a game or whatever it was kids did these days. Dunham’s wife watched her daughter all the way to the school building and then, after the girl had gone in, she watched some more. Then she watched the closed door, as if thinking that her daughter might come back any second. And then she turned and walked away, head down, hands in the pockets of her long camel-hair coat.

  There were a few other women there, dropping their kids off. But Dunham’s wife didn’t stop to chat with any of them, didn’t say hello, didn’t even nod or make eye contact.

  Beneath her coat, she wore a white blouse and blue jeans. She wore no make-up and her hair looked like it had been thrown back quickly and tied, strands of it floating around her head. She looked haggard, like she’d just got out of bed, and yet still she was beautiful, beyond normal women.

  I felt further from her, further from all people, than I’d ever felt. Next to her, I was a vile thing, huge and clumsy and ugly as death.

  I checked to see if she had a bodyguard somewhere. Then, when I was sure she was by herself, I watched her walk, just for the hell of it.

  She dawdled, turning now and then to look back at the school, as if she thought that her daughter might’ve come out again to see her. I thought she didn’t want to go back to wherever she’d come from. Then she turned away and crossed back over the road.

  When she got closer to me, I could see that her skin was pale, even though her cheeks glowed in the cold air. Sunlight had broken through the clouds and gave her a silver halo. There was something in her eyes, too, as if she was thinking of things far away, or long gone.

  She reminded me of Brenda. There was that same calmness, as if the world wasn’t really there at all, or, maybe it was more like the world was real, but she was a ghost floating through it.

  Whatever it was, it was something that I used to see in Brenda. There were those moments when she’d seem to drift off somewhere, when her eyes would glaze over and she’d forget about me, about everything around her. I think I knew, in those moments, that she expected to die. Tina was right about her. Suicide was bang on. Sadness clung to Brenda like a shroud.