And someone shouted at me and I blinked and it was dark and my car was halfway over the wrong side of the road. A van was in front, stopped a few feet from mine, its headlights blinding me. Someone shouted, swore at me. I reversed, swung the steering wheel round and put my foot on the gas and spun the wheels and clipped the van as I passed it. I had to remember where I was. Brenda was gone. I had to remember that. I’d lost her. Had to remember.
My head dropped a couple of times and I opened the window to let in the cold air and rain. My heart banged in my throat and I was drenched in cold sweat. These things didn’t matter. All I had to do was get where I was going. It was all clear to me, in my muddled mind. It all made sense, strings of moments tying together into a knot, tying around my throat.
Bowker was twisting around in my head, one of those pieces of string, terrified of me, squealing me up to Paget as soon as he could, strangling me with his shifty eyes.
‘Some funny little bloke,’ she’d said. ‘I seen him around the place.’
Warren was there too, telling me about the scam with the prostitutes at Cole’s place. Cole’s casino had a scam with the pros run by Wilkins. Marriot ran the same scam at the Sportsman way back. It fitted that Wilkins and Marriot knew each other, probably worked together.
Then there was Cole telling me that the Ellis job I should’ve done was another of his. Yes, it was there, it had been there for years and now it was around my neck, killing me, and I was fighting it because that’s what I did. I fought. Everything. Always. It was all I could do.
‘All that anger in you,’ she’d said. ‘All that hatred.’
All the anger in me. Yes, the rage. It was all I really had, maybe all I’d ever had.
There were the Albanians, too, with their connections. Marriot would’ve known the Albanians, must’ve done, would’ve used some of the women and children they’d brought in.
And then Paget, not out to capture me and question me, but on a mission to kill me.
And the girl. Yes, the girl. Kid. Yes, it had all been there.
I dumped the car a block away and climbed out and watched the pavement fall away from me. I took a few deep breaths and walked, putting one heavy leg before the other, trying to keep in a straight line. Buildings swayed to the side of me, but the rain soaked me and the wind made me cold and that was good. I was dead, heading to the breaker’s yard. That was fine. That was okay. Just one thing to do, just one more thing.
I floated through the door. I remember a man putting an arm out to stop me. I remember snapping it. By the time I was in the club, I had the Makarov in my hand. A few shadows were scattered around the place. One of the shadows turned to me and said, ‘Fuck.’
He meant it. Every word.
The shadows moved, slowly at first, and then with cries and shouts they flew around. The rain, or sweat, or something, made me shiver and I felt light, out of myself, and the Makarov felt heavy like it was dying in my hand, like it was wasting away. It needed life. I needed to give it life. I gave it life.
I unleashed the gun and death had come, and chaos, and I watched the shadows fly, some one way, some another. One of them slammed into me and bounced off, and I moved my arm and the gun with it and when I’d stopped moving, the shadow stayed on the ground.
I walked through the club. I heard cracks here and there, but they meant nothing to me because I had something I had to do. I was dead anyway, but I had to finish things. I put a fresh magazine in the gun and carried on.
The office was at the back, along a corridor. I remembered that much. As I went down the corridor, a shape appeared and raised a dark object and rounds sprayed all over. I raised my arm and the figure disappeared.
The door was shut and when I turned the handle small holes appeared and splintered the wood. I thought that was funny and I looked at the holes. I think I laughed. I might’ve cried. I shot the lock away and fell in.
I saw his face clearly, and I saw the ruined eye and I saw what he held in his hand and I heard words come from his mouth and I took his hand and bent it back until it broke and he screamed and crashed to the ground. And someone said something, and I think it was me and, in a broken voice, he said, ‘My hand, my hand.’
And I said something else and he looked at me through a ruined face and said, ‘I’ll get it for you. Please, Joe. Please, don’t do anything.’
He crawled to the corner of the room and opened a cupboard and fiddled with something large that looked like an iron safe. He pulled out a big black shape and then another, throwing them towards me. And he said, ‘It’s all there.’
And I thanked him and all I could think of was Bowker fixing a date with Brenda, and Paget slicing her to death, and all because she was grassing Marriot up to the law, staying with him, fucking the johns, fucking in his films, living in fear because she couldn’t bear to abandon the children he used, and all the time she thought she was safe. And all the time Marriot knew she was in with the law and thought I was in on it too. And all that led to her death in some fucking alley, and to this shit he’d plunged me in, his revenge, a long time coming, setting me up with Cole so that he could use me to take over Cole’s firm, get back on top, using me because it completed the circle, strangling me with the past. His past. My past.
He stood slowly.
‘It was Paget, Joe. Not me. It was him told me about Brenda grassing me up. It was him carved her up. I didn’t know anything about it. I swear to you.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know, Joe. Honest. He’s run. It was him. Look, Joe – ’
I shot him in the stomach. He crumpled to the floor and gripped his gut, writhing in pain. His glasses had fallen off. After a while, he tried to crawl away, like some insect with its legs broken off. He left a bloody trail as he went. I don’t know where he was going to. I think he was just crawling. It was the only thing he could do. When I got tired of watching him crawl, I put another round in the back of his head. Then I shot him six times more for no reason that I could think of except that my gun still had six rounds left in it.
I reached down for the bags and the fucking floor hit me in the face. When I came to, things were clearer. The Makarov was still in my hand, the bags in front of me. Marriot’s blood crept slowly across the floor and pooled around his body, what was left of it.
I opened the bags and checked them. They were full of money, Cole’s money, bundles of used twenty- and fifty-pound notes. I counted off sixteen grand and put it in my pocket.
I must’ve blacked out again. When I came to, I stood slowly. When I heard the noise, I swung round, and that made me dizzy and I staggered. I managed to get the Makarov up, but I knew it was empty. A voice said, ‘Hold it.’
I focused on the figure standing in the doorway, and saw that the figure was Eddie. He had his hands out. They were empty. I lowered the gun and he lowered his hands. He shook his head slowly.
‘I don’t know how you do it.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Symbiosis.’
He was talking circles again. The whole thing was a circle. I was tired of fucking circles. He walked over and kicked Marriot. He was still dead. Eddie smiled.
‘I guess you figured it out, huh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He had ambitions. That’s the trouble with ambition. Was he in it with the Albanians?’
‘No,’ I managed to say, my tongue thick, my mouth dry. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t have gone after Cole. Marriot played them.’
‘He gets out of nick and tries to take over Cole’s turf.’
‘He was after it before he got nicked.’
‘How do you know?
‘Paget.’
Eddie nodded.
‘Right. That’s why Paget was in with Cole. He and Marriot had already arranged it. Paget works Cole from the inside and they take him down. But Marriot gets nicked and they put it on hold and strike when Marriot gets out. Neat. That the money?’
‘Yeah.’
&n
bsp; ‘Come on, I’ve got a car out back.’
He called back to a couple of his men. They came in and took the money. Eddie reached down to give me a hand. I ignored it.
‘You’re not going to make it by yourself,’ he said.
‘I’ll make it.’
I stood, wavered, and steadied. He said, ‘Right. Let’s go.’
‘What are you doing here?’
He smiled again. He was finding it all amusing, in his way.
‘Like I said, symbiosis.’
My gun came up. He saw the gun and made a small movement.
‘Don’t,’ I said. He froze. He wasn’t smiling any more. ‘You set me up.’
‘Joe, come on, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I know.’
‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
‘You led Cole to me.’
‘No, Joe. I didn’t. You’re not thinking straight. I don’t know where you’ve been staying.’
‘But you knew I was at Dalston, that I’d been shot in that house. You were the only one who knew. Cole knew someone was there, but he didn’t know it was me. You told him. After that, he was able to find me, through Browne, because he knew I’d been hurt and would need a doctor. How long have you known it was Marriot?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘It matters.’
‘I knew he and Wilkins went back. Long time ago. You narrowed it down to three, remember? Wilkins was one of them. I figured it from there.’
‘You let Cole get me.’
‘Just business. We let you and Cole have some rope, that’s all. We knew you’d get there eventually. Vic likes to keep a low profile.’
‘You knew I was coming here.’
‘Yeah, I did. Had some men outside. But we couldn’t get involved yet, didn’t want to tip off the Albanians. So, we waited. Vic said you couldn’t do it yourself. I disagreed. What else could I do? Would you have let me stop you? Nothing could’ve stopped you.’
He was right.
‘And now?’
‘Just making sure you’re all right. Vic and Cole have come to an arrangement. These Albanians are getting ambitions, getting a bit too big for their Albanian boots. Pretty soon, they’re going to start encroaching on our turf. So, my enemy’s enemy and all that. We’ll get the money back to Cole, he’ll pay them off and then, in a while, Vic and Cole will join up and take them out.’
‘And Paget?’
‘Cole will find him. He’s probably got Cole’s smack. Now, let’s go.’
I stowed the Makarov.
‘I’m not finished,’ I said.
I pushed past him. I was in the corridor behind Marriot’s club. There were doors. I opened one and another. The third was locked. I kicked it open. She was on the floor, bent over a thin woman, her sister. There were bullet holes in the wall, and the woman. For all I knew, I’d killed her. When Kid looked at me, she had an empty expression like she didn’t know who I was, or didn’t care. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to give her life and protection. I don’t know what I wanted. I wanted her to give me something. I couldn’t stand straight. I held out my hand. She looked at it. I was dizzy and I was leaking blood again. I hit the floor hard. I didn’t know if I had it in me to get up. Not this time. I could feel what strength I had draining from me. I tried to move, tried to get to her. My body was lead. I think I passed out again.
I felt something cold on my cheek. I opened my eyes and saw something small and thin and dark. I saw a small girl, nothing more than bones and skin and huge eyes. She had the same expression Brenda used to have. I knew what it was, then. I knew what it meant, that look. I knew what Brenda used to feel. Kid put her hand on mine. She was soaked in blood.
Eddie watched us. He shook his head and said, ‘Jesus.’
I pushed myself to my feet and led Kid, or she led me, I can’t say.
Eddie stared at us, at me, his face blank for once. Whatever he saw, it no longer amused him.
“Fuck,” he said. “Now I remember what they called you. The Machine. That was it. The Killing Machine.”
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Preview
Read on for the first chapter of
REVENGE AND THE MACHINE
With Kid only just buried and the people that murdered Brenda still at large, Joe has only one thing on his mind: revenge.
1
We burned her on the Thursday. It was one of those dull March days. There was no sky, just wall to wall grey, no colour anywhere, no sun, no wind. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t anything. It couldn’t even be bothered to rain.
It didn’t matter.
We crawled along the Eastern Avenue and Blake Hall Road and past the Flats, and I watched people trudge by with their heads down and their hands in their pockets, pushing their children and pulling their shopping and dragging their lives about. The whole world was in mourning. I saw an old Sikh bloke by the side of the road. He watched us go by and bowed his head.
I could have carried the coffin in one arm, it was so small. Instead, four of us walked with it; me and Browne and Eddie and some bloke the funeral house laid on. Browne couldn’t walk straight.
The service was a rushed job and I had the feeling the vicar, or whatever he was, wanted to get to a wedding or christening or something, anything that was far away from a lump like me and an old drunk Scot and a black gangster and a small dead girl in a small brown coffin who’d never had a fucking chance. He gave us the usual such-a-tragedy spiel and mumbled a prayer or two. When he told us that she was safe now and in God’s arms I wanted to grab him by his clean white collar and drag him down to where she’d held her dead, blood-soaked sister and to where she’d been used as bait for a robber who’d liked kids, and I wanted to ask him where his fucking god was then. Eddie put a hand on my arm.
He said, “Take it easy, Joe.”
Maybe he was thinking the same thing I was. Probably not.
Browne wept through the whole thing. I couldn’t blame him for being drunk. He’d liked the girl. He’d thought he could help her. He’d thought he could help me. He couldn’t even help himself.
Cole came to the funeral. Some of his men were around, out of the way. They were tooled up and edgy, but Cole seemed okay. He and Eddie nodded to each other. Browne avoided him.
We went to a pub afterwards, me and Browne and Eddie. A couple of East European women came in. They told us they’d worked for Marriot and they were glad he was dead and they were sorry about the girl, even though they’d never known her name. Eddie bought them a drink and they cried a bit. While we were there, other people in the pub quieted their talking and avoided eye contact and dribbled out. A thug, an old drunk Scot, a black criminal and two prostitutes sitting in a bar. It sounded like the start of a joke.
Browne was still pissed but downed a few glasses of Scotch and managed to get pissed all over again and bawled some more which left Eddie as the one to do the talking, even though he’d hardly known her either. He tried, though, and said things like ‘She had you two at least’ and ‘He paid for it, Joe. Marriot. And Beckett too’ and stuff like that and all the time I sat there knowing I might’ve been the one who’d fired the round that killed her. It had been a blazing fight and my head wasn’t right and I’d let loose my old Makarov semi-auto and shot the place to shit. So, yes, I could have been the one.
Then Eddie bought another round and raised his glass and said,
“Here’s to Kid.”
And we all raised our glasses to a tiny dead African girl who was so thin I was scared of crushing her to death when I held her, and who looked at me wide-eyed and open-mouthed, like she was looking at something frightening, and who was named Kindness and who we called Kid.
2
&
nbsp; I was staying at Browne’s. I was still weak and I’d fucked up my arm again when I’d charged into Marriot’s club and flattened the place and ripped through his men and killed the cunt as he’d tried to crawl away from me, blood trailing from his gut. So I needed to mend it, my arm.
Browne fussed over me like an old woman. In his eyes, I’d saved her. I can’t say if that’s true. Maybe it was more like she’d saved me. I don’t know. I didn’t tell him that I might’ve been the one who’d killed her.
So, Browne fussed over me and, in between being unconscious, kept checking my shoulder and my arm.
“This time let the bloody thing heal,” he’d say.
Cole sent some doctor round to help fix me up. The doctor was a specialist at something or other. Cole was trying to pay me back. Brown didn’t like it. Maybe he thought I was his patient, or maybe his ego was hurt. He cheered up when I told the other doctor to fuck off. I didn’t want a gaggle of them round me all the time.
The law had to be bought off, or shut up anyhow. Cole and Conway had clout and they saw to that. There was an understanding between the two of them. They were friends now, like Stalin and Hitler. They fixed it so that the blame went onto the Albanians who, like Eddie had said, were getting too big for their Albanian boots. There was a lot of stuff on the news about clampdowns on foreign gangs and the Albanians got mentioned. It suited Cole and Conway that everyone thought they were to blame. The Albanians had brought the girl into the country in the first place, and they’d worked with Marriot, and if Cole and Conway managed to wipe them out of existence, I, for one, wouldn’t mind. So it was all neat and tidy and everybody was happy because the Albanians had been officially declared the bad guys and one thing people like is to know who the bad guys are.
Paget was still out there, of course. He was another matter. I had to get him, for my reputation if nothing else. I knew he’d sliced Brenda up, six years back. Others knew. If I let it go, I’d lose face. I tried to tell myself that destroying Paget was just business, but I don’t think I believed that.
To Die For Page 23