by James Newman
“Business or pleasure?” Joe smiled.
“Both, although I guess every geezer’s version of pleasure isn’t being tied up on a rack and being whipped by a cat of nine-tails with bull-dog clips clamped to your nipples. Try something old something new, something borrowed or something blue is my motto. Some guys like it darker, you know what I mean? Venus in furs, like.”
Joe knew, said:
“You have a client who thinks he’s being cheated on by a dominatrix?” Joe managed another painful smile.
“It’s a crazy world,” Hale smiled. “And I love every moment of it. Anyway, must dash.”
Joe watched his friend bounce down the street towards his appointment with Miss Whiplash. The City had him, that was for sure. It had him good.
CLUB TROPICANA
now
BYRON held the mobile with two digits – thumb and forefinger. The gypsy king had three fingers missing from when he was playing with a shooter as a nine-year-old. The old man was a poacher, ran in the blood. His nose had been broken so many times it hardly functioned as a hooter – just a mashed up piece of flesh on a face speckled with burst blood vessels and a muscular jaw like that of a pit bull. The dog, that is. His old man was part of a proper firm back in the days when a bank job was like a trip to the ATM. His body was a maze of prison tattoos covered by a white linen shirt and pressed black trousers. Lived in a seven bedroom mansion on Rushmoore Hill, just outside the Metropolitan Old Bill’s due restriction, but close enough to hit the town in thirty minutes in one of his seven sports cars. Byron was listening to Bach and reading the rag when the phone rang.
It was dark outside.
He was on the karzi.
“Byron?” the caller said.
He was named Byron for three reasons.
One: He was a fucking Lord
Two: He didn’t mince his fucking words.
Three: The club foot.
Left foot – no fucking toes. Now the psychologists have a theory that being bullied as a kid may lead to the victim becoming an aggressor in later life.
Fingers and toes, son, fingers and toes.
The psychologists were fucking spot on.
“What you mean they stung the little cunt?”
“Took the cash and the merchandise,” Elmo said.
“You fackin what?”
“Everything, I swear.”
Byron eased the rest of the turd out. It made a splash. Felt good for a second. Like victory. As long as man could squeeze out turds there was still hope for mankind. “I want to find out who this mob are – di’ ya get a butchers what they fackin look like?”
“Big, body builders.”
“Fackin security, no doubt. No fucking manners.” He got up, wiped. Tissue paper held between his thumb and finger. Added. “What about the boy?”
“Jimmy?”
“Yeah, that’s the lad. Wouldn’t like to be in ‘is fackin plimsoles right ‘bout now. Give ‘em forty-eight hours. Tell him to be creative.” Byron pulled up his strides and flushed. He looked back down in the bowl to see if there was anything remaining – he felt manly when there was. This time the toilet bowl was as clean as a whistle. The old man was losing his touch.
“How’s he gonna come up with fifty grand in two days?” Ed asked.
“As I say, tell the cant to be fackin creative. I’ve known Jimmy since he was a knee high to a fackin grasshopper. He has a ’ed on ‘is shoulders I’ll give ‘em that. Knows how to think and if he has an incentive he’ll get the money or the merchandise back. And if he don’t then I’ll shoot the cant, chop his fackin legs off and throw the ‘em in the canal where he came from. How’s that for an incentive? Where are ya now?”
“Outside Wolf’s gym.”
“Well, get yerself in there, san, and start asking some fackin questions. Use your fists and your fackin wits if you’ve still got any about you. These geezers’ main line of business is selling steroids shipped over from Asia. The coke and the MDMA they just sell on the side. I’m guessing business got a bit slim and they decided to take a risk on jumping you two muppets. What happened to the supplier?”
“They shot him. Got Jimmy in the leg too.”
“And what’s the likelihood that they’ll grass up when the boys in blue come knockin down the doors?”
“Nah, they wouldn’t do it. Both of them know who you are, Byron.”
“Let’s fackin hope so, san, for yours and my sake. Get yourself in that gym and cause some fackin havoc, sanshine. Get lively.”
Click.
Edward Case pocketed the Nokia. He always was a bit tasty. ‘Ed Case they used to call him. Still do as a matter of fact. Once, few years back, back at the site, it took three paddies to knock seven shades of shit out of him but he had stood up and fought back with nothing short of blind fury. He’d been battered, beaten, back-stabbed, buggered. He’d seen the barrel of a gun from the wrong angle more times than your average civilian. The fear of fear was worse than fear itself. Get in there. Get busy, leave fear to old women with tumors the size of watermelons. Hunchbacks, cripples, the lonely Librarian with a note pad and a pen and a reason to tie the knot. Of the noose, that is. Leave fear to the schoolgirls with mad crushes on popstars they will never meet. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
Have it.
Bare knuckle boxing was his game. He picked up a cool monkey after that bout.. The next bout he got floored by a Polish fighter – the Pole fought with his left and as every boxer knows and your drunken uncle knows, as his girlfriend’s knew, nobody likes to fight a lefty. You have to train for it. Ed had little time to train. Hated gyms. These steroid injecting weight-lifters couldn’t be much more than the Pole or the Paddies. He opened his bag, opened a quarter of Vodka and took a bite. He put the bottle back in the bag next to the tube of super glue. Next he slunk his back against the narrow alley leading to the gym. Took out a syringe loaded with speed and hit it into the main-line. The rush was out of this world.
Took out the brass knuckle duster and slipped it on his left wrist.
The metal felt cold.
Cold and deadly.
He waited for his body to float back down to earth and then buzzed himself into the gym. Took the stairs, two at a time. Stopped on a landing and took another hit of the Vodka. Brought the speed back to the surface.
Fucking weight-lifters.
Checked his bag again. Super glue, bottle of vodka. Knuckle duster. That was all.
When you get in as many scrapes and have as many bottles and glasses racked over your noodle sometimes you aint got the time to get stitched up at the hospital. The job was difficult but so were girls, hand-gliding and snowboarding in the alps in spring.
Super Strength Glue.
Super Strength Pain Killer.
Originally designed by the military for stitching up wounds without stitching.
He walked into the gym. Wished he hadn’t. Geezers lifting weights. At least a dozen of them all over one hundred kilos without an ounce of fat between them. A music system played a song: Club Tropicana.
The speed was pushing him forward into the middle of the gym where he stood looking at each of the gorillas in turn. Two he recognized from the heist.
“You looking for a membership?” one gorilla asked.
“We don’t accept fecking pikeys,” said another.
“Nah I’m looking for the powder and the wedge youse cunts fukin half-inched from us.”
The sound of weights crashing. Six or seven stood around him.
“What fecking powder?” Gorilla number one asked.
“Well, you and I both know we aint talking about the ones you boys take that shrivel up your dicks and make your biceps twinkle. Maybe the birds say they want a bit of muscle, but they also want something more than a fecking acorn, chav. MDMA. That’s the fecking gear.”
“You fucking what?”
“You heard me,” Ed Case said taking a swing at the nearest gorilla
, who stumbled back and knocked over a stand of weights.
A moments silence followed.
Edward Case felt the glorious shower of victory for a second.
Ed should have taken that time to attack the others.
He didn’t. The speed and the booze had his sense of time all mangled up.
He felt like laughing. “Who’s fucking next, then?” he said. He swung at one with the brass duster, felt it connect and the crack of the jaw. Took a step back and waited for a muscle-freak with a shaven head to attack. The skinhead caught him with a swift succession of blows. He kicked out, skinhead palmed his foot away.
Ed felt gravity reaching out to catch him.
It didn’t take long.
They attacked like a pack of hyenas; two elbows cracked his shoulder blades. A blow to the back like he’d been hit by a truck. His legs couldn’t hold him. Ed took to the ground and curled up fetal. The kicks, and punches, came like routine. A routine he knew too well. One joker had even attacked him with a barbell before kicking Ed down the stairs. Tumble, tumble, trip and fall. The speed intensified the experience. It was happening. There was a blade from somewhere. Shone under the lights. Stabs and slashes, didn’t hurt, but the flash of metal, and blood seemed unreal. His mind was only on another shot. He got out of there, somehow, and took another shot, which intensified the bleeding, his heart pumping harder with the speed and the adrenalin. He sat and patched himself up. Applied the superglue to the wounds, putting himself back together best he could. He had heard somewhere that Vietnam vets used superglue to close open wounds and well, if it were good enough for the Deer Hunter it was good enough for Edward Case. He ran out of glue and headed to the nearest boozer. Shock carrying his feet forward in a frenzied motion.
Revenge rattled in his mind.
Not know, he thought.
Later,
Much later.
GHOSTBUSTERS
now
AS BYRON put down the phone he noticed the lights outside the window. Just one beam.
Flash.
Flash. Flash.
Some nosey cunt taking pictures of the fucking house.
He strode up the stairs. Unlocked the metal cabinet and took out the shooter. He had a license for the 12 bore. Cocked it and loaded two cartridges. Back down the stairs, slipped on his green barber wax jacket and headed out of the house, gravel crunching lightly under his feet as he headed towards the source of the flashing light.
A nerdy little geezer twelve yards away holding a camera taking pictures of the evergreens that lined the perimeter of Byron’s property.
Byron sneaked up slowly behind the geezer and poked the shooter into the small of the photographer’s back.
“What’s your fecking game, son?” Byron snarled.
The geezer jumped three foot in the air with fear propelling him upward and landed awkwardly arse first on the turf. He turned around shaking. He wore rimless spectacles, that had miraculously stayed on his head and a warm sheepskin winter jacket. He took in Byron’s smashed in hooter and huge frame. “I ain’t a weirdo or nothing,” Nerdy Geezer said.
“You don’t fecking wanna be, mate. Now, I’m gonna give you three seconds to explain yourself before I lower this barrel between your legs and blow both of your bollocks and your fecking bell-end, if it dangles that low, across this here fecking grassland.”
“What?”
“I’ve got a nineteen year old daughter living in that house and if I find some dirty old man with a camera it doesn’t take too much of a leap of the imagination to see what the fuckers up to and with the lord’s blessing I’ll blow his bollocks sky fucking high. One.”
“Wait.”
“Two.”
“Th....”
“I’m a ghost hunter.”
“You fecking what?”
“Honestly. I mean I’ll prove it.” He pulled out a wallet and handed Byron a card and shone a torch over it.
Bill Morgan
International Ghost Hunter
Tel 07959 896578 www.spiritworld.org
“You’re having a fucking bubble aint you, mate?”
“No. I’m quite serious – you see this land here is where the pilgrims once travelled to Canterbury. A monk died on this here spot and has been seen by many hunters over the last forty years. The house, your house sir, has been reported to play host to a ghost whose footsteps creak and his groans can be heard every April 13th. Also, and you may check this, your living room has a stain that has been damp for three hundred years”
“Feck off.”
“It is said that one of the pilgrims was hiding in a secret hiding place next to the main fire. A false wall behind a cupboard that can accommodate up to three large children or very small men. Women, it was meant for. A pilgrim was hiding inside and when startled lept from his hiding place knocking over a chalice of consecrated wine. The stain has remained damp ever since. Check when you return to your home. And be careful. The ghost of a young woman who fled with her lover and then was brought back by her aggrieved father. The girl and the lover were locked inside the secret room until they both died of suffocation or starvation. The history of that house is alive with activity.”
“You’re off you’re bleeding rocker, mate.”
“Look,” Bill took his camera from around his neck and showed the shots to Byron. “These here, the lights, they’re what we call orbs and show paranormal activity. There is much activity here.”
“Leave it out, son – that’s the light from your flash reflecting off the leaves and the only activity you’re being seeing from now on is your arse getting back in your motor and getting out of here. Go on. Hop it.”
“But if you would let me take some pictures inside?”
“How do I know you aint the filth or the tax man?”
“My card.”
“Any muppet could ‘av one of those made up. Now gor on op it, sunshine.”
Byron watched the ghost hunter as he walked up to and got inside a Morris Minor. The engine started and Byron watched the car disappear down Rushmore Hill. He returned to the mansion and put the shooter back into its metal cabinet.
Curiosity got the better of him. He walked, dragging his club foot into the main living room and checked the old carpet next to the main fire. A three inch stain he hadn’t noticed before. Looked like a red wine stain. He never drank the stuff. Bent down.
The stain was wet.
Sweet Jesus.
He opened the cupboard next to the fire-case and after a small struggle he pushed open the back panel to discover a secret room the other-side. Bricked up. He put his two-fingered hand inside.
The air inside was as cold as ice.
Fackin freezing.
OUR HOUSE
then
NOBODY EXPECTED what happened next. The social worker came back with a woman from the child protection department. Obviously no stranger to the bakery cream-cake department the woman wiped the sweat from her brow as she approached the caravan. They had a bunch of paperwork that Noah couldn’t read even if he were sober. She handed me the documents.
Read them.
A court order.
The school had contacted the social work department. The social work department had petitioned the court to take me into care. The judge had agreed. Also amongst the paperwork was my birth certificate. My father’s occupation was listed as psychiatrist and novelist.
His signature was an elaborate scrawl.
Taylor.
Rose was right.
I wasn’t one of them.
“Where’s my mother?” I asked the two women.
“She drowned that day,” the fat woman told me.
“What day?”
“There was an accident in the canal.”
Swimming with the swans.
“My father?”
“We have tried to locate him. He closed all his affairs and bought a ticket to the Far East.”
“Where?”
“Bangkok...But he coul
d be anywhere.”
My mind reeled back to the geography and history books. “Siam,” I muttered.
“Yes, you must come with us now. Somewhere safe. And as for you,” she looked at Noah. The courts haven’t decided what to do yet. We have to examine the boy and see what signs of abusive have been administered.”
“Never touched him. Loved him as my own. Taught him all I knew. You can’t just be taking him away. I saved the boy’s life.”
“I’m not going,” I said.
“You have no choice. You can come now or you can be taken by the police. Its better you come now, love,” the pony-tailed social worker said.
What the hell was a social worker anyway? Somebody who intruded in other people’s business. Busy bodies looking out for the evil in others and never seeing it within themselves.
“You may as well be taking my heart with you when you go,” Noah said. “If it weren’t for me he would be dead.”
A tear travel down the old bastard’s cheek. The salt water slowly fell down and rested in the pit of an acne scar and there it remained. Perhaps forever.
I felt numbness.
Nothing.
“Jimmy will be put into care and then adopted by a foster family. You have every right to go through the correct legal channels to try and gain custody.”
“Legal channels? I can’t read nor write and youse ganna take the boy aways from me?”
“There is a team that helps you with the process. We shall send somebody down here to talk to you about it. “Jimmy,” the fat woman said. “Gather your things.”
My things consisted of three books, a stolen packet of polo mints, two t-shirts, a toothbrush, and a pair of tracksuit bottoms.
I’ve always traveled light.
***
The care home was a kind of half-way house for the neglected, abused and unruly. I fitted in just fine. First day a kid in his early teens tried to pull down my shorts and rub his erection against me. I spun around kneed him in the balls eight times. Grabbed him by the throat. “Just because your old man’s been fooling around with you don’t give you the right to do it to others,” told it to him straight. Choked the bastard and then put another knee to his groin until he found reason.