4 Bones Sleeping (Small Town Trilogy)

by Gerald Wixey

  Except for the two boys outside the club – no booze motivating, just revenge.

  I ranted to myself in a rambling, alcoholic induced anguish. I wanted to be sat in the reception of the Regent’s Palace Hotel. Somewhere public, somewhere safe. Sit in there and watch Teddy and his underling’s crash through the front door on the opposite side of the road. Their knives glinting, coshes, knuckle dusters, lead piping and whatever else came to hand. Sit in this grubby reception area with Wyn and Harry and observe as they all tumbled out scratching their heads. Wandering off with unfinished business collectively etched across furrowed brows. Perhaps a myopic stare across towards us and then off for good leaving us with a leisurely drive into the sunset.

  I peered eastwards, the irregular line of buildings, cornices still intact. Roofs complete and unaffected by the best efforts of the Luftwaffe. Night sky still a smudge of dark orange where it merges with streetlights and neon signs. Smells from the restaurants, onions and garlic and fish remind me that I hadn’t eaten for hours.

  ‘It’s nice up here, we used to come up and gaze at the night skyline sometimes.’ I presumed Wyn meant him and Shirley. ‘Not going to jump are you?’

  Not yet.

  I felt his arm come around me, a reassuring cloak of warmth and strength and friendship.

  ‘C’mon, let’s go back in.’ I smelt his cologne and cigars … his strength. He squeezed my shoulder. ‘It’s nearly over.’

  No – it hasn’t even begun yet.

  I thought about joining the other two downstairs. Harry drumming the fingers of one hand on the table, a cigarette in the other. Wyn drinking coffee and telling his brother that things would soon calm down. I crept back into bed and pulled the blankets over my head and drifted back to my childhood. I had learnt to steal from quite a young age. Stealing was the easy part, the more complicated venture of selling things on left to an old lag that lived at the end of our street. All the kids used to cut their teeth on him. He’d fence anything – I make him sound like Fagin. He wasn’t, he did it because he liked everyone.

  Especially us kids, give him a bag of rusty washers and George would still give us a few coppers. Encouraging us in our burgeoning careers, it turned out that I knew the criminal mind, but not Shirley’s. I had drank and talked with her, walked her back to her flat a couple of times. A blind man with a whirlpool of internal turmoil as I tried to put the key in the lock. The dance of the door key, no, yes, no – at last the key slipped home. My mind everywhere, thinking back to the time I walked a young woman home in the snow during the blackout. Soft fluffy snow floating down in a windless sky. Crunching under my shoes, my urban scene transformed into a sliver meadow.

  Now, I felt like the devil had just tried to tap tackle me. I could have sidestepped, but I let him trip me up. Happy to follow Shirley and Wyn wherever the journey took me, probably to the gallows at this rate.

  I crept downstairs, a ghostly scene in front of me. One light on in the far corner, shadows criss-crossing the cavernous room. Harry face down on the table, head cradled by his arms and snoring. An ash tray full of untipped cigarette ends. Wyn glanced at me and tipped his head a touch, his expressive face saying everything. Eyebrows raised, the corners of his mouth turned down a touch as he nodded in his brother’s direction.

  Asleep on sentry duty – firing squad for him.

  He smiled as I pulled a chair up and joined them. His face never actually lied; the truth was in there somewhere if you cared to look closely enough. But no one ever did, distracted by his mellifluent tone and steady gaze, you believed whatever he wanted you to believe.

  ‘Are they still outside?’

  He nodded, ‘Go and have a look,’

  I shook my head; all I could imagine was pounding footsteps and shadowy figures running away and into the night. Blood draining from two young men as they gurgled and spluttered their way to oblivion. I had hoped that when the sun rose, it would burn off my fear, get rid of Harry’s heroics for a few hours and inhibit Wyn’s vanity for long enough for us to get away from here.

  Wyn smiled beatifically my way, not a care in the world. ‘Did you sleep?’ I shook my head. He leaned across towards me, ‘Don’t worry.’

  But I did, ‘Do we go now?’

  ‘Not while the police are stood next to my car.’ Wyn appeared to be assessing things, he frowned and thought out loud, ‘You pretend to agree to their demands, then you actually agree to everything they want and then you’re as bad as they are.’

  I assumed he meant gangsters like Teddy.

  I said, ‘We have to get out.’

  Harry lifted his head, eyes still shut as he said, ‘Let’s go now.’

  ‘What about the boxing?’ Wyn shook his head.

  Harry’s eyes opened slowly. ‘I’ve pushed my head through a brick wall too many times for you. Anyway, with what went on, they might dock my winnings and I’m bound to lose my license, its over.’ A sense of relief in their somewhere, Harry spread his arm around the cavernous club, ‘This is down the tubes too.’

  ‘You can’t leave me on my own to run this place.’ Wyn’s gaze came my way, he raised his eyebrows, twisted his head a touch.

  How long to get back on our feet?

  I said, ‘It’s finished, it’ll take months to persuade people it’s safe again. Which of course it never will be. Why did they do it?’

  Silence as they both considered my question, Harry lit up and Wyn rubbed his chin between thumb and forefinger. I voiced my own idea of how it had started. ‘I suppose the boys wouldn’t let them in and out came the knives. The trouble is, the business is unfinished. As it is, they’ve closed us down, but we’re still alive and we’ve made them look fools.’

  ‘It was a botch and we’re still their targets.’ Harry hammered his cigarette into the fully laden ash tray. Dust and smoke came up like a smoke from a chimney, badly in need of a clean. ‘Let’s share the money and get out.’

  I could see an argument developing here, Harry only wanted to give Wyn his share if he cut and run as well. I felt that Harry half should have the lion’s share – he did the work after all. But they decided to split the money three ways, without rancour as well. I put my hands up, ‘I did nothing, just give me what I would have won with the money I put into the pot.’

  Wyn looked horrified, mouth hung open for a second and then, ‘Oh no, oh no – your idea, mostly my capital and Harry carried it all out beautifully.’

  Harry nodded and winked at me. Seemingly less surprised at his brother’s generosity than I was. Another quality that threw me, I always saw him as obsessed with his till. But on reflection, that wasn’t true. He gave Shirley anything she wanted, kept me in beer and fags and more. We sat in silence, as if no one wanted to appear undignified and suggest sharing it out now.

  I longed to ask the question, how much?

  Wyn leant back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head. A benevolent chancellor about to deliver good news.

  ‘Just over three thousand pounds… each.’ Wyn stood and went round behind Harry as the breath whistled out from inside me. Three thousand, enough for three or four houses, a fortune.

  He put his arm around Harry, ‘You can buy that pub you’ve always wanted, I can get a hotel – how shall we put it, somewhere quieter. It’s all too exciting here. Shall I get the champagne, or is that tempting fate?’

  Then the noise, like a medieval battering ram, the splintering of wood, cries of mad dogs at the door. Shouting and baying for blood and Teddy crashed through the front door. Harry stood up, my eyes wide open at the crow bar he manifested from who knows where.

  ‘You fucking slags.’ Came our way.

  Six of them with knives and snarls and wild, wild eyes. Teddy, not to the fore now, urging the others forward. Harry and Wyn stood, backs tight against the bar, crow bar in Harry’s left hand, pointing towards the maul slowly coming our way. Six knives against one crowbar, held by a boxer impervious to pain, ferocious and fearless. Impervious to punches, but n
ot blades.

  Wyn hissed at me, ‘Get behind the bar and pass me the fire extinguisher – quickly.’

  I saw it at once, a huge, old thing that must have held at least a gallon of carbon tetrachloride. I had a job to lift it, heaving and grunting with the effort of it all, I managed to get it up onto the counter. Wyn turned and picked it up with one hand, swing it down to his feet. Pulled the delivery hose out and pointing at the maul like John Wayne would his Winchester rifle at recalcitrant Indians.

  The maul stopped rolling about eight feet from us, a collective confusion, a synchronized frown in place. Easily outnumbering us, but a hefty crowbar had a decent reach advantage and who wanted a poke in the eye with that?

  ‘Go on you cunts.’ Urged Teddy from a discrete distance, a scrum half at the back of the pack urging them forwards.

  I cowered behind the relative safety of the bar, soda siphon in one hand, I had a job to lift it let along use it as a weapon. Harry used the crow bar like a poker. He never raised it above his head, pushed it out like some savage piston. Eyeless came on first and Harry’s piston caught him just above the heart, he went down and I expected blood to spurt out like a geyser, instead only screams came gushing our way.

  ‘Help me – Teddy.’

  Wyn started pumping away, carbon tetrachloride doesn’t act instantaneously – a few seconds before the eyes start screaming. The application appeared to spur them on, invigorate, not deter and they rushed forward, only to pull up inches from us as their eyes started to burn. Wyn pumped like a demented bilge pump operator. Harry went forward poking away, jabbing into ribs. You could feel them snap. A couple dropped, unsure or incapable of rubbing eyes and ribs at the same time. Harry kept relentlessly pursuing and poking. Wyn pumping and spraying his deadly cocktail around.

  It was a massacre, a First World War charge onto a line of machine guns and one by one they all fell. My eyes went everywhere looking for Teddy. Wyn picked a chair up and broke it across the back of a kneeling man.

  Where’s Teddy?

  Teddy had snuck behind the bar, alongside me and he lunged at Harry’s back.

  ‘Harry, Harry!’

  The knife arrowed towards Harry’s neck, but for a bulky man he had some reflexes. Turning, ducking and catching the knife at the same time. Harry screamed, but still got a punch off, just clipping Teddy’s chin. Not enough to knock him out, enough for the blade to be released and time for Harry to stare down at it, before he pulled it out from his hand.

  Eyeless was up and moving towards the door, Teddy close behind, neither gave a backwards glance.

  Harry had clamped a bar towel around his hand.

  Wyn shouted at the moaning group, ‘This way.’ Herded them into the adjacent office, easier than an ankle biting sheepdog manoeuvres four bewildered sheep into a pen.

  I walked over and locked the door. A simple enough act, the consequences of which is yet another thing that haunted me forever.

  Wyn said, ‘Get the money.’ Harry moaned softly to himself. Wyn stared around, took a deep breath and whispered to me, ‘Go and get the car.’

  I don’t want to go outside.

  ‘Do it.’ He shouted at me for the first and only time in his life.

  I jumped, Wyn threw the car keys my way. I caught them and glanced from one to the other, Wyn still impeccable, Harry wild eyed, his thinning fair hair all over the place. I went towards the shattered front door and peered outside.

  Where did the policemen go?

  No policemen, no Teddy, no anybody. Two in the morning and pretty much deserted. Basilica like silence, with just my heart doing a drum roll. I walked over to the car, leant against the door for a few seconds. Please, please give me the few minutes needed … please.

  ‘C’mon Jack.’ Harry barking out instructions, Wyn, suitcase in one hand. His other arm around his brother and they staggered over towards me.

  ‘No choke, don’t flood the fucking thing.’

  Decent enough advice from Harry, irrelevant if my shaking hand couldn’t get the key in the ignition though.

  Harry barked more instructions. ‘Don’t touch the accelerator either, she’ll fire up, it’s a warm enough night.’ I watched him in the mirror as he slumped against the back seat, Wyn soon slipped alongside him, the suitcase clasped to his chest. I pressed the ignition button and the big Humber engine fired on less than half a turn.

  I let the clutch up; we slid away from this nightmare, but …

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Just fucking drive.’ From one brother.

  ‘You’ll think of somewhere.’ From the other.

  Teddy - 1945

  A broken man echoing around inside his head. Fuck them all, most have nothing inside to break anyway. Scum the lot of them with their freckled faces and clean nails.

  ‘My ribs hurt Teddy.’

  What a fuck up, that’s me finished, what a fuck up.

  ‘My ribs hurt.’

  Laughing stock, finished off by a couple of sheep shaggers, laughing stock.

  Eyeless wheezing and moaning didn’t help either, shut the fuck up.

  Sit down and think, drink tea, whisky, more tea, more whisky… think!

  Stare at the empty whisky bottle, find some rag, look for that old Jerry can full of petrol. Fill the bottle up, find a couple more bottles, milk will do.

  Fill them up, c’mon Eyeless.

  ‘My ribs hurt.’

  Cross Westminster Bridge, redness in the sky to the right. More than fucking redness soon. Along Whitehall, melancholy sighs and Eyeless dawdling along behind. Lost in a painful world of his own. The close heavy smell of early morning in late summer. A woman walked by, plain looking, white blouse and blue skirt, both ironed within an inch of their lives. She stared at the bottle carrying pair.

  What you looking at.

  She bustled past.

  ‘My ribs hurt. It looks bad, walking along with four Molotov’s between us.’

  Kick a few pigeons in Trafalgar Square, up the Haymarket, skirt around Piccadilly Circus and up Regent Street. Nearly there.

  ‘Got any matches Teddy?’

  Beak Street, too many people out and about now. Around the back, count the windows. That’s the office. Silence apart from the sound of a window breaking and the roar of ignition. Two more bottles thrown into the same window.

  Roars like a blast furnace.

  Last bottle.

  Fucking hell.

  Flames bursting out of the window, glass shattering – screams.

  Screams?

  That’s a bonus, let’s hope that ponce of a reporter’s in there as well.

  More screams, hammering, kicking, scratching – let me out, please god let me out.

  Shut up you fucking mumpers.

  16

  Jack - 1980

  I stopped and stared up at the sign. The Wheatsheaf, my house was directly behind me, the office twenty yards farther up the road. Despite the proximity, I never used the pub. Just another dingy little boozer, god knows how anyone made a living there. But I needed somewhere quieter than a chapel on a Monday night. A silent corner with a nicotine stained ceiling and equally discoloured, muslin curtained windows. Somewhere where I could manifest into a nondescript little man, one who had never had a moments excitement in his miserable little life. That’s what I wanted, a life of dullness and a couple of drinks to set me up for a day of unremitting dreariness.

  I put my hand on the door handle and thought about John Stern, Don, a geography teacher and maybe even Patrick. When does using a young girl become abuse? I could imagine a young geography teacher having a degree of sensitivity to the relationship.

  But the other two?

  I crept in, the first thing I saw was the fat landlord, who never looked up from his newspaper, he just wheezed a few times, then the rattling smoker’s cough. His breathing shallow, puffed his cheeks out every time he exhaled, kept his lips close together and huffed away. Typical of a middle aged, heavy smoker, his cheeks flapped
away like an emphysemic bull frog.

  He carried on reading until I coughed.

  ‘Oh - hello, just about to… what’s your poison?’ He looked at me, twisted his head.

  Don’t I know you?

  Recognition, ‘Oh hello Jack.’

  The landlord’s head went back and he seemed to confuse me, I’d suddenly become one of Her Majesty’s Custom and Excise. ‘I don’t water the mild down, or put the bitter slops back into the barrel.’ The fat man’s vanity took over, pushed his chest out and pulled his stomach in, ‘Who’s been stirring the shit?’ Pained innocence spread across his jowls, slowly – a bad mime artist.

  My spell as a dull little man lasted a couple of minutes it seemed. Forgetting my earlier wish, I tried to bring some direction into this dull man’s life. ‘Do you get many St Mary girls coming in?’

  He squirmed, I waited and waited. Silent as a sadistic psychotherapist. The clock’s tick got louder; the fat man lit a cigarette. Wheezed tobacco smoke and began to cough – I thought his lungs were coming up – expected them to ricochet off the bar and bounce towards the front door. He dragged in a little air and stared, at me and then back to his newspaper. Up at the ceiling, over to the front door and reluctantly back to me.

  Finally, ‘Sometimes, not that I serve them of course.’

  I showed him the photo of Celia, ‘Was she ever in here?’ I pulled a stool up as I spoke. The fat landlord kept staring at me until I said. ‘It’s important and I’m busy.’

  He frowned at me, ‘No need to be like that.’ His glance went down to the photograph. ‘Sometimes – why what’s up?’

  ‘Was Patrick ever with her?’

  He leaned closer, conspiratorially close in fact, and then he whispered, ‘It was easier to let him in, you know what trouble he can be. He was always quiet though – they just sat over there and she got drunk.’

  I wondered why he had to whisper there’s no one to hear a word he was saying anyway. I wanted to shout at him, speak up. Instead I whispered back. ‘You served alcohol to a fifteen year old girl then?