Wreckage

by Niall Griffiths

  yeh but Freddy was evidently sitting on that bench to be close to the dough to guard it, wasn’t he? So it’s no surprise cos – aye but if that modelling agency had’ve been on another street – if it had’ve been set up elsewhere – if Freddy had been sitting on any other bench – if the slab on that grave hadn’t’ve been cracked – if they’d hidden the rucksack somewhere else – if they if he if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if if –

  Alastair leaves the gardens. It’s a fucking big cathedral. Junkies reappear to float ghostly through the trees and gravestones like desultory, departed souls. One from inside the oval shadow of his hoisted hood and with candleflame eyes watches the skinny figure with the rucksack and baseball hat ascend the stone stairs.

  Oo the bag is nicely heavy. As he grins Alastair feels scabs crack on his face and thinks that before he boards the train he’ll wash his face in some public toilet somewhere, make himself look a bit more respectable for what he’s got to do. There’s a toilet in Central Station, a nice cleanish one with soap and towels and everything. He’s heading there anyway.

  Station.

  * * *

  Darren’s mobile trills in his pocket like a baby bird chirruping ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. He takes it out, regards the display screen which shows Tommy’s number, turns it off and puts it back in his pocket. Fucking Tommy. No need to speak to that fat bastard or any of his toady minions like Sully or Squires or Lenny fucking Reece. Jesus, that Lenny – just caught him unawares, that’s all. And then the hot shock of that burger in his face all stingy in his eyes and he couldn’t see for a bit, was blinded, couldn’t do fuck all about being frogmarched into the cab or anything cos he couldn’t frigging see and the shock, man … Plus he’s one strong bastard, that Lenny is. Big strong Welsh bastard. Not so big that he won’t bleed, tho. Soft skin, every human being has got this soft, rippable skin that parts easily under sharpened steel or splits under heavy blunt objects. And the amount of blood … Darren saw someone get shot once – T with his nine-mil – shot in the leg, through the artery, like. The blood … spurted four feet in the air. Could’ve had a frigging bath in it, no lie. Or like the old lady in the post office and the way her scalp unzipped aye but bigger, younger, maler people as well Christ only cowards only focus on leathering old ladies and how else would she have opened the safe, by asking her nicely? By saying ‘pretty fucking please’? Ruthless, man, that’s how you’ve got to be. Merciless, like. Get hold of a Walther from somewhere and line them all up, all of them, Alastair Sully Gozzy Lenny Robbo Freddy and Tommy himself, one shot each back of the head walk down the line pull the trigger take this youse cunts –

  Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  And seven bleeding sacks of shite on the deck who’ll never treat anyone like a divvy ever, ever again. See ya.

  Darren sits on a bench in Williamson Square and lights a cigarette. Pigeons strut muckily around him and burble until they realise he has no food to offer them at which point they drift away again, through and around and scattered flapping by the legs of people out early for the night, blotchy white feet in strappy heels, polished shoes and trainers and boots. Darren blows smoke and thinks anger at them all, pigeons included because they can fly. He turns his mobile on and rings Alastair again for about the seventeenth time in the past two hours or so and this time he receives a strange, lifeless tone as if he’s called Mars. He turns his phone off again, replaces it again in his jacket pocket. Dribbles smoke at the floor, the sooty paving slabs dull-sequinned with colourless coins of flattened gum.

  Where oh where will Alastair be? Where will he go to spend that money? Too stupid to leave town where will he go? Too brain-dead even to hide for a while, lay low for a while he will not go to his granny’s house for shelter or maybe he will because he is that thick. Or:

  Pub. Or:

  Knocking shop. Or:

  Where else where else where will his appetites take him … With the ready cash to assuage his hungers where will he drift to where will he go, around this city Darren can see him wandering in his skinny inadequacy in that antwacky shelly and that perpetual frigging baseball cap and that gob hanging open never-shut, drool on his pimply chin and the stained white socks tucked into his antwacky trainees and the way he walks all drippy and feeble and ineffectual just bumbles through the world brain-dead get that he is, breakable little arsewipe with a body susceptible to so much pain and pain it will suffer oh how it will split and bleed that face flattening under Darren’s fist and feet Jesus the rage in him the fury in his head pushing at the bone, pounding at the bone such a sharp throbbing in his head against the inside of the skull pound pound pound the bone which is going to surely –

  Crack.

  That’s it.

  That’s that bastard’s luxury. That’s that bastard’s Spanish villa.

  Darren crushes the end of his cigarette and leaves the square and walks to the gyratory and boards the next bus that will take him to Liverpool 8, bound as it is for the Dingle and St Michael’s and areas beyond. He buys a ticket and finds a seat upstairs among the bright people going out and their chatter and invisible perfume clouds and he peers through the window at the passing city, the night’s illumination beginning to burn. He disembarks on Upper Parliament Street and cuts through the estate behind the Coronation Buildings, the corporation houses all identical and the music behind their windows either techno or reggae, always techno or reggae. Beyond this estate lies some old terracing cross-hatched around patches of waste ground that once held buildings either obliterated by Luftwaffe bombs or razed in the riots and never built on again, left fallow for dandelion and nettle or as dumping grounds for unwanted household appliances or old mattresses or on occasion burnt-out cars sinking into mud and bracken like mastodons. Darren enters one of these terraced streets and halts at a house whose lower windows and door have been covered with sheet metal, three big sheets riveted to frame and jamb. From an upper window a faint light pulses. The number 18 is painted in red on the steel.

  Darren presses the intercom button at the side of the door. On certain streets like this one in appearance in other areas the net curtains would be twitching up and down the street on each side like some prolix secret signal, some abstruse and coded conversation conducted via flap and jerk of cloth. In some areas, along some streets net curtains do twitch. Eyes do pry. But not here, not unless they check for police. Only ever police.

  The intercom crackles. A voice all drawly answers:

  —Yeeeeee-aaaaahhh? Oo dissssss?

  —Darren, lad.

  —Hoooo?

  —Darren. Darren Taylor.

  —Know none Dah-ron Tee-looorrrrr. Bye-bye.

  —Darren fuckin Taylor, yeh fuckin fool. I’m known ere, lar. Ask Herbie, if he’s there. An then just fuckin lerruz in.

  Faint voices through the intercom system kind of robotic, mechanical. Like sentient machines concocting a plot. Then:

  —Hoooo-kay Mistah Tee-looorrr. You go rount back.

  Darren does, down the urinous ginnel between ashpiles of burnt clothing and through a gate into a garden where three pit bulls tied to metal stakes driven into the bare-soil lawn burst into instant violent insanity at the sight of him until a black guy in a deckchair smoking a cigar the size of a rolling pin waves a rolling pin at them and tells them to shut the fuck up.

  —Y’alright, Darren? What’s happenin, kidder?

  —Y’alright, Jegsy? Guard duty tonight is it yeh?

  —Someone’s gorrer do it, lar, avn’t thee?

  —Is right. Catch yiz later.

  —Nice one.

  Darren pushes the back door open and enters the kitchen empty of every appliance except the electric cooker on which all four rings burn fiercely to heat up the saucepan on each in which water boils around small glass jars. One man, tall and skinny with a woolly hat and goatee beard, attends at once to them all, raising each jar to check and gently shake, his hands describing fast jerks and circles over the hot ho
b like some kind of legerdemain. Some magician this and indeed something of the alchemical to this scene and the very process itself carries or is surrounded by such an aura. The honed focus on this man and his deep desire to intensify and improve. Purify, depollute. Unclear he is as to which salts separate and why and which new ones are formed or why but knowing only that they will if his quick hands and assessing eyes are inspired. Knowing only that they will.

  One small, cracking sound behind the burbling bubbles. The man raises a jar and regards it and smiles at the small chalky rock decocted from liquid and hisses ‘yesssssss’. Darren goes into the gloom of the adjoining room and scans the wall-bound faces as his eyes adjust to the lack of light and sees no Alastair. No Alastair, only ten or so people like him both male and female assessing Darren in turn with a gaze communal and focused strange. Faces both white and brown and shades in between lining this room like variegated flowers lit hydroponically by the huge throbbing TV screen showing The Matrix.

  Another man in a woolly hat rises smiling and approaches Darren. They clasp hands and punch fists knuckle to knuckle.

  —Darren, man.

  —Herbie. Seen Alastair?

  —Alastair? Herbie rolls the word around in his mouth as if tasting it. —Don’t know that name, my friend.

  —Aye, Herbie, yeh do. Dozy get always wears a basey? He’s been here with me before. Few times, like.

  Herbie nods. —Oh yeh. Haven’t seen him, no. Not for weeks. Last time was … He drifts off, thinking, then slips into some kind of trance in which his dark eyes become as glass for a few seconds and which is broken abruptly by a gold-toothed grin. —Anyway. Have a smoke with me, lar. Seein as yer here, like, yeh?

  —Aye, alright.

  They move to a corner and sit and Darren takes his place among these people with their eyes boring at the TV screen like awls and small glass pipes being put to lips and billows of smoke lightly rising. Little conversation except that on the television unless tongues and burning rocks could be said to converse which maybe they can in a language comprised of bubbling and of breath. Seated figures in gloom as if placed to await in some ante-room admission or rejection from a different world or anticipating some judgement, as if this is the Day when the souls have risen and these here arranged about have no allotted place. As if whatever power has called them forth does not know what to do with them unplaceable as they are and malleable to no proscribed system extant of punishment and reward. And in their withdrawal and stance isolate and willed can be seen the horror of a glimpsed nothingness and a splinter of knowledge empirically earned of what it might be like to live for ever in darkness and alone.

  Herbie produces a makeshift pipe from somewhere, built out of a Buxton water bottle and a Biro tube and some tinfoil. Like something a child might make. Like some plaything featured on Blue Peter or at school. He loads it with a stone and smokes it then loads it again and hands it to Darren who smokes too, Herbie regarding him with the odd glassine focus of the crack-high as Darren’s own eyes achieve that sheen and focus also. The smoke in the bottle trapped in plastic like a little captured cloud. Some miasma gone maverick and of necessity snared. Darren returns the pipe.

  —Nice one, Herb. Ta, lar.

  —Norra problem, Dar.

  —Herb … fuckin top name for you, that, innit? Herb. Appropriate, like.

  Herbie grins. —Is right. An yer not gunner believe the name of the musher I bought the bugle off.

  Interrogative eyebrows on Darren.

  —Doctor Rock.

  —Go ’way. Yeh kiddin.

  —Nah, straight up. Doctor fuckin Rock. He’s a proper doctor an evrythin, gorra practice in Huyton.

  —What, an he deals gack on the side?

  —Aye, yeh. Dead easy for him to get hold of, innit?

  —How’s that, well?

  —Every fuckin ozzy’s gorra supply of charlie, Dar. Skag n all. Best fuckin painkillers goin, lar.

  —Yeh?

  —Oh aye yeh. Y’know on charlie, when yeh snort it like an yer face goes all numb? That’s the anaesthetic kickin in, man. That’s the –

  —I know that, Herbie. I’m not fuckin stupid, lad.

  —Never said yeh were, mate, never said yeh were. Just explainin to yiz, like, why there’s always a good supply of beak in thee ozzy.

  Even in this gloom and through the chemical obfuscation Herbie can discern the faint yet fierce flickering in Darren’s sharpened eyes. Can see the blaring TV screen reflected wee in each pupil and the tiny figures wearing shades and long leather coats fighting there as of Darren’s eternal inner fury given form, as if it has assumed this shape of fighting figures whirling, flying, gravity-defying as if the force and extent of his always-anger can be seen only as such impossible acrobatics, as movements that the human body can never really make.

  Yes. Plus Darren’s been known to slash people’s faces with knives. Herbie’s seen him do it. There is that as well.

  —Don’t talk to me as if am a bleedin knobend well.

  —I wasn’t, mate, I was just sayin –

  A stocky cross-legged man sitting close to the television screen turns his head, swivels it on his bulky shoulders.

  —Ey, can’t youse two keep it down? Tryna watch this. Good fuckin movie, lar.

  Herbie sees Darren’s face begin to swell as he glares at the cross-legged man and soon the high will flop and deflate and it must be cherished before it does not spoiled no not spoiled which is a thing about to happen. Bad words are amassing in Darren’s throat like an army. Herbie nudges him gently.

  —Ey. See them fuckin towers come down, lar?

  Darren grunts. Eyes blazing into the back of the cross-legged man’s head.

  —Yeh, couldn’t fuckin believe it, man, Herbie goes on. —Like a friggin movie or summin, did yeh see it? I was in a boozer in Chester with Dean, barman puts the box on like an –

  —Dean?

  —Aye, yeh.

  —Wrexham Dean?

  Darren staring at Herbie. His head like a building ablaze and the eyes like windows about to shatter.

  —Aye, Deano, lives in Wrexham. You know him.

  —Dean wasn’t in Chester, man. He was in fuckin New York when the towers came down. He watched the planes fly in. He told me.

  —Nah, man, he was in a pub in Chester, I was with him. Barman flicks the telly on like and –

  —Fuck off, Herbie. Dean was in New York. Don’t lie to me, lad.

  Something wrong here. The lean on Darren and the gritting of his teeth his breath leaving his nostrils like a horse’s and the purple bruises black in the half-light and Herbie recalls Dean’s rapt face as he watched the televised towers topple and the replayed planes and the flames and the tiny people falling through such vast space kicking their tiny arms and legs and the explosions and Dean’s softly muttered ‘Jesus Christ’ several times over as if robbed of all speech except that name that plea but Darren’s leaning here and his teeth are bared and his breathing is quickening change the subject Herbie change it quick:

  —So, this erm, this Alastair one. Why yeh lookin for him?

  Darren’s breath slows to nearly normal. His expression softens: —Wha?

  —Before like. Yeh asked me if I’d seen Alastair.

  —Did I?

  —Aye, yeh, yeh did. Soon as yeh came in. Don’t seem like yeh wanner give him some good news either, if yeh don’t mind me sayin. Got summin to do with them bruises, has it?

  Herbie nods at Darren’s face. Darren stares down at his knees. —That mudderfucker Alastair. That bastard.

  Oh Jesus. —Is he?

  —Fuck yeh.

  —Why? What’s he done?

  And what story follows told by Darren so it follows that betrayal is the theme. Of a one-armed absconder somewhere in Wales and of a fruitless quest to find him undermined by Alastair’s innate stupidity and then of a post office cased by Darren for weeks and the stubborn old lady proprietor who had to be given a belt before she’d open the safe and al
l that fucking money and then Deano’s party in Wrexham cos he’d just come back from New fuckin York Herbie not friggin Chester and then the Lime Street Station bar and being jumped from behind by two little scally bastards who skanked all the money and then Lenny, ambushed again, and Tommy and their names are Robbo and Freddy know them? And it turns out that that Alastair cunt is behind it, believe that shite, that betraying fuckin bastard can’t believe he’s done this thought he was a bleedin mate can’t trust no bastard these days man and how they’re gunner fuckin bleed when –

  —Fer fuck’s sake. Cross-legged man’s head rotates again. —Fuckin gob on you, lad. Can’t yeh just fuckin button it? Important friggin film, this, not that you’d know fuck all about that. Youse wanner gab all fuckin night, take it out to the friggin yard or summin an lerruz watch the fuckin film in peace. Honest to God.

  He turns back to face the telly. Darren says:

  —Ey, lad.

  And Herbie gulps heat.

  Swivelhead again. —Wha?

  —Want yer fuckin face ripped, cunt?

  The man sneers. —By you?

  —By me, yeh.

  —Wanner friggin try it? Come ed, then, prick.

  He stands. He is big. Floor-bound faces crane up at him then at Darren as he stands too, shrugging off Herbie’s entreating hand as he does so and the big man steps forward and Darren’s right hand strikes like a snake. No blade flashes or catches the light from the TV screen, nothing like that, just Darren’s hand darts in the half-dark and seems to slap the other man’s cheek yet there is no retort, no sound of crack or clapping just that one swiftly swiping arm.

  One or two gasps. Herbie groans low: —Aw fuckin hell man …

  The big man stops dead, raises one hand to his face. He takes that hand away to examine it for blood and as he does so and against the pale blue light of the TV that side of his face yawns away. Little blood as yet except that splashed across the television screen in a dotted line across Laurence Fishburne’s head, just that slow splitting in two of his face as one cheek sags to show teeth where teeth should never be seen.