by Mick Scully
26
Up on the roof. That was a song wasn’t it? Up on the roof. That was where he had taken to having his cigarette breaks now. Better not to be out on the street alone; you have to move along a bit if you want a ciggy – No Smoking Anywhere Near The Door – Stretton’s instructions. Gives The Wrong Impression – what sort of fucking impression did he think Chinese gangsters with shotguns give? One of the artillery team Stretton had brought in was up there too, and Carrow needed to know what was going on – he hadn’t forgotten he was on Crawford’s payroll, and he was sure as fuck that Crawford wouldn’t have either.
The door to the roof needed a hefty push. It was steel-panelled up on the outside with a whole selection of bolts and mortises on the inside. ‘Sergei. It’s me, mate. Carra.’ The Bulgarian was huddled in his thick combat jacket on the remnant of a defunct chimney that enabled him to peer down into the street at the front of the club. Binoculars on his lap, a flask of hot coffee at his feet and by his side a Kalashnikov that every time Carrow saw it made him feel as though he was going to have an asthma attack.
A voice in Carrow’s head kept telling him that for most of his adult life he had been a cop. He should either be reporting this, or getting as far away from it as possible. And quick. But that’s as far as it went. Listening to the voice. Agreeing. You’re right. But action? Nothing.
The team included two guys working the inside of the club who you wouldn’t know from normal doormen except they kept to themselves. Stretton wasn’t doing things by halves. This must be costing him a fortune. Carrow had picked up that this was an out-of-town gang with a growing reputation. Run, as he had suspected, by a London firm, but based in Stratford-upon-Avon; the cover was these guys were agricultural workers, out on the farms of Warwickshire pulling spuds from dawn till dusk. The caravan parks surrounding Stratford were full of teams of Eastern European agricultural workers. All working for a pittance. Perhaps these guys did do some spud-pulling now and again, to keep their cover, but they certainly had other skills. Very disciplined. The men inside never got chatting to the girls who gave them the eye; always distant, their mind on the job. And Stretton seemed to have called it right with this one. Everything had been as quiet as you like since they arrived. It looked as if the Chinese had got the message.
Sergei was undeniably a man with a head for heights. Carrow had seen him bend so far forward to observe door activity that he had been convinced he would lose his balance and topple into the street. Other times, belly-flat like a soldier, his head just peering over the edge, he gazed down like a gargoyle, observing all.
‘How’s it going, mate?’ Carrow sat beside him. The cold immediately hit his arse; a shock, but it was so hot down in the club that the chill up here felt good. Though perhaps not for more than ten minutes. Sergei looked pretty cold.
‘Good. Quiet.’ Sergei only had a few words of English, but these were two Carrow liked to hear from him. He passed him a cigarette and the two smoked in silence, looking out at the lights of the Birmingham night, pinched and pale in the winter cold.
Sergei pointed to the column of lights to their right. ‘Row tund.’
‘Rotunda,’ Carrow corrected him, and Sergei repeated the word accurately. The electronic throb of the music in the club pulsed the roof beneath their feet. ‘Shit music,’ Sergei said. ‘Every night. Shit music.’ Every night he said this.
The thought of trying a conversation on music always seemed too much like hard work, so, although Carrow wondered what the man would regard as good music, he said nothing. A car turned the corner below them. The two men rose. Sergei leaned over. The car slowed, but continued. ‘Nothing,’ Sergei said returning to his seat on the wall.
Carrow had been trying to suppress images of Ruthie all evening, one in particular – but now it broke through and he saw it again: her being dropped off at work, leaning across to kiss Kieran Walsh goodbye. Kieran Walsh. He told himself it didn’t matter who it was – she’d got herself a new bloke, even if it was just to tide her over until the man Howie’s release.
And would he really want that role anyway – tiding her over? He didn’t let himself answer that question. Instead he rose, and made his way back down into the club.
So, when a couple of nights later she turned up at the club with a group of girls, he was cautious. Or at least he tried to be. But – there was just something. He watched her dancing. First with her friends, then with a couple of guys who joined them. But the next time he passed she was gone. Then he saw her chatting to one of the Bulgarians, her arm resting for a moment on his, saying something into his ear. Perhaps she would succeed where others had failed, but a moment later she was dancing with her friends again. When he saw her heading for the bar he caught up with her. ‘How’s the new boyfriend?’
She waited. Smiled. Teasing. He knew it. She knew he knew it. ‘Gorgeous.’
‘So, it’s love?’
Then, a curious way she had. Her face changed. Something fell away – the humour, the bravado. Leaving something lovely, something vulnerable remaining in the empty face. ‘Love? I wouldn’t say that. It’s just – life. Do you want to buy me a drink?’
‘Only if it’s an investment.’
The spirit was back in her face.
‘I’ll have a vodka and lime. A double.’
Each time he saw her she was dancing. Each time he saw her she spotted him immediately. Like she was watching for him.
There was a small smile for him as he passed her, still dancing with her friends, on his way up to the roof for a smoke. He winked. On the roof he just nodded to Sergei before moving across to the other side to light up. He ought to kick this habit. Like he had promised his mother.
He stood leaning on the cold iron rail of the fire escape looking down into the black no-man’s-land behind the club. He wanted to think. He needed the cold air and the smoke burning in his chest to do so. Give up? Not for a while anyway. He checked the slide in his memory, watched her kissing Walsh as she got out of the car. Just like a girl does: kisses her boyfriend as he drops her off at work. She didn’t know Carrow was there, watching. She didn’t know he knew who Walsh was. It was a genuine act. So, what was he to make of tonight? Maybe she had got tired of him. It’s just life.
It was the guy inside, Howie, she was really interested in, that had got to be the truth of it. Others, including him, were just to get her through. He remembered that lovely look on her face. Don’t be fooled, he wanted to say to himself, women can do that.
Then she was gone! There’s a perfume ad that uses that line. Comes on every Christmas. Beautiful woman. Expensive perfume. She runs up a golden staircase and disappears – then she was gone, a voice says. The man following left bewildered.
The most embarrassing time Carrow ever had on the force was coming down from a flat in Vaughan Williams on the Mendy to find that his squad car had gone. Nicked – nicked before he could get it back to the nick. He was to hear variations of that joke a hundred times. But of course it wasn’t a joke, and he’d stood looking, staring, at the empty space where his vehicle had been just twenty minutes before. His mind refusing to accept that it had been stolen. He must have made a mistake. So he walked round the building cautiously, as if the car were engaged in a game of hide-and-seek with him, and if he were careful, he would be able to creep up on it without being noticed. Got ya! Helplessly he scanned the area, looking back to where he had looked a few seconds before. Probably, he even looked up.
It felt like that now. Wandering round the club. Round and round. He couldn’t see the girls she had been with. Perhaps they had all gone. Why would she leave without telling him? Had she just been teasing him? Up one staircase, down another; nothing golden about these. He checked the street. He asked the Bulgarian he had seen her talking to. He even went up to Stretton’s floor. Then up another level to pop his head round the door to the roof.
When all was done and there were just a few staff left around the bar, having a drink as they waited for taxis, he
went back up to the roof. Sergei was gone now. He had the space to himself. Thin shavings of snow were trying to fall. He lit up. Inhaled deeply, but that didn’t shift whatever it was that was stuck in his chest. So what was the problem? He had been turned down by women before. Something close to a sob took his chest. He held on to the rail of the fire escape. What was happening? This wasn’t him.
27
Daytime was tedious. There was only the gym. It seemed like just getting through till the evening. And then it was the job; the Norway. This was Birmingham, his city, he was back. He had friends here, a past. So why was he behaving as if he were an immigrant in a new country? With nothing?
Sometimes he thought about his old mate, Jack Stevens. He was the only real white friend he had ever had. They had done their training together and shared a flat for a time. Jack used to go to Buddhist meditation on Thursdays. Had the piss taken out of him rotten by the rest of the guys. All except Dowd, their gaffer. He respected Jack, made him his number two.
Live in the present, Jack used to say. Concentrate on that. Well that’s what he was doing wasn’t it? Living in the present. Not thinking about the past. Not thinking about the future. Just the now. Today. The gym. The club. But it wasn’t right; he knew it. Because it was starting to feel like he didn’t have a past, didn’t have a future. And he couldn’t live like this for very long. It was like the days in Jamaica after his mother’s death. Beaches and bars. Sunshine and music. Freedom. But it wasn’t. It didn’t work. He needed something else. The answer was probably as simple as getting a job. A real one. This was no life. Sharing a flat on the Mendy with Toga. And not even Toga’s flat, it was a Mendy flat, he was keeping it warm, the phrase round here for occupying someone’s place and covering the expenses, while they’re inside. When he had asked how long they would be able to stay there, Toga had just smiled and told him it would be a while yet before they had to think about eviction.
These couple of weeks here had been okay. He had liked sharing with someone again. Toga rose late, spent most of his time at the gym or a snooker club he went to, occasionally disappeared somewhere. Carrow didn’t ask questions; both men respected the privacy of the other. It was when they got back from the Norway and unwound with a smoke and a drink that they spent time together. And even then, they were careful. The talk was mostly about the night’s shift, any door problems, the women that had been in that night, how things were going with the Chinese.
Bit by bit information was leaking out. It was the Dragons. They pretty much had the casino scene in the whole of the West Midlands sewn up. Other forms of gambling too. There was a big trade in importing counterfeits. Cigarettes. Perfume. And some drugs. Coke. Heroin. A little bit of pure opium, it was thought when he was on the force, but that was a niche market, very high-class and usually went down south. Now they were moving into the club scene. They had already acquired a couple of places in Wolverhampton without too much trouble and one in Nottingham with quite a lot – a man dead.
Toga was still in bed when Carrow left the flat to head for the gym. He detoured. Made for the Gables instead. He just wanted to see if she was on the same shift this week, if Kieran dropped her off again. If he did, that would explain the other night. He parked his car by the church and walked down the hill. Stopped when he spotted Walsh in an Audi parked up on the other side of the road. Carrow dodged into the shrubbery of the nearest driveway. Walsh was on his own, his fingers tapping the steering wheel.
Carrow watched. Ruthie must be on the morning shift. Walsh had come to pick her up. I might as well piss off, Carrow thought, go to the gym, go back to the Mendy, go and get pissed. She’s still with Kieran. The other night – she was just taking the piss.
But he didn’t move. There was comfort standing here among the trees and shrubbery, standing in the cold, not even smoking. In the moment. Nothing else. Like working again.
A car pulled up behind Kieran’s, a fuck-off maroon BMW, so close Carrow though it was heading for a bump. A whisker away – but a whisker’s enough. A woman driving. Grey hair pulled back. Kieran got out of his car. The woman opened her door and Carrow could see Ruthie in the passenger seat. Kieran squatted down beside the open door talking to the two women, Ruthie leaning forward. Then Kieran rose. Ruthie got out of her side of the car and walked round. The woman got out too. Older. Elegant. Perhaps she was Ruthie’s mom. She was certainly well off. Not only the BMW but the fur coat she was wearing. Long. Carrow didn’t know enough about fur to be able to tell what creatures had copped it to produce her coat, but it looked like film star quality to him.
Kieran watched the three of them chatting. Eventually mommy got back into her car, reversed away from the Audi, did a U-turn and drove down the road and into the entrance of the Gables. Perhaps she wasn’t mommy after all. Perhaps she was the owner of the place.
Kieran pulled his cigarettes from his jacket. Gave one to Ruthie, popped one in his own mouth and lit them both. They stood smoking and talking beside the car, leaning against it, leaning against each other. And when the cigarettes were finished, Kieran kissed Ruthie before she pulled away and walked towards the Gables. Kieran watched her. At the drive she turned and waved. Kieran waved back before he got into his car and drove away.
Carrow emerged from the bushes. Took a slow walk down to the Gables. The BMW was in the visitors’ parking area. No sign of either its driver or Ruthie.
There weren’t many in the gym. A group of blokes sparring in the boxing section, a couple on weights, both very serious about their workouts and recording their performance in their phones. Everyone knew he was an ex-copper. He ran into faces there he had come across in the past. A nod or two, sometimes an ironic grin, but no one said much. He should join a proper gym, where they had women doing aerobics and a café and a swimming pool. This was just a muscle factory. He stopped thinking and got on with it. Don’t let the brain take the strain.
He took a drive out to Handsworth to visit Miss Rosa Quirk, his only relative in the city, a cousin of his mother. It was something to do with the afternoon. He and his mother had lived with Miss Rosa until he was eleven when they were given a place of their own. When his mother returned to Jamaica she tried to persuade Miss Rosa to go with her, but she had a son who had been killed at ten, buried here in Witton Cemetery, so there was no way she was going to leave. Eventually she would be placed in the same grave, and when she used to talk about it, it seemed to Carrow that she was looking forward to that day. Placed, that’s how she used to say it.
Both Rosa and his mother had been proud when he joined the force and did well. Occasionally he stopped by Rosa’s place in uniform. Afterwards she immediately rang his mother in Jamaica to tell her how fine he had looked, how well he was doing – Be proud, sister. Your son a fine man. The Lord has blessed you well. Rosa had always been big on religion. A stalwart of her church.
The area hadn’t changed, and the old instincts were still there. Carrow watching what was happening. Doorways. Street corners. Between parked cars. See if he could spot deals. And what would he do if he did see something? Nothing – he was just a tourist now. But the instinct? The looking? Just habit. He knew where he was then; he had reasons. And it was with this nostalgia that he took a spin down to Brewery Street where the Doberman Crew had their base.
A line of flash cars parked outside 114, Linton’s place. There was a meathead kid sitting on the wall, in shorts despite the cold day, swinging his legs, drawing in on a spliff. Only a kid but strong, well built. Attitude you could feel from across the street. A white baseball cap and serious-money trainers. No hoody up – too proud to hide. Carrow smiled. Obviously there to keep an eye on things – a trainee. But a promising one if he was on the gate. If Carrow were still on the force, this kid would be one to watch.
‘It is not the place it was any more. Gangs. Gangs and guns and drugs. There has been killin’ in this street. I tell you, Craig, people’s hearts are hard now. Ruthless hard.’ Miss Rosa Quirk was stirring the dutchie, heating
up her Saturday soup. Carrow hadn’t wanted any food, he wasn’t hungry, never was after a workout, but Miss Rosa had insisted. ‘Boy, you don’t step in my house and not get fed. House rule.’ And now it was nice, sitting comfortably in Miss Rosa Quirk’s kitchen, the table laid, the smell of the food, being looked after.
Miss Rosa looked across to him. She had eyes like a bird of prey, hooded; softened by her slack mouth. ‘Your mommy, she loved my Saturday soup. I do the soup and the bread puddin’. She do the pork jerk, rice and peas. You remember?’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘Happy days.’
‘Yes.’ And Carrow wished now that he had arrived with a gift, some flowers, a box of chocolates, some gesture. Why was he so thoughtless?
‘Well, now she rests in Santa Cruz. Back in the parish of Saint Elizabeth. Where she started. Where she’ll always remain. And I am glad she is there. In her own place, among her own kind.’
Carrow recalled filling in his mother’s grave with the help of friends, distant relatives, the sons of her neighbours, as is the tradition. He dropped the first shovelful of earth in, and he laid the last. Thrust in the spade to show the job was done; the other men followed suit. Then they walked away to join the women of the family. He wished now he had taken a photograph of the grave, to bring to Miss Rosa. Outside the kitchen window English rain was falling.
Miss Rosa ladled soup into a bowl and put it on the table. She cut bread for him. He could smell patties warming in the oven. Being fed like a little boy. Miss Rosa sat opposite him.
‘You’re not having anything?’ he asked.
‘Hiatus.’ She swept her hand across her stomach. ‘I keep to very regular times.’
She watched him eat. He didn’t need to tell her it was good, his appetite was back. Then without warning she said: ‘So they killed the child.’
Carrow opened his mouth in surprise. Soup spilled over his lip on to his chin. He wiped it away with his hand. Miss Rosa pushed a napkin he hadn’t seen towards him. He wiped his fist, dabbed his lips, his chin.