His eyes narrowed until they was more or less shut. ‘Why would I reckon summat like that?’
I knew what he were getting at. I pulled out my wallet, hoping to fuck that he’d be happy with what were in it. I had a last loving feel of the five sheets lying therein, then palmed em and put my hand on the bartop. ‘Cos you’re a businessman,’ I says.
He licked his lips, greyish tongue brushing the lower reaches of his tash, then turned about and served another punter. I were sweating. I could feel the notes getting damp under my hand. I wondered how long they could stay there without turning to mush. But Nathan came back and nodded at my untouched pint. ‘Payin’ fer that, are you?’ he says, and winked at us.
I handed him the notes.
He walked to the till, counting em, then stuck em in his back pocket when he saw the other punters was busy drinking and not paying him no mind.
I drank the lager, hoping that that were that, far as that went.
I were fair worn out when I got home. Swede were, anyhow. It were plain to us that deciding on a final resting place for Baz at this stage might well be a mistake. I didn’t want to dump him somewhere and then go back a couple of days later, when I could see straight, to shift him somewhere else. And besides, there were no hurry.
I had a cellar, see. A big bastard of a cellar that went down two levels, getting cooler with each one. In fact the cellar were as big as the upstairs, and I’d often thought about putting a little gym or a pool table down there. But I never ended up doing that. Never had the money, and couldn’t be arsed even if I had. Weren’t really my house. It were me old man’s, though he were long dead. I only dossed there.
But Baz’d be all right down there, for now.
I hauled him out of the boot by the armpits and lugged him down the stair. His mashed face were all dry and caked and puckered round the edges, like raw meat left outside on a hot day. He were getting heavier and all. I promised meself, as I sat him up in a corner of the bottom cellar, that when I brung him back up again it’d be in at least ten bin liners.
I didn’t hang about at home. There were still a fair bit of afternoon left before I were due at Hoppers. Be a pity to waste it. I ain’t the sort to be holed up all hours like a hermit. I likes to get out there amongst em. And besides, I didn’t fancy spending much time under the same roof as Baz. He smelled manky at the best of times, and being dead weren’t liable to change that.
On the way out I noticed my shaking hands. I went to the kitchen and took a big swig out of the whisky bottle I’d lifted out of Hoppers a couple of weeks back. It went down my neck like molten lava and settled in a warm pool somewhere in me guts. When I opened my eyes again my hands was steady. I wiped my eyes and took another swig, just to be on the safe side.
I got back in me car and took the usual route across town. I were starting to feel all right.
‘What?’ she says after I’d rung the bell.
‘S’me, ennit. Let us up.’
‘Who’s you?’
‘Me, you dozy cow. Let us up.’
‘Fuck off,’ she says. But that were just her way. The door clicked.
I pushed it open with my boot and went upstairs.
‘What the fuck happened to you?’ she says. ‘White as a glass o’ milk, you is. Sick or summat?’
She were sitting on the bed in her black undies. Maybe she’d been waiting for us. Maybe she’d just been getting dressed. It mattered not a jot to me. She were there, is all. And there were a bed. She saw the look in my eyes and showed us the one in hers. I pushed her back on the bed. She bounced back up, giggling, and started pulling at my belt. I pushed her back hard this time. And she knew.
She knew all right.
It were all over my face, whatever it were. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. Not even when I were pressing it on her flesh and pumping it inside her. She had to have it.
I gave it to her.
6
I fell fast akip straight after, as were my habit, and started dreaming, which were not my habit. I gets em all the time now, but dreams never used to come easy to me. These days I can’t rest my eyelids for a couple of seconds without dreams popping up out of the darkness. Sometimes seems I’m spending more of me life dreaming than waking. But that’s now, and I ain’t here to talk about the now. I were talking about back then, after I’d topped Baz Munton, stashed his body, tried me best to take my mind off it all by rogering Sally, then nodded off.
Well, as I says, I had a dream. A nasty one, although you wouldn’t reckon so if you had one such yourself like as not. I were in a dark room. It were the kitchen in my house, curtains drawn and no light on. No light were on cos there were no bulb in the socket, and that’s what Beth were berating us over. Despite fact I hadn’t seen her since the day she died, it were no surprise to see her. It were no shock to hear her sharp tongue neither. She were at my right ear giving us all kinds of verbal hell. And I were sat at the table, taking it in one ear and doing me best to flush it out the other, as were my habit back when Beth were about. But there were some sort of block in the U-bend and the shite weren’t flushing out proper. And slowly my head were filling up with it. All in all, things was just as they had been leading up to her demise.
It were because my brain weren’t flushing it away that I had to give up finally and listen to her. She weren’t moaning about the light bulb as it turned out. Not no more anyhow. Now it were summat else, summat that she had no business carping on about, being as she were dead and all.
‘I made a pie for you, Royston. I made a nice big pie with meat and taters and onions in and a nice brown puff pastry just the way you likes it. But you left it, Royston. You didn’t eat yer pie. You left it on the table until it got cold and the pastry went hard. Wasn’t hungry, you says. But I knowed you was hungry cos you went out and ate a bag o’ chips. And while you was gone, Royston, while you was gone someone came along and ate the pie.’
‘No.’
‘Come on, Blake, I’m starvin’. An’ don’t shout like that.’
‘Leave us alone. Get away.’
‘Blake. Wake up, you dozy wazzock.’
‘The pie…wha…?’
‘You’re dreamin’, sweetheart,’ says Sal. And, if you can believe it, her voice were tender as the first warm breeze of spring.
I opened my eyes and squinted at her, trying to convince meself that she were real and Beth were a dream. But that weren’t easy. Sal looked and sounded like a dream herself, all dewy eyes and soft caresses. I were afraid to trust her, as if she’d be snatched away from us and replaced with Beth, face all screwed up with spite and nastiness.
‘Hey,’ she says. ‘S’matter? Gawpin’ at us like that, eyes fit to pop out.’
‘You called us sweetheart, right?’
‘I did.’ Her voice were soft and gentle like someone else’s. Anyone’s but Sal’s. ‘So?’
‘Well…summat of a shock, ennit.’
‘But, sweetheart,’ she says again, even going so far as to stroke my face. ‘Sweetheart, you knows I loves you.’
I didn’t know it, as it happened. And on any other occasion I’d not have welcomed hearing it. But it seemed all right just then. So I put my arm around her and pulled her close. I were still jumpy from the dream, and the closer I pulled her the better I felt. ‘Aye,’ I says. ‘I reckon I do know that.’
She looked up at us, big blue eyes containing none of their habitual hardness. ‘Do you love me, Blake? Do you? Answer us honestly.’
Beth had asked me this once, as it happened. I hadn’t known quite what to say to it then, so I’d guessed the answer. And guessed it wrong. But you learns from your mistakes, and I weren’t about to walk into that trap again. There’s only one answer when a bird asks you that question. And let me tell you now—if you don’t get it right, you’re in for trouble. I opened my eyes and winked at her. ‘Aye. Course I do.’
We snogged for a bit. Just as I were getting going again, Sal got up and walked across the room. I watche
d her arse cheeks go up and down and out the door. When she came back soft music were floating through from the living room. It were ‘Endless Love’ by Lionel Richie and some bird. I watched her tits bounce back to the bed. Instead of getting back under the sheets she climbed atop us and sat looking down. It weren’t a bad view from my angle, and I started moving under her. But she wanted to talk.
And when Sal wanted to talk she talked. ‘Then why don’t we move away?’
I gave her a good look in the eyes, probing for signs that she were joshing. Or maybe I’d banged her so long and hard that I’d knocked her brain askew. Why’d she come up with such barmy ideas? That’s what I wanted to know. But I couldn’t ask it. Hurt her feelings, it would. ‘Woss matter with you?’ I says instead. ‘We can’t move away.’
‘Why not?’
‘Lives here, don’t us. Always has done, always will do.’
‘But—’
‘No one leaves Mangel, Sal. It ain’t an option for folks like us. There’s things standin’ in our way, keepin’ us in.’ She knew what things I meant. Everyone did. But I didn’t like to say em out loud. No one did.
‘Oh, Blake,’ she yells, eyes blazing, tits wobbling, Lionel warbling on in the background about not being able to resist some bird’s charms. ‘Why don’t you see? What kind of a life does we live here, eh? Same thing day in day out. Ain’t no hidin’ here. Every bastard knows every other bastard. Everyone calls me slapper. And now they’ve all taken to callin’ you bottler.’
‘That won’t be happenin’ no more,’ I says, all deep and flat. Bit like Clint Eastwood actually.
‘How come?’ she says, crossing her arms across her chest and looking at us funny.
But I knew it would be happening. They’d go on calling us names unless I let on to folks about what I’d done to Baz. And I weren’t likely to do that. ‘It won’t be happenin’ because…I’ll show em that it just ain’t true.’
‘Oh aye, what you gonna do? Top one of the Muntons or summat?’
After a pause I says: ‘That’d be goin’ too far, I reckons. But don’t you worry about it. Opportunity’ll arise soon enough.’
She stretched out beside us. We stayed like that for a while. My eyes went to the net curtains, which was rippling gently in the warm breeze. Outside the sun were packing up and hauling tent for some other part of the world, making way for an evening that’d all but moved in already. I wanted to stay just where I were, leaving all them out there to fight and name-call amongst emselves. But it never worked out like that. Sooner or later someone comes along and knocks on your door. And if you don’t answer they lobs a brick through the window.
That’s what I were thinking. And maybe Sally were thinking it and all. Either way, we gave each other a squeeze.
‘I oughta shift,’ I says. ‘Work tonight.’
‘Blakey…’
‘Aye.’
‘I ain’t no slapper.’
‘I knows that, love,’ says I, pulling up me trolleys.
‘An’ I won’t give no one cause to say I am. Not ever again. Them days is gone.’
I gave her a kiss. A nice long one. And I had a feeling she meant it. ‘Sal,’ I says, pausing in the doorway. ‘Lend us a tenner?’
‘Fuck off. Ain’t got a tenner, have I?’
‘Go on, Sal.’
A few seconds later she got out of bed and went to her handbag on the dresser. ‘Here. Fiver’s all I got.’ She held it over her shoulder, keeping her back to us to make a point.
I put my arms around her and kissed her neck. Then I took the bluey and pissed off.
I drove home, feeling better all round. Soon as I got in I took my gear off and put it in bin liners. I weren’t expecting trouble from coppers, but sticking to the safe side never did no one no harm. I smelt Sal all over my body as I stepped into the shower, which got us excited all over again. Then I saw the grave dirt under me fingernails and went limp. I started singing to take my mind off it. I sang ‘Always on My Mind’ for about twenty minutes, then got out of the shower.
Afterwards I splashed me neck with aftershave and pulled on some clean trolleys. I were thinking about Sal again as I opened the wardrobe. Not in any sentimental way, mind. I went over what we’d done back there at her flat, before I’d fallen akip. It had never been like that before. Some bits I couldn’t recall, like they was a dream. But I knew they wasn’t.
I thought about the real dream that had followed, and straight away looked at my bed, the one that I’d shared with Beth. I dunno what I were looking for. Maybe I were expecting Beth to be lying there, long blonde hair spread out across the pillow like straw, snoring like a trooper with sinus trouble. But she weren’t there. And she never would be again.
‘Calm yerself,’ I whispers, catching my eye in the mirror. ‘You don’t act calm, folks’ll wonder woss wrong, ennit.’
I buttoned up a white shirt and made sure the dicky bow were a mite askew, the way dickies is meant to be worn.
I wondered if Sal had meant it, about leaving Mangel. She were full of it, that girl. She knew as well as anyone how leaving town weren’t what Mangel folk did. Truth were, I couldn’t see meself living nowhere else nor her neither, even if it were possible. Products of our environment, that’s what we was. Used to learn us at school that we was all leaves on the same tree, and when a leaf drops off it withers and dies. We can’t live without the tree, and it can’t get by without us. That sounded about right when we was younguns. And most folks accepted it as gospel. And if I drove out to the East Bloater Road now and then and looked on the fields lying yonder, what of it? I were just looking, weren’t I?
I donned black trousers, black jacket, and black boots. I were primed and ready. But I didn’t go. Not right away. I looked at meself in the mirror a while longer, turning and posing like you do. I were looking all right, I reckoned. Bit puffier these days than when I were younger and done more training, but you has to set that off against other things. Like my features maturing with age, coming into their own like. Beth used to say I looked a bit like Clint Eastwood, as it happens.
‘Beth,’ I’d say to her. ‘Who do you reckon I looks like?’
She shrugged and didn’t look up. ‘Dunno. No one really.’
‘What about Clint?’
‘Clint who?’ She was lying on her bed in knickers and bra, painting her toenails.
‘Eastwood. You knows him.’
‘Oh him. Aye.’
‘Woss that? Aye, you knows Clint Eastwood? Or aye, you reckons I looks like him?’
‘Aye.’
‘Thought so. Ta.’
‘What you grinnin’ at?’ she says, finishing one foot and moving on to the other.
‘Clint Eastwood, ennit. I looks like him.’
‘But, Blakey, it ain’t about looks, is it. It’s about the things you does. Actions. Thass what counts.’ And that were the end of that conversation.
I trotted downstairs, looking at my watch. I were late. I went out the front door and fired up 2.8 fuel-injected litres.
Beth had a point, you know. About putting yourself across. It don’t matter how much of a hardman you looks. It don’t matter how wide your shoulders is or how short your hair’s cropped. Looking hard amounts to jack shite. You want folks’ respect, you got to show em what you can do. Remind em what’ll happen should they choose to meddle.
These was the issues I were tossing around inside me swede as I touched sixty up the Wall Road. Things seemed clearer now. Maybe it were the wind whistling through the window. Maybe it were the fag I were smoking. Maybe it were the pleasant feeling in my loins that dogging Sal all afternoon had left us with. But I didn’t reckon so.
Not really.
It were because I’d killed Baz Munton.
Hoppers weren’t far short of dead when I stepped in. It were early, mind. Normally I’d have a pint or two near the door until the pace picked up, maybe share a joke with Rachel. I were planning on doing just that when Fenton comes out his office holding a cig
ar.
‘All right, Mr. Fenton.’
‘Blake, can I have a word, mate?’
Fenton had bought Hoppers a few month back, when it were still a burnt-out shell of a place. It were a classic case of an outsider sailing into town in a big car scouting for prime land to stick his flagpole in. No one knew shite about him, besides him being a poncey cunt from the big city with a flash motor and a posh voice. But folks didn’t need to know much. It were enough to know he weren’t local. If you ain’t from Mangel, folks round here tends to wonder why. Why ain’t he from Mangel when every other fucker is? And if he ain’t from Mangel, how’d he come to be here? They wondered, but no one ever had the bollocks to ask him. See, your outsider in Mangel commands a certain grudging respect. He’s been out there, ain’t he, seen places that Mangel folk ain’t seen nor never will see. Folks might not like him, but they won’t touch him neither, just gawp at him like he’s got two heads and three arse cheeks.
I’d never seen him that way meself. For starters he had floppy hair past his collar, which made him bent in my book. Feller’s hair ought to be short, unless he’s a tramp. Then there was other things about him I didn’t take to.
He didn’t understand what made Mangel folk tick, for one. That don’t add up to much of a problem in a street sweeper or a warehouseman, but when you runs one of Mangel’s premier drinking holes it does. Right from the off he were spouting new-fangled ideas about running Hoppers. I reckoned em just talk at first. But then I seen the way the new Hoppers were taking shape. It weren’t right. He’d turned a perfectly good piss house into a fucking tart’s parlour. Take the name for starters. Plain old Hoppers it’d been up to then. Nothing wrong with that and no need to change it. But Fenton had to go and tack on ‘Wine Bar & Bistro’, didn’t he. I’d never seen no one drink wine in there, and fuck knows what a bistro is.
Course, when the punters saw his changes they gave it the arse and stayed away in droves. And to his credit Fenton recognised where he’d gone wrong and changed most of it back again, except the new name. Still weren’t right in my book, but it were an improvement. And folks seemed to agree. Hoppers weren’t the place it once had been, but it were a place to get pissed. Punters came back. And after a while you got used to the name. It were classy, when you came to look at it. Classy in a way only a feller from the outside could pull off.
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