Magnificent Joe

by James Wheatley

  This would be her domain: it’s her who would have opinions about what kind of sofa they should have and where they should put it and all that other stuff. Without those opinions, this isn’t a flat or a place to live; it’s just a space. If the flat was already done out, Geoff could just accept it as it was and never give it a second thought, but to start totally from scratch? He doesn’t have a clue. In his wallet, behind the loyalty cards, is a photograph of her. He’d forgotten it was there, but now he remembers it and has to beat down the urge to take it out.

  ‘Shit,’ he mutters.

  ‘Excuse me?’ The estate agent, from the other room.

  ‘Nothing.’

  She appears anyway and smiles at him. ‘Are you starting to feel at home?’

  Geoff feels too helpless to move or speak. Maybe he should go back to the hotel. Maybe it was a bad idea to come here alone.

  ‌40

  I drive slowly past Barry’s house. For some reason, I’d imagined him sitting in his front room right now plotting my destruction, but the van isn’t in the driveway. He must be at work, wherever that is these days. I park just down the street and wait. I don’t know what kind of sick stories he’s been telling about me and Joe, but I’m going to beat it out of him.

  By five thirty, it’s dark and other people are arriving home, but no sign of Barry. Six o’clock comes and the van still hasn’t appeared. I desperately need a piss. This isn’t going well. I want to be here when he arrives, but if I wet myself, it might ruin the effect.

  Back at home, having relieved myself, I come up with an idea. I pick up the phone, do 141 to withhold my number, and then dial Barry’s. His wife picks up. I lower the pitch of my voice and try to soften my accent.

  ‘Hello. Can I speak to Barry?’

  ‘He’s not in at the moment. I can take a—’

  ‘Any idea when he’ll be back?’

  ‘Not really. He went to the pub after work. Who is this?’

  ‘Thanks.’ I hang up.

  Now I know where Barry is, assuming that ‘the pub’ means the Admiral. I leave the house and start walking. The time is just after 7 p.m.

  Ten minutes later, I get to the pub and walk round the back to check the car park. Barry’s van is there: I’ve got the bastard. I lean against the wall in a patch of dark. A plan? I don’t have one. My stomach boils, but my mind is a dead calm and all I know is that I need to go in there – right now – and bring an end to whatever it is he’s doing. My body moves and I’m walking again, round the side of the pub, past the windows, and through the front door.

  He’s in the corner, behind the pool table with a group of men. There’s a heavy cloud of smoke above them, their ashtray is full, and there are empty glasses everywhere around. I recognize the big bastard and a few other faces, and then Barry sees me. He rises to his feet and points. ‘Speak of the devil.’ They all turn to face me; I haven’t felt this hated in years.

  ‘What are you doing, Barry?’

  ‘We are protecting this community.’

  ‘You lot? You’re what this community needs protecting from.’

  ‘You’d better be careful what you say. There’s a lot of angry people here.’

  ‘You’re just doing this to get at me because you can’t get to Geoff. You know that Joe’s innocent.’

  ‘Is he fuck,’ the big bastard butts in. ‘I’ve spoken to that little boy’s mother.’

  ‘That little boy is the one that fucking did it, and you know it.’

  ‘Bollocks. What was your mate doing in there in the first place? Fucking weirdo, he is. I’ve seen him around. I don’t like the look in his eyes.’

  ‘No one likes the look in his eyes: he’s mental, but he’s not a child abuser.’

  Barry steps forward. ‘We’re not taking any chances with our kids.’

  ‘Fuck off, Barry. You’re an idiot. Frank,’ I call over my shoulder to the barman, ‘I think you should call the police – there’s a fucking lynch mob forming here.’

  No response. I turn. Frank is crossing the floor towards the door, keys in hand. I start to run towards him, but I’m tripped and fall into a stool. As someone hauls me up by my jacket collar, I catch sight of Frank retreating back to the bar, and the door firmly closed. Pairs of hands spin me round, but I don’t have time to take in who they belong to because my feet are off the ground and the air rushes past my ears as they slam me down onto a tabletop. The whole world is suddenly light, making no sense.

  The ceiling resolves itself above me. I try to move but my arms are pinned. Barry’s face appears.

  ‘Don’t get in our way.’ His breath stinks of beer and fags.

  ‘Whatever you think you’re going to do, you won’t get away with it.’

  The big bastard looms up next to Barry and shoves something under my chin. I don’t know what it is, but it feels pointy. ‘Now, there are no grasses in this room, are there?’

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘I did the brick, in case you were wondering.’ He winks at me and then turns away. ‘Lock this cunt up.’

  They drag me to my feet, propel me into the back of the pub, shove me through a door, and close it behind me.

  Total darkness.

  I turn and reach out, feeling for the doorframe and then the wall around it. Eventually, I land on the light switch and press it. I’m in the cellar. I try the door; it’s locked.

  ‘Just behave yourself in there.’ A voice from outside.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I shout back, and heave an empty barrel across the room. It clatters off the wall and bounces back towards me.

  ‘No good making noise – they’ve turned up the music.’

  ‘Let me out!’

  ‘Just relax. There’s nothing you can do.’

  Prick. But I don’t see what other options I have. I sit down on the barrel and wish I’d got round to buying a new mobile.

  Minutes tick by. It’s coming up to 8 p.m. I’ve got to get out of here before it’s too late. Then I realize what I have to do to make them open the door. It’s simple. I walk over to the gas cylinders and turn them off. Then I unhook all the barrels one by one, sit back down, and wait.

  Shortly afterwards comes a hammering on the door. ‘Stop messing around in there!’ Frank’s voice. ‘Turn the beer back on – I’ve got a pub to run!’

  ‘Come in and do it yourself.’

  ‘Don’t fuck me about!’

  ‘I’m not fucking you about; I’m offering you a deal. You’ve got two minutes to open that door or I’ll start breaking things.’

  ‘You fucking will not.’

  ‘What do these big plastic valves do? The ones on the wall with the red balls floating in them? They look important.’

  Quiet. I go over to the door and listen at the keyhole.

  ‘We’re not letting him out.’ Another voice.

  ‘We have to. If he starts breaking things, it could take me days to get the parts.’

  ‘That’s right, Frank!’ I shout. ‘You’ll be the pub with no beer. Have you heard that song? It’s a good one.’

  The door swings open and I’m staring down the barrel of a handgun.

  It’s one of Barry’s followers, a skinny kid in a pink shirt. He can’t be any older than nineteen. Frank stands behind him, looking like he’s going to shit himself. It takes me a few moments to understand what I’m seeing. Then I start to laugh.

  ‘That’s a fucking air pistol.’

  ‘It’ll still kill you if I shoot you in the head.’

  ‘You’re a moron.’

  He shoots me in the arm.

  At first, there is no pain. Then it comes. I’d always imagined that being shot would feel sharp, but in fact it feels like someone hit me in the bicep with a hammer. I put my left hand to my right arm and bring away blood. I look up at the kid. Our eyes meet for a second or two. He breathes in and then runs away.

  Just me and Frank.

  ‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘Are you all right?’

  I chin him. It
’s with my left, but he’s old and fat and it’s enough to knock him down. He grovels on the floor with his hand over his mouth. I step over him and walk out into the pub. I stiffen my back, look ahead, and try to put one foot in front of the other in something like a straight line. No one tries to stop me as I make for the door. Barry and all his mates have gone.

  Outside, I lean up against the wall. I touch the wound again. It hurts. My fingers tingle numbly, and although they move when I tell them to, they don’t feel connected to the rest of my body.

  It was only an air gun; it can’t be that bad, I say to myself, but I know that it can if he hit an artery. There’s definitely more blood than I ever like to see on the outside of my body. Fuck it. I need to warn Joe, and if they’ve gone straight there, I need to go now.

  I start to move. The fresh air seems to do me some good; things sharpen up and the shock dies away. I can’t go down the lane, because that’s the way they’ll take and I would just walk straight into them. I need to loop across the fields and head them off. I pick up my pace, break into a jog. I can do it. I run.

  I head down the street and then take a left onto the road that leaves the village. I pass the phone box. I could stop and dial 999, but every second counts now, and if they get to him before me, who knows what they’ll do in the time it takes the police to arrive. I keep running and eventually the houses stop and the hedgerows begin. Then I’m at the stile. I climb over it, slipping as I step off and falling onto one knee. Automatically, I put my right hand down and scream in pain and anger when I push myself up, but I’m on my feet again and moving forward.

  From here, I can run in pretty much a straight line to Joe’s house, avoiding the lane. I’ll have to climb some fences, but the sky is clear and the moon is bright, so at least I can see where I’m going. I try to keep my pace up, but I’m straining now and my legs just won’t move as quickly as I’m willing them to. I hop another fence, lose part of my jacket on the barbed wire, and by the time I see the lights in the houses on Joe’s terrace, I’m knackered and stumbling.

  Finally, I reach the hedge that runs along the lane and scramble through a thin patch on my hands and knees. I stand up. Joe’s house is dark. I go to the door. It’s locked. Of course it is; I told him to do it. I knock, but he’s obviously not in.

  ‘Oh, Joe, you fucking idiot. Don’t be out walking.’ But I know in my stomach that’s exactly where he is. Now I have no choice but to call the police. I’m about to go and ask his neighbours, and then I hear yelling from down the lane.

  I run towards the sound. Pitching forward in exhaustion, my legs and arms flail. It’s further away than I thought, the sound carrying in the cold night air. I’ve got to get there. Then the noise stops and the only sound is my own breathing and the thump of my feet on the frozen ground. I come round a bend.

  There is a body in the lane. They caught him at a break in the high hedgerow and did it by moonlight. He lies crumpled, like casually discarded clothes. The search is over, and all around me the night is suddenly vast and cold. I watch, I breathe, and then I run the last few feet and drop to his side.

  ‘Joe.’

  ‌‌Epilogue

  The following year

  I stayed because I wanted to see Barry convicted. It took a couple of months to go to trial, but I got my day in court and he got sent down. Then I stayed because I didn’t know what else to do. It was Laura’s letter – the last thing I ever heard from her – that made up my mind.

  I’m sorry I left without saying anything. You must have realized that I went to Geoff. He got in touch just after Joe died. I needed to get away, and he had a plan. I’ve explained everything to him, and he understands the truth now. I couldn’t stay in that place any longer. It’s horrible. There’s nothing left there for you or me, but I couldn’t wait around for you to work that out. You should leave too. Please. Go and do something new. You deserve it.

  Love,

  Laura

  —

  I arrive in London in the spring, get a room in a doss house, and walk into a job agency. The venetian blinds are dusty, and the plants are fake. They find me a job me then and there.

  ‘Flats,’ the man says. ‘New ones are going up all over the place. We’ve more work than we know what to do with.’

  I don’t like him. He keeps clicking the top of his biro and I want to take it off him and jam it up his nostril. I take the job, though. I fill in the forms but leave out my criminal record because it’s obvious to me that these people will never check.

  The job is easy: some huge old building, once a factory and now becoming apartments. There are so many men crawling all over the place that you could just lose yourself in a quiet corner and do nothing all day. Of course, I don’t do that. I want the work; it keeps Laura out of my head, just about.

  I pal up with a Polish guy called Adam. He’s new too and we’re both as skint as each other. For the first two weeks, until we get our pay packets, we pool our money and share lunch: one half of a pre-packaged sandwich each.

  He picks a chunk of pickle out of his beard and puts it in his mouth, looks at me with serious eyes. ‘Tastes like fucking shit,’ he says.

  ‘So what’s the food in Poland like?’

  He shrugs. ‘Tastes like fucking shit.’

  ‘What did you do for a job back there?’

  ‘Psychiatric nurse.’

  ‘Nice.’

  When the money finally arrives, his is well short, so I help him nick a carton of new smoke alarms. We take them out of the boxes and tape them to his body under his clothes. He walks off the site, stiffly but without arousing suspicion, and the next day, he turns up with a loaf of fresh bread and a full pound of deli ham. We feast, sat on top of a stack of plasterboard. A couple of weeks later, he stops coming to work. He must have found something else.

  It’s late summer by the time I’ve saved enough to put a deposit on a flat. A studio, they call it. I call it the rabbit hutch. It’s above a shop in Acton. There are rats in the walls, but at least it’s not damp. It gets so hot some days that I have to take all my clothes off in order to stay indoors, but I know it won’t stay this way; come winter, I’ll be freezing. I make the most of the weather and spend the weekends in the park or walking around the city, letting the people flow all around me. It’s exciting.

  One night about three weeks after I move in, I hear someone hammering at the outside door. I open the window and look down. Adam is standing on the pavement. He reaches into a carrier bag, pulls out a bottle of vodka, and waggles it at me.

  ‘It’s my birthday!’ he shouts up.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Scotland. Raspberry season. Then strawberries. Then blackcurrants. Fucking shit.’

  I go down and let him in. He tells me my flat stinks. I ask him how he found me. ‘Just asked around,’ he says with a shrug.

  We drink hard, then go to the pub and carry on. Adam talks about all the women he’s fucked. I talk about all the women I haven’t fucked. We stumble back late with kebabs and sit cross-legged on the floor, stuffing our faces. When we’re finished, he licks his fingers, then spies a pile of library books and pokes at them.

  ‘Ha. You’re an educated man.’

  ‘I’m bloody not.’

  ‘Good books, though.’

  ‘You know them?’

  ‘Some. I read them at college.’

  ‘You went to college?’

  ‘Of course. I am an educated man.’

  ‘And you’ve ended up fruit-picking and hod-carrying? It doesn’t seem worth it.’

  He sits up straight and looks me in the eye. ‘Listen, that’s just something idiots say. Education, it sets your brain free. And when your brain is free, there is always hope.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘Almost always.’ He laughs and lights a cigarette. I hand him an empty can for an ashtray, and he sits for a couple of minutes. ‘It’s worth it, man. It’s worth it,’ he says eventually.

  ‘Aye. I co
uld do with some hope.’

  ‘Well, you did not come to London for this, did you?’

  ‘I’m too drunk for this conversation. Let’s put some music on.’

  —

  I wake up the morning after with a filthy hangover. Work is not going to happen. I take a shower and brave a cup of coffee. I keep it down, but only just. The room stinks. I can’t remember Adam leaving, but he left a note for me. Some of it might be Polish, but all of it is in unreadable, drunken handwriting. The only bit I understand is scrawled in block capitals: ‘DON’T FORGET THE HOPE!’ Daft bastard.

  I take some painkillers and listen to the radio until I feel able to move again. Then I go to my sock drawer and take out the thing I didn’t show him last night: a blank Open University application form. It has been there for weeks, waiting for me. I spread it out on my tiny desk. It’s long, and the type is small, but the first box only wants my name. That’s simple enough. I write it in, slow and careful.

  Well, it’s a kind of hope, isn’t it?

  ‌Acknowledgements

  My family. Jane Rogers for her support and advice throughout the writing of this novel. Juliet Mabey and all at Oneworld for publishing it. Euan Thorneycroft, my agent, for taking the chance on me. The writing group in Sheffield for feedback and comradeship. Ellen Cartsonis and family for everything.

  Thanks also to Marko Hautala, Sophie Hoskins, Elisabeth Garton, David Harsent, Sara Quin and anyone else who ever read a draft, in part or in whole, and offered constructive criticism or simple encouragement.