by Paul Harris
I nodded and took another glance over at Joe Large who was still scanning the front page of his newspaper.
“New phone?” Buffalo asked.
Lola took the box out of the bag and tapped his fingertips on it. “State of the art.”
“Let’s have a look then.” Buffalo grabbed the box and began to pierce the tape with his thumb nail. He completely tore one end of the cardboard box off and tipped its contents out onto the bar.
“Careful!” remonstrated Lola. “You’ll break it!”
“Under guarantee, innit?”
“That’s not the point.” Lola picked his new phone up off the bar and removed it from its polythene bag. He polished the screen admiringly.
“You’re supposed to take that off,” said Buffalo. “That sticky plastic film on the screen.”
“No, it stops it getting scratched.”
“You’re supposed to take it off.” And, with that, Buffalo snatched the phone from Lola’s hands.
Lola wrested it back again and gave it another polish.
“Does it work?”
“Of course it works. It’s brand new.”
“Turn it on then. Let’s see what it does.”
Lola turned the device over in his hands, and then again, and then over again.
“You don’t even know how to turn it on, do you?” snorted Buffalo derisively.
“Of course I do!”
“Well, go on then. Turn it on.”
Lola examined each face of his new phone before placing it on the bar, picking up the instruction booklet and removing that from its polythene bag too. Buffalo snorted again and took the phone, he too rotated it in his hands just as Lola had. Lola, meanwhile, was flicking through the instructions a page at a time.
“Surely it’ll be at the front of the book,” I prompted. “The instruction how to turn it on?”
“I’m not looking how to turn it on!” Lola returned, curtly. “I know how to turn it on!”
“Oh?”
“So, how do you turn it on?” asked Buffalo, seemingly admitting quiet defeat himself.
“It’s obvious!” Lola took a pair of reading glasses that had been protruding from his shirt pocket and put them on. “There’s a button on the top. Just press it and keep it pressed for ten seconds.”
Buffalo handed him the phone. “You do it, I can’t see a button.”
“There it is!” snapped Lola. “Just press it!”
“You do it! You got the glasses!”
I took the phone from Buffalo’s open hand, before he lost patience and threw it at Lola, and located the tiny button. I pressed my finger down on it and kept it there until the screen lit up with the manufacturers logo. “It works,” I announced, handing it to Lola.
“Of course it works!” he said.
Buffalo snatched it from him again. “So, what’s it do?”
“Here, Rod,” said Lola, under his breath, “I didn’t know you and Brie had split up.”
I stood up. “What makes you say that?” Joe Large put his newspaper down on the table in front of him and was peering at me.
“Oh, nothing,” said Lola. “Never mind.”
“Come on!” I demanded. “What you heard?”
Lola shrugged and returned his attention to the instruction booklet, but I wouldn’t release him from his obligation to reveal his source. “Well?”
“I might have mentioned it to him earlier, Rod.” confessed Buffalo. “Just in passing, you know?”
“You tracked me down to the Carphone Warehouse especially to tell me!” exclaimed Lola, blowing the conspiracy wide apart.
“You two been gossiping about me?” I asked disdainfully. “Really?”
They were silent and bashful. I shook my head at them, and went on. “Where’s his gaff?” I demanded to know. “This Bothwell character?”
“Darwin Street,” said Buffalo. “Down at the bottom. Number forty-seven. You know his car. It’s a white Golf. It’ll be on his drive. But you’re best off leaving it Rod, the geezer’s always tooled up.”
“I heard that; shooters and shit. Don’t worry.” I exchanged glances with Joe and marched towards the door. Before leaving, I paused long enough for Buffalo to get the last word in, secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t let me down.
“I wonder if they went to see the new Batman film?”
Delilah
A dark figure marched along Darwin Street, from the top to the bottom, scanning the driveways. His pace was quick but methodical. He saw everything and noted it, filed it away for future use. He was dressed in a dark hoodie with no markings on it, no brand names, nothing identifiable. The hood was pulled up tight over his brow, exposing only his chin and his tightly pursed lips. Although he walked quickly and never loitered in order to avoid suspicion, a conspicuous air of menace betrayed him. His fists were clenched firmly in his pockets and his eyes were set like gemstones in rock.
It was one of those streets that although very much urban was leafy too. It had once, many years earlier, been a model of suburbia and was yet inclined to aspirations of that nature. Cats sat atop garden walls and on doorsteps contentedly grooming themselves. They stopped licking their nether regions as he passed and glared at him with a curious disdain. He ignored them and evaded eye contact, and their attention was drawn to the birds chirping cheerfully from the top of the trees that lined the roadside, their song only pausing occasionally and momentarily as they defecated malevolently on a parked car or two. He almost smiled as he passed a yellow Cortina parked on the kerb with recycled berries smeared across its windscreen.
Rats cowered beneath heaps of waste and rubbish, waiting for darkness to descend and for their own particular adventures to begin. A woman sat in pale blue pyjamas on a doorstep smoking a cigarette and drinking Kestrel Super from a can. She watched as he approached. “You lost?” she called out in a voice so deep and gruff that only a female with a thirty-a-day habit could possibly replicate. He responded by bowing his head lower and pulling his hood further over his eyes. “You got something for me?” she slurred, and then laughed heartily almost like a pirate.
The man acted as if he were oblivious to all of this but he was not; he behaved as though he were on a mission of the utmost import. He was breathing heavily and seemed agitated. He looked left and right as he moved with purpose between the hedgerows and stone-clad walls. His steps slowed as he neared his destination and the beat of his heart quickened. As he walked, he raised the rim of his hood. His facial features were expressionless. A slight scar on his right cheek glistened with sweat. The soles of his trainers squeaked against the smooth tarmac of the path and this irritated him. He leant back and tried to walk on his heels in an attempt to quell the metronomic sound of his footsteps but this resulted in sharp pains shooting through his ankle ligaments.
Eventually, he came to a silent halt at the rear of a white Volkswagen that was parked on a drive in front of a neat semi-detached house with the cross of St George hanging in one of the upstairs windows. Hanging baskets spilled brightly coloured petunias either side of a white painted porch. He looked the car up and down and thought that he recognised some of the digits in the registration number.
From the corner of his eye, he deduced movement from the upstairs window that wasn’t adorned with a flag, and he raised his head instinctively. Looking up he saw, in the words of the World’s greatest Welshman (prior to the emergence of Gareth Bale), “the flickering shadows of love on the blind”. They were vertical blinds in a splendid shade of mint green, possibly from Laura Ashley. He turned, sullenly, to walk away, always keeping his eye on the window above.
He began to walk back in the direction from which he had come, but then noticed something laying beneath a bush. Bending down he discovered a length of rusting steel rod. He raised it above his head and swung it at the rear window of the Golf GTI. The window smashed and set the car alarm off. The mint green blinds were parted anxiously, and now he walked away as purposefully as he had come, the alarm still ringing i
n his ears even when he was well out of earshot and violent images flashing hurriedly through his mind.
Anthony Newley
There were no underpants left in my underwear draw. It had been a particularly heavy week at the kebab shop. I rummaged through the laundry basket until I found a pair that weren’t too soiled and carefully climbed into them, struggling to retain my balance. One legged games had never been my strong point. Once correctly attired, I set out for the Pig. On entering, I saw Lola sitting alone at the bar.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” I replied defensively.
“You seem worried, that’s all.”
“I’m never worried!”
“Well, a little agitated then.”
I didn’t feel agitated and I tried to think of something to say to change the subject. Then I dropped on something out of the blue. “Anthony Newley once picked a fight with me, you know.”
“Where?” asked Lola without batting an eyelid.
“On the 74 bus.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said, ‘Yeah?’”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Why’d he say that?”
“I think it was because I played the Artful Dodger in the school play once.”
“Why would Anthony Newley care who you played in the school play? He’s been dead ten years!”
“Actors are very precious about stuff like that.”
“Are you sure it was Anthony Newley and not some other geezer?”
It was a damned good question and I had to think about it for a while. Lola noticed my hesitation and pounced. “You’re not, are you?”
“Maybe it was some other geezer but why would some other geezer cop the hump over me playing the Artful Dodger in a school play?”
“Did he even mention the Artful Dodger?”
I paused again while I cast my mind back to the incident in question.
“I thought not,” said Lola emphatically. “Did you get that ridiculous tattoo covered up yet?”
“Can we change the subject?”
“You’ll have to get Rat to turn it into something else.”
“I don’t like Rat, he’s shifty. I might go to Spider next time.”
“Spider’s closed.”
“Still?”
“He’s done a runner somewhere. No one knows why; or where.”
We sat on our barstools in silence for a short while contemplating absolutely nothing. Buffalo came in like a gust of winter wind and began to remonstrate with us for not informing him that we were already there. “Communication!” he exclaimed whilst pounding his fist on the bar. “That’s your problem, Rodney, communication!”
I apologised profusely to him. “I didn’t realise there was a procedure.”
Lola raised his eyebrow at me but Buffalo saw him do it and then turned on him too. “And you with your new phone? Do you know how to use it yet?”
“Getting there.”
“Do you know how to turn it on yet?”
“Yes. And I’ve set the time.”
“Must be why you’re always early these days,” Buffalo snorted.
As Buffalo dug in, my appetite waned and I decided to walk home alone; as always, alone; and maybe take a trip to the laundrette.
Chapter Eleven
Storm Gathers
On the corner of Ambrose Street stands a Café. It’s been there for as long as anybody can remember and has never changed. It may have become dustier and a little more frayed around the edges and the ravages of time may have cast a yellowish pall over its decor but it has never seen the need to reinvent itself as a coffee shop or a sandwich bar. It is still a good old fashioned greasy café.
The windows are now opaque by nature and you have to press your nose right up against the glass to see who’s inside before you decide whether to take the plunge or not. The lighting’s dim and the furniture worn, but the staff are friendly, the food is good, and it’s relatively inexpensive. It’s a good spot for a Saturday morning fry up to cure the Friday night hangover or, in this, the case in hand, a Sunday morning fry up.
There is a dusty framed photograph of Fulham’s 1975 FA Cup Final team hanging from the wall next to the coat hooks; Bobby Moore looking as tall and proud as ever he did. Curtains of an indiscernible hue hang from a lopsided curtain rail. At least one leg of every table is packed up with cardboard to reduce its wobble. They are covered with plastic red and white checked sheets and not one salt or pepper pot matches its neighbour.
Sol was sitting alone at one such table slicing some black pudding up and dipping it into a lake of HP’s finest. He swirled the sauce around the chipped china plate almost as if it were paint on an artist’s palette. Egg yolk blended with bean juice to form a jaw-dropping sunrise. The remains of fresh fried tomatoes drifted across the scene forming small pools suggestive of frog spawn. Smears of sauce like tree trunks are dropped into the landscape and the heavily laden canvas is temporarily dispensed with.
Sol seemed to be deep in contemplation as he took up half a slice of fried bread and began to shovel the remainder of his breakfast into his gaping mouth with it. He licked his lips after each and every mouthful and purred with satisfaction. A combination of juices ran down his chin until he caught them with a paper napkin. He picked at a gap in his teeth and deposited a small strand of bacon on the napkin. Pushing it to one side, he began to unfold a copy of the South London Gazette. It was the third time during the course of his meal that Sol had unfolded the newspaper. It was the third time that he’d focussed on the unpleasant headline that harrowingly adorned its front page. He grunted. “Bollocks!” he muttered beneath his breath and then he silently mouthed the words of the headline again.
“Probably written,” he thought to himself, “by some local hack with an axe to grind. Why couldn’t they just leave people alone? Why couldn’t they let people go about their business and keep their noses out of it?” He carefully folded the newspaper again. “Why did they always have to stir things up?” He pushed the paper away and pulled his plate nearer to him in preparation for the final assault on the all-day belly-buster. He glanced up at the clock whose careworn face was stained with grease and nicotine, and as he made some chronological calculation relating to the remainder of the day’s activities he noticed through the window a patch of pressed white flesh with a nose in the middle and two blue eyes peering vacantly at him.
Meanwhile, in the street outside, Timmy Cubberley was, on that particular Sunday morning, walking past the café. Was it by a mysterious coincidence that he pressed his face up against the large age-stained window pane to see who was inside or was it merely that he repeated this very operation every time he passed the café? Whichever it was, in this very instance, he happened to spy Sol sitting alone, looking sad, and in clear need of company and a friendly face.
Timmy bounded in, approached the counter, over enthusiastically greeted the woman behind it, and ordered a couple of cups of tea from her before joining Sol at his table who grunted an indistinguishable greeting through a mouthful of pork and leek sausage meat. Timmy pulled a chair back and eyed Sol’s almost empty plate with his usual expression of confusion before sitting down. “You ain’t got no chips left!”
“So?” Sol was slicing up the last of the soggy fried bread.
“Why ain’t you got no chips?”
Sol swallowed. “Didn’t want any.” He wiped more sauce from his mouth with a fresh napkin. “I’ve been meaning to have a word with you anyway.”
“Oh yeah? What about?” Timmy felt a little uncomfortable because of the way Sol was watching him from behind the paper napkin as he over-deliberated his clean-up operation. He was momentarily distracted by the flickering images of human outlines as they walked past the window in the street outside and wondered whether he hadn’t ought to have walked past too.
“Why’d you bring Rodney down the Trumpet the other Saturday?”
Timmy was still gl
ancing at the window and then to the door, hoping for the welcome arrival of a third party. “He wanted to see Amos. Alright, ain’t it? You’re old mates anyway, right?” Timmy attempted to produce a tension busting smattering of frivolous laughter but it sounded more like sweet tea gurgling in the back of his throat.
Sol took a mouthful of tea himself, grimaced, and then added two spoonfuls of sugar. As he stirred it, he said slowly and deliberately, “You handed me to him on a plate.”
“Rodney’s alright. He just wanted to see Amos.” Timmy sounded anxious, as if he was lying and he’d been caught out, but he hadn’t been lying, not this time. “Apparently they go way back; years back.”
“So do me and him. Trouble is,” Sol paused as if to lend greater gravitas to what he was about to say. “Wherever Rodney goes a storm gathers, chaos ensues, and people get hurt.”
Timmy sipped his tea. A woman in a blue apron and thick glasses brought a bacon sandwich over to him and he thanked her eagerly. “Rodney’s alright, there’ll be no trouble. You worry too much.”
Sol grunted again, pushed his chair back, and stood up to leave. “You watch. You just watch.”
Timmy took a large bite of his sandwich and began to chew. Sol leant towards him and said emphatically, “You just watch as the storm gathers around us now!”
“Rodney ain’t a problem,” reiterated Timmy, spraying moistened breadcrumbs and lumps of bacon rind all over Sol’s face. “He swears he’s a changed man.”
Sol was still wiping fat from his chin and spitting small articles of non-specific debris onto the pavement as he left the café and walked up Ambrose Street. He glanced back over his shoulder as Timmy stepped back around the corner just in time to evade detection. Sol pulled a dark hood up over his head and Timmy watched him disappear into the distance and wondered where he was going in such a hurry with this week’s Gazette stuffed in his jacket pocket before he too pulled up his hood and stole off in the opposite direction.
Sol strode with, it has to be said, a certain degree of exigency past the rows of houses with his head bowed slightly as if he was evading recognition for some reason. He shoved his left hand into his jacket pocket and gripped the newspaper with it. An abandoned child’s bicycle lay across the footpath in front of him and he stepped into the road to avoid the obstacle. He heard a man’s voice as one of the house doors opened behind him. The man retrieved the bike and dragged it into the house. He slammed the garden gate heavily behind him to express his anger and when he re-entered the house, also slamming the front door, he began to shout. Sol heard a child begin to cry and then a woman shouted something at the man.