Those Who Feel Nothing

by Peter Guttridge

  You look at the guy sitting at the table and gesture to Neal outside. ‘Wuss.’

  There’s a hint of a smile then the man hurls himself out from behind the table, a knife in his hand. The problem is the table is screwed to the floor so hurling is a difficult thing to do.

  You have time to hit him in the face with the glass in a hammer blow before he can get near you with the knife. It’s a tough little fucker of a glass.

  It’s weird to watch the man’s forward momentum almost immediately reverse. You wish you knew the physics. He falls back, a glass-rim size impression on his forehead.

  You figure it’s about time you paid attention to the barman. You look at him and whatever it is he’s bringing out from below the counter. You wag your finger and step towards him.

  ‘How do I get hold of Sal Paradise?’

  Watts had polished off his seafood and was thinking about his first official meeting as the new PCC when an Asian woman in an expensive-looking cashmere coat came into the pub. Chinese? Korean? Vietnamese? He really couldn’t tell and that embarrassed him. At the bar, she bought a pint of beer and carried it carefully over to a table in the corner. A table Watts always liked to imagine his father drank at, back in the day. She sat, a look of misery on her face. He turned away from her grief.

  The meeting had been with a contractor looking to sell the force Incapacitating Flashlights.

  ‘Which are what?’ Watts said.

  The man was slick-suited, mid-thirties, a military background overlaid with a salesman’s spiel. He placed what appeared to be a bulky-looking torch on the edge of the desk. Watts reached for it but the man shook his head.

  ‘Handle with care. This is the next generation Tasers. A better non-lethal weapon. Homeland Security in the US developed it. It flashes intense beams of light to blind targets and make them vomit.’

  Watts nodded slowly. ‘What happens if they close their eyes?’

  The contractor laughed. ‘Then you go old-fashioned and kick them in the goolies.’

  Watts smiled. If he had to see the salesmen Hewitt was clearly intending to sick on him then those with a sense of humour would work best for him.

  ‘It’s part of a range of next generation law enforcement aides,’ the man said. ‘We also have the Active Denial System. That heats the skin of a target individual in two seconds to fifty-four degrees centigrade, causing intolerable pain. Our acoustic bazooka – a sonic cannon – delivers a pattern of sound that is excruciatingly painful and incapacitates the targets by making them vomit.’

  ‘How are they with seagulls?’

  The man looked puzzled. ‘Police Commissioner?’

  ‘Just kidding,’ Watts said. ‘Is vomiting a common factor with these new generation weapons?’

  The salesman shrugged. ‘Vomiting is certainly a disabler.’ He started rooting in his bag. ‘I’m going to leave you a sample to test.’

  The Asian woman abruptly rose and hurried out of the pub, still looking miserable. The pint was untouched so Watts assumed she had gone out for a cigarette, but the barman started to clear the drink away.

  ‘You’re sure she’s not going to come back,’ Watts called.

  The overweight man snorted. The barman turned to Watts and shook his head.

  ‘I wish she would. Waste of a good pint. Plus it might do her good – she looks so miserable.’

  ‘She’s done it before?’ Watts said.

  ‘She’s been doing it for months,’ the barman said. ‘Same day every week. She buys a pint, sits there for a bit muttering to herself, then leaves without touching it.’

  ‘Same seat?’

  ‘Exact same seat. If it’s taken she loiters and puts the pint down on the table when she leaves.’

  Watts frowned and thought about that. ‘All sorts,’ he finally said.

  The barman gives you the name of a nightclub Sal Paradise may or may not own. He is occasionally seen there. In the evening you search it out. It’s more bar than nightclub. The few bored women scattered around are there for business purposes only. Various desperadoes are sitting around the room, in groups or alone.

  The women assess you as you walk to the bar, dismiss you as a potential client. The desperadoes watch for longer.

  ‘Sal Paradise?’ you say at the bar.

  The barman looks at you but says nothing.

  ‘Doesn’t he own this place?’ you say.

  The barman shrugs thick shoulders.

  You ask for a bottle of Polish vodka and examine the seal before you hand over your money. It’s cold enough. You take it to a table in the corner by the window. For the next hour you drink steadily, watching the street outside and the action in the bar, trying to ignore the rattle of the old fan above your head as it makes its wobbly rotations.

  The drinking is unwise. This is not like you when you’re on an operation. But then you’re not like you and you haven’t been for a long time.

  Sal Paradise always had his fingers in a lot of pies. Prostitution, of course. He brought in girls from Vietnam. Doubtless he is now into people trafficking in a much bigger way. You’ve heard he is in the illegal organ trade. His people are skilled at filleting for all saleable organs some dope they’ve drugged in a bar and left bleeding out in a cheap hotel room. He is also heavily involved in the heroin trade. The fact he smuggles antiquities, either fake or real, seems almost benign, except that he uses the same distribution routes.

  The custom in bars in Cambodia is that the waiter doesn’t remove the old bottles from the table when he brings the new because he will count them up when it comes time to pay the bill. He sticks a paper napkin in the dead ones. There is a table in your line of sight with probably twenty bottles on it.

  A western man in a sweaty T-shirt and stained shorts, his thick, hairy legs stretched out into the aisle between the tables, has his tongue down the throat of the tiny local woman in a red polka dot dress sitting beside him. He is pawing at her breast none too gently.

  You look away to check on the three men in the street who turned up ten minutes ago. One of them is Neal, the mean man you glassed yesterday. Here on his own account or doing a job for Sal Paradise?

  The sour taste of vodka comes up in your mouth. For a moment you think you are going to vomit. You breathe heavily through your nostrils.

  Neal is lounging directly opposite the bar, the other two are at either end of the street. But is there someone round the back too?

  Your plan, such as it is, involves getting behind them, letting them think they’ve lost you then following them to Paradise. Of course, if Neal is here on his own account, they’ll just lead you back to the bar where you first met him.

  You’re pretty certain you can beat the bejesus out of any of them one on one and with the advantage of surprise. You’re pretty sure they’ll be carrying, but whether it will be knives or guns you don’t know. You’ve got your own little helper in your pocket.

  As you get up to go to the bathroom you catch the slightest of movements at the bar. A tattooed, thick-set guy not exactly looking your way but, by some slight adjustment of his being, tying himself to your movement. The barman is busily and pointedly polishing glasses. A woman in a tight black dress looks at you hopefully.

  You were thinking maybe they wanted to take you in the street but now you’re wondering if they want to do it here.

  Well, you’re on your feet now. You have to do something. You don’t look at the guy. You stumble a little as you head over to the door marked Toilettes. You’re putting it on, but only by a fraction.

  You push open the door. It leads into a short corridor with another door to the right. Through that is a small room with washbasin and, facing you, two doors: one for women, one for men. You push open the one for women. It’s a narrow cubicle with no window. You push open the men’s door. The same.

  You close both doors and squeeze behind the outer door. There’s just about space between you and the side-wall. You’re pretty sure that as the door opens, a pursuer won�
�t be able to see you in the mirror above the washbasin on the opposite wall.

  In your inside pocket you have a cosh. Sand in a leather pouch. It is about sixty years old but it still does the job it was intended for when your father made it. He had a set of brass knuckledusters too but they went missing years ago. Tough guy, your dad. Especially when it came to women.

  Your problem is the confined space. There isn’t going to be much room to get a good swing.

  The door handle rattles and you raise the cosh to shoulder height. The door opens against you, obscuring the person coming in. A hand reaches round the door and pushes it closed just as you start your swing. You would normally go for behind the ear but you’re not sure of your aim so intend just to whack him as hard as you can on the back of the skull.

  Except it isn’t the man who was sitting by the bar. It isn’t a man at all. You grab the woman in the polka dot dress as she folds. You kick at the women’s toilet door and drag her in, lowering her on to the toilet seat. She slumps to the side. You wedge her against the wall, trying not to notice the lump rising on the back of her head like a soufflé and the blood streaking her dyed blonde hair with red.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ you whisper as you pull the door closed behind you.

  You are turning in the confined space in front of the sink when the outer door opens again. A bulky male edges through. You let him get the door partway open then, just as he sees you, you shoulder the door shut in his face. You have your full weight behind the door and you feel it hit him hard.

  You pull the door open. The man who was sitting at the bar is coming off the opposite wall. You go for the nose, swinging the sap in a tight arc then flicking your wrist to bring it down hard on the bridge.

  You hear the crack and feel the blood spurt across you. The man puts his hands up to his face as he slumps. You drag him in and leave him half in, half out of the men’s cubicle. You close the bathroom door behind you.

  You follow the corridor to the end. The fire exit is locked, double-locked and padlocked. You are going to have to leave by the front door now. You re-enter the bar and move as quickly as you can before people respond to the commotion. You see the barman coming out from behind his counter.

  You are trying to be light on your feet but, given the amount you have drunk, you feel like a barrel rolling into the street.

  The humidity hits you first and then Neal, standing to the side of the door.

  He is aiming for your kidneys but by chance your elbow gets in the way. He has his own knuckleduster. You feel the pain shoot up to your shoulder as your whole arm goes dead. You stagger to the side.

  You still have the cosh in your other hand and you swing it tight and fast and hit him across the side of his head.

  You are aiming for his temple. You are doing it by reflex and not thinking about the fact that you might kill him. But you can’t get enough swing so it is not a good blow. Even so, he totters.

  There is an alley directly across from the restaurant. You huff and you puff and though you may not blow the house down you do get across the street and halfway down the alley before the two little piggies at either end of the street have started moving.

  You abandon any idiotic thought of trailing them back to Sal Paradise. Instead you head back to your hotel and take to your bed, exhausted and drunk and cursing yourself for that drunkenness.

  You are woken some time later by the sensation of drowning. You are drowning, in the plunge pool in your backyard.

  Whilst Rafferty was on the telephone to his solicitor, Gilchrist and Heap huddled.

  ‘You know we have to arrest him, ma’am, if we’re to secure the car and the house,’ Heap said. ‘If we leave him here he can destroy evidence.’

  ‘I know,’ Gilchrist said, chewing on a nail. ‘But, Bellamy, we’re out on a limb here. We don’t know for certain it was his car. If it is his car we don’t know he was driving it. He could say someone stole it – because, actually, we don’t know where his frigging car is.’

  ‘With respect, ma’am, we haven’t looked yet.’ Heap gave a half-gesture. ‘And it’s him, ma’am. You know it is.’

  ‘It seems probable but he’s an important person in the town.’

  Heap looked up at her. ‘I didn’t know you were the cautious type when it came to worries about a powerful person biting back.’

  Gilchrist flared. ‘Mind your bloody lip, Sergeant,’ she hissed. ‘We have to be seen to be acting properly.’

  ‘Arrest them both and we will be,’ Heap said.

  ‘Easy enough for you to say,’ Gilchrist almost snarled at him. ‘The shit doesn’t stop with you.’

  Heap nodded slowly. ‘You’re right, ma’am. Nine times out of ten shit does flow downward to land on my head and the heads of people like me. But in an instance like this the shit flows upwards.’ Unexpectedly, he grinned, his cheeks reddening. ‘But it doesn’t stop with you either. Isn’t that why God created chief constables?’

  You lie on the tiles by the pool, face down, spluttering up chlorinated water and vodka. Someone kicks you in the ribs, hard enough to lift you off the tiles. You retch again and curl into a ball, expecting further kicks.

  Nothing happens.

  You can see out of the corner of your eye a man standing in the doorway of your room. He is half in shadow, appropriately enough. You look behind you. Neal and two of his men are standing in a semi-circle, well within kicking distance, looking towards the shadowy figure. He leans out of the shadow. He jabs a finger at you though his voice is low and calm. Hoarse, exactly as you remember it.

  ‘If you want to speak to somebody, what’s wrong with just picking up the bloody telephone, asshole?’ He shakes his head. ‘Jesus. Coming on like gangbusters in one of my bars.’

  Sal Paradise. You recognize the voice but you’ve never seen his face before. You’re not sure how you expected him to look. Mean-faced like Neal? Barbaric? You’ve met enough bad people not to expect him to be wreathed in sulphur or breathing fire from his nostrils.

  Of course, he just looks ordinary. A bit jowly, bags under his eyes. He looks down at you. He has your passport in his hand. He scrutinizes it then looks at you, frowning.

  ‘We know each other?’

  ‘From a long time ago,’ you say.

  ‘And you’ve come for payback? Because, let me tell you, that ain’t going to happen. Better men than you have tried, Gunga Din.’

  ‘I came to you for help,’ you say.

  ‘I ain’t in the helping business, friend.’

  ‘That’s what you said then.’

  ‘What – and that has rankled with you all these years? Now that’s what I call a slow burn.’

  ‘I’ve got no beef with you. I’m looking for men you had dealings with thirty-five years ago – men you may still have dealings with. Men you told me were dead.’

  ‘Most men I had dealings with thirty-five years ago are dead. Nature of the business. I’m the exception.’

  ‘I know one of them is alive,’ you say. ‘I don’t know if you still have dealings with him and the others.’

  ‘If the others are still alive. You say I told you they were dead back then?’

  ‘You did. An ambush, you said.’

  Paradise shrugs. ‘Then they’re dead.’ He peers at you. ‘But if they are still alive you want me to welch on someone I do business with?’

  ‘I just need to be sure there won’t be a problem with you when I go after them.’

  Paradise grimaces. ‘When not if you go after them, you say. Sounds like you’ve already made your mind up, whether I give you permission or not.’

  You say nothing.

  ‘That’s all you want?’ he says. ‘My permission?’

  ‘Current whereabouts would also be useful.’

  Paradise shows his teeth. ‘If I were you I’d be contemplating your own whereabouts in about ten minutes’ time.’

  You take a gamble. ‘They ripped you off thirty-five years ago and I bet they just pissed themsel
ves laughing at what a dumb fuck you were.’

  Paradise clenches his big fists.

  ‘You’re about a spider’s fart away from having your back broken. How do you feel about spending the rest of your life as a head on a stick?’

  ‘Do you mind if I sit up?’ you say.

  ‘Go ahead – it makes it easier for me to kick your teeth in.’

  You roll on to your side, trying not to grimace at the pain in your ribs. You’re hoping they’re only bruised, not broken, though it actually makes little difference. Your throat and chest burn from the forced ingestion of water. You sit up, cross your legs loosely.

  ‘Thirty-five years ago you did a bit of business with four men: Rogers, Cartwright, Howe and Bartram. You told me at the time they were dead but I’m guessing in fact they ripped you off.’

  ‘And pissed themselves laughing – yes, I got that. Why do you care?’

  ‘That’s a long story.’

  ‘And you don’t have much time left, so why don’t you give me the SparkNotes version?’

  ‘They took something precious away from me.’

  ‘Thirty-five years ago?’

  You nod. He laughs but it’s not much of a laugh.

  ‘And only now you’re pissed about it?’

  You cough up some more water. ‘I’ve only just realized,’ you say hoarsely.

  ‘And what do you want with these guys? You’re going to kill them?’

  Your lungs are hurting now as well as your ribs. ‘Probably.’

  ‘No offence, but don’t you think you’re getting a bit old for that shit?’

  You say nothing. Paradise shakes his head.

  ‘And you want me to facilitate that? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why?’

  Paradise leans forward again. He has a vein throbbing in his forehead. You watch it, trying to calculate his heart rate. It’s low. As if to explain why it’s low he says: ‘I never let emotion get in the way of business.’ He sits back. ‘Let me tell you something, pilgrim.’ He works his jaw, preparing his pronouncement. Here it comes. ‘The world belongs to those who feel nothing.’