‘How’d they know about the body?’ Tommy asked.
‘I don’t know. Unless those blokes with the Black Hats told them, but they didn’t look like blokes who’d want to be mates with coppers, eh?
‘And Marvin ran from men with wide black hats,’ I said. My voice whispered as the doors to the police car opened. I didn’t want to be drawing any attention, not with a body lying dead near our squat. ‘We need to get out of here Tommy. The allotments are too crowded for this time of night and this used to be a nice quiet neighborhood. Men in black hats and now coppers and we’ve already had the army chopper in the sky.
‘Hello?’ a high-pitched voice called out.
We backed against the oak tree as the coppers approached the gate to Marvin’s burial site. Billy Two Guns stood on the sofa looking for us, squinting through his crooked wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a shiny, sleeveless jacket with a lime green shirt and pastel blue trousers. As he bounced about on the sofa, the dog slunk off, knocking Billy’s crooked walking stick to the ground.
Pete ran to the sofa. ‘Marvin was killed by a tall man like Ben.’
Billy clamped a hand over Pete’s mouth, trying to calm the boy and quiet his tongue as Tommy and I approached the furnace.
‘We need to go, Billy,’ I said. ‘The police will be looking for a quick result and we don’t need them pinning Marvin’s murder on us.’
Tommy took his cheroot from his mouth and pointed at Billy’s long shoes. ‘Nice shoes, Billy.’
Billy rubbed the right shoe against his trousers trying to rub the mud from the leather. Billy generally wore non-lace running shoes. Not that he ran anywhere, but he struggled with tying laces because of his chronic back pain
‘You all right?’ I asked him.
Billy struggled with eye contact big time. He stood a little over four foot so eye contact for Billy meant a lot of navel gazing or he ended up with a crick in his neck. Tommy said he suffered paranoia about his height and Billy thought the world stared at him because he waddled when he walked. The world did laugh and point at his waddle. The world laughed even harder when he waved his crooked stick in anger. And he had an old fashioned attitude of hate to all minorities, shared it with a loud voice and that allowed more folk to stare, which fed the beast of paranoia.
Billy didn’t get the dilemma, because Billy was thick. Simple.
Two torches flashed in our direction and we froze, looking at the two coppers standing over Marvin’s carcass.
‘I’m out of here, guys,’ I said. ‘Seriously, there’s a dead body back there in the allotments and this might seem callous to Marvin, but I don’t want to be charged with his murder.’
Chapter Nine
Funeral for One
On the day of Marvin’s funeral I and Tommy woke early from a vigil of vodka, something small and furry we’d charred to death and a lung full of butts. The pigeons pecked at stones and we scattered a flotilla of seagulls thinking the square offered a feast. Deliveries sat nestled against doorways of Smelly Alley. The butcher whistled an irritating tune to the clash of steel on steel as he sharpened his knives, his boy stumbling under the weight of bloodied carcasses. The fishmonger dressed in his smelly white coat and oversized rubber boots, re-introduced yesterday’s catch to a fresh bucket of ice. A sweet aroma of bread and buns breathed life into the alley; the darkened baker’s shop busy with muted sounds from beyond the counter. Doorways housed the rag-laden homeless, snoring at the last minutes of slumber before another hopeless day chased them into oblivion.
The square remained cordoned with sagging yellow tape flapping between battered dayglow cones. A low droning buzz played from the blank video screen and the lynching wire hung from the roof of the blackened wall of the town hall. Blood splattered the earth. Canvas lay wet and dirty. Twisted pieces of metal and the odd shoe lay forgotten across the empty square. Masses of flowers dotted the ground in sympathy for the citizens who died alongside the Mayor.
Ostere’s Uniting Church neighbored the graveyard and possessed a sinister façade. We parked our arses on the stone fence guarding the grounds, kicking at the honey-colored stone collapsed onto the grass verge bordering Church Lane. A small wooden gate to our left, allowed entry onto a narrow path, its uneven cobbles winding through gravestones bearing ineligible dates and weed strewn sunken plots. At our backs gargoyles leaned and leered from the blackened stone of the church front. Their hideous images dared pilgrims to approach, ridiculing their faith, courage and naiveté. A steeple tickled at heaven’s arse and ravens circled high above our heads and swooped low at the corpses. They perched with scratchy claws on the gargoyles’ bony heads, squawking and making the lot of the dead a grim nightmare and that of the living a sinister promise.
Closer to the hour, when chanting monks paced the grounds and Tilly latched the Old Poets front door open, we approached the large arched ebony door. It stood ajar, the darkness beyond reminding me of the many haunted hours my siblings and I spent praying and praising my mother’s Lord. Tommy shuffled forward with a jaunty indifference, but I stopped on the threshold, wishing we’d all agreed to a piss up back at Blacky’s.
I hated church, religion and didn’t get all the genuflecting crap and the songs sucked.
Me and Tommy found ourselves perched on a hard wooden pew at the back of the building, cringing beneath a line of gruesome figures in chain mail. A curious addition to a church, but I guessed they represented crusaders from a long forgotten religious campaign. I picked up the book of songs and laughed at the ghoul within me busting his sorry arse inside a church curious to witness Marvin’s mourners.
‘What’s so funny?’ Tommy asked.
‘Nothing, I guess. I don’t get why we’re here.’
‘It’s a funeral,’ he said. ‘You’re here to say goodbye to Marvin. You said he was your childhood mate.’
‘But the bloke pissed on me, didn’t he, by marrying my girl. She was supposed to be my wife and it was supposed to be our happy ever after. Tommy, it was set in stone. My parents and her parents joked about marrying us once we’d stop shitting in our nappies.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
I looked at Tommy and smiled. ‘The Man is why, Tommy. The Man tried to conscript me. My body was lawfully requested to join his bloody war against terror.’
Tommy scoffed and laughed at me. ‘She dumped you?’
I shook my head remembering the last days Linda and I spent together with fondness. With the introduction of conscription for all ‘idle’ eighteen year olds, my father took joy in signing me up as a soldier. The conscription papers sat on the kitchen table and I ran fast and far. I didn’t want to fight for the Man and his war on terror because I didn’t believe in his war.
‘I remember the night I left Ostere,’ I said. ‘And no one got dumped. Me and Linda sat in her mother’s kitchen and I stole a kiss and recovered a feeble fumble in the foyer.’ I nodded my head and smiled at Tommy. ‘Oh yeah the lustful release of teenage angst ruled as we gravitated toward her chambers.’
We sat in silence, the two of us exhaling vapor into the frigid air and digging deep into our pockets to find warmth. My memories of the day I left my parents’ house left a chill in my heart. There had been no goodbyes as I stole from the house early in the morning and met with the Projects in the dark of Blacky’s compound. My father expected to see me in a uniform that afternoon. My mother had bought film for the old camera hanging in the hall cupboard.
‘I had to leave,’ I said. ‘Run or suit up in army camouflage and dodge bullets. The Projects were looking for recruits, so I got my arse out of Upper Ostere before the army came calling.’
‘Like the bloody Projects was a clever place to go,’ Tommy said. ‘The bloody Projects are a front for terrorists. They do as much shooting and killing as the army.’
Tommy liked to read the headlines of the tabloids and quote sensations as truth. You couldn’t argue with him. ‘I didn’t commit no acts of terror,’ I said. ‘It was all about training
when I was there. I spent my time humping crap on daylong hikes. We blew stuff up, but I was just the lookout and no one got hurt.’
Tommy pulled a tabloid from his back pocket, slapping the crumpled image of the Mayor’s lynching on my lap. A photo of a balaclava-masked terrorist suggested the Projects’ involvement.
‘The Projects didn’t set those bombs off,’ I said. ‘And they didn’t string the Mayor up and leave him to hang.’
‘That’s the Mayor?’ Tommy looked back at the paper. ‘Are you telling me the Mayor’s dead?’
‘I’m assuming he died,’ I said. ‘I mean, I didn’t see him take his last breath. Saving my arse seemed more important than worrying about the Mayor.’ The crusaders at my shoulder leaned forward, intruding on my space. ‘She said she’d wait.’
‘Wait for what?’
Tommy liked to bait me. ‘Until I came back.’
‘But you can’t ever come back, can you?’ he said. He’d turned in his seat, looking at me with his face in my space. ‘All of us who dodged the draft can’t never come back, because if we do, we have to go to jail.’
I nodded and sighed. ‘A military jail,’ I said. ‘No games, no TVand no swimming pool.’
‘And the hard bloody labor,’ Tommy added. He showed me his hands. ‘I wasn’t bred to hold a pick, you know. Given another time, I’d be holding a gun and I’d be fast.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. You’d be dead.’
‘Would not.’
‘What about that pack of rats over by the sewer? I’ve never seen you get close with a knife. Even little Billy’s given the big fat one you call Rupert a nick. No, you got no eye-hand coordination, eh?’
‘Knives aren’t guns, Pilgrim.’ He talked in a deep voice with a touch of gravel to impress me. ‘You got to be fast. You got to be still. Breathe out. See the bullet and visualize the impact. Hittin’ a rat with a knife don’t compare.
‘And why would I want to hurt Rupert,’ he said in his normal childlike voice. ‘That don’t make sense.’
‘My point is,’ I said. ‘The Man can’t last forever. Conscription and this stupid bloody war have to end. Then I can come back. But she didn’t wait. And like I should give a shit. I don’t want to talk about it.’
We settled back in our seats and stared at the ornate windows covering the entire back of the church. I sighed and looked at Tommy. ‘So why are you here? You didn’t even know Marvin.’
‘I did, but I’m here for the vodka. Rumors suggest you’ve got some going spare.’
He patted at my chest, his hands reaching inside my jacket. I slapped at his hands and pushed him away, because Tommy could be too tactile. One night sitting on the sofa with a load of alcohol in our bellies and the furnace burning red hot, he tickled me and that’s not right. I gave him a right slap and the night remained awkward and sober.
‘And he died on our patch, didn’t he?’ Tommy sat back, confident I hid no vodka. ‘Can’t have a fella dying at Blacky’s and not say goodbye.’
I pulled the vodka from my backpack and passed the bottle to Tommy. His hands shook as he held the bottle to his lips, his skin rasping as he wiped at a dribble before drinking again. Tommy liked a drink and preferred to drink my alcohol.
‘Are we early?’ Tommy asked.
I hoped not as my perfect funeral involved me and the vicar and no one else mourning the mongrel. I wanted him buried with my handful of dirt being the only handful thrown at his wooden tomb.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Poor old Marvin wasn’t Mr. Popular at school, eh? I reckon I was his only friend.’
‘Sort of soon this funeral, you know?’ Tommy took another drink. ‘It’s only been a day since we found him.’
‘Yeah, has been sort of rushed. And what with him being murdered you’d think the coppers would want to hang onto his body, eh? I’ve heard the morgue’s full to bursting so they’re burying folk quick as.’
A shiver shook my bones as the icy slate floor gnawed through my old worn-out boots. My coat came courtesy of a posh old hotel three months back. I lifted it from the coat hooks by the exit when the sun shone with vigor and the winds soothed rather than froze. The morbid chill of the church found the thin fabric wanting.
‘Nothing’s done right these days,’ I said. ‘In the old days folk used to come to the house and sit with the body all night and the coffin was open.’
‘That’s gross, you know. Listen Ben,’ he said. ‘Why do you think someone killed him?’ He clutched the vodka to his body.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Marvin said his dad worked for bad people, big time hoodlums whatever that means. I remember Marvin’s dad and he was, well, low-key, eh? I saw him one night in this piss stained threadbare dressing gown and slippers and all stooped and coughing up a bucket load of phlegm. He was always coughing with a grubby handkerchief catching the spit. And he was an accountant and no one kills the bloke with the bloody abacus, eh? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Marvin’s old man’s dead, too?’ Tommy said.
‘Not definite, but I’m guessing dead. Marvin didn’t seem hopeful.’
‘Jesus, that’s bad luck.’
‘Bad luck, I don’t think so.’
My voice lowered to a notch beyond a whisper as a small stooped body, hooded and cloaked to sandaled feet, entered from the side door and followed the left wall. A small withered hand reached for the hand rail and climbed a set of narrow wooden steps to stalls set above the front door.
‘Marvin’s old man hung about with bad men. When they come to his house they disarmed and guns, loads of bloody guns pulled from ankles, shoulder holsters, out of their groins and plucked from their arses landed on the hall table.
‘This is what Marvin told me years ago, eh? He reckons they nearly shot him because he came down to look at the guns and the first one he touched knocked them all onto the floor. He stood with the dog staring at a mountain of weapons and a gang of men seriously pissed off and wanting to shoot him.’
‘But they didn’t,’ Tommy said. ‘Lots of blokes carry these days.’
‘This was when we were wee. And they kicked the dog because he growled. Marvin’s dog was like chronic fart old.’
‘That’s not right. Maybe he heard something crucial, like where they hid the money.’
‘The dog?’
Tommy giggled. ‘Not the bloody dog, Marvin. Maybe he was eavesdropping and that’s when the guns fell on the floor and he was caught and he knows where the money is kept.’
‘What money?’ I said. ‘This was years ago. He was a child.’
Tommy shrugged and drank from the bottle. He pulled a fresh cheroot from his pocket and gripped it with his teeth.
‘Marvin said they killed his father,’ I said. ‘Well, he thought they killed his father. That night I met Marvin in the square, when the men with those stupid hats were hassling people, Marvin said they sent his mum a finger in the post. A bloody finger cut right off his old man’s hand. They said if they didn’t get the bag back, they’d send her the rest of the body. All cut up into little pieces.’
Tommy stared at me. ‘Serious? Maybe his dad, with his last dying breath, passed on the secret of the money to his child. And those men don’t just kill the one person, you know. No, they have to kill the child so he doesn’t come back and avenge his dead dad. Criminal types are dead scared of revenge you know.’
I grabbed the vodka, keen to get more alcohol inside me before my bones clattered and rattled from the chill air.
‘I reckon it was for that bag,’ Tommy said.
‘How do you know about the bag?’
‘Marvin come looking for you the other night.’
‘Where was I?’
‘At Tilly’s, I think. You’re always at Tilly’s, you know?’
‘The girl feeds me,’ I said. ‘She thinks I’m clever.’
‘Yeah, well, me and Billy and Pete have been doing fine without you.’
Tommy slumped forward and sighed. ‘It was me that
told him to hit the square if he wanted to find you. I guessed you’d be there or at Sylvia’s. You’re always there early evening, aren’t you?’
Tommy’s statement worried me. The hood and the quiet demeanor mattered little if everyone knew I spent afternoons on the seat opposite the Paella stall. Even Marvin, a man I hadn’t seen in over two years, found me. I needed to vary my routine before the army worked me out.
‘No. I’m not always there.’
My reply bordered on petulant. Tilly worked in the Old Poet Public House round the corner and the drunks in the Poet could do your head in. She didn’t like me bothering her and I liked the music in the square and watching the Punksters fighting the Slotvaks over contraband amused me.
‘Yeah, you do. You sit there hoping Tilly will walk past on her way home.’
‘Piss off. I like the square because none of the twats from the Poet go there. On a good day, when I’ve got a shekel to spend the bloke who cooks the sheep gives me a good deal on a roll. I thought no one could find me there, eh? Now I know better.’
‘He just appeared from nowhere, Marvin did,’ Tommy said. ‘Me and Billy had just finished chewing on a something bloody and furry Pete found. We should’ve charred it longer, but we was hungry, you know. It smelt wrong before we slapped it on the griddle and it hummed a shit tune once we’d burnt it.’
I no longer cared who attended Marvin’s funeral. If Tommy and Marvin had predicted my movements, attending Marvin’s funeral increased the risk of the army finding me. My gaze turned to the small door on the left tucked beneath the high pulpit, thinking it offered me the best means of escape should the army call.
‘Yeah, well he was just standing there with two big old bags asking about you.’
‘And you told him where I was. What if he’d been army?’ Tommy looked away, removed his cheroot and shrugged. ‘Did you say two bags?’
‘Yeah, he was lugging two big old bags. Me and Billy talked an age about what was in ‘em. And he looked like shit, Ben, so he couldn’t have been army. He was wearing a suit, but it was ripped and smelt nasty. Who comes to Blacky’s in a suit? We were hoping someone had died in our family and Marvin was one of them blokes from Heir Hunters and the bags was stacked with cash. But all he wants to know is stuff about you. It was like he was the police.’
No More Heroes-#1 Dystopian Thriller Heroes Series Page 6