Room 119

by T F Lince

  Dean looked through the window at the hordes of people all with somewhere to go. He had nowhere to go, and he didn’t want to go anywhere. He was just about at rock bottom.

  His mind helped him weigh up the situation. When you’re down, you have a couple of choices. You can look up and start to climb again, maybe call in a couple of favours at a smaller trading firm. Dean’s reputation would surely afford him that. Then he reminded himself that nobody in this city would touch him with a bargepole until the Killen Steel fiasco had all blown over, and nor should they.

  The second choice was to look down. If you’re just about at rock bottom, you may as well see what the very bottom is like, have a look around, and savour the atmosphere for a while.

  That’s what Dean did. He headed for a shop to get the cheapest bottle of vodka he could lay his hands on. Walking along the Thames, taking a swig of his Russian new best friend every few hundred yards, he popped into bars along the way for a couple, staying for more than a couple in The Prospect of Whitby, one of the oldest pubs in London. It reminded him of his home up north. The hangman’s noose dangling from gallows attached to the side of the building seemed very apt at the moment.

  The next morning, Dean’s head was banging. His place was not looking as spick and span as it used to, not that Dean noticed as he threw a capsule into the coffee machine and pressed the button. The machine made a noise like it was sucking the coffee out of the container before filling a glass cup, the air bubbles flying up from the bottom like a waterfall in reverse.

  Dean turned on the screens to be presented with the ‘No Signal’ sign. Fair enough, he thought as he turned them off again. He grabbed some tablets from the drawer, popped a couple out of their sleeve, left the rest on the kitchen worktop, and took a sip of his coffee. What will today bring? he thought.

  Buzzzzzzz.

  Dean rushed to the receiver on the wall, more to stop the noise entering his delicate head than from any curiosity as to who was on the other end. Dean wasn’t really in the mood for company.

  “Yorkie, it’s Jack. Are you OK?”

  “Fuck off, Jack, of course I’m OK.”

  “Can I come in? It’s freezing out here.”

  “No. ‘Fuck off,’ I said.”

  Dean smiled as he pressed the button to release the door. If he had to draw up a list of people he would want to see when he didn’t want to see anyone, Jack would probably be top of it.

  The lift cage opened into Dean’s apartment; Jack knew the code.

  “Dean, what in God’s name went on, on Monday?’

  Jack never called Dean ‘Dean’; it was always Yorkie, so Dean took notice. He grabbed two beers out of the fridge, handing one to Jack.

  “To be honest, Jack, not really sure. I had a deal all planned out – signed, sealed and delivered, and from a great source, too. What I do know is that little shit Oliver had something to do with it.”

  He pulled the ring pull on the can – fsssss – before pouring the beer into a glass.

  “Come on, Yorkie, you can deal with the likes of Oliver in your sleep. You got in too deep and fucked this up all on your own.”

  Jack opened his can and poured the beer, the magic widget delivering the perfect pint experience. He took a sip before the beer had a chance to settle, spoiling the magic somewhat.

  “Yes, I know I fucked up, Jack. Did they get out of it OK?”

  “Not really. They are still working out what to do. Falconer’s will survive, but only just. A few people will be out on their ear. There will be casualties, Yorkie.”

  Dean looked down at his shoes and then back at Jack.

  “Are you going to be OK, Jack?’

  “Yes, I’ll be OK, but will have to keep my head down for a bit. They’ve blamed you for the lot. That’s why I’m here. I think they’re coming after you. For the lot, I mean – this apartment, your car, even your home.” Jack took a sip of his beer and carried on. “They are pissed off, Yorkie. They want it back, and you know how it works. You can’t wipe out that kind of money and just walk away, you know that.”

  As Dean looked around the room, the realisation setting in, Jack continued.

  “It would have been worse if Dexter hadn’t let Oliver put on a reverse trade. You’d have been in for a lot more. You need to thank him really.”

  Jack looked around at the apartment. It looked a mess. He shook his head at Dean. Dean felt like he was being tried in court by his best mate.

  “Thank him? You think so, Jack? He screwed me over. I don’t know how, but I do know he failed to tell me the deal was screwed, LITTLE SHIT!”

  Once Dean had calmed down from his rant, he added, “Anyway, it was an authorised trade, Jack. They can’t get me for nothing.”

  Jack looked surprised. “Well no one at work is saying it was authorised, most of all Dexter. He’s saying you were the typical rogue trader and that he would never authorise that much. He says you were flying solo.”

  Dean jumped all over this accusation. “Bullshit and he knows it, Jack.”

  “Really, Dean? That’s a lot of dough. Dexter’s never even been close to signing that much off before.”

  “Don’t say you don’t believe me either.”

  Dean stared at Jack, who shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “I’m not sure who to believe.”

  “You don’t, do you, Jack? Well, do you know what? Why don’t you just fuck off with the rest of them.”

  Dean headed for the lift and punched in the call code.

  “Yorkie, I’m the only friend you have got right now. That’s why I’m here.”

  Jack walked past Dean, shaking his head, and pressed the button. As he slowly disappeared from view, Dean could hear him shouting, “Good luck, Yorkie, you’re going to fucking need it.”

  Chapter 9 – Off the Rails

  It’s a lot easier for a train to fall off the tracks than it is to get back on them. That was the case with Dean – he was so far off the tracks that he could barely see where they were anymore, and getting back on them was not an option at the moment. Two weeks of getting up late, drinking all day and going to bed when his body gave in were taking their toll – Dean was unshaven and looked like a down and out, blending into the nooks and crannies of London like he belonged there. Gone were the suits and clean cut look; he was well and truly at the bottom now and didn’t really care.

  He had bought a pay as you go phone and punched in Sarah’s number. He’d even practised what he would say to her, but each time he went to phone her, he was too pissed and thought better of it. He did miss Sarah and Jodie, but it was hard to get a signal from the bottom of the earth – much easier to get another beer.

  Dean staggered back to his apartment after another day and night on the town. It was not the pristine apartment he had lived in a couple of weeks ago; it was littered with pizza boxes and empty beer bottles and fag packets. He thought, like he did every other night, that he would tidy up in the morning.

  The morning came too early, as it always seemed to lately. He staggered out of bed and looked in the mirror.

  “What the fuck, Dean? Sort your fucking self out,” he said, expecting his reflection to talk some sense into him. It didn’t, but at least it listened.

  He looked at the phone on the table. He would have to call her sooner or later. Then he saw his box of belongings from work with the picture of Sarah and Jodie and the Ryder Cup whisky. He owed them both a phone call.

  He fumbled with the pay as you go brick as his fingers were not programmed for its size quite yet. He didn’t have to scroll far down the contacts list as it was the only number he’d put in there. Taking a deep breath, he selected Sarah’s name before hitting the green call button.

  “Hello?”

  Dean paused. He loved hearing the sound of her voice.

  “Sarah, it’s me.” Dean sounded nervous. His confidence had all been drained out of him.

  “Dean, where the hell have you been? I heard about your job and I don’t know why I�
�m bothered, but I have been trying to ring you to see if you’re OK.” Although her sentence was spoken with compassion, the words inside it were not opening the door wide enough for Dean to do any more than peer through a crack. “And don’t think I rang because of me. I couldn’t care less, Dean. It’s Jodie – she wanted to know that her dad is OK.”

  Dean listened for a change.

  “Jack’s told me about your job and about the state you’re getting into. Well, good luck, Dean. I’ll tell Jodie you’re not dead.” There was a pause. “Yet,” she added. “Oh, and keep out of my and Jodie’s life. We don’t need a prick like you.”

  “Sarah, I really need to see you both right now. I’ve been going through hell here.” Dean meant it – he was on the boxing canvas in the twelfth round as the referee counted, “One, two, three, four,” in his face.

  “Dean, if I have my way, you will never see us again. We might even be moving away.”

  “Five, six, seven,” the metaphorical referee counted.

  “Moving where? Don’t think you’ll stop me seeing her, Sarah…”

  The boxing referee thrust fingers eight and nine into his face.

  “Dean, have a nice life.”

  Sarah hung up.

  “Ten.” Ding-ding-ding. “Knockout.”

  Dean reached for a his Ryder Cup whisky and scanned the fridge, hoping he’d bought some tonic, coke or anything other than milk that he could mix it with. He found some Sprite – that would do. He sipped his drink, thinking about Sarah and Jodie and how things had ended up like this. He realised now what he’d had, and he would do anything to get it back to how it was three weeks ago.

  Dean was pissed off, and it showed. “Stop me seeing her? How the fuck dare she? We’ll see about that.” He left his drink, which he had hardly touched, before grabbing the car keys, the picture and the whisky bottle and heading for the car park.

  It was 3.15pm and Jodie’s school got out at 4.30pm. Mumbling to himself, “I’ll see her whenever and wherever I want,” Dean drove, glancing at Jodie and Sarah’s picture on the passenger seat beside him. The conversation with Sarah had pushed him over the edge and he was falling into whatever lay beneath.

  He raced through London and headed out of town, unaware of his speed. After the last two weeks, he probably shouldn’t have been anywhere near the wheel of a car, but he wasn’t exactly Captain Sensible right now. At 4.15pm he pulled into a parking place opposite the school, riding up and down a curb while doing so, then opened the door and headed for the gates to see Jodie.

  As soon as Dean spotted Jodie in among the hordes of pupils leaving the school building, he shouted her name. Leaving her group of friends, she ran to her dad, screaming, “Dad! I can’t believe it!”

  Sarah had been coming to collect Jodie from school since Dean left. Despite Jodie’s protestations that she was more than old enough to get the school bus with her friends, Sarah could tell deep down that her daughter was comforted by the gesture. Despite her attempts to hide it behind teenage bravado, Jodie had clearly been feeling insecure ever since Dean had left.

  Parking up, Sarah noticed through the crowd that Jodie was running towards a man at the gates. Leaping out of her car, she ran across the road, realising as she got closer that it was Dean.

  “Dean, what are you doing here? Jodie, come over here.”

  “She’s OK here with her dad, aren’t you, Jodie?” Dean slurred his words a little, which did not go unnoticed. The last couple of weeks were still in his system.

  “Yes, Dad,” Jodie said as if on autopilot.

  “Dean, you’re drunk. Let Jodie go now.”

  Dean gripped Jodie tighter.

  “For your information, Sarah, I’m not drunk.” He then turned his attention to Jodie. “Jodie, you know I will always love you, don’t you?” Dean felt a tear trying to force its way out his eye and fought it back.

  “Yes, Dad. Are you coming home so we can finish our game of chess?”

  Dean looked at Sarah and got a ‘not on your life’ stare.

  “Maybe one day, Jodie.”

  “Dean, you let her go now, you’re scaring me. JODIE!” This ‘Jodie’ was an order. Jodie made a move to go to her mother.

  “I thought we might go for a ride. Would you like that, Jodie?” Dean grasped her tighter still.

  “Yes, Dad. Mum, can we go for a ride?”

  Sarah walked over and grabbed Jodie’s arm.

  “Dean, you can kill yourself, but you’re not killing my daughter.”

  Sarah started to walk away before turning on her heels, her ponytail slapping in her face.

  “That’s the final straw, Dean. Fuck off and don’t ever come back. You will never see me or her again, you drunken prick.”

  Dean fell to his knees at the school gates, a couple of teachers who had come over to find out what the commotion was all about looking at him and shaking their heads. He watched Sarah and Jodie walking off, Jodie turning to get another look at her dad before her mother, in floods of tears, forced her forward again.

  “Who the fuck do you think you’re looking at?” he said to the teachers who were his judge and jury right now. He jumped up and walked to the car, barging a couple of onlookers out of the way as he took the most direct route.

  Dean got in the car and drove. Would he ever see his daughter or Sarah again? He was not sure, but he knew he’d fucked up, and fucked up big this time. He kept looking at their picture on the seat of the car next to the whisky bottle and his eyes filled up until he was struggling to see the road through the tears.

  Heading south, he thought he would go and have a chat to the sea. The sea was always a friend to him when he was a kid; the sea was a good listener. Arriving in Brighton, he parked up and took a walk along the pebbly beach with the picture grasped close to his chest. He skimmed stones over the sea, beating himself up over how it had all ended up like this.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  He slumped to the ground, looking at the picture, stroking Jodie’s cheek gently with his finger.

  “You are both better off without me anyway.”

  That was it. They would be better off without him. He was a fucking mess, and nobody liked a mess, especially a mess of the fucking variety.

  He jumped up and headed to the car as if the compass in his head had given him a new direction. It was clear to him that if Dean Harrison was no longer around to fuck everything up, then the rest of the world would reset back to normality. For the first time in two weeks, he knew exactly where he was going. Was he scared? No. The demons in his head had given him a way out and he was ready to take advice from anyone right now.

  Dean keyed Beachy Head into the satnav, which announced the journey would take just over an hour. If he put the hammer down, he reckoned he would nail it in forty-five minutes. Even Little Miss Satnav could not annoy him now. He was clear in thought and ready for whatever would come next.

  Chapter 10 – All Downhill From Here

  Dean parked behind a battered old minibus with Sweet Dreams Nursing Home for Alzheimer’s on the side.

  Sweet dreams? he thought. I do hope so. He grabbed the picture, and the whisky bottle as he might need some Dutch courage.

  Turning to look at the battered old bus, he muttered, “Well, you can’t take it with you,” and took out a large wad of notes which he placed under the wiper blade. His dad had had Alzheimer’s, and Dean thought doing a good turn just before his own day of judgment might not be a bad thing.

  Dean headed up the path, still clear in thought. He was doing exactly the right thing. Everything would be fine in ten minutes’ time; Sarah and Jodie would be fine and the world would be a better place.

  Oblivious to the world around him, Dean walked up the path, past the phone box put on the suicide hotspot of Beachy Head in 1976 as a lifeline for potential jumpers. It was plastered in Samaritans business cards, but Dean did not even give it a second glance. This was it. When Dean made his mind up, he would always go through with it.
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  He stepped over a small white picket fence, wondering how that was meant to make anyone have second thoughts about jumping. He could see the edge of the cliff in front of him, and his heart rate increased by enough beats per minute for him to feel a kick of adrenalin filter through his veins.

  There were some people near the top of the cliff, probably bloody do-gooders trying to stop jumpers.

  They’re not going to stop me, Dean thought.

  To his surprise, as he passed them, he noticed they were an old-ish couple sitting sharing a flask of soup, tartan blankets over their knees. They will make people want to jump rather than put them off, he thought, smiling as he walked to the edge.

  Dean stopped as his feet approached the cliff face, briefly looking down. Then he looked back at the couple, who were still drinking soup and not paying him much attention. He released his grasp on the picture he had pulled into his chest and looked at Sarah and Jodie one last time before giving them both a kiss.

  “I love you both. I’m so sorry.”

  Unscrewing the top of the whisky bottle, he intended to take a final drink before jumping into the unknown.

  “Well, get on with it. You’re spoiling the view,” the man behind him shouted.

  “Can a man not have his last moment in a bit of peace?” Dean looked over the clifftop to the sea before taking a sip of what was left of the whisky.

  “If you’re going to jump, jump. Oh, and you know someone has to tidy that bottle up, you selfish bastard.”

  Dean turned to give the man a stare.

  “Don’t look for sympathy over here.” The man straightened the blanket on his wife’s knees.

  Dean shuffled forward like a diver preparing for an Olympic dive, his feet now perching half over the cliff edge. He had one final look at Sarah and Jodie, hugging the picture back into his chest, then let the now empty bottle of whisky release from his grasp. It fell, smashing on the cliff face on its way down.

  Dean looked out to the sea, closed his eyes and leant forward, feeling at peace with the world while his brain frantically indexed through his memories, trying to find one to stop him jumping. It settled on one from when Dean was ten years old. He was on his dad’s 30-foot Yorkshire coble The Whitby Trader to go yucking, a northern term for fishing with rods. The coble had left Whitby Harbour even before the milkman was up, steaming to the east to anchor onto one of the many shipwrecks.