Headhunters

by John King

  ‘If you settled down you’d end up bottom of the league,’ Carter said. ‘Imagine that, Balti. Four points maximum all season. You’d be shacked up living the life of a cunt and your mates would be on the rampage enjoying themselves, running up points while you’re shovelling gerbil shit for the kids.’

  ‘I’d never give Denise one up the arse. She’s too nice for that. What kind of woman do you think she is, a slag? Denise is a solid lady. We’d make a good couple. I can see us with the trolley now, working our way through the freezers, loading up on steak and burgers, frozen peas, a nice bottle of wine to wash the meat down and some of that expensive Italian ice-cream.’

  ‘You would mate. Believe me. A bird like that needs a good six inches up the dirt box to sort her out. Dirty old cow. No wonder Slaughter’s a headcase. She must shag him rigid. Mind you, any woman hangs around with that cunt isn’t letting herself in for French cuisine and vintage champagne. Must be a fucking battlefield when they get going. Can’t imagine old Slaughter’s into hours of foreplay and romantic meals for two. More like a quick knee-trembler and a samosa with his chips.’

  ‘Me neither, but it’s bad news sticking it up a bird like that. Mango’s right. That kind of stuff’s for queers, even if it is worth four points. You’d never catch me going that way.’

  Eileen came round picking up glasses. She was an average looker, but friendly enough. Denise had sex and Eileen warmth. Will reckoned that meant more. He’d fancied her since she first started working in the pub four months before, though she’d never paid him much attention. It always worked like that. The women you took a shine to were either with someone else or not interested. The ones that pushed themselves were generally a bit iffy, with glazed eyes and desperation in their moves, thinking they were getting left out, craving love and affection so they’d shag anything and hope to hang on after the event. Like a lot of blokes. Will didn’t think there was that much difference. Women could have babies and men couldn’t. Straightforward really. He hoped Carter didn’t get to grips with Eileen.

  She took the glasses to the bar. It was only half-seven, but the pub was busy. Will was surprised. First day of the year and the world should’ve been staying home watching the game shows. Mind you, he was filling up fast enough, and would have a few more before he went home. It was like all that enthusiasm had been watered down the night before, and though everyone was going through the motions, not admitting they’d been fooled by the Christmas tinsel and extended drinking, persuading themselves it really was a brand new start, that this was the year when they’d finally get somewhere, be happy and satisfied with their lot, they knew deep down it was just going to be more of the same old bollocks.

  ‘Where did you get to with that bird then?’ Harry asked. ‘Last I saw, you were chatting up Mick Gardner’s sister. She’s a right old slapper, even Balti’s serviced it. Fanny like the Channel Tunnel. Half French by the look of the hair under her arms, but then she’s gone and Mick said you’d pissed off with some decent-looking blonde which seems a bit suspect because everyone knows you’re a pig-fucker.’

  ‘Don’t remember Gardner’s sister. I gave her one last year. Well rough. No. I said I’d walk this other bird home so she wouldn’t get mugged. It might’ve been New Year’s but businessmen never sleep. Time’s money if you’re a sick cunt waiting in the shadows looking for an easy target. She wasn’t bad. Lives down Ramsey Road and has her own place. Looks over the train track, but you wouldn’t know it at night, just in the morning when the wagons roll through. Fuck knows who travels that early. Probably shipping nuclear waste through or pigs for slaughter. That lot don’t rest. They’re the real pig-fuckers. But this bird was very polite when we got back, very proper, went and turned the lamps on and chose a CD, shitty music, Mango sounds, and then when I’d had a drink, a couple of glasses of quality Scotch to warm the throat and thaw the vitals, I delivered some of the usual patter and she was away before you could say “Mango’s a wanker”.’

  Will went to the bar and ordered a cheese roll. He hadn’t eaten all day and was starving, but still had enough nous to concentrate on Eileen walking along the counter towards him, plate out in front. He self-consciously watched her breasts move gently under the wraparound top she was wearing, long silver earrings brushing against the fabric covering her shoulders. She had a small nose-ring all the way from Rajasthan via Camden. He was feeling embarrassed just thinking about her breasts so close to the material, nipples rubbing erect. He liked the smell she brought with her, character embedded in the face. Perfume always worked with Will. Made her stand out exotic in an everyday London boozer. He wished he’d asked for some salt-and-vinegar crisps or peanuts as well, but didn’t want to send her down the bar again and make a fool of himself. Nothing turned a woman off more than indecisiveness. If a bloke stammered or didn’t know what he wanted they’d look straight through you like you were scum. A man with appeal was a man who never glanced sideways. That was the way he’d been told to look at the problem. You had to have the dosh to back yourself as well, otherwise you were nothing. The rappers had it worked out well enough.

  ‘What happened to your eye?’ Eileen asked, a hard edge to her voice that he couldn’t identify. ‘Been getting in trouble, have you?’

  ‘Three blokes had a go at me last night.’

  ‘What did they do that for then?’

  ‘Don’t know really. I was standing there waiting for a cab, minding my own business, thinking about the new year and everything, wondering if today was going to be any different from yesterday, brand new life and all that, and when these blokes turned up and tried to nick it I told them it was mine, that I needed to get home because I was knackered and had been waiting around for ages. Tired and emotional like, with the end of the year and Christmas over. They just piled in. There was nothing I could do and after they’d given me a bit of a kicking they nicked the cab.’

  ‘You should get it looked at.’ She was more sympathetic now he’d shown himself the victim rather than one more pisshead causing trouble. ‘They might’ve damaged your eyeball. You could’ve ended up getting blinded. The eye’s very sensitive you know. It’s come up quickly. You won’t be impressing the women looking like that.’

  She smiled and put the cheese roll on the bar and Will tried not to look at her tits, wondering whether it was a real diamond plugged in her nose. Whether she took it out at night so the butterfly didn’t come out and slip into her head, working its way into the back of her skull, wishing he knew why she’d mentioned women.

  Will hoped he wasn’t going red, blushing like a kid as he paid his money and went back to the others without delivering the killer punch that would show he was a smooth cunt with a good line of humour. He should’ve followed up with a sharp one-liner, but words didn’t come easy. Least not with the opposite sex. He was too much of a gentleman, that’s what he told himself when confronting the truth that he was probably just shit at chat-up lines, though he’d never say it out loud. He just went along with things, they all did, expecting nothing, except for Carter always aiming to get his leg over. It was unnatural somehow, looking to get stuck in all the time, no chance for a decent chat with his mates, a couple of pints and he was off for the night sniffing round anything that moved. But she was alright, Eileen behind the bar, and maybe it was better he wasn’t one of those blokes who could talk about anything and say nothing, because someone like Eileen, with a Rajput ring in her nose and classy perfume, would see through the shit and tick him off as one more brain-dead wanker thinking with his knob. One day though.

  ‘Getting in with Eileen are you?’ Carter asked, looking over his shoulder at the barmaid, talking now with Denise who’d dumped her handbag out back and was ready for the evening’s work, having a smoke because the landlord was out and not due back till after closing. ‘Didn’t know you fancied her.’

  ‘I was only talking to her. Why does everyone have to be looking to get into a bird’s knickers just because they have a bit of a chat? She as
ked me about the eye, that’s all. Wanted to know what happened last night. She’s not going to stand there ignoring something like that bulging out of the socket at her, is she?’

  ‘Alright Mildred, I was only asking. No need to cry about it. Here, I’ll wipe your eyes. She’s alright. A bit skinny in the legs but at least she’s not a heifer you’d have to string up and open with a chainsaw, blood all over the shop as you hook up a rope and pull out the Tampax. I wouldn’t say no if she was offering me a quick one in the cellar. Wouldn’t turn her down so I could piss off upstairs and service old Balti breath over there.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my breath, you cocky cunt? Didn’t even have a curry last night, though I wouldn’t mind a bit of a feed right now, but I’m off them. That’s my New Year’s resolution, to shift a couple of stone and give those Kashmiri boys down Balti Heaven a break.’

  ‘You’re a slob,’ said Mango, laughing as he rocked back in his chair.

  ‘And you’re a toerag who hangs about with nonces in pinstripe suits, sucking cock, so you can piss off back to your stocks and shares or whatever the fuck it is you do for a living.’

  ‘I made forty-grand last year touching my cap for my betters, milking the smug bastards, getting them all worked up so they hand over their liquid assets. But at least I’m moving, not stuck in the shit like you or one of those kids in King’s Cross or Streatham. At least I’m dealing in prime genetics, not the mongoloid swill kids from Halifax get shoved down their throats for a few quid. Wake up lads. It’s a material world. Even Madonna knew that much. Maggie understood what it was all about. Best prime minister we ever had that woman. Gave me the break I needed.’

  Balti felt himself losing it a bit, looking to smack Mango if he went on. His head was heavy and he wasn’t in the mood for propaganda. He fucking hated Mango sometimes and everything he was into; the expensive gear and three-bedroom flat in Fulham, that Jag he’d bought and the holidays in Spain three or four times a year, the Jag with its five-grand stereo and automatic sun roof, Spanish resorts full of English slappers who left their knickers at Customs and collected them again on the way home; and the Jag shifted when Mango put his foot down, blowing the rest of them away. It made him sick just thinking about it all, and there was Balti, sweating his bollocks off lugging bricks around, coriander and garlic in his water, slave to a lippy Belfast cunt of a foreman, and the tosser opposite was sitting in a luxury office near Liverpool Street punching buttons on a keyboard, juggling figures and probably working out his own pay packet. It wasn’t fair, and Balti was left behind in the wrecker’s yard with his big end fucked while Mango cranked up the volume and disappeared down the Western Avenue in a cloud of lead-free exhaust fumes. It wasn’t like Mango was smart, except when it came to maths and making money, dedicated more like, but he’d always been that way. Always had to have what he reckoned was the best of everything. Into the image rather than content. Listening to disco shit at school when the rest of them were into punk and 2-Tone, going for the soul patrol gear when he should’ve been wearing DMs.

  The Sex Division members knew each other from childhood, sharing the same streets and school and most of the same lessons, once or twice the same girls. Like that time Balti had stopped seeing Helen Peters and Mango was straight round, filling the void. Now Carter was getting involved, telling Mango he was a wanker, that he thought he was better than his mates, that if he really thought odds and ends were all that mattered then he could fuck off to some other pub, back to Fulham and a poxy wine bar, or better still fuck off to where the cunts he worked with lived and drink cocktails and talk about the rugby, then bend over and touch his toes while he got some public schoolboy’s fist rammed up his arse. You don’t even like football, you tart. But Balti was giving up on the argument. It was the same old stuff that Mango dismissed as the politics of envy, turning off and drifting back to those turn-of-the-year days when he was a kid. Balti’s dad would have a hangover so he’d keep his head down knowing he’d get hit if he made too much noise, maybe go see Chelsea play if there was a game on in London. Like that time they’d gone up the Arsenal, Boxing Day maybe, he couldn’t remember exactly, when Micky Droy was playing and they’d gone in the North Bank, kept their mouths shut, shitting it, then there was a roar and the Chelsea North Stand steamed in and kicked the shit out of Arsenal who pegged out the other side. They were all there, everyone except Mango, even Will who supported Brentford, Mango busy with Zoe, that Iranian bird who got him into the soul music, knocking around with her Hawaiian shirt mates. He was a wanker even then, listening to love songs when any sussed kid was into decent lyrics.

  They were good times. Eddie McCreadie’s Blue And White Army and the Clash releasing White Man In Hammersmith Palais. That was the best song, fucking magic. Balti felt guilty suddenly, remembering Mango’s older brother Pete who’d had all the records and lent them out left, right and centre, turning them in the right direction. Will, meanwhile, had always been a few years ahead when it came to music. Then one day Pete went missing. He’d walked down the tube saying he was off to Greenford and hadn’t been seen since. No postcard, no letter, no nothing. The old bill had tried to trace him but without any luck. Everyone had a theory. Maybe he’d just had enough, signing on, not seeing anything on the horizon, just Maggie raving about law and order.

  Balti looked into his glass and watched the bubbles popping, thinking of Mango sitting on the swings across from the station, waiting for his big brother to come home. It was seventeen or eighteen years ago now and Mango must’ve given up. Just before Christmas he’d seen Mango’s Jag and the bloke was down the same playground, swinging back and forward. Every year he went back and didn’t give a toss if the mothers down there thought he was a nonce after their kids. Maybe he cried when he thought about it all, the sadness and that, and Balti couldn’t blame him. He wondered what Pete was doing now, if he was still alive, if he’d ended up on the game. Mango had told Balti that was the worst thing that could’ve happened, one time when he was pissed. Or a smackhead, clean now but a wreck, living in a graveyard in Stoke Newington or Hackney, sleeping rough. Mango was pissed Christmas Eve, mumbling on about Pete being a crack addict or a wino, weighing up the options. Balti had told him to look on the bright side. If his brother was alive he’d come back one day. But they were only words. Mango had never been the same since his brother went missing.

  ‘Get a round in then, you tight cunt.’ Harry was sick of the squabbling, like a load of kids the lot of them, back in the playground. ‘You’re the money man round here Mango, so shift yourself and go to the bar.’

  ‘Alright. Forget I said anything. It’s the change of weather, the time of year, just gets me going and everything and I’ve got to hit targets and keep people sweet. You don’t know what it’s like working for a bunch of stuck-up wankers who’ve got money behind them and sit there waiting for you to fall down and mess up. Forget what I said Balti. It’s the pressure does it.’

  ‘Leave it out. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Go on, give him a fucking kiss,’ Carter said, puckering his lips. ‘Couple of fucking irons you two.’

  Mango stood up and went to the bar, Denise coming over to serve him, swapping pleasantries, the entrepreneur acting casual. Denise thought he was a wanker. She wouldn’t trust him to water her plants. He was a right turn-off with the expensive clothes and big-man attitude, eyes shifting here and there, never following the line of conversation. His wallet was stuffed with tens, twenties, fifties, propped on the counter, credit cards jutting out. He thought he was special and she had half a mind to set Slaughter on him, take off the muzzle and let the pit bull loose. Except Mango hadn’t done anything wrong really, it was just the way he stood and talked and everything about him. But that Terry, he was gorgeous when she concentrated on the back of his head and she knew he was interested. Those kind always were. She could see them getting together and though Slaughter would hospitalise them if he ever found out, probably worse, he would never hear it from her l
ips. Anyway, she could control him if a rumour started. She had him wrapped round her engagement finger. A sincere expression and good sex would convince lover-boy that the person spreading rumours was spreading lies and he’d be round to see them with that machete he kept under the bed looking to mend their thinking.

  Slaughter was a nutter, mental about Denise and life in general, but it was amazing what a healthy bit of sex did for a man like that. It was the strippers on stage and bikini girls on advertising boards that caused problems. Agency models in sight but out of range; winding them up, taking their wages, then stabbing them in the balls for having tattoos and tatty gear, chasing wealthy fashion clones with funny haircuts. Slaughter would drink out of the dog’s bowl if she told him. He trusted her, believed her sexual appetite meant he was major, more than sex and protection, that he was the man of her dreams or some other romantic rubbish. That Terry was smart. He was dead ahead. No complications. She’d ask him why he was called Carter when she got the chance, straight out, confirm her suspicions and learn the details. She’d blow his mind.

  The man she was serving was going on about something or other, a film he wanted to see, and she was smiling and doing her job, nodding her head, raising eyebrows, but all the time she had her eye on Terry leaning forward over the table telling a story to the three others, Will and the two men who shared a flat down the road. She wished she was a fly on the wall listening, a wasp with a sting, getting hot and bothered thinking about Terry having it off with one of his girls. She guessed it was that kind of story. She felt annoyed for some reason, Slaughter getting in a punch-up with a bloke in the West End the night before, putting the silly so and so’s head through a car window because he’d paid her a compliment, a bloody compliment, nice arse. Anti-theft device screeching in her ear. Slaughter ran off leaving her to follow as best she could. It wasn’t the kind of life Denise wanted.