Headhunters

by John King

  When they’d got back to her place he’d stripped off and she could see him standing there now. Covered in ink with a dead penis full of lager, body swaying side to side, head back looking at the ceiling. She’d been ready for a Slaughter special, rough sex which was okay if she was in the mood but not when he was paralytic and biting into her neck like Dracula on a bad trip. She thought of that time when she’d pissed over his face, both of them burning up. She’d covered the bastard and he choked when it gushed into his mouth, eyes wide hoping it was okay, looking to her with a kind of appeal, a dumb kid. But last night Slaughter had looked at the ceiling like he was trying to find skin in the plaster, first-year monsters in the woodwork. He fell back against the wall and sank down to the floor. Denise had to turn off the gas fire otherwise he’d have burnt alive. He didn’t move till morning. Terry though, where was he last night? She watched the men laughing together, wishing she could get him on his own for a minute and arrange something.

  ‘Here you go,’ Mango was back at the table. ‘Anyone want crisps? I reckon Denise fancies me.’

  ‘Leave it out,’ Carter said looking towards the bar. ‘Take her on and you’ll be into Slaughter as well. He’d fucking kill you. Chop you into tiny pieces and feed you to the penguins in London Zoo. Then he’d take your head and put it on a stake outside the Tower of London for the ravens and beefeaters, balls stuffed in your mouth.’

  ‘Suppose so. Don’t stare at her otherwise she’ll think I’m talking about her.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘What’s your resolution, Mango?’ Harry asked, bored with Denise, a right old slag by his reasoning. Those kind were trouble. They came in your dreams and gave you grief all night long.

  ‘Going to get myself a Merc by the end of the year.’

  ‘I thought you were shagging the Jag. Changed your mind a bit sharpish didn’t you? Fed up creeping down at three in the morning in your boiler suit to get stuck into the exhaust?’

  ‘I’ll keep the Jag and get the Merc as well. I have to earn the money first. It’s a target to aim for. You’ve got to plan ahead. It keeps you going.’

  ‘Can I use the Jag when you get the Merc then?’ Carter asked.

  ‘Fuck off. You’d ruin the upholstery with all the birds you get through. It’s a class motor. I don’t want stains all over the leather.’

  Mango regretted the comment right away because it recognised Carter’s reputation. He liked to present himself on an equal footing, but never did as well as the sex machine and would have to lie his way up the table. That was okay, because Mango was good with the truth. The others wouldn’t have the ability or desire to cheat, but a high position was important for Mango. He was a competitor and despite his relative wealth women didn’t exactly come calling like they did for Carter. He did alright, anyone could do okay with a bit of effort, but he was nowhere near the Carter class. Sometimes it bothered him, but Carter had serviced some right old grinders in his time and Mango had long since convinced himself he was more into quality than quantity. Something stirred, the memory of that kid up in King’s Cross, the girl from Halifax. Young and tender and fucked rigid by how many men he did not know.

  ‘What about whores?’ he asked.

  ‘What about them?’ Balti was feeling the strain, looking forward to a good sleep but too tired to get up and go home. He was fucked and not looking forward to getting up for work.

  ‘Do prossies count?’

  ‘Course they fucking don’t,’ Carter said.

  He turned to look over his shoulder again and three Sex Division members considered the possibilities. Will wished they’d talk about something else, but was more concerned with the pain shooting through his eye than starting something off. Balti looked at Mango, then Carter, Harry catching his eye and winking as he lifted his glass and took a big swig of liquid gold.

  ‘Why not?’ Harry asked. ‘After all, you’re still doing the business. It’s the same things you’re doing so there should be the same points available. You’ve got to perform even when you’re splashing out for the privilege. It’s not that easy.’

  ‘Don’t be a cunt. What’s the point having a league if you’re going to pay some tart for points. It would be taking a bung.’

  ‘No it wouldn’t,’ Harry was into the game. ‘You look at the big clubs and football’s all about how much money you can spend on players. It’s like everything nowadays. Ask Mango what counts and he’ll tell you money, and he should know better than the rest of us stuck down here while he’s rubbing bollocks with the men who matter. Nothing else comes into the equation. You still have to buy quality players to succeed. It’s not like you pay the money and everything’s over with. You might not be able to get it up or something.’

  ‘Fuck off will you. You’re trying to wind me up. There’s no sense having a league if you go out and pay for it. Where’s the fun in that? It would be like you said, success geared by how much you spend.’

  ‘Like professional football then.’

  ‘We’re better than that. We’re in it for the love of the game, or at least I am. You lot might find it a bit of a struggle, not being into birds and all that, rather sit at home wanking over the cartoons, but some of us enjoy shafting beautiful women. Sex makes the world turn.’

  ‘Well what about a points system for the state of the bird concerned if we can’t get them for whores?’ Balti asked. ‘Give them a rating on looks and how much effort it takes. I mean some birds we could all have, but others are a better standard. You’ll fuck anything with a dress on. Vicars, Scots, whatever. The rest of us are a bit more select. We don’t scatter our DNA everywhere.’

  ‘Is that the excuse then?’ Carter was shaking his head. ‘You’re all going to say you’re only interested in beauty queens. Next you’ll be wanting points for blokes.’

  ‘Do us a favour,’ Balti said, choking on his drink, outraged. ‘Any cunt does that and he’s out of the fucking squad. Immediate relegation and a lifelong ban.’

  The lads nodded their heads wisely and sat in silence.

  ‘What about rape then?’ Mango asked. ‘What about twenty points for rape?’

  ‘Yeah, twenty points for a rape. You fucking lemon.’

  They were all laughing now, because the options were endless, and Mango was getting silly. Anyone who raped a woman deserved to be hung. They all agreed on that. It had to be the worst crime going. That and child sex. There were some fucking sick bastards in the world. Hanging was too good for rapists and child molesters.

  ‘What about animals?’ Mango asked.

  ‘He’s had a few animals in his time,’ Balti said. ‘Carter’s not fussy where he dumps his load.’

  ‘We all have, be honest. Get pissed and you don’t know what’s going on. A bit of meat would do when you’re on the scent. It’s programming. I mean, that’s why God invented the orgasm. Nobody’s going to plan kids are they, because it makes your life a misery and everything, so there’s this implant wedged in the brain that makes you fancy the opposite sex, and when you’re pissed you lose your reason and shag anything. A pig can still produce young, can’t she?’

  ‘I meant hamsters and stuff like that,’ Mango was cracking up. He didn’t normally laugh much, but was feeling spaced out. ‘Some people shag animals, don’t they?’

  ‘Anyone does an animal, a four-legged animal that is, and I’ll chop their bollocks off,’ Will said, piping up at last. He liked animals, saw them as defenceless victims. Even mentioning rape in the same sentence as sex was bad news. That kind of stuff was all about power and control. He was a romantic and couldn’t really separate sex and love.

  They shut up when Eileen came round again. Carter asked her if she’d had a good New Year’s Eve and she nodded, saying she’d gone to her sister’s house. A few people round for dinner, and it made a nice change from the usual drunk effort, an Italian meal which her brother-in-law had made. He was from Naples and a good cook. The Italians knew how to enjoy themselves without getting pissed, th
ough she couldn’t say much seeing as how she worked in a pub. She asked how Will’s eye was and he stammered a bit and knew he was going red and said fine, thanks, then changed his mind and was honest and said it hurt, real painful like, and she told him he should go and see a doctor. Harry looked at Will and prescribed another pint.

  ‘You’re in there,’ Carter whispered, when Eileen had gone.

  Will shook his head and felt awkward.

  ‘How about shitting on a bird then?’ Mango asked.

  ‘Why is it always you that comes up with the sick stuff?’ Harry asked. ‘You’ve got no soul. You’ve sold it down the City. I bet it’s sitting there in a bank vault wondering where you’ve gone. Why would you want to shit on a bird? You’re sad even thinking like that.’

  ‘How about shitting in their handbags then?’ Balti flicked a dead match from the ashtray at Harry, which bounced off his number 2 crop before felling to the floor.

  The Sex Division membership thought about this new development. It had a certain kind of appeal. There had to be something acceptable beyond a four-pointer, something nobody was going to achieve. Rape, animals, anything like that was obviously bang out of order, the mark of a pervert destined for a severe kicking. But shitting in a bird’s handbag was funny.

  ‘Five points. What do you think?’ Harry liked the idea.

  ‘What about ten points?’ Carter was laughing, they were all laughing.

  ‘Ten points for shitting in a bird’s handbag then. We all agreed on that?’

  Everyone nodded, even Will. It was the impossible dream, a Sex Division special that went beyond the everyday, a recognition that there was only one winner when it came to sex, unless Mango made a determined effort and Carter lost the urge. Will was negative about the league anyway and Harry and Balti would never be that bothered, maybe pulling once or twice if they were lucky, but more concerned with drink, football, food; preferring a laugh and a good wank to feeding someone a line. The handbag bonus scheme eased things and made the league more light-hearted. That’s all it was supposed to be really. A bit of a laugh.

  COGS

  Harry was late. Well late. And that lazy cunt Balti hadn’t woken him. He sat up in bed and breathed out, watching the mist form and hover, then slowly disappear, pulling the pillows high behind his back, chasing the dream running out of reach, deep into his brain where it could hide in the undergrowth. The radio was talking about a fire on the tube, Clapham North evacuated and the London Fire Brigade in attendance, a train on the District Line stuck underground packed with commuters, passenger under the carriages at Whitechapel, leaves on the line outside Waterloo threatening derailment, a pile-up on the M25 with police cutting a woman and child from the wreckage; all the normal fun and games of a rundown infrastructure. He had fifteen minutes till he was due at work and wasn’t going to make it, but bollocks, there was nothing he could do now. Then Balti was sticking his head round the door saying he’d just got up, the fucking alarm hadn’t gone off, that they’d better shift. He started half an hour later than Harry so was alright, handing over a cup of tea and a plate with two pieces of toast floating in a puddle of melted margarine, then shut the door and returned to the kitchen.

  Harry sipped milky tea with two sugars, still tracking the dream, his head clear despite the drink of the previous evening. They’d left the pub at closing-time, though Will had pissed off about ten, wanker, and the rest of them had got soaked on the way home. Typical Will picking the right moment and avoiding the storm. He looked round the room, curtains half drawn and his clothes in a tangled pile by the chest of drawers. He needed to go to the launderette. Then he was concentrating, like he could make something click towards the back of the skull, a switch setting electricity loose, current popping and the scene sticking, colour melting inside felt-tip outlines.

  He was with Balti, a tropical paradise by the look of things, both of them in bright yellow shorts. He pushed harder retracing their steps, a long winding trail through pure white sand, a bit younger, four or five years, and they must’ve been in the Philippines or Indonesia, somewhere in South-East Asia, because there were skinny brown kids playing in the sand looking for crabs, changing to skinny white kids building castles, then brown kids again wading into a clear blue ocean with small nets held high above their heads, up to their waists in a gently lapping sea, white kids dodging sewage and used condoms, brown kids watching for fish, wary of sharks. He saw a fin approaching, the pit of his stomach drawing back as he pictured the monster lurking, teeth razor sharp for amputation, victims drowned and mutilated, pure blue water turned to congealed artery red, a dolphin leaping then belly-flopping with a smile splitting its cartoon tab-of-acid face.

  He bit into the toast and pulled the bed clothes higher. Harry liked dolphins. Everyone liked dolphins. Except the American military who’d trained the poor cunts to carry explosives on kamikaze missions. Tuna fishermen didn’t give a fuck about dolphins either. Then there were the amusement parks that kept the bastards confined and taught them to perform for their supper. Life was shit if you were a dolphin in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’d been two in the Thames a while back, but there was so much shit in the water they’d got sick and their skin peeled with the pollution. He couldn’t remember whether they’d escaped, the faint voice of the radio missing the end of the story. Take a wrong turn like that and you ended up boiling alive in industrial waste. But it was freezing on the mainland painting a house in Wandsworth. They had to let the gas people in first so wouldn’t be starting till a bit later than normal, which gave him an excuse. Fuck’s sake. He’d almost spilt the tea.

  Pushing his head again, Harry was back with that line of footprints across a near-deserted beach, an exotic hideaway, sitting with his best mate, like brothers, both of them tanned and fit, bare-chested, served a nice plate of rice and a yellow pineapple dish with grated coconut, thick banana shakes in tall glasses, sliced papaya and watermelon on a separate plate. There was a brilliant green snake winding its way down a palm tree and the two men watched it as they ate, trying to decide whether it was poisonous. The old lady serving said no, that it was just a tree snake, teeth long gone and the gums bruised dark black red. There were tiny transparent geckos on the ceiling watching the dream unfold and when he looked across the sand the kids were coming back to shore with their catch, lifeless silver strips of protein. He felt happy. Real contentment. The fishermen were children, but at the same time adults. They were old when they were young, yet would hold on to a brand of innocence till the moment they died. He couldn’t remember much more. The rest of the dream was fading, just out of reach, a mystery washed away by last night’s drink. He was late but didn’t care now. Harry’s dreams usually decided his mood for the day. He dreamt a lot. He was in a good mood and knew nothing could touch him for the rest of the day.

  He heaved himself out of bed and stood naked in the middle of the room eating toast, nicely done with burnt edges. Balti would make someone a perfect wife. He imagined the fat cunt in a bride’s dress with a veil over his head, some old slapper from Blues carrying the train, walking up to the preacher and taking the cunt’s crucifix then driving it into his head, blood on the insignia, army uniform under the holy man’s skirt. Harry laughed and wondered if it was part of the dream coming up. He walked over to the window and looked round the curtain, careful not to show himself off to the outside world. He didn’t want to get done flashing before he’d even got out of the house. It would be just his luck getting dragged out in handcuffs. Straight down the nick for some instant justice.

  The street was damp but it wasn’t raining, a gentle wind rattling the frame which was rotten and needed replacing. He put his dressing gown on and went to brush his teeth, have a wash, making a note to get the dressing gown cleaned. It didn’t smell too healthy. There was no time for a shave and Balti was in the kitchen telling him to get a move on, fuck off you cunt, you should’ve woke me up earlier, then he was back in his bedroom considering a wank before the first
day’s work of the new year, a quick meeting with the five-fingered widow. He reached under his bed for a magazine and pulled out a plum. Red Hot Asian Babes On Heat. He flicked through and selected Tash and Tina, who were busy servicing The Sultan Of Singh. The lager was still in Harry’s system and slowed him down at first, but with a bit of concentration he was soon erect and beating out a familiar rhythm. Practice had made perfect and in under a minute he was unloading the white man’s burden. He mopped up and found a clean pair of pants and a T-shirt that wasn’t too bad, added his torn sweat shirt and jeans, and sat down to put on thick socks and boots. Balti was shouting he was off on his own if Harry didn’t get a move on, get your finger out you fat bastard, stop banging the bishop. Just like a nagging wife.

  Will worked his way through the albums, stopping at Yes. The sleeves were bent and worn, and the corners looked as though they had been gnawed by rats. He’d never listened to Yes, though he’d always been quick enough to slag them off. Longhaired hippy music. It was funny how it worked. He’d never been into Deep Purple or Status Quo as a kid, but had listened to Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti enough times. His first single had been by Elvis Presley, according to his old man, and later he’d found out Elvis was one of punk’s many enemies. The same went for the Beatles and Stones. It was mental the way you had to act according to the rules, even as a kid. It was still there and he wanted to buy one of the Yes albums to prove a point, but if he did it to prove a point then he was still being told what to do in a roundabout sort of way. He could afford the record because it was secondhand, dusty vinyl, and he could buy it because he was older with money in his pocket. He’d pay a couple of quid, have a listen, confirm his opinion, then chuck the album out so it wouldn’t pollute the rest of his LPs. But then he would have to do the same with every other battered piece of vinyl in the racks. He left well alone.