Headhunters

by John King

  He always wondered what she’d bought. He asked but she said it was Christmas and a surprise, that he was still a big kid at heart wanting to know what his brother was getting ahead of time. It would spoil the surprise if she told him. Jimmy would have to wait and see like everyone else. Did she still buy for a teenager? Did she think her eldest son was the same as the last time she’d seen him, still wearing the same clothes, the army surplus trousers and Harrington, pale face and spiked black hair, suspended in time? Mango did. Off to Greenford to see about a job and there was Mango sitting on the swing waiting for his brother to come back, stood up and let down, twisting the chain round and round, spinning back to earth feeling like he was nothing. He tried not to visualise the scene. He always saw himself in that playground like the spirit he didn’t believe in was high above in a spaceship, looking down on the wickedness of human error. It was his own kind of death experience. He’d read about death trips. Sometimes he wished the old bill would come round, say they’d found a teenager’s skeleton and DNA fingerprinted Pete, that it was his brother and no doubts remained. Murdered by a pervert and buried in a shallow grave. Found by an unemployed man out walking his dog. At least they’d know for sure. It was the suppressed hope that did them all in. It never seemed to get any easier, however many years passed.

  After the regulation break Mango returned to the screen, eyes out of focus now confronted by regimented lines of white figures, digits marching in time and suddenly melting into a tangle of jagged edges. He tried to click into gear but couldn’t get going. He was due in at eight the following morning, so surrendered to the inevitable and switched off his computer. He went for his coat and stopped at the drinks machine. He was groggy and tired. His thoughts were losing their clarity, the concentration essential for his success at work fading as his brother made himself part of the present. The ghost was back, ready to cause havoc. Mango chose coffee for a kick-start. It was bitter and tasted of chemicals, but would have the desired effect. He took the lift down to the ground floor and waved to the security guard, a big bastard with a starched collar and glass eye, the result of a pub fight in Bermondsey in his youth. One of the old Millwall boys. Mango passed through the heavy glass doors and into deserted City streets. The buildings towering above James Wilson were sand clean and well-maintained, architecture a fine balance of the old and new. He felt it worked well. A winning fusion of tradition and the modern element to take London deep into the new age. There was no point looking back, although the past was inescapable and had to be accommodated, so a compromise had been reached. The best elements were promoted, while those that had been ignored or pushed outside the area remained to blur the wider vision.

  Mango loved the streets of the City when they were empty. He imagined the rest of the human race sucked into a vacuum, abducted by aliens, zapped by an intergalactic ethnic cleansing team. He would sit with the controllers and oversee the extermination campaign. Logic would prevail and he would be president for eternity. All around him there were buildings honed from quality masonry and shining glass, not the cheap stuff they used to house the masses. It was down to quality. If the buildings and environment were solid, then it followed that standards would be maintained. Put someone in a slum and they adapted in order to survive. He hated poverty and insecurity. It made him angry. He wanted the best on offer and fully accepted the survival-of-the-fittest dogma that had revolutionised British life. It was common sense.

  The pubs were shut and most of the offices deserted. He walked down perfectly cut streets, very little rubbish to be seen, surveillance cameras on every corner protecting his interests. Mango felt safe. He went to the underground car park, paid his toll and slipped into the Jag. The smell of its interior filled him with a magnificent sense of satisfaction. He leant his head against the rest and inhaled deeply. His eyes ached and he had a pain above his nose, but the Jag was the ultimate relaxant. He closed his eyes and thought of the yucca tree. Perhaps he should buy one for the flat.

  Mango drove an XJ6 3.2 Sport. It was a beautiful piece of technology. The machine oozed class and represented British car design at its finest. It had set him back a little over thirty grand, but was well worth the money. It wasn’t a long trip from WorldView to King’s Cross and he was travelling in style. Cleanliness and sharp design would soon be replaced by uncollected litter and inner-city confusion. Mango cut through Smithfield, past the church where Queen Elizabeth I had watched the execution of Catholics, past the market’s meat racks and freezer lorries with their rows of dead pigs, ancient fields now a concrete landing pad for refrigerated truckers waiting to unload their cargoes. Mango’s curiosity showed hundreds of pigs on steel hooks, deep black channels carved down the front of their bodies, from throats to missing genitals, straight through to the bone so that the insides could be hacked away, wall-to-wall, clogged together satisfying a pork-hungry public. Computers had given way to headless bodies, hard white digits to drained black blood. He put his foot down disgusted and the Jag soared through Farringdon and Clerkenwell to King’s Cross. He became absorbed in the engine. The atmosphere was warm and comforting. Cold butcher’s steel a mindless fantasy.

  King’s Cross was near to deadlock, traffic moving slowly in front of the station, paper flapping and neons flashing, cheeseburger take-a-ways and sex shop invitation. It was cold and dirty, the inside of the Jag the height of automotive luxury. He preferred the sound of the engine to the radio, working himself further inside the machine, feeling the power and rational precision of the XJ6 surge through the accelerator and into his body. He was part of the mechanism, naught to sixty in 7.9 seconds, cool and calculated, a top-of-the-range model beyond the tug of failure. Mango sat in traffic watching the crowds; half-drunk office workers and inter-city travellers weaving in and out of the festering scum. He stereotyped drunks, junkies, whores, drug dealers, spivs, pickpockets, pimps, muggers, rapists, hypermanics, schizophrenics, wankers. Every kind of mental disease was there in King’s Cross drowning in drink and powder and lingering bouts of psychosis, too much for the clean-up campaign. He looked at thin girls and body-built men with gold watches and expensive designer gear. He thought about the girls on the game; addicts, abused kids, poor mothers. He considered the scum milking them, minor-league entrepreneurs dealing crack and selling women as a fast-shifting commodity, chopping their heads off and hanging them on skewers for roving punters. Mouths frozen and sucking devices installed. Blonde heads with bullet holes, American imports, back of the skull efforts where a man could insert his penis and fuck the pig’s brains out.

  Once away from the main flow Mango knew his way. He saw pros along the side street, tarted up for a cheap porno mag centrespread, caricatures leaning into cars matching the advertising billboards lining London; black and white, old and young, fat and thin, ugly and one or two beauties. Some carried handbags for their accessories, others just had the clothes they wore, making do with spit where others splashed out on lubricant. A woman got out of a car and slammed the door, kicking the wing as it pulled away fast leaving behind a heavy smell of burnt rubber, screaming words Mango couldn’t hear. He looked for the kid from Halifax he’d had up by the mosque in Regent’s Park, more out of curiosity than any desire for a repeat performance. There were some sorry people about, so desperate they’d do anything for a pittance, spaced out on crack, smack, fuck knows what, amyl nitrate to help them with the big payers demanding a tight fit. His eyes glazed imagining the workings of the human body. He saw blood pumped through veins powering the heart, speeding corpuscles and heaving muscles, valves straining stress, popper acceleration, his own engine expensively tuned and ready to explode down the motorway at a top speed of 138 miles per hour. But these women were the wrecks, covered in rust, scabs, burnt oil. He saw the stockings and suspenders, black white red, the thin fabric and low-cut bras, high heels and thigh-length Nazi jackboots.

  A black woman approached, thick red lipstick and hot pants wedged into the crease of her cunt. He looked at the crutch and im
agined her shaved clean like the pigs in the refrigerated lorries, heads cut off for Queen Elizabeth I, chainsaw mutilation in the centre of town, Jack The Ripper in the East End slaughtering immigrant workers, Irish whores, operating and hanging their insides over the walls of Whitechapel. The woman was tapping on the glass moving her hand in front of her mouth, offering to suck him off, mouthing the words cheap-very-cheap as she faced up to economic reality, fluttering false eyelashes, star of a pop music video that would conveniently avoid the cold of a leaking one-bedroom flat in Hoxton. The skin was tight against bone but the thighs were too powerful, make-up overdone and smudged, rough as fuck. Mango pulled forward leaving her behind, past three younger blondes; arms, legs, heads nailed together, mouths jabbering, powerpacks inserted. Plastic dolls on a street corner. Inflatable sex. Full of sickness battered by economy and gender. AIDS blended with herpes, syphilis, hepatitis, depression, suicide, a couple of coughing under-five black bastards waiting in Hoxton. He felt confused and thought about doing a U-turn, but kept going.

  Mango moved further along the street, cars slowing down so drivers could choose from the menu. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw Hot Pants get into a dented Granada. Then he spotted the one he wanted, a young girl up ahead, just what he was looking for, purity itself. She was in a doorway wearing a mini skirt, talking to a couple of bent-looking boys. He thought of Pete. Rent boy on the game. It was wrong, all wrong, that kids like Pete had to leave home and end up down at the bottom of the pile, pissed on by the world, a dumping ground for queers and sadists, the kind of people who deserved the death penalty. The Jag came to a halt and the girl approached. Mango pressed a button and the window noiselessly lowered, cool night air entering the cocoon. She was perfect. The hair was cropped short and dyed black, and she had a nice pair of lungs for a kid, not particularly big but jutting forward with sharp nipples he could see through the green cotton top she wore beneath an open PVC jacket. Mango imagined a red button in his mouth, digging his teeth in deep and tugging hard, pulling the nipple off and cracking it open with his incisors. The legs were thin but the skirt showed them off just right. The girl leant in and touched his ear sending a shiver of excitement through his body. Her perfume was strong, the smell of roses, resembling a sophisticated brand of artificial beauty. Mango knew that it was cheap shit. He smiled a paternalistic smile as he handed over his money and the girl walked round to the passenger’s side. He pushed the relevant button to unlock the door.

  Sitting next to him the girl was small and innocent, legs crooked and half open, a kid who was probably about thirteen. He glanced at the texture of her skin. The legs were pale white and covered in goosepimples. He increased the heat a little, attempting to thaw her out. She’d catch a cold standing around on street corners like that. He remembered his mum telling his sisters to dress warm when they went out. She’d said the same to him and his brother, but more often to the girls. When you were young you dressed to impress rather than look after your health. It was only when a kid got older they saw beyond all that. But the girl sitting next to him, flicking through his CDs, she was beyond that now. He wanted to give her advice. If he was sensible he’d give her the benefit of his years. He should tell her to sort herself out. Go back to school. Get some kind of an education. There were other ways of earning a living. Stacking shelves, cleaning offices, and factory work could pay alright if she got in to the right firm. Maybe she could do something with her life, like he had, get ahead, make decent money. She could become an estate agent. You didn’t need a brain for that. Just flog houses to idiots who couldn’t afford the repayments, take the commission, then turn your back when it came time for the eviction. Maybe Pete went that way, but no, he’d have done better, Mango was sure of that. There was more to his brother than shuffling deeds. Pete was international. Diamonds, technology, something major. Good old Pete. He should tell the girl about the success of his brother, the short black hair and everything, pale white skin, causes and effect, but he was a man of action and would rather drive up to Regent’s Park.

  The smell the girl brought into the car was irritating, breaking the Jag’s magical aura, yet her presence was exciting, like Halifax, bringing fresh life and the promise of pubescent sex. He drove slowly along the corridor, watching for Halifax, saw comings and goings and the exchange of currency, market forces hard at work. Once on the Euston Road he returned to the girl next to him, buckled down behind the seat belt looking out the window saying little. He found this annoying. The silence put him on edge. Fucking slag. Treating him like one more sleazy punter looking to abuse underage girls. He should teach her a lesson. Put his foot down and steam out of London, 138 miles per hour, naught to sixty in 7.9 seconds, multi-point fuel injection, power-assisted steering, over thirty grand’s worth of automobile. Somewhere they didn’t interrupt a man going about his legitimate business. He was solid. Doing well. He drove a Jaguar XJ6 3.2 Sport and owned a two-bedroom flat in Fulham. He snorted coke on his own late at night watching videos of German au pairs flat on their backs as queues of Italian queers ejaculated over their grateful faces, while his mates made do with more lager, blow, kebabs. The gym in which he trained was exclusive. The mirrors were floor-to-ceiling and the clientele Eton-educated or London-done-good. Mango was going places. Foot down naught-to-sixty in 7.9 seconds, six in-line cylinders, piling through North London past Hampstead, Barnet, out into Hertfordshire or cutting along the M25 to Essex.

  They’d find a nice little beauty spot surrounded by black fields under a locked sky. An abandoned lover’s lane. Mango was erect. Space Shuttle job. Grabbing the slut round the neck he’d drag her forward, taking the cut-throat razor from his pocket and holding her down, the blade he kept honed tight on the jugular, maybe a nick or two to see the disease in her blood. He would demand an apology for her treating him like shit, like he didn’t matter, like the Jag was just another car. She’d left him spinning in circles, dizzy and confused, just a kid, sitting on those swings like a right idiot for everyone to laugh at, trapped, surrounded by losers, going nowhere, round and round and round till his mouth filled with sick and he started to cry.

  He’d remember the Jag’s seats and take her out into the darkness. Do them both a bit of good, breathing fresh country air, the hum of the nearby dual carriageway keeping him sane. Subhuman vermin. Drag her to a ditch scaring away the rats and foxes lurking in hedgerows. Night prowlers. The sound of survival flapping in mud. He’d pull her beneath an old oak tree and wait for the moon to burst through a crack in the clouds. He’d see the face for what it really was. He’d force her to look him in the eye. The cropped hair and black dye. The look he knew so well. Selling herself like that, beyond sex now, a boy and a girl, bisexual psychology shifting from a kid growing up playing football to a youth roaming London alone, unloved, killed by a monster and buried in the same spot, under the old oak tree, the only possible reason for a teenager’s disappearance. Somewhere there was a bit of English countryside that would remain forever English. One day they’d find the bones. Thousands of years into the future, fully-developed genetic technology readily available, a society so far advanced in its scientific understanding of the creation myth that nurses would be able to apply synthetic skin to the basic bone structure and rebuild the innocent victim. Mango saw Pete in a coming world of peace and love, where people stuck together and there was no need for competition. Right now it remained a masochist’s fantasy and belonged to the dole queue. Mango did the sensible thing, fitted into his world and survived. More than that, he prospered. Learnt lessons. He had the strength and the power. He had power over the kid next to him, turning her head now from the Euston Road to the punter behind the wheel.

  ‘Where we going?’ she asked.

  ‘Regent’s Park,’ shaking away the thoughts racing though his brain, imagination running wild, all that death and destruction bad news, something for the TV. ‘It’s quiet up there. We can be alone for a bit. No risk of the old bill or some headcase watching through the wind
ow.’

  The girl laughed and her hand moved to his groin. Mango felt tense and turned right. They stopped at a set of traffic lights on the edge of Somers Town. He felt awkward with her next to him when the Jag wasn’t moving. The girl leant over and undid his flies. The lights changed and they continued. He cut through back streets to the edge of the park, a quiet spot under a thick covering of trees. He remembered going to the nearby zoo with his family as a kid. Everyone but the old man. Mango must’ve been eight or nine at the time. It sounded grand when he was small, just the name London Zoo, like the animals there represented the city. They paid to enter another dimension. Watched animals move they’d only ever seen stationary. It was mental. Lions, tigers, bears, elephants, giraffes, crocodiles, snakes. There was a gorilla as well. He didn’t remember the name. The poor thing sat there in his own shit surrounded by cold steel, banged up for the duration, sectioned like a nonce, though nobody on the other side of the bars seemed to realise what it all meant.

  Pete smacked some kid making faces at the gorilla trying to wind him up, and the wanker had run off crying. The face of the gorilla was in front of him now. The dimmed eyes and broken frown, controlled and paraded for the crowds, unable to appreciate the innocent love of the children outside. The size and power of his body made it worse somehow. There was an unhappiness Mango understood but hadn’t been able to identify till years later, thrilled by the strength of the beast, the gentleness and pride. It was all a mess, the lot of it, and now he was all grown up sitting in a flash motor in among the wealth and prestige of Regent’s Park with a teenage tart from King’s Cross threatening to splash his seed all over the upholstery.