Headhunters

by John King

  Balti dunked a biscuit and looked back at the house. It was amazing the money some people had. It must’ve cost four-hundred grand minimum and hadn’t been in bad nick to start with. Even so, the family wanted the whole place redecorated and were having an extension added to the back. The builders had finished most of the work and now it was West London’s job to give the house a going over. Turn it into a palace. Balti would have thought that a six-bedroom house was big enough for a couple with two children, but figured they must be used to bigger and better things. They could use the extension as a greenhouse. There was enough glass and it faced south. Grow some of the old herb. Something like that. But Balti wasn’t complaining. No chance. He was glad of the work. If the owners didn’t want the place done up they’d all be signing on. It was an eye-opener, that’s all. The house prices in Barnes were right up with the best of them, though he didn’t know if he’d fancy living there. Too far from home and there didn’t seem much in the way of decent pubs and curry houses. He wouldn’t mind the garden though.

  The house was detached with a garage to the side and there was a taller wall at the bottom of the garden with a thick layer of ivy eating into the bricks. It was high enough to shut out the house behind, though you’d need binoculars to see in, it was so far away. A retired colonel scanning the windows for action. The lawn nearest the house was feeling the strain of the extension work. Sand, bricks and concrete slabs had destroyed the grass, a cement mixer standing idle, its work done. It was hard work building and he was glad to be out of it. Painting and decorating was better. You really felt like you achieved something. You were putting the finishing touches to the final picture. Get stuck in listening to the radio and watch the room come back to life. Balti was well into his new job and the money was alright as well. Things were looking up.

  He’d lasted two days selling insurance before one of the blokes at Harry’s firm left and he was straight in the door. He didn’t have to think twice. Talking shit was no way to make a living. He’d hated the insurance game from the beginning, talking out of his arse trying to con people who weren’t much better off than himself. The interview had been a doddle because most of his earnings were based on commission and the firm wasn’t taking a risk. The rest of the blokes were wide boys who didn’t give a toss about anyone, while the few women there tried to out-male the males. Not that Balti was a social worker, but he still felt like a cunt trying to worm his way into someone’s wallet, a working man or woman struggling to make ends meet worried enough by the crumbling welfare state to want to buy some kind of private protection. They were trying to think ahead and he was expected to prey on their fears, the same fears he’d had signing on.

  Like there was nothing to look forward to, just the skip in the street stacked with broken concrete and rotting rubbish, because everyone knew the country was being stripped bare. It was like Karen said, the more the rich got the more they wanted. They ground you into the gutter and then pissed on you as you laid there drunk on supermarket lager. It was dog-eat-dog philosophy and it set people fighting each other. Kicking and punching, trying to get something for themselves so they could switch off and pretend there was nothing wrong. Balti wanted an easy life. He was like everyone else. Cash in his pocket and a job. He wanted to be left alone. Didn’t want to think about the unfairness of it all. Karen was a diamond though. She knew what it was all about, but the way he saw it things were never going to change. It was human nature to be selfish, but with time on your hands it made you feel worse knowing the truth. He didn’t want to be a victim that everyone felt sorry for. He wanted respect. A job gave you that. Without money you were fuck all. You couldn’t do anything and you walked with your head down. You felt different. Birds weren’t interested if you were hard up. It didn’t fit in with the power trip. If you acted hard then it filled in some of the gap. That was the pecking order for you.

  ‘Remember that time in Magaluf?’ Harry asked. ‘We walk in the room and Carter’s doing the business with those two birds taking turns sucking his knob.’

  ‘Should have got in there as well,’ Paul said. ‘Me and this mate of mine did a two-ender with some bird over in Hornchurch. I unloaded down her throat and he gave her one from behind. Right filthy old slapper she was. Fucking slag.’

  ‘These birds in Magaluf were alright,’ Harry said. ‘I’m not into that kind of thing myself. I mean, you don’t want to see your mate on the job do you.’

  ‘Suppose not,’ said the Happy Hammer. ‘But it was dark and this bird fucking loved it, the dirty cow. Back of a fucking transit van as well.’

  Balti remembered the holiday snapshot. Opening the door and finding the sex machine on the job. One of the girls turned and gave them the once over, then told them it was a private party and they weren’t invited. Obviously didn’t think they were up to scratch. They’d gone down the bar. Five in the morning and they were knackered, forced to sit around with the whizz kids waiting for that greedy cunt upstairs to finish. They hung around patiently sipping their bottles of piss water moaning about Carter lying back with a blonde between his legs and a redhead sitting on his face. Pure heaven. That was Magaluf for you.

  ‘It’s a bit out of order, isn’t it?’ Balti said. ‘I mean, the girl looks after you both and then you slag her off. Like if they do the business right off then they’re tarts, and if they keep their legs closed they’re fucking lesbians. Least she was game for a laugh.’

  He was mimicking Karen on double standards, trying to get a rise out of Paul for lumbering him with the West Ham mug. Balti told him it was a divide-and-rule plan pushed by the government and promoted through the media. Something to keep the people in line. Keep them fighting among themselves so they wouldn’t get organised and have a pop at the scum in charge. They had fuck all in common with some bloke who drove a Roller and lived in Hampstead, or some bistro trendy in Kensington. It was right what Karen said. She made you think about things like that, but it was hard working it all out. It wound you up something chronic when you realised you were being shafted the whole time. It was the same with blacks and that. Another way to break you down and keep you fighting each other.

  It was funny, because even though the months signing on had been hard and driven him round the bend, he’d slowed down and not been so knackered all the time. Sitting on the common wasn’t how he wanted to spend his life, but it made him think about things. True, it only made him more hacked off, but it was good to know he could reason things a bit. Usually he was just working and going home to sit in front of the telly, or going out and getting pissed, but without the hard graft his mind was all over the shop. He didn’t like thinking too much. That’s what did you in. There was no way out that he could see, whatever Karen said. Life was a struggle. You were born, grew up, fought for everything, and then you lived on a shitty pension and became a burden on the economy. Then you died. That was it for people like him. Pure and simple. He wasn’t complaining. The facts of life.

  ‘Suppose it’s a bit unfair, but so what?’ said Paul. ‘It’s just a laugh. You wouldn’t want to end up with that transit van bird though. Walking down the aisle knowing she was into threesomes. No bloke would. I mean, your trendies and that, they say they wouldn’t care, that they’d fall in love with gangbangers, but they don’t. They say it doesn’t matter what colour you are, or where you work, but you don’t see the knobs marrying black girls from Woolies do you? They still stick with their own kind.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be that bothered,’ Balti said. ‘Doesn’t worry me at all. Means she’s a goer and that’s only going to be good for me, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’d mind,’ Harry said. ‘Even though you say you wouldn’t, you would. It’s only natural. I’m not saying it’s right, but that’s the way we are. Birds are the same.’

  Being out of work might have got Balti’s brain going, but it had also started him thinking about sex more than normal. Specially in the summer when anything between twenty and fifty started to look good, in their short
skirts and tight tops. All the gear coming out of the wardrobe. Fucking heaven, and if you weren’t wearing yourself out you had time to start thinking about how you weren’t getting the business. He’d spent a good few afternoons in front of the telly plugging into the old porn videos. Watching the Germans and Dutch doing their O and A levels. Jeans round his ankles with a hard-on as Wanda with the thirty-eight-inch bust took everything her three admirers could shove into her. She was getting every hole filled and when the grunting and groaning reached its climax the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the blokes withdrawing and shooting over her face, belly, arse—and there Balti was sitting with spunk over his T-shirt and the video rolling on to another scene in another house with another blonde bird getting another length off another headless junky with a sagging knob. He always felt let down after he’d come and wondered how he got so worked up, turning the video off and going to wash away the mess. He still went back for more, though, because London was hot and steaming and he wasn’t getting the real thing.

  That’s how it went, unless you were Carter who didn’t need magazines and films. Running through the contact mags he’d got his bottle together and written off to three women whose masked photos showed them in all the regulation gear. Flicking through pages of glossy pictures and lines of ads he knew they weren’t going to be stunners, but so what. Balti didn’t care. They must be desperate to advertise. Either that or nymphos. Nutters even, but he wouldn’t know till he tried. The phone-lines cracked him up, beautiful models with big tits plastered with slogans—BORED HOUSEWIVES TALK DIRTY … CLIMB ABOARD AND I’LL BRING YOU OFF … SHOOT ALL OVER MY HOT TITS—with the tiny type giving the phone rates. He wasn’t a mug. And some of the videos they sold. Fair enough, everyone liked watching a bit of oral and anal and double pleasure, but it was stretching things selling videos of freaks and all that dominatrix stuff. Mango had some of those videos, but Balti wasn’t interested in spanking birds or sitting in a fucking cage. That was comedy stuff. Balti didn’t mind a bit of rubber, but birds with whips was a right turn-off. He’d leave that to the Tory MPs. It made you wonder when they sold freak videos of twenty-five stone women shagging blokes half their weight. The pictures made him feel sick, the rippling flesh and collapsed bodies. That really was taking the piss. Then there’d been the midget getting it off a couple of nice-looking birds who should’ve known better. Fucking horrible. You had to have standards.

  Then last week this bird from Archway phones. Suzie says she’s got his letter in her hand and that she loves the content and the handwriting. A couple of words spelt wrong and it looks like it’s been written by an artist, all spikes and tatty edges. At first Balti thought she was taking the piss, and he didn’t remember spelling anything wrong, but she said she meant it in the nicest way because she’d been dyslexic at school and had a bad time of things till she finally got some proper help. Most of the time it had been teachers telling her she was stupid and wasting their time. They started talking and it seemed easy enough so they lined it up and tonight was the night. She sounded alright and he’d been up front saying he was no oil-painting, but she wasn’t bothered because as far as she was concerned it was the imagination that counted and she liked solid men. Hated skinny runts with their ribs sticking through hollow skin, pale hairless bodies and a serious lack of blood flow. As long as he remembered that a woman had a clitoris then they’d get on fine. It was a right turn-on that and her voice went husky asking him how he wanted her to dress. For a couple of seconds he’d been tongue-tied knowing this was a test of imagination and that Suzie liked men with imagination. He had to come up with something fast so went for a red basque and high heels. It wasn’t very original and he held his breath because he thought he must’ve fucked it up, but it seemed to do the trick.

  Best of all Suzie could accommodate. That was important. He didn’t want Harry on the scene. He’d take the tube up after work. It was all a bit sad, but exciting as well. She could be okay or a fucking headcase. Either way he was in for an interesting night. North London on tour.

  ‘Look at this sick cunt,’ Paul said, flicking through the paper. ‘They should take the bastard out and hang him. Every other day there’s a fucking nonce in the paper.’

  There was the blown-up face of a child-killer, his brow heavy and face unshaven. He looked like a nonce. Maybe it was the way the picture had been taken looking up. The headline condemned the monster who had dragged off a six-year-old girl during a hot summer’s night, sodomised her and then set fire to the body. The report said that the police believed the maniac had planned the attack, stashing a can of petrol in a blackberry bush. Hard eyes stared straight ahead. The previous day Babs had smiled and pouted and pushed her full breasts forward, nipples ice-cubed erect. Babs liked watersports in the Caribbean (especially jet skiing) as well as quiet Italian meals for two and dancing the night away in Stringfellows. She had a big future ahead of her. The paper had been in no doubt of that. But today the message had changed. The fun was on hold with outrage filling the gap. Paul finished the report and turned to the editorial with its subhead SCUM.

  ‘What’s the point letting people like that waste our money in the nick?’ Paul asked when he’d finished the editorial. ‘Nonces should be strung up. Them and terrorists who put bombs in shopping centres and murder innocent women and children.’

  Balti nodded. There was no point arguing. He didn’t believe in the death penalty simply because he knew what the old bill were like. They’d fit you up for stupid little things, so what would they do when they were faced with a crime that had to be solved fast because the media was breathing down their necks demanding instant retribution?’

  He finished his tea and took three more biscuits to keep him going. He wanted to get back to work. It was too hot and he needed some shade. It was cool indoors and he didn’t mind getting back into the painting. There was a steady motion working the roller and his brain got into the rhythm. He ran his hand along the polished banister leading upstairs. Right the way up and no chance of a splinter. Into the room he was painting with the radio playing Oasis quietly in the background.

  The rest of the afternoon passed quickly and they were soon knocking off. Balti stayed behind and ran a bath. He had a bag with him and clean clothes. He stripped off and got in, spread out. Bubble bath hit the rim of the tub. Fucking lovely. It was amazing what a bit of luxury could do. He dried off and put on a clean pair of jeans and a new-breed Ben Sherman. He let himself out the back and walked to the BR station. It didn’t feel like London in Barnes. He could’ve been at the seaside or in some market town. He felt relaxed. He didn’t have to wait long for a train and he was on-board cruising through South-West London and up to Clapham Junction, past Asda, New Covent Garden and Sainsbury’s. The sun lit up the MI6 building opposite Vauxhall BR, with its flash design and glass panelling. The carriage was nearly empty, a kid with some kind of drum n bass playing in his earphones and an upright elderly woman reading a gardening book. Everyone was going in the opposite direction. The train pulled into Waterloo, the international terminal to his left.

  He pushed through the crowds watching the departure board and went underground, buying his ticket and checking the adverts lining the escalator, West End tourist shows and dodgy soul albums. Fucking typical—the board on the northbound Northern Line platform said the next train was in seven minutes and the cunt was going the wrong way. The one after went through Archway, but it was twelve minutes. He’d go up to Camden and change. The platform started to fill up and he wasted the time watching mice play under the lines. The Northern Line had to be the worst line in London. Nothing but hassle. The waiting made him think about where he was going, the woman at the end of the trip. He had to phone Suzie when he got to Archway as she wasn’t that keen on giving out her address. Fair dues. A girl couldn’t be too careful. For all she knew he might be some serial killer. When the tube finally arrived he was pressed against the door between the carriages, where at least there was air rushing in when the t
rain was moving.

  Balti didn’t like being packed in tight. He’d heard the horror stories of the tube going down because the wiring was so out of date. Thousands stuck underground and he didn’t fancy it in a packed carriage. He didn’t fancy being pressed up against the office girls in front of him either. Felt like a right perv trying to think of something apart from Suzie. He tried counting sheep but he wasn’t a farm hand like Pete Wilson. Mango hadn’t brought his brother out yet and wanted to go up to Norfolk to stay on the farm. He’d miss the luxury of his flat and wouldn’t like getting the Jag covered in cow shit. But he was pleased for the bloke. Mango got on his wick at times, but he’d been through a lot and now maybe he’d ease up.

  Balti relaxed when a good chunk of the passengers got off at Leicester Square. Camden came up soon enough and a short wait later he was passing through Kentish Town and Tufnell Park, walking up the out-of-order escalator at Archway past the puffing old-timers. When he reached the top he was out of breath himself. Torrential rain pounded the concrete outside. He was sweating from the train, straight out of the sauna so he shouldn’t have bothered about the bath. He hoped he didn’t smell too bad. He found a phone and made the call.

  ‘Hello.’ A man’s voice.

  Balti hesitated. Must be the wrong number.

  ‘Is Suzie there?’

  ‘Hold on.’

  He didn’t expect this. She said she could accommodate.

  ‘Hello.’ A woman’s voice.

  ‘Suzie?’

  ‘You made it. You’re a bit late. I’ll come down and get you. We can go for a drink.’

  Balti walked outside and waited by the railings. The rain had stopped. Short and to the point, steam rising from the pavement. A man answering the phone, meeting at tube stations, off down the pub. It wasn’t what he expected. Wasn’t like the films. He had the script in his head. The easy run up to Archway, round to a nice little flat where the sex goddess opened the door in some silky gear, ushered into a nicely laid-out living room. Sitting on the designer couch. The pouring of drinks. A couple of sips. Suzie downing hers in one. Rushing towards him. Off her head with lust. Sex mad. Balti carried out on a stretcher, with an intravenous drip in his arm and a big smile on his face. Something like that anyway.