The Boxer's Dreams of Love

by philip boyle

  That morning, in the maudlin suburbs of the Glasgow estate, he had spied twitching lace curtains and the ancient spectacles of old women, watching, waiting, wearying, their spirits fuelled with resignation. Harding had left his patch for this fallen tract of land. He was accompanied by two constables from the local station, who looked down on him on two counts, firstly for bringing them to this forsaken place, and because he was from the city to the east.

  He doubted that this house had ever been a home. It smelled of pisspoor peasants and pedants alike who scorned the comforts that it might have offered. He wasn’t sure exactly why he was here. Everything had been taken, the photograph that Andy had mentioned was back in the Glasgow station. Harding had seen it before he ventured into hell. It was something at least to put a face to the name Stephen Zinny, not that it gave any real clue as to the man’s recent activities. The floorboards made ceaseless noise as he made his way through each vacant room, each more depressing than the last. He stood at the top of the stairs and saw the constables looking back up at him. Neither had spoken to him in the house. Their efforts to help had lasted all of two minutes and they spent the rest of the time by the front door, waiting. Now watching him.

  ‘Nothing here I suppose. Sorry for dragging you out here.’ Being nice to them made little difference to their demeanour. He took one last look at the narrow landing behind him, for no particular reason other than from habit. A glint, a sparkle of something on the floor by the farthest room. He picked up a silver earring that spoke of sincere imitation. He wanted it to mean more than it did. Why hadn’t someone else seen it, picked it up? It had probably been kicked unnoticed from room to room. Maybe even the rats had left it behind, so insignificant was it. He couldn’t help showing it to the other two and felt immediately stupid for doing so. He could imagine the jokes back at the station after he’d gone. He slipped it into his jacket pocket and would never see it again.

  They invited him back to the station for lunch, well, for coffee at least. He declined and could practically smell the relief on their breaths. On the drive back to Edinburgh he decided to make a surprise call on Eddie only to be surprised himself that he had checked out. You stupid fucker, Harding thought. Where did he run this time? He had neither the means or the brains to go too far. And what was he running from exactly? No sense, no reason to any of it. Maybe Eddie was carrying some information he didn’t realise was important. Enough to kill for. Harding took the wrong exit on the roundabout coming out of Stirling. Back, back to the city where he would never belong. To the grey grime offices where every footfall echoed with a bass drum. To the end of the day where the light above his desk would flicker with its own disappointment. The case files got bigger, his headaches swelled and what should have been his place of rest, namely his home, had become a ticking bomb of tension, every word and gesture fraught with danger. He loved her, didn’t he? He couldn’t go through all that again. Couldn’t fail a second time.

  Traffic snarled, snaked like a razor coil around the naked skin. He could feel panic coming on him. Thought if he sat in this stream of cars for too much longer, his head would explode. The heat. The sweat trickled, then flowed like a torrent to the edge of his sanity. He turned into a hotel car park, no idea which one, it didn’t matter. He headed inside, doused his face with water in the corporate brass bathroom and then looked for the bar.

  Expensive food, sparkling water, a touch of brandy and the blessed relief of a short walk in the hotel gardens saved Harding from himself. He could cope, he could see things a little more clearly. He had a plan of action for the rest of today, well not so much action but at least it was a plan of sorts. Then knock off at six without fail, home reasonably early. He would smile at her, surprise her, possibly bring her flowers. Bring her out for a meal, a few drinks, then home, to bed, not to sleep, but to dream. He couldn’t fail. Not for a second time. Idling at a traffic light, the last mile taking longer than the previous ten, looking up at battle skies, threatening to attack at any moment. Pedestrians idling across the road, weighed down by bags, by their own overwrought concerns, seeing nothing but their own two feet. People just hanging around, on corners, against shop windows, flicking lighters, tossing coins, swigging from cans, plastic coke bottles, heavy gold rings on thick fighting hands. Harding wished he didn’t see so much. He looked inside his own car, the sweet sticky smells from half eaten mint chocolate bars. And the ticking. He had noticed it earlier, on quieter roads. Here it was again as he waited for the eternal lights to change. The ticking of his heart. No, it was too slow for that. It was probably a sound the car had always made and it was only now that he was hearing it. The closer he got to the station the worse the crowds and the fumes and the noise. Finally, just around the corner. He found his spot and cut the engine and still he heard the ticking. Of his heart, of his life? He gathered up his papers from the passenger seat and got out of the car. Pressing the button to lock the car, the voice came clear and hard across the busy road.

  ‘Detective Harding.’ It took him a second to locate the man behind the voice. In the bakery doorway, he could swear he could smell the thousand luxuriant odours behind the window, a bull-headed unshaven man with twinkling eyes and the widest smile. A stranger with a familiar face. The man had his hands in the pockets of a raincoat that lived too large on this miscreant from the lower depths. He whispered Harding’s name this time and started to turn away.

  This time he heard the ticking of his heart, too fast now, his fingers on the keys, his eyes searching the metal skin of the car, looking for a scratch, a sign.

  Too late. Too late to scream, to warn, to wave his arms in desperate dire signals.

  The ticking stopped. Everything stopped for Alan Harding.

  Eddie suddenly started running. Towards it. As if the sirens were calling his name. And there in the carnage, through the haze of black smoke, the screams, the dislocation, Eddie was drawn, peering through the clouds of confusion. Then someone was pushing him back and he knew he should leave. There was nothing but death here. Another death.

  Almost a carbon copy, his life re-cycling, on repeat, destined to go over and over it again. This was Frankie all over again. This was the gun in the face, the phone call. This was the curse. This was the police station, his destination, and once more he was prevented from going in.

  Broken glass crunched under his feet. Oil-slicked shoes that slipped in the blood of the unknown. His feet went out from under him. He went under the scene, under the breath of chaos and tragedy. On the ground he could see things as they really were. The mist, the dust, the smoke cleared a little and he saw the distended, distorted body of a man he knew well. The eyes saw before the brain could comprehend. It was him, the detective, Harding, couldn’t be, no, couldn’t. Not just that he knew him, it was all of it, it was the continuation of the never-ending nightmare. He had come here today to end it, to wake up. Did Harding’s eyes blink for a moment? Alive? But, but that was impossible. Because—

  Why? Because the head was no longer attached to the body. All sound had been pumped out and Eddie could hear only the groans of his own body. He forced himself to his feet. All he wanted was to lie down. He wanted to hear again. Wanted to un-see what had passed in front of him. He tried to move, to stagger from the burning grounds, from the howls of fear screaming at him. He caught a glimpse of a tiny shining object on the ground. It was an earring which he stooped to pick up for no good reason. Closed his hand around it and stumbled away from the scene.

  CHAPTER 25

  Edie lost but alive They were not her own clothes. She could smell another’s body on them. Dead now, no doubt. Lifted the dress above her head and held it there for a second. She could smother herself, it wouldn’t take long. No, not here, no place to die. He would just leave her here with nothing more than a shrug.

  Awake. She was certain because she could see the damp stains on the ceiling above. There was a lonely fly hovering near the bulb. She could see, she could feel but she had no control over an
ything. They lifted her arm, they pulled back the sleeve of the stained cream dress and pressed against her skin. Finding, forming a vein. Blue and pulsing, followed by the pinching, pricking pain that lasted only a second and carried her off to another land, free, a flaxen world, heartbeat slow and unsteady, everything, everything. The man leaned close as always, his terrible words followed his stinking breath. Why would he say such things to her? Then they were gone, and she waited for it to calm down. Every sharp angle, every crusted corner of the misshapen room softened into dreams that she would never remember.

  At four in the morning, Edie’s eyes flashed open, a nightmare lost forcing her awake. She was standing, she was floating inches above a shiny varnished floor. On the edge of the floor a few feet away, bright naked lights dazzled. Her shoes were black diamonds, in vivid contrast to the ruby red dress that caressed her fragile body. She touched her face carefully, touched ruby lips that stained her fingers. And beyond the lights, past the edge of the world?

  Darkness. But could she hear the low murmur of something out there? The buzz of anticipation? The tension of the silent audience waiting for the voice, her voice. She cleared her throat as quietly as possible and stepped forward an inch or two. There was no microphone but something told her she didn’t need one. She looked behind and there was nothing but black there either. No band, but again she knew that she didn’t need it. Her spirit soared beyond anything she had ever known, the thrill of what was to come.

  Her mouth opening, the words would come, notes, melody, strung together in elegant harmony. And there—

  In front of her, a scratched, dismal mirror, uncleaned for eons, reflecting back something that couldn’t be. The holocaust face of a frightened woman, hungry, sallow, white pale, mouth open. No sound, no voice, no melody, no words, no voice, no.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  As she turned to find the source of the voice her body hurt, pain syphoning all hope.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, Edie? Waking the whole house in the middle of the night. Do you want us to tell him? Want him to come again?’

  She shook her head. ‘I was dreaming. Woke.’ No lights, no stage, the distant murmur was the late night cargo trains moving through. Through where? The featureless man by the door was pleading with her, keeping his distance as if she was contagious. Of indeterminate age, at least to her in her present state. But she knew one thing, the answer to his question. ‘No.’ She didn’t want him to come at all, not again, although the details of his last visit were vague to say the least. The tremors of those memories were enough.

  ‘Well, get back into bed then. Stay quiet.’ She could almost hear compassion in his voice but it was probably just fear on his part. The door closed, she was alone again. The middle of the night was creeping towards dawn. The dawn of which day, which date? She was only partially sure what year it was. Lay down, lay your thoughts down. Sleep without dreams, please God. For a few hours at least. And tomorrow? They would move her again, if not to a different house, then a different room, as dreary as this one no doubt. The last time she had seen the street conjured nothing but a road of red-bricked houses, attached like Siamese twins that never spoke to each other. She thought it was England at least, although there was no good reason for that. She thought she could smell the sea. Brighton, perhaps, back in the none too bright home where she had once plied her trade. She could sing only in her head, she could remember nights that were and some that could never have been, where there had been vast crowds and her voice had floated up with the angels.

  On the corner of the street some days earlier she could have sworn she saw Eddie. She had to say his name over and over. To conjure his face. All that came at first was the slumped drunken figure at the table in the Glasgow hotel. Hatred had flown in with those images. But they soon abated and the true picture of the love of her life came hauntingly back. The love of her life, a cliché beyond meaning, and only now, in these endless, nameless days did she realise that.

  Taken, kidnapped, how funny, absurd was that? Her. Nobody, except to herself and Eddie. But she had no value, there was nothing to ransom for her release. Eddie had nothing, unless he had kept it well hidden. She had stopped asking eventually. There was little point and no answers ever came back. But if no ransom, then what? Had she committed a sin so appalling that her mind had blocked it out? She must have. They didn’t ask her for anything. She had joined this travelling circus of men and sometimes women. They kept her hidden, in the background, out of sight, as if she had some terrible deformity. They fed and clothed and occasionally washed her, but most of all they kept her down, her body, her spirit, down by sticking frail needles in her train track arms.

  Down.

  She fell back on the bed. And freedom came to her in falling sleep.

  CHAPTER 26

  A surprise visit from Tommy Pearson Eddie dumped the earring in the first bin he could find on his nervous, jagged escape from the city. Before the streets could be shut down, before his face was famed on TV screens and newspaper front pages. This was no mental boast on Eddie’s part, no febrile imagination dreaming of importance beyond what he deserved. Whatever he had felt before, however innocent he protested himself to be, he couldn’t ignore the simple truth now.

  In the downed black back bar of the Craven Arms, Eddie cradled his drink like the last solace, he planned and schemed without a shred of hope. He waited for the sound of more explosions in the streets. He expected the doors to burst open, a riot of riot gear and heavy weaponry all pointed at his puny personage. ‘I’ll come quietly gov, it’s a fair cop,’ he heard himself say out loud. Amused looks from the irregular regulars who’d seen and heard it all. No, Eddie thought, it wouldn’t for a little while yet, a day, maybe two. First there was the awful duty of scraping up Mr. Harding from the road. Eddie liked him, had liked him.

  Of course there was the girl. There would always be the girl. He had never regretted anything more. Never. Whatever her character, however much misery she brought on herself. Eddie was certain it wasn’t the first time that she’d been hurt like that, abused, she had invariably hurt herself more often than not. Think of her kneeling in the rain, that boy in her mouth, drunken despair running with the water down her face, blissful ignorance wrapped like a neon blanket around her. That scar of hers in the harsh vivid morning light. None of that mattered, none was an excuse.

  Sarah Zinny. Zinny. That was the important piece.

  I punched her, that’s all. One blow, hardly fatal. He forced himself to remember that night. Was there something he had forgotten? He hadn’t been that drunk. He saw his closed fist, replayed it over and over, her face crashing down like a ragdoll’s. Maybe there was blood from the impact, from her mouth, but she didn’t die from that. And what about the boy? And her father wants revenge, wants to hurt him. So, he steals back the money that Frankie gives him. Has him followed, makes threatening phone calls, has a kid put a gun to his face. And taken Edie? Eddie could allow all that, accept it on some level. But Frankie, the kid? And now Harding? All that for him, for Eddie Brogan and that one mistake. That was insane, Zinny was insane. And if it wasn’t true, if all of this was coincidence, how absurd was that? It could and it couldn’t. A dead end in both directions and high walls on both sides.

  He had only ever wanted one thing, even when he was too young to be conscious of it. It was what everyone everywhere wanted. What everyone dreamed of.

  The boxer had only ever dreamed of love. So he would run, run and run. But forward not back, not away from the storm but into the eye of it.

  Flushed, filled with heightened hopes, Eddie ventured back along side roads to the scene of the crime. Yellow tape flickered easily in the tiny breeze yet it was more than enough to keep people back, to turn their stomachs, their heads. Little sign now of what had occurred only hours before. Men in white, armed sentries guarding death, cameras flashing on invisible pieces of evidence. Eddie touched the tape, half-expecting alarms to sound. In some novel, or movie, or a
thousand cop shows, he had seen, heard or read that the killer often returns to the scene, to taunt, tease, himself and them. So he assumed they would be watching, maybe not from the street but from a window somewhere, from the station no doubt. His face would be registered, searched, his name found. He looked at the faces around him, the spectators, thinking that he alone would be able to spot the killer. He thought of Manny then. Manny had followed him, stolen his money, beaten him finally. But even Eddie couldn’t see Manny falling that low. Not for all the money in the world.

  He slept in the house that night for what he though was the last ever time. Their house. He had expected a break-in of some kind, squatters at the very least. But there wasn’t even the scuttle of rats. He thought he wouldn’t sleep for a moment, that the expectancy of sirens would keep his brain alert. There was nothing but exhaustion as his head hit the hard pillow and he didn’t hear a sound until the sun blinded him at seven the next morning and the door bell brought him scrambling to his feet.

  Down the stairs with the eternal bag in his grip and the letter cold against his stomach. The bell rang once more and through the frosted glass he saw nothing but the suggestion of a man, no hint of his character or purpose. He had a second to decide but really what else could he do? He opened the door and saw the bemused smiling familiar face that he couldn’t put a name to.

  The bow-tied man extended a hand. ‘Mr. Brogan, it’s been a while.’ Eddie would have tidied up if he had known he’d be having people around for tea. Tommy Pearson, landlord, Edie’s ex-manager, or maybe he was still her manager, scrutinised his property with raised eyebrows. He was also looking for something else and the obvious question soon followed.

  ‘Edie?’ With all the absurdity and uncertainty of recent times, Eddie couldn’t help himself thinking that somehow this curious little man was just another part of the game.