The Concrete Grove cg-1

by Gary McMahon

  “Well?” her voice was starting to get on his nerves; it sounded small and tinny, like a faulty tape recording.

  “I thought we’d have a little dodge along the Quayside for an hour, and then go back to Far Grove for a few beers and a smoke with my mates. I can score some good gear there — something that’ll keep us going all night.”

  She laughed again. The sound grated on his nerve endings. “I like it when you keep going all night, Fran.”

  It was starting to rain; the charcoal sky looked like someone had slashed it repeatedly with a knife, showing the flat blackness beneath. The clouds were low and heavy, lumbering like pregnant beasts, and the air was turning cold. Boater ducked into a pub doorway, losing his grip on the girl’s hand for a moment, and made his way through the hot, sweaty crowd to the bar.

  They had two drinks, and during the time it took them to finish he realised that he was already bored of this girl. He didn’t even know her name; she was pointless, just another way of wasting time as he waited for that good thing to appear — the event that he knew, deep inside, would never happen, not even if he lived for a million years. Where had he even met her, anyway, this plastic sex toy? He reached inside his memory and plucked out an image: she owed Monty Bright some money, and had taken the option of servicing him once a week to bring down her payments. Growing tired of her, Monty had given Boater permission to take her on, and it had all clicked into place.

  It happened all the time, this trading of bodies. Monty got sick of them fast, and he passed them on to his men. This time it was Boater’s turn, but each moment he spent in the girl’s company was another inch towards the thought of killing her — one more step along the road to oblivion.

  He was glad when his mobile phone rang. It pulled him up out of the swamp of his thoughts, made him realise where he was and who he was with — another empty vessel, a cast-off he was about to use as a receptacle for his dead dreams and his dull desire.

  He pulled the mobile out of his inside pocket, where it was vibrating against his ribs, and flipped open the lid with his thumb. “Monty. What can I do?” he always answered the same way whenever his boss called; it was a ritual, a habit that he enjoyed. It placed him inside an ordered moment, like a well-oiled hinge in time and space, and made him feel important. ‘Doing things’ was what he was good at.

  “Where are you?” Monty’s voice was calm, unhurried — that was good, at least. There could be no trouble if he wasn’t on edge.

  “In some shitty pub down at Newcastle Quayside.” The sound of the revellers inside the building swelled, threatening to steal Monty’s response, but he pressed the mobile handset tight against his ear.

  “Get your fat arse back here. I’ve had a phone call. We’re going to have some fun.”

  He could imagine Monty’s face and over-gelled hair shining in the low light, and the way he would be leaning back in his chair, perhaps even fondling his crotch as he spoke, anticipating the night’s pleasures.

  “I can be there in about half an hour. Who is it?” The crowd surged, dragging him sideways. He lost sight of the girl as a host of people spilled between them, moving in a clot towards the back of the narrow space.

  “You know — that bitch from the other day. The Fraser woman. The one with the daughter. She’s decided to take us up on our offer. She wants to negotiate a deal, payment in kind.” His laughter spewed through the phone handset. It was a terrible sound, like the gurgling of a backed-up drain.

  “Okay, I’ll just dump this slag and be right with you.” Her face came into view, over the shoulder of a thin black man in a sparkly shirt that made Boater want to reach out and slap him. She looked afraid, as if she knew what they had in mind for Lana Fraser. “In fact, I’ll probably be there even quicker than that.” He smiled, but somewhere inside he was aware of something tugging as it threatened to break: a small hand, tightening around his guts. The smile felt wrong, as if it had been manufactured. It didn’t quite fit his bloated face. “Just let me deal with this situation, and I’m gone.”

  Static crawled along the connection, reaching for him. More small hands, but these ones made up of sound. Then, just as quickly, the static cleared. “Okay,” said Monty. “Don’t be late or we’ll get this show on the road without you.”

  The line went dead but the words hung there, like objects suspended in the darkness of space.

  Boater put away his mobile and finished his pint. Then he looked at the girl, wishing for a moment that he knew what to say, how to act like other people. He jerked his head, indicating that she should follow him, and then he set off for the main entrance, barging people out of his path.

  “G’night, Boater,” said the tall, lean doorman who was lounging against the wall to his right. Boater couldn’t remember his name, but he might have sparred with him years ago.

  Boater turned around, glared at him. A dull, uninspired rage moved through him, coiling like snakes. “What was that, fella?”

  The man’s eyes flickered — whatever confrontation was brewing, he had already lost. That was all it took: a faltering glance, a tiny show of weakness. “Nothing… just saying goodnight, like.”

  Boater squared up to him, straightening his back so that he reared to his full height and with his chest pushed outwards, narrowing the space between them. “No. What did you say, exactly? What were the exact words you just said to me?” He clenched his hands into fists; they were like steel, the joints between fingers sealed shut, welded with sweat.

  “I… I just said ‘G’night, Boater’.” The man took a step back, his spine hitting the wall. That was another show of weakness, his second within the space of a minute; an unforgivable act of defeat that could not go unpunished.

  “I’m Mr. Boater.”

  The doorman nodded, looking to his friends for assistance. He raised his hands, but they were open; he held out his palms, surrendering before the fight had even begun.

  Boater didn’t even need to look over his shoulder to know that the other two doormen would not intervene. He was a known face; his violence was both feared and emulated all across the region. Nobody fucked with Francis Boater, not unless they wanted their face remade into a sculpture of flesh and bone and their family beaten like dogs. He didn’t know where to stop; violence was his fuel, his food. He lived to hurt, to cause pain. It had always been his way. That’s why Monty Bright had brought him in, trained him up, and trusted him with his life.

  “That’s Mr. Boater, you piece of shit.” His hand moved so fast that he barely registered the motion. He was so keyed-up, so attuned to the moment, that he didn’t even feel the impact of the blows, just knew in his heart that they had landed true. He saw a splash of red, a blur of pink, and a flurry of spastic movement… then the man went down, hitting the floor like a felled tree.

  It was over in seconds. Barely anyone had seen it happen, and those who did failed to understand what they had glimpsed: the raw, brute power of the blows, the finality of the knockout, and the strange compression of time and energy which resulted in Boater walking away the victor. He was always the victor; nobody he had ever met could even come close to besting him.

  He left the building, trusting that the girl would follow. They always did. It never failed him, the allure of violence. Not with this type; not with a girl like this one, who always mistook savagery for heroism and confused a beating with a show of passion. He hated her; hated them all. These bitches, these bastards: these fucking empty shells tottering around with nothing on their minds but badly dyed hair.

  “Where are we going, Fran?”

  He was facing the thick black tongue of the River Tyne, watching people caper like cartoon characters on the other side, waiting in line to enter The Tuxedo Princess, the decommissioned car ferry that now served as a grotty floating nightclub. He refused to turn around, to look at her, but she insisted. Her hand clutched his arm, pulling at him, trying to get his attention.

  He focused on the boat and the fact that it was soon to be
sent to Greece, where it would probably be scrapped. He’d once worked the door there, pushing around scrawny students and estate kids, flexing his muscles to make the men shake and the women giggle. The end of an era; another local landmark stripped down, floated away, soon to be forgotten. He often felt like his world, his private northeast, was being slowly demolished, bit by bit, memory by memory. Soon there’d be nothing left of the life he’d once known.

  Finally, with regret, he allowed himself to be turned.

  “Where to now, then?” Her eyes glittered like the stars above them; the skin of her neck was flushed a deep shade of red; her cheeks trembled. She was aroused, she wanted him.

  “Fuck off, pet. I have to go somewhere.” He breathed deeply, trying to get his rage under control. Even a random act of violence had failed to clear his system, to give him that fix of blood and thunder he seemed to need more and more often these days.

  “Take me with you. I’m game. Whatever you want: you, your friends. We can all have a party.” She was so eager to be abused, so keen to submit to even a hint of cruelty. What was wrong with these people? What was wrong with him?

  He imagined breaking her spine with his passion. He thought about cutting off her lips with a pair of scissors. He felt sick; he was dead inside.

  That coiling sensation from deep within him had returned, but this time he could not ignore it. There was something going on, a feeling that he couldn’t even explain. He felt like crying. That was why he’d given the doorman a slap: because his emotions were running away from him, breaking free, and he needed to at least try to get them back under control. He was not a man who could allow himself to experience normal human emotions. Empathy, understanding, pity, mercy, redemption… these were not for him, not for his kind. He had been flensed of such concerns, a layer of epidermis surgically removed by a blade so keen that its edge was invisible.

  The girl seemed to hover before him; her feet were raised several inches off the ground. Her bottle-blonde hair shone like a promise of something better and her eyes glittered again, this time even brighter than the stars. She reached out, reached inside, and Boater felt her small hand grip his ribs, pull them apart, and expose his heart. He heard it beating, beating, and the sound was so close that it was terrifying.

  Then, as a crowd of revellers spilled out of another pub and onto the pavement, yelling and screaming and chanting football songs, the moment ended. The cage of his ribs sealed shut and his heart was locked away, where it belonged, deep inside the prison cell of his body. The vision, for what it was worth, had ended.

  “Fuck off,” he said, turning away and stumbling along the stained footpath like a drunk at night’s end. His cheeks were wet; he was crying, but silently and trying to pretend that he wasn’t. For a moment, someone else had taken him over — someone real, someone normal — and he hated the feelings that weakling interloper was forcing him to endure. He had been invaded by normality, and it felt… wrong, unnatural.

  The Fraser woman — that bitch, just like his mother was a bitch — was really going to get something special tonight. If he had felt sorry for her before, there was no more room for sympathy now. Someone had to pay for the way he felt, and she was going to find herself impaled on the sharp end of his confusion just to settle that debt. He promised himself that it would be an experience she would never forget — even if she walked away with her body intact, her mind would be crippled by the memory.

  Boater hailed a cab, flopped down onto the back seat, and told the driver to take him to the Concrete Grove, where the edge of a familiar abyss awaited his arrival.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LANA STOOD IN front of the mirror and stared at her reflection. She was wearing her little black dress, black high-heels and way too much makeup. Bright red lipstick made her lips look swollen; the smoky liner around her eyes gave the impression of light bruising. Ordinarily, she would never go out like this, but she knew what men like Monty Bright admired in a woman: overt sexuality; the image of a whore.

  “Whore.” Spoken out loud, the word lacked genuine impact. It only hurt when she thought it, when she kept it inside where it could slice her up like a razor.

  She turned away from her tarted-up image in the mirror and walked towards Hailey’s room. She pushed open the door and stepped inside. The curtains were open; street light leaked through the pane, streaking her daughter’s bed covers.

  She walked across the room, stepping over Hailey’s discarded clothes, and stood at the side of the bed. Staring down, her heart felt heavy and her mind began to clear. What she was about to do, she did for Hailey. She would go to any extreme to put things right, to clear the debt and start all over again. If she had found a way to turn back time, she would have done it without pause for thought, and to hell with any sacrifice time might demand.

  She remembered when Hailey was born. The memory still ached inside her. Three in the morning: New Year’s Day. She’d just missed out on being one of the first New Year babies, and her sibling had missed out on everything by being born dead. Lana’s labour had been long and hard. Her waters had broken fifty-two hours before the delivery, but she had not been dilated enough for the midwife to induce her. The hospital was understaffed and too many pregnant women had been admitted… the whole thing had been horrible, a nightmare.

  She recalled a scene a minute or so after midnight, with Timothy standing by the bed, repeatedly lifting and letting drop one of the cheap nylon bed sheets. Worry and lack of sleep had made him fuzzy and weird — he barely even knew where he was or what he was doing. Fireworks were going off outside to welcome in the New Year, but Lana’s gaze was drawn to her husband’s busy hands, and the sheet as it fell repeatedly onto the bed. Static electricity shimmered in the air; it was their private firework display, a show put on just for them and their as-yet unborn children — the living and the dead.

  “For you, honey,” she whispered now, in another life.

  Hailey stirred in her sleep, one arm coming up out of the creased mass of sheets to cover her face. The bedclothes slipped down to her waist, exposing her midriff. The skin there looked thin, like paper. Lana could almost see her insides through the semi-translucent layer: bunched intestines, and other organs that didn’t look quite normal.

  When Hailey was born she was floppy and unresponsive, a condition caused by something toxic in Lana’s liquors — the fact that her waters had broken so early had led to some kind of infection. The baby’s skin was grey; she was barely breathing. They took her away and put her in the Special Care Unit, up on the top floor of the hospital, while Lana continued with her labour. Timothy followed them out of the delivery room; he was clutching one of the tiny woollen hats they’d told him to bring along for the newborn babies. A small, silent Indian doctor drifted in to stitch up Lana after she’d pushed out Hailey’s brother, repairing the wounds caused by the delivery of the twins. He worked in silence; he didn’t look up from his task once, not even when Lana began to cry. A nurse with short hair and a small tattoo on her neck had carried away a bedpan containing the waste.

  “For you…” She leant over her teenage daughter’s bed and touched Hailey’s stomach. The flesh there was warm, almost moist. She spread out her fingers, forming a fan of the digits. Something fluttered inside Hailey, like a caged bird, and then went still. Her belly remained flat; it did not bulge or distend in the way it had before, when Hailey had lifted her blouse to show Lana the great secret of her anatomy.

  I imagined it all, thought Lana. The stress, the sheer pressure of our situation… It caused me to hallucinate. What I thought I saw… it was impossible.

  Even as she thought this, she was not entirely sure that she truly believed the theory.

  Impossible…

  Tucking Hailey back into bed, she straightened up and left the room. Everything seemed heavy: her skin, her bones, even the weight of her thoughts. The world was moving slower than it ever had before, as if the nature of gravity had altered.

  Her p
lan was simple, but it was also repellent. She would go to Monty Bright, allow him to do whatever he wanted with her, and then walk away, back to her life. She had been through so much, experienced such horrors because of Timothy and the things he had done, that she believed she could detach herself from the moment and just let it happen.

  It might hurt; it would probably haunt her for the rest of her life. But at least the debt would be cleared, and she and Hailey could move forward, make plans to leave this horrible place.

  She was willing to do anything to guarantee Hailey’s future. Even this: allowing a crude and vicious man — and possibly his friends — to use her body as a plaything. If she thought of it in mechanical ways — she had had a coil fitted a few years ago, so would not become pregnant; she would demand that they all use condoms in case of disease; she would refuse to kiss anyone on the mouth — then she could pretend that it was a job of work. She had grown accustomed to stifling her emotions, and this would simply be one more situation to lock up inside, throwing away the key.

  She could think of worse things… like death, or mutilation. Rape — no matter if she went there willingly or not — was better than being maimed or crippled or killed. These men, she knew, were easily capable of all three acts. Penetration she could probably handle and come to terms with, even if it meant losing something of her soul; but losing a physical part of herself would be a lot tougher to accept.

  But then again, she knew that physical scars healed. Blood stopped flowing; cuts and lacerations sealed themselves shut. Emotional scars, though, never went away: they just faded.

  Could she do this? Could she really go through with it?

  She glanced over her shoulder, at Hailey’s bedroom door. She remembered how that fat bastard, Monty Bright’s enforcer, had caressed her daughter’s photograph, licking it with his obscene tongue.