Jog On Fat Barry (14 page)

“No loose ends,” I heard him mumble.

“It’s not over yet,” I yelled at him.

“It’s all good, mate,” he said back with a smile.

And it was “all good.” Madden had taken care of business. Mrs. Jacks, the mother of the boy Madden had thrown out the train window, and his boyhood friend, Ronald Taylor, would share everything he owned. His mum and sister, both Down Under in Toowoomba, would get nothing.

I glanced in the rear-view mirror. No one was following us. I asked Madden to call it in and reassured him that we’d be up in the bird and safe in minutes. He reached for the radio but couldn’t get it to work.

“We’ll just drive to the border then,” I said.

“There’s nothing there, mate,” Madden said back. “Just sand, rocks and mountains.”

The sun began to rise. Moments later, black smoke began to billow out from under the bonnet. I could see flames. Something was on fire. The tank suddenly blew and the truck careened off the road into a ditch.

“Come on,” I yelled, pulling Madden from the flames. “We’ll go on by foot.”

Madden and me trudged on through the sand. And while we did, two words never stopped repeating themselves in my head: “No regrets… no regrets… no regrets.” I’d always hoped for a
nasty-spear-up-the-shitter
or
arrow-through-the-heart
sort of ending anyway. I couldn’t wipe my own arse when I came into this world; certainly had no intention of leaving it the same way: dribbling on a pillow in some gloomy room where no one knew my name.

I had made sure that Mum and Dad were my sole beneficiaries, and smiled when I imagined what their faces would look like seeing all that money. They wouldn’t know what to do with it. Would they be frivolous? Would they take a world cruise, or buy a new house? More likely than not, they’d give it to the Battersea Dogs Home. I cursed the Bedouin who told us the border was only a few miles away as Madden stumbled.

“Hope yet,” I shouted, pulling him up.

Something behind us was kicking up dust. I turned to look. It was shimmering in the heat about three clicks away. Minutes later, I heard the hum of an engine and realized the thing shimmering was a jeep. Madden stumbled again. I looked down. Flies swarmed around the smile frozen on his face. The temperature was already well above 45º C, and the sound of the jeep was growing louder. For a minute or so I wondered if it really was a jeep. The dehydration had well and truly kicked in and I was probably seeing and hearing things. I couldn’t remember how long Madden and me had been walking, but I didn’t want to walk any more. It was becoming impossible to think straight. I slumped down beside Madden and reached for the Browning. I put the barrel against my temple; my finger tightened around the trigger. The metal felt hot against my skin. Various thoughts raced through my mind; one kept coming back. I was in the Falklands; walking toward Teal Inlet. Two marines from four-five commando were pinned down, with one cradling the other in his arms.

“Fucking commandos!” he shouted. “Don’t make me laugh!”

The marine cradled in his arms was dead: his stomach had been torn open, his guts steaming in the freezing night air. The other was crying, and shouting, and ignoring his mates, who kept appearing out of the dark to plead for silence, before disappearing back into the blackness again.

“Longest basic training in the fucking world! Only what fucking good is that to me now? Didn’t teach me how to hold Jem’s fucking guts together, did they? Didn’t learn how to drown in our own piss and blood, cause that can’t be fucking taught!”

The Argies were shooting into the dark, aiming at the sound of his yells, and the air seemed to squeal as their bullets whistled by. But the boy wouldn’t stop shouting. He just kept going. And all the time he did, we were sitting ducks. I crawled through the mud and the sodden grass and crouched down beside him. I slipped my arm around his neck and slowly tightened my grip. I only wanted to make him stop. I just wanted to make him quiet. But it was too cold… it was so bloody cold.

Two hundred and fifty-five of our boys were killed in action in the Falklands. Nearly three times that died on the other side. Since then, 264 of the boys who came home have taken their own lives—immersed in social dislocation; alcoholism; depression. They can’t work; are generally left to rot. But flashbacks can be horrible cunts. They bring it all back, even though the military swears they don’t and can’t. But that should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been associated with the army. I never knew an officer worth following, or any government that ever really gave a fuck. You’d have to be soft in the head to expect them to. If every scoundrel in London were told to stand up, not one person in the House of Commons or the House of Lords would be left seated. And the public are clueless, because of all the other things they worry about, like plasma screens, the soaring price of petrol, or whether Prince William gets his end away. The system was set up to fail. But every cloud has a silver lining. It just depends on how you’re looking at it.

I heard the jeep stop: heard its doors open. This was no illusion: no chimera. The blokes with beards began shouting at one another. They were anxious, frightened: I could smell the stench of their fear. I knew that stink: had been schooled in it; accidentally strangled a marine who reeked of it. Had seen off another threescore and ten who’d drowned in it. I looked at Madden, swatted the flies away from his eyes and mouth, and smiled. Fear was getting closer. But that fucker would never get his stink on me.

trinkets

All my bits and pieces began to leak years ago. What little hair I still had remaining on my head grew greyer with each passing day. Not a moment went by when my teeth, or my back, or my feet didn’t bother me. Somewhere, somehow, my life got fucked up, and nothing short of suicide would put it right. But one could only take their own life if they were alive in the first place. And since, to all intents and purposes, I’d been dead for eight years, and only started living once this crazy thing began, the taking of my own life had never really been an option.

The lady stopped outside the Laundromat and lit a cigarette. Her skin was sallow and sunburnt, her cheeks were sunken, her eyes were lifeless, and her make-up was garish. She was maybe twenty, but looked closer to forty. She was emaciated. Her hair was lank and dyed black, and her yellow teeth were crooked. She closed her eyes, standing completely still for a moment, and then began to fall forward from the hip, ever so slowly, like some kind of worn-out flower wilting in the midday sun. But each time she reached the point where it was impossible to go any further, without toppling over, she’d linger for a few moments, suspended if you will, before she defied gravity with a kind of otherworldly elegance, and popped right back again.

The tattoo on her arm depicted an angel standing on a cloud. The angel had silver-tipped wings rising out of its back and locks of golden hair corkscrewing down about its shoulders. Its milk-white flesh shimmered so radiantly it was as if the sun itself was blazing beneath the lady’s skin. I had followed her to a hotel without saying a word, and showed no surprise when she suggested we fuck on top of the blanket and not under it because there were bedbugs. The room was filthy. It stank of alcohol and sweat. Used rubbers littered the floor. The woman stripped. She unzipped my fly and took me in her mouth. The cheeks of her arse sat on her heels. She was gaunt: almost skeletal. She pushed me onto the mattress and straddled me. I glanced at the floor and thought about AIDS, hepatitis, and every other virus that was probably lurking inside her as she reached for my cock to guide it inside her. I wanted to say something but didn’t because the light bulb above the bed began to brighten. It grew brighter with each passing second and then shattered. Glass and sparks rained down onto the bed, and, as they did, the woman began to morph. Her sunburnt skin turned milk-white; her lank black hair turned golden and corkscrewed down around her neck and shoulders; her crooked yellow teeth suddenly straightened and sparkled like pearls.

The storm that had raged all day and night showed no signs of letting up, and the winds fuelling it blew into the police cafeteria through a broken window someone had attempted to put right with cardboard. It was cold. I shivered beneath a blanket. My head was pounding, and the blood trickling out of my left ear was driving me nuts. I listened to the air as it whistled into the room. Or at least my right ear did: the left wasn’t working. The blow had probably shattered the eardrum. I’d have to see a doctor, and my lip needed to be stitched. I was completely naked under the blanket and asked the detective if I could have my clothes back.

“Hamlet told Horatio there were stranger things in heaven and earth than could be dreamt of in his philosophy, and I guess I can go along with that,” he said, without looking up from the ball-puzzle he was toying with. “But even the Prince of Denmark would have to think my head was up my ass if I actually believed any of the shit you’re asking me to, Dennis. You don’t mind me calling you Dennis, do you?”

I didn’t know what to say. What made men do the things they did was still a mystery to me, and something that, up until then, I hadn’t really given much thought to. Logic and reason, more often than not, had nothing to do with anything. I knew that. But why a guy sucker-punched me, and then pissed on my clothes was a riddle I had no answer to. And I’d already told this detective everything I knew. Just like I had told the other two cops before him.

“I was with the girl,” I said again. “She was talking. Then everything went blank. I guess I must’ve passed out. And when I came to, I had a sore jaw, and my clothes were covered in piss.”

“Not all cops are assholes, Dennis,” the cop said back.

Of course, if I had my time over again, I would’ve played a very different hand in all of this. I had no idea I’d been marked, or that anyone stupid enough to get involved with me would be marked too. The detective already knew too much, even though he didn’t believe a word of it. Still, it was guilt by association, and his implication would stand just the same. I’d given him the facts: I fucked the lady; she transmuted into the image of her own tattoo. She told me she was an angel, a “messenger of God” sent from Heaven. He had chosen the last superhero of the 20th century. Seven billion names had gone into a hat and mine was the name that had come out.

“Tell me more about the lady,” the detective said.

“She was a chain-smoker,” I said back. “No sooner had she put one out, then she was lighting up another. Told me Heaven was a smoke-free zone, and that she was going to make the most of what little time she had here on earth smoking as much as she could, even though it had been smoking that got her into Heaven in the first place.”

“What happened to her?” the detective asked.

“Disappeared while I was in the bathroom,” I said. “After we did it. I ran out looking for her, and bumped into the homeless girl. She said her name was Leena: Leena Plum. She was hungry. I bought her a slice of chocolate cake and a glass of milk in a diner. When the cake arrived at the table, it was the… lady who brought it. She was dressed like the waitress. And, as she put down the plate, she said that I would know the truth, and that the truth would set them free.”