Nipper (25 page)

‘You picked the wrong lads to have a go at, boyo,’ he says.

I just keep walking towards them, getting more and more angry as he talks tactics – or rather hurls them – at his mate. ‘I’ll put him down and you stamp his face in.’

I’m thinking,
you pair of idiots
, and I’m having flashbacks about beating Dad up. As I get closer, they look a lot bigger than I first thought, but that’s good, I won’t feel so bad for what I’m about to do. I sweep the first guy’s legs from underneath him, and the other one rugby tackles me into a parked car. I hardly know what I’m doing by this time as it’s almost like an out-of-body experience. All I know is I’m breathing heavily and as we spill around a corner against a big glass hotel room window, flashbacks of St Fillans Road fly through my head.

Then he starts screaming at the top of his voice. ‘I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough.’

I suddenly snap out of it, realising that it isn’t Dad. Then I stop and sit down on the bonnet of a parked car, and can’t
believe what I have been doing. We both have blood all over us and he’s sitting on the ground with his back against the wall.

‘That’s enough, Jock. That’s enough, mate. Let’s just forget about it.’

I am confused. ‘Did you just call me “Jock”?’ Does he know my father? Can he see him in me? My head’s now all over the place.

‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’ He thinks I’m offended with the Jock comment because I’m Scottish.

‘Let me gee yi a hand,’ I say.

He’s panting and so am I, as I go over to give him a hand up. But as I do, the bloke that’s on the ground around the corner has got up, and can’t see where we’ve gone at first, but then he finds us. I don’t see him coming. While I’m helping his friend off the floor he comes at me from behind.
Crash!
He has rugby-tackled me straight through a plate-glass apartment window. We’re now lying on a bedroom floor covered in glass, and then he staggers up and runs off with his friend.

I’m glad they’ve gone as I’m exhausted. They must have been rugby players. I can’t believe it – there are hardly any holidaymakers here, I’m on my own, starting a new life and I still manage to get in a fight.

It’s like that old song,
I look around and there’s a heartache following me
, only in my case it’s my demons, my dad, that’s following me.

I sit on the end of the bed catching my breath and trying to clean the blood and check for any major glass wounds. I’ll be OK, though, it’s nothing I’ve not had before.

The next thing I know I’m lying face down on the bed, handcuffed, with a gun at my head, with someone screaming at me from two inches away in Spanish.

It’s the police. I must have fallen sleep on the bed. I can’t understand a word they’re saying and they can’t understand me. Even if they did speak English I don’t think they’d have got my lingo at the time, as my Dundonian accent is very strong. They drag me into the police car, put me in jail for three days and feed me on thin slices of pepperoni on a baguette that’s more like a house brick than a roll.

How have I managed it? Yet again I’m in trouble with the law. Whatever went on when I was a kid, I still want to keep telling myself that it doesn’t bother me any more. I’m a happy-go-lucky person. I make people laugh. I’m always the life and soul of the party. So why do I still have this burning desire to destroy people? Why does everyone want to have a go at me? At least that’s the way it seems to me at this time.

I start thinking about Dad and what he used to do to me and suddenly I’m a three-year-old kid, frightened, alone, lying on the bed, bawling my eyes out. Although I physically left Dad behind the night of our showdown in St Filland Road, he still has a stranglehold on my soul. Every brick of the wall I have built up round myself has the name ‘Jock’
stamped on it and I know it’s something in myself I’ll have to change as nobody else is going to help me.

So much for my new start, my new dreams, my new hopes, my new life…

B
y April Benidorm has turned from a ghost town into a never-ending party. I get a job as a dancer and though it’s only one night a week, it’s more money in my pocket and I’m feeling better about my life. My anger is subsiding, or at least being locked up again. I’m still drinking every night but my body is not receiving the same punishment I’ve been giving it for the past four years.

Bobby decides to join me in Spain as he feels the same about Dundee as I do. I’ve got him a job as a doorman after a couple of weeks and he’s having a ball.

Then one day, out of the blue, something extraordinary happens. I meet Sophie Jones, one of the most beautiful creatures on God’s earth.

The first time I see her I pick her up over my shoulder and take her into the club that I work for. I do this with anyone
who tries to walk past, as you get money for each person that comes in. I’ve met some really nice-looking girls over the summer and seen a lot of stunners but Sophie is in a league of her own. She has long blonde hair, brown/hazel eyes, is really tall and slim, tanned and politely spoken, and I have a funny feeling she’s been sent down to me from heaven.

She has this green dress on, very short, just below her backside, and legs that seem to go on forever. What’s more I click with her straight away. She’s different to all the other girls I normally come into contact with. I know that she’s special, a class apart, and I’ve never expected to meet anyone like her.

It’s three in the morning and we’re both still in the club. She looks over and I’m dancing with a palm tree. So even if I can’t say for sure whether I’ve swept her off her feet, I’ve certainly had an impact on the palm tree.

At this stage in my life, although I have always been searching, I always thought I was destined to be a loner. I don’t want to be a loner but I never thought in a million years that I would find anyone, even though I’m desperately looking for someone to trust.

My natural reaction to anyone who ever shows me any love or affection is to back off. I still remember how Dad would tell me he loved me and do me in on the same night. I won’t let anyone get that close to me or mess with my head – which is all I have known when it comes to intimacy. The hand that fed me has been the hand that bit me and I’ve told myself so many times that I won’t be fooled again.

But something about Sophie throws me off guard. She sweeps under the radar. I’m not expecting someone like her to come into my life and it knocks me sideways.

I spend every day of the two weeks of her holiday with her. Bobby has met Katie, one of her friends who is one half of a pair of twins. It’s a great release for me to be spending time with someone so genuine and honest and innocent. Sophie’s only three years younger than I am, but I seem much older as I’ve had to grow up fast.

The day she’s meant to go home to Cheshire, she cries because her father has told her she can’t stay and get a job. This girl is more impulsive than I am, I think to myself. I’m pretty gutted when she goes home, as I’m getting used to seeing her every day and I actually miss her. I’ve never had that feeling before about anyone as I’ve always been a bit of a loner. I like my own company but Sophie Jones – she is a light in a dark room.

She heads back home and almost immediately I am missing her badly as it’s suddenly dawned on me that she has been the only good thing in my life. I cope with this in the usual way I always cope with problems. I go back to my crazy world and take more drugs and fill myself with more booze to forget. I have started to become really close to a group of lads from Algeria. They’ve taken me under their wing as one of their own. We teach each other Scottish and Algerian football songs, and laugh about things we’ve done in the past. They are the nicest people
you could meet, but if you get on the wrong side of them, it’s a different story.

I feel quite safe though, as I’m like a brother to them. I have met some seriously disturbed characters over the years and people that are known as gangsters, but these lads are basically trained killers and in a league of their own. Some are ex-soldiers who have completed the compulsory two years in the army. Others have gone AWOL before joining, as they know it would mean they’d have to wipe out whole villages of their own friends and people. One lad, Jamal, has killed over thirty people while in the army and has never batted an eyelid.

They never boast about these experiences. We just sit and chat, swapping stories about our lives. Then one day when I’m dining with them in one of their houses, I walk into the kitchen for a glass of water and see two black 9 mm handguns sitting on the worktop. Instantly I realise that they must be involved in something that’s way over my head.

With Sophie gone I’m back on drugs again, doing things that only a man high on cocaine would even dream of. As I grew up I always had a cut-off switch, and could stop when I knew something was a bit too much. But that switch has now gone.

As part of my initiation into their group I agree to go on the back of a motorbike, get dropped off behind a building where some Spanish guy works, wait until he comes out, then stab him in the arse as he owes the Algerians a lot of money.

Jamal goes over exactly where to hit the guy and what to say as I do it. ‘You push the knife in his left ass cheek, straight in the middle.’

He’s standing up in front of me, pointing at the area I have to go for. ‘This area is safe, there’s no main artery, it is just muscle.’

‘What if he moves and it goes in the right cheek?’

‘Fuck him, he shouldn’t have moved. It’s his own fault. If he’d paid my money he would have no problems with his ass. After you do it, he’ll fall to the floor. All you say is
dos million pesetas!
Then you walk away.’

I work it out, the bloke owes him £10,000, but I never ask what it’s for as it’s really none of my business. I’m just there to carry out orders.

I leave the house and jump on the back of a motorbike with another lad, putting a seven-inch lock knife I’ve been given into my inside pocket, then we’re off – on a military mission to search and destroy. As the bike tears through the back streets of Benidorm, I’m mulling things over in my head as warm air blows into my face. I don’t really feel any emotion or fear as the drugs I’ve taken to psyche myself up have clouded my thoughts, convincing myself that this guy deserves what he’s about to receive.

After ten minutes we arrive at a car park behind some apartments in the middle of nowhere. It’s pitch black as it’s about one in the morning and the place looks deserted.

‘OK, I’ll be over there. When you have done it, get here quickly.’ He points to a dark street between two apartment
blocks that are only half built. I have already been given my instructions – what he looks like, what time he finishes work, and so on.

I’m on my own from here on in, dressed like a cat burglar and high as a kite.

I calmly walk into the car park and crouch down behind a bin shelter, between two parked cars, thinking which way I’m going to run and what to say, going over it in my head so I don’t make any mistakes. Talking to myself, as my heart starts pumping.

‘In the left cheek,
dos million pesetas
.’

Then I started having doubts and qualms.

What if I miss his arse and hit a main artery by mistake and kill him? What if he has kids?

It seems even the evil voices in my head that used to make me snap are having second thoughts. I have turned into two different people, two voices arguing with each other.

What if you kill him?

Fuck him, stick it in his back!

This goes on for around fifteen minutes and there’s still no sign of him. All of a sudden a door opens at the back of a restaurant next door to the flats. Someone comes out and walks into the car park, passing the car I’m now crouched behind. It’s definitely the bloke.

I take the knife out of my inside pocket and walk up behind him, ready to do what I’ve gone there to do. Then I stop.

I’ve had a vision of Dad. And instead of it fuelling my rage, the licence to kill, I suddenly begin to wonder if I’m becoming Jock. An unstable maniac with a chemical imbalance or a self-inflicted drugged-up thug that wants revenge against a world that has done nothing against him. At this moment I’m two different people, one of whom I’m seriously starting to dislike.

I’m standing in the middle of the car park with the knife by my side only feet from the guy, shocked at what I’ve nearly done. The good voice in my head has overpowered the evil one that wanted me to kill him. It’s like being in a film – it never seems real. The lad has now turned around as he must have heard my footsteps behind him. He looks at me, then his eyes look down towards the knife.

‘
Dos million pesetas
.’

I can see by the look on his face that he’s petrified.

‘
Sí, mañana
,’ he says as he takes off into the darkness.

I just can’t do it. All the way back to the getaway bike I keep thinking I can’t believe I was about to stab someone who’s never done anything to me.

‘Did you get him?’

‘No, he seen me and ran into a car, but your money is on its way.’

‘Did you say what I told you to say?’

‘Yep, he’ll bring it tomorrow. Your money is on its way.’

We don’t speak much on the way back to the house. He doesn’t ask me what’s gone on, as I’ve now promised him his money will be paid in the morning. I’m ninety-nine per cent
sure after seeing the look on the lad’s face in the car park. Well, I’m praying I’ve read his expression correctly.

Luckily for the bloke, the good side of me has the upper hand. Luckily for me, the next day, the bloke sends a woman to Jamal’s house with the £10,000 he owes them. He must have seen the look in my eyes, the one that sometimes scares me when I look in the mirror.

The Algerians ask me what I said to him and why I didn’t stab him but I just tell them, ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat.’

Not that they care how I did it, they’re just impressed at how quickly they got their money back. But I think it’s fate that I’ve gone that night – fate giving the guy a helping hand – as I’ve seen a few of the not so fortunate people they’ve paid a visit to. And fate for me too, as I have this odd feeling of vertigo, like I’ve been standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to fall – and something has held me back.