Wreckage (19 page)

get a fuckin
grip

get a fuckin
grip
man

Sobbing Alastair who weeps as a child weeps, in the delusion that their tears can ever alter anything. In the hope forlorn and fatuous that all external assault may cease in the flood of shed and stinging brine as if their waters are uncommon, scarce enough to startle, as if rare enough to arrest. As if as if as if as if

He delves in his pocket and pulls out a bunch of keys. With the tip of one of them he starts scratching
in
the paint of the cubicle door, more words among the many already scored in or scrawled on, those legends scraped and scribbled he now adds to:

DARREN TAYLOR SUCK’S BIG COCKZ

DARREN TAYLOR LIKES IT MMM UP THE SHITTA

FUCK ALL YOUSE ARSE-BANDITS

DARREN TAYLOR IS FUCKEN DEAD

And maybe writing that last will make it happen. Draw it down from the leaking sky a spell a promise a a a a

Alastair again, back out in the city, searcher in a shell suit, quester in a cap. The water now on his afflicted face only from above and not any more from within, yet shared of salts it is and of a similar mineral consistency, the drizzle without, this drizzle within. With face upturned he tastes it and whether from that one-cloud sky or dreg from reddened eye he cannot tell, cannot discern any difference. Just this wet and heavy lees that sheens all features alike.

Two figures in the dark back street between warehouse hulks all up until recently deserted and dilapidated yet some now renovated in the last few years. Once they stored cotton and sugar and tobacco and flour and oil and other such staples, stored them in amounts vast and attended by a workforce of similar size, then to lie unused and empty for several decades although some now converted into offices or even living quarters and others still as they have been for many years, shot through with slanting sunlight and
inhabited
only by pigeon or rat and a few vagabonds who in corners too build nests of rag and shredded paper like their counterparts rodential or avian and like them again survive on the city’s leavings and lean on the generosity of the odd few of its denizens. Call these spaces crumbling, cavernous, shot through with slanting sunlight some unusual kind of a home and the ghosts of gone commerce carried by the wind that wails through broken window and subsidence crack, not only the clank of cog and pulley or gabble of a hundred different tongues but also the wailing of those who were broken to build this city’s parts, those enslaved, their pulverised bones in the mortar of these storehouses now and their blood in the buried sumps long unused now drying to red scale and the many voices which lift the wind, form the wind that moans and shrieks and draws up from the vast flat empty floors little dancing devils of dust and detritus, fiend-friend and familiar to those souls lost and desolate which roost in the shadows of these high halls.

The drizzle so thin and fine doesn’t exactly fall as instead saturate the air. Lenny and Darren stand by a door of reinforced steel and face each other, a few feet of wet air between them.

—You’re fuckin
slashed
, Lenny, Darren says. He might as well be remarking on a new jacket that Lenny wears for all the flatness in his tone. —No lie, lar, you are pure fuckin ribboned. Sometime in the future, like. You’re fuckin
sliced
, lar.

—Am I?

—Oh aye, yeh. Don’t you worry about that, lad.
That
fuckin kite o’ yours is Stanley’d an that’s that. Consider yerself marked.

—Consider meself quakin in me shoes, Darren. Tremblin with fear I yam, see.

—Yeh, you fuckin well
will
be, knob’ed.
No
cunt treats me like this, knowmean?

—How else was I gunner get yew to come? Send out a fuckin invitation is it?

Darren shakes his head. —Don’t wanna hear it, lar. You’re gunner need a friggin
calculator
to count the stitches
I’m
gunner give yeh.

Lenny laughs. —Ee, yew an that Stanley knife. Like a kiddie with a toy yew are, see. Favourite teddy bear, like. Just can’t leave it alone, can yew?

Darren says nothing, just extracts a curl of fried onion from his ear and examines it and flicks it away. Lenny leans and rings for a second time the bell next to the reinforced door and this time hears heavy steps clump along the hallway behind that door and the galumphing tread and woof of a big dog.

The door opens a crack. A Rottweiler’s massive head black and beige and jowly snarling sniffs the air. A blue rope around this dog’s neck and wrapped around the wrist of Jamie ‘Gozzy’ Squires, his lopeyed leer above the tightly buttoned neck of his anorak and his shaved head haloed by the fur-spikes of its collar.

—Oh would yeh fuckin look who it is. He grins at Darren, fixes him with his one good eye while the other one regards the sky. —Got some fuckin explainin to do, you av. Wanner start now, well?

—Fuckin geg out, Gozzy. Al speak to Tommy and
only
Tommy. Ain’t got werd fuckin
one
to say to youse so just fuckin geg out, will yeh.

—Gerrin. Gozzy pulls the dog to one side to allow Darren and Lenny entrance. Lenny ruffles the dog’s huge head as he passes it and leans to whisper endearments in its ear enamoured as he is of large powerful animals and Gozzy leans too to secure the rope lead’s D-clip to the collar and for a moment their heads are clustered like that to form one beast three-headed. Three-faced hybrid of human and dog leering all three with bared teeth and tongues aloll at this strengthened threshold.

A swagger on Darren as he walks down the corridor lined each side with boxes of DVD players and Megadrives stacked eight, ten high. Dark corridor this towards a lit portal at the end and through and into this light. Some kind of office with a loud central point of two young women, their big hair and leopard-spotted thigh boots and displayed tan midriffs and made-up faces blaring in Darren’s eyes that still sting from hot grease.

Tommy sits between them on a swivel chair. The cheeks of his arse spill out over each side of the seat and in this position he looks like an immense 8 topped with a perm, Rockport boots planted flat and splayed on the floor and chino trousers tucked in. He glances once at Darren with eyes like slate chips pressed into lard and tucks a thick wad of paper money into the breast pocket of his red Kappa jacket and then looks back at the women, his eyes upwards, standing as the women are.

—Right, youse two. Fuck off, well. Get back to work. Money to be made out there.

They leave. One of them glares at Darren as she passes and Darren stares and checks out her arse which she wiggles all exaggerated in more of a fuck
you
than a fuck
me
way. Lenny stands aside to let them pass and smiles at them then looks sort of shyly away. Gozzy just leers one-eyed. Their stack heels clomp down the corridor and the front door opens then slams shut and drabness descends into the room. It is as if a macaw has just exited a bank.

Pugnose Tommy sniffs the air doglike.

—What’s that friggin stink? Slike onions.

—It’s him, innit, Lenny says, nodding at Darren. —Had to put me burger in his face to get him to come, didn’t I?

Glance at Darren. Back at Lenny.

—So yer’ve ad no dinner, Len?

—Not a bean. Starvin, I yam.

—Get yerself in the kitchen well an knock up a butty or summin. Take Shay Neary with yiz.

Lenny takes the dog by the collar into the adjoining kitchen and closes the door. Tommy spins and stabs something on a computer keyboard and the screen goes blank then he spins back and points a banana finger at Darren.

—You. Fuckin knob’ed there. Sit down.

Darren looks for a chair. There are three but in one is Tommy and in another is Gozzy and in the third in the far corner leaning back against the wall is Jez Sully, hands locked across his belly, steroid-swelled muscles stretching his skintight white polo neck.

—Wharrav I just said, Darren? Sit. Fuckin.
Down
, lad. Are yeh deaf?

Darren sinks on to the dusty floor. Shuffles back so that he leans against the same wall as Sully and so cannot be struck from behind by him or indeed anyone else. Sully regards him amused and side-on as he would a small entertaining animal. Puppy with a plaything, say.

Tommy wheels himself on his chair towards Darren. Castors squeak and he leans, looms like a wave of flesh.

—Two little cunts name of Robbo an Freddy, Darren. Ring any bells?

Very bright, stark light above. Humming fluorescents cast no shadow, expose and illuminate everything.

Darren shakes his head. —None, Tommy.

—Yeh sure?

—Aye, yeh.

—So them fuckin stitches in yer ed an that shiner an that fuckin smack in the nose there, got them fallin down the fuckin stairs, did yeh? Or were yiz fuckin bushwhacked behind Lime Street Station by two lil no-marks names of Robbo and Freddy?

Darren says nothing. Tommy wheels himself back away to a desk topped with a computer terminal with a
South Park
screensaver and opens a drawer and takes out a gun and lays it flat on the mousemat and spins it, spins it. It catches the harsh yellow light on its barrel as it revolves. Tommy’s favourite nine-mil, this. Darren has seen it before. Heard it shout, even, and seen what it can do.

—These two lil scallies callin themselves Robbo an Freddy come to see me. Wanner buy a coupla grand’s worth of beak, step on it, set themselves up in biz. That’s what thee tell me thee wanner do.

Jez Sully laughs. Just one abrupt humourless bark.

—An am thinkin to meself: now where did a pairer blerts like these get ahold of that kinda swag? Jez is thinkin the same, aren’t yeh, Jez?

—Yeh. An am also wondrin what’s happened to the fuckin
car
youse were given day before yesterdee.

Darren speaks: —I
called
yeh, Tommy. Left yiz a voicemail. Didn’t yeh gerrit?

—Not fuckin interested in no fuckin voicemail, lar. Tommy flaps a fat hand. —What I wanner know is where these two little fuckin toerag neds get ahold of
that
kinda dough. Two fuckin grand. Terns out, dunnit, that thee jacked some fuckin pissed-up shite-fer-brains outside Ma Egerton’s alehouse cos, an here’s the fuckin funny bit, his
mate
told em to. Some dopey twat in a baseball hat, thee said. Know anyone fits that description, Darren?

Flame begins in Darren’s stomach. Grinding in his teeth. —Alastair …

—That’s the one, aye. Dozy cunt in a baseball hat. Accordin to this Robbo lad, or Freddy, whoever the fuck it was, this Alastair one came up to him in the Lime Street Station bar, said he could earn some wedge like, if he jacked the pissed an brain-dead cunt with the fuckin rucksack full of it. Which was
you
, by the way. Said he’d split it with em, like.
Then
it terns out that some postie in North Wales has been screwed an people saw a Morris fuckin Minor at the scene like, an two dick’eds with Liverpool accents an surprise surprise where was fuckin
you
an yer dozy fuckin no-mark
mate
yesterdee? An what fuckin kinda
car
were yiz drivin?

—Yeh, Sully says. —An where’s that friggin motor
now
, eh? Fuckin
liked
that car, I did. Classic, like. Pure fuckin quality.

The kitchen door opens. Lenny’s there, leaning left shoulder against the jamb, eating a fried-egg sandwich and holding a saucer underneath his chin to catch the drips of brown sauce and runny orange yolk.

—So what I wanner know now, Darren, is this. Tommy scoots on the wheeled chair with shocking speed like a white van pouncing and his big face is suddenly in Darren’s the dark eyes wide bright light on dry skin: —WHAT THE FUCK IS GOIN ON HERE, TWAT? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOUSE UP TO?

Darren’s face heated by bad breath and he would recoil but the wall is there against his back and he can see a gun close to him it gulped in Tommy’s huge ringed hand but for the barrel a gun a gun: —Fuckin Alastair, Tommy! Tellin you, lar! Nowt to fuckin do with me, man, it’s that fuckin Alastair! Believe!

He shows his hands to Tommy, palms out, fingers spread: —Honest to God, Tom! Look! No fuckin fingers crossed, lar! It’s that fuckin Alastair!

—Oh, an that Alastair screwed the postie, did he? On his own, like? Yer tellin me that that dozy get –

Squires yells: —Smack him, Tommy! He’s windin yer up, lad!

Darren spits words at that voice: —Fuck off you yeh gozzy cunt! Al fuckin –

Choke. Tommy’s huge hand, the gunless one around Darren’s neck squeezing SQUEEZING the room is abruptly red.

—Ey, Tommy … c’mon now, mun … got to let him speak, first, mun …

Lenny’s hand on Tommy’s arm. The hand opens and Darren gasps and splutters and Jesus Christ some bastard will pay for this shit. Pay for it all, man, no lie.

—Speak, Darren. Quick now, boy, while yew’ve got the chance.

—Yeh, go on, twat, Tommy sneers. —I’m fuckin
dyin
to hear it, like.

—Alastair, man, Darren wheezes. Breath through his throat like a blade. —That fuckin Alastair … I know what happened now … that bleedin betrayin
cunt
…

Gozzy’s voice again: —Whack the divvy, Tommy. Always said he was a fuckin wrong’un, didn’t I? Doan need gobshites like that, lar, better off without em. Tellin yeh. Avn’t I always said?

Lenny gestures at Squires to shut up. All four faces gather round Darren, leaning leering looming faces without mercy three of them one softer slightly all reflecting the severe yellow light above and washed now in a redness receding.

—Speak, Darren.

—Tell us, lad. Pure cannot
wait
to fuckin know, like.

—It’s that fuckin Alastair, man … it’s
his
doin … honest to God …

The faces withdraw. Tommy scoots backwards on his chair. —Oh ere we fuckin go. Blah after blah after fuckin blah.

—No, lar, it’s true! Tellin yiz! We
both
screwed that postie aye but I was gunner
tell
yiz! Honest! Fuckin
knew
he was up to somethin that snidey get …