Playfair

by Jamie Tuck



  Para las ninas

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Monday

  Welcome to Rotterdam

  Some time later

  Wednesday

  Walkin On Sunshine

  ‘Ah Christ! Man! Jesus fuckin Christ!’

  Billy ‘Hash’ Brown stands braced with the hose in his hands, the jet of water blasting into the red mush of human meat and hair, shattered bone and blood.

  ‘That’s fuckin mingin!’

  He’s alone on the stolen boat’s little wooden deck, like the cleaner on a scaffold after a clumsy execution.

  The brains that had exploded from the young lad’s head stick together and try to cling to the thin slats like a dropped strawberry mousse, resisting the water blast before, finally, sliding across the deck and over the side of the boat and into the flat North Sea.

  ‘Mingin.’

  Somewhere inside Hash’s own head, there’s surprise that the kid’s oxygenated brains weren’t grey like in the films.

  Blue, even.

  He looks away.

  ‘Man,’ he gags. ‘Ah fuck. Man. Ah man.’

  The pressure from the hose rocks the boat a little, sending ever-widening ripples out into the otherwise calm water. All the way home to North Shields. One hundred and seventy six nautical miles to the west of this wet nowhere.

  There’s only one other living human being in any direction between here and where the hot yellow sky meets the sea.

  And two dead ones.

  ‘Fuck,’ Hash groans. ‘Me.’

  More pieces of the boy’s exploded head scurry away from the water jet and wash over the side.

  ‘Ah man, ah man. I’m sorry son. I’m so fuckin sorry. Ah man. I didn’t, I didn’t?’

  A chunk of skull won’t budge.

  It’s the hippy kid’s fontanelle - his crown, the part his adoring mother had smoothed and protected when he was a baby, her youngest son at her breast.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ Hash mutters, turning his face away from the mess. ‘Jesus fuckin Christ. That fuckin psycho. I didn’t know he’d? How?’

  It wasn’t an accident.

  ‘Billy!’ a hard man’s voice shouts from high overhead, aboard a second boat.

  The one they’d both arrived here on.

  Kirrin.

  Except Kirrin really is more ship than boat. A top-of-the-range fish-seeking missile. The little boat Hash is now washing clean of murder rocks gently in her shadow.

  Hash turns and creaks his head back on his neck to look up, high overhead to the deck of the huge deep sea trawler. But all he can see is a man-shape cut from the ferocious yellow sky. He knows who it is though, he brought him here; Talbot, Wade Talbot.

  Kirrin’s Skipper.

  ‘Stop fuckin around man,’ he barks. ‘Hurry up!’

  Fisherman.

  Father-in-law.

  Killer.

  The two boats rock slightly from the power of the hose. Tethered by a thick rope, side-by-side and alone in the Dogger bank fishing grounds in the open expanse of sea that separates eastern Britain from western Europe. Hash cuffs his hand over his eyes and again looks up Kirrin’s sheet metal wall, but the shape and its voice have gone.

  ‘Fuckin psycho,’ he mutters.

  He returns to his duties, pointing the jet of water at the big chunk of skull, it looks like the top of a cracked coconut. It resists and then begins to roll, tumbling over, showing the red insides then the brown hair on top, the red insides then the hair - red and brown, meat and hair - until it skitters over the side and into the sparkling silver sea.

  ‘Ah man! Mingin!’

  Billy watches it float on top of the water, hair-side up to the burning sunshine like the kid it was part of had been for a cooling dive and was about to break the surface and smile.

  Fish rise from the deep, feeding off the tasty underside, moving it from side to side in little jerks.

  ‘Ah, man!’

  He turns away, gagging on something his body thought it had long since digested - a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, eaten at four o’clock this morning when he and Talbot had left the dock alone aboard Kirrin. A canny bag o’ Tudor for the journey. Hash isn’t keen on eating before these trips, not trusting nor liking the sea.

  Hash leans against the rail, the hose pumping aimlessly over the side and into the sea.

  ‘Fuck,’ he sighs. ‘Me.’

  He rubs his brow with the back of his hand.

  And, for the first time since the two boats met on the high seas eleven minutes ago, he tunes into his surroundings. Ears freed from the heavy blast and splash of the industrial-strength hose.

  A radio on the deck is playing “Walking On Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves. A radio station somewhere obviously reaches this far.

  It’s crackly but loud.

  “I’m walking on sunshine, woh-oh, I’m walking on sunshine, woh-oh. I’m walking on sun-shine, woh-oh-oh - and don’t it feel good!”

  ‘Aye,’ Hash mutters, leaning against the rail and looking at the mess floating on the sea. ‘Feels fuckin grrrreat. Just ask this poor cunt.’

  A smaller fragment of skull flips over on itself as Hash turns and points the hose at what’s left of the kid’s exploded head. It skitters overboard and into the sea.

  “Hey, alright now, and don’t it feel good! Hey . . .”

  ‘Fuck off!’ Hash says, and boots the radio over the side into the bloody water.

  Sploosh.

  Katrina joins the house band from the Titanic under the waves.

  ‘Stupid fuckin Yank.’

  ‘Billy!’ Talbot screams from above.

  Up on Kirrin’s deck, Talbot pulls on the fire hose.

  ‘Pack it in! Y’fuckin talkin to y’self man.’

  Talbot yanks it out of Hash’s hands. It whips up and blasts him from crotch to chin with a hard jet of water.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, man!’

  Hash grabs his balls. There’s a lot of power in that hose, he feels a sickness down where the wires from his nuts are plugged into his guts.

  ‘That’ll fuckin do, kidda, that’ll do,’ Talbot barks down from the rail. ‘Christ. You’re a right fuckin woman.’

  Talbot pulls the writhing spurting hose up over the side of Kirrin’s deck like a chopped anaconda.

  ‘We need to get movin. You know the plan, kidda, right?’

  Most of the meat and skull fragments and brains have gone overboard and Hash stands in a shallow film of bloodied water.

  Holding his balls.

  ‘Aye,’ Hash looks out across the vast sparkling cornea towards home.

  North Shields.

  Two urban words that spell ‘paradise’ to Billy ‘Hash’ Brown.

  ‘I keep headin west then drop anchor when I see land. I get it. I get it. It’s okay. I’ve got it.’

  ‘Okay right, undo that rope. Just keep headin west kidda, just keep headin fuckin west. Do y’hear? The Tyne is directly west of here, even a spastic like you can’t fuckin miss it. West. Got it?’

  ‘West,’ Hash says, as he works at the stiff knot in the rope that joins the two boats, releasing the small boat from the big trawler like a duckling set adrift of her mama.

  ‘Fuckin west, I got it the first time.’

  The little boat drifts out of Kirrin’s shadow.

  And sun spills from the sky onto the little boat’s deck and onto the back of Hash’s virgin white neck like molten steel from a blast furnace.

  Talbot disappears and Kirrin’s engines roar into life.

  The big trawler growls away towards home, the gap between them widening fast.
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  Hash shuffles around into the wheelhouse and starts the engine. It coughs then fires and farts. A lawnmower next to Talbot’s Bentley.

  ‘Fuckin shitbox!’

  He pulls on the little black lollipop that is the throttle, feeling for the power. This the first time he’d ever skippered a boat. Billy Hash Brown had never found his sea legs - never looked for them, to be honest. He wasn’t here for the fish.

  Hash focuses as hard as he can on the little black earth in the bowl screwed onto the wheel house’s cheap Formica dashboard, to make sure the white W is on top of the arrow. It isn’t. It’s on top of a big E. His head starts to ache.

  ‘Jesus fuckin Christ,’ he says.

  He turns the wheel.

  Kirrin has already steamed far away, shrunk to the size of a toy boat in a bath, her twin engines daring the Royal Navy to a race.

  Hash pulls the lever down hard and the stolen boat’s engine starts to moan then grows to a grumble before settling on the sound of a broken tractor heading up a hill.

  ‘Ah man, this is gonna take for fuckin ever!’

  He spins the wheel round and around until the W kisses the arrow - 270 degrees.

  West.

  And Hash is alone, utterly alone.

  Nobody around for mile after wet nautical mile.

  Only ghosts for company.

  ‘Fuck!’

  He needs to stop the thoughts forming. He reaches for his brown Kappa tracksuit top and shuffles around in the pockets. He pulls out a green packet of tobacco and his cigarette papers. Trying not to take his eyes off that W in the compass. He wrestles the cigarette together and reaches for his lighter.

  It always gives him a snigger. A woman in a bikini becomes naked when you turn it upside down.

  He exhales the smoke - ‘Jesus-fuckin-Christ’ - attached to his favourite phrase.

  And almost relaxes, his left ear right next to the plastic speaker for the CB radio. He checks the W is where it should be and looks out at the twinkling, calm water. He puts the cigarette back to his lips for a second drag and . . .

  ‘ZZZZZzzzzzzZAAA’

  . . . . a LOUD blast of static, right into his fucking skull.

  ‘Fuck me!’

  It throws him back into the wheelhouse’s starboard window.

  Then comes the voice.

  ‘FREDRIK? zzzz FREDRIK? zzzzzzZZ.’

  ‘Ah?’ Hash almost cries. ‘What the . . . fuck?’

  He puts his hands on top of his head.

  It sounds like the Klingons, on the other side of the sun - a woman with a smoker’s throat. A worried mother, trying to reach her son.

  Her dead son.

  ‘Fffff . . . ?’ Hash says.

  The sweat freezes on his back and neck and snaps off in tiny icicles.

  ‘zzzzz Fredrik, waar bent u zzzzzz Fredrik? Fredrik? zzzzzz.’

  ‘What the?’ Hash drops his hands to his side.

  ‘I?’

  He leans back against the door and looks at the radio’s red eyes.

  ‘Fredrik?’ it continues. ‘Ontmoette u Talbot?’

  Hash lifts his hands and grabs the door frame like he’s about to do a chin up . . .

  ‘Fredrik . . .’

  And boots the radio from its housing.

  ‘Jesus fuckin Christ!’ he shouts, just the rattling boat’s engine now for company.

  He grabs the wheel tight and stands and stares at the black bowl of water with the floating compass inside, keeping the W over the arrow - 270 degrees.

  ‘Jesus fuckin . . .’

  He puts the cigarette back to his lips.

  And goes west.