Playfair
Page 18
~
The national 9pm news bulletin rolls. Anna Ford. The only female presenter who looks like she might actually know where to find her clitoris.
Sporadic riots across the country. Civil unrest rising with the temperature, a vague variety of causes, says a bore-in-a-beard - unemployment, frustration, a desperate desire for socio-economic re-alignment.
Or something.
Delaney wants to grab this ‘expert’ by his David Bellamy beard and tear it from its roots.
He points the remote, pulls the trigger: TV drama, women in period costumes, pushing their tits up high as ear muffs.
Four channels to choose from, all of them shite.
The phone rings, he lets it.
It’s persistent.
‘Jesus.’
Delaney rattles in his chair until it gives off its final shake.
A cheap bagpipe tune played on an organ, probably in a producer’s bedroom, announces it’s time for the local BBC news.
An obligatory shot of The Tyne Bridge scrolls by.
‘Somebody should nuke this hell hole,’ Delaney sighs.
The newsreader looks like she’s just wandered into the studio on her way home from an amateur dramatics class.
The news is flat, just like her face.
The phone rings.
‘Hello, news desk.’
‘Y’little bash-tad,’ says Dusty.
Slam.
The lead item on the local news is about job losses, the second lead rolls but Delaney isn’t staying. He, rightly so, pulls the trigger when she says the immortal words; ‘wheelie bins’ in a tone of impending doom.
‘Wheelie bins!’ he shouts. ‘Jesus Christ. What time’s the next train to London?’
Delaney turns the newdesk Atex screen to the side, the numbers for the emergency service control rooms are on a laminated sheet pasted to the side of the computer. He’s not done any check calls since he arrived on shift - a hanging offence.
Just as his fingers reach for the Northumbria Police, the phone rings.
‘You dead yet grandad or what?’
‘Sorry? Is that The Kernel news desk?’
A younger voice. No accent. Official sounding. In control.
Delaney shuts his eyes.
‘Yes. Sorry. Sorry sir. I thought you were someone else.’
‘Nice. Is Turner there? Alex Turner.’
The Evening Kernel’s crime reporter, best hack on the rag – kept away from the national press by the Geordie homing instinct, one of the few local borns to work on the rag - big fish, very small pond.
‘No sir, not until Monday now. Can I take a message?’
‘I’m a friend of his, an old friend. I’ve just come back from Tynemouth Lodge and . .’
He burps.
‘. . . sorry.’
Delaney sighs; yet another drunk with a bar stool scoop.
‘And a guy I used to work with was telling me a story I think he would be interested in.’
‘Oh really?’ Delaney says, losing interest. He reaches for the remote.
‘I’m retired drug squad . .’
Delaney’s finger pauses over the trigger.
‘Drug squad?’
‘ . . . and this guy was told something, ve-very,’ the voice belches again. ‘Excuse me. Very, very interesting, I’ll ring him on Monday.’
A ghost in the back of Delaney’s mind whispers; ‘bring in a story’.
‘Oh, drug squad you say? Wait a second. Why not tell me? I can pass him the message.’
He scrambles for a pen.
‘Well, there’s a massive drought.’
Delaney’s pen relaxes.
‘Oh, I think you’re mistaken,’ he sighs. ‘There’s no water shortage sir.’
‘You what?’
‘There is no drought sir, it’s hot but there’s lots of water. Kielder dam is full and . . ’
‘Son, do I sound like a bloody weather man?’
‘Sorry sir, I mean. . .’
‘Dope son. Dope. Drugs. There’s no cannabis. A drought in cannabis. There’s nothing to smoke and. . .
‘Oh? Whacky baccy? Oh sorry sir, I misunderstood. You know . . .’
‘‘Whacky baccy’?’
Silence.
‘‘Whacky backy?’’ the ex-cop groans. ‘You gonna shut up and listen or will I speak to Turner next week?’
‘Erm, go on. Whacky . . . I mean. Erm. Cannabis?’
‘There isn’t any. There’s a drought. A drought in smoke for the stoners. All the way up the east coast of Britain. There’s this boat supposed to sail out of Rotterdam, makes drop offs all the way up the east coast of the UK. It seems it must have sunk.’
‘Yah, I see, I see. Yah,’ Delaney breathes knowingly. ‘Yah.’
‘You writing this down?’
Delaney bristles and readies himself for offence, then - settles his feathers - pulls Munroe’s pad across the desk.
Scratches at it.
Dead pen!
‘Gah!’
‘The Squad have been looking at North Shields Fish Quay for years. Never got anywhere.’
Delaney scratches hard at the pad, making deep welts in the paper – but no ink trails.
‘There’s a grass who buys. . .’
Finally the ink flows.
‘Grass?’
‘A grass. A snout. An informer. And they.’
‘Sorry sir, I . . .’
‘Jesus son, will you just shut up and listen. The grass buys it from one of the stalls but there was no supply this month, they’re thinking maybe this magic boat has sunk.’
‘The boat?’
‘No, the chicken.’
‘Chicken.’
Delaney writes the feathered word down.
‘Jesus fuckin Christ. Are you the fucking work experience kid or what?’
‘I beg your pardon, I’m . .’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Erm, Ri. . . Erm. Clarke. Kevin. Kevin Clarke.’
‘This is a big story Kevin. Could be the scoop of Turner’s career.’
The ex-cop takes a sip of his drink.
‘Heh heh. Clever bastards. All the best ideas are the simplest. What comes and goes from rivers without ever being checked?’
‘Erm?’
‘Boats son, fishing boats. Trawlers. Come and go as they please. Wheels of industry, got to keep turning and all that.’
‘Oh, oh. Yes. Yes. Of course.’
‘Some customers get a ‘special box’ instead of fish.’
‘SPECIAL BOX,’ Delaney says as he writes the two words down.
‘I once had a girl with a very special box kid, it was a bit fishy too eh? Eh? Heh heh heh.’
‘Erm, hah?’
Mal sighs.
‘The entire east coast, can you imagine? Heh heh heh. There’s not a spliff being smoked anywhere. Heh heh heh. Hilarious. Friday night, can you imagine?’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Friday night and half the country is full of stoners gagging for a spliff. How funny is that? All the local late night garages will go bust at this rate – nobody’s buying their munchies, their Rizla papers and their fags. Heh heh heh.’
‘Ha? Erm. Yes, sir. Erm. Ha ha.’
‘You’ll let Turner know?’
‘Yes, yes of course. I’ll pass the message on.’
‘They’ll never prove anything. They’re a tight, slippery fucking lot down there.’
‘Yes,’ Delaney says. ‘There’s definitely something fishy going on, by the sounds of it.’
Pause.
Delaney locks his eyes closed.
Grimaces.
‘You taking the piss?’
‘Erm, sorry sir. I? You know. I? Ha ha.’
‘Bit of a fucking comedian eh, Kev? Make sure you tell Turner that Mal called. Mal. He’ll know who I am.’
Click.
‘But . . . Hello? Erm? Mal? How do I, erm? Mal?’
Seven miles down river, and Te
d Berry is trying to fold a shout inside a whisper.
‘Wedge?’ he coughs, standing at the top of the grass bank that leads down to the ship yard.
‘Wedge?’
He takes a few steps down.
‘Fuuuck!’
And slips.
He slides down the dust towards the concrete on his backside. His good hand steering his descent like a fin. A forward roll at the bottom and then he falls forward on his hands and knees to the concrete.
‘OW!’ he puts the spelk wound to his mouth.
‘Fuck’s sakes!’
The metal dinosaurs keep watch as Berry gathers himself up, heart kicking a tantrum. He waits, listening; a flock of birds flutters far away over the grey expanse, a creature rustles rubbish under a metal tube. He can hear a TV.
He sits there, his palm in his mouth.
Berry gets up and creeps forward in the direction of the shed next to the main gate, he opens his throat, cups his hands and – ‘Wedge’ - shout whispers again.
Nothing.
‘Fuckin melonhead freakboy,’ he mutters to himself.
He turns his head to the left until his neck locks, his feet shuffle round to join it and he looks back up the hill he’d just fallen down. His face returns to the stretch of concrete between him and the rotten security shed.
The flashing lights of a TV spill out across the grey plain and there’s a muffled cockney squawk; ‘We need to tawk.’
BBC One, Eastenders.
‘Cockney wankers,’ Berry mutters.
He plays at being in the SAS and snipes across no man’s land to the shed, he looks round the side and edges forward to the door - he needs to step passed it to get a look in the window. He eases along toward the door’s hinge and leans.
He peaks into the scummed-up shed window and . . .
A shape inside comes straight towards him.
‘Fuckinhell!’
The door swings open.
Berry dives round the corner, round another - then onto the ground behind the shed, he rolls under it into discarded metal wire, beer cans and cartons.
The man pulls down his zip and starts to mumble.
He smells of vinegar.
‘Little cunts. Always fuckin around, I’ll . . .’
He strains and rasps out a fart.
Fwump.
Fwump.
Phweeert.
‘ . . . kill all these little fuckin bastards. Drown the lot of them.’
Piss bursts out of his pants, splashing on the concrete.
Drops splash Berry in the face.
‘Fuck’s sakes!’
He turns his back and rubs piss from his cheeks with his t-shirt.
The air reaks of ammonia, he looks up; slashes of light shine from nicks in the shed’s floor, illuminating the dirty underworld forest beneath the hut.
It stinks.
Something died under here.
‘Little fuckers, I, I’d drown the little . . .’
Berry’s eyes scan the mess under the shed.
‘Wedge, you fuckin fuckin circus freak bastard,’ he whispers. ‘I’m gonna fuckin . . .’
There’s something greasy brown in the darkness, moving along one of the slashes of TV light – it’s rumbling towards him like a miniature little storm cloud.
‘Rat!’ he choaks. ‘Uuuuaagh.’
He can feel her four paws tapping the floor, scurrying in time with Berry’s manic heartbeat - big as a cat, Queen Rat, whiskers patrolling the air like spears as her nose sniffs out the stranger in her home.
‘Aaaggh!’
Too loud, way too fucking loud.
He throws a can and some of the stinking earth in her eyes, she ducks and flattens her ears then twitches, curious - gives him a hurt ‘only saying hello’ look.
She scurries away.
The piss torrent subsides.
‘What the?’ the drunk says.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ Berry mouths to himself.
He tries to force Jack back into his Box - he leans on the lid.
‘Man, oh man.’
And waits.
By the gate, and Hash feeds the key into the car door, turns it then drops it into his deep tracksuit pocket. He aches his way around to the boot and presses the button.
It’s locked.
‘Fuckin hell man.’
He fumbles for his keys, pushing his arm stiff to the bottom of his stinking pants. They scratch far away next to his inner thigh.
It’s a long stretch.
‘Ayaz man,’ he sighs.
He puts the key in the lock and peers over the opened boot at Foggy, stepping up and down the kerb, rolled cigarette at his lips.
The world’s worst burglar.
‘Fuckin dick head,’ Hash says as he reaches into the boot for a fat yellow torch.
‘Here,’ he passes it to Foggy then rummages around, gently, inside his tool box.
‘What we need this for?’ Foggy says, looking to the sky. ‘It’s still pretty light man.’
Hash passes Foggy a pair of tin snips, like heavy metal scissors.
‘Stop whining.’
Hash pauses at the lock, fumbling and jingle jangling keys.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Foggy twitches. ‘Nobody’ll pinch that pile of shit man.’
‘Have y’locked your side?’ Hash snaps.
Foggy steps off the kerb to the passenger door and opens it, pushes down the catch and slams it.
‘Locked,’ he says, flapping the handle. ‘We goin now or what?’
Hash pulls his dirty sahara hat down a little closer to his eyes.
They walk to the gate, then veer off to the left of the fence.
‘Bet you’ve even got blister’s on y’fuckin balls,’ Foggy mutters, then snorts out a laugh at the image in his head.
They walk along to a bush, standing solo against the fence like a sprig of broccoli.
‘Right,’ Hash asks. ‘Here’ll do. C’mon.’
They stand still, Hash stares at Foggy.
‘What?’ Foggy says.
‘Cut a fuckin hole in the wire.’
‘Oh fuckin kay,’ Foggy answers, passing Hash the torch.
He points the giant scissors at the flimsy fence and unzips it into two unsteady curtains.
‘Hold the fuckin thing open.’
Foggy grabs the flaps as Hash eases himself through, then pushes his own gangly frame into the dockyard, snaring himself on a sheered edge.
‘Bastard!’
It rips a hole in his shellsuit pants.
‘What?’
‘I’ve ripped me new fuckin pants,’ Foggy shouts. ‘Looker.’
His voice ricochets around the open shipyard and down to the pigeons settled in a ledge carved from the river’s concrete wall.
It unsettles them, they fly away.
‘Keep the fuckin noise down.’
His voice lowers – ‘four fuckin quid’ - he pulls at the pants.
They walk out into the industrial wasteland spread out before them.
‘Where the fuck we goin?’ Foggy says.
Hash fiddles with the torch, whacking it twice – clang clang - against a metal tube before the connection is made.
A feeble light glows.
‘Bollocks,’ Hash says, shaking it. ‘Needs batteries.’
They walk towards the mammoth shed in the distance, aiming for two rusting cranes locked in a scan of the skyline like frozen lancers of the home guard.
Hash looks around, confused
‘Y’fuckin lost, aren’t ya?’ Foggy says, still playing with the hole in his pants.
They walk towards the bend in the flashing pink, curling river.
‘I came here up the river.’
‘The river?’
‘Aye, by boat.’
‘By boat?’
‘Aye, the river.’
‘The river?’
‘Fuck me, are y’just gonna keep repeatin the last words I fuckin say?’
�
��‘Fuckin say.’’
‘Prick.’
‘Spastic. Y’fuckin lost.’
‘Stop moanin man! Jesus fuckin.’
‘Dick.’
They walk around a crane to a yellow fence.
‘Here! This is it!’
Hash speeds up, he shuffles up excited to the fence.
He looks down.
‘Fuck?’
He sees his face looking back.
The dry dock is filled with black ink. A wooden pallet and a yellow builder’s helmet rest motionless on the oil stained water.
‘Ah fuck?’
‘What?’ Foggy says.
‘It’s not there.’
‘What?’
‘It’s not fuckin there.’
‘Aye? What? WHAT’s not fuckin there.’
Foggy stares into the black water.
‘The boat.’
‘WHAT fuckin boat? Jesus fuckin Christ man!’
‘The boat. Play Fair. The boat with the fuckin hash inside. We parked it . . .’
He points at himself in the water.
‘Down there.’
‘Oh.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Play Fair?’ Foggy looks at Hash, confused. ‘Did y’say ‘Play Fair?’’
‘Aye.’
Foggy smiles.
Shakes his head.
‘Get fucked. Play Fair doesn’t exist, that’s just a fuckin myth man. Hah.’
‘It fuckin DOES, y’wanker. We nicked it. Well, Talbot . . . Anyway.’
‘Don’t believe ya.’
‘I couldn’t give a fuck what y’believe. Why the fuck else would we be here, eh?’
‘Fuck me,’ Foggy looks down at himself in the black water.
‘Really?’
‘Fuck’s sake.’
‘Man, I’ve dreamt of that thing for years. That’s where all the dope comes from . . ?’
‘No shit Sherlock,’ Hash sighs.
Foggy looks at his own reflection and the ever-darkening starry starry night over head.
‘Fuck! Maybe it’s under water?’
‘Boat’s float.’
Hash retreats and eases his bony arse into the mouth of a fat metal tube. He glances around.
‘I need a fuckin spliff,’ he says, his face seems to be curling up into the saggy rim of his filthy hat.
Foggy sits in the next tube and builds himself a smoke. The flick of his lighter fires up the scene.
‘Maybes Talbot’s been back for it?’
Foggy takes a deep drag.
‘He’d tell you though, wouldn’t he?’
‘Would he bollocks.’
He blinks his eyes and looks up the river, his blistered brow descends. He rises from the tube and steps up to the river’s edge and peers down at the gentle water, a silent pink firework display twinkles, reflecting and re-arranging the sky as it twists and laps its heavy way to the city.
‘Hang on?’
Something about the angle of the bend resets his mental compass, he looks over to the opposite riverbank – a metal arm sticks out over the water; a conveyor belt that once poured coal onto ships.
‘’Coals to Newcastle’?’
‘What?’
‘And them pipes weren’t there?’ Hash mutters. ‘Were they?’
‘Fuckin talkin to y’sel again,’ Foggy says, shaking his head. He flicks his cigarette and rises. ‘May’s well fuck off home. This place gives me the fuckin willies. Talbot’s a fuckin cu . . .’
‘It’s the wrong hole.’
‘What?’
‘It’s the wrong fuckin hole.’
‘What y’mean ‘it’s the wrong hole?’ You sound like Melanie.’
‘It’s further up, look. Behind those pipes.’
‘Err. Aye?’
‘Definitely. Talbot must’ve stacked these pipes with the crane. Looker.’
He creaks forward at a higher speed than usual of late.
‘Get up y’wanker!’
Under the shed, and Ted Berry curls further away from the old drunk’s piss puddle as it spreads towards him.
‘Fuck’s that?’ the man says, dick in hand.
Berry nips his eyes tight and puts both hands under his body next to his heart, certain the old fucker can hear the crazed John Bonham in his chest.
‘Wedge,’ he whispers to himself. ‘You. Melon headed. Fuckin. Freakboy.’
The security guard’s scuffed brogues crunch the concrete.
Berry looks across the darkness to the other side of the hut and the furthest slash of light coming through the holes in the floor from the TV.
Freedom.
It’s a fair crawl all the way to the otherside, and that’s where the rat went.
‘Fuck that.’
‘Cuntin rats,’ the old man says.
He resumes hosing the ground.
It takes approximately four hundred and eighty seven years before the piss finally ebbs – the glistening arc losing its power and retreating up the drunk’s tube.
‘Fuckin hurry up man,’ Berry mutters. ‘Y’silly old cunt.’
It starts again; Rainy Season - it might only rain once a day, but boy does it rain.
‘For fuck’s sakes!’
Berry can’t be sure he hasn’t said that out loud.
Another few seconds pass.
Phreeert.
He rasps out a fart, Berry’s lungs pull the brown mist down the side of the hut and into his chest. The drunk’s most recent meal; pickled eggs from a jar sitting, untouched by any other hand, on the corner of a bar.
Phreeerrrrrt.
He drops another.
‘They n’er fuckin listen, man,’ he says. ‘Ne’er fuckin listen. Cunts. The lot of em.’
He shakes his dick and opens the door to - ‘Ricky!’ - the TV’s dreary dialogue.
The door closes.
‘Thank fuck!’
Berry scuffs his way to freedom, out from under the hut and gets to his feet. His eyes adjust to the diminished day behind the back of the shed.
He steps out behind the shed and looks around.
‘Wedge?’
He turns to run across the concrete and up the grass bank.
‘Fuck him.’
But the stale vinegar of an alcoholic’s breath still colours the air.
A light blinds him like the final judgement, up close – right in his face.
An industrial strength torch.
‘Shit the fuckin bed!’
The old man’s pissy fist flies through its flame.
‘Little fuckin cunt!’
Less than sixty feet away, and Foggy is sampling some suffering of his own.
‘Ow, fuck!’ he squeals as he cracks a kneecap into the corner of an industrial pyramid of massive metal pipes.
‘Bastard!’
‘Shhh man,’ Hash replies. ‘Fuck!’
The injured soldiers hobble together across no man’s land, Hash following the line of the river, cross referencing it with his blistered memory.
A huge set of gates hold back the river from a cavernous hole in the ground.
‘This is it!’ Hash says.
Hash steps up to the yellow railings like a child on his first trip to the seaside.
He points the dying torch down.
There’s nothing there.
‘Fuck?’
He follows the wall deeper and closer to the gate.
‘Yes!’
The shattered white slats of a white boat.
‘Fuckin right man! It’s here! It’s fuckin here! I told ya.’
Foggy joins him at the rail.
‘Mint! Ehm? What am I lookin at?’
‘There man,’ Hash nods down. ‘Y’dick head.’
‘The boat?’
Foggy isn’t impressed.
‘That’s it?’
‘Aye.’
‘It’s a bit fucked innit? Did y’drop it?’
Hash again points the limp torch.
‘Hey, aye? I? I
dunno. I was on Talbot’s boat by then, I was a bit,’ he gestures at his complection, ‘Y’know.’
‘Fucked,’ Foggy snorts.
‘And stoned. There’s more hash on that fuckin boat than even a cunt like you could ever smoke.’
‘Wanna bet?’
‘Howay. And keep y’fuckin voice down.’
They head off between the rail and pipes towards the red crane where the steps slash down the concrete wall to the dock floor.
‘How much hash, Hash?’ Foggy laughs. ‘Hah, I’m a fuckin poet and I didn’t even know it. Ha ha.’
‘What?’
‘Poet and didn’t know it.’
‘Y’re a knob wi nay fuckin job.’
‘Get fucked Blister Boy. Howay man, seriously - how much? Y’probably talkin out y’fuckin arse anyways. ‘Play Fair’ - bollocks.’
Foggy twirls a finger at his temple.
‘The sun’s fucked y’brain.’
‘Ever seen a bin lorry when bags are packed so tight they look like they’re gonna fall off the back?’
‘Fuck off? Seriously?’
Hash looks at him.
Smiles.
‘Seriously.’
Foggy’s face ignites like a true believer shaking Gabriel’s hand at the Pearly Gates, finding it wasn’t the ancient mass-control scam he feared - and all those years spent kneeling instead of living had been rewarded in spades.
‘Fuck’s sakes!’
A young voice in the darkening dockyard over by the shed, next to where the dry dock nips into a point.
Foggy spins like a dog to a whistle.
‘What was that?’
They stop.
‘Jesus!’ Foggy says. ‘There’s somebody there man! Looker!’
Over between the big red crane and the green bank, there’s an old Portabakin shed – the blue lights of a television flickering against its window. An old man stands in a string vest, one hand against the shed wall in a nazi salute. He’s holding something in the other.
His cock.
‘Tully,’ Hash says.
Tully’s piss flows.
‘Cunting rats.’
The shrunken drunk looks like Piltdown Man. Pickled. His organs destined for dissection by trainee doctors up at Newcastle University’s medical school. It’s a good one, one of the best in the country.
Phreeeeert!
‘Tully,’ Hash repeats. ‘He’s just an old fuckin drunk.’
‘What?’
Phreeeert.
The piss starts to lose its urgency.
‘Ne’er fuckin listen, man. Ne’er fuckin listen.’
Phreert.
‘Cunts. The lot of em.’
Tully moves across the front of the hut and opens the door to squawking Cockneys on the TV.
‘Quick,’ Hash takes the first two steps down into the dry dock.
‘Howay man!’
Tully closes the door, reaches inside for something but doesn’t enter – he edges around the side of the hut like a grandad playing Santa, a present in his hands.
‘Fuck’s the silly old cunt doin?’ Foggy says.
‘Eh?’ Hash replies. ‘Dunno. Howay man, he’ll be asleep in a minute.’
They descend the steps to the dry dock floor.
‘Who the fuck’s Tully?’
‘A tramp. Just an old fuckin tramp, I think he used to work here years ago, was a shop steward or somethin. Alcoholic. Lives here now, sort of.’
‘Little fuckin cunt!’
‘Shit the fuckin bed!’
They continue down the steps.
‘Aaow!’
Foggy grabs Hash’s tracksuit top.
‘Y’little bastard!’
‘Aaaow!’
‘Listen.’
‘What man?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Aaaooooow.’
‘That!’
‘Eh?’
‘Sounds like some kid’s gettin fuckin murdered.’
‘What y’think y’doin, eh?’
‘It’s two different voices man. It must be the telly. Howay man.’
‘Aaaaooow.’
Foggy shivers like a cat throwing off water and wraps his arms around his sides.
He steps down into his grave.
Behind the shed, and Berry throws up his hand, eyes scalded by an industrial torch.
‘Y’little bastard!’
He tries to launch himself across the concrete to the grass bank.
‘Fuckinhell!’
But that’s where the Portakabin is, the sharp artex splashed against the hut scrapes his back like jagged rock.
‘Aaaaow!’
A hand flies through the flame of the thing and grabs hold of his favourite t-shirt, the threads stretch and complain.
Berry grabs the old aged pisshead; he’s tight and lithe like a featherweight, suprisingly hard bodied and bizarrely cold, like a fish.
‘What y’think y’fuckin doin?’ the drunk shouts. ‘Eh?’
His methylated breath burns at Berry's nose.
‘I said ‘what the fuck y’think y’doin’?’
‘Just messin mister! Just playin!’
Berry raises his hands, palms up and outstretched in submission.
The drunk’s fist crashes into Berry's cheek, raising hot blood to the surface.
‘Aaow.’
‘Just fuckin playin?’
Clout.
Berry’s brain chimes against his inner ear.
He throws his arms up for cover like a boxer.
‘I'll 'just fuckin playin’ ya, y’little cunt.’
There’s a pause, Berry drops his guard a touch.
‘Little cunt.’
Clout.
Perfect timing.
Clout.
The drunk leaves a vapour-trail through the air like sprayed sewage.
‘Aaaooow! Fuck!’
Clout.
He strikes an underhand note from the other ear - Berry’s brain bell swings wildly from side to side, chiming where it meets the skull.
‘Eh? Eh?’ the drunk dances, tightening his fist so his oversized middle knuckle sticks out. ‘Just fuckin playin?’
Whack.
Top of the head.
A knuckleduster.
To the very spot where you’re never to touch babies.
The fontanelle.
The bell cracks and falls, Berry’s legs fall away and his knees meet the concrete.
‘Aaaaaaaaow!
The drunk drags him along the concrete, stretching the neck of his t-shirt down to the nipple, just like the old man's vest.
‘Ah'll fuckin ‘just messin’ ya, y'little cunt. Little bastards tormentin me, always throwin stones at me roof.’
Clout.
‘Y’fuckin think ya . . .
Clout.
‘. . fuckin . . .
Clout.
‘. . funny, don't ya?’
Clout.
Berry curls up on the concrete and wraps his arms around his head, brain rotating like a lost space probe.
‘Where's ya mates now when y’need them then eh?’ the drunk pants. ‘Y'little cunt? Eh?’
He leans forward, one hand steadying himself against the wall, to make sure he gets it just right.
‘Aaaaooowwwww!’
He knuckle dusts Berry again on the crown of his head.
‘Aaaaooooow!’
Now the tears come.
The pain is sharp, long and thin, burning down through his scalp like an ice pick to the very seed of his brain.
‘Aaaaooooow.’
The old pisshead straightens up, rasping air.
‘Cunts need taught a fuckin lesson.’
He grabs at Berry’s t-shirt and tries to pulls him along the side of the shed, scratching his shoulder as he goes.
‘Right,’ the drunk says. ‘I’m gonna throw you in the fuckin dock. Y’little cunt. Howay! Y’gonna have a fall. How’d y’fancy havin a nice little accident, eh?’
He pulls him two feet towards the drop, like a resisting prisoner on his way to the hangman.
‘No mister, please mister. Don’t!’
Berry reaches out to grab one of the hut’s legs. His eyes twisting in salty pools - overawed and overpowered.
‘Little cunts like you,’ the drunk pushes a foot down on Berry’s arm, the one locking him to the hut. A damp sock pokes through a hole in the smooth sole of his shoe.
‘Y'should be fuckin drowned at birth. Ah'd do it, ah would. Nay bother. Drownin little tormentin cunts like you at birth - do the world a favour. It should be me job.’
Berry opens his eyes and tightens them into focus, chest blowing oxygen into the torrential blood storm.
‘Eh, wha y’reckon?’
He pulls him a few more inches towards the void.
‘That should be me job, drownin little cunts like you at birth. Eh? Eh?’
Clout.
‘Good job for me that eh? Eh? Everybody’ll think y’fell. Y’shouldn’t be pissin around in the docks. It’s dangerous.’
Drag drag.
‘Do y’fuckin mother a favour. She'd thank me for it, wouldn't she, eh? Wouldn't she?’
Berry is stretched out like a man on a rack, his fingers still gripping the hut leg.
The old drunk takes a rest.
Berry inches under the shed – hand outstretched seeking a better grip.
‘Keep still y’little cunt.’
The old pisshead stands on Berry’s back. He isn’t heavy.
Berry focuses under the hut looking for escape.
Something scurries across a flash of light from the TV then off into the dark.
Berry sharpens his eyes.
‘She’d thank me for it, y’mam, wouldn’t she, eh? Havin a little bastard like you, eh? Poor cunt.’
It’s not over.
Clout.
Drag, drag.
‘Aaaaow!’
The man fades and Berry tries to see through the blackness, his face lit by one of the slashes above his head. He looks up through it, there’s a fan he hadn’t noticed spinning on the roof of the Portakabin blowing a slight breeze through the floor and onto his face.
Berry looks into the darkness under the hut.
Light from the TV flashes between the wooden slats and dances along the edges of two clasped bunches of silver thread, tickling his nose.
Right in front of his face.
Nose to nose.
Two tiny black eyes.
Berry stares into an untidy, easygoing place – Queen Rat’s friendly, curious soul.
‘Hello, can I help?’
But the boy sees MURDER.
‘Raaaat!’ he jerks back. ‘Uuuuuuuuuaaaagh!’
Ancient strength in his bones, like a woman lifting a truck off her baby.
‘Uuuuuuuuuaaaagh!’
The old drunk tips backwards and lands hard on the bones of his arse, his legs and arms kick at the air like a tipped cockroach.
‘Ah'll kill ya, y'little fucker.’
Berry's feet scrabble at the grit.
‘Uuuuaaaaagh.’
The souls of his worn out trainers grip and launch him.
A crane passes by, the tube pyramid, then the dry dock to his right, another crane.
The black serpent Tyne blocks his escape, he turns to look back over the 100 metres he’d covered in four seconds – the wrong direction. He looks at his feet for Queen Rat - a black bin liner moves, pushed by a gentle river breeze.
‘Uuuuuaaah!’
It wraps itself around his leg.
‘Uuuuaaah!’
His legs rotate, setting their own course along the riverside, away from the rat, away from the old pisshead still on his back like a dog rolling in shit for scent.
‘Uuuuuaaaah!’
Anywhere.
Saturday