by Jamie Tuck
Halfway up the steep road down to the fish quay, and Rick Delaney stops at the white Ford Escort he’d borrowed last night from the Evening Kernel’s garage.
Now reported stolen to the police by Munroe.
He turns the key in the door.
It resists.
‘Stupid thing.’
He fiddles until the door opens.
‘Ooof,’ he says. ‘That bloody stinks.’
Rancid fish, still cooking in the boot.
He takes off his linen jacket and hangs it on the plastic coat hanger glued above the rear passenger seat then shuffles through the inside pocket.
He pulls out his notepad.
‘Oh? Photo?’ he looks up the steep Tarmac hill to the park gates.
‘They’ll need a photo?’
The letters ACAB – All Coppers Are Bastards – are sprayed on the wall next to the car.
The paint could be fresh.
‘I’m not going back up there. Jesus, no. No chance!’
He stands with the pad on top of the car, using its roof as his desk. He smiles and puts the pen to his mouth.
‘EXCLUSIVE,’ he says, writing down his favourite word. ‘Ha ha.’
‘By Rick E,’ – he scribbles out the now redundant E.
‘‘Rick Delaney.’’
‘GANG warfare broke out,’ he reads as he writes, constructing the first paragraph to his masterpiece.
He chews the blue Bic.
‘Gang warfare? Is it? What’s gang warfare if not that? Jesus! How can a fifteen-year-old boy have his own enforcer? Hitman? Fifteen!’
His eyes follow the white footprints up the centre of the road to the top of the hill.
It’s empty.
‘Right, come on Rickster.’
He focuses on the task at hand.
‘Right. GANG warfare broke out. Erm? The young face of an international drug ring? Cartel? Cartel! Nice. Nice,’
The pen goes back to his lips in search for some more overwritten inspiration. He tries to summon The SS’s vocabulary.
‘In a shocking indictment of the youth of today . . .’
The sound of a loud guitar solo gets closer then passes by behind, breaking his spell.
‘Wanker!’ a high voice shouts from the car.
He watches the black Cavalier take the next left.
‘Scumbags,’ he sighs.
‘Someone should drop a bloody bomb on this place.’
He puts his mind back in gear.
‘The gang leader a mere fifteen-year-old boy by the name of Edward Berry. A good looking teenage boy with the world at his feet. But the young Berry has taken an evil route to easy money, keeping the kids in his home town high on lethal – evil? - drugs. In a teenage turf war . . .’
Delaney pauses.
‘’Teenage turf war!’ Ha ha ha. Great stuff, Rickster!’
A sweat patch gathers under Delaney’s armpits as he leans over the roof.
‘Oh?’ he says, puts the pen to his lips. ‘Hang on. Can I name a fifteen-year-old in this story?’
He tries to remember his media law course. English law protects minors from the press.
Sometimes.
He just can’t remember when.
‘You can’t name them in a court case? This isn’t a court case. Yet.’
He looks up to the park gates for inspiration.
‘Sod it,’ Delaney says. ‘Kid is a bloody gangster, isn’t he? He has no rights.’
Delaney scribbles ‘please legal’ at the top of the pad – a note for the newspaper’s lawyers. Every newspaper reporter’s ‘get out of jail free’ card.
There’s the distant sound of a guitar solo, getting closer.
‘God,’ Delaney says. ‘Could that have been the footballer bloke? What’s his name again.’
He looks over into the back seat and the front page of yesterday’s Evening Kernel – WADDLE SIGNS FOR TOTTENHAM.
There’s a picture of a footballer in a brand new white strip with a really bad haircut.
‘Can’t be him. Can it? Oh, hang on. No it isn’t. He’s down in London,’
The guitar solo.
Delaney looks at the car radio then up the hill to the park gates, the road is empty.
‘For God’s . . .’
The guitar is accelerating in volume.
Loud.
Fast.
Louder.
Faster . . .
. . . it’s behind him.
‘Wanker!’
Delaney turns and, the film in his head slows down.
He holds his hands out against the approaching heavy metal.
‘FUCK! NO!’
A few seconds earlier, back in the car, and Ted Berry is vaguely aware that they’re heading back up the hill.
‘It IS him!’ Wedge shouts, he leans out of the window. ‘Wanker!’
The guitarist’s fingers reach high up his fretboard penis and he hits the strings, volume cranked to 11.
Berry pulls himself up from the upholstery.
‘Is it hi. . .’ he says. ‘FUCKINHELL!’
The reporter’s head smashes into the windscreen.
‘AAAAGH! What the fuck? AAAAGH!’
It cracks.
The head.
And the windscreen.
Kristiaan crunches the gearbox into reverse.
‘Bastaard!’
It takes a second or two to find the gear.
Crunch.
Grind.
Crunch.
He puts his arm around the back Wedge’s seat and looks through the back window.
He smiles at Berry.
An aggressive parker
The back wheels lift up on their springs.
Then drop.
He revs hard, twice.
Vroom.
Vroom.
He looks at Berry with his wet pebble eyes.
‘Hoo hoo hoo!’
He releases the clutch.
‘CARNAGE!’
Fragments of a second pass like seeds blown from a dandelion, floating gently one by one to the ground.
‘Heroin?’ Berry says into the barrage of high notes. ‘Overdose? FUCK!’
Kristiaan presses the stop button, pausing the guitarist’s wanking wrists.
For now.
‘Man, I don’t feel too fuckin good,’ Berry says.
‘Ah, why do you need to punctuate every sentence with a swear word. It annoys me. You will be fine Mr Berry, do not worry.’
‘Kristiaan?’ Wedge says. ‘Did you just run over that fuckin reporter bloke?’
‘Reporter?’ Kristiaan says, smiling in the mirror. ‘What reporter?’
Berry smiles back like a kicked dog currying favour.
‘What reporter?’ he repeats. ‘You are very high Mr Veg.’
‘But?’ Wedge starts.
‘Man,’ Berry says. ‘What the fuck’s happened to me head?’
It’s as if Kristiaan has stabbed an egg whisk through an eye and is giving his grey matter a damn good scramble.
The business of the fish industry passes by.
‘Do not worry boys, you must trust me. The drugs. They will wear off.’
‘Aye?’ Wedge says.
‘Of course, unless you want some more? Hoo hoo hoo!’
‘More?’ Wedge looks through the gap at Berry then across to Kristiaan. ‘Yeah man, fuckin right!’
‘Ah man,’ Berry says. ‘I’m gonna fuckin puke.’
‘We are nearly there Mr Berry. Mr Veg here is navigating. Yes?’
They pass a fish and chip shop, there’s a long queue out the door.
Kristiaan turns down to the corrugated iron shed and the clutter of masts overhead that mark The Gut and the closed fish market.
They drive slowly along the thin strip of concrete. Tyres split splatting over the dock’s final hosing as they go.
‘There it is,’ Wedge shouts. ‘That’s Talbot’s boat.’
Kirrin - the flagship of the Tyneside trawling fleet is moored
away from The Gut on its own, up beside the ice factory.
Kristiaan punches Wedge on the arm.
‘Good boy. You’re a very good boy. You will get your reward. Eh? You will get your reward later. Hoo hoo hoo.’
He turns off the engine and gets out of the car.
He leaves no instructions.
A thin film of fish mist coats Berry’s mouth and tongue.
‘I’m gonna fuckin puke.’
He opens the door.
‘Oh, fuck me.’
Reeeugh!
He barfs all over the dock.
Reeeugh!
‘Where’s he gone?’ Wedge says.
Reeeugh!
Berry sits back in the car seat, breathing heavily. Trying to reassemble his brain.
Time is without structure, the links in the chain have expanded to variable lengths.
Minutes pass.
Some like hours, others like seconds.
‘Bez?’
Maybe not even in sequence.
‘Aye?’
‘Bez? I’m fuckin monged. Did he just kill that reporter?’
Berry looks at the cracked windscreen.
He opens the door.
Reeugh!
It’s dry, there’s nothing left to throw onto the road. Berry looks up the river, the metal dinosaurs tear at the sky, whipping the sunsetting sky into a pink disarray. The river Tyne spills out into the North Sea like a vast sheet of metal, hammered into position by northern hands.
‘Maybes we should get out the car?’
‘Car? Oh, aye?’
Click.
The door opens.
‘Vorder, gaan wij varend. Ai yai, sorry, English. Come on, I want to show you something.’
Berry and Wedge stand on Kirrin’s deck looking out over the fish quay
‘Man,’ Berry says, impressed. ‘This is a proper fuckin ship.’
The stern is cleft open, framed by a wrought iron gibbets for the pulling in of nets full of writhing life.
Squealing seagulls bother the mast.
This is an entirely different beast from Playfair – this boat works for a living. Everything, every square inch of the boat smells of fish and industry.
Wedge leans against the rail, smoking a cigarette.
He looks fucked.
Happily fucked, like he’s found the answer to a question he’d yet to ask.
There’s a roar, the whole world shakes, vibrates - then settles.
‘Fuckinhell?’
Fifteen hundred horses chomping at the bit, Kirrin’s engines.
Kristiaan comes out of the wheelhouse.
‘Wij betaalden u te goed M. Talbot. She sounds powerful no? We will get there in no time at all.’
He points to the rope looped around a gun metal ballard sticking up from the quay.
‘Mr Berry, can you go and untie the rope there for me please?’
‘Eh?’ Berry looks at the rope looped round the metal erection. ‘Oh, aye.’
He jumps over the side of the boat and onto the quay.
‘Where the fuck y’goin?’ Wedge says.
Berry grips the fat rope.
He pulls.
The ship comes closer - amazing - loosening the rope’s grip on the ballard.
Berry unties it and the coils unfurl, Kirrin edges away from the dockside.
She slides out into the river.
A foot.
Two feet.
Three.
‘Woo hoo!’ Wedge says. ‘Ha ha ha. Ship a-fuckin-hoy Jim lad.’
Berry looks to where Kristiaan stands at the wheelhouse, he looks like he’s trying to tell him something.
‘Ha heh heh.’
‘Y’fuckin comin or what?’ Wedge says from the deck.
Berry looks down at the expanding water.
‘What? Ah fuck!’
‘Jump y’fuckin idiot!’
Berry inches his right foot out over the water.
Reconsiders.
The ship is about five feet now from the riverbank.
‘Fuckinhell!’
He turns to get a run.
Sprints, and leaps.
He lands on the deck.
Kristiaan hoots the horn.
Parp.
Parp.
Parp.
Berry stands at the stern as Kristiaan points the ship’s bow towards the open sea. The world has turned to sepia over the river, scratches of cloud line the sky like chopped cocaine on a smoke glass table.
‘Ha heh heh.’
Kirrin growls out between the piers.
Headed East.
Two dozen miles into the North Sea, and Skipper Ted Berry stands tall in Kirrin’s wheelhouse, both hands at the wheel.
Except this is no wheelhouse.
It really is a bridge.
There’s room enough up here for a bar.
‘Ha heh heh!’
And down below, the expanse of wooden deck getting dark, that could be the dancefloor.
‘Pull this Mr Berry.’
Kristiaan points at a toilet chain, hanging from the ceiling.
He pulls it.
Parp.
‘Ha heh heh.’
Parp.
‘Ha heh heh. Ha heh heh.’
Parp.
Parp.
Parp.
‘Hoo hoo hoo, look at you Mr Berry. You really are a skipper now. Skipper Ted Berry.’
‘Man, this is cool!’
‘She is a beauty. Een zeer sterk schip, u deed voor zich goed M. Talbot. She is a very fast boat, we will get there in no time at all. Ah fosure.’
Parp.
Parp.
Parp.
‘Fuckin right man!’
Berry moves the wheel off to the right.
‘Look at the compass, Mr Berry. And keep her pointed East. I have something downstairs I need to take care of. I need to find my brother.’
The turn isn’t instant, but Kirrin begins to bite into the sea and lean to the south.
Berry turns and looks out of the open wheelhouse door behind him.
‘Ha heh heh.’
Someone has switched the lights on over his hometown far behind in the distance. The lights like a cluster of stars, receding.
‘WOO HOO! Ha heh heh.’
The lighthouses on the north and south piers spin their white lances across the black sea.
He points the ship to the East.
Parp.
Parp.
Parp.
One hundred and seventeen nautical miles later over an empty patch of water called Cleaver Bank, and Kirrin cuts her way through the black night, Skipper Ted Berry still at the wheel.
Only stars over head, billions of pinpricks in a black stage curtain.
No moon.
The black glass of the bridge is like a mirror. Berry watches Kristiaan come in through the door, his glass pipe in his hand.
He’s taken his top off.
Wedge is sitting by the window, a smile on his face.
‘He likes his drugs, no?’ Kristiaan says.
‘Aye. He takes after his mam.’
‘And you, Mr Berry? You are not so keen, no?’
‘Me?’
‘Drugs don’t suit you. It is too much for your brain, yes?’
‘S’pose, aye. Sort of. I’m a fuckin space cadet already.’
He can see Kristiaan sidling up behind him in the glass.
Then his skin recoils.
Kristiaan’s hands are running down the sides of each arm, one holding the glass pipe.
Berry freezes.
He smells of cheap aftershave and hot sweat.
‘Here, Ted. Let me show you.’
He’s up close, his naked chest touches.
He’s staring at his neck like a vampire.
‘We need to turn slightly south.’
And there it is, there’s no denying it – an erection on the other side of the tight rocker jeans.
He can feel his breath
on his neck, a kiss sure to follow.
Berry rolls to the right.
‘What the fuck y’doin?’
Kristiaan holds up his hands.
‘I was just trying to teach you something,’ he says.
He turns to Wedge, sitting – happy-as-a-pig-in-shit, looking out of the window.
Far, far away.
‘Hoo hoo hoo.’
‘What?’ Wedge turns his face indoors. ‘What? I wasn’t listenin.’
‘Mr Berry here is uptight, no? Mr Veg? We should do something to calm him down.’
Kristiaan lifts up his glass pipe.
‘Are you ready for more, boys?’ he says, filling it from a small green tin. ‘We must relax and enjoy the journey, no?’
Wedge smiles.
‘Fuckin right!’
Kristiaan lights the pipe with his brother’s tit lighter, the end glows.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
He passes it to Wedge.
He follows suit.
Berry looks out of the window, the North Sea – black and infinite, like space.
‘Fuckinhell?’
Kristiaan puts the pipe under his nose.
‘Nah,’ Berry says, he nods at the blackness. ‘No more, I’m drivin.’
Kristiaan grabs his shoulder and turns him, the bit of the glass pipe bangs into his teeth – catching Berry’s gum.
There’s the faint taste of blood.
‘Smoke. NOW.’
Once.
‘HARDER!’
Twice.
‘Very good. And again.’
Three times.
The turn from the blackness has messed up Berry’s internal compass, inside the bridge - everything is moving. There are no fixed reference points. Nothing is solid, nothing can be relied upon – least of all thought.
The wind is picking up now, from the North.
Berry turns back to the blackness out front, gripping the wheel - waiting for his brain to anchor itself, looking for something to focus on as the ship powers forward, full speed ahead. Chewing away nautical miles like black carpet.
But the black window just pulls at him.
‘Man, oh man.’
His mind again relaunches, skimming reality’s surface, disturbing the sendiment below.
The world is not solid.
And it’s not safe.
He looks down at the glass earth sitting in a bowl now pointing South East, it doesn’t help, it wobbles around like a boiling kettle.
‘Ah, man,’ he says. ‘I’m gonna fuckin puke!’
The compass inside his head splashes against the inside of his skull.
He staggers to the door.
‘Hoo hoo hoo.’
‘Ha ha ha,’ Wedge says. ‘Baby lungs. Ha ha ha.’
‘Baby lungs! Very good Mr Veg. Baby lungs. U zult eerste zijn.’
Berry reaches the ship’s rail and barfs into oblivion.
Once.
Blurrrr!
Twice.
Blaaaaaaaaaarr!
Three times.
Rurrrrrrrrrr!
All of them dry.
The black sea pulls at him.
He closes his eyes.
And he lets go.
Monday
