‘Something like that.’
‘It’s what I thought. I got to say, I liked the idea: the symmetry. You know, the innocence Davey Green bestows, yea he even takes away. Of course, the later I left it, last night, the less sense it made me going to the local cops. I mean, what if that guy had died… how would I look, then? Standing like a knob, saying, Yeah, I was an eye-witness but I thought I’d let him croak.’
Green twisted his Rothmans packet around, then slapped it to the table, his great grey hand covering it entirely.
‘And so there I was, enjoying your hospitality and drinking your delightful tea and letting time tick away. All the while, fuck, but little Jakie’s grown into one smooth git. Then, this morning, I got another idea. Suppose this wasn’t the first incident of its kind…’
Green was looking up at Jake now. A smile in his eyes like he was asking: How does that compute?
Jake said, ‘Is that why you were late this morning?’
‘Mm-mm. I had to find a friendly copper who didn’t mind me having a diddle through his incident sheets. I got to say, that area’s like the X-Files, it gets so many unexplained attacks. And all of them within fifty yards of the casino doors. So far, no one’s volunteered a description, but going off the modus operandi, it could be the ghost of Bruce Lee.’
‘Bruce Lee? Why not Bruce Wayne?’
‘Who?’
‘Batman.’
‘What, the guy in the tights, makes the boys wonder?’
Jake nodded. He had to say, even at the comic-book level, what he’d been doing was hard to justify. But if he tried to claim he was protecting his staff, it sounded worse. They weren’t the reason. What it was, at the hard core of the matter, he liked kicking the shit out of bad men he couldn’t get enough of it. And, like Bruce Wayne, you had to suspect the reason was buried in his past.
Jake said, ‘You thought that was why I agreed to come back with you? I was worried you might dig a little deeper, find a shed full of new stuff to hold over me?’
‘I was just fact-checking, getting background.’
‘That I’m a dangerous psycho?’
‘Well, you certainly got a temper.’
Green settled back, smug in his seat. Jake didn’t care. The truth was, there was no way Green could have blackmailed him into taking this trip. Losing the casino gig bothered him less than Green could imagine. It wasn’t simply that Jake wasn’t a gambler; that was one of the things that had recommended him to the casino’s owners in the first place.
Jake’s real problem was he disliked gamblers. Their nervousness, their beliefs, the things that turned them on… night after night, he felt he was surrounded by people who made his flesh crawl. Picture a Krishna-ite toting his bells and lathered in Vaseline, whining for a fix. That’s how he saw gamblers: pervert junkie zombies. And it was time he quit flitting between a martyr and a third-rate vigilante. This trip back to Manchester, it was either a final attempt to push the self-flagellation act or a route to recovery. See some bad men… atone for some dead boys… all that stuff.
Jake said, ‘I was thinking, how did you identify Kevin Donnelly? He didn’t have any family.’
‘Fingerprints.’ Said matter-of-fact. Donnelly, of course, had no police sponsor. Just a yard-long criminal record. ‘Anyway, the lad had plenty of family. A mother, two or three fathers, and God knows how many sisters and brothers.’
Jake was startled for a second. All the orphans together, sharing a flat in Hulme, he always assumed Kevin Donnelly was the genuine thing: a bona-fide orphan. Not just a slim Jim Morrison-style fake like the rest of them.
Chapter Six
Jake’s flat was 283 Robert Adam Crescent, though there was no number on the door. One way to recognize it: someone had spray-painted Hommoes in vertical letters from top to bottom. Jake might have taken it personally but it also said Niggers in fresher paint, left to right. The door, like the window, was covered in plywood inside and out. This was primarily a security measure, though the window did open onto the kitchen and Jake was glad no passer-by could see the state of his sink. Hulme housed a mix of people, but even the worst of the scum kept a cleaner house than these four queer boys.
Jake put the key to the lock, saying, ‘Homme Sweet Home.’ Johnny stood behind him, stamping his feet. Kevin Donnelly was a pace further back, hovering like he was still unsure how far Johnny’s invitation stretched - just to the walkway, or all the way through the flat’s front door.
It was actually Jake’s flat… at least, it was in his name so he claimed the rent benefit cheque although it had never yet been used for rent. There was a bundle of eviction notices skewered to a nail on the inside of the door. All of them unread because no one was ever evicted from the Crescents. If it ever became council policy, they could always fill out a fresh application at the housing office and move to one of the empty flats further along the block. The next time, they would have to rent it in Sean or Fairy’s name – Johnny had already used up his turn. Maybe they should think about moving, just to solve the kitchen-sink scenario. Although Jake would miss his monthly cheque, and couldn’t imagine how the sink could become a bigger problem.
Pushing the door open, he caught a snatch of Fairy singing along to the record-player: ‘Boys keep swinging… Boys always work it out.’ Bowie’s bass theatrics made it an easy song to parody. Effortlessly easy, because Fairy would never knowingly parody the divine David.
Jake let Johnny pass him in the doorway, and stopped Kevin Donnelly, saying: ‘Listen to that and tell me you still like Bowie?’
Donnelly just grinned and nodded – so what could he say? Anyway, Jake found himself inexplicably moved by the song tonight. Almost to tears, despite Fairy’s tinny campiness… it was the unbelievable truth. Maybe the speed was hazing his judgement but one line was really doing it for him: ‘Heaven loves you… the crowd shouts for you.’ Imagine if that were true, that just being a boy got you a solid blast of adulation, stretching from heaven to earth… and nothing stands in your way.
The living-room was filled with cigarette smoke and lit by strings of Christmas lights. Inside, Fairy and Sean and four others were improvising a party. Fairy was working the hardest. With the combined noise, Fairy’s singing and the noise from the record-player, no one heard the front door but they couldn’t miss Johnny’s grand entrance. He charged the room, yelling ‘Alright’. In a second, everyone was shouting, ‘Johnny! Jake! Alright!’
Jake nodded around the room, playing it wary as he probed for residual anger. If Fairy was still steamed about him skipping with that old guy’s money, he wasn’t showing it. Maybe he’d forgiven and forgotten, maybe the surprise appearance of Kevin Donnelly was acting as a distraction. Johnny was dragging Donnelly into the room, and anything new Fairy could not resist.
Johnny was pointing round the room, providing a full roll-call of introductions so Donnelly wouldn’t feel shelved. ‘This is Rebecca. This fox here, this is Debs. Alright, Debs…’
Rebecca was on the settee. Debs had been dancing with Fairy but was still now. She had a shy smile for Johnny.
‘…the one asleep there is Domino and…’ Johnny broke off, looking at a small kid crouched by the armchair where Sean’s boyfriend, Domino, was sleeping, ‘…you got to forgive me but who the fuck are you?’
The kid said, ‘Sorry. David.’
Jake didn’t know who the fuck he was either.
‘David. You alright, yeah?’ The kid nodded. Johnny gave him a full grin. ‘Okay. Then we got Sean here and, last up, Fairy. Everyone: Kevin.’
Johnny had invited Donnelly back as they were crossing the roundabout below the Mancunian Way. They were running across the carriageway, avoiding the underpass and dodging the minicabs, when Johnny looked back and saw Donnelly tagging behind them. Johnny was saying: ‘I told him he had to come back. No argument. You know he’s living in a DHSS-approved B&B. I said, no way. I’ve been through that and those places are suicide pits. Isn’t that right, Fairy?’
Fairy nodded. ‘Death
by Bed and Breakfast.’
‘Listen to him, Kevin. He knows. I swear, the council’s got a meat truck moving round constantly, just picking up the bodies. Like, what are they called: those twenty-four-hour gun cars the cops have on call, just waiting for an armed response. Or one of those nuclear convoy things where the missile trucks are always moving so the spy satellites can’t track them…’
Johnny was running out of moving things, his mouth was willing but his general knowledge was giving out.
Jake said: ‘A shark.’
‘Yeah.’
*
There was a bottle of Pernod on the floor, trapped between Domino’s ankles. The bottle looked about three-quarters empty, so that might be why the boy was coma’ed. Sean’s boyfriends might have trouble holding their liquor but they could pass as novelty drinks cabinets.
Jake was reaching down to free the bottle when Rebecca said, ‘I thought I’d see you down Devilles, Jake.’
He looked up, said, ‘No’, shaking his head to let her know that it was too long a story. So far, he hadn’t said a thing about DC Green and Bootle Street police station, and neither had Donnelly. When it came out, it could look strange: Jake keeping quiet on something like that.
‘How was Devilles? Is that where you linked up with Sean and Fairy?’
She said it was. Jake was wondering now why she was out at all: wasn’t it a schoolday tomorrow. He said, ‘Have you broken up for Christmas already?’
‘Last week.’
He brought the bottle over as he sat down next to her. He could see now, through the dark green glass, that the Pernod had been diluted with blackcurrant. It was one of Fairy’s recipes. Jake passed the bottle to Rebecca, and when she shook her head he remembered she had a car and was probably driving. He took a swig, realized Fairy had used Vimto not blackcurrrant and started giggling, with his mouth already full.
‘What’s the matter?’ Rebecca was smiling, glad to have a hook as she tried to connect. Jake shook his head, meaning that he couldn’t speak, not that he didn’t want to. Thinking: this had to be the national drink of Manchester: Pernod and Vimto. Was that a Vimtod or was it a Permo? Which made Domino permo-glazed.
Up above him, Debs’s dancing had subsided to a basic shuffle. She swayed in front of Johnny as she asked him about Berlin. Her first question: had he been out clubbing? Johnny began telling her about The Jungle or Der Shungle or something; a name that Jake hadn’t quite caught the first time and still couldn’t make out.
Apparently, the inside of the club was fitted with scaffolding and steel walkways which made Jake think of a building site. To their left, Fairy was fussing around Kevin Donnelly, asking if he needed a drink. When Fairy began looking around, Jake guessed he was searching for the Pernod bottle. He took another swig and held it out. Fairy passed it on to Donnelly who rubbed the neck with the sleeve of his Harrington, playground style. When he realized what he’d done, he blushed through: the colour of the drink he was pouring inside himself.
Sean was sat over by the record player, thumbing through the box that had SEAN painted on its leatherette skin in Tippex. When his head flicked up for a moment, Jake caught him casting a striking glance over at Domino. Or maybe it was concern. Jake remembered, now, that he’d heard something about Domino and diabetes. It came back to him: the boy once passed out in a stairwell in Pips. He’d been trying to drag his way to the snackbar to find a sugar sachet when the diabetes overtook him. Jake had heard the story secondhand. It might have been Sean who got the sugar. Jake could only picture someone crawling up a sheer staircase, groaning ‘Sugar… Sugar… Sugar.’ Yes, Honey?
Jake started giggling again. Rebecca put her arm around him, cosying up as he smiled back at her.
‘What is it?’
He shook his head again; it wasn’t worth saying out loud. He breathed in, recognizing the smell of her hairspray. Elnett Extra-Hold – the same brand he used. Her was fixed in a row of spikes, pointing down in front of her face like a security fence. It wasn’t designed to be impregnable.
‘Who’s he?’ Jake pointed at the other kid whose face had begun to seem familiar, but whose name had been re-erased.
‘David? He’s at sixth-form college with us.’ She meant her and Debs. The boy was in a huddle next to Sean, crouched over the records but searching through the wrong box. He had something by the Human League in his hand and a connoisseur’s look across his face. It was wasted on Sean, who’d pulled out a disco twelve-inch. As it started up, Jake recognized ‘Imagination’ by Imagination. David leant the Human League record against the front of the hi-fi cab, as though they operated a queueing system.
The flat was a third-floor maisonette right at the top of Robert Adams Crescent. The front looked down into the broken circle of the four Crescents and over to Moss Side. The back windows looked onto the Aaben Cinema and across to the Ship Canal. The idea of a maisonette, Jake assumed, was to recapture the glamour of a council house but set it in the bright modern utopia of a tower-block. There were three bedrooms upstairs: his, Johnny’s and Sean’s. Fairy had been the last to move in, so slept downstairs in a makeshift lean-to at the back of the living-room. Any guests, if they weren’t asked to share a bed, crashed on the settee. He guessed that’s where Kevin Donnelly would be sleeping, unless Fairy turned out to have an interest.
Jake took another circular peek around the room and realized both Fairy and Donnelly had disappeared. If they were using his bed, they were both dead.
Jake was almost on his feet when Johnny came dancing over, holding a bottle of poppers in his hand. ‘You want some?’
Absolutely no moment of indecision. Jake took the bottle, removed the loosely screwed cap and covered the neck with his thumb. He took a snort up his right nostril, a quick gulp of room air, and another snort up his left nostril before he passed the bottle sideways to Rebecca. What was it with poppers? Primed up, he was nothing but a ticking time-bomb. Johnny stood in front of him, watching intently as he counted down the seconds. When it came, Jake felt the muscles at the base of his neck vibrate and begin to spread, like g-forces were flattening his face. Spreading wider, the muscles opened around his mouth until his lips were stretching into a rictus grin. The sound coming out of his mouth, this inhuman cackle, set up new spasms. His cheeks were pleating like curtains and opening out to his ears, his eyes were staring upwards, flickering and Everyone else’s eyes were on him.
He had one hand gripping Rebecca’s knee, the other holding onto the settee cushion. He knew what he looked like: His Holiness the Pope courtesy of Francis Bacon. And he was pushing into the purple until it crested, receded and he was coming back to earth. He could hear his laugh now, human again, the manic but recognizable giggle. Then the echo. He turned to his right, it was Rebecca, giggling with him and wanting to share the moment. He puppet-nodded his head in front of her to keep her giggles coming. She had a hand in front of her mouth to cover her quaking smile. Above it her eyes were watering in their violet Cleopatra frames. As she began to subside, he was asking, You alright?
Her soft giggling, ‘Yes.’
‘You sure? Y’alright?’
Watching her head nod as he nodded up and down in front of her, moving closer until their lips met and they began kissing. She began a little too hard. The sharp point of her tongue probing like a little snout, but he kept his lips soft and she began to respond. Soon they were slipping together, moist without being wet, in and around each other’s lips in shallow dives. He bared his teeth for a moment and felt her bottom lip glide across their serrated surface, then she nibbled his lips for a passing second.
They were beginning to work together, he could feel her relaxing as he moved a little deeper. Every shared slip of their tongues diluting the taste of spearmint that hovered on her breath… and probably the taste of aniseed and cigarettes on his.
It was Rebecca who broke away. He didn’t know why until he heard Fairy’s voice above them, saying, ‘Jake. Jake.’
He shook his head,
‘Yeah?’
Something was upsetting Fairy. ‘Can you come over?’
‘What is it?’
Fairy pursed his lips, ‘Can you come.’
Jake got up, stroking Rebecca’s shoulder rather than strain for an apology, and followed Fairy out of the room. Fairy opened the front door and they stepped onto the walkway.
Johnny was leant on the pebbled concrete rail, ten yards from the open door, as though he was searching for privacy.
When Jake asked him what was going on, he shrugged and said, ‘That kid, Slappy,’ using the name Fairy had given Kevin Donnelly on the night they first noticed him. The boy had been hovering at the kerb by the Bus Station, looking uncertain before he climbed into a beaten-up Transit van. As the van pulled away, they saw the driver’s face, unshaven and grey as an emery-board. The man scanned the street for live witnesses, then nodded his head backwards. Kevin pushed between the two front seats and disappeared into the rear of the van. They’d all seen it, but Jake was the first to speak, barely laughing as he said, ‘He’s going to get fucked over.’ Fairy had said, ‘A slappy – give him six months and you’ll hear his sphincter flapping as he walks.’ It was the kind of obscene image Fairy hoped to carry off with a camp twist. It turned Jake’s stomach but, when he shot Fairy a look, Fairy hadn’t looked too happy either.
Jake said, ‘Donnelly? What’s up with him?’
‘He’s up in my room skriking.’ Johnny’s face was drawn. He hadn’t slept in how-many hours now and even the amphetamine wake-up call couldn’t override his tiredness.
‘Sling him out. You want to get to bed, mate.’
‘He’s in my fucking bed. You brought him here. You talk to him.’
Jake could have said, It wasn’t my idea. You invited him. But he got the feeling he was supposed to be constructive: ‘What’s his problem?’
Fairy said, ‘He can’t take rejection.’
‘You go up, then. Give him the benefit of your experience.’
Fairy didn’t laugh. ‘I’ve been up. He’s really upset.’ The stress on really. ‘It’s not Johnny’s fault.’
Manchester Slingback Page 6
