Ashes by Now

by Mark Timlin

  ‘No, ta,’ he said. ‘I’m not used to tailor-mades.’

  ‘Was it bad?’ I asked, as I lit mine.

  ‘It was hell, Mr Sharman. Honest. You don’t know what it’s like on the rule landing. Do you know they shit in your food and the screws do nothing about it.’

  It’s the same all over, I thought. Everybody’s got to have someone to look down on. Even in prison. Everybody needs a whipping boy to take their spite out on.

  ‘I heard,’ I said.

  ‘Shouldn’t be allowed,’ he said. ‘Specially as I never done it.’

  ‘Leave it out, Sailor,’ I said. ‘It’s all ancient history.’

  ‘But you know.’

  ‘I don’t know anything, Sailor,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I don’t even know who I am.’

  ‘But I want justice.’

  I nearly laughed out loud.

  Justice. In this world. He had more chance of shitting rubies.

  ‘You’re out now,’ I said. ‘Think yourself lucky you only did a twelve-stretch.’

  ‘They have to let you out quicker these days. Make room for the up-and-comers. There’s not enough room inside,’ said Sailor.

  I shook my head and tasted the beer. It was thin and watery, but at least it was cold. I sipped at the Scotch. It burnt a path down into my stomach where, in a fight to the death, it met the bacon I’d eaten earlier.

  ‘And you reckon I can get you justice, do you?’ I asked.

  ‘You could if you wanted.’

  ‘But I don’t want, Sailor. I just want to be left alone to get on with my little life. It ain’t much, but it’s all I’ve got.’

  ‘I wanted to be left alone to get on with my life,’ he said, and his voice was loud enough to ruffle the feathers of the barmaid, who switched on the stereo system and chose an Elton John CD to cover the sound of our conversation.

  ‘You and your lot made sure I didn’t,’ he went on over ‘Candle in the Wind’. I hate that fucking song.

  ‘They’re not my lot now,’ I replied. ‘I’m persona non grata with them. Have been for years.’

  ‘I know. Word gets round, even when you’re on Rule 43. That’s just why you could do it.’

  I shook my head. ‘No chance, Sailor. I prefer to forget that part of my life. Sorry mate.’

  ‘I never done nothing to that girl,’ he said, almost sobbing.

  I was getting pissed off. Pissed off with the shitty bar I was sitting in. Pissed off with the rubbish beer. Pissed off with the rude barmaid. Pissed off with fucking Elton John singing stupid songs about things he knew nothing about. Pissed off with Sailor and his interminable whining. But mostly pissed off with myself for being who I was.

  ‘But it was only a matter of time, Sailor,’ I said. ‘Even if you didn’t touch Carol Harvey. Eventually you’d have got round to getting bored with showing your dick to little kids. Eventually you’d’ve wondered what it was like to actually touch them. And then one thing would’ve led to another, and you’d’ve ended up just where you did end up. You’re a nasty little nonce, Sailor. And I think you probably got exactly what you deserved.’ And I left my drinks and got up from the table and took a couple of tenners out of the pocket of my jeans and tossed them down on top of his tobacco tin. ‘There’s a few quid for you. Don’t bother me again.’

  And I left and drove back home, pulled the phone plug out of the wall, sat on the sofa and demolished the best part of a bottle of gin before I passed out.

  14

  After that Sailor didn’t ring again. It looked like he’d finally got the message.

  For a week or so, things were back to normal.

  I was dossing around with Dawn and Tracey most of the time. Business was slack. In fact non-existent. Mainly because I’d turned off the answer machine in my office, and threw the mail into the bin unread on the rare occasions I went down there.

  I wasn’t going to win any local businessman of the year awards, and that was a fact.

  The truth of the matter was I didn’t care that much. I was getting on very well without the world, and from what I could see, the world was getting on very well without me.

  But, as I might have guessed, if I’d taken time out to think about it, it couldn’t last.

  Nature abhors a vacuum, and that was exactly what I was living in.

  The telephone rang in the middle of the night. I was alone. I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away. I answered it. ‘Hello,’ I said, as you do.

  ‘Nick Sharman?’ said another voice from my past, although once again I didn’t recognise it straight off.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hello, Nick. It’s Terry Collier.’

  ‘Terry Collier?’ I replied with a question mark. Although I remembered him well enough. I’d been thinking about him only a short time before, after all. It was a coincidence that was already worrying me.

  ‘How soon they forget,’ he said. ‘Come on, son. Wake up. You remember me, don’t you?’

  ‘Terry Collier from Brixton nick,’ I said. Just for something to say, as I tried to come to.

  ‘Peckham now.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You’re wanted.’

  ‘What for? Overdue parking tickets, or the annual reunion?’

  ‘Don’t be smart, son.’

  ‘Is this a joke?’ I asked, and even as I said the words, I knew it wasn’t.

  ‘Oh no. No joke. As I recall, dead bodies are never a joke.’

  I tried to make sense of what he was saying, but my head was still fogged with sleep.

  ‘Say again,’ I said.

  ‘We’ve got a dead body here. A suicide by the looks of it.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with me?’ But I knew.

  ‘He left a note addressed to you. We thought you might like to come over and read it.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked, but I knew that too.

  ‘Your old friend and mine, Sailor Grant.’

  ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘Oh shit, indeed, son. It’s not very nice I must say. And we’re dying to see you, if you’ll excuse the pun.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Me and Lenny Millar. You remember Lenny. And of course old Sailor. Though I doubt if he’ll have much to say to you, being deceased and all. Except for what’s in his letter of course.’

  ‘Lenny Millar. Christ, are you two still together?’

  ‘Why split up a winning team. He’s a skipper now, and I’m a DI.’

  Shit always rises, I thought.

  ‘So come on, Nick. Get your skates on, boy. We haven’t got all night.’

  But of course, that was precisely what they did have.

  ‘You could just open it without me,’ I said.

  ‘We have. And we want you to read it. Now. Here in person.’

  ‘Where is here exactly?’

  ‘The garden of England. Canvey House, Lion Estate, New Cross. Number 22.’

  ‘Not that place.’

  ‘That place. So get yourself over here right away. That’s official. Understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I understand. I’ll be with you in a few.’ I put down the phone.

  I called the local mini-cab office right away, and they promised a car tout suite. I knew the Lion Estate of old, and I wasn’t taking my car to within a mile of it. I didn’t tell the operator exactly where I was going. I just said New Cross.

  I rinsed my tired old face and got dressed, and for once the cab was waiting before I’d laced up my boots.

  When I told the driver where we were headed, he wasn’t happy. He hummed and hawed, and eventually demanded a tenner out front, in case I did a runner. I paid him without argument. Otherwise I knew he’d just turf me out of the car, and that would be that.

  I didn’t blame him for not wanting to g
o. If I’d been a cab driver I wouldn’t have wanted to take a fare to the Lion Estate either. It was a sink. A black hole where the local council dropped all the tenants it didn’t want to know about: the thieves, junkies, arsonists, non-payers of rent, bad neighbours. You name any kind of anti-social behaviour, and there’d be a dozen or so professionals at it on the Lion. It was a no-go area for postmen, milkmen, doctors, dustmen, meter readers, bailiffs, everyone. Social workers were regularly bottled off. The fire service only went in with police protection, and ambulances had stopped entering the estate after three false alarms in as many days ended up with three ambulances being stripped of all drugs, medication and saleable parts. And Canvey House: that was the worst part of a lousy place. It was one of three tower blocks right in the middle of the Lion. The water-stained concrete that it was built of was scarred with smoke, bullet holes, the lot. Inside it was infested with every bug and insect known to man, and probably a few that weren’t. It was damp, rotten with mould, and riddled with asbestos. A perpetual hard rain of garbage, old TV sets, furniture and Christ knows what else poured off the building, day and night, because the tenants couldn’t be bothered to take their junk downstairs by more conventional means. You took your life in your hands just entering the front door. And once inside, the corridors and lifts were the domain of muggers, dope dealers and sexual perverts.

  The cab driver dropped me off at the outskirts of the estate. He point-blank refused to drive into the maze of narrow turnings that covered it. I didn’t blame him. Cab hijacking by joy riders was one of the new games on the estate. And his Volvo wasn’t in bad nick.

  I walked up to Canvey House along pavements covered in Rottweiler shit, tin cans, cardboard pizza-coffins and broken glass, under dead streetlamps that had been vandalised so many times the council didn’t even bother to repair them any more. I saw a couple of gangs of youths roaming the place, but both times I stopped in the darkness until they had passed me.

  I got to Canvey House at three in the morning. The dark night of the soul. A police Metro was parked next to an unmarked Sierra well away from the building. It’s not pleasant to have half a hundredweight of rusty refrigerator drop through the sun roof as you’re chatting on the RT.

  I went through the gap where the security doors had once stood and into the foyer of the building. If that’s not too grand a word for a shit-stinking concrete hall covered in graffiti. I took the stairs. I wasn’t about to risk being stuck in the lift with a knife-wielding crackhead or worse. Number 22 was on the sixth floor. The front door was standing ajar, with a uniformed copper outside on guard. I told him who I was, and why I was there, and he called inside for DI Collier. Terry came to the door himself to greet me. It wasn’t the friendliest of reunions, but then I hadn’t expected it to be.

  ‘Nick Sharman,’ he said. ‘Well, well, well. It’s been a long time. A lot of water under the bridge.’

  I nodded. ‘Terry,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Save it, son,’ he replied. ‘We’re not here for that. I don’t want to see you, any more than you want to see me. I just want you to read what Sailor wrote you. Then we can all fuck off out of this shithole.’

  I nodded again. ‘Fair enough,’ I said.

  ‘Come on in then. The body’s still here. The meat wagon’s out on another shout. I hope you’ve got a strong stomach. It’s not a pretty sight.’

  He looked at the uniform and said, ‘You can hop it now, son. We’ll take care of the necessary.’

  The uniform didn’t need to be told twice and made for the stairs without saying a word.

  15

  I followed Collier into the flat. It stank like a public toilet. The wallpaper in the hall was covered in mould, and there was no carpet on the filthy linoleum floor.

  ‘Come and see your old mate,’ he said, and opened the first door on the left.

  It was the bathroom. An airless, windowless hutch that stank worse than the hall outside. It wasn’t hard to see why.

  Next to the filthy bath was the toilet. Sitting on it was Sailor Grant. He was naked. His skinny body was scarred and white. He was slumped back against the cistern and he’d vomited down his bare chest. His arms were hanging down by his sides and his legs were bent at the knees. His face was yellow and in rictus, his lips drawn back over his teeth, and there was so little flesh on his skull it looked like he’d been dead for months. His flaccid cock hung down limply between his legs.

  Next to the toilet was a half-bottle of Scotch on its side. There was still a tiny residue of liquor inside it. The outside of the toilet bowl was covered with soft, drying faeces.

  ‘Shit himself,’ said Collier, and held up a plastic bag, inside which was a dark brown pill bottle. ‘Drunk himself stupid, then took a handful of sleepers. What a way for a bloke like me to spend the night, eh? Stuck in here with that.’

  ‘Goes with the job,’ I said. But not necessarily your job, I thought. You’d be too high-powered these days to get involved with a sordid little suicide on the Lion Estate. But I didn’t make any comment.

  ‘Course you’d know,’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘Who found him?’ I asked, ignoring his comment.

  ‘His mate who he squatted this place with. He was sleeping his afternoon’s recreational drinking off in the back. Woke up, got took short, and found this. Pissed himself, he did. He called us in. He’s down the station now making a statement.’

  ‘Where’s the letter Sailor left?’ I asked.

  ‘In the living room, if you can call it living,’ he said. ‘Lenny’s got it.’

  He pushed past me, and I followed him into another room. It didn’t smell so bad in there. Just damp and old and loveless. You can smell lovelessness you know. If you’re used to it like I was.

  Lenny Millar was standing by the window looking down over the lights of the estate. There was nothing to sit on except an orange crate in one corner. The place was as filthy as the rest of the flat I’d seen, and littered with beer cans and more half-bottles of Scotch. All empty this time.

  He turned at our entrance. ‘Nick Sharman,’ he said. ‘By Christ, I thought you were dead.’

  ‘No such luck,’ said Collier.

  Lenny was holding a grubby sheet of paper in his hand. ‘This was addressed to you,’ he said to me. ‘Must’ve missed the last post. We couldn’t resist reading it while we were waiting for you. Hope you don’t mind.’

  I ignored his comment and, after a second, he handed the letter to me.

  I looked at it in the light from the unshaded centre fixture. It was hard to make out the scrawl, but I persevered.

  Mr Sharman,

  theres nothing here for me on the outside

  I thourt you mite be able to help me

  You no I never done what they said I done

  You were my last chance of cleering my name

  I never tuched that girl and we both no thats true.

  I dont blame you you were only doing yore job

  dont worry ill be better of were im going

  best wishes sailor

  ‘Touching, isn’t it?’ said Collier.

  I shrugged, but the note affected me more deeply than he’d ever know. How could anyone write ‘best wishes’ and then top themselves?

  ‘Were you helping him?’ asked Lenny Millar.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With whatever he was doing. Trying to clear his name, or some such nonsense.’

  ‘No. He asked me, but I blanked him.’

  ‘Sez you.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘And we’re supposed to believe you.’

  ‘I don’t often get mixed up in anything these days,’ I said. ‘That’s my life.’

  ‘Your life’s shit, Sharman,’ said Collier. ‘Just shit. I hear you’re going case with a pair of bent strippers down Wandsworth way.’

&
nbsp; ‘Why would you hear that?’ I asked.

  ‘I like to keep in touch with old colleagues.’

  ‘I just bet you do.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning nothing. Can I go now? This place is depressing me.’

  ‘Shame. Just make sure you don’t get involved, and we’ll all be happy.’

  ‘Involved with what? There’s nothing to get involved in. The poor little fucker done his bird, then got let out to live in a place like this, being hassled by people like you, for something he probably never did in the first place. Like he said in this –’ I held up the piece of paper in my hand ‘– he’s probably better off where he is now.’

  ‘And you’d be better off forgetting all about him,’ said Collier.

  ‘Who?’ I asked, as if I’d already forgotten, and he hesitated. If I hadn’t said any more, he’d have probably let me go and get on with whatever I had to get on with. But I never know when to stop. When to leave well enough alone.

  ‘But it’s interesting that you’re still so worried about him after all this time. Even though he’s dead,’ I said. ‘I wonder why?’

  And Collier hit me. A low blow that doubled me over, and introduced me to a world of pain where I was going to live for a long time. I retched, and put out my hand to Lenny for help, but all he did was smile nastily and kick me in the kidneys. I felt more dreadful pain in my back as the blow connected, and Collier moved in and started hitting me again, anywhere he could reach, until the light in the central fixture went out, and I dropped slowly away into a black hole of my own.

  16

  I came to lying on the cold floor of the flat. I hurt so much that I almost couldn’t get a grip on reality. I wavered back into unconsciousness until Lenny Millar threw cold water in my face. I opened my eyes again, snorted as I breathed in the water and looked up into his ugly clock.

  ‘He’s come round, guv,’ he said. ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘Get him up,’ said Collier. ‘We can’t leave him here. That young copper saw him arrive. We’ll have to take him away and finish him off somewhere else.’