Foot Soldiers

by Neil Williams

  He looked up at her and frowned.

  “The bloke that... you know?”

  “Oh!” smiled Ned nervously. He really didn’t want to know the gory details, but Matilda clearly hadn’t picked up on that.

  “Apt name, really...” she winced. “Just – in.”

  Ned waved his hand in her face. “Please, stop.”

  “What I say?”

  “Too much,” he replied, trying his best not to look like he was thinking about her having drunken sex up against the grubby wall of the night club with some faceless bloke that clearly had a small penis.

  “C’mon,” he said, trying desperately to change the uncomfortable subject. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Unfortunately, Matilda, as usual, wasn’t quite finished and had a few probing questions of her own. “Where did you lose yours?”

  Ned could feel his face turning beetroot red. “I... Erm... I... In a...”

  She cupped her ear; “Where?”

  He averted his eyes and muttered something that sounded like ‘telling gnome socks’.

  “Telling gnome socks?”

  “TELEPHONE BOX!” he shouted. “I lost my... in a telephone box.”

  “Oh,” she whimpered, desperately trying to keep a straight face. “Classy.”

  “You had sex up against that wall!”

  Matilda shrugged her shoulders. ‘So?’

  Ned sneered with bewilderment back at her. “Look, can we drop this and get on with what we’re ‘not’ meant to be doing before someone sees us? We’re supposed to be up at the wall, for Christ’s sake... not doing this.”

  Deflating her smirk, a stern faced Matilda saluted him. “Yes sir!”

  “Thank you,” he sighed.

  They took a step towards the door.

  “Did you get engaged?”

  “Piss off.”

  Matilda’s howls of laughter could be heard as far away as Main Street. She sounded like a Banshee on a trampoline.

  The inside of the club was as tacky and brash as one of Eddie McMillan’s beloved Hawaiian shirts; a splattering of fake plastic palm trees, nicotine yellow tables, scratched leather chairs and more poles than Poland – albeit chrome and used for entertaining immature and drooling, so-called ‘gentlemen’ in tight fitted polyester suits that clearly had more money than morals.

  Rumour had it that Warren Hart, a former regular at the club, was rushed to hospital with a two litre plastic bottle of Limeade stuffed up his anus because he’d stupidly told Eddie one night that his gaudy establishment looked just like that particular flavour of bottled soft drink... with cigarette ends floating around inside.

  Rumour also had it that it was Eddie himself who’d rammed the bottle up Warren’s backside... and then charged him the full registered retail price!

  Eddie McMillan always dressed like he’d just returned from a two week holiday in the Bahamas and looked just like Tom Selleck would look if he was trapped inside a hall of mirrors.

  Draped in an oversized Hawaiian shirt, salmon pink shorts and bright orange flip-flops, Eddie sat alone at the bar, sucking on a chewed up cigar and cooking the books.

  He was comfortable in his own company, mainly because it was the only time he didn’t feel violent or angry. People made his blood boil. They had done ever since he was a nipper. Not that Eddie was a mindless thug. On the contrary, he was a very shrewd and intelligent entrepreneur with his dirty fingers in a lot of dirty pies. He just didn’t like... well, anyone that wasn’t called Eddie McMillan; not even his trophy wife, Sasha, or her spoilt-to-buggery rat of a Pug, Aisley, which she insisted on carting around in her ever expanding collection of designer hand-bags.

  “Eddie McMillan?”

  Hearing his name called out so abruptly, Eddie threw an understandably startled look back over his shoulder and clocked two young police officers loitering by the door into his club.

  The female officer took a step towards him. “We’d like a word.”

  Before either Ned or Matilda could process what was happening, Eddie sprang off the stool and scrambled like a spooked squirrel over the top of the bar and bolted through the cellar door. For a man of his size, he wasn’t half nifty on his flip-flops.

  “Bugger!” yelped Ned as he watched their suspect make his daring escape.

  Matilda groaned and shot him a fierce look. “Get after him!”

  Before Ned could muster up any kind of a reaction, Matilda belted back out of the main doors and left him to pursue Eddie alone.

  “Aw, for,” he moaned, breaking into a mad dash at the bar and throwing himself over it like Keanu Reeves. Sadly, unlike Keanu, Ned fell flat on his face.

  “Shit!” Scrambling up off the sticky bar floor, he stumbled into a run and hurried through the cellar door after Eddie.

  A heavy fire exit door at the back of the club flung open and smashed against the wall, as a sweat soaked Eddie spilled out into the alleyway and stumbled head first into a row of wheelie bins like a drunk on roller stakes, toppling one over.

  Grunting and hurt, Eddie kicked his way through a mountain of rancid bin-bags that had spilled out of the wheelie bin and panted his way towards his silver Jaguar that was parked further up the passage.

  Grabbing the handle, Eddie swung the door open, leapt into the driving seat and hurried to find his sodding car key. “C’mon!”

  “Freeze!” a disembodied voice shouted.

  Eddie threw a panicked look into the rear view mirror and saw Ned hurtling down the alleyway towards him. “Shit!”

  Ripping the car key out of the pocket of his shorts, he stabbed it into the ignition slot and twisted his hand.

  As Ned inched closer, the Jaguar suddenly roared to life and Eddie pressed his flip-flopped foot down as hard as he could on the accelerator.

  The Jaguar took off like shit off a shovel and thundered down the alleyway.

  Behind the wheel of the mighty beast, Eddie threw a look back over his shoulder and flashed a smirk when he saw Ned running pointlessly after him.

  But then he turned back around. Then he clocked Matilda spilling into the narrow passageway ahead of him. “Shit!”

  Eddie slammed on the brakes, but the speeding Jaguar continued to career towards Matilda, who threw her arms up in front of her face and winced. “Holy –“

  The Jaguar’s wheels screeched to a stop and Eddie was thrown towards the windscreen. “Shit!”

  Before his head hit the wheel, the air bag inside it inflated like a giant balloon around his face.

  Matilda took a moment before bellowing an almighty sigh of relief.

  Ned, meanwhile, slowed to an exhausted stop and dropped down onto his knees. He wanted to say ‘Jesus’, but just didn’t have any surplus breath left in his lungs. He was knackered.

  Moments later, Eddie was back sat at the bar, but this time with Ned and Matilda, still trying desperately to recapture their breaths as they questioned him about Liam.

  “He got too big for his boots and I called his bluff. So I roughed him up a little bit, so what? He owed me money and I wanted it back.”

  Matilda wheezed. “How much?”

  “Two grand... But that don’t mean I killed him, does it?”

  “Why not?” panted Ned.

  Eddie couldn’t believe he was being asked such stupid questions. “What would have been the bloody point?” he snapped. “A dead man can’t pay off his debts, can he? Liam knew that. I told him, I’d be happy with a hundred a week... as long as I got it back.”

  He threw Ned a disappointed sneer. “Now I’m not going to, am I? Not now he’s dead.”

  Ned glanced at Matilda and then narrowed his eyes at Eddie. “So why did you run?”

  “We’re not always who we say we are, are we?”

  “I don’t follow?”

  Eddie cricked his neck and turned confidently towards Ned. “Just because you’re in a copper’s uniform don’t mean you’re a copper, does it?”

  “I suppose not, no.”

 
“I’ve got a lot of enemies – just like you have.”

  Matilda’s curious brown eyes lit up. “Anything you want to tell us about, Edward?”

  Eddie shook his head. “Not really, no. I’ll take care of my own problems, thanks.” He turned back to his accounts. “Now if there’s nothing else, I’ve got to get back to cooking the books.”

  Realising they weren’t going to get anything more out of Eddie, Ned gestured to Matilda that they should leave, but on the way out of the club he couldn’t help but confess something to her.

  “There was not one part of that that I didn’t enjoy.”

  Matilda smiled warmly at him.

  “Fancy popping back to mine for a coffee?” he said confidently.

  “Aye, okay,” she replied. “But only for a coffee!”

  Ned looked confused. “That’s what I just said.”

  Matilda remained silent and waited for the penny to drop. Finally, it did.

  “Oh,” he said sheepishly. And although Matilda’s joke about going back to his flat for sex hadn’t been his intention, he still couldn’t help but feel a little shot down by her rejection. “Okay.”

  Exiting the club, Ned and Matilda headed off for a coffee... but just a coffee... leaving Eddie behind with a sneer of his face.

  If looks could kill, they’d have been total goners.

  4

  If Ned had only watched more romantic comedies when he was a kid, rather than wasting his youth gorging on Chuck Norris fodder, he would have known that asking a girl back to his flat for a coffee was pretty much the same as asking her back for a quickie. If only he’d watched ‘When Harry met Sally’, he wouldn’t have been sat like a quivering fool on the edge of his bed, nervously slurping on an Americano and wishing he’d asked Matilda back to his digs for a mug of ‘Yorkshire Tea’!

  Mocca, Latte, Cappuccino and Espresso were sexy. PG Tips and ‘Raspberry and Echinacea teabags’ were, well... about as sexy as Jabba the Hutt in a crop top and hot pants. But it was too late. Ned had foolishly asked Matilda back to his flat for sex without even knowing it... until now.

  Perched on the corner of his bed, he cupped a steaming mug of coffee to his lips and fired anxious glances at Matilda, who was down on her knees, rifling her way through his badly stacked collection of video cassettes and DVD film boxes with the clumsy zeal of a greedy toddler rooting through a large bag of pick and mix in search of the last cola bottle.

  “What about the weird one?” she said shaking her head despairingly at Ned’s frayed copy of ‘Inner Space’. “Thingamabob... Ronald? He seems obsessed with death and dying.”

  Ned shook his head. “Nah... He wouldn’t have asked if Liam suffered when he died. If he’d done him in, he would’ve ruddy known that he did.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.” She continued rooting through the pile of tapes. “What about what’s his name... the one with the beard? Erm, Gandalf?”

  “What – ‘ZZ’?”

  “Aye?”

  Ned shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe,” His eyelids sank. “But I know who my money’s on.”

  “JESUS!”

  He desperately wanted to say ‘Jesus? I don’t think he did it either’, but chose to reply with the more traditional “Huh?”

  “BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN?!”

  ‘Oh no!’ he thought. He slurped his coffee. “What’s up with Brokeback Mountain?” he mumbled defensively.

  She tossed him a teasing smirk. “What’s UP when you’re watching Brokeback Mountain, mores the point?”

  He looked evil. “Shut up and drink your frappuccino!”

  ---

  They must have been half way through Brokeback Mountain when Matilda turned to him and smirked. “So it’s got nothing to do with Heath Ledger in a Stetson, then?”

  Ned’s eyes were glued to the television screen, but he didn’t want to peel them away from the film or rise to her endless ridicule, so pretended like he’d not heard what she’d just said and continued to watch Jake Gyllenhaal riding a horse.

  She tapped him sharply on the shoulder. “Ned!”

  “What?” He sucked in his breath and looked at her. She shuffled up the mattress until her shoulder was touching his. She hated repeating herself, but she figured it was worth saying it again, just to see the look of horror on his face.

  “So it’s got nowt to do with Heath Ledger in a Stetson, then?”

  He humoured her with the terrified look she craved. He could see what she was thinking.

  “What? No!” he said in sheer bewilderment. “What – you think that I’m...”

  “Hey,” she blurted defensively. “Nowt wrong with that if you are.” She paused for a moment to work out how best to phrase it. “I just... I just didn’t have you down as a ‘Brokeback Mountain’ kind of a bloke.”

  Ned was equally anxious and intrigued. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer, but asked for it all the same. “Then what kind of a bloke did you have me down as?”

  As she slowly turned towards him, her head pressed gently against his. He could feel her warm breath inside his mouth... it tasted toffee sweet... like a Curly Wurly!

  ‘Ooh, Curly Wurly!” he thought, before suddenly feeling the hairs on the back of his neck tingle as her eyes fell deeply into his.

  “A...” she whispered, wetting her dry lips.

  ‘Jesus,’ he thought. ‘Is she about to kiss me?’

  All he could think about was Melissa Gordon, the school hottie he had a crush on when he was fourteen. Back then he was obsessed with Winona Ryder and Melissa looked a little bit like her... well, if she underwent intensive plastic surgery. Melissa liked Curly Wurlys too. He’d bought her one at the school disco, but she went off with Adam Johnson... the lucky bastard.

  “We’d” she said softly.

  “What?” he whispered nervously.

  She parted her lips to speak, but sharply peeled her face away from him and sat up. “We’d better get back to work!”

  Ned’s heart sank quicker than a rock in a goldfish bowl.

  “Yeah,” he mumbled, trying his damndest to disguise that look of disappointment he also had in his eyes when Melissa stole his Curly Wurly and buggered off with Adam ruddy Johnson.

  Heaving herself quickly off the mattress, Matilda grabbed her jacket off the arm of the sofa and made for the door.

  Ned quickly hit the ‘pause’ button on the television remote and went to get up, but she threw up her hand to stop him. “See you back at the station, cowboy.”

  He knew he looked as stupid as he felt, but couldn’t help but admire her attempt to defuse the awkward situation with a joke. “Okay, cowgirl.”

  Unfortunately, his witty reaction didn’t make her smile. This was the first time he’d ever seen Matilda look nervous and it made him feel as uncomfortable as she clearly was.

  Bowing her head, she muttered something like ‘see you then’ and scurried out of the flat, leaving him alone with only his confused thoughts for company.

  “Dick!” he snapped at himself as the door slammed shut behind her. Letting out a sigh that, if it had to be a word in the English dictionary, would’ve been ‘gutted’, his eyes drifted over to the television screen and gazed sadly at Heath Ledger.

  Then, like a rock to the head, something hit him.

  Springing up off the mattress, he dropped to his knees in front of the television set and pressed the palm of his hand against the screen. He could feel that tingle of static in his fingers as he ran them slowly down Heath’s face.

  Then, he remembered what Eddie McMillan had said to him back at the club and suddenly everything fell into place.

  “We’re not always who we say we are!”

  “YO!”

  Matilda skidded to a stop on the steps and threw a curious look back over her shoulder to see who’d just shouted at her.

  Lurking at the top of the staircase like a seedy backstreet pimp was Brinkley. He had a strange look in his hooded eyes that made her instantly feel uneasy. He craned his
face out of the shadows.

  “He’s a good man is Ned,” he said sternly. “You could lots worse than him.”

  She snorted a smirk. “Yeah, I know.” Then she sighed. “But he could do lots better than me.”

  He grumbled disapprovingly at her. “You look like a nice girl.”

  She shot him that look of hers. “And you look like a dealer.”

  Brinkley smiled proudly. He loved it when people thought he sold drugs. “Yeah, well...” he smiled wolfishly. “Looks can be deceptive.”

  Matilda fell silent as a thought sparked like a struck match inside her ever curious mind. “Yeah,” she said with a glint of realisation in her big browns. “They can.”

  5

  Ralph hated making house calls because they always reminded him of the day his own father was arrested for murder and stuffed into the back of a Panda car by two faceless ‘uniforms’. He would never forget that look of emptiness in his father’s eyes, as if every fibre of life had been sucked out of his bones and left behind a breathing corpse.

  Ralph could also see the irony in becoming one of those faceless policemen that changed people’s lives with a knock on the door. He clenched his fingers into a fist and reluctantly tapped the door.

  When Linda prised it open, she didn’t look much like ‘mum of the year’ material anymore. She was hot and flustered and dark beneath the eyes. She’d clearly not had a good night’s sleep, Molly-Jane was flopped over her shoulder like a ragdoll, crying, and smoke was bellowing out of the kitchen into the cluttered hallway.

  “What?!” she snapped as the door swung back. Ralph thrust Dean’s kagool into her face and smiled.

  “One anorak returned as promised!”

  She recognised the voice behind the raincoat and hurried to splash on her warmest smile as she took it from him.

  “I even washed it for him,” he smiled. “Well,” he said sheepishly, “the rain did.”

  She smiled genuinely at him this time and ushered him inside. “Please, come on in.”