by RJ Dark
We stood, and the twins opened the door for us. I went through first and Jackie followed. He paused in the doorway and turned back to Mick.
‘I heard a story when I was a kid, Mick, about a nasty little fish that lived in a small pond. All the other fish were scared of it, but because he was such a little fish, he couldn’t see how small his pond really was and he became convinced he was the king of the ocean.’
Everyone in the room tensed while Mick and Jackie stared at one another.
‘Have you ever heard that story, Mick?’ said Jackie. ‘Do you know how it ends?’ Before Mick could say anything Jackie carried on. ‘The little fish gets into the ocean one day, and a shark eats him.’
Mick stared at Jackie, then he shook his head.
‘See Mal and his Asian-gentleman friend out, lads. We’re concentrating on today’s business today. We’ll talk about fishing with them another day, eh?’
Jackie grinned at him, and the twins escorted us out of the building and back to our car. I struggled into my seat and Jackie started the engine as the twins moved their Range Rover.
‘Mick was not acting like Mick,’ I said.
‘I think he might have overstepped the mark, starting a war with Russian Frank,’ said Jackie, and he glanced over his shoulder at the busy street, full of Mick’s soldiers. ‘But he looks pretty well outfitted.’ He turned back to me. ‘It won’t save him though – I’m not Frank. And someone is going to pay for what happened to Benny. That was not right.’
‘Why is he ready to deal then, if he’s got an army?’
Jackie shrugged. ‘He’s scared.’
‘But why?’
‘You’re the thinker, Mal.’ I glanced down the street at the cars, the men. It certainly didn’t seem like Mick needed to be scared of Russian Frank, and he wasn’t scared of Jackie either – he’d shown that in his house. I turned over our conversation in my head.
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Oh?’ said Jackie.
‘I don’t think he needs to be scared of you, Jackie.’
Jackie’s eyes widened and his head jerked back, as if shocked. ‘Are you underestimating my propensity for violence and well-deserved justice, Mal?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘not at all. I just don’t think Trolley Mick killed Benny Callaghan.’ Jackie turned to me. ‘That’s the “why”, Jackie. That’s what he wants me to ask Frank. Why did he kill Benny Callaghan the way he did. And that’s why he’s scared too, I reckon.’
‘Cos if it could happen to Benny,’ said Jackie, ‘it could happen to him.’
We sat quietly for a few seconds.
‘But Callum said Mick’s men took him.’ Jackie’s brow furrowed in confusion. ‘Callum was never the brightest lad though, was he?’ I said, and Jackie gunned the car forward and onto the roads of Blades Edge. I sat back in my seat, putting one hand on the roof so I didn’t bang my head when Jackie hit a pothole.
Nothing made sense anymore.
Nothing.
25
We drove into town. Jackie was very quiet.
In another man, I’d think that he was worried. That driving right into the middle of Russian Frank’s territory after he’d given one of Frank’s men a savage beating and cut off one of his fingers was playing on his mind, the thought of what retribution may be about to come. But that wasn’t Jackie. It just wasn’t the sort of thing he worried about. He had a supreme belief in his own abilities – when it came to violence, at least.
But he didn’t like puzzles; he liked the world to be straightforward, and to him it generally was. Good: people Jackie agreed with. And bad: people he didn’t. For a man that ran a protection racket, among other things, he had a pretty strong moral code running through him.
‘I could go see Frank by myself,’ I said.
Jackie shifted down a gear, overtook a cyclist, passing so near that he nearly knocked her off her bike.
‘No.’
‘He won’t hurt me if I’m bringing a message from Mick.’
‘You hope.’ The engine made a noise like an angry lion.
‘He won’t.’
He didn’t answer.
I was pretty sure I didn’t sound like I believed what I was saying, but if my voice shook slightly, it was hard to tell over the rumble of the engine.
Jackie let the car come to a stop at some lights and stared ahead as cars came through the intersection. I felt like every car that passed was staring at me. They probably were, as I was sitting in a lime-green Lamborghini. If you ignored the roar of the engine, it was too quiet in the car. If the thing had been fitted with a radio, I would have turned it on, but it was far too expensive a machine to have a radio in it.
‘You want to hear him answer Mick’s question, don’t you?’
‘What?’ He turned to me, a sharp, quick movement.
‘When I ask why, like Mick wants me to. You want to see Frank’s face, don’t you?’
‘What makes you think that?’ He stared at me. The yellow of the sodium light played off his sharp cheekbones, and he looked like a person drawn in a comic book from a few slashes of ink.
‘You do though, don’t you? That was the reason you wanted me to go and see Mick too. You wanted to know if he did it.’
A car horn sounded and Jackie looked up.
‘The lights have changed,’ he said, and he continued to stare at me while he slipped the car into gear and pulled away slowly.
‘Don’t get us killed, Jackie,’ I said.
He didn’t reply.
Russian Frank kept court in the city’s only Russian club. It was called The Russian Club. I don’t know many Russians, so maybe they’re not a particularly imaginative lot, or maybe it’s just Russian gangsters, or maybe it’s just the Russians gangsters in this particular city.
We get a lot of grey cloud and rain; it doesn’t encourage flights of fancy.
Jackie parked the Lamborghini outside The Russian Club on double yellow lines. Got out, gave the finger to someone who sounded their horn at him for partially blocking the road, then shouted, ‘Fuck you, arsehole!’ at them for good measure. Then he wandered round to wait for me to get out. It was a really low car, and I reckon Jackie must have practised getting in and out a lot to do it as easily as he did.
I won’t lie, I struggled.
The club was in an old Victorian Methodist church. It had two big doors set within an arch of stone. I remember when it was still a church, they used to be painted red, and generally covered in graffiti. You had to go up four steps to reach the doors. The doors were painted black now, and you never saw graffiti on them. Above the doors it said, Abide by the Lord thy God.
On either side of the door of The Russian Club stood two men. Big men dressed in black trousers and black T-shirts stretched to the point of tearing by muscles that were, more than likely, at least fifty per cent steroid.
‘I’m here to see Frank,’ I said.
Neither of the men on the door so much as acknowledged I existed.
‘I said,’ I repeated more loudly, ‘I’m here to see Frank.’
I may as well have been talking to statues.
Jackie walked up to one of the men, he barely came up to the Russian’s shoulder. He stood on his tiptoes so he could talk right into the man’s face.
‘My friend. Wants. To see. Frank,’ he said loudly, like a boorish man ordering drinks from a Spanish waiter. The Russian ignored him. Jackie said it again. The bouncer ignored him again. Then Jackie said something in Russian.
‘A my nei terlis drug ob druga na tanspole v kakom gay klube?’That got a reaction. A tiny movement of the man’s mouth. He didn’t look happy. Then he bunched his fists. His face was starting to change colour, becoming redder and redder. Whatever Jackie had said, he really didn’t like it.
‘Not Russian. Not get in Russian club,’ said the man on the other side.
Jackie grinned and slowly lowered himself back down from his tiptoes. Then he walked over to the bouncer who had spoken while the oth
er one got control of himself.
‘That is quite a racist policy,’ said Jackie.
‘Not Russian,’ said the bouncer.
‘Is it actually because I am brown? Because my friend, Mal, is embarrassingly white,’ said Jackie.
‘No.’ The bouncer smiled at Jackie. ‘It is because you are not Russian.’
Jackie sighed.
‘Look, you just tell Frank, that Mal and Jackie are here with a message from Trolley Mick,’ said Jackie. He took a five-pound note from his pocket and folded it up. Then he placed it under the tight shirt sleeve of the bouncer’s T-shirt. ‘He’ll want to see us.’
‘Not Russian.’
Jackie spoke to him in Russian.
The man took the five-pound note from his shirt sleeve. I thought he was going to flick it at Jackie – as bribes went it was pretty feeble – but he put it in his back pocket instead. Then he smiled at Jackie and said, ‘Not Russian.’
Jackie turned around, walked down the three steps that fronted The Russian Club. At the bottom, he turned round to face the two bouncers. He looked very small, compared to them, even though he was pretty well muscled himself.
‘I put Harry in hospital.’ No reaction. ‘You know, the stationer? I beat him until he cried.’ The bouncer on the right’s head moved, coming slowly round like a stop-motion statue from an old film.
‘Maybe Frank want you in the club,’ he said. Then he opened one of the doors and slipped in. Jackie turned and gave me two thumbs up and a grin.
‘They respect strength,’ he said.
The door opened again, and the bouncer re-appeared.
‘Frank see you.’ He said to Jackie and then motioned toward me. ‘Frank says bring him too.’
Jackie brought me.
Inside, the club was full of smoke. It was strange, I’d got so used to there being no smoking in clubs that it took me a moment to work out what the bluey-grey haze was. Incense, I thought at first, then I saw a man take a drag on a cigarette and blow smoke rings to impress the elaborately jewelled woman sat next to him. They sat at a table in a booth that curled around them, upholstered in red leather, full of people, also with fags or elaborate jewellery, often both. Next to that was another booth, then three more. The same on the other side. In the centre of the room were tables set for dinner with couples sat at them. All the booths were full and there were no spare tables.
No one in the room spoke. Not one of them.
No music played.
They watched us.
Jackie seemed oblivious to it, but I felt every eye as I hurried after him. I heard every footstep – he was wearing expensive Cuban-heeled boots, Jeffery West’s, I think. I was wearing Cuban-heeled boots too, Jackie’s hand-me-downs. The tap of heel on floor drew the room’s gaze, heads turning to follow us until we reached the bar at the end of the room.
The bar filled most of the back wall. It was very shiny: highly polished wood, a lot of chrome, a lot of optics for spirits, and a mirror that ran the entire length of the wall behind. There was writing on the mirror but it was in the Cyrillic alphabet, so I couldn’t read it. I caught sight of a man in the mirror; he looked small and scared and out of place.
I realised it was me and tried to walk a little taller.
A waiter passed with a tray of food; he didn’t look at us and I couldn’t smell the food for the stink of tobacco. At one side of the bar was a door and Harry, the stationer, was propped up on a stool. He was pretty bruised. One leg was in a cast as was one arm, and his hand was swollen with bandages. A crutch leaned on the wall by him.
‘Hi, Harry,’ said Jackie brightly. ‘How’s the stationery business going?’
Harry didn’t answer. He reached back with his good arm and pushed the door open and we went through. I guessed Harry had gone down a bit in the Russian gangster underworld.
Through the door, we stepped into an office, where the walls weren’t clad with dark, old wood they were covered in neatly shelved books. At a desk, similar to the one in my office, sat Frank. In the corner of the room was the man who I guessed had taken Harry’s place. He was small, and very thin, with a sharp nose, and hair that he wore long and tied into a bun on top, shaved to the skin at the sides. Young, maybe late twenties. Jackie clocked him first and as he walked in, he kept his body turned toward the man, watching him and not Frank. The man didn’t move, apart from his eyes, which followed Jackie. Jackie looked him up and down and then nodded, turned to Frank.
‘I like the new help,’ he said.
‘That is Donald,’ said Frank, ‘like the president of America. Though he is not simply help – he is more of a specialist.’
‘I thought he might be,’ said Jackie. He glanced back at Donald, and Donald opened his coat a little so Jackie could see he wore a gun underneath.
‘An SPS, nice piece. Expensive. Though, of course, I am sure Donald will be handing that in to the authorities, handguns being illegal in the UK,’ said Jackie.
‘Donald is new to this country,’ said Frank. ‘He does not speak your language, never mind knowing your laws.’ Frank grinned at Jackie. ‘Why don’t you try and take his gun from him?’
‘Not my job,’ said Jackie. ‘ … Today,’ he added.
‘Try though.’ Jackie shrugged and turned toward Donald.
Donald did a magic trick.
One moment he was still, studying Jackie with a detached, professional interest, and then there was a gun in his hand and it was pointed at my friend.
‘Ooh, you’re good,’ said Jackie. He turned to me. ‘He’s good, Mal. I did tell Frank he needed someone good, didn’t I?’ He turned back to Frank. ‘You know, I like a man that can take advice.’
‘You are very glib for a man who might be about to be shot, eh?’ said Frank.
Tension. A silence in the wood-panelled room while Jackie and Donald stared at each other.
‘He’s not going to shoot us though,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ said Frank, ‘Jackie, I see your pet mouse speaks. And why am I not going to shoot your friend, and then you, mouse?’
‘I think Donald is the one who’d be doing any shooting,’ said Jackie. Then his voice became very serious. ‘Or trying to.’
Frank ignored Jackie, just stared at me, but Jackie didn’t see that because he was only looking at Donald and Donald only had eyes for him.
‘Well,’ I said, my voice holding remarkably well considering I wasn’t actually sure he wasn’t going to shoot us. And I knew that Jackie might well start something because of what had been done to Benny Callaghan. ‘I think, before you do anything, you probably want to know what Trolley Mick sent me to say to you.’
Frank stared at me for what felt like a very long time. Then he nodded.
‘Da,’ he said. ‘I find that out, then maybe I shoot you?’ He was a man altogether too pleased with that idea.
‘No.’ I shook my head.
‘No?’ He managed to look genuinely puzzled, even though I was starting to become sure it was all play acting.
‘We drove here in a lime-green Lamborghini,’ I said, ‘and parked it outside your club on the double yellows. Then Jackie shouted abuse at a passing motorist. They probably reported us to the police straight away – I would. So we’ve been witnessed coming here, if you kill us here, now, it causes problems. And you hate problems.’
Frank steepled his hands in front of his face, nodding slowly. ‘I do not like problems,’ he said, ‘that is true.’ He then spoke very slowly, as if thinking it through. ‘You do realise though,’ he spoke even more slowly, ‘that you are likely to end up with a parking ticket as this is a permit-controlled zone.’
‘Small price, really,’ said Jackie.
Frank nodded again. ‘Sixty pounds,’ he said, ‘though if you pay it quickly, it is only thirty.’ Then he said something in Russian and Donald made his gun vanish again. ‘What is this message Mick Stanbeck sends me?’
‘He says, if the ticket is found, he’ll split it with you, fifty-fifty. But o
nly if all the fighting stops now. No more firebombs. No more stabbings.’
Frank stared at me, I had the strangest feeling he thought I was joking. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes.
‘It seems Trolley Mick has overreached himself, as you say here, eh?’ He looked from me to Jackie. ‘You go back, tell him eighty per cent for me, twenty per cent for him, and he can keep his little council estate.’
‘He’ll say no,’ said Jackie.
Frank shrugged and then he leaned forward, and it was as if I had vanished from the room. All his focus went to Jackie.
‘Have you ever thought, Jackie Singh Khattar, of running that little council estate yourself? You are small-time now, I know. But with my backing then …’
‘Offer him sixty-forty in your favour,’ I said. ‘I reckon he’ll go for it.’
Frank continued to ignore me, all his attention on Jackie.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘I like being my own man.’
Frank nodded to himself. He seemed distracted, bored with us.
‘Eighty-twenty,’ he said. ‘That is my offer.’
I stared at him, knowing Mick would never go for it. Then, I had a sudden flash, like an overlay of an older reality and something that I’d thought odd about Frank, all these trappings of the west: his name, the other names, Harry, Donald, all of it finally made sense.
‘Are you okay, Mr Jones? You look very far away?.’ he said. ‘Are you communing with the spirits?’
‘Remember when you were a kid, and you used to sit on your mother’s knee and watch American films? Remember’ – I was going to say ‘how you’ but I tripped over the words and that wasn’t what came out – ‘how she loved all the heroes? The way they chose what was best for others over what was best for themselves?’
I stopped talking and realised everyone was looking at me. Jackie, Frank, even Donald seemed slightly interested. Frank tapped his pen on the desk, nodding quietly while staring at me as if murder might be a good idea.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I am a fool not to listen when the spirits speak, eh? Mick gets thirty five percent, and he should be happy with that. Now, Malachite Jones, hurry and find this ticket, or you’ll have both Mick and I wanting to cut off your fingers.’ He laughed like it was the best joke ever.
