Crusaders

by Richard T. Kelly

  ‘Hiya!’

  ‘How, Lind – hell’s teeth, what you done to yer heid?’

  ‘Jake done it when I was asleep.’

  ‘He never? The little –’

  ‘Nah man, grow up. I did it. What, have I spoiled me’sel?’

  Claire was emerging from the toilet room jammed in beyond the kitchen – leading with her belly, post-shit fag in one hand, Chronicle in the other.

  ‘Aw, fuck me, Lindy, not again?’

  Such was the sum of the greetings. Indeed the pair of them looked harassed and grouchy, faces like kicked-down doors.

  ‘What’s the matter with you’s, then?’

  ‘Friggin’ police were round, weren’t they?’

  ‘What did they want?’

  ‘Nowt. Just give us a load of bother.’

  ‘Did they say they were police? When they come in?’

  ‘Aye, two of ’em, badges and all, bold as a fart. Said they’d had complaint.’

  ‘Off of who, like?’

  ‘Didn’t say.’

  ‘So what did they do?’

  ‘Just walked around the place being arsey. We’d nee punters in, thank fuck. Eh, but one of ’em says to wuh, “Funny sort of sauna this is. Where’s your steam room?” Aye, he says, “Where’s your massage tables at, then?”’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said we did it all just on the beds.’

  ‘Aw, Claire, man, that was a bit fucking mong, wasn’t it?’

  ‘What was I s’posed to say? I wasn’t expecting it. I thought they weren’t bothered.’

  Lindy’s calculations were already more advanced. ‘Naw, but they can’t have been serious, like. Or they’d have had a watch on us – they’d have burst in the minute they reckoned they’d catch some bloke up to his nuts. Naw. It’s just trying to put the wind up wuz.’

  ‘Aye well, you wanna talk to them girls, they got proper rattled.’

  ‘Doug, you’ll tell Stevie, aye?’

  ‘Aye, I will. He’ll not want to hear, mind.’

  ‘Bloody tough.’ She could feel herself taking charge again. She was in the wrong line of work, she knew it. ‘Who’s on, then?’

  ‘Yulia – she got the frighteners the worst. Leanne’s in, Kirsty …’

  ‘Right. Anyone else coming?’

  ‘The Thai girl, maybe, she’ll call to say. Aw aye, and Liz.’

  ‘Which Liz?’

  ‘Fishwick.’

  They’d got a lot of Lizzes. For the customers Liz Fishwick called herself Lana.

  ‘Did you get fed, Lind? Do you want owt?’ Claire gestured to the microwave, to a sack of oven chips and a small stack of shrink-wrapped chicken pieces, their pimply skins yellow as jaundice. The house menu. No, Miss Clark would not be having any of that shit. ‘Just a cuppa tea, eh?’

  ‘Aw, you can get that yer’sel. I’m pushing off then.’

  ‘Wait on, will ya? ’Til I get round the rooms?’

  She gestured to her plastic bag of gear from Superdrug. Claire, though, was resolutely collecting her own goods. ‘D’ye want the paper?’

  ‘Aye, leave it.’

  ‘Okay. And are you pleased, then? With your lovely hairdo?’

  ‘Aye, I fuckin’ love it.’

  She checked into the living room – curtains drawn, the faded plush settee where the girls sat watching telly, waiting to be weighed in the balance. Top of the Pops was on, some Michael Jackson video. ‘Hiya,’ Lindy sang. Leanne smiled back. She was in her mid-thirties, fair and fair-looking, if plump – worked in a nursing home by day. Lindy was more or less sure she made in a week at the home what she could pull in here in one night, albeit a grossly crowded one.

  And there was Yulia, pushing her wispy hair from her face, prodding the ring in her nose, shifting her girlish carriage on the settee. Lindy motioned for her to come outside, as to step into her office.

  ‘Y’alright?’

  ‘Not so good. Ah … okay.’

  ‘Don’t worry, about the police, okay? It all gets settled, honest. There won’t be bother.’

  The girl bobbed her head, unconvinced but seeming to appreciate the effort.

  ‘Listen, can you do a bit in the day for us the morra morning? With Jake? It’s just I’ve got a load of errands to run.’

  ‘Oh yeah, oh sure, Lindy, I love to.’

  ‘Just maybe three hours? I’ll give you twenty quid, okay? And here, I’ve got a bit special.’ With two fingers she unveiled the small glossy wrap from her jacket top pocket. Yulia’s eyes lit, her hands were greedy. ‘Hang on, we’ll do it together bit later, eh?’

  She found it best to be discreet about these things, in deference to house rules about not getting rubbish in off the street – typical Stevie, his twisted universe of right and wrong.

  Pressing on down the corridor to the Red Room – which was, in truth, cerise – Lindy found the door closed, in use. Kirsty, presumably – younger and less to look at even than Leanne, but with a jutting milk-white bosom. The bathroom door, too, was shut, the hiss of the shower audible – one satisfied soapy customer. She hoped he had thrown the window open, for it was getting mouldy round the corners in there. She threw down clean towels at the foot of the door. These always seemed on the small side for the clientele, the lardy blokes they got in – those keen readers of the small ads in the Daily Sport, hungry recipients of a dirty secret down the pub.

  She set to business in the Green Room – went from the yucca to the aspidistra, the begonia, the spider ivy, watering the soil from a tooth-mug, wiping the leaves. She propped a window ajar, plumped the pillows, threw the duvet afresh and smoothed it, working carefully around the alarm button screwed into the head of the bed. Then she sprayed the air with several squirts of Woodland Pine freshener, refilled the hand-wash dispenser with Forest Glade liquid soap, pulled off the stained hand-towel by the sink and hung a fresh and folded one. The palaver of each room, its allotted scent and branded goods – it made her laugh, for it was all the same shit really. She got down to her knees to change the bin bag, pick up some nearby detritus, in no hurry, for next up was the Black Room – black walls, black quilt, a teenager’s haven, but a nest for filth too. Whilst the room was not specifically reserved for anal intercourse, its ambience seemed liable to propose the mood. More troublingly, Lindy was never sure she could properly see what was on the sheets, or strewn about the floor.

  ‘Oi, Lind. There’s a fella.’ Dougie, bothered, was filling the doorframe.

  ‘Eh? What, man?’

  ‘Claire’s off and there’s a fella pitched up.’

  Lindy got testily to her feet, wiped her hands on the hem of her tee-shirt, and followed Dougie’s swaying bulk back down the corridor.

  Stood by the kitchen counter with his chin to his chest was a most uncommon customer, clad in a not-bad blue suit. She passed him and rounded the counter, business-like, and now he looked up to her eye – forty, probably, fit and handsome, yes, but a bit of a boozy flush to his cheeks and a challenging kind of a smile. His shirt collar was open, the forked tail of a discarded crimson tie poking out of his jacket pocket. The night seemed made for off-cue surprises, and this one smelled iffy too. Why would a bloke with money and his own hair and teeth come to pay for it here? Fruitless to ponder, she knew – just blokes, dirty dogs, prey to all manner of mad urges, high fevers, nagging and persistent stiffness.

  ‘Hiya. What you after?’

  ‘I can’t quite see …’

  ‘Well, why don’t you step into the lounge there, have a bit shufty?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve had a look.’

  ‘You’ve met the girls?’

  ‘Not met, just – it’s just I’m not quite certain. That’s the thing about girls, eh? All these possibilities. Could I maybe have a word?’

  ‘Just talk to the lass you’re after.’

  He nodded but didn’t seem to listen, just grinned slowly. ‘That’s quite a look you’ve got. Striking.’ He waggled a finger at the side of his head.
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br />   ‘Thanks. Now why not nip back in the lounge there, just talk to the girls ’bout what sort of massage you fancy.’

  ‘Aw aye, then, gotcha.’ He was still grinning like an imp. It was giving her the hump. They weren’t stood there for the purpose of sharing a joke.

  ‘You a bit shy, pet? No need to be. Everybody likes a bit naughty.’

  He didn’t seem to care so much for that tone. He could fuck himself. There was a coyness that wasn’t really appropriate in one of his years – was, in fact, a royal nuisance – because the facts were not hard to master, even for a novice. Within the kitchen drawer nearest to her, taped to the base, was a list handwritten in blue-ink capitals on a sheet of ruled A4. Twenty quid for the base, a half-hour chat and the so-called ‘fingertip massage’. Then the itemised extras. Hand relief, thirty. Topless hand relief, forty. Sixty by mouth. Ninety full-on. Up the arse, one hundred and twenty. The gentleman could either extract this much from Yulia or Leanne in his own sweet time, or else Lindy was minded to shove that tariff under his nose and enquire as to exactly how he fancied getting his dick wet this evening.

  But he was sidling back in any case, toward and through the lounge door, fingers stroking his chin. Lindy jerked her head and lowered her voice. ‘Keep an eye on him, Dougie, will ya?’ She mimed the tippling of a pint. Dougie shifted to station himself with a discreet view through the doorway.

  Lindy switched the kettle to boil and took up Claire’s Chronicle, a more than usually startled front-page splash blazed in high capitals. EXECUTED: DOUBLE PIZZA KILLING SPARKS TIT-FOR-TAT FEARS. Nasty. She paddled through the rest of the front-end. PAEDO PRIEST GETS SIX YEARS. Typical, should have strung him up by his mouldy gonads. EX-PIT GOLF COURSE FLOPS. Well, what did they expect? Golf, in Sunderland? FAKE PISTOL STICK-UP. Well, at least it was a fake. But it was all pretty much grim as fuck, as per usual.

  She had reached the Entertainment – STING COMES HOME IN GLORY – and the telly schedule spread, when renewed motion disturbed her. That bashful reddish face was hovering nearby once more.

  ‘Actually no, I don’t think I will.’

  ‘Aw right, whatever you like.’

  He laid a hand on the counter, tapped as if thoughtful. His smile, she supposed, could have won him favour on a happier day. ‘You’re not by any chance available yourself, are you?’

  ‘Bugger off out of it, man. What does it look like?’

  Lindy flashed a harried look at Dougie, who stirred and stepped forward, hand out. But the client was showing some gumption at last, holding up his own hands in penitence, beating a sharp retreat for the staircase.

  Chapter IV

  KINSHIP

  Saturday, 16 November 1996

  The alleyways of Oakwell were slick with overnight rain, an odour of dogs and dead leaves in the air as Gore took the long walk, the walk of shame, a hundred yards to Lindy’s door. If the day’s portents were dank November-dismal, his mood was cautiously hopeful, coloured by a night and a morning of solid self-criticism and resolutions made firmly on the basis thereof. He carried a spray of pink freesias and the semblance of a plan for an afternoon out, one that would see Lindy nicely lunched, Jake escorted to a bookshop and then, he fancied, the swimming baths. Knowing he was overdue to make good, he intended to settle a goodly portion of the debt. There would have to be agreement, though, each to give some designated inch to the other. He didn’t have an answer for the full extent of Lindy’s charges against him, but he had words as well as deeds prepared. I know I’ve seemed distant. Please let me try and show you it’s not what you think.

  He rang the bell, prepared a face. No answer. He looked about him. Two doorways down the alley, a woman had come to her stoop for a cigarette, and surveyed him with some mild interest. He took no offence, for this morning he was wearing his clerical suit and collar, precisely so that all might know where he was coming from.

  The door before him was flung open, and a wholly unexpected girl was inspecting him also, her slight smile vaguely critical – Slavic-looking, pallid, very young in her black vest and hooded jersey top, drawstring bag over her shoulder.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hallo! For me?’

  ‘Ha. No, I’m here for Lindy?’

  ‘Ah, no, I am sitter.’

  ‘Sister?’

  ‘Sitter. Lindy’s not here, I sit with Jake. Her son?’

  ‘Babysitter?’

  ‘Yes! She is back soon, you wait?’ She motioned for him to step aside.

  ‘Sorry – where are you going?’

  ‘No, no, Jake is fine, is good, he upstairs with his daddy. You go?’

  She was holding the door for him, so keen to be on her merry way, oblivious to his confoundment. Gore’s first impulse was to turn tail, get long gone himself. No, he simply wasn’t braced for this encounter.

  But wasn’t this the day when matters were set straight? Was he or was he not a serious man? Something was instructing him that this had to be so. His uniform, he knew, gave him both pretext and escapeway. He took hold of the handle as she passed him cheerfully, her Saturday newly unburdened. Gore stepped lightly over the threshold, pulled the door closed.

  Upstairs indeed was from whence the sound of action emanated – small cries, jarring loud thumps upon the floor. Gore laid the freesias down on Lindy’s coffee table, mounted the stairs, wary, breath bated.

  ‘Oh! Oh! Eh? That’s a good un …’

  A voice bold as brass, commonplace Geordie, and yet with an emphasis he knew he recognised. On the top stair he lingered.

  Your steps were always leading you this way. The need to know, to see. Too strong.

  He stepped closer and peered through the open door of the boy’s room.

  Steve Coulson was crouched upon his knees, packed into his jeans and tee-shirt, playing energetically with Jake. They each sported those shiny red Lonsdale boxing gloves, Jake in football shorts yanked up to his belly button. Stevie was making a comic show of keeping guard as Jake flailed at him, dropping hands at the last minute so the boy could bash the broad target of his grinning face. Hands-on daddying, plain to see.

  With a sharp sideways glance Stevie clocked Gore, then looked back in time to weather another haymaker from Jake. Then he planted his gloves vice-like at the sides of the boy’s head.

  ‘Eee, son. Now look who it is. It’s the Reverend Gore.’

  Jake revolved to face Gore and struck a pose, gloves raised, proud as punch. Gore flicked the fingers of one hand at the boy. Stevie nodded with his chin, then lightly cuffed Jake’s jaw.

  ‘Shall we duff him up, eh? The Reverend? Shall we’s, Jakey, eh?’

  *

  Stevie pushed aside the cut flowers, set a mug of tea and a virgin pack of biscuits down before Gore, then slumped back into the leather sofa. Gore knew he was right to have plumped for Lindy’s chair, as Stevie’s frame made the long settee look a meagre thing. His countenance, though, seemed odd to Gore’s eye – he was redfaced, mildly sweaty, as if from fever or whisky rather than exertion. There was a rent in the crotch of his jeans, and a flap of striped under-shorts protruded.

  ‘You admirin’ wor ballroom?’

  Gore dragged his eye to Stevie’s flashing overbite, and nodded in the direction of the joke. ‘How you keeping then, Stevie?’

  ‘Aw …’ A shrug. ‘Not brilliant. You?’

  ‘Not so good, neither.’

  ‘Naw?’

  ‘Just a lot on my mind. Things stacked up. Things not working.’

  ‘I knaa how you feel. Whey, we’re having a time of it, aren’t wuz?’ Stevie sighed and lifted the biscuits from the table, ran a thumbnail round the wrapping, split it in half and set it down again. ‘Tell ye, I’ve been in a mood lately. It’s like every morning I get up – I want to give thanks to someone. For every day I’ve got. Weird, isn’t it? Maybe not so weird for you, like.’

  Baffled, Gore tried a knowing smile. From the first moment of their acquaintance, he knew, Stevie had shown him this curious gravity – so
me sort of fancy that they were tough and serious men, struggling through a thicket, a vale of tears, sorely misreck-oned by their peers. Moreover, that they had something in common. The decision to play along had seemed more than worth his time. As of this hour, the fancy seemed substantive and rebarbative, the decision foolish. Everything had changed.

  He reached to take his mug. Stevie too surged forward and clapped hold of his forearm, vice-like.

  ‘Look, I want you to knaa, John, it’s not any of my business, your affairs and that. I’ve not got any problem wi’ you.’

  ‘What do you mean, Steve?’

  ‘What you get up to, your life, y’knaa? Nowt to do wi’ me nor anyone else.’

  Gore measured a reply. Stevie’s grip made clear thought difficult.

  ‘You don’t have to come the choirboy, John. Everybody likes a bit naughty.’

  The expression was ludicrous to Gore, but Stevie wasn’t smiling. ‘Naughty …?’

  Stevie sat back. ‘Just a saying. I mean, you’re not doin’ owt wrong.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Look, you’ll have gathered, Steve, Lindy and I have been spending –’

  Stevie raised a hand, his mouth set. ‘John, I divvint need to knaa, man. I knaa, like, but I divvint need to. That’s my point. My only business here is that lad up there.’ He jerked a thumb. ‘She’ll have telt ya all that, aye?’

  ‘Well, no, you see. She hadn’t said a word.’

  ‘Aw. Right.’ Stevie scratched at the frayed knee of his blue jeans. ‘Well, she’s like that. Keeps all her bits in a box, like. It’s good habits, but. Cos people talk, I knaa that. From experience. Your enemies, they talk.’

  ‘Enemies?’

  ‘Look, I’m only sayin’ – I knaa what it’s like, man. To feel like everyone’s out to get you. It’s rotten. Now, see if someone said you were like a hypocrite, aye? They’d be right out of order. Right out of order. It’s just like what you’ve always said. People want to have their own houses clean before they gan round flingin’ stones.’