No More Heroes

by Stephen Thompson

  On the night of the stabbing, on the bus ride back from the hospital, Mitch said, ‘You ain’t alone in this, Si. Man’s got your back.’ ‘For real,’ said Benjy. I nodded but didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to tell them I was scared and that I was secretly hoping the police would get me out of my bind. They had begun an investigation into the attack, had actually shown up on the Front and asked questions, but no one dared go on the record against Django, and since Theodore was still unable to speak and was not going to identify his attacker when he recovered, the investigation was unlikely to go anywhere.

  The day after the attack I stayed at home. I didn’t go to the Front because I was too scared but I heard that Django had showed up there as normal. He didn’t fear me in the slightest. He was taunting me. There was no other way for me to look at it. Beverly advised me to let the matter drop but even she knew what it would mean for me if I didn’t act. One evening Mitch stopped by to check whether I was going to do something or, as he put it, ‘pussy out’. I got annoyed. ‘For fuck’s sake! It’s my brother. Let me deal with this in my way.’ I’d raised my voice, which got Beverly’s hackles up. ‘Keep it down, please. If you wanna argue, take it outside. Shereen’s asleep.’ Mitch left, calling me a coward under his breath. I was glad to see the back of him. At that moment, he seemed to represent everything that was wrong in my life.

  For the next couple of days I hid myself away at home, getting under Beverly’s feet, smoking weed and worrying about the damage I was doing to my reputation by staying away from the Front. The only thing that drew me from the house was Theodore. He was still in hospital but was now sitting up and talking a little. On one visit, after he’d heard me spouting my empty threats, he lost patience and said, ‘I wish you’d stop chatting shit. It ain’t you, bruv. Never was. You trying to end up in here with me? Please, do me a favour and stop going on about it.’ I was moved by his concern for my safety, but questioning my courage was extremely hard to take. It hurt me and made me determined to prove him wrong. Even here, with so much at stake, my lifelong desire to please him, to gain his approval, seemed to be overriding all other considerations. It occurred to me that he might have been biding his time till he was well again before taking his own revenge on Django. He was no coward, so it seemed logical. In all likelihood, he was plotting something, but I couldn’t allow him to get the job done ahead of me. It was mine to do. He knew it. I knew it. Everyone knew it.

  * * *

  The first time I met Lee he made me jump. I’d just come back from the hospital and was about to take the lift up to the twelfth floor, covering my nose against the stench coming from the nearby rubbish chute, when he stepped in front of me and said. ‘Name’s Lee. Friend of your brother’s. Got a minute?’ I looked him up and down: white, clean-shaven, twenty-something, about five-ten, dressed in a blue overcoat, black drainpipe trousers and brown suede loafers. I’d never met any of Theodore’s old gang before and hadn’t expected any of them to look so dapper. Now I understood why he always used to dress so well, it had obviously been part of their identity. For a moment I wondered if they had given themselves a gang name, something sartorial. The Burberry Boys, for example. I had a quick look around, suddenly wondering if he was alone. There was no one else about. It had just gone nine and the flats were always quiet at that time of night.

  Turning back to Lee I said, ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Bit public, don’t you think?’ He pulled a face and added, ‘Not to mention whiffy.’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Your brother.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘We heard what happened.’

  A door opened on the first floor balcony, directly above our heads. We couldn’t see the person and instinctively stopped talking and listened as he or she shuffled along the landing and put something in the rubbish chute. Moments later it landed with a loud thud in the metal bin a few feet from where we stood. After the person had gone back inside and closed the door Lee said, ‘There’s a boozer not two minutes from here. Fancy a swift one? On me?’

  We ended up in a faded pub in Haggerston. It was deserted except for a few old white guys who were sitting at a round table nursing pints, smoking cigarettes and chatting in hushed tones. The table was so small their knees were practically touching. Lee was much more comfortable in that environment than I was. As soon as we walked in his shoulders went back, his chest seemed to expand and he became altogether more confident than when he had approached me in the flats. I hung back as he strode up to the counter and ordered a pint of lager for himself and a Jack Daniels and Coke for me. The barman, a paunchy white guy with bad teeth and a comb-over, looked at me and said to Lee, ‘Is he old enough to drink?’ I laughed. I’d never been ID’d before. Lee said, ‘It’s OK,’ and the barman silently prepared our drinks. I took the opportunity to look around. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in a pub. They were places to be avoided. Racist white people went to pubs. That was the first deterrent. The second was that they always had musty old carpets and reeked of cigarette smoke, stale alcohol and sweat. This one was no different, on the décor and smell at least.

  We took our drinks over to a secluded corner near the dartboard and sat face to face across a rectangular table with four Watneys beer mats and a dirty metal ashtray on it. The lighting in that part of the pub was dim but not so much that you couldn’t see the rings on the table and the crumbs on the brown Paisley carpet. We clinked glasses and Lee said, ‘To Theodore. Here’s hoping he makes a speedy recovery.’

  He took a sip of his lager, which left him with a thin line of froth on his top lip, then put his glass down and said, ‘T’s a top bloke. Honestly, he’s like a brother to us. We couldn’t believe it when we heard.’

  He paused, fingered the rim of his glass, then added, ‘Do you know who did it?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be asking if I did.’

  ‘I know who it was. And believe me, he ain’t getting away with it.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I sipped my drink for the first time, the ice already beginning to melt. It was a little too light on the whisky and way too heavy on the Coke.

  ‘Anything we can do to help?’

  I became suspicious. It suddenly occurred to me that I’d never met this guy before. For all I knew he was Old Bill.

  ‘How do you know my brother again?’

  Lee smiled and said, ‘Smart boy.’

  He then told me a story from my early childhood, involving a bed-wetting incident that only Theodore and my parents knew about. It made me laugh, both the story and the fact that Theodore had seen fit to tell his gang about it.

  ‘Can you get me a gun?’ It just came out.

  Lee took a moment to recover from the surprise then said, ‘Ever used one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’s all kinds of guns.’ I didn’t say anything, feeling slightly silly for being so non-specific.

  Lee said, ‘Something small but powerful, something you can conceal and carry around without too much trouble. That sound like the kind of thing you need?’

  I sipped my drink. All of a sudden my throat felt parched and my heart was beating a bit too rapidly. I was only having a conversation but already I could feel myself crossing that divide. Lee must have sensed my fear because he said, ‘You sure you wanna go down this road?’

  I looked at him, taking a moment to consider the implications of what he was saying, then nodded.

  ‘Alright, then. Leave it with me.’

  He put his glass to his mouth, tilted his head back and downed the rest of his pint in one go, his Adam’s apple bobbing and down as he swallowed. I waited for him to drain the glass then said,

  ‘How much will it cost me?’

  He looked surprised. ‘You having a giggle? It’s on the house.’ He stood up and said, ‘Fancy another?’

  The following day he met me outside Dagenham
Heathway station in his blue Triumph Stag. I felt grumpy, like someone being forced to do something he didn’t want to do. As we were driving away from the station, Lee tried to engage me in conversation and it was all I could do not to tell him to shut up. Not only was he being too chirpy, his yellow Fila tracksuit, zipped up to his neck, was a little too loud and his aftershave a little too pungent. I couldn’t wait to get away from him and wondered how my brother had been able to spend so much time around guys like him. How he had even met them was still a mystery to me. He had always refused to discuss it with me, saying the less I knew about them the better it was for me. In the pub the night before, I had tried to get some answers from Lee but he’d been just as tight-lipped.

  ‘T’s right. Best not to ask a lot of questions.’

  He did answer a couple, though. Had he or any of his gang been to see Theodore in hospital? ‘No. Two of the lads are being detained at her Majesty’s pleasure and the rest of us are on our toes.’

  How did he hear about Theodore being stabbed?

  ‘It was in the Hackney Gazette. Did you not see it?’

  I hadn’t.

  We drove deeper into the countryside. Lee talked the whole way, mostly about all the rain we’d been having recently. He was all for it.

  ‘Nothing better for staying indoors with the missus and getting all cosy, eh?’

  I muttered a few words here and there, but my mind was on the business at hand. I kept my head turned away, staring at the passing scenery while Lee prattled on. After a while I saw that the clouds had started to darken, casting a gloomy shadow over the winding country lane and the hedges, trees and fields round and about.

  The stables were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by the Essex countryside. I counted twelve adjoining stalls, each with its own door. Aptly, they were laid out in the shape of a horseshoe, around a cobbled courtyard. The place was obviously well-kept. But for a few dead leaves blown in by the autumn winds, the yard looked immaculate. All the stalls were closed except two, which had their top flaps open. As we pulled into the yard, and no doubt attracted to the noise, a chestnut-coloured horse with a long, black, shiny mane poked its neck out from one of the open stalls.

  When we got out of the car, it became excited and started moving its head up and down and flaring its nostrils as if in greeting. Lee hurried towards it. I stood back, not sure if I was supposed to follow, and watched as Lee started stroking the animal’s neck and smoothing its ears and saying something to it which I didn’t quite catch. After a while he noticed I hadn’t moved and beckoned me over. Reluctantly – I was no animal lover – I walked across the courtyard. Once I was standing next to him, and at what I thought was a safe enough distance from the horse, Lee said, ‘Simon, I’d like you to meet Fancy. Fancy, Simon.’

  He then invited me to stroke the horse but I refused. It looked too big, too powerful. ‘They bite don’t they?’

  ‘Only if provoked. Go on, she’s friendly.’

  Tentatively, I moved towards Fancy and slowly stretched out my hand towards her. She could tell I was nervous and seemed to want to help me. Lowering her head, she suddenly lunged forward and nudged my hand with her hot moist nose. The shock, to say nothing of the force, made me take a step back but Lee urged me forward again and this time I put my hand on her neck and left it there. She didn’t move. Her neck muscles were big and taught, her skin velvet smooth and cool to the touch. Feeling more confident, I started moving my hand up and down her neck, along her mane and then finally over her ears and in the space between her eyes. A sense of peace and well-being came over me and the more I stroked the calmer I felt. Lee broke the spell by saying, ‘She’s a beauty isn’t she?’ I’d never been that close to a horse before, and had certainly never touched one.

  I didn’t know what else to say apart from, ‘She’s quite something.’

  On the way from the station Lee had talked a bit about the stables and now went a little further into its history. It had been in his family for generations. They rented it out but business had become so slow they were thinking of converting the building into a luxury home and selling it off. Fancy actually belonged to his sister, Jean, who came out from Ilford on a daily basis to muck out her stall and take her for a gallop. While Lee was speaking, we were joined by a middle-aged man dressed in green mud-spattered wellies and a grey quilted body-warmer. He was accompanied by a black-and-white sheep dog who slinked away from me but started wagging its tail when it saw Lee. The man seemed to appear from nowhere but had actually driven into the courtyard in his mud-covered Land Rover. Lee introduced us. He was called Jim and his dog was called Lottie. Lee said I was a friend from London and I got the feeling Jim had heard that many times before. He grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously and said,

  ‘I see you’ve met Fancy. Play your cards right and Lee here might let you ride her later.’ Suddenly nervous again, I said, ‘I don’t know about that.’

  They laughed, by which point Lottie had decided I was OK and started licking my trainers.

  After a few more pleasantries, Jim went back to his Land Rover, opened the back and took out what looked like a small bingo bag, Lottie prancing about his legs the whole time and whining slightly. He came back and handed the bag to Lee and said, ‘I forgot to ask: how’s Shelley?’ Lee brightened. ‘She’s fine, thanks. All over now.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Jim. ‘Frank must be chuffed to bits.’

  Lee nodded and said, ‘So chuffed he’s booked a cruise for the two of them. A fortnight around the Mediterranean.’

  Jim smiled. ‘Alright for some, eh?’

  I tried to fill in the gaps. Lee was obviously talking about his parents. His mum had been ill and it must have been serious enough for his father to be taking her on a cruise to celebrate her recovery.

  While I speculated, I couldn’t take my eyes off the bag in Lee’s hand. I knew what was in it and the thought made my heart pound, whereas Lee and Jim were chatting away like a couple of golf buddies taking a break between rounds.

  ‘Well, Lottie,’ said Jim, ‘back to work for us. Let’s leave these two idlers alone.’

  We shook hands and he said, ‘Nice to meet you, Simon. Good luck.’

  Good luck? Did he know what I was planning to do? If he did, it hardly seemed appropriate that he should be wishing me good luck. I wasn’t going on a pheasant hunt. He turned to Lee, ‘As for you young man, I suppose I’ll see you when I see you.’

  ‘Not if I see you first.’

  Jim rolled his eyes. ‘The oldies are the best.’

  ‘And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?’

  Jim shook his head and he Lottie walked back to the Land Rover and got in, Lottie sitting up front in the passenger seat. Moments later, they were gone.

  ‘Right, then,’ said Lee, turning to me, ‘let’s get you sorted.’

  We walked over to the other open stall, two down from Fancy’s. Lee opened the bottom flap, ushered me in, came in behind me then closed both flaps. The darkness was sudden and total. Lee flicked a switch somewhere and an overhead strip bulb flickered noisily into life. The stall was square, warm and panelled, with a thick layer of sawdust covering the floor. There was a feeder trough affixed to one of the walls. It looked to be made of galvanised steel and had a visible waterline. While I was busy familiarising myself with the surroundings, Lee started sweeping back the sawdust with his foot and eventually uncovered a trap door. Crouching down, he unbolted it, swung it open and said, ‘Excuse the smell. Noone’s been down there for a bit.’

  I peered over his shoulder and saw a wooden staircase leading down to what looked like a cave. It was dark and I could feel the cold from where I stood.

  ‘What’s down there?’ I asked.

  ‘We use it for storage,’ said Lee, brushing the sawdust from his hand. ‘Place is full of junk. Used to be an air raid shelter.’

  I didn’t think I suffered from claustrophobia until I saw that opening.

  ‘After you,’ said
Lee, moving aside.

  ‘No, please,’ I replied, ‘you first.’

  Lee grinned and, leaning against the sides, eased himself into the gap. It was such a narrow, steep staircase that he had to climb down backwards. Once he was out of view, I took a deep breath and went down myself.

  Lee hadn’t exaggerated about the junk. The dim, naked lightbulb wasn’t strong enough to pick out all the items, but I saw a lot of household appliances, stacks of boxes sagging under their weight and garden furniture of almost every description. Beyond the stored items, the shelter was in darkness. Lee told me later that the family used to run a DIY store until a B&Q opened up nearby and put them out of business.

  The musty smell, the low ceiling that made it almost impossible to stand upright, the dim lighting, the piles of junk: no sane person would go willingly to such a place and then, having gone there, linger. I wanted out of there as soon as possible and it seemed Lee was of the same mind. ‘Let’s get this over with.’ He opened the bingo bag and took out a handgun and then, moments later, a box of what I took to be bullets, even though the box was unmarked. Seeing the gun up close made my heart skip a beat. Lee weighed it in his hand, almost lovingly, then tried to hand it to me but I shrank back.