by Helen Zahavi
‘Shouldn’t have done that,’ she informed him. ‘Middle of the night, and they’re by my bed.’
‘It was only business. Nothing personal.’
‘But aggravating, all the same.’
‘No harm intended.’ He shifted his weight. ‘They only wanted to have a chat. Bit of a chinwag, if you know what I mean.’
‘Well they had it, didn’t they.’
‘I guess they did.’
‘So what’s your problem?’
‘It’s you, my love. You’re my problem of the moment. You took something from me, and I want it back.’
‘Should have asked,’ she said. ‘That’s what people do, see. They want something bad enough, they just tend to ask.’
Her gaze came to rest on the custody sergeant. He had a sallow, pasty look. Pink-rimmed eyes and narrow hips. Been eating too much prunes and custard, stuffing himself in the downstairs canteen. And a face like you get when you hate the world. He had a vicious look, when you really looked. But nice and clean, though, she reflected. Scrubbed and gleaming. You could see he washed behind the ears, which made a pleasant change. They were all like that, the lads in blue. They all looked bathed and talcumed, soaped and ready. Lean and mean but very clean.
Henry was quite clean too, she thought, considering. Because it must be hard, when you decompose, to keep the body-smells at bay. But at least he made the effort. A losing struggle, possibly, but at least the old boy tried.
‘Well I’m telling you now,’ he said. ‘Just give it back.’
‘How much d’you want?’
‘You trying to be clever?’
‘I’m only asking.’
‘All of it, darling. I want it all back.’
It was pelting down outside. You could hear it even in the lobby. Even sat inside a bomb-proof nick, you could hear the rain come sheeting down.
‘I hate these places,’ Henry muttered.
He had that phlegm-sound in his throat, as if he’d like to hawk it clean, just spit his feelings on the floor. Just gob them out and watch them settle on the polished vinyl floor.
‘Fucking loathe them.’
‘Won’t take long,’ she soothed.
‘Shouldn’t have made me come here, darling.’
‘Do the business, and we’ll be off.’
‘Full of bastard Filth.’
‘Ssshhh . . . ’
‘Making me meet you in a copshop. What I’d call a vicious act.’
‘At least it’s warm.’
‘Not a girly thing to do.’
‘But fairly smart, I would have thought.’
He brought out a well-worn tobacco pouch. Squeezed it gently in his hand.
‘I know,’ he muttered, ‘and it’s why I like you. It’s why I get this nice, warm feeling in my scrotum when I think of you, and I think of you a lot, these days.’
She frowned at the floor.
‘Do you really, Henry?’
‘Really what?’
‘Get warm in the gonads . . . ?’
He smiled.
‘I do.’
She let this filter through. She let it permeate her consciousness and sink into her brain.
‘Tell Joey, shall I? Cause he’d like to know.’
He shook his head. A yellow grin.
‘There you go again,’ he said, ‘just mouthing off. Like you’ve always got to make a noise, you’ve always got to wind me up. I mean normal girls, they’re nice and quiet. They’ve got the sense to button it. Prudent, really, when you think about it. Keeping quiet, I mean, when someone’s talking. Shows they’ve got respect, which can’t be bad. But you just keep gabbing, don’t you?’
She thought about this for a moment, then shrugged, and muttered:
‘Yeah.’
‘Such a lippy little bitch, but I’ll tell you something: I like my ladies when they talk, I like it when they gab a bit. Their mouths,’ he said, ‘all soft and pulpy, wet and open. Quite charming, really, if you’re partial. I just hold them down and pop it in, stuff their little gobs with me. Tends to shut them up, I’ve found. So when they talk too much, when the whining gets a touch too loud and their shrill little voices start to get on my nerves, I just bring it out and stick it in, I just pull it out and shove it in.’
A wistful look came over him.
‘It quietens them, if you know what I mean. It sort of . . . calms them down.’
At which point in his dissertation, the duty sergeant glanced across and asked if he could help. Manners, she thought, approvingly, being partial to good manners. A touch of civility, here and there. Can’t be bad, the way she saw it.
Henry shook his head.
‘We’re fine thanks, mate. Waiting for one of your D.I.’s to show.’
‘Want to leave a message?’
The pink-eyed sergeant with his Mersey voice.
‘We don’t mind waiting.’ The Fatman smiled. ‘We like it here.’
She watched the sergeant shrug and turn away. He had enough to do, for it was a busy station. Punters streaming in and out, and that moist, familiar, drenched-through smell that was rising from their clothes.
‘You think he knows you?’
Henry shrugged.
‘Might have seen me on the street, going about my lawful business.’
A wealthy sort of smirk.
‘Who fucking cares, cause I don’t know him.’
‘He could nab you, couldn’t he.’
‘That scouser, you mean?’
‘Put you inside.’
‘Yeah,’ he grunted. ‘In his dreams, he could. In his clammy, copper fantasies.’
She shut her eyes. Listened to the rain.
‘You think you’re untouchable.’
‘I know so, darling.’
‘Must be comforting, being you.’
‘It is, my love. A comfort is how I’d put it. Because I can go down Kilburn, see a one-time hard man hobble down the road, and every step he takes, it gives him pain. And I think to myself: I did that. I made him into that. I brought him down to that. And I’ll tell you something, shall I? It’s the greatest feeling. Like you’re flying high in the clear blue sky. Like you’re the king of fucking creation.’
‘Language . . . ’
‘Sorry.’
He began to chew his lip.
‘But that’s me, see? Least I try.’
‘Try what?’
‘Try and prove I’m still alive. That whatever I do, I don’t eat shit. Not like Joe and all that garbage, namby-pamby wholesome types who lend the neighbours a helping hand, and like to do the decent thing, and have to be so fucking nice. Cause I just look at their smiling faces, at their shit-filled, smiling faces, and it makes me want to kill them, sometimes.’
He rolled the tobacco pouch between his fingers.
‘I mean I know you prefer him, I just don’t know why. Because you and me, we’re what I’d term compatible, see. Not much to choose between us, really.’
She considered this statement for several seconds.
‘There’s one main difference, Henry.’
She leaned towards him and lowered her voice. She’d do her best to phrase it gently.
‘One of us is a lady . . . ’
The damp and fragrant Donna breath.
‘ . . . and the other one’s a cunt.’
‘Fair point,’ he murmured. The glimmer of a smile. ‘And elegantly put, if I may say so.’
And also true, he might have added, for the trouble with Henry was he could do what he liked. That was Henry’s basic trouble. When Henry farted, everyone clapped. When he shifted his bulk on his padded seat, raised himself up an inch or two, and let the gas jet freely out, they smiled in admiration. They spread their lips and flashed their teeth to show their pleasure in the act. They sniffed the Henry-scented air, inhaled the Henry sweetness.
When Henry made a Henry joke, they laughed to show they’d got it. They delighted in his appetites, worshipped every self-indulgence. They felt in some strang
e way enhanced by witnessing his greed. Even when he hit them, when he slapped them round the head to emphasize his point, they tended not to mind, for power must express itself. They felt that they were privileged if he let them kiss his arse. Not just any arse, they told themselves, but Henry’s arse.
Henry’s trouble, his basic trouble, was he’d never been told the truth. No one had told him what he really was. He’d gone through life, and no one pointed out he was a piece of stinking filth, a glob of putrefaction in this green and pleasant land. No one took him by the arm, and bent towards his cheek, and whispered revelations in the soft and waxy ear. They didn’t hold a mirror to his face and say: examine that, you cunt. Have a butcher’s, if you dare. Look at what God did to you. They never said it. Might have thought it, in their sweaty dreams, their nightly indiscretions, but not to Henry’s face. Not said it, to his face.
‘Shall I tell you something? Shall I? You should have done your bit, my love. Should have bowed the head, and bent the knee, and done your honest bit.’
‘Couldn’t help it, Henry.’
‘Should have sucked me off.’
‘Couldn’t do it, Henry.’
‘Should have wrapped your mouth around my cock and done the decent thing.’
‘Had this wave, see.’
‘But you left me sitting, like an ape.’
‘This nausea-wave, inside my gut.’
‘Left me waiting, on my own.’
‘This pukey feeling, deep down in my gut.’
‘Left me dripping, while you ran.’
‘I would have stayed. But I had to go.’
‘Quite a nasty thing to do, I thought. Quite a female thing.’
‘That’s girlies for you.’
‘I mean it wouldn’t have fucking killed you.’
The hiss against her ear.
‘So why couldn’t you, eh? You listening, darling? Why couldn’t you just be nice, for once? Cause I’m only asking, aren’t I. Just making conversation. So give me one good reason, you stuck-up sow.’
She thought it over for a moment, allowed herself to cogitate, and then she said:
‘Thing is, Henry, you’re a shade too old. A bit decrepit, as it were. Got that oldman whiff, and it doesn’t wash off.’
The drooping age, that sweetly rancid odour . . .
‘And I don’t like to think of it, rubbing inside. Might catch something nasty, see. The slime of your collected years might leave what’s termed a residue. Makes me feel quite queasy, frankly, and I can’t help how I feel, now, can I? Can’t help it, Henry, it’s how I am.’
A memory of sagging flesh and brown-flecked skin.
‘Not my thing, see, old men’s cocks. I mean the idea isn’t so bad, but the reality, sweetheart, the ghastly reality . . . ’
And she shook her head, for life could be cruel.
‘So that’s my reason,’ she concluded. ‘As you asked.’
She glanced at him, but his face was blank. You couldn’t tell, by watching him, what he was thinking. You had to listen hard. You had to lend an ear, and watch his mouth, and hear him say:
‘You know what I’m feeling right now?’
His voice beside her, thick and gummy.
‘Warm in your scrotum?’
‘I feel like smashing something.’
She nodded politely.
‘Better wait a bit, till we get outside.’
‘Something soft and girlified.’
He was speaking calmly, very quietly.
‘I could do it right now, I could finish you now.’
She watched his hands compress the pouch.
‘Just snap your neck. Just wrap my hands around your neck and snap it, fairly fast.’
She gave an understanding nod.
‘It’s good to talk . . . ’
‘And the look on your face, the total fear on your slutbitch face.’
‘ . . . a bit of verbal give and take, some oral intertwining.’
‘Could do it, couldn’t I, right here in the Filth-hole. Thumbs on the windpipe, maintain the pressure, then that perfect sound, that whiplash crack that’ll bounce off the walls. Imagine, eh? Almost feel it in my hands, the soft vibration in my hands. I could do it, darling, just finish you now . . . ’
Then a sudden, high-pitched laugh, as of a fresh castrato, and he dug a finger in her ribs.
‘Only joking, precious. Not an animal, am I? I mean I’d only thump you in the mouth. Right in the gob, see. Right where it hurts.’
Pause for further contemplation.
‘And then I’d shove the fist inside. Try and spread your jaw and push it in. See if I could make it fit.’
A vivid image in the Donna brain: her bleeding mouth, the teeth knocked out, the searing pain as the fist goes in. They both had his fantasy in their heads, but only one of them was smiling.
She checked the clock.
‘Shame we’re sitting in the nick, then, isn’t it? All that yearning, unreleased.’
‘Almost worth it though,’ he murmured. ‘Almost worth a stretch inside for the look on your face, the look of surprise on your disintegrating face. I’d say that’s almost worth six months or so.’
‘But not quite, I reckon.’
A wistful sigh.
‘Not quite,’ he agreed.
There was a slow, extended hiss, and the ceiling light above their heads went out. She needs her light, she drinks it up, and it disturbed her, slightly. Not quite as much as Henry had, but slightly, all the same. She picked up her bag.
‘We going to sort it, then, or we just going to sit here?’
The Fatman shrugged.
‘Give back the bonus and we’ll call it quits. You can keep the car.’
‘What about the other one?’
‘The one you trashed?’
‘The one we sold.’
‘I’ve got it back.’ Complacent Henry grin. ‘Got a whisper from a friend, and Phil was happy to oblige.’
‘So just the bonus?’
‘And peace will reign. We’ll be friends again.’
‘No more boys . . . ?’
‘Like it never happened.’
She thought it over.
‘And you’ll wipe the debt.’
‘Can’t do that, sweetheart.’
‘You’ll wipe it, right?’
‘I’ll extend his credit.’
‘How long?’
‘Three months.’
‘Twelve.’
‘Six,’ he said.
‘Done.’
He cleared his throat, swallowed down the phlegm.
‘Call me tomorrow, right? Just dump it somewhere, and let me know. The boys can collect.’
He got to his feet.
‘They like to keep busy.’
‘So it’s over, then?’
‘It’s over, sweetheart.’
He gazed at her. The bleak, grey eyes.
‘Just remember, won’t you: whatever you took, I’ll be getting it back. Cause it’s only fair, and I like to be fair. You follow me, darling? You get my drift?’
‘Course I do.’
Of course she does.
With which agreement, they both shook hands. For peace will reign. And pigs might fly.
* * *
CHAPTER 14
Joe hung a left off Lisson Grove, then left again, and pulled up by a tattered row of shops.
They’d chosen Paddington for the drop. Couldn’t beat it, really. Great little place, if you like that type of thing. Perched on top of Notting Hill, and right next door to Maida Vale. Tucked in rather nicely, and always plenty of skips about. An ideal spot for dumping stuff. You just bomb along the Edgware Road until you reach the underpass, then drop your problem in a skip and quietly walk away.
You don’t have to ask, because nobody cares, and even if they do, they’ll very rarely mention it. They’re taciturn folk in that part of town. Got that buttoned-down look on their faces, that sullen, wary, London look. That ground-down, pissed-off, fuck-you l
ook, that makes you want to emigrate. But they’re a tolerant sort, round Paddington. You can walk down the road with a cosh in your hand, and they’ll move out the way if you’re smiling. A very Henry kind of place, jammed with three-legs full of beer.
But you need to have an attitude, for otherwise you’re shafted. If you’ve got no muscle, you go under. If you’ve got no boys to back you up, you shouldn’t really step outside, shouldn’t look at passers-by, shouldn’t even breathe too much, if you can possibly avoid it. Better keep your head down and your voice low. Keep your window shut, and your door bolted, and hope you win the Lottery.
‘I can’t believe we’re doing this.’
‘We’re doing it, babe.’
‘I mean it’s bad for my digestion. You hear me, Joe? This is bad for my bowels.’
‘Don’t say that word, okay?’
‘What word?’
‘You know what word.’
‘You mean the bowels word?’
‘Don’t say it, all right?’
She shrugged.
‘All right.’
He cut the engine. Silence in the car. Mid-afternoon and the sun was shining, bright and cold like a junkie’s heart. Across to the right there was an endless line of greybrick flats, marching off to nowhere, while straight ahead was a patch of open space, a kind of extended yard for the local lads, where they could sniff their glue and hone their blades.
Henry territory, absolutely. Sort of place he worshipped with a passion. Somewhere he could urinate in peace. He liked to pull up in his limousine and step on to the pavement. Then he’d stride up to the wall, take it gently out, and let the goodness flow. He knew the locals wouldn’t mind, being mostly in debt, mostly to him. Not for them to mind where Henry made his water. Just smile, and wave, and ‘Hello Henry.’ Very blokey. Nice and matey.
She wound down the window and had a look at the skips. There were two of them side by side, about thirty foot away. Dusty pink and fairly full. Aesthetically they weren’t too bad. Not entirely unappealing. There was the slightest stench, if you were parked downwind, but nothing too outrageous. A vaguely dog-food kind of smell, but nothing too bizarre.
‘Better do it, then.’
‘You sure you don’t want to?’
‘It’s man’s work, sweetie. Rather you than me.’
For one had to be a hairy type, an uncomplaining three-leg, to shove a wodge of notes among the garbage, to poke one’s hand inside the muck and leave one’s benefaction. But she’d done her bit, she’d made her contribution to the cause. She’d pulled some greasy paper from a bin and wrapped it round the money-pile. It would let the Fatman know she cared, let him know she valued him. Help him understand the state of her emotions.
