by Adam Baron
I wasn’t feeling too good either. They weren’t simple pissheads. I’d known it all along. I thought he was just saying that because Toby and Shulpa were there, I thought he’d tell me next day, the day after. But I’d let Nicky move me away from the knowledge of it like a skilful hostess at a party, steering you from someone they know you’re going to hate.
‘I’m taking you to the hospital.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Billy, my hero.’
‘But before then you’re going to tell me what the fuck’s going on. And you’re not going to bullshit me.’
He was still leaning forward on the table. He wouldn’t look at me. The words I’d said were like another boot in his guts. I saw his shoulder begin to shake and his face crease up.
‘Oh fuck, Billy. I’ve been an idiot. I’ve been such a fucking idiot.’
‘Has this got anything to do with Jack Draper?’
‘They’re going to kill me, Billy. Next time they’ll really kill me.’
‘Who? Who were those guys? In the bar?’
He started to tell me but before he could get very far his voice began to crumble until it broke like a cliff face being battered by a force-ten gale.
Chapter Twelve
He got through a lot of it in his flat. I listened, interrupting him only once to call Shulpa and let her know that he was, roughly speaking, okay. The rest came out in my car, then before and after the doctors had fixed him up. Nicky had had three ribs broken, plus all of the fingers on his right hand. As well as the two teeth that were still lying out near his garage, two more were wrecked and would have to go. His jaw was dislocated and the rest of his face was bruised as a ripe banana in a spin dryer. The back of his head was severely grazed but his skull wasn’t broken. The gash in his face needed fourteen stitches.
‘You’re going to have a scar,’ the doctor said. She didn’t sound too sympathetic.
They’d jumped him after he’d pulled the door of his garage down. It was the same two guys as before, in his bar. They’d pushed him against the flimsy metal garage and started with their fists.
‘It made a hell of a noise. I thought someone would be bound to come,’ Nicky said. ‘But they didn’t come.’
They left him alone long enough to tell him that this was his last chance. Next time he wouldn’t see them, or even hear them. He should welcome the pain they were making him feel because next time there wouldn’t be any. Just a bullet in the back of his head.
‘You’re fucking with us. We thought you were clever. How come you are fucking with us?’
Nicky’s protestations fell on deaf ears. The small one, the one with the beard, had pulled a blade and slashed him. Nicky was dragged off behind the Transit van where they spent another ten minutes using their feet, ending their visit by holding his arm still while the bigger guy drove his heel into the back of Nicky’s hand.
‘He just stepped on it and turned his foot like he was grinding out a fag. I heard my fingers breaking. And then he did it again. I think that’s when I started to lose it. I could tell they were kicking me after that but I couldn’t feel it. Then I must have passed out. When I came to I didn’t know where they’d gone. I thought they might be waiting for me, I thought they might want to get into my flat. So I called you. Did I tell you where I was?’
‘You’d passed out again. I had to find you. It didn’t take long.’
‘Thank God. I thought it was them again.’
‘I know.’
‘I was so scared, Billy. I thought they’d changed their minds. I thought they’d come back to finish me.’
When the nurse at the Euston Hospital saw the state of him they rushed Nicky through Casualty and I waited an hour, sitting in the flat yellow lighting of the waiting area watching a TV set fixed high up on a bracket out of reach. I switched between the TV above my head and the constant, low-level drama going on around me as people came in after fights, car accidents, sudden internal explosions. The TV was less depressing. I sat through most of ER before realizing the irony of it. Then the nurse came over and told me I could see him.
Nicky didn’t want to tell me the rest. We were waiting for his X-ray results in an open booth at the end of a long corridor, him sitting up in his bed, me on a chair. He wasn’t nervous about being overheard – there was no one in the next booth. He just didn’t want to admit what he’d done. When I asked him if it had anything to do with Draper he looked confused and shook his head. I thought I’d leave it till later to tell him what had happened with his friend.
‘You never ever asked me how I got the money for the Ludensian,’ Nicky said eventually. There was something almost accusatory about the way he said it. ‘How come you never asked me that?’
I shrugged. ‘I never really wondered. I assumed you borrowed it, got it off a bank. No? That or you inherited some money…’
‘My father runs a tailor shop. Doesn’t even own it. I never went to college. I didn’t have anything to go to a bank with.’
‘So tell me.’
Nicky lay back on his bed. I knew they’d pumped a lot of Lydocaine into him. He was still in pain and just wanted to sleep, but I wasn’t going to let him.
‘Tell me.’
‘I sold coke,’ he said. ‘To begin with. When I came to London.’ He shifted in his bed, his hands going to his side. Of all the damage he’d suffered I knew that in the days following it would be his ribs that gave him most grief. ‘I was charming, I knew how to wear a suit. That was when coke cost money. I went to parties, hung out in what used to be the Zanzibar. I made a lot of money.’
‘And you bought the Ludensian?’
‘I didn’t have anywhere near enough for that! No. Not that I cared. I had enough, but after a few years I just wanted out. I’d nearly been caught a couple of times. Once I had to pay off some copper more than I made in a month. I was using too much of it too. I was looking for something else when someone I knew mentioned that he needed a bar manager for a place he had in Mayfair. He was a client of mine. It seemed like the perfect chance. And it was fine – for a while.’
‘But you went back to it?’
‘Not really. No. I was happy. I didn’t have as much money but I still got invited to the parties, I was having a good time. I was still only in my mid-twenties. Then I was working one day and this little old guy came in, said he wanted to talk to me. I recognized him, he knew the owner, they were very pally. He was Maltese, wore a little pin in his lapel with a cross on it. I thought he was a bit of a joke to be honest. But later, when the owner had left, he pulled me aside. He told me he knew what I used to do. I thought he was trying to blackmail me.’
‘And he wasn’t?’
‘He wanted me to wash some money for him. Through the bar. And not tell the owner. My cut was ten per cent. I didn’t want to do it but the way he put it I didn’t think I really had a choice. I did it for three years. By the time I finished I was pretty well loaded. And I got the Ludensian.’
‘And you told him you were quitting? The Maltese?’
‘I didn’t need to.’ Nicky shifted in his bed again. ‘He died. I even went to the funeral. That’s when I decided to leave. I just left my job and I didn’t hear anything. I kept expecting to but I didn’t. Maybe the guy who took over from me carried it on, I don’t know. I set up on St John Street, in a shite old pub that I gutted and did up. I knew the former owner and he wanted out. Ten years ago. And it’s been fine. Fun at times, boring at times, fucking hard work the rest. But fine.’
‘Until they came back.’
‘Yes,’ Nicky said, ‘until they came back.’
‘And they made you start up again?’
The ends of the curtain flapped gently as a trolley went by. Nicky closed his eyes and turned away from me. He’d done something and he couldn’t quite believe it. I knew what he was going to say. If they’d tried to make him, he would have said something about it weeks ago, he’d have asked me what to do.
‘No.’ Nicky sounded like a child, st
anding in front of an old lady’s smashed front window. ‘They didn’t make me. I heard what they had to say and I agreed. Simple. I don’t know if they’d have pushed it.’
‘If they had we could have done something.’
‘I know. But I just said yes. They told me it was a one-off, that I’d clear twenty-five grand in five months and I said yes. Jesus. I didn’t even need the money. Not need it. I can’t believe I did it. I just thought, yeah, cool, twenty-five K, could do with that. It had been so easy before, why not now? And they came round with a suitcase. The next day. A fucking suitcase. A suitcase stuffed with cash. With two hundred and fifty thousand quid.’
No wonder he didn’t tell me. He knew what I’d have said.
‘I put the money out through the bar, the tills. A bit at a time. I was to give them back ninety per cent of what they’d given me.’
‘And what went wrong?’
‘Nothing. It was just like before. Piss easy. No one at the bar knew. For weeks it was okay. Business has been great, I was shifting more of it than I thought. The Maltese picked up fifteen K three weeks straight and the initial bundle was a bit lighter each time. It was all going fine.’
‘Until?’
‘Until it fucking well disappeared.’
‘What?’
‘All of it, the whole pile. From the bar, underneath the floorboards upstairs. It just fucking vanished and I’ve no idea where. And now they come calling, once a week. And they want fifteen grand each time. And I haven’t got it. And next time when I tell them no that’ll be the end of it. They’re just going to fucking kill me.’
I didn’t know whether or not to be relieved that what Nicky had got himself involved in had nothing to do with his footballing friend. It was probably a relief; as yet, there were no corpses involved. I was about to fill him in on what had happened ever since I met Draper when there were more footsteps and the doctor came into the booth, with a nurse. The doctor removed the dressing from Nicky’s face and I watched as she stitched him up, as effectively, it seems, as somebody else already had. She wasn’t over gentle. The doctor was a very attractive woman in her late thirties with a V between her eyes that never disappeared and hands that looked older than the rest other. They were strong hands, but veined, a copper band at her wrist. Her hair was clamped back across a high forehead, a chickenpox square stamped into her pale, almost translucent skin, just below her left temple. She looked at both Nicky and me with an expression blank of concern, laced with flat curiosity and barely disguised distaste. Her look said, ‘Men, men do this.’
The doctor asked the nurse to tighten the bandages round Nicky’s ribs, then asked me to step outside into the quiet corridor. She took off a pair of heavy, black framed glasses and hung them from her coat pocket.
‘How did this happen?’
She was tall, five ten. She had a clipped, precise voice but not harsh, as attractive as she was.
‘I don’t know, exactly. I only found him. He was mugged. Surely he told you?’
‘He told me. Not a pub brawl, then? Some drunken fight?’
‘No.’ I shook my head, puzzled. ‘He was mugged.’
‘Funny. His wallet was in his pocket. Muggers tend to take that.’ She looked at me very hard. She didn’t speak for a second.
‘He managed to fight them off.’
‘No he didn’t. Not with those injuries.’
‘I only found him.’
‘He could easily have punctured a lung, you know? His ribs getting broken like that. He could have died.’
‘But he’ll be fine?’
‘Yes, I suppose. Eventually. Though he’ll definitely have a scar. It was obviously a knife that cut his face. Sharp too, very professional. The sort of thing the police get very interested in. Easier for us than a bottle as it happens but still very unpleasant. His ribs will hurt like hell. But he’ll be fine, if he doesn’t make a habit of this kind of thing.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘And you just found him, you say.’
‘That’s right.’ She was still staring at me. I realized why. She was looking at the result of an uppercut from my friend Des two days before. I’d ducked it late and his thumb had hooked underneath my headguard. ‘Were you mugged too?’
My hand went to my forehead. ‘It’s a day old.’
She moved closer, touching a cold thumb to my brow and nodding, grudgingly. She was close to me, her body almost touching. There was a thin gold chain round her neck, a delicate cross resting just below the deep well at the base of her throat. Her breastbone was washed with faint freckles.
‘I see. How did you get it?’
‘It has nothing to do with this.’
‘Convince me.’
‘I got it in a boxing ring.’
‘Oh, I see. Boxing.’ She turned to the left, pushed the curtain aside and told the nurse that she was going to see to another patient. She turned back to me.
‘Boxing. My very favourite sport.’ Her lips pursed. I thought about answering her but I had nothing to say. I’d noticed before, as she sewed Nicky’s cut, that she was wearing a wedding band. I suddenly wondered what her husband was like, whether he had to pretend not to be interested when there was a report on the news about the latest Lewis fight. I had a picture of the house they shared, full of books, mahogany and Radio 3. I had an instant kick of jealousy.
‘Take care of your friend,’ she said. ‘Tough guy.’ I watched her walk down the hall.
* * *
I told Nicky about Draper as I drove him home. About how I’d refused to help him but then changed my mind. What happened next. He didn’t know what to say. After a while he looked at me.
‘He wouldn’t do that.’
I didn’t answer him.
‘He wouldn’t. He’s…he’s a lot of things but not that. I’ve known him years. We fell out for a while, and I realized he was a long way from perfect as a person. A long way. I know he’s no angel. He was a twat to Shulpa years ago, but he’s not a killer.’
‘No one is. Until they kill someone.’
‘Not him,’ Nicky asserted. ‘I know he comes across a bit, I dunno, flash, but did you think he was capable of killing anyone? You’ve got instincts about that kind of thing. Well?’
I glanced over at Nicky but didn’t say anything. We sat for a while, in silence, locked at a red light.
‘What will you do? Tell the police? I understand that you’d have to if you got pulled for it yourself, but what if you aren’t?’
I didn’t really have an answer for that either.
Later, when we got to his flat, helping Nicky onto the sofa, I remembered the phone call. He’d made me take him inside so he could make it.
‘Who did you speak to?’
‘My father.’
I looked at him.
‘In Leicester. He doesn’t live at home any more, but I asked him to go round there. He wasn’t very pleased about it. I asked him to tell my mother to go and live with him. Him or one of his sisters. That or pay for her to go to India for a while.’
‘Why?’
‘They didn’t just threaten to kill me. I don’t know how, but they have my mother’s address.’
Chapter Thirteen
At five to nine I was propping up a pillar outside the George on the Pancras Road with my hands in the pockets of a Norwegian ski jacket that I’d found in the sales in August. The morning was cold but the coat was warm and strong with, the sales assistant had been proud to show me, a radar sensor sewn into the arm so that avalanche teams could find me under the snow if that proved to be necessary. Not, I trusted, that I would be needing that particular feature in King’s Cross. I hadn’t used the jacket to ski in yet and had no idea when I’d be going. When I’d bought it I thought maybe I could go with Nicky but, thinking about it now, he’d already been under one avalanche that year.
I pulled the zip up to my chin and waited as the early morning rush hour moved around me. Rush hour? None of the cars making their way t
o or from the Westway was moving any faster than a crawl. The pub behind me was dark. The George is that rarity in the area these days, an unreconstructed gin palace that has resisted the stripped floorboards and the roast guinea fowl, clinging on to a lurid burgundy carpet and pickled eggs. I drink in the George now and then but only because the gym I train at is underneath the pub. When I say train I don’t just mean lifting weights and using a rowing machine, which I do, I mean fight. I come here to fight other men, other men strange enough to want to come and fight me. But even though I very much needed to put more work into my speed, and my jab still wasn’t getting through enough, it wasn’t to trade punches that I’d come here that morning. I yawned in spite of the cold and looked at my watch.
My head had been rushing from sleep when the phone woke me. I’d been dreaming again. This time, for some reason, it was of the doctor who had treated Nicky. In my dream she was naked, her chest and stomach covered in open stab wounds, one of her nipples hanging off. She was slapping Nicky, pushing him back down a hospital corridor, punching him with a woman’s fist until he cried, cutting his face with her ring. I was there but I wouldn’t do anything. I wouldn’t help him. When she’d had enough of him she turned to me, her teeth curled in a snarl.
‘Come on,’ she spat. ‘Tough guy. Come on. Come on.’
The machine kicked in but the caller didn’t feel the need to say anything. There had been a similar message last night and the electric woman on 1471 informed me that she didn’t have the number. It gave me a good idea who the caller was.
My head was still clanging with sleep but I shook myself awake. I sat up and listened to the machine rewinding itself. At that moment my alarm went off. It was after eight and I pushed my duvet aside. Then I had that feeling again, only twice as bad.
