Booze and Burn

by Charlie Williams

  ‘I’m no outsider, Blake,’ he says. ‘I’m Mangel, like you, through and through. I may not like it, but I am. Aye, took us a long time to hide me Mangel accent, it did, in that there big city.’

  I couldn’t fucking believe it. Hour and a bit late I were. I ought to have sorted this bollocks out and sprung Fin days ago, not an hour and a quarter late.

  ‘Blake, listen. Doug’s corner shop, years and years ago. Five thievin’ tykes, lookin’ to rob sweets. Doug comes in and grabs one of em. Everyone scarpers but that one boy. Remember now?’

  But Doug’d be all right about it, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t put Fin through the sausage maker right away, would he? Nah, course he wouldn’t. He’d get up early and do it first thing, like as not. Don’t want to wake no neighbours up.

  ‘Sammy Blair,’ he says. ‘That’s my real name. That’s who you knew me as. I thought you’d recognise me, outside here the other night. I couldn’t believe it when you didn’t. But I suppose it has been a long time…’

  Mind you, what if Doug did turn Fin into bangers? What if I’d fucked it all up and Fin were getting ground up right now? I shook my head hard. No, I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t.

  ‘Don’t believe us?’ he says. ‘How about this: Your dad used to shave yer head once a week on Sunday nights to stop you gettin’ fleas. You never knew your mum and no one knew what had happened to her, not even you. There were five of us that day in the corner shop—you, me, Johnny Fuidge, George Bundage, and…er…’

  Weighing it all up I reckoned I had a good chance. If I got it sorted now and went round Doug’s within the hour, I had a good chance of being all right. I could give Doug what he wanted and get Fin back.

  ‘Finney, that’s him. Hey, I heard what happened to him a couple of years ago. What a shame, eh? Chainsaw, wasn’t it? What a way to die. You must have been gutted.’

  Poor old Fin. I had to get him out. Your mates is all you got, ain’t they?

  ‘You probably don’t know what happened to me. My mum and dad moved away after the…you know, in the corner shop. It was hard for them. This is hard for me now. I never told no one before. Doug…fuck, this is so hard to say. Doug…did stuff to us. And do you know what? Do you know what the worst of it is? No one did a thing about it. Not even my mum and dad. They believed me, even after the police said I was lyin’. But they wouldn’t do nuthin’ about it. Dad wouldn’t go and slay the dragon in the corner shop.’

  Like I says before, the pistol were a long and pointy one like what Clint has. I’d been eyeing it up all the while, sat there all suggestive like it were.

  ‘That’s what it needs, Blake. It’s taken me twenty-four years to work it out. Nuthin’s gonna get better until the dragon is slain.’

  I started moving me paw along the bartop. Nick were still going on about summat or other and he weren’t looking.

  ‘That’s why I came back here, Blake. To settle the score. I tried gettin’ him back the same way, fuckin’ up his precious little girl over there. Look at her. Fuckin’ pathetic, ennit? Fucked up on drugs, doin’ whatever for a fix. And I mean whatever, Blake. You wouldn’t believe…What the fuck are you doin’?’

  It were a good weight in my hand, and I preferred it to the one I’d shot Cosh’s head off with just now. There were no safety wossname on it like on the other one, so I pulled back the curly thing on the top and it made a nice clicking sound like you gets on them old cap guns. I pointed him at Nick Wossname’s head. ‘Soz, mate,’ I says.

  ‘Wha…what are you doin’? I thought we…?’

  ‘Aye, but I gotta do this, so…’

  ‘What? Why?’

  I shrugged. ‘Someone asked us to.’ I didn’t have no grudge against this feller. Didn’t even know him, did I? So I wanted him to see why I were doing it. ‘I just gotta do it, mate. No hard feelin’s, eh.’

  ‘Hold up…who put you up to this?’

  ‘Don’t matter, mate. Best shut yer eyes…’

  ‘No, wait. Blake, we can sort this out. You’re bein’ paid for this and you want the money. I can understand that.’ He were talking a bit fast and I were only getting bits of it. ‘But listen, we can go away. Look at all this…’ He opened up the little leather bag. Full of other little bags it were, placcy ones full up of sweets, like them others I’d seen before, except there was blue ones and yeller ones here as well as the white ones. ‘There’s more where this lot came from. I’m a fuckin’ factory, Blake. I churn em out by the lorryload. We can make a fuckin’ fortune in the big city. We can go there, Blake, you and me. You don’t wanna stay in this dump.’

  ‘Big city, eh?’ I says.

  ‘Yeah. That’s where all this started. I used to make em for some guys there, but…Me and you, Blake, we could clean up. Come on, Blake. Whaddya say?’

  I had a little think. The big city, fuck sake. Me in the big city. I knows Mangel folk can’t leave Mangel and that, but I’d be leaving with an outsider. That’s got to work different, right? What do you reckon?

  And what the fuck were there to keep us in Mangel? I weren’t even on the door at Hoppers no more. And as for Fin…

  Well, he’d be meat by now. Wouldn’t he?

  ‘All right, then,’ I says. I meant it and all. Big city here we come, straight down the East Bloater Road in Sammy’s flash outsider motor. ‘All right,’ I says again, ‘let’s fuckin’ go.’

  He had time for a quick smile. We smiled at each other for about a second altogether. It were a nice time, all in all, that second or so. I trusted him and he trusted us and we both knew about it. We was the answer to each other’s worries, though it had took us a fair bit o’ shilly-shallying to come by that knowledge. Aye, it were a sweet moment. But then his left eye popped out.

  Fucking horrible, it were. Just sort of went bang, flying out and squirting lardy stuff on us. He went down. Dead, by the looks of him.

  I still had the big city in my head as I lobbed meself over the bartop. I were doing it by reflex, like Clint does when there’s shite flying. Cos eyes don’t just pop out like that for no good cause. Normally you’ve got summat pushing em from behind. Like a bullet or summat. Especially when there’s a bang.

  I squatted low for a bit, then poked me swede up between the beer pumps. A feller were stood there, holding a gun.

  Dave.

  Back from the fucking dead.

  Only just, mind. Looked a right state, he did, and if he weren’t stood up you’d have thought him a month past burying. Filthy he were, covered in muck and dried blood and fuck knows what else. One of the sleeves on his donkey jacket were ripped right off. Both shoes was missing. He’d strapped bits of old truck tyre to his feet with rags instead. His glasses was still on but they was shattered to fuck. Looked like a pair of milk bottle tops strung together with twigs.

  ‘I told you,’ he were screaming, waving the little pistol around. It were the one I’d clocked him with in Hurk Wood back then. He came closer, looking down at the dead Nick Wossname. ‘I blinkin’ told you not to push us, Blake. But you didn’t listen, did yer? None of em listened.’

  I covered me ears as he shot Nick a couple more times.

  ‘Well no one pushes us no more. You hear? No blinkin’ bastard’s pushin’ us never again. Thought you could kill us, eh? Eh, Blake?’ Couple more gun pops. ‘Who’s laughin’ now?’

  He started laughing. ‘Who’s blinkin’ laughin it by now eh? Who—?’

  Another bang.

  And a thud.

  ‘Well, fuck me,’ I says, peeping over the bartop at Dave down there, half his guts out. ‘Well, just fuck me,’ I says, clocking PC Plim over there by the back door, dropping his gun and honking all over the hard stuff.

  20

  DOWIE KILLER CAUGHT

  Robbie Sleeter, Crime Editor

  A man has been arrested for the double murders of Informer reporter Stephen Dowie and Hoppers doorman Dean Stone. Dave, of Fosbert Street, Mangel, has also been charged with the triple murders of Nick Nopoly, Nigel “Nob
by” Oberon, and Roderick “Cosh” Slee, all three taking place at Hoppers last night (see SHOOTOUT AT HOPPERS, page 7, paragraph 11). Dave, who went on to kill himself, is being held at Mangel Police Station.

  Investigating officers believe Dave went mad after crashing his car north of Mangel several days ago. A police psychologist had this to say: ‘The impact of the crash could have dislodged something in his brain, turning a mild-mannered, law-abiding citizen into a bloodthirsty mass murderer. There’s no other explanation, is there, Brian?’

  ‘No,’ replied Dr Wimmer.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Tracey Flagel of Margaret Hurge Twentieth Century Hair Design, where Dave was employed as a hair-sweep. ‘Mind you, I always said he’d come to no good. Always the quiet ones you has to watch out for. Ain’t that right, Marge?’

  ‘Did you hear what they found in his bedsit?’ said Marge. ‘Guns. Hundreds of them. Bullets as well. No one knows where he got them from. Nor why he had them. What would someone like him want with guns?’

  ‘Marge, I don’t know.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  In a statement released this morning, Police Chief Bob Cadwallader said: ‘It is always a shame when it comes to this. Truly I think it is. That said, we’ve got to look on the bright side. Justice has been served, and this town has been delivered from a vicious madman. So really you can’t complain, can you?’

  Asked about Royston Blake—hitherto the main suspect for Dowie’s murder—the chief said: ‘What of him? I told you we’ve got the murderer, didn’t I? You want to know about Royston Blake, go ask him. I’ve got nothing to say about him.’

  OTHER NEWS: The dead body of a man was found on a bench in Vomage Park early this morning. Jack Jones, an unemployed panel beater and former convict from Piecemeal Road in the Muckfield district, leaves five illegitimate children. ‘Going by the damage in his chest area,’ s Tracolice pathologist, ‘I’d say he had a massive heart attack, brought on by prolonged alcohol abuse. You could tell he was an alcoholic just by looking at him. And he stank of urine, which just confirms it. I mean, come on—tattoos all over him, stinks of urine, sleeps on park benches. Ain’t hard to work out the kind of man he was. Is it, Brian?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Dr Wimmer.

  ‘Well?’ he says.

  ‘I done it,’ I says. ‘Can I have our Fin back now?’

  He looked us up and down, his eyes the only bit of him moving. Then they went behind us. ‘Where is she, then?’

  I were looking behind him and all. The shop were dark, but I could see that the shelves had hardly nothing on em now. Couldn’t see nothing else in there neither. ‘In the motor,’ I says. ‘In that motor there.’ I pointed to the 1.3 Capri a few cars up.

  ‘And the feller who led her astray?’

  I shrugged. ‘Woss you want us to do? Bring you his head? He’s dead, ain’t he? Read it in the paper.’

  Doug looked at us for a bit, chewing his lip. ‘Well, bring her up, then.’

  ‘But she ain’t—’

  ‘I says bring her.’

  I went back to the 1.3. She were sat shotgun and hadn’t moved. Looking straight on, she were, eyes half open, head tilted roadside a bit. I’d told him she were in the motor, but to be honest there were only about half a person here.

  ‘Come on, love,’ I says, opening the door.

  She didn’t move. I might have known I’d have to lug her. I don’t mind carrying birds on most days—especially ones not wearing nothing besides my leather—but I just didn’t fancy this one here. Weren’t just the plastered leg, neither. She seemed a bit mucky, like. And not in the good way. I bent down to get me arms under her.

  ‘I knows how to make it, you know,’ she says as I slipped a paw under her thighs.

  I stepped back. I’d reckoned her out of it, and her turning out to be in it after all threw us just a mite. ‘You what?’

  ‘Joey. I knows how to make it. I watched him do it tons of times. It’s easy when you knows how. Just a matter of gettin’ the balance right.’

  I looked at her close-up. Eyes still wasn’t focussing and her face were sweating a bit. She were sick and fucked in the head, in short, which is why she were talking shite. I mean, who the fuck is Joey?

  She got up and started hobbling. I were grateful for that. I took her arm to stop her falling over.

  ‘Where’s her clothin’?’ says Doug back at his shop door. ‘And what happened to her leg?’

  I shrugged. ‘Found her like it, didn’t I?’

  I could se he wanted to say summat else about that, but the words just wouldn’t come for him. He got her by the arm and yanked her in.

  ‘Er…’ I says as he went off into the darkness. ‘I wants me leather back, you know.’

  He disappeared into the back room but I knew he’d be back cos he’d left the door open. I lit one of Jonah’s fags. After a bit I stubbed it cos I weren’t enjoying it. Me lungs was telling us they wanted real air for a change, even if it always stank of shite in Mangel. I whiled away the time counting me cuts and bruises instead. Couple of minutes later I heard a squeaking sound.

  ‘Here,’ says Doug, wheeling the chair out. Piled up on it were some tinnies. About four hundred of em I reckoned. On top o’ them were two trade-size cartons of bennies. My leather were hanging off one of the handles. ‘That’s us square,’ he says, still stood there. He were waiting for us to come back at him, like as not. Then he plonked summat else atop the lager and fags and slammed the door.

  I picked up the thing Doug had plonked and turned it over. A paper bag it were with summat stodgy and heavy inside. I sniffed it and put it back on the fags.

  No mistaking the whiff of sausages.

  I were pushing Finney’s cripple chair back over the road when I noticed the light on upstairs in my house. That’s a bit odd, I thought. But it didn’t rattle us too much. Weren’t like a copper car were parked out front. And no one else were after us right then, so far as I knew. Nobby and Cosh must have left the light on t’other night when they’d been touching the place up, like as not.

  Mind you, there were a strange Viva Estate parked out front. Pissy yellow, it were. I’d fucking had it with shite motors, and if she were still there when I got up on the morrer, I’d shift her meself.

  I let meself in the front door.

  I’d been wrong about the light upstairs. Weren’t Nobby and Cosh left it on. Some fucker were in here. I could hear him up there with the hoover.

  I didn’t know what to make of that. Nor the hall and kitchen, as I pushed Finney’s chair through em. Been cleaned good and proper, they had. It were hard to be lairy when someone’s broke in your house to clean it. I opened the fridge. Clean in there and all. Milk, butter, cheese, bottle of sparkling, eggs, bacon…

  A bottle of fucking sparkling?

  I cracked open one of Doug’s tins and sucked on it. Didn’t taste right. Drinkable just about but slightly off. I poured him down the sink and tried another from off the bottom.

  Same.

  I went to the bottom of the stair. That hoover were still going. I knew what it were now. Coppers had sent someone round to clean up as their way of saying ta for all the work I’d put in for em just now. I’d fucked off with Mona before none of em could tell it to me face. Aye, that’s it.

  I wandered into the front room.

  It were all arse-about. None of Fin’s things was there, just a couple of armchairs and the telly from Sal’s flat on a little table in the corner. I put the bangers atop the telly and flopped into one of the chairs.

  ‘Bye, Fin, mate,’ I says, looking at the sausages. ‘I tried.’

  I fucking did and all, didn’t I?

  It were a smell what woke us. A nice smell. And a sound. Sizzling. Back there in the kitchen.

  ‘Well?’ says someone. A bird. ‘What d’you think?’

  I turned. ‘All right, Sal,’ I says. Cos she were stood by the door, hands on hips, smile on chops, apron round that big belly of hers. ‘Woss I think to what
?’

  ‘Here,’ she says, coming over and parking herself on me knee. ‘The house. Done it nice, ain’t I? Only took us a day an’ all. Mind you, this room here were the hardest. I bagged all that rubbish from in here and dumped it, Blakey. You don’t mind, do you? Only it were your dead mate’s stuff, and he’s…you know, he don’t need it where he is.’

  She were stroking my cheek. Her hand stank of bleach. She had her arm round us, pulling me face to her tits.

  Her apron smelt of sausages.

  ‘Nuthin’ worth keepin’ anyhow,’ she says, ‘And besides, we needs the room now.’

  I looked at the telly. Them bangers weren’t there no more. Gone and cooked em, hadn’t she?

  She’d gone and cooked our Fin.

  ‘Blake,’ she says, pushing my head back so she could see it. ‘We’ve been rowin’ a bit of late. You knows it and I knows it. But I forgives you. I knows you didn’t mean it and I don’t care no more anyhow. We got to put all that behind us, Blake. Things is gonna be different now. I’m…’

  Her eyes was wet. A little tear rolled from one of em and settled in the deep red furrow across her cheek.

  ‘I tried to tell you before, Blake. I’m…’

  She’d had her stitches out, but not even half an inch of slap could hide the damage.

  ‘We’re havin’ a babby.’

  She flung her arms round us and started sobbing.

  After a bit she got up, saying: ‘Oh, don’t look at us. Let me fix me face first. You go an’ get that bubbly from the fridge, eh? Ain’t it marvellous, though? A babby. Our babby…’ She went up the stair.

  I got up. Soon as I opened the cellar door I knew from the smell that she hadn’t been down there. Never had been down there, she hadn’t. Scaredy of it, weren’t she? I turned the light on, went in, and bolted the door behind us.

  ‘Oh, feller phoned for you about your car,’ she says. Her upstairs and me in the cellar and still I could hear her. ‘Says he wants some money for fixin’ it. I…Blakey? I hope you don’t mind, but I sold it. Part-exchanged it for summat more sensible. See it out front, did you? Nice one, ennit? We’ll be needin’ that now, with the babby an’ all.’