How to Be Bad

by David Bowker

  “How bad?”

  “I was running up debts under an assumed name. The police had all they needed to put me away. Warren said he knew a man who could sort out my problems. That’s how I came to know Bad Jesus. I met him in a pub in Eltham, and he told me that he’d get me out of trouble for a price. The price was twenty thousand, which I didn’t have. Jesus said he knew it was a lot of money, so I could pay him back in monthly installments. It seemed like an amazing deal. So I took it. Two weeks later, I got word that all charges against me had been dropped. I couldn’t believe it. I was overjoyed.”

  “You mean the guy’s a loan shark?”

  “Among other things, yeah.”

  “You borrowed twenty thousand from a loan shark? Caro, that’s insanity.”

  “It runs in the family,” she said bitterly. “Jesus seemed okay at the time. It was only later that I found out what kind of sick monster he was.”

  “What’s the debt now?”

  “It’s hard to say. Maybe about a hundred and twenty grand.”

  “God almighty!”

  “Yeah … you see, the interest doubles every month. And then there are the unpredictable extras like today’s five grand!”

  “You’ll have to do something about this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Let’s go to the Citizens Advice Bureau.”

  She thought this was so funny that she laughed, spraying me with liqueur-whiskey.

  “So what made him come to my shop?” I said.

  “He probably knows you never stopped loving me.”

  “Why? Have you told him?”

  “No way.”

  “So how would he know?”

  “Jesus sees everything.”

  “What you’re telling me doesn’t add up, Caro. Why would a loan shark worry about your ex-boyfriends?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A thought occurred to me. “I’ve been getting anonymous e-mails. Pretty sick stuff. Could they have come from him?”

  Caro shook her head. “Guys like Jesus never write anything down. If he wanted to make someone feel bad, he’d be more likely to drag him behind a car at high speed until his head fell off.”

  I sipped my drink, trying not to ask a question but failing. “You and Jesus,” I said, “you haven’t…?”

  “No!”

  I sighed with relief like a very bad actor. “But I must say, Caro, for an intelligent person you’ve behaved very, very foolishly.”

  “I know. But I kept thinking, I’m my dad’s next of kin. One day I’ll inherit the house and the money and pay Jesus off.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Mark, have you any idea how frightened I am?”

  She didn’t look particularly frightened. A little drunk, maybe. “What did Bad Jesus mean about interest?” I asked her.

  She only hesitated for a second. “How should I know? The guy’s a prick. He just opens his mouth and shit pours out.”

  “He said he hadn’t had any interest this week. How could you have been paying interest? You haven’t got any money.”

  “I’ve given him a couple of hundred quid now and then,” she said, pressing her face against my shoulder. “Just to keep him off my back.”

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, I returned to my one-to-one unarmed combat class, realizing that I might need to be fit for whatever lay ahead. Again, Lenny insisted that I punch him in the stomach as hard as I could.

  “Isn’t this the way Houdini died?” I asked him.

  “How the hell should I know?”

  That was the frightening thing about Lenny. He was a world-class exponent of karate, but he had no interest whatsoever in Japan or Zen or Shaolin monks. His areas of expertise were drinking, putting out fires, and causing grievous bodily harm.

  As a firefighter, he had cut people from wreckage and walked into burning buildings, yet the only anecdote he had to offer involved giving a fireman’s lift to a naked eighteen-year-old. “She had the biggest pair of knockers you’ve ever seen in your life.”

  Obeying orders, I drew back and hit him in the stomach as hard as I could. Lenny let out an angry yell.

  “Sorry,” I said, surprised by my own strength.

  “I’m not shouting ’cause you hurt me. You daft prick. I was using … what’s it fucking called? Chi. Spirit. If you cry out when you’re hit, it limits the damage your opponent can do to you. It’s like I’m directing all my resistance here.” He patted his solar plexus. “Hit me again.”

  I whacked his belly a few more times. Each time, he roared defiance. Then it was my turn. “But you’re a black belt third dan,” I objected.

  “Yeah?”

  “You could cause me permanent damage.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll hold back a bit.”

  I braced myself, and as his fist flew forward I summoned all the chi at my disposal and yelled. A few seconds later, I was lying on my back on the floor of the gym.

  “Fucking hell,” I said, rubbing my aching gut.

  “No,” said Lenny. “That was good. You showed good spirit.”

  He made me stand up while he hit me again. After the third time, I started to feel a little pissed off. When it was my turn to hit Lenny again, I summoned all my strength, yelling as well as punching. This time, the blow contained all my accumulated pain and embarrassment, and when it connected, Lenny rocked slightly on his heels. At that point, he beamed. “I’ll tell you what, my son,” he said. “That was a fucking beauty. Keep punching like that and you’ll have no problems whatsoever.”

  Later, in the shower, Lenny made me an opportunistic offer. “Listen, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “You know that little chat we had about your kicks? How I said there was room for improvement?”

  “If I recall, you described me as ‘fucking useless.’”

  “Did I? Well, listen. I’ve got something that might help you. A set of leg stretchers.”

  “Leg stretchers?”

  “Yeah. They’re yours for forty quid.”

  We went out to Lenny’s little white van, and he produced two long movable metal bars joined by a handle. The idea was that you held the device between your ankles and pressed down on the handle until the bars forced your legs apart.

  “Do they work?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Lenny. “How do you think I got to be so supple?”

  I didn’t really want the stupid contraption but thought that buying it might further my relationship with my karate tutor. “Okay, you’re on,” I said. “But could you give me a lift home? This thing’s a bit heavy.”

  “Deal,” said Lenny, and we shook on it.

  So he drove me all the way to East Sheen, saving me a tedious bus journey. On the way, I asked him to tell me a few firefighter’s jokes. He didn’t know any. “There is one thing we say. Some of the houses we go to are so filthy that we have to remember to wipe our feet on the way out.”

  I forced a laugh. Lenny asked me what I did for a living. I told him. He nodded. “And business is bad, is it?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because you worry a lot. I can see it. You got frown lines on your forehead.” Lenny cackled, having thought of a joke. “You’re s’posed to be following the way of the warrior. Not the way of the worrier.”

  Lenny took a look at my book collection while I went upstairs to get his money. Without much hope, I suggested that if he found a nice book he wanted, we might be able to arrange a trade. Lenny found this hilarious. “A book that’s worth forty quid? There’s no such thing.”

  While I was taking a piss, I heard a knock at the door. I assumed it was Caro, or someone complaining about the way Lenny had parked the van on the pavement. The lavatory window was open, and I peered down into the street. I heard Lenny answer the door; then came the sound of shouting and scuffling. A moment later I leaned forward to peer through the window and saw three shapes spinning about in the darkness.

  I cut my piss short and ran down to see what was happening. Lenny was standing on the
pavement, looking down. A large man was lying on his back in the gutter, illegally parked on the double yellow lines. The big man was gripping a baseball bat that had obviously not done him much good. His face looked like a strawberry flan that someone had trampled on.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “I opened the door and this idiot took a swing at me,” said Lenny incredulously. “There were two of ’em. The other one legged it.”

  The guy on the ground, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, coughed and blew out a huge bubble of blood.

  “Fuck,” I said. “What did you do to him?”

  “Simple block, then elbow strike to the face,” said Lenny. “The elbow’s one of the deadliest parts of the body.”

  “What about that speech you give us about how it’s always safer to run away?”

  “I didn’t have time to run.” He eyed me warily. “I got the impression they thought I was you. Is that possible?”

  I looked at Lenny. I hated to admit it, but we were the same height, with similar haircuts and similar sticky-out ears. I’d swear I was far more handsome, but maybe not.

  “All right,” he said. “Do you mind telling me what you’ve been doing to bring fellas with baseball bats down on you?”

  I chose to ignore the question. “We better call an ambulance.”

  “You call the ambulance. I need to run some cold water over this elbow.”

  Lenny went up to the bathroom. Before dialing 999, I went out to see what Lenny’s victim was doing. He wasn’t doing anything. He’d gone, leaving a trail of blood that stretched all the way to High Street.

  CHAPTER 7

  AND WHEN DID YOU LAST KILL YOUR FATHER?

  THE NEXT day started promisingly enough. I opened the shop just before nine. There was the usual crowd of people standing outside, none of them wanting to come in. But then I logged on to my Web site to learn that someone had ordered my most valuable book, a very good first edition of Casino Royale without a dust jacket, price three thousand pounds. I was elated and went to the case to remove the book, only to find it wasn’t there.

  I wasn’t unduly concerned. I tended to mislay books all the time. I had a habit of taking the finest copies off display, subjecting them to lingering adoration, then putting them down somewhere stupid. When a book was lost in this way, I found that a frantic search never helped. It was always best to take time out, go for a walk, do something else. As long as I remained reasonably relaxed, my unconscious mind could usually be relied upon to lead me to the missing volume.

  So I locked up and went across the road to Jeff’s café. I ordered pancakes and hot chocolate and waited for my unconscious to do its thing. Jeff, who had bought a few gardening books from me, wandered over to discuss the worsening international situation. “What about the Middle East, eh? Wouldn’t want to go there for me holidays, would you? And what about them United Nations? Eh? Eh? Name me one bloody nation they ever united. Just one…”

  When I left I saw two teenaged boys coming out of a local driving school called the Passmore School of Motoring. I didn’t pay much attention, but as I was unlocking the shop, one of the boys spoke to me. He was about sixteen, tall and wiry with a complexion like a fully detonated mine field. Although I couldn’t understand a word Spotty was saying, something about his diction was horribly familiar. “You torch ma bruddy agen yera ded man.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  I looked around and saw that the spotty kid was standing next to Hitler Youth, son of Wuffer. “Yeh? Yeh?” taunted Spotty. He and Hitler Youth were evidently brothers.

  I entered the shop as quickly as possible and closed the door behind me. The boys pressed their faces against the window, scowling and pointing. Then, abruptly, they got bored and walked away. I waited a while, then checked up and down the road. The two brothers were nowhere to be seen.

  I went back inside but, as a precaution, locked the door. I sat down at my desk, logged on to the Madden Books Web site, and trawled through the orders and inquiries. After about ten minutes, someone hammered belligerently on the door. The two boys had returned with their father.

  Wuffer, face pressed to the shop window, pointed in turn at me and his feet, inviting me to venture outside for a confrontation. What deterred me, apart from common sense, was that Wuffer was holding a loaded crossbow.

  Seeing that I was unwilling to accept the challenge, Wuffer tried the door again, confirming that it was indeed locked. Then he and his sons embarked on a truly bizarre war dance. They started prancing and jumping past the window. Wuffer took off his T-shirt, exposing a torso that was the color and texture of lard. He bounded back and forth past the window, flexing his biceps, shouting and pointing. His sons imitated him, spitting on the window and beating their chests.

  This went on for about fifteen minues. Finally, slowly, my tormentors moved off down the road, still pointing, shouting, and dancing.

  * * *

  NO SOONER had I washed the spit off the window than Caro turned up. She was extremely agitated. Two police officers had been round to see her about Warren. Someone had reported seeing him being pushed off the platform into the path of the train that had killed him. There was even a likeness of the suspect, which looked so unlike me that Caro had been able to say, quite truthfully, that she had never seen the man in the picture before. But the experience had shaken her up quite badly.

  “Did they act like they suspected you?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Did you tell them Warren had been hounding you?”

  “No.” She looked at me with contempt. “Of course I fucking didn’t!”

  “So they don’t know anything. What are you in such a state about?”

  “I didn’t like the way they looked at me.”

  I closed the shop for lunch. Holding hands, we walked into Sheen, not because we wanted to or because there was anything in Sheen worth seeing, but because walking helped me to think. We sat on a bench outside Woolworth’s, watching the filthy traffic roar by.

  “I’ve been thinking about what my own dad would do,” I said.

  “I remember your dad,” said Caro. “He’s handsome, isn’t he?”

  “No! My dad? Absolutely no way. You must be thinking of someone else. One thing he is, though, he’s strong and solid. He never gives up until he’s found a way through a problem.”

  “And?” said Caro, meaning when was I going to stop making speeches and get to the point.

  If I weren’t such a reasonable, fair-minded everyday Nick Hornby kind of guy, I would have split her lip.

  “I’m going to do what my own dad would do,” I said. “I’m going to go and talk to Gordon, man to man. I’m going to try to put things right.”

  She sat up straight and linked her arm in mine all cynicism gone. “You really think you can?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Whether he’s a prick or not, I saw the way he looked at you. The old guy obviously adores you. I’ll tell him the truth, that you’re worried he’s going to disinherit you, that you’ve got into serious financial trouble but you’re too proud to tell him yourself.”

  “That’s good,” said Caro. “I like that a lot.”

  “I’ll tell him it’s not just the money. You need to feel he loves you.”

  “But don’t mention Bad Jesus,” she said. “Tell him I made some bad investments.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Tomorrow night,” said Caro.

  “What about tomorrow night?”

  “Eileen is a spiritualist. That’s her night for communing with the dead. Dad’ll be alone all evening.”

  * * *

  I TOOK Warren’s gun, tucked into the waistband of my trousers. The gun wasn’t for Gordon’s benefit. I was planning to talk to the old man, not murder him. But recent events had made me wary of making journeys in the dark—even a journey as short as this one.

  Lenny always said that in a real fight, running away was the best defense. These days, any stupid little jer
k could be carrying a knife. No matter how skilled you are, someone can always run up behind you and stab you. You might hate yourself for running, but it’s better than making your wife a widow and your kids fatherless.

  But now I didn’t need to run. If I bumped into Bad Jesus or he bumped into me, I would have the perfect reply to his supercilious remarks. The most eloquent answer of all.

  Someone was walking behind me. Wondering if I was being followed, I slipped through a gate bearing a sign that read NO HAWKERS. I waited in a garden until the stranger passed by. It was a white-haired old man in a raincoat, leaning on a walking stick.

  At twenty past eight, I rang the doorbell of Gordon’s comfortable residence. It was a windy night, and the trees in the drive strained and swayed. You could almost smell the money blowing through the gardens of the rich houses. Bright, welcoming lights twinkled in the neighboring drive. I heard a car pull up, its tires stirring gravel, followed by words of welcome. Someone was arriving for a dinner party. There was the gentle thwuk! of an expensive car door closing—the doors of the cars I drove never sounded remotely like that. A woman laughed, and the confident, twittering voices faded away.

  It finally struck me why Caro was so angry about everything. Her father was loaded. This house, a stroll away from Richmond Park, may not have been able to compete with Dickie Attenborough’s home on Richmond Green or the Jagger residence on Richmond Hill, but Gordon obviously didn’t have to scrape by on his old-age pension. While other offspring from similar backgrounds were living on generous allowances in well-appointed flats, Gordon’s only daughter was surviving on benefits and fraud, living in a run-down hovel with bailiffs queueing at the door.

  Gordon didn’t answer, so I leaned on the bell and gave it a trick-or-treat ring. There was movement in the hall, then another long pause, as if someone were listening. Eventually, a thin, high, womanly voice said, “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Mark,” I said brightly. “Caroline’s boyfriend. We met the other day.”

  There was another pause, as if Gordon believed me but was not convinced I merited the enormous effort of opening the door. “What do you want?”