Jello Salad

by Nicholas Blincoe

She asked, “Did he tell her he would kill himself, too?”

  Cheb had told her all about Hogie’s career on the drive to the TV station, all the details of the tricks and blackmail he liked to use. She was just confirming the facts, she’d already passed sentence.

  “Of course he did. Why, what did he tell you?”

  Susan refocussed, staring deeper into the rear-view until Cheb disappeared and all she had were the headlights of the traffic behind her. She’d left the press pack stranded on the South Bank but now there was some kind of van on her tail. It had a weird aerial on its roof and she saw glimpses of it as she hit every turning through the city.

  She said, “We‘d better hurry and get him over to Frankie.”

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Frankie took another pull from his duty-free brandy. His boys were still talking, even tapping their feet to the music below. Judging from the herby smell and the fresh clouds of smoke, they were passing round another spliff. Frankie took a look at his watch and read the dial as four. He’d been planning to sleep and let the youngsters keep an eye out for trouble. The deafening fucking music below had kicked that idea toothless.

  Looking out of the window again, he thought he saw something beyond the river. Night blind and brandy tight, he couldn’t be sure. He narrowed his eyes and the blur resolved into a car—a late arrival for the rave below.

  The car parked on the mainland and a couple began staggering towards the bridge. The pair had moved several yards before he realised they were holding someone between them, a slumped figure barely moving its feet.

  He shouted his boys over, pointing as he said, “What they up to?”

  Liam ambled across, looked and shrugged. “There’s a geezer out there, he’s out of his tree already. No way the cunt’s getting past security.”

  The three of them slowed as they reached the crown of the bridge. The one on the dope seemed to be convulsing. His friends dragged him over to the side wall. Frankie got the running commentary off the boys: the guy was heaving up his guts. His pals were holding onto his arms and coma guy was doubled up, retching into the shadows below the parapet. Stranded there, the two helpers were lit up by the moon: one with reddish blonde hair, scattering moonlight; one of them bald, soaking up the light until his head was a chunk of moon rock.

  Liam said, “You know what Frankie, I reckon it’s your wife.”

  Frankie sloshed towards the window, staggering sideways and slamming hard against another window. Even with his face to the glass, he couldn’t make out a thing. “You sure?“

  “She’s in every fucking newspaper.”

  The group were moving along now, out onto the cobble-stones of the island. Frankie said, “Who’s she got with her? Is it Pakis?”

  Sean was just behind him, saying, “I don’t think so. I only see three of them.”

  The group kept moving, drawing closer to the side of the warehouse until they dropped out of sight. Frankie stood on tip toes, trying to look down as he shouted: “Where’d they go?”

  Liam was rooting through a sports bag. When he came up he was holding an automatic rifle diagonal to his chest He started running close to the windows, sometimes hopping as he tried to look straight down. “I see them.” He tried to get into a sniper’s position, hugging the wall.

  Frankie lurched, the brandy swinging left-right in his stomach. “Gimme that bag.”

  Sean skimmed it over. Frankie tried to stop it with his foot but fumbled, moving too fucking slow. It slid right past him. If there was anything out there, he’d missed it. If he could ever have seen it

  Now Sean was shouting, “Here, what’s that?”

  A truck had stopped at the edge of the water. Dim shadows gathering in front of it, half-lit in the pool of its headlights. As a second truck came crawling towards them, the shadows resolved into a group of men and women. They broke their circle to give the second van room to pull alongside.

  Frankie said, “Get me that fucking bag.”

  Sean had it held out for him, all ready, and Frankie fumbled inside. He recognised the thick cylinder of the flare as his hand closed around it “Open the window.”

  The windows were sealed. Liam came running back and hammered out a square pane with the butt of his rifle. Frankie popped the strip from the top of the flare and tossed it in an arc to the river below. The water lit up red, the tow path flickered as though a dim orange bulb was swinging over it.

  “You see anything? Is it Pakis?”

  Sean wasn’t sure. The group had disappeared behind their trucks as the flare burst on them.

  Liam said, “I think they scooted.”

  “They’re taking cover you cunts.” He swung a kick at the boy as he staggered for the bag again. This time he was going for a sawn-off. As always, it felt so right in his hand. Big but short, built for surgical thuggery.

  He began filling his pockets with cartridges. Liam had popped another pane and was stood at a. window with his rifle stuck through the hole, aiming down and ready to squeeze.

  Frankie trotted towards him. “It’s Pakis, innit? Am I right?”

  “I’m not sure.” The kid was freaking on him, you could hear it in his voice. Frankie accelerated to a run, as ready to slap his face as look outside.

  The three of them were lined together at the window, trying to focus on the far side of the bridge, when the light came on. It was so powerful, coming from the water’s edge, it threw them all into silhouette. Frankie turned, blinded, staring at the sharp outline of Liam standing next to him. He didn’t know what was outside, he almost expected helicopters or tanks, even siege engines.

  “Well, who the fuck do you think it is?”

  Liam faltered, “I think… I think it’s the television news.”

  There was a third TV van joining the two already in position on the quay side. Another broadcast crew, setting up more banks of lights. When they threw the switches, they flared white, swaying on spindly stands. Every one of them aimed at the side of the warehouse. At their feet, camera crews and lone photographers were fanning out across the bridge.

  Frankie said, “Who brings the fucking media to a gang war?

  Liam was screaming next to him, “This isn’t a fucking photo op. We gotta get the fuck out of here.”

  “No.” Frankie wasn’t having any of it. “We stick it out”

  *

  Hogie staggered forward, flecks of vomit coating his face, nausea bucketing inside his chest. His brain never stopped spinning, picking up static as it turned. The lights kaleidoscoping off the water. The ticking of a million off—beat clocks. He blanked again.

  His sight returned in blotches. first his feet, one boot zooming into focus and whiting out, then the other. Trying to lift his head he caught lumpy chunks of melody, bite-size pieces that were heading straight for him until they shrieked and swerved. The sound of a needle dragged across its groove and bunny-hopping into another beat. There was never a moment’s silence but Hogie could still feel an empty space growing in his head. He could feel it, his own brain a swollen lump of emptiness, spinning inside its jelly.

  He was dud-boy, pushing at the edges of a huge soft crowd. The hands keeping him upright held him just feet from the swaying mass. Still-life dancers, caught in a strobe, appeared ahead of him, their bodies creating rippling wakes as they slid away again. He felt the heat tightening the skin across his skull. He felt the shared sweat till the building with pearl beads and tasted the spray as the waves broke over him. And through it all, the music washing by, holding everything together in soft suspension. Until he hit another hole and started away. Another black spot to fall into.

  He came round. He was lying face down on a concrete ramp. Two hands cupped either side of his face, lifting it gently as he lifted his own eyes. It was Cheb, crouching down to connect with him. Hogie focussed on the baldness of his head and the spiral of colours bouncing off it, turning the reds into UV slide-shows and the blues into warm-oil paisleys. Hogie tried to look further. Maybe he saw speaker
stacks, dancer’s podiums, a flying Sumo wrestler twenty feet tall. Susan Ball floating in a blush haze. But there was still a problem with his head. The hurt inside, the stinging on the outside.

  Cheb’s voice at his ear, “Don’t say anything, you don’t need to know anything.”

  “Cheb, is that you?”

  He wasn’t sure. Did it sound like Cheb? Did Cheb sound so crazed?

  “Just keep quiet.”

  “What’s happening, Cheb?”

  “This is it. The grand sacrifice, the willing victim, the way out of this mess. So keep it shut.”

  Hogie tried again to lift his head. He saw, in Cheb’s hand, a slim-jim knife blade, a glinty twinkle winking on its sharpened edge. Cheb touched the blade to Hogie’s lips, stressing a shush sound. Then another head appeared on the scene, lowering itself slowly until it was almost cheek—to—cheek with the Cheb monster.

  Hogie recognised the voice of George Carmichael, “My God Cheb, is that Hogie? What have you done to his face?”

  TWENTY NINE

  Cheb said, “I customised him.”

  George crouched there, between Cheb’s battered head and Hogie’s raw melon, and said, “You shaved him?”

  “Yeah. My own mother couldn’t tell us apart.”

  It wasn’t a very smooth shave: parts of Hogie’s head shone, others carried a buff of blond fuzz, smaller sections were grazed red. But it was thorough enough, Hogie was bald from crown to chin, hair and beard both gone. Cheb leered down at his handiwork, still holding the knife he’d used to do it, the long shiv blade like a scalpel in his hands.

  A blast of dry ice sprang up from under the barrier, sucked out of the huge steaming warehouse by the colder night air. Hogie seemed to smoulder at the edges, Cheb just smoked. When George Carmichael felt his eyes turn spongy he stood up.

  They were all here: Susan looking anxiously into the crackling blur of dancers; Naz holding a walkie-talkie to his ear and trying to make sense of the static; Mannie, loose and flitty, flapping around in his A-line mac; and Cheb and Hogie; both bald, and both, in their different ways, practically senseless.

  Cheb joined Naz at the barrier and asked for an up-date.

  Naz put down his walkie-talkie and told him what he’d heard. “The bouncers are going mad. They’ve seen the TV crews and they’re worried they’ll appear on the breakfast news.”

  Cheb said, “So what are they doing? Running out?”

  Naz nodded, Uh-huh. “So what now?”

  “We split up. Two teams: you, Carmichael and Mannie; me, Hogie and her.” He nodded to Susan who was now crouched over the unconscious Hogie.

  George didn’t understand anything. “Two teams? To do what? What the fuck is happening?”

  Cheb said, “It’s all over. You go and grab some glory with Naz, go hold the media at bay.”

  Susan was hauling on one of Hogie’s arms, trying to drag him towards the barrier. Cheb took the other arm and between them they hauled him upright, rolled him over the barrier top and let him drop to the other side. As she swung a leg over to join him, George touched hold of Susan’s shoulder. She shook him off with a grim face.

  “Leave it, George. We’re going up alone.”

  “Going where?”

  Naz was on the move, heading back towards the main forecourt at the front of the warehouse. Before he disappeared, he called for Mannie and George to follow him.

  Susan waved him away. “Go on, George. We can deal with Frankie.” She and Cheb were fully over the barrier now, struggling to support Hogie’s dead weight as they launched into the crowd.

  “Deal with him how?”

  “By making sacrifices. It’s over George, you go on.”

  It was the last thing she said. The last thing he heard before the crowd swallowed her. Then George was left there, between the waterfront and a sea of dancers. He shrugged and turned, loping down the ramp until he picked up speed. Mannie was ahead of him, already at the corner of the warehouse. George followed him, pounding down onto the cobbles, all the time wondering why? Why the blazes? Why the blaze of light? And as he rounded the edge of the warehouse, he saw Naz in triumphant silhouette. Standing there, swaying in his great coat.

  Naz dominated the forecourt. The whole yard was lit up like a stage, the light coming low over the river to throw shadows at his back. Behind him, the last of the security team were running for the far side of the island. Ahead of him, the cameramen were shouldering heavy—duty video cams across the bridge while strings of mike dykes followed on, pointing their equipment like hairy bazookas. All they could see of him was a lone gunslinger, made gigantic by his own shadow. Naz took a few giant zigzagging steps, partly to feel the way his overcoat swung, unbuttoned. Partly to get the mood right in his own mind.

  He had already decided he was going to use a Smith & Wesson, a combat magnum with a barrel over eight inches long. He thought it was a joke gun when he first saw it, among the crop he took from the Comecon. But it suited this scene. He would have liked to wear it at the side, so he could thumb back his coat and quickdraw. But he didn’t have a holster so it had to go at the front, nestled above his belt buckle. The cameramen were within fifty yards now, almost close enough for him to appear in focus but still a looming shadow.

  It was one of those moments. Naz began striding towards the lights and the action. He kept his steps long-legged, slow. He felt his coat lift in the breeze, swinging from the vents like synchronised tails. The TV cameras had him in their sights, the press photographers were sparking around them. Naz shook his trigger hand out to relax it, brought it up to rest lightly on the butt of the magnum. Then drew. His hand out straight, the pistol so steady it pointed like the finger of judgement.

  The news crews began ducking, weaving. The press cameramen hit the floor. One of them launched off the bridge and slapped down into the water.

  Naz lifted the gun two degrees, the barrel sight aimed dead at one of the light stands. His first shot hit the exact bulb he aimed for. It was all so smooth, the gun was a marksman pistol with virtually no recoil. Naz had under estimated it. He saw now, it was a suave piece: guaranteed winner gat-of-the-month award. He adjusted and fired at another stand, taking out the centre bulb in a battery of nine. When he levelled off the gun and pointed to the crews, they began to get the idea he could hit them whenever he chose and started rising off the cobbles to pull a rapid retreat. As long as they stayed on the far side of the bridge, off his island kingdom, they could film all they wanted. He imagined how he must look, framed against the bleak brick of the mills, rising high above the water: the easterner, Clint Asia. He shot out another bulb, just out of devilry, then threw some poses out into the hail of flashes: the gun crossed at his chest; then hanging loose from his dangling hand; then pointing to the moon above him as dust rose off the cobbles.

  *

  Looking out from his window, high above the scene, Frankie said, “What the fuck’s that about?”

  He turned to Liam. The boy’s mouth was open, his head shaking. He didn’t know either. If he had a best guess, he didn’t come out with it. The elevator had begun screeching, hauling its cage from the warehouse below, and the sound sent him sprinting from the window to take an offensive position. As the elevator juddered into place, he was right in front of its steel doors. His assault rifle was shouldered and aimed, he was ready for the opening attack.

  Frankie nodded his approval as he sneered his way over. He carried his shotgun crooked open in his arms with the cartridges suckered in their holes. A few paces from the elevator, he snapped it shut and took his position next to Liam. The two of them armed and dangerous, the first thing anyone would see as they stepped out of the elevator. Frankie had to say, he liked the set-up.

  He called for Sean and pointed him at the doors. “Go open it, we got you covered, son.”

  Sean walked over to the heavy outer door, grabbed the handle and started hauling it back. The light inside the cage threw out a beam that grew fatter and fatter with every inch, mak
ing a path of light for Liam and Frankie as they stood shoulder to shoulder, guns facing the elevator like a two-man firing squad.

  Frankie looked at Liam, noting the concentration in the boy’s eyes as he held his rifle steady on the widening gap. He wondered whether to say something, a neat epithet, but he couldn’t think of anything so just swung his shotgun to the side, tight into the boy’s ribs, pulled the trigger and sent the boy into a bloody sprawl.

  Sean looked up, a glimmer of shock as he saw his partner jerk sideways. Then Frankie swing the barrel onto him and blasted him where he stood.

  Cheb and Susan heard the shots from inside the elevator, but saw nothing. The outer door was only a quarter open. They stood and looked at each other and because they heard nothing else, Susan nodded at the door.

  “You’d better open it?”

  Cheb nodded. When he let go of Hogie’s arm he expected him to stagger, if not fall. But Hogie only sagged slightly and stayed upright.

  Cheb pulled back the inner cage door and got ready to haul on the outer one. The morphine was still holding him together but he felt the weight of the heavy door. Maybe the strain would be too much, he’d just void his bowels and lose his cool and his togetherness in one.

  He was convinced he knew how the scene would play. It was a teaser. the sliding door would uncover Hogie first and then Susan. As he stepped out of the shadow of the door, he would form the last of the trio. And Frankie would stand there, confused, staring at Susan as she stood perfectly framed between twin bald heads.

  Frank grinned Looked up at the tall guy and down to the dwarf and said, “Fuck me, two baldies.”

  He was calm, standing with his legs slightly apart and his shotgun open, carefully plugging the smoking chambers with two new cartridges.

  Susan made the first move, stepping out of the cage as she said, “I think we should talk.”

  He nodded, maybe they should. He wasn’t hostile, just guarded.

  She told him, “I’ve got most of the cocaine that went missing.”