Serious People

by Shea, James A.

  “There will never be a good time to leave those good for nothings behind. But I’ll tell you something. If you don’t, that little lady won’t be hanging around, let alone that bloody job!”

  As John sat in the passenger seat of Emma’s car, driving back to his new home, he couldn’t get his uncle’s face out of his head, and the last words the old man had spoken to him before walking back towards Hammersmith. Of course, Emma had offered him a lift; but he refused to use up what he called the young couple’s petrol money. John loved his Uncle Roy and wished what his uncle told him were as simple as the words he used.

  Suddenly, all he could remember was that night—the night from his childhood, which would forever live in his nightmares—the night that was always the first thought he had whenever he looked at his brothers.

  John had been driven back from football practice by his best friend's mum. He hadn’t even noticed that she’d parked further up the street than usual, let alone that the obvious reason for this was that the police had cordoned off the end of the street they lived on.

  He vividly remembered walking down the street with Mrs. Blakeley and then being approached by that policeman. Looking back it was clear the copper must have thought it was just a mother and son trying to walk down the street. This could be the only reason for the kind of language he used.

  “You don’t want to go down there Mrs," the copper said, pointing down the end of the road that was cornered off by police tape. “Some old whore’s just been slashed up good and proper.”

  He couldn’t remember for sure if the copper was smiling when he was saying this; but in his recurring nightmares he'd always had a wicked grin on his face.

  In later years, John had learnt the full gruesome story. His Ma had been conducting some fetish based sex act with the would-be killer, when the then five-year-old Billy and three-year old Nick had walked in.

  They'd only come into the room because they'd heard awful noises coming from inside; even in relation to the usual types of sounds they’d grown up having to endure, these were horrid and terrible. Their Ma and this man had both been screaming with pain, whilst carrying out some lurid act.

  John had always wondered how the boys could have been allowed to walk in. Had she forgotten to shut the doors? Or did she not care less? John could never claim to have known his Ma well enough to know—for sure. He hoped it was the former.

  But as soon as his brothers had entered the room, the client had gone mad. He rushed downstairs and grabbed a carving knife.

  John had only learnt the actual details whilst in his early twenties. He had gotten hold of the notes from the court case; it was during a phase he went through where he was desperate to know the detail of what happened. He’d convinced himself at the time, if he knew the detail fully then he could move on. If he knew what happened to his poor old Ma, he could start to make sense of it. But after he found out exactly what had happened, he wished he had never known.

  The notes had detailed how the killer's defence lawyer had claimed that his client had felt “a mentally destabilising shame at children seeing him carry out a depraved sexual act”. This had “driven him into a psychotic frenzy.”

  Billy and Nick had watched as every wound was inflicted by the crazed man on their Ma—all forty-eight stab wounds. The sketchy testimonies, that some social worker or WPC had got out of them, was the only version of events the coppers and sub-sequential court case was built on.

  Billy had seemingly screamed all the way through the attack—so the additional witness statements of the surrounding neighbours had corroborated—but Nick had just watched, not saying a word.

  They were hopelessly damaged and John wasn’t. A simple twist of fate had taken John out the house that night and left them there, without their big bother to look after them. He owed them—he owed them for life.

  Their Aunt Mary was left to bring them up, and the twisted old bitch’s mothering had only served to focus them on a career of crime. “Try and better yourselves like Charlie O’Neil… He’s a friend of the family you know boys. He’ll make a place at his table for you. We share Irish blood you know…” John could hear the old witch say.

  John wasn’t there that night and that was the only reason why he was relatively normal and they were—what they were. He owed them because of that. He had to get them sorted somehow.

  So all he could think about now was focusing and getting his brothers straight after the Robert Payne thing. Maybe, now they had had a bit of time to reflect on the day, he hoped, they’d find themselves a bit shaken up by it? They might well be waiting for some killer to walk through the door of the bar, seeking retribution for the murder of the gangster. They could well be scared that history was about to repeat itself, that they’d die like their Ma in their home. In any case, John knew that he had to somehow sort this out for them, to get them straight. Only then could he focus all his energy on his new job and his new life.

  Emma grabbed his knee and turned to him momentarily. “It’s such great news about the job; and you know the best part? Dad wouldn’t be doing this unless he really believed in you,” she grinned.

  “I won’t let him down,” John said, smiling back at her.

  Just give me a bit of time—I won’t let anyone down, John thought, looking out the window.

  Chapter Sixteen - Charlie O’Neil

  The powerful headlight beams from O’Neil’s modern E-Type lit up the gated entrance to Robert Payne’s house. They almost made him look, to any onlooker, like he was on stage under the spotlight, as he paced up and down on his mobile phone.

  He had been pressing the buzzer for almost ten minutes before giving up and was now having similar success in trying to phone his friend instead. What was grating O’Neil was that the phone was ringing—it wasn’t going straight to answer phone—it was ringing and ringing.

  His best friend was the most dependable person he knew, but he did have a weakness, this being women. The lights of the house were all out but he couldn’t eliminate the possibility of Payne being up there with some bird. It was unlike him to be without his phone; but it could have slipped out en route to the bedroom.

  With this in his mind, Charlie decided to keep ringing. Come on, Robert, pick the fucking phone up. How can you be looking after the business if you’re not answering the goddamn phone!

  “Do you trust me?” He could hear Robert’s voice say in his head. “You know you can depend on me right?”

  Payne had been stood with Charlie, in front of an empty truck yard. It was desolate; had not been used in twenty years. The year was 1990; the country was in recession and, for two cash rich guys like them, the world was their oyster.

  “We could pick this up for peanuts.”

  Charlie looked at Robert, waiting for a smile, a sign that his friend was simply joking. He looked around again; what was he missing? The place was a hole. The only thing Charlie could see of any value in the empty yard was a small building at its centre. It seemed to house some kind of office and was big enough to have a few other rooms as well.

  “What, I really don’t get it? What am I looking at?”

  “That, my friend, is our new business,” Robert smiled.

  “I thought we agreed we were heading to South America? Get set up over there. You said we’d be untouchable—no law to look over our shoulders—good weather...”

  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking again. We’re untouchable over here; we’re clever; how much we got in our pockets? We got money, Charlie, proper money. Now’s the time to speculate.”

  “I’m not sure mate,” Charlie shrugged.

  “We’re going into the logistics business. We buy this place for nothing, well good as. We’re going legal.”

  O’Neil looked around again at the yard and scowled.

  “Right now, people with money can do shit, a lot of shit. Let me show you something,” Payne said, taking something from his jacket.

  In one motion, Payne chucked something towards him. Charli
e O’Neil instinctively caught it and looked at the tube of toothpaste that was now in his hands.

  “I even got us our first contract—the Palmolive Toothpaste company. They’re looking to get into the UK. I said we’re the businessmen to help them.”

  A smile started to appear on O’Neil’s face; he wasn’t sure what he had in his hands but he was sure it wasn’t toothpaste.

  “This is going to be proper money? Even more than we already have?” O’Neil asked.

  “The money I’m talking about, we ain’t near made yet—nothing like it. That toothpaste tube’s full of cocaine paste. Open it up, it looks just like toothpaste. We mix ten per cent of every toothpaste pack we import in as pure cocaine paste and bang! We’re bringing in a shit load of coke! Let me tell you Palmolive’s got big plans we’re going to be importing a lot of this toothpaste.”

  “That will be a few grams,” O’Neil said, trying to weigh the tube of toothpaste.

  “Fuck that, that’s a few fucking kilos of coke,” Robert smiled. “And that ain’t the best bit. We get ourselves a few facilities to burn that shit up—cut it up a bit—and you’re talking a fuck load of coke. We’re talking millions.”

  O’Neil looked around the yard. Yeah this could work, he thought. He could see his and Payne’s name emblazoned on a few trucks; yeah he liked the look of that.

  “We’re a partnership, Charlie, like always,” Robert continued. “I sort the business—you know I can make this work—but you know your part.”

  “You want me to play King of London.”

  “Fuck London, this thing will make us the biggest importers in fucking Europe. I’m gonna need you to be the fucking King of the world! And I can make the business bit work. Maybe in a couple of years, the Palmolive Toothpaste company goes bust after to trying to make it in the UK. Then a couple of months later, I got a feeling an adhesive company might spring up in good old Mexico with similarly ambitious plans.”

  O’Neil smiled. Robert had the plan—just like he had the plan for the banks—this was going to work. This was going to make them money, millionaire type money.

  “But for this to work, you need to fucking own London, Charlie… every fucking club, every door, every place we put your name, even if it makes us no money. We need to be seen as owning everyone… no one moves without us letting them.”

  “I reckon I got that already.”

  “You need more. For this to work, we have to own everyone.”

  “I’ll play my part; I still got the hardware. I can raise an army on the streets.”

  “I know you can mate; every small time hood wants to work for you. We gotta harness that.”

  “Leave the blood to me, Robert. I’ll make the fucking Devil fear my knock on the door.”

  And he did. Charlie and his firm had brought every big crew in London to their knees. It was simple. He had the budget to hire any gang worth recruiting in London; he had the money to have more firearms than any of the competition. So he brought the world to heel. It was easy; he knew the rules. Be the most violent, terrify people on the street.

  He wasn’t proud of what he’d done—but it was business, it was his part of the business. Robert was the accountant, who always had a new plan, and he was the Devil making sure everyone knew not to fuck with the devil.

  “You got me, you’re right,” Charlie smiled at Robert. “You’re the most dependable person I fucking know.”

  The memory of his words echoed around Charlie’s head as he stood staring at Payne’s house—as he listened to the endless chiming of his phone, still waiting for his friend to answer.

  Where the hell are you Robert?

  Chapter Seventeen - Ronny Wild

  Ronny Wild didn’t mind early mornings. It was, in his opinion, a rock n’ roll myth that rock stars got out of bed at midnight and lived a sub-vampire lifestyle.

  He did, of course, concede that he enjoyed getting up after eleven o’clock—on some days. And if someone was to draw up an average of the hour at which he had risen over the last twenty years or so, it would certainly have been later than ten o’clock. It was with this in his mind he couldn’t help but grimace when he looked across at the clock on the wall that displayed the time of six in the morning.

  Anything for the fans, he said to himself. God only knows how many of his fans had set their alarm early to hear his voice and what he had to say that morning; and it was for them more than for his own benefit he was getting up so early. Ronny began to wonder how much the normal audience figures would be lifted by his guest appearance this morning. On an ordinary day, he thought, who on earth would be awake, let alone listening at this time in the morning. I'll probably triple the audience by appearing on the show this morning, he thought. I should be giving Max a call and get triple my appearance fee.

  Wild had been booked, by Fame, onto the breakfast show of the internet radio station Get Rocked Music. He had never heard of the station but, then again, these new radio stations seemed to appear every other day. His main fear was whether he actually was going to see any dime off his appearance fee himself, after it had passed through Fame’s office.

  This in turn led him to wonder how much he was actually getting paid for this outing. Though he didn’t know much about the radio business he did wonder how the place he was currently sat in could really have that many listeners. He had thought it was pretty small, as he first walked in; it was just based on one floor of an office block in the middle of Birmingham. Though he didn’t know Birmingham well, he did get the impression that this couldn’t be the good part of town.

  It reminded him of one of those retro pirate stations from the eighties, as he looked at the walls, which were covered in peeling wallpaper. There were some strategically placed posters holding up bits of particularly loose parts. These type of places generally meant cutting edge reputations, cult audience followings. Real music—this was why he had been invited.

  He looked around at the various bands and performers depicted in the poster; there was a good range of past and, Ronny assumed, upcoming groups. None of him, which was quite rude, he thought. But then, maybe they hadn’t known too far in advance that I was coming.

  A young woman, wrapped in a big duffel coat and woolly hat, approached Wild. She smiled as their eyes met. Obviously a fan, Wild thought to himself.

  “Morning, can I get you a coffee or something?” the young woman said, still smiling warmly.

  She couldn’t help herself, Wild thought. She probably doesn’t even realise the coffee shops won’t be open yet; but you can’t blame her for trying her luck. Any chance to get near to Ronny Wild.

  “No I’m ok thanks, no offence,” Wild said, giving his best sympathetic face.

  “No problem buddy, I was just making one,” The young woman said as she walked away.

  “Sure you were,” Wild replied quietly.

  Making one! He admired how the young woman had tried to play down her offer—to go out and fetch him a Starbucks or something—by suggesting she was just going to make a rock star some instant. The interest from the fairer sex never gets boring though.

  Wild looked at his watch; it was getting closer to his time slot. I wonder if they’ll want me to sing a few tunes?

  As he was pondering this thought, the young woman approached him again carrying a clipboard. Now she wants an autograph. Ten out of ten for trying, he thought.

  The young woman sat down next to Wild. “Hi my name’s Cazza and…”

  Wild cut Cazza short and grabbed the clipboard. “Is it just to you Cazza, or maybe the whole family?”

  The young woman looked confused, “Sorry?”

  “The autograph?”

  Cazza looked more concerned than confused. “Can I have my clipboard back now?”

  “What?”

  Now Wild looked confused.

  “It’s got today’s schedule on it,” Cazza said, taking the clipboard bad firmly. “I was just coming over to see if you were Ronny Wild? Well I suppose make sure. Bu
t there-again, who else would be sat here at this time in the morning!”

  “Ah nicely done, good comeback,” Wild said, playfully punching Cazza on the shoulder. “You were obviously embarrassed when I didn’t want to get a coffee with you. Great comeback,” Wild said sympathetically.

  “Go for a coffee with you?” Cazza said, looking confused once more.

  “It’s all right I’ll play along,” Wild said, winking at the young lady.

  “Yes I’m Ronny Wild,” he added nonchalantly. “The famous rock star.”

  “OK. When the light bulb up there,” Amber said, pointing to a large light bulb above them, “when it flashes amber… step into the studio and the DJ will help you set up.”

  Before Wild could answer, Cazza hurried away.

  I’ll never get used to the broken hearts, Wild thought bitterly to himself. It's not even like he did it on purpose; he wouldn’t want to shun anyone and he definitely didn’t deserve the shitty attitudes it sometimes created.

  Eventually, the light outside the studio flashed and Wild strode in. The DJ had just started a track and was free to help Wild put on a headset. In contrast to the area outside the studio, it was a large well equipped place; right now Wild could have been sat in one of the Radio One studios and he’d know no difference. He started to feel more optimistic about being there and, in particular, about his potential fee.

  “Hey nice to meet you man, my name’s Ed Hardman,” the DJ said, offering his hand.

  Wild shook his hand. “Nice to meet you Ed.”

  “It’s cool you’ve decided to come on the show,” Ed said, pressing a range of switches on the board of dials in front of him. “You’d be surprised by how many people won’t go near us and just don’t get it, you know?”

  “No I get it man; this whole small pirate radio show. It’s a niche part of the music industry,” Wild replied, hoping to display his knowledge of radio.

  “Pirate? I’ve never heard us described like that before?” Ed said thoughtfully. “But, I suppose I can see that; some people don’t like us for sure and pirate is probably one of the nicer things they say.”