Mickey Take: When a debt goes bad...

by Steven Hayward

  Loosely winding a length of nylon cord around his hand and elbow, he ties it off with a knot. Then he removes a cleaver from a plastic bag and wraps them together in an old towel. Feeling his way in the dark he counts the rows of metal frames and slides the bundle into a recess. The plastic bag he’ll dispose of after removing the white ball that he’ll clean and return to its rightful place, hopeful its absence has gone unnoticed.

  Back upstairs, stepping out into a hallway, he opens a heavy door slowly and glances across the room. The older man slumped in the chair remains still as the grave.

  5.

  Friday, 18th

  Eight o’clock, the morning after the night before and I don’t want to open my eyes. I’ve made it to the bathroom where I’m leaning against the wall, vigorously massaging my temples. I’m painfully aware that the last few hours back with the lads got pretty ugly. Talking of which, there’s a gruesome stranger peering back at me when I eventually squint at the mirror. He bears a passing resemblance to me, only ten years older.

  I hate seeing my own reflection; it never seems to look quite like the person in my head. My version of me still has thick black hair that grows strong and defiantly untamed, and a thin, confident mouth that kinks very slightly into a raffish grin, framed by a perfectly honed jaw. This morning I can forgive the red eyes and even the dark circles below, but the face looking back at me also appears to have an excess of plucked goose-skin under its jowl, which The Banker accentuates by dropping his head forward and pushing his shoulders back, before pulling at the resulting goitre with his fingers. I wish he wouldn’t do that. Not only does it make his dimpled chin look like the parson’s nose, I can also see he’s starting to go thin on top. The only thick hairs sprouting rebelliously now are growing out of his eyebrows, nose and ears. I manage to stop myself looking any lower, because I know he’s not as athletic as me. I don’t want to see his gut – it keeps getting bigger. As for his wedding tackle, just lately that seems to be going the other way – definitely a case of use it or lose it.

  For some reason, Grace jumps into my head and the old boy in the mirror covers himself with a towel. Seems he’s still bashful this morning. Not me, I’d want her to see the effect she’s having. I look down, but all that’s bulging under the towel is my own beer belly, and I’m reminded of the unsettling conclusion to the events of last night…

  Still Buzzing

  I had a lot of catching up to do once I rejoined the guys. They’d included me in every round I’d missed, and I had to drink the three pints that were lined up waiting for me, in quick succession, while they quizzed me about what they’d just witnessed. I don’t think they could quite believe it. And if I was honest, neither could I.

  ‘Not bad for an old git, horribly out of shape and out of practice.’ It was Tom who said it but they were all thinking it.

  Of course they wanted to know all about her and so I told them the basics and embellished the rest, to hide the fact we’d met before. Even I was surprised that after just two encounters we had clicked so well without really knowing much about each other, and in spite of such a bumpy start. They seemed totally gobsmacked that I could bag such a young beauty, Jake almost said as much.

  ‘Yeah, don’t forget, I do have a good track record,’ I reminded him. ‘Sam was also a real looker.’

  ‘Sure,’ he agreed before taking great delight in adding, ‘That was then, this is now. You’re no spring chicken, mate.’

  ‘No, but she sure as hell is,’ Harvey chipped in. That was the part they were struggling with and, to tell the truth, so was I.

  I didn’t want to take their money. It didn’t seem right in the circumstances. But they insisted. And they wouldn’t let me buy another drink either. They said I’d had to invest into the game and so the least they could do was cover my costs in beer. My only contribution was to buy everyone supper on the way home.

  When I stumbled into the solitude of my big, empty house, feeling very drunk and a bit queasy, the burger and chips drowning noisily in a stomach full of gas and ale, the reality of the day nagged away at my stupor, forcing me to confront the fact I still had a dodgy camera and a large wad of someone else’s cash hidden away. I also realised I had no idea what had happened to Herb and, come to think of it, what the hell I had got myself mixed up in.

  I sat on the floor where I’d landed, with one sock in my hand, trying to force myself to focus on the big issues. All I wanted to do though was think about Grace. I must have thought about her for quite a while – in particular the relief map her bosoms made in that stripy top, the slight touch of her tongue on my lips when we kissed and her hand cupping my bum with a little too much firmness in her middle finger… Disappointingly, thinking about her was all I could manage.

  Perhaps not surprisingly, but with hideous consequences, The Banker had retired for the night. He might have even stopped me from making the phone call in the first place. But somehow I must have found Herb’s number and hit the connect button. I heard his phone ring twice and then a click as it was answered. Euphoric in my drunkenness, I waited to hear his voice. Instead there was only the sound of breathing.

  ‘Herb? You’re there.’ I said in a rasping whisper.

  ‘Huh?’

  I heard a grunt that persuaded me he’d just woken up. ‘Herb, it’s Mickey. You okay?’

  The breathing got louder and he mumbled again.

  ‘Hmm?’ he said, the gruffness of his voice not unreasonable in the circumstances.

  ‘Sorry I woke you, Herb,’ I sang out, like it was completely normal to be calling him at one in the morning. ‘It’s so good to talk to you. Thought you were in trouble.’

  ‘Na,’ he said, sounding like he was finally emerging from unconsciousness. And for a fleeting second, in my brain-addled stupor, I was ready to believe that he had just been asleep earlier in the day, and my concerns since had all been groundless paranoia.

  ‘Been calling since last night,’ I said, feeling the need to justify all that pathetic anxiety I was glad to finally disown. ‘Even drove down today but you weren’t there. Where you been? I was getting worried about you.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  He still sounded strangely guttural, like he’d woken with a sore throat, but his breathing had quietened noticeably and I figured he was beginning to get over the rude awakening.

  ‘I got it Herb.’

  ‘Wha?’

  ‘The camera… I got the camera. What shall I do with it?’

  Then the sound of breathing stopped and there was nothing. Even in my state, I was worried. Surely he should have recovered his senses enough to be able to say something intelligible by now. Even if he was comatose thirty seconds ago.

  ‘Herb?’

  ‘I’m very sorry…’ Suddenly the words were crystal clear, but they were spoken in the deep voice of a stranger, stinging me like a cold flannel to the face. ‘He can’t come to the phone right now.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not important who I am, Mickey. What matters is who you are. And what was all that about a camera?’

  ‘Piss off!’ I disconnected and dropped the phone, my fingers twitching from subliminal burns.

  Shit…! Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I picked it up again and hit redial. It rang twice and then went silent.

  ‘What have you done with him?’ I screamed and waited for the voice. That time I couldn’t hear any breathing. There were no background sounds at all. Until the silence was replaced by a continuous buzz. I redialled and it buzzed again. After three more attempts getting the same response, I gave up and slumped back onto the bed. I wanted to do something, I just didn’t know what. I was too inebriated to think straight. My conscience wanted to fight, but it was a token effort, and I settled for wrestling the corner of the duvet over my shoulder. Once it had me in a headlock, I gratefully submitted to the count.

  Neighbourhood Watch

  I leave my own personal portrait of Dorian Gray shut in the bathroom
, and Mickey the Younger staggers into the kitchen in search of coffee and aspirin. My next priority is to prove the brain cells reminding me of the call I’d made to Herb’s last night have not been terminally impaired. I call his number and hear the hum of the dead line in the cold light of day. Slowly unpicking a woolly tangle of memories, I’m forced to accept the deeply disturbing voice that answered last night wasn’t just a bad dream. I stop rubbing my head, reopen my eyes and decide there’s only one thing to do.

  That’s why I’m now sitting in my car in a queue of traffic eighty yards from Herb’s house. Bear with me. It’s almost nine-thirty and this isn’t a busy road. Seventy yards from Herb’s house... even in the rush hour you never have to queue along here. Sixty yards from Herb’s house... it’s not a through road or a short-cut to anywhere. Fifty yards from Herb’s house... the only people that use this road are either just arriving or just leaving.

  Did I say Herb’s house? I was using the term loosely. My head’s still throbbing as bloodshot eyes struggle to take in the scene. All they can see is the roof. I’m using that term loosely too. What was once a grey slate pyramid, much like every other roof in the road, is now a cat’s cradle of charred timber.

  The car in front edges forward again and I almost bump it as I pull away, unable to take my eyes from the point of mutual interest, and the reason for our slow progress. I should be able to see the sidewall above the attached garage. I can’t because it’s not there anymore. It’s now a heap of rubble on the flat roof below. Moving forward again, the front of the building comes into view. The wall looks structurally sound, although the rendering is blistered and smoke-stained, and the two big upstairs windows are shattered. Their distorted frames have arching brows of soot, giving them an expression of shock, and making them look like the school runt stunned by the punch that broke his glasses, crying white tears of molten plastic.

  Getting closer I catch a glimpse into the front garden. What was once a small lawn with tidy borders is now a mosaic of shattered roof tiles. The front door is still intact and, off to the side, the garage also appears to be untouched. In fact, the whole of the downstairs looks to be largely unscathed, but a thin mist of vapour continues to rise out of the gutted hulk that was once the upper floor.

  A fire engine stands in the road immediately outside the house and two police cars either side serve as the outer corners of a perimeter, marked out in blue and white tape: Police Line / Do Not Cross. Traffic is being directed in a contraflow through the narrowing in the road, and as I finally drive past I can see a small group of scene of crime officers, dressed conspicuously in their white hooded overalls and masks, entering the front gate and studying the surrounding pathway. I look at the front door, seemingly undamaged by heat or smoke, and imagine the SOCOs examining it for traces of evidence before eventually opening it. In my mind, the first thing they see is my scrap of paper sitting folded on the mat, undisturbed but for a light dusting of soot.

  The traffic moves quickly once we’re through the restriction, and I have to force myself to stop looking over my shoulder and concentrate on driving. It’s been a full five minutes since I first joined the queue of traffic halfway down the road, before seeing the reason for the hold-up. As I’ve approached and then passed the house, the thing playing on my mind is the assumption it’s already being considered a crime scene. Is that just a precaution with any domestic fire where some accidental reason isn’t immediately obvious? Or do they already know something?

  I take the car into one of my usual decoy roads and find a gap to park. Back into Herb’s road on foot, I cross over so I’m approaching the house from the opposite pavement. When I drove past, I noticed a small group of onlookers being marshalled by a single copper, who kept them back from further disrupting the flow of traffic through the bottleneck. They are still there and I mingle in to listen to what’s being said.

  It seems the alarm was raised around two o’clock when a passer-by saw flames coming from the roof. He was much the worse for drink and woke up half the street shouting ‘Fire! Fire!’ The woman doing most of the talking, to anyone who’ll listen, is standing in the front garden of the house opposite Herb’s; the rest of us are gathered outside her gate. She hones in on my arrival and proceeds to tell me she was the person who called the fire brigade and that she has spent most of the rest of the morning making cups of tea.

  ‘The first fire engine was here in fifteen minutes,’ she says. ‘Then two more came. It was over an hour until they got it under control.’

  She refocuses on her wider audience who are beginning to lose interest in information they’ve already heard, and announces there’s one small area at the back where the remaining fire crew is still working to make it completely safe for the police to start their investigation.

  ‘They said it’s probably where the fire started. In the kitchen,’ she says before telling me what I really wanted to hear. ‘I didn’t think there was anyone home last night, but I was so relieved when they said they hadn’t found anyone inside.’

  I soon realise this woman probably knows as much about Herb’s recent movements as anyone else I know, so I drop in a few seemingly innocuous questions.

  ‘Was it a family living there?’

  ‘No dear, it was a widower. Lived alone in that big house; been in there for years.’

  ‘What, has he gone to stay with family then?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t got any family. Wife died long ago. Twenty years I’ve lived opposite him and all he’s ever said to me is “hello”. Never once invited me in. And yet, there’s always people in and out. I would have thought it was a tip in there, but one of the firemen said it was empty.’

  The word minimalist flashes into my mind, but I stop myself correcting her. This is getting me nowhere. Maybe I know more about him than she does after all. As she continues rambling I start to lose interest in her commentary and look back towards the wreckage where the front door is now wide open without any sign of my note on the mat.

  ‘…no furniture, no mod cons,’ she says and I turn back to face her with a frown.

  ‘What? Nothing?’ I say, realising she really did mean empty.

  ‘Not in the house,’ she says. ‘Unless everything was in that garage. That’s where there was always a lot of coming and going.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, that was the strange thing about him. The way he was always having things delivered. You’d have thought the place would be heaving with stuff. Big vans backed up there all hours of the day and night. It’s motorised you know,’ she says pointing across the street to the only part of the house that isn’t a charred wreck. ‘That garage door… he doesn’t even have a car. And it would always roll back down before the van pulled away, so you never got to see what was going on inside. Not that I’m one to pry.’

  ‘So what made you think the old boy wasn’t there overnight?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ she says looking me right in the eye. ‘A big silver car turned up yesterday morning. It stayed there at the kerb for fifteen minutes and then the front door opened and the old fella walked down the path, bold as brass. Very smartly dressed, as he always is, suit and tie, cashmere overcoat, all topped off with a smart brimmed hat. And carrying a small suitcase.’

  ‘He went willingly.’ The words slip out before I can engage my brain.

  ‘It certainly looked like it. And that driver,’ she says, reaching up on her toes while puffing out her chest, ‘huge bloke he was. He got out of the car like he was a chauffeur, opened the back door for the old chap to get in and they drove away.’

  ‘So he wasn’t forced to leave.’ Again, it’s not a question, merely the noise the cogs are making in my head. She starts to respond anyway.

  ‘Well… I never thought about that. Why? Do you think…’

  ‘Oh, no. No, ignore me. Just thinking out loud. I don’t even know the guy.’

  ‘No… it seemed more like he was going off on holiday. No, I remember now, he talk
ed to the driver like he knew him. As if they were old friends.’

  I’m trying to think of a subtle way to ask if she noticed what make the car was or whether she by any chance had written down the registration number. God knows what I’d do with the information even if she had it.

  ‘I haven’t seen him since,’ she continues. ‘Although, as I told the fire chief, we didn’t get home until eleven last night so I really couldn’t be sure.’

  She tails off and I think about slipping away when she stops me dead in my thoughts.

  ‘You’re very interested… for someone who doesn’t even know him.’ She’s raised her voice and is suddenly staring at me intently. ‘Oi!’ she hisses, and one or two of the bystanders who’ve been largely oblivious to our conversation turn to look. ‘Haven’t I seen you around here before?’

  ‘Have you?’ is all I can say.

  ‘Hey, you’re not that bloke who was snooping around over there yesterday are you? Knocking on his door he was and looking through them windows when most decent people were still in their beds.’ Her voice is getting louder and I’m starting to worry the copper standing by the roadside will hear her. ‘Looked just like you he did. There’s not much goes on round here I don’t notice, like I told that detective earlier.’

  Fortunately, my wits haven’t abandoned me completely and, before I’ve even formed the words in my head I’m saying in my calmest banker voice: ‘I’m Anne Field’s son. I grew up at number 44 until she and I moved to Hamilton Road East. I went north of the river a few years back. I visit her quite often, so I’m sure you would have seen me around.’

  ‘Annie’s boy? Annie Field’s boy? What, young John…’

  ‘No, I’m Michael.’

  ‘Michael. Yes, silly me… wouldn’t be John… no, of course not.’ She loses herself for a second in flustered embarrassment and I stand there cringing. Then she starts up again as if someone pushed her reset button. ‘Well, why didn’t you say? I’d have made you a cup of tea if I’d known you were Annie’s boy. Leaving you standing on the pavement all this time. How is she? I haven’t seen her for weeks.’