Mickey Take: When a debt goes bad...

by Steven Hayward

‘Field,’ Mac says, stepping out in front of me. ‘Inside… now!’

  Red Sauce

  I’m struggling to admire my surroundings. If circumstances were different, I’d be darting from row to row, in awe, like a kid in a sweet shop; pulling out bottles and blowing dust from their labels, attempting to pronounce the grand French chateaux and appellations. Instead, I can only squat and gaze at the racks of vintage wine that stand like regiments in Herb’s cavernous cellar. From its scale and order, and the layer of grime that’s been allowed to settle like a noble shroud, this has to be a collection amassed over many years. I turn my head as far as it will go but I can’t see the door. It’s too far behind me. That and the fact there’s a nylon cord biting into my neck…

  I had to accept it was no contest when Mac the Knife steered me into the house. It wasn’t going to be the most dignified entrance to the breakfast party, but I figured at least I’d be able to challenge Herb on what the hell was going on and find out what’s happened to Grace. But once inside the panelled hall, I was frog-marched straight ahead, halfway down the corridor that was no longer narrowed by piles of boxes, and into a little room where a bank of CCTV monitors lined the walls. On one screen I saw the front of my own car out on the road and on another, a rear view of the Mercedes with its boot open.

  ‘What have you done with her?’ I yelled, but that just prompted Mac to remind me he still had a weapon by piercing my T-shirt with its cold steel tip, and introducing it to the soft flesh behind my left kidney. That propelled me through another doorway, and once we’d descended a steep drop into the cellar, he proceeded to impress me with his mastery of bondage.

  Don’t get me wrong. There was nothing sensual about the way he tied my feet together with a length of cord. Nor was I aroused when he forced me to the floor with my knees up to my chin while he took up the slack and wound it several times around my waist. Once he’d finished securing my hands behind my back and tying off the loose end around my neck, I really couldn’t see the appeal. Thankfully, he didn’t then hoist me into a compromising position. I don’t know if he enjoyed it, but he didn’t say a word, and left me with nothing but the cold stone wall for a backrest. I didn’t say anything either. On account of the billiard ball behind my teeth and the length of duct tape he stretched tightly from one ear to the other.

  I’m left squatting here, helpless and desperate to know what he’s done with Grace. Is she here? Is she still alive? It’s been several hours now since I saw him drag someone from her flat. I keep telling myself that her car hadn’t been there. But the sight of a small, delicate foot twisting grotesquely at the ankle keeps flashing before my eyes to convince me it was her. Who else could it have been? She said that was where she was going. And Herb has been after her for years. I should have done more to protect her. Instead I’ve led her right into the hands of a man that I called my friend, and that she had hoped to call her father. And now, I can’t even help her. The only thing I can do is concentrate on drawing deep breaths through my nose and try to fix my eyes on something calming. Usually, in the only remotely comparable situation I can think of, I would have to settle for the pattern in the lens of the dentist’s overhead light. Today it’s a darker glass I’m focusing on; a Louis Latour Montrachet Grand Cru. I think the label says 1998.

  Realisation starts to dawn that I could be down here for hours. Worse still, Mac the Dominatrix might return to knock me about a bit, just for kicks. I need to find a way out to look for Grace, but twisting my head past the next row of bottles only causes the noose to tighten further. And before I’m forced by reflex to turn back to ease the pressure, I catch a fleeting glimpse of something hideously familiar that causes the air in my lungs to escape the only way it can, exploding in a torrent of snot from my nose.

  When I regain my breath, I try to vocalise her name in my throat. It dies unheard in the mucous that’s clogging my airways. I take deep breaths to clear my nose, and try humming it loudly, but it’s useless. I need to get a better look to find out if she’s even there. I try again to stretch my neck and force my eyes to the right. Even then, all I can see is no more than the hint of the edge of the rug behind the metal frame.

  Overcome by a total sense of helplessness, I feel the muscles in my legs start to spasm and I slump back against the wall, resigned to staring straight ahead for what feels like hours. But maybe only minutes later the door opens behind me, and I recognise the sound of Mac’s lumbering footfalls.

  I think about trying to look around but my neck’s had enough of this tourniquet. It’s not just the way the rope tightens when I move my head that makes it protest; it’s the fact it doesn’t then loosen off as much when I turn back. While that may be true, the real reason I don’t look around is because I don’t want to see him coming. There’s nothing I can do, no matter what he has in mind. All those instinctive fight or flight chemicals flushing through my body have nowhere to go, and I’m locked in a pre-mortis rigor. Let’s just get this over with. I close my eyes and wait for the inevitable.

  Instead of approaching me, he rushes past, and when I open my eyes he’s crossing my field of vision at a speed that defies his bulk, huffing and puffing as he goes.

  ‘Fockin dae-light,’ he mutters and I realise he’s not come for me.

  Perversely, I now want him to acknowledge me, to show that he can hear the bizarre noises I’m trying to project, to at least meet my pinpoint stare so I can see into his soul. But he passes without a glance, and I don’t even get any relief that his obvious agitation isn’t directed at me. My neck’s refusal to move means he disappears momentarily until, in a replay of the earlier scene, he staggers backwards, dragging the rolled-up rug from out of the recess. Again he struggles to control the dead weight, and I see streaks of red in stark contrast to the pile’s neutral tones. And when a limb slips free, this time it’s a pallid arm that hits the cold concrete. But now, when he fails to prevent the bundle from unravelling, it does so completely and all I can be sure of, as it rolls out of my sight, is that the body is completely naked.

  I close my eyes, imagining the slim thighs and delicate calves ending in small feet, one of them twisted at an impossible angle, and my head spins. I hear him hastily re-rolling it and hoisting it onto his shoulder with a grunt. As he heads back to the door, I watch him turn in my vague direction, but even now he denies me the validation of looking me in the eye.

  ‘Ye took ma money,’ he says, seemingly to the wall above my head. ‘And ye came back… and took ma property. No one touches ma stuff.’ The words are the most I’ve heard him say, and in an accent as uncompromising as the Clyde.

  If I had the strength and the means to do more than mumble unintelligibly, I’d ask him what the hell he’s talking about. Okay, the money, I get that. It’s pretty obvious it wasn’t Herb’s or he’d have said something by now. But what would Mac the Bruce be doing with a photograph of Herb’s wife? I doubt the question is even discernible in my eyes, but he still won’t look at them anyway.

  ‘Coming back for you,’ he says. It’s a promise that offers me no hope, and once again he gets away. And this time there’s quite literally nothing I can do about it.

  Present Arms

  There are crashes and bangs as Mac climbs the stairs, and I feel every knock as if it’s my own body being bashed against the rail and bumped into the doorframe. When the door slams I close my eyes and give into the wave of grief. I don’t have the luxury to sob; even so, when I blink and the first tear runs down my face, a steady stream soon follows.

  When my head begins to clear, a new sound registers in my brain, and I sense someone else in the room.

  ‘Mickey?’ he says and I realise it’s Herb, slowly coming towards me. I raise my head and his movements become more urgent and he reaches me and immediately starts to peel back the tape from my mouth. He cups his other hand under my chin, encouraging me to spit out the ball and I make no attempt to hold back the glob of saliva that also plops into his palm.

  ‘What has
he done?’ he says, and I see the genuine horror in his eyes. He reaches around behind me and starts picking at the knot behind my neck.

  ‘Over there!’ I shout. All that comes out is a rasping whisper. ‘Go and see… over there.’

  ‘Let me get this undone,’ he says, but I twist away from him and he comes back to face me. ‘What is it, Mickey?’

  ‘Over there.’ He turns in the direction of my eyes.

  ‘What is it, lad?’

  ‘Grace,’ I screech and the effort scorches my throat. ‘I think it was Grace.’

  ‘No,’ he says, as he walks away. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘Did you tell him to take her?’ I shout, at last finding some volume.

  ‘Oh God,’ he says, looking into the recess before tracing the dark stain across the floor with his eyes. He reaches down to touch it and lifts his finger to his nose. Before he can confirm what I already know, a different voice that’s as deep as it is familiar shouts from the direction of the door.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ The words precede the clomping of a cumbersome descent, and the irony that I couldn’t move if I wanted to is lost in the moment when the voice adds: ‘I’ve got a gun.’

  My view remains limited and nothing seems to change for several seconds. I’m guessing Herb is doing as he’s told out of shot. I wait like the captive audience at a West End show for someone new to take the stage. But it’s not a confident entrance when a middle-aged man with a limp and a boxy brown suit shuffles into my peripheral vision.

  ‘What do we have here?’ the stranger says, pointing a pistol with his right hand and reaching up with his left as if to scratch his forehead.

  ‘Riggs!’ Herb exclaims, and I have to push back against the wall to stop from rolling onto my side.

  ‘And you must be Mickey Field,’ the gunman says, now standing square in front of me like he’s reached some invisible mark on the floor. He looks at me with a fixed smile, but keeps the gun pointed stage left. This time when he strokes the skin above his eye, I notice the gristly white scar that divides his brow like a tectonic ridge. ‘I thought you were on his side. What have you done to piss him off? ’ I haven’t a clue how to answer that and I’m glad when Herb draws his attention away from me.

  ‘What are you doing here, Riggs?’

  ‘A little bird told me there’d be some action here this morning. And I’ve been wondering where you sloped off to after our recent little barbecue in Gravesend.’

  ‘You bastard. You’ll pay for that.’

  ‘No, Long.’ Riggs’ voice booms around the cellar. ‘I’ve paid all I’m going to pay for your pathetic vendettas. I’m still convinced you killed my brother when he was just a boy.’

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ Herb says. ‘I didn’t kill him.’ I still can’t see Herb but I’m half-expecting Riggs to look daggers back at me. I’m glad when he doesn’t.

  ‘And what have you done with my wife?’

  ‘I’ve never met your wife,’ Herb spits back at him. ‘You never were much good at keeping hold of your women.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Riggs yells. ‘With your pathetic little ransom note.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. But from what I’ve heard, she was better off without you, you sadistic bastard.’

  ‘Hear that?’ Riggs says, turning back to me. ‘There you are, trussed up in his cellar like a gimp in a fetish bar… and I’m the sadist.’

  ‘He didn’t…’ I say, but Riggs cuts across me.

  ‘So what’s that then?’ he says to Herb, pointing to the floor with the gun.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is that blood?’ Riggs stoops precariously to touch it. ‘Is that… her blood?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Herb says louder and Riggs points the gun back at him.

  ‘If you’ve killed her…’

  ‘Like you would give a shit.’

  ‘Fair deuce,’ he says, nodding as if in civilised agreement. ‘She’s good for nothing. Couldn’t give me a son. Even a daughter would have been something. Does fuck all and spends my money. So, yeah… I’m not losing any sleep. But if it was you who took her… you who killed her…’ he says with an evil grin. ‘Then I’d care.’

  ‘What, like you killed mine...’

  ‘It’s Grace’s blood!’ I shout, and they both turn to look at me. ‘I was there… at her flat, when Mac took…’

  ‘Yeah, nice try, Field.’ Riggs scowls back at me. ‘Thought you’d be in on it somehow.’

  ‘Do I look like I’m in on anything?’ I protest, but he dismisses me with an ironic shrug.

  ‘What have you done with her, Long?’ he yells.

  ‘Not me. I just came down here and found Mickey like this. It’s all Mac’s doing. Listen to the lad.’

  ‘That Jock… is your pit bull, Long. Don’t play the innocent.’

  ‘He’s right though,’ I plead. ‘I saw it all happen. Then the bastard tied me up and took her away. You should be going after him. She might still be alive.’

  ‘She might, might she?’ he says, but remains focused on Herb. ‘The body… where would he have taken it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Herb says.

  ‘You can’t give up on her,’ I splutter. ‘It wasn’t just a… body.’

  ‘Don’t expect him to care about Grace,’ Herb says. ‘He’s the one who killed her mother.’

  ‘That was an accident,’ Riggs counters. ‘You’re the one intent on wiping out an entire family.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about family,’ Herb says. ‘You took mine… before all this even started.’

  ‘You still had something left,’ Riggs says, again rubbing at the scar on his forehead. ‘But you threw her away like rubbish. I’ve taken more of an interest in her life than you ever did, you selfish piece of shit.’

  ‘What, by buying her loyalty?’ I say, surprising myself with the strength of conviction given my precarious position.

  ‘What do you know about it, Field?’ Riggs turns and points the gun at me; I flinch.

  ‘Enough to know you’ve got Terry Pinner over a barrel.’

  ‘Just enough to keep young Grace in a lifestyle to which I’m sure she’s become accustomed.’ He sneers at me and adds: ‘A bit out of your league, I would have thought. What are you? A failed banker.’

  ‘Pinner’s been in your pocket for years.’ Herb joins in. ‘Protecting you.’

  ‘Wasn’t he there the night of the crash?’ I add and Riggs’ face visibly twitches. He tries to conceal it by rubbing his forehead and just stares at me. ‘Funny how you got out alive and everyone else died.’

  ‘Not everyone,’ he says. ‘Don’t forget the child… I never have. Even if he didn’t care.’

  ‘You bastard,’ Herb says, though this time with less rancour.

  ‘If it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have even got through her teens,’ Riggs says.

  ‘If it wasn’t for you…’ Herb counters. ‘She’d still have a mother.’

  ‘You’re missing the point, both of you,’ I shout. ‘If you care for her, why aren’t you trying to find her? You do know she’s your daughter Herb.’

  ‘Yeah, right!’ It’s Riggs who scoffs while Herb seems to be nodding. ‘We’ll see about that.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Herb says and Riggs grins back at him.

  ‘What is she to you, Riggs?’ I say, and as he looks at me, I notice Herb edging forward and I try to keep up the distraction. ‘You seem intent on protecting her. But you know what? She doesn’t have a good word to say about...’

  Before I can finish he swings the gun down at my head and, although it’s only a glancing blow, it’s enough to send me reeling onto my side. The noose around my neck tightens mercilessly as I try to hold my head off the floor to stop it closing my windpipe completely.

  In the same moment, Herb takes his chance and throws the billiard ball. It narrowly misses Riggs and ricochets off the wall into the nearest rack of wine with explosive force. Riggs is thr
own off balance and Herb makes a grab for the gun. Herb is deceptively strong, with the element of surprise and a good few inches advantage. Riggs’ movements are laboured under the assault and he struggles to stand his ground. The gammy leg appears to be more than just a minor disability and gives him a pronounced weakness on one side. Herb soon overpowers him and I hear the gun clatter across the floor.

  While it’s good to see Herb overpowering Riggs, it’s bad I have to watch it all happen sideways. While they’re fighting each other, I’m wrestling with gravity, trying to prevent my head resting on the floor. I’m hoping Herb can help me sit up, but the thought is interrupted by distant voices. Muffled shouting reverberates though the open door and heavy footfalls stomp across the timber ceiling. I daren’t move, although I can see Herb heading back towards the stairs and Riggs getting back to his feet. I try to call out, but the door slams somewhere behind me and then there’s silence… except for the rhythmic dripping that draws my eye to a pool of red liquid, laced with shards of glass.

  With an arm wedged beneath me, my shoulder grinds into the concrete. The tendons down the side of my neck strain against the weight of my head. I can’t let it drop. The cord has pulled so tight around my throat. Breathing is now the only priority. I draw the filthy air into my lungs in a thin, painful whistle. I’m struggling to clear my lungs as the dirt clogs my throat. Movement only constricts the noose more. The fight to free myself has the opposite effect. I’m feeling light-headed. Panic setting in. One last gasp... every sinew… desperate… for movement… some loosening... My head jerks… up and down… seeking the slightest opening. Violent spasms… I can’t control… squeeze it tighter. My lungs… at bursting point. Conflict in my head… deafening…

  Then it stops… Everything stops.

  Domestic Bliss

  As a little kid, I loved to lie in bed, warm and snug on a Saturday morning, and hear Mum vacuuming somewhere in the house. Something about the low resonating ebb and flow would send goose bumps down my back as I curled up tight beneath the covers. There must have been something comfortingly womb-like about that feeling. I always knew, sooner or later it would stop, and when it did I would lay there, hoping she was just moving to the next room. Then it would start again. I never wanted it to end but it always did. Eventually. I don’t know if it’s the old cylinder cleaners that made such a wonderful hum or if it’s something you grow out of because I haven’t had that feeling since. Not until now.