To Fight For

by Phillip Hunter

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded and went back to stirring his coffee. The waitress had noticed me now and came plodding over, as slowly as she could. Her feet made a sticking noise each time they left the vinyl-tiled floor. It sounded the same as the flickering light, only slower. It didn’t seem real, none of it did.

  When the waitress finally made it to our table, she took a pad out of her pocket and held a pen over it.

  ‘Something to eat?’ she said to me.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Tea.’

  She didn’t bother to write that down.

  ‘You got a radio here?’ Eddie said to her.

  She looked at him as if he’d accused her of gobbing in his coffee.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Put it on, will you?’

  She plodded back the way she’d come, even more slowly, as if the sticky tiles were gradually dragging her down.

  We waited, Eddie and me. He stirred his coffee. I watched him stir his coffee. We listened to the flickering light, and to the clanking of plates from the kitchen and the clinking of knives and forks on ceramic.

  Eddie finally had enough of stirring his coffee. He tossed the spoon down.

  ‘You think Bobby Cole’s gonna save you?’ he said, watching the waitress fade away.

  ‘No.’

  Now he moved his eyes back to me.

  ‘Well, you’re right about that. Cole won’t last much longer. We’ve got him, Joe. Vic’s got him.’

  ‘You think I care about Cole?’

  ‘No. I just think you’d better not get on Cole’s side.’

  ‘I don’t have sides.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  The radio came on. Static-filled music came from a tinny speaker. It was good enough to cover our voices.

  ‘So, you’re gonna wait it out at Browne’s for everything to cool off. Or wait for something to happen, maybe?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Joe. You’re a stubborn cunt, know that? There’s a war going on and you’re in the middle.’

  ‘You haven’t told me what you want.’

  ‘I want you to leave, go away, lie low for a while.’

  ‘Is this a warning?’

  ‘It’s a friendly word.’

  ‘When did you start becoming friendly?’

  That made him smile.

  ‘I’m always friendly, Joe. Aren’t we friends?’

  ‘You’re nobody’s friend, Eddie. Neither am I.’

  ‘You’re paranoid.’

  I told him to fuck off. He smiled even more.

  ‘Don’t be like that.’

  The waitress came back with a mug of tea. She dropped it in front of me and threw some packets of sugar and a spoon onto the table. Then she scribbled the bill out and put it down between us.

  She looked at Eddie, and at Eddie’s coffee. When she was happy she’d made the point that people like us were a waste of her valuable time, she strolled back to her cakes.

  ‘How should I be?’ I said to Eddie.

  ‘You should be smart. Leave London.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re dead here, even if you live, which you won’t.’

  Now it was my turn to stir. I picked up a couple of sachets of sugar and tore them open and poured the sugar into my tea, nice and slowly, one grain at a time. When I’d done that, I stirred. Let Eddie fucking wait.

  What I didn’t understand was this act of his, this friendly warning. He didn’t give a shit about me, or anyone. Everything he did had a reason. Finding that reason was the tough part.

  I stirred. Eddie waited, knowing what I was doing. My spoon clinked the mug. The tea whirled round and round, like my head, like my fucking life.

  I could hear the sound of the traffic outside, whirring by, going around like the tea in my mug. I could smell frying fat and coffee and plastic.

  I stopped stirring, put the spoon down. The tea carried on spinning. The light kept on flickering.

  The old bloke spoke at last. He said, ‘You want something else? Jean?’

  She didn’t answer him. Turning to look, I saw them side-on. The old fellow was looking at the woman, waiting for an answer. She still had the mug up to her lips, but she wasn’t drinking from it. She just looked at the bloke over the rim. He gave up and went back to his bread.

  There was something strange in that and my hackles rose. Everything here was weird, and I thought again that I was stuck in some play not knowing what I was supposed to do.

  I tried to ignore that feeling. I turned my attention back to my tea.

  ‘I’m staying,’ I said to Eddie, watching as the brown liquid slid round and round so slowly now that it was barely moving at all.

  ‘Leave London, Joe. While you still can.’

  ‘Why would you care?’

  ‘Call it a favour. Because we go back.’

  ‘Nice of you.’

  ‘Fine. You’re not important, that’s why. You’re a sideshow, but Vic wants you out and he’s as stubborn as you and while he’s hell-bent on getting you, he’s losing sight of the bigger picture.’

  ‘So you’re here off your own bat.’

  ‘I’m here unofficially, yes.’

  ‘What would Dunham say to that?’

  I saw his jaw muscle flicker. The gleam in his eyes dimmed a bit.

  ‘Don’t push it. Like I said, I’m doing you a favour. I’m the fucking gift horse.’

  ‘If I’m just a sideshow, why does Dunham want me?’

  ‘Because you made him look stupid, weak. You know he can’t have that. He has to destroy you, Joe. No choice.’

  ‘He’s had plenty of time.’

  ‘I’ve managed to hold him off.’

  ‘Then why don’t you kill me now? Have done with it, take my head back to Dunham. And don’t give me that bollocks about us being friends.’

  When he didn’t say anything to that, I said, ‘It’s the film, isn’t it? That’s why you haven’t killed me yet? You want a copy. I’ve got one.’

  Two girls came into the cafe then and sat down at the table next to us. My skin prickled. They were both young, both had that Celtic thing going on, the white skin, the red-blonde hair.

  Eddie picked up his spoon and started stirring his coffee again. One day maybe he’d drink the fucking stuff.

  One of the girls had a slim, athletic figure. She had freckles on her arms and a long white neck. Her pale blue eyes seemed paler beneath the narrow arched eyebrows. Her hair was long and straight, and the colour of honey. She had a band of flowers tattooed around her wrist, as if they were her hopes and dreams and she carried them where she could see them, remember them now and then.

  The other girl had curves, all in the right places. She was a redhead too, only it was darker and curly, like gold thread that had rusted. Her eyes were large and a kind of blue-green-grey, the colour changing as she moved her head. And they were soft eyes which looked as if, sometimes, they’d melt away and take her some place quiet.

  When they’d first sat down, I’d thought they might be law, but I could see they weren’t. They didn’t have the core of decay that the police always carry with them. Even the best undercover coppers can’t hide that rot, that disease that infects them, as if their soul had gangrene.

  No, these girls were too clean for that. They’d just straggled in and taken a seat without thinking. They were too innocent to notice what others could see; the danger that lived with people like Eddie and me, the threat, the murder in our blood.

  So we said nothing for a while, me and Eddie. He stirred his coffee, gazing at the table top as if he was just waiting for a friend. I watched Eddie and scanned the cafe, making sure nobody was looking at us too closely. I could hear the girls at the next table as they chattered. They talked about clothes and music and men, laughing now and then, teasing each other.

  My mind started to wander, and I thought about Brenda and me, sitting, as we sometimes used
to, in a cafe like this, me probably stirring my tea while Brenda nattered about clothes or music or whatever, teasing me, as she used to do.

  And for a moment – just a moment – I wanted to be at that table with those girls, just so that I could sit there and listen to them, just so that I could be normal for a while, unknown, unknowing, another mug who worked five days out of seven for forty years, and then retired and died. I wanted to be with those girls and be normal for a while, and be ignored. Sometimes that was all I wanted; to be ignored.

  I noticed Eddie looking at the girls, probably wondering, like I had, if they were plain-clothes. Then he flicked his gaze over to me, and a sly glimmer came into his sly eyes.

  Maybe I’d given something away, a slip, a flicker of expression.

  ‘I have a thing for redheads,’ he said. ‘Their bodies are more sensitive. Did you know that, Joe? Must be their skin. You touch them and they melt.’

  I had to wonder why he was telling me. I didn’t care, and he knew it.

  The girls had noticed him now. He flashed them his handsome, movie-star smile. They went for him straight away.

  He leaned towards them.

  ‘I’m Eddie,’ he said.

  The woman with pale blue eyes blushed and smiled. When she did that, her eyes got even lighter so that they were the blue of a clear summer evening sky.

  ‘What’re your names?’ Eddie said.

  ‘Karen,’ said the one with pale eyes. She spoke in a Scots accent. Glaswegian, I thought. The other girl had an English accent, posh, smooth. She said her name was Vicky. Eddie told them he’d always liked redheads.

  ‘Maybe it’s a black thing,’ he was saying. ‘We get bored of brunettes, and blondes are a bit too common these days. It’s not often you see a proper redhead. Now I’m looking at two of them.’

  They watched him, wide-eyed, as if he was doing some magic trick. He did that to women, and he knew it. He said, ‘My friend here’s just got out of the nick, and he hasn’t seen a woman for a while, so we were wondering if you’d like to join us.’

  Then, as one, they looked at me, and their smiles fell away, and their sparkling eyes dulled, and all that was left was a kind of fear. I couldn’t blame them for that. I knew what I looked like to people. I knew what I did to them. I wasn’t the kind who could be ignored. Maybe that was my curse. I felt it, though. Somewhere inside, I felt a stab of pain.

  The one with curly hair looked at her watch.

  ‘Well …’ she said, looking at her friend for support.

  ‘We have to go,’ the other one said. ‘We only came in for a moment.’

  They hadn’t even ordered.

  As they were walking out, Eddie turned back to me, that slyness dancing in his eyes.

  ‘You’ve got a way with the birds, Joe. I never seen two women scarper so fast.’

  Now I understood what he was doing. It was another of his games. He was putting me down a bit, letting me know what power he had, what I didn’t have.

  I tried to pretend I didn’t care about all that. I had a gun, I told myself. Fuck the rest.

  But that was a lie. I did care, and I couldn’t understand why. Maybe it was just that I missed being with Brenda. Maybe it was that simple.

  But Eddie had made a mistake. Wanting Brenda only reminded me that she was gone. And for that, people would suffer. For that, I’d make the whole fucking world suffer.

  ‘Happy now?’ I said.

  ‘I got rid of ’em, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I was tired of all his shit. My head was starting to wander again. I needed it clear. I needed to know what this was really about. Things were happening in the background that I was missing. Eddie was toying with me, I knew that much. I said, ‘You still haven’t told me what you want? Is it the DVD?’

  He leaned back in his seat.

  ‘We want it, sure. You know that. But I don’t think you’re gonna give it to us.’

  ‘Right.’

  He sighed, and his sigh said I was being dumb. I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. I was being childish.

  ‘Why do you want it?’ he said.

  ‘I could ask you the same thing. You know what’s on it.’

  There it was again, that flicker in his jaw. He was angry about this, whatever he pretended. On one hand, he worked for Dunham, and he was loyal, I had to admit that. Fuck, I even respected it. But Dunham had given protection to Paget. And now Dunham wanted a DVD of some rich cunt with a child so that he could use it for his own means.

  I think that bothered Eddie. I didn’t get that. Eddie was too smart to let his conscience be affected by that sort of thing – that was, if he had a conscience, which I doubted.

  ‘Vic wants it,’ he said. ‘And he wants Glazer too.’

  ‘What do you know about Glazer?’

  ‘Paget told us everything, so don’t think you’ve got a lead on us there. Vic wants that film, Joe. That’s all that matters.’

  ‘Fuck Dunham. And fuck you.’

  That made Eddie smile, but it was a weak smile, as if, privately, he agreed with me. He bent forward and took a sip of coffee.

  ‘Who’s the man in the film?’ I said.

  He didn’t even bother answering that one. He just put his coffee down. That was all the answer I’d expected.

  ‘The girl in the film,’ I said, and saw Eddie’s jaw tighten again, ‘she’s about the same age as Dunham’s daughter.’

  I don’t know why I said that. It didn’t make any difference, and I knew it. But, still, I’d said it. Eddie didn’t speak for a moment. He gazed at his coffee. He wasn’t stirring it now. He was past those games.

  ‘We saw an opportunity to exploit a situation,’ he said to the coffee. ‘It’s the business we’re in. Don’t get sentimental about these things. But you want Glazer. Why?’

  ‘He was part of it. Maybe the worst part. If he hadn’t grassed her up to Marriot, she might be alive.’

  ‘Leave Glazer and maybe I can get Vic to leave you.’

  ‘No good.’

  ‘So you want it all neat and tidy and done up in a fucking bow.’

  ‘I want blood.’

  ‘Why, Joe? What does it matter? It’s only business. You of all people should know that.’

  ‘It’s not business to me. It’s personal.’

  He leaned back again, a satisfied look on his face, as if he’d solved it all, proved something important.

  ‘Personal. Yeah. That’s the problem, isn’t it? Since when did you start caring about things, Joe? About people?’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. He was watching me. I had the feeling he was trying to see how far I’d go, how much strength I had left, whether I was the same man he’d known for years.

  After a while, he reached forward and drank some coffee.

  ‘How’s things, Joe?’ he said, putting the mug back. ‘How’s Browne?’

  Right then I knew Eddie knew exactly what had happened to Browne. He’d never given a shit about Browne. He wasn’t important, and Eddie didn’t have curiosity for things that weren’t important.

  It was Dunham who’d sent Roy Buck. It must’ve been.

  ‘He got hit,’ I said. ‘By a bloody train.’

  ‘Oh?’

  I watched him closely.

  ‘Roy Buck,’ I said. ‘Remember him?’

  ‘The Reaper?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘He was at Browne’s place.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  I shrugged and kept watching Eddie.

  He looked right back at me. He didn’t twitch a muscle, didn’t flicker. That amused glint was missing from his eyes. And I knew I was right. The bastard knew all about Buck.

  What was more, he was letting me know he knew.

  There was something wrong with that, though.

  Eddie was subtle and smart, and, sure, sending Buck was the kind of thing he’d do. He knew there was some-thing fucked up about
Buck, that he’d break bones without thinking anything of it. And he knew that I’d know what Buck was capable of – Christ, he’d done it to me, hadn’t he?

  But Eddie also knew me well enough to know I wasn’t scared of Buck, or anyone for that matter.

  ‘I’ll keep the DVD. I’ll take my chances with Buck.’

  ‘I might agree with you, but Vic won’t. You know that. He’ll come after you. And if he can’t get you …’

  He frowned.

  ‘You’ll let Buck loose on Browne.’

  ‘Me?’ he said.

  ‘Do you think I care that much about Browne?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think anything. However, didn’t we just establish that you did care for people?’ He shook his head, smiling. ‘Shit, Joe. You almost got me there. You want him, don’t you? The bloke in the film.’

  ‘I don’t know who he is.’

  ‘No, but you’re going to try and find out. You’re gonna get him yourself, aren’t you? You won’t. You won’t even get close. You’re not big enough, Joe. I’m right, aren’t I? Is that what you want? His blood too?’

  ‘I want everybody’s blood.’

  ‘Yeah. But it’ll cost you. Blood for blood. Can you accept that?’

  As he was saying all that, something else came into my mind. I thought back to the encounter with Buck. Had he been waiting for me to turn up? Was that the whole point of it, that it was a show of strength, a threat? Was that why he hadn’t asked Browne any questions?

  ‘Go to this place,’ Eddie must’ve told him. ‘Wait till the old man’s alone and throw him around. The other man will come back. Leave when he does.’

  But here was the problem: Dunham wouldn’t have bothered with that shit. He would’ve wanted me taken somewhere and tortured or killed.

  Instead of that, Eddie must’ve decided to try another way, a more subtle method. But he’d overplayed his hand, had been too subtle, had outsmarted himself. He was telling me he knew about Buck, sure, but he was telling me in his roundabout way, meaning he wasn’t telling me at all, only hinting at it, but knowing that I’d get the hint.

  But I now knew that Eddie must’ve done that by himself, as a warning to me. And all that told me there was a split in the Dunham camp – or, rather, that Eddie wasn’t happy with how things were going.

  And letting me know that was his mistake.