‘Joe,’ she said, ‘Joe.’
‘I’m here.’
‘Joe,’ she said again, only softer. She seemed to be fading, going away from me, disappearing into the fog.
I put my arm around her shoulder, pulled her closer. She wrapped her legs around me. I stroked her thigh. It was warm and smooth. It was like silk, only smoother.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said, not knowing why.
‘Afraid,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘Afraid.’
Her body came out in goosebumps. I held her tighter.
‘Have you ever felt fear?’ she said.
‘What of?’
‘Oh, anything.’
Have I ever felt fear? Fuck.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve felt fear.’
There are different kinds of fear, I told her. There’s the fear that hits you in the guts like a sledgehammer when you hear the order to fix bayonets. There’s the fear when you climb into the ring, knowing you’re too old, too damaged to keep on fighting but knowing too that you haven’t got any choice. There’s the fear when you climb out of the ring and your head is fucked all ways and you don’t even know who you are.
There’s the fear you feel coming from others that soaks into your skin. There’s the fear that spreads inside when you’re alone. I knew both of those. I told her all this.
And then there’s the fear, the dread I’d had when I thought I’d lost her. I didn’t tell her about that one.
‘I didn’t think you could feel fear,’ she said.
‘Everyone feels fear,’ I said. ‘Everyone.’
She was quiet for a while, then she sat up, pulling herself away from me. She reached over to the bedside table for a cigarette. The flare of the lighter flashed onto her face and made it look pale, dead. The flickering flame threw our shadows around the room. Then it all went dark again and I heard her suck in smoke and breathe it out as if she was sighing.
‘I hate it,’ she said. ‘The fear.’
‘Most people let it rule their lives. But it’s not so bad. Fear’s a prison. If you want out of prison, you have to stop fear controlling you.’
‘Live with it, you mean?’
I thought about that.
‘Sort of. You have to know it’s there but ignore it, push it aside. When I was in the Falklands we had to go forward into shelling, machine gun fire. I was shit scared. We all were. Our platoon sergeant told us we were all probably gonna die. After that the fear didn’t bother me.’
She didn’t say anything, but I knew she was thinking about what I’d said. I could hear her smoking, feel the heat of her thigh pressed against me.
‘What are you scared of?’ I said.
‘Nothing.’
She didn’t even bother to try and sound convincing.
‘What is it?’
‘Just stuff, Joe. Please.’
That meant I had to shut up, not question her.
‘I feel safe with you, though,’ she said. ‘And, what you said, that helps too.’
I told her that was good, but I felt fear then, real, dark, thick fear.
She killed the smoke and put her head back on the pillow and folded herself into me again.
We were silent for a long time. I stared up at the greyness of the ceiling, just happy to be there, in her bed, her body and mine tied together. If I could’ve spent the rest of my life like that, I’d have been okay. Fuck the world.
‘I remember this time with me dad,’ she said, her voice low, husky. ‘Me real dad, that is, when I was a kid. Long time ago, incidentally.’
‘Not so long,’ I said.
She snuggled up more.
‘Well, anyway, I was scared of spiders. If I saw one, I’d scream and jump on my bed. They move so fast. I think it was that more than anything that scared me. There was this crack, see, in the skirting board and this spider lived there. I’d seen it go in and out. I told my dad, begged him to do something. So, he covered the crack, boarded it up.’
Now she was quiet for a moment. I didn’t want to say anything. It was like, if I spoke, I’d break something. I always seemed to be treading on eggshells when I was with her.
‘Anyway,’ she said quietly, ‘I would lie there, in bed, thinking about that spider being trapped there, starving to death, in the dark. I thought maybe it had a family and that it was just trying to feed them. And I couldn’t stand it. I felt so guilty, Joe. Next day I got my dad to pull the board off. I was never scared of spiders after that.’
‘What happened to him?’ I said. ‘Your dad?’
Her body tensed.
‘He left, went back to St Lucia. Just dumped us. Never heard from him again.’
‘Why did you want to go to that pub?’
She said nothing for a long time. Her body felt cold and I thought again about her face looking so pale in the light of the flame.
‘The Falklands,’ she said, finally. ‘That was a long time ago. You don’t have to do that now. You don’t have to do what they tell you. What scares you now? Apart from dancing with me.’
She poked me in the ribs with her elbow, making light of it all. That’s how I knew it had upset her, me not dancing.
‘I’m afraid you’ll get hurt,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid it’ll be my fault, that I didn’t stop it.’
‘Oh, Joe.’
She pushed herself into me, hugged me tightly, tighter than she’d ever done before.
‘You won’t let that happen,’ she said.
After she was murdered, I sometimes thought that, of everything I’d done or said, not dancing with her that night hurt her the most. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I just wanted to think it so that I could hate myself a bit more – if that was possible.
Somewhere, a phone was ringing.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I opened my eyes, saw Browne watching the TV, wondered where I was, remembered.
I mumbled something. Browne mumbled something back.
Slowly the day got older, and I got older with it, but at a hundred times the speed.
The highlight of the afternoon was when Browne laughed at some politician on the box. He was being interviewed, this bloke, and had been asked if he thought the police needed external regulation, and he’d said no, not at all. He’d gone on to say that, on the whole, the public trusted the police, just as they did politicians.
That’s when Browne laughed. He laughed a lot. Then he stared at the space in front of him, not laughing at all. Then he had another drink.
I kept telling myself I had to get up and do something, but I couldn’t remember what. So I stayed where I was and waited for something to happen.
Nothing happened. And then nothing more happened and I started to wonder what I was supposed to be waiting for anyway.
Then something happened.
The phone rang.
Browne glanced at me sideways, as if checking to see if I’d heard it. He got up and went out and came back.
‘Joe,’ he said, holding the handset out to me.
I took it and held it to my ear and said, ‘Yeah?’
I heard a voice that sounded too posh to be anyone I could know.
‘Is this … is this Joe?’ the voice said.
Was I Joe? I had to think about that.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Marriot,’ the voice said.
Marriot? He was dead. I killed him. I said, ‘Who is this?’
‘Marriot. Jason Marriot.’
Jason Marriot? I didn’t know any Jason Marriot.
‘I want to help you,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You said you knew someone who … who died.’
‘I’ve known lots of people who’ve died,’ I said, thinking someone here was going mad.
‘Look, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t … Look, you told me about a woman you knew. If she died, it was Kenny Paget who killed her.’
‘Yes,’ I said, knowing now who he was, remembering what I’d told him. I kne
w a woman.
‘I know that my dad was somehow responsible. I know that. But there were others, right? It wasn’t just him.’
‘Right.’
‘And Paget’s one.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ll go after Paget? I can help. I know where he lives.’
‘Paget’s dead,’ I said.
There was a long silence.
‘I see,’ he said.
Only now was my head beginning to work properly. He wanted to help, he’d said. Was this a set up? Who was he working for?
‘Why do you want to help me?’
For a few seconds all I could hear was a kind of buzzing sound. Then his voice filled my ear, and I could make out the pain in it.
‘I spoke to my mum,’ he said. ‘I spoke to her about my dad. I know what he did.’
After I’d hung up, Browne handed me some tablets.
‘Take ’em,’ he said.
I explained to Browne that the boy was Marriot’s son, and that he might help me get to Glazer, and that he’d tried to kill me.
‘That’s how I hit my head again,’ I said.
Browne sat and listened to all that, and then he sighed and shook his head and said, ‘I don’t know why I bother.’
I didn’t know why either, except that he couldn’t seem to help himself.
When the knock came, Browne answered it and led Marriot in. He seemed younger than I’d remembered, not much more than a teenager. He was thin, his jeans and plaid shirt too baggy. There was a plaster on his forehead, and a smudged blue-yellow bruise on his chin.
‘Come in, son,’ Browne said to him. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’
‘Uh, yeah. Yes, please.’
Browne wandered off and Marriot came further into the room, looking at me side-on.
He sat in the chair opposite me, and leaned forward, his arms on his knees. He seemed about two miles away, and yet his face was a few feet from mine.
We waited like that until Browne came back with a mug of tea. Meanwhile, Marriot had clocked Browne’s Scotch, and Browne noticed him noticing it.
‘Would you like a bit of something in your tea?’
Marriot nodded. Browne topped the tea up from his half-bottle.
Browne and me watched him sip the tea, then gulp it down.
‘Take your time,’ Browne said.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ the boy said, lowering the mug and wiping his mouth on his shirt sleeve.
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘Look, what you said, about my dad, what he did …’
He looked down at the mug in his hands.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Browne said. ‘You can’t be held responsible. Or your mother.’
I thought Browne was talking bollocks there, but he gave me a look that said, Right, Joe?
‘Right,’ I said.
‘My mum,’ Marriot said, ‘she thinks you’ll come back. I want you to promise you won’t see her again, won’t hurt her.’
Browne was looking at me the same way the boy was. They were waiting for an answer – would I promise not to hurt a woman? Did Browne think I might?
‘I don’t care about your mother,’ I said, looking down at my hands, which were huge and ugly and brutal, the bones made of iron and the skin made of tree bark.
‘Promise me you won’t touch her.’
‘Yes,’ I said, not able to look away from those hands, ‘I promise.’
‘May I have another tea, please?’ he said.
Browne took his mug, looked at it, looked at me, looked at Marriot.
‘How about a glass instead?’ he said.
The boy nodded. I’d never known Browne to hand out so much of his booze, except when he knew I was fucked in the head, or injured, or missing Brenda or Kid, or whatever.
Anyway, he went to the cabinet, pulled out a glass, dusted it off and handed it to the kid, along with his bottle of Scotch.
When he’d had another swig, Marriot shuddered and said, ‘I know my dad was involved in crime.’ His voice was thicker. ‘I think I always knew it. But I didn’t really understand what, exactly.’
‘And now?’
He didn’t answer that.
‘You asked me about a man called Glazer,’ he said, looking up at me and Browne as if he wanted us to smile and pat him on the back.
‘Yeah.’
‘I remember him. His name was Mike. He’d come around the house sometimes. Him and that … that bastard, Paget. Look, it was them, all right. Not my dad.’
‘I don’t care about that,’ I said. ‘I just want Glazer.’
Browne glared at me again. I didn’t know why.
‘You said you could help me,’ I said to the boy. ‘How?’
‘My dad had a safe,’ he said, ‘in his office.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘After he died, it was unlocked. The solicitor had to get someone in from the safe company. There wasn’t much in there, but what there was went to my mum. She didn’t know what to do with it, so I took it. I’ve had it in a shoebox in a cupboard.’
‘Where is it now? This stuff?’
‘In my car.’
‘Go get it.’
He didn’t move.
‘Finish your drink first, son,’ Browne said.
The boy nodded, tipped the booze into this mouth, shuddered again.
‘This must’ve been hard for you,’ Browne said. ‘Coming here, telling us what you have.’
‘It was.’
Browne glanced at me. I saw his jaw flex, something flicker in his eye. He turned back to Marriot.
‘Why don’t you go, son,’ Browne was saying, ‘take that stuff to the police? Let them sort it out.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘The police?’ Marriot said.
‘You seem like a decent man,’ Browne was telling him. ‘Don’t get yourself involved any further. Just take it all to the police, make a clean breast of it.’
I tried to stand up, but went dizzy half way and fell back again. It wasn’t the usual kind of dizziness. I looked at Browne, understanding what he’d done.
‘What were those pills?’ I said.
‘Sedatives. They’ll wear off. In a while.’
I swear there was a smile on his face.
‘You planned this.’
Browne ignored that. He turned back to Marriot who was looking at us both with his mouth open.
‘I don’t understand,’ Marriot said.
‘This world,’ Browne was saying, ‘these people, Joe, here, look at him, you don’t belong in this, doing what they do. Go live your life. Be good.’
Browne had done me properly. Him and his bloody morality. The boy was unsure now.
‘And you?’ he said. ‘What about you? Why are you here? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I’ve learned too late.’
‘Well …’
I shook my head.
‘Give it to the law and they’ll be all over you,’ I told Marriot. ‘And your mum. Glazer’s one of them. They protect their own. You know that.’ His eyes flickered from me to Browne and back again. ‘And if they do investigate it, your dad’s name will be shit. Your mum’s too. Browne may go for that innocent line, but the law won’t.’
Browne stared daggers at me.
‘My mum didn’t know what my dad did.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘She didn’t know.’
‘Maybe, but it’ll take a lot to convince the law about that, even if you found ones who weren’t going to grass you to Glazer. You want to protect her, don’t you?’
I expected a fight with Browne, but he sighed and said nothing. We all said nothing, then Marriot got up and left.
Browne watched him go, then dropped his head. He thought Marriot would be back. I wasn’t so sure.
Silence filled the air between Browne and me. I was angry. Browne knew I would be, of course, which is why he’d doped me.
‘What was all that about?’ I said.<
br />
‘You don’t get it, do you? You just don’t understand.’
‘No. I don’t.’
He sighed, shrugged. Another failure. Another one to chalk up.
‘He phoned when you were asleep, told me who he was. He said he wanted to talk to you, to help you. It occurred to me that he might have something to lead you to Glazer.’
‘So?’
‘What would you have me do? Help you kill a man? You don’t really think I’d go that far, do you?’
He was right, of course. I hadn’t thought about it. Browne was a fuck-up in a lot of ways, but he’d never hurt anyone so far as I knew, even the ones who deserved it. And he would never let someone be hurt if he could avoid it.
So, he saw an opportunity to prevent me doing harm. All he had to do was give me some sedatives and try to convince Marriot’s son to walk away.
‘What else can I do?’ I said.
‘The police, Joe. Let them handle it.’
‘Police? What police? Glazer is a policeman. Compton is. You think you can trust them?’
‘They can’t all be bad.’
‘Tell me the ones that aren’t. Christ, Brenda went to the fucking police, and they murdered her for it.’
‘I know, son,’ he said, quietly. ‘I know.’
We heard the front door close. The boy must’ve put the latch on.
He walked into the room holding a shoebox. He held it out to me, but kept his eyes down.
‘I don’t care about anything,’ he said, ‘except my mum. Leave her alone, that’s all.’
I opened the box and started to go through the stuff inside. Browne watched in silence. He filled his glass.
There was a ledger. Names, numbers, amounts, credits, debits. I saw Glazer’s name there. He was getting a grand a month from Marriot. There were other names, some I knew, most I didn’t. That ledger would send a lot of people down, if the law got it. The right law, that was. But it was no use to me. I tossed it aside.
There were papers, deeds, documents relating to this and that. Marriot owned a lot of stuff; properties around London, Scotland, Spain. There were memorandums of association, articles of association. Marriot had companies doing all sorts of shit – on paper, at least. Paget’s name was on a few of them, listed as a director. So were a few other people, most of them dead. None of these helped me.
It was the address book that did it. As soon as I saw it, I grabbed it, opened it up, went straight to G:
To Fight For Page 15
