The Fireman

by Stephen Leather

  I put my hands out to the sides, palms holding onto the walls at about waist height. I was sweating and it wasn’t the gin. Jesus, I needed a drink. Then the knife arm pulled back and I tightened the muscles of my stomach in a useless reflex action and then the guy by the lamp spoke quickly in Cantonese, jabber, jabber, jabber, hands still on hips, chin thrust up, legs apart.

  The one with the knife kept his eyes on me as he listened, but the arm relaxed and I allowed myself to breathe out, slowly. I was shaking, and the more I tried to stop it the more my arms and legs trembled.

  Howard shouted something in Chinese and the knife man looked at him, just once, a sideways glance, the sort I used to give Andy when she walked past my desk in a tight skirt, quick and furtive. The fear of what might happen if I did anything got the better of the fear of what would happen if I stayed still and I made a grab for the dressing table with my left hand, groping for something, anything, to throw at my attacker. I fumbled the can of deodorant and it clattered against the mirror, but by the time the knife man had turned to look at me I had it in my hands. I had some vague idea of squirting it in his eyes but I was shaking so much I couldn’t get the top off and then the knife started moving towards me. I screamed and threw the can at his face with both hands and tried to get my body out of the way of the blade. Both his arms went up to protect himself and without thinking I kicked him between the legs as hard as I could, still screaming. I was so frightened I had my eyes shut tight, sure that my stomach was about to be sliced open.

  The kick knocked me off balance and I fell back against the wall as the air exploded from his lungs through clenched teeth and he bent double, the knife dropping from nerveless fingers as his hands went to comfort his groin. His face was about six inches from the buckle of my belt and I brought my knee up hard. Again I closed my eyes just before I hit him but I felt his nose shatter and blood soak into my trouser leg. He flicked over and fell backwards onto the single bed, wailing like a banshee, the cries of a woman, not a man.

  I was exhausted and I leant against the wall for support, chest heaving. The trembling was getting worse, even my breath was coming in short gasps and I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears.

  The guy by the door released Howard, then pushed him into the bathroom. He shouted at him in Cantonese and pointed at his face then slammed the door. It wasn’t locked, but if Howard knew what was good for him he’d stay put. I felt very alone, and scared.

  ‘What is it you want?’ I said, and I could hear the fear in my quivering voice. ‘Just tell me.’ I inched along the wall and felt the knife under my foot, but there was no way they were going to let me pick it up.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked again, disgusted at the pleading tone, the whine of a frightened schoolboy.

  They kept either side of me, hands swinging freely, legs slightly apart, the confident swagger of men who knew they were good and who weren’t going to be taken by surprise.

  I had no illusions about what was going to happen next, the kick in the balls had been a pure fluke. My stomach was churning and it wasn’t just the drink, it was my body’s realization that it was going to get hurt. I felt so bloody helpless that I wanted to cry. Both of the men were younger than me by a good fifteen years, and that was a decade and a half that I hadn’t exactly spent looking after myself.

  They stood still, and the longer they waited the more tired I felt. The guy who’d been holding Howard was better dressed than the other two, he had a cream linen jacket on over his shirt and he was wearing black leather shoes with gold buckles on. He was quite good looking, hair neatly brushed to one side and features that made one think that maybe he wasn’t fully Chinese, the nose was longer and more pointed, the eyes weren’t so slanted. He was completely calm and breathing softly through his nose.

  They moved together as if in reponse to some unspoken command, both falling back into stances that could have been karate or kung fu or a paso doble for all that it mattered to me. I was stone cold sober now, one of the side effects of the prospect of getting the shit kicked out of me, I guess.

  My head was clear, adrenaline coursing through my veins cueing my body for fright, flight or fight. Fright was already taken care of, flight was out of the question so that just left fight, and that was only seconds away. I’d lost the advantage that comes with a swift kick in the balls, now it was two against one and this time I wouldn’t catch them off guard.

  They were carving strange patterns in the air with their hands and then the one on the right turned his back on me and then his leg swung round like a whip and his heel caught me under the chin and my head cracked against the wall. He was still turning and he flowed back to his original fighting stance, arms waving, poetry in motion. Then it was the other one’s turn, he shuffled forward and stamped his front foot and I looked down at the baseball boot and then his right fist flew forward and smacked me on the nose, just a tap but I could feel blood flow and my eyes water and when he stepped back I could barely see him through the tears and then he kicked me in the stomach and I slid down the wall with a volcano erupting in my chest.

  When I came to Howard and I were alone in the room and there was blood on the towel he had in his hand. I hurt, but not too much, I guess the drink was numbing some of the pain. My left eye was puffed up and closing and two of my front teeth felt loose and my tongue was bleeding, but it wasn’t so bad. I could live with it. I’d have to. The screaming mass of nerves that was my solar plexus was making breathing an effort but that could have been worse, too, so I made a feeble attempt to give Howard the wounded soldier smile until I realized I’d got a split lip. He dabbed at it with the wet towel and made soothing noises. The daft old bastard.

  ‘I’m sorry, laddie,’ he said.

  ‘That’s OK, Howard. No use crying over spilt blood.’ He’d managed to get me onto the double bed so I just lay where I was and closed my eyes and tried to forget the pain. I’ve been hit a few times in my life, not so often that it got to be a habit, but often enough so that I knew how to duck. Sometimes you have to ask questions that people don’t want to answer and you have to help a photographer take pictures that people don’t want taken. Usually you can get by with some fast talking, occasionally you just make a run for it, but every now and again some clever bastard takes a swing at you. If there are witnesses then you just have to take it, and hope that your button presser is quick enough to get a snap because gentlemen of the press don’t go around thumping the public, no matter what the provocation. If there are no witnesses around then you’ve always got the option of hitting them back and forgetting all that crap about the pen being mightier than the sword.

  The first time I ever got hit on a job was up in Scotland, doing a shift for one of the evening papers. It was shitty work because evening papers have wickedly early deadlines which meant starting work at seven o’clock, before even the sparrows had started coughing up their morning phlegm. I’m never at my best until after midday and intravenous doses of black coffee, but in those days I was busy making a name for myself. Oh yes, I needed the money as well.

  The news editor was a bearded Aberdonian with a gut that looked like an eight-month pregnancy, and twins at that. His name was Malcolm Fräser but everyone called him Big Malky, to his face and behind his back, it was all the same to him, hide like a rhinoceros with certain facial similarities too. He was an ugly bastard, inside and out. I learnt a lot from him.

  I was twenty-one, I had my proficiency certificate from the National Council for the Training of Journalists and a piece of paper that said I could do T-line shorthand at more than one hundred words a minute, and I’d got about half a dozen decent by-lined cuttings under my belt and I was hungry for more.

  I’d poured down two cups of murky canteen coffee and a greasy bacon sandwich and I was halfway through the morning papers when Big Malky bellowed from the news desk like an elephant in heat. I scurried down the office, notebook and pencil in hand.

  He wanted me to go and interview a hit
and run driver who’d been given a five-month suspended sentence after killing a ten-year-old boy who’d run out in front of his van. The police had breath-tested him and found that he was over the limit but he’d managed to produce a doctor who swore that the hay fever medication he was on could have produced a false reading and now he was back in his flat in Paisley and the boy was in a cemetery outside Bishopbriggs. Big Malky waved a handwritten note under my nose and said, ‘Read this yer bleedin’ Sassenach.’ He had a sense of humour, did Big Malky. That and halitosis and a large mole on the side of his nose from which sprouted a cluster of black hairs that he refused to clip.

  It was written on lined notepaper and that’s always a bad sign, only nutters and children write to newspapers on lined paper. Only nutters use crayons, but among the mis-spellings and the bad grammar and the obscenities was one allegation that needed checking. According to ‘A friend’ who’d scrawled the message, the doctor was related to the driver, cousins once removed, and if true that would put a different complexion on the evidence given to the court.

  Big Malky leant back in his plastic executive chair and put his size twelves on the desk. The chair groaned and either it or Malky made a loud farting noise that everybody in the newsroom pretended not to hear.

  ‘Margaret is chasing up the birth certificates in Edinburgh, I want you to go and interview the driver,’ he leant forward and the chair farted again as he grabbed a sheaf of newspaper cuttings and settled back, flicking through them. ‘Kemp’s his name. Go and have a wee blether with Mr Kemp.’ He gave me the address and I practically flew from his presence, not because I was keen to get on with the job, more to escape the sickly sweet smell that suggested it hadn’t been the chair making the noises. Both the early shift button-pushers were out on jobs and the office car was out picking up the editor from his Kelvinside mansion so I phoned for a minicab and waited for it in the street, the collar of my sheepskin jacket turned up against the biting Glasgow wind that chills bones and breaks veins and chaps your skin. The driver looked about fifteen years old and so did his battered Cortina.

  His leather jacket was the same colour as the rust on the wings and the gear stick jumped out of first as we headed towards deepest, darkest Paisley. I kept the collar up and my eyes closed because at that time of the morning I didn’t want to talk to anyone, never mind a moronic minicab driver, but he started a conversation anyway. Turned out he had a degree in economics from Strathclyde University and enough ‘O’, ‘A’ and ‘H’ levels to play a half decent game of Scrabble. That’s what twenty per cent unemployment does for you. The car was his and he hired the radio from the minicab firm for an extortionate sum of money and if he worked seven days a week he could just about keep his wife and kid in food and clothes. He told me what he earned in an average week and for a while I felt guilty because it was about the same as I got for one casual shift and that didn’t include the expense sheet I filled in every Monday. The guilt lasted about three seconds before I stamped on it and killed it. I was training myself to be hard, not to care, to be cynical and callous and tough like the seasoned hacks I went drinking with every night. I was getting there. We arrived in front of a soot-stained tenement block, four floors high with slates missing from the roof and ‘Celtic are crap’ spray-painted under a cracked window. Spelt right, too. Who said standards of education are falling?

  He pulled the handbrake handle up a good ten inches before the car stopped rolling forward and asked me if I wanted him to wait. I figured he could do with the money he’d get for waiting and the few extra quid for the run back to the office so I said yes. Yeah, I was real tough.

  Kemp’s name was under the bell on the right hand side of the third floor landing which smelt of stale piss and cabbage. Or stale cabbage and piss. I tried breathing through my mouth but it made no difference, Big Malky and his farting chair paled by comparison. I pushed the buzzer and it rasped like a dying wasp and then I heard the sound of two bolts being drawn and a latch turned. The door opened a full six inches before a metal chain snapped tight and a shirt button appeared at the point in the gap where I’d been expecting to see a head. I had to go up another button before I got to a neck and then a full-lipped mouth that should have belonged to a camel before passing a long blackhead-spotted nose on the way to a pair of coal black irises set in bloodshot whites. Kemp was a big one all right.

  ‘Mr Kemp?’ I asked, in a high squeaky voice that came from trying to keep my nostrils pinched against the stink in the hall.

  ‘Aye, what d’yer want?’ he asked.

  I told him I was from the paper and wanted to talk to him about the court case. He grunted and closed the door. Two minutes passed and I still hadn’t heard the chain being released so I rang the bell again.

  This time the chain was released and the door was flung open and I was looking at Kemp’s bared chest straining to get out of its white shirt covered in green shamrocks.

  ‘I’ll tell you this once, sonny,’ he said. ‘Get fucked.’ Then the door slammed shut in my face.

  ‘Yes, Mr Kemp, sorry Mr Kemp, I’ll be going now, Mr Kemp, sorry to have troubled you, Mr Kemp,’ I said to the door, feeling brave now that there was a two inch thick piece of timber between us. I even tugged my forelock. Scared? Me? Too bloody right.

  I climbed back into the cab and we were halfway back to the office when I figured that I ought to call Big Malky and give him the bad news. The third phone box hadn’t been vandalized or crapped in so it can’t have been there long. I got Malky on his direct line.

  ‘He doesn’t want to talk to me, Malky,’ I said.

  ‘I dare say he doesn’t, you soft bugger,’ he replied. Did I mention his witty repartee?

  ‘He looked like he might get a bit nasty,’ I said, trying not to make it sound like a whine.

  ‘Back you go,’ he said, and hung up.

  ‘Yes, Malky, no Malky, three bags full, Malky,’ I said to the buzzing in the receiver. It was obviously going to be my day for speaking to inanimate objects.

  We drove back to the tenement block and this time my feet felt like lead as I forced myself back up to the third floor. Seconds after I hit the buzzer the door was practically pulled off its hinges and then Kemp was out on the landing with me. He pushed me against a damp plaster wall and grabbed me by the throat with one giant paw. He shook me backwards and forwards in time with his voice.

  ‘Don’t … you … fucking … listen? … Leave … me … alone … or … I’ll … knock … your … fucking … head … off.’

  I felt sick and my head was ringing. I could just about focus but it was an effort and I wondered what would happen when he finally let go of my neck, would I be able to stand or would my legs prove to be as weak as they felt?

  ‘Do … you … understand?’ The final shake was the hardest and when I opened my eyes it was to see his broad back disappearing through the door which crashed behind him. ‘Yes, Mr Kemp,’ I managed to whisper but I decided to save my breath, bending double and massaging my aching throat.

  There was no point in ringing Malky, I knew exactly what he’d say, both to my face and as he put the phone down. Shit. This time the door opened on my third knock and I was halfway to hitting the wood for the fourth time when his fist caught me under the chin and sent me spinning backwards. The door slammed shut at the same time as I was slumping to the floor, gasping for breath. At least I hadn’t bitten my tongue or lost a tooth. It could have been worse. That’s what Big Malky told me anyway. And, you guessed it, I was to go back.

  ‘I don’t want to see your ugly face in this office without an interview with Kemp. Margaret’s already been on the phone to say that we’ve got the bastard bang to rights. All we need is a quote from him to tie the whole thing together. Get the fuck back in there.’

  ‘Yes Malky, no Malky, three bags full Malky,’ I said, but I wasn’t being brave because he’d hung up on me again. I was getting used to talking to a dead phone. There was only one thing to do. I needed the work so I neede
d this story. So I went back to the all-too-familiar door and pressed the buzzer and Kemp came out and smiled and put his arm around me and said ‘Jesus, kid, you’ve got guts’ and invited me in and poured me a whisky and told me his life story. Yeah, and if you believe that you’ll believe the bit where the cavalry came charging over the hill at the last moment or the one where the good guy gets the girl and the bad guy gets thrown into the slammer. I’d stopped leaving a tooth under my pillow years ago, and I knew full well that if I went anywhere near Kemp again all I’d get would be a sizeable dose of GBH. Malky had done me a big favour by letting me know that the tip we’d had was kosher, so I sat on the stone stairs oblivious to the foul smells that wafted around me and took my notebook out of my pocket. My throat ached like hell but I couldn’t stop smiling to myself as, in my very best T-line shorthand, I wrote down a one hundred per cent fictional interview with Mr Kemp, along the lines of ‘It’s a fair cop, you’ve got me bang to rights.’ It was the first time I’d made up quotes to get a story to stand up, but it wasn’t the last. I was surprised how easy it was. Ethics? It’s a county near Sussex, isn’t it?

  I got a joint by-line on the late edition splash and a slap on the back from Big Malky that rattled my teeth every bit as much as Kemp’s punch. The delightful Mr Kemp made a few threatening phone calls to the office and once had to be escorted from the building by a couple of security guards but there was nothing he could do – he didn’t have enough money to sue a newspaper, few people do.

  I slept and dreamt of Sally.

  I woke with a start and when I squinted at my watch it was noon so I guess it was the bloody cannon that had shocked me out of sleep. My head hurt, a lot, I couldn’t breathe through my nose and my stomach felt as if it had been used as a trampoline by a couple of Russian shot-putters.

  I suppose the fight could have had something to do with it but it was hard to tell because that’s how I normally felt after a really hard night’s drinking. I liked to think of the previous evening’s encounter as a fight rather than a beating. It made my ego feel a little less bruised, though it didn’t do much for my nose or stomach. I tried to sit up and the pain brought back memories of the kick in the back so I stayed where I was and listened to Howard snoring on the neighbouring bed. He looked a lot older in sleep, I found it difficult to imagine him frolicking with a young Thai girl, even flat on his back his private parts seemed practically inaccessible. I tried visualizing all the positions, all the angles, but I couldn’t see any way that he’d be able to achieve copulation. I reached over to the bedside phone and ordered coffee and orange juice. A loud snore reminded me that Howard might want breakfast so I ordered the same for him.