Saturday's child ci-1

by Ray Banks

  My head starts feeling heavy, then the fear of coma spikes me with adrenaline. I put my hands out into the mud, sinking them deep. I try to push myself to my knees. It takes a couple of attempts, and when I get there, my head’s thumping. Keep my eyes narrowed, because the world’s going to get bright soon, I know it. It might be dark here, but the headlights of oncoming cars feel like they’re burning my eyes right out of their sockets.

  I concentrate on the road, lit up, raindrops like stars. They burst as my focus shifts.

  And something catches my eye. It shines white against the tarmac. I pull myself closer on my hands and knees.

  A tooth.

  That tooth.

  I finally got the bastard out.

  And it hurts to laugh, but I do it anyway.

  PART THREE

  Blue Skies for Everyone

  Parole is granted on the basis of reports by prison and probation staff, on the nature of your offences, your home circumstances, your plans for release and your behaviour in prison.

  An Irish guy with a soft voice gave me a book about the American penal system.

  ‘Read this,’ he said. ‘But I want it back. It’s part of my library.’

  I read it in a day.

  Six months before the Parole Eligibility Dates and thereafter annually you will be asked whether you wish to apply for parole.

  This book was about the Depression in America, made up of all these first-hand accounts of convicts over there. And they were fucked from the start. See, these guys had no education, they were mostly black, and had fuck all in the way of civil rights. No money in your pocket, you’re sent down for vagrancy. You stay too long in one place, you’re loitering.

  Four months before your FED you will have the opportunity to see the reports and to make written representations stating why you believe you should get parole and what you will do on release.

  God help you if you wanted a little action. The girls might have been pros, but they were being employed by the law to snare these guys. You got drunk, thought that girl with the come-to-bed eyes actually wanted a slice of you, the next thing you knew you were behind bars.

  Three months before FED you will be seen by a member of the Parole Board who will write a report for the Board. You can see and comment on the report. He will be a kindly-looking guy in a beige shirt, white collar. He won’t ask you if you feel like you’ve been rehabilitated, because that’s a bullshit question.

  In ‘30s America, convicts were leased out as slave labour to wealthy landowners. When their sentences were up, they were pressured into signing contracts they couldn’t read.

  Then they were slaves for another ten years. Couldn’t leave, either. Not unless they wanted armed guards with hounds on their tail.

  Two months before FED – a panel of Board members will consider your case. You will not attend. They will focus primarily on the risk to public of a further offence being committed were you released, although they will consider the benefits of early release under supervision.

  A Glaswegian called Harry Beggs collared me when the news filtered along the spur. He threw an arm around my shoulder and said quietly, ‘Don’t think about it, son. You think about it, you’ll go nuts instead of flying, ken? Dinnae let them clip yer wings before you get a chance to use ‘em.’

  I didn’t, which is why I read so much in those final months. But it weighed on me. When I heard I’d been approved on condition that I report to Paulo’s club, it felt like my stomach was lined with lead. This was what freedom was about, moving from one cage to another. When I gave the Irish guy his book back, he said, ‘The Irish are the niggers of Europe.’

  ‘What about the Scots?’

  ‘The Scots are the Irish who could swim.’

  Bloke had an answer for everything.

  When Paulo came by before that final hearing, I was in no state for his usual bullshit. We argued hard. Part of me wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, that I’d wait until the last moment of my sentence before I agreed to work for him.

  We fell into silence. I focused on the tattoo on Paulo’s arm.

  A blue heart with three names: Mam, Dad and Keith.

  It was fear that kept me inside, but a greater fear that made me back down and agree to his terms.

  Back then, I was my own worst enemy.

  Nothing’s changed.

  FORTY-TWO

  It’s a long night and a longer limp back to civilisation. Or Sunderland, which is the next best thing. Road signs point the way north, and the freezing wind lets me know I’m getting there. As much as I want to slump into a ditch by the side of the road and sleep for forty hours, I know I can’t. Things to be done, loose ends flapping in the breeze.

  So I follow the signs along the side of the road, a constant whoosh of cars flying by. I watch the night crack into morning, grey skies above. Dishrag clouds. More rain. I let a downpour wash away the self-pity, replaced it with anger once I started walking, and now all I have are images of Stokes, George and Alison. The rage keeps me limping, even though every bone in my body wants to rest. Muttering to myself, it’s no wonder people don’t give me a ride. Well, shit on ‘em. If they don’t fancy giving a lift to a stranger covered in blood and mud and piss, then that’s their loss. I could have paid them well, made their day with a stack of cash, but no.

  The great British public, otherwise known as It’s None Of My Fucking Business.

  Another thing to keep me going: the promise of a service station. The signs have been pointing to one for the past six miles, and I’m desperate enough to believe in them. Anything to get out of the cold for a while, get myself cleaned up and rested before I work out my next move.

  When I finally get to the service station, it’s in the arse end of nowhere and somewhere in my battered head I wonder if it’s the same one I passed when I drove up here. I hobble into the carpark, lean against the side of an articulated lorry and catch my breath. I’ve resisted smoking until now, but after the walk, I think I’ve deserved it. I light up an Embassy and break into a nasty, painful cough.

  I ditch the cigarette. I haven’t healed enough to enjoy it, but it kills me to see it wasted, so I move on.

  Into the rest area, past the blaring arcade machines and into the Granary Restaurant. The woman behind the counter looks like she just caught a nostril full of something rancid.

  It’s probably me. I make the mistake of talking to her, and her top lip pushes further into her nose.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. But the toilets are for customers only’

  “I just want to clean myself up, love.’

  ‘And I’m sorry, but the facilities are for customers.’

  ‘I’m a customer.’ I look around, grab a muffin wrapped in plastic and slam it onto the counter. ‘There you go.’

  She looks down at the muffin. When I follow her gaze, I notice the muffin’s all mashed up. And when I look up again, she’s staring at me like I’m a psycho.

  ‘How much?’ I say.

  ‘Three pounds.’

  ‘For a fuckin’ muffin?’

  Her face crinkles. One step from calling the police or hammering a panic strip. I root around in my jacket, pull out my wallet. Stokes and his mates are a bunch of amateurs: from the looks of the wad in my wallet, they didn’t even have the sense to rob me. I hand the woman a tenner. When she takes it, there’s dirt on the note.

  ‘Have you anything smaller?’ she says.

  ‘Is testing my fuckin’ patience part of your job description?’

  “I just asked ‘

  ‘Keep the change. Call it a tip. Customer service like yours, you deserve one.’

  She points to a sign for the toilets and I drag myself across the restaurant. I manage to stun a couple of kids in the process. They were happy enough throwing their breakfast around, but one sniff of me seems to have killed their appetites stone dead. As I push open the door to the toilets, I hear the mother say, ‘Don’t stare.’

  Listen to your mother, kids.
/>
  It’s too bright in the gents. I think about knocking one of the lights out with my shoe, but I’m too knackered to do it. I move to the basin, feel a wave of nausea rise and crash in my gut. Run the cold water and splash some on my face. I watch the dried blood streak and feel my cheeks go numb. It looks like my face is melting. My fingers brush stubble as I wipe the excess water away and the bruise on my jaw aches.

  What a fucking state.

  I grab a fistful of paper towels, run the hot water and start dabbing at the cuts around my eye. It’s no good, though. I can’t focus properly.

  Count them off: a battered nose, swollen; major damage to the cheek and my right eye; the left eye swelling in sympathy; a nasty purple bruise where I got kicked in the throat.

  Oh, there’s plenty to pay back here. And I haven’t even checked below the collar.

  Back in the restaurant, I don’t get as many stares. I grab my muffin from the counter, give a cracked smile to the woman and make my way out to the phones. I have a plan. But it requires equipment, and it requires that I get some rest first.

  But I can’t phone Mo without his number. And there’s nobody else I can trust up here.

  Well, there’s one.

  I feed a handful of change into the payphone and listen to it ring.

  ‘Donna, it’s me.’

  ‘Cal. How are you? How’s Manchester?’

  ‘I’m not in Manchester.’

  ‘What’s up with your voice? Sounds like you had the shit kicked out of you.’

  ‘That’ll be because I had the shit kicked out of me.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’ll live. I think. Look, Donna, I really need some help. Can you come and pick me up?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at the services south of Sunderland, I think. I’m near Sunderland. I saw a sign for Darlington, too. I don’t know.

  I’m near somewhere, but I can’t see it.’

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘I’m calm. It’s been a rough night, that’s all.’ I close my eyes for a second and feel my legs start to buckle. Snap awake.

  ‘Please, Donna. I swear. This’ll be the last time.’

  ‘Give me an hour,’ she says.

  I wander out into the lobby of the station and watch the carpark. Another hour and I’ll be out of here. And then what?

  Knocking me down and beating the shit out of me stank of desperation, like Stokes didn’t know what to do with me.

  He’s just another scared amateur trying to make things better but fucking them up worse.

  Rob Stokes, playing the hard arse, the proper gangster.

  What he’s seen in hip-hop videos and Al Pacino movies. All posture with none of the balls to back him up. I’m working for the real thing here, and whatever movie Stokes has been watching, it just bubbles and flares on the screen. He’s not living in the real world.

  Uncle Morris Tiernan has been linked to the deaths of over thirty-seven men in his career. Some of them used to be mates. And Tiernan hasn’t done a day behind bars for any of them.

  Rob Stokes has no idea who he’s fucking with.

  He’s about to find out, though.

  I bite into the toffee muffin and feel like throwing up. Drop the muffin onto the ground, put my head between my legs and spend all my time trying not to pass out. The sound of an engine makes me look up. Donna gets out of her car and looks at me with a mixture of disgust and pity on her face.

  When I get into her Fiesta, she tells me to open the window.

  ‘You’re minging,’ she says.

  “I know,’ I say. ‘And thanks for this.’

  ‘No problem,’ she says.

  And for a moment, I actually believe her.

  FORTY-THREE

  I couldn’t fuckin’ stomach talking to them cunts. I sat in the corner of Dobsons by meself, had a large double brandy.

  Them bastards was useless, fuckin’ useless. Bottlers.

  I said we did summat to Innes, they looked at us like I was going mental.

  ‘Enough with the speed, Mo,’ said Rossie.

  ‘Aye, c’mon, Mo. You’re off your tits,’ said Baz. ‘We did his car. That could be enough, right?’

  ‘His car? His fuckin’ car? What’s the matter with youse cunts? Where’s your balls?’ And I were raging in that van, felt like knocking both their skulls off the bonnet until they went limp. And maybe it were the speed what made us itchy, but it weren’t just that, couldn’t have been. I looked in their faces and I knew that them bastards weren’t up for the real deal.

  Aye, it were alright if you needed someone cut or knocked about, but you talked about killing a fucker, then they shit it.

  Didn’t mind blood on their hands, unless it were the last drop spilled. Leave that to some other poor bastard like me.

  I weren’t given up. Nah, I just had to factor in their cowardice. Just like everything, man. You want summat done, you got to do it yourself.

  Always been the same. Back when we was kids, I were always the one with the ideas. Rossie and Baz, they was followers. Fuckin’ sheep. But now I were drinking, slowing, I realised summat: they wasn’t sheep no more, they was pawns.

  They did like I said, else they’d end up the same way as Stokes were gonna be. I had me plans already drawn up for that cunt. And Innes. And Alison.

  Alison most of all. Who the fuck did she think she were, eh? Little bitch, little fuclcin’ slag bitch, all playing the grownup one minute and spreading for any fuck and then sucking on a wowwy-pop the next. I didn’t mind when she up and said she wanted nowt to do with us. Nah, I didn’t mind. Bitch were fuckin’ pregnant, anyways. So I just gave her a fuckin’ kick in the gut and left it at that.

  Homemade abortion, right?

  Nah. Didn’t kick the bitch hard enough.

  And I kept me mouth shut and so did Alison, ‘cause if Dad found out it were me what stuck it to her, we’d both be out.

  Alison’s mam was a whore, and her little girl were just the same, but she were still a little girl and Dad always liked her more than he liked me. I must’ve reminded him of the fuckin’ shack-job what spawned us or summat ‘cause when I were a kid I used to look at meself in the mirror and I never looked a bit like me dad.

  I drunk the brandy right down, like a warm hand on me gut. I’d bought a pack of Rothmans at the Paki shop and I lit one now, got out me seat and went to the bar. Got a pint of Guinness and brought it back to me table. You smoke like The Man, you drink like The Man, you become The Man.

  Rossie tried to say summat to us, but I ignored him.

  Slipped behind me table and took a sip of the black stuff.

  This were it. Like I’d ripped me dad’s heart out and ate it, wore his skin like a fuckin’ suit.

  All I’d wanted to do were take the fucker out. That were all.

  Simple operation. Nobody would’ve missed Innes. Way I heard it, he had family in Jocksville, but he never talked to them no more.

  Maybe Paulo would’ve said summat.

  Fuck, I didn’t know no more. It might’ve been a risk worth taking, like. But then maybe it were the billy and the fuckin’ pills mangling me head and not letting us think right. And I had to think right.

  But what the fuck, eh? Top and bottom were that because them bottling cunts didn’t let us do what I wanted, we lost the bastard. We’d swung by the hotel, I went inside, asked, ‘Did Mr Innes check out yet?’

  The receptionist said that she couldn’t give out that information.

  ‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I’m a mate of his. We was out last night on the piss and we lost him somewhere in town. I just wanted to make sure he got in alright, know what I mean? I’m his best man. He’s getting married. I’m his best man.’

  Fuckin’ speed.

  But she didn’t give up nowt.

  So we was stuck here. All I could do was wait. Hoped the fucker hadn’t spotted us and hoped to fuck he gave us the call when he were supposed to.

  FORTY-FOUR

>   The bath water is a notch too hot for comfort, but it feels like it’s easing some of the tension away. I’m laying back, my head on a blue flannel, staring at the shower that overhangs the bath. It smells good in here, despite mypresence. Donna’s bathroom is full of wee wicker baskets overflowing with soap. I’m playing with one shaped like an apple. Give it a sniff, and it’s uncanny.

  Close my eyes, and I’d swear it was the real thing. I half think about taking a bite out of it, but then I’d have to finish it. I don’t think I could explain a half-eaten soap.

  I can’t stay here. I think I’ve gone the limit with Donna’s hospitality, might have even crossed the line with this one, especially considering she dumped me twenty-four hours ago. My clothes are being washed right now and once they’re dry and I’m changed, I’ll be out that door and back in the game. Maybe pay her or something. I don’t know the etiquette. But I can’t afford to stay around. My body might be relaxed in the water, but my head’s all over the place. Every time I close my eyes I can feel the rain on my face.

  Someone’s going to get proper fucked for this one, but I have to get out of this bath first.

  The aches aren’t gone completely, and my back feels twisted out of shape. I don’t realise how bad it is until I try to get up and I can’t. Panic turns the water ice cold. I try to move my legs. They don’t shift, not even a ripple.

  Christ. I’m paralysed.

  I grab at the side of the bath and try to pull myself out, but the strength has long gone and I drop back, splashing water onto the floor. I’ve seized up from the waist down. My fingers hurt from gripping the bath and my head starts thumping with a full-on panic attack.

  Shit isn’t the word.

  There’s a knock at the bathroom door. ‘Cal?’

  ‘Donna, I…’ What the hell am I going to say?

  ‘You okay in there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. “I can’t move.’ The door clicks. ‘No, don’t come in. I mean it.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘Can you call someone? Just don’t come in.’