My arse were stuck in Mangel and all. My arse and the rest of us. ‘I done you a favour, mate,’ I whispers. ‘I done you the biggest favour a feller can do. An’ you didn’t even say ta.’
I took off when the nurses started pointing at us and whispering to each other. Wig felt askew so I looked in a shop window and set it straight. I were fucking starving so I headed down to Alvin’s. I thought about Hoppers and this new feller on the door. They was trying to get rid of us, clear as day. I risks me life to fetch his doofer back and Fenton gives us the boot.
‘Kebab in yer chilli sauce, sir?’
‘Aye, but go easy on the rabbit food, eh?’
‘Right you is, Blakey.’
‘Fuck sake, why do every cunt think I’m Blake? I don’t look nuthin’ like him. Look at me fuckin’ hair, for starters.’
‘Right you is, Blakey. Nice hair.’
I took me scran and walked off down the road. Down by the meat market there were an old bench covered in pigeon shite. I dusted it off best I could and parked my arse. It were a funny spot for a bench, facing as it did the high wall round back of the market. I recalled sitting there once or twice as a nipper, like as not bunking off school and at a loose end. Always seemed to be trading or slaughtering going on back in them days. I’d sit there and listen to the drone of the auctioneer on market days. He’d talk so fast it were hard to keep up with him most times. Plus half his words was drowned out by the bellow of cattle in the killing shop next door. After a while I’d stop hearing him and just listen to them cows. It were a hell of a sound, let me tell you. A bit hard on the ear holes at first, but once you got yourself accustomed it came across almost like music. They knew they was up for the chop, them cattle did, and this were all the noise they had left to make. I’d sit there on me tod and listen to it, letting it sink right into me bones. They wasn’t crying, see. They was singing. Singing cos not five yard away were a feller with a poleaxe waiting to dispatch em from Mangel and this here Earth.
I thought about the folk I’d killed. I’d poleaxed em all, for one reason or another. And I’d paid for em. I’d been paying for em all me life it seemed, what with guilt and feeling out of sorts and running round Mangel like a horsefly around a nag’s arse, trying to cover me tracks and sort it all out.
And for why? Why were I shelling out for doing em a favour? The feller with the poleaxe in the slaughtering yard never paid. They fucking paid him. He sent the bastards to a better place and got his reward for it.
So why ought I to pay?
Well, I can’t answer that. But I can tell you summat else.
I weren’t paying no more.
I looked at the market again. There were no singing cows in there now. Market these days were five or six fellers in flat caps standing round an old bull. Slaughtering yard were hardly worth the space. Finney were one of the handful they had left working there, and he only went in now and then. Farms had been shutting down steady for years, and the folks who worked on em had up and moved here. There’s Mangel for you.
Town full of sprout pickers and shite shovellers.
Sun were getting low, and I could hear voices coming up the alley from the river. Lads, out for a night on the pop. I screwed up me kebab wrapper, lobbed it over me shoulder, and got walking again. I weren’t afraid of no one. I reckon you knows that by now. But I knew how I looked, sitting there all alone in me wig and sunglasses. I looked like a cunt, and a bunch of lads up for a laugh can’t very well walk past a cunt without making summat of it. No, I weren’t in the market for aggro just yet.
Weren’t long before I would be, mind.
18
I hadn’t long to wait. I’d only been there a few minutes when he pulled up in a muck brown Viva that were white underneath if I recalled it right. No pride, that Mick Runter. How he got my job were beyond us. Fenton must have been taking the piss.
He got out and slammed the door behind him, then stood there shaking the cramp out his skinny legs and yawning. As he strutted past the stinking doorway where I were hid I stepped out.
‘Oh, all right, Blake.’
‘All right, Mick.’ I twocked him with the wrench.
Piece of piss.
He went down nice and clean. Just like they always does if you hits em hard enough. I dragged him into the shadows and set about swapping kit with him. His togs was fucking tight. I couldn’t do the trousers up proper but they had to do. I didn’t have no mirror nor nothing, but I looked at the brick wall and saw meself in that. I looked dapper, I reckoned, despite the tight kit. And when you looks good you feels good. I winked at meself and laughed. It were good to be head doorman again. It were good to be Blake again. I went round the front.
Rachel turned the colour of washed tripe when she clocked us. ‘Know what you needs,’ I says, pulling up a stool and nodding at my choice of lager. ‘Bit of blusher round yer cheekbones. Our Beth always got the blusher out when she were feelin’ peaky.’
‘Blake…’ she says. I nodded at the lager again. She got a glass and started pulling. ‘Blake, ain’t you…’
‘Head doorman? Aye. Too fuckin’ right I is.’
‘But the coppers…’
I put the glass to me lips and didn’t let up until it were empty. I couldn’t recall ever having a nicer beverage in all me borned days.
‘Blake, the coppers is after you. You can’t come in here.’
‘Some bastard’s gotta man the door, ain’t he?’ I says, struggling to get the words out between belches.
‘You knows we got someone in for that.’
‘Don’t look like he’s turnin’ up, do it. And Mick Runter? Why the fuck him, fuck sake?’
‘No one else applied.’
‘Scared of steppin’ in me boots.’
‘Er…summat like that. What’s you smilin’ like that for?’
‘Smilin’, am I? Just happy, I reckon. Life’s a laugh, and Mangel’s the place to live it in.’
She glared at us, pulling us another pint. ‘Have to make this me last un for now,’ I says. ‘On duty.’ I necked the lager and went out back to see Fenton. Doors neeeding manning up front and all, but I had a feeling Fenton needed a bit of buttering up, what with me not getting the doofer for him yet.
Dunno what I’d been expecting, but it weren’t what I found. Fenton were sat at his desk, phone in one hand, scribbling on a bit of paper with the other. A businessman at work, you might say. Both hands still had a bit of strapping on em but nothing suggesting the kind of fucking up the Muntons had done him. The cigar lay smouldering in the big ashtray on his desk. It were a big fuck-off one like you don’t often see round these parts. He put the phone down and picked the cigar up, taking a nice long pull on it.
‘All right,’ I says.
‘Evening, Blake.’ From just them two words I could tell he’d be hard work. In one of his moods, weren’t he. Me poor heart sank. I didn’t have the energy to pull him out of it. ‘Take a seat,’ he says.
This weren’t right. Weren’t just his moodiness neither. Him being moody weren’t unheard of. It were the other stuff. Last time I’d seen him he’d been a wreck. Fucking desperate one and all. But now he looked all right. He opened a wooden box and offered us a stogie. I took one and sparked it up with the lighter he offered us. He hadn’t looked us in the eye yet.
‘Blake. There’s some things we need to sort out.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘Yes. First of all, what are you doing here?’
I asked him what he meant by that. I were Blake, head doorman of—
‘That’s not true, Blake. We’ve got a new doorman. Mick, his name is. You’d like him. He’s starting tonight, though I’m not sure where he’s got to…’
‘You ain’t got no new doorman. I’m the doorman.’
He clocked us proper for the first time. ‘What have you done to Mick?’
‘Who says I done summat?’
‘You’re wanted by the police, Blake. Your picture is plastered all over the paper.
You’re a…’ His cigar had gone out. He lit it again. There were no point him going on as he were. He knew the score as well as I did. I were doorman. Head doorman. Some things you just can’t go tampering with.
‘I ain’t forgot our deal, Fenton.’
‘Deal?’ He looked at us like I’d just flobbed on his carpet. His lower lip were quivering and his nostrils was going in and out like a pair of bellows. ‘Well I have forgotten it,’ he says. You could tell he were trying to sound hard. It didn’t work. ‘I have forgotten about our…“deal”.’
‘Woss matter, Fenton? Gaggin’ for us to get yer doofer back you was, last time I—’
‘Yeah, I was.’ He got up and went and stood in the corner near the window. ‘But when I asked you I didn’t realise you were the cunt who—’
‘Hey now, mind yer tongue.’
‘—who stole it in the first place. You and your cohorts.’ He were yelling at us now. His yelling voice were all shrill and warbly, and I wished he’d do my ears the honour of shutting his cake hole.
‘Well I dunno where you heared that, Fenton. I ain’t…’ I trailed off. Not cos I’d forgot what I were saying, mind. I were looking at the marble ashtray on his desk. It were the one Lee had used on his fingers. But that weren’t the clever bit. Clever bit were the two fag butts in it. Regals, they was. Fenton only smoked cigars. I wondered if Mick Runter smoked Regals. I doubted it. Couldn’t think of no one smoked Regals in Mangel. Except…
‘You what?’ I says. Just cos a feller ain’t listening don’t mean he ain’t aware he’s missed summat. ‘What d’you say?’
‘I said,’ he says, all slow like I were thick. ‘I said I know you did it because someone told me. And I believe him. Want to know why I believe him? Because he gave me back what you stole. The doofer, as you call it.’
‘Who?’ I says, trying to get the Regals out of my head. ‘Who the fuck?’
But it were his turn to not listen now. I heard the door open behind us and Fenton stood up, saying: ‘Who the fuck…?’
The thing about getting coshed from behind is you don’t know about it. Not even when you come to, pushing yourself off the floor and spitting the taste of rusty nails out of your gob. Too much lager is your first thought. Too much lager tasting like rusty nails. Only later does you put two and two together and come up with a cosh.
I gold hold of the chair I’d been sitting on and hauled meself up, putting two and two together and coming up with the rusty lager still. My skull were vibrating, which were a bit of a clue. But when me eyes came together and I could see what were happening across the desk, I forgot about skulls and sums and lager and the lot of it.
‘No,’ Fenton were saying, sat down behind his desk with his face bleeding and his eyes weeping. A feller were behind him, dressed in black. It were that feller from the big city. You know, cunt asking Rache about Hoppers t’other day and suggesting I were a shite doorman. He were steadying Fenton’s head with one arm and holding a blade to his throat with the other. Over in the corner the safe door were hanging open.
I clocked all this in the space of a couple of seconds, still hanging off the back of the chair with my head vibrating. Then the feller jerked the blade and opened Fenton’s neck, spilling blood across the desk and causing Fenton’s hair to fall clean off his head. A little jet of the stuff squirted sideways, arced a bit through the air, and sprayed one of his poncey pictures on the wall. It pumped out like that for a while, a red rainbow across one side of the room. Fenton’s eyes was rolling, mouth opening and closing. Then his blood pressure eased off and the jet slowed to a trickle. His shaved head still had a bit of tape atop it for holding the wig in place. It were odd to see him without his poncey hair. But once you got over the shock it were all right. Better than the wig anyhow. Why some fellers wears hairpiece I never will understand.
Didn’t have much time to think about it before the feller had me face in the carpet. He pinned us down with his hefty frame and poked the blade into the side of me neck. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t do the same to you,’ he growled into me left lughole. ‘Go on, I’m waitin’. Ain’t waitin’ all night, neither. No? Ain’t got a reason? Right…’
‘Eh,’ I says, mouth full of rug. ‘Hold up a sec, mate.’ I tried to twist my head round to see him, but he pressed the metal into me neck all the harder, which hurt a lot, I can tell you. ‘All right. Fuckin’ calm it, right? No need to lose yer rag.’
‘One reason. Ten. Nine.’
‘Me birthday, ennit.’
‘Eight. Seven.’
‘I got kids. Eight of the fuckers.’
‘Six. Five.’
‘Coppers is on their way, you know.’
‘Four. Three.’
‘Er…’
‘Two.’
‘I’m Royston Blake, head doorman of Hoppers Wine Bar & Bistro, and you can’t kill us.’ I shut me eyes tight and hoped for the best.
He didn’t get off us, but the blade didn’t go in no farther neither, which pleased us no end. Then his hulking body started bouncing up and down a bit, shoving the wind out of us in little bursts. I frowned and wondered what manner of hanky panky he were up to, when finally he made a barking sound and it dawned on us that he were laughing, in his own way.
‘Doorman,’ he says, barking and bouncing. After a bit he got off us, using the back of my head as a push-off. ‘Go on and get up, doorman. Let’s see you.’
I rolled over. Me ribs hurt pretty bad. I tried to take a deep un, but they kept screaming once I got so much in. ‘Who the fuck’s you?’ I says soon as I could manage it.
He were sat on one of the plastic chairs on the side of the room that weren’t covered in Fenton’s blood. He started cleaning his nails with the blade—a lock knife with a thin shaft and black handle. Jutting out the side pocket of his jacket were the chewed corner of a little brown box. He laughed again a bit, shoulders going up and down like a pair of humping cows. ‘I was a doorman for a bit when I was younger,’ he says after he’d calmed down. ‘Not for long, mind. No one stays doorman for long where I come from. You either move on to better things or you end up an old security guard with his Thermos and his fuckin’ Woodbines. Nah, pal. That ain’t for me.’
It were a bit odd, watching him talking and picking his nails and Fenton sat behind him, throat slashed, trap open, eyes on the ceiling. But the feller seemed happy. And it made me a bit happy to see him so at ease.
‘Don’t a doorman got career opportunities round here? Good doorman down our way gets noticed. He’s useful, innit. Soon he’s in demand for a bit of action, spot of enforcement or problem solving or summink more his level than standin’ at a door lettin’ pissed-up slag-rakers and leather-faced mingers inside. Ain’t that the way round here?’
‘Well,’ I says, getting up carefully. I glanced at Fenton to make sure he weren’t listening, conversation taking a turn for the sensitive and all. But I knew he weren’t. No man could lose that much sap and keep ticking. ‘Matter of fact,’ I went on, ‘I have done a bit of…action, d’you call it? Aye, I done a bit o’ that, but I never took to it.’
‘So a doorman you’ll stay.’
‘S’all right with me. A doorman I were borned and a doorman I will stay. I likes the sound o’ that.’
‘Sounds all right, dunnit. But who says you’ll stay a doorman?’
‘Eh?’
‘Me, ennit. I’m the one says yay or nay, all right? And right now my head says nay. Know why?’
I slid my hand inside me jacket, all casual like. ‘Reckon I don’t.’
‘See, that’s the trouble with all you sprout pickers—no brains. ‘Stead of brains you got turnips. You walked in on us, dincha. I ain’t gonna let a bloke see me do a job and go on breathin’.’
I had me finger and thumb around the top end of the gun barrel. If I moved my arm in any more he’d notice for surely. My eyes was flitting between him and the box in his pocket. I let him rabbit on, waiting my moment.
‘That’
s the difference between you and me, innit. I’m a professional. You’re a turnip. I cover my tracks and get a job done clean. You go round messin’ with folks you don’t know and gettin’ yourself in the shit big time. And for what? Cos you don’t like a bloke’s face? Cos he makes you feel small? Fuckin’—’
He’d stopped and gave us his full and undivided. He nigh on had to, me having a gun on him and all. That fucking shut him up, didn’t it. Until he started smiling.
I were pointing a bloody monkey wrench at him, weren’t I.
‘Don’t shoot,’ he says, putting his hands up and barking like an uppity spaniel. Then he jumped up and stood legs apart, tossing the knife hand to hand without taking his eyes off us. I reached me left arm behind us and tried the door. He’d locked it, the fucker. He lunged at us.
I jumped sideways, clattering a filing cabinet and giving meself a dead leg. I limped on around the desk to the window. He stayed by the door, watching and laughing. I laughed and all as I pulled out Mandy’s pistol. Good old Mandy.
‘Who’s the perfeshnal now, eh?’ I says. ‘Who’s got the turnip on his head now? Eh? Eh?’
He aimed the knife to lob at us. Looked like he knew how to do it and all. ‘Put the fuckin’ weapon down or I bury this in your throat,’ he says, not moving his lips.
Well, I had no choice, did I. I were a professional, see. I didn’t give a runny shite about him killing Fenton. But I wouldn’t stand for no flash cunt from the big city coming down here and likening my head to a turnip.
I pulled the trigger.
The gun were bust or summat. Must have been. It went pop and that, but sort of whipped out of my hand and flew under the desk. Fucking firearms. I hadn’t never seen a monkey wrench do that.
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