by J. Thorn
A minute later and Joe came out, dumped the bag on the bar and looked at the man.
"There is your money, I never asked for it."
"No I am aware that you did not ask for it. The money in there is equal to how much you must place into the bag to repay your debt to us."
"I don’t have the money."
Joe put a hand on the bar, his pipe nowhere in sight.
"The agreement was for longer than a few months."
"At our discretion," said the gentleman.
"At your discretion? I expected a little more time than a few months."
"My employer has decided that your debt to us must be paid back immediately."
"I said I don’t have the money. I need more time."
"This guy giving you a hard time Joe?" asked Ryan, who without my noticing was halfway across the room heading towards our guest.
"No Ryan. Leave it be, it all right."
"I’m quite serious Mr Dean. Your debt must be paid this minute."
"Hey didn’t you hear the man? He said that he doesn’t have the…"
What happened next was so fast, I’m not sure I even saw who shot who until my brain caught up with me. Our visitor spun round, his hand raised, a gun held firmly in it. Then Ryan flew halfway across the room, most of his head vanishing in that instant, splattering the windows, furniture and the back wall with blood. I'd barely managed to move out of the way, let alone think about doing something about it, when Joe’s hand came up from behind the bar, revealing a shotgun that was already cocked. Our visitor had just enough time to turn back round to face us and give Joe a resigned look, when most of the upper half of his body disintegrated in the shotgun blast.
When the dust and noise settled I poked my head up from the bar, where I had ducked when Joe’s shotgun went off, looked around and saw the destruction of the room.
Tad crouched over the body of Ryan, and then stood up. "Jesus!" he bellowed, from the corner. He had ducked down on the floor when the shooting had started, and from the chunks missing from the top of the table he had hidden under, and the splinters of wood that had showered that corner of the room, he had barely escaped injury himself.
"What the hell is going on?"
I saw him looking down at the floor, and my vision skipped over to Ryan, who was on the floor barely three feet from him, the visitor's body sprawled across the floor halfway across the room.
"He’s dead," Tad looked pale. "They’re both dead."
"You calm down now Tad," said Joe, turning to face me. "You going to help me clean up this mess?"
I nodded. And that’s what we did.
Joe closed the place up, pulled all the curtains shut, and the three of us set to making our story as best we could, deciding that Ryan and our visitor had killed each other.
Soon the police were crawling all over the place, but our story seemed to be fine with them, and there were no conflicting stories to say anything different, I think that anyone that had heard the shots probably just ignored them, and most folks prefer to pretend stuff just doesn’t happen. To be honest, I don’t think they gave a damn. They seemed glad to know that the incident was over and that apart from getting the bodies removed and the whole cleared up, they didn’t have a reason to stay.
They had James Alderman, the local undertaker, come over, and between us we cleaned up the place and boxed the bodies, which were then taken off in a police van to god knows where. James didn’t say anything, but I could tell from his expression that he wasn’t entirely convinced of our story. He never questioned it though, and he never said a word to anyone, not that I know of anyway.
By the time it was all cleaned up, and it was just me and Joe in the bar, it was nearly morning. I picked up our dead visitor’s other weapon, a shotgun, which Joe had hidden out in the storeroom while the police had been there, and went to place it under the bar in the card den. I don’t know why I noticed it. Maybe it was some strange instinct that made me examine it.
There, marked clearly on the barrel of the small cut-off shotgun, was a symbol I recognised. It was a small silver circle with the block letters HOLCROFT.
The police came back a few times after that, different ones, always asking the same questions over and over, and always seeming glad to leave. Things like this happened all over London in those days, at least in places like Gallowshill they did. I wouldn’t imagine any of those police officers liked visiting the place very much.
They didn’t find the shotgun. We hid it away in the beams above the card den, just where we would hide nearly everything that Joe dealt in that place. The gap in the ceiling was so well hidden that most folks didn’t even suspect it was there.
After the police had made all the investigations they could, and grilled me with questions for the tenth time, they gave up trying to find out what really happened. No one was saying anything. I think the chief investigator of the case, a big man called Leyton, or something like that, had a clue that there was more to the story than was being told to him, but he soon got bored. There were enough murders in that part of London for him not to care too much about yet another bar killing.
For some reason Joe decided that I should keep the shotgun, if I wanted it. So I did, and I put it under my bed upstairs in the small back room that I had made my home, just above the pantry and next to Joe’s room. I gave it a good clean-up, took off the Holcroft mark and threw it away. One last link to my past life removed and one more that I didn’t have to remember.
We thought that was the last we were going to hear about it. The dead man was the one that Joe had dealt with to borrow the money in the first place, and it turned out he was the proprietor of a hard-arm lending company in Soho, one that the police had been itching to shut down for years.
Of course things don’t always turn out how you hope. No one had considered that the lender had a partner.
About two weeks later, while Joe was out dealing with some business, and I was minding an empty bar, waiting for a delivery, a young boy, no older than I had been the day I floated away down the Thames and away from the auction warehouse, walked in the back door, looking a little frightened but hopeful at the same time.
He was shorter than I had been at that age, and a little fatter. I guess he knew where to get his work from, or he had a good master. It turned out that 'good' wasn’t the appropriate word.
He edged forward, looking at me sheepishly, as I cleaned glasses with a bar cloth.
"Scuse me sir."
"Yes boy?"
"Are you Mr Weldon sir?"
"Who is asking?"
"Um, Mr Dean said I could find you here."
"Mr Dean?"
"Mr Joseph Dean sir, he said that I could find you here."
"Ok you’ve found me, now what does Joe need with a messenger?"
"Um, he said that if I asked you to take the leather bag to the old swimming pool, he would pay me a shilling."
"Really? A whole shilling, just to pass a message on to me."
"Yes sir."
"Now, that seems a strange thing to ask, don’t you think?"
"Um, yes sir. But he said that the gentlemen with him would kill him if you didn’t take it."
My heart sank at that moment, and I’m sure that to that young kid my face must have drained of all colour, because I could see his expression change from tentative to ready to run. I don’t suppose he wanted to be delivering the message any more than I wanted to take that bag to the swimming pool.
"Who was with him boy?" I asked.
He scratched his head and frowned.
"Four men, I think, sir. One of them was really, really big as well. They all had guns, all but the big man I think."
"Right. And they have Joe in the swimming pool?"
"Yes, he is all tied up and lying on the floor in the bottom of the pool. I think they beat him up, sir."
"Right, well here is your pay."
I gave him two shillings, to which his eyes widened.
"The second i
s so that you don’t say a word to anyone."
"Yes sir," he said, itching to leave.
"Not a word to anyone, you hear me?" I called out as he ran out of the door.
It took me half an hour to get over to the swimming pool. It could have taken me half of that, but part of me didn’t want to go, even though the other part knew I wasn’t going to leave my friend to be killed.
The leather bag was still where Joe had stashed it, still full, and tucked into the back of the wooden cabinet in the office, stuck behind a pile of books. The cabinet was another of Joe’s little hiding places. It was built with a hidden compartment that was so well made you never would have suspected it was there, and if you did there was only one way to open it, with one key. Both of the drawers had to be open at the top, yet both locks had to be firmly locked. Only then could you pull the panel out.
When I lifted the bag I knew something was different straight away. It was heavier, much heavier. I took a moment to open it, and by my estimation there must have been twice as much money inside the bag as when Joe first showed me. From somewhere, Joe had found the money to match what was in there, just as the dead lender had demanded.
I stood for a few moments, outside the main doors to the old swimming pool, got my breath, swore that I should have taken my shotgun with me, and then pushed my way in, past the entrance.
There was a foyer just inside the main doors. Old white tiles, now smashed and greyed through years of dust and neglect, were scattered across the ground. Rubbish had collected in the corners and up against the railings, from where people had used the place as a dumping ground or a squat over the years. Where there were once three rows of nicely polished wooden benches, there was now just a pile of broken wood and glass. The huge panelled glass that allowed you to see into the swimming baths from the foyer were long gone. Just a few fragments stuck out from the rotten wooden frames like sharpened teeth.
Through the gaping hole that had once been the panelling I could make out the faint light of several oil lanterns. They were the only visible light. Once nearly the entire roof had been clean glass, to let the sunshine in, but at some point, when they had all been broken, someone had boarded all the holes up, cutting off the light from the outside world. The baths had fallen into darkness, and the damp warm wet had encouraged mould and rats to spread through the building.
I couldn’t see Joe, but I could see two men pointing rifles down into the sunken depths of the swimming pool. Another gentleman was sitting on the broken frame of a wooden crate, watching me. The fourth, the bigger man that the boy had mentioned, was nowhere to be seen.
"Come in Mr Weldon," chirped the seated man, his voice high, almost shrill. Like the others he was wearing a suit, except his looked more expensive, and he wasn’t wearing a long trench coat like the two riflemen.
"May I ask to whom I am speaking?" I asked, waiting in the gap between the broken window frames.
"You may. I am Mr Blake, and I was John Whelan’s associate, before his…demise." I noticed his eyes were on the bag.
"I see you have Mr Whelan’s bag."
"I do."
"May I see it?"
He must have sensed my hesitation.
"Please Mr. Weldon, we mean you no harm, your involvement is…unfortunate, but necessary, do come in. "
I stepped through the broken frame and walked out over the tiles towards them. As I reached the edge of the pool, I saw Joe.
He was tied up, his hands and legs hitched together, as though he was an animal ready for slaughter. Standing next to him, with huge, meaty hands at his sides, was a giant of a man. He must have stood over seven feet tall, even bigger than Chef from the Running Ground, but his height wasn’t the biggest part of him. I think if you stood three men next to each other then you may have had the kind of bulk that was this man’s body. He was dark skinned, and dressed in a perfectly clean and tailored suit. I think he could have wrestled an elephant, but there was something else about him that set me on edge, something wrong, something I couldn’t place.
I passed the bag to Blake, who opened it for a moment, nodded to the two riflemen and made a short coughing noise, then stood up.
"That will do just fine, Mr. Weldon."
He turned and walked to the edge of the pool and look down at Joe.
"Mr Dean. Your account has now been satisfied. We are pleased to have been of service too you. Do feel free to contact us at any point should you require our assistance once more."
And then they left. First Blake, followed by his two armed cronies, and then a minute later the big man down in the pool walked quietly away from Joe’s crumpled form, climbed up the ladder at the side of the pool, and then passed me. He stepped through the broken panels, through which he had to stoop to get under, then out of the front doors.
I stood watching the huge man as he went out of the doors, all of the time trying to figure out what it was about him that was wrong about him. Then just as he stepped out into the light of the street and I caught my first clear look at him, just for a moment, I saw it.
His feet.
Where the other gentleman had worn new, shiny shoes, this man wore none. But then you probably couldn’t have bought shoes for his feet. Because not only were they large, but they weren’t even feet. At the end of his powerful legs were hooves.
Hooves, just like a bull would have, or a ram or something, or like the feet of something much darker, something that at the time I didn’t even want to consider. At first I thought his feet had been cut off, and what I was looking at were the stumps, but in the thin shaft of light that shone on them from the doorway it was quite clear exactly what they were. I only saw them for the briefest of moments, and then he was gone.
They had beaten Joe up pretty bad. He could barely walk by the time I managed to untie and pull the ropes from him. He didn’t say a word, just nodded at me and then stayed silent as I helped him back over to the Caff. I offered to take him to the hospital, but he shook his head. All I could do was take him up to his room on the top floor of the Caff, and help him into bed.
They hadn’t broken any bones, or even cut him, but as I helped him take his clothes off and get into bed I saw that nearly every inch of his body had been beaten, and would soon turn bruised.
Joe didn’t come out of his room for three days. I took food and water to him, making sure he was okay, but he lay there in the dark, with the curtains drawn, in silence.
When Joe finally came out a lot of the bruises had cleared up, but he looked pale, not his jovial self. He was still quiet, and withdrawn, and for a while he didn’t say anything, just poured himself a large whiskey and sat just inside the doorway. When he did speak his voice was strained. Joe had a very distinct voice, and this didn’t seem like the same man.
"I just wanted to say thanks for coming over there."
"That’s fine, Joe. You would have done the same."
"No really, you could have left. You risked your life, and I’m grateful."
I poured him another whiskey and placed it on the stool next to him.
"You’re welcome Joe."
And that was the last we spoke about it.
Joe closed the place up for a few weeks, and during that time I found myself a new job over at the leather-cutting factory, as a clerk, counting receipts and making out orders and such. Joe knew the owner, and to be honest I think he was glad to get me out from under his feet and replace me with a young lady from south London who he had taken a liking to.
After a while I stopped going to The Caff as often and spent most of my time between my new job and visiting the hospital where Marie still worked.
Isn't it amazing how your life just changes all of a sudden, sometimes? I don't know what prompted it, but that would be the last I saw of Joe Dean. I guess sometimes our lives just move on. Mine certainly did. I was seeing a lot more of Marie during those days. Some changes are joyous, and often unexpected, but sometimes things don't work out exactly as you had planned, do they?<
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It was 1923, and we had been married for three months and two days when we set off on our trip to Edinburgh. It was a very different place back in those days. Even though a lot of people were struggling just to get by, living on the poverty line, post war industry was booming.
We left London at ten in the morning, almost on the dot, aboard the Special Scotch Express train out of King’s Cross station. It was a bitterly cold morning and the fog was starting to creep in. I remember standing in that station, a chill in the air that penetrated to my bones, marvelling at what advances in engineering had come to pass to see such an impressive piece of machinery let loose upon the world.
I was still a very young man back then, and I had only been on a train twice before in my life, and both times it was to a place a lot less pleasant than Edinburgh, and in decidedly less pleasant company, so I was looking forward to that journey immensely.
It was one of the most extravagant things I ever paid for during my younger years, but of course, as I sat in that carriage with my new wife, watching the countryside go by at a leisurely pace, I wasn’t to know at the time that I was to pay for that trip with more than money.
The train stopped at York for just a few minutes, to give the crew time to check the engine, and for the passengers to catch some fresh air. Then off we went again, thundering along the tracks towards our destination.
My wife and I sat looking out of the window for most of the journey. You have to remember that although a lot of it looks the same, most of the countryside that we were passing was completely new to us. I commented to Marie that we had watched the weather change at least half a dozen times in those few hundred miles. It seemed that the closer we got to Scotland, the brighter the weather was.
At six thirty in the evening we finally pulled into Waverley station, after a journey of no less than eight and a half hours. That might seem like a long time to you. Trains back then didn’t travel at the lightning speeds they do today. But to a young man in the 1920s, the Special Scotch Express was a miracle of progress, and I was on an adventure never to be forgotten.
