Nick's Blues

by John Harvey

  “And the baby?”

  “Social services.”

  “She’s not going to keep her? Melanie?”

  Nick shook his head. “Going to have it put up for adoption, mum reckoned.”

  “If it had been me…” Ellen began and then left it hanging. “You don’t know who the father is?” she said.

  “No.”

  “When you were talking to her, she didn’t say?”

  “No.”

  Ellen stirred her latté, spreading the darker coffee up the glass.

  “Let’s have a look at these,” she said, spreading the photographs across the table. “How many are you going to use?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You can’t use all of them.”

  “I know that.”

  “This one,” Ellen said, lifting it up carefully with middle finger and thumb, “you’ve got to have this.”

  It was a close-up showing part of an old-fashioned shop window in Kentish Town, done out as if Next and Top Shop had never existed. Dresses Nick couldn’t imagine anyone wearing let alone buying, each with its price clearly marked and some comment hand-written onto card — New Season’s Colours — Latest Fashion.

  “You don’t think it’s too like the one we saw?”

  “The Walker Evans?”

  “I don’t want to get marked down for copying.”

  Ellen grinned. “Call it an homage. That’s what artists do when they nick stuff from others. Your teacher’ll probably think it’s cool.”

  Nick hoped she was right.

  ***

  When they got outside it was threatening rain. On the pavement outside the Archway Tavern, a sandy-haired man in baggy trousers and a suit jacket but no shirt was playing the penny whistle. Traffic seemed to have come to a standstill in every direction.

  “You know this afternoon,” Ellen said above the sound of car horns. “I said I thought we might go and see this film…”

  Oh-oh, Nick thought, here it comes.

  “Well, my dad’s coming home. Unexpectedly. I haven’t seen him in ages.”

  Ellen’s father, Nick knew, was a doctor working in Zimbabwe or Namibia or somewhere. He couldn’t remember what she’d said.

  “We’re all going to go out and meet him at the airport.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said.

  “I’m really excited.”

  “Yeah.” If she was so excited, why hadn’t she mentioned it before?

  “Nick, you don’t mind?”

  “Why should I?”

  Ellen shook her head and sighed. “Look, I have to go.”

  “Okay.”

  He stood, rooted, as she started to walk away.

  She was almost at the crossing before he called after her. “When will I see you?”

  “Call me. You’ve got my number, right?”

  “Right.” It was written inside the back cover of his folder.

  He watched as she slipped between the lanes of stationary cars, arms swinging lightly, trademark beret angled back on her head. At the far side of the road, people milling round her, she raised her hand to wave.

  By the time Nick had waved back she was lost to sight.

  ***

  Back home, he rang the place where he worked and checked it would be okay to start back again at the end of the week. Christopher wasn’t answering his mobile, which probably meant he’d forgotten to charge the batteries. Scott and Laura were at the Holloway Odeon, he knew, watching something or other.

  “Why don’t you come with us?’ Scott had asked.

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “Come on.”

  “Leave him,” Laura had said, something of a leer on her face. “Nick’s got other things to do now, haven’t you, Nick?”

  Not so’s you’d notice, Nick thought.

  In his room, he lifted down the guitar and began to work his way, laboriously, through the three basic chords in E.

  Half an hour later, less, the fingers on his left hand were starting to get sore and he was bored. Played at the only speed he could manage, it didn’t sound much like music. It didn’t sound much like anything.

  Out in the kitchen he tried Christopher’s number again. Nothing.

  TV offered a film about Bonnie Prince Charlie, rowing, Home and Away, a John Wayne western or racing from Newmarket, Windsor and Musselburgh.

  On the floor beside his bed The Grapes of Wrath lay accusingly closed.

  He fished out his father’s tape and set it to play.

  Lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.

  Feelin’ tomorrow like I feel today

  If I’m feelin’ tomorrow like I feel today

  Gonna pack my trunk an’ make my getaway

  Worried, baby, trouble in mind

  Yes, I’m worried, baby, got trouble in mind

  Never satisfied, just can’t keep from cryin’

  Whatever his father had been feeling, whatever had been worrying him, getting him down, whatever he had felt unable to face, Nick still couldn’t really understand.

  What had Charlie said? Sometimes loving other people isn’t enough, you have to love yourself as well.

  His mum had said he was afraid.

  The track came to an abrupt end and another started part-way through.

  Hard luck’s at your front door, blues are in your room

  Hard luck is at your front door, blues all round your room

  Blues at your back door, what’s gonna become of you?

  Nick pushed himself off the bed and reached for his jacket, scribbled a note to his mum and left it on the kitchen table.

  By the time he arrived the lunch rush was over and Marcus was standing out back with a cigarette in one hand, a bottle of imported Anchor Steam in the other.

  “I thought you said next weekend?”

  “I did.”

  “So?”

  “So I felt like working, that’s all.”

  Marcus let smoke drift upwards from the corner of his mouth. “Too early for the evening shift, you know that.”

  “That’s okay, there must be something I can do.”

  “There’s pans in soak. A sack of potatoes that wants peeling.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know the money’s the same?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’ll work right through?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve had lunch?”

  Nick shook his head.

  “Get something first. Don’t want you fainting on the job.”

  Nick grinned and headed back inside.

  twenty six

  Steve Rawlings had a piece of tape across the bridge of his nose, helping him to breathe. There was residual bruising, slow to fade, beneath his right eye. The knuckles of his left hand were newly raw.

  Less than an hour before, just a few hours after he’d done a bunk from the supposedly secure unit he’d been sent to, Rawlings had followed a fourteen-year old drug dealer into the car park of a block of flats behind the Holloway Road and attacked him with a brick. Hit him so hard and so often there were spots of blood dark across his t-shirt and brick dust embedded in the palm and fingers of his right hand.

  Something well satisfying, Rawlings thought, hitting someone with the broken half of brick.

  Almost more satisfying than cutting them with a blade.

  How about more than using a gun?

  As yet he didn’t know.

  He thought he might find out.

  Murray had told him about the gun inside, the pair of them cooped up in a poky top floor room, bars on the windows and locks on the doors. Told him how Bradley — that was the kid Rawlings had just whacked with the brick — worked between the scuzzy park outside the leisure centre and the flats. Hand signals and mobile phones. Told him how Bradley, ever since he’d been lost his stash to some blokes in a pumped-up Sierra from south of the river, always carried a gun.

  An air pistol converted to fire .22 ammunition.

  Brocock M
E38 Magnum.

  Bradley braving it out at fourteen, a year and a bit less than Rawlings himself.

  It had cost him a hundred quid, back of a pub in Willesden.

  “I don’t want no air pistol,” Rawlings had said. “Think I’m some kid or what?”

  But when Murray assured him just such a weapon had killed an Asian taxi driver in Bradford, he thought it might be okay just the same.

  Right now it felt good in Rawlings’ hand.

  And as he got close to the estate, it felt good tucked down into his belt beneath his t-shirt and his Nike top, cold against the small of his back.

  He would call Casper on the mobile he’d taken along with the gun: call Casper and let him get hold of Harry and Josh.

  ***

  The gun and the mobile weren’t the only things Rawlings had boosted. By the time the four of them left Harry Leroy’s flat they were pretty high. Leroy’s mum working somewhere round Finsbury Park — no questions asked — and his dad finishing eighteen months inside.

  Leroy’s mum had been foolish enough to leave around an almost full bottle of cheap vodka and Josh had gone down to the corner shop for a couple of six-packs of beer.

  They hit the walkway loud and crazy, pushing one another from side to side, laughing at Harry’s infirm attempt to impersonate Biggie Smalls.

  Smack into Ross Blevitt and half a dozen others, sauntering their way down to the Boston for a game of pool.

  “Shit!” Josh said and nobody else said a word.

  After a moment, Rawlings pushed back his hood and started to walk to where Blevitt stood. Blevitt, wearing his usual Burberry cap, waiting with amusement in his eyes.

  “What’s up?” Blevitt said. “Thought you was all tucked up inside.”

  “You grassed me up,” Rawlings said. “Turned me in.”

  Blevitt smiled. “Man, you grass yourself up, right? Every time you open your stupid mouth.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You an’ your pathetic little crew. Look at ’em, standin’ there pissin’ their pants.”

  Laughter from Blevitt’s friends, fingers pointing, gestures miming masturbation, fists.

  “What you gonna do now,” Blevitt asked. “Find another girl to beat up, all by yourselves?”

  Angry, Rawlings came a step closer, one step then another. “You’ll find out, right? Soon enough.”

  “Ooh,” Blevitt laughed. “Scary!”

  Rawlings reached round behind and brought out the gun.

  “Jesus!” someone said.

  All watching as, hand not quite steady, Rawlings aimed the gun at Blevitt’s chest.

  “What’m I supposed to do now?” Blevitt said. “Get down on my knees? Pray?” And laughed in Rawlings’ face. “You know what? You’re too chicken, i’n’it? Pussy, yeah?”

  Contempt on his face, he slowly turned and began to walk, slowly, away.

  Finger close to the trigger, Rawlings straightened his arm and took aim.

  Five metres, ten, fifteen. Rawlings aware of everyone staring at him. His arm starting to shake.

  Blevitt, never bothering to look back, was now thirty metres off and about to move out of sight.

  Sweat ran down into Rawlings’ eyes.

  “Big deal,” he said, lowering his arm. “Bastard’s all mouth, right?” And then, as he headed back along the walkway. “Better things to do, yeah?”

  ***

  Lamont and Handley had heard the message on their radio, earlier in the day: Steven Rawlings, absconded from local authority care.

  “Isn’t that the lad went for that woman with a knife?” Lamont said.

  “The same.”

  “Let’s stick close to the estate then. His sort, they never stray far from home.”

  “Okay,” Handley said, wondering which course her partner had learned that on.

  A little shy of ten, they were turning left out of the lights on Gordon House Road, when Lamont, driving, noticed four youths crossing towards the petrol station on the opposite corner.

  “What d’you reckon?”

  “Just kids.”

  “Well,” Lamont said, turning the wheel. “Won’t hurt to take a look.”

  ***

  That time of evening the petrol station was usually pretty quiet. Those motorists who filled up on their way home had long been and gone and the late night rush, such as it was, was still to start. Just a few lone cars, one every ten minutes or so, no more; a handful of locals nipping in for a loaf of bread, a pint of milk.

  Dawn wondered how much longer the owners were going to think it worthwhile opening evenings at all. Closing at eight might be better, eight-thirty at a pinch.

  She always kept a magazine close by the counter, Hello or OK, something to stop the time dragging, but by now she was up to here with who’d married whom and who was wearing what, and was stacking cans in the chiller cabinet, bending low, practically kneeling, when the boys came in.

  “No one here,” she heard one of them say.

  Then one of the others, “Shut it!”

  When she stood up the one who’d spoken last told her to get back over to the till and give them all the money she’d got. He was holding a gun.

  ***

  Lamont drove past the petrol station on the opposite side of the road, did a U-turn and brought the vehicle to a standstill some three or four car-lengths short.

  “What now?” Handley said.

  Lamont shrugged. “Go in and take a look.”

  “You wait here,” Handley said, releasing her seat belt. “I need some more mints. I’ll go.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Inside, no one had moved.

  “You deaf,” Rawlings said, “or what?” Jabbing the gun barrel towards Dawn’s face.

  “No, no. I just…”

  “Then get over there. Now.”

  Something about the gun, Dawn thought, didn’t look right and she wondered if it might be a replica; wondered without wanting to put it to the test.

  “Move it!”

  “Okay, okay.” Trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

  She was almost at the till when she saw a uniformed policewoman crossing the forecourt towards the door.

  At almost the same moment, Diane Handley saw Dawn looking in her direction and read the concern, the warning on her face; saw the way the youths were standing round her; saw, or thought she saw, the gun.

  “What?” Rawlings said. “What’s wrong?”

  “N… nothing,” Dawn stumbled.

  “Then open it up. And you,” pointing at Josh, “get those fags. Put ’em in a bag. Come on, do it now. Casper, what’s the fuckin’ matter with you? I tell you to keep watch or what?”

  Handley made it back to the car without being seen.

  “Armed robbery in progress. Call it in.”

  When the message went back out from the control centre, logged Immediate, Jackie Ferris was sitting in her own car in Kentish Town, round the corner from Nandos, radio tuned to the police channel, eating peri-peri chicken and chips.

  An armed response vehicle carrying two authorised firearms officers was closer, only minutes away, having been called to a brawl at a pub in Queen’s Crescent.

  Dawn breathed out slowly and evenly, pressed a button and the till sprang open.

  “Okay,” Rawlings said. “Empty it. The notes, the notes, just the notes. Come on.”

  Dawn fumbled, letting some of the money slip from her fingers, playing for time as best she could. Rawlings threatening, cursing, the rest of them more and more nervous. Harry Leroy, sober now, straight and sober, wishing to hell he wasn’t there, close to making a run for it, worried only about what Rawlings would do.

  Casper backed into the centre aisle and tins of lubricating oil went tumbling.

  “Okay,” Rawlings said, snatching the last of the notes. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Harry Leroy was standing, frozen, in front of the reinforced glass door, watching as the police car pulled slowly into the for
ecourt. And, loud now, the sound of police sirens, close and getting closer.

  “Out!” Rawlings shouted. “Out, out, now.”

  Josh and Casper hurled themselves at the back door, locked with a bar across, and only succeeded in setting off an alarm.

  “Move!” Rawlings yelled at Leroy and when he didn’t budge, clubbed him with the barrel of the gun.

  By then a second car had come skidding across the forecourt, narrowly avoiding collision with the petrol pumps, officers jumping out wearing protective vests, weapons drawn.

  Rawlings leaped back towards the counter and grabbed Dawn by the arm, gun pointed at her face, and she swung the fire extinguisher she’d been holding behind her back. and struck him on the shoulder, hard enough to knock the gun aside. Swung again and caught him on the side of the head as he backed away.

  Rawlings staggered, almost but not quite falling to his knees.

  A police officer stood in the open doorway, a semiautomatic machine gun pointing at Rawlings’ chest. He could feel blood running down onto his neck. His fingers opened and the air pistol slid to the floor. Tears flooded his eyes.

  A second officer, armed with a 9mm handgun, ordered him to lay, face down, on the floor.

  Jackie Ferris crossed to where Dawn was still standing, shaking, close to hyperventilating, and slowly prised the fire extinguisher from her hand.