“Bruno!” I snapped.
His face registered no emotion whatsoever. “Bitch was out of control,” he shrugged.
“You’re done here. Get changed and go.” He stared at me and I stared back. “Leave, now, Bruno.”
He glanced over at Nicky, who by now had collapsed, coughing, onto the canvas, then he sighed, ducked through the ropes, jumped down and sauntered towards the changing rooms, undoing his gloves with his teeth and not once looking back.
“You sure you’re OK?”
Nicky was sitting on the bench in the ladies’ changing room, bent forwards, flexing her jaw from side to side while I stooped beside her.
“I’m fine. It just really bloody hurts, getting punched in the tits.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“I don’t think you do.” Somehow she managed to giggle. She straightened up and arched her back, touched her breasts and winced.
“I’m really sorry. I should never have let that happen. We’re banning Bruno from ever training here again.”
“It wasn’t your fault, or his. It was me who lost it. I knew we were meant to be sparring, but I just … really wanted to lay into someone, and he happened to be there.”
“Why did you?”
She looked at me, and shook her head, and turned to grab her towel. “I’d better make a move …”
“Is everything all right? With you and Harry, I mean?”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth I wanted the cracked lino floor to open up and swallow me. She’d talked about her husband a few times, and from what I could make out they always seemed to be arguing. But it was none of my business if her marriage had problems. What was I going to do about it anyway?
When she looked at me now, though, she didn’t laugh, or politely suggest I should scram; it was almost like she was flattered that I cared. I guessed she was about to tell me something, but thought better of it, and held a hand to her jaw again.
“I need a shower,” she said.
She stood, and I did too, and held up a finger up in front of her face.
“Put that away, Finn. I don’t have a concussion.”
“What day is it?”
“It’s Sunday, and tomorrow’s Monday, and you’re coming to my office at three to sign the completion.”
“The what?”
“For the purchase of the freehold. Have you forgotten?”
When Nicky had helped me buy the lease she’d mentioned the whole building was for sale. That had worried me—I thought we might get chucked out by the new owner—until it occurred to me that if I bought the building, that wouldn’t happen.
“No,” I said. “Well, sort of. I’d forgotten what day of the week it was.”
“Then how the hell were you going to test me for a concussion?” Now she sounded like her regular self again. When she started to pull off her T-shirt I suddenly realized where I was, and made a run for it.
“Don’t use all the hot water, all right?” I called over my shoulder.
“Tell you, Finn, we are damn lucky she didn’t sue. That’s what puts gyms out of business.”
“How would she sue us? She’s our lawyer. It would count as conflict of interest or something.”
“I’m serious, boy! Next time it happen, maybe it won’t be a friend of yours, who gets up and walks away and laughs about it. Maybe some girl end up in hospital.”
“Delroy, there won’t be a next time.”
Delroy shook his great grey head and sighed. We were sitting around the table of his poky kitchen drinking rum from shot glasses—heavily diluted, at Winnie’s insistence. Delroy’s wife didn’t approve of strong drink, and Delroy had a hard enough time walking when he was sober. Watering it down was fine by me; I didn’t really like the taste anyway, and I only sipped at it to keep Delroy company.
I ate at their house most nights, and loved it there, and they seemed happy to have me. It was warm and bright, and even the po-faced Jesus pictures Winnie had pinned up everywhere didn’t stop the place feeling cheerful. It was certainly cosier than the mouldy-smelling apartment over the gym, but then a bus shelter in the rain would have been cosier than that place.
“You business tycoons too busy talking shop to stir the chicken?” Winnie complained as she bustled in. The smell of her cooking filled the house and my mouth was watering. The first time I tasted her jerk chicken and sweet potato I wolfed down three helpings and nearly died of indigestion. Now I made sure I took my time.
“I’m not falling for that one,” Delroy grunted. “I know what you like when someone mess with your cooking.”
“I hope you are hungry, Finn, there’s an awful lot of food here.” She tutted as her glasses steamed up, then took them off and wiped them on her flowery apron.
“Course the boy is hungry. He work all day, seven days a week. Up at five and he never stop, painting, fixing windows, cleaning. Boy’s a one-man army.”
“It doesn’t count as work if you enjoy it,” I said.
“It’s because you work for yourself,” said Delroy. “Take orders from no one, that’s what make the difference.”
“All the same, boy your age ought not to be working every hour the good Lord sent,” said Winnie. “You need to get out more, make some friends your own age. Not hang around with grumpy old farts like Delroy here.”
“I am younger than you, woman!”
“Maybe I find you a nice girl from my church you can take to the pictures.”
“Finn don’t want none of them God-botherers,” snorted Delroy. “He take a girl to the movies, he want one who’ll sit in the back row. He’s looking for heaven in this life, not the next.”
“You is disgusting, Delroy Llewellyn!”
“I’m fine, Winnie, thanks,” I said.
“You got a girl already?” Winnie beamed.
“I wish,” I said.
“Look at him!” Winnie grinned. “Boy blushing like a Caribbean sunset. You tell us everything now. What’s she like?”
“She’s married, that’s what she’s like,” grunted Delroy.
I stared. If this was a wind-up it was kind of close to the bone.
“Hush, you!” scolded Winnie. “Finn wouldn’t go with no married woman.”
“She’s a lawyer, and she’s married to a rich man who works in the City, and she’s ten years older than Finn, and she spend more time with him than she do with her husband.” Delroy poured himself another shot of rum, and this time took a swig without watering it down. Was that why he’d been scowling at me this morning as I waited for Nicky to turn up? Because he thought I had a crush on her?
“Well, how is it Finn’s fault if she like him?” protested Winnie. “What woman wouldn’t take a shine to a big handsome fella like him?”
I felt my face redden. Delroy had seen right through me. Of course I fancied Nicky—how could I not? She was beautiful, clever, funny, and a day I didn’t see her at the gym felt … wasted somehow. I knew that, even if I’d never acknowledged it, and never would. To Nicky we were simply lawyer and client, I’d been sure. We were friendly, yeah, but … Delroy seemed to be suggesting Nicky felt the same way about me as I did about her, and that was bull—it had to be.
“You’re hallucinating, Delroy,” I said. “I thought it was her who got punched in the head today, not you.”
Delroy was staring into his empty shot glass. “I seen the way she look at you. Believe me, boy, that woman going to break your heart.”
“That’s what women do, isn’t it?” I said.
“Hark at him,” Winnie tutted sadly. “Man of the world.”
And then the doorbell rang.
Winnie went to answer it, grumbling about local kids playing knock and run, while Delroy and I sat there in awkward silence. I was kind of flattered that he was taking an interest in my love life, or the lack of it, but all the same I wished he’d mind his own business and let me make my own mistakes. Another part of me was wondering if it was true what he’d said about Nick
y, that she wasn’t just there to prop up the business and offer professional advice.
True, she’d been there when my mother was attacked, and come with me to the hospital where they tried in vain to rescue her, and stuck by my side through the purgatory of questions that had followed. Nicky had held my hand at the inquest when the details made me want to weep or throw my chair through a window or both. OK, she was more than just my lawyer, but Delroy must have been imagining the rest. Nicky was way older than me, way smarter, way classier.
So what if she worked out at our gym, and came running with me? It had come up in conversation that her house was just not far from the Thameside path where I ran most mornings. And early one morning she’d overtaken me, and since that day we ran together a few times a week, and talked about nothing in particular, but that didn’t mean she had the hots for me … did it?
Lost in thought, I took a while to catch on that whoever was at the door wasn’t coming in and wasn’t going away either. Winnie’s voice was growing louder and shriller and more insistent, and I was just thinking I should go and find out what was happening when I heard someone push their way into the house, ignoring Winnie’s protests, which by now had risen to a shriek. While Delroy groped behind him for his crutch, I kicked the chair back and pushed through the bead curtain into the hall.
A shaven-headed bloke the size of a wardrobe was standing in the hallway blocking the entire front door, his arms folded and his fat mouth a tight grim line. Winnie was in the doorway to the front room, scolding someone loudly in such a thick Caribbean accent I couldn’t understand a word she was saying, but I got the gist: someone had barged in to rob them. Delroy and Winnie had nothing worth stealing, I knew, but details like that never bothered the twitchy lowlifes that roamed this area looking to fund their next fix any way they could. Not that the gorilla in the doorway looked like your typical smack addict, but I figured I’d help Winnie out first and analyse the intruders’ motives later.
A bloke in his mid-twenties, shorter and slighter than the first, emerged from the front room lugging Delroy’s cheap flatscreen TV under one arm and ignoring Winnie’s protests. There was a sour tang of stale tobacco from his clothes, his fingers were stained yellow with nicotine, and he wore his greasy hair in a daft old-fashioned quiff with sideburns that almost reached to his broad, square chin. All he needed was the glittery jumpsuit and the tacky gold sunglasses.
“Would you mind putting that back, please?” I said. It sounded absurdly polite but I knew that was the approach Winnie would prefer.
Elvis weighed me up and dismissed me with a glance. “Look, just mind your own business, kid, all right? And there won’t be any trouble.”
“There’s already trouble,” I said. “Winnie, get in the kitchen.”
“No, Finn, this is not your problem,” said Winnie, but there was a catch in her voice, and when I looked at her face I saw she was crying, and a surge of indignation sent adrenaline coursing through my body. Through everything that had happened to Delroy she had never lost heart or given up hope, and to see her humiliated now filled me with a rage I could barely contain. All thanks to those two leather-coated creeps carting Delroy’s worthless crappy supermarket TV out the front door.
I strode out after them. They were headed for a big shiny Merc parked at the curb with its boot open. By now I knew these two were definitely not typical burglars, but I didn’t care any more.
“Yo, jerk,” I said. “I asked you nicely.”
Elvis turned, the TV still under one arm, and sighed as if I was a parking ticket he’d have to tear up. He glanced at his glamorous assistant. “Sean?” he said wearily.
Sean the Wardrobe turned back and lumbered towards me, smirking. He was big and packing plenty of muscle but he moved like a hippo with piles, and that crappy cheap leather coat he was wearing would restrict his movements. He wore leather gloves too—either he thought they made him look hard, or he bit his fingernails—and when I saw him open his big meaty right hand I thought, He’s planning to punch me?
I was almost insulted, but I let him take a swing, dodged and came up and threw all my weight into a straight right to his jaw. His big fleshy face rippled under the impact like a half-set jelly and he stumbled backwards.
By now Elvis was loading Delroy’s TV into the boot of the Merc, but I figured he wouldn’t drive off without his boyfriend. I let Sean find his balance and watched him come to the boil, shaking his head and screwing up his piggy little eyes. He came back at me twice as fast as before, his great fists flying, but so wild they might have been passing asteroids. I slipped up close and sank a left into his solar plexus, feeling the wind gush out of his body and watching him sag like a punctured blimp. He fumbled for my collar, plainly hoping to hold me still long enough to clobber me with his other fist or maybe a head-butt, but I grasped his wrist and locked his gloved hand back and twisted his arm round and he fell heavily to his knees, wailing a high-pitched protest that sounded weirdly like Winnie. Delroy was in the doorway now, watching, Winnie behind him sobbing and pleading with him to intervene.
“Bring the TV back,” I called to Elvis, “or I break his arm.”
“Dammit!” said Elvis, and he slammed down the lid of the boot.
“Fine,” I said. “Have it your way.”
“Finn, don’t,” said Delroy.
I looked at him. I wasn’t really planning to break Sean’s arm, but I was pretty sure I knew how to dislocate it. Dislocation was painful, but it could easily be fixed, although fixing it was even more painful.
“Let him up,” said Delroy.
I released Sean’s arm and stepped back. He knelt there, clutching it and cursing under his breath, until his boss came back, stood over him, sighed in frustration and kicked him in the ribs.
“Get up, you useless prick,” he said.
“If I have to bring that TV back myself,” I said, “I’ll be using your ass for a wheelbarrow.”
But Elvis ignored me and instead pointed a stubby little finger at Delroy. “You were warned,” he said. “Next time you’re late, we’ll take all your bloody furniture, not just that cheap piece of crap.” He glared at me. “And thanks to this Boy Scout, your rate’s just doubled. You don’t like it, talk to Mr. Sherwood.” He turned and shoved Sean the Wardrobe back up the path towards the Merc.
I let them leave and turned to Delroy, who was leaning on his crutch, his knuckles white and his black face paler than I’d ever seen it.
“Delroy?” I said. “What the hell’s going on?”
“You borrowed your stake in the gym off Sherwood?”
“What else was I going to do? We didn’t have six thousand pounds lying around.” Delroy was slumped in his armchair in the front room, opposite the empty stand where his TV had once stood. Now there were just a few balls of dust and some loose cables with the connectors half wrenched off.
“You could have borrowed it from me,” I said. “I can afford it. I told you, my dad’s friend in Spain left me a shedload of cash—what the hell else am I going to use it for?”
“That’s your money,” said Delroy. “I wanted us to be partners. If I took the money off you, where would that leave me?”
Winnie bustled in again, her eyes still red and swollen, clutching a can of furniture polish and a faded yellow cloth. She sprayed the stand and wiped it down, as if she could clean up this horrible bloody mess with a duster.
I’d heard a few things about Sherwood, none of them good. Cars had been burned out, windows broken, knees smashed with baseball bats in alleys behind dodgy pubs. You had to be stupid or utterly desperate to borrow money from him. And Delroy and Winnie weren’t stupid.
“I been paying it back out of my disability allowance,” said Delroy. “Fifty pound a week.” He was staring at the floor, as if he was afraid to look up and see the gap where the TV had been. “But this week the bank messed up, and the money came in a day late. I called Mr. Sherwood and all, tried to explain, but they kept saying he was busy.”
Fifty pounds a week? How could Delroy ever afford that sort of money? I knew Winnie was still working as a cleaner, although she was nearly seventy. The way she’d talked it about it made it sound like something she did for the company of the other cleaning women, and to keep herself busy. Now I cursed myself for ever letting myself believe that. She couldn’t afford to stop working, because I had come to them with a stupid scheme about opening a gym, and she had gone along with it to make Delroy happy. I’d thought I was being clever and helpful when all I had done was landed them in debt to a loan shark.
“I’ll get your TV back,” I said. “In fact, to hell with that, I’ll buy you a new one. A big one.”
“It’s not your problem,” muttered Delroy.
“It doesn’t matter. I want to,” I said.
“Forget it, Finn,” he sighed. “I watch too much TV anyway.”
I had to fix my screw-up somehow. And it was going to take more than a new television set.
two
Nicky didn’t show up the next morning, either for our run along the river or at the gym, and for once I was glad. She would have sensed something was bothering me and nagged me to tell her and insisted on helping to sort it out, but I had the feeling this wasn’t the sort of problem that a lawyer could help with. Sure, I’d be seeing her that afternoon, but maybe I’d have come up with a solution by then. This was my screw-up, and I wanted to see what I could do without getting any more of the people I cared about sucked in. Back at the gym I heaved away at the weights harder than ever, clanging the metal bricks till my muscles burned, punishing myself for my blindness, my stupidity, my selfishness. Delroy watched me from the corner of his eye as he prowled around the gym, grunting terse words of encouragement to the punters working out and training, but didn’t come over to talk about the night before. There was nothing to be said anyway. When I’d changed and showered I simply told him I’d be back in an hour or two and he didn’t ask where I was going.
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