by R. D. Ronald
‘Take it easy, you backed into me.’
‘Bullshit, yeah? I was conversing with this lady here and you smashed right into me. Get me another fucking drink,’ he said, pointing towards the shattered pieces of glass on the carpet.
‘The bar’s over there,’ Scott said, pointing with his middle finger before pulling it up into a fuck you gesture.
The Asian grabbed two handfuls of Scott’s jacket and tilted back his neck as if about to launch a head-butt at Scott. Before this could happen, the earring doorman grabbed him by the hair and threw a single short punch directly into the man’s kidneys. The Asian gave a mangled cry and fell to his knees, the doorman preventing his fall any further by maintaining his grip on the man’s hair. Another member of security came towards them and hauled off the Asian towards the exit by his collar.
‘Sorry about that Miss,’ said Earring to the blonde girl, whose startled look resembled a sex doll with her mouth shaped in a perfect O. ‘Complimentary cocktail, just you head over there and see that barman,’ he said, and pointed at the man who had served Scott earlier, who was looking over.
‘I bet you’re glad I was still close by,’ He said, once the girl was out of earshot, looking decidedly pleased with himself as he smoothed imagined creases from his jacket.
‘Nice place you have here,’ Scott said, avoiding the question. ‘I thought I was supposed to be the one who hung out in dives.’
‘Sadiq there was a VIP, a rising star in the Garden Heights business community, a multi-millionaire already. If his altercation had been with pretty much anyone else in here you can be sure it would be them on the pavement now and not him. You’re just lucky we have a special relationship.’
The tempo of the music increased and scarlet spotlights began to dance around the room. The doorman’s skin and eyes shone with a malevolent red, earring sparkling furiously.
‘Will you be there at the meeting?’ Scott asked.
‘We’ll see.’
‘Do you know when?’
‘That’s not for me to say.’
Obviously Scott wasn’t going to get any information so he made to walk past the doorman towards the exit. The man reached out and held him lightly by the forearm.
‘Are your habits going to be an issue like Twinkle or do you have things under control?’
Scott didn’t know what he was talking about so just stood and looked at him, waiting for the question to be given further clarity.
He released Scott’s arm, held his own forearm out and tapped three times in the crook of his elbow with two large forefingers. ‘Your habit,’ he said. ‘Twinkle can be a bit excessive at times.’
‘I don’t have a habit,’ Scott said. ‘As far as I know neither does Twinkle.’
The man laughed and shook his head. ‘Alright Scott,’ he said, and held out a hand indicating that the conversation was over and Scott was free to leave.
Twinkle could be many things but Scott had no reason to suspect him of having a heroin addiction.
Before venturing back onto the street Scott quickly glanced around to make sure the lunatic from the club wasn’t skulking in the shadows looking to avenge his bruised ego and kidneys. Reasonably satisfied that he could avoid being thrust into the public eye for a pointless fight with the Z list celebrity, he pulled out his phone to call Angela. She was pretty much the only thing that could persuade him not to just head home. After five rings it redirected to answer phone. Fuck it, Scott thought and called for a cab.
Chapter 9
Scott found the Christmas holidays a fairly depressing time and given the opportunity he tended to stay longer in bed. The whole season was geared up towards families which in his case just made him think of death. By the time he did surface and have a shower it was already past one in the afternoon. Scott turned on his mobile phone intending to try Angela again; it had been a few days without any contact at all, and considering how close they had recently become it didn’t feel right.
As he scrolled down through his contact list for her number the phone began to ring, Neil flashed on the caller ID screen.
‘How did the night go?’ he asked, as he connected the call.
‘Fucking terrible man, I need to see you today,’ Neil said, his voice sounding scratchy.
‘Alright, calm down. What happened?’
‘No, not on the phone.’
‘OK then I’ll wait in, just come over when you can.’
‘Someplace else. The Starbucks down beside the plaza, can you be there at two-thirty?’
‘Yeah,’ Scott said uneasily. Neil got spooked by things from time to time, but Scott had never heard him as nervous as this. ‘I’ll see you then,’ he said, and hung up.
Scott arrived at Starbucks fifteen minutes early. He’d called Iris and ordered a cab for twenty minutes’ time but it had turned up right away.
Stan was the driver and explained they hadn’t had many calls so asked if Scott wanted him to wait. Scott said he didn’t know how long this would take, but Stan told him he’d be in the car park at the corner unless another call came through.
At the counter Scott ordered a large Mocha from a cheerful woman with unusually wide gaps between her teeth and a body that was shaped like a potato.
Taking his cup he moved away from the front of the shop. He usually avoided any food or drink establishments that had the floor to ceiling glass fronts. All the people walking by made him feel like a goldfish in a bowl or an animal at the zoo.
He settled into a booth, put his feet up on the seat opposite and tried again to call Angela as he waited for Neil to arrive. There was still no answer. Scott tapped his phone against the formica table-top thoughtfully. If there had been complications with Steph it was possible that Angela had been in the hospital the whole time with her phone turned off. He phoned directory enquiries and had them connect him through to Steph’s ward at the hospital.
‘Hi, can I speak to Stephanie Hutton, or someone connected with her? I’m a close friend of the family,’ he said when the call was connected.
‘One moment please,’ the voice that answered the phone said. ‘No I’m sorry, Miss Hutton was discharged on Friday.’
‘That can’t be right, I visited on Friday and the doctors told her she would be discharged on Monday.’
‘I’m sure you’re right but patients often get homesick and discharge themselves early, especially at this time of the year.’
‘OK, thank you.’ Scott mumbled, and disconnected the call.
He took a sip from the Mocha, and decided if Stan was still there after he met with Neil he’d stop by Angela’s place on the way back home.
The glass door into the coffee shop opened and Elizabeth Flight walked in with someone wearing a grey sweatshirt with the hood up and combat pants, that may or may not have been Neil.
She walked up to the counter as her companion glanced around the room and Scott recognised by the long length of dirty blonde hair that hung down from the hood that it was Neil. Scott waved him over and, as Neil walked up to the booth, Scott noticed he seemed to be favouring his right leg over the left, and when he put down the hood saw a black and purple bruise that stretched from as low down as Neil’s jaw bone, covered his right eye and across the bridge of his nose.
‘Jesus, what the fuck happened?’
‘Apparently there’s competition.’
‘Competition from who? Those twins with the long hair that used to deal around our route?’
‘No this is much bigger. Not competition as much as these guys have taken over.’
‘Taken over in Blitz?’
‘No, everywhere. The whole city,’ Neil said, glancing nervously around as if his attacker may have been lurking in one of the booths, ready to strike again.
‘Start from the beginning, what happened?’
‘Just the same as any other night, I went round the bars, Elizabeth was with me,’ he said, looking at her as she put two cups down on the table and sat on the seat beside Neil. ‘I mo
ved some stuff to the usual crowd, no strangers. We saw these two guys in a couple of places over the night. Probably wouldn’t have noticed them but they weren’t really dressed right for those type of bars. They looked sort of as if they’d dressed down to blend in but hadn’t quite got it right.’
‘I think I’ve seen one of them before,’ Elizabeth said, in what Scott found to be an amused tone of voice, as if this was just some new game she was playing.
‘Seen one where, out drinking in the bars?’ Scott asked, trying to repress any ill feeling he had towards her.
‘No, at least not around those bars. I don’t remember. Daddy has me attend so many functions I can’t possibly keep track of everyone I’ve seen.’
‘Right so they approached you in one of the bars?’ Scott asked, turning back to Neil.
‘No, I caught them looking over a few times but they never said anything. I thought it was cause Elizabeth looked really hot, they were just jealous or something.’
She seemed to wallow in that, as if this whole meeting was some kind of clandestine ploy Neil had thought up to compliment her.
‘So you went on to Blitz?’ Scott prompted.
‘Yeah, it was fine in there, we didn’t even see them. After we came out I still had some bags I was selling off to people, so by the time I’d finished we were just gonna head over to Elizabeth’s place. They stepped out from the alley behind the club, told me they wanted a word. I walked round thinking they were gonna try buy some shit, like maybe they were undercover feds or something. I was just gonna tell them to piss off when one of them grabbed me and threw me up against a wall. His mate said that if we, and he did say we, not me, so they know I don’t work alone Scott, if we want to keep on dealing then everything has to be bought through them at their prices, and we have to pay a premium on top to keep Blitz as ours.’
‘So what did you say?’
‘I told him to fuck off, like who the hell did they think they were and shit.’
‘So then they beat you up?’
‘Yeah, fuck man it was brutal. I’ve been in plenty bar fights over the years but this was different. There was like, an efficiency to it. Within just a few seconds I was face down in the snow wondering what the fuck had happened. They took the rest of the drugs I had too.’
Elizabeth nodded, confirming Neil’s statement.
‘And the cash, how much cash did they get?’ Scott asked.
‘Everything, it was just rolled in my pocket along with the remaining bags. It was after the club so I figured it was job done, nothing was hidden.’
‘So what happens then, do we just wait until we run into them again or what?’ Scott asked, struggling to make sense of Neil’s story.
‘No, they said someone will be in touch.’
Back in the cab on the way to Angela’s flat Scott was wondering what he could do to get out of the situation he was now in. He figured just leaving their drug business for Neil to do what he wanted with might be the best option, but that would all depend how things went with the meeting in which he and Twinkle were due to get paid.
Stan could tell something was up the way Scott got back in and slammed the door shut. Other than asking for their next destination he kept quiet, casting the odd furtive glance at Scott in the rear view mirror but otherwise kept his thoughts, and more importantly his questions to himself.
The afternoon was dark and stormy, a perfect backdrop to Scott’s mood. He chewed distractedly on a fingernail as Stan continued to navigate the cab along the quiet suburban streets in silence. They pulled up outside of Angela’s apartment block and Scott handed some money to Stan and told him not to wait. He was out of the cab and walking towards the entrance before the driver had time to tell him the fare.
Remembering the steaming cup of coffee waiting on the table last time he’d been there, Scott looked up and tried to locate which were the windows for Angela’s flat. Across the whole block they were all small, square and identical. How many had been in the living room, was it two or maybe three? He couldn’t remember. He stopped for a second and counted along her floor, a shape five windows in vanished just as he caught sight of it. Had it been someone watching him? Maybe, or perhaps a cat jumping from the window ledge in a neighbouring apartment.
The entranceway was unlocked again so he didn’t bother to buzz up. There’d been no-one outside on the street and the stairway in the building was equally deserted. Scott felt an increasing sensation of isolation, like he was the last man alive on the planet. He shivered and gave three raps of the knocker on Angela’s door. The hallway had been quiet beforehand and he strained to hear anything from behind the door. The silence seemed to get louder until it became almost unbearable. Scott cleared his throat just to hear a sound, and knocked again on the door, this time pressing his ear up against it. He couldn’t hear anything so he tried calling her name, assuring her that it was just him and that he was worried about her, but his words did nothing more than bounce back along the corridor behind him. Slowly he made his way back downstairs, turning for one last glance over his shoulder in case the door should open.
Scott decided against calling Stan’s cab back and opted to just walk for a while. It wasn’t like he was in a hurry to get anywhere now anyway.
* * *
Twinkle’s message arrived the next day just after 2 pm. Scott had woken early but lay in bed ‘til noon. He’d wandered the house unable to settle into anything. Starting one task and then leaving it unfinished and beginning something else. The message had provided a welcome focus. It simply read ‘Tonite John Henrys at 8’. Now there was something for his mind to fix upon, he wouldn’t need to look for distractions from the questions about Angela that relentlessly surfaced like bubbles in water.
He ate, walked the dog, came home and showered. Scott felt he was on the verge of something, it wasn’t excitement he felt but nor was it fear. When the time was right he called a cab and left. Only then did it occur to him that it was Christmas Eve.
There was no surprise that Twinkle was in the bar as Scott arrived. The speed he was drinking from his glass suggested he was in a desperate race against sobriety, and one that he appeared to be winning.
‘Slow down, the night is still young,’ Scott said, putting a hand on Twinkle’s shoulder.
Twinkle turned to him and grinned, there were dark wet spots on the front of his t-shirt from beer that had dripped from the glass in his haste.
‘Another one of these for me and one for my young friend as well,’ Twinkle said, leaning unsteadily across the bar attempting to catch Joanne’s arm as she walked past. She evaded his grip and cast a concerned glance back towards Scott.
‘Let’s go sit at a table, man. That’s Sharon’s friend remember, you don’t want to blow things before they get back off the ground again.’
‘I know, I know,’ he said, shaking his head drunkenly. The tips of some strands of his hair glistened as if they’d fallen into his glass. ‘It’s my last night Scott. We do that thing and then I’m off the drink and everything else for good.’
Scott took a firm grip on Twinkle’s elbow and half ushered, half dragged him away from the bar.
‘That’s enough. We’ll have a couple of drinks together if you want, but no more talk of later on, OK?’
‘OK my friend, whatever you say.’
Scott went back to the bar and picked up their drinks. Twinkle had flopped down onto a bench between two tables and the current occupiers of one had taken the hint and moved. Scott pushed in beside him, putting their glasses on the table.
‘You been in for long?’ Scott asked.
Twinkle made an elaborate shrugging gesture, which pretty much told Scott that he’d been drinking long enough for time to no longer be a factor.
A while later they both left John Henry’s. Scott had asked only the time they needed to leave, planning on getting all further information Twinkle had been given when they were alone outside. He’d kept the conversation away from anything criminal and let Tw
inkle go on at length about the plans he had for himself, Sharon and the kids. By encouraging Twinkle to do most of the talking, this at least had slowed down his drinking, and when suggestions to top up with spirits arose, Scott had declined them as well.
The meeting, Twinkle now told him, was to take place in a large tower block in Orchard Rise, just outside of the main city zone. Orchard, Scott thought, that was a joke. The only thing that ever grew around there was the crime rate and the amount of dog shit on the paths.
No more snow had fallen since last night but the temperature had dropped below freezing again, and what snow remained had now frozen into solid patches that crunched as they walked on them. Twinkle was a little unsteady as he walked, but Scott kept an eye on him and stayed close enough to prevent a fall should he stumble or slip on the ice. There would have been no point waiting for a cab to take them at this time on Christmas Eve. Besides, Scott didn’t want anyone knowing where they were going, and was taking an indirect route to the tower block just in case. His paranoia levels were elevated but Scott was glad of the heightened awareness.
Twinkle trudged on in silence, his breath as visible as it was pungent in the cold night air. Scott reached for his cigarettes but then put them away again, he didn’t want anything to slow them down now they were so close. Just get this over with and find out what to expect next.
The block they wanted was called Raven’s Nook, and was one of three ugly grey concrete columns that loomed like giant tombstones over Garden Heights. They had first been built to house the homeless after the war, but these days it seemed only the lowest rung on society’s ladder were housed there.
As soon as they came into view, Scott instinctively pulled up his hood. There’d undoubtedly be high resolution surveillance cameras on top monitoring the streets all around, and Scott wanted no connection between himself and this meeting. If he’d asked, Scott would have told Twinkle it was for the cold, but either he hadn’t noticed anyway or simply didn’t care.
The large entranceway door shrieked as Scott pushed it open. Twinkle had told him the meeting was at a flat on the fourteenth floor; as much as he didn’t want to chance getting stuck in one of the elevators here for the Christmas break, Scott also didn’t feel like climbing all of those stairs. He pushed the button to summon the lift. A grinding sound followed by two metallic clangs announced it was on its way.
