Bent

by Joe Thomas

  You know what they say about sentries though —

  If they’re not where they should be, they’ll be having a snout half a yard behind you, so watch your fucking back.

  You watch your fucking back. You give it a few snouts worth, time-wise, and decide to take a proper look.

  The tunnel is long, long, long, and dark like a cellar, and cold like charity. It's damp, and the drips echo. Two lines, one up, one down, and you realise you and Tojo can do some serious damage here, if you get enough time to set the charges at either end.

  And there is no one. There are no sentries. It occurs that perhaps there's a reason —

  Why the fuck would anyone be here, down here, so far behind the lines? Isn’t that the point of the mission?

  Either way, there are no sentries and you are deflated. There's not been a real hitch, not been a chance to have a go.

  Tojo's happy, though.

  *

  Challenor sits at his desk. He stares at his desk. His head thrums. His head throbs. His head spins. His head, to be honest, really honest, if he really thinks about it, his head feels like it's been turned upside down, inside.

  It feels as if his brains are in his fucking chin.

  It's early -

  Well, if he really thinks about it, it's still late. It's quite late, he thinks, which makes it quite early. It's neither really early or really late yet. He reckons he’ll hit both in about half an hour, if he stays exactly where he is, stays at his desk, not moving, staring at it. If he does that, it’ll be really late and really early at exactly the same time and this should help, this should really help. Christ, it’ll be helpful when the time sorts itself out, when it's worked out what it is, the time, early or late.

  Radio's on. Some jingle jangle about Sheila, sweet little Sheila.

  Someone walks past Challenor's office. ‘Oi,’ he shouts, ‘oi, you! Get in here!’

  Police Sergeant Alan Ratcliffe pokes his head round the door. ‘Guv?’

  ‘Oh, hello, Alan, it's you.’

  ‘Sir?’ Police Sergeant Alan Ratcliffe looks confused.

  Challenor isn’t sure how to help him regarding this confusion, though Challenor recognises that he's confused, and that feels like something, like an achievement, some understanding at least.

  Challenor nods, eyebrows raised, at the ceiling, indicating the music that is jangling through his office. He says, ‘I thought Buddy Holly had bloody died.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Challenor is nodding, fast, and he realises that Police Sergeant Alan Ratcliffe remains confused. ‘The song, Alan, that's playing.’ Ratcliffe now nods himself. ‘Is it not Buddy Holly, Alan?’

  ‘It's not, no, guv.’

  ‘Well who is it, Alan?’

  ‘It's a Yank, guv, I think, a lad name of Tommy Roe.’

  ‘Is it now.’

  Challenor's head bobs. He starts to laugh. He starts to convulse with laughter.

  ‘Sir?’ Ratcliffe asks. He looks a little nervous, does Police Sergeant Alan Ratcliffe. Challenor recognises the look that his subordinates sometimes have on their nervous little faces.

  Challenor raises a palm. ‘Well, Alan, this Tommy Roe, we ought to get him down here, we ought to nick him, this Tommy Roe, nick him and book him, Alan.’

  Challenor continues to laugh, continues to convulse, to shake with laughter.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘’Cos he's a thief, Alan!’ Challenor delivers the punchline between gasps, gleeful gasps. ‘He's stitched Buddy Holly right up with this little number. Done a real number on him, in fact, Alan. Get it, Alan? Get it?’

  ‘I think so, sir, yes.’

  ‘On you go, Alan, as you were.’ Challenor waves Ratcliffe away. His laughter settles, his shaking settles, his convulsions settle. He says, to himself, ‘Poor old Buddy Holly, bloody shame that was.’

  He wipes his eyes. He grimaces. His head sings. His head yells.

  Christ it's early, he thinks. And he has a big day, a long day ahead of him. The previous night's drinking was, he now accepts, something of a mistake.

  *

  ‘Christ it's dark in here, Tanky,’ Wedderburn says, as you inch along, deeper into the tunnel, like blind men it's so dark, using the line, tapping the line, to keep your bearings, the line your white stick. ‘We better get a wriggle on.’

  You know that there tend to be lengthy enough intervals between trains —you’ve been timing them — and you know that the majority of these trains are goods trains, and this is good news.

  You know this, but it doesn’t half make time slow down when you’re laying charges in a tunnel. And if you don’t do it sharpish, gawd knows what’ll come out of the gloom and smash you to smithereens, really do a number on you, an ironic little number.

  One hundred yards in, and you lay the charges against the ‘down’ line from Pontremoli. It takes you five minutes. It feels like hours, like hours and hours in the dark, as you shake and shiver from the cold and the nerves and the fear, the fear of a train —

  And Christ it's hard work, fiddly work, laying charges against the line like this when it's so dark and so cold.

  You burrow deeper into the tunnel. You cross to the other side of the tunnel. You lay charges on the ‘up’ line. The ‘up’ line, you believe, runs towards La Spezia.

  It takes about five minutes to lay these charges on the ‘up’ line.

  ‘Come on, Tanky, well done,’ Wedderburn says. ‘Let's get out of here.’

  You move as fast as you can. But it's dark, and it's cold, and it's damp, and each step is a hindrance, really, each step stops you from going faster, from walking freely, and it's a bloody nightmare, and then the line starts to hum, to fizz, to warm up, and you know what this means.

  The line hums louder. The line sings —

  ‘Good God,’ says Wedderburn. ‘Move, man. Run like hell.’

  The line yells —

  You’re already running, sprinting. You don’t need a senior officer to tell you that. And what's odd is that suddenly you can run, suddenly it feels like you can move, you can get out.

  You’re racing the train —

  Head on.

  You need to get out of the tunnel before it gets in, before it hits you in the face, punches you slap in the face, headbutts your face with its face —

  You have the peace of mind to decide that, yes, this is the way round: you’d rather hit the fucker head on than have it plough into your back.

  The circle of light ahead gets bigger, the noise of the tracks thrums louder, and the chug of the train is more persistent, more prominent.

  And then you’re in the stream, you’re soaked as you’ve dived head first into the stream —

  Just quickly enough to see a goods train, running towards La Spezia, you believe, disappear into the mouth of the tunnel.

  *

  The previous night Challenor went into the Coach and Horses via the lock-in entrance and proceeded to drink four bottles of brown ale and four whiskies very quickly.

  He was halfway through his third bottle when someone clocked him, and there were a few murmurings, which he fronted out, and then a group dispersed as he purchased bottle number four, and then the same group gathered around him as he drank bottle number four and suggested he might want to leave.

  Challenor remembers, now, staring at his desk, early, very early in the morning, that he wasn’t too keen on leaving.

  Before leaving the Coach and Horses, Challenor swore violent revenge on at least half of the small group that had dispersed and then gathered around him to persuade him to leave, and then he put a chair through the window.

  Well, he thinks now, with a wry grin — and this wry grin seems encouraging, he thinks, in terms of his imminent recovery — he didn’t put it through the window exactly, as the chair bounced back and landed, upright, ready for use, back inside the saloon. Challenor was not the only patron present to be surprised by this turn of events. The group that were gathered around him - two of whom had had
to move sharpish to avoid this chair - stared in disbelief at the chair's new position.

  Challenor chuckles now at what happened next.

  He, Challenor, sat down on the chair.

  The group looked hard at the window.

  Challenor sighed and smiled and waved his fourth bottle of brown ale at the bar staff, clearly desiring another.

  The group looked at Challenor.

  Challenor said, ‘Pull up a pew, have a seat, it's bloody raining them, after all!’

  The group looked again at the window.

  Challenor said, ‘It's not fucking rocket science, my old darlings!’

  The window, it turned out, was open, and Challenor's chair had in fact bounced back off the shutters which had been pulled down so as not to alert the long arm of the law to the illegal drinking that was going on.

  Challenor smiles now as he remembers enjoying explaining that avoiding the police meant there was no damage. Had he, Challenor, not been around that evening, there would have been no need to pull down the shutters.

  The pub was not wholly convinced by this explanation, by its logic.

  Challenor did not stay much longer.

  After he left the Coach and Horses, via the side door, he turned right, right again, and right again, to find himself back on Moor Street. While he had had a fair wallop of booze, he was smart enough not to return to the Geisha. He smiles at this foresight now, staring at his desk, his head smarting despite these smarts, his head bellowing, in general complaint.

  Instead, Challenor barged into Limoncello, his favourite Soho trattoria, where his old pal Lucky ‘Luke’ Luciano was tidying away and chin-wagging with the staff. They were not, Challenor understands now, thrilled to see him. They were not at all tickled by his appearance, this was clear from the word go.

  Their hospitality was brief, but significant: a bottle of the restaurant's eponymous spirit was lifted out from behind the bar and several large measures were poured first into a tumbler, and second down Challenor's throat.

  Cheers, Algiers; Algiers, cheers! He remembers toasting the room with this to a general bewilderment. Challenor knew his friend's game: sink him with fortified drink and he’ll be out of your hair all the quicker.

  And Lucky Luke was right.

  *

  Face down in the stream, it occurs that the train would not have hit you in the face, would not have headbutted your face with its face, as there was plenty of room on the other side of the tunnel to avoid that fate, that face.

  Of course —you were running as the charges you laid would have gone off inside the tunnel with you in it, and there is no way you would have avoided that fate, as you now can tell by the wrench of metal, the screech of metal against rock.

  Fuck me, it worked. Smoke rolls, avalanches from the mouth of the tunnel. Flames flash. Parts of the train go bang, explode, crack.

  You mention your little misunderstanding to Tojo.

  ‘Haha, you wally, Tanky,’ he says, ‘but whatever gets you out in time, right?’

  That God's honest, you think.

  Then you hear it: a low thrum, a hum, the line is buzzing again.

  ‘Christ,’ Tojo says, ‘there's one coming the other way!’

  And then the crunch, and the screech, and the wrench, but you don’t wait around to inspect your handiwork, you scramble the fuck up the hill to your hideout and try and put as much distance as you can between you and it, your handiwork.

  You smile, thinking of a nickname for you both:

  Two Train Tojo and Tanky —

  Who dares wins.

  *

  It's still very early, or very late -

  Challenor clocks this ambiguity he feels and understands that it means he is not ready for anything more than his office, his desk, just yet. This is a big day, a long day that he has in front of him and it is important that he sets himself about it the right way, and, at this early - or late - point in the day recuperation is the key He must, he accepts, recuperate, recover. But what from?

  Himself, he supposes -

  He needs to recover from himself.

  Challenor charged out of Lucky Luke's charged up by a good dose of fortification, of fuel -

  And then didn’t know what to do next.

  It's quite the problem in Soho for your drinker who isn’t especially keen on either live music or live ladies. Challenor likes music, he's listening to it now after all, he thinks, but he likes it on his own terms. Whenever he has tried to enjoy the live music experience, there have been moments of great pleasure, of euphoria, even, when he has been swept up in the rhythm, the swing, the sweet voice and the hard, percussive sway, when he's looked about him and seen a joyous bunch of youngsters, face-splitting grins on them all, and he's reckoned he's understood this live music lark. And then he's needed to go for a slash, and to do so has meant fighting his way across a packed dance floor, a packed, sweaty, writhing, jumping dance floor past a load of twelve-year-olds full of hair grease and he thinks, perhaps I don’t need this live music lark after all.

  So where does your drinker go then?

  Challenor tried Trisha's on Greek Street. He got halfway down the stairs before the pair of berks who run the door picked him up by his arms and carried him back out.

  ‘Go home, Harry,’ one of the berks had said. ‘It's four in the morning and we’re closed.’

  ‘Home? At four?’ he’d replied. ‘I’m going to work, my old darling.’

  And after that, he remembers now, he did the one thing he should really regret -

  He shunted his way, bull-like, up through Soho to West End Central, the Mad House. And at the Mad House, he went down to the holding cells. And in one of the holding cells he found a young lad, whose name he forgets. This young lad was brought in for causing a spot at a local skin shop on Berwick Street. This lad had, it transpires, been bothering an employee of this skin shop. The police constable on duty informed Challenor that the young lad was a known associate of Joseph Oliva, one of his mob, low down the chain of command, but still. Challenor told the Police Constable on duty to let him into the cell. In the cell, he took out a piece of lead piping that was in the inside pocket of his coat. He dropped this on the floor next to the young lad.

  ‘That's yours,’ he said to the lad.

  He then took the lad by the lapels and slapped him about the face. He gripped him by the throat and slapped him about the face. He pushed him up against the wall and drove the palm of his hand repeatedly against the wall, just to the right of the young lad's head. The wall crumbled.

  ‘Who's is the lead, son?’ he asked. His eyes flashed. ‘You crummy little sod. I’m sure I’ve knocked you off before. Receiving, wasn’t it? I’ll have you again, too, you’ll see.’

  He breathed alcohol like a dragon. He stuck his face in the young lad's face. He carried the lad to the wall on the opposite side of the cell. He pinned the lad up against this wall by the throat with his left forearm. With the palm of his right hand, he pushed at - he massaged, really - the forehead of the young lad into the wall. The wall scratched under the weight. The wall balked under the weight. The young lad trembled. The young lad said nothing. The young lad gasped -

  Challenor heard the tell-tale trickle of urine on cell floor. Job done.

  After a little while, Challenor put the young lad down and picked up the lead piping.

  ‘I’ll deliver this to the duty officer, then, lad. Seeing as I’ve discovered it on your person, during my interrogation.’ He grinned at this unfortunate lad. ‘Mind how you go, my old darling,’ he said.

  Yes, he thinks now, his head screaming, his head really bickering with him, this is the one thing he should really regret. Thing is, he doesn’t -

  He doesn’t regret it at all.

  Who dares wins, he thinks.

  *

  You’re heading higher and higher into the mountains and further and further south towards Pontremoli —

  Rendezvous with Dudgeon and the other lads. You should make
it.

  Your knees are bleeding. Your arms are bleeding. You fall and you pick yourself up, you scramble and you sweat, you bend under the weight of your pack, your equipment. You climb higher and higher. The air thin. The rocks jagged-

  These Italian mountains craggy and beautiful in the cool of the night, as the sun comes up, the red sun illuminates the edges of these mountains, and you think they’re not so different to the Highlands of Scotland in their edge of wildness, in their edge.

  And you’re driven on, partly by the thought of meeting the other lads — you’ll get some bloody conversation out of some of them — and partly as you’re excited, you’re like a child, ready to share your success.

  Wedderburn leads. He's got the map, the compass, the bearing, and, well the bearing, that officer bearing.

  ‘See that church, Tanky, down by the stream?’

  You nod.

  ‘That's Villafranca,’ he points north, just up there, and that's La Spezia,’ he points west, ‘so that must be the church.’

  You’ve no argument. There's an issue though.

  ‘We’re going to have to leave the cover of the mountains,’ Wedderburn says. ‘Make a break for the lower ground. I suspect we won’t be alone down there.’

  This is no issue, you think. This you relish.

  ‘Let's get on with it, Tanky.’ Wedderburn folds the map. You finger your knife. ‘Quicker we get down there, quicker we know.’

  Sounds good to you. The pair of you are lean, hungry, dirty, sweaty, bearded —

  Killers.

  You reach the point on the map, the agreed rendezvous point, on the bank of the stream, a little down from the church.

  You’re definitely in the right place —

  Thing is, no one else seems to be.

  *

  Challenor looks at the two addresses on the scrap of paper -

  Miracle I didn’t lose this, he thinks.

  His head sighs. His head exhales. His head deflates.

  He thinks it's about time he did a little work, also that it's about time he did a little work, looking at the clock and seeing that it is 8.30 a.m., and that he has been asleep face down on his desk for the last forty-seven minutes. He snorts, clears his nose and throat, gives it the old smoker's hello, hacking and snorting, he is, for a few minutes. The coffee he had one of his nervous subordinates go and fetch him about an hour ago - or did a nervous subordinate bring it without his prompting? It's possible, but if so, he’ll have words - is beside him and loaded with sugar and thick with cream, and cold, cold with a filthy layer of skin on the top of it. He skims his finger over this layer of skin and pulls it out, and carefully drops it in his bin. Soho, he thinks, is all about skim skin flicks, skin shops, skin shows. Skin you alive, it will, Soho. Skin-of-your-teeth type of scene, he thinks, Soho. The Soho skin crawl will make your skin crawl. No other way through. Soho is a cold, cold, thick cup of coffee, old and unwanted, charged with caffeine, with fuel, dark and murky, with a nasty, sorry, unfortunate layer of skin on the top.