Church Group

by Michael Brightside

  * * *

  The car was easy enough to find, a three-series BMW with jet black windows and matching paint. It was getting in it that was the hard part.

  “There isn’t enough room for us all to get in and have a line,” Jon said. “If two stand outside, then when the rest of us are done that two get in and have a sniff. Yeah? Tel you go in the driver’s seat, you’ll have to stay in the car.”

  I sat down in the back next to Al. Jon sat in the front passenger seat, with Tel as directed in the driver’s seat. Tel put his hand down the front of his shirt and pulled out a small gold pot hanging from his neck on a thick rope style chain. Unscrewing the top he revealed a miniature gold spoon on the end of the chain. He dug it into the pot before holding up the spoon in front of me, a small amount of cocaine heaped on top. I sniffed it up and immediately felt a hundred times better.

  Coke has this uncanny ability to sober you up from any drug. It can pull you out of an ecstasy trip if you’re rushing too hard, or counteract amphetamines if you’ve accidently overdone it. If you were ever on a night out and you started to regret the amount of chemicals you’d consumed, you could always rack a line of coke up and you’d be fine. The only exception to the rule was alcohol. Snorting coke whilst drunk didn’t make you feel fine. It made you feel like an actual fucking superhero. Coke was good on its own; but with alcohol taking away the paranoia most commonly associated with it, it became absolutely amazing. I’m sure it must have torn your grey matter in half, filling yourself with one drug that makes you want to sleep and another that wants you to be the most awake you’ve ever been. At a time like this though; if it was just one thing, it was just spectacular.

  “We can’t all fit in the car.”

  “What?”

  “We can’t all fit in the car,” Steve repeated. “There’s six of us and I’ve only got five seats.”

  “Bollocks,” Jon said. “We’ll have to do two trips.”

  Al leaned into the middle of the car. “I’ll go in the boot.”

  “Are you sure?” Steve replied. “I wouldn’t go in the boot.”

  “Yeah no worries,” Al said. “Just don’t crash.”

  Tel cut Al out another line for the journey, then he and Steve got him comfortably into the back; standing over him like a pair of gangsters while they made sure his legs were fully inside, before they shut the boot lid down. Al’s world became a lot smaller.

  I thought about Al trapped there in the boot, curled up with his knees to his chin. I wondered whether I’d have made the sacrifice he had, and I wondered whether I really wanted to be going onto the second half of the night we had planned. In the meantime I had to make do with being pinned in the middle of the back seat, between the combined broad shoulders of Gaz and Tel.

  Ten long minutes later we arrived in the unlit car park at the rear of the pub, where no one could see us letting Al out of the boot. Al’s pupils had grown massive, either due to the coke or the fact that he’d been locked in the dark for the last ten minutes.

  “What the hell are you doing with them?” James whispered to me when he saw us all walk into the pub together.

  “Hello James, nice to see you too,” I replied.

  “Seriously. What have you brought them here for?”

  “Why? Do you know who they are?”

  “That’s Jon Callings, one of the biggest dealers in Carlton,” James told me, looking over at him.

  We watched as they made their way to the bar and the small crowd of people waiting for a drink dispersed and reformed round the other side, all of them trying not to make eye contact with our new mates.

  “What? Jon? He’s alright. We’ve been drinking with them in the bar on Carlton pier half the day.”

  “They’re nutters Lu, you don’t wanna get on the wrong side of them,” James said.

  “Well everyone will have to just stay on the right side of them then. Al has kicked every one of their arses at pool today without them doing anything,” I said. “I mean fuck me; they just gave me and Al a lift back and Al was in the boot. They took a big risk there just to do us a favour.”

  “You were in Jon Callings’ boot Al?

  “Nah, course not mate,” Al replied. “It’s Steve’s car not Jon’s.”

  Gaz invited us over to a table covered in beer. It might have been our local but I think they still wanted to be in charge. I sat down with them and noticed how the rest of the room had gone quiet.

  I introduced them all to James, then Jon placed a fifty pence on the pool table as a couple of blokes I didn’t recognise were setting the balls up.

  “Winner stays on,” he said.

  “You’re OK,” the bloke at the baulk end replied.

  “Go on lads, have your game first, those are the rules,” Jon said. But it was too late, they’d already gone back to their seats.

  “Who’s going to play me then?” Jon asked. “What about you Al, you gonna give me a rematch? I’ll show you how it’s done this time.”

  “Yeah you’ll be fucking lucky Jon,” Al replied, carrying on setting the balls up from where the lads had stopped. The silent pub fell silenter.

  “So you from Kirk-Leigh as well?” Tel asked James.

  “Nah dude. Hemford.”

  “Fuck me that’s worse ain’t it?” Tel said. “Are you partial to a bit of quiver as well?”

  James smiled, “I wouldn’t say no.”

  “Follow me then,” Tel said, getting off his stool. “Where are the gents?”

  By the time the pair of them came back, James seemed to have calmed down. It was almost as if he was glad we’d bought these people to the pub now. Surely not just because they’d given him free cocaine? As pissed as Al and I were, I knew we wouldn’t have invited the four of them back to our local unless we trusted them. It disappointed me to think that James might have thought otherwise.

  The rest of the night went well. Luckily James had some money on him so we finally managed to get a round in. It didn’t matter that James paid, just that for once it wasn’t one of those four. It wasn’t long before the bell for last orders rang; it always rings too early, but then we had arrived pretty late.

  “So what’s the plan now then lads? Where do you normally go on a Saturday after the pub shuts?” Jon asked us.

  I turned and mouthed to James, “Your place?”

  He stared back into my eyes and whispered, “No way, I’m not having them back to the flat.”

  “Why not mate? They’re alright.”

  “Take them back to the garage then.”

  I don’t think there’s any way James could have known the moral implications of that sentence, but he was right. If I’d expected him to host an afterhours drinking session for them, then I should be willing to do the same. It didn’t seem like that bad an idea, although I was aware it probably wasn’t a good idea.

  “You’re alright to come back to mine,” I said. Fuck it, they still had loads of coke, chances were we could steal a bottle of spirits from either Al’s parents’ house or mine. What could go wrong?

  I went in the car on the first trip, with Jon, Steve, Tel and Gaz. Al and James started walking back, sharing a pint that Al had managed to sneak out of the pub. I got to sit in the front seat this time as I was the only one who knew the way.

  We pulled up halfway along my road and I asked everyone to be quiet, just until we got into the garage. With the exception of Steve who went back for the other two.

  The four of us made our way down the side of the house and into my room, where we ended up sitting awkwardly on my bed. I hadn’t thought about trying to seat seven people out there, it was never normally a problem when it was just Al or Kyle.

  “Have you got anywhere I can put this?” Tel asked me, taking his gold chain off. I wiped down a CD case from the side and handed it to him. He emptied onto it the remaining coke from the pot around his neck.

  “How we doing for beers then Lu?” Jon asked.

  “And music,” Gaz added.

&
nbsp; “One sec.” I tip-toed into the house where I found a litre bottle of vodka in the kitchen, pretty much full to the top. I took that and a bottle of Coke back to the garage, then made a second trip to find seven glasses. This proved to be the hard part; I had to substitute mine and Al’s for flowery mugs. All that was left was to turn the stereo on and push play. There would always be a tape in there, today it was piano house.

  “Turn this up Lu. I love this song,” Gaz said.

  “Really?” I replied. “I didn’t think you’d be into this sort of thing.”

  “Me? No I love this sort of music. It always gets the sausage swinging at G-A-Y.”

  Jon and Tel both laughed. In the absence of any Frank Sinatra I tuned the stereo to Radio 2.

  “Nice place you’ve got here Lu,” Jon said. “I would’ve loved to have somewhere like this when I was your age. How old are you by the way? Twenty-something?”

  “Eighteen,” I replied.

  “Fucking eighteen!” Jon said. Tel kind of sighed. “Eighteen. Do you remember that you two? What I wouldn’t give to be eighteen again.”

  “Why how old are you?”

  Jon laughed, “Older than eighteen!”

  “I was already inside by the time I was eighteen,” Gaz said.

  Of course he was. For murder probably, but he’d waited until he was back at the garage to tell me.

  “What for? Er....if you don’t mind me asking,” I said carefully, unsure of the etiquette of asking someone why they’d been to prison.

  “GBH,” he replied without hesitation. Ah GBH. The thing that is happening while you’re murdering someone.

  Gaz looked at me with distant eyes. “My old dear started seeing someone just after I left school. She’d had partners before but this one used to knock her about.” He paused for a moment as if having to himself remember what had happened. It was probably at least as long ago as the whole time I’d been alive. “He was a big bloke, Darren his name was. I put up with it for ages because my mum loved him. She’d finish with him but he’d always sober up and come round apologising and she’d take him back. It used to wind me up but I ignored it because most of the time he made her happy.”

  I gave him that sympathetic squinting eyes look you give someone when you have no idea what to say.

  “I’d been out drinking with my mate for my seventeenth birthday. It was only a matter of time before I snapped. Anyway, I came home to find my mother crying at the bottom of the stairs. Turns out Darren had gone to the pub after work instead of going home, by the time he rolled in he was pissed and his cold dinner was waiting for him on the table.”

  “That was his fault for going to the pub,” I said.

  “You’re right, it was. But he didn’t see it that way,” Gaz replied. “So he goes upstairs and pulls my old dear out of bed, drags her downstairs by her throat and shoves her face in the plate of food. When I found her she still had mashed potato in her hair, bless her.”

  I looked over at Jon and Tel, the pair of them listened on in silence.

  “Where was her boyfriend?”

  “Tell Lu what you did,” Jon smiled.

  “I knew he’d have gone back down the boozer, it was only on the estate so I went there to find him,” Gaz said. “He was there, like I knew he would be.”

  I was pretty sure I knew where this was going.

  “I weren’t as big at seventeen as I am now, and Darren was a big bloke. I knew if we came to blows there was a good chance he’d have done me. So I went straight in the door, grabbing a beer bottle off a table as I walked up to him. Then I hit him round the head with it. As soon as it hit his nut I felt all that anger I’d kept built up inside me come out. I must have hit him five times with it before he hit the ground, I was still hitting him as he went down. Then I hit him one last time and it smashed. Nearly took his fucking eye out, there was claret everywhere. That’s what done me in the end, two and a half years I got, my solicitor reckoned it would have been half that if the bottle hadn’t smashed.”

  “Fucking hell. Did you get arrested at the pub?”

  “No Lu. When I looked up all his supposed friends had backed off, so I managed to get out the pub and back to my mate’s again that night. We carried on drinking round his until the morning, then the old bill turned up. My old dear had told them who I’d been out drinking with the night before, she didn’t know I’d gone back round his again; kind of grassed me up, but she wasn’t to know. Wankers put me straight on remand. I didn’t get out again for eighteen months.”

  “You spent your eighteenth birthday inside? Would you do it again?”

  Gaz stared straight at me. “To see him in court, with a patch over his eye and stitches all over his boat? To know that every time he looked in the mirror he would regret laying a hand on my mother? Of course I’d do it again.”

  “If you’ll do bird for anyone you’ll do it for your mother,” Jon agreed.

  “Too right,” Tel added, passing me the CD case.

  As I sniffed the strong cocaine up my nose I wondered whether I’d have been brave enough to do the same in that situation, knowing that after eighteen months in prison the rest of your life was going to be very different. Maybe Gaz had never meant to end up living the way he did, but had had this life forced on him by unlucky circumstances. And to think, I thought I’d had it bad at home; the only screaming I’d ever heard from my mum was at my dad when he’d forgotten to put the bins out.

  Steve, James and Al soon arrived and the conversation went back to being a bit more light-hearted; the seven of us managing to fit surprisingly well in the garage, although I ended up sitting on the floor despite it being my room.

  By two in the morning the vodka and cocaine were all gone, so everyone said their goodbyes and Jon, Steve, Gaz and Tel went back to Carlton; respectfully not talking as they sneaked down the side of my parents’ house. Al and James crashed on the end of my bed, under a blanket made from clothes pulled straight out of my wardrobe, hangers and all. When I woke in the morning James had gone. Al was still there and had spread himself out, managing to get half under the covers with me. Apart from having all of the glassware from the house out there, and the ashtrays being full to overflowing, the garage looked just the same as after any other night. That was, until I got up to take a piss in the back garden and nearly tripped over Gaz’s brown leather jacket on the floor.

  Bollocks.

  It Was Too Delicious an Irony Not To Be

  June 2002.

  Al and I had been out celebrating his nineteenth birthday at Club Z, sadly without James or Kyle as both had been forced to work. At closing time we left with no money for a taxi.

  The air was charged with the thick static of an approaching storm that made the electrons in my body align north and south. It looked like it could rain at any moment but with brains that understood only optimism, that was never going to deter us and we began walking. Having waited over a month for Gaz to come back to mine and retrieve his jacket, we’d decided he’d forgotten about it, and Al had taken to wearing it himself. I’d never have had the guts; but tonight when it looked like we were going to get wet, and I was wearing a flimsy hoody over a shirt, I wished I did have.

  We made it to the end of the road before a policeman pulled his car over and asked us where we were going. For reasons I still don’t know to this day, Al told him we were on our way to a house party. Now while I have no real problem with the police, I do respect the ability they have to cock things up for people like us. Telling a copper you were on the way to a house party at two o’clock in the morning, fucked out of your head on E, was asking for trouble. This was one of those times you avoided the police.

  “Just come from one lads, a big fight kicked off there; it filled half the street at one point. I take it that’s the one, there won’t be any more partying going on there tonight. I’m going to have to take you home.”

  Fuck. This will be interesting.

  As our unlikely trio pulled off down the road, déj�
� vu hit me in an instant. A few months earlier Al and I had ridden my motorbike back from Wanton after seeing my dad’s new flat for the first time. Well, not immediately after seeing his flat, but after a several hour detour at the pub. By the time we had our crash helmets back on the pair of us could barely stand. It was as we came down this very road that I’d seen blue flashes of light reflecting off my brake and clutch levers. I’d tried to calm my riding down but it was too late, the car had caught up with us and the copper knew. Drink driving; taking a passenger whilst on a provisional license; no insurance; no L plates; no MOT; using both sides of the road as if it were a racetrack. The points, fines and court appearances totted up in my head. Not to mention a night in a freezing cold cell. That’ll teach me. I remember glancing at the lone policeman as he pulled beside me, before giving me the strangest look I’ve ever had; then he overtook us and disappeared into the night. No fucking way. He wasn’t stopping us. He was on his way to another call. That look. I knew what it meant. Any other time, I would have you in an instant. Not now you wouldn’t. Fate was on our side tonight.

  The policeman driving that night looked about thirty, had dark hair, and was alone. Our chauffer for the night matched that description exactly. It had to be him, it was too delicious an irony not to be. We’ve met before and I think you gave me a look that said if I ever see you again you’re nicked. Think. I needed to know.

  It would be a hard topic to get onto, even with my drug addled brain running at twice its normal speed. I couldn’t approach the subject head on. I needed to get him to mention it but without implicating myself. Maybe I could say I was out walking and saw the whole thing. No. Too obvious. Could I ask him what he was doing on a Friday night three months ago? Again no. I would need to start with last weekend and work back from there but there wasn’t the time.

  I looked at his face in the rear view mirror one more time to be sure, the black plastic rim surrounding the reflective glass framed my eyes perfectly. The same view you would have looking at someone through the visor of a crash helmet. It was the same view he’d had of me that night, the same view he had now. Fuck. Look away. Don’t make it obvious, just don’t look at him again until you get out of the car. Stare out of the window instead.

  The sky lit up with a flash of lightning. I watched the fork come down from the clouds and tail off behind the roofline of some houses. The crash of thunder that followed seemed to shake the car. A welcome distraction.

  “Bet you’re glad you’re not out in that?” the policeman asked as we made our way across the islands of tarmac forming in the river of the road. In front of him the windscreen wipers were moving so fast they seemed to blur into a pair of Japanese fans.

  “Yeah. Thanks,” I replied.

  Not a moment too soon we pulled up in somebody else’s cul-de-sac at the wrong end of the village. I didn’t want him knowing where either of us lived.

  He looked towards Al. I hadn’t noticed but Al had pulled the front of his beanie hat down to cover his eyes, and turned up the collar of Gaz’s leather jacket in an attempt to cover his face. From behind I could see his cheekbones pulse, as he tensed the muscles in his jaw. Maybe this wouldn’t have been the best time to play mind games with Mr Policeman, seeing as Al’s eyes had probably rolled into the back of his head. Al felt the car pull to a stop and quickly opened the door.

  “Is your mate alright?” the copper asked, turning to me.

  “He doesn’t like lightning,” I said, leaving the car as quickly as I could. “Come on Al let’s get you home.”

  The copper laughed.

  “Cheers for the lift,” I said. Now please stop waiting for us to go into this stranger’s house and go away.

  The walk to mine wasn’t that far but the torrential rain would have soaked us in seconds, and as if that wasn’t enough I was pretty sure we were going to get struck by lightning soon, as unimaginable electrical fields balanced themselves above us. Ideally I wanted to leave the roads and cut through a field to make doubly sure we were in the clear with the copper, but we’d never have made it back, and even if we did we’d have been soaked through and covered in mud.

  Running up the road trying to think of somewhere to get out of the weather, I saw Ship’s bungalow in the distance, and remembered the boat at the end of his back garden.

  “Come on Al! Ship’s boat!” I shouted.

  That would keep us dry until the worst of the storm passed.

  I necked my last remaining pill under the yellow glow of the streetlight outside his house, then the pair of us made our way to the end of his garden. After we’d lifted ourselves onto the boat using the metal handrails on the deck, I flung back the makeshift tarpaulin roof and ordered Al down the ladder into the cabin.

  As I followed him, I pulled the cover back over and it sent a shower of freezing rainwater running down the back of my collar, slowed only by my shivering neck hairs as they stood on end.....

  Try Some, It’s Dirty as Fuck

  July 2002.

  Kyle turned up out of the blue one Friday as I arrived home from work, dressed up to the nines and reeking of aftershave. I wasn’t surprised to see him arrive at my front drive at exactly the same time I did, he’d gotten that down to a fine art. He looked excited and had to have something planned.

  “Lu geez, I’ve got the weekend off!” he shouted. I could emphasise with his excitement. Even though I had every weekend off, I still loved them. “Is the garage open?”

  “Hold on mate,” I replied, “I’ve only just got home from work.”

  We walked down the side of the house and I let him in through the garage door.

  “Check this out!” he said, slapping down a big bag of what looked like yellow paste. He opened it and a rancid chemical smell filled the garage. “It’s bass Lu, like speed but stronger. Try some, it’s dirty as fuck.”

  It was at that point I noticed Kyle was chewing gum. Kyle never chewed gum unless he was on something. That explained why he was so excited.

  “Get that down ya,” he said, breaking a corner off the lump then cutting it into a line for me. It was wet and didn’t want to be cut up, it broke into little crumbly pieces that refused to get small enough to be ideal for snorting.

  I tore a piece of paper off an envelope by the bed and rolled it into a tube; then put it in my nostril, craned my head down, and sniffed the line hard into my face. It felt cold as it hit the back of my throat, then the tang of the chemicals came out onto my taste buds like bleach and cleaning products, only with undertones of something sweet. I felt anxiety build in my guts, adrenaline pumped through me giving a fight or flight sensation. I chose neither; instead reclining on the duvet and lighting a cigarette while Kyle cut himself out a line.

  “Fuck mate, this is good stuff.” I wanted to move around but my head was ringing.

  “Put some tunes on Lu,” Kyle said, relaxing next to me on the bed as I passed him the second half of my cigarette.

  I had a dig through the tape-packs at the end of my bed, settling on an old Dreamscape.

  “How much is there?” I pointed to the little bag of yellow sitting on a CD case between us.

  “An ounce. Twenty-eight grams. I got it from some geezer down Wanton pier, I can’t get hold of pills anywhere,” he replied. “That’s what I need to tell you, fucking hell, I’ve got a flat in Wanton to help look after for the weekend. It’s my mate from works place, well he lives there with his mate but he’s gonna be away for the weekend or something.”

  “Oh sweet, how come it needs looking after?” I asked, wondering why a flat can’t just look after itself.

  “Fuck knows bruv. It doesn’t matter does it? Are you ready to go?”

  I stood up and realised my legs had gone slightly numb. “Just got to have a shower,” I said, my head spinning as I felt the blood vessels pumping in my brain. “I’ll be five minutes tops.”

  “Yeah no rush, I’ll skin one up for the drive,” Kyle said as he pulled a secret bag of weed from the front pocket in
his shirt, before laying down a king-size cigarette paper on his thigh.

  I darted inside, saying hi to my mum as I ran up the stairs. Afterwards, as I was drying myself with a towel, I realised I couldn’t remember showering. I’d also forgotten to take a change of clothes with me. I put my jeans back on commando style, not wanting to wear the boxers I’d been wearing at work all day, then when I got back to the garage I made Kyle face the other way while I got dressed properly.

  We had one more line each and got in his car. The drive went by in a blur, we stopped at a shop halfway so we could both get a can of Stella. I handed a cigarette to Kyle while he was driving and he tried to put it behind his ear. He failed, instead displacing the spliff he’d put there earlier and pushing it out onto the floor. Having stopped to find it, then having smoked it, we arrived at the flat, where we left the car in the shared parking to the rear.

  It was an imposing, white Victorian townhouse, in the middle of a long terrace of pastel coloured period buildings standing on the edge of the seafront, all with front windows that faced directly out over the sea.

  Kyle pushed the two top buttons on the intercom. It buzzed, then a man answered.

  “Hello, who is it?” Asked the intercom.

  “Hello I’m after Pat,” Kyle said.

  “Pat? He lives in the top floor flat at the back. I heard him in there earlier, I’ll go and check if he’s still in. Who is it first?”

  “Tell him it’s Kyle. Kyle from work.”

  The voice on the other end of the intercom fell quiet for a minute, the sound of seagulls on the beach behind us filling the gap. I put my face up to the front door and peered through the letterbox. Then a man came running down the stairs, two steps at a time, before flinging open the door.

  “Kyle mate!” he said while they shook hands.

  “This is Lu,” Kyle said. “He’s sound-as-a-pound.”

  “Alright Lu, nice to meet you I’m Pat,” he said, shaking my hand too. “Come in I’m right at the top. It’ll only be the three of us, Jason’s gone away, but I’ll tell you about that when we get upstairs.”

  Pat was a bit taller than me but unsurprisingly not as tall as Kyle. Slim built with dark hair and mostly dark stubble, a small patch of ginger either side of his chin. He and Kyle may not have been the same height, but they looked around the same age. Kyle was twenty-one now.

  I followed them both through the stairwell, its floor strewn with junk mail and unopened letters to people who had either moved out, or lived by the mantra- what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Bills and final demands included. We climbed the two flights of stairs at nowhere near the speed Pat had come down, until we reached his flat. Walking in through the fire door, the first thing I noticed was the smell. Slept in. It quickly became apparent why when I realised there was no bedroom.

  A tatty, red fabric sofa sat at one end of the room, just in front of the only window; an equally worn matching red armchair sat opposite. Pat removed a duvet that was bunched up at one end of the sofa, and stuffed it down between the back cushions and the wall. Then the pair of them sat down, their heads framed perfectly by the grubby sash window behind them, with its barely drawn purple curtains. Through the window I could see the brick wall of another building but nothing more. I took a seat on the single chair and as I looked around the sparsely furnished room, wondered how they could live with less stuff than I had in the garage. I didn’t say anything though, like I didn’t ask how Pat and Jason both managed to sleep in there with just a sofa and a chair between them.

  “Sorry about the mess lads, I don’t really look after the place like I should when Jason isn’t here,” Pat said, as he picked up a pair of empty Coke cans from the glass topped coffee table in front of us. Both had had their ring pulls removed, he picked those up too and took the lot to the kitchen. “I was having a nap when you turned up, still don’t feel like I’ve woken up properly.”

  “I’ll fix that,” Kyle said, pulling the bag of export strength speed from his jeans.

  “Fucking hell is that all coke?” asked our soon to be disappointed host for the evening.

  “Nah it’s bass, super strong speed. Look at it.” Kyle opened the bag revealing the drugs inside.

  The faint smell of the room’s double life as both an entertaining and sleeping place was replaced with the smell of the illegal chemical paste in front of us.

  “That stinks mate, I’m going to have to open the window.”

  “You wait,” Kyle said. “Have you done this before?”

  “What speed? Yeah everyone’s done speed mate,” he replied sarcastically.

  “This ain’t speed, here try some.” With that Kyle began to cut out three lines, one for each of us. I didn’t know if I wanted another line yet, especially not twice the size of the last one I’d had.

  Pat snorted his line first. “Fucking hell that’s strong on the back of your throat,” he gasped. Kyle and I smiled at him knowingly. “So are you from Kirk-Leigh as well?” Pat passed me the rolled up ten pound note from the table.

  “Yeah mate,” I replied, snorting my share. All of the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and tingled. I suddenly felt I wanted to ask a really good question in return, something Pat would be impressed with, something he could bite off and chew. A million questions circled the inside of my head. “What about you?” Was the one I subconsciously decided was most appropriate.

  “South London, Thornton Heath. Do you know London?”

  In the background Kyle did his best impression of a vacuum cleaner.

  “London mate? I went to King’s Cross one night to Bagleys,” I said. “I don’t know London that well though.” I wanted to ask if Kyle was from South London too but felt it was rude, seeing as I’d known him for so long and never asked him what part of London he was from. I assumed it was a different part or he’d have mentioned it then.

  “Fuck, I’ve just thought I’m not being much of a host am I? Do you two want a beer?”

  I looked at Kyle, then at the floor, searching for the beer we’d bought from the shop, before remembering that we’d drunk it on the way.

  “Cheers Pat but me and Lu might as well go down the shop and get enough for the whole night, otherwise we’ll be fucked when they shut.”

  Pat disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a smile on his face and a whole crate of Carlsberg in his hands.

  “Where’d you get them from?” I asked.

  “Me and Jason always get a load of beers at the end of the month when we get paid. We go down to the supermarket and buy whatever’s on offer, it was three of these for twenty quid this month, there’s some cold ones in the fridge.”

  The beer felt extra cold where the drugs had attacked the back of my throat. I lit a cigarette to go with it, handing out two more as well. I didn’t want to be seen as a dentist in front of our host, as in someone who pulls them out one at a time. Pat got up and turned on the CD player in the corner of the room, one of those cheap ones made to look like a full separates system. Most people would probably only notice when they got up close and realised it was made from one piece of moulded plastic. It came on already tuned to Radio 1, who it transpired were hosting a garage music special.

  “This’ll do,” Kyle said as he cut out some more drugs. “Who’s up for a joint then?” He pulled the weed from his shirt pocket. “Have you got something I can roll this on Pat? I don’t want to get bits in the bass.”

  Pat went to the kitchen, returning with a One Nation CD case in his hand. I only glimpsed it for a second but it was long enough to know it would be the next thing we listened to, it had the name MC Skibadee printed on the front.

  “Pat geez, tell me that’s in there,” Kyle said excitedly. Pat smiled. “Go on, let me put it on, I won’t have it mega loud.”

  Pat looked at me and I nodded, as if it was up to me.

  “Put it on mate.”

  From the moment he saw the CD, Kyle had been in a state of action, half hovering on the sofa, waiting
for the go-ahead. He ripped the CD from its case and dropped it in the top of the player, jabbing overenthusiastically at the play button before sitting back down.

  Radiohead played out through the cheap speakers. We looked at each other in unison.

  “What the fuck?” Kyle said. “You gave me the wrong CD.”

  “Nah can’t be mate, I remember putting it away. Plus I haven’t got a Radiohead CD. You must have pushed the wrong button.”

  Pat got up and walked over to the CD player, pushing stop several times before pushing play. The room went quiet then Radiohead played again, taking it from the top.

  “I don’t get it, no one’s been in here since earlier and I swear to fucking god that case had the right CD in. I must be losing the plot,” Pat said as he opened the top of the CD player.

  He peered in, then let out an, “Honestly what is going on?” While throwing his hands up in the air before letting them hang dejectedly at his sides.

  I got up and had a look, a One Nation CD stared back at me.

  “I’m not having this,” Kyle said. “It’s doing this to us on purpose to trip us out.”

  “It’s a CD player mate, I don’t think it has the capacity to do things on purpose,” I said. “Are you sure you’re pressing the right buttons?”

  The pair of them gave me a dirty look as one.

  “You get it working then,” Pat said.

  I traced the power lead from the CD player back to the socket on the wall, turning it off for five seconds before turning it back on. Then I put one finger on the CD play button while I stared at the CD through the little bit of plastic masquerading as glass in the top. I pushed play and the CD began spinning almost immediately, followed by the dulcet sounds of Radiohead.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Not a fucking clue.”

  “Right, this is going outside,” Pat said, while Kyle racked up another three lines. My attention had been drawn elsewhere while all the excitement was going on and I only now realised how fucked I was. Everything looked to be glowing, like it had a glossy sheen to it.

  I reluctantly put another line of bass up my nose while Pat took the possessed CD player out into the stairwell.

  “What you doing with that Pat?” I heard a voice ask.

  “There’s something wrong with it,” Pat replied despondently.

  “What, it’s not working?”

  “It will only play fucking Radiohead!” Kyle shouted towards the door.

  “Let me have a look at it.”

  Kyle panicked and put his hands over the drugs when he saw the man come in.

  “Nah don’t worry about me,” the stranger said. “That’s not all coke is it?”

  “I wish. It’s bass mate,” Kyle laughed.

  “Oh yeah I can smell it now, you don’t see that often.”

  “I’ll line one up for you if you want?” Kyle said.

  “Not for me thanks,” the man replied. “Not any more. I’ll have a beer though if you’ve got enough.”

  Pat introduced Kyle and I to his next door neighbour, the bloke we’d spoken to on the intercom from outside. I somehow missed his name and didn’t want to seem rude by asking so I waited to hear someone call him by it. I already felt like I’d let him down a little.

  He was painfully skinny, in a red t-shirt and denim jeans with no shoes or socks on. He looked a bit tramp-like, maybe ten years older than me, thirty or so. A bit young for a tramp.

  The neighbour plugged the CD player back in and hit play. Radiohead.

  He peered in through the top of the CD player. “This CD must have Radiohead on it somehow, we need to try a different one.”

  He took the CD out and handed it to Pat, and as he did a second CD fell off the back and did a mesmerising spinning dance on the floor.

  “You put that CD straight on top of the other one didn’t you?” the neighbour asked, looking at Pat.

  Pat sighed, “Kyle you twat, did you not look to see if there was a CD already in there?”

  The man from next door took a long, laboured look at the three of us. “Are you telling me that between the lot of you, you couldn’t work out what was going on?!” he laughed. “You bunch of idiots.”

  “Hold on a minute, I thought you said you didn’t have a Radiohead CD,” Kyle said.

  “It must be Jason’s,” Pat replied.

  “I thought he wasn’t here this weekend,” Kyle said.

  “He was still here this morning, they didn’t come and arrest him until nearly one.”

  “What did they arrest him for?” I asked.

  “Oh he attacked someone in Wanton with a pool cue, they’ve kept him in on remand. It’s not the first time he’s done something like that. That’s why I’ve got the flat, until he gets back; I’ve been staying here on and off but it’s mine for a while now. As long as I look after it.”

  I pictured this repeat violent offender and what his definition of looking after would be. I doubted it would have been invite two people he didn’t know round and sniff a load of drugs off his coffee table while drinking his beer. The thought of him walking through the door and finding us made my blood run cold.