Beast of Burden (28 page)

They killed my brother, tore up my family and stamped the remnants into the dirt without even fully fucking realising it.

They turned me into a fucking mong, just like everyone says, a man who can't walk, talk or fuck on account of the stroke that was the direct result of a job I did for Morris fucking Tiernan.

Which is why I'm about to do what I'm doing. Because I already know who killed Mo Tiernan, and I can't let him take the fall for it.

After all, Paulo's the only real friend I have.

INNES

Of course it comes down to Jason Kelly in the end. One of the reasons I've been staying away from him, especially after when Paulo tells me how it all happened. The lad was trying to stay on the straight and narrow. Difficult enough on your own, made harder by the dealer that insisted on hanging around the club, looking for all the world like a stray dog nobody wanted to shoo away. Or had the balls, considering that dealer had the name Tiernan, ringing bad bells for those who didn't know the backstory.

The way Paulo told it, it was Jason Kelly he was looking out for. He saw that spark in the lad's eyes, wanted to focus it on the right thing. One bad spar, a lad a couple years younger than Jason marked him up because Jason hadn't been watching his loose guard, and he'd started wavering after that. Looked to the dubious comforts of the past to see him through.

Now Paulo tried to pull him to one side — he'd already seen Mo nosing around the place again, didn't want to get into it if he didn't have to. Besides, Mo hadn't actually come onto the premises as yet, so Paulo didn't think he could get too demonstrative. Anyway, Jason was all understanding, the usual smiles and denials. Course he wasn't back on the wraps, Paulo. No way he'd do that anymore, is there? That was the shit got him in trouble in the first place.

The rehabilitation song, and Jason was in full voice.

But Paulo's never been an idiot, despite his palooka-looking face. So he kept an eye on Jason. And after a week or so, he saw Mo come out of the shadows. Paulo'd made a show of locking the place up and leaving, and it was only then that Mo showed his face.

“Should've seen him, Cal. You knew the bloke was a walking corpse anyway. Anything I did to him …”

“Okay,” I said. “Carry on.”

Jason Kelly with his kitbag, moving into the darkness where Mo was skulking. Paulo watching from the club. Saw Jason emerge from the shadows a few minutes later with both hands in his pockets.

Paulo waited long enough for the suspicion to die down, waited for Jason to head up Coronation Street. He'd deal with Jason the next day, in the office, the kind of intense whispering that put the fear of God into the other lads, and which I remembered from my early days at the club.

Once Jason had gone, Paulo came out of the club, stopped by the front doors. “Mo?”

Nothing.

“You're out there, son, I know it.”

A shuffling sound, but not much else.

“Think we need a word, don't you?”

“I'm not on your fuckin' property,” he said.

“I know.” Paulo tried to keep his voice friendly. Calm. “But I think we should still have a talk, you and me.”

“Fuckin' joking, I'm not coming anywhere fuckin' near you.”

“Don't be daft, Mo.”

“Fuck off.”

“Don't make this difficult, son.”

“Here, I didn't do nowt wrong. Got nowt on us.”

Paulo didn't hang about. Off the steps and into the darkness, grabbed a handful of greasy Berghaus before Mo could react, wrenched him out of the shadows, the breeze throwing a stink into Paulo's face. He gritted through it, dragged Mo into the club and shoved him into the middle of the gym.

“Take a good look around, mate,” said Paulo. “Want you to see exactly what you and your scally mates did. Reckon you haven't had much of a chance to admire your fuckin' handiwork, eh?”

The walls were still blackened then. They were still using the old rings, the old equipment, all of which had a layer of engrained soot on it.

Paulo brought Mo into the club to look at it all. The way he told me, he just wanted Mo to see what he'd done, show him that the place was still standing. He wanted to see the lad's reaction, and as he watched Mo look around, he already had a nice long speech for him, the usual warning and lecture rolled into one.

He'd just started when Mo said, “Ah, fuck it.”

“You what?”

Mo danced back into the club a little more. His eyes seemed almost hollowed out. And when Paulo told me how bad Mo looked, it was difficult not to think of a dancing skeleton, a rictus grin and the junkie tremble.

“Fuckin'
deserved
it. What, you want to fuckin' tell us that it didn't work? It worked.” Mo pointed at Paulo then, still grinning. “Went right off the fuckin' rails, you did. Think I'm having problems, you was almost back on the fuckin' sauce, don't think I don't know about that. And so the fuck what anyway, man? What, you think you're better than me? You're not better than me. This — all this shite — it was a fuckin'
warning
. You got nobody to help you, nobody to protect you, we're gonna come at you any fuckin' time we
choose
to, know what I mean? You are not safe.”

“Don't be a dick, Morris.”

“You think I give a
fuck
anymore?” he screamed. And his eyes were red. “You think I got owt to fuckin' take
away
from us now? What, you think I'm going to look around here and realise how fuckin' great you are? Fuckin' daft cunt.”

“You're out of your fuckin' mind,” said Paulo.

“The fuck?”

“Get out of my club.”

“You brought us
in
here, man.”

“And now you have to leave.”

Because as soon as Paulo brought Mo into the light, he saw the damage and knew how deep it went. Saw what he told me — a walking corpse, held together with a rare raging electricity, moving through sheer force of will. Mo's face twitched, a spasm of fear or hatred, as if he'd seen his reflection in a mirror, saw the mixture of faces in his own — the mother who left him, the father who hated him — and realised that they'd both been right to do so. Because somewhere amongst the misfiring synapses in his head, Mo knew his weaknesses.

But there was a difference between knowing your weaknesses and having them pitied by someone you hated.

“Aye,” said Mo. “I know why you brought us in here, like. You want to have a pop at us. Because your fuckin' mate knows, I'm not going to stop if I don't want to, and there's nowt you can do to persuade us to back off. So you want to fuckin' end it.” He waved his hands — a come-and-have-a-go gesture — and stepped towards Paulo. “Course you want to fuckin' end it. We all want to fuckin' end it.”

Paulo stood his ground, told Mo that he wanted him to leave. He didn't want to put hands on him, not like this. In the end, though, he didn't have a choice.

It was what Mo was waiting for. Soon as he felt Paulo's touch, Mo twisted, ducked and brought his forehead into Paulo's left cheek.

You could barely see the mark on Paulo's face by the time he told me what happened that night. And it wasn't so much the pain — Mo was weak as fuck, barely able to throw enough solid punches to get him out of the proverbial brown paper bag, so there was no chance he'd knock down Paul Gray — but the shock of the blow, the fact that this little prick had managed to plant one on him. And like a lot of ex-fighters, it wasn't even a conscious decision on Paulo's part to hit Mo back. It was as natural a reaction as breathing out when your lungs were full.

But he was pro enough to keep his punch loose. Told me that he didn't hit Mo hard at all, just enough to burst a lip and put him off-balance. A few steps, a one-two, three-four, then Mo dropped.

But not before he smacked his head off the end of the bench behind him.

The wet, heavy crack seemed to hang in the air long after Mo hit the floor. Paulo watched him roll onto his side. Looked at the bloody mark on the end of the bench, thought he saw something solid stuck, glistening, to the wood. Then he watched more blood begin to pool under Mo's head.

Paulo told me he was sorry.

“It's okay,” I said.

“I'm so fuckin' sorry, I didn't—

“Don't … worry about it.”

The reason he told me was Tiernan. When he found out I was seeing Tiernan, he knew the game was up. If I hadn't been contacted, there would've been nothing said, I know it. The new club was open for a while, the bench gone along with the rest of the old gym equipment. All the walls of the place were painted, the trace evidence destroyed.

But guilt had a way of lingering. And as soon as Paulo knew I was on the case, he felt the need to spill his guts. Sitting forward in his chair, leaning on his knees, looking through me. His voice hoarse from all the talking, from trying to keep back tears of panic. As he talked, I watched his big hands clenching each other, the knuckles scuffed and scarred from a million punches that hadn't ended up in someone's death. But Paulo knew it only took one. Did the last time, the reason he went to prison, which was why he was stuck to his seat when he told me.

“I checked him out,” he said.

“And?”

“He was breathing.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah.”

But either way, it wouldn't look good. If Mo had been alive, he'd need a hospital. And there'd be an assault charge or worse pinned on Paulo. Plus more bad publicity for a club that had just made a couple of page fours by being firebombed.

And if Paulo was mistaken, that Mo was dead, then that would mean the end of everything. Without a doubt, all the hard work Paulo put in to get the club up and running would be totally worthless. Because all people would see was a man who'd previously done time for beating a man to death, up on trial for almost exactly the same thing. He'd be an ex-con who couldn't even rehabilitate himself, let alone the lads that came into the club.

“He couldn't stay there,” said Paulo.

I nodded. Of course he couldn't.

“Where?” I said.

“Miles Platting.” Paulo was shaking his head now. “There was a thing in his pocket, something from the Job Centre. I reckoned that was where he was crashing these days, I'd take him back there.”

“Right. You took him in your car.”

“Yeah.” He looked up at me now. “I didn't — I mean, I reckon he was still breathing, but I couldn't —”

“It's okay.”

We sat in silence for a bit. Outside, it started to rain, the water spackling against the window with a gust of wind. I breathed out, reached for my Embassys and wished I had a drink. Paulo probably did, too.

“He's dead,” he said.

I nodded. Trying to think.

Remembering — “He's long gone, Callum. Trust us on this. Don't go looking for trouble when there's nowt to find, alright?” — and thinking that it wasn't so much advice, more a fucking warning.

Don't go snooping around and accidentally find out he killed Mo. Don't open that box, no matter what the fucking voices in your head tell you to do. It's not worth it.

When I looked at Paulo then, I understood the situation. He was trying to sort it himself, but couldn't reconcile what he'd done with the results. It was like when I saw my brother for the first time when I got out of prison. There was some shift in our relationship, like we'd somehow swapped places.

And I knew that Paulo and I were the same now. I wouldn't be intimidated by him for my own good, nor would I ever really seek his approval. There was nothing to look up to now I knew that the bloke was just as weak and stupid as the rest of us.

Didn't mean I didn't love the bloke to death. Just, things changed.

“He's dead, isn't he?”

“He'd be … at the club. If he wasn't. You know … what he's like.”

Paulo lowered his head again.

“What's the address?” I said.

Paulo told me. I struggled to my feet, told him to wait here. I'd call him when I got there. He said he'd come with. I told him no. It was better if I went alone. The drive there would give me enough thinking time, because an idea had already kicked in my head.

It's still there now. And it's time to do what Mo wanted, and end it.

Once and for all.

INNES

I call Uncle Morris, sitting outside Sutpen Court right now. Thinking there's no easy way to break this to him, and there's no way I can do it over the phone, either.

Tiernan's mobile keeps ringing, as if daring me to hang up and forget about it. But I can't. Not now. Not now I've planted everything I'll need. And it's not even as if I've done a great fucking job of it, either. It won't matter. If there's one thing I've fucking learned from my constant slog through this life of mine, it's that the truth doesn't matter — it's what
pretends
to be the truth, what someone
believes
. In that respect, every day is a leap of faith.

And in that respect, Tiernan better pick up this phone soon before I lose my fucking mind with worry.

He does. And it's only when he answers that I realise how late it feels. Already dark outside. More rain in the air. My side aches.

“Hello?” he says.

“It's Innes. We need to talk.”

“Now?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Where?”

He grunts something, moves the phone away from his mouth for a moment. I can hear him talking in the background. Probably to one of his fucking apes. Telling them to either back off or saddle up, depending on how much he trusts me. I'm hoping it's the former, hoping the last few days and the marbles I've chucked under his feet haven't done too much damage. Because I need some swinging room here.

“What is it?” he says when he comes back to the line.

“I have a name,” I say.

He breathes out. Like he was hoping for it, but now he's having second thoughts. “Okay,” he says.

“Where?”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“What?”

“I can't. Not now.”

“Why not?”

My turn to breathe out. “You trust me?”

He pauses. There's some more talk off-line. Somewhere deep beyond him, I think I can hear a door closing. Then another pause. His voice seems cracked when he speaks again. “Who is it?”

“I told you. I can't tell you.”