Cleaning Up (26 page)

He lay in the dark for a while and listened to the blare of sirens in the distance, a sense of grim satisfaction turning his mouth into a bleak thin line. What was that Sonny had told him? Yeah, that was it. There are always consequences to your actions.

Pauline rang Tommy just after nine - the sirens and the circling chopper had delayed his sleep for a couple of hours until he’d remembered that he had some ear plugs at the back of his sock drawer. Her news had jolted him awake. He ate
some toast, showered and got down there a little after ten. She was round the back of the building near what was left of his office, animatedly chatting with a middle-aged fireman and Jeannie, her office administrator. He called out her name and she called back and gave him the briefest of smiles, her face blotchy and tired. The emergency services had taped out a perimeter some twenty yards from the back and side-walls of the building. The roof had buckled but was still intact. The wall of his office was a blackened shell, his desk and the computer now a fused lumpen mess. When she had finished chatting with the fire guy she turned in his direction, they walked up to each other and embraced. He held her for a few moments but she’d done with any crying. She stepped back and looked at him, her hands tightly clenching his upper arms.

‘Anybody see anything Pauline?’

She shook her head, ‘it was called in just after half eleven, by the time they got here it was well ablaze.’

He stepped half a pace to the side and took in the mess again.

‘Who would want to do this Pauline?’

She shook her head, ‘don’t know love, doesn’t make sense does it? But, given last night, who knows.’

He wasn’t convinced by the connection, the town centre and the estates had been orchestrated but that had been somehow organic too and predictable. He could see the cause and effect in it. The riot was a curdled reaction arising from the interminable status quo of disaffection, struggle and unhappiness, which had fed the mob mentality. Finally erupting into battle stations, the ‘let’s get into it’ with the coppers and the jackal like ransacking of the shops. But, to his mind, this
seemed odd, an anomaly that was out of whack with the rest of the fucked up night.

‘Anyway Thomas, it looks like you’ll be sharing an office for a while. The front of the building’s still usable apparently and the reception should be big enough for the groups. Maybe the council might have a room or two for us to use.’

Typical Pauline, he thought, the Phoenix rising whilst the place is still smouldering. She was always looking for a way to keep going, as redoubtable as the people of London in the Blitz.

‘Yeah, yeah we can do all that - everything is covered.’

He looked around to his left, smoke still spiralling over there too, the High Street in fucking tatters.

‘Looks like we’re still waiting for that Great Leap Forward eh Pauline?’

She smiled and touched him lightly on the cheek, ‘that fight never stops Tommy, that’s why they put people like you and me down here.’

Tommy nodded grimly - she was half-right in her assertion, he was starting to feel battle fatigue though. Let them have their shit heap, he thought.

Tommy met the old man in the Farriers for lunch and he set his stall out early with Guinness and a malt chaser. Mick raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. Nev dropped in and Drink Gorman was already there, half-lit and already starting to burble. Mick’s old sparring partner, Jimmy Buck came in too, which meant that there would be some guaranteed laughs to leaven the disbelief and the anger.

Today he was in the mood for it and he matched the old man for spleen. He’d even shared his spiritual sickness theory with them during the lengthy, slightly circular conversation 
about last night’s events, the youth as the spawn of a culture of rampant vacuous commercialism. His dad liked it - nodding along furiously, getting off on his son’s bristling anger at least as much as the details of his argument. The old man had always enjoyed seeing his fighting side, the displays of the chip off the old block.

‘Aye right on son, right you bloody well are, there’s no excuse for the little fuckers’ behaviour but they’ve been doled out a diet of false idols for decades now. If we want any kind of fucking enlightenment let’s get rid of the TV for fucking starters.’ That comment caused Drink to burpingly giggle in slight alarm. Nev broke the silence, ‘there are some decent shows on though Mick, yer know,
National Geographic
and that.’

The old man rolled his eyes to the heavens but gave Nev a pass.

‘Let them eat fucking cake,’ Mick said and JB laughed and then chimed in.

‘Get the little cunts in the army and kick the mums’ and dads’ arses too. Fucking nanny state has killed us, soft as shit this lot, good job Adolf wasn’t born in the nineteen fifties.’

Tommy agreed, he disagreed, they were right, they were wrong, he was certain, he was uncertain and he was, pound to a penny, as pissed as a fart. He drank all the way through the day. Mick had temporarily bailed out in the late afternoon, off home for tea and a nap. The old man returning a few hours later, fresh faced for his weekly dose of the blues band.

The band’s industrial noise levels always made any attempt at conversation a complete waste of time, beefed up bass and drum underpinning toe curling string bending guitar, 
just the way Mick liked it. The old man nodding along to the rolling four-four beat, that percussive motion of his punctuated with the occasional ‘get it up yer’ punch of the air. Tommy up and dancing with Lil, the comely barmaid, to Dr. Feelgood’s
Back in the Night
. Tonight they were temporarily in seventh heaven - rolling back the years.

Tommy woke up to the sunlight pouring in through the window of his old man’s front bedroom. He looked at his watch and groaned, it was nine o’clock, his mouth and throat were as dry as a march through the Gobi and he had a crushing headache that painfully pulsed with every breath. He forced himself to dress and just about kept it all down. He drank as much water as he could bear and had a futile look for some aspirin. He didn’t know why he’d bothered as the old man regarded using tablets as a sure fire sign of weak willed degeneracy. He climbed back up the stairs to wash his face and had a quick clean of the teeth with his old man’s spare toothbrush, finally wincing his way on out of Mick’s pad just before ten. It was a long walk home, it would be nearly two hours by the time he arrived at his own flat. Tommy went via the High Street and felt a genuine sadness as he looked at the fucking mess that was the aftermath of the riot. They hadn’t fucking missed, that was for sure. He knew the young couple who’d had the florists and, Jesus, poor old Harry Pritchard and his electrical goods joint! He’d bought loads of
secondhand
albums from Harry when he was still in his teens.

There was a high police presence down there and both ends of the High Street remained sealed off. The clean up crews were already in, bolstered by some of the shopkeepers sorting through the crap in the areas where the buildings were deemed to be safe.

Tommy turned away from the mess and walked the rest of the way home. He spent the afternoon laid up inertly on the couch like a beached sea elephant that was saving his energy for the mating season. Thankfully, his supply of aspirin was kicking in to do the trick. He was grateful for the company of the muted pictures of the TV. The stereo was fully loaded up with CD’s so he wouldn’t have to move for hours if he didn’t want to.

Donna hadn’t called, which irritated him a little even though he hadn’t called her. Later on in the evening he eventually plucked up the energy and resolve to get through to her. He apologised, he was meant to be cooking her dinner last night. She gave him exculpation but in a cool neutral way which, although understandable, irritated him again.

And that was it for the next few days, the aftermath; local politicians, visiting national politicians, every man and his dog pitching in with their ten cents worth. The left banged their drum, blaming poverty, lack of opportunity and social exclusion. The right rat a tatted back with criminality, family breakdown, the gang and drug culture, one parent and no parent families and the nanny state absolving people from individual responsibility. The local Archbishop even had a poke at the false idols of consumerism and celebrity and the growth of reality TV. The kids blamed the coppers, lack of jobs, things to do and places to go. The shopkeepers were gutted and angry and wondered why they had bothered putting in the time and effort for a local community that was so ready to cannibalise them. Little old ladies were frightened and he was missing his life in Australia and the sunny tolerant relaxed hedonism of inner city Sydney. He had a few days off while they sorted out the building although he checked in on
Pauline and the gang every day. He felt he at least owed her, and the rest of the staff that.

He met up with Donna on the Wednesday, her place this time and he told her about the conversation with Sonny.

‘You told him what I told you, about Pasquale?’

He looked at her levelly and nodded, trying to read her face and failing miserably.

‘And what made you think that was OK Tommy?’

Fucking hell - he was being chastised!

‘Sonny knew Donna - he told me. He’d had the word from a reliable source. Pasquale was lucky not to have been pulled in.’

‘Why did they leave him alone then - if he is still… dealing?’

Tommy caught the hesitation and just like that he’d felt something start to take shape in his mind; the talk that he’d had with the kid at his bedroom doorway, the fact that her time-line was a little out, a house bought in a reasonable part of the city before she took up her university studies. Sure, he thought, the city was cheap then, still pulling out of its
postindustrial
wasteland rep of the eighties. But, a single mum doing what was semi-skilled work at best. It just didn’t add up - period.

She was looking at him for an answer, ‘Well Tommy?’

‘Don’t know Donna, I don’t know. He’s fortunate though, I know that.’

Looking at her face was not any great source of comfort to him but, fuck it, he was tired of tiptoeing around, trying to compartmentalise everything in his fucking life.

She laid her knife and fork down at the side of her plate and calmly asked him to leave the house.

Tommy had a dumb moment, not a hundred percent sure if she was being serious. She noted his uncertainty and she repeated it for him.

He hadn’t finished his curry but maybe it wasn’t time to point that out.

He stood up, walked past her and let himself out, a little embarrassed, a little angry and more than a little relieved.

He went back home and lay on the couch and flicked on the TV and watched a wildlife documentary. Nev was right, TV can be pretty good. He was still a little tired from the all dayer on Saturday. What a fucking weekend, he thought, shit sprayed all over the walls.

Tommy thought about his own youth - the punk rock years and good ole Maggie Thatcher. He agreed with Mick, that you could draw a line of consequence from that blighted era. It had been a tipping point in the nation’s history, one that had seen so many of the working class start to slide into membership of a burgeoning underclass. There and then so much of the self-identification of the community had started to erode. The bridge between youth and adulthood was now even more fraught and uncertain. Back in the day that difficult part of the journey had been made easier by the learning of a trade and the pride and certainty that that brought. A life of substance and meaning had been replaced by a rancid gruel of drugs, daytime TV, mindless computer games, the worship of baubles and trinkets and the celebrity fuck fest.

He loathed the actions of the little fuckers but he understood it, it hadn’t risen out of a vacuum and that generation were now the product and the proponents of a nihilism that had not been there when he was a kid. Everybody, to different degrees, was copping the consequences, the only question
was, where to from here?

Tommy half rolled off the couch with a groan feeling stiff and creaky - old, old, old, he thought and turned off the box. He put on the first Clash album and listened to the bristling energy and the band’s vehement calls for action and awareness. Still ringing like a bell after all those years. He felt restless but didn’t know where to take it - that was an old feeling but one that he hadn’t had in a long time. He turned the music off and did some breathing exercises for ten minutes or so and that seemed to do the trick, his thoughts no longer tumbling and disjointed. Becalmed, he flicked the TV back on and surfed for a few minutes finding nothing on that he wanted to watch. His dad was right, he thought, TV is shit.

He phoned Lee and asked if it was cool if he headed back down in a couple of weeks time. They chatted about the riot for a while and Lee asked if Donna would be coming down too but didn’t offer any comment when he’d told him no. Lee mentioned a trip to Brighton as a reccie for Bernie and himself. Tommy liked the sound of that, a day by the seaside would be just the ticket to blow away some of the urban angst.

They said their goodbyes and he sat in the quiet for a while, turning off the lamp and looking at the night sky noting, again, the lack of starlight. He awoke an hour or so later. Feeling stiff and more than a little cold he made his way to his bed.

Darrin had let his mum feed him for a few more days, the shoulder was still tender and sore enough to make a lot of doing the basics a drag. He didn’t mind being fussed over for a little while, dealing with the riot seemed to have worked
wonders for his patience. He’d popped into work on Tuesday and sat in the canteen for half an hour with a few of his colleagues picking over the bones of Saturday night. Chev was still in the hospital; jaw wired up, some missing teeth and concussion - twenty or so of the crew had picked up injuries. A dozen or so of the crew were now off work.

Sarge Thomas stuck his head in the canteen door and told him that a call had come through for him from DS Young. He said his goodbyes to his colleagues and made his way to the desk. Sarge Thomas gave him the phone with a little wriggle-lifting of the eyebrows, which spoke volumes about what he thought about the young detective. Young was his usual effervescent self. ‘I’ve been told you did well on Saturday Dazzer boy, regular hero is the word in dispatches. Take all the time off you need son, we want you back but only when you’re hundred percent.’