Diaries of the Damned (38 page)

Unlike Simon, Marcus had l
ived in the town his whole life and had watched as it made the transition from a small coastal English town to a place the size of a small city. Now it was on the cusp of linking up with the three surrounding towns, all of which were suffering the same fate. Marcus knew it would only be a matter of time before someone would raise the idea of combining them all.

Easterton
had once been nothing more than a proud and well-respected fishing village which grew as the industry it housed did. Then, overnight, the fishing moved away…taking the majority of the jobs with it. Yet the people had stayed; they were settled, had families, and so the next generation of employment arrived. Factories rolled into town offering short-lived salvation to the locals. But the eternal quest for cheaper labor played its part and they all watched as, once again, their industry was taken away, this time to make room for the immigrants who were not only willing to work, but more than happy to do so for a much lower remuneration.

Marcus knew first
hand what a crappy place the world was, and that was in part why he decided to join the police. He wanted to be able to say the neighborhood that his kids would grow up in was safe. It was a losing battle, he knew that, but he had never been one to just cover up and take the abuse.

Marcus noticed that three shops had decided not to open at all today. Each had signs in their windows advising potential customers that the temporary closure was a result of the near unbearable hot weather. They were small, family run establishments. One dealt in leather bags, and another sold handmade cards for all occasions – or so the sign in the window claimed. The last was a craft shop, its window filled with knitting patterns; wool of every color imaginable lined the back wall as if it were where God had made his Technicolor
Dreamcoat.

None of them would see the end of the year. It was a sad fact of small town life that no small business could compete with the bigger corporations, many of which were part of international consortiums and so not dependent on the locals to survive.

Stopping, Marcus bent down and grabbed an empty cola can and threw it in the bin that was about half a meter away. ‘Preservation of Public Image’ had been the session that asked every officer to stop and pick up litter while on duty. Marcus and his colleagues had another name for it, but complied nonetheless. He whistled to himself as he moved further along; not a song, but just a jaunty tune that seemed to grow in his head.

Marcus’s stomach growled.
He had skipped breakfast that morning, and now he would be made to be made to regret it. He patted his trousers and the pockets of his vest and then the pockets of his sweat-soaked shirt. Nothing. Then he saw it: his wallet, on the table beside the front door. Sitting, waiting for him to grab it – only he had gone out the back that morning.

“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath.

He looked at his watch, annoyed with himself. In truth it wasn’t the fact that he forgot his wallet, or even his grumbling stomach that made Marcus frustrated. He had just learned over the years that something always went wrong when he was unprepared.

Before joining the force, Marcus had been a boxer; a light heavyweight, and one with a lot of potential if the people back then were to be believed. He had a record of 21-0 with 18 knockouts when his manager Walter Whitney had first promised him a title fight. Wal
ter had been a small, reptilian-looking man with the cold beady eyes of a shark and a temper to match. He had been Marcus’s manager from the beginning, ever since he had first spotted him sparring at the local fitness center. He had been big and fast, and even as a youngster had had the power to stop most of the other fighters in his gym. He had been described as the perfect mix of George Foreman and Joe Frazier with his raw power yet graceful style.

But
it had all begun to crumble around his ankles one afternoon, a matter of days after he had knocked out the number one contender for the WBO title at the start of the fifth.

He remembered it like it was yesterday, a fact helped by his regular repetition of the tale at the many gatherings he attended. It had become his trademark party tale, one that could be rehashed as often as required without getting stale. Of course his children had also loved it, still did – or at least so they told him.

He had only come into the gym to pick up his running shoes, but he had gotten to chatting with some of the other fighters who had been milling around waiting to start training. Big Joe – one of the trainers – had spotted him, and came across, telling him that Walter wanted to see him up in the office. He looked up and saw Walter’s shadow looking down on them from behind the dirty glass. He wasn’t alone; someone else was up there. Marcus had no idea who it was; his mind wasn’t thinking about his next fight, let alone a shot at the champ, Virgil Hill.

Despite the strange feeling that rumbled in his gut, Marcus ran up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. He buzzed past the dusty photos that lined every wall in the gym. They were nothing more than a random collection of old pictures and newsp
aper clippings of boxing events and fellow pugilists, going back to the days of bare knuckle fights held on the fishing docks. He had spent years staring at them, reading them all while he waited for his time in the ring or a spare heavy bag .

Marcus stopped himself just outside Walter's office, running his fingers through his then thick and bushy hair. He hadn’t shaved for a week, and the
coarse stubble threatened to become a beard. Bracing himself, Marcus rapped on the office door three times and then walked in without waiting for an invite.

Inside, Walter's office was as run down as the rest of the gym. The walls hadn’t seen a lick of paint in years; not since before Walter had bought the place. The lone light, nothing more than a bare bulb, hung from the ceiling, its fixture long since vanished. A thick, gray-green cloud hung in the air from the constant stream of cheap cigars that Walter insisted on smoking. Lighting one was the first thing he did each
morning, and the glowing ember never left his mouth until he went to sleep at night.

He had died of lung cancer at the age of
sixty-three, an age that everybody who knew him was amazed he ever reached at all.

The eyes in
the room turned to face Marcus, and the bad feeling (which, until his last days on earth, continued to creep over him every time a bad call came over the radio) rumbled his stomach again, louder this time. There were three men in the room, and none of them were on Hill’s payroll. Walter ushered him inside and offered him a seat. The three strangers all wore expensive suits which hugged their giant, steroid-enhanced muscular frames as if made of Spandex.

“Listen, k
id, you fight well, but to get the champ, you gotta let him think he can win. D’ya understand?” Walter croaked. His voice was deep and scratchy from a lifetime of tobacco.

Marcus was young then, a real talent in the boxing world, but naïve to the workings of the real one. He had nodded; what he heard made sense. He just hadn’t heard what they were asking of him. There and then plans were drawn up for him to fight
Aleksander Papp, a young German fighter, who had a good reputation but who was not regarded as a title fighter because of his nationality and the fact his trainer was a Russian defector. Everything moved at lightning speed, and before Marcus knew it, his hand was clutched in the sweaty, powerful grip of all three strangers in turn. The fight had been arranged and dates confirmed. Many years later Marcus would realize that it had all been done before he had even arrived, and his presence was a matter of unimportant coincidence.

Tensions had begun to rise in Marcus’s camp eight weeks out from the fight. He felt as though he wasn’t being put through his paces enough. This had led to several heated arguments, and he started to work out himself in the garage of his flat. Walter kept telling him that the fight was more of an exhibition, just to get the champ’s teeth chomping. Marcus, who was foolish and young, had believed him.

It wasn’t until three days before the fight that Marcus began to get a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. He cornered Big Joe one day after training. It was at the end of the day, and everybody had already gone home. Joe was about forty kilos overweight and would break into a sweat just climbing into the ring. Yet, despite his name and appearance, he was one of the kindest men Marcus had even known. He bred racing pigeons and enjoyed tending to his own allotment whenever he had the chance.

Joe had crumbled like a baby before Marcus had even started to ask him any real questions. He told him that he was being undertrained in order to make the fight harder for him; to make him have to work hard for the win. Joe had started to sob when he confessed to knowing what was happening, and between repeated apologies he said that they were trapped in something much bigger than they could understand. Some big time mobsters from London had already bribed the referee to make sure that the German won no matter what he had to do.

Marcus stopped in his tracks. His heart pounded as he looked around the shopping arcade. He could have sworn he heard something, but he still got worked up when he remembered that incident. It had robbed him of his future, and he would never forgive Walter, not even if that simple act was all that stood between him and the fires of Hell. It wasn’t about being the champ, but that they were taking away from him the thing that he loved. Boxing made the world a simple place: you were given an opponent, you trained hard, looked after yourself and then you either won or lost. Or so Marcus had always thought.

Once Big Joe had finished apologizing and offering promises of redemption that included all the fresh vegetables he could eat, Marcus stormed straight into the local bar where he found Walter in the lap of some local woman for hire. Marcus ripped the fresh cigar from his manager’s mouth and
, after pulling him to his feet, struck him with a lightning fast jab/right cross combination that sent Walter flying into the table behind him, snapping it in two and upsetting the two large tattooed men who had been the occupants.

Marcus had walked away and never spoken to Walter again. He had turned up to the fight, determined to do it on his own.

“Fuck the consequences,” he had told Big Joe in the dressing room.

Walter hadn’t been foolish enough to show his face. His nose had been broken and a further slapping from the bikers he had upset put him under self-imposed house arrest for several weeks.

The fight began and Marcus knew from the first jab that his German opponent was clearly up to speed with what was planned, so Marcus just came out swinging.

Marcus survived the first few rounds with little damage. It was obvious to him that while his opponent was a good fighter, he wasn’t a killer. He lacked the look in his eye and the ruthlessness in his gut to move in and pile on the hurt if his man refused to fall from the heavy blows.

Marcus’s long-term girlfriend was ringside; he looked over to her for inspiration at the end of every round. It was the beginning of the seventh when the realization of where he had seen the two large, shaven-headed gentlemen (who now flanked his girlfriend) before. They had been present at the pre-fight weigh in, whispering with Papp's trainer and management team.

By the end of the eight round, Marcus saw the two men stand and walk away. His future wife was in tears, her caramel colored face had paled, and she looked like she was about to faint. Her lips had blended in shade and disappeared from her face, while her eyes were ex
pressionless. He looked at her with his left eye beginning to swell shut from a well-placed series of blows, but she wouldn’t look at him. She simply sat staring straight ahead; her expression one similar to the abused women Marcus would later take statements from on a regular basis. She cried; he had never seen her cry before, but she had tears welling up that just couldn’t be held back any longer.

As he rose for the eighth round, Marcus knew what was happening, but he didn’t know what to do. Marcus didn’t know what to think as he walked out for what he knew would be the last few rounds of his career. He would go down swinging: win, lose or draw, the kraut would have to
beat him. He told himself this and believed it at that moment. He believed it in the aftermath of it all, and deep down he believed it to his dying day.

His wife never told him what they had whispered to her. She simply said that he didn’t need to know, he had retired and it was all in the past. They had planned on moving away, to start a new life together away from the corrupt nature of the sport that no matter what length of retirement was put in the middle, Marcus would continue to love and miss. None of them ever spoke about it, but both knew that had he been single, Marcus would have carried on fighting, not because it was manly or because he wanted the fame and fortune it offered, but simply because he loved it.

Marcy, whose real name was Michaela, had been the one who suggested to Marcus that he should try for the police. She was five years older than he was and had already been on the force for three years. Her father had been a cop, and she had always wanted to follow in his footsteps – to make him proud of her. She had succeeded the moment she was accepted and he had told her exactly that every chance he got.

Marcus applied
and was accepted before he had completed the application form. He passed the physical test with flying colors, breaking the course record in the sprint and number of pushups he completed in one minute. A ‘staggering seventy’, the instructor had dubbed it that night over drinks in the training center bar. The actual number had been closer to eighty, but the name sounded good and so stuck.