GBH
Authors: Ted Lewis
ALSO BY TED LEWIS
Get Carter
Jack Carter’s Law
Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon
Copyright © 1980, 2015 by the Estate of Edward Lewis
Published by
Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lewis, Ted, 1940–1982.
[Grievous bodily harm]
GBH / Ted Lewis.
1. Criminals—England—London—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6062.E955G74 2015
823’.914—dc23 2014033183
ISBN 978-1-61695-550-2
PB ISBN 978-1-61695-646-2
eISBN 978-1-61695-551-9
v3.1
Contents
G.B.H.
1861. Section 18. Offences Against the Person Act:
“Whosoever shall unlawfully and maliciously by any means whatsoever wound or cause any Grievous Bodily Harm to any person … with intent … to do some … Grievous Bodily Harm to any person, or with intent to resist or prevent the lawful apprehension or detaining of any person … shall be liable to ‘imprisonment only’ … for life.”
Amended 1967, Section 10 (2), Schedule 3
.
THE SEA
A
DRY LIGHT WIND
ripples softly across the coastal plain, murmuring round the bungalow’s corners, bound for the sanddunes and the shuddering brittle grass.
From the bed, I stare through the window and watch some shreds of cloud pass luminously across the face of the moon. The clouds move on and the moon is solitary once more, its brilliance sharply defining the bedroom’s details. A mile away, the sea is subdued as it tumbles on to the flat, hard beach. I look at my watch. It is a quarter to three.
I pick up the handgun off the bedside table and get up off the bed and walk from the bedroom into the large bare L-shaped hall. The moonlight casts the shadow of the open staircase leading to the loft, deep black on the plain linoleum floor. The floor feels unexpectedly warm beneath my bare feet. I walk towards the front door, my approach causing the moonlight to ripple beyond the frosted glass.
I draw back the bolt, unlock the door and open it slightly, quietly. The warm night wind hesitates in the doorway for a moment, then laps over my naked body. For a few moments I remain motionless, then I slowly pull the door until it’s fully open. Then I listen.
There is only the soft noise from the shore and the night rustlings from the gorse and the copses and from the hedgeless water meadows that stretch away as far as the horizon. I step
forward on to the tiled steps. I look to my left. Three miles away the lights of the gas terminal are brilliantly clear in the night’s stillness, like a city centre without any suburbs.
I go back into the bungalow and lock and bolt the door behind me.
In the large lounge, the curtainless windows make it unnecessary for me to switch on the light. I climb the open-tread steps and walk over to the drinks and pour myself a brandy and ginger. I put the gun down on the piano and in the darkness I light a cigarette.
THE SMOKE
S
AMMY OPENED THE DOOR
, which surprised me, even though he was expecting me. Sammy goes through life as if he’s always expecting both barrels. That being so, I’d expected his old lady. And even when he’d clocked it was me and not a different urban gorilla, his squitty little eyes swivelled this way and that, trying to fathom the Hammersmith darkness beyond the relatively large shapes of Jean and myself. What he expected to be backing us up I do not know.
Sammy stepped back and held the door open and Jean and I removed our shadows from the tatty Georgian columns and entered the yellow light that did not do a lot for Sammy’s undecorated hall. Nor, when it came down to it, for Sammy’s complexion.
“I got rid of Margaret and the kids,” he said. “The place is clear.”
“That’s right, Sammy,” I said. As if it wouldn’t have been.
Sammy backed along the wall beyond the foot of the staircase, stopped his slithering against the first door on the left.
“I’m here,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said to him.
Jean looked at me, signalling her opinion of Sammy with an icy smile, and walked through the doorway. I began to follow her, but my progress was arrested more by the expression in Sammy’s eyes than by anything of a more physical nature.
“Mr. Fowler,” said Sammy, “I got to tell you. I don’t like none of this. No way do I like none of it.”
I looked at him.
“I just wanted to tell you that,” he said, wishing he wasn’t having to endorse what he had already said.
“Why?” I asked, and maintained the look and the longer I maintained it the less inclined Sammy was to reply. Relenting I said to him, “You don’t have to stay. You can piss off down the boozer. Tell Harry for you to use my slate. Or then again, you can clear off upstairs and watch the match on TV.”
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t be able to turn the volume loud enough.”
“In that case,” I said to him, “it’s down to the boozer, isn’t it?”
A short silence. Then Sammy said, “Yeah. That’s what I’ll do, Mr. Fowler. I’ll nick off down there and take advantage of your kind offer.”
As if he’d come to that conclusion all by himself.
“Good,” I told him.
I walked through the door and into the room.
Jean was standing by the bay window, lighting a cigarette. The drawn curtains were hidden behind the blankets which had been hung from the curtain’s rufflettes. Also as per instructions, the carpet had been turned right back, and on the bare boards in the centre of the room an upright chair stood on its own. Facing the chair was a cheap divan. Next to the divan was a folding card table and on this table was a bottle of scotch, a bottle of vodka, some tonics, some ginger ales, and some glasses. Also on this table stood a table lamp, providing the room’s illumination, the central light socket being, for the moment, otherwise engaged. On the floor, next to the folding table, was an aluminium bucket full of water. Next to the bucket, on the floor, was the other equipment.
I clocked all this, and then I looked at Jean, only to find that she was already looking at me. Our gazes, though apparently blank, transmitted our mutual feelings.
In the doorway, Sammy appeared, putting on his overcoat.
“Well,” he said, “I’ll be on my way then.”
We both looked at him.
“I think everything’s like what you said.”
“Looks like it, Sammy.”
“Right then, I’ll be off, then.”
He paused for a moment, like an amateur dramatic waiting to be cued off stage. Then he disappeared, and there was the sound of the front door closing.
After he’d gone, Jean said, “You think Mickey’ll be on time?”
“I’d say so. He put the collar on Arthur at quarter to seven.”
Jean looked at her watch. The ash broke from her cigarette and fell to the floor. “I think I’ll have a drink while I’m waiting,” she said.
I turned to the card table and poured vodka for Jean and scotch for myself. I carried her drink over to her and while I was handing it to her the doorbell rang. Jean didn’t look at me as she took the glass from me.
I went out of the room and opened the front door. Immediately in front of me stood Arthur Philips, age early forties, hairstyle late fifties. His open-neck shirt was terylene and the suit Burton modern. Behind Arthur stood Mickey Brice, the yellow light pinpointed in his dark glasses like the eyes of Morlocks.
