Give The Devil His Due (3 page)

       I was looking forward to the evening, seeing the guys we hadn't seen for donkeys' and all the stories they’d have to tell. The morning wasn't anything to write home about. The usual suspects: old ladies going to bingo, Sainsbury’s shoppers with too many carriers, and the great unwashed. I knocked off about midday. Having already packed my overnight bag the previous day, there wasn’t much left to do apart from putting Pugsley's things together: dog bowl, food, lead and toys. He had a squeaky plastic king-sized burger that he would play with. Because of his undershot jaw, he used to have difficulty picking it up. It was really comical to watch him trying to get this thing under control. I used to feel a tad guilty in laughing at his struggle. Leaving the house, I grabbed a water bill that was sitting on my porch window sill. It was red (always waited for the red ones to arrive before paying-up – that was my MO). It’d become a bad habit that needed to change.

       I headed for mum's house. Pugs had to be dropped there first, before the journey to Bristol. She'd look after him for the night. She always moaned about his dribbling. He couldn't help it; he was a Boxer - they all dribble. She might moan but I knew she loved him. She wouldn't have been willing to look after him otherwise.

       An hour and two cups of tea later, I was on my way. Hopefully I'd see a post office en route where the water bill could be paid. Even more hopefully I wouldn't see Dave in it, dealing bonds.

       The drive to Bristol was a pretty uneventful one. I arrived relatively unscathed. No road-rage today, though it has to be said that when there was road rage, I was usually the instigator not the victim – another of my bad habits.

       On the doorstep waiting to greet me was Phil. He had this odd habit of knowing my exact arrival time, and he'd be standing there, in front of his house just as my car rounded the corner and entered his street. Every time I visited him he did this. It was almost as if he was tracking my car via satellite.

       The other two reprobates we were going to meet up with were Neil Fairburn and Trevor Kozen. Neil and Trevor were like chalk and cheese. Neil, always the ladies’ man, and Trevor constantly with his head in books (academic or
Star Trek
were usually the flavours of choice). Neil, handsome; Trevor, geeky – he could have been Woody Allen's lovechild! Neil, forgiving; Trevor, not.

       In fact, if you ever crossed Trev or someone in his family, he would make it his life's work to get even – talk about holding grudges. It was amazing how the two ever became friends they were so different, but friends they were, and good ones at that. The last I heard about Neil was that he'd become a sales rep. Successful I would imagine. He always had a very slick line in chat. I hadn't a clue about Trevor. I remembered him going to university to read law, but what he was up to now was anybody's guess. With so many spaces to fill there’d be plenty for us all to catch up on.

       Looking at Phil standing there on his ownsome it was obvious I was the first to arrive. ‘Where are they then?’ I asked.

       ‘Trev'll be here in about three quarters of an hour.’

       ‘What about Neil? Is he still coming?’

       ‘Yeah, he hasn't told me anything different.’

       We went indoors. Phil was one of those people always in the middle of something. I could see he had one of his PCs on. Virtually every room in his house had a computer. When asked why he hadn't got one in the bathroom, he said there was one on order. The man was sick, and needed to get a life.

       ‘Won't be a minute finishing this Will. Dump your gear upstairs and we'll go out the back.’

       I went upstairs, put my stuff in the spare bedroom and made a quick visit to the bathroom. Less than two minutes later I was sat out on Phil's patio. Phil, never one to wait for the sun to be over the yardarm, had a couple of chilled cans on the table.

       ‘I can't go mental Phil. I won't be up to it this evening if we have too many now.’

       ‘Don't worry, I shan't let you.’

       We sat there and talked for awhile. Phil had just passed his motorbike test and was feeling the need to give me a street-by-street account of his test route. I listened jealously. I’d wanted to sit mine but hadn't had the time for enough practice to put in for a test.

       Motorbike talk over, Phil was telling me how the reunion had come about. It transpired that Phil had bumped into Neil's folks a couple of weeks before. Neil's parents had Trevor's mother's home number and so that's how Phil had tracked the lad’s down.

       I wanted to know more. ‘So where are they coming from then?’ I asked.

       ‘London.’

       ‘What, both of them?’

       ‘Yeah.’

       ‘That's weird.’

       ‘What's weird?’

       ‘Them not travelling together.’

       ‘Well, maybe they've finished work at different times. Maybe they're coming from different parts of London.’

       Phil always had a possible answer for everything. I still thought it a bit odd that they weren't journeying together. After all, it was the same rail line that they'd be using. Why not get the same train and catch up on old times? Just as I was having that thought, Phil's next-door neighbour's dog went ballistic. There was someone knocking Phil's front door.

       ‘We're out the back, side-gate's unlocked!’ Phil shouted.

       A few seconds later, the gate moved tentatively open and a grinning Peachy appeared before our very eyes. I had to ask him, ‘Why the slow-mo entrance Peachy?’

       ‘I didn't know if you had the hound-from-hell back here.’

       ‘No he's next-door’s’. He's in their back garden. Just sounds like he's in mine.’

       I could see the relief on Peachy's face. Trevor ‘Peachy’ Kozen looked like he hadn't changed at all. Same baby face, tight black curly hair; he even had the same glasses on. Well, they probably weren't, but they looked like they could’ve been.

       The years had been very kind to him. He obviously still had the same canine phobia he'd possessed as a child. And why ‘Peachy’? Well, ever since we were adolescents and the sap started rising, Trevor had suffered from what Phil described as ‘peach syndrome’, named after the famous Professor ‘Simon (I Like ’Em Big!) Peach’ in the film ‘
The Italian Job
’. Trev liked ’em big too, and I mean BIG, hence the nickname Peachy. At least it was better than being called ‘Tea-cosy’ – the other nickname he’d had as a youth.

       ‘How was the train ride?’

       ‘Train was packed. I had to stand until Swindon.’

       ‘You should stop being such a cheap bastard and buy a first-class ticket then,’ Phil quipped.

       ‘Fuck off.’

       ‘Nice to see you too Peachy,’ replied Phil.

       ‘Nice to see you? It’s customary for the host to welcome the guest warmly and inform him of the sleeping arrangements.’

       ‘You're in the back room downstairs Peach. There's an airbed in there but you'll have to blow it up yourself. Bog's straight up the stairs directly in front of you, cans are in the fridge. Any other questions?’

       ‘Yeah, what's for dinner?’

       ‘We'll sort that out later. Probably a sit-down Indian.’

       ‘Fair enough.’

       With that, Trev disappeared inside, only to return minutes later, Hawaiian shirt and shorts on, can in hand. He looked like he'd just arrived on the first day of his holidays. I could see it was going to be one of those evenings.

       ‘So fill us in then. What've you been doing with yourself?’ I asked.

       ‘Where shall I start?’

       ‘Why not begin at the beginning?’ Jesus, I was turning into Lewis Carroll! Trev did begin at the beginning. He gave us the whole lot, from university to lawyer, to a kibbutz, then political journalism, BBC researcher, assistant records manager at the Central Criminal Court and his current post – which he'd held for the last three years: senior archivist at the British Archives, Kensington. Throw in a couple of Dawn French look-alikes along the way. One he had been engaged to – but the relationship went sour when
she
lost weight for the wedding, so
he
lost interest. I reckon there was enough material there for a major new series on Channel 4. It seems I hadn't done it all; Peachy had.

       He'd even brought along three photo albums to substantiate all this, just in case we didn't believe him. Both Phil and I were laughing at one of his holiday snaps, when the hound-from-hell announced Neil's arrival. Same routine; the slow opening of the gate followed by accommodation instructions and drink location.

       Unlike Trev, Neil had changed. He looked tired and quite gaunt. He was going to have a quick shower to freshen up before joining us outside.

       I said to Phil, ‘Must have had a heavy one last night.’ He was showing his age a little more, but you could see he would scrub up well. He still had a bit of panache about him. Like Peach, he gave us the low-down on what he'd been doing over the last few years. Repping, redundancy and acrimonious divorce. Then he dropped a bombshell.

       ‘I've been inside too.’ I looked at Phil; Phil looked at me. Trev just looked … well, sort of vacant.

       ‘Inside?’ Phil asked.

       ‘Yeah, prison.’

       These were uncharted waters we were venturing into. Neil continued. ‘It was all to do with the break-up. I became very depressed, and got done for drink-driving. It was the next day at the station, after the cops had pulled me the night before, that I found out she'd stopped the insurance direct debits. My blood alcohol reading was so high I got nine months. The magistrates acknowledged that the insurance might not have been my fault, but it didn’t excuse my state and for that reason they sent me down.’

       I could see the tension in Phil's shoulders ease. I think he initially thought Neil was going to tell us he'd spent the last ten years inside for being a mad axeman or something.

       The atmosphere lightened and we all started to really enjoy the warm afternoon. The chat, the laughter … it was like we were fifteen years younger. Phil put some tunes on the stereo and opened the french doors. I don't think it was a random collection; he had pre-selected the tracks. It was stuff that was around from the last time we'd all been together. Phil had always fancied himself as a bit of an ‘Alan Freeman’. The music leaked outwards to where we sat and provided the perfect mood for our discovery and nostalgia. All in the world was well.

       Phil got so into the swing of things that later in the evening he insisted on paying for the Indian. By the time we all crashed out, it must have been about 5 a.m. We had talked about virtually everything. Our ups, our downs, where we were going and how we hoped we’d get there. For that one evening we'd all had a tremendous mental lift. Funny how familiar friendly faces can raise your spirits. Our heads were newly-filled with the missing jigsaw pieces that had just been put into place.

Chapter 2

Saturday 11.20 a.m. Bristol
I felt like absolute shit. By the time I got into the bathroom the other three had violated it. Even though there were no visible signs of the sacred place having been desecrated, there was an aura lingering and this made me feel even worse. I don't think these people understood the concept of ventilation, was it really that difficult to open the bloody window? So, Alka Seltzer, shower, another Alka Seltzer and all the while muttering to myself, ‘Never again, never again.’

       Ablutions over, I returned to the pack. Phil had stuck the coffee on. Exhausted from the night before, we were slowly easing into the day. Neil and Peachy would be getting the train. I’d be driving to Wales. Phil offered to run the two of them to the railway station. I said I'd wait until he got back before I left. I still felt over the limit and unsafe to drive. It was about 1.30 p.m. when Phil returned.

       ‘They get off OK?’

       ‘Well, Peachy did. Neil asked to be dropped into town. Said he had a few things to pick up before he was going home.’

       Again I found that odd; why they wouldn't have travelled together? They were, after all, going to the same place, and surely they had shops in London where Neil could get what he wanted.

       It was time for me to head off. ‘Have you got their phone numbers and addresses, Phil?’

       ‘Here's Peachy's work, mobile and email, his address is on the back.’ It was a P.O. box-number. ‘Neil said he's moving house at the moment, so the best way to reach him is via his folks.’

       Talk about cagey, I thought this all a bit bizarre. Were these guys frightened to give me their addresses or something? Perhaps they thought I was going to stalk them. Mine was not to reason why. Phil opened the windows; the fresh air breezed in and I began to feel a little better. Time to go.

       I arrived back an hour and a half later, straight round to mum's. Pugsley was waiting. He stank a bit but never mind; it was his smell and I loved him. He didn't ask much in life, just a decent meal, walk and cuddle and he’d be ecstatic. If only a happy life was as easily attainable for the rest of us. I avoided the sauce for the next few nights. My liver was grateful – it would have bought me a present if it could.

Wednesday 9 a.m. South Wales

I'd been busy working the last few days, trying to maintain Mr Barclaycard in the manner to which I'd let him become accustomed. My plastic was beginning to strangle me.

       I hadn't spoken to Phil but would give him a bell around tennish. It was now 6 p.m. Dave was walking towards his house just as I pulled on to my drive. By the time I'd switched off the engine and opened the driver's door he had changed direction, covered thirty-five yards and was two feet away.

       ‘There's a new arrival in the street!’ he said excitedly.

       ‘Oh?’

       ‘Yes, I met her for the first time a couple of hours ago, and we really hit it off.’