Incinerator (3 page)

So what if she worked out at our gym, and
came running with me? It had come up in conversation that her house was just not far from the Thameside path where I ran most mornings. And early one morning she’d overtaken me, and since that day we ran together a few times a week, and talked about nothing in particular, but that didn’t mean she had the hots for me … did it?

Lost in thought, I took a while to catch on that whoever was at the door wasn’t coming in and wasn’t going away either. Winnie’s voice was growing louder and shriller and more insistent, and I was just thinking I should go and find out what was happening when I heard someone push their way into the house, ignoring Winnie’s protests, which by now had risen to a shriek. While Delroy groped behind him for his crutch, I kicked the chair back and pushed through the bead curtain into the hall.

A shaven-headed bloke the size of a wardrobe was standing in the hallway blocking the entire front door, his arms folded and his fat mouth a tight grim line. Winnie was in the doorway to the front room, scolding someone loudly in such a thick Caribbean accent I couldn’t understand a word she was saying,
but I got the gist: someone had barged in to rob them. Delroy and Winnie had nothing worth stealing, I knew, but details like that never bothered the twitchy lowlifes that roamed this area looking to fund their next fix any way they could. Not that the gorilla in the doorway looked like your typical smack addict, but I figured I’d help Winnie out first and analyse the intruders’ motives later.

A bloke in his mid-twenties, shorter and slighter than the first, emerged from the front room lugging Delroy’s cheap flatscreen TV under one arm and ignoring Winnie’s protests. There was a sour tang of stale tobacco from his clothes, his fingers were stained yellow with nicotine, and he wore his greasy hair in a daft old-fashioned quiff with sideburns that almost reached to his broad, square chin. All he needed was the glittery jumpsuit and the tacky gold sunglasses.

“Would you mind putting that back, please?” I said. It sounded absurdly polite but I knew that was the approach Winnie would prefer.

Elvis weighed me up and dismissed me with a glance. “Look, just mind your own business, kid, all right? And there won’t be any trouble.”

“There’s already trouble,” I said. “Winnie, get in the kitchen.”

“No, Finn, this is not your problem,” said Winnie, but there was a catch in her voice, and when I looked at her face I saw she was crying, and a surge of indignation sent adrenaline coursing through my body. Through everything that had happened to Delroy she had never lost heart or given up hope, and to see her humiliated now filled me with a rage I could barely contain. All thanks to those two leather-coated creeps carting Delroy’s worthless crappy supermarket TV out the front door.

I strode out after them. They were headed for a big shiny Merc parked at the curb with its boot open. By now I knew these two were definitely not typical burglars, but I didn’t care any more.

“Yo, jerk,” I said. “I asked you nicely.”

Elvis turned, the TV still under one arm, and sighed as if I was a parking ticket he’d have to tear up. He glanced at his glamorous assistant. “Sean?” he said wearily.

Sean the Wardrobe turned back and lumbered towards me, smirking. He was big and packing plenty of muscle but he moved like a
hippo with piles, and that crappy cheap leather coat he was wearing would restrict his movements. He wore leather gloves too—either he thought they made him look hard, or he bit his fingernails—and when I saw him open his big meaty right hand I thought, He’s planning to punch me?

I was almost insulted, but I let him take a swing, dodged and came up and threw all my weight into a straight right to his jaw. His big fleshy face rippled under the impact like a half-set jelly and he stumbled backwards.

By now Elvis was loading Delroy’s TV into the boot of the Merc, but I figured he wouldn’t drive off without his boyfriend. I let Sean find his balance and watched him come to the boil, shaking his head and screwing up his piggy little eyes. He came back at me twice as fast as before, his great fists flying, but so wild they might have been passing asteroids. I slipped up close and sank a left into his solar plexus, feeling the wind gush out of his body and watching him sag like a punctured blimp. He fumbled for my collar, plainly hoping to hold me still long enough to clobber me with his other fist or maybe a head-butt, but I grasped
his wrist and locked his gloved hand back and twisted his arm round and he fell heavily to his knees, wailing a high-pitched protest that sounded weirdly like Winnie. Delroy was in the doorway now, watching, Winnie behind him sobbing and pleading with him to intervene.

“Bring the TV back,” I called to Elvis, “or I break his arm.”

“Dammit!” said Elvis, and he slammed down the lid of the boot.

“Fine,” I said. “Have it your way.”

“Finn, don’t,” said Delroy.

I looked at him. I wasn’t really planning to break Sean’s arm, but I was pretty sure I knew how to dislocate it. Dislocation was painful, but it could easily be fixed, although fixing it was even more painful.

“Let him up,” said Delroy.

I released Sean’s arm and stepped back. He knelt there, clutching it and cursing under his breath, until his boss came back, stood over him, sighed in frustration and kicked him in the ribs.

“Get up, you useless prick,” he said.

“If I have to bring that TV back myself,” I said, “I’ll be using your ass for a wheelbarrow.”

But Elvis ignored me and instead pointed a stubby little finger at Delroy. “You were warned,” he said. “Next time you’re late, we’ll take all your bloody furniture, not just that cheap piece of crap.” He glared at me. “And thanks to this Boy Scout, your rate’s just doubled. You don’t like it, talk to Mr. Sherwood.” He turned and shoved Sean the Wardrobe back up the path towards the Merc.

I let them leave and turned to Delroy, who was leaning on his crutch, his knuckles white and his black face paler than I’d ever seen it.

“Delroy?” I said. “What the hell’s going on?”

“You borrowed your stake in the gym off Sherwood?”

“What else was I going to do? We didn’t have six thousand pounds lying around.” Delroy was slumped in his armchair in the front room, opposite the empty stand where his TV had once stood. Now there were just a few balls of dust and some loose cables with the connectors half wrenched off.

“You could have borrowed it from me,” I said. “I can afford it. I told you, my dad’s friend in Spain left me a shedload of cash—what the hell else am I going to use it for?”

“That’s your money,” said Delroy. “I wanted us to be partners. If I took the money off you, where would that leave me?”

Winnie bustled in again, her eyes still red and swollen, clutching a can of furniture polish and a faded yellow cloth. She sprayed the stand and wiped it down, as if she could clean up this horrible bloody mess with a duster.

I’d heard a few things about Sherwood, none of them good. Cars had been burned out, windows broken, knees smashed with baseball bats in alleys behind dodgy pubs. You had to be stupid or utterly desperate to borrow money from him. And Delroy and Winnie weren’t stupid.

“I been paying it back out of my disability allowance,” said Delroy. “Fifty pound a week.” He was staring at the floor, as if he was afraid to look up and see the gap where the TV had been. “But this week the bank messed up, and the money came in a day late. I called Mr. Sherwood and all, tried to explain, but they kept saying he was busy.”

Fifty pounds a week? How could Delroy ever afford that sort of money? I knew Winnie was still working as a cleaner, although she was nearly seventy. The way she’d talked it about it made it sound like something she did for the company of the other cleaning women, and to keep herself busy. Now I cursed myself for ever letting myself believe that. She couldn’t afford to stop working, because I had come to them with a stupid scheme about opening a gym, and she had gone along with it to make Delroy happy. I’d thought I was being clever and helpful when all I had done was landed them in debt to a loan shark.

“I’ll get your TV back,” I said. “In fact, to hell with that, I’ll buy you a new one. A big one.”

“It’s not your problem,” muttered Delroy.

“It doesn’t matter. I want to,” I said.

“Forget it, Finn,” he sighed. “I watch too much TV anyway.”

I had to fix my screw-up somehow. And it was going to take more than a new television set.

Nicky didn’t show up the next morning, either for our run along the river or at the gym, and for once I was glad. She would have sensed something was bothering me and nagged me to tell her and insisted on helping to sort it out, but I had the feeling this wasn’t the sort of problem that a lawyer could help with. Sure, I’d be seeing her that afternoon, but maybe I’d have come up with a solution by then. This was my screw-up, and I wanted to see what I could do without getting any more of the people I cared about sucked in. Back at the gym I heaved away at the weights harder than ever, clanging the metal bricks till my muscles burned, punishing myself for my blindness, my stupidity, my selfishness. Delroy watched me from the corner of his eye as he prowled
around the gym, grunting terse words of encouragement to the punters working out and training, but didn’t come over to talk about the night before. There was nothing to be said anyway. When I’d changed and showered I simply told him I’d be back in an hour or two and he didn’t ask where I was going.

The loansharking business was getting squeezed nowadays by those Internet lenders with adverts everywhere and interest rates in four figures, but even so there was always room for bottom-feeders like John Sherwood, taking on borrowers no big firm would touch. He ran small ads in free newspapers and put postcards in newsagents’ windows describing himself as a “local friend in need” who would even bring cash to your house. That sounded like good service, but then his operating methods relied on knowing where you lived. As soon as something went wrong—and something always went wrong—he wasn’t so easy to reach. His adverts featured a mobile phone number, but if you called it, all you got was a voicemail message telling you to leave a number for someone to call you back.

When I was thirteen or so, running wild
around West London, one of the places me and my fellow brats had hung out was a snooker hall that had seen better days. A sign outside the door barred entry to anyone under sixteen, in theory, but no one could be bothered to enforce it. If you could cough up the hefty deposit for balls and cues and had enough pound coins to keep the table light on you could play all day. There were usually older blokes hanging around, some offering a range of drugs to anyone who asked. For the most part we ignored the pushers, but one thing I did learn was that a loan shark called Sherwood had an office nearby. Once or twice I’d glimpsed a slim bloke in a sharp suit, usually with a couple of heavies in tow, slipping in through an unmarked doorway in the alley outside.

The snooker hall was a few minutes’ walk from the bus stop on the main drag, lined with pubs and clubs that only came to life at weekends. The entrance was off a narrow side street, and its doorway was barred now by a steel grille filled with rotting litter and leaves; behind the dusty filth-spattered windows slabs of chipboard had been screwed up to stop looters ripping the place apart for
its pipes and wiring. Either it had run out of money or the cops had finally got their act together and put it out of business. As I glanced at the doors, their handles wrapped in rusted chain, I couldn’t work out whether I felt nostalgic for the fun I’d thought I’d been having here or angry at myself for wasting so much of my youth in this dump playing bad pool and losing all the money I’d made from shoplifting cigarettes and booze.

But all that was past, I thought, and there was no point in beating myself up—especially in this neighbourhood, where you could usually find a crack addict to do that for you. I went round the side to the grimy alley with its unmarked door, noticing a sleek new convertible Merc parked in a private off-street bay opposite—a motor way too classy for this part of town.

It looked like my luck was in.

I banged on the blank double doors and after a few moments heard footsteps clomping down the stairs and a rattling of the lock. When the door was shoved open Sean’s head emerged, and when he clocked who it was standing there his face went bright scarlet,
adding a lovely pink tinge to the purple bruise my fist had left on his face the day before. Even though he was indoors he was still wearing his leather gloves, I noticed. Maybe he had a skin condition.

“I’d like to talk to Mr. Sherwood,” I said.

I could see uncertainty and indecision jostling under Sean’s beefy features. He seemed unsure whether he should tell me to piss off and slam the door again, or step out into the alley and see if the previous day’s encounter had been an unlucky fluke. I stared at him and waited, ready for either but hoping for neither. If he did slam the door again I’d have to stand there knocking on it till Sherwood came out for lunch or something, and it was starting to rain, and I’d look like a berk.

“You got an appointment?” said Sean finally. I nearly laughed at his effort to sound efficient and professional—he came across like one of those self-important grannies who work as doctors’ receptionists so they can have a nose through patients’ medical records.

“I’m here to repay a loan,” I said.

Sean squinted, and his little eyes nearly disappeared
into the fleshy folds of his face. “Wait here,” he said, and slammed the door shut.

It re-opened a few minutes later and Sean urged me in with a sharp jerk of his head. The stairs were covered in cheap vinyl, but at the top the floor was so thickly carpeted I couldn’t hear my own footsteps. The long hallway was moodily lit, painted in muted beige colours and lined with bland abstract prints in metal frames. The effect was meant to be classy and upmarket, but it reminded me of one of those budget business hotels where travelling salesmen watch porn. Sean led the way up the corridor to a pair of wooden doors, rapped gently with one leather-gloved knuckle and waited, while I examined a nearby oil painting showing a hay cart fording a stream. It looked old, and it didn’t really go with the modern abstracts, but maybe Sherwood thought it gave the place class.