Nirvana Bites (7 page)

‘You
what
?' I shrieked in disbelief.

‘I – I've been thinking. It's not fair on you to drag you into this. And whoever's behind it, well, I reckon you will have scared them off. I'm sure it will be fine now.'

My brain tipped inside my skull. ‘Have you gone totally mad? What on earth leads you to that conclusion? Anyway, you're not dragging us in. We're walking of our own free will. Not to mention the fact that you're paying me.'

‘And I still will,' Stan stuttered eagerly. ‘I really am very grateful. But please, Jen. Please, just drop it.'

I stared at him through narrowed eyes.

‘You're frightened,' I accused. ‘What happened this evening? Where did you go?'

Something amazing happened then. Stan changed from shiftless schoolboy to powerful executive in one fluid movement. It was amazing to witness and knocked me off balance for a moment.

‘Look, Jenny, I don't want to say this, but that really is none of your business. I asked you to do a job for me and now I'm saying, “Thank you very much. You've done a good job and now it's over.” Do I make myself clear?' He tilted his chin and arched an eyebrow at me.

For an instant it worked. I shrank before his power. But it only lasted a heartbeat. No fucking fat-cat was going to stand in my front room and tell me he'd got what he wanted from me and now I could fuck off. Stan hadn't actually seen me in action, since he'd been staring at the inside of a roll of carpet at the time, but he must have known what I was capable of. I can't recall my precise words, though I suspect that ‘fucking', ‘fuck' and ‘fucker' featured more heavily than any astute political polemic. I wanted to hurt him and it was only the knowledge that he might quite like it that stopped me. Instead I grabbed my keys and jacket and ran out of the front door.

It was chilly and a thin drizzle was floating down from a moonless sky. A train clattered over the bridge, light spilling fleetingly on to the dark street. Someone had knocked out the only streetlight. I pulled the denim jacket tighter and strode off down the road.

I was wrapped in a cocoon of anger and didn't notice the two men standing in the shadows under the bridge until it was too late. As I came alongside, one of them grabbed me by the shoulder and flung me back against the wall. He pressed his body tight against mine. He twisted one hand into my hair and with the other he held something cold and sharp against my exposed neck. He was dressed in black with a balaclava over his face. He was so close I could feel the rough wool tickling my cheek. I could smell beer on his breath.

So this is how it ends, I thought. I could feel the damp bricks bruising my spine. I wanted to scream. I wanted to fight him off with some spectacular martial-arts move. I wanted to beg. I wanted to swallow. I did none of these things on the grounds that any of them would bring my neck even closer to the blade.

‘Listen, bitch,' he growled. ‘You and your friends keep your noses out of our fucking business, right? This is the only warning you get. Understand?'

I couldn't nod, but he wasn't moving, so I assumed he was waiting for a response.

‘Erm,' I croaked carefully. ‘Sure. Only – what
is
your fucking business?'

The hand holding my hair jerked viciously forward and back, slamming my head against the bricks.

‘It seems we're going to have to teach you a lesson, bitch.'

It's weird what goes through your head at such a moment. There I was, about to die or at least be seriously damaged, and all I could think about was when had I had my last crap. If I had to die, there wasn't much I could do about it. But I really didn't want to be found lying in a pool of my own shit. It matters. Don't ask me why.

What happened next was far more terrifying for my assailants than it was for me. There was a dreadful screeching, followed by what sounded like a hundred hell-hounds escaping from Hades. My attackers shot off so fast I almost fell forward in their wake. They ran to the other end of the bridge, jumped into a parked car and were gone in a blink. Milliseconds later, they were followed by Tyson, dragging Derek Vance behind him at full pelt. Tyson continued with his Hound of the Baskervilles impersonation until he reached the patch of wasteland on the far side of the bridge, where he crouched and relieved himself of the desperately needed dump.

I was still leaning against the brickwork. I didn't quite trust my legs yet. Tyson stood and sniffed his trophy with pride before allowing Derek to lead him back under the bridge. Ignoring me completely, Derek leaned against the wall next to me and took a pack of cigarettes and a box of matches from his pocket. He lit one and exhaled slowly. Tyson, contented now, snuffled rabbit-like in the gutter.

‘Could I have a cigarette please, Derek?' I asked in a strange squeaky voice.

‘You'll have to pay,' he replied, not looking at me.

‘I've got no money on me. I'll pay you tomorrow,' I pleaded.

Derek shook his head stubbornly. ‘Nope.'

‘I'll tell your mother you smoke,' I threatened. Mean, but I was desperate. Mrs V was a chain-smoker, but for some inexplicable reason she would never allow her fifty-year-old son to touch a cigarette.

Derek shot me a resentful look, but handed over his own cigarette and lit another for himself. Beggars can't be choosers. We smoked in silence for a while until my body felt more like my own again. I chucked my butt on to the ground and tested a limb by stamping it out. It seemed I was functioning again.

‘Good-night, Derek,' I breathed and moved off. Derek didn't move but Tyson rewarded me with a low growl.

As I walked under the bridge there was a low cooing from the ironwork above me, followed by a heavy splat on my shoulder. First Stan. Then mystery assailants. Now a fucking pigeon. Tonight was certainly the night for being royally shat on from a great height.

I stumbled back upstairs to the flat. I had only been gone about a quarter of an hour, but I felt like I had aged three hundred years. Stan was slumped on my cushions, watching a late night chat show. He turned to speak as I walked in, but then his jaw dropped and welded to his upper chest.

‘Jesus Christ, Jen. What happened to you?' he faltered.

I looked in the mirror on the opposite wall. My hair looked like a bird's nest that had played host to a particularly riotous party. I was pale and sweating. My face was streaked with dirt. A tiny trickle of blood crawled down the left side of my neck. And on my right shoulder, there was a pigeon shit the size of an omelette.

‘I was attacked, Stan,' I said in a tiny voice.

His response took me by surprise. I don't know what I'd expected, but this wasn't it. He leapt to his feet and began pacing the room, his fists clenched to the sides of his head.

‘What?' he ranted. ‘But it's impossible. You can't have been. Why would…?' He tailed off and stood twitching in the middle of the room.

Can you see it? At that instant in time, I could have had an advantage. In a power struggle between the likes of Stan and the likes of me, such an opportunity would come but rarely. If I could just have been a little less freaked and self-obsessed, I would have seen how odd his reaction was. I could have seized the moral high ground dictated by my appearance. I could have demanded answers he would never give under different circumstances.

So did I do that? Did I fuck. And I have to live with the fact that, if I had, everything could have been so different. Nirvana would still have consisted of six members and one hanger-on. And maybe all the blood, sweat and tears would have stayed in their rightful places. Hindsight can be a savage bastard.

Anyway, I didn't ask the questions. Instead (and I blush) I said (oh, I can hardly bear to repeat it), ‘I don't want to talk about it.'

I don't want to talk about it
.

(No, no, no. I can't believe I said that. What kind of a spineless jellyfish am I?)

Stan came towards me. He went to put his arms around me, but glanced at my shoulder with distaste and gave my elbows an awkward squeeze instead.

‘What do you want me to do, Jenny?' he asked in a quiet un-Stan voice. There it is again. Go on. Go for it. So you've been beaten up. So what? It's not like it's the first time…

‘I want you to go to bed,' I replied. (Groan.) ‘I want you to go to bed so I can have a bath and some space.'

Stan was gone so fast, I barely registered movement. The bedroom door whooshed shut behind him. I bet he couldn't believe his luck.

That was a long and horrible night alone with my fears and my memories. I spent all of it sweating and shaking. The scene in Stan's flat had been a tea party – even with the shooters, whereas the episode under the bridge had been up close and nasty. It was as if that guy had swung me round by the hair and flung me back a quarter of a century.

Fucking bastard. Fucking bastards. All of them.

It probably would have helped if I'd been able to cry, but that's something else I haven't done for twenty-five years. So instead of sobbing and snivelling, I sweated and shook. I'm a survivor though. I must be, or I wouldn't be here. So while my body did its sweaty shaky thing, the cogs of my brain continued to turn.

There were two major questions.

One: who were those guys anyway? When I had asked what their business was, it had been a serious question. Between us, we'd pissed off quite a few people in our time, so the answer was far from obvious.

Two: what was the cause of Stan's strange reaction? He was obviously hiding something. But what? And how could I get it out of him?

7

IT MUST HAVE
been about seven in the morning when I heard Mags moving around downstairs, getting ready for work. It occurred to me that I had better let the others know what had happened under the bridge last night. Not because I was attention-seeking, and not because I was after sympathy, but my attacker had mentioned my friends. In theory, we were all in danger from the Black Balaclava Brigade. Whoever the hell they were.

I risked the bleary-eyed wrath of the others and used my keys on the assumption (correct) that they would all be in bed, with the exception of Mags. To my amazement, the responses I got were more coherent – and more sensitive – than the collective ‘Fuck off' I'd been expecting. The times they were a-changing, all right.

When I got home, Stan was in my tiny kitchen brewing coffee. All this was a bit of a culture shock to me: up at seven – without having been out all night; a polite response from my fellow Nirvanans at said unearthly hour; a man in my kitchen, clad in boxer shorts and Elastoplasts. Only last night's violence was familiar.

My head felt fuzzy, like I'd been chain-smoking skunk all night. Even after a black coffee thick and strong enough to slice and chew, I was having trouble ordering my thoughts. Stan, for his part, was having trouble meeting my eyes. We seemed to come to a wordless compromise: he wouldn't mention dropping the case if I didn't; he wouldn't mention whatever he had avoided mentioning last night and I wouldn't rend him limb from limb. It was clear that trust between us was at an all-time low. But last night's attack had locked us together in a deadly embrace that neither of us could break.

Stan said he wanted to check on the penthouse. Funny how he never referred to it as home. I wasn't happy about letting him out of my sight today, so suggested Ali and I accompany him in the transit. I wasn't too happy about him being
in
my sight either, but I'd feel more comfortable if I could keep my eye on him.

The scene in Docklands was as we had left it. Ali and I swept the wreckage of the aquarium into the dust sheet that had covered it, while Stan checked his mail. If there was anything untoward, he didn't share it with us. He pressed ‘play' on his answering machine. The first three messages were concerned colleagues at the Beeb, checking on his health. The next was from Catherine, demanding to know why he'd taken leave of absence without telling her. Stan clucked in annoyance.

There was no build-up or preparation for what followed. With a letter, you can sometimes sense from the envelope that the contents could rock you. With the technological hardware that is an answering machine, you get no such warning. A guttural whisper, like that of a man with chronic bronchitis, invaded the room.

‘Sta-an. Oh, Sta-an,' it called in mocking tones. ‘Did you think it was all over? Did you really think that? Well, I'm calling to tell you, it's
not
. Not by a l-o-n-g way.' A wheezing cackle was cut short by a mechanical voice announcing the time: three o'clock that morning.

Stan's face was ashen. He stared at the machine as though stuck in a game of musical statues. I picked up the phone and punched 1471. Surprise, surprise. The caller withheld their number.

I looked at Ali, who was staring with narrowed eyes at Stan, who was still transfixed by the answering machine. The sound of a key being inserted in the front door broke the spell. We all spun round. Stan whimpered. My heart was pounding and my throat constricted. My senses strained at the door, trying to penetrate the wood and see through to the other side. We heard fumbling, the key being withdrawn and another inserted. I turned wildly to Ali, who nodded at the door. We were both still holding our brooms.

We moved to the door and instinct took over. Ali took up a position behind it and I stood on the other side, clutching the broom in both hands. Meanwhile, whoever was on the other side continued to try keys in the lock. I felt a trickle of sweat drip down between my shoulderblades. Stan whimpered again. As the door swung open, there was a roaring in my ears. The intruder stepped into the room.

I leapt forward and clouted him on the side of the head with the broom. As he staggered sideways, Ali leapt round the door and grabbed him from behind, holding the broom handle tight against his throat.

‘No!' screamed Stan. ‘No! Stop! Don't hurt him. It's James.'