No More Heroes (18 page)

I brace myself for a volley of kicks, a little solidarity violence for their fallen comrade, but all I get is held tight.

Collins turns to me, his face tight. He gestures for the mechanics to let me go.

“What the hell was all that about?”

I look round at Tony and the other mechanic. They’ve backed off. They don’t want to sort me out in front of their boss, but they
do
want to sort me out.

Back to Collins, and I realise he’s the only thing stopping me from ending up like Frank right now. “We should walk and talk.”

Eddie switches round in the dirt. He’s being helped to his feet, one hand clamped to his face, his eyes wild in their sockets. He points at me, doesn’t have to say anything.

You’re fuckin’ dead
.

I walk with Collins towards the alley. “You know there’s going to be a protest march tomorrow night. Jeffrey Briggs is organising it.”

“I told you, I don’t have anything to do with—”

“I believe you. I think. But your boys here do have something to do with Briggs, and your fuckin’ ignorance isn’t going to save you. I’m asking you to talk to those lads for me. They’ll listen to you more than they’ll listen to me, obviously. Tell them to pass the word on, I have it on tape that this march is going to be a forced riot.”

Collins’s face pales. “That’s got nowt to do with me.”

“It will do.” I stop by the entrance to the alley. Look across at my car. “Because if you don’t manage to persuade these lads from attending, if you don’t use whatever pull you have with Briggs to stop this march, then I’ll get the
Evening News
to do to you what they did to Plummer.”

“You can’t do that.”

“With a fuckin’ tape of your employees, I can. Now think about that.”

I head off towards my car. Stop as I’m about to get in.

“And tell Eddie, I see him anywhere near the Lads’ Club, I’ll put him in the fuckin’ ground.”

Sitting in my darkened living room, waiting for boot boys to kick the front door in. I’ve tried to tell myself I’m not doing that. Went so far as to actually cook something to take my mind off it, fried the blood out of a steak, got surprised at how long it took to do a potato in the oven. Then I settled down in front of the telly with a beer.

Now the beer’s drained, and I’ve moved on to the vodka, straight from the freezer, the greasy dinner plate on the coffee table in front of me. Watching the news with the volume turned down, got a pleasant codeine-vodka haze going on and a chair wedged under the handle of the front door. Not that it’ll make much of a difference, but it should be an early warning if Eddie and his pals decide to pay me a visit in the middle of the night.

PROTEST MARCH PLANNED FOR FRIDAY EVENING

That’s the caption underneath footage of Jeffrey Briggs leaving what looks like the Manchester law courts. He meets a huddle of reporters, tries to fend them off as he walks right through the middle of them. His face has the burst blood-vessel complexion of a serious whisky man. A small knot in his tie, which hangs from a thick neck. His suit jacket barely covers his gut. The man’s trying his best to keep a smile on his face, but it’s not a natural expression and makes him look like he’s been sipping vinegar.

I take a drink, talk into my glass: “Cunt.”

See a brief standing next to Briggs now, a shabby guy, looks like a welder in a cheap suit. Briggs comes up to a clutch of microphones, clears his throat and brings up a piece of paper. Some kind of prepared statement, but I’m not going to hear it. I double-check that the volume’s turned right down. I don’t need to hear what he’s saying to know it’s most likely bullshit.

Besides, the papers have been full of it recently. When they’re not talking about how hot it’s getting, how the temperature’s breaking all known records, they’re talking about how crazy people are getting about the race situation. We’re so scared of the influx of immigrants that we’re not dealing with it, we’re withdrawing, terrified of car bombs, ricin and crazy brown guys with explosive vests on public transport. We’re barricading ourselves into our homes and watching telly, letting all this shit fester.

And that can’t be good.

I finish my drink. Feel the bubble where my brain should be.

Look across at the front door, squint to see if the chair’s moved.

No. We’re good. Safe for now. But I’m still slipping out here, feeling the edges blur a little too much. I lean forward, put my glass on the coffee table, take a deep breath. I can’t just wait around here. I’ll keep drinking, keep swearing at the telly, get more and more fucked until I wake up screaming again.

So I get to my feet and stand there for a bit, looking at the television. Swaying in the half-light. I look down at the ashtray, see it clogged with filters and wonder when I smoked all those cigarettes. I check my pack, find I’m running low and decide I’ll go out, get some more.

I shouldn’t drive, but I try anyway. What I end up doing is leaning over the steering wheel and looking at the road through narrowed eyes. Turn the radio on to keep me from losing my mind at the wheel, and I’m grateful it’s a music station. I don’t think I could take more news at the moment.

I find myself heading to Cheetham Hill. When I see a garage up ahead, I don’t trust myself to manoeuvre the Micra onto the forecourt without doing some serious damage, so I park up the street and stagger down to the shop. Buy a load of cigarettes, some chocolate and a couple of cans of Red Bull to shake some of the booze out of my system. All it does is wake me up a little. I still feel pissed.

I can see Strangeways assaulting the skyline from here. You can’t walk around Cheetham Hill without seeing at least part of that shithole. When I first got out, I swore I’d never go near the place again, but since that close call in Newcastle, I’ve found myself driving back up here every now and then. It’s a kind of therapy for me; I can look at the place now and not think I’m going to be dragged back.

Not without a fucking good reason, anyway.

I light a cigarette, head for my car. As I’m walking, I notice someone at the end of the road, hear the scrape of heels as she walks towards me. As the light catches her, she’s one of those women who look a lot older than they actually are. Dark hair frames her face, which is pale, but made up. She’s holding onto a handbag that doesn’t match what passes for her outfit, a denim skirt and trackie jacket, halfway zipped, revealing a pinkish cheap top.

“Got a light, love?”

I look at her. Nod. She shakes a cigarette to her lips. I light it for her. When she breathes smoke, she looks up at me as if she expects me to say something.

When I don’t, just swaying and staring aimlessly, she says, “What you after?”

“I don’t know,” I say, smiling. “Have not got the foggiest.”

She pulls the cigarette from her mouth. “You want prices first or summat?”

I shake my head. “It’s okay.”

She tries to keep talking, listing it out. Hand jobs, blow jobs, fuck jobs, no anal, no bareback … and I can afford it all.

“No, it’s okay. I’m not interested. Really.”

It takes her a while to process that. She looks at the cigarette in her hand, then smiles at me, but there’s a touch of pity on her face that I’m not keen on. “Did you think I was just asking for a light?”

“No.”

“Then what?” She’s already looking around, wondering if she should keep talking to me. Getting ready to flinch if I make a move for her.

“You know something, I don’t know.” I follow her gaze, then up to the prison. “I just thought I’d help you out, I suppose. Be that one bloke who actually gives you a light, so you remember.”

“Why would I want to remember that?”

I nod. “You’re right. Sorry I bothered you. You take care of yourself, alright?”

She cocks her head at me, then sticks the cigarette in her mouth and continues up the road, glancing every now and then over her shoulder to make sure I’m not following her. I take a drag on my Embassy, blow smoke, and look at the “Ways again.

Stupid.
Stupid
. Can’t play the same game with her that I can with other women. What fucking game? What other women?

Fuck off
.

It doesn’t take, so I have to say it out loud: “Fuck off.”

And now I feel like a headcase.

Which is why I’m no good with women, right? Fucking headcases don’t tend to pull that often. If I want to justify it to myself, I could say that I got locked up before I got the chance to live the life of the single bloke. Didn’t get a chance to get beered up with my mates — fuck it, didn’t
have
any mates except my smackhead brother, and he wasn’t much fun to be around. So I didn’t get a chance to hit the pubs, cracks on with the drunk lasses for a quick fumble up an alley or in a bus shelter.

The time I should’ve been doing that, I was shacked up with a bunch of fucking lags. Blokes talking about sex as fantasy — “I’d fuck that” about a picture on the cell wall. They treated their women like wishes, afraid that talking about them would make them disappear.

Scared, angry and desperate. Prone to things that’d make them sick on the outside.

But fuck that. Don’t get on it; keep it locked. Now’s not the time.

I dump the cigarette and get back into the Micra. Sit listening to the radio for a moment, trying to recognise the songs by the first few bars and failing miserably, then pop the second can of Red Bull and guzzle it till my eyes water.

When the news comes on, I kill the radio and start the engine.

Feeling slightly better now. Clear enough to drive home without killing anyone, anyway.

First thing the next morning, I call Frank’s mobile. This time, it doesn’t go to voice mail. Which is immediately gratifying, because it means he’s doing better than the last time I saw him.

“How you doing?”

He keeps his voice low, but he seems better. More alert. “I’m good, Callum. Bit stiff, bit achey. Nothing too bad.”

“Why’re you whispering, mate?”

“I’m …” The rustle of the phone against material. Then: “I’m round my mum’s. She’s not happy.”

“Right. Course not. She said something. She noticed you were—”

“Well, it’s not like it wasn’t obvious,” he says. “I look like that bloke from
The Goonies
.”

I laugh. Grab my jacket and head out of my flat. “Well, you get her to look after you, mate. Bed rest. You need any money or anything, you let me know, okay? Least I can do.”

“Appreciate it.”

I hit the car park, head for the Micra. It’s a cool enough morning to wear a jacket, so I shrug into mine, pop my mobile in the pocket and get into the car. The idea this morning is head over to Paulo’s, apologise for not going round yesterday to help with the new rings, and see if there’s anything he wants me to do. If I’m going to be moving into the back office, it’s best I get on his good side.

Start the engine, and the radio kicks in. It’s a talk show, one of those topical phone-ins where the insane and the ignorant call up thinking they’re experts because they read a book once.

Or they’ve heard the latest news — some guy in Bolton, asylum seeker, just been found guilty of four counts of possessing material of use to terrorists, plus two further charges of similar offences and two counts of money laundering. The charges are all very vague, but the evidence isn’t.

Talk about fucking red-handed. Apparently the guy had the equivalent of the
Terrorist Almanac
, how to maintain multiple identities, advice on how to carry out suicide bombings on bus and train networks, pointing to other targets such as stadium exits, colleges and cinemas. Home-made bombs and internet chemistry lessons — how to poison the country in three simple steps.

What made me stop is that he supposedly downloaded all this from a secret Al-Qaeda website. Wonder if they’re on Facebook, too.

Some bigwig in Manchester’s counterterrorism unit — which I didn’t even know we had — says: “He appears to have been a
sleeper
remaining in the shadows, waiting and preparing for action. It’s clear to us he had support and links with terrorists across the world.”

That’s the main topic of conversation at the moment. Various callers ranging from the narked to the homicidal, both sides of “Manchester’s race divide” as the DJ puts it. Way to pull communities together, you daft prick.

Thirty seconds into it, and I’m already annoyed. And I’m not the only one. Some of the callers with limited vocabularies are throttled in the middle of their sentences, a profanity caught in the five-second delay. As for the rest of them — especially the ones bandying rhetoric around like it’s their own show — I’d gladly choke the lot. I check my watch, wonder why these people aren’t at work like the rest of us.

“Not just the recent terror arrests to talk about,” says the DJ. “We also heard a lot earlier on about the attack in Rusholme. Bit of a hot topic for a warm morning, this one. Keeping the lines open, so have your say. You know the number to call.”

I turn it down, keep it as background noise so that it almost matches the engine.

Catch the words “student” and “beaten” …

My back hurts. I take a couple of pills, have to dry-swallow them because I’ve run out of water. Or someone from the garage nicked the bottle I had in the glove compartment. When I rattle the remainder of the codeine around in the bottle, I realise I’m running low. Wonder how the fuck I managed to take so many.

“On the line, we have Del Shickley—”

“Shikely,” says the caller. Then slower, for the benefit of the DJ and anyone else who needs it: “Shick-ay-lee.”

“My apologies, Del.”

“Absolutely fine, Robin. Happens all the time.”

“Now, you found David, is that correct?”

“I did, yes, but that’s not why I’m ringing in. I’ve been advised not to talk about what happened. For legal reasons.”

“You have something else you’d rather talk about?”

“Yes, mostly to counter what one of your callers was talking about, uh, this being a
racist
attack …”

“Jeffrey Briggs.”

“Yeah, well, he wasn’t at the hospital,” says Del. Quickly, as if he’s positive he’s about to be cut off. “He said he spoke to David last night. Well, he didn’t. I found him, I spent most of the night at the hospital and Mr Briggs wasn’t there. So he didn’t talk to David, much less get his side of the story.”