To Die For (17 page)

Then I heard Brenda say, ‘Poor old Joe, heading for the breaker’s yard.’

I opened my eyes. Brenda wasn’t there. Someone had said it. I saw the cabbie staring at me in the mirror.

I closed my eyes and heard her voice again, smooth and cool, throaty cool. I was burning up, the sweat soaking me and she put a cool hand to my forehead.

One time, she said, ‘I ran away from home when I was sixteen. That was how come I ended up here, doing this. It was this or living on the streets. Me parents split up and I hated me step-dad. Old story.’

Sometimes she asked me about my plans. There was nothing I could tell her. I had no plans. She would tell me that she was going to do a course, become a beautician, whatever that was.

‘What do you like doing, Joe?’ she said. ‘You can’t like your job as it is. Being like that all the time, it’s just not right.’

We were in a cafe down near Farringdon. I’d gone to see someone and she’d come with me and we’d gone into this place for a tea. The bloke I had to see was thinking of a job and wanted to talk it over with me. Brenda had wanted to come. Maybe that was why she was asking me these questions, telling me about her dreams. It turned out the job wasn’t for me and we left the bloke and went for something to eat.

I must have looked pretty dumb, sitting there trying to think of something to say. She smiled and put a hand on my arm. I flinched when she touched me.

‘I don’t mean anything by it,’ she said. ‘What I mean is, what do you do when you’re not working? You must have something. Everyone’s got something.’

‘I go to the gym. I read.’

‘You read?’

‘I can read.’

‘I didn’t mean that. What I meant was, most people these days don’t bother with books.’

‘Most people are stupid. And you thought I must be one of them.’

‘God, I’m making a mess of this.’ She took a deep breath and blew it out and said, ‘So tell me, Joe, what do you like to read?’

‘History, that sort of thing.’

‘You don’t like fiction?’

‘I’m not interested in it.’

We sat in silence for a while.

‘Tell me something else, Joe.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Something. About you.’

I couldn’t think of anything to say. She said, ‘Well, do you... do you believe in God?’

‘It’s a neat scam, I’ll give them that.’

‘Scam? What do you mean?’

‘Scam. Con. Feed people fear and hope, promise them more than they’ve got and you’ll have them eating out of your hand. Politics too. Crime’s got nothing on that lot.’

‘You admire that? Cons?’

‘Sure.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s a good way to get money.’

‘So why don’t you do it? Cons.’

‘People would never trust me enough to believe me.’

‘So you went about getting what you wanted another way. You took it.’

‘If you like.’

The waitress came to our table and handed us our food. Brenda had a baked potato. She took a long time cutting that thing up and putting the butter and cottage cheese on it. She took way too long.

‘That’s sad, Joe,’ she said. ‘All that anger in you. All that hatred.’

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

‘Anger’s got nothing to do with it.’

‘No?’

It was all about the money, I told her. That’s just the way it was; nothing to do with me. I’d come to learn this. I’d done things the hard way for a while, labouring on the sites, enlisting in the army, trying to find a way of living, trying to find something. And finally I’d found it, I’d reached a way of thinking.

It was something she never understood.

‘You take what you need,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’

‘That’s cynical.’

She was still fiddling with her food, not looking at me.

‘Is it?’

She looked up and there was something in the way her eyes were shaped, like she was sad or something.

‘Poor old Joe,’ she said. ‘Heading for the breaker’s yard.’

‘I’ve got a way to go yet.’

‘You couldn’t have been like that all your life. That cynical. There must have been a day once when you wanted to do something else. What did you want to be when you were a boy?’

I told her I’d done woodwork at school. I’d liked making something with my hands. It was the only good thing that school ever taught me.

She’d ask me that kind of thing sometimes, and talk about what she wanted to do and what we could do together.

‘You could have been a carpenter, Joe. You still can. You can do a course. They do courses in all sorts of things.’

She’d talk like that, like everything was possible, like we could start again. Sometimes I almost believed her.

One time, I got to thinking about what she’d said. I had the feeling that she wanted me to help her get out from under Frank Marriot. So I went to see him.

He had a large office at the back of a strip club along a narrow side street in Soho. The place was quiet when I went in, only a few staff getting the place ready. A couple of the girls were sitting around, chatting, smoking. I ignored the bloke at the bar who asked me what I wanted. I went into the back.

The office was cluttered with boxes of magazines and photos and videos. There were grey filing cabinets and a computer and desk next to a window which looked out on to a brick wall over the road. In some ways it was like a million other small businesses up and down the country. In some ways.

Paget was in the office when I entered, leaning against the wall by the door. There was no reason for him to be there, as far as I could see. But he stayed where he was, and watched me through slit-like eyes.

Marriot sat behind his desk, scanning one of his magazines, making notes on a pad.

‘Hello, Joe,’ he said, all bright and breezy. ‘Nice surprise. I thought I’d see you again. I told Kenny, didn’t I, Ken? I said, Joe’ll come round sometime, have a word.’

‘You did,’ Paget said.

‘You been thinking about my offer?’ Marriot said.

‘I want Brenda off your books.’

He put the magazine down.

‘Do you?’ he said. ‘Well, sure, I can understand that. Young couple like you, in love, whole world ahead of you, full of promise.’

‘I want her off.’

Paget made a noise. I turned to look at him. His lips thinned. I think he was laughing.

Marriot sat back. He pulled his glasses off his face, wiped them on his tie.

‘Any reason?’

‘Lots of them.’

‘Any reason in particular?’

‘Why do you care?’

He slid his glasses back on to his sour-looking face.

‘I have to think about Brenda, you see. I’m sort of responsible for her. I have to wonder if you’re here off your own bat, perhaps what you want her to do is not in her best interests. I’m just looking out for her. Right, Kenny?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So, give me a reason I can understand.’

‘Fuck reasons,’ I said. ‘I’m not asking your permission. She’s out.’

‘Well, if it’s what she wants.’

‘It’s what she wants.’

‘You sure about that, Joe? Because I don’t think she wants to leave. All them blokes. I think she’s having too much fun.’

I reached over and grabbed him by the front of his cheap suit and hauled him up out of his seat and pulled him over the desk. It was the first time I saw him lose that smug look.

I pulled my fist back. Then something cold touched the back of my head. I could hear Paget breathing close to my ear.

‘I squeeze, your head blows apart,’ he whispered. ‘I’m good at squeezing.’

I dropped Marriot and walked out.

When I told Brenda what I’d done, she was angry with me. I didn’t understand why.

We were at her place. I was washing the plates; she was drying. I’d gone over for a meal and afterwards I’d told her what I’d told Marriot. She stopped drying the saucepan she was holding and slammed it down.

‘What did you do that for? Did I ask you to do it?’

‘I thought you wanted to quit.’

‘I do, it’s just...’

‘Just what?’

‘It’s not that easy.’

‘Why not?’

‘Please, Joe. Forget about it, eh?’

‘It’s a dangerous business. You know that. You know what they’re like, the blokes you go with.’

‘You don’t understand,’ she said, like she was talking to a child.

‘Tell me, then.’

Marriot was in with some serious people, she said. He didn’t like his girls leaving him, she said. She was doing okay, she said.

The more she said all that, the more I thought she was lying, making excuses. I didn’t push it. I washed, she wiped. She didn’t leave Marriot.

‘I’ve got a date,’ she’d say. She always called them that – dates – as if love was involved. Maybe it was easier for her that way. ‘Some businessman,’ she’d say, ‘posh type,’ or, ‘some copper Marriot’s got on the roll,’ or, one time, ‘some funny little bloke. I seen him around the place.’

It went like that. She talked about them like I talked about jobs I did. Some jewellers, some bank in Stepney, some fucking thing.

If ever we went out, I never took her to places we both knew, places where we might run into Marriot or Paget. I thought I’d do something stupid if I came across them. Brenda never said anything about it, but I got the feeling she understood.

One time, I took her to see a fight. She didn’t like it and we left early. On the way out, we bumped into Browne.

‘How are the headaches?’ he said. ‘Are they getting worse?’

I shrugged.

He saw Brenda and introduced himself.

‘I’m the one who used to fix him up,’ he told her. ‘So that he could get back in the ring the next bloody night and get more of his brain pummelled to mulch.’ He saw the look on her face. ‘Take no notice of me,’ he said. ‘Joe’s all right. To be honest, there’s not much up there to damage.’

Outside, Brenda asked me about the headaches. I told her that it was just what happened when you’d fought for a long time like I’d done.

‘Do you take anything for them?’

‘Codeine sometimes. If they’re bad.’

‘
Are
they getting worse?’

‘Yeah.’

She was quiet for a while. I could see that she wanted to say something, but she didn’t seem to have the words.

‘All that fighting, Joe,’ she said finally.

She hooked her arm in mine and we walked through the night. She didn’t say anything, but every now and then she’d tighten her hold on my arm, pull herself closer to me.

She never again mentioned my work or my lifestyle or her work or the pain of life.

Sometimes, when we were sitting watching TV, or in a pub, she would get a faraway look in her eyes. She wouldn’t say anything in those moments, but her mouth would frown now and then, and her eyes would seem startled one second, angry the next, like her face was having a conversation with itself. I wondered what she was thinking when she went quiet like that. I should’ve asked her.

I opened my eyes and didn’t know where I was. It took me a long time to work out that I was in a cab, and that I was alone. I was cold.

My head was fuggy, thoughts far off. The cab rolled through dark empty suburban streets, grey and bleary through the fogged-up window. I watched it all like a man watches his face age.

I was starting to remember. I was going back to Browne’s. I’d been to see Eddie. People wanted me dead.

I thought about the meeting with Eddie. Something he’d said twitched inside my mind.

I was wondering what that something was when the cab stopped in front of Browne’s. I reached forward and paid the cabbie and everything swam around me. As I fell out of the taxi, I realized that the wet feeling beneath my shirt was more than sweat.

I had a key to Browne’s place, but it was more than I could do to get the bloody thing out and put it into the keyhole. I banged on the door. I was surprised when I stumbled into the house. Browne muttered something that I didn’t catch. My body weighed half a ton now and I had trouble dragging it to the kitchen. Browne followed me.

‘Sit down, for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘What the hell have you done?’

I collapsed on to the seat. I followed Browne’s eyes and saw the blood seeping from my arm, dripping on to the floor.

‘You’ve broken the bloody stitches,’ he said, pulling off my jacket.

The left side of my shirt was thick with blood. Browne fiddled about with my arm.

‘No hospital.’

‘No hospital. I know. What the hell were you doing going out? You’re lucky to be alive. I don’t know how there’s a drop of blood left in you.’

He packed tea towels around my arm and went off for bandages.

It was then that I saw the girl standing in the doorway. I’d forgotten about her. What was it Browne had called her? Kid? I was supposed to ask her some questions, wasn’t I? I couldn’t think what they might be. She stared at the blood with eyes wide with awe and horror, as if she was looking at the terrible slaying of an animal.

‘Why are you still here?’ I said to her.

Her eyes moved up from the blood.

‘I cannot go, sir.’

She pronounced the words exactly, hitting the ‘t’ and ‘s’ with neatness. There was an African accent. I didn’t know what country it was from. I could have asked her, but I didn’t care enough.

‘Don’t call me “sir”.’

She wanted something, but I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t want to know.

‘What shall I call you?’ she said, looking directly at me, arms straight by her side as if she was talking to a teacher or master or something.

‘Don’t call me anything,’ I said. My face was cold and clammy. ‘Just go.’

‘I cannot.’

My head was light, floating up to the ceiling. My body was lead. I wondered if Browne had given me something. I was trying to remember if he’d stuck me with a needle. I remembered that something had been on my mind, but I couldn’t get a fix on it. I could hardly stay upright in my seat. And the damned girl was there, staring at me, telling me she couldn’t go. Couldn’t? What the fuck did she want?

‘Why?’ I asked her.

I didn’t hear an answer. I felt myself slump forward in the seat. I saw her hand reach out towards me. She touched my arm as I fell and hit the floor.

I woke with a start. Something was touching my right hand. It was dark and I was still light-headed. I wasn’t sure now that it had been anything after all. A dream, maybe.