To Fight For (15 page)

Browne came in and switched the light on and blinded me. He was dressed in old slacks and an inside-out T-shirt. I saw he'd been asleep. His face was puffy, his eyes bloodshot, his grey hair wilder than usual.

He saw me sitting there and yawned and wiped a hand over his hair, making it even madder, if that was possible.

‘Been back long?' he said.

‘No.'

‘Did you find him? This Glazer?'

‘No.'

He frowned, nodded, stood watching me.

‘Can't say I'm displeased, Joe.'

He shrugged to himself, mumbled something, scratched his armpit.

‘Hungry?' he said, shuffling over to the fridge. ‘You must be.'

He made us something to eat. Well, he took it out of a box and put it in the microwave. It was okay. After that, he sat at the table and picked up the
Evening Standard
I'd bought for him. I made tea and put his mug down in front of him. He wasn't reading the paper as far as I could see, just staring at it.

I turned the light off, returned the room to shadow. I liked that, shadow, darkness. There was something true about it, something clear.

We drank our tea. Browne pretended to read his paper by the light from the hallway, but I knew it was too dark for him to see anything.

Something was bothering him but I didn't want to ask in case he lectured me again. But there was something I wanted to say to him, too. Only, I knew it was going to be hard going. My head was confused enough without all the grief I was going to get from Browne behaving like a stroppy teenager.

So, we sat in silence and I let the silence grow until I could wrap myself in it for a while, forget Browne, forget all the shit. That was something else I liked. Silence. Shadow and silence. Nothingness.

The only thing I was sure about was that I didn't know what the fuck was going on. Eddie was right about that much. I kept getting snapshots, bits and pieces. I couldn't see the whole picture because, as Eddie was pleased to tell me, I was too small to count.

A week or so ago, Browne had wanted me to give the DVD that Brenda had left me to Compton and his mob. They were investigating Glazer, after all. They were anti-corruption coppers. Surely, they could be trusted. Couldn't they?

Well, maybe. But I had a thing about the law. I knew most of them were okay, sure, but there were enough bent ones to count; you could never know which ones were straight, which were wrong. Anyway, as far as they were concerned, I was fair game, a villain. What if I handed Compton the DVD and he went right on and arrested me? I'd do thirty years. Fuck that.

Then, too, I might need the DVD myself. Maybe I'd get in a jam with Dunham. He wanted the DVD as well. We were bound to bump into each other.

Again, I had to wonder how it was that Paget had found out the DVD was valuable. He hadn't known at the time, or until recently. Marriot had done a few years inside and if either of them had known the DVD was wanted by Compton, they would've cut a deal. Instead, Paget only found out in time to use it to get protection from Dunham.

And what of Glazer? I had to make sure I got to him before Compton or Dunham. And then there was this stuff with the law searching Brenda's flat after she'd died. That must've been Glazer, and he must've been after the DVD. But why? If Brenda had sent him a copy, he must've already had one. Unless she hadn't sent it. What if the copy I'd found was the one intended for Glazer?

But no. That copy was meant for me. It was addressed to me. For Joe, it had said. She must've known I'd go there, to her flat, to her secret place, as she called it; the place where she hid things that meant something to her. The cotton dress I'd bought her, and the creams from Liberty. And the letter to me.

So, what was Glazer after?

It was a fucking mess, and the more I thought about it all, the more I got lost in it. Cole was right, I was in some confused shit.

‘I haven't watered it,' Browne said.

He did that sometimes, spoke his thoughts out loud. It was odd, hearing his voice cut through the silence. I'd forgotten he was there. I think, probably, he'd forgotten I was there.

‘What?'

He looked up. I could hardly see his face. I wondered how long we'd been like that, in the gathering gloom. His paper was on the table now. He must've been looking into the same darkness as me.

‘Oh,' he said. ‘The flower. I haven't watered it. It's been a bit dry lately.'

His voice cracked a bit with pain, and I cracked a bit with it.

He was talking about the small violet he'd found in the back garden, near the rockery. He'd come across it a little while back. Only, for him – for us – it wasn't just a flower, it was a symbol of the life of a small African girl called Kid.

Kid. Her name was Kindness, and we called her Kid, and she was tiny, no more than skin and bones and huge eyes. But she'd had courage, and more.

She'd been used by Marriot, traded by him for money and the lust of the cunts he catered to.

I'd found her when I'd raided a house. She was hiding in the cupboard. Afterwards, she'd stayed with us, and Browne had grown fond of her. And, for a while, we'd become like some freakish family; an old drunk doctor, a battered half-dead criminal and a small, thin African girl who'd experienced more terror and more pain than either of us could imagine, but who would still kick her legs on the sofa when she watched something funny on TV, or would gape at Browne when he'd had a few too many and did his Scottish dancing for her.

I remembered her, this small girl. I remembered how she would lie asleep on my chest, rising and falling as I breathed, or how she would tremble at night, as she dreamed her memories and remembered her nightmares, or how she would hold our hands – mine and Browne's – as we walked along a market, the three of us damaged almost beyond repair, but somehow finding in each other enough to carry on.

Yes, I remembered her. And what had been done to her.

If for nothing else, Marriot had to die for what he did to Kid. If I could, I'd bring him back to life just so that I could kill him again.

But she'd died too, caught in the savage crossfire when I'd gone to kill him.

And of all the bastard ironies in this fucked-up bastard world, the worst, perhaps, was this: storming Marriot's place and flattening it, trying to find and free Kid, killing all the blurred shapes that moved before my blurred head, it might have been me who'd fired the shot that killed her.

I'd never told Browne I might've killed Kid. I think it would've been more than he could bear. Christ, it was almost more than I could bear.

So, she'd died and Browne had found this small violet, by itself, in the garden. From then on he'd looked after it, in his own way.

‘Oh, it won't last much longer,' he said quietly. ‘I know that. It's such a wee thing, so delicate. It's starting to wither now already.'

Brenda was dead, Kid was dead, and Browne was dying, as slowly as he could, one glass of Scotch at a time. Even the flower was dying. And then there was me, or what was left of me, beaten and bashed, gutted, old.

But not down. Not yet.

So, there we were; me and Browne, and our memories of dead people filling the space between us and a whole load of shit going on that I didn't understand, and all the while we both knew it was only a matter of time before the war outside smashed into the house, destroyed us both.

I remembered my tea and drank some of it. It was cold.

‘You should go somewhere,' I said, putting the mug down. ‘Get out of here.'

I couldn't see his face clearly now. It was too dark. But I knew he was angry.

‘I'm not running.'

‘You're stupid if you don't.'

‘Are you running?'

‘It doesn't matter about me.'

He said, ‘Tsk.'

That was it as far as he was concerned.

I went up to my room and pulled a grand from the bag. When I went back down, the light was on. He was back to pretending that he was reading his paper. I held the money out to him.

‘Go to Scotland. Go to your sister's.'

He looked at the money.

‘I'm not taking that. And I'm not bloody going to Scotland.'

‘Take the money.'

‘It's blood money.'

‘All money's blood money.'

He lowered the opened paper onto the table and ran his hand through his hair.

‘Well, maybe so. I'm still not going to Scotland. I'm not leaving my own bloody house.'

‘I can't protect you here. There are too many of them.'

‘Come with me, son.'

‘I need to stay in London.'

‘So you can get killed? Come with me, Joe.'

I sat back down at the table. Well, I fell into the seat. My strength was fading.

‘What would I do in Scotland?'

‘Grow old.'

Grow old. Would that be so bad? End all this shit. Run away. Grow old in some out of the way place. Everyone was telling me the same thing: leave, live. Even Brenda had said it, more or less, in her letter:

‘Don't destroy yourself for me, Joe.'

‘I can't,' I said.

‘There are too many of them, you said. Too many for even you, Joe.'

‘Maybe.'

‘But you'll stay, even if staying kills you?'

‘Yeah.'

He slammed his hand on the table.

‘You're a bloody fool. What's the point? What the hell can you prove? If this is for Brenda or Kid … Christ, Joe, they're dead. They wouldn't want you to do this to yourself for them.'

‘It's not for them. It's for me.'

‘Your self-respect? Is that it? Your bloody egotistical self-satisfaction? Your reputation?'

‘If you like.'

Browne swung round, his face fiercer than I'd ever seen it. I didn't know he had it in him, that anger.

‘You bloody idiot,' he said. ‘Don't you see? You think this rage of yours, this hatred, is a weapon to turn on everything, to level the world, to flatten your enemies, like you did in the ring. But you're wrong, Joe. Hatred turns inwards and inwards again so that it's forever unfolding new parts of yourself to hate. I know all about that. And finally all the years of vitriol corrode your innards and hollow you, gut you so that you're a different thing inside, hating your own existence, wanting to smash the image that looks back from the mirror.'

I couldn't say anything to that. I knew he was right.

He sighed and looked at me and shook his head slowly in that way he had. He dumped the newspaper in a half-crumpled mess, stood, trudged to the cupboard above the sink and pulled out a bottle of Scotch and a glass. He came back to the table, sat heavily, unscrewed the bottle top and poured.

‘Then I'll stay too,' he said, screwing the top back onto the bottle, very carefully. ‘I'll take my chances.'

‘You were all set to leave a couple of weeks back.'

‘Aye,' he said. ‘Well …'

Well, that was before he found the flower. Before he found a purpose, however small.

‘You'll get in my way. Take the money and go.'

After that, there was nothing. Every now and then he'd take a sip of Scotch. He was stubborn. And brave, in a way. Oh, he was scared all right, and he knew the dangers without me telling him, so deciding to stay took guts. I knew I wasn't going to get him to leave.

I got up and started to make another tea, but then I decided I didn't want one and I pulled a glass from the cupboard and went and sat down and slid the glass along to Browne. He hesitated, looking at me quizzically. Then he uncapped the Scotch and poured me a hefty amount and slid the glass back.

I didn't usually drink. But, now and then, I'd have some, just to dull the pain, as Browne used to say. I swallowed some of the booze and felt it burn its way down to my gut.

‘I'll tell you something I've come to learn,' Browne said.

I knew I was in for one of his lectures. Somehow, this time, I didn't mind. The alcohol, probably.

He said, ‘I've come to appreciate the world in a new light. Because of people like you, Joe, and the scum you know. It seems to me now that all the stuff they tell us to be – honourable, honest, kind – all that play-the-game mantra, it's all a load of old rot.'

I could've told him that when I was five years old.

‘It's what they want us to believe,' he was saying, ‘the authorities, it's what they want us to do, us being the weak and powerless, the meek.' He laughed. ‘The meek shall inherit the earth. My God, that's another one, isn't it? Another of the lies.'

He scratched his ear.

‘Everything's wrong,' he said. ‘We're a country upside down, arse over tit. We've got kids getting pregnant while their parents play computer games; forty-year-old children and twelve-year-old adults. We've got bankers on the fiddle, policemen breaking the law, MPs doing whatever they want. Science and technology bring everyone closer together while governments and religion push us all further apart.'

He went on like that for a while, telling me it was all arse upwards. Then he was quiet, his fingers still attached to his ear.

‘I forgot what I was saying,' he said finally.

He remembered his Scotch, though, and took a long swig of it. Maybe his memories were in there somewhere, the sour taste of his own failures mixing with the acid of this new knowledge of his that the world was lousy.

‘It's rot,' he said again. ‘All of it.'

I'd grown used to Browne's ways, his whining, his barbed comments. He would get drunk and rant about something, or he'd be sarky, sly in his humour. I mostly ignored it all.

But now he was being thoughtful, and he wasn't drunk, yet. And somehow that made his words carry weight, as if they were final. I wondered if, by deciding to stay at home he was throwing in the towel, as if he'd decided life just wasn't worth the fight any more, wasn't worth the pain.