To Fight For (24 page)

‘Why have you come here?' she asked her feet.

‘I need somewhere to stay for a while.'

‘They have hotels for that.'

‘There are people after me. They'd find me in a hotel.'

‘But why here?'

‘It's the only place I could think of.'

Now she looked up at me.

‘The only place?'

‘You're the only person I could think of to come to.'

‘You know other people, don't you?'

‘Yeah. But other people know the other people I know.'

She reached down the side of the sofa, pulled a pack of cigarettes out. On the floor, beside her foot, was an ashtray, mostly full, and a lighter. She put a cigarette in her mouth, taking a long time to do it.

‘They'd find you, these
other
other people?'

‘They'd find me, eventually.'

‘Are you scared of them?'

‘No,' I said, knowing it was the truth. ‘I'm just tired.'

She nodded. I had the feeling she understood exactly.

She lit her cigarette, inhaled and blew the smoke out in a sigh, as if she was relieved at last to be breathing deadly air.

It looked strange, her smoking. It looked like a child playing at being an adult.

‘Who are they, these people? Who's after you?'

‘Everyone.'

She rocked back and laughed. I suppose it was funny, when you thought about it. Funny in a fucked-up way.

‘You don't mess about, do you?' she said.

‘No.'

She laughed some more. When she'd finished, she leaned back, looked up at me.

‘You know how to make coffee?'

‘I'll work it out.'

I made coffee for her, tea for me. We sat and drank our drinks and she smoked her smokes and I kept expecting her to scream and run from the house or call the law or something. But she didn't.

We talked a bit. She asked me where I came from, what I'd done, things like that. She told me a bit about herself.

She'd hooked up with Paget out of desperation, she said.

‘He was flash, had money. I was young, stupid. I was doing tricks for twenty quid a shot. He told me I could do a hundred a time, few hundred quid a night. Course, he didn't tell me how much I'd have to shell out to Marriot. I think I made more money by myself. I was safer, too. By the time I realized that, it was too late. Nobody left Marriot. Not if they wanted to keep their looks.'

All the while we talked, there was a hole there, in the air, between us, between our words. We both knew what that hole was, we both pretended it wasn't there, but I felt it pulling me in.

We moved onto booze. I went down to the offy and got some beer for me, some mixers for her. She already had plenty of gin and vodka. The smell of Tina's G and Ts took me back to Brenda. After a few beers, I was feeling a bit drunk. I'd started out sitting on a chair, opposite Tina. Then I moved to the sofa. Then, somehow, she was nearer, and I could smell her perfume and, Christ, it was the same as Brenda used.

Every now and then, I'd close my eyes, smell her cigarette smoke, her gin, her perfume, and I'd think I was with Brenda. But then I'd open my eyes and see a thin, pale blonde woman with huge eyes, instead of a thin, black woman with huge eyes and a huger smile. The pain would hit me. She saw it.

‘You loved her, didn't you?'

I didn't have an answer for that. I didn't know what love meant. I had nothing to compare it with.

‘If I could, I'd swap my life for hers,' I said. ‘I'd tear the world apart to give her a minute more life. I'd tear myself apart too.'

‘That's love,' she said.

Was it love? Could it be? It felt like fury to me. Maybe that was as close as I could get to love.

She moved closer to me.

‘I loved her too,' she said softly.

She moved closer still, so that she was touching me. I wondered about that and thought it must've been the drink. What else could it have been?

‘You said you were tired,' I heard her say, though her voice was even softer now, fading into the air along with the rest of her.

She pushed herself into me, reached her hand out to touch mine. I didn't move my hand. I wanted to, and I couldn't.

‘Yeah.'

‘Tired of what?'

It was a good question. I don't think I knew exactly. I just felt that I couldn't go on. My blood was running thin. I thought about what Browne had said to me once, ‘You want to vent your fury, your wrath, like some god who destroys everything, innocent and guilty, anything to serve your will.'

‘Rage,' I said to Tina. ‘I'm tired of the rage. There was a time, not long ago, not long at all, when I wanted to set the world on fire, when I wanted blood, everyone's.'

‘And now?'

‘I don't know any more. I don't think I know anything any more.'

‘Could you stop? I mean, just give it up?'

Could I?

‘Brenda used to talk about it, about me stopping, about us going away somewhere, starting again. I would've done, I think.'

‘But?'

I knew I shouldn't drink, what with all the pills Browne kept giving me. But I didn't care. It felt good to not care. At least my head wasn't hurting. It was buzzing a bit, but that was okay. Wasn't it?

‘Joe?'

‘Huh?'

‘You alright? You were saying why you couldn't stop, with Brenda.'

‘Was I? Yeah, Brenda. She wouldn't stop. I asked her to a couple times. She wouldn't, and wouldn't tell me why. I know now.'

‘Because she wanted to get Paget and Marriot.'

Paget and Marriot. They were dead, weren't they? I could see their blood on my hands. What did they have to do with Brenda? What was the question? Who was I?

‘Joe?' Brenda said.

But it wasn't Brenda. It was someone else, some slim pale woman with Brenda's smell.

I said, ‘Yeah. No. I mean, she did, but she wanted to protect the children. It was always about them, more than Paget and Marriot, more than her. More than me.'

I closed my eyes, and I could feel Brenda next to me. My head was floating away. I could smell her. But I knew something wasn't right about that and I didn't dare open my eyes. I felt her arm on my chest, her head on my shoulder.

It's not real, I told myself. Keep your eyes closed, I told myself. Just for a moment.

But I opened my eyes, looked for Brenda, saw blonde hair, white skin.

‘Joe,' she said.

I felt her breath on my chest.

‘She couldn't stop herself,' I said. ‘It was in her nature, I suppose.'

‘It was suicide.'

‘Maybe. It was something she had to do.'

‘She's gone, Joe.'

‘Yeah.'

‘I know you cared about her, but you've got to leave it behind you. It's all in the past. It's gone.'

Gone. Was the past ever gone? My past was all around me, all through me. It was in my blood. It was my very life. I'd turn a corner and face it. It controlled me. Could I let it go?

We were quiet for a while. I drank my beer and, when I finished, Tina got up and went and got me a refill from the fridge. When she sat down again, she didn't make any pretence. She folded herself into me.

I felt good. I felt free. Dunham had Glazer, would do a deal with him, or kill him or whatever.

And I …

I pushed away the thought of my failure. Well, I tried to.

‘It's gone,' she said again. ‘For both of us.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Do you care about anything, Joe? Anyone?'

‘Not any more.'

‘Could you? I mean, could you care for me?'

I thought she must've been taking the piss. Why would she want someone like me?

But her hand was on my chest, and her face was looking up at me and her eyes were so big, so pleading.

‘I could be her for you,' she said.

I reached my hand out, touched her cheek. But I didn't know if I was touching her or Brenda. I didn't know.

And I don't know if I cared. Part of me hated myself for that. Part of me didn't care.

I was going back again, or I was going forwards, just to go back. Or something. I was lost, wherever I was, whenever I was.

I no longer knew what I was. I'd been confused before, sure, but I'd always known what I was, at my heart; I was the machine, the Killing Machine. I'd fought a war, battles, a hundred men. I knew that world. I knew rage and pain.

But this …

I was lost.

She leaned forward, brushed her lips against mine.

We lay on our sides, facing each other. We hadn't spoken for a long time. I felt okay, no tiredness in my limbs, no fuzziness in my head, just some pain here and there. It was alright.

But there was a part of me that wasn't there. It was a small part, but it nagged at me and whispered in my ear and told me that this was all a lie, even if I wanted, for now, to believe in it.

After a while, she ran a finger along my brow. Her finger traced the line of an old scar. I'd forgotten it was there. Her finger moved slowly, tracing my history, my path through life. Her finger was like a drop of rainwater sliding down a window.

‘You've got a lot of scars,' she said.

‘Yeah.'

‘What's this one?'

‘Fight.'

‘Fight,' she said, trying the word out. ‘And this one?'

‘Knifed.'

‘Knifed. Just that? Knifed?'

‘Just that.'

‘Tell me about it?'

‘Why?'

‘Why not? Scars are interesting. Each one has a story.'

‘Scars are damage, that's all.'

Her hand moved to my shoulder, and the scar there, still raw. Then to my back where her hand moved in a kind of zig-zag.

‘What are these ones?'

‘Shotgun.'

‘And this one?' she said, moving it back to my torso.

‘Fight.'

‘Fight. Shotgun. Is there any part of you that's not scarred?'

‘Somewhere, probably.'

‘Seems like it's only scar tissue holding you together.'

‘That's what Browne says.'

‘You talk like you don't care.'

‘I don't.'

‘And this one? Sorry.'

‘It's alright, just tender still. That was Paget.'

‘When you …'

‘Yeah.'

She was quiet for a while, moving her finger over my scars, as if, in the still of the night, in the darkness, she was reading my body, finding out what I was.

‘I remember Brenda talking about you, well, about this fellow she was seeing,' she said. ‘She called you the Killing Machine. All these scars; looks like you were the one getting killed.'

‘I'm still here,' I said. ‘It was a joke between us. That was my nickname in the ring. I never used it. She used to take the piss out of me. That's all.'

‘The Killing Machine,' she said.

Brenda used to smile when she said that, a spark in her eyes. Tina's voice was flat, though. There was no smile in it.

She sighed, gave up tracing the scars and flattened her hand on my stomach.

‘I thought I'd escaped all this. I thought I'd found a small, quiet, boring place to do small, quiet, boring stuff. I thought I'd forget, or I'd be forgotten. But then Kenny came back, and you and all the rest of them. Everything came back. You don't ever escape. Life is the killing machine.'

I said, ‘Yeah.'

‘Is there a way out, Joe? Could there be?'

I'd been asking myself that.

‘I dunno.'

She got up on one elbow. I looked at her face, it was wreathed in shadow. Her eyes were black holes.

‘There could be, couldn't there? We could leave here, start again somewhere. You and me. I'd give it all up if you could. You said you were tired of it. Are you really?'

She sounded like Brenda. Or, at least, the words were the same, but with Tina there was an edge to her voice. It sounded like desperation.

She slept, her body resting on mine, her leg and arm across me, as if she was trying to stop me from leaving.

I heard a slight snore, felt her body rise and fall in slow rhythm. And, while she lay on me, thoughts lay in my mind, and pulled me into their depths.

The way she'd talked, I wondered if I could put everything behind. Could I hide here? Then, when the heat was off, go somewhere, with Tina, maybe? Could I take off, start again, as Brenda had wanted us to do?

I thought about that girl I'd seen at the bus stop, the one with the twins. I thought of the bloke with them. Could I be like him? How did I know he hadn't once been like me? Could I have a future? Other people did, why not me?

But, then, other people weren't on a death-list, they weren't wanted by the law, by mobsters, by anyone with a gun. Other people hadn't killed, hadn't seen death at close hand, hadn't had people they'd cared about cut to death, shot to death.

I tried to imagine myself as a free man. I tried to think how it might be if I could've sat in that cafe – with those two redheads on the other table – and not been wanted by half of London, and not felt old and ugly and tainted by death.

I tried, but it was no good. Once, maybe, escape could've happened. With Brenda it could've happened. I could've hung up my gloves, my guns. We might've made a go of it somewhere, away from London. We might have had a family.

But Brenda was dead and that was why it could never happen, no matter how much I wanted it. It didn't feel right. Brenda was dead, and I'd failed and I could try to pretend as much as possible, try to ignore that dark hole and make plans and whatever. But, at the back of it all, I had a debt to settle. I had something I had to do. Even back at Browne's place, knowing it was all over and waiting with an empty gun for them to come and finish me off, even then it felt wrong. I just wasn't that kind of person. I couldn't give up. I was a machine, after all.