Bright Spark (9 page)

Kevin didn’t mind taking the
blows as long as the old man kept him in well-paid work. And he’d never be
unemployed; who could be more trustworthy and loyal than family, particularly
when family could be knocked about with impunity if they grumbled or skimmed?
It didn’t hurt that the family business had a secure, hassle-free and high
volume outlet; at least it had until last night. Kevin still reeled and burned
from the blows of a long night of anxiety and panic that had tipped over into
violence and rage with every new tremor.

As he weaved his BMX through
traffic, some old fart with a trilby and a tie waggled his walking stick and
shouted some bullshit at him; he was dressed the right way for an old nonce
with nothing better to do than stand in the road staring at kids and rummaging
in his pockets. He stood on the pedals, dragged a thick gob-full of snot and
nicotine from his lungs and spat it hard onto cracked pavement, making it his
own. It tasted more coppery than usual, burned his split lips on the way past
and plastered itself to the concrete in wet scarlet stripes.

He bounced off the kerb again,
carefully dropping himself into the path of a car just setting off, some little
metallic hatchback; old, unscuffed, probably got its own name, middle-aged bird
at the wheel, face caked in polyfilla, stuffed toys on the parcel shelf,
nodding and grinning like the occupants of the community bus that sometimes
squeezed itself down his street to collect that spas Jeremy to take him out for
a pretend life somewhere.

The hatchback jolted to a halt,
almost stalling. Middle-aged bird’s eyebrows drew together, something moved in
her throat and she almost gulped, afraid to show him fear. He planted his feet
on the tarmac, giving her a good look at his blackened and torn face, flayed
knuckles, radiant gold chains, pristine white tracksuit. He stuck his hands
down his tracky bottoms, gave his cock a squeeze, felt something harder and
more reassuring, looked her in the eye, blew her a kiss, then pumped the
pedals, sped away, grimacing through the shredding pain from his legs; wishing
middle-aged bird had been some excuse for a bloke, someone willing to sound the
horn, gesticulate, get righteous, then get stared or slapped down to show whose
street he was on.

Honour needed to be restored.
Kevin had taken the second best hiding of his life, only to be robbed of the
chance to return the compliment. Someone would need to help him get back on
top. He’d had a little taste of retribution last night to wash down the hurt, but
like fried chicken or a burger in a brown bag it had just left him hungry for
much, much more. Someone would know what it was like to be in the dirt,
drowning in fear, looking back up at his eyes, cold and business-like like a
gangster’s; someone who had undermined the family business; someone who
therefore owed him a debt and qualified in so many ways for a good beating.

Just like school. There was a
natural order. Some hit, some get hit. Some gave, some took. When he walked
into a changing room or a corner of the playground, even before he learned the
walk, wore the trainers, did some time, he was a wolf in a farmer’s field. And
nature was amazing; there was always one still stammering away with a goofy
grin while those who’d already been educated found fascinating new things to
stare at on the floor or the ceiling; always one on the edge of the pack, too
thick, too clever, too scruffy, too neat, too different to be wholly accepted
by the rest of the sheep who just made it easier for him to pick them out.

What had they done, why was he
doing it, why can’t you just stop, the dumb bleaters or their dumb, dickless
teachers might ask while he was still punching, or later while he was still
smirking or shrugging or just staring at the white splendour of his new K-Swisses
and chewing broken skin off his knuckles. Stupid questions. Missing the point. 
They knew the answer already, or they wouldn’t have asked the questions with
tears and snot and blood and breaking words in their throats. He’d learned the
answer before he even knew how to put the questions into words. Daddy was an
excellent teacher.

Bony knees forking and the
cards in his spokes clattering – his baby sister would hate him just a little
bit more when she discovered her Pokemon set was incomplete - he pedalled into
Pemberton Court like an angry cicada. Stacked in a four-story slab of concrete
and pebble-dash, the flats wrapped themselves around a courtyard of ancient
Fords and Vauxhalls leaking sump oil, grass flecked with dogshit and trees in
full leaf blinding CCTV cameras mounted too far above street level.

Skidding to a stop, he sniffed
the air and listened. No breath of wind disturbed the glistening of sweat on
his bruised skin or the labouring gasps as his lungs bulged against ribs that
were made of broken glass. A memory of cinders tainted the air as a blanched
sun cleared the murk above the top floor. The estate’s pulse had slowed; the
barking dogs too drowsy to clamour for blood or love or a life beyond a
piss-soaked porch and a scrap of grass, the screaming babies too hot to fill
their lungs with more warm air, the boy racers sleeping it off rather than
splitting the air with bass, fat exhaust or squealing rubber.

BMX stashed behind a bush with
needles, condoms and windblown chocolate wrappers, Kevin found the stairwell,
smiled at the inevitable stink of piss and cabbage, the worthless bike with
buckled wheels chained to the banister, the tags sprayed in scarlet like a
faded tattoo over municipal pink proving he was on someone else’s ground.
Trainers slapping and squealing on linoleum, he dragged his aching carcass up
two flights to the first floor and stopped, gasping, slumped against the wall.

Nicotine and something sweeter
found him, dragging his eyes along the balcony with its smashed TV’s, split bin
bags, headless dolls, wheel-less toy cars, bedraggled pot-plants. Scuffed
paintwork and patches of plywood marked out Ali Bongo’s flat, the numbers long
since chiselled off, but there were no signs of life there. A skein of
cigarette smoke drifted from the door of the next flat along. Beaded curtains
rattled and he forced himself erect, shoulders back.

A hand emerged, fingers stained
khaki squeezing a roll-up almost burned to the knuckle, then a wrist, a
grinning red imp tattooed on it. As the girl stepped out to taste the air,
Kevin took in the gauzy, thigh-length negligee she was almost wearing, the way
it draped from puckered nipples and cupped her naked arse. He stuck his hands
in his pockets; let his eyes bulge and his tongue loll. She flicked thick
strands of bleached hair out of her eyes, saw him and pinned his gaze with her
own.

“What you fucking staring at,
nonce?”

“You’re looking well fit today,
Whitney.”

“Barry,” she shouted back into
the flat, flicking the fag-end over the balcony. “Well get a good look, maggot,
‘cause it’s all you’ll ever get.”

“Might be enough for now,” he
said, jostling his hands in his pockets and waggling his tongue.

“Barry, business,” she shouted
again, drawing a distant grunt from inside. “Looks like you’ve had one good
slap down. You looking for another or you actually buying something?”

“I ain’t buying. Ain’t in the
buying game no more. Got business of my own. Someone dossing with your
neighbour owes me.”

“Tough shit.”

“Fuck off, it ain’t.”

“Ain’t got  a clue, have you.
‘Bout how things work.”

“We ain’t at school now,
Whitney. Don’t look like them GCSE’s got you any further than shaggin’ old
Barry. And that’s only fifty yards from your mam’s, I reckon.”

“I’ll tell you what I know,
shithead. This is where Barry lives so that makes everything you can see
Barry’s. He don’t mind you selling seeds and stalks to students. He might mind
you coming over here and pissing on his lamp-post.”

Kevin broke eye contact with
Whitney, resisting the urge to cuff her, to see her splayed on the floor rather
than squared up to him with hands on hips. He spat over the balcony and heard
the gush and spatter of Barry’s first piss of the day. He should walk away, but
he’d just be taking a bloodless beating. To stand his ground meant a bit more
pain and maybe a few less teeth, not a bad price for the world to know he had
bollocks.  

“You’ll want to be nice to me,
some time soon.” Dropping his eyes to the floor, he slouched back towards the
stairwell.

“Come back when you’ve grown
up, dickhead.”

He hauled himself to the second
floor, wheezing again but not resting this time, crossed the length of the
block to the opposite stairwell and vaulted down the stairs, jarring ribs and
spine and seeing flecks of broken lightning. A glance through the fire door
showed him Whitney going back inside, hands cupping a new smoke.

Flattened against the wall, he
found himself outside Ali Bongo’s flat. He knocked, quietly, pointlessly, then
harder, teeth gritted as the sound echoed around the court. Did he hear a grating
noise, a window sliding, something about to be jammed against the door? What
was he doing? He had to have this, couldn’t not have it.

He reached into his boxers and
pulled out a souvenir of thieving for scrap; an inch-thick length of insulated
copper wire, a beautiful cosh with jagged ends; easy on the hand, hard on the
head. Turning, he gripped the door frame on either side, braced himself and
kicked hard at the lock, only then noticing the cracked and pitted paintwork
surrounding it.

It gave with amazing ease and
an unmistakable crunch of splintered wood and fractured glass; the job must
have been half done already. Counting out the seconds with heaving breaths,
Kevin darted inside, heard a bellow and thudding steps from next door, flung
the door shut, saw it bounce uselessly open again from a split and warped
frame, looked for something to wedge against it, seeing only a mound of mail,
beer cans, encrusted filth everywhere and a window wedged wide open with a
flat-screen TV. He winced at the high-octane reek of alcohol, sweat and piss,
and something else. A roll-up burned in an ash-tray.

He ran to the window and
clutched the sill, to see Firth looking back up at him as he rounded a corner,
his blotched face and limping, stooped gait making him almost a reflection; or perhaps
a prediction, he thought, as a bulky figure filled the door to the flat
brandishing a baseball bat.   

Time was strolling away from
him and he was stumbling to keep up. Harkness winced as the luminous digits of
the bedside clock on his undisturbed side of the bed tumbled into eight am and
it started bleating at him. Had he really imagined he’d need a wake up call or
had that been someone else’s idea? His phone joined the chorus with a vibrating
rhythm that sent it skittering slowly across the bedside table as if the caller
was willing it to his ear.

He threw the fresh, white linen
shirt into the laundry basket, its collar speckled with blood from his attempt
at a close shave. It fell short and wrapped itself around his feet as he
lurched for the phone. He kicked the shirt into the air, noticed his socks were
mismatched, caught the shirt, clasped it to the blood seeping from the nicks on
his chin and grabbed the phone as the call cleared. The number had been
withheld, which meant work and probably someone or something important. An
accusing list of other missed calls over the last fifteen minutes confirmed his
suspicion that he’d succumbed to a micro-nap in the shower. 

He’d needed more of a cleansing
than the scalding hot water had given him, but the pelting of water had drowned
out all other thoughts and sensations for a few welcome moments of oblivion,
the power shower proving itself again one of the few pricy mod cons he knew he
couldn’t give up easily. He knew this for what it was; a parting thought. Gone
was a yearning to make things right with Hayley, replaced by the first draft of
an exit strategy.

Every book, CD, DVD, electrical
item, canvas print and floor cushion now begged to be inventoried, allocated
and labelled, an agreeable if rueful exercise for a lazy Sunday, as if the
division of a shared life could ever be so simple and anaemic. Yet the first
draft had failed to list the messy carving up of intertwined friends and
finances; the junking of shared intimacies and experiences; the admission that
love had dwindled into wishful thinking; the knowledge that it was his fault,
his passion for delusion the only one that still burned; the need for a
conversation that was honest rather than expedient; the need to scratch the
itch beneath his skull. 

He pushed it all to the back of
his mind, three soot-choked murder victims more of an excuse than he usually
needed, dabbed at the beads of blood still welling from his chin and set about
making himself presentable. Five minutes later, he prowled the kitchen, already
glistening with sweat beneath the lightest suit he owned, having dumped the bin
bag containing the sulphurous remains of his usual suit in the garage. He
stopped suddenly, as if slapped, and drew in a deep breath. He would go to the
car, make his calls, sketch out a plan of attack, untangle his thoughts, get
underway and become a professional again.

A movement caught his attention
from the front garden, a flowing curve of sly and sinuous grace. He stood in
the shadow of the door between kitchen and lounge and the sun beat down on the
lounge window, so the generally twitchy tabby from next door but one failed to
see him as it scanned enemy territory with amber eyes and glided across the
turf.  Neither man nor beast would pay a guiltless visit in this manner and
Harkness felt compelled to take a minute to prevent an all too familiar crime
which generally resulted in proud mounds of glistening excrement in the centre
of his lawn.

He kicked off his shoes, took
the plastic lemon from its place near the patio door, slipped outside and
jogged lightly down the side passage. Knowing his foe was alert to danger and
fleet of paw, he came out shooting. As he rounded the corner, he squeezed the
plastic lemon, sending the stinging liquid arcing towards the cat which had
parked on its haunches, back curved and tail quivering in excremental ecstasy.
It started and turned just in time to blink lemon juice into its own eyes,
hissed, sneezed, span blindly and rocketed into the street, trailing shit.