How to Be Bad (25 page)

“Oh, yeah,” said Jesus. “Look at me. I'm shaking all over.”

“It doesn't take any courage to tie someone up and torture them,” said Caro. “It's what the
fucking
police do.”

“Shut up!” yelled Jesus.

I could see where Caro was going with this. “How about it?” I said to Jesus. “A fair fight. Just me and you, man to man.”

Jesus looked like he was considering it.

“I don't know, boss,” said the Jazzman, looking me up and down. “The guy don't look much, but he made a right fucking mess of Kev and Phil.”

“So?” said Jesus, approaching the Jazzman threateningly.

Cancer Boy stepped between them. “Might be tricky, that's all he's saying.”

“This guy likes
books,
” said Jesus. “See those muscles of his? He got them in a gym. They're not real. Real muscles are like this.” He flexed an enormous bicep. “I was born with these. I didn't have to fucking
grow
them.”

Neither Cancer Boy nor the Jazzman reacted.

“What? You honestly think this little prat could take me?” said Jesus.

“You got to be careful with those karate types,” said Cancer Boy. “They know all the deadliest points of the body. Like the Adam's apple. Hit someone hard enough on the Adam's apple, you'll kill them.”

“That's right,” agreed the Jazzman. “And if you hit someone hard enough on the nose with the heel of the palm, you can knock the nose bone right into their brain.”

“I asked you a question,” said Bad Jesus. “Do you think he could take me?”

There was a long silence.

“Right, that's it,” said Jesus, shoving me. “Outside, now. We'll soon see how hard you are.”

Cancer Boy waved his hands in protest. “No, no, no. That's just wild, boss. You'll bring the cops down on us. Probably even try and blame us for the two dead bastards. If you're going to fight, do it here. Not in a public place, man.”

“There's no public out there. This place is a ghost town by the sea. Come on.”

Now I was so scared I could hardly feel my legs. “I'll fight you on one condition,” I said. “It's just you and me. When you start losing, I don't want your friends to join in.”

“Getting scared, are we?” Jesus shoved me forward. “Outside.”

I started walking, and the others trooped after us. There was a black Cayenne Estate parked outside the house. It was the kind of car an American dentist would use for family vacations. I vaulted over the gate and clambered onto the hood of the car. As Jesus came through the gate, I launched my entire body at his head. It wasn't karate, it was street-fighting on a prepubescent level.

Jesus fell, crashing like a true heavyweight, and for a few moments I had the unlikely experience of sitting on the Son of God's chest and pounding his face. Because I was scared and desperate, everything Lenny had taught me seemed completely irrelevant. I couldn't even
remember
what he'd taught me.

Jesus grabbed one of my wrists and turned sideways, taking me with him. Not wanting a sixteen-stone psycho on top of me, I yanked my wrist free, rolled clear, and got up. My divine opponent, showing an agility I had not anticipated, was already on his feet and facing me.

I backed away, and Bad Jesus followed me, until we were standing on the gravel of the village hall parking lot. Cancer Boy and the Jazzman, with Caro between them, walked alongside us to monitor the fight's progress. “Hit him, Jesus,” said the Jazzman, like some kid in the playground. “Fucking leather him.”

Jesus might have considered himself an expert in violence, but he charged me like any out-of-condition football thug, brutal arms swinging frenziedly. There was no art or accuracy in the attack. He took the pragmatic approach, believing that if he launched twenty undisciplined blows in the approximate direction of my head, at least two of them would connect. He was right.

I've heard fighters claim that in the heat of battle, you don't feel the pain of your wounds. But when Bad Jesus caught my right eyebrow with his left fist, it was like being at the center of an explosion. The impact jarred my teeth, cowed and diminished me, threw me off balance.

My response was an ungainly kick that would have made my karate instructor despair, yet it slammed into Jesus' crotch with a satisfying thud. Even in the dark, I could see his astonishment and indignation. But my boot must have missed his balls, because a few seconds later he retaliated.

Taking one punch from an angry man who is larger and stronger than yourself can never be pleasant. Being hit a second time is, to say the least, discouraging. Jesus retaliated with another school-bully onslaught, and one of his punches caught me in the chin. He probably thought he had floored me. I still contend that I slipped. Either way, the end result was the same.

I fell over.

I was hurt and demoralized, but not beaten. Had I been able to rise swiftly enough, the outcome of the fight might have been different. But as I was pulling myself up, Jesus took a run at me, and I knew what was coming. His boot whacked into my left temple, sending two hundred volts of pain through my skull. Then he kicked me again.

After that second kick, the pain retreated. Time seemed to falter in its course. Shadowy figures danced slowly around me like Apaches circling the wagon train in an old cowboy movie.

My life didn't flash before my eyes. Instead, I saw a fancy parade of all the things that had ever made my life bearable: the sea, DC Comics, Marlon Brando, Modigliani, “Ode to a Skylark,” Sinéad O'Connor, Dirk Bogarde, Bertie Wooster, Johnny Depp, Laurel and Hardy, J. M. Barrie, Kurt Vonnegut; a wonderful, shamefully obscure novel called
Fata Morgana
by William Kotzwinkle; Selma Hayek, with or without clothes; Billy Wilder films; “Everything Is Cool” by the Serenes, old American sitcoms of the fifties and sixties; Oliver Reed; guitars; the Beatles; Boris Karloff as an old man; my family; the stars; the smell of fireworks; the
nyow nyow
sound that passing cars make when you're parked in a lay-by; snow; Christmas morning when I was a kid; Easter eggs for breakfast; that wonderful first album by Jim Nightshade; and Caro. Caro. Caro.

There I was, about to die and still making fucking lists.

Then the world came back into focus and Bad Jesus was standing over me. I heard Caro shouting, “No, no!” and sobbing. Jesus' arm was fully outstretched, and I knew he was aiming a gun at me.

“Not here, you pill,” complained Cancer Boy. “Shoot him and you're leaving forensic evidence behind. Ballistics, man.”

The voices seemed intrusively, mindlessly loud, like voices from the TV when you're falling asleep on the sofa.

“Well, what, then?” said Jesus. “I know. The car's got a towbar. We could tie him to it and drag him behind.”

“Down a public road?” said the Jazzman. “Don't you think someone might notice?”

Jesus sighed as if his men were being deliberately obstructive. “All right, who's got a blade? Someone give me a blade.”

The Jazzman withdrew a short knife from his belt and passed it to Jesus, then yanked me to my knees and held me there. Jesus held the knife close to my shirt and, with a series of deft little cuts, ripped it open. “Don't worry,” said Jesus, “I'm a doctor. I trained at the Harold Shipman School of Medicine.”

Caro threw herself in between us. “No!”

“Out of the way.”

“Please. I'll do anything you ask. Just leave him alone.”

Her hair was so fair, her skin so pale, that she appeared to be glowing in the dark. Jesus looked at her, and I knew he was thinking what I'd always thought, that loveliness so extreme excused any amount of scheming and lies.

“Okay,” said Jesus. “Be my bitch. No one else's.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“I will be your bitch. Whatever you ask for, I'll give to you.”

“And I still want the money you owe me, with interest. I think you should pay for the wonderful privilege of being fucked and abused by me.”

For a whole two seconds, Caro hesitated. “Deal,” she said finally.

“Okay.” Jesus nodded to Cancer Boy. “Put her in the car.”

Cancer Boy escorted Caro to the Cayenne Estate. I tried to move, but the Jazzman tightened his grip, forcing me back down onto my knees. “Well, Killer,” said Bad Jesus. “You're a very lucky boy. It turns out the whore cares about you after all.”

Then he drew back his foot and kicked me full in the mouth. The impact almost snapped my neck. My mouth and nose filled up with blood.

The Jazzman hurled me forward onto my face. I coughed out blood and lumps of teeth. Then I felt hot breath on my face and heard Jesus say, “When you're lying awake in your lonely bed, remember this.
I'm the only man who ever made her come.
”

Car doors slammed, and a bright light washed over me, followed by the sound of an engine thrumming into life. I started crawling, knowing they were going to drive over me. The gravel cracked and spluttered as the heavy-duty tires rolled forward. Then a second engine roared, and out of the darkness came a second pair of headlights, set at full beam and aimed directly at the Cayenne. It was a large van, and its driver could evidently see what was about to take place, because he began to sound his horn in protest. The Cayenne swerved past me and skidded out of the square.

As defeats go, mine had been fairly comprehensive. I'd lost the fight. I'd lost the woman. I'd lost my teeth and my good looks, or what passed for them. Despite all these setbacks, I was possessed by a strange euphoria. Caro had saved me. She had traded her body in exchange for my life. That could only mean one thing. She loved me.

She really loved me.

CHAPTER 13

HOW TO BE BAD

W
HEN
I opened my eyes there was a strong smell of antiseptic and I was lying on the sofa. Dad was kneeling beside me. At first, I thought I was hallucinating. Then I remembered the blazing headlights and the angry horn and realized Maurice Madden, purveyor of quality meats, had come to my rescue.

Dad was swabbing my face with a ball of cotton wool. In his other hand, he held a bowl of warm water. The water was the color of cherryade.

“Why are you here?” I asked him.

“Your mother made me come. A bloody good job she did.”

Then I remembered that there were dead bodies in the house and sat upright so abruptly that the room went out of focus. “I've just got to do something.”

“There's no bloody need,” said my dad. His voice sounded thick, as if he'd just woken up. “I've seen them. What the bloody hell have you been doing?”

Dad went out of the room and returned with two large brandies in balloon-shaped glasses. He crouched down by the fire, holding the glasses as close as possible to the flames to warm them. Then he lit a cigarette, something he only did when agitated.

My father downed his brandy in one gulp and held the other to my inflated lips. “You should see a doctor, really,” he said grimly. “And a bloody good dentist. And a fucking psychiatrist by the looks of things.”

I started to speak, and the pain of the cold air on my broken teeth made me wince. Dad passed me some tablets. “Codeine,” he said. “I take it for my back. Might help.”

I sat upright and swallowed the pills down with the brandy. When I'd finished, my dad sank back into his armchair by the fire. “Okay. Now you can tell me what's been going on. I don't want any excuses, any made-up silly bloody stories. The truth.
Now.
”

I hadn't seen Dad so angry since the school parents' evening when I was fifteen, when all my teachers had assured him, with astonishing unanimity, that I was a charming boy with great potential who just happened to be bone idle.

Weeping with shame, I told him about Caro's debt to Bad Jesus, the car bomb, the accidental death of Janet Mather, and Danny's arrival and suicide. I didn't bother mentioning Warren or Gordon. I didn't want my father to see me in a bad light.

Dad stared at me for a long time. “And the police really said that, did they? That they'd leave you alone if Caroline let 'em, you know…” He squirmed in embarrassment.

“That's exactly what they said.”

He got up and paced the room. “Well, then. That's blackmail. Even if you'd wanted to call the police, tell 'em about your accidents, you couldn't trust the buggers, could you? So it's not as if we want to break the law, is it? We've got no choice.”

“That's exactly the way I see it.”

Dad stopped pacing to glare at me. “You realise all this'd break your mother's heart if she knew about it? You know that. Don't you?”

“Yeah.”

“She isn't to know. Understand? Not ever. If you ever breathe a word of any this, I'll break your bloody neck.”

“Okay, okay.”

He blew out cigarette smoke in a despairing cloud.

“I'm sorry, Dad.”

“I told you Caroline was bad news, didn't I? I bloody warned you. What the fucking hell did you have to marry her for?”

I told him we weren't married, that the marriage between her and Danny had never been annulled. “Oh, charming,” remarked my father, unconsciously echoing Danny. “So now she's a bigamist, too, is she? As well as being a thief, a prostitute, a drug addict, a murderer, and
a stupid bloody cow!
”

With this, my dad stormed out to his van, returning with some old sheets and a bag of tools, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Okay,” he said. “I'm going to help you. On one condition.”

“What?”

“That you don't go after Caroline, you don't try to contact her, that you end it now. While you're almost in one piece.”

“Okay,” I said.

He nodded and sorted through his tool bag.

“What're you going to do?” I asked him.