Lionel Asbo: State of England (20 page)

‘
UN!
’ he cried, and jerked back … But as he dabbed his cheek, well, Lionel had to smile. He had to smile. He thought of Pete New, his cellmate at Stallwort. Bloke seemed to specialise in unlikely accidents. He said he once poached an egg in the microwave, took it out, went to sniff it – and the whole mess exploded in his face! Said it fucking near blinded him! … So Lionel had a good old laugh about Pete New. A very good old laugh (him breaking a leg from watching TV!). And then he drained his glass, chewed on a couple of boiled potatoes, and smiled again with a little twist of the head.

‘More bubbles, son.’

His dinner, so far, felt a bit like a practical joke – the beer mug, the GILFs, the hot butter. Nothing serious, mind. In the South Central they were always playing practical jokes. More money than sense, half of them. Practical jokes with superglue and cling film. Whoopee cushions. Squirting HP sauce and mustard. Setting off the fire alarm. High jinks, if you like. Being stupid on purpose. More money than sense, the lot of them. Sometimes it’s like they playing practical jokes on
theyselves
…

Lionel reapplied himself to his meal. Using the silvery tools, plus his fork.

The key moment came ten minutes later, when he threw down his weapons and reached for the enemy with his bare hands.

* * *

‘I’m sorry you seemed to have such trouble with your entrée, sir.’

‘… Well, you know how it is, Cuthbert. You win some, you lose some.’

‘Do take the napkin, sir. Take a clean one. Here … That looks really quite nasty. Might need a stitch or two.’

‘Look at this one!’

‘Dear oh dear.’

Lionel’s yttrium credit card was slotted into the gadget and he did the rigmarole with the PIN. He added a startling tip and said,

‘They’ll patch me together at the hotel.’

‘May I ask where you’re putting up, sir?’ Mr Mount’s eyes widened and he said, ‘Well they have a very advanced valet service at the South Central. They might, they just
might
, have some luck with those …’ Mr Mount seemed to submit to a gust of anguish. ‘Those
stains
.’

‘Yeah?’

‘My God. It’s rather more serious than I thought.’ Mr Mount was no longer calling Lionel
sir
, because he knew that his customer would be taking his leave in fairly good order. This had not looked probable during Lionel’s endlessly self-regenerating fit of laughter; and it had looked even less probable during his climactic struggle with his main course – when Lionel was crashing around and visibly giving off a faint grey steam. ‘What can one say? Bad luck, old chap.’

‘Yeah cheers, Cuthbert. An unfortunate choice.’ Lionel was still short of breath, and there were still tears in his eyes; but he was in complete control. ‘Next time I’ll have the haddock.’

‘… Why, thank you very much indeed, sir.’

He swung himself down the steps and out into the alley, his tie half off, his jacket, shirt, and waistcoat colourfully impasted with butter and blood. He felt very hungry.

‘The bingo get a bit rough, Lionel?’ said the man from the
Sun
.

‘Just stand there a minute, Lionel,’ said the man from the
Lark
as he raised his camera. ‘Ooh, this is priceless, this is.’

‘The old ladies take their revenge on you, Lionel?’ said the man from the
Daily Telegraph
.

Lionel glanced right. At the far end of the alley there was a policeman, standing stock still, and staring his way.

‘Copper watching. That settles the matter,’ said Lionel Asbo succinctly.

He moved to his left.

‘Come on then,’ he said wearily. ‘Gaa, Christ, let’s have it. Go on – get you laughing done with. Yeah, I will. I will. I’ll do five years for the fucking three of yer.’

XII

NOTHING REALLY OUT of the ordinary happened between 2009 and 2012.

‘He’ll get ten, they reckon, and do five. And serve him bloody well right.’

‘Come on, Dawn. Think. He won’t be out till 2014!’

It was Sunday. They were having what they called
breakfast on bed
(it was a single bed), and rereading Saturday’s
Mirror
(their new tabloid of choice).

‘He
fancied
prison,’ said Des dazedly. ‘He did. He
fancied
prison.’

‘Three counts of GBH. Plus Assaulting a Police Officer.’

On their laps (and on facing pages) were the iconic Before and After shots from the dead-ended alley off Brompton Road. Before: Lionel posing on the steps of the restaurant, Pickwickian, vaudevillian, aglow with combustible bonhomie. The After photograph (not taken immediately after, because the journalists’ cameras had all been smashed): this was more interestingly composed. The malefactor, like a city scarecrow, his lolling head, his arms up around the shoulders of the two policemen, with all the stuffing coming out of him (the ripped and twisted suit, the frothy white shirt); and then, to the right, just behind and beyond, the wheeled ambulance trolley with its own fixed light and the lumpy body lying on it (this was the man from the
Daily Telegraph
).

‘Tsuh-tsuh,’ said Dawn. ‘Tsuh-tsuh.’ She was addressing the cat. ‘Here, Goldie. Here, love … The restaurant bloke says he had a fight to the death with his lobster.’

‘Mm. The QC’s preparing his defence. Lord Barcleigh.’

‘The fat one …
Diminished responsibility
. Oh yeah. It was the lobster, your honour.’

‘I can’t understand him, Dawnie. He did it when a copper was watching!’

‘Mm. And not even nutters do that. Here, Goldie. Here, girl.’

In early 2010, incidentally, they traded in their single bed – not for a double bed (because the room itself was the size of a double bed), but for what was called a Bachelor’s Occasional.

Minicabbing, clambering over speed bumps, forever staring into the unlanced boil of the red light (and then the lurid matter of the amber). Diston traffic was obedient to the hierarchy of size: the Smart car feared the Mini, the Mini feared the Golf, the Golf feared the Jeep, the Jeep feared the … Des, driving, impatiently aware of the frail flustered presence of the bicycle on his inner flank, but himself obedient to the great swung mass of the bus.

Here’s a tale of the unexpected
, said Lionel in August, 2009, on his first day back in Stallwort (awaiting trial).
I had a shit this morning. Hey. Go up and see you gran
.

I am, Uncle Li
.

I want a report. And oy. While I’m away – don’t you dare go near me stuff
.

The first-class train fare to the North West Highlands and back, by sleeper, ran well into four figures. But Des went on the Cloud and got a bargain-berth ‘apex’ split-ticket – for eighteen quid! … You rose before first light (Inverness, then motorcoach via Lairg), and you returned in the next day’s early darkness: the grey hours. Des did his Christian duty, and his Christian penance, about every six weeks, and sometimes Dawn came too.

The home was a townhouse, five floors high and unusually deep, with a great many internal partitions of hardboard (and cardboard). The atmosphere of the place frightened Des right from the start, and every time he went up there it seemed measurably slacker, shabbier, more demoralised. Souness itself (fifteen miles east of Cape Wrath): there were prettier enclaves further back and up on the cliffs, but the township, the port, where Grace dwelt, was a maze of dark flint, populated by taupe genies of sopping mist. It was never not raining. A spittling, hair-frizzing drizzle was your absolute basic – what the locals called
smirr
; and it was smirr that kept guard between downpours.

Grace was in a conical attic – the hospital bed, the chair beside it, and a cavernous sink with thick rubber tubing attached to the spouts.
Des, dear
, she said, clearly enough. But thereafter she spoke in random clauses that made no sense. Some stuck in his mind for a moment, and he thought he’d remember them later, but he never did. So he started writing them down.

Nine owls out where it’s high and cold
: that was one

Partial to gains I stake claim
: that was another.

No-no disturbs sin, et cetera
: that was yet another.

The chief physician, furtive Dr Ardagh in his shaggy marmalade suit, used the phrase
early onset degenerative brain disease
. He mumbled something Des didn’t quite catch.

Sorry? A few more good years?

Uh, no. A good few more years. Is what I said
.

He returned to the conical attic.

Unresisting, even so
, moaned Gran as he eventually kissed her goodbye.
Fifteen!

Des remembered that one. Was it a reference to the things that took place between them in 2006 – when he was fifteen, and hadn’t resisted? Neither Des nor Grace had said a word about it all since the disappearance of Rory Nightingale.

At his trial at the Old Bailey, Lionel, for the first time in his life, pleaded guilty.

Diminished responsibility was Lord Barcleigh’s theme: he asked the jury to consider
the massive senselessness of the offence, committed, after all, in plain view of an officer of the law. Medical science calls it an
ictus –
a spasm of the brain
.

Lionel himself, dressed for the occasion in the pathetic shreds of his shahtoosh dinner jacket (woven from the wool of the chiru, an endangered Tibetan antelope), was archaically humble:
I deeply regret all distress caused
, he said.
I’m just a boy from Diston who got out of his depth … I’ll do me time with no complaints, and I swear I’ll never again be a threat to uh, to society like. I’ve done it the hard way, You Honour, but I’ve come to see the error of me ways
.

One character witness turned out to be disproportionately influential: Fiona King, the co-manager of the South Central Hotel.
He was a model guest. If all our clients comported themselves like Mr Asbo, I can assure you that my life would be very much simpler. Ask anybody. Lionel Asbo behaved like a true English gentleman
.

Even more tellingly, Police Constable George Hands (
Yeah
, Lionel would later admit,
he was dearer than Lord Barcleigh
) informed the court (through splintered teeth) that Lionel’s conduct, in the Knightsbridge alleyway, had in fact been more consistent with the lesser charge of Resisting Arrest.

He got six years – a light sentence, many felt (and wrote). Five months were already served, and Lord Barcleigh, making due allowance for Lionel’s good behaviour, predicted that he would be a free man by the spring or early summer of 2012.

Des switched subjects: from Modern Languages to Sociology, with a special emphasis on crime and punishment. Lionel, when told of this, simply shrugged and turned away. As usual he had his cellphone on loudspeaker – a conference call with his investment team. This was in the prison outside Exeter: its name was Silent Green.

You can’t go far wrong in prison
, Lionel might say, between calls … And Des came to a tentative conclusion: the career criminal
didn’t really mind
being in prison. Being in prison didn’t ceaselessly strike him as an unendurable outrage on his dignity. Des resolved to ask Lionel why this was – but not today.

Prison
, said Lionel.
Good place to get you head sorted out. You know where you are in prison
.

Well yeah, thought Des. You’re in prison.

Go on then. Off you hop
, said Lionel as he leaned into another call.

And Des would eat a cheese roll at the station, and head back to London on his day return.

The next time he went down there Lionel was busy buying half a dozen forests’ worth of Uruguayan timber.

The next time he went down there Lionel was busy attacking the yen.

A word, therefore, about Lionel’s finances.

In his three weeks of freedom Lionel Asbo spent nine million pounds, nearly all of it on craps, blackjack, and roulette (there was also the unused Bentley ‘Aurora’, and a seven-figure clothes bill). But his investments prospered almost uncontrollably right from the start. He instructed his young squad of free-market idealists to be as aggressive as possible.
Don’t fuck about on five per cent
, he told them.
Go for it
.