See How They Run (8 page)

Dr Feeney had tried his hand at some humour in describing this episode but he was a fish out of water when it came to levity. There was nothing particu
larly funny about it anyway. Rather sad, really. Big
M had leant back in his chair and placed one of his famous feet on the table, displaying a battered leather
shoe. Once it had been a bespoke, hand-stitched
Saddle Oxford in light tan from John Lobb. Top of the range. But Big M was down in the dumps, he’d had enough. His trademark shoes – his Ones and Twos, his Rhythm and Blues, his Scooby Doos were falling apart on his feet. Big M was down at heel, quite literally.

So what?
said Pryderi, placing one of his own feet on the table and showing a cheap pair of
black boots in equally poor condition. Inside one of his ribbed stockings they could see the familiar bulge of his compact Beretta 92. He was never without it these days.

Nah
, said Big M.
We’ve got to go.

After all he was a sex god, and sex gods didn’t walk around in shit shoes.

Hotel Corvo was a big black hulk, a sunken liner sleeping with the fishes, when they drove away. Big M behind the wheel, Pryderi by his side, Ziggy and Rhiannon in the back. Old-fashioned style, women in bright summer dresses and chiffon scarves, a wicker hamper between them. Rhiannon had leant forward, ran a hand through her lover’s hair and said
someone needs a haircut, loverboy
.

Some decent boots, that’s all he hankered after. He longed for the creak and perfume of a new pair of leather shoes on his feet.

Pryderi was ready to go too. So tired now, he’d been continuously on edge since the gunshot. Bloodshot eyes, stubble. Nasty tremor when he held a young deer in his gunsights; he’d lost his nerve.
Didn’t want to shoot innocent animals any more
either. He was superstitious: it could be him next in the firing line.

So where are you taking us, Twinkle Toes
, he asked
Big M.

But Big M didn’t have a masterplan. Never had, really. Go with the flow, have a nice time, don’t waste energy on trouble and strife. He didn’t want any angst or head games. That’s the way Big M lived his life.
Never collide with the modern world
, that’s what he
used to say.
Go round it, go under it, keep your head down till it’s gone right past, but don’t take it on head to head. It’ll wear you down, sap your batteries, suck away
your life juice.

He just kept on driving along country roads,
keeping the afternoon sun behind him as it sank
towards the western sea. Long ribbons of daisy-flecked grass flowed between the wheels. August was tired and sleepy, summer’s sap-flow had slowed, and snails had already begun their long journey towards winter, climbing laboriously up the hogweed stalks; the season had come to a stop, a convoy waiting for its own spillage of pollen to be cleared off the road. Now it sat there in the spent grasses, its creaking bodywork already starting to rust.

They drove for hours, skirting deep woods squatting like huge green chiller cabinets, until the taller oaks and sycamores cast long shadows across the bleached wheatfields. They felt completely alone in this vast open terrain, and indeed they saw no one for a long time, not until late afternoon, when they met an England sign by the roadside. Shortly afterwards they entered a typical Hereford village, black and white cottages with sinister cats disappearing through rough holes under doors. Through the small-paned windows they could see warty hags with gnarled hands, up to no good behind broken cobwebs and piss-yellow net curtains.

For chrissakes carry on
, said Ziggy,
or I’ll start
screaming
.

So on they went, following the signs for Hereford.
They got there late at night when the light was
failing, so hardly anyone saw them putting in at one of the better hotels, a place with a garage to hide away the car. Like so many bankrupts, Pryderi had a surprising ability to find tons of money when he needed to. He showed off, hinted at a secret stash, got them an expensive suite. Swiss bank account, or maybe not, wink wink. Rhiannon was taken aback and stayed close to Big M; she liked it all above board.

They stayed in this place for a month, keeping a
low profile, making sure they spoke good English
always. Posh place with plenty of toffs floating around. In the meantime, Pryderi used his hunter’s instincts to comb the town for a bargain, and soon he’d spotted one – a boarded-up pub by the river called The Saddle Inn, going for a song. The previous landlord had been a dipso who’d played the optics
all day, pissed as a rat by noon, people helping
themselves while he picked fights with strangers. Nightmare, the place had been closed down by the constabulary.

So Pryderi bought it with his back pocket dosh and the four of them threw themselves into the business. Nice coat of blue paint, clean windows, yellow chintz curtains, classy prints on the walls, tables and chairs outside and a nice bistro feel to the place; shiny beer taps, good coffee, relaxing view of the old Wye Bridge. Felt almost French. Big M used to go down to the river each morning for a dip.

I just love that river
, he’d say.
Rises in Wales, ends in Wales, takes a stroll through England along the way. The water sounds Welsh, it so reminds me of home.

You’d know where he was by his dragon-red
towelling robe on the bank, weighed down by the finest blue suede shoes ever seen in the city. Elvis would have been proud of them; a pair of catalogue Ben Shermans with a price tag to match their mod origins in the sixties: a mere sixty-five quid. He’d thrown them in as extras during a big splurge, but
once on his feet they’d stayed there. Those shoes
became his trademark.

Big M, with his usual aplomb, opened a nice little restaurant at the back.

The customers poked fun at him, they said
shuffle them shoes Big M
, but he liked that sort of thing.

The Ben Shermans looked a little out of place
beneath his checkerboard trousers, but his chef’s toque seemed to balance things out once he’d added a blue flash to the headband. Nice touch, a hint of cavalier humour. They liked him, they liked his little eatery hidden away at the end of a flowerpot alley, with its little courtyard, fountain, and abundant greenery. He grew a splendid moustache and twiddled it as he engaged in badinage, teasing the men, making ridiculous passes at the women – all of them, indiscriminately, even the grandmothers: he was a natural magical realist. He went to their tables at dusk with rosebuds in slender vases, he lit their cigarettes, he indulged in crazy episodes of tap dancing as he carried the plates, he sang Tyrolean love songs from the windows above, he even brought out his fiddle on special occasions, swept around the place playing
gypsy music and ogling the ladies close up with
incredibly mournful eyes.

And the food, ah, the food was out of this world. Seafood a house speciality, but the
a la carte
menu was huge and catholic, a high church liturgy for a swelling congregation. It was just a hobby to Big M; just another string to his bow. But he was booked up every night, and soon enough he’d garnered a Michelin star and a great review in the
Sunday Times
. The chief ape himself, A.A. Gill, had declared that the food was much too good to be served so proximate to the dark ugly trolls who lurked just over the border.

And so it went on, a new paradise on earth was created by the four of them, but it didn’t go on for long enough. That old human worm, envy, crawled around the gutters of Hereford and spoke in many
ears, whispering who is this man who wears his blue suede shoes in bed, seduces your wives and daughters, wriggles his hips and says he’s a love god? Why do our burghers crowd his tables, laugh in his sunny courtyard, go home with their wives to love again after years of cold indifference?

Soon, a brick sailed through one of the front
windows. A few scenes occurred in the courtyard, staged by paid thugs. It was happening all over again, but no threatening gunshot was needed this time round. Customers were melting away and worse was to come, said the rumours. Bad stuff: a knife in the dark, or fire through the letterbox. Pryderi stowed his Beretta in his sock again. Ziggy started to chain smoke. Rhiannon doodled pictures of horses on napkins and dropped plates in the kitchen. It couldn’t go on.

Pryderi was mad with rage. He wanted to fight
fire with fire; he wanted to take them on at their
own game. He prodded Big M, urged him on with fighting talk. But to no avail. Big M wasn’t having any of it, his fighting days were over.
Last thing I need is a spell in the cooler.
Maybe he was ready for a change
anyway. Cooking all day could get boring, and
there wasn’t much time to chill. Big M spread his
hands wide, shrugged his shoulders, and said: ‘Let’s move on. What’s the point? Trouble breeds
trouble, anyway I’ve had enough of small-town
people with small-town minds. The river’s getting colder, autumn’s on the way. Let’s crack on, let’s have a nice easy time for a while, see some places and watch the leaves fall.’

Infuriated, Pryderi gave in, sold the place for a song, and had the Bentley serviced.

Soon they were gone.

Lou read the story till his eyes ached, then went for lunch in the students’ caff downstairs. Tray in hand, he looked around for someone to sit with, but all eyes seemed to be elsewhere, anywhere except where he was standing. Again he felt isolated, and soon he was morose too. His sandwich tasted artificial and his too-hot coffee came in a false styro-mug. Nothing felt real any more. Even the students around him had an ersatz quality about them, a submissive
Stepford
Wives
blandness. Perhaps they were the Stepford
children. Modern education had reduced the world to twelve incontrovertible bullet points, and the rest of the universe fitted neatly onto a Facebook page. Any restlessness was quickly numbed by a limitless flow of celebrity trivia. Christ, it was depressing. But he himself was a product of the same system. How much more exacting were
his
methods? Not nearly
as good as Dr Dermot Feeney’s, who’d actually
gone out and found some of Big M’s relatives. Yes, he’d got the story straight from the horse’s mouth. Or maybe the cat’s. Feeney had traced one of Big
M’s cousins, through a nostalgia forum called
Manx for the Memories, to an old people’s home in Douglas, Isle of Man. A geriatric who wore spanking new tartan slippers with gold bobbles, and who still had an interest in
lurve
.

Lou left half a sandwich and took his coffee to his room, then read on.

After Hereford, anonymity. Four chameleons in search of a shadow. Even Feeney wasn’t allowed to
know where they’d landed. *
A city in England, never revealed
, said his notes. This time they rented a
closed-down pub called The Shield and Dagger. Its cider specialties – Three Hammers, Green Goblin, Frosty Jack, Total Wipeout – hinted at a West
Country location. Glastonbury Tor in the distance, maybe. A house for hard-drinking men with silvery eyes, blinded young by the apple maggot.

Who knows where they went, because they kept themselves to themselves. No food this time. No showmanship from Big M, not for a while anyway. But eventually the Big M within got the better of
him. What started as bar-room banter became a
regular routine, which became a comedy slot every Friday night – Big M with a black hat and a mic, a spotlight, and a flow of rough cider. He’d developed a bit of a drink problem during that period, according to Feeney. Big M seemed to get better with every pint. Like the brew, he became even more potent and deadly as the night wore on. Friday night got to be very popular at the Mutton, as it was called, mutton dagger being a well-known synonym in those parts for a man’s best friend...

The Shield and Dagger became a magnet as the Friday night comedy store spilled over into Saturday, then Sunday; taxis arrived suddenly from far and wide as Big M and his guests turned every weekend into a mini fringe event fuelled by gallons of scrumpy. His favourite routine,
Fill yer Boots
, based
on his own penchance for snazzy footwear, was
legendary.
Hell for Leather
also did very well. He was ideally suited to stand-up; cool and laconic, sad and ironic. But his popularity had the usual downside, and soon enough his success was pissing off all the local publicans. Their empty bars gave them plenty of time to work up a fury, and to plan revenge. One night the fab four at the Shield and Dagger were woken by a tremendous wall-rattling bang, and when the men opened the front door, Pryderi with his Beretta at the ready, they found a stinky old boot nailed to the wood, its tongue lolling out at them; inside it they found a message with an unlit match sellotaped to it. Not very polite. Pryderi put his Beretta back in his sock and read it.

The shits
, he said to Big M without looking up.
They want us out of town by noon on Sunday. Or the place’ll go up in smoke, us lot with it.