The Last Card (17 page)

D
unstan sat and watched Ade play with his little girl, Tawana. Ade was good with kids generally, but with Tawana in
particular
. The little girl was almost two years old; she had known Ade for as long as she could remember and she referred to him lovingly as ‘Uncle Ade’. Improbably, Tawana was a caring, happy child with a sweet temperament. Ade was very fond of her. But for some reason whenever the little girl called him ‘Uncoo Ada’ Dunstan found it
hilarious
. It reminded him of the old black man on boxes of Uncle Ben’s rice. Ade had asked Dunstan on a number of occasions what Uncle Ade had to do with Uncle Ben and Dunstan had never been able to come up with an adequate answer. Ade had learnt to ignore him. He considered it beneath him to respond to such childish provocation.

Today, however, Dunstan was serious. In fact he had been in a rather serious mood for at least forty-eight hours. Since the other night when he and Ade had made their drive-by attempt on Paul Akers, things had been very serious. After they had driven off, unsure if they had killed him, the two of them had been staying with Dunstan’s babymother in South Wimbledon. They had been there for two days now and Dunstan was well past stir-crazy.

Firstly, it had been confirmed that Paul Akers was very much alive. That was bad news. You beat an animal badly enough, Dunstan reasoned, it will give up, back away; classic shock and awe tactics. Leave it only slightly wounded however, it’ll keep fighting. In their failure to kill Paul, Dunstan and Ade had shown weakness. Who could tell what Alan’s next move might be? Dunstan was driving himself mad thinking about it. And what was the word on the streets of
Stokey and Hackney about him and Ade? People would know by now that he and Ade had stepped up to the plate and tried to ‘hit’ Paul. Most of Dunstan’s crew would welcome the hit because they knew that Paul was a liability. However, since he didn’t finish the job, how many of his crew would remain loyal in the face of Alan’s undoubted response?

Add to all of this the presence of Shirley, Dunstan’s babymother, and his troubles were complete. Dunstan loved Tawana and came to see her whenever he could (at least once every two or three months?) but Shirley was a different proposition.

Before Dunstan had entered the realms of gangsterism he had been one of a crew of dancers, all black and all from his estate in Stokey. They had called themselves the G-men and been attached to the sound system of the same name. Whenever the sound was on the road, playing in different parts of London, the G-men would go too, performing their routines and doubling as security. One night they were playing an event in Streatham at a community centre called The Castle. As Dunstan and the rest of the boys well knew, going across the river into South London meant dealing with ‘pure
leggo-beast
gial an’ savage manhood’. So when, as Dunstan and his dancers were spinning, body-popping, doing the slide and generally going through their paces, a group of girls started to heckle them, it was only to be expected, them being leggo-beast. Three of the girls were black, two of them white, and one was wearing a full-length burqa and was therefore of indeterminate race. Dunstan’s attention was drawn to one of the black girls, a redskin who looked to be about fifteen. She was the one with the loudest, most caustic remarks, swearing like a sailor. She had the kind of slackness in her laugh that would make a black man blanch.

‘Urrgh! You call dat fuckin’ dancin’! My fuckin’ grandmuvver could drop moves better dan dat, you know’t I mean!’ The next time Dunstan dropped to the rubber mats that they were dancing on, balanced on his head and prepared to spin, his view of the redskin was upside down. Despite the danger of the move he was attempting – it could easily have ended with a broken neck – the redskin
continued
to heckle.

‘Look a’ you! You fink you’re fuckin’ good, don’tcha!’ She was looking right at Dunstan. ‘I seen babies do dem moves, you know’t I
mean! Dem is old time moves dat my dad does! Get some new fuckin’ moves, man, my dad’s got a Chihuahua dat can dance better dan dat, ha, ha, ha, I seen de Chihuahua spinning on its ’ead an’ it’s got moves dat you ain’t even got! Ha, ha, ha!’

That was it. Dunstan dropped his feet back down to the mat, flew over to the redskin and grabbed her by the throat. But not even that could halt the stream of poison issuing forth.

‘Go on den, you fuckin’ bastard, ’it me, go on, ’it me, I ain’t afraida you pussies from up norff you know, you can’t fuckin’ dance anyhow …’

Under the circumstances Dunstan was left with little choice. He let go of her throat and punched her in the face. He knocked her clean off her feet, knocking her front tooth out in the process. At that point DJ Ruffntuff, the sound system stalwart, was flung sideways from behind the deck, the cans were ripped from his ears and someone slammed a chair down on top of the cold cuts that had been keeping the crowd in The Castle bubbling all evening. Suddenly it was a free for all, a mass fight that did nothing to dispel the ugly and scurrilous rumour that South Londoners were indeed fine examples of ‘savage manhood’.

If Dunstan had been any way unconvinced of the ugliness of the rumour about South London girls, he had it confirmed for him half an hour later round the back of The Castle. It was there that the redskin – he later discovered her name was Shirley – clung to his penis like a woman drowning on storm-tossed seas. She handled his organ with an enthusiasm that Dunstan could only admire.

Two months later she was pregnant with Tawana, was given her own two-bedroomed flat on a nice, leafy estate in South Wimbledon and she and Dunstan were tied together for the foreseeable future. When the stresses and strains of working in the city proved too much Dunstan would retire to South Wimbledon and impose his will on Shirley to the best of his ability. The problem was that Shirley was a redskin witch; the manner in which she had made herself known to Dunstan – by swearing and heckling him – was a feature of her personality that had remained a fixture. Domesticity for Dunstan could never be bliss with Shirley for a partner.

When Dunstan and Ade had decided to go underground for a while, South Wimbledon had seemed the obvious place. But the
reality of sharing the same space with Shirley for anything longer than a few hours was daunting. The forty-eight hours that Dunstan and Ade had been there was fast taking Dunstan to his breaking point. Ade had already stepped in twice to avert a blood-bath: on the last
occasion
Dunstan had cuffed Shirley when she accidentally spilt some coffee on his lap, and only Ade’s quick reactions stopped Dunstan being stabbed in his neck with a sharpened chopstick. In the argument that followed Tawana and then Shirley cried hysterically while Dunstan tore clumps out of his own lush afro.

All that had been about three hours ago. Shirley was out for a while to cool off while Ade amused Tawana, and Dunstan sat quietly thinking. And that was when he came up with his plan to get them out of this hell-hole.

‘Why don’t we just call Alan?’

‘What?’ Ade looked up from the doll’s house that he and Tawana were playing with.

‘Why don’t we just call Alan up, tell him we want a meeting?’

‘And then what?’

‘I don’t know. We’ve already knocked out two of his boys. Per’aps we should call it a day, you know’t I mean?’

‘But what about de globalisation plan?’

‘Yeah, but …’ he glanced round Shirley’s flat with an uneasy look on his face. ‘… Dere’s a time and a place, you get me? My man is vex and I man don’t know if I’m ready for all out war, you know’t I mean?’

Ade scowled.

‘What you looking like that for?’

‘I dunno Duns. You sure you wanna ring him now?’

‘You gotta better idea?’

‘How’s it gonna look?’

‘It’s gonna look like we’re doing the right thing; dis is bizniz.’ He and Ade maintained eye-contact.

‘Well … it seems to me you started something; let’s finish it. Me and you. Maybe there’s an opportunity here.’ This little speech wasn’t much in itself, but in the weeks ahead Dunstan would look back on it as the moment that his and Ade’s relationship was to change forever. But that was to come. For now, Dunstan was secure in his connection to Ade.

‘No, I don’t agree. Later for that.’ Dunstan crossed the room and picked up the phone. Ade watched him dial the number.

‘Alan?’

‘Dunstan?’

‘We need to talk.’

H
stepped out of the Tube station at Holland Park and looked around. It was after ten and it was dark. He’d spent the last twenty-four hours in his flat, mostly lying flat on his back in the dark, hands behind his head, thinking about his next move. What could it be? The money to pay off Akers would soon be his. Great. But now Akers didn’t want it. Akers wanted him to take a dive. No. No way. H couldn’t bear the thought of that. Making a sham out of something he loved and that the punters believed to be real. No, it wasn’t him, he couldn’t do it. Akers was forcing him to do something that all of his instincts screamed against. Thoughts went round and round in his head. If he hadn’t taken a gambling holiday when he had, he would never have won the big hand with Stammer, which would have meant he would never have intervened when Akers’ mobsters had come in to Blackie’s demanding money, which meant he never would have come into contact with Akers, which meant he would never have been in the position to tell Akers to fuck right off, which meant Akers would never have … and so on and so forth.

In the end, how far back did you have to go when you looked at the events of your life? When you had problems and things weren’t working out for you? Since all children are presumably born innocent, H reasoned to himself, surely they should all expect good things to happen in their life. But since bad things happened to people all the time, H wondered whether that was because they deserved bad things to happen to them? And whether they did or they didn’t, the journey from being young and innocent to being older and less innocent meant that a sequence of events had taken place, over the course of a life, from A to Z. Since all events seemed to be inter-connected, there had
to be a point, one single moment in time, when things began to go wrong. You had to be able to pinpoint that moment if you thought about it long enough. H had been thinking about it on and off for the last twenty-four hours, but had yet to pinpoint that moment.

He could remember one of his schoolteachers, Mr Enias, who had posed a similar question one rainy day when H and his mates
couldn
’t go out and play. It was one of those strange but true problems that for some reason had always stayed with H.

The problem was this: a man stands on the platform of a railway station waiting for his train to arrive. Moments later, he looks along the track and sees the train bearing down toward the station. Instead of the train slowing and stopping however, it keeps its pace up, clearly intent on continuing through to a destination further down the line. In frustration the man rolls up his train ticket and hurls it at the front of the train as it passes him. The rolled-up piece of paper, his ticket, is thrown from right to left and hits the front of the train, which is travelling from left to right. Therefore the train pushes the ticket back the way it came. That must mean that the ticket, at some point, changed directions. Now if the piece of paper changed direction, there must have been a single moment when the paper was
stationary
, the exact moment when it changed direction.

That piece of paper changed directions, yet physically, its change of direction and, therefore, its moment of stillness, seems an
impossibility
. That single moment had to exist. And so it was with H’s life. There had to be a single moment when the promise and potential that was his … changed directions.

H couldn’t remember how Mr Enias had resolved this teaser but it seemed to H that Mr. Enias had somehow stumbled on a kind of metaphor for H’s life.

Outside Holland Park Tube station, H was trying to remember the way to Nina’s house. He turned right and set off, walking down Holland Park Avenue. He was almost past the second turning when he recognised it and doubled back down Holland Park Terrace, past The Prince of Wales pub, into Pottery Lane. His instincts had been right. The road wasn’t cobbled as he’d remembered it, but the lane of small, expensive mews houses was familiar. He found Nina’s front door and knocked.

The living room was bathed in a soft, glowing light. At shoulder height, running along three of its walls, was a long strip about six inches wide, housed in white plastic casing, which looked like a photographer’s light box. It was. At one end of this strip the light was a soft white, at the other end the light was blue. In between these two points the light went through all the colours of the rainbow. This was the only light source in the room and it gave the space an elegant, mellow, soft glow. H had never seen anything quite like it.

Looking equally elegant was Nina. She wore a faded pair of jeans and a sleeveless, backless top with a 60s print on it, all green and blue swirls. Her feet were bare. The jeans sagged like men’s jeans on her narrow hips. H couldn’t help but admire the fit. The top revealed more than enough to be a major distraction. Her hair looked clean and well groomed. Overall, Nina radiated casual elegance. Not an elegance that was cold and unapproachable, but the kind of
effortless
elegance that was … inviting.

Nina and H sat on facing sofas in the middle of the room. In the soft half-light, Nina stared at H. H swirled the glass of whiskey he held in his hand, peering in as though the content of the glass was endlessly fascinating. In his other hand he spun his talisman.

‘It’s like a nervous tic the way you play with that thing. What kind of lighter is it?’

‘It’s a Zippo; a replica of the original 1932 model. And it’s not a lighter, it’s a talisman.’

‘Talisman? You? Superstitious?’ Nina clearly didn’t believe it.

‘It’s to remind me; to remind me what failure feels like. What it’s like to lose. I bought it at a time in my life when things were going badly and now I keep it as a reminder. To make me do better.’

H paused while he chose his next words with care. Earlier in the evening when he knew he needed to speak to somebody, anybody, he’d hit on the idea of calling on Nina for a number of reasons. Firstly, she’d seemed sympathetic to his dilemma with Akers, and secondly, she knew Akers. He wouldn’t have to explain anything. But also, and he couldn’t tell how important this was, he was finding Nina
increasingly
attractive. Her tough woman act, with its roots that stretched into the rough parts of North London, and which she maintained
despite the wealth that she lived with now – it made her an
interesting
contradiction. H had been out with as many white women as he had black so that wasn’t an issue but the fact that he still felt a lot for Beverley – what did he feel? – was confusing him.

‘I’m in a jam, Nina.’ He said it apologetically, as though real men don’t find themselves in jams.

‘I know. Gavin told me.’

‘Jesus! Does everybody know my business?!’ He exploded as though he was angry, but actually, H was secretly pleased. He could do ‘anger’. ‘There’s no fucking way on earth that I can throw this fight!’

‘That’s right.’

‘How can I look my little boy in the eye and tell him I’m a fake?!’

‘You can’t.’

‘So what the hell am I going to do?’

‘Kill White Alan.’

Neither of them laughed and the silence between them was a long one.

‘You keep coming out with this … stuff.’

‘Have you got a better idea?’

‘Who do you think I am? A fucking fantasy of yours, a Yardie or something?’

‘Please. Do me a favour!’

‘Well, I’m not a killer! I don’t do murder!’

‘What do you do? Apart from gamble?’

‘Fuck you!’

‘No. I’m serious, what do you do? ‘

This wasn’t a road H wanted to go down. Not now and not with her. ‘What is it with you and White Alan, anyway? What’s going on with you and him?’

‘We were lovers once. But not any more.’

‘So leave him! Like any normal woman!’

‘I’ve tried. But with a split of two-hundred-thousand pounds, I’d find it a lot easier. If you understand what I’m saying. Two-
hundred-thousand
-pounds.’ She stared at H as she repeated the numbers. Just in case he had missed it the first time. ‘The only sure way to get the money,’ she continued ‘is to get rid of him. Permanently.’

H was finding it all unreal. He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation.

‘There’s no way, Nina …’

‘I know exactly how …’

‘I’m not the man for that kind of …’

‘I’ve got the combination to the office safe. It’s five, five, two …’

‘No!’

‘… Six, three …’

‘NO!’ H shouted the word at the top of his lungs, spilling his shot of whiskey before she would stop.

But even then she didn’t stop. Or rather she did stop talking but that wasn’t the end of it. She rose, left the room, walked upstairs to her bedroom. H heard her rummaging around in a drawer or closet. She came back into the living room and gently placed something on the sofa next to H. It was a brand-new, fully-loaded, snub nosed Magnum 357.