To Die For (13 page)

‘So, that was that.’

‘That was that,’ Brenda said, throwing her arms out. Some of the coffee sploshed from her mug and I caught a smell of it and realized she’d laced it with vodka. I wondered what kind of night she’d had. I wondered if that was the reason she wanted me to tell her these stories, any stories that kept her from thinking about real life. The stories I was telling her were real, but they weren’t real to her. That’s what mattered.

‘I’d joined the Paras because I couldn’t think of anything else to do,’ I said. ‘When I thought of something else to do, I left. The government called it desertion. I didn’t care what they called it. I had to avoid the law for a while and then get a new identity, but that didn’t matter.’

I’d been lucky with that bullet, I told her. It had fragmented when it hit the other bloke’s helmet, and only a part of it had entered me. It had nicked the bone, chipping it, but that was nothing. It was so long ago now that I hardly thought about it. Whenever I saw the scar, something of the past flickered in my mind, but that was it.

I’d learned two things from my time in the army:

One: I was good with violence. I could take it and not mind. I could handle bad situations and not panic. I could kill.

Two: I wasn’t earning enough money.

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘That’s all there is.’

‘The End,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

She put another biscuit in her mouth and chomped on it and pulled her arm across to wipe away the crumbs. She drank some more of her coffee and pulled on her cigarette.

‘Tell me about the other ones,’ she said finally.

‘Which ones?’

‘All of them.’

‘It would take hours.’

‘I’ve got hours.’

‘You’ve got to sleep. You’re tired.’

‘Yes. I am tired. But I don’t want to go to sleep just yet. Okay?’

‘Okay. Which scar do you want to know about?’

‘Tell me about those ones on your back. The ones I kiss at night. I know them so well, and yet I don’t know a thing about them. I don’t understand them. I want to understand. Tell me a story, Joe.’

She used to say that to me sometimes. Tell me a story, like I could tell her something sweet and happy, something to lull her to sleep with.

‘After I left the Paras,’ I said, ‘I ended up in Sheffield, bouncing at a club, doing the odd strong-arm work, repoing, debt collecting, stuff like that. It wasn’t bad work. It paid okay, but it wasn’t enough. So I started putting out feelers, asking questions, making contacts. Soon, I met a man.’

Michael Sloane had done six years in Strangeways for armed robbery. That should have tipped me off, I suppose. Still in his twenties with a stretch behind him. Usually, the ones who get sent down are the ones too stupid to avoid it. But I was dumb and fed up with everything.

I was introduced to him by a man called Griggs. Griggs had said, ‘Bloke I know needs someone for a job. You interested?’ I’d said, ‘Yeah.’

And that was that. Easy.

‘Easy,’ Brenda said, a slight smile in her eyes.

It was a balaclava job, I told her.

‘A what?’

‘A balaclava job. A post office in Hemsworth.’

‘Right. Balaclava. Got it.’

She was starting to slur her words now.

Sloane had said, ‘We go in Tuesday morning, before the pensioners’ve collected their money. It’ll be ripe.’

‘He seemed to know what he was talking about,’ I said.

‘Did he?’ Brenda said. ‘Know what he was talking about, I mean?’

‘No.’

At 08.00, we pulled up outside a corner store along a small, grim, grey shopping parade. It wasn’t busy, but it wasn’t as deserted as Sloane had said it would be. Griggs was driving the car. Sloane got out, pulling down his balaclava. I followed. Sloane was carrying a shotgun. Nobody told me I needed to be tooled up. I’d thought someone would mention it. I’d thought they knew what they were doing. Sloane fished a crowbar out of the car boot and gave it to me, told me to stand there, told me he’d do the business and if anyone gave us grief to smack them with the crowbar.

We walked into the shop and along the aisles of canned goods and chocolate bars and dusty magazines. We reached the meshed-in cubicle at the back. Some old geezer with a cloth cap and a young pregnant woman with bags of shopping at her feet were waiting for service from a middle-aged Asian woman. The Asian woman looked up and saw Sloane and I saw straightaway that she wasn’t going to play ball. Her eyes widened with shock, and then anger kicked in. She waved her arm back and forth. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. Not again.’ Sloane raised the shotgun and told her to give him the money. She started to gather her till and collect the cash into a safety box, all the time waving a finger at Sloane.

Brenda was smiling.

‘She had guts, that woman.’

‘Yeah. More than Sloane did.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Threatened her, shouted at her, waved his shotgun about.’

Then the old bloke lifted his stick and started beating Sloane over the head with it. ‘Fucking bastard,’ he called Sloane. ‘Scum, the lot of you.’ Sloane covered his head with his arms while the old man pummelled him. Then the lady with the shopping bags started on him.

Brenda laughed.

‘I would’ve liked to have seen that,’ she said. ‘What did you do?’

‘I thought about helping him and decided, fuck him, and fuck Griggs too. The whole thing had been bodged. I was no professional at the game but even I could see that Sloane was an idiot. I turned and started to walk out. I heard Sloane shouting to me to help him, but I carried on walking.’

And that was how I got shot the second time. Sloane let off both barrels at me. It was a sawn-off and he was being knocked about and I was a good twenty feet away, so the scatter pattern of shot sprayed half the window and shopfront. But some of it hit me in the back and I ended up sprawled over the magazines and by the time I was outside the back of my shirt was soaked in blood. I reached into the car, pulled Griggs out, and drove off.

‘God,’ Brenda said. ‘You were lucky you weren’t killed.’

‘Damned lucky.’

‘What happened to the others? Sloane and Griggs?’

The cigarette burned between her fingers, the mug sat on the table, her hand holding it loosely. She seemed to have forgotten about all that. She seemed to have forgotten everything for a moment, caught up in the sad story of a sad fucking life that I was telling her. I suppose she at least forgot about her own sad story while I was telling her mine. Maybe that’s what stories are all about, forgetting. I guess she knew this better than I did.

‘I don’t know what happened to them,’ I said. ‘They probably ended up doing long stretches somewhere – they must have done – but they didn’t have my real name so they couldn’t grass me up. I’d been stupid, but I was clear. Like you say, I was lucky.’

And that was that.

‘That was that,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

Afterwards, I came back to Tottenham. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I’d learned my lesson.

She mashed her cigarette.

‘Promise me you won’t get shot again,’ she said, flattening the cigarette, squashing it too much, concentrating all her effort on it.

‘I can’t do that,’ I said.

She finally abandoned the cigarette. After a while, she looked at me.

‘I don’t want you having any more scars. Please. Promise me.’

‘I was stupid before. I worked with idiots. I promise I won’t do that again.’

‘Promise me you won’t get shot.’

‘How can I?’

‘I don’t care if you don’t mean it, Joe. I don’t care if you lie or pretend. Just tell me, promise me. Promise me that I won’t have to see any new scars on you.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I won’t get shot. You won’t have to see any more scars.’

Well, part of that was true. She wouldn’t ever have to see a new scar.

‘Tell me a story, Joe,’ she’d say.

The bullet slammed into my shoulder, spinning me around, throwing me backwards. The walls disappeared and the floor raced up and smashed into my face. I hit it like a sledgehammer pounding into stone. I didn’t know what was happening. The floor was where the room should have been and someone was driving a red-hot poker into my flesh, and it was endless, unbearable. The pain pulsed through me, into my marrow. I didn’t know where I was, I just felt the pain and the floor pushing into my face. I was in a house, I was in the Falklands, I was in a hospital, I was on the canvas, I stood above a dead man with eyes open and lips pulled back. Everything clouded around me, darkened, and became blurred. An age-old instinct screamed at me to get up. I tried to use my arms to push myself but my left arm collapsed me into a heap. Hot fluid touched my cheek. My left arm felt cold and split by electric pain that ran from my fingers to my neck and down my spine. I tried again to stand, bringing my knees up and using my right arm. It was funny, I felt so useless. I almost laughed. I felt stupid. I was a kid again in the ring. I could see myself from up high, flailing about. Blackness and sickness and a spinning dizziness welled and faded and welled again, and the floor moved from side to side. Something red and shining moved slowly in front of my eyes. I knew it was my own blood. There was a lot of it. I saw a gun on the floor. It was my gun. Someone was dead. I had to get out of here. There’d been an explosion. A gunshot. Someone had been shot. People had been shot. I’d been shot.

With my good arm, I pushed myself up on to my knees. I stayed like that for a moment while I let the sickness and confusion sink. I remembered where I was, what I was doing there. I remembered a girl’s face. I felt a cold sweat break out over me. I was losing blood quickly and it was making me feel faint and weak. I had to get out of here. People would’ve heard the gunshot. Police would be coming. They responded quickly to reports of gunshots. They came in heavy. I had to get out of here.

I managed to stand. I swayed. I saw my gun on the floor. I saw my blood. I turned.

I saw her then. She was curled up in a ball. She was still in the wardrobe. The gun she’d used was on the floor in front of her. It was a .32 automatic and I’d taken it from less than three feet away. If it had been a 9-mil, I wouldn’t have got up.

I picked up my gun and stumbled out. It was hard going; I’d never done anything so hard. Tabbing miles with 140-pound loads over ankle-breaking terrain in bitter cold; fighting the last eight rounds of a twelve-round fight with a broken hand – that shit was easy. This was hard. The blood didn’t seep, it poured. The pain pulsed through me, but my left arm was getting cold. It was hanging like meat, swaying at my side. I needed to fix it, but I couldn’t stop. I wanted to rest, to lie down and let the swirling fog overtake me. I had to get out.

I should’ve questioned the girl. She might have seen who killed Beckett. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was on the stairs now and they fell away before my eyes. I leaned against the wall and slid along it, stumbling down, trying not to fall. I should’ve killed the girl. She’d tie me to the killings. It was too late. I couldn’t go back. I could hardly go forwards.

I was fighting hard not to faint, pulling on every flicker of strength I had, trying to hate, trying to push the adrenalin through me. That was my only chance. At the bottom of the stairs, my legs gave out and I hit the floor. I wanted to stay there. I wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep, but something in my mind took over. I went on to auto. I got back up and pushed myself away from the wall. The front door was only yards away. It was miles away. I put one foot before the other. I was learning to walk all over again.

I made it through the door. The fresh air helped; I sucked it in. I gathered all my strength, gritted my teeth. I said, ‘Move, you bastard.’

I moved.

My car was across the road. All I had to do was get there. All I had to do was put one foot in front of the other. No fucking problem. I put one foot down. And again. And again.

I opened the car door and threw my gun inside. I held on to the door and fell in.

My heart was thumping now and pumping out blood quickly. It was pouring right out of me. I pulled my belt off and tried to make a tourniquet, but I couldn’t get the belt tied off, not with one arm.

I put the key in the ignition and started the engine, but I couldn’t change gear. I couldn’t move my fucking left arm. With my right hand, I let off the handbrake and put the car into first and let off the clutch. The car lurched forward and smashed into the car in front and stalled. I tried to put it in reverse.

I opened my eyes. It was dark. I didn’t know where I was. Then the pain hit and I remembered. I’d fainted, I knew that. There were no police, so I must’ve been out for a minute only. Something was there, though. Next to me. And then I saw her.

She stood next to the car. She was a foot away, looking at me. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open like she was looking at a magic trick or a dangerous animal in the zoo. I grabbed her and said, ‘Who killed Beckett?’ She just looked at me. ‘Who was it? Did they say anything? Did you see them?’

I shook her. She was so thin. She was skin and bone. She rattled.

Each time I tried to focus, the pain would surge and splinter my body.

It had to be Cole, of course, who’d killed Beckett. He’d found Beckett and sent some men to get his money back. So, if Cole had the money, he must also know that I hadn’t taken it, that Beckett had fucked me over. So I was probably clear with Cole. But the police...

But it couldn’t have been Cole. The door was unbolted, hadn’t been smashed.

The police would arrive soon, and in force. And they’d be looking for me.

My mind was clouding over again.

Beckett had let them in. He wouldn’t have let Cole in. He knew who he was letting in. He’d trusted them.

I didn’t have time to think. I couldn’t fuck about with the girl.

I let her go. I thought she’d run away. She didn’t. She stood and watched me.

‘Go,’ I said.

I was supposed to kill her, wasn’t I? She’d identify me to the law. Big man, blood leaking out of his arm. Christ, there were probably a hundred things that tied me in to the house. Besides, maybe she could clear me with the law, tell them who’d done the killings.