Wreckage (22 page)

—Fer fuck’s
sake
. Cross-legged man’s head rotates again. —Fuckin gob on
you
, lad. Can’t yeh just fuckin button it? Important friggin film, this, not that you’d know fuck all about that. Youse wanner gab all fuckin night, take it out to the friggin yard or summin an lerruz watch the fuckin film in peace. Honest to God.

He turns back to face the telly. Darren says:

—Ey, lad.

And Herbie gulps heat.

Swivelhead again. —Wha?

—Want yer fuckin face ripped, cunt?

The man sneers. —By
you
?

—By
me
, yeh.

—Wanner friggin try it? Come ed, then, prick.

He stands. He is big. Floor-bound faces crane up at him then at Darren as he stands too, shrugging off Herbie’s entreating hand as he does so and the big man steps forward and Darren’s right hand strikes like
a
snake. No blade flashes or catches the light from the TV screen, nothing like that, just Darren’s hand darts in the half-dark and seems to slap the other man’s cheek yet there is no retort, no sound of crack or clapping just that one swiftly swiping arm.

One or two gasps. Herbie groans low: —Aw fuckin hell man …

The big man stops dead, raises one hand to his face. He takes that hand away to examine it for blood and as he does so and against the pale blue light of the TV that side of his face yawns away. Little blood as yet except that splashed across the television screen in a dotted line across Laurence Fishburne’s head, just that slow splitting in two of his face as one cheek sags to show teeth where teeth should never be seen.

Darren leaves to screams. A big black guy stands in his way, gold teeth and necklace gleaming, blocking the door. Boxing gloves in the colours of the Jamaican flag on a thick chain around his neck.

—You want some n all, lad? Darren says. Looks him sneering up and down. —Youse Yardies and yer fuckin bling. Nowt down for yeh.

Dull blade. Hooded eyes regarding Darren as the black guy steps aside and Darren leaves the uproar behind him.

Insane dogs again in the garden. The brandished rolling pin.

—See yeh, Jegsy.

—What’s goin on in there, Darren? What’s all the fuckin fuss about?

—Fuck knows, mate. Don’t ask
me
. Think some
little
blert’s OD’d or summin. Am out of here before the bizzies tern up. Fuckin amateurs, lar, eh?

Jegsy from his deckchair watches Darren leave the garden and barks at the dogs to shut up but this time they don’t, panicked as they are by the sounds of chaos from the house, the screaming and the shouting. Jegsy sighs and rubs his face. Never easy, this shit. Nothing ever is. All is chaos. Ash is everywhere.

Darren, small in the street, running down towards the lit city. Across waste ground of weed and wreckage where a tree of flame once stood, a tree of fire with a lifespan measurable merely in minutes yet an aeon in its echoing.

The concourse at Central Station is heaving and long lines stretch from the ticket offices, watched over by a pair of transport police like buzzards; black-dressed, hands clasped behind their backs with their elbows spread like wings. Alastair joins one queue of rush-hour length and waits patiently, the rucksack held to his chest at all times and when at last he reaches the window he buys a one-way ticket to Wrexham. He shows his ticket to the police at the barrier and they nod him through and he goes straight to the manky public toilet at the top of the escalators and enters one of the cubicles there and drops the toilet lid and sits on it, the sack of money at his feet on the pissy tiles. He holds his face in his hands. He examines his fingernails, badly bitten. He notices a glory-hole in the left-hand wall of the cubicle and takes out his keys and scores in the paint around it these words:

DARREN’S COCK HERE

MMM SUCK IT BOYS MMM

Then he takes up the rucksack and leaves the toilet and descends the escalators to the underground and boards the next West Kirby train and alights at Bidston where he waits twenty minutes for the Wrexham train, he alone on the empty platform in the dusk dropping on to the marshland surrounding and the zipping lights and perpetual muffled roar of the motorway and beyond that the high lights of the tower blocks beginning to snap on in the marooning sky. A New Brighton train passes and he regards the passengers on it, their featureless faces blank and purulent under the fluorescent bulbs like yellow water. Like a train of the drowned. The Wet Hell Express. He smokes three cigarettes in succession as he waits for his train shivering in the cold and when it arrives he gets on and finds a window seat but soon he can see nothing except his own reflection, soft doppelgänger in the streaky glass, and the illuminated names of the stations the train calls at, those on the Wirral southbound like Neston and Parkgate and then abruptly those in a different tongue as he enters North Wales like Pen-y-ffordd and Gwersyllt and Caergwrle, where on the opposite platform northbound the signs point now in the direction of Lerpwl. Not far from here, she was born. Nearby, his grandmother was born he thinks but what vast barriers she had to cross both physical and in the form of the Eryri range and others. Others which he can comprehend but never really articulate,
kin
to the Cymric signs that flash past the reflecting window; on the inside, he can pronounce these words.

Wrexham; Dean’s do. Two nights ago?
Last
night was it? Jesus, how eager time seems to die. To escape the burden of its appointed role and office. Life itself in its headlong rush like this train. One hurtle through a drizzly darkness.

He gets off at Wrexham General and climbs the stairs alongside the racecourse ground where he went once to see Tranmere play just for the chaos in it and he legged it when the locals began to pelt the group he was in with bottles and he hid beneath a bush on the platform until the train came. He crosses this bridge over the railway track and carries his sack which seems very heavy now into the edges of the town to the bus station where the many bays and waiting buses bewilder him, as do the wall-mounted timetables with their confusing place names and times like some arcane treatise on the movements and reactions of ferrous metals. The booking office is closed but he can see a uniformed man in there behind the counter so he raps on the window with a knuckle. The man ignores him so he raps harder and then the man looks up.

—We’re closed.

—Aye, I know, but I need to get to Cilcain.

—Where?

—Cil. Cain.

The man approaches the door so he need not raise his voice.

—Where’d yew say?

—
Cilcain
.

—Next bus quarter to seven.

—In the morning?

—Yes. The man nods and gives Alastair a look. —Or yew could always get a taxi.

Alastair leaves, approaches the cab rank and asks the lead driver the fare to Cilcain. The quoted price seems absurdly high so he traverses the bus station, weaving between waiting travellers and over and around the swaying or prostrate jakeys these places seem for some reason to attract and enters the big grey bunker of a pub propped up against the row of shut shops.

Noisy bar. Some footy on the big screen. Ally asks one of the bar staff the price of one night’s single room and the price is reasonable, is at least a lot lower than that quoted by the cabbie so he accepts it and is shown upstairs to a small and stuffy but clean-seeming room, bed table portable telly shower and hospitality tray, with an unrestricted view across the bus station. Alastair showers quickly then takes some money out of the sack and hides the sack beneath the bed and goes down to the bar and finds a seat in a corner and drinks until he is drunk and says not one word to anyone or even himself and when the bell rings and the lights flash to signify last orders he throws whisky into himself and ascends the stairs to his room like a pinball, bouncing from corridor wall to corridor wall and finds the door to his rented room and enters it after several bungled attempts to get the key in the lock and collapses clothed on the bed. He gurgles as he snores. On top of much money.

Peter’s up at the bar. Peter the Beak. Must be sweltering in that long black leather coat but he
never
takes
it
off. Told Darren once that it was like Samson’s hair, that he’d lose all his special powers if he ever took it off.
What
frigging ‘special powers’? Divvy.

Darren taps him on the shoulder and he turns and grins and they punch fists.

—What y’up to, Dar?

—Tryna find Alastair. You seen him?

—Alastair?

—Aye, yeh know, dopey twat, always wears a baseball hat.

—Oh,
him
.

—Aye, yeh. Seen im, well?

—Tonight?

—Yeh.

Peter shakes his head. —Not for days, man. Weeks, even. Last time I saw him he was with you.

—Aye, well, he’s not tonight. Need to find the cunt, tho. If yeh see him make suren give me a bell, yeh? I’ll av me moby on.

—Alright. What happened to the face?

Darren taps his nose. —Keep
this
out. He turns to go but suddenly remembers something. —Ey, guess who
I
saw thee other day?

Peter shrugs.

—That berd you were seein. That cracked slapper who strangled her boyfriend, what’s her name now?

—Kelly? Peter is abruptly upright, back straight, taller than Darren. —Where djer see
her
?

—Chester. Adder kid with her n all. Lil baby, like.

—Chester?

—Yeh. Just crossin the road, norra bother on her. Merdrin fuckin whoo-er if yeh ask me, like.

Peter’s face unreadable as he thinks. Darren taps the side of his nose and makes a sniffing sound. —Info like that’s werth a wee bump, Peter, innit?

—Not carryin tonight, Dar. Night off. But I’ll make sure yeh get boxed off soon as, yeh?

—Aye, well. See that yeh do.

Bighead longcoat arsewipe and Darren leaves the bar and once outside his mobile gets a signal and immediately it screams at him to indicate incoming text. It’s from Tommy. He reads it:

DAZ

ALLS SOUND

MONEY BACK

NO PRBLMS

GIZ CALL M8

He reads it twice, deletes it then presses the hash key and puts the phone to his ear. Tommy answers on the third ring.

—Darren. Where
are
yeh, lad?

—Just got yer text, Tommy.

—Aye. Yeh haven’t been answerin yer friggin phone, av yeh?

—Tryna find that fuckin Alastair, that’s why. Been all over the fuckin city an –

—Fergerrit, lad. No need any more. We’ve got the money back, every fuckin penny. Get yer arse round ere an yeh can take yer share an we can avver toot an a bevvy, alright? To celebrate, like. Sound with that?

—This straight up, Tommy?

—Wha?

—Straight up, all this? Money back an all that, God’s honest truth?

—God’s honest truth, lar. Al tell yeh all about it when yeh get ere. Am choppin the beak up now an Lenny’s pourin the Baileys. Want someone to come an fetch yeh?

—Nah, yer alright. I’m only round the corner.

—Alright well.

—See yiz in ten.

—See yiz in ten.

Darren ends the call. Tommy’s voice was calm. He even sounded happy. Trust here in this world is as faint as the breath of a moth’s wing but without it there is only an abyssal plunge. Only friction burns on your face from the speed of the passing air because
that’s
how fast you fall.

Darren walks down into the city centre, hands in pockets, fingers caressing the metal of the Stanley knife. Has a life of its own, it’s thirsty for blood. It’s like a tiger. No,
he’s
the tiger, Darren is, terrible beast of prey stalking the night-time city, ravening, of immense and terrible power. Huge he is and hungry. He’ll be in ozzy now, that rude bastard round at Herbie’s. Getting his kite stitched up. Deserved it, tho, the gobshite. No fuckin manners. Tryna make Darren look small, well who’s the dickhead
now
, eh? Bastard. Deserved it. Asked for it. They always,
always
do.

The beams from the Tower restaurant have been turned off now but some pollution palling the city still casts a reddish sheen on the moon’s face. Darren looks up at it, it lights his way, it leers into Alastair’s cheap rented room scores of miles away. Blood-red
visage
of a wrathful god regarding them all, all who mix and move and sleep and walk and all the buildings and vehicles they exist within.
Everything
they have built.