from way back, when hard men were genuinely hard). Then, quietly, he said, “No sweat, Erik. I’ll even string it out a bit, just so your friends get their money’s worth.”
Best’s laughter filled the car. It sounded genuine, but Marty knew that you could never be sure with a man like Erik Best.
The silent driver guided the car off the motorway and along the minor roads. They were several miles out of the city, where the countryside began to encroach and cancel out the manmade structures. Not too far away, the Scottish borders demarcated the ancient boundaries between the old tribes of the Britons and the Picts: it was a place of ruined castles and ley lines; of ancient stone cairns, secret underground waterways and the spirits of the marauding dead. The land was steeped in a history that Marty had only ever learned about in school. The real stories — the petty wars and the personal politics and the blood that had drenched the earth — were something of which he knew very little. But still it scared him. He feared these open spaces, seeing glimpses of an ancient world that he could never truly know. Strip away the urban glamour, the cars and the suits and the money, and all you had left was the bare earth… and the old bloodstains that would never truly fade.
The farmhouse loomed on the horizon. It was an old structure, all ancient timber beams and locally quarried stone, and as far as he knew nobody had lived here for decades. Erik Best ran a lot of his entertainments out of this place: dog fights, sex and drug parties, and of course the bare knuckle bouts upon which he’d built his reputation.
As they drew closer to the old building, Marty saw people milling about on the grass outside the Barn, located several yards away from the main building. The lights were on in the house, but the doors were open and the majority of the select guests had already begun to gather at the place of combat.
“They’re all ready for you, me lad. Let’s not let them down, eh?”
Marty said nothing. He checked the wrappings on his hands and did a few neck-stretching exercises. He was limber this evening, but there was always room for a little more flexibility. The key to this kind of gig, he knew from experience, was a combination of stamina and flexibility. With those two elements in place, you could easily outdo brute strength. If you knew what you were doing.
And Marty knew what he was doing.
They parked the car slightly away from the other vehicles — mostly four-wheel drive yummy-mummy school-run models, but with a couple of Mercs and Beamers parked alongside them. The driver stayed where he was, and Best climbed out, going round to the rear to open the door for his star attraction.
Marty nodded and got out of the car. “Thanks,” he said, scanning the area. He’d been here before, a handful of times, so he already knew the layout. The last time he’d been at the farm, it had been for one of Best’s infamous parties, but the time before that was for a bout in the Barn against a wiry gypsy blessed more with aggression than with ring sense.
“You ready, marra?” Best stood before him; the top of his head came up to Marty’s chest. He was small, but he was deadly. Sometimes people forgot this fact, and they always came off the worse for it.
“Fuck, yes.” Marty clapped his hands together and started to jump up and down on the spot, short, sharp movements meant to get his circulation going, to get his buzz on. The air was warm; the sky was strangely bright for this time of the night. He unzipped his tracksuit top, turned around, and threw it into the car. He was pumped; the muscles in his arms and shoulders felt tight, in a good way. He was
Best walked over towards the infamous Barn and Marty followed. He threw some quick air punches, snapping them back just for show. He rolled his head on his neck and shrugged his shoulders. He made his face neutral; he wanted to give nothing beneath the surface away, he had to protect what was inside, behind the mask he always wore.
Fear surged through his body, starting in his belly and spreading out along his limbs. He bit down on the terror, swallowing it back down, consuming it and taking raw power from it. This was what he had cultivated, when he would condition his body as a teenager. All those small cuts, the burning cigarettes, and all the times he had held his forearm to the flame of the gas cooker in the kitchen. It was all done to summon this fear: the fear of Humpty Dumpty and the beatings his father had dished out in the name of discipline.
“Humpty Dumpty,” he whispered, tasting the words, the regurgitated fear, the horror that had dogged him for twenty years and taken on the form of a nursery rhyme because that was the only way he could think of to deal with the cold, dark feelings that gnawed away at his insides.
He remembered the trees up along the edge of Beacon Green, and the small, fat thing that sat in the branches of his memory, gibbering and giggling and spitting as he watched it swinging its legs and slapping its egg- like torso. The thing that was never too far from his dreams, the creature that could simply not have existed… but it had; the monster was fact, not fiction.
Humpty Dumpty was real. He had seen it, twenty years ago, hours before he and his friends had followed the figure they’d christened Captain Clickety into the Needle and lost a slice of their summer, their lives, their fucking childhood.
Best spoke to a lot of people as they made their way to the Barn, but Marty ignored them all. The designer suits and the dresses, the leering, sweaty faces and the wet mouths that bayed for blood. They were worse than animals, these people; all they wanted was to see someone get hurt, anyone. It didn’t even matter who got trashed, or how much money was lost in the process. As long as they got a glimpse of bloodshed, and heard the sound of bones cracking, they were happy. They would go home and they’d fuck each other senseless, thinking of the blood-stained combatants they’d seen, pretending that they were tough enough to get inside the ring and trade fists with a brutal stranger. Telling each other that they understood what it meant to be a man.
Marty knew that he was a stand-in, nothing but a rich couple’s role-play: they barely even saw him as a real person, just an extension of the video games they played and the action films they watched as they snorted cocaine off the lid of a DVD case. He hated these people; he wanted to break them all into little pieces and piss on the remains. But instead, he’d be their show pony and take their money, and go back to the flat to patch up his injuries ready for the next time.
He knew his place, and they knew theirs. This was how the world worked: there were those who paid and those who played, and then there were those — like Erik Best — who
Marty had once been present when Best had accepted a delivery of business cards. Small, neat font, good quality ivory card; they must have cost a lot of money.
The words stamped on the front had said:
Erik Best knew his place, too.
They entered the Barn, walking in through the open double doors. Everyone crowded in alongside them or behind them, being careful not to jostle in case they prompted some early violence. Marty smiled.
There must have been thirty or forty people present, but the noise was kept to a level that would not be heard from the road. Marty wasn’t sure about the logistics of these bouts or how Best managed to organise them and keep the authorities away, but they were usually low-key affairs with the details and guest list kept secret until the last possible minute. It took a lot of money to buy your way in, and once you were there it still didn’t mean you were guaranteed a return visit. Everything was at the whim of the organiser. Best kept a tight rein on things, and he enjoyed keeping people guessing. Nobody would ever take him for granted.
A crude ring had been set up at the centre of the barn, enclosing an area of approximately six metres square — near enough to regulation boxing ring size to suggest that somebody had at least taken the preparations seriously. There was straw scattered on the floor, long stakes had been driven into the ground at each corner, and sagging lengths of old climbing rope lashed it all together. Marty remembered this set-up from last time: it was surprisingly sturdy, and the stakes had held even when he’d thrown his last opponent against one of them, almost snapping his spine. There were lighting rigs strung across the ceiling, but the halogen bulbs were not quite powerful enough to dispel all the shadows. The interior of the Barn had a dusty atmosphere, as was fitting.
“Can you smell it?” Best turned to face him, raising his strange blond eyebrows. “Can you smell all that fucking middle-class cash?” His smile was wolfish, and his skin was moist with sweat. He looked… Marty struggled for the right word, and then settled on
