He’s just another scared amateur trying to make things better but fucking them up worse.
Rob Stokes, playing the hard arse, the proper gangster.
What he’s seen in hip-hop videos and Al Pacino movies. All posture with none of the balls to back him up. I’m working for the real thing here, and whatever movie Stokes has been watching, it just bubbles and flares on the screen. He’s not living in the real world.
Uncle Morris Tiernan has been linked to the deaths of over thirty-seven men in his career. Some of them used to be mates. And Tiernan hasn’t done a day behind bars for any of them.
Rob Stokes has no idea who he’s fucking with.
He’s about to find out, though.
I bite into the toffee muffin and feel like throwing up. Drop the muffin onto the ground, put my head between my legs and spend all my time trying not to pass out. The sound of an engine makes me look up. Donna gets out of her car and looks at me with a mixture of disgust and pity on her face.
When I get into her Fiesta, she tells me to open the window.
‘You’re minging,’ she says.
“I know,’ I say. ‘And thanks for this.’
‘No problem,’ she says.
And for a moment, I actually believe her.
FORTY-THREE
I couldn’t fuckin’ stomach talking to them cunts. I sat in the corner of Dobsons by meself, had a large double brandy.
Them bastards was useless, fuckin’ useless. Bottlers.
I said we did summat to Innes, they looked at us like I was going mental.
‘Enough with the speed, Mo,’ said Rossie.
‘Aye, c’mon, Mo. You’re off your tits,’ said Baz. ‘We did his car. That could be enough, right?’
‘His car? His fuckin’ car? What’s the matter with youse cunts? Where’s your balls?’ And I were raging in that van, felt like knocking both their skulls off the bonnet until they went limp. And maybe it were the speed what made us itchy, but it weren’t just that, couldn’t have been. I looked in their faces and I knew that them bastards weren’t up for the real deal.
Aye, it were alright if you needed someone cut or knocked about, but you talked about killing a fucker, then they shit it.
Didn’t mind blood on their hands, unless it were the last drop spilled. Leave that to some other poor bastard like me.
I weren’t given up. Nah, I just had to factor in their cowardice. Just like everything, man. You want summat done, you got to do it yourself.
Always been the same. Back when we was kids, I were always the one with the ideas. Rossie and Baz, they was followers. Fuckin’ sheep. But now I were drinking, slowing, I realised summat: they wasn’t sheep no more, they was pawns.
They did like I said, else they’d end up the same way as Stokes were gonna be. I had me plans already drawn up for that cunt. And Innes. And Alison.
Alison most of all. Who the fuck did she think she were, eh? Little bitch, little fuclcin’ slag bitch, all playing the grownup one minute and spreading for any fuck and then sucking on a wowwy-pop the next. I didn’t mind when she up and said she wanted nowt to do with us. Nah, I didn’t mind. Bitch were fuckin’ pregnant, anyways. So I just gave her a fuckin’ kick in the gut and left it at that.
Homemade abortion, right?
Nah. Didn’t kick the bitch hard enough.
And I kept me mouth shut and so did Alison, ‘cause if Dad found out it were me what stuck it to her, we’d both be out.
Alison’s mam was a whore, and her little girl were just the same, but she were still a little girl and Dad always liked her more than he liked me. I must’ve reminded him of the fuckin’ shack-job what spawned us or summat ‘cause when I were a kid I used to look at meself in the mirror and I never looked a bit like me dad.
I drunk the brandy right down, like a warm hand on me gut. I’d bought a pack of Rothmans at the Paki shop and I lit one now, got out me seat and went to the bar. Got a pint of Guinness and brought it back to me table. You smoke like The Man, you drink like The Man, you become The Man.
Rossie tried to say summat to us, but I ignored him.
Slipped behind me table and took a sip of the black stuff.
This were it. Like I’d ripped me dad’s heart out and ate it, wore his skin like a fuckin’ suit.
All I’d wanted to do were take the fucker out. That were all.
Simple operation. Nobody would’ve missed Innes. Way I heard it, he had family in Jocksville, but he never talked to them no more.
Maybe Paulo would’ve said summat.
Fuck, I didn’t know no more. It might’ve been a risk worth taking, like. But then maybe it were the billy and the fuckin’ pills mangling me head and not letting us think right. And I had to think right.
But what the fuck, eh? Top and bottom were that because them bottling cunts didn’t let us do what I wanted, we lost the bastard. We’d swung by the hotel, I went inside, asked, ‘Did Mr Innes check out yet?’
The receptionist said that she couldn’t give out that information.
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I’m a mate of his. We was out last night on the piss and we lost him somewhere in town. I just wanted to make sure he got in alright, know what I mean? I’m his best man. He’s getting married. I’m his best man.’
Fuckin’ speed.
But she didn’t give up nowt.
So we was stuck here. All I could do was wait. Hoped the fucker hadn’t spotted us and hoped to fuck he gave us the call when he were supposed to.
FORTY-FOUR
The bath water is a notch too hot for comfort, but it feels like it’s easing some of the tension away. I’m laying back, my head on a blue flannel, staring at the shower that overhangs the bath. It smells good in here, despite mypresence. Donna’s bathroom is full of wee wicker baskets overflowing with soap. I’m playing with one shaped like an apple. Give it a sniff, and it’s uncanny.
Close my eyes, and I’d swear it was the real thing. I half think about taking a bite out of it, but then I’d have to finish it. I don’t think I could explain a half-eaten soap.
I can’t stay here. I think I’ve gone the limit with Donna’s hospitality, might have even crossed the line with this one, especially considering she dumped me twenty-four hours ago. My clothes are being washed right now and once they’re dry and I’m changed, I’ll be out that door and back in the game. Maybe pay her or something. I don’t know the etiquette. But I can’t afford to stay around. My body might be relaxed in the water, but my head’s all over the place. Every time I close my eyes I can feel the rain on my face.
Someone’s going to get proper fucked for this one, but I have to get out of this bath first.
The aches aren’t gone completely, and my back feels twisted out of shape. I don’t realise how bad it is until I try to get up and I can’t. Panic turns the water ice cold. I try to move my legs. They don’t shift, not even a ripple.
Christ. I’m paralysed.
I grab at the side of the bath and try to pull myself out, but the strength has long gone and I drop back, splashing water onto the floor. I’ve seized up from the waist down. My fingers hurt from gripping the bath and my
