A White Arrest

‘Yeah, the fucker forgot to brush his teeth and I can guarantee he didn’t floss.’

The cricket captain was tending his garden when Pandy came by. A local character, he was so called because of the amount of times he’d ridden in a police car. His shout had been: ‘It’s the police, gis a spin in de pandy.’ They did.

Booze hadn’t as much turned his brain to mush as let it slowly erode. Norman had always been good to him, with cash, clothes, patience.

When Pandy told the drinking school he knew the famous captain, they’d given him a good kicking. Years of Jack, meths, surgical spirit had bloated his face into a ruin that would have startled Richard Harris.

He said: ‘Mornin’, Cap!’

‘Morning, Pandy. Need anything?’

‘I’ve an urge for the surge, a few bob for a can if you could?’ Once, Norman had seen him produce a startling white handkerchief for a crying woman. It was the gentleness, the almost shyness of how he’d offered it. Norman slipped the money over and Pandy, his eyes in a nine-yard stare, said:

‘I wasn’t always like this, Cap.’

‘I know, I know that.’

‘Went to AA once, real nice crowd, but the Jack had me then, they said I had to get a sponsor.’

‘A what?’

‘Sponsor, like a friend, you know, who’d look out for you.’

‘And did you get one?’

Pandy gave a huge laugh, said in a cultured voice: ‘Whatcha fink, take a wild bloody guess.’

Norman, fearful of further revelations, said: ‘I better get on.’

‘Cap?’

‘Yes?’

‘Will… will youse be me sponsor?’

‘Ahm…

‘Won’t be a pest, Cap, it’ll be like before but just so I’d have one. I’d like to be able to say it, just once.’

‘Sure, I’d be privileged.’

‘Shake.’

And he held out a hand ingrained with dirt beyond redemption. Norman didn’t hesitate, he took it.

When Pandy had gone, Norman didn’t rush to the kitchen in search of carbolic soap. He continued to work in the garden, his heart a mix of wonder, pain and compassion.

He’d be dead for weeks before his sponsor learnt the news.

‘You can’t just go round killing people, whenever the notion strikes you. It’s not feasible.’ Elisha Cook to Lawrence Tierney in Born to Kill

Kevin, without knowing it, used an Ed McBain title. As he greeted the ‘E’ crew with ‘Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.’

He was tripping out, had sampled some crack cocaine and gone into orbit, shouting: ‘I can see fucking Indians. And they’re all bus conductors.’

He trailed off in a line of giggles. When the crew had taken their first victim, they had also ‘confiscated’: a) a mountain of dope; b) weapons; c) heavy cash.

Kevin, sampling all these like a vulture on assignment, roared: ‘I love LA!’

Albert, worried, had asked: ‘Is it dangerous?’ Meaning the drugs, and got a nasty clip round the earhole.

‘Dope is risky for those who’re fucked up to start. See me, it’s recreational, like, that’s why they call them that.’

‘Call them what?’

He dealt Albert another clip and answered: ‘Recreational drugs, you moron. What is it, you gone deaf? Listen to that monkey’s shit. Wake up fella, it’s the nineties ending.’

He set up another line of the white.

Patrick Hamilton wrote: ‘Those whom God deserted are given a room and a gas fire in Earls Court.’

If homelessness is the final rung of the downward spiral, then a bedsit may be the rehearsal for desperation. In a bedsit in Balham, a man carefully pinned a large poster of the England cricket team to his wall. He stood back and surveyed it, said:

‘To you who are about to die — here is my salute.’

And he swallowed deep, then spat at the poster. As the saliva dribbled down the team, he half turned, then in one motion launched a knife with ferocity. It clattered against the wall, didn’t hold, fell into the line. He took a wild kick at it, screaming:

‘You useless piece of shit.’

The knife had come from Man of War magazine. Monthly, it catered for would-be mercenaries, Tories and psychos. Their mail-order section featured all the weapons necessary for a minor bloodbath. The ‘throwing knife’ was guaranteed to hit and pierce with ‘deadly accuracy’. The man dropped to the floor and began his morning regime of harsh exercises, shouted:

‘Gimme one hundred, mister.’

As he pumped, the letters on his right arm, burned tattoo-blue against the skin: SHANNON. Not his real name, but the character from Frederick Forsyth’s Dogs of War. Unlike the fictional character, he didn’t smoke, drink, drug. The demons in his mind provided all the stimulation he would ever need. Words hammered through his head as he pounded the floor:

Gimmie a little country or gimmie rock ’n’ roll but launch me to Armageddon I will smote the heathers upon the playing fields of Eton and low I will lay their false Gods of sporting legend I will I will I am I am the fucking wrath of the nineties. The new age of devastation.

‘Setting a Tone’

Brant and Roberts were sitting in the canteen. Not saying a whole lot. Both had newspapers, both tabloids. None of the Guardian liberal pose in here. In his office, Roberts kept the Telegraph on top, lest the brass look in.

They were comfortable, at odd times sometimes were. Grunts of approval, decision, amazement. Of course the obligatory male cry had to be uttered periodically to emphasise there were no pooftahs here:

‘Fwor, look at the knockers on ’er.’

‘See this wanker? He ate the vicar’s dog.’

Emboldened by the reassuring bonding of the sports page, Brant put his page down, had a look around, then took out his cigs, asked: ‘Mind if I do, Guv?’

Roberts raised his eyebrows, said: ‘And what? You’ll refrain if I do mind?’

Brant lit up, asked: ‘You packed ’em in, Guv. How long now?’

‘Five years, four weeks, two days and… Roberts looked at his watch, ‘…Nine hours. More or less.’

‘Don’t miss ’em at all, eh?’

‘Never give ’em a moment’s thought.’

Brant’s chest gave a rumble, phlegm screaming ‘OUT’ and he said: ‘You heard about the new kid. Tome?’

‘It’s Tone, but what?’

‘He answered a mugging call. An old-age pensioner was set upon by four kids. Took his pension. The usual shit. So, along comes the bold Tone, says: ‘Why didn’t you fight back?’

Roberts laughed out loud, said: ‘He never!’