High Street Drifter

'I forgot about him...'

'He wanks himself to sleep. Thinks I can't hear him...'

I felt the loss of her body as an absence of something precious, something vital. Like waking up after a succubus had been.

'I'll help you...'

She just lay there, her head upon her outstretched arm, one finger pointed at the skirting board...

My next shift with Ron wasn't till Saturday night. Maxine was out on a doctor's cert. Not even a call. Not even a paranoid-making text. But the ten grand in cash I found in an envelope in my locker was some small consolation...

We worked the rescheduled do in the function room. A fiftieth for Bernie. Family mostly, Polish birds from the bus station caff where she worked, friends of her kids...A shower of gannets and we were short staffed, forced to cover the floor and all.

Ron knew but he wasn't letting on. He overdid the blasé, like all of it had been some master plan of his that had come to fruition. We were so busy that we didn't get a chance to speak properly until we were cashing up.

'Sorry about the other night. I was fucked.'

'You ought to take better care of her, mate...'

He looked at me squint-eyed; lost count for a minute...Outside, someone was banging on the shutters.

'Go and...would you?'

It was Bernie's husband, a messy fucker like only a mick can be. He wanted the bar reopened. How dare we close the bar. He was an original member...A plasterer, a powerlifter gone to seed, multiple organ failure waiting to happen. One clean hit to the brain was all it would take. But I had to pacify him. I did them a round of cocktails on the house, eye-dropping Optrex into his Rusty Nail. He was groping his way to the bog before I made it back to the bar. Wearing chinos that night had been a schoolboy error...

Ron skinned up when he finished the tills.

'We earned this...'

You could actually watch the dope taking hold of him in real time, like he was turning into a Cuprinol man. I feigned smoking when I took the spliff from him. I needed to stay focused much as I needed him pliable...

I went to bring in some glasses and turf out the roadkill. A manky drunk operates on the same frequency as a spoiled five-year-old. You have to be agreeable but firm...

The floor of the lobby was all trampled chips and paper plates of mud cake. A claim waiting to happen...Odilo, the security guard, was trying to sweep up in the middle of a crowd waiting on taxis whose mood was ugly enough to begin with.

Who you fucking pushing, Frenchman?

Five or six generations of settled tinkers; cowboys, hustlers, whelping Madonnas, bruised whores, sob stories, sticky fingers...There are places where soldiers come from and always have done. Not around here. Not from the ranks of this sister-fucking scum...

A minibus pulled up outside. For Connors...Now they started kicking off over order of precedence. Odilo handled it. He'd been a useful middleweight at one time, back in Austria; said he'd fenced in college as well...

I helped him balloon the principal fuckwit from the mix, some mole-rat looking gimp from the Basin Estate. He'd lost face in front of his woman. The little cunts came back later on and tried to glass you as payback.

'My Dada is original members...'

'I don't give a fuck, you're barred. We have you on camera kicking off...And put your top back on...'

'You. Frenchman. You coming over here...' He spat at Odilo. 'I'll shave you, boy...'

If we'd touched him, we'd have had twenty of them jumping on. Then every one of them and their extended families would have sued us. All we could do was neutralize. We kettled him until he calmed down, keeping the rest of them at arm's length, but the cabs were coming steady now and the edge of the scene was blunted with each one that left.

'Frenchman...Come back for a drink later.'

'Maybe. Thank you. And tell Ron thanks for all his help...'

Ron was sitting exactly where I'd left him, thumb-sucking paranoid. And he used to say that dope made him a better grafter...

'Sounded fresh.'

'Tinkers. Usual pig opera. Odilo says to tell you you're a cunt. I'll do the floor if you do the skip...Can you manage?'

'One of us has to be back here. Until the money's in the safe...'

'I know the rules, Ron. I read the fucking Safety Statement.'

'Well, then...'

I saw him with Maxine's eyes, if only for a second. Saw the weeds she craved; the rose dropped on to the sinking coffin lid with grande dame panache; the post-afters quiet and clean air of her house. Her house...She could set about eliminating all traces of him. That's what it all comes down to in the end - a neglected headstone, a stock remembrance in the evening paper once a year, a bin liner of shit in the boot intended for Oxfam but never delivered. This was your life...

I took a pair of latex gloves from the box under the sink and stuffed them in my back pocket. Stuck the pick from the ice machine in my sock...

It was after two when we got out. I'd skinned up another spliff in the meantime, got two monster brandies down him. He was fucking rubber. I had to drag him to his car.

'I can drive...'

'Fuck off.'

I took the keys from him.

'I don't want to go home...I don't want to...Not with her there, cunt, she's a cunt, mate...'

'You already said.'

'Let's go find some bitches up in this motherfucker...'

'If you puke, I'll have you...'

He passed out long before we arrived at the common. I parked in the trees by the War Memorial, where the bug chasers and traps flog their holes. Best thing about shirtlifters is that they understand the importance of discretion, especially the married ones, the self-haters and Leviticus botherers who haunted the place. Even if they saw something, they wouldn't have seen anything. And like the cops would give a fuck about some snuffed-out degenerate...

'I know what you did...'

Ron was semi-conscious, drool-mouthed.

'Course you do. Max. Celie...All of your birds.' I snapped on the gloves. 'Nothing personal...'

His face crunched as I slammed it into the dashboard. I pulled his stunned head back, slipped the tip of the pick under his eyelid and pushed up...No Hollywood convulsions; nothing left to prove...If he'd lived half as smoothly as he died, he'd have done all right for himself...

I waited till his pulse faded, scoping out the darkness. There was a Land Rover parked in a thicket of trees away to the left but their line of vision was was blocked. I didn't need complications. All it had to look like was a trick gone bad...

Wallet, phone, satnav...One thing more...

I walked away, leaving the engine on standby. The catalytic converter on the dead leaves would take care of the rest...

Some enterprising rent boy had filmed the car exploding on his phone. It was all over the net for a few days before it was displaced by some other horrorshow or saccharine gross out. Thank fuck for novelty and micro attention spans...

They held the funeral afters in the members bar. A shit turn out. A handful of friends and neighbours, staff that weren't rostered that day like I was. Ron's family were either dead or estranged. Only one of his three brothers showed up, Simon, a textbook dodgy uncle from some Barkingside halfway house. The erstwhile black sheep...I watched him perving over Abby who, to be fair, was drunk out of her mind and falling out of her top. Maxine was staring into space, benzoed to catatonia, mithered with feminine support like she'd been since the cops had knocked on her door that morning...

The DS I'd talked to was an ex bootneck, an Iraq vet. That he could function at all was down to those PTSD support groups. Umm Qasr, he said. I knew a bloke who'd lost a leg there. You just get talking and before you know it, they've forgotten what they were asking about in the first place...

'And after you brought him home...?'

'I walked to the High Street and caught a cab back to the leisure centre to pick up my car...'

He nodded. They'd talked to the driver who'd remembered the fare; seen me on the car-park CCTV...

'And this, erm, lifestyle...Mr. Bunting had never given any indication of...?'

'Nah, not...I mean, Ron...Jesus, you think you know someone...'

'Sad business...It's the family I feel sorry for...'

...Abby reeled up to the bar, holding two empty slim jims.

'Oi, Lurch...Fucking...Two double vodka, one Red Bull...'

'Ice?'

The word seemed to offend her grievously. She had her mum's salt, her dad's lack of self-control. It was a poxy mix.

'What's your name then?'

'Paul.'

'Ron sucking your cock, was he?'

'Keep it down, love.'

'Don't fucking love me, you sick fuck...'

'Abs love, stop it...' Maxine came over and took her arm but she shook her off.

'How could he? How the fuck could you not know, Mum?'

The whole bar had gone quiet. She was only saying what was on everyone's mind...

'Come on pet, some fresh air...'

Simon copped an artful feel as he made to squire her away.

'I want a fucking drink! Get off me!' She dragged a tray of empties to the floor and started crying. 'I'm sorry, Mum. I'm so sorry...'

Simon led her outside, past a gallery of faces lost somewhere between pity and mortification. Maxine wanted to help me clean up but I wouldn't hear of it.

'Nice send off.'

'Nice, was it Paul...?'

The whites of her eyes were bloody yolk. Chewed lipstick, a foundation tide mark on her neck, a fraying button at her breasts...I got her a brandy but she pushed it away.

'I don't want it.'

'Settles the stomach...you know what I mean?'

'I need to see you...'

'Can you get away tonight? You know the Travelodge by the flyover?'

'No, but I'm sure I'll find it...'

Room 187. It was gone beyond a joke...

Maxine came late and in disguise. Horn-rimmed problematic glasses, an ink-black Cleopatra wig...I had her leave them on as we fucked with the avidity of newly sprung lifers. Passion and desire are all well and good but this was something else entirely, like the terminal stages of some brain parasite infestation. We cannibalized each other, vomited up the shredded flesh, then did it all over again. And again. And again...

There was grey light and birdsong outside when the fury abated. Maxine was naked on the floor, curled up like a foetus. I stepped over her on my way to the toilet, reassured by the slow rise and fall of her flank. At some stage, she had asked me to kill her. She had meant it as well...

I pissed shuriken, took stock of my wounds. Cat scratches, hatebites, an ache that extended all the way from my arsehole to the bridge of my nose...I had that look in my eyes too, one I hadn't seen since the aftermath of those dog days in Sangin. There comes a point in combat at which terror bleeds over into the purest elation; when you realize that the chaos and the horror, both within and without, are no aberration.

This is it. Your natural element. Welcome home, son...

She was sitting by the window when I returned, peeping through a gap in the curtains, looking out at the ricket-baby pallor of a London dawn, yet another disadvantaged day, blighted at the very point of conception.

'It's bright out ...'

'After six...We should leave the bar closed today. Mark of respect.'

'I've been waking up on the dot of half three every night. What time did you do it at...?'

'Do what?'

'Do what...' She giggled. 'And no, you are opening up today. We have that coffee morning...It's what he would have wanted.'

'Cause of all suffering, they reckon...'

I held her head from behind, smoothing back the hair at her temples like a stylist. Her scalp was raw from dragging, cruciform with welts.

'Now what?'

'Now? We watch the sun come up. We remember...'

I dropped the severed finger with its wedding band into her lap. She picked it up and touched it to her lips...