Ask Roy what he believes in. Ask if he’s going to hell, or if there’s just a blank space after all this, and he’ll say what he always says. He’ll say: “Jesus is a friend of a friend.”
That way suits Roy. That way he doesn’t have to worry about forgiveness. But sometimes – while he’s on the job, sitting in stolen cars, lurking in empty car parks, suspended between unkept bushes and rust-fused trolleys – he wishes there were someone, something, to deliver him. Because the waiting gets boring. And after so long dealing with people, or waiting to deal with people, it’s boredom that does his head in most.
Hiding here in twilight, Roy wishes he were already at the Rose. His comfy chair at the back. Half a shandy, two bags of peanuts. He yawns, keeps yawning, keeps wanting to pack it all in and go straight over there. How much was tonight’s job even worth, anyway? He coughs, startles himself. There’s no doubt he used to enjoy all this sneaking about – the window-watching, the note-taking. It’s just that now it feels so glamourless.
One eye on the target. One eye on the time –
But what else can he do?
So Roy sips from a flask of tepid coffee, smokes a pair of prison rollies back to back. He flicks through an offnet mobile rammed with porn. Checks his mirrors. Tries to rub away the comedy circles around his eyes. He rolls three more cigarettes in as many minutes. He scratches his groin. And then he tries to focus. He takes out his revolver – an import from the former Yugoslavia, an officer’s gun – and chambers a pair of cartridges.
All as he watches and waits and watches and listens. Then waits some more.
He thinks: All this time on your own can’t be good for the soul. He thinks: What soul? Maybe, despite the cash his handler stumps up, glamour’s the wrong word anyway. Not for Roy: a fixer, tinkerer. Your man-down-the-pub.
And yet Roy’s become so skilled at waiting. These days he breathes for this concrete – these car parks, the levelled terrain behind disused bingo halls, demolished shops, abandoned malls. He lives to wait. Because suddenly it’s worth it – all the patience, all the rituals:
When his mark steps out of the squat, a woman in tow.
Roy opens the car door. Unfurls, stretches. He turns to his mark and tilts his head; watches the couple as they move across the tarmac.
Walking just ahead of the mark, the woman strikes a match for a cigarette. She seems to exhale her first drag for a long time. Her hair’s updoed, beehived. She smokes with teen surl.
The mark looks concave, harried – feeble light betraying a run of misspent years. He catches up with her again and they walk in step, half-committed somehow, not quite hand-in-hand.
Roy approaches them, the revolver stuffed in his coat pocket.
“Evening,” he says. He’s far enough away that the wind might easily carry it off, yet close enough for the tone to register. The two of them pause and double-take.
“Evening,” he says again, and cracks a smile.
The couple squint. They take in the man before them: shining bald, a heavy winter coat, with something like claw marks running across his scalp.
The mark speaks first. “We know you?”
Roy keeps coming. “Me? No. Not yet.”
The woman turns to the mark. Roy’s seen it all before. He knows her heart will be going – that her throat’s catching when she swallows. From her stance he’d say her legs have seized as well.
Roy scans left, scans right. Nobody else, only the husks of burned-out cars. A road sign spitting error messages.
The mark pushes a shoulder in front of the woman and puffs himself up.
So Roy counters – quickens his pace. “Keep still for me,” he says.
The mark edges forward to eclipse the woman. Possibly still wondering if Roy means him. “You what?”
Roy reaches for his revolver. He imagines a crack running from his feet to theirs. He knows at this range, them standing this way, he’d likely tag them both with one shot. He can almost feel the revolver’s kick – the violence of it running through his forearm, absorbed in the elbow, triceps. A warm feeling, rare but addictive.
The woman murmurs something. Her dry lips catch and roll up on her teeth.
“Elbows or knees?” Roy asks.
The mark raises a hand. Can’t work this out.
Roy shakes his head. “I don’t do fingers.”
The mark looks upset. “What’s up with you, pal?”
The woman drops her cigarette and darts.
“That your missus, that?” Roy asks, tilting his head towards her.
“N-nah,” the mark says. “Just some bird–”
Roy nods slowly, watching her go. Then he says, “Are we going elbows or knees?”
“I don’t get you,” the mark says.
So Roy raises his revolver and fires once into the air. The crack splits the night, sets distant dogs barking.
Now the mark gets it. It spreads over him like glue. He falls to his knees and goes rigid. Roy finds it oddly brave – this acceptance the mark’s past has come to find him. That his past has teeth.
Roy looks beyond his mark to the woman. She’s out as far as the car park boundary, the scrub that fringes a denuded petrol station. “Fast her, isn’t she?” he says. She vanishes, and Roy shrugs. “Anyway. You know why I’m here.”
The mark nods without looking up.
“And you know who sent me?”
The mark nods again. “Think so. Yeah.”
Roy frowns – all he can do to look sympathetic. “Alright,” he says. “Doesn’t make it easier, though. Just means I say less.”
The mark deflates. “It was self-defence,” he says. “I swear down. We were off our heads. He comes up through the window and we get jumpy, so I pull my cannon and–”
“Listen,” Roy cuts in. “I’m not judging. I don’t care what happened.”
The mark quietens. He rocks forward, a confessor baring his neck.
“Alright,” Roy says again. “Let’s get on with it. You left or right-handed?”
“L-left,” the mark tells him.
Roy shakes his head. “Cack-handed as well? Christ, man. How’s about we do your right? That way you can still write our friend a sorry letter.”
The mark wilts. He gazes up at Roy with his elbows in the gravel, his hands twisted together.
Roy kneels by him, scans once more for trouble. The car park’s still desolate. The mark is silent, slack. A trolley train creaks. No life in the squat. Lost carrier bags skiffle across the concrete. Roy, knowing now that deliverance won’t come today, puts a fatherly hand on the mark’s head and his pistol in the crook of the mark’s right arm, and says to him: “Sometimes we’ve got to learn the hard way.”
The mark mewls.
“Let’s count to three, yeah? You and me together.”
And the mark nods, nods, nods along –
“Good lad. Ready?”
Roy and his mark say it slow:
“One–”
But Roy being Roy he fires on two.
The North Wales coast under boundless sky. Two children, a boy and a girl, poke at dying fish with twigs, the ocean swell leaving grey foam between their toes. The fish are bland, silver-flanked. The boy’s organized his in a line. Nudged by the foam, a few of them still twitch in the sand.
The girl – Melanie – has scored the head off one of hers, and it stares up dumbly. She decides it looks miserable like that, so she flicks the head away.
The boy feels weird in his stomach. Melanie keeps threatening to remove her own glass eye, mainly because she can.
“Don’t you want to see?” she keeps asking him. “Don’t you, don’t you?”
The children have just met. Their parents are somewhere nearby – one of the group laughing deeply, taking pictures with a loud camera, a big camera. His father, most likely. The boy is itching. Melanie’s pasted with cream. The parents don’t see. Once more she threatens him. Once more he squeals and looks away.
Finally Melanie puts her fingers to her face.
“Look,” she tells him. “It’s not scary.”
The boy pleads and smells the salted air.
Melanie laughs. She’s done it anyway. Her fake eye has popped out, is cradled in her hand.
The boy looks at her socket. He can see the insides of her head.
In the new Manchester, 2025, you have to find new ways to make ends meet. It’s why Sol and his partner Irish drive about in a recovery truck looking for donors to steal.
Their little scheme goes like this: you see a driver, you scan their car, you agree to tag it. You go out early on your first run – early when commuters are preoccupied with getting in safely; getting in without getting jacked. And because it’s bitter in the city – autumn on the turn – the weather helps too: wipers smear in the misty rain, and damp interiors easily steam up the windows.
Of course, nine times out of ten your commuter will park somewhere safe, somewhere sensible. Maybe the city’s underground car vaults, or the caged walk-to-work pens.
But Sol and Irish are patient men. They know the odds. And they’ll do their worst on that tenth.
This morning they lap a route not far from their workshop in Old Trafford, barely a mile outside the city centre. You’d think they’re shitting on their own doorstep, but their unmarked recovery truck barely raises an eyebrow – it’s as battered as everything else.
After a good few laps, they see a woman parking an anonymous Korean hatchback at the end of a row. Lady Luck’s feeling kind – the driver’s even left enough of a gap for their truck in front. Sol noses them past; laughs uneasily as Irish rolls down his window, leans to pip the horn, shouts something crass.
They lap the block twice again, just to make sure the woman has gone.
“We having it?” Irish asks.
Sol nods. There was a time he might have felt sad or sorry for what they do – but as Irish often says, “Guilt doesn’t pay the rent.” You can practise indifference, he’s found, and now practice has made perfect.
The men park and pull on their caps. Roll out their hi-vis vests and bail. Out of the truck, they each signal to make sure the other has spotted a nearby CCTV rig whose lens case is dangling off its mount. Sol pauses there, the broken camera like some stranger’s flowers – withered, browned – strapped to the railings at the scene of an accident.
Irish kneels, unracks the trolley. Sol pulls their wooden chocks from the passenger seat footwell.
“Excuse me,” comes a voice.
Sol swivels. A man in the door of a terraced house opposite.
“What’s all this?”
Off to the side, Sol hears Irish swear under his breath. He feels instantly hot; starts patting his pockets.
“Sir…” Sol starts.
The man leans off his step on a beige crutch. Older, white hair. Straining to see through jamjar glasses. For some reason he strikes Sol as being only half-loaded, scrambled, so that now on his plain skin you can see his raw code poking through.
“I asked what’s going on,” the old man says, pointing at the truck. “Bloody jobsworths – you best have a good reason for all this.”
Sol finds what he needs. He drops the chocks and crosses the road, a thin wallet in his hand. He straightens his cap and flicks the wallet open. Mounted inside is a passport photo with a fake name and some bumf about licensing. A decent approximation of the council’s logo. “We’re cleaning up,” Sol tells him. He holds it out, trying to steady his hand. “The car’s wanted.”
The old man resettles his glasses and pulls Sol’s ID into his face. He whispers as he reads, moving Sol’s hand back and forth through his focal length. Sol can smell his breath.
After ten seconds, the old man clears his throat. “I better apologize. It’s just that–”
“No need,” Sol tells him. “Honest. It’s nice to see a bit of community spirit.”
The old man blinks. Vacant expression. “They just come and go as they please…”
Irish bounces over, cap off, forehead glistening. He winks at Sol, acknowledgment his partner isn’t blessed with a natural blagging nature, and says to the old man: “Ever see any nice motors out here?”
The old man shifts his weight. “Oh, every so often. No one local, mind. Must be earning a fortune up some tower to drive the daft bloody things they do.”
Irish frowns. “Not the safest place to park, though, is it?”
As if on cue there’s a rumble behind them, increasingly loud, before a ferocious-looking motorbike burbles past. Riding pillion behind a rider in racing leathers, a smartly dressed woman pulls on an open-faced helmet. Sol watches her, fully absorbed: she’s so still and composed, looking dead ahead. Then he winces as the bike tears away. Only aftermarket parts could make a machine so noisy.
“No, no,” the old man says distractedly. Sol doesn’t even remember the question. The old man’s eyes follow the bike, its passenger. Then he looks back as if someone’s behind him in the house. “Are they gangsters?” he whispers. “These ones you’re after?”
Sol and Irish share a look. “Something like that,” Sol tells him, shrugging with one shoulder. Then another pause as they hear the motorbike downshifting some distance away.
“Oh dear,” the old man says. “It’s really gone to the dogs, hasn’t it?” Sol smiles, and the old man continues: “Listen, I don’t suppose you gents fancy a cuppa at all. Kettle’s not long gone. The granddaughters bought me some of those filter efforts.”
“We’re good, cheers,” Irish says. “Places to go, people to see.”
The old man nods. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”
Irish salutes him casually. “Appreciated. You take good care now.”
The old man holds up a bronchial hand and turns to go inside.
Sol shoots Irish a look.
“What?” Irish says.
“Nothing.”
“What’s up with you?”
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s crack on.”
Irish chuckles. “Don’t like what you can’t plan for, do you?”
Back in the road, Sol loads the chocks under the hatchback’s tyres, making a mallet of his fist to wedge them in. Irish, still chuckling, stretches out on the trolley before disappearing under the car to shear its handbrake cable.
“Give us a hand then,” Irish says, wiggling his feet.
Sol takes his partner by the hems of his overalls and pulls. The trolley slides cleanly, and Irish comes out beaming.
“I’ll grab the winch,” Sol says, stepping away. But as he’s walking off, he hears Irish freeze.
“Sol.”
Sol looks over. “What’s up?”
“Check it out.”
Sol follows his gaze. “What?”
“Look.”
Down the road, a bright silver saloon is pulling out of a parking space. A Lexus, probably a 2012 or 2013 model. A little too early for a conversion, which means it’ll cost a fortune to run, but still blessed with smooth, clean lines. Tinted windows. Non-standard alloys. From the looks of things it’s even fitted with run-flat tyres.
It’s a rare sight, a car this nice. And judging by its registration plates, which start RA, it’s not local either. RA. Sol jogs his memory. Carlisle?
Irish nods at Sol as if to agree with something essential. “Piece of piss,” he says.
And Sol can read his partner’s mind. He shakes his head. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Call it community service,” Irish says. He pulls his cap visor low. “Care in the community.”
“Not with someone in it. We’re not jacking–”
“Opportunity knocks,” Irish tells him. He points at the Korean hatchback. “More guts in that Lexus than fifty of these fucken sheds.”
“Irish…”
The Lexus is being driven unsurely, tentative. The men can sense it’s unfamiliar to the driver.
Then it begins to accelerate towards them, and Irish has broken away, gone, sprinting up the pavement.
“Get in the truck!” he shouts back to Sol. But before Sol has time to react – to appreciate the lines Irish is crossing, to fear the mistake his partner’s making – he watches Irish salmon-dive off the pavement and up the saloon’s bonnet. A sickening crump, and the Lexus skids, stalls. Irish rolls off it.
“What the fuck!” The driver’s out already, a stocky build, dark leathers. Sol unconsciously connects the motorbike to the car for an instant, then hears his partner yelling madly. He opens the truck cab’s door; watches heart in mouth as Irish springs up and shoves the driver. The driver falls gracelessly, shocked by the speed of it all.
Sol takes his hands off his face and climbs into the truck, head buzzing: We jacked it. We jacked it. We jacked it.
The Lexus screams past, and Sol follows. He can see Irish’s silhouette through the car’s rear window, his shoulders jerking up and down with laughter. Just as they turn, Sol glances behind – sees in his mirror the driver staggering up the road.
Two streets over, Sol’s skin liquid, he spots one of their fly-posters flapping on a lamppost:
WE BUY OLD BANGERS FOR SCRAP.
Mel’s the only person shopping in the supermarket. The cameras follow her mercilessly down each aisle – their controller a sweaty security guard wrapped in fitted mesh.
Behind a till, also watching Mel, is a teenaged girl wearing a filigreed salwar kameez and circus-bright makeup. Mel’s noticed this look more recently: neon fairyland by way of raver chic. It seems hollow as far as counterculture goes – childish revolt, permitted if only because it’d be so easy to crush – but it makes her feel oddly grateful: at least someone’s burning bright in the gloom.
As customers go, the security guard doesn’t have much to watch. He thinks he’s got Mel down pat: a slight but cunning woman, a stray with a limp – like a past operation only did so much. The lights don’t do much for her complexion, either. Regardless, he amuses himself with crass scores – hips and lips and arse – for something to do when he’s not enforcing his own brand of corporal law.
Mel is oblivious to the guard’s rotten gaze. She’s here for the essentials: wet wipes, baby oil, tea bags, cotton pads. Desperate for the cash, she’d slipped a twenty from last night’s takings.
That said, Mel doesn’t intend on paying for much. She’s already squirrelled a few items up her sleeve, shrewdly putting cheaper items in the basket as cover.
“Looking for anything, miss?” the checkout girl calls between the aisles. Mel knows it’s the girl’s job to sound suspicious, but it rankles.
“Vegetables,” Mel calls back. “Broccoli?”
They share a sad little laugh.
“There’s powdered stuff,” the girls says, pointing. “Round there.”
“Not proper though, is it?” Mel asks. She actually tastes broccoli for a second. Salted, buttered. The texture of a stem crushed between her back teeth.
The girl frowns. “Heard of it, but I never ate it.”
Mel goes towards her. “How old are you?”
“Eleven.”
“Eleven?”
“Yeah, why?”
Mel smiles. “I’m being daft,” she says. “Eyes aren’t up to much… But look at you. You’re beautiful, aren’t you – nothing to worry about there. Can’t believe you haven’t tried broccoli, though. It’s only been missing a few years…”
The girl shrugs. “That powder smells rank anyway.”
The thought of being so young again makes Mel touch a hand to her belly. A dull pain there, radiating. Some failure of empathy. When she refocuses on the girl’s features it’s like she’s seeing the composited faces of every woman employed by the Cat Flap. That this girl’s eleven but appears sixteen says something – and the closer Mel looks, the more she sees a worldweariness etched in her expression. Suddenly, Mel remembers herself lying with him – him – in their old bed, morning sun turning the windows into luminous squares, and vocalizing that trite old question: But what kind of world would we bring them into?
Mel blinks. Mel remembers needles sliding home. A series of bad decisions entwining, a blackened spaghetti of mistakes–
She shakes her head. The shelves around her are empty, their backlights fuzzing.
What if my girls have lied about their ages?
She stumbles.
“Miss?” the checkout girl says. “Miss?”
Mel snaps back. Striplights waning. “I’m alright, love,” she says, and turns away. More empty spaces. A basket of used meat cartridges, donated, beneath a handwritten sign reading FREE MEAT JUICE.
Mel snakes round to the supplements. She stacks her basket and pushes more boxes up her sleeves, their edges catching on old scars. Each item justified with a hypnotic refrain: this is my way of looking after things. In the next aisle she does the same for toiletries, rolling packets around her thin arms to disguise their shape.
Satisfied then, she moves for the till. It’s all rehearsed, this – pulled off at so many other shops before. She unloads the basket and tuts loudly, then makes a show of patting down her pockets. A song and dance about tipping out her bag. A pained face to the checkout girl. Lastly she says: “Gone and forgot my bleeding purse, haven’t I? What. A. Pudding.”
The girl looks stupefied. Copper bolts through her hair. “That’s OK,” she says. “You can… you can leave it here if you want. I’ll keep an eye on it.”
Mel smiles slowly. She touches the girl’s arm. “Would you?”
The girl nods, reveals a cautious smile of her own.
Mel checks her watch, mindful of the boxes piled up behind it. “See. Knew you were a gem. I’ll nip back in a bit, yeah?”
The girl nods.
Mel taps the girl’s hand and goes to leave. Just before the sliding doors, though, she hears a whistle.
“In a rush?”
Mel clocks the security guard in his mesh wrapper, grinning yellow teeth. He points up and she looks into his camera. He whistles again.
“Come over here.”
Mel goes to him, hands in her pockets. “I’m not a dog,” she spits, mindful of the checkout girl. “You whistle at a fucking dog.”
The guard steps out of his cage and motions to her sleeves. “What you got up here, then?”
Mel scowls. “My bloody arms.”
He’s a big guy, the guard, and before she even realizes he’s locked off her wrist, twisted it up and back. He pulls her into him, and she smells his mouth, sour and livid. She wrestles to look back, but the checkout assistant can’t see them. There’s a tattoo on the inside of his forearm – a bird, feathers pluming, falling, with crosses for eyes.
“Clever little tealeaf, aren’t you?” the guard says. “We lopped off hands for less in Afghan. Had this kid once, right – rooting through all our stuff he were…”
“I’ll scream,” Mel tells him. “And then I’ll make sure you never piss standing up again.”
The guard shows her a black tongue. “Screamed out there an’ all. Specially when your first cut didn’t go right the way through…”
She squirms against him. “Let go.”
But the guard simply shrugs, unfazed. “Only doing my job,” he says. “Doesn’t have to be like this.”
“You’re not wrong,” she whispers.
The guard pretends to look hurt. “Don’t recognize me, do you? Were only after a discount – a freebie if you’re being nice. I do you a favour… you do me a favour.”
Mel stops struggling. She looks at him levelly.
“Course I know who you are,” he says. “Everyone does. Should probably pay more attention to your regular johns, though – not the best customer service otherwise, is it?”
Mel nods. Wary now. The guard’s grip slackens and she yanks free, rubs her wristbone. A punter? The stolen goods have travelled up her arms and started scratching the furrowed skin of her elbows. Irritating more scars. “You’re right,” she says.
Yet the facts feel wrong. And the main fact is this: in her house you respect the punters as they respect you – but it’s hard to spot the worst of them.
“Now hop it,” the guard says. “And warm up a spot. I’ll be round to see you all soon.”