I was watching Jim from the corner of the bar, surreptitiously sipping a half lager shandy while my brother and his friends looked around sheepishly, fake Ids ready in the event of any challenge. I was watching Gentleman Jim walk in, sit down and wait.
And wait.
I was watching him, Uncle Jim, meet a client.
This was all a coincidence. We’d accidentally walked into the hitman’s date. Luckily, he hadn’t seen us. And my brother was so far oblivious. He was sitting opposite me, facing towards the window and unable to see our uncle, Jim, sipping from a long tall drink, purple tie, hair slicked, and those same thin black gloves we’d seen him hold that stranger’s head in, waist height, through the telescopic sight on that .243 rifle, that night under our pillows.
Jim had trimmed his moustache.
And I was kicking the table leg. Aiming for my brother’s ankle but missing and hitting my dead little sister in her dead little head, beneath the table where she, never born (properly, at least), was hiding. Underage. Non-uniform day. One split lip from a punch by some kid I pushed over. Greasy quiff and peanut tie outside the maths block, fracturing the sympathies of my brother who, after wading in, told me that I deserved it.
‘You’ll always get it eventually,’ said our dead little sister, not long from the nursery, which backed on to the primary school by the side entrance to our secondary.
‘You told me to push him,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said, laughing. ‘And you fell for it. What’d that boy even do to you?’
‘He made fun of my trainers.’
‘Well, they are pretty old. Look, they’ve got holes.’
‘Come on then,’ said my brother, who’d waited for me at the gates as usual, while his friends loitered outside the petrol station across the road. ‘We’re going down the road, try to sneak some beers. You can come if you shut up.’ The pub we went to was known for not requesting ID but they still sat me behind a pillar so I couldn’t be seen from the bar. ‘Look who’s there,’ said my sister, hiding under the table. Uncle Jim had walked in a few moments later. ‘He’s looking very smart,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’ll go hang out with his shoes instead of with yours,’ poking my exposed toe. ‘You’re just a boy, after all,’ squeezing my thigh. ‘Plus, given his dangerous profession he’s probably likely to die soon. Then we can both sit at your feet, although I,’ she said, with the cheese Wotsit breath of a child, ‘know better places to tease you.’
‘What the fuck was that for?’ said my brother, after I’d tried to kick my sister, missed and hit him. ‘Look who’s here,’ I whispered, nodding towards Gentleman Jim and the long tall glass of what looked like vodka and cranberry in front of him. ‘Must be a secret meeting.’ My brother laughed, though not in a collaborative way. ‘A covert rendezvous,’ he said, shaking his head taking a drink. ‘He must’ve got here early,’ I said, checking the clock, ‘on purpose, to get a good table with a view of the door. To scope out the floor. Keep a hand on the gun in his pocket, in case the meeting goes wrong.’
‘Or well,’ said my brother, smartly, before turning back to his friends.
My little sister, on hands and knees, was slithering over the floor in long socks and pleats to Jim’s table, under which she crawled, sat cross-legged and winked at me. Meanwhile, another man, a stranger I didn’t recognise, had entered the pub. He approached the bar and asked for a glass of water.
This was it.
Gentleman Jim hadn’t seen him yet. He was drinking his drink and sniffing the menu. When the stranger approached him he put his hand on Jim’s shoulder, quickly, before sitting down. ‘Can I have another?’ I asked my brother, who was drinking cider but who’d only allow me the one because, ‘We’re already pushing our luck here.’
My sister was listening to Jim’s conversation. I peered round from behind the pillar again and saw Jim take his black gloves off the table top and put them into his coat pocket.
It was a black coat.
They were both very shady.
Just as you’d expect men to be when they’re dealing in oral contracts.
If I’d been older I’d have gone round the corner and watched them through the window from under a fedora and waited until they left. I’d have followed them, expecting to find them in some warehouse or other, if they were working together, choking mercilessly some doomed enemy. Hands and knees. Repeating the name. Maybe a belt round the neck. A black leather belt. Gets on his knees as Gentleman Jim frees the belt from his trousers. Smacks him around. I’d be watching all this through the window, a spy, trying not to slip off the bin, watching, stroking the gun I’d been hoping I wouldn’t have to use. An .08 Luger, or Browning high-powered pistol.
Double tap.
A leather strap around the neck.
My sister, who’d already suffered death by rotisserie umbilical cord, flopping around beneath the table, had infiltrated the meeting on my behalf because I couldn’t be seen by my father’s brother, and he, by the looks of things, didn’t want to be seen by anyone.
The menu was clearly a ruse. A way for Jim to look true in his position as possible friend while this strange man sat opposite him without taking off his suit jacket, only occasionally sipped his water and talked an awful lot. Talked an awful, awful lot.
Reached across–
I was bent round the pillar.
–and took Jim’s hand.
‘Well,’ I said to my sister later that night, after everyone involved had left to either dream about teenage sex or commit murder before going to bed. ‘Well,’ after lying to my mother about my swollen lip–
“You don’t have to play contact sports if you don’t want to, love.”
–and after lying to my father about my swollen lip. ‘Well,’ to my sister, who was lying underneath my cabin bed on the futon I used to play PlayStation on instead of studying Roosevelt’s New Deal or algebra. ‘Well, I didn’t expect Jim to tell him that his time was up in public. Do you know what he said?’ I asked her. ‘Did you hear what Jim said to the stranger? Why he wouldn’t stop talking? Why he looked so sad and scared and took Jim’s hand and pleaded?’
‘He just said he was sorry.’
‘What?’
‘He just kept saying honey, honey, honey.’
Over.
And.
Over.
‘Honey?’
‘I think it was a nervous twitch,’ she said. ‘Probably saw it on the menu Jim was holding in front of him. Saw honey-glazed ham. Honey-roasted vegetables. Milk and honey. Honey and whisky. Probably got stuck in his doomed head. Prob–’
‘Makes sense,’ I said, two feet from the roof while my brother was asleep on the other side of the room. Just then a loud creak. Footsteps on the ladder, approaching the ceiling.
‘Keep it down.’
‘When are you going to ask them to get rid of this thing?’ said my sister, climbing on. ‘You’re not much of a child, are you. How many children do you know who have committed murder?’
‘Fuck you.’
She was sitting by my feet.
‘Take your hands out of your pants,’ she said.
‘Not very manly, is it? All that begging. And in such a public, um, position. Probably why the guy who’d hired Jim in the first place wanted the stranger dead. You can’t have weaklings in that line of work.’
‘It wasn’t the same stranger as the stranger we saw before, was it?’
‘How could it have been?’
‘They looked awfully similar.’
‘But you only saw the back of one’s head. No, he’s dead. These kinds of men go from one job to another like that.’
Click.
‘He must’ve given something away,’ she said. ‘Something important. To the police, or a rival gang.’
Pause.
‘Where do you think Jim did it?’ I asked.
‘Did what?’ she asked.
‘Killed him,’ I said.
‘I saw them by the door to the kitchen,’ she said. ‘I think maybe Jim strangled him there.’
‘Go to fucking sleep,’ said my brother.