Chapter Eight

For Mark, the day became increasingly dreamlike. As Julie became more attentive, and Carl quite friendly, Lena, Stellachi and death lay somewhere else, on another road that he’d left behind. His head tried to repair itself and in one brief moment of relaxation he saw how life might have been for the Richards, in another time, another place, and with Shane.

They drove down to the beaches of the Gower, Carl’s old Merc smooth and reliable. Julie chatted away about not much, clearly relieved that there was no problem between her two men. This was another major change in her life. Mark thought she might have been glad that, in her eyes, he was single again. She’d been overawed that time he’d shown up with Lena. Her looks, accent, work, told Julie he was moving away big time, the estate just a bad memory from an increasingly distant past. Deep down, with all the crap cut away, he was still her little Mark.

They stopped near a virtually deserted beach, marked by cliffs divided into three rocky points. Julie had already been here with Carl. As they walked down from the nearest parking place she nudged Mark in the back.

‘Never imagined places like this when you were little, eh?’

‘Oh, I imagined them, Mam.’

As Carl walked on ahead Julie lowered her voice.

‘You know I always wanted to take you on trips, but it was hard to get off that estate with no money, no car. And all the other stuff.’

‘That’s all in the past, Mam. We’re okay now, aren’t we?’

‘We could have been here with Shane,’ she murmured, ‘he’d be about starting Comp now.’

He expected her voice to break and tears to come but Julie remained calm. She’d grown a lot since he’d been in London. Mark sensed a confidence in her that had not been present before and Julie was going to need it.

‘Do you ever think about Daniels?’ Julie asked quietly.

Daniels’ short life ended with his face in a bag of glue. Mark was just sixteen, and his friend’s death had made sure his late teens were rough and wild. Or rougher and wilder. The passing of Daniels taught Mark that someone like him had to fight for everything in this world. Mark had never called Daniels by his first name, no one had, and he couldn’t remember it now. He hadn’t thought of him in years but would never forget that last image, Daniels’ dead eyes the same colour of the sky above him as he sprawled in the dirt of their back lane. Lena’s face joined Daniels’, then Shane’s, they swirled around in a vile mix and each one accused. Then he saw Stellachi knocking on Julie’s door, introducing himself as Mark’s friend, his hard face creased with that thin smile. Oozing charm and malice, as Julie invited him in.

‘Mark?’

‘No, not too much, Mam.’

‘You all right? You’re shaking a bit.’

‘No problem. It’s the shock of all this fresh air.’

Carl waited for them to catch up.

‘Quite hot, innit? There’s a pub up the top there if we walk over the beach and up the other side.’

‘Okay, Carl, lead on,’ Mark said.

Mark scanned the beach. It was too hard to get to for many people to be here. A few couples were dotted around, kids chased balls, a few dared the edge of the sea. He realised the headache had gone and the nerve had stopped throbbing.

They crossed a small river that fringed the beach, and fed into the sea, Carl helping Julie over a causeway of stepping stones.

Julie was enjoying the day, while Mark ran a few ideas for his survival through his head. He wouldn’t hire a car, but he’d get up to the valley tomorrow on the train. First, he’d have to buy some gear. He wanted to be isolated, to find a place he knew well, where he could take stock of all that had happened, and which he could defend. He’d already taken the decision not to tell Julie anything. It was impossible to unload this now Carl was around, but he was taking a chance. A big one.

‘Let’s have Sunday lunch,’ Julie said, ‘my treat. I’m earning quite good money at that factory now, Mark, with my bonus an’ all. The girls there are all right, too. They don’t pry as much as the ones back home.’

‘No, I’ll pay,’ Carl said,’ since Mark came down special, like.’

Mark had waited thirty years for an uncle to offer him anything. It was strange to hear Julie refer to the estate as home. Life there had been a grind punctuated by short, illusory spells of hope, more like little stabs than spells, glimpses of lives others led, which he’d paid for with the proceeds of his crimes. Illicit money had been his collateral for happiness, what he’d thought was happiness. Yet it had been home, the only one they’d known, and he still felt just a touch of kinship with it. A pride in its roughness and the way it clung onto life without an even break from anyone. Now they’d both got away, even if his new life had been ripped apart. Losing Shane had been the spur they needed. Maybe it was true something good comes from the most desperate of acts, yet Mark found it hard to think this way about the killing of Lena – or Agani, for that matter.

‘You’re quiet,’ Julie said.

‘Was I ever anything else?’

‘No, not really. Look, things are all right, aren’t they? Was it that serious with Lena?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe not. It’s over anyway.’

‘Maybe you should stay down here. Plenty of nice girls around, ’specially for a boy as fit as you. There’s a few in the factory that would …’

‘Thanks, Mam, but no thanks. I like it up there, believe it or not. I like the fact that no one knows me. All right, everything is fast and cold, but you are left alone, if you want to be. Like we never were.’

He was talking in the present about feelings that were no longer there.

‘Aye, I know what you mean. I’m only a few miles from that hilltop but it could be on the bloody dark side of the moon now. It’s so different down here.’

Julie breathed in deeply, ‘Look at it. Everything’s so clean.’

‘The air was just as fresh in the hills.’

‘You and your hills. You were always on them.’

‘Well, not always, Mam. I was in plenty of houses as well, wasn’t I?’

Julie laughed, and dug him in the ribs.

‘You were a right little rogue, but don’ bring that up, ’specially in front of Carl. That’s all over and done with   isn’t it?’

‘Aye, over and done with.’

Carl rejoined them. Mark knew he’d been pacing on ahead to give them a chance to talk. He appreciated that. There was something solid about Carl he liked; he’d seen stuff too and his eyes were the proof. They were a firm brown, set slightly back in his head, alert, but also a little lost, as if they were looking back on something that couldn’t be forgotten. Mark wondered if he’d killed anyone when in the army, and the answer was probably yes. How quickly Julie’s world might shatter if she knew each of her men had pulled the trigger, but only one legally.

‘Me and Julie had a nice Sunday lunch here the other week,’ Carl said, pointing to the pub they were approaching. ‘Good grub and not too pricey.’

The pub was trying to stay old, a hand painted wooden sign swung in the breeze outside, and the seabird on it was painted a bright blue. Suddenly Mark wanted tradition, all the stuff Lena had disapproved of, and he’d never had. He thought of beef and Yorkshire puddings like the condemned man he probably was. Julie had tried the odd Sunday lunch when they had been flush, but often they’d disintegrated into rows and incrimination. The Richards family rituals. Mark knew just enough about the Bible to be aware of the Last Supper. Maybe this would be his Last Dinner, at least with Julie.

The pub wasn’t too busy. Summer had tailed off and kids were back in school, and what was left were mainly pensioners, people with time on their hands, and finding it harder and harder to spend. Julie was right. This world was so different to the one they’d lived in. It reminded him of the Cotswolds, that Christmas with Lena. Lena had used a word to describe that place, genteel. He’d looked it up when she was away. It meant cultivated, elegant, refined, words that had one thing in common, none of them had played a part in his life before she came along.

Mark insisted on buying the drinks.

‘I’ll only have the one pint,’ Carl said,’ I’d be knackered if I lost my licence.’

‘Get me a pint of lager,’ Julie said.

‘It’ll be almost as big as you, Mam.’

‘Oi, don’ be cheeky. Women drink pints now, or haven’t you noticed? My boy’s old-fashioned really, Carl.’

They took a corner table, shown there eagerly by a man with a Midlands accent. Mark sat with his back against the wall.

‘Have you noticed they’re always from over the border in places like this,’ Carl muttered. ‘Never our own.’

‘Oh, don’ start that again,’ Julie said. ‘Carl got this thing about the English, Mark. Bloody racist he is, sometimes.’

Mark smiled but didn’t take sides. Not liking outsiders, afraid of losing driving licences – things like this sounded so tame now, so normal. That word ‘normal’ kept cropping up in his thoughts. What had Kelly said, that there was no such thing. Maybe the old scally was right, but there was such a thing as extreme life, and he was heading there.

*

Kelly heard his arm snap before he felt any pain. Shock protected him for a moment, then it came. It surged through him like some mighty fist and his bladder lost control. He would have passed out had not Angelo jerked him back.

‘No, my friend don’t go to sleep.’

The big man said something in a language Kelly had never heard before.

‘My friend says you are not a man at all, you wet yourself like a child, and you stink like an animal. What use are you to a man like Richards?’

Kelly knew he was making noises, whimpering, then a high pitched keening as Angelo prodded his busted arm, but they didn’t seem to be coming from him. They were coming from far away, as if they were outside his body. They sounded like his mother shouting at him, and his father coming in through the front door with his belt in his hand.

‘I don’ know nuttin, right,’ Kelly managed to shout out. ‘Nuttin about Mr Richards, nuttin about fuckin’ nuttin.’

The big man stood behind Kelly’s chair, his gorilla-like arm about to close around his neck. Angelo waved a finger.

‘A drink, Kelly, that’s what you need. That’s what you do, isn’t it. Drink?’

For the first time since he’d fallen from a scaffold and smashed both ankles Kelly did not want one. Angelo picked up the bottle and pushed it towards his mouth. Kelly squirmed until the big man held his head. It would be so easy for this one to snap his scrawny twig of a neck.

Kelly thought his bowels might have joined the bladder. This had to be a fucking dream, he’d wake up at any moment. If he did, he’d swear he’d lay off the booze. This was a warning, maybe from the Almighty himself.

Angelo began to pour. Some of it went down Kelly’s throat, forcing him to swallow, some onto his chest. He was wet top and bottom now. The drink hit home immediately. It recognised familiar territory and mixed with last night’s load. The pain in Kelly’s arm turned from white-hot to dull fire.

‘That’s right,’ Angelo said, ‘good, Kelly, good.’

Angelo stopped pouring, as Kelly coughed and spluttered, his eyes trying to focus. Angelo held his head, and turned it towards the window.

‘Look, the sun is out. Another fine day. See how soft and white the clouds are, how blue the sky. Life is always worth living, even for you. Where’s Richards? What is his name, Mark? Where’s Mark, Kelly? You know you want to tell me.’

‘I never call him Mark,’ Kelly murmured. ‘I dunno where he is. I never know. Look, I just done a few jobs for him, now and then. He’s a private dick.’

‘You done jobs?’

‘Yeah, me.’

‘What could you possibly do?’

Despite the crippling fear, and the pain that pulsed through him, Kelly had a flash of defiance, an echo of old, pre-drink times.

‘I’m not fuckin’ useless. I’m good for getting stuff, and watching out for things.’

‘Ah yes, like a rat in a sewer.’

‘I got a car for him last Friday, that’s all. He said he wanted a motor. He gimme a few quid.’

‘What did he say when he stayed here? Why did he stay, Kelly?’

‘Nothing, I dunno why he stayed. It didn’t make sense. I thought he might have had a ruck with his girlfriend. Look, I said, he never told me nuttin. Look at me, for fucksake. Why should he? I didn’t want to know. I only want to be left alone, an’ he fuckin’ should have.’

‘But he has a nice apartment, a lovely woman. What was he doin’ here, in this cess pit?’

‘Jesus Christ, what you wan’ me to say? I’ll say anything. He’s gone back to the flat, he’s gone back to Wales. He’s gone to fuckin’ Buck House to see the queen.’

‘Have another drink.’

Again the liquid poured down. A river to oblivion. Kelly had heard that somewhere, deep in his past. Maybe in church, when he’d gone as a kid, parents each side of him, like guards. When he’d stood in the cold, damp, musty atmosphere to hear all the frightening stuff about hell, damnation and burning in the fire. Their local priest was a throwback, with talk to match.

Most of the whisky was gone now. It had taken over him, he was hardly aware the men were there and the pain was in some distant place, but as Angelo tapped his head softly, and spoke in a soothing voice the terror came back. It was reaching a peak, and he was finding it hard to breathe.

‘I believe you, Kelly,’ Angelo said softly. ‘I too think Richards has gone back to this Wales.’

‘It’s you he’s running from,’ Kelly said, ‘isn’t it, you fucking bastard. You and this other ape.’

‘So, there is a little spirit somewhere still inside you,’ Angelo said. ‘We won’t hurt you no more.’ He nodded to the big man.

‘Kelly, let’s go the window, to look at the beautiful day.’

‘No way.’

Kelly sprang up and tried to make it to the door but the big man caught him up and lifted him off his feet. I’m not going to get out of this, Kelly thought. No way. The thought cut through the whisky but it diminished his fear, rather than added to it. A decision was being taken for him. The big man tried the window while Angelo held him upright. He solved the problem of the paint-stuck frame with one kick. The sound of traffic, and Sunday people drifted up. It was a perfectly normal sound.

‘This room needs air,’ Angelo murmured in Kelly’s ear, ‘we need some air.’ He gestured to the big man, who took Kelly by the scruff of the neck and threw him out.

Kelly might have been drowning. Donegal flashed up in millisecond scenes, the village dead before tourists could save it, his mother who did her best, the old man who beat the shite out of him, the torn black and white photo of his only girlfriend, the one who went away, taking his life with her. He heard a woman screaming, he’d never had that effect an any of them before. But maybe the scream is mine, Kelly thought, my final sound in this world, as the pain he’d felt in his arm exploded to all parts of his body. Time did not exist. and his eyes focused on nothing.

‘Go and get the car and pick me up at the back,’ Angelo said. ‘His arm will just be one of many injuries now. They’ll say this Kelly killed himself. He was down, now he’s out. The police will not bother about him too much. Why should they?’

‘But what if he did know something?’

‘No, impossible. Go.’

Angelo stood in the bed-sit for another minute, lighting up an untipped cigarette. The room reminded him of his past. His first place in Tirana, shared with four others. He wished Stellachi hadn’t killed the girl.

*

Mark tried to keep Lena from his mind as he cut into the beef. It was medium rare, how he’d always liked it, but as he put a piece into his mouth his mind rejected it. He saw the pink-red centre of the beef and dropped his fork onto his plate, splashing Julie with gravy.

‘What’s up with you?’

‘Sorry, maybe it’s the beer. I never drink at this time these days.’

‘God, things have changed. Too much of that vegetarian nonsense from your ex, as well, I bet.’

‘Leave the boy alone, Jool.’

‘Ganging up on me already, are you?’

Julie pretended to be cross but Mark knew she was pleased. Carl was warming to him. Hope springs eternal, it had always been on the kitchen wall in the estate house, a cheap plaque made of plastic wood, with a flower motif at its edges. That saying had become a joke between them, and she’d taken it down after Shane’s disappearance, but Mark could see that the words were still ingrained in her.

Mark ate what he could of the meal, feeling Julie’s eyes on him the whole time. Carl also watched him, but in a different way. He was checking Mark out, knowing that he was here for other reasons and wondering what they were. Mark remembered talking to an ex-army guy who’d worked for the agency. He’d told him about Ireland, the feeling he had when he walked down dangerous streets, how the hairs on the back of his neck twitched in expectation of a bullet. Anytime. All the time. You never get rid of it, even when you’re home from fucking leave, the man said. Maybe Carl still had it. Maybe Mark had given it back to him today.

‘You want another pint, Mark? Carl asked.

‘OK.’

They sat on the patio at the front of the pub’s dining room, enjoying the best of the sun. To Mark, the sea looked strange, for it was not part of his land-locked world. It was full of shifting movement, a sluggish turning of itself. Stretching away from all that the land held for him. It would be tempting to accept its invitation, but it would be useless to go abroad. He’d lose any edge being home might give him, and, even now, flying was still out. He saw himself a gibbering wreck in an airport lounge, disarmed by his phobia, a sitting duck for Stellachi, or anyone halfway good.

As they sat and drank a wind started to get up, whipping the tops of the waves into foam.

‘White horses, they’re called,’ Julie said, ‘Carl told me. She zipped up her jacket. ‘The sun’s going. Come on, let’s get back, it’s getting a bit parky.’

His mother was tipsy but not in the way Mark remembered, when she’d totter home from the local club full of booze and recrimination, let down by one man, used by another. Sometimes obeying the plaque by bringing home a punter, who’d disappear with the new day. His childhood and her prime time, or it should have been. Suddenly, Mark wished he could change it all, give Julie another chance, not continue to smash her life with what he had always brought to it. She thought she had a new start now. Perfect fucking timing. If he’d known Carl was on the scene he wouldn’t have come here. Whatever was going to happen could at least have been kept away. But Mark didn’t know about Carl, because they were crap at communicating. He’d been absorbed in Lena and where she might lead.

Julie ran her hand over Carl’s shoulder as he drove. Mark watched as she toyed with the back of his neck. These two seemed to have something real, and if he hung around Julie would think her new world was complete. Telling her he was not staying would be difficult, Mark tried to think of something but his brain would not play ball. As the last of the sun came back out, Mark dozed, like a tired boy on his way home from the seaside. Like it might have been twenty-five years ago, if they lived a different life, in a different place.

Mark was alert when they got back to Julie’s flat. It was hard to imagine any action here, but bad things happened anywhere. He knew Carl was watching him in the rear view mirror. He knows I’m on the lookout, Mark thought, he knows the signs, but there was no one around, no gold Lexus parked nearby.

‘It’s bin a lovely day,’ Julie said, ‘I’m going for a lie down. I think I drank a bit too much.’

‘Want a brew?’ Carl said, ‘you look like you could do with a coffee.’

‘Ta.’

Carl made the drinks and they sat down in the main room.

‘Want the telly on?’

‘Nah, don’t use it.’

‘That must make you some kind of freak in this day and age.’

‘Probably.’

‘I usually watch a bit of sport Sunday afternoons.’

‘Don’t let me stop you.’

‘No, it’s okay.’

They were silent for a while, each man drinking his coffee and weighing the situation up.

‘So what you running from?’ Carl said eventually. ‘Police? Your girlfriend?’

‘What makes you think I’m running from anything?’

‘I know the signs. I learnt them well in the forces, apprentice in Ireland, graduated in the Falklands. You got twitchy written all over you. You haven’t relaxed a second, not even when you nodded off in the car.’

‘So, you were in the Falklands, as well.’

‘Aye, but I haven’t told your mother. Some of the guys like to bang on about it, I’d rather let it lie in the past, where it belongs. She don’t ask much anyway. You haven’t answered, Mark.’

‘The police aren’t after me. I’ve kept my nose clean since I did a stretch in a young offenders’ place.’

‘Aye, Julie did tell me that, but something’s up, something more than being dumped by a girlfriend.’

Mark shrugged.

‘Maybe it’s my natural state. I’m not much of a mixer. Look, I’ll be gone soon. Going tonight, as it happens. Things to do, like.’

‘Your mother’s gonna be upset. She’d like you to stay.’

‘How about you?’

It was Carl’s turn to shrug. ‘It’s her place. And it’s a big sofa.’

‘Thanks, but I’ve got plans.’

‘What, Sunday night, and no car?’

Mark realised this guy wasn’t going to give up. ‘I’m meeting up with a few guys I work with,’ he said.

‘What, you’re on a job down here?’

‘That’s it, but don’t tell Mam. It’s nothing much anyway, routine surveillance stuff.’

‘Sounds interesting.’

‘No, not really. That’s only in the films. I’m going to the bog,’ Mark said.

When Mark went back into the living room Carl had the holdall by his side. It was open.

‘My old sergeant used to have one of these,’ Carl said. ‘He took it off a Yank mercenary on a hillside near Goose Green. Shot him in the head with it. Bit of a museum piece now, I’d say. This other one is much more like it. German, I think, but the name and number’s been scratched off.’

Carl picked up the automatic in his other hand.

‘Two-gun kid, eh? Better tell me, Mark, and quickly.’

‘Perhaps I’d just better go.’

‘Like fuck you will. ‘Carl jerked a thumb towards the bedroom. ‘You can’t think much of her, bringing these here. And the S and W has been used recently. Blow a hole in a wall, that would, and other things.’

Carl put the guns on top of the holdall, carefully, neatly, they nestled there like a kid’s toys.

‘Julie will be waking up soon. Better start.’