CHAPTER TWELVE: SHIVERY EYES

 

 

THE FOREMAN WAS a stocky, catarrhal man who wore a Manchester City pin just below the knot of his tie. “Rapler,” he introduced himself. “Tony Rapler.” It wasn’t much of an interview. Rapler asked him, over superheated cups of weak coffee, what experience he had had on building sites.

“Not much,” admitted Sean. “But when I was younger I did some casual labour on small sites. Building garages and extensions, that type of thing.”

“You look fit. Work out much? Swimmer?”

“I run a bit. And my last job was warehouseman, humping kitchen units and firecheck doors around. It helps.”

“Any form?” Rapler asked.

“No. I’m disappointingly clean.”

Rapler laughed. “You’ll be fine. We need a few more meatheads about the place. All we get are students sniffing around for a few weeks’ work in the summer. They usually cry off after a couple of days. Think they’re going to turn into Lou Ferrigno – ‘Aye, boss, no trouble. I could carry bricks all day’ – and before you know it they’re walking around like they’ve just had a hernia.”

“What was this place?” Sean asked.

“Built in the 1970s. Nobody knows what it was meant to be. Hotel most probably. But it was also an office block, with a private residential quarter and a leisure facility. You could have been born inside and never had a need to go out. Maybe if they built it down south it would have worked, but up here?”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah, up to a point. Guy who designed it, Peter de Fleche, hanged himself. Dutch. After it was abandoned and the demolition orders went through you’d see him in this fucked-up Jag, giving it the slow drive-by. Felt as if he’d failed, they reckon. Did a couple other buildings in a similar vein. Then nothing.”

“He doesn’t need to know any more.”

Sean turned to see the barrel-chested man from the funeral standing in the doorway. He had so much neck it resembled a collar for his head to nestle in.

Rapler said, “This is Ronnie Salt. You’ll answer to him on the softstrip. He runs a good team, does Ronnie.”

Ronnie nodded at him. Up close, his eyes were unpleasant splashes of cement-grey either side of a nose that might have once been used as a blacksmith’s anvil. The two men walked across the sunken, blasted forecourt to the condemned building as another man turned up. He nodded at them and Rapler clapped his hand on the new man’s shoulder. “Marshall?” Rapler asked, “Jamie Marshall?” They disappeared back inside his Portakabin.

“Why is it being knocked down?” Sean asked, as they approached the de Fleche building.

Salt regarded him with what looked like a wince, as if he had expected Sean to be mute and was now resigned to having to converse with him. “Well, it’s completely shagged out. I mean, look at it. Nobody has lived there or worked in it for years. Sick building. Air conditioning system never right. Couple of people died. Airborne disease.”

“Great. Must be a pleasure to spend your days in there.”

Salt sneered at him. “It’s a job.”

The front of the de Fleche building soared away from them like the prow of a ship. The entrance was a fly-blown revolving door ten feet high with so many cracks it looked like a feature. Behind the fogged barrier of glass, a bank of shattered TV screens hung from the ceiling over a horseshoe desk. Sean tried to imagine what the lobby must have looked like.

“Let’s have a closer look,” he said.

The doors gritted and squealed as they pushed through. The air in here was a urinous melange; a deep scar in the far wall showed how vagrants might have gained access. Squatter evidence lay around them: empty tins, shit-streaked toilet tissue in a bin sack, newspapers bearing dates from half a decade previously.

Salt stood by the door, his hands in his pockets, toeing something small and shrivelled that owned claws and a tail.

“Has work started on this place yet?” Sean asked.

“Yeah. We’re going top to bottom. Just a couple of floors done so far. Slow job.”

“Where’s your team?”

A blunt thumb jutted upwards. “Wordy bastard aren’t you? Do you ask so many questions all the time?”

Sean spread his hands. “Just being friendly.”

“Keep friendly for your knitting circle, or whatever it is you do when you leave us. Work is here. Hard fucking work. And I will come down on you like the knives at a knacker’s yard if you step out of line. Hear me? Don’t like it? Hard-hat off, fuck off. Simple as that.”

“I understand,” Sean said.

Salt regarded him for a few seconds longer, then jutted his thumb north again. “Let’s go.”

 

 

HE FELT LIKE a zoo animal in a new kind of viewing experience, one in which the attractions are led around a static public. Smoke and the smell of over-brewed tea hung sourly in the room. On one wall, a calendar depicted a topless woman sitting on the bonnet of a Ferrari eating melting ice cream.

Salt said, without any attempt at pointing out the owners of the names: “Robbie Deakin, Tim Enever, Lutz Singkofer, Nicky Preece, Jez Cartledge. This is... tits... forgotten your name. Steve?”

“Sean. Sean Redman.”

“Right then, I’ll let you get on. Show him what’s what. Maybe start him off on the loose wall in the bathroom.” Salt left, grabbing a fish paste sandwich from a wrap of foil on one of the men’s knees. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he called, as his boots began their descent.

An embarrassed silence fell. Sean broke it: “Have you worked together as a team long?”

“’Bout six month,” replied the man with the fish paste sandwiches. He offered one to Sean. Sean accepted. “I’m Robbie. Salty’s a miserable old bastard. Ignore him. We hardly ever see him anyway. He normally fucks off to the pub when Vernon’s not around.”

“Who’s Vernon?” Sean bit into the sandwich. It reminded him of childhood. Salty, cheap paste. Margarine on bland white bread.

Robbie said, “Vernon Lord. He’s the chief. He’s the sub-contractor. Gets us quite a bit of work. We had a guy, what was his name? Anyway, he was shite. Smackhead. So we need another. Six men is more or less right for this job.”

“Five and a half, Rob, if you’re counting Tim.” The guy who had spoken raised a hand to Sean. “All right mate? I’m Nicky. This is Jez and that’s Lutz.”

Sean said, “Lutz? You German?”

“Fuck off,” said Lutz, in a loose, Mancunian whine. “I’m from Chorley, me.”

Nicky nodded at another figure, hunched over a paperback novel. “That’s Tim. AKA Shivery Eyes.”

Tim looked up as Robbie leant over to ask Sean if he wanted some tea.

“Yeah sure,” Sean said, studying the candyfloss hair and the too-big eyes. More quietly, he asked: “What’s up with him?”

Robbie checked Tim and grinned. “What isn’t? He’s all right, Tim. Aren’t you, Timmy? All right?”

Tim said, “Sound.” His voice was low and whispery. He looked like a tuberculosis “after” picture. His eyes slow-blinked gummily, crusted with goo. A pane of spit sealed his open mouth. The breath he drew in through his nose turned to liquid in his lungs. Sean could clearly see his ribs under the fabric of an ancient Duran Duran T-shirt.

“Is he fit to do this kind of work?” Sean murmured.

“What? Making the tea and bringing us stuff from the shop? He manages that all right, mate.”

Lutz said, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about our Tim. We look after him, hey, Tim? Don’t we look after you?”

Tim shrugged. He said, “Do you like dick? More cock?”

Sean screwed up his face. “You what?”

Lutz laughed. “It’s his little joke. He asks everyone that. They’re writers. Science fiction writers. You know. Philip Dick, isn’t it, Tim? Do Androids Dream of Electric Blankets?”

“Sheep.”

“Sheep blankets then. Whatever. And Michael Moorcock. I never read anything by them, but Tim here has always got his face in a book.”

“What you into there?” Sean asked. He was frustrated. He wanted to ram Tim into the wall and ask him what he had been doing at Naomi’s funeral. None of the others had been there, as far as he could tell. Tim shifted, obviously uncomfortable with the sustained interest in his business. Sean saw now how, behind those gritty lids, Tim’s eyes vibrated and jerked like the numbered balls in the National Lottery.

“Harrison. M John, not Harry. The Committed Men.” His voice soughed out of him. He seemed to diminish under the effort.

“Good?”

Tim shrugged. “Yeah.” His bovine scrutiny of Sean over, he went back to his paperback.

“We’ll give you something simple to start you off with,” Robbie said, drawing on a pair of thick gloves. “Grab a pair of these. Over there by the door.”

Robbie took him through to what must once have been the kitchen in this particular flat. Sawn-off drains thrust through the floor like severed limbs. “Lump hammer,” Robbie continued. “Highly technical this bit... take the hammer and twat the Christ out of that dividing wall till there’s nothing left.”

“That’s it?” said Sean, shedding his jacket.

“How hard do you want the job to be, mate?” said Nicky, who had followed them through. “Listen, me and Lutz are going to make a start on the flat across the landing. Robbie’ll give you any advice you need. Want tea? Tabs? A fiver putting on Wet Dream in the three-thirty at Ascot? Tim’s yer man.”

“Right,” said Sean. “Thanks.”

He had never used a lump hammer before; he couldn’t even remember if he had ever held one. Its weight intimidated him. Aware of Robbie observing him, Sean hefted the tool, left hand gripping the end of the handle, right hand circling the neck, just under the dense block of iron. He stood adjacent to the wall, left foot in front of his right, and brought the hammer back over his head, grunting as he swung it up and forwards, at the same time letting his right hand slide down the shaft to meet the left.

“Fuck me,” Robbie said, as a quarter of the wall disintegrated. “Take it easy, mate. You’ll end up in hospital if you carry that on. Pace yourself. It’ll come down whether you give it five blows or fifty. It’s you who’s got to wake up in the morning, come in here and do it all over again.”

“I’m okay. I’m up to it.”

Robbie winked and left him.

Twenty minutes on, stripped to the waist and with sweat stinging his eyes, Sean had to stop. The wall, after that first impact, had proven to be stouter than he expected. Pock marks cratered the plaster; brick peeked through, obstinate. He had to get around the site. Make a connection.

He was about to go back to work when he heard the scratch of a shoe on the linoleum. Tim was standing there, his paperback dangling from his hand, one finger hooked inside it to keep his page. He looked at Sean for a long time, but then Sean saw how he was trying to coax some form from the wet ruin of his mouth.

“I’m going to the offy,” he said. “Peanuts. Want a beer? Salty doesn’t mind if you have the odd beer.”

Sean could think of nothing he wanted more, but he felt it was necessary to hold back a bit. If there was a weak link here, Tim might be it. His way in. And for that to happen, he had to behave differently from all the others Tim schlepped for.

“No, thanks,” he said. He didn’t wait to see how long his answer would take to sink in. He went back to the wall. Thinking about Naomi refuelled him. The bricks didn’t stand a chance.