Читать книгу Utterly Monkey - Nick Laird - Страница 8

Two miles and forty-seven yards away, Geordie was skinning up a morning spliff to lessen the stress of Trisha. Two men were arguing over an enormously fat girl who was dressed from head to foot in Adidas. The two men were both at least three times her age, which appeared to be around thirteen. Man One and Man Two would periodically stand up and shout at each other and then sit down. Like little figures wheeled out on the chime of a fancy wooden clock, they’d wave their arms, clang around for a while and retreat. The fat girl’s brown hair was scraped up away from her face and sat in a tuft on the top of her scalp, like the green parts of a pineapple. It was becoming apparent that Man Two was the girl’s father and that Man One drove her school bus. It was also becoming apparent that Man One had fathered Pineapple’s baby. This, the offspring of Pineapple and bus driver, was now being brought on stage for some kind of curtain call. It was a pink-faced wailing package and nobody wanted to hold it.

Geordie took the last hot drag on his spliff, and stubbed it out, crooking it like a baby finger. This was interesting. He was alone in Danny’s flat. He stood up. He was wearing only pale blue creased boxers. He lifted his rucksack from the foot of the sofa and emptied the contents out onto the sleeping bag. He replaced everything bar one white plastic bag. He set about counting the cash it contained. Geordie had not left home empty-handed.

The morning of his going he’d been fit to burst with worries about what to take and where to go and how to get. The usual going concerns. He’d rang Janice at work and asked her to meet him in the old children’s playground over in Kildrum. It was out of town and across the road from a housing estate that was being emptied out, house by house, to swankier estates. The windows on some houses were boarded up and some were flung open on the warm summer sky. The place had the look of an advent calendar. Janice had taken her lunch hour early from the chemists and driven out in her wee red Fiesta. Geordie watched her carefully and clumsily reverse the car into one of the outlined spaces in the car park, even though it was completely empty. She sauntered up to him. Tight scant denim skirt, white trainers, a navy V-neck top and a long open maroon cardigan. Her hair was tied back and Geordie fancied she’d been crying or maybe it was hay fever. She looked good, great even, if you forgave the wonky eye, and Geordie did, as he held her waist and kissed the soft swell of the top of her breasts.

‘Jan, I have to disappear. You know your fucking brother has put the word out on me.’

I heard Brewster talking about it in the kitchen. Geordie, I don’t know what to say. It’s my fault. I tried to talk to Greer but he wasn’t having any of it. And Da said to shut up or he’ll turf me out. Should I come? Should I come with you? Where are you going?’

Good old Janice, Geordie thought. Good old stupid sexy Janice, with her little waist and little feet and big lips.

Better not, at least not yet. I’ll try and send you a message at Martin’s when I get something sorted. I don’t know where I’m going, to be honest Jan. And I’ve no cash. I was thinking of Australia but there’s visas and stuff to be sorted out and I’ll have to do that in England. You could try and come over and meet me in London maybe, or in Australia even, in a few months. You could do your hairdressing again and I could work in a bar or drive a cab.’

‘Geordie, if you need money, I can get you money.’

He had turned her round and she was leaning into his lap as he drifted slightly on the swing, pleased with the airy movement. He was considering whether or not she’d let him slip her skirt up and fuck her gently from behind, here and now, as a little leaving gift.

‘How can you get money? You can’t nick it from work Jan. They have security cameras in there.’

‘Geordie!’ she snapped a little, ‘I love that job. I wouldn’t steal from Mr and Mrs Martin. They’ve been really good to me.’

‘Aye, Charlie Martin’s been very keen to be really good to you. Mad keen. Mad keen to get you in the back of the shop all alone and be really good to you.’

‘Shut up. Listen to me. Greer has money in a box behind the panel in the bath. He doesn’t know I know it’s there. You have to work the panel off with a knife or screwdriver but the other day I was in there and Da was shouting to let him in the bathroom but I was shaving my legs and I turned round to let him in for a piss and kicked the side panel of the bath and it made a clangy sound, like metal. Geordie, I can feel you.’

Geordie had slipped his hands inside her cardigan, which she’d zipped up, and he was cupping the underside of her breasts. His cock was running lengthways to the left, over the side of his thigh. ‘Hold on,’ he said, and slipped one hand under the pinch of his jeans and pulled his cock up straight, to fit in the shallow indentation that her tight skirt allowed her ass to make. ‘Go on then. What about the bath?’ He pulled her tight to him now, holding her hard little waist. She was rubbing a little against him and her voice was softer, sinking.

‘What? Oh. Well, I let Da in and then when I went back in to finish my legs I took Brewster’s penknife from the cabinet, which Malandra had in there cos it’s got tweezers on it, and I took the panel off and there’s a metal box, with a lock on it but the key was in it, and it’s full of money. I mean full of money. It must be Budgie’s. No one else in the house has cash like that lying around.’ Her voice trailed off as Geordie moved one hand down and under her and touched the warm, wet patch of her cotton knickers.

‘You’re full of money.’ He slipped a finger in under the strict elastic and felt that smallest part of her hardening. With his palm on her thigh, holding her legs apart, his finger moved down to feel the lips loosening, moistening.

‘Geordie, not here. Come into the car and we’ll park down by Macklin’s river.’

‘Ach, come on, there’s no one round. It’s the last time we’ll see each other for a while. Are you saying, Janice,’ and here he moved the other hand up over her breast and freed it from her bra. Loose and soft and billowy. He held the dense little nipple between his finger and thumb, gently, then firmly, ‘that you’ll steal Budgie’s money to give to me? What are you saying?’

‘You’ve nothing to lose. I’ll deny everything. No one knows the money’s there. He never checks it. That first night I put a hair between the panel of the bath and the wall so that if someone took the panel off the hair would fall and Geordie, the hair was still there this morning. I’ll take some of it. Just enough to see you right. Come on.’

Clever girl, Geordie thought. Janice stood up, shivery, adjusted her bra under her top and tugged her skirt round to straighten the seam. She dragged him by the hand to the car, and as she walked she felt the friction tingle between her legs, as if his fingers were still down there. Geordie pulled his checked blue shirt out of his jeans to cover his cock: it had thrust its angry head over the parapet of his belt.

Driving back into town, after a frenetic half-hour at Macklin’s river, feeling sated and lazy and sexy, Janice told Geordie to meet her back at the playground at two, and to bring a bag. She went back to work and told old soft Mr Martin that she wasn’t well. Woman’s problems. He was getting ready to complain when she pushed her chest up against him and made as if to cry. He told her to go straight home and get to bed. They could manage without her. She drove to the semi-detached house at the edge of the Dungiven estate she shared with her parents, Malandra and a varying number of brothers (Budgie’s marriage had faltered, as predicted, almost immediately, and Jackie and little snub-nosed Greer Junior lived with her mother over in Coagh, and Chicken had just moved across town into his girlfriend Jenny’s flat which was, too conveniently, above the offy). She told her mother, who was sitting at the dining-room table doing a jigsaw of two poodles in a pram, that she’d period pains, and needed to take a bath and some aspirin. Her mother, holding two edge pieces between her pursed lips, looked up, nodded and then looked down again. Some old sitcom was on the telly. Janice thudded up the stairs into her room and emptied her toilet bag onto her bed. She carried it into the bathroom and set it on the edge of the bath. She leant against the sink and looked at herself. The mirror was overcast with dust and constellated with stray white flecks of toothpaste. Janice thought how old she looked. She stretched the skin at the side of her eyes to flatten the little crow’s feet that were appearing. She must remember to wear her glasses more when she drove, not squint so much. And she should stop smoking, they say that’s not good for the skin. She turned and looked at herself from the side. Her breasts were still high and still firm, for breasts that size. She cupped them as if weighing them, and thought how last week some asshole down at the building site on the Benaghy Road had shouted after her, as she passed on the way to the solarium at lunchtime, You don’t get many of them to the pound. She felt like kneeing him in the balls as she had Budgie, when he’d tried to get into her room three years ago, drunk. No way Jos´e. She hadn’t let him in since she was sixteen and he never tried any more. She lifted her top. Her stomach was still flat and still hard. Good. She could do with losing some weight off her bum she decided, and suddenly, a little viciously, tugged off her top and wriggled out of her skirt and knickers. She stepped cleanly out of the puddled clothes, and looked at the pale mass of herself again. Skin and then inside that flesh and inside that bone and then inside that what? Didn’t people say the marrow of the bone? People had bone marrow transplants didn’t they? As she stood and stared in the mirror she saw her face waver and emerge as if it was fifty years old. Fleshy cheeks, a corrugated brow, eyelids thickened and heavy. She blinked and came back to herself. You’re getting old Janice, she thought, you’re beginning to die.

She opened the bathroom cabinet. A dimpled strip of Boots paracetamol clattered into the sink, triggering a loose scree of assorted plasters. An ancient bottle of Calpol, still in its stained cardboard sheath, stood at the back of the top shelf. A stippled pink ankle support covered some squat and sturdy pill bottles. It dated from the time Budgie, up playing on ‘the pitch’ (really a partly gravelled field behind the Costcutters which had been earmarked for a car park that never appeared) had his ankle sprained by a dangerous tackle from Jackie McMenemy. That was the first time Budgie had been in trouble, apparently, according to Brewster, as Janice had only been one or two then. As payback Budgie had lifted a broken brick from the pile they were using for one of the goalposts, hobbled over to Jackie, who was sitting cross-legged nursing his own ankle, and smashed it in his face. Her dad had given the McMenemys money so that Budgie wouldn’t go to borstal. You still saw Jackie round the town on a Saturday, holding the hand of one of his wee boys who’d look up, wailing or smiling, into the gap-toothed grin of a village idiot. You can fix that sort of stuff now, Janice thought, wiping her tongue like a polishing rag over the neat ornaments of her own front teeth.

There were pumice stones and scalpels and bunion and corn plasters for her mother’s gnarled feet (the legacy of twenty years standing behind the counter in Marshall’s bakery). And there was Brewster’s penknife with the tweezers that saw heavy usage. The hair on Malandra’s body could best be described as adventurous. Her eyebrows, left alone as they had been for approximately fifteen years, had sent out expeditions to explore the rest of her face. The small of her back had fleeced itself. She was pretty, Janice knew, and unlike her was dark, which was really why the flecks of downy, shadowy hair on her face used to be noticeable. From when she was twelve, if she ever pissed any of them off, they’d called her Elvis, what with her sideburns and all. Which was why there were four half-empty tubes of Immac in the cabinet, and the tweezers were kept busy applauding in the natural light by the bathroom window.

Janice banged the cabinet door and pulled out the blade of the knife with her thumbnail. She wedged it in between the panel and the side of the bath. The panel shifted slightly ajar. She turned on both bath taps: they squealed as she twisted their heads, and dripped in some gloopy orange bubble foam. The panel was a sheet of plywood, painted white, and the green deposit box was still behind it. She pulled it out from its hiding place. It was lighter than she remembered. She put the lid of the toilet down and sat on it, the box and the lid burning her bare thighs with cold. The cash was in rolls packed in little plastic bank bags. They reminded her of messages in bottles somehow. She hadn’t time to count it or estimate how much it was. She quickly took the bags out and pushed some into her trainers, and then pushed her socks in after them. The rest she stuffed into her toilet bag. She stood up then, and touched, gently, as if in remembrance, the cool damp hair between her legs. She would miss him, she thought, and his lovely big cock. Maybe she would try and meet him somewhere. Fuck Budgie. It had been a long time since she’d felt anything but hate for him. Fuck Greer and Chicken and their vicious mouths and fists and friends. Fuck the lot of them. Except Brewster. He was all right, just a bit pathetic. He floated around like a ghost, shocked to be noticed at all. She went to the toilet, wiped, stood and yanked the chain. It was an old-fashioned toilet with the cistern up high on the wall. It glugged and then whimpered, filling up. She stepped into the bath and hunkered. It was too hot to lie down in. She could hear the bubbles in the foam popping softly, audible as an opened can of Coke. She lowered her ass into the water and raised herself again. She cupped some water and let it drizzle down over her knees, onto her thighs, into the nest of hair between her legs. She sat down properly and then, with the dragged, reverberant sound of skin on wet plastic, slipped down into the bath to submerge herself completely. Pinching her nose closed, she felt the water funnel into her ears. She could hear the sounds of the house much clearer here: the television spilling canned laughter in the living room, and the steam whistle of the kettle on the gas ring, and then her mother’s chair scrape back on the lino tiles as she got up in her sheepskin slippers and shuffled into the kitchen to warm the teapot. I live underwater, she thought suddenly, and pushed her feet against the bottom of the bath to surface for air and shampoo.

Geordie then had a bagful of cash. Janice had put the money in a white plastic bag and he’d placed it in the front pocket of the rucksack he’d nicked from his little sister Grace. As soon as he’d got on the ferry (until then he was still expecting Budgie to appear suddenly, behind some window, tapping softly as rain) he’d nipped into one of the disabled toilets, and sat on the floor and totalled the cash. £49,250. Not bad at all.

Sitting on Danny’s sofa, Geordie counted it again, dealing the notes into piles like playing cards. £49,300. He recounted it. £49,450. Fuck it, he thought, I’ve a rough idea. He lifted two of the Bank of England fifty pound notes, pushed them into his left trainer and placed the rest back into the plastic bags. He started to look around Danny’s place with replenished interest. Where the hell could he hide it? He wandered through the flat like a prospective buyer, looking up at the plaster cornices and down at the skirting boards. He tapped walls. He opened cupboards and drawers. He peeled back the carpet, like sunburnt skin, from a corner of the living room. The pale epidermis of unpolished floorboards. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He sat down again, heavily, on the sofa. And then it was obvious. He’d hide it where Budgie had hidden it. Geordie lifted a small fork from the cutlery drawer, which was still lolling out like a tongue, and carried the bag into the bathroom.

The bath must once have been new and white. And that must have been some time ago. It now had a discoloured ring around it, close to the top, like a high tidemark and the base of it was grained by smaller rings and various stains, all of them bad. The panel was plastic and when Geordie inserted the handle of the fork, it scraped open almost immediately. Behind the panel was a paper bag filled with nails, a magazine from July 1995 called Smash Hits (featuring Take That and their magnificent teeth) and an empty bottle of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. He pushed the plastic bag right to the back, past the roughened underside of the bath.

Geordie, to the tune of ‘The Farmer Wants a Wife’, was softly singing Fifty thousand pounds, fifty thousand pounds, hey-ho ma-dearie-oh, fifty thousand pounds. Janice was an idiot. She reckoned that kind of money was Budgie’s, that it was the proceeds of one scam or another: bleaching red diesel to white, flogging counterfeit DVDs or videos to the stallholders up at Nutts Corner, offering ‘protection’ to the chippies and offies that lined the main street. That kind of folding didn’t come in from that. Not, leastways, all at once. Fitting the panel back into its gap, Geordie started to get a little unnerved. Maybe he was the idiot. Everyone’d heard the rumours. Something was starting up or going down. Something was being unleashed. Maybe he had Something’s money.

Geordie showered, dressed himself in yesterday’s garb, and set off towards Dalston. Danny’s flat was in Stoke Newington, according to Albert, Olivia and his postcode, but Danny himself admitted Dalston was spiritually, if not technically, its home. He had given Geordie brief instructions last night: turn right out the house, then right again, then buy some food for dinner.

Stoke Newington High Street runs from the white liberal enclave of Church Street (homeopathic healers, designer clothes shops, independent bookstores) through the Turkish community (men’s clubs with no discernible purpose, kebab shops) to the African and Afro-Caribbean end (hair shops, furniture stores selling coffee tables fashioned from ceramic tigers). Geordie began to walk down it. He passed a mobile phone shop and remembered he’d not brought his phone out. Stupid of him. He’d not seen so many different shades of skin before. Geordie, Danny had learned last night in the pub, had never tried garlic or pasta, unless tinned spaghetti is pasta. Neither had he drank wine outside a church or eaten an aubergine, a courgette, or a sweet potato. Geordie felt himself in a new position: the outsider. He felt white. He couldn’t stop looking at the black people he saw. Their skin looked polished. They were beautiful. In Ridley Road market he thought he was about to get his head kicked in for staring. He was looking at a broad-shouldered young black man wearing a brown leather jacket and a gold-buttoned white shirt with a Nehru collar.

‘Wadchu looking at liddle man?’ Geordie realized he was talking to him. The man was repeatedly tilting his head back, as if brandishing his chin like a weapon.

‘Nothing,’ Geordie mumbled, shaking his head, scurrying, suddenly animal.

He came to a butchers, entitled Halal Meat, on the corner of the market. It was one long glass counter open to the street. Bald dead chickens clustered upside down along the back wall. Three men, slick and confident as bartenders, swayed between each other and served the docile queue. They wore white coats smeared with blood. They made Geordie think of a war movie he’d seen once in which sleepless doctors tended to the wounded. He inched to the front.

‘Yes? Help you?’ said Omar Sharif’s plumper little brother.

‘Can I have a pound of bacon and four chicken breasts please?’

The moustache behind the counter leant right across and tapped his cleaver on the glass: Are you taking the piss my friend?’ He rolled the ‘r’ of ‘friend’ and toned the phrase as Goldfinger did to James Bond. Geordie, angry, shook his head and then softened his face and shook his head again.

‘No bacon. How many chicken breasts you want?’ Sharif Jr straightened up behind the counter.

‘Four, please,’ said Geordie, a little stunned.

He crossed the road to the Kilkenny Arms, received his Guinness from the bleached Australian barman, who actually said ‘G’day’, and sat at an empty table. His ears were burning. He felt somehow embarrassed. This was the capital of his country and he felt a million miles from home. This was London, home of Big Ben, unfailingly chiming on the news every night, home of the Houses of Parliament and Churchill and the Union Jack and all the unchangeable symbols the orange banners displayed. Geordie realized he hadn’t seen a flag all day.

Mooning over his Guinness, Geordie thought about Ulster, that little patch of scorched earth. It had stayed loyal to England and now England didn’t want it. England was completely indifferent to it now. Geordie remembered Jenny McClure, this girl he’d known at primary school, who was tall and blonde and posh, which meant that her family lived outside the town and owned two cars and her dad played golf. She was clean and prim and perfect. And all through P6 and P7 he’d asked her to the cinema and made her little Valentine cards and warned the other boys off and waited after school just to walk ten paces behind her to the gates where her pert and pretty mother waited. And all that time she either ignored Geordie, or got her friends to tell him to leave her alone. Geordie remembered the lunchtime when, in an empty classroom, he’d poured the jar of dirty paintbrush water into her school bag. One day you wake up and hate.

At the Orange parades the police would stand on the fringes, attentive and static, like curious strangers who’ve stopped to watch a wedding party leave the church. Geordie remembered sitting on tarmac in fierce bare sunlight watching old Andy MacLean, a friend of his da’s, unwrap the Lambeg from the oilskins with a deft patience. He remembered the clipped neatness of his white rolled shirtsleeves. The snap and flutter of the tendons in his forearms. And how his thin wrists arched as the drumsticks twirled like spokes in front of him, and under his jutted chin how the ordinal drum had pounded and pounded and swung. He remembered how the lodge’s banners had advertised their faithfulness, as if faithfulness was all that mattered. But how could one stay devoted to someone who wants to leave you? Well, they wanted us once, Geordie thought. He stayed on in the pub for an idle hour, opposite a toothless old timer, folded into himself, dressed like Geordie’s dead grandfather, grey suit, flat cap, reading the Irish News. When he stood up to slope past him, the old guy raised his tumbler of whiskey to eyelevel, as if he was toasting the two of them.

Outside the pub a tattered newspaper was lying against the curb and the wind was freeing it sheet by sheet. Some pages blew about restlessly further up the pavement. One had managed to wrap itself around a lamppost and was flapping gently like a drunkard trying to hail a taxi. Geordie stopped to watch an African man, in a brown lounge suit and a piano keyboard tie, across the road. He was preaching about Jesus and reminded Geordie of the McNulty brothers, who, on a Friday night when he was shuttling from pub to pub on Ballyglass main street, would be standing out in suits they were too young to need for work, beseeching the sinners to repent. Geordie wandered back up the High Street and turned left past the school into Sofia Road. The playground was filled with kids shouting and running and taking everything very seriously. Kids don’t really have senses of humour, Geordie thought. Everything seems so important. One little boy, Arabic looking, was standing in uniform by the wire fence looking particularly grave. Geordie looked back, just as level and serious. The kid sneered, casually flipped him the middle finger, and walked off.

In the house Geordie slumped down on the sofa and turned his phone on. He’d two texts, both from Janice. BUDGIE KNOWS UVE CASH said one. RING ME said the other. Geordie needed to piss. He jumped up and went into the bathroom. He was jittery. It was always going to happen, he reasoned, but he didn’t realize it would happen so quickly. He’d need to think. There was no way Budgie would know where he was. It wasn’t like he was still in danger. He zipped up, flushed the toilet, and then checked his voicemails. One from Janice. She’d been crying. He’d probably slapped her about. The second voicemail was from Ian McAleece. Something about a drink. He wasn’t in the mood for that. As he was setting the phone down on the table it rang. He answered it, knowing he shouldn’t, but angry suddenly. ‘Geordie? It’s Ian here. From the boat.’

At eight o’clock that morning, just as Danny was rising soberly from bed, and the sleeping Geordie was making the repetitive gurgling sound of a broken cistern, Ian McAleece was sitting on the side of his sagging single bed in Kilburn Park’s sad little Lord Gregory Hotel. He was intently jabbing his mobile phone buttons with his stubby index finger. In Ballyglass Budgie Johnson woke suddenly and hoarsely answered his little silver Motorola: ‘Hello?’

Yes, it is a small small world. And Ulster but a button on its coat.

‘Budge, listen mate. Get a pen. I need you to get the cash to Mervyn. He’s bringing it across tonight. He needs to get it left in to this hotel. You got a pen?’

‘Okay, okay. What’s the address?’

Seven minutes later, Budgie Johnson went to the makeshift cupboard and found that the cupboard was bare. Wearing his boxer shorts patterned with the prison arrows of Christmas trees, he had locked the bathroom door, knelt on the damp bathmat and slipped his house key in the crack between the wall and bath to lever the panel off. He’d pulled out the green metal box, flipped its lid and gaped. After very slowly mouthing fuck several times, he put the panel back in place, set the box on his bed and banged on Malandra’s door.

‘’Landra, open the door. Ah need ta ask you something.’ Budgie was not yet angry. He was so terrified he felt like he was floating.

A scrape and a click and a tousled, dark, pretty Malandra, in a Bart Simpson nightshirt bearing 1986’s legendary injunction Don’t Have a Cow Man, appeared, holding a mug of tea.

‘What?’ Voices from the portable in her room came into the hall and were chanting Four. Three. Two…in some competition on breakfast television.

‘I had a box under the bath. There was stuff in it. And now there’s not. You know anything about it?’

‘What sort of stuff? Drugs?’

Either she was very sly or knew nothing. Budgie spun round and knocked sharply on Janice’s door.

‘Jan, open the door.’ Malandra waited, interested and leaning against the door jamb, with one leg arched neatly so the heel of her foot rested against her other ankle. She looked poised to execute some daring entrechat or pirouette.

‘What? What is it?” came a voice from the bedroom, unmistakably issuing out from a head on its side with one cheek pressed into a pillow.

‘Open the fucking door Janice.’ Budgie was no longer floating. His thoughts were beginning to settle: he was up to his neck here. His stomach contracted. His fists were itching. He punched the door once, and again. Hard.

‘Okay, okay. Hold on.’

A ratchety noise and the door inched open.

‘What is it? Greer, this is my day off.’ Her tone suggested that her brother didn’t have any days on. Budgie smacked the door fully open with the palm of his left hand and Janice was shoved backwards. He strode into the room and grabbed a fistful of her hair.

‘Where the fuck is it you wee bitch?’

Janice was only aware of Budgie’s breath, his stinking morning breath, on her face, and the sharp pain in her scalp. Her hair was lifting her up onto her tiptoes. Then she registered Malandra screaming as her terrified face appeared over Budgie’s naked shoulder, her arms pulling at Budgie’s neck. She noticed how hairy Budgie’s shoulders had got. And then she started to scream as well. Budgie spun round and in doing so pushed her onto the bed. He launched Malandra into the hall and shut the door and pushed the bolt across.

‘I think you’ve something to tell me.’

‘Greer, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who the fuck…I was asleep and you just force yourself in here and…you’ve no fucking right…’

Budgie moved across the room and neatly slapped her across the face with the back of his hand. Janice stop fucking about. I know you took it. Now where is it? You’ve no idea what you’ve done.’

‘What fucking money? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I never mentioned any money Jan.’

Janice looked scattered, stunned. Budgie sat down beside her and took her hand in his. He started to bend her index finger back. Very calmly he said, ‘I’ll break your fucking finger Jan I swear it. I won’t even blink. Now tell me where the fucking money went.’

‘I didn’t know it was yours. I just found it. I’ve spent it.’

‘Don’t talk shit. You better fucking hope that’s shit. Did you give that money to your little boyfriend? Cause if you did, he’s a dead man. He’s fucking dead Jan. You’ve killed him.’

He didn’t know it was yours. I told him it was mine.’

‘Yeah, cause you re going to have fifty grand in your pocket. You stupid stupid bitch.’

When he said ‘fifty grand’ Janice’s eyes flickered. Budgie read it correctly.

‘You didn’t even know. You didn’t even know how much you’d given him. God, but you are an idiot Jan. You’re nothing but an idiot slut.’

Casually, Budgie punched her hard on her left temple. Jan crumpled onto the duvet and began crying. He stood up.

‘I need that money. You better tell that little thief I’m going to come after him and rip his fucking head off. You better tell him to get that money back to me. Or he’s dead, and you’re dead, and his family’s dead, and everyone his family’s ever fucking met is dead. You hear me Jan? This is big boy rules. You stupid fucking stupid bitch.’

Budgie was breathing hoarsely. He opened her door. His mother and Malandra were standing in the hall. Malandra was crying and sniffing while his mother just stood there watching, bovine and floral in her nightie, open-mouthed. Budgie considered shutting it for her but instead feinted a lunge at them. They flinched and Malandra screamed. Budgie snorted. Back in his room he rang Ian who answered weirdly.

‘Hawwwo.’

‘Ian, everything all right?’

‘Yeah, brushing my teeth. You speak to Merv?’

‘No, not yet, listen there’s a minor problem.’

‘What sort of problem?’

‘The money isn’t quite ready.’

‘What do you mean not ready? It’s been ready for months. Mervyn’s flying tonight. I swear to God Budgie if you’ve taken any of that money you’ll be dead by dusk.’

The same tone he’d just used, the same threat he’d just made to Janice. He suddenly wished he could step out of the way completely, instead of being smack in the middle, making death threats and receiving them, like a domino stood on its end in a row of them, waiting for someone to touch the first one and topple the lot.

‘I swear I never touched it. I kept it safe but there’s been a fuck-up. Not my fault. My…my little bitch of a sister…I think she’s taken some of the money.’

‘How the fuck did she get at the money? What sort of fucking treasurer are you?

‘No listen Ian. It’s fine. Calm down. I know who has the money. I’ll get it back.’

‘Don’t tell me to calm down. I’m your fucking CO. Now who has the money? Where is the fucking money?’

‘Ian, I’m sorry. It’s a guy we told to get out of town. Geordie Wilson. It seems she gave him some money. But he’s just left, he’s…’

‘Geordie Wilson?’ Ian started to laugh.

‘What? What’s funny?’

Budgie heard a tap run, and then one, two, three spitting sounds. Then the jangle of a plastic toothbrush being set in a glass.

‘Mr Wilson and I became acquainted on the boat over. I have his mobile number. You’re a lucky man Budgie, stupid but lucky. How much money do I need to retrieve from him?’

Budgie grimaced. ‘About fifty thousand.’

‘Fucking hell Budge. This is the last time you look after the cash for the boys. I’ll see to that. You and me’ll be having a chat when I’m back. If I have any fucking problems getting this…Well, I’ll be coming to see you anyway. That’s a promise. I’m going to give Mr Wilson a call and arrange to meet for a drink. Now, meantime, here’s what you can do…

‘Listen mate,’ Ian said, ‘you fancy a pint this afternoon? I’m at a loose end. Waiting for something to arrive.’

Geordie was leaning back on the sofa but frantically jiggling his right leg. It hadn’t stopped jiggling since Jan’s texts.

‘Well, I’m a bit busy at the minute. Something’s come up.’

‘Mate, I won’t take no for answer. Seriously. Nonnegotiable. Meet me in the centre. What about O’Neill’s off Chinatown? Go to Leicester Square and walk through Chinatown. You can’t miss it. Four o’clock say?’

‘Maybe. Look it’s just this thing’s happened and I need to think about…’

‘Yeah great. Tell me about it later,’ Ian interjected, ‘I’ve got to go now.’ He hung up. Geordie set the phone on the wooden coffee table and leaned back again on the sofa. He looked up at the ceiling. White paint flaking off the pale pink plaster meant the near corner looked like a sky ragged with clouds. He breathed out heavily, utterly deflated. He picked the phone up and texted I’LL BRING THE CASH BACK to Janice, and immediately turned it off. He looked at the ceiling’s mackerel sky again, and thought how when he was a kid at scout camp in Gosford, his patrol leader, the ruthlessly cheerful Terry Green, had told him that a sky like that meant good weather was on its way. Yeah, right. Where’s Terry Green now? Six feet deep and filled with worms. No good weather came for him, Geordie thought, and it isn’t sunshine that’s heading for me. All those homespun proverbs, country wisdom, local knowledge, old wives’ tales: what a load of shit.