The
merchandise was now buried good and deep on an abandoned plot, well away from
his dad’s plot on the allotment. He’d noticed the old bill and the ambulance
people traipsing all over it a few weeks ago when the old bed-wetter who owned
it was found dead in his shed by another dodderer.
Heart
attack, he’d heard later; probably blew a gasket playing with himself over a
nice pair of tabloid tits. Kevin had been getting ready to do Kelly in the shed
when he’d heard the commotion. She’d enjoyed the sport at first, keeping
deathly quiet and peeking through the netting of the shed’s window. Then she’d
got giggly and he’d had to remind her he could do time with the nonces if the
coppers got curious. She hadn’t liked it much when they did it in silence
though; she’d got timid without the usual blather and bullshit to get her going
and he’d had to finish quickly to stop her crying and making noise. Reliving it
later, alone, he knew he liked it more that way, with her just shutting up and
taking it fast and hard. He hadn’t been nicked either, not then and not ever,
and he’d seen something useful to tell his dad about.
That
had come in handy last night. While the old man unearthed the plastic-wrapped
blocks of heroin and bags of coke and pills from beneath the shed and made some
calls, Kevin had dug a hole in the dead man’s vegetable plot. He’d had to choke
down pride to grab the spade and stab it into the earth again and again, almost
gagging on it whenever his dad told him he was digging like a queer, prodding
at it like a mincer, not getting stuck in, not earning his inheritance. He
plunged his energy into the splitting earth, hating it and cleaving it and
relishing the fact that it was endless like his hate.
Minutes
into the digging, he’d become a dynamo, every stroke creating its own energy,
the inertia of spite. He’d stopped when the light ebbed, looking up at his
looming dad from a wide trench almost as deep as he was tall. Dad had laughed
at him, called him a mentalist and wondered if he’d dig his own grave as well,
but at least the ‘queer’ jokes dried up.
He’d
wrapped the gear in multiple plastic tarpaulins, covered it over with hundreds
of pounds of earth and replaced the desiccated greenery on top as naturally as
he could. He’d then helped his dad smooth over any trace of digging at their
own plot, spread the spoil out widely and scattered and sprayed rat poison, cat
deterrent and slug pellets all over both plots in the hope that they’d hurt or
baffle a police dog if it ever came to that.
They’d
finished off this morning, starting at first light, before dog walkers or
pottering gardeners appeared, and before the sun gathered its full strength.
The day had gone well, so far. No pushing and shoving, no ‘queer’ or ‘nonce’
jibes. His dad had even laced his coffee with whisky. Now he rested on the
spade, buzzing a little from the liquor and the little snort of amphet he’d
palmed the night before to help him start the day with a whizz. King of all he
stood upon, he guessed at the prodigious street value of the chemicals five
feet beneath his feet, certain that he’d get his slice of the action if he
barked and chased balls and rolled over when the old man told him to. He heard
laughter, clean and child-like and tried to smile; finding his mouth otherwise
engaged, he realised the laughter was his.
He
didn’t know it then but later it was as plain as the soil beneath his
fingernails that he’d already made the decision. When dad’s phone burst into
rude life, startling the birdsong into obscurity with another chorus of ‘Mr
Bombastic’, he didn’t even look up from the tattered array of cabbages and
spuds before him, wondering idly if they’d tap into the gear with their roots
to bloom magnificently and briefly then transform into pale, emaciated,
trembling vegetables that would prowl the allotments stealing from healthier
plants until someone threw them into a deep composter to fester and stink. He
shook his head and giggled some more.
The
sparks of irritation flying from his dad’s mouth as if he were a cutting tool
only made Kevin crane his neck to stare, curious but not alarmed. Him talking
to mum often started and ended in fury. He had a temper and she had the bruises
to prove it. It used to make him uncomfortable, the violent words, the punches
and kicks and the weeping, spitting aftermath, until he realised that she kept
pushing his buttons, never learning, always asking for it; and dad was just as
dumb for hanging around there, letting her goad him, not sorting her out
properly or walking away. It’s not right to hit a woman, unless she screams in
your face and jabs at you, then the law has to be laid down; but if it can’t be
laid down properly, finally, once and for all, then what? He giggled again,
watching the thoughts form with detached interest, not sure whose ideas they
were.
“You
fucking stupid little tossbag!”
The
old man was striding towards him, face scarlet and knuckles pale and itching to
be used, phone clipped shut and stuffed into a pocket to leave the hands free.
Kevin hadn’t taken a beating for over a week now so perhaps this one was overdue;
he felt his shoulders tauten in a flinching reflex and tried to force them into
a shrug.
“You
kept it, didn’t you? You only fucking kept it.”
“W-w-w-what?”
he stuttered, finding his mouth gummed by an unbidden fear become habit.
“Your
little souvenir of the pub.”
He
drew closer, slowing his step so he’d have time to wind himself up properly,
and work out how much damage he was entitled to do.
“Pigs
doing a warrant at my fucking home. Because you can’t keep your pretty, queer’s
mouth shut. Because you want to shag little girls. Because you, you little
piss-weasel, can’t get anyone your own age to spread their legs for you.”
“I
d-d-don’t know what…..”
“The
fucking recording box from the Friars’.”
Keith
Braxton dragged a hand across his face as if he could wipe something away,
turned on his heel, turned back, jabbed a finger, threw down his arms, shook
his head. Kevin felt his fingers tighten on the handle of the spade.
“I
shouldn’t have brought you on board. You ain’t got the balls or the brains. You
only make a living from this if you keep the pigs from sniffing you out. If you
act like a pro and let the fuckwit junkies get pinched without ever knowing you
exist. What the fuck am I to do with you, Kevin? How will you ever learn if
someone don’t teach you?”
“I
c-c-can l-l-learn,” he managed, dragging the words from his tightening throat,
seeing the dry earth crumble as the spasm in his fist drew the spade from the
earth inch by inch.
“Fuckin’
right you can.”
That
should have been the cue for him to squeeze his eyes shut and take his
medicine, to accept the blows that jerked back his head, dragged him off his
feet, doubled him up in a gasping, puking convulsion, bulged black and red
across his vision and fired off a final volley of flash-popping light. But this
time the dynamo still held its charge. Inertia fired his limbs, arcing from the
endless soil through the thick iron and wood in his hands, resolving itself in
one movement and one word.
“No!”
he screamed as he lurched outside his dad’s punch, both hands clutching the
spade as he dragged it from the soil, hefted it overhead and flung its blade
down, both his feet leaving the ground as it bit into something.
Then
he was staggering, sweat or tears or both stinging his eyes, toes tingling where
the spade had bashed against them, gazing into his dad’s eyes, strangely calm
now beneath the gaping red crescent etched on his forehead. Then he slumped,
face glossy with blood, sitting in the dirt, surprised to find himself there,
scrabbling with fists and feet, unformed words no more than a bubbling in his
throat.
Kevin
knew he could learn from his mistakes. He’d been childish, indiscreet and weak.
How could he be the big man, the smart man, the geezer and the pro if he
couldn’t stomach the big decisions? He caught himself sobbing while his dad
squirmed in the dirt, looking for balance, groaning at the sudden wrongness of
the world. Kevin knew he should be laughing while his old man wallowed; no
sooner had he thought it then he exploded with mirth, heart pounding and
fizzing again with the chemical energy he needed to make things right. So many
problems could be solved with this spade, if he acted quickly, if he didn’t
give in to craven doubts. It wasn’t like he had a choice; dad wasn’t a man you
could safely leave half-dead.
He
danced away from his dad’s lunging grasp, planted his feet and swung the spade
again and again, sometimes feeling the shiver of cracking bone on the flat of
the blade, sometimes leaning into it to penetrate skin and sinew with the
blade. It got easier once the clotted screams had subsided, once he’d embraced
what he was, what he was always meant to be; the man his father had made out of
the boy, hard brick from soft clay.
Harkness
gunned the diesel-engined pool car down Burton Road and took the Yarborough
Road roundabout without braking. Slowey gripped the passenger seat as the car
squatted on its offside wheels, shouting his directions above the squealing
rubber and mechanical clatter. He glimpsed a puff of tyre smoke from a car that
nearly t-boned them and a stuttering movement as something else hit its rear.
He locked his eyes straight ahead, determined to see only what he needed to see
from now on.
“Left
left,” he shouted, spotting the unmade access road to the allotments as the
speedo ground past 50 mph.
Harkness
stood on the brakes and flicked the wheel. In a rear-wheel drive car, the
manoeuvre might have worked straight away. In this sedate and safe front-wheel
drive car, the rear wheels slewed sideways for a mere fraction of a second
before the traction control kicked in and the front wheels set themselves
safely and steadily at a garden wall. Harkness pumped the brakes then jabbed
hard at the throttle, tearing the steering from its inertia and bouncing onto
the dirt track with a brittle crack as the wall claimed a wing mirror.
“Jesus
wept,” said Slowey. “I’m driving next time.”
“You
love it. Best part of the job, this,” said Harkness, grinning wolfishly.
“Didn’t you sign for this car?”
He
goaded the engine again, letting the car buck and scrape its way along the
pot-holed track. Slowey scanned the allotment as best he could given the
blurring, teeth-chattering momentum, looking for anything incongruous among the
tangle of fencing and greenery. Then he found it, a brisk, cyclical movement as
incongruous as an oil well in a wheat field.
“There!”
He jabbed a finger. “No, for Christ’s sake, just park up…...”
Harkness
glimpsed the figure of the youth, stripped-down to the waist, ruddy with
exertion, streaked with something dark, labouring with a spade in the parched
earth. He spun the wheel again, letting the wheels churn through cauliflowers
and leeks, collecting bird netting on the grille. Then the car buried its
bumper in a raised hedgerow and dragged up a mass of roots clumped with drying
clay as it surrendered its inertia and Harkness finally bowed to physics and
reason.
The
two men abandoned the car, brakes smouldering and engine ticking, at a gallop,
slowing to a walk when it became clear that they had found Kevin Braxton, that
he was aware of them and that he couldn’t care less. His hoarse wheezing might
once have been laughter, tracks in the dirt on his face might once have been
tears and the spatters of flaking rust on his tracksuit bottoms and skinny
torso might once have been blood.
Reading
the scene, the two men split and circled Braxton, keeping a respectful
distance. Slowey murmured into his radio, ever the professional. Braxton had
worked hard in the last few minutes, his father’s battered remains already covered
with a thin layer of earth. It momentarily occurred to Harkness to summon an
ambulance, assuming Slowey hadn’t already, whisk out his ‘resusci-shield’ and
try to save Keith Braxton’s life. He dismissed the impulse as force of habit or
wishful thinking; Keith might have had it coming, but the enquiry’s body count
had escalated to a point beyond professional embarrassment. Besides, no body
with any life left in it would remain wholly inert with soil and grit clogging
its nostrils and clouding its unpeeled eyes.
“Morning,
Kevin,” shouted Harkness, trying too hard to be casual, betraying his fear. The
youth stabbed the spade into the soil and sagged against it, limp and
uncoiling. Yet he still deserved a respectful distance; Keith had been a highly
proficient hard man and felling him must have taken some determination. “Let
go of the spade. There’s a good lad.”
“Look
like a fucking nonce, do I? Fuckin’ working man, now, innit? Businessman, an’
all.” Braxton’s knuckles seemed welded to the spade’s handle, rooting his
faltering body to the sod. His eyeballs gyred in his head, pinprick pupils
flickering from side to side then drifting upwards, threatening to vanish into
his skull until he blinked them back into focus. Hysteria vied with hilarity in
his voice. “Who’s the hard man now, eh, wanker? Who’s the daddy?”
“Kevin,
are you in there mate? Can you hear me?”
“You
want some too, eh? Come on then, come get some, I’ll fucking rip you a new
one!” Braxton took a step back, grabbed the spade with both hands and in one
fluid and powerful movement uprooted it, tripped over his own feet and hurled
it and himself flat onto the ground.