Deadfolk (17 page)

He stared at us while I carried on smoking. Then he shook his head and got out. ‘Come on, Blakey,’ he says, hanging back into the car. ‘Help us. He must be twenty stone if he’s an ounce.’ He waited for a bit, then shut the door and started making noises out back. Soon he had Baz on the ground and were lugging him slowly down to the water. I could hear him grunting and panting like a randy boar. He were right about Baz being a lump. Finney were struggling, and that were saying a lot considering he shifted dead cattle around for a living. But I were staying put. This were the way it had to be. I had responsibilities now, me being boss of Hoppers and all. If anyone clocked us putting a corpse in the river, I’d be headed for more shite, just when I were clambering out of the first lot. No, it had to be this way. And besides, Finney’d said he wanted to help.

Fuck it. I got out and went to give him hand. I knew I oughtn’t to. But what can you do? Mates is mates, even if they’re cunts as well. I always helps a mate in need. Call it a fault in me character.

We took a leg each and dragged Baz onto the path running alongside the bank, then stopped for a little rest. Finney got his fags out and passed us one. We smoked and stood quietly, listening out for folk. Finney started kicking an old pop can around. ‘No one about, is there?’ I says. But Fin didn’t hear us. He’d booted the can up the path and were off after it, imagining himself making a run at goal from the halfway line. All of a sudden I felt uneasy, like I were standing on a wall with a slurry pit on the one side and a sheer drop on the other. A deep sound started up somewhere in my head like the lowest note on a church organ. Unless I got shifting I’d fall off for surely. Fin were miles away now. He’d turned off into the scrub and were chasing the can back toward the car, dribbling past invisible fullbacks and shouting his own commentary. The noise in my head were getting louder, making us tremble and loosening me bowels. I flicked the fag, half-smoked. It pinged off Baz’s dead face and landed in the dirt, where I stepped on it. I grabbed Baz’s feet and hauled him down a little track that led to the water. I’d feel better once he were in the river.

‘All right, mate.’

I stopped dead and looked over my leather-clad shoulder. There were a feller sitting a few foot down from us on the water’s edge, holding a rod. He winked at us, then saw Baz and frowned.

‘All right, mate,’ I says, pleasantly enough.

It were Danny, short podgy cunt with glasses from three year above us at school. Four, perhaps. I’d never called him by name before and I weren’t about to now. Anyhow, didn’t much matter who he were. He were the bastard who seen me lugging Baz. He had to go.

We looked at each other a minute or two. The end of his rod started twitching this way and that, but he weren’t aware of it. We was staring at each other, wondering who were planning what. Then I stood up straight and pulled out the monkey wrench. It were a nice weight in my hand. Felt like it were meant for more than just servicing a wide range of nut gauges. Hitting folks’ heads seemed a more proper usage right then. Specially when I swung it and caught him just above the left ear. His body lurched to the left and I thought he’d go down for surely. But his legs started wheeling under him, making up for the pull of gravity. He scuttled off sideways. I followed and brung the wrench down on the same spot near enough. This time the sound were like batting a marrow with a crowbar.

He went down for good this time. He lay there kicking and dribbling, eyes flitting about like moths around a light bulb. I watched him, thinking how it were a shame and all, but there hadn’t been much else I could do. Then he stopped twitching and went all still.

I booted him in the guts hard as I could. Just to be sure.

I waited, and lit another un. My legs was starting to ache. I wanted to get out and stretch em a bit. But that’d be spoiling it. I’d done me bit, and now I had to keep my head down. Across the river the sun were dipping behind the Deblin Hills. I looked at me watch. Eight o’clock. I had to be in the graveyard by nine to meet Mandy and get my passport to happy days. And I were fucking starving. Me guts was making noises like a pining greyhound. And where the fuck were Finney? Last time I seen him he were chasing that flipping pop can and screaming about some of the crowd being on the pitch and reckoning it were all over.

I lit another one and waited. I went over all the things might have happened to him. He’d trod in a pothole and broke his leg. He’d fallen in the water and drowned. He’d sat down and fallen akip. He’d forgot what he’d come here for and walked off homeward. I looked at the steering column. The keys was still in it. Perhaps I’d best fuck off.

But then he comes out of the trees clutching a big fish in each hand, grinning like a beered-up friar.

‘Fuck me, Blakey,’ he says, slotting his arse into the worn out driver’s seat. ‘Ever seen barbel this size? Here you go.’ He dropped one in my lap.

‘Well bugger me,’ says I. He were right. They was the largest barbel I’d ever seen in them waters or any other waters, not that I’d ever seen waters other than them running through the Mangel area.

‘Found em down there by the water,’ he says. ‘Someone left em there. Gear an’ all, loads of it. Fancy it? I’ll pop back down there if you wants it.’ He went to open the door.

I pulled him back and says: ‘Leave it.’ He looked at us funny, so I says: ‘Don’t want folks seein’ us round here. Case they finds Baz.’

‘Aye, nice thinkin’.’ He started up the Allegro and pointed her townward. ‘So er…you get rid of Baz an’ that?’

‘No. Got up and ran off, didn’t he.’

‘Eh?’ He slammed on the brakes, making the fish fall off me lap. An old codger walking his dog stopped and clocked us.

‘You means he came back to life an’…oh.’ He started laughing. ‘You’re joshin’ us, right? Got up an’ ran off, heh heh.’

The old cunt still had his bifocals on us. His hound started barking. I stared back at him until he got moving again. ‘Just fuckin’ shift,’ I says to Fin.

He stopped laughing after a bit and says: ‘Right then, thass that sorted. Fancy gettin’ pissed now?’

Finney were hard to get rid of. He saw it as our duty to get plastered, being as how we’d just achieved summat. I fobbed him off by telling him I were meeting Sal for a drink, and he were welcome to come along and join us and get arsed and that. Finney’d always been funny around birds. Birds of mine anyhow. Specially Beth. He hardly ever came round ours in case she answered the door, and the one time he did try his luck she made him stand on the doorstep. She told us later she didn’t want folks like him hanging around the house and bringing the place down. She had a point. Fin were a scruffy cunt if ever there were one. And he didn’t speak proper like meself and Legsy. But he were a mate, weren’t he. A wife ain’t meant to treat her feller’s mates like that. And I told her as much. But she just shrugged and says oh well, what’s done is done. And she’d do it again if he came round again. But he wouldn’t, would he. Not now she’d put him in his place.

Anyhow, that’s how I got shot of him. He dropped us off by my car and went off somewhere. I headed for Norbert Green, stopping off at Alvin’s for a bag of chips and a can of pop. I ate and drank as I drove, which weren’t ideal. The bag were wedged between me thighs and the heat from the chips had us sweating like a bastard. I wolfed em down fast as I could, shutting up them pining greyhounds in me guts. Then I downed the pop in one go, which had us belching so loud folks was turning their heads as I drove past. And that were with the windows rolled up.

It were bang on nine when I pulled up outside the graveyard. No one were about, besides meself and all them deadfolk underfoot. There were a church over the far corner, but I don’t reckon as anyone ever used that, besides for funerals. Ain’t much call for churches in Mangel, and I don’t reckon as ever there were. There’s a reason for that, my old man used to tell us. And this were the one thing I remembered him telling us that didn’t have a wallop on the end of it. According to him, right, religion is for folks who’s missing summat in their lives. There’s a hole inside of em, see, and they fills it with churches and vicars and that. It’s the same the world over. Big flocks of folks with holes inside of em, temples and gods to fill em with.

Well, Mangel folk ain’t got that hole. Mangel folk don’t need anything but bread, water, and air. And lager. And fags.

I set off down the path, getting rid of a bit more pop gas as me guts got shifting. This were it then. I were finally gonna find out what this doofer were that every bastard were after. Not that it mattered. Could be a golden calf for all I gave a toss, long as it got us my name up above the door of Hoppers. I walked past the spot where Baz had drawn his last breath. You’d never have known it. I’d covered me tracks pretty good there. It were hard to believe it’d really happened, seeing it now. I were glad of that. And Baz were off to the sea by now, which is where the River Clunge finally comes out, I hears.

Course, there were no sign of Mandy Munton. Not that I’d expected there to be. By my reckoning she’d be lurking behind a tree up the other end of the yard, ready to jump out behind us when I came past. It were only when I reached the far gate that I wondered if her brothers might have rumbled her. And by then it were too fucking late.

I barely had time to swear under me breath before Jess were atop us. He were a heavy cunt. Not as heavy as Baz, but Jess were hewn of muscle rather than lard. He were your proverbial shite house, less windows and doors, being as his eyes was always blank as a brick wall and he rarely opened his gob. But it weren’t his weight what bothered us. Not even when he brung it all down into me guts via his right knee. I could handle that. Well, I’d get over it in time anyhow. It were his smell what I couldn’t handle. Stank like he’d filled his trolleys, he did. And I didn’t take kindly to it. Fighting’s a physical business, and the least he could have done were wipe his arse proper. Aye, it got my goat up all right.

He were using my head as a speedball when the thing started inside of us. It were the same thing what’d done for Baz, once he’d brung it out. It were a blackness surging outwards from somewhere in me belly, making us numb all over but mad for blood. Me arms and legs felt like cooling pig iron. I threw Jess off. It weren’t that hard. He were up quick, chin stuck out like a bulldozer shovel. But he could have been swinging an axe for all I cared. I’d still have had him.

I swung my right leg at him, ignoring the right he were swinging back at me face. He connected nice and sweet with my left eyebrow. And on another day that might have stunned us good and proper. But not this time. And he knew it. My boot landed square between his legs.

No man’s knacker sack is built to hold up against that much welly, and I reckon it done the trick. I pulled back to take a pot at that bulldozer blade, see if I couldn’t put a dent on him on his way down.

But then I went down instead.

It were the smell what hit us first. A sweet, sickly, meaty smell. One that I’d become all too familiar with of late. Aye, it were the stench of rotting carcasses what hit us first when I came to.

‘T’ain’t me. The car, ennit.’

I mean, summat a lot harder than a stink had hit us already, right around where my neck joins the back of me skull. That’s the way it were feeling round there when I moved me swede a bit anyhow.

‘Hard to shift that kind o’ stench. Had half a goat on the back seat once, from work. Only there a couple days it were. But his spirit lingered, you might say. All the way to highest heaven and back it did stink. Still comes back on hot days.’

I needed air. It were stinking, like I told you. And stuffy as a turkey come Christmas. I had to get away from it, open a window, stop breathing altogether. Anything. I opened me eyes to see which of these were achievable. And that’s about the time I became aware that someone were addressing us.

‘Bit of air fresh’ner’d do it. Hey, Blakey, lend us a couple o’ squid for some air fresh’ner?’

‘Fin,’ says I. ‘Fin, what the fuck am I doin’ in your Allegro?’

He lowered the window and looked up and down. The stuffiness and stench gave way to the Mangel air, which weren’t much better to be honest. Then he wound it up again, lit a smoke, and says: ‘Hidin’, ain’t us.’

‘From who?’

‘Who? Muntons, course.’

We was parked down a back street out Muckfield way. I recognised the place straight off. As lads we’d robbed a repair shop down here. You don’t forget shite like that.

‘Why is we hidin’ from the Muntons?’

‘Wh—can’t you recall? They was doin’ you over in that graveyard. Jess and Mandy, for cryin’ out fuck. Saved you, I did. Mandy brained you with a big bit of headstone. Headstone, heh heh. Get it? Head—’

‘Mandy?’

‘Aye.’

‘What for? I mean, why would Mandy—’

‘You was layin’ into her Jess, for one. Ain’t seen you scrappin’ that dirty for years, Blakey. Booted the fucker square in the plums, and no mistake.’

‘But Mandy—’

‘Aye? What of her? Munton, ain’t she?’

‘Aye, but…’

‘But what? Muntons looks after Muntons. Besides, they all shags her. The brothers, that is. Keep it in the family an’ that.’

I rubbed the back of me swede again. It were like rubbing wet turf. Least the fog in my head were starting to clear a bit. ‘That right?’

‘Course. Blake?’

‘Aye?’

‘Why was you in that graveyard anyhow?’

‘Why was
you
there, more like.’

‘Follerin’ you, case you got into any more bother. And lucky for you I did. What was you up to?’

‘I were…’ The thoughts flooded into my head like someone pouring hot lard into each ear hole. The coppers. Nathan the barman. Fenton and his doofer. Hoppers, my name above the door. ‘What’d you do to her?’

‘Who?’

‘Mandy.’

‘Don’t fret. No one seen us. Have a fag.’

‘Ta. What’d you do to her, you cunt?’

‘Hey, hold up. I saved your arse again. Sticks me neck out for you time and again an’ what does I get back? Meanness is what. Meanness and fuckin’ nastiness. T’ain’t fair.’ He folded his arms and stuck out his lower lip.

We sat in silence for a bit. I smoked me fag, then flicked the stub out the window. ‘Fin?’

‘Aye.’

‘Ta for lookin’ out for us an’ that.’

‘S’all right. What mates is for, ennit.’

‘Aye. Fin?’

‘Aye?’

‘What’d you do to her?’

‘Oh for fuck. I juss smacked her a bit. S’all.’

‘Smacked her? Where? How hard?’

‘I dunno does I? Twatted her on the ear or summat. Don’t matter do it? Birds goes down easy. She’d of killed you.’

‘She hurt then?’

‘Dunno. Went down, didn’t she.’

‘Blood?’

‘Bit.’

‘Breathin’?’

‘Fuck sake, Blake.’

‘Breathin’?’

‘Aye. Dunno. I didn’t fuckin’ kill her, leastways.’

‘She have summat on her? Summat in a bag or summat?’

‘Sorta summat?’

‘You knows. A…a thing. She have summat on her?’

‘Well…’ His eyes was off in the distance, concealing the hard work that were going on behind em. For most folks it ain’t hard to cast the mind back an hour or so. But this were Finney. ‘Fuck me,’ he says.

‘What?’ He had us all excited. Of all folks, Finney were the one set to spill the beans on what this doofer were. ‘What is it?’

‘Down there.’ He nods down the road. ‘Thass the place we done over that time, yonks ago. Ennit?’

I sighed. ‘Aye, reckon so.’

‘Well, fuck me. Hey, know the old geezer we done over that time? Seen him t’other day. Sittin’ on a bench in Flockford Park he were, with two or three other mongs an’ a nurse. Fancy that, eh?’

‘Well bugger. Mong now, is he? That were you, droppin’ the battery on his head there.’

‘I knows. Smart, eh? I were right proud when I seen him like that, starin’ at fuck all, slobber danglin’ from his lip. Right proud.’ He shook his head and lit another one.

‘Well?’

‘Wha?’

‘Mandy have summat on her?’

‘Oh aye. Had a box. Dropped it on the grass when she went for you with the headstone.’

We shut up for a bit. I sat on my side looking out at that old repair shop with boarded-up windows and graffiti all over. I thought about the feller and how one minute he were in his own premises, a mechanic on top of his game, enjoying a spot of recreation with a local slag. Next minute we waltzes in and turns it all around for him. We switched off the lights in his head, just so’s we could spend a few quid down the arcade and buy a bit of lager. We switched em off for good. And it were all right. Seemed all right to fuck with folks, long as we had a laugh and got summat out of it. Folks didn’t matter cos they was asking for it. Should have seen us coming, shouldn’t they? We was only younguns.

‘Say that again,’ I says, lighting up me last fag. ‘Go on. Humour us. Say again what you done with the box.’

‘Aw, don’t be like that. Blakey. I telled you how it were. There were nut’n else I could do.’

‘Say the fucker again.’

‘All right. I kicked it away. Heard some bastard comin’ didn’t I. Smelt fag smoke anyhow. So I hauled you up under the armpits an’ starts draggin’ you to the car. I sees this box on the grass near where the bitch must of been hidin’ and I kicks it away. Couldn’t pick it up, see. Had me hands full like.’

‘And where’d it go, once you’d kicked it?’

‘Well…’

‘Go on. I needs a laugh.’ I really did.

‘Well, there were this dog, see. Mangy old bastard with one ear. Anyhow he scooped the box up in his chops…Should of seen it, Blakey. You’d never believe a dog could pick up a box like that with his teeth. Heavy an’ all, it were. The box, that is. Me big toe still hurts like a bastard.’

‘And the dog…’

‘Aye. Ran off.’

‘With the box.’

‘Aye.’

‘Blake. This ain’t clever.’

I shone the torch up the alley. A cat. A bastard fucking cat. ‘Go on.’

Finney pulled away again. His lights was off and he were sticking under twenty, pulling over whenever we saw a car coming. ‘I tells you this ain’t clever.’

I shook my head and bit me lip and counted to ten. Sitting in Finney’s Allegro in the middle of Norbert Green weren’t the place to have a row. But a row were coming, like it or no. ‘Clever?’ I bellowed. ‘Clever? What the fuck does you know about clever? You wouldn’t know clever if it sucked you off and gave you a tenner.’

‘Calm down, eh, Blake? Say what you likes about me. I knows what
ain’t
clever. And this is it.’

I sat there in the dark, trembling with rage. ‘So you knows what ain’t clever, eh? Reckon you do, does you? What about robbin’ Baz’s corpse from out my cellar? Did you spot how not clever that were? And drivin’ the fucker about town for days? How’s that for not clever?’

‘I’ll tell you what weren’t clever. Keepin’ him in yer cellar in the first place. And toppin’ him. Not clever at all.’

‘You…’ It were a peculiar feeling. I were so overcome with anger that my whole body were good as paralysed. It weren’t just the shite he’d got us into with Baz that were getting to us. All kinds of memories was flooding back into me swede, times when Finney had fucked up and I’d kept mum about it. ‘You…you fuckin’ burnt my wife. How’s that for not clever? Eh? How’s that for…’

Suddenly everything were silent. Then one or two noises crept into my ear holes. Breathing. Heart beating. The drip and groan of the Allegro’s dormant engine. A strange urge came to us. I wanted to say sorry. But fuck that. I weren’t saying sorry to Finney. He’d killed Beth and ruined my fucking life.

All right all right. So maybe I had made that second phone call back then on the night of the Hoppers blaze. It’s all a mite hazy and I had things on me mind and maybe I can’t be sure either way, honest I can’t. But I didn’t truly reckon summat’d come of it if she did come over. How could I? Aye, messing her about and pissing her off weren’t beneath us. But topping her? Come on, she were a bird, weren’t she? You ain’t meant to top birds.

‘Aye, well…’ he says. ‘Soz about that.’

I looked at him. He looked at his hands. Like I says before, I couldn’t stand seeing folks miserable. ‘Forget it,’ I says. ‘You weren’t to know she were in there, was you.’

‘Aye.’

I lit a fag. ‘Aye? Aye what?’

‘Aye. I did know she were in there.’

‘Come again?’

‘What I says. I knew she were in Hoppers. When I lit it, like.’

‘Eh? How? Why…’

‘Put her in there meself, didn’t I. What you wanted, wernit?’

I looked at Fin. He were still looking down at his hands, waiting for us to say summat. And maybe I ought to have said summat. Summat special, like such an important moment demands. But in the end I just says, ‘Shut up.’

‘I fuckin’ done it for you, Blake. You weren’t happy with her. She were bad news. An’ I wanted me old mates back. Me, you, an’ Legs. Like we is now. She were fuckin’ bad news, Blakey. Trust us.’

I laughed a bit. But it weren’t a proper laugh. ‘All right, Fin, thass enough.’

‘But I gotta tell you, Blake. Can’t keep it in forever, can I? I brained her with a whisky bottle and tied her up, see…good an’ tight. Done all right there, Blake, didn’t I? Tied her legs together and then her arms. Then I rolled her over and tied her arms to her legs…’

‘Fin, shut the fuck up.’

‘…she wakes up a bit an starts blabberin’ so I boots her in the swede an’ gags her with me socks. Soaks her in paraffin an’ leaves her behind the bar an’ goes outside…I done all this for you, Blakey…Then I sets the place alight. Blake. Blake? Listen to us, Blake. I had to do it that way. I—’

‘Shut up.’

‘Don’t shout at us, Blake. Done you a fuckin’ favour, didn’t I. You’d of done it yerself sooner or later. I would and all if my wife were putting it about anyhow. Not that I ever had a—’

‘You what?’

‘Blake.’

‘Sayin’ my wife were a slapper?’

‘Blake, get off us. I can’t breathe like that.’

Finney’s face were going slowly purple. There weren’t much light, but I knew it were going purple cos that’s the colour a face goes when you close your hands around a throat. His hands flapped at my arms but I hardly noticed. Then summat moved out the window. Across the road there. ‘See that?’ I says, pointing.

Finney coughed and spluttered a bit.

‘Fuckin’ dog, wernit. See it? Over by the park.’

I shone the torch over that way, but Finney weren’t paying much heed. So I opened the door and slipped out.

I crossed the road. On the other side I stopped to spark up a fag, my lighter making a noise like a truck hitting a bridge. This weren’t right. But it weren’t as if I had a choice. He had to be around here somewhere. I stepped over the hedge, snagging me tracky bottoms on a thorn. ‘Bastard fuck and bollocks…’ I says followed by other such words. I got meself free at last, but there were a little L-shaped tear right under me knackers. I hated messing up me togs. A man’s togs says a lot about him. Just look at Finney. His gear had ‘cunt’ wrote all over it. I flashed the torch around.

And there he were, sniffing at summat on the grass. I were sure of it. There couldn’t have been two such dogs in Norbert Green.

I took a step forward. He looked up and clocked us, his one ear standing to attention. I’d been hoping it were the box he were sniffing at, but it were just a pile of old dogshite. Still, can’t expect a dog to trot around all night holding a box in his chops. No, he’d hid it somewhere. He trotted off across the park.

I followed. He were walking quite slow, like Lassie when he’s leading some feller with a rope and pulley to where a youngun has fallen down an old mineshaft. Maybe this here mongrel knew what I were after and were taking us to where he’d stowed it. Dogs is clever like that sometimes. I once had ten bob at eights on a hound named Ted Fletch at Blender Stadium. Half a lap to go he were second place and fading. With all the strength in my heart I willed the leader—a black and white called Pig Dodger—to fall arse over. Well, he did. Came out the last bend too hard and slid out, knackering one of his hind pins. That were the end of Pig Dodger, but it just goes to show how dogs is telepathetic sometimes. And I won eighty quid.