Happy Days (18 page)

Winter gasped with pain. ‘Vodka,’ he managed.

‘You don’t say please in your country?’

‘Please.’

‘Good. Very good. You know something about businessmen? They learn very fast.’

Winter swallowed hard, fighting the rising gusts of nausea, wondering how on earth he was supposed to drink in a position like this. Then he caught the tiny scrape as someone twisted the top off the miniature and moments later he felt the trickle of liquid as the bottle was upturned over his bare back. After this came another bottle. Then a third. Winter was trying to visualise what it must look like, the spirits running over the whiteness of his flesh. Then came Lamborghini’s question, freezing his blood.

‘You mind if we smoke? My friends and I? You mind if we light up?’

As if to make the point, he crouched low beside Winter’s head again. Winter could see the lighter. It was a Bic. Lamborghini flicked it twice, inches from Winter’s eye.

‘You know what happens next? All that booze? You know what we do at Christmas? Before we roast the meat? You know what we use instead of vodka or gin? We use slivowitz, plum brandy, and you know how that works? It burns. In the end it makes the meat crisp. Beautiful smell. Beautiful taste. Happy Christmas, Mr Businessman, eh?’

Winter turned his head away. He didn’t want Lamborghini to see the tears in his eyes. This was worse than dying. This was humiliation, total abasement. In a minute or two these animals were going to set him on fire. And watch.

Nothing happened. No conversation. No more taunts. Winter still had his head turned towards the bed and the window. There came another fork of lightning, much closer this time, the thunder deafening. Winter could see one of the two big guys sitting on the edge of the bed, his huge hands folded over his knees, his eyes flicking back and forth behind the ski
mask, a punter with the best seat in the house, waiting to see whether the main attraction measured up.

Winter stirred, wondering whether his burning flesh would trigger the fire alarms and who would eventually arrive to find his charring body. Over the years, like everyone else in the world, he’d seen news footage of protestors dousing themselves with petrol and then striking a match. There was a terrible fascination in watching a human being engulfed in flame, and he’d always marvelled at their commitment. To bear the pain without flinching – totally immobile, often cross-legged, the way it happened with Buddhist monks – was beyond his imagination. That kind of courage spoke of a belief he simply didn’t have. When the time came, as it surely would, he knew he’d wriggle and howl and scream exactly the way these guys had planned it. They probably had their mobiles ready for the moment he caught fire, and once they legged it would doubtless circulate the pictures to anyone foolish enough to cross the Montenegran mafia. Our country. Our coastline. Your fucking profits.

There was another clap of thunder, virtually overhead. The entire hotel seemed to shake. Winter began to shiver, knowing he couldn’t take much more of this, all too aware that the waiting – in exactly the way they’d planned it – was probably worse than the event itself. He’d had enough. He wanted it over.

‘Do it,’ he said.

‘What you say?’

‘Do it. Just fucking do it.’

Lamborghini muttered something he didn’t catch. The guy on the bed nodded and stood up. He stepped out of view and moments later came the tug of a zip and Winter became aware of the guy looming above him. Then he felt the splash of something warm on his bare back. He tried to put a picture to what he was hearing, to what he was feeling, and then he realised the guy was pissing all over him, sluicing away the alcohol
from the miniatures. A couple of cans of Heineken at least, Winter thought. Thank God for lager.

‘Your lucky night, Mr Businessman.’ It was Lamborghini again. The spotless High-Tops. ‘Next time not so lucky … eh?’

The big guy had finished. He zipped himself up, gave Winter a playful parting kick and then joined his mates by the door. To Winter’s immense relief they appeared to be getting ready to leave. For a second or two he wondered whether this was simply his imagination playing tricks. Maybe his brain was scrambled. Maybe he’d already burned to death and by some trick of the mind had been spared the agony until later. Maybe this whole thing was some grotesque nightmare. But then Lamborghini was back in his face. He was holding what looked like a scrap of white paper between his forefinger and thumb.

‘We leave you this, Mr Businessman. A little present. A little gift. From Montenegro.’

Winter felt a blade sawing through the cable tie around his wrists. Then, quite suddenly, his hands were free. The blood surged back into the stiffness of his fingers, a hot scalding pain as bad as anything he’d suffered, and he rolled onto his side in time to see his tormentors leaving. Lamborghini was the last through the door. He didn’t look back.

Winter waited and waited, praying they didn’t have second thoughts and come back to finish him off. The rain was much heavier now, and when he’d locked and bolted the door and finally made it across to the window, the patches of grass visible beneath the security lights were already beginning to flood. For a long moment he watched the darting blue fingers of lightning against the blackness of the surrounding mountains, dazed, trembling, his bare flesh icy cold, and then he pulled himself together, knowing he had to get organised, repair a little of the damage, make a plan.

Limping towards the bathroom, he noticed the scrap of paper on the carpet. He paused, eyeing it. Bending, even breathing, was incredibly painful. With immense difficulty, he
retrieved the paper. It was a bus ticket. For tomorrow. 09.35. To somewhere called Herceg Novi. The message couldn’t have been plainer. Leave.

SOUTHSEA: WEDNESDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 2009

On those nights when Bazza Mackenzie couldn’t sleep – increasingly common – he’d taken to creeping out of the big double bedroom in the house on Sandown Road and making his way downstairs to the privacy of his den. Marie, who was a light sleeper herself, had been aware of this for weeks but had chosen to say nothing. Like everyone else in the family she’d recognised that something was happening to her husband, that something was changing him. Her daughter, Ezzie, had put it down to the excitements of the coming election, but Marie, who knew Baz best of all, wasn’t so sure. A phrase of Winter’s had stuck in her mind. Paul had said he was becoming unhinged. In some deep and maybe permanent way he’d lost it. What ‘it’ comprised was not clear, but Marie, like Winter himself, was fearful about the consequences. For one thing, her husband had started calling her Ma.

Marie lost track of how long she spent that night lying in the darkness waiting for Baz’s return. Once, carried on the wind, she caught a distant church bell toll four o’clock. A while afterwards she heard the low rumble of the first of the day’s FastCats powering up for the run across the Solent to Ryde Pier. Finally, when Baz still didn’t appear, she slipped on a dressing gown and went downstairs.

Mackenzie was sitting at his desk in the den, staring at his PC. When the door opened behind him he didn’t seem the least
surprised to see Marie. He gestured at the screen and told her to pull up a chair.

‘Fucking extraordinary, Ma,’ he said. ‘The boy’s a genius.’

‘You mean this Andy?’

‘Of course.’

Marie sat down. She’d never met Makins but had no doubt about the impact he’d made on her husband. Guys who wanted to sell you their services, said Baz, were ten a penny. Even consultants like Kinder weren’t that hard to lay hands on. But truly special individuals, genuine one-offs, were bloody rare, and in the shape of Andy Makins Baz had found a prime example.

‘Here … look.’ Mackenzie scrolled back to the beginning of what looked like a very long email. Marie peered at the subject heading.

‘Smoutland?’

‘That’s code for Pompey.’

‘But why Smout?’

‘They’re a family, Ma, three generations, all dysfunctional as fuck, total muppets.’

The Smouts, Bazza explained, were Pompey born and bred. The oldest couple, Arthur and Marj, had an allotment at the end of Locksway Road. It was the love of their tiny lives and nothing would ever spoil it for them. Not the bastard little scrotes who broke in at night and necked vast quantities of White Lightning and trampled all over their veggies. Not the thieving pikeys who jemmied the lock off their little garden hut and stole their power tools. Not the man from the council who harassed them with letters about late payment for use of the communal stand pipe. Not even the black aphids that laid waste their crop of tomatoes. No, in the world of Arthur and Marj there was room for only one emotion.

‘Which is?’ Marie, in spite of herself, was interested.

‘Gratitude. They’re grateful, Ma, and you know why? Because life has never given them anything, not a penny, not a
single decent break. And so bad news, all the shit and aggravation I’ve just mentioned, is all they expect.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘No, it’s not, it’s funny. And weird. But it gets better.’

He scrolled on through the email. The middle generation of Smouts was represented by Dave and Jackie. Dave occupied one half of a cell in Winchester Prison after being nicked on a drugs offence. Jackie, bless her heart, visited him every Thursday afternoon, half past three, on the dot.

‘In real life, Ma, you get to meet in the visiting room, but Andy wants to go one better. He’s after one of those glass partitions. What Jackie does, she arrives every Thursday with a week’s supply of the
News
and holds the pages up against the glass, one by one. That way she doesn’t have to say very much, which is fine by Dave, and he gets to stay in touch. Plus we obviously hand-pick the bits of the paper that get the message across.’

‘Message?’

‘Inbreds stoning the swans on the lake down at Great Salterns. Kids living rough in bus shelters. OAPs treble-locking their doors at night to keep the Kosovans out. Welcome-to-Pompey stuff.’

‘This is some kind of film?’

‘Video, Ma. Andy’s going to upload it to YouTube. Kind of soapy thing. Lots of episodes, all shot specially.’

‘But why someone like Dave?’

‘Because he’s just like his dad. Grateful. Humble. Doing his bird the way he should. No complaints. No one to blame but himself. Start watching this stuff and you’ll piss yourself laughing.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘You will, Ma, you will. Because Dave and Jackie have a daughter – and you know what? She’s just the same. Sweet as you like. Takes life on the chin. Grateful as fuck for sweet fuck all.’

Young Shelley, said Baz, lives in a council flat in Somerstown way up on the tenth floor. The men in her life drift by from time to time, but she’s the one who has to sort out the kids.

‘How many?’

‘Three. Tyler, Jordan and Scottie. They’re nippers, tear-aways, totally out of control. In episode one Scottie dumps the family cat out of the window. This girl has fuck-all money, zero prospects, never goes out of an evening, never has a chance to enjoy herself, plus she really loved that cat, but you know what?’

‘She’s grateful.’

‘Yeah. Big time. She loves the council. She loves the view. She even loves the old dosser in the flat next door who’s always trying to get into her knickers. He’s had a hard life. It’s not his fault his dick’s got a mind of its own. Plus, of course, she loves her kids to death. The cat thing was a mistake. Tyler never meant to set fire to the sofa. Jordan only ran away because she got into a bit of a muddle. Brilliant. Can’t fail.’

‘But what’s the point –’ Marie nodded at the screen ‘– to all this? What does it mean? What’s it trying to
say
?’

‘It’s not trying to say anything, Ma, except that people like the Smouts are total retards. They trust everyone and get fuck all in return. People are going to die laughing when they watch this lot, especially the kids. The Smouts are weirdos. They’re so not 2009. Compulsory viewing, Ma.
Cult
viewing. Do us no end of good.’

‘Us?’

‘
Pompey First
. Andy’s doing it so every episode ends with our logo. That’s all you need, just the association. Andy calls it viral. It’s a marketing thing. We’re spreading the word, but doing it in a way no one’s ever done before.’

‘But I still don’t get it. What are you really saying about these people?’

‘The Smouts? That they’re old-style Pompey. That they haven’t moved on. That they’re too stupid and trusting to look
out for themselves. That they leave themselves wide open and get turned over as a result. This is a pitch for the kids, Ma, like I say, and when Andy says it’ll put us on the map I believe him. YouTube goes everywhere. We’re talking an audience of millions.’

‘Kids as in adolescents?’

‘Kids as in students. Over eighteen. With a vote. And it doesn’t stop there, Ma. These days you can be thirty-plus and still be a kid.’

With some reluctance Marie nodded. From what she could see, the Smout storyline was silly and cruel and – to be frank – offensive. But maybe Baz was right. Maybe that’s what it took to sell a political message these days. One way or another, you had to make an impact.

‘That’s right, Ma. That’s exactly what Andy says. You have to give the punters a smack in the face to get their attention. Either that, or you make them piss themselves laughing. After that you can probably sell them any fucking thing.’

‘Through the Smouts?’

‘Exactly. This is about a bunch of muppets banged up in their own little world. Of course they’re bizarre. Of course it’s bad taste. But we’re talking relics, Ma, real dinosaurs. Life ain’t like that any more, and everyone knows it, especially the kids. You grab what you can and you make sure no other bugger gets it off you.’

‘Great.’

‘You’re complaining?’ Mackenzie gestured round. ‘Six bedrooms? Sea views? Couple of decent motors in the drive? Money to make sure the kids are OK. You think all that happened by accident?’

‘Of course it didn’t.’

‘Well, then …’ He put his hand on her arm. ‘Chill out, Ma. Like I say, the guy’s a genius.’