Raucous Read online

  Ben recalled everything. Thirty-five and still hiding from kids. He could put every bully in chronological order. Here was a new entry.

  Ben didn’t break stride, a swerve wouldn’t help, a quick jog would be fatal. You running away? Memory of events told him to keep his head down, keep constant pace and ignore. Most got bored, and this one was alone. It was groups, fuelling each other on an escalating dare of who could go furthest that caused most pain. Singles used a few words, bored or wanting to test just how scary they could be.

  They never did this with Jean.

  This one was sixteen at most. He was wiry and dressed up in clothes a TV executive would define as street-dealer number three. In the age of globalization, a farm-boy from Bristol could wear the baggy jeans and Chicago Bulls without being ridiculed by peers. But real courage meant following the true you, which is why, at thirty-five Ben followed weekly comic feasts and afternoons on the internet holed up in their luxury apartment, a cocoon of security, where they were only visited by the nurse. He wanted to be there now.

  The boy stepped into Ben’s path.

  “Nice Comics,” he said.

  Ben stopped. He had nowhere to go. Blocked in, face to face. Memory told him walking around would result in physical contact, and his new twenty-seven pounds worth of comics on the floor.

  The phrase was false, a lie, probably a joke. At first Ben had tried to describe their beauty, their subtlety, the intricacy of story design and message. A genuine love for Japanese Manga that more often than not resulted in ripped pages, pushes and trampled covers.

  “Expensive,” the boy said.

  Money, the boy wanted money. But Jean and Mitch had told him in their different ways to never hand over cash. Never.

  Ben paid once. The next day Jean took it back by force. He could do that again but it meant reading everything he had tonight. When Jean showed up, knowing as she always knows about the cash he gave away, his collection was at risk.

  But the boy would get hurt. Ben would like that. Jean would like that.

  Jean had destroyed that time. Three years of weekly collection in a metal bin with lighter fluid and fire. She watched pages burn and float away because Ben would remember and see for himself.

  “Rich are we?” the boy asked.

  The boy placed an arm around Ben’s shoulders. Ben smelt tobacco: rolled, smoked and choked. No alcohol, nothing clear. But it was early. The hug was tighter than a friend’s.

  Ben stayed limp, and let the boy talk. Jean, he thought, is going to hurt you.

  “Sure you haven’t got a wallet there? A bit of money?” The boy asked as he patted Ben’s pockets.

  “No, I spent everything on these.”

  “I could do with a smoke. You don’t smoke?”

  Jean allowed Ben three cigarettes a day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Eat then smoke. Long slow pulls on a German brand in a black box. Jean and Mitch let him have that. Nothing more.

  “No, I don’t smoke,” Ben said.

  “No cigs, no money. What to do?”

  Ben wanted to be like Jean sometimes. She would make fun of him for that thought.

  The boy let Ben’s shoulders go. “Tomorrow, eh? We’ll see each other tomorrow. Go to the shops together, right?”

  Ben smiled. He hoped the boy would show. Tomorrow he would meet Jean.

  CHAPTER THREE

  She watched Jim get into his immaculate ten year old VW Golf and drive away. She was five hundred meters distant and could see no details. But she knew it was Jim, she had followed him, and his old stiffening gait. The car she had watched hundreds of times. Its straight edge shape seeming ancient against the rounded contours of the modern car. Street lights provided illumination to the side street in which she stood. She glanced into one of the front rooms, its veiled curtains not present. An old couple watched TV, a soap opera about a false square in the centre of the city they lived. Realistic, she thought, in that it depicted misery and depression and the need for everyone to cheer up through alcohol in the local pub. She shook her head at a miserable old couple watching misery based on their existence.

  Raucous had arrived unexpected, taken the difficult shot at getting back into the business he was destined to lead. It had paid off and now Jim made his move to make sure at the very least that the start would roll forward without obstruction. She tried to believe in her own strength, in her own ability to reach an end.

  She would never see him again. She was sure of that. He would come back to the city, it was the place he had to be when it all came to an end. This was his life, the place he never left. She would never speak to him again, never have the opportunity to sit down and tell him what she needed to say. He never gave that opportunity before, and he would not have time to change his ways. She had rushed here when she heard of Raucous winning the fight. She thought she would be too late, that Jim would have moved fast. But he slept for a last time in the flat he had rented for sixteen years. She watched him leave, watched him lock up, watched him take a final look. She wanted him, if she were honest, to look at her. But she had hidden as she always did when she wanted to see him. She thought that he could sense her, that he would turn. But he never did and now never would.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Hey, retard,” the teenager shouted.

  Jean looked up, smiled and hunched forward without breaking her jog. She was imitating Ben because that’s who he thought she was. She was wearing Ben’s clothes, unwashed as they always were. Sports clothes he used to sit around the flat. She was finding it difficult to slouch. She preferred standing straight. She hated the bland unclean clothes. No brand, originally grey. Stained. No style. Rocky Balboa running Philadelphia steps.

  The boy had brought three friends. All teenagers, all in their uniform of sports casual. All with baseball caps. One of them asked, “Is that the one, Jon-Jon?”

  Nice to know your name, Jon-Jon, and yes, I most certainly am.

  Jean analyzed what Ben had experienced with her own deductive sense. Jon-Jon was a city boy moved to a seaside town. The fact he was from London had meant the locals looked upon him as something hard. He was wearing street gangster clothes from a ghetto where he had never been. He had confused a winter-street in small-town England with a crack-den in 1980s Detroit.

  Jean had heard them speak as she jogged along the pedestrian road from their apartment. She hadn’t heard the other three exchange greetings, but she was guessing they were Azzers: Gazza, Wazza, Dazza or some variation on the Neanderthal theme. Skinny pale kids, acne not quite gone, with tracksuit bottoms, white socks and trainers. A gangsters uniform bought by their parents from a high-street knock-off sports-store. Jean smiled, knowing that they all had an England football top for every year of their lives, to go with the white baseball caps they wore to individualise themselves from the bare-headed masses.

  Jon-Jon needed to show his strength. He wasn’t going up against one of his new friends, an attempt to take his place in the pecking order by force. He wanted to expand their number, be one of them, be accepted. He had, using the massive brain of a habitual school shit, created his own initiation ceremony.

  Jon-Jon had met Ben. Ben had gone, today was Jean.

  Jon watched Jean jog toward the apartment. He pushed himself away from the wall and group with a push of his buttocks.

  “You? Again? You got the money?,” Jon Jon asked.

  Jon’s head twitched, a small shake as if his brain needed a quick clean. He squinted, unsure of what he saw.

  “I was hoping you would be around,” Jean said. “Shall we talk about yesterday? You weren’t so nice to my friend Ben.”

  “What?” Jon-Jon asked.

  “The man you bullied yesterday. That wasn’t nice.”

  Jon-Jon shook his head like he had water in his ears. He mouthed “what?”

  “It was you,” he said.

  “It was Ben.”

  Jon-Jon tightened up, clenched muscles in his shoulders that needed to be loose.

&n
bsp; Jon-Jon started to move closer. He moved slow, but not natural. He forced a limp into his stride like a TV gang punk. She never understood this don’t fuck with me because I have gout mentality. Just like a Michael Jackson music video where gangland Killers were portrayed as leather clad effeminate, stud-wearing queens who liked make-up in a never possible attempt to make MJ look bad Jon-Jon, she was sure, was going to end up with a miss-spelt tattoo on his neck and a few home-made words like DAD in Gothic lettering on his forearm.

  She had every intention of beating the little fucker’s face about, because as much as she despised Ben and his sloth habits of doing fuck-all each day of his existence, he was part of her. She figured the other three would bail as soon as Jon-Jon squealed, but kind of hoped they wouldn’t.

  She had checked their stature and bulges. They were all carrying knives, they all did nowadays, no straight-up, square-go fistfights, not that there had ever really been fair. Knives now, glass before. Chains, bars the lot. Knives were in fashion. But if you didn’t know how to use one, and the majority of the little pricks who had raided their Gran’s kitchen drawers for anything with a pointed blade, couldn’t even conceal the things let alone parry, slash and stab.

  Jon-Jon moved his right hand toward his pocket. He touched with the tips of his fingers like John Wayne about to draw. It was still there.

  In groups they were dangerous; alone they were half-starved, etch-a-sketch tattoo, pin-bags of blathering nonsense. All sweary, potty mouthed, cowards with the occasional exception of a genuine head-case. But these were easy to spot as they were invariably in prison.

  Jon stepped forward, his right leg following as if from the hip down it was made entirely of solid teak. Jean checked her step; she was getting too close too fast. Jon-Jon opened his mouth as he blocked Jean’s path. The word he attempted, a homophobic insinuation about where Jean likes to place her penis, was lost, just like the air in Jon-Jon’s lungs. Jean struck the heel of her hand directly under the ribcage and into the solar-plexus. And Jon-Jon dropped.

  “Breathing will be painfully difficult for a while,” Jean said. But on a positive note it is impossible to suffer hiccups.”

  Jean, showing off, and attempting to goad the three boys into more fun physical stuff, cart-wheeled.

  “Do we know each other,” she asked as she landed on her feet facing them.

  The three boys looked at her, at each other and spoke no words. They stared at Jean for ten seconds and moved into a line and walked away. Jon-Jon tried to speak, but he found he couldn’t create sound without control of his lungs.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Raucous was suited and booted and ready

  A polyester two-piece from a high-street shop that sold t-shirts with the life expectancy of three months. They were all made exclusively in Bangladesh. It was a shiny grey slim fit, white shirt and slick black brogues. Everything for less than a hundred pounds. But he felt good. His fists and elbows cracked and shot pain when he moved, his back was stiff and his legs ached on every step. But he smiled, walking the streets of where he had grown up. Old terraced houses that were now too expensive to buy and held none of the squalor his childhood had seen. They were clean back then too, but now they looked new. He knew people were looking, he knew they recognized him, had at the very least heard of his fight, his victory, and his return. The prodigal son of a family that no longer existed had returned and half the people in the district had no idea from where he had come. He was as foreign to them as the Pearly King, and as rare. Raucous beamed, but it faded as he thought of Jim. He was one of the originals. A relic from the sixties, old school in the sense of having grown up being the hard man his physique demanded. Raucous would see him again, and carry out the promise he had made. He had told Jim, looked him in the eye as he sat across that plastic table inside, and swore he would kill him, He remembered the words, simple, easy to remember. I promise you, Jim, I’ll kill you.

  Jim would have travelled and arrived. Raucous had given him time. It was needed. Two days h waited from the fight. Three would be best but he couldn’t give it all. He had to move now. The alarm won’t have sounded, they won’t know where he has gone. And he will have gone. Earlier than he would have wanted, but Parker was an unforeseen. If Parker knew, and Raucous knew he did, then Jim needed to travel fast, just like Raucous had taken the risk of heading straight to the top by taking on that kid. A dumb move, too much risk but it worked out and now he was heading for Turk. The man had called him, asked for his presence. A simple step and the Turk was now in need of Raucous. Raucous had the information the Turk needed. Raucous was one of three. Jim was heading there fast, but would be coming back, Parker was an unknown. But complex plans have a million variables and Parker was one he could do little about. The Turk was the way in, the way to the outcome he had thought about for years. Raucous looked up and saw the Den. It had been seventeen years since he’d been inside the nightclub of burnt carpet and sticky floors. The name had stayed but the clientele had moved on. Its neon lights and shiny façade were a long way from the old man’s ballroom of years past. The front door was unlocked. Raucous inhaled deeply.

  It started.

  All plans do.

  It would not go the way he had seen, no plan ever had. But the key moments, some in which he would not be involved had to be met. The Turk was first.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mitch saw Jon-Jon from their Kitchen window. Jon-Jon had come early, looking to hide. Mitch ate breakfast and thought. He had two ideas, two possibilities. The first was best, but the second more likely. He hated being hit. But Jean had caused confrontation. She had insulted to big for a kid so small. Jon-Jon needed face.

  Mitch dressed, putting on a loosely ironed black shirt and well-worn jeans. He left the apartment block and walked to where they would meet. The White baseball cap and startled-deer eyes popping, every ten seconds, from behind the alley corner. Mitch saw him, knew he was there, and knew Jon-Jon’s plan. Mitch stopped four meters from the alley.

  “You saw yesterday I can fight better than you,” Mitch said. “You know from me speaking to you now that I know where you are. There is no surprise. You will not win.”

  Jon-Jon stepped out into the street. He was wearing the same clothes from the day before. The Sports-style stupidity-indicator of polyester cheapness. From the pocket in his jogging bottoms he produced a knife. It was a plastic handled, chipped-blade of a kitchen knife, available free with thirty five tokens from all good co-ops in 1987.

  “Do you know how to use that?” Mitch asked. “While I’m not exactly Mick Dundee, I can take that off you if you want.”

  Jon-Jon hesitated, lowered the knife till it was at his hip.

  “Maybe this isn’t who or where you should be,” Mitch said. “I was defending myself yesterday. That’s all.”

  “The day before? With the comics?” Jon-Jon asked.

  “I was different, ill, I guess you could say.”

  “You humiliated me.”

  “I defended myself.”

  “If I want in, they say I have to cut you.”

  Jon-Jon took a step forward with his knife raised.

  “That’s not smart,” Mitch said. “Think about it. There are cameras here.”

  Mitch pointed out the three cameras that recorded action on the street

  “Too late then. They’ve seen this already.”

  “That’s not how it works. If something happens they’ll go back and check. No complaint and nobody watches film of this little through road.”

  “So I don’t do it here,” Jon-Jon said and placed his knife back in his pocket.

  Mitch smiled. He knew option one had gone.

  “If by some miracle you sneak up on me, manage to wound and walk away, when I’m found dead they’ll look at this video because this is where i live. Who’s the first they are going to look for?”

  Jon-Jon looked at the three cameras in turn. He rubbed his head.

  Mitch saw the chance. “You’ll be In prison,
but a man’s prison, big men, scarred with prison stories, strong guys. Because you don’t get the Hilton for murder. Can you survive that, at what, how old are you? Seventeen? You want that life?”

  Jon-Jon looked up to the white Victorian building that was now low rent flats.

  “They’re watching this,” he said.

  Jon-Jon tensed. He had to do it. The idea was planned. He needed to balance out an equation, equal the shame he felt by causing pain for Mitch.

  They were a meter apart and Jon-Jon, arced his arm back and threw an untrained punch. It was slow and easy to avoid. But Mitch didn’t move. The inside of Jon-Jon’s clenched fist caught Mitch’s cheek. In boxing terms a slap. Mitch rode the power, turning his head with the force of contact. And they stood and nodded. The slap had exaggerated the strength of contact. But a red mark appeared on Mitch’s left cheek. Mitch knew it would fade quickly and there would be no bruise. Jon-Jon was no fighter and unable to break blood-vessels.

  The equation was balanced. It was Mitch’s turn to react. Jon-Jon was happy, but nervous. The peace hung on Mitch. For Jon-Jon this was an end.

  Mitch did not move. He stared into Jon-Jon’s eyes.

  “Are we finished?” Mitch asked.

  “I am,” Jon-Jon said.

  Jon-Jon walked away toward the apartment. The curtain swung closed as the boys inside went back to sitting around and doing nothing.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “You don’t bruise easily,” Raucous said. “I thought I would have left a mark.”

  “You really are thick,” the man said.

  Raucous was in the Turk’s office, a room decorated in dark wood and leather in a bad attempt at replicating Italo-American gangster comfort.

  The Turk sat behind his mahogany desk, the lighting low. He probably had cotton wool stuffed in his cheeks to give him an incomprehensible Marlon Brando mumble. His face sure looked like fat blubbery hamster. His palms were face-down on the green felt cover.