Aloysius Tempo (6 page)

He goes, ‘You never asked me to pay your flight, Aloysius, did you? When I asked you to Dublin on the phone you never said, “Ah Martin, yes, you’re a great man, pay the plane and get me a nice hotel up by the park and I’ll be over to meet Imelda.” You just said to me, “No problem, Martin, I’ll come to your meeting in Dublin.” ’

I go, ‘But you did pay for the flight and hotel.’

He goes, ‘I offered to. But you were coming anyway. You were coming anyway because you have money, you have a few grand about you, don’t you?’

I shake my head. ‘I’m skint.’

‘No,’ he goes. ‘You act skint. You have a good few grand tucked away from doing a good few jobs like this neck trick.’

He lifts his pint as if to toast me, takes a drink.

‘Still fecking waters and all that,’ he says, winks, drinks.

‘Go fuck yourself,’ I say, and I have what will be my last drink with this man.

‘I’m not a policeman, Aloysius,’ he says, putting his glass down, smacking his lips again. ‘I’m nothing like that. I did thirty-five years in the fucking civil service and I hated it. I worked for minister after minister and every one of them was a fucking asshole, you know? Every one of them. And the fucking red tape – Jesus – it would eat you up, eat your soul and chew it up and spit it back at you, you know?’

He rubs his head.

‘I don’t do any red tape now at all,’ he says. ‘I never write anything, sign anything – nothing like that. And I’ve never been happier. I just have this bit of a thing now where I help out Imelda with her business, just the odd job here and there, going to lunches and making the odd call. I love it. And I do what I can for her, you know? She’s a good woman, a great woman, and you could trust her with your life, so you could. Honest to Jesus, she’s as sound and solid a person as you could find, you know?

‘And I’m solid enough myself, Aloysius. I hope you can see that in me, that you can get that from me. I’m not a snoop or a spy or a liar or anything like that. I’m just a man doing a job he enjoys, and he enjoys it because it doesn’t chew on his soul, you know?’

A pause.

He goes, ‘Will you meet her again? Will you give it another go? If it doesn’t work out, we’ll say no more. I’ll never contact you again. I promise. If it does, well, I don’t think you’ll regret it. That’s the honest truth – you won’t regret it.’

I push my bottle towards him.

‘You have told me today, Martin, that you think I’m a murderer,’ I say.

‘I have,’ he says.

‘That you reckon I got money to do … that … to a man I knew nothing about.’

‘I have said that, yes.’

‘And of that you are, you’re saying, certain.’

‘Yes,’ he says, taking a drink, adding, ‘100-percent certain.’

I go, ‘You’re insane. Goodbye Martin. Goodbye, good luck.’

And I go, ‘And keep that promise. Never contact me again.’

He shrugs, says, ‘Fair enough.’

Amsterdam

The Netherlands

August 2016

PHONE ALARM.

5:30
AM
.

I’m dressed, eating scrambled eggs, downing coffee, at 5:47
AM
. I throw on a coat, set basic security traps, reach to the top of the flat’s front door as I’m going out. I’ve cut a deep, slim pocket into the wood and, with two fingers, I tug my work mobile out of its hiding place.

I lock up, go quietly down the stairs, outside, plug my head into a black woolly hat and suck deep on the cold, dark, street air. I walk fast, head down, shoulders up, to Vondelpark.

The sun starts soaking up the night as I get to the tree, as I stop and look up to Tall Marianne’s tenth-floor flat.

There’s a red vase on the windowsill inside which says she has no reason to think there is a problem. I cross the road, look at the camera, get buzzed in, take the lift and knock the door.

Tall Marianne answers, eyes half closed, topless, jogging bottoms below, thirty years, three thousand late nights. She has a skinhead, a healed knife wound on her fake right boob.

The floor inside says she has been doing a jigsaw puzzle and drugs and reading about confidence. It says she has been drinking wine and tequila and rolling among all of that while holding someone close.

I close the door and she opens her mouth, the SIM card pushed at me on her tongue. I take it, she goes back to her warm bed and she’ll be asleep in ten seconds.

I’m fixing the card into the old phone and walking among the debris of her just-ended night, towards the window I looked up to. On the sill I see the red vase, a US passport, a wallet, some coins, some paper dumped and crunched from travel. Whoever the American might be, he or she has had, I don’t doubt, a brain-boiler of a sexual experience.

I click the SIM card into place, look outside, down to my tree.

Two men standing there.

They’re looking at where I am.

I freeze, take stock, commit them to memory, step back slowly.

I say, ‘Fuck,’ and my heart makes itself known.

Jeans, jackets, clean, white, sober, alert, late thirties.

‘Fuck.’

They have no business being there at this time, looking like that, looking in the direction they are looking.

I leave in silence, shun the lift and take the stairs, going up.

It could be coincidence.

On the next floor I look out again and they’re still there. They’re looking somewhere else, checking the sightlines.

On the next floor, they’re gone.

I reach the thirteenth landing and lean against a wall, stop moving. I listen.

Listen.

Listen hard.

There’s nothing. No clunk of the lift, no shoes on stairs, no words bouncing up this concrete block from the ground, no swing or shut of a door anywhere in this little tower.

I look out again, can’t see them anywhere.

I count to twenty and again listen, listen, listen.

I see nothing, hear nothing.

I start walking down the stairs, becoming pugnacious, getting ready for hard and fast, ready for confrontation, filling with shove and luck, and my heart slips into its stride.

At ground, I watch the glass external door, take stock of everyone and everything I can. Nothing here tells me anything is wrong.

Four minutes later and a daybreak tram is coming, the whirr of it closing is the only sound. I exit the building. Two cars pass. I walk fifty feet, to where the tram is stopping. No one gets off. I get on, flash my card.

Nine people, none of them interested in me, none of them at the back. I sit in the last seat and try to see the whole city around me, try to see men in jeans who may or may not be trying to destroy my life.

Six stops and I exit, walking alongside Keizersgracht, self-briefed that my human engine is on some kind of starting block, some adrenal launch pad.

Three Englishmen and four Englishwomen, early thirties, are walking and laughing, trailing luggage, heading home. I stroll a few paces behind them, switch my body language, match their happy gait.

I slip on my glasses, pull out the phone, finally checking it. It tells me I have no emails, just one message from three days ago. I look around, 360 degrees, put it to my ear and, nice and clear, a woman says, ‘I would like to order the potatoes, the vegetables and the beef in Munich, please.’

I press delete and pull away from the walkers, veer off to the left, towards the nearest canal side.

My gut, the brain in my gut, has me raise the phone as if busy, so that it won’t look so wrong if I stop and turn, if I need to act crazy, to shout or run. I check behind again.

They’re there, the two men, 220 feet distance, watching me, matching my gait, not too close, not too far from their target. This is no coincidence; this is a crisis.

I walk backwards for a moment, pretend I’m talking, move a hand in demonstration, watch them watching me.

I act more now, put an arm out, chat away, laugh loudly, rub my head, stop, lean against a wall. I spread out, chill out, become a guy who takes up too much space, the most relaxed person in the place, the alpha male, the too-confident guy you would look away from because you know he will not let you look for long.

But they don’t look away.

I lock eyes with one, some flat-nosed dildo with a donkey jacket, and I’m slipping the SIM card out, sliding it into the fold of my right palm, now taking a firm grip of the phone.

The bigger guy, the bald one, is staring too. Whatever Flat Nose and Big Baldy are doing, they are going to do it very soon.

‘Fuck flight,’ I say to the phone, ‘fight.’

And I welcome in the feeling bigger than fear, the feeling that covers and smothers fear. I feel the limitless entering my limbs and urging me forward now. I push off the wall, hard walk right at them.

I go, ‘Looking for me?’

The bald one holds his hands up, goes, ‘If you want to be found, we’ll find you.’

English. Midlands.

He’s the bigger one.

And he’s the target.

The smaller guy with the flat nose laughs, ‘Or we can
not
find you, whatever you want, mate. Up to you.’

English. South coast.

And my way of walking is making them uneasy. And the rhythm I am giving this situation is making them get ready for risk, making them brace for the throb of the fray.

Big Baldy puts a hand on his chest, poised to go get something in that coat if he needs to. But only if he needs to.

I put my arms up.

‘No,’ I go, ‘it’s fine, you can find me, lads. Here I am. Right here in front of you. Front and centre.’

And they’re thinking fast, maybe getting confused, as I close in.

I go, ‘Here I am you fucking cunts, moving into your point blank.’

They part, splitting the target, nervous smiles, but they’re competent – they’ve done this before.

I’m imminent now, still fast.

Both are going to go for me, but I’ve got pace and, as a matter of fact, I’m strong as fuck.

They’re looking at the legs.

I slam the end corner of the phone onto Baldy’s crown, turn and elbow back hard as Flat Nose is grabbing, ramming his face.

I slam Baldy again, again, again, and my arm is being pulled back, my leg being kicked.

I slam again, hard as I can, stabbing him with the blunt edge of a phone, and he’s dropping to the ground, his blood jumping now, little red dolphins into the air. He’s thirty-eight.

A hard whack on the head stuns me. I turn, get palmed in the chin. My tooth cracks, break. I step back, keep balance, regroup. Bastards.

Flat Nose has pulled out a firearm, a pistol, but he does not want to use it. He jams it into my flesh, right to where it’s too hard into my guts to shove it away.

One fierce, unexpected lightning knee in the balls, one serious, cupped-hand slap on his ear as he dips and he’s deaf, dazed, aching. And I know he is under orders not to kill because I am still alive.

I whip off my glasses, fold the arms, jab them hard in an eye. Jab again, twisting. I slap the same ear again, this time throwing him off balance. The glasses are lodged into the head now. He’s thirty-six. I let go and punch those specs, finish that eye off forever, stab his brain. He falls back. Another boot in the balls.

I check – both down, both out.

I want to put one of the fuckers in the canal.

I’m going to put one of the fuckers in the canal.

But I can’t. They would die. That’s a bigger story. Keep the story below the radar, out of the water, off the agenda.

I pull the bloody glasses out of the hole in his head and now I’m moving fast and breaking the SIM card in my hand, the taste of blood inside my face.

Now I’m a hard-running target in the centre of the city. Now everyone is coming awake and looking at me, now I’m in deep shit. Now I’ve got to start the escape plan.

Who are they?

Rounding a corner, looking backwards, bashing into someone – male, twenties – a bicycle, knocking him off, him roaring in fury as I keep going.

I cross a road, look back and there’s no one. I run on, cross two streets more, a hard right, looking back.

No one.

On Rokin, towards the bridge I need, pulling in first behind a row of shops, behind a restaurant. There’s an alley.

Stopping. Between big restaurant bins. My back hitting a wall, looking left and right, left and right, hands shaking.

I spit, a blob of blood. I wipe at the sweat. Off comes my jacket, white T-shirt below. Off with the cords, leaving just the joggers’ shorts. I pull the headphones out of the jacket pocket. I open a bin, dump the jacket and cords, the hat, run my hand around the neck of the bin, close it, run my greasy hand through my hair, slicking it back then spiking it up.

I jog out the end of the alley, head down, earphones, trying to tune out the white noise of adrenaline slamming around my system.

And my pace is relaxed.

Look at me – the professional, working out before working.

And there are tears in my eyes, tears coming as I know I’m on the run, as I gear up once again to get the hell away from whatever it is that could burn and bury me alive.

I cough, a film of bloody phlegm around the inside of my mouth, my throat choked with iron and oxygen flavours. And I feel dirt coming up from somewhere, bits of grit and filth crawling onto my tongue.

I jog and spit, looking at no one. I jog in among emerging people starting their days, and I’m smiling, smiling as I turn around, running backwards, seeing no one, tilting my head side to side to the music.

I get to the bridge, cross it, turn right, two barges along. I turn and don’t see them, don’t see anyone who is looking at me.

And I drop onto the barge, go up to the front end, drop to the floor, my back against the red and black of the prow. I reach behind, flip open a little plastic hatch, take out a key, unlock the door on the floor, slide it open, fold my legs up, roll over and drop down, crunching as I land in the tiny salt-storage compartment.

I get onto my back, facing upwards, lie still, stay silent in that black cube. I look hard at the blue-and-white square of new-day sky above. I reach to my right, wipe and wipe at the sticky, damp-sucking salt and pull up a plastic bag. I pull out the gun, raise it to that sky.

It’s here, now, that I stop. That I wait. That I swallow blood and wait.

I rub my face.

And wait.

I sweat and wait.

And I say, ‘Stop, stop, stop … ’ when more tears come into my eyes. I wipe at them and say, ‘Stop, stop it.’

And my stinking hand, my restaurant waste hand, my rats’ piss hand, wipes again at my tears.

And nothing happens.

And nothing happens.

Sweet nothing happens.

I blink and get my eyes as clear as they can be and nothing happens.

And then I see something moving, arriving right above me, some kind of bouncing light, something sky-coloured high in the sky, something flying, stopping, silent, secret.

And my normal mobile rings.

6:45
AM
.

It rings.

And I lie here. Folded and secret, stunned at everything.

It rings out.

I wipe some sweat, more tears, knowing that this newborn day might close tighter yet.

I think about holding my ground, about dominating the environment, about flicking off the safety catch and fighting back, about being first to strike. I think about the pulse of war, about the thump of action I can bring crashing into any situation.

And it all turns to nothing, all melts away in my head, all runs down my face.

I breathe deep, keeping that pistol aimed at the sky, tilted right at that alien thing right above.

And the phone rings again.

And I know it will ring and ring and ring.

I get it with my left hand, number unknown.

I go for it, cough and collect myself.

I go, ‘Hello?’

She goes, ‘Hello Aloysius. It’s Imelda Feather.’

I have nothing to say.

This disastrous event has to involve her, but I have nothing to say.

I want to say, ‘Oh hi Imelda, I so much enjoyed meeting you, you’re such a lovely person.’

I want to say, ‘Hi Imelda, it’s not a good time because I’ve got a drone following me and my life is over.’

I want to say, ‘Fuck off and die, Imelda.’

Maybe I could ask her to talk about sitting in an office doing some nice PR, about going for a nice lunch together in some cramped Dublin restaurant.

And no words pass between us.

And someone’s on the barge. Some footsteps, slow, careful, on the deck, heading towards the hole I’m in.

Step. Step. Step.

She says, ‘Aloysius. That is a replica gun you are holding. You bought it in a shop in Bruges for €38.99’

More footsteps.

She goes, ‘The man you are about to see above you is holding a real gun, but he can’t be completely certain that your gun isn’t real.’

And he’s walking.

‘If he feels threatened by you, Aloysius, he will kill you.’

His shadow arrives, climbs up me, up over my chest, my face, his toes right to the edge of the hole. I see the hands, steady and holding the gun, moving into place, pointing silently, ferociously, down at me.