Blind Needle (8 page)

The other man nudged him sharply in the ribs. There was an irregular stain on his cheek, a birthmark in the shape of a chicken-claw. ‘We don't know him,' he muttered without moving his lips. ‘Shut your bloody hole.'

‘He looks all right to me,' the fat one grinned, and even in the poor light I could see that his teeth were small and square, brown at the roots. ‘What about it, squire? You're not CID, are you?'

He gave a throaty cackle with his head lowered, watching me craftily from beneath puffy eyelids.

I felt suddenly sick. The thought of the needle had churned the greasy food in my stomach into a fermenting cauldron: my bowels became liquid. I had finished with needles, I thought, for ever. Starched white coats and tight transparent gloves and glass ampoules with clear amber fluid. Dr Morduch's waxy face swam up like a bloated balloon. It loomed larger as he bent towards me, his gold-framed spectacles glinting. His eyes bulged in the round lenses, filling them, and he frowned a little, V-shaped creases appearing on his wide forehead as he aimed the syringe. Christ, I could feel it happening … the hollow point bearing down … the thin cold sliding pain piercing to the marrow. Needles shrivelled my insides, made my head into a drum-beat.

Without realising it I was leaning against the whitewashed wall. I saw the man with the birthmark – pointed nose, narrow furrowed brow, long thin ears – peering at me with small, glittering eyes like tiny sharp stones. ‘What the hell's up with him? Bugger looks sick.'

‘Leave me … please,' I said weakly. The smell of urine from the grate brought something up in my throat.

‘Hey, Ray,' the fat one said, gleefully, as if struck by a wonderful idea. ‘Led's give him a free shot. Eh? Why not? Build up our clientele.' He reached into his pocket.

‘Okay,' the man called Ray said. ‘Go ahead. And you pay.'

‘Who? What der you mean? Why me?'

‘What I said – give him one if you want to, only it comes out of your share. What do you think I am, the Salvation Army?'

The light from the frosted globe gleamed weakly on something in the fat one's hand.

I closed my eyes.

The wall was rough against the back of my head. If I could have died by willing it I would have chosen to. It was the same feeling I had when S – threatened me, the same numbing panic when he told me what he was going to do to me.

‘Roll his sleeve up,' said the soft fat voice.

‘This one's on you, is it?' Ray said in a flat snarl. ‘Your fucking share, remember that, Wayne, not mine—'

‘He'll have money. Feel in his pockets.'

Hands rummaged inside my coat, dipped into my pockets. I took hold of a thin bony wrist and dug my nails in. The thin man yelped a curse and hit me with sharp knuckles. It wasn't a hard blow but it made me angry. I opened my eyes and saw the needle. I hawked up what was in my throat and spat in his face.

‘You dirty …' Ray said incredulously. ‘Did you see that?'

‘Hold him still,' the fat one, Wayne, said. ‘While I jab him.'

Ray wiped his face and edged sideways out of my vision. I tried to watch him but couldn't keep my eyes from the needle's point, weaving in front of Wayne's straining stomach. On his flabby forearm there was a tattooed dagger dripping purple blood.

Grinning at me with his bad teeth, Wayne said, ‘I dun't care about the money. He can have dis one on the house. Hee-hee-hee. I can't wait der see him come crawling to me on his hands and knees. I'll mek him eat dog turds first. Make the bastard beg!'

‘Please keep away,' I implored him. ‘Please.'

‘Please-please-please. He's god manners.'

‘Stick him if you're going to.'

‘How much do you want? I'll give you money,' I said, pleaded.

‘Come
on,'
Ray said. ‘For crying out fucking loud.'

‘Led him sweat a bit.'

‘Why do you want to do this?' I said hopelessly, knowing I couldn't reason with them. Reason to them was a sign of weakness. Easier and quicker to obey your instincts, do what the mood told you to do. Thinking was difficult and unnecessary, gratification came easy, gave instant pleasure.

‘Lissen, squire,' Wayne said gently, wheedling again. ‘You'll enjoy this, you really will. You'll be floating on a pink cloud in a blue sky. Brickton'll seem like Torrimelinos. Your very own package tour – you'll thank me, promise you will.' He said sharply, ‘Ready?'

I saw a blur of white hands reaching for me and stuck my boot out. It sank into something. Ray was holding my arms and shouting, ‘Where are you, where the fuck are you, what are you doing down there?'

His grip was amazingly strong for such a thin runt. He tried to twist my arms behind my back, shouting at Wayne on the floor. We scuffled together, doing a comic dance on the damp flagstones; Wayne was grunting and wheezing, still on his knees. It was the kind of nightmare in which your limbs are constricted by a crushing weight, and unless you break free a terrible fate awaits you. I twisted and squirmed but whatever I did I couldn't break his grip; it was impossible, beyond my strength.

‘Get up, get up,' Ray was panting. ‘Stick the bastard if you're going to, for Christ's sake …'

Wayne raised his moon face, rising slowly and murderously on one leg, wheezing like a steam engine. With my arms held fast I had no other choice but to put the toe of my boot under the hanging chin. He made a funny sound as he went over backwards and I heard the glass of the syringe break as it fell onto the flagstones and rolled into the urinal.

‘You bastard!' Ray rasped in my ear.

Wayne was slumped in a heap, holding his jaw with both hands. I don't like violence but I hoped it was broken. I felt better with the needle gone. I wrenched myself sideways and Ray hung on, cursing me. We staggered to and fro, feet scrabbling for a hold on the flagstones, and I managed to get his body between me and the wall and
put my full weight behind my shoulder, driving it into the narrow breastbone. I heard a dry gasp as his breath left him, and his hands went slack.

I didn't kid myself that I could have beaten him in a real fight: the grip of those bony hands was amazing. I was lucky to have caught him as I did, and while he was still gasping I took the chance and ran.

There was a gate with a fringe of barbed-wire along the top. I pulled the bolt back and yanked the gate open. It opened six inches and stuck. There was a dustbin in the way. It weighed a ton, but I finally shoved it aside, squirmed through the gap and ran into the street. A voice behind me (I think it was Ray's) shouted through a spasm of coughing, ‘Next time it won't be smack. Next time it'll be AIDS.'

The rain had thickened, swirling like yellow smoke in the sulphurous streetlights. I ran without direction, not knowing the town, not really caring, just wanting to disappear. After a while I slowed down, stood panting and listening; I couldn't hear footsteps. I felt nauseous again, with the running and the fear. I leaned against a wall with my wet ice-cold forehead in the crook of my elbow and with immense relief let it come.

Dr Morduch's waxy, heavily lined face came down, a syringe in his gloved hand. ‘Hold him still, can't you?' he said irritably.

I twisted against the straps. Somebody was squeezing my ankles as if they wanted to break them off. I was gagged and couldn't scream.

‘Now then, old chap,' murmured Dr Morduch in his best avuncular manner. ‘You'll feel better for it, I promise you. No more bad dreams. Right – hold him still!'

The hollow point bore down, a drop of pinkish liquid gathering at the tip like a dew-drop. The needle went in, burrowed into the vein, forming a long thin mound. The mound travelled along my arm, a tiny vindictive mole working away industriously towards my heart. If it ever reached my heart I would be dead and done for.

Dr Morduch's broad thumb pressed home the plunger.

A molten river of spite coursed through me. I jerked, strained against the straps, went slack as my nervous system was knocked out of action. My eyeballs weighed a neutron star apiece.

‘He's going … he's going … going …'

‘Gone and never called me mother,' said the moon-faced man with the vice-like grip.

Somebody was wailing. I thought it was me until I opened my eyes, and the wailing went on. I expected to hear the gnashing of teeth and other sounds of lamentation. It was the radio, or perhaps a record, from below. I lay back on the flock bolster, still shaking, my neck stiff from the strain, watching the plume of my breath ascending to the ceiling like the smoke from a funeral pyre. For the past two nights I hadn't dreamt of S –, which I took to be a good omen. Perhaps I really had shaken him off, and he was still wandering up and down the
M6, a ghost looking for a phantom.

The dirge-like voice kept to the same high monotonous pitch, a soul in torment, though to Mr Patundi's ears it might have been bubble-gum music, number three in the Calcutta charts.

After a quick wash in cold water I went out.

The street was muffled in damp sea-mist. I welcomed it as protection, another layer of disguise. It was a pity I couldn't alter my appearance in some way, but I had no moustache or beard to shave off, and my hair was already cropped. The barber along the street couldn't be of assistance.

Where I came from we called a chill mist borne on the wind moor-grime, but this was from the sea and I didn't know if the locals had a name for it. Shrouded ghostly figures passed by. The cars in the high street had their lights on; lorries revved and groaned, frustrated by the creeping pace and the narrow corners. Their trailers clanked emptily.

At a newsagents I bought a morning paper and asked the girl behind the counter where B-H Haulage was. She was vague – second left after the traffic lights, up the hill, or was it the third? – picking at a spot on her chin with a fingernail from which the polish was flaking. I wandered off without hope in that general direction, but in fact I found the place easily enough: metal bollards painted in black and white stripes were set into the pavement on opposite corners of the street to safeguard pedestrians from the turning lorries. Just then an articulated lorry, lights blazing, B-H in a circle on the doors, came down the hill with a shriek and gasp of its air-powered brakes.

The iron superstructure clad with corrugated panels fronted directly onto the street. A wrinkled ‘B-H Haulage Co Ltd' was painted on the panels. The entrance was a square black hole, intermittent lights inside like feeble glow-worms. Next to this, and further up the hill, a two-storey office in modern brick was set behind chains looped to white posts, enclosing an area of clean white gravel with spaces for cars.