Serious People (24 page)

“Chuck us another whisky, H,” Mickey said, passing the man behind the bar his empty glass.

Harry, or simply H, as he was known to his friends, was a large man in his early seventies; his police record would tell you he spent most of his young life as a local villain, with many priors for GBH, ABH and burglary. But since the mid-eighties he had the reputation of having gone straight.

Mickey knew this wasn’t the whole truth; in the late eighties he’d actually joined O’Neil’s crew and was a sometime member of their bank robbery team.

Harry had been muscle for the bank jobs they had carried out all those years ago. He was part of a small group of fellas who were called on occasionally to make up the numbers. He was also someone Mickey considered an operational expert, skilled at both knowing how to intimidate by sheer size, and with the intelligence to know when to shut up and allow more intelligent or important people talk. H was the type of fella he hoped Seamus could become.

The years after the robbery had not been kind to H; he had been hit especially hard by the house market crash in the nineties. He was the oldest part of the bank robbery crew, by some margin, and had seen his financial investment in bricks and mortar as his retirement fund; H had no plans to get his hands dirty again. But after the financial crash he had played his part in the turf wars that Robert and Charlie started in the mid-nineties. Although by then age was catching him up and, unless some numpty stood still so he could lump them, he wasn’t the physical presence he had been.

“There you go Mick,” H said, handing him a whisky.

“Cheers mate. It has been a shit day,” Mickey replied.

“Yeah?”

“Did you hear about that crash on the M40, stopped the whole bloody thing for the afternoon?” Mickey said.

“Yeah, a lorry turned didn’t it?” Harry replied.

“Yeah, and we were stuck right in the middle of it,” Mickey said, taking a big swig from his new drink.

“What the hell were you doing on the M40?” Harry asked.

Mickey shook his head. “Don’t bloody ask.”

“We were getting this drummer to re-join a band we’re putting back together,” Seamus said, with an enthusiastic smile on his face.

Both Mickey and Harry turned to look at Seamus. H was clearly wondering who this buffoon was.

“This is Seamus O'Driscoll, he works for me now,” Mickey said, gesturing to Seamus, who offered Harry his hand to shake.

Harry grabbed the younger man’s hand. “You’re the boxer from Hayes aren’t you?”

“Yeah I was,” Seamus replied. “I work for Mickey now.”

“You had some talent kid. I watched you knock the teeth out of that other boy—what was his name—former regional champ?” Harry said, looking to the ceiling trying to remember the fight. “Lawrenson, yeah Lawrenson, that was it.”

Seamus looked remorseful. “Yeah, lost my license soon after that though.”

“I’ll get you a Guinness son,” Harry said, selecting a pint glass.

Harry looked up from the drink he was pouring. “You notice those boys in the corner Mickey?”

Mickey knew better than turn around; he subtly glanced at the mirror behind the bar and focussed on the hoodies huddled around a darkened table. This was the thing he loved about H. He might not have the muscle anymore, but he had the sharps. He could spot when something was off.

Mickey had put the mirror there for this very purpose. The average Joe who frequented the Irish Club would never have noticed, but whenever Mickey was in, he’d always stand or sit at the same place of the bar, a place that gave him a perfect three hundred and sixty degree view of the whole establishment. To anyone looking on they’d think the owner was completely relaxed and off guard. The casual visitor would also not be aware of the row of light switches that were covertly placed beneath his spot at the bar, so that he could drop the lights, whenever he needed to… and the baseball bat which sat conveniently on a hook under the counter within easy reach.

Mickey smiled as he looked closely at the reflection of the three men.

Harry leant closer to Mickey so he could whisper. “You know them?”

Mickey nodded. “Yeah I know them.”

“I don’t think they noticed, but I got a few of the boys to quietly position themselves around their table, just in case my gut feeling was right. They’ll be ready to jump on them if you want,” Harry whispered.

As Mickey looked at the Blakes, his mind drifted to one his favourite books,
The Art Of Reading People’s Body Language
; it was a book that had given him a head start on someone making a play on him more times than he cared to remember. He carefully reviewed the three brothers. Mickey had always previously thought of the Blake brothers as clowns; nasty and at times psychopathic, but not dangerous to him. They were simple and predictable. As he watched them in the mirror, though, he now saw something different; in particular in the one he knew was called Billy. Billy’s back seemed ever so slightly straighter, his shoulders tense. There was a confidence there, and he was here with a purpose; he was about to do something. They’d recently been sacked and were here to cause trouble. Stupid boys.

“Good job H,” Mickey whispered with a nod.

H nodded in reply and gave a slight hand signal to the men surrounding the Blakes’ table; within a moment each brother had large forearms around their throats and sudden panic in their eyes. But this was not now where Mickey’s attention was fixed, his attention had been drawn to the floor, a metre or so away from Billy Blake’s table, and a familiar metal clang—the type of metal clang a gun made when it hit a hard floor. There was a gun, a gun in his club. One of the Blake brothers had brought a gun into his club—his mind almost exploded with anger.

Mickey walked up to the gun, picked it up and inspected it. The gun was a Colt Trooper. Despite Mickey’s personal hatred for firearms, his line of work meant that he had a good knowledge of handguns—it was a fundamental part of both being successful and staying alive. The CoIt was a large gun as handguns went, and highly powerful. If you took a slug from this anywhere from your waist up the prognosis would not be good.

The reason for Billy’s previous confidence was now made clear.

“You bring a gun into my place?” Mickey growled, dangling the gun in front of Billy.

Billy Blake didn’t reply. He held Mickey’s stare though, and Mickey never liked this; it showed a lack of respect. Perhaps on another day he would regard this disrespect as more an act of stupidity than anything else more serious. But today—right now—he was furious.

“You bring a gun into my place. You brought a gun to my place! My fucking place!” Mickey shouted into Billy’s face. “Were you going to use it on me? You piece of shit—you planned to use it on me!”

Billy Blake seemed to try to shake his head but, due to the broad arm around his neck, was barely able to move. And Mickey didn’t care—it was too late for excuses.

“You know. I get the impression you were going to use it on me?” Mickey said. “Here let me use it on you!”

Mickey swung the gun's handle viciously around Billy’s face. This was followed by a horrible cracking sound, suggesting the Blake’s cheek bone had broken and instantly matched with a large cheek wound. This did nothing to douse Mickey’s mood; it actually energised him with the power of retribution. He swung the gun into Billy Blake’s face over and over again until it was a mess of blood and Billy Blake had lost consciousness.

Mickey took a moment to smile at the crumpled mess of Billy Blake before approaching the next nearest brother, dangling the bloodied gun in front of him. This brother’s demeanour was notably different; maybe it was the result of having to endure watching his brother’s punishment. But this one looked afraid; and his fear took a different form to that which Mickey was used to seeing in people like the Blakes.

“You know they’re right, what they say,” Mickey said, turning to Seamus who was stood patiently behind him, waiting to be invited to join in. “These are powerful guns.”

“Mr. Dunne,” the Blake brother who was now positioned in front of Mickey began, almost choking from the hold he was in. “We came down here to apologise—with what happened. We didn’t want there to be any hard feelings.”

Mickey looked at the Blake brother who was now doing the talking. “You come into my place with a fucking gun?”

“It was stupid. We wanted some protection; we weren’t sure how you’d react. We're sorry!” The Blake cried out desperately.

Mickey looked at the man; there was nothing in him that wasn’t believable. The man looked pathetic. There was no way this fella had come in here for a ruck. What stupid pricks! Bringing a gun into his place for protection! He looked across at Billy Blake on the floor and held no regret. People had to know what the consequence was for carrying a gun into his club.

“It was damn stupid!” Mickey said, with no remorse. “Take these boys outside and show them what happens to people who bring weapons into my place.”

“You want them to be able to leave walking?” Harry asked.

“Yeah why not; no one can say Mickey Dunne hasn’t got a forgiving side,” Mickey replied.

“Should we tell Mr. Payne or Mr. O’Neil about this?” Seamus asked.

“Seamus I only tell the bosses the stuff they need to know. They won’t want to be bored by this shit; these boys are nobodies. They're just pissed because we put them outta work the other day. Trust me, they've learnt their lesson,” Mickey replied.

John and Nick had been lucky; the guys who had thrown them into the Irish Club's back yard had been more than lax carrying out of Mickey’s instructions to give them a good beating. The man who had charge of Billy had merely thrown his semi-conscious body to the floor; he'd obviously felt there was no need to waste any more energy on him.

John fared best of all. He was aided by being no stranger to taking a kicking. He had learnt the hard way—by way of harsh experience—about how to absorb a beating, how to angle your body just before you receive a punch. John had learnt the art of exaggerating the force of blow. He knew this generally left the aggressor less motivated to deliver more punishment. It was normally a flawless tactic; his foe’s ego would prevent him from questioning why he had made so much of the blow.

John had adopted both tactics on this occasion. The guy who was holding him had given him a strong punch in the stomach, but John had seen the move coming. He made a slight move to his left, which shifted the impact area to his side. The blow still hurt, but not to the extent that a punch to the gut would. His large aggressor was then not given time to question the force of the impact; John fell to the floor at the moment the blow was delivered and rolled around on the floor in his embellished pain.

John could recite many instances where he had been able to hone his skills when it came to absorbing punches, usually after he had been sought out for retribution because of something one of his younger brothers had done. It was always assumed, as he was the eldest, that he was the best target for revenge, as if that would send out a message to Billy and Nick. If we can do this to your elder brother, think what we could do to you. These people were, of course, oblivious of John’s younger brothers being far better in a fight than he was. It was indisputably true that he was the weakest of all his brothers, not just in physique but in psyche too. 

Back in his teens, Nick had committed a truly heinous crime. When John found out about it, he was so disgusted that he’d wanted to give his brother a beating himself and show all their detractors that the Blakes did not accept this kind of behaviour either, but he didn’t.

Nick had been seeing a local girl for a few weeks, a truly lovely girl, so much so John couldn't understand what she saw in his disturbed mute brother. Her name was Sarah, and at the time she was studying for her GCSEs; from what John could understand from the fleeting times he had met her, she must have thought she could ‘fix’ Nick. He vividly remembered her telling Auntie Mary and the rest of the family over dinner how she could tell that Nick had good thoughts and feelings, through his eyes. Eyes, she said, were the window to the soul.

John’s only regret, looking back, was he never told Sarah how wrong she was about this—that she should get the hell away from his brother before she got hurt. Instead John stood back and just waited for something to happen. The wait ended when Sarah’s older brother came round to the bar and claimed Nick had raped his little sister. John naturally knew it was true, though he had professed his younger brother’s innocence and refused to say where Nick was. And John knew how it would end.

It was at least an hour later when his Uncle had found him; both eyes were blackened with bruises and he could barely stand up straight after the beating he had taken for his brother. Somehow he found the strength to stagger to Nick’s bedroom, where his younger brother had been hidden, just listening to what was going on downstairs. Never at any point had he come down to help defend John. When he saw John enter the room he just laughed; there was no remorse just a callous laugh. It was on that day that John knew Nick was beyond help.

John looked down at the semi-conscious form of Billy. Unlike Nick, John hoped that Billy was not all bad, that he could help him, possibly steer him to something better than a life of violence. All Billy’s drive and aggression could surely be channelled into something worthwhile.

Nick had taken a worse beating than John. He was walking with a limp, and his left arm could well have been broken from to the angle he was holding it. Somewhere inside, John enjoyed seeing his brother’s injuries; he knew Nick had spent most his life earning these types of beatings and rarely getting them. 

John had managed to carry Billy for the best part of a mile, on the way back to Hammersmith, with Nick staggering behind him. Finally, he set his brother down on a park bench, so that he could give himself a much needed breather. He carefully lowered Billy onto the bench and Nick quickly collapsed down next to him. John stretched his aching bones.

John was not sure where they were; they’d used the Tube to travel to the Irish Club and he was fairly sure they were still a long way from home. It had been a strange night, he reflected, sitting down on the grass. But it had not gone completely badly, from his point of view. The idea of killing Mickey the Bag had never been a good one and, in John’s opinion, the brothers had managed to get away fairly lightly under the circumstances.

John looked around the park, trying to get his bearings of where they should be heading for next. He started to wonder what Emma would be doing about now, and if she was also wondering about where he was and what he was up to. He hoped she wasn’t concerned as
that
would mean more explaining to do, something John was far too exhausted to prepare for.
As he was looking around, his eyes fell on a figure who was sitting on a bench on the opposite side of the park. The figure looked very familiar, as he strained his eyes to get more focus.

“It can’t be?” John said, now staring across the park.

He turned to his brothers, who were both now collapsed on the bench. Billy looked asleep and Nick appeared equally docile, lying next to him.

“Nick I’ll be right back,” John whispered.

Nick gave him have a wave and didn’t seem bothered what happened, providing he could stay resting for a while longer. John took the opportunity and walked towards the solitary figure.

John crept closer to the figure on the bench and, when he could see the person more clearly, he almost cried out in surprise. He had to pinch himself; he was looking at the unmistakable form of Ronny Wild, one of his music idols as a teenager.

John got a bit closer and decided to attempt conversation. “It’s you—Ronny Wild—isn’t it? It’s really you.”

Wild saluted John with what looked like a can of extra strong cider. “It’s me!”

John looked at the man, now slightly concerned for him. He hadn’t heard anything about Ronny Wild for years; was he now a tramp? Had things got that hard for him?

“Let me tell you something,” Wild said, slurring his words. “When whisky lets you down—and let’s be honest it can from time to time—you can always go back to good old cider!”

John could see now that Wild was dressed in some kind of tuxedo outfit. He obviously wasn’t living a life on the street just yet. “Can I have your autograph?” John asked.

“’Ave you got a pen?” Wild slurred.

John rifled through his pockets and pulled out a pen. He passed a used tube ticket to the rock star, who was now attempting to sign it.

“I used to think you were fantastic in Wild n’ Weird,” John said, hoping his autograph would actually be legible.

“I did have a career after that… a couple of solo albums, even European number ones!” Wild replied.

“No offence Ronny, you don’t mind me calling you Ronny do you?” John asked.

“Sure, suppose I should be thankful someone remembers my bleeding name,” Wild replied.

“Well, in my opinion, rock music is all about bands, you know. And your solo stuff was OK but, to be honest, not many guys would pick up your album or go to the concerts. It would look a bit—I dunno—gay,” John said, hoping his honest assessment wouldn’t offend Wild.

Wild looked surprised at John’s insight. “Really?”

“Yeah, I mean. I'm sure you had enough women buying your solo CDs?” John replied.

“Not really,” Wild said, passing his scribbled signature to John.

“Oh,” John said, wishing he hadn’t said anything. “It’s just my opinion, but I think you should have stayed with the band. Then you would have been massive.”

“Wait a minute,” Ronny said, staring right through John. “This makes sense to me now. I think if I had stayed with the band, I would have been massive. Wow! I feel so much better.”

“I’m pleased, I could help,” John smiled back.

Wild jumped to his feet, appearing to be suddenly sober. “I knew it couldn’t be down to people not liking my music,” he said, starting to walk away, continuing to talk to himself.

John called back after him. “It was great to have met you!”

Wild ignored John and continued walking. “This all makes sense now; they never stopped enjoying my music—they just didn’t want to look like gays, of bloody course!” he said. “I knew people still loved me! I can still be massive!”
John watched the aging rock star disappear into the distance. What a prick, John thought, as he looked at the wavy lines that were on his ticket. It looked nothing like an autograph. John replaced the ticket in his pocket and walked back to where he left his brothers.

When he returned to the bench, Billy was now stood up and slowly stretching his damaged limbs.

“How do you feel?” John asked.

Billy put his hands to his bloodied face. “How’d I look?”

“You look like shit,” John replied, thinking there was no point in lying.

“That Mickey the Bag, I fucking hate him!” Billy screamed suddenly. “I’ll teach him to embarrass us like this. He can come to
our bar
, and we’ll get people in to do this to him!”

John looked back at his brother; now was not the time to argue with him. John knew it was pointless to say that they barely had enough friends between them to fill a car let, alone the family pub.

“We need to get you home Billy, let Auntie Mary sort out your face,” John said, trying to shepherd his brother towards the exit of the park.

“Promise me John, you’re going to help me settle this score!” Billy shouted. “We’re still brothers; it’s not too late for you!”

John looked at his brother.
It’s not too late for you!
  He could hear Emma saying those words. It wasn’t too late, despite what they’d done, get his brothers home and safe. So he could start a new life too.

“You listening to me?” Billy continued. “Are you with us?”

“Billy, you’re delirious, we need to get you home,” John replied.

Billy pushed John away and stood uneasily on his feet. “Promise me brother!”

John didn’t reply; he’d had enough of Billy’s shit for one night.