The Last Card (25 page)

G
avin looked at the clock behind the bar. 11.13pm. Still no sign of the second black guy. What had happened? Gavin knew that the boxer was still upstairs. He finished his tonic water, took one last look at the club’s entrance and headed for the door behind the bar.

He stood silently in the hallway, listening. The low throb of disco pulsated through to him but other than that he couldn’t hear anything. He stepped quietly to the stairs, aware that he was walking on tiptoe. As he hit the first step it creaked and again, he paused. Still nothing. He took the stairs two at a time, acutely aware of every creak and groan underfoot.

H silently reached the landing. He stood stock still, his heart pounding.

Gavin peered into the recesses and the shadows that had given up the boxer earlier that night. Nothing. He kept staring, desperate to penetrate the darkness. Finally he moved, taking another step in the direction of Alan’s office door. That first step was on a floorboard that must have disliked something about Gavin because its groan was so loud the small, fine hairs at the back of Gavin’s neck stood to
attention
. Gavin’s heart nearly leapt through his mouth. Again he stopped, frozen. He stood like that for thirty seconds that seemed like thirty minutes. He again moved forward, more carefully this time.

He put his ear to the office door, desperate to divine what was happening behind it. He couldn’t hear anything. He looked at the door and knocked. Nothing. He knocked again. Still nothing. He slowly opened the door, poking his head round it.

Everything looked as it should. Gavin stepped into the room. Only now could he see that Alan’s chair was tipped over and, and there was Alan! Sitting crumpled on the floor!

‘Alan?’ Gavin tentatively called his boss’s name. ‘Alan? Can you hear me?’ Either Alan couldn’t hear him or he couldn’t answer him. That’s when Gavin made his second unpleasant discovery for the night. The mirror above Alan’s head was gone and the safe was open.

‘Bastard!’ He spat the word out through clenched teeth. He looked down at Alan and spat it again. ‘Bastard!’ He stepped back out of the office, skipped quickly down the stairs.

H
had been hiding behind the door, clutching his now full,
brand-new
holdall to his chest. At last he could breathe again. His breath came quickly, in short bursts. He stepped out of the office. His new suit was suddenly hot and sticky. The pain in his hip was a forgotten memory now as he walked quickly and quietly to the stairs and descended them. He stopped at the bottom and looked along the hallway. He couldn’t see Gavin anywhere. He approached the door leading to the side of the bar and opened it a fraction. He peeked into the club, searching through the milling bodies of gays and
transvestites
. Still no sight of the late Alan Akers’ main man. He opened the door a fraction more and crouched down to slip through.

As H hovered in the doorway, his eyes scanned the shifting lights and bodies. There he was! He spotted Gavin walking amongst the clubbers, easing, pushing people aside as he looked for him. From his position, crouching by the door, H could see there was something frantic about the way Gavin was moving amongst the Roxy clientele. He was like a shark, leaving in his wake a trail of chaos. People behind Gavin gave him dirty, annoyed looks as he passed.

H waited his moment. It wasn’t a large club. He waited until Gavin was at the far end of the dance floor, his back to H. At that moment H rose. He strode quickly through the club. He left by the main entrance.

Outside, H looked around, trying to find a taxi.

T
hese fucking poofters! Gavin was becoming increasingly desperate. Where was he? Where was the boxer? How could he have given him the slip? Gavin waded through the gays and the queens; dancing, preening, posing and mincing. How the hell did this happen to London?! was the thought going through Gavin’s head when he turned on the dance floor to see H’s tall silhouette and the back of his head, moving towards the entrance. Fuck! Gavin immediately headed after him, moving with more aggression now, less finesse.

It was a move Gavin was to regret. Dancing next to him, with a carefree charm, was a tall, burly man, built like a construction worker, dressed in a simple red knee-length, chiffon dress. He had a blonde wig perched precariously on his head over a dark stubble. In his haste to catch up with the boxer Gavin had planted a hand in the small of the man’s back and pushed hard. The man, at that moment twirling to something high in energy, stumbled in his dainty sandals with the kitten heels. He quickly regained his balance, however, and as Gavin moved to go past him the man reached out a muscular, hairy arm and grabbed Gavin by the back of his elegantly coiffured hair, jerking him back.

‘Oiy! Wha’s your game?!’

‘Argh!’ Gavin spun round and landed a perfect blow high on the man’s temple. He let go of Gavin’s hair and staggered back, his bulky form knocking aside those merry-makers dancing nearby as he went down. Gavin immediately turned back to the door in hot pursuit of Hilary.

He burst out on to the street, pushed his way past another fucking black guy about to enter the club, just in time to see Hilary toss the bag into a black taxi.

‘Hey! Come back! Where do you think you’re going?’ The words were gnarled, Gavin angry that the boxer so underestimated him that he thought he could just walk out with the money, right under his nose. ‘And what’s in the bag you just threw into the taxi?’

Hilary turned and looked round at Gavin. As Gavin strode towards the boxer he saw him ready himself for combat. And then he saw him look at something to one side. And then Gavin glanced at what caught the H’s eye. And then he saw another black guy, the one he’d just barged past. And then he recognized him – braided hair on one side, loose hair on the other. And then he saw the Mac 11 pointing at him. BANG!

And then Gavin … forty-nine years old … member of the 1984 Olympic bobsleigh team … ex-fitness instructor … ex-enforcer for Alan Aker … murderer of Dipak Chandra … was dead.

F
or a moment, out on that busy Soho Street, all was silent. H looked from Gavin, shot through the head and instantly dead, to the black man standing next to him, looking at the body. H knew he’d seen him somewhere before – that hair! Where was it? The man suddenly turned and walked – he didn’t run – he walked away through the crowd, into Wardour Street and around the corner. Everybody turned to look. And that was H’s cue. He span round and climbed into the waiting taxi, slamming the door behind him.

‘Heathrow Airport.’

‘Hang on a minute, mate, don’t you think we should wait for …’

‘Heathrow Airport! I’ve got a plane to catch!’ Something in H’s manner must have told the taxi driver that his passenger meant
business
. Whatever thoughts he might have had about civic duty, he put them to one side and pulled away. Better to not get involved.

H sat in the back of the taxi squinting out the rear window. Jesus Christ! That was close. A large crowd was now beginning to form around Gavin’s body.

The taxi drove round Marble Arch, heading into Bayswater Road. The traffic was busy, it was Saturday night after all, and H was on edge. He eyed the big houses and flats as they crawled by, knowing that he wouldn’t be seeing anything like this for a while. Not where he was going. He had told the driver to head west, even at this stage still not sure whether to go to Holland Park and Nina, or Hanwell and Beverley. As the taxi brought him ever closer to Holland Park H’s thoughts became more and more confused. Clearly, his feelings about Beverley were wrapped up with Cyrus. If there were no Cyrus,
would he be thinking about Beverley? Should he be thinking about Beverley? A part of him still loved her but what had she done for him lately? And what about Nina? Was that love or lust? There were so many things he liked about Nina but he couldn’t help thinking … could he trust her?

H pulled out a fresh packet of cigarettes. He hadn’t had a
cigarette
in a while and one of the advantages of giving up boxing was that he could now have a cigarette without feeling guilty about it. Or at least that’s what he’d told himself when he bought the packet earlier that evening. As he was taking a cigarette out his eye caught the ‘No Smoking’ sign.

‘Excuse me? Driver?’ The driver looked round. H waved the
cigarette
at him with a questioning look. The driver tutted but, no doubt with one eye on the size of his tip, he relented.

‘All right then, mate, go on.’ He shook his head with disapproval. Fuck you, H thought. If you’d had the evening I’d had you’d want a cigarette as well! He thought back to Akers. He’d killed him with his own bare hands. How did he feel about that? Revulsion? Yes. But … but also a sense of … power?

H screwed up the plastic paper and the silver wrapping paper that surrounded the cigarettes. He crushed them into a tight ball, opened the taxi window and tossed them out. The paper ball flew forward, carried by the momentum of the car, hit the windscreen of another oncoming car and bounced back, into the street. H had a sudden flashback to Mr Enias and the teaser he had posed for his class. H thought about the turning point of the paper he’d just thrown and the fact that if it had just changed direction from moving forwards to moving backwards then at some point, mathematically, it must have been stationary. He again thought about how he’d always perceived his own life in those terms; the moment when his own life had become stationary, had changed direction …

‘I can’t fuckin’ hear you!’ Nick was shouting at H above the noise in the arena.

‘I’m a champ!’

‘You’re a fuckin’ god! Now go out dere and prove it!’

It was the start of the last round. Nick and Matt both took H’s head in their hands and kissed him on the cheek before climbing out of the ring. He was their boy. H rose. He looked across at Mancini. Another adrenaline spurt shot through his body. This was his last ever round as an amateur. H shook his arms out waggling his boxing gloves from side to side, preparing himself for the coming battle. He stared across at Mancini while he eased his gum-shield into a more comfortable place in his mouth. Mancini himself was like a restless horse, prancing, skipping, waiting. Ding! The bell tolled. The referee waved H and Mancini to the centre of the ring. He looked them both in the eye, paying special attention to the bloodied Mancini.

‘Are you all right?’ The question was shouted above the noise in the arena and delivered sternly. This was a game for men. Keeping his eyes on H, Mancini nodded vigorously. ‘You’re sure!’ Mancini dragged his eyes from H and now glared at the referee. He again nodded his head, but slowly this time. The message was
unmistakable
. And so the referee waved the two boxers together and stepped quickly back, out of the firing line. H and Mancini dead stared at each other. They touched boxing gloves in the strange etiquette of the ring. And then it was on, they were ready to bash each other’s brains out.

The two boxers circled each other warily. Mancini grimly smiled.

‘Are you gonna dance all night, cupcake? Or stand and fight?’

The referee stepped forward. ‘No talking!’ He stepped back.

And that was when H went to work. He glided forward; he jabbed,
bobbed, jabbed again. H was quickly returning to the zone of the last round. He moved, danced on his toes, down, came in, threw a
combination
, one-two-three, rat-a-tat-tat, back on his toes. He worked the ring, looking good. The crowd loved it and H’s support picked up again. Seeing their man doing so well the crowd were turning the event into a carnival.

Mancini ducked, bobbed, bang! caught one in the face, still came in, big right, missed, H was gone, chase, one-two-three, his face is peppered, shit! he still moved forward.

And so it went on, H on his toes, shuffling, the crowd loving it. Coasting his way to victory.

H glanced across at Matt and Nick. Both wore huge smiles, gave him the thumbs up. H turned to Mancini, he advanced to the middle of the ring, planted his feet. H waved Mancini toward him. Come on if you’re hard enough! Come and have a go! And like a wolf, Mancini smiled.

What happened next took just over a minute. H was to suffer the consequences of that minute for the rest of his life. Later, when he replayed the last round in his mind, it was Mancini’s smile that he remembered. H had been taking Mancini apart, like a surgeon,
skilfully
and precisely dismantling him, piece by piece. Yet going into the last round Mancini smiled once when he taunted H, and then again when H waved him on. Mancini must have known something because after that second smile he came at H like a ten-year-old child opening a room full of Christmas presents. H and Mancini now stood toe-
to-toe
in what was an old fashioned, macho, tear up. It was a war; vicious and brutal.

Nick and Matt couldn’t believe their eyes. They shouted and screamed at H, desperate to be heard above the pandemonium that had broken out in the arena.

‘Move!’

‘Get out of there!’

‘Move away!’

‘Dance, H, dance! Shuffle on him!’

‘What the hell are you doing?!’

‘For fuck sake, move!’

But H didn’t move and H didn’t dance. He gambled. He gambled himself against the best that Mancini could throw at him; H gambled
that he could beat Mancini boxing the way Mancini boxed; H gambled to prove to Mancini that he was as tough as he was. H took that gamble. But as the two of them stood toe-to-toe, tearing, snarling, pounding each other, H began to tire.

Why didn’t the referee step in? Because this was the final round of the final of the ABAs. Nobody wants to see a boxer hurt, but nobody wants to step in too soon and therefore end a fight prematurely; deprive a boxer, a warrior of the right to snatch first prize. No, the referee wanted to see what these two fine boxers could do.

As H wilted Mancini became stronger, he kept going. H took a big one on the chin, then another. Blood spurted from his eyebrow. Soon there was no power in H’s punches. H took another heavy blow and his gum-shield flew out. He stumbled. A final crushing, terrible blow and H went down. His eyes closed. He was out before his head crashed to the canvas.

The pandemonium in the arena turned to silence. Nick and Matt leapt into the ring. Mancini raised his arms in victory but rather than circling the ring in triumph, he went to his own corner and stood with his trainer and seconds, waiting. They could see H was in trouble …

H lay on his back. His back on the canvas. A crowd of people around him. A doctor leant over him. The doctor’s head was down. The doctor was listening. Listening for signs of life. The doctor snatched at H. Desperate for a pulse. He felt nothing. Now shouting. Cleared people away. Stopped breathing. H was dying. Tilted H’s head. Pinched H’s nose. Blew into H’s mouth …