Wreckage (27 page)

That Colm cunt comes back to this city an his fuckin knees’re gone elbows n ankles n all six-pack the bastard

THAT’S WHAT YER GET FOR LAUGHIN AT ME

But BETRAYAL

Make im a cripple

Fuck im right up like Sammy fuckin Gallagher

Like DARREN FUCKIN TAYLOR’S gunner be pure
is
gunner happen

Like a hundred fuckin others cos no cunt rips me off or treats me like a knob’ed fuckin NO ONE does I am DEATH to the toerags I am DEATH to these no-marks fuckin scum I am DEATH to them who think ther better than me think thee can make
me
look a twat I AM

There’s a knockin on the door. Darren fuckin Taylor that’ll be.

I nod at Gozzy to goan answer it. Ee nods back an does.

This cunt’s gunner
die
.

BUS DRIVER

Can’t say that I noticed him, really, to be honest. Boy just got on, paid his fare, went and sat at the back. Noticed that he kept his rucksack held all tight to his chest like and when he got on that early in the morning I thought to meself: Aye-aye. Here’s trouble. I mean you
would
, wouldn’t you? Scouse lad with his face all bruised and cut and the baseball hat and that, that shellsuit? Mean, a boy like that gets on the bus and you’re automatically on your guard, aren’t you? I’d heard of the Cilcain robbery, like, but I didn’t make the connection and anyway as I say,
all
’s he did was get on, pay his fare and go and sit at the back. Why should I have noticed him? Perfect passenger, he was. And
them
you don’t notice. Them’re the best kind.

And it’s still a job I love, to be honest. I’ve been doing the Wrexham–Mold circular for years and I never get bored. Up early, open roads, day all new and fresh, badgers and foxes and all the other animals you see at that time. It’s brilliant, I love it, to be honest. The early run, like, the roads’re all empty and I go through all the little villages on the way, across the Vale of Clwyd, beautiful it is, see. Breathtaking. I’m too busy looking out at the scenery and concentrating on me driving to notice one particular passenger although as I say I
did
notice this feller when he got on but after that … well, he just kept himself to himself, like. Didn’t even notice when he got off at Cilcain although he was probably the only person to do so at that time of the morning, to be honest. I mean, I was just enjoying meself, as I always do. It was a beautiful morning. But I
do
recall stopping at Cilcain because I remember watching some big hawks circling over the post office, the one that was robbed, big buzzards, they were. But that’s all I remember, really … as I say, you tend not to notice the good passengers, them who cause no problems, just pay their fare and sit quiet. You tend not to notice them, and they’re the best kind, to be honest.

ALASTAIR, HIS GRANDMOTHER KATE: HER LEAVING

MUGGED

Come to Wales, Simon says. Stay in my parents’ holiday cottage, he says, do some climbing, canoeing, get drunk in the pubs, have a great time of it. Shag women called Rhiannon, show the boyos how to drink. Have a
great
time, he says. What he
doesn’t
say is: Come to North Wales and get rolled by some scar-faced Scouser for ya mobile fuckin phone …

Capel Garmon: that’s where Si’s cottage is. So I got the London–Chester train and took a bus out into the hills and did a bit of walking on my own and spent the night under canvas on my own by some river. Few spliffs, few tinnies, did a bit of writing … didn’t sleep very well tho cos of all the noises. God, the
noises
.
Snufflings
and scrapings and screechings all night outside the tent, felt like I was camping in Africa or somewhere. So I woke up knackered, like, and packed up the tent and took a walk to the nearest village for a bite to eat and a cuppa and to catch the bus out to Si’s place at Capel Garmon, and just as I turn the corner I see the bus pulling away. Missed it. And standing there as if he’s just that moment got off it is some scally in a baseball hat holding a rucksack to his chest and he calls me over and what does he do? Only takes my fuckin mobile, doesn’t he? Only mugs me for my fuckin mobile … Honest, he’s like some Harry Enfield Scouser, he is: Ceeeerrm down! Ey, lar, ey! Ceeeerrm down!

Oh yes, come to wonderful Wales and get mugged by some Scouse bastard in a shellsuit with cuts and bruises on his face. Oh nice one, Si, nice one, my bravvah. And all those noises in the night as well … tellin ya, this is the Wild West, my friend. Too fucking right. This is the Wild West.

And he goes off with my mobile, round the corner somewhere, and I’m just about to chase him and knock him on the back of his head and take the fucking thing
back
when he reappears, like, and just hands it over. That’s all he does, just hands it straight over back to me. Says sammink to me in that awful nasal accent and then waves and walks away. Waves! Politest mugger
I’ve
ever encountered, not that I’ve met many, like … in fact, to be honest, he was the first. And it could’ve been much, much worse … but he was still a fucking Scouser, tho, wasn’t he? All the fucking same, man, them bastards, all the fucking same. Lucky I didn’t get me face Stanley’d.

I checked my phone, made sure it hadn’t been spat on or anything, and then I checked the timetable at the bus stop, so I didn’t notice where Terry or Barry or whatever his Scouse name was went. Didn’t see. The timetable told me that I couldn’t catch a bus to Capel Garmon from there anyway so I just carried on walking, thought I’d get to the next village then call Si, tell him to come out and pick me up in his new 4x4 he got for his birthday. So yes, I had a bit more on my mind than what some brain-dead Scouse scally was up to. I did hear a gunshot, yes, when I was walking down the lane to the next village; I heard the crack, but I just thought it was someone shooting pheasants or grouse or whatever. Didn’t see anything, just heard the gunshot. Thought to myself: there’s some yokel’s breakfast sorted out, innit? Wasn’t until I watched the local news that night at Si’s place that I realised what had happened. But what can ya do? And what can ya expect? Some scally mugger trying to get into your shop … Jeez,
I’d
shoot the bastard too. I stayed at Si’s for a week – canoed on Bala Lake, climbed one of those mountains with the mad Welsh names. I did the Adam and Eve jump but Si wouldn’t do it, too chicken-shit. So he’s getting slated for weeks about that one. So yes, apart from that fucking Scouse mugger, my time in Wales was quality, or
most
of it was … I mean, I didn’t do the jump either, to be honest. But I wasn’t as scared as Si was. But Jeez I was pleased to get back on the train again, get back to some fuckin civilisation. It’s the Wild West out there, my bravvah. And it follows ya; I mean, two days back at home and me mobile rings; some fucking Scouser tellin me that he
knows
I’m in on it all cos the call came from my phone. Threatened to rip my arms off, said he was blind in one eye now cos of me, and that he was going to murder me and someone called Alastair together. I told him that I didn’t know what he was talking about, that I don’t know anyone called Alastair, and switched me phone off. Wrong number, must’ve been. But I’m monitoring all me calls from now on. But ya see what I mean, how it follows ya? Just can’t get away from it, man. It
follows
ya.

EMRYS

Buzzards. He hears them squealing. They must be soaring low over the shop and the adjoining fields, scanning for newborn lambs in the pastures, for unprotected new lives to rend and destroy and if the events of the past few days have taught him anything then it is the necessity of protection; the moral imperative to guard the innocent, to shield the vulnerable from harm and hurt. Which is what Frank’s gun is for.

Still in the hospital, she is. She may never leave it alive.

Buzzards. Big, brutal birds. Wheeling and screeching above the shop. The way they kill rabbits: not strong enough to kill them outright or carry them aloft they will swoop and strike, swoop and strike until the rabbit is dragging itself broken across the field still seeking sanctuary trailing its guts behind and the raptor will then eat. Whilst the rabbit still lives. It will eviscerate and eat the eyes of the still-living thing.

Protect the innocent. Shield the susceptible, the unsafe.

Frank’s shotgun in his arms feels perfect. The shape of it, its heft. Like some sword of justice. He carries it outside into the bright morning and shields his eyes as he scans the sky and sees no birds in the glare but hears them and there is a figure, a shadow crossing the road towards him. Shellsuit and baseball hat and battered face and holding a rucksack tight to his chest this figure stepping out of the sunlight and approaching him and Emrys knows what this is it is the evil returned the badness come back as it will and will again.

She may never leave the hospital alive. When he saw her on that horse. Forty years. Stillborn baby and the tears and the infant badger found in the barn and that time they came and shot the sheep. Take this off me I cannot bear it.

The figure stops. Holds out the rucksack in its arms towards him. The split and swollen mouth opens to speak beneath the eyes blank in the shade of the cap’s peak and Emrys levels the gun and twitches his finger. The index finger of his right hand, it twitches once and quickly. To protect the innocent. From harm to safeguard them.

DARREN

If there will be one event that, for the rest of his life, he will regret ever happening it will be, here and now, the pissing of his pants.
Not
a good way to confront death. Although it will
not
be it will feel, until he eventually
does
die, half blind in Melbourne, Australia, in a motorbike accident at the age of sixty-three, like the final indignity. Like
the
ultimate indignity although of
course
in the days to come there will be many,
many
more.

ANOTHER NURSE: WENDY MURRAY

Sometimes they get to you; sometimes there’s one among the hundreds of others that gets to you, that stabs your heart. That makes you realise the futility of it all and the pointlessness of existing for so many years just to die alone and adrift in the corner of some terminal ward with a view of the gridlocked traffic from the window, had you the strength to just sit up and peer out through the glass … and all the other illnesses around you … and within you, everything failing, shutting down …

Kate died today. The ancient lady in Ward H who in her rare moments of clarity had the mental energy of someone half her age, she died today, shortly after her grandson or was it her great-grandson, rough-looking lad with the beaten-up face, came in to visit her. Over a century old, she was. She went as Wendy was washing her; as she lifted up the left arm to clean the oxter, sun-parched powdery shell, the old lady gave out one last rattling breath and all the life left her, all the more-than-a-hundred-years of it. Wendy was asking her if she’d received a telegram from the Queen when she turned a hundred. Suspected that her words made no sense to Katie if indeed they could even be heard but enjoyed chatting to her anyway, enjoyed it especially when the ancient lady would respond in Welsh, how songlike that language came from her withered lips. Did she send you a telegram,
sweetheart
? and that was when Katie died. Just rattled and went limp. And Wendy thought that the last word Katie heard in her life was an endearment, was someone calling her ‘sweetheart’. And she felt a cold skewering sensation inside her chest, beneath the starchy uniform, within her thin skin.

She called for the duty doctor who arrived and noted the time of death. No point in even attempting to revive such an ancient human being; her ribs and lungs would be shattered by the defibrillator and the unacknowledged yet widespread triage system in operation throughout Merseyside hospitals forbade it anyway. So that’s all he did, the doctor, just noted the time of death and looked into Wendy’s face and told her to go and take a break, have a few minutes’ rest.

On her way to the nurses’ station she stopped at a vending machine and bought two bags of crisps, ready-salted flavour, a can of Coke and a Snickers. She’d been watching her weight recently but there’s solace in salt and sugar and E-numbers. There’s a kind of energy. Some comfort. As she ate and drank alone she watched the local evening news which told her of an incident earlier that day at Liverpool docks, a shooting incident; evidently, armed police had been trailing men suspected of gun-smuggling from Northern Ireland and had followed their Transit van to the docks where a firefight had ensued. A grim-faced reporter with the Cunard building as a backdrop spoke of a ‘hail of bullets’ in which four men died, one a local underworld figure police named as James Squires. In the back of the van was found a ‘substantial’ amount of firearms and also two men trussed up in rope with
heavy
weights tied to their bodies; one of these died in the shootout, the other remained in hospital in a critical condition. Sergeant O’Malley appeared on the TV screen and spoke of his fears of a coming gangland war for control of the city’s lucrative drugs trade. Then back to the studio where the newsreader informed Wendy that no police officers were hurt in the incident and on to the next report of another fatal shooting this time just outside Wrexham, a burglar shot dead by the owner of a post office whose wife was in hospital following an earlier break-in. Police were investigating.