‘I can’t understand him, Dawnie. He did it when a copper was watching!’
‘Mm. And not even nutters do that. Here, Goldie. Here, girl.’
In early 2010, incidentally, they traded in their single bed — not for a double bed (because the room itself was the size of a double bed), but for what was called a Bachelor’s Occasional.
Minicabbing, clambering over speed bumps, forever staring into the unlanced boil of the red light (and then the lurid matter of the amber). Diston traffic was obedient to the hierarchy of size: the Smart car feared the Mini, the Mini feared the Golf, the Golf feared the Jeep, the Jeep feared the … Des, driving, impatiently aware of the frail flustered presence of the bicycle on his inner flank, but himself obedient to the great swung mass of the bus.
Here’s a tale of the unexpected, said Lionel in August, 2009, on his first day back in Stallwort (awaiting trial). I had a shit this morning. Hey. Go up and see you gran.
I am, Uncle Li.
I want a report. And oy. While I’m away — don’t you dare go near me stuff.
The first-class train fare to the North West Highlands and back, by sleeper, ran well into four figures. But Des went on the Cloud and got a bargain-berth ‘apex’ split-ticket — for eighteen quid! … You rose before first light (Inverness, then motorcoach via Lairg), and you returned in the next day’s early darkness: the grey hours. Des did his Christian duty, and his Christian penance, about every six weeks, and sometimes Dawn came too.
The home was a townhouse, five floors high and unusually deep, with a great many internal partitions of hardboard (and cardboard). The atmosphere of the place frightened Des right from the start, and every time he went up there it seemed measurably slacker, shabbier, more demoralised. Souness itself (fifteen miles east of Cape Wrath): there were prettier enclaves further back and up on the cliffs, but the township, the port, where Grace dwelt, was a maze of dark flint, populated by taupe genies of sopping mist. It was never not raining. A spittling, hair-frizzing drizzle was your absolute basic — what the locals called smirr; and it was smirr that kept guard between downpours.
Grace was in a conical attic — the hospital bed, the chair beside it, and a cavernous sink with thick rubber tubing attached to the spouts. Des, dear, she said, clearly enough. But thereafter she spoke in random clauses that made no sense. Some stuck in his mind for a moment, and he thought he’d remember them later, but he never did. So he started writing them down.
Nine owls out where it’s high and cold: that was one
Partial to gains I stake claim: that was another.
No-no disturbs sin, et cetera: that was yet another.
The chief physician, furtive Dr Ardagh in his shaggy marmalade suit, used the phrase early onset degenerative brain disease. He mumbled something Des didn’t quite catch.
Sorry? A few more good years?
Uh, no. A good few more years. Is what I said.
He returned to the conical attic.
Unresisting, even so, moaned Gran as he eventually kissed her goodbye. Fifteen!
Des remembered that one. Was it a reference to the things that took place between them in 2006 — when he was fifteen, and hadn’t resisted? Neither Des nor Grace had said a word about it all since the disappearance of Rory Nightingale.
At his trial at the Old Bailey, Lionel, for the first time in his life, pleaded guilty.
Diminished responsibility was Lord Barcleigh’s theme: he asked the jury to consider the massive senselessness of the offence, committed, after all, in plain view of an officer of the law. Medical science calls it an ictus — a spasm of the brain.
Lionel himself, dressed for the occasion in the pathetic shreds of his shahtoosh dinner jacket (woven from the wool of the chiru, an endangered Tibetan antelope), was archaically humble: I deeply regret all distress caused, he said. I’m just a boy from Diston who got out of his depth … I’ll do me time with no complaints, and I swear I’ll never again be a threat to uh, to society like. I’ve done it the hard way, You Honour, but I’ve come to see the error of me ways.
One character witness turned out to be disproportionately influentiaclass="underline" Fiona King, the co-manager of the South Central Hotel. He was a model guest. If all our clients comported themselves like Mr Asbo, I can assure you that my life would be very much simpler. Ask anybody. Lionel Asbo behaved like a true English gentleman.
Even more tellingly, Police Constable George Hands (Yeah, Lionel would later admit, he was dearer than Lord Barcleigh) informed the court (through splintered teeth) that Lionel’s conduct, in the Knightsbridge alleyway, had in fact been more consistent with the lesser charge of Resisting Arrest.
He got six years — a light sentence, many felt (and wrote). Five months were already served, and Lord Barcleigh, making due allowance for Lionel’s good behaviour, predicted that he would be a free man by the spring or early summer of 2012.
Des switched subjects: from Modern Languages to Sociology, with a special emphasis on crime and punishment. Lionel, when told of this, simply shrugged and turned away. As usual he had his cellphone on loudspeaker — a conference call with his investment team. This was in the prison outside Exeter: its name was Silent Green.
You can’t go far wrong in prison, Lionel might say, between calls … And Des came to a tentative conclusion: the career criminal didn’t really mind being in prison. Being in prison didn’t ceaselessly strike him as an unendurable outrage on his dignity. Des resolved to ask Lionel why this was — but not today.
Prison, said Lionel. Good place to get you head sorted out. You know where you are in prison.
Well yeah, thought Des. You’re in prison.
Go on then. Off you hop, said Lionel as he leaned into another call.
And Des would eat a cheese roll at the station, and head back to London on his day return.
The next time he went down there Lionel was busy buying half a dozen forests’ worth of Uruguayan timber.
The next time he went down there Lionel was busy attacking the yen.
A word, therefore, about Lionel’s finances.
In his three weeks of freedom Lionel Asbo spent nine million pounds, nearly all of it on craps, blackjack, and roulette (there was also the unused Bentley ‘Aurora’, and a seven-figure clothes bill). But his investments prospered almost uncontrollably right from the start. He instructed his young squad of free-market idealists to be as aggressive as possible. Don’t fuck about on five per cent, he told them. Go for it.
Right, said Lionel, as he sauntered round the exercise yard. Take sixty out of the one-thirty and have a punt.
Depressed bank stock? he said, while watching TV in the rec room. Yeah, give it a crack. Fifty. No. Sixty.
Vend, he said, activating the flush toilet in the privacy of his cell. Now take ninety and have another punt. I fancy oil. And get me eight per cent on the principal.
Good effort, boys and girls, he said as he ate chocolates in the commissary (Quality Street and Black Magic). Me gains’ll be reflected in you bonuses.