“Not like I give a fuck what you do, like. I’m not putting any pressure on or nowt.”
“I know you’re not, man.” Terry smiled, but it didn’t seem to stay on his face. “I’m just saying that I want to have a think about it.”
Marto held up one hand. “Nae bother, son. You do that, take all the time you need.” He leaned in, trying to keep his voice down, but the gist was clear: “But he’s not fuckin’ hard, if that’s what’s worrying you. Streak of piss, stiff breeze’d knock him on his arse.”
“He’s a runner,” said Terry.
“How’d you know that?”
“Rabbit.”
“Wey aye, that’s why. I never thought.”
Terry tapped a temple. “Fuckin’ brains, me.”
“So y’are.” Marto gulped back some of his beer, showed his teeth and bucked his head as he belched. “How, tell you, see if it was me? And he’d done to me what he did to you?” He pulled a sick face. “I’d chin the cunt into the middle of next week.”
“I know you would.”
“But that’s me.”
“Aye, that’s you.”
“I’m fuckin’ emotional.” One last drink to punctuate, then: “All I’m saying is, you want to find him, the lad’s easy fuckin’ found.”
“That right?”
“Has to go to the Addictions to give a sample, else he’s back in the nick. Big car park outside the place, you could wait there, nobody’d bat a fuckin’ eye.”
Terry rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth. He was warm, felt sweaty. “What does he look like?”
“Like a smackhead streak of piss,” said Marto. “Shaved head, got this tattoo of a Jew star on the side of his neck.”
Terry grimaced. “His neck?”
“That don’t make him hard. He’s soft as clarts, everyone says.”
“Everyone?”
Marto grinned, held up his empty pint glass. “How, you want all the gen, you’re gonna have to get another round in.”
They stepped out of the pub and leaned against the wall to focus. Their breath misted in front of their faces.
“You need any help... on it,” said Marto.
“Nah.”
“You’ll think?”
“Aye.”
“Wey, then. Take care.”
Terry clapped him on the shoulder, and Marto lumbered off down the road. Terry watched him go, the street lights throwing a sick orange glow over everything. Marto walked with his legs going in opposite directions, and Terry knew he’d be the same once he pushed away from the wall.
Promised he’d think about it, but there wasn’t a lot to think about. What Marto told him, if Terry didn’t do it, someone else would. This lad Rabbit owed cash all over the fucking shop, pissed off the kind of villains who wouldn’t think twice about battering fuck out of a junkie, even if it was just for giggles and small change.
He launched himself off the wall and dug both hands in his jacket pockets, striding forward as straight as he could. He wanted a tab, but didn’t think he’d be able to smoke and walk at the same time, so he kept concentrating on the pavement, watching his feet, until he got home. There he fished around for his keys, scratched at the front door for a good minute before he realized they’d had to change the locks.
His missus came to the door, one fist keeping her dressing gown closed, her other hand trembling with something other than the cold. She opened up on the chain first and regarded him with blank eyes. Then she unlocked the door, left it ajar and went back to the lounge.
She hadn’t been sleeping, which meant Terry hadn’t been sleeping, either. Wide awake and stiff as a board at the slightest noise, convinced that it was happening again, and she wouldn’t take anything for it, wouldn’t relax. When he suggested medication, it was as if he’d suggested she take cyanide instead of Nytol. So he stopped suggesting it, and tried to find other options.
“You’re late.” She was perched on the edge of the settee, watching the telly, some cheap drama about cops and killers. “You stink an’ all.”
“I know.” He sat on the settee next to her, watched a couple of cops banter on for a bit. “I saw Marto.”
“What’d he say?”
“He got us a name.”
She nodded, a sharp little movement. “That all?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
He glanced across at her. In the flickering light of telly, she looked older than she was, her eyes hollow and short wrinkles slashing at the edges of her perpetually pinched mouth. She looked at her hands, knotted together in her lap, and swallowed.
“So what you going to do?”
He looked back at the telly. The cops were at a crime scene, a body face down in the middle of the floor, and they were talking about the pretty patterns the blood had made when it sprayed up the wall. Terry put one hand over hers and squeezed.
“I’m going to sort it,” he said.
On Monday morning, nice and early, he phoned in sick. Said he had a bug, he’d been up all night with the sickness and diarrhoea, didn’t think he’d be in for a couple of days at least. There weren’t many questions after that. People he worked for, they didn’t want to know the gory details, and with Terry’s clean sick record, he reckoned they probably owed it to him anyway. He drove to Freehold Street, where he parked a good way back from the entrance to the Addictions place and got settled in for the day.
By nine o’clock, the Addictions place was open. He watched them come and go, got to know the clients by the way they looked. A couple with a bairn in a pushchair, the girl with a fat arse and telling the stocky bloke that she’d seen these lush tops in Primark, and as soon as she got her dole, that’d be her. An old man with a face like a burst balloon who looked more like an alkie than a smackhead, shambling pigeon-toed and tired, and who trailed a lingering smell that could strip paint. Two lads on bikes, swinging around the car park, waiting on a third, older lad, who came out of the Addictions smiling yellow and black, announcing that his piss test was done.
The afternoon came, and Terry put on the radio, confident that nobody had seen him. Classical music filled the car. Sort of thing he listened to when he had the Cavalier to himself, none of your avantgarde stuff, just the standards. Relaxation music.
Terry took a drink of water. Just a sip to wet his mouth. Last thing he needed was to be bursting for a piss when Rabbit showed his face. He put the cap on the bottle, and the bottle on the dash, and he swallowed against a quickly drying throat. Got to thinking about what he had to do, like if he was the kind of bloke to go out and bray a lad, even if he had a fucking good reason. He hadn’t been in a fight since he was a kid, and even then it’d been mostly just him defending himself against bigger lads. Marto — oh aye, Marto — now he was the kind of bloke who could be the full-on radge merchant, no sweat, but Terry wasn’t sure about himself. Wasn’t that he didn’t have the bottle — he had plenty of that; enough to spare, even — but it wasn’t something he’d done before, and there was a loud part of him that was worried he’d freeze.
He looked at the rounders bat. He’d taken it from the garage, where it had sat in the summer box with the swingball. Kids wouldn’t miss it, and he’d replace it before the holidays. Couldn’t have his bairns playing rounders with a bloodstained bat. Just like he couldn’t have his missus staying up all night every night, going steadily mental to ITV Nightscreen. It wasn’t right. Terry looked up, blinked against the sunshine. The radio was playing Wagner, that tune that reminded him of the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer Fudd ran around in a horned helmet.
Kill da wabbit and all that.
He smiled, moving away from the light. Shielded his eyes and saw a figure heading towards the Addictions. He was a long lad, a wide walk on him, and a thin layer of stubble covered his head. Terry shifted in his seat, tried to get a better look.