Crusaders (31 page)

‘Shall I – would you like me to make that for you?’

‘Aw, would you?’

‘Of course.’

‘You’re the best. Masses of butter on the toast, aye?’

Gore shucked off the mattress, extricating his shorts from his tangled jeans, and padded down barefoot to the kitchen, where he prepared the simple repast. Lindy supped and munched keenly.
She’s so physical
, he mused, before biting into a slice himself and realising he was ravenous. They snuggled down in the duvet,
profile
to profile.

‘Are y’alright?’

‘I’m good, yeah, thanks.’

‘You’re funny, you are.’

‘Funny how?’

‘You had us worried a bit. Wasn’t quite sure we were gunna get there, y’knaa what I mean?’

‘I know. Sorry.’

‘Well, we managed.’ Her fingers turned around in his sparse chest hair. ‘It’s alright, you know? To say what you’re after. And you were so keen, but, to give us a hand? I knew then, see. That you liked us.’

Gore smiled, inwardly disquieted. Here they were, snug lovers, her sharp tongue now rolled up as she replayed the highlights of the seduction, like instant lore, the story of a romance.
Was
this a romance? He remained, he knew, just a little in shock.

He excused himself and wandered down the hallway to her bathroom, tidy doppelgänger of his own. There he showered hastily and dried himself with her sole bath sheet. He had stepped
lightly halfway down the stairs when he saw Lindy, in knickers and a short kimono, scrambling eggs at the kitchen hob, singing off-key snatches of a pop tune.
‘But any fool can see they’re fallin’ …’

He padded back into her bedroom, and there peered more closely at her knick-knacks on the dresser drawers. A couple of framed photos, one of Jake in an unlikely convulsion of giggles, the other of Lindy in monochrome, perhaps six or seven years younger and rather gravely doe-eyed and lovely, her hair cut in a feathery bob. Looking closer, he realised the image had been trimmed out of a magazine.

Around the photos were snaking piles of trinkets, an ashtray like a swan, a pair of gonks, a fat envelope bulging as if with banknotes, and a portable music player flanked by small piles of CDs, the artists all surly, handsome and dark-skinned. He prised open one drawer – full of folded and slightly faded tee-shirts and little tops. The second was all bras and knickers. Her best frocks were
suspended
on the crowded clothes rail, mixed with skirts, jeans, coats – nothing fancy or startling, save for a short black leather dress which, Gore had to concede, looked sexy. Tucked behind the rail amid a pile of odd shoes was an orange Adidas hold-all, a gym bag, a sniff of testosterone in this otherwise girly haven. Idly Gore reached for the handles, and found the bag heavy as a pair of
bowling
balls. Curious, he tugged the zip but it snagged, no more than half-exposing a thickly wadded towel. Then he heard a mounting tread on the stairs, and dived for the bedcovers.

At twelve after six they were still abed, watching
Blind Date
in a fuzzy image on her portable television. She snuggled into his chest. Sipping another tea, Gore was starting to feel tolerably hefty and masculine – at least a plausible imitation of the same, he thought, were his picture to be taken in the act. Not something for the church newsletter, admittedly, nor any of his recent media
outlets
. ‘The vicar among the people.’ Just another Saturday night for some, a determinedly strange one for himself.
Blind Date
was
followed
by
Gladiators
, muscle-bound members of the public in
athletic
contest with pro-bodybuilders. Few of the professionals, he
decided, had anything like the forbidding brawn of Steve Coulson and team. He couldn’t picture any of
them
in coloured spandex, snarling and clawing the air. A chuckle escaped him. ‘Dear me. What posers.’

‘Say that to their faces, would you?’ Lindy murmured. ‘I know you’re big and all, but I divvint reckon you’d last in the ring, pet.’

It was perhaps the minor disparagement that told Gore it was past time that he be elsewhere. The feeling grew swiftly and acquired a solidity, the urge to be gone much more resolute than his earlier decision to linger.

‘Lindy, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to push off.’

She only looked at him, in some dubiety.

‘Tomorrow’s Sunday. I’m afraid I’ve a fair bit to get done.’

‘What, have you got a
sermon
to write or summat?’

‘I do, actually …’

He dressed quickly, as Lindy seemed to remain absorbed in her show. But once he was buttoned up, she sighed. ‘Off you go then, thief in the night …’

She fastened herself once more into the kimino and led him flouncingly down the stairs. He simply couldn’t decide whether or not she was joking. By the door he embraced her, kissed her lips, but felt her withdraw from him first. He measured what should be the parting words. She intervened.

‘See you tomorrow then?’

‘Are you – won’t you be busy?’

‘I’ll see you at your service.’

‘You’ll be there? Great.’

‘I’ll be there. And I’ll maybe see you in the week? Maybe do something?’

‘Yes, let’s.’

She gave him that wry smile. What was she thinking? Gore could not tell, and had no time to weigh it any further. He strode off into the darkness. The evening was crisply cold – he could feel it, most unusually, in his thighs. He spun round at the end of the alley, so as to wave, and found that Lindy had not dallied at the door.

‘No. No, I’m not best pleased, fellas.’

Stevie looked from Roy – his mien, indeed his whole posture, lugubrious and troubled – to the sludgy heaps of newly tilled earth stretching out for an acre beyond the Maginot Line of the rear fence. They had dawdled a hundred yards from Roy’s house, down the full length of the damp landscaped lawn, to this lonely end of the garden shrouded by towering pines, sweet sharp scent in the air, needles crinkling underfoot. It was quiet, unnaturally so. In days gone by, on little strolls of lesser purpose, Roy would tote his shotgun along with him, loose an occasional shell into the air. Not today. For starters he wanted Stevie and Shack to observe this, the ominous ugliness of a soon-to-be new neighbour.

‘It used to be an old tip, as I heard. I thought, “Who’d want it?” Didn’t think they could ever build. Stupid of me. Prices round here.’

‘Did your lawyer not pick it up, like?’

‘Aw, probably did. He’s good. I just wasn’t too fixed on the
particulars
. See, that’s how things slip into the shit.’

Roy shrugged. And Stevie could see him shouldering the
burden
of matters grave and regrettable, if perhaps ultimately
manageable
. But Roy wasn’t quite the bolshy force in the camel-coat that he used to be. Shack, by contrast – on this his first outing to Darras Hall – seemed brimful of frustration, a bridling lieutenant waiting permission to report. Stevie, for his part, was feeling the cold of the dwindling afternoon, wanting to be elsewhere – another city, another calling, another set of associates.

‘Least you’ve got them trees,’ he offered. ‘Tall, like. Natural barrier.’

Roy scoffed. ‘I doubt I’ll ever see the birds in them again. Not once this fucker’s a proper building site. No. You can’t stop
people
doing whatever they bloody like if they set their little minds to it – throw enough money at it. As for that fucking Morpeth Council … some arsehole’s getting paid for this, you can bet. Aye, well.’ He sighed heavily. ‘If this were the sum of our woes we’d call ourselves happy.’

For the first time that day Stevie saw Roy give Shack the full glare of his foglights. ‘So what did the polis say then, Shack? About Teflon?’

‘Aw, it was arson, for sure, Roy. They only got in as far as the lobby, then they just dumped a bloody great petrol can. Lit it and ran off. Police reckon it was between three and half-past in the morning.’

Roy blew out his cheeks. ‘Christ. Good job somebody talked us into putting all that fucking steel in the foyer. The old velvet would’ve burned until Christmas. A petrol can, but. Dog-shit way to go about it.’

‘Dog shit’s about what they’re like,’ Shack muttered. ‘The state of them gadgies come into the Gunnery that night.’

Roy was pensive. ‘Aye. Aye. So that was the start of all this, right?’

Steve worried a pile of needles with the cap of his boot. ‘Only if you reckon all this is cos of Skinner. Not them Codys.’

‘Whey of course it’s bliddy Skinner, Stevie man,’ Shack snapped.

Roy was switching his gaze back and forth between them. ‘You’ve not had so much bother before, no? Not at Teflon?’

‘We’ve had plenty,’ said Shack evenly.

Stevie rounded on him. ‘What was that, like?’

‘You’ve not always been looking, Stevie, so you’ve not been
seeing
it. If some radgy Manc tells us I’m a dead man, I remember it.’

‘So do you just tell us the half of what gans on then, Shack?’

‘It’s only the half what you listen to, Steve.’

Stevie felt himself knotting up all over his body. They had swung for each other twice before – once as mere lads, then a ‘straightener’ out the back of the pub Shack used to guard in Hebburn. They had shaken hands over a draw, though Shack had been on his knees at one stage. Round about now, though, it was starting to look like a rematch.

Roy slashed the air with his hand. ‘Alright, for fuck’s sake. Jesus. I shoulda dug ditches for a living. Like my old man. This is where we are, whether we like it or not. Let’s not be dickheads about it.’

Stevie countered Shack’s stare until Shack looked to his feet.

‘Now, obviously, all this bother – the main slight is directed at me. But you might want to take it personally too, Stevie. People aren’t meant to like you, right enough, but all this is pushing it. Who’d be giving the orders? Who’s Skinner’s man like you are for me? Is there one?’

‘This bloke Crowley, I hear,’ Shack said quietly. ‘The one come in the Gunnery that time. The leader.’

‘I put him in the General,’ said Stevie.

‘Aye, well, now he’s out, so he must want putting back.’

‘He wants putting in a fucking box is what he wants.’ Roy’s jowls were newly thunderous. ‘We know that, don’t we? No use tarting it up. They need a proper wind up ’em, that lot – blow ’em right the fuck back to Moss Side or wherever. No more than what they’re giving you, Stevie.’

Shack nodded. ‘Givin’ all of us. Mickey, like. That was a fucking outrage.’

Stevie glared. ‘It was me at his bloody funeral, neither of you’s.’

‘What’s your point?’ Roy had produced a cigar, and he jabbed it at Stevie. Stevie well knew that for Mickey he had no deep feeling, nothing much more than the shudder of disgust that such a
ten-stone
weakling should have been hacked into by a mob, left
without
a prayer. That was grievous. That was the sort to whose level they were getting lowered.

‘Okay.’ Roy winced. ‘So here’s
my
point. There’s gotta be some comeback here, fast, or we look like cunts. That’s not – it’s not
sustainable
. Stevie, I’d have thought looking down a gun-barrel would have cleared your head. You’re not just gonna give this guy a bollocking, right? Invite him out for a bit of the old Gentleman Jim?’

Stevie was silent, staring aside into the trees. Roy laid a hand on his arm and he could smell the Cohiba Robusto, like burning leather. ‘Are you with us, Stevie? I’m saying it’s just where we are. Daddy can’t make it go away.’

The tone was anathema to Stevie. But Roy had a hold on him, his voice slipping down into a low burr. ‘I can get it done for me, Steve. Someone’d do it for me. But it’d cost me twenty grand I can ill afford.’

Stevie glanced back to the formidable house, to Roy’s Donna, worriedly vigilant on the patio, being tugged about by the leashed labrador. All bought and paid for. One didn’t acquire such a
castle
, he knew, through an excess of sentiment. ‘You’ll be alright,’ he murmured at last.

The burr, insistent. ‘Steve, my money’s not just there to piss into a river. What do I pay you for? Pay him? All your team?’

Stevie had never ever wanted to hear it phrased like so, like this – as if his livelihood were a mere handout, not his own diligent handiwork.

‘See, I’m just as concerned about you, Steve, you know that.’

‘Aw aye?’

‘Aye. You’ve had a good run. Good years, you and me. But you might have run into a bit of a wall here, personally. That’s what I’m seeing. You back away from this one, it’ll still be you that’ll end up paying for it.’

‘He’s right, Steve.’ Shack had picked his moment. ‘They’re walkin’ all over you, man. It goes on and where’s your respect? That’s what it’s about.’

That word, bandied endlessly, emptily. Stevie’s stomach was turned by it. And he had never heard such scant ‘respect’ from his deputy.

‘Look, bollocks, I’ll do it,’ Shack was saying. ‘I’ve done it. Nowt new to me.’

Roy’s eyes evinced a new interest. Stevie shook his head sharply. It was Shack’s stock Goose Green story, how as a private he had ‘finished’ some Argie, pumped bullets into his back and head as he tried to crawl off. Until now Stevie had thought Shack’s fleeting Para career an unqualified boon, the likely root of his calm in the gale, his hundred-yard stare, his dependable presence at shoulder. But he didn’t want any of that pitched against him now.

‘It’s my decision,’ he muttered.

‘But you’re not
makin
’ it, man. It’s not just about you, see. They’ll get after us and all – me, Simms, Dougie. They’ll get onto your girls, your
bairns
. They’re just giving you two fingers, man, they don’t care.’

Roy nodded. ‘Right enough. It’s a what’s-it. Gauntlet.’

‘You need to get your head on straight, man. You’ve not got a
choice
. Divvint kid yourself. There’s money out on you, right? We know that. Just cos one pair of numpties fuck it up – there’ll be
teams
looking for you, man. Lawrie Skinner’ll just pay out
whenever
he has to. Cos one of ’em’ll manage. Even if they just get lucky.’

The weight was on him and before him, just as if he were lying recumbent beneath the four-hundred-pound bar, its oppression blindingly obvious. So why lift a finger? No, there was always a choice – always the option to leave it, rise up and walk, disappear. And was there a hole big enough, one where he would never again need to look at himself? Unable to say, he merely nodded.

‘I’ll have your back, y’knaa that,’ said Shack – redundantly, by Stevie’s reckoning, for today had seen sedition that would not be forgotten.