Not Dead Enough

73

Paul Packer sat at a table outside the Ha! Ha! bar in Pavilion Parade, in front of the entrance gates to Brighton’s Royal Pavilion, sipping a latte and watching the world go by. He had a smile on his face. At ten thirty on a hot, sunny August Monday morning, there were a lot worse places to be in the world than here, he reckoned. And this sure as hell beat working! Which was a private joke to himself, because, of course, he was working.

Not that it looked that way to the waitress, or to the people passing by. All they saw was a figure in his twenties, short and burly, with a shaven head and goatee beard, scruffily dressed in a shapeless grey T-shirt, with an exercise book open in front of him, in which he appeared to be jotting down notes, just one of the scores of students hanging out in cafés all over the city.

He missed nothing. He clocked every face that passed by in either direction.

People in business clothes, some carrying bags or briefcases, rushing around to meetings, or in some instances just very late for work. He observed the tourists; one elderly couple were walking around in circles, both trying to read a map, the man pointing in one direction, the woman shaking her head and pointing in the other. He saw a middle-aged couple, Dutch he guessed, striding determinedly in ridiculous clothes and heavy backpacks, as if they were on some kind of safari and needed to carry their own supplies. Then he watched two kids in baggy clothes practising a parcour jump over a free-standing information sign.

Several homeless down-and-outs, all of whom he knew by sight, had passed by in the last half-hour. Probably going to spend the day on the Pavilion lawns before moving to their next doorstep or archway, lugging their worldly goods in shopping bags, or plastic sheeting, or in supermarket trolleys, leaving behind the sour reek of damp sacks in their wake. And steadily Brighton’s lowlife – the dealers, the pushers, the runners and the users – were all starting to surface. The junkies, their last fixes all but worn off, were starting out on their relentless daily grind to find the money, by whatever means they could, for their next hits.

In the lulls between passers-by, Detective Constable Packer did make real notes in his exercise book. He had ambitions to be a writer, and at this moment he was working on a film script about a group of aliens whose navigation system had broken down and they landed on Earth, just outside Brighton, in search of help. After just a few days they were desperate to leave. Two of them had been mugged, their spacecraft had been vandalized and then impounded, because they had no money to pay for the charge of towing it off the main road, where they had parked it, and they didn’t like the food. Furthermore, they couldn’t get the help they wanted without filling in an online form, which required a postcode and a credit card number, and they had neither. Sometimes Packer wondered whether his job made him too cynical.

Then he was jolted back to reality. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a familiar, round-shouldered figure slouching along. And his already pleasant morning suddenly became even more pleasant when the figure walked straight past without clocking him.

Paul stared at the emaciated, gaunt-faced young man in a ragged hoodie, tracksuit bottoms and filthy trainers with an even measure of loathing, disgust and sympathy. The young man’s ginger hair was shaven, like his own, in a number one, and he, as usual, had a thin, vertical strip of beard running from the centre of his lower lip to his chin. Paul watched him walk slowly through a photograph being taken by a young man of his girlfriend or wife, oblivious to just about everything around him. He weaved through a gaggle of tourists being shepherded by a tour guide, and now the Detective Constable knew exactly where he was heading.

To the wall across the square from them, where there were cashpoint machines, side by side. And sure enough, the young man sat down between them. It was a popular spot for begging. And already he had a target, a young woman who was entering her bank card.

Paul Packer seized the moment, strode across and stood squarely in front of the man just as he heard him croak feebly, ‘Can you spare us any change, love?’

By way of a greeting, Packer held out the shortened stump of his right hand index finger. ‘Hi, Skunk,’ he said. ‘Remember me?’

Skunk looked up at him warily. The woman was digging in her purse. Packer turned to her. ‘I’m a police officer. Begging is illegal. Anyhow, this fellow knows better ways to get a pound of flesh, don’t you?’ he said, turning back to Skunk, waggling his bitten-off index stump, and making a series of rapid bites, clacking his teeth noisily, mocking his former assailant.

‘Don’t know what you mean,’ Skunk said.

‘Memory need a jog, does it? Would a day in a custody cell help? Be difficult to get your drugs there, wouldn’t it?’

‘Fuck off. Leave me alone.’

Packer looked at the young woman, who did not seem to know where to put herself. She grabbed her cash and her card and fled.

‘I’m clean,’ Skunk suddenly added sullenly.

‘I know that, mate. I don’t want to bust you. Just wondered if you’d like to give me some information.’

‘What’s in it for me?’

‘What do you know about Barry Spiker?’

‘Never heard of him.’

A fire engine screamed down North Street, siren louder than a ship’s foghorn, and Packer waited for it to pass by. ‘Yes, you have. You do jobs for him.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘So that Audi convertible you were swanning around the seafront in on Friday night – that was your car, was it?’

‘Dunno what you mean.’

‘I think you do. There was a car following you, an unmarked police car. I was in it. You drive pretty well,’ he said, with grudging admiration.

‘Na. Dunno what you mean.’

Packer put his stump of an index finger right up close to Skunk’s face. ‘I’ve got a long memory, Skunk. Understand.’

‘I did time for that.’

‘And then you came out, but my finger didn’t come back, and I’m still pretty pissed off, so I’m going to make a deal with you. Either I’m going to be in your face for the rest of your shitty little life, or you help me.’

After some moments’ silence, Skunk said, ‘What kind of help?’

‘Information. Just a phone call, that’s all. Just a phone call from you next time Spiker gives you a job.’

‘And then?’

Packer explained what he wanted Skunk to do. When he had finished he said, ‘Then we’ll call it quits.’

‘And I get arrested, right?’

‘No, we don’t touch you. And I’m out of your face. Do we have a deal?’

‘Is there any cash in it for me?’

Packer looked down at him. He was such a pathetic figure, the DC suddenly felt sorry for him. ‘We’ll bung you something afterwards, as a reward. Deal?’

Skunk gave a limp, indifferent shrug.

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’