A White Arrest

‘You wouldn’t kill me in cold blood, would you?’ ‘No, I’ll let you warm up a little.’ Paul Guilfoyle and James Cagney, White Heat

He spooned the prawn cocktail as if it contained secrets, then looked her straight in the eye, began: ‘I think I was born angry and there was plenty to be pissed about. We had nowt. Then I became a copper and guess what?’ She hadn’t a clue but he wasn’t expecting an answer, continued: ‘I mellowed ’cos I got respect at last. It felt like I was somebody. Me and Mike Johnson. He was me best mate, Mickey, bought the act even more than I did. Believed yer public could give a toss about us. One night he went to sort out a domestic, usual shit, old man beating the bejaysus out of his missus. Mickey got him up against the wall, we were putting the cuffs on him, when the wife laid him out with a rolling pin.’ Brant laughed out loud, heads turned, he repeated: ‘A bloody rolling pin, like a bad joke.’

‘Was he hurt?’

‘He was after they castrated him.’

Fiona dropped her spoon, said: ‘Oh, good grief.’

‘Good don’t come into it. See, you gotta let ’em see you’re the most brutal fuckin’ thing they’ve ever seen. They come quiet then.’ Brant was deep in memory, even his wine was neglected.

‘My missus. I loved her but I couldn’t let ‘er know. Couldn’t go soft, know what I mean? Else I’d end up singing soprano like old Mickey.’

Whatever Fiona might have said, could have said, was averted. Brant’s bleeper went off, he said: ‘Fuck,’ and went to use the phone. A few moments later, he was back. ‘There’s heat going on in Brixton, I gotta go.’

‘Oh.’

He rummaged in his pockets, dumped a pile of notes on the table, said: ‘I’ve called a cab for you, you stay, finish the grub,’ and then he was gone. Fiona wanted to weep. For whom or why, she wasn’t sure, but a sadness of infinity had shrouded her heart.

As Brant approached the car, his mind was in a swirl of pain through memory. He’d let his guard down, and now he struggled to regain the level of aggression that was habitual. As a mantra, he mouthed Jack Nicholson’s line from A Few Good Men: ‘The truth, you can’t handle the truth — I eat breakfast every day, four hundred yards from Cubans who want to kill me.’ For a moment he was Jack Nicholson, shoving it loud into the face of Tom Cruise.

It worked. The area of vulnerability began to freeze over, and the smile, slick in its satanic knowledge, began to form. He said: ‘I’m cookin’ now, mister.’ And he was. As the Volvo lurched towards south-east London, Nicholson’s lines fired on: ‘You come down here in your faggoty white uniforms, flash a badge and expect me to salute.’