Bleeding London

SHEFFIELD

Gabby was looking good on the day she met Mick from the London train. There was something newly mature and self-possessed about her. Her hair had been cut into a geometric bob and she wore a tailored, slightly mannish tweed jacket with tight jeans and heels. She hardly looked like a stripper at all.

As Mick detached himself from the rest of the arrivals, he still looked rough. He’d put on a new clean T — shirt but the suit continued to show the effects of his recent skirmishes. He walked stiffly towards her. She went to him, put her arms tightly round him, squeezed and kissed him. The kissing was thorough but it did not seem to Mick as though it was very deeply felt. He was glad. He didn’t want to have to feel too much. Her arms felt strange around him and he ran a hand through her unfamiliar hair. It immediately sprang back into place, neat and unruffled. Mick realized it was no longer the same colour it had been when he’d left. Perhaps she’d dyed it, but perhaps she’d let it return to its natural colour.

“Did you bring my car?” he asked.

“The battery was flat.”

“Yeah, well, I told you…”

“It’s OK,” she said. “I’ve got a car.”

She took his arm as though he were an invalid or an elderly relative, and walked him across the car-park in the direction of a white BMW.

“Is that yours?” he asked, not expecting for a moment that it was.

“I borrowed it.”

“What? You hired it?”

“Whatever,” she said, and she unlocked the door and got in behind the wheel. She seemed at home, as though the car was very familiar to her. Mick was naturally suspicious, but he folded himself into the passenger seat and prepared for the worst. Without another word she began to drive. Mick had never liked her driving, it was too erratic and it made him nervous, but today she drove fast and purposefully, though she was heading neither in the direction of his flat nor her own. He wondered if she’d booked them into a hotel for their big reunion. That would have been uncharacteristically thoughtful of her.

“We have a lot to talk about,” he said, as an early warning to her that she shouldn’t expect this meeting to be too comfortable and easy.

“Yes, we do,” she agreed.

Yet for the moment it seemed best if they said nothing, if they let the backdrop of Sheffield roll by, first the terraced houses, then the retail parks, then a bit of greenery, then into the posher areas of the city. At last there was no city at all and they were in the countryside and Mick wondered if Gabby was doing something totally naff like taking him for lunch at a country pub, but that would have been even more uncharacteristic.

After a few more miles Gabby slowed down, turned into a narrow lane where the hedges almost touched the sides of the car, then along a dirt track that Mick could see led to a group of converted farni buildings. This was one version of the Sheffield dream: moving into the country and doing up an old barn. There was a big open-sided structure, maybe once an old cowshed but now a garage that housed a line of fancy cars. Opposite was a house, a big two-storey stone building with rockeries, an ornamental pond and a pair of huge mill stones set either side of the front door. There was a covered swimming pool out the back and beyond that a paddock with a couple of horses.

Gabby parked the car on a turning circle of gravel at the side of the house and got out. Still bewildered and still saying nothing, Mick slowly followed her.

She said, “There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

“Jesus,” said Mick. “I can’t face meeting anyone. Not now.” She didn’t stop to argue, just walked up to the front door of the house knowing that Mick would have to follow. She went in without knocking and Mick trailed after her. There was nobody there to meet them, but as he walked through the hall and went into the living room where Gabby was standing he saw that this was the house of a rich man; not London rich like Jonathan Sands or Graham Pryce, but rich nevertheless. It all looked simultaneously antique yet brand new. There were beams, bare stone walls, an inglenook fireplace with a big fire, an oak dresser, rows of copper pans; but they could all have been manufactured yesterday. Everything was spotless, polished, without patina, and there was a snowy white sheepskin rug on the floor. There was also the incongruous smell of cigar smoke in the air.

Mick glared at Gabby, trying to convey a whole world of accusation, hostility and suspicion, but she remained perfectly at ease and unruffled. She had the upper hand, if for no other reason than she knew what was coming next.

After what felt like an age, a door opened in a corner of the room and a man came in. There was an arrogant bounce in his step. The way he entered the room showed that he owned all this and much more besides. He was a broad man, tall and big-chested. He could have been most ages between thirty and fifty, though Mick would have estimated the upper end. The image was somewhere between a bouncer and an ageing rock star. The hair was receding but long and meticulously laundered. The clothes were casually flash, a silk shirt, an embroidered waistcoat, a thick, studded belt. He looked like a hard man, a rough diamond, but not particularly thuggish, more the sort who gets other people to do his thuggery for him. Before Mick could weigh him up any further the guy was shaking him by the hand, putting an arm round his shoulder and laughing as though they shared a long and hilarious acquaintanceship.

“Good to see you, Mick,” he said. “I’ve heard a fuck of a lot about you.”

The voice was rough and local, though it had had a few edges rounded off. He was a Sheffield lad but he’d been around a bit.

“This is Ross,” Gabby said quietly. “Ross McLennan.”

Mick did not look impressed, not even interested, and he said nothing, but that didn’t matter to his host who was now going round the room stoking the fire, adjusting chairs, forcing Mick to have a drink. Reluctantly Mick accepted a beer and declined a glass.

“Why am I here?” Mick asked.

“Because Gabby brought you here.”

“And why did she do that?”

“Because I told her to.”

“It’s like that, is it?” Mick said haggardly.

“Yeah, it’s exactly like that.”

Mick sat back with his beer and decided to let McLennan make the running. For the moment he appeared to have no other option.

“I hear you’ve been in London,” McLennan said. “Terrible place, isn’t it?”

“Some of it.”

“And I also hear you did a pretty good job while you were down there.”

“Who’d you hear it from?”

“Word travels,” said McLennan.

Mick didn’t like the idea that anybody was talking about what he’d got up to in London, certainly not to some man in Sheffield he’d never met or heard of.

“Gabby tells me everything,” McLennan added.

“Is that right?” Mick said. “How do you two come to be such good friends?”

He could see Gabby tensing up but McLennan answered evenly enough. “Through business,” he said.

“What business?”

“You’re a nosy bugger aren’t you?” he said, but he was amused, not angry. “I do all sorts of business. I do some promoting. I saw Cabby’s act. I thought she was too good for that game.”

He was sitting close to her and he reached out a hand and stroked her knee. Mick felt it was being mostly done for his benefit, to test his reaction, see if he’d get angry. In fact he felt a great surge of relief. For a moment he thought maybe that’s all this was, an unnecessarily elaborate way for Gabby to dump him, a way of showing him that in his absence she had found a new man, someone older, richer and fancier than him. But he didn’t believe it could be that simple.

“I admire what you’ve done for Gabby,” McLennan continued. “You saw what needed doing and you went and did it.”

“Yeah, I’m good at that,” Mick said. If McLennan wanted to detect a threat in his reply he was welcome to.

“Defending a woman’s honour,” McLennan said. “That’s very chivalrous, very Lancelot. Those bastards deserved everything they got.”

“You think so?” Mick asked.

“After what they did to Gabby, I’d say so, yes.”

Mick took a mouthful of beer before saying, “I don’t know what they did and I don’t know who they did it to, but I don’t think they raped Gabby.”

The statement hung in the air like the smell of yesterday’s chip fat. Mick turned towards Gabby who briefly looked as though she was going to protest, but then she stopped herself. It was as though she couldn’t be bothered any more, that there was no longer a need to pretend. She wouldn’t look at him and she turned in her chair so that the back of one shoulder was facing him.

“Are you calling Gabby a liar?” McLennan asked.

“She’s been called worse things,” Mick said.

McLennan laughed. It didn’t even sound particularly forced. McLennan was easily amused and he didn’t seem to mind at all having his woman insulted.

“Gabby told me you were bright,” McLennan said. “She told me you’d work out what was going on. But she also said you’d get the job done, and that you’d be a good man to have in the team.”

“What is this? A job interview?”

“No. You’ve already got the job, we’re just negotiating terms.”

“What are you talking about?”

McLennan brisded slightly. He wasn’t used to being addressed so offhandedly.

“You’ve already done a job for me, right?” McLennan said. “You’re smart. You were right about those guys. Maybe they didn’t rape Gabby. Maybe you realized that a while ago, but it didn’t make any difference did it? You carried on. You knew they deserved what you were giving them, even if you didn’t know why. Or maybe you were just having too much fun to stop. OK, so they didn’t rape Gabby. But they did do something that really got me mad.”

“So I beat them up because they got you mad?”

“You’ve got it. Exactly. I mean, if Gabby had come to you and said this bloke you’ve never heard of called Ross McLennan has got six other blokes you’ve never heard of and he wants you to beat them up for him, well, you’d have hesitated, wouldn’t you? But these guys needed seeing to and I can’t do everything myself and Gabby knew you’d do a good job, and if she had to tell a little white lie to spur you on, well, so what? The end justifies the means, right? And besides, it was a good apprenticeship, a good trial run. It gave me the chance to see what you’re made of.”

Mick did his best to look impassive.

“So what did these guys do to you?” he asked.

“You don’t need to know that.”

That old line.

“Don’t I?” Mick asked.

“No.”

“Somebody could’ve got killed.”

“Not you though, Mick. You’re too clever for that.”

“I do need to know what those guys did,” Mick insisted. McLennan took a gun out of his pocket. He didn’t do anything so uncool as point it at Mick or even hold it properly in his hand, but Mick could take a hint. Suddenly he didn’t need to know at all. He shook his head slowly and dumbly.

“You two just about deserve each other,” Mick said, and he waited for McLennan or Gabby to rise to the bait, to defend themselves or each other, but it didn’t affect them, they were immune to such low-level insults.

“So the first thing, Mick, is that I owe you some money,” McLennan said. “What’s your current rate?”

He pulled out a bundle of notes and began peeling fifty pound notes off it. Then he had a better idea, shrugged and tossed the whole thing over to Mick. Money, he was making clear, was not the issue here. Mick caught the bundle with one hand, put his beer down on the floor and held the notes as though weighing them.

“Yeah, have the lot,” McLennan said. “Have a little on account for the next job I ask you to do.”

“No,” said Mick. “I think I’ve done enough for you.”

He threw the money back. McLennan couldn’t catch it cleanly and it hit him in the chest. Mick got up out of the chair, and whether it was deliberate or not McLennan couldn’t tell, but the can of beer was kicked over and its contents leaked rapidly across the floor towards the white sheepskin rug. Deliberate or not, Mick didn’t apologize or try to pick up the can and stop the flow.

“What are you doing?” McLennan demanded. “What are you doing, you little twat?”

“I’m ending the negotiation,” Mick said, and he took a couple of steps towards the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Mick wasn’t altogether sure but he had to get out of that house. He needed to put a lot of distance between himself and that place, and between himself and Gabby and the business of violent, bogus revenge.

“Don’t turn your back on me!” McLennan shouted. “Don’t turn your fuckin’ back on me.”

So Mick turned to face him.

“You know,” Mick said. “I’m not sure I’m quite as clever as you think I am. I never did work out what the real story was. I never really worked out that Gabby had some other man pulling her strings. If I had, in the beginning, if I’d known that you’d stolen my girlfriend and made me beat up six guys for no good reason then I’d have wanted to come up here and fucking kill you. That’s what I’d have wanted as my revenge.

“But I really didn’t work it out. I didn’t know properly till now. And now that I do know, now that I’ve seen you, I don’t need to kill you at all. It’s enough just to have made a mess on your carpet.”

He wished it could have been shorter, pithier, more like in a movie. He walked out of the house, across the gravel, up the track, on to the main road. He started walking in the direction he’d come from, back towards Sheffield, the city where he lived; but it was a direction that led to other places too. At first he planned to walk the whole way home but after a couple of miles he knew it was ridiculously far away, so he began to stick his thumb out at the passing traffic. It wasn’t long before he got a lift with a van driver from Leeds who was doing a drop in Sheffield then driving on to London.

“Terrible place, London,” the driver said, “but I can take you all the way if you want.”

Mick looked around the inside of the cab, at the silt of cigarette packets, empty drink cans, yellowed football programmes, at the two balding gonks on top of the dashboard, and he looked out at Sheffield visible in the near distance. He thought about his scuzzy rented flat, not visited all this time, his faded old car, and then of the more general scuzziness and fadedness of London.

“So what do you say?” the driver asked.

It was a long time before Mick answered.