The Thing Itself

ELEVEN

Charlie Laker was having an early fish supper in a restaurant on Whitby harbour front when his phone chirruped. It was a new phone and he hadn’t got round to changing the ringtone — he’d had a busy few weeks — but he winced every time it rang because it sounded like a bird choking.

‘Yeah?’ he said, his mouth full of Dover sole.

‘Bernie Grimes, Charlie.’

‘Bernie — how’s the south of France?’

‘Sweltering. Charlie, I need a favour.’

‘Well, I owe you one for your help with that Milldean thing.’

Laker reached for his glass of wine. Muscadet. The best the restaurant had to offer. It was OK, actually.

‘My wife tells me some gels have been picking on my daughter.’

‘Didn’t know you had a daughter. Or a wife, for that matter.’

‘The missus and me aren’t living together any longer. You know how it is. You can’t live with ’em and you can’t kill ’em.’

Laker gave a quick snigger to show willing.

‘And she brought up your daughter?’

‘Sarah Jessica. Lovely girl. Goes off the rails sometimes but a good kid.’

‘And these girls been picking on her?’

‘They overstepped the mark. Big time.’

‘And you want my people to have a word.’

‘More than that. They almost killed her. Stoned her on the beach.’

Laker reached for the bottle and poured a big glug into his glass.

‘Jesus, Bernie, I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘You have contacts moving girls, don’t you?’

Laker frowned.

‘Yeah, but they’re coming in, Bernie. These girls are already here, aren’t they?’

‘I want them working in some hovel of a brothel in some cesspit of a port town in some cancer of a country for the rest of their hopefully short lives.’

‘You do want revenge, don’t you? How old are they?’

‘Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Some of them won’t have been plucked yet.’

‘This is a pretty big favour you’re asking, Bernie. Massive, in fact.’

‘I know that. I’ll owe you.’

‘How many girls you talking about?’

‘Ten.’

Laker got a coughing fit as his Muscadet went down the wrong hole.

‘Ten?’ he spluttered. ‘Are you mad? We can’t lift ten.’

‘Sure you can. It’s Milldean. I hear it’s chaos down there at the moment with that hoodlum Stevie Cuthbert missing, presumed dead. I don’t know if that was down to you or John Hathaway, but with the crime boss of Milldean out of the way after all these years, who’s going to stop you?’

‘But ten all at once, Bernie. One missing kid is bad enough but a third of a class — that’ll definitely be noticed when they take the register.’

‘So what? They’ll be gone by then. Disappeared. I was thinking Africa — the Congo or somewhere?’

‘Lot of HIV down there, Bernie. Place is rife with it.’

There was silence on the end of the phone for a moment.

‘All the better,’ Bernie Grimes said.

‘Well — ’ Laker said, distracted by the sweet trolley going by. He fancied the look of the Black Forest Gateau — ‘they’re always complaining class sizes are too big.’

Next morning, Laker sat on the bench below the statue of Captain Cook and looked across to the ruined abbey on the opposite headland. He could picture the plague ship coming into the harbour below, the navigator strapped to the wheel, all the crew dead and drained of blood. Dracula lying in the dank hold of the ship, in his coffin of Transylvanian earth.

Laker’s car idled behind him. A handful of his men were spread across this headland keeping an eye on the people climbing up from the harbour and passing beneath the arch of the whale jaw cemented into the ground at the top of the incline.

Charlie Laker looked out to sea, squinting behind his sunglasses against the glare of the sun on the water. He disliked the sea but only because he wasn’t good on it. He’d never had sea legs.

The irony was he’d run pirate radio stations off ships for Brighton gang boss Dennis Hathaway back in the sixties. But in the three years he’d done it he’d never once set foot on the rusting hulks they were using.

Laker had never wanted to be a gangster when he was growing up. He wanted to be a pop star. But then his little brother, Roy, died and everything changed.

He thought about Roy almost every day. Charlie Laker had never forgiven himself for his brother’s death. He knew Roy hero-worshipped his Teddy-boy older brother. That’s why he’d allowed Roy to come with their friend, Kevin, up to the bonfire that fateful November day in 1959.

‘Let me get in the den, Charlie. I can be the guard.’

The den was in the middle of the bonfire. Charlie tousled his brother’s hair.

‘OK — but keep close watch.’

It was fucking freezing in the wind. It took Charlie and Kevin a good five minutes to light their fags.

‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ Kevin said. Charlie looked at his brother, who was grinning to himself as he explored the narrow space inside the rough pile of wood.

‘Back in five,’ Charlie called as he and Kevin hurried down the street to the cafe on the corner.

They stayed ten, maybe fifteen minutes. It wouldn’t have been that long if Kevin hadn’t fancied the girl behind the counter. She wasn’t even that good-looking.

‘We’ve got to get back to Roy,’ Charlie said.

Reluctantly, Kevin followed him out. They saw the bonfire burning at the top of the street.

‘Fuck.’

Charlie set off at a run.

Telling his parents was the worst thing ever. His father was too upset even to give him a hiding. His mum had been the one to offer violence, smacking him across the face and punching at his chest, screeching, until his father pulled her off.

Roy had always been her favourite — because he was the youngest, of course — and she never forgave Charlie for not looking out for him.

When Charlie saw On The Waterfront on the telly, he broke out into a sweat when Brando was in the back seat of the taxi with Rod Steiger, who played his older brother, Charlie.

‘You should have watched out for me, Charlie. Just a little bit.’

It was like hearing his grown-up brother’s voice.

His mother scarcely said two words a year to him for the next ten years. And his father didn’t even have the energy to beat him up again.

He went to work for his dad at his garage out of guilt. Sometimes he’d catch his dad staring at him, a perplexed look on his face.

His parents seemed to take it for granted the police investigation got nowhere. The life had been sucked out of them. In the evenings they’d sit in front of the telly, side by side on the sofa, morose and blank. Both chain-smoking. Both dead of lung cancer before they were sixty.

Now, a tap on his shoulder. A voice in his ear.

‘Boss? A call for you. From Italy.’