Crusaders (21 page)

‘Oh sure,’ muttered Susan Carrow, abruptly waspish. ‘Then see all the liberties taken …’

‘Liberties like what?’ Lindy shot back.

‘Like girls dumping their kids off on others so’s they can
gallivant
.’

‘Well that’s not what
I’m
talking about –’

Gore felt the barbs biting and chose to intervene. ‘Well, it’s
certainly
worth a note, I’m going to look into it.’ Childcare had not been of any previous interest to him, but as of now, clearly, it would have to be.

Rod Moncur was animated. ‘I tell you what would be great,
really
great, would be stuff for older kids to do. Could you sort out some of that?’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘Well, in my day, the best thing was a Scout troop. I’d love it for my lad to have that. Great for keeping lads out of bother.’

‘It’s an idea. Do you think we’d get young people to come?’

‘Don’t see why not.’

Sean Goddard intervened, as if he had rarely heard such folly. ‘What, you want to gan to the park where they all hang about smoking tack, ask if they fancy learning reef knots? Wearing a bloody woggle?’

Moncur was defensive. ‘Bet you’d get
some
.’

‘Oakwell maybe. Scoular. Round Crossman you’d not.’

‘Ah, you live on Crossman?’ asked Gore.

‘Not bloody likely. I’m near enough to smell it.’

More gruff chuckles. The unanimity Gore found worrisome. ‘That’s a little hard on the place, isn’t it? On Crossman?’

Moncur shook his head. ‘You can’t be soft about it. There’s
people
are just wrong uns, and Crossman’s full of ’em.’

Sean Goddard too had fixed Gore with a jaded eye. ‘It’s a hovel, man. You’ve got cars burned out, bloody syringes on the grass what a bairn could pick up … You can’t get people brought up decent there.’

Monica was looking sidelong at Gore as to say that such was the bed he had made for himself. He bridged his fingers and chose his words carefully. ‘I should say, my remit, my pastoral care, is meant to extend to five local estates – to Oakwell, Scoular, Blake, Milburn and Crossman. All of them are equally important to me,
but the poorest maybe more so. Now, I know Crossman is rough, I’ve been there –’

‘Oh you’ve
been
there, have you?’ Sharon Price cut in, not kindly. ‘Where are you at, Reverend, is it Oakwell? You wouldn’t be so cheery if you’d been burgled three times in a year.’

‘I’ve been burgled. It’s rotten but it’s not the end of the world.’

‘Did they take your mother’s heirlooms? Smash your wedding photos, do their business on your settee?’

Gore had no answer to these charges.

‘No, I didn’t think so, but that’s how they’re raised round Crossman.’

Kully Gates had raised a hand, frowning, and was twitching her fingers. Gore gladly gave her the floor. ‘Come, please, you must remember, you have some people out of work for years. Their children don’t know what a proper job is.’

Sharon Price wore an outraged face. ‘Get away, dirty bitches
sitting
happy on thirty grand a year, just for having spawned some litter of thugs.’

‘Oh well now, if you think that’s how the system works –’

‘Aye, I do, I know it.’

Sean Goddard cut in again. ‘Look, I work at the General, right? I see ’em all come in. Little girls wi’ big bellies. Lads drugged to the eyeballs, and this un’s gone and stabbed another for looking wrong at him. I’ve seen ’em hit
paramedics
have tried to help ’em.
That’s
your Crossman. There’s only one cure for it.’

Love?
Gore feared not.

‘You send the wrong uns down a lot longer. Zero tolerance, like they call it in America.’

‘Right enough,’ seconded Rod Moncur.

‘It’s a bit drastic, though, isn’t it?’ Gore ventured. ‘Criminalising a young person at that age?’

‘It’s not a bother to
me
, man, not if the kid’s a bloody criminal. There’s lads round here have killed old ladies for money for drugs. What do you
do
with buggers like that? They’ve got to be
punished
, they’ve got to
know
they’ve been punished, it’s got to
hurt
.’

A female voice intruded, violently bored. ‘If you think lockin’ up bairns for years is how to stop your tellies gettin’ twocked you’re
crackers
.’

Shoulders and eyes all shifted en masse to peer at Lindy Clark.

‘I’m sorry, but you should hear yourselves. You go on about the good old days like we were all so bloody kind to each other, then you’re talkin’ about locking up bairns and throwing away the key.’

‘What’s
your
idea then, missus?’ retorted Sean Goddard.

‘Summat more like what
he’s
talking, eh?’ She waved a hand at Gore. ‘That’s your religion, right?
Supposed
to be, any road. Being kind to people, giving ’em a chance. Or are you’s all so righteous already?’

There was no reply, but the glowers persisted.

‘Oh, I see. So righteous you’s don’t want to listen to
me
, do you?’

Lindy got to her feet, sealed up a small bag and strode
purposefully
down the aisle, rolling her eyes at Gore as she passed.

‘Please, don’t go …’ he offered.

She did not reply but pressed onward and out.

All eyes were on Gore. He understood that one of their scant number had elected to expel herself from the group. Clearly the group had not, in any event, deemed her one of them. He had sympathy with her. And yet the group was all he had to work with. The circle would have to be closed up and soldered – for the moment, at least. He raised his hands.

‘You know, I wonder – if perhaps we might pray?’

He pressed his palms together and, to his relief, saw all
assembled
do likewise. He set to reciting the familiar panacea of the Lord’s Prayer, supported by a low mumbling echo. This
unanimity
at least he found manageable. After the Amen he looked from face to face and smiled.

‘Right then. Who’s for a nice milky brew?’

In the informal huddle round the tea urn Gore found Monica was at his side, fastening a brocade scarf at her throat.

‘I told you, didn’t I?’

‘What?’

‘Get your Sunday right first. Don’t run before you can walk.’

‘I found it interesting, though. The anger in people. It’s useful to hear it.’

‘What you’ll find, if you’re not careful, John, is you’ll just be a punch-bag. For what’s bothering them. They’ll just come to you to have a pop. You’ll get bruised for it but you’ll be none the wiser. You can’t please everyone.’

‘Well, if I can’t please thirteen people …’

‘Thirteen wasn’t so bad, in the end.’

‘Oh no, of course not. I’m only sorry we had a walkout.’

‘Oh! I’m only sorry she showed up. Miss Clark. She’s only funny, that one.’

Gore looked quizzical.

‘All funny notions about herself. She was a bit more covered than usual tonight, mind. Her mam’s dead of the drink. I don’t think neither of ’em knew who her dad was. And now she’s a
kiddie
of her own, and she’s not got the foggiest how to manage far as I can see.’

‘She has a child?’

‘Does
she
have a child? You remember that little terror what tried to geld you the other day?’

Recall came sharply to Gore. It was all a little bit too interesting.

‘You saw, though. She fancied that crèche. Oh aye, offer her a perk and she was in like Flynn. Thinking everyone else can look after her kid. She wasn’t born yesterday. Nor was I.’

‘What about the father? Of her child?’

Monica narrowed her grey-green eyes at him, a look Gore read clearly as saying: don’t be silly, vicar.

‘Dare I ask where he is?’ he persisted.

Monica’s mouth set primly. ‘He could be any number of places.’

As he crossed the darkened threshold of number seventy-three Gore immediately saw the red light of his answerphone blinking through the gloom. Shrugging off his coat, he rewound the tape and heard a message from Bob Spikings.

‘Oh, hello, John. One of these days you must get yourself a mobile. Anyhow, Jack may have mentioned my idea, about, uh, keeping your hand in? I wondered if you’d consider taking a turn in the pulpit for me at St Mark’s? I’m afraid it’s not the, uh,
happiest
of all occasions …’

Funeral
, thought Gore. He rewound and listened again,
carefully
took down Spikings’s number and dialled it. Spikings quickly confirmed his suspicion. There was a young man to bury, the
circumstances
violent. The deceased, one Michael Ash, had been stabbed to death in the seat of his car, in a car park near the city centre.

‘Dreadful,’ said Gore, after some moments.

‘Horrible, yes, I know, I know. Only thirty years old. From an alright home too. But, uh … I think there’s grounds for suspicion he was
possibly
the, uh, architect of his own misfortune. Wasn’t robbed of anything, you see. The understanding is he was, oh, mixed up in drugs – you know? You consider the nasty way he went, and there’s really no other explanation. Anyhow, I can’t say I know the parents all that well. So this might be an opportunity for you to, uh, preside …’

Gore accepted, as he knew he must, with unease. The dull and sorry truth was that he could imagine few words – none from his usual store – that could be of any solace to the Ash clan.

Stevie commonly found that words failed him. He was happier by far trading in nods and handshakes, for they served just as well. He knew, though, that certain matters had to be broached
verbally
, if they were not to sit and fester. For some weeks he had
wanted
words with Dicko. The need sat awkwardly inside, and he shifted it from locker to locker, just as he hopped from foot to foot on the opposite flank of the neon-splashed entrance to Club Zeus. The cold was biting, November of 1986 on its way out, and they were present and correct and properly attired. But something was wrong with the picture. And to fall out – to fight – with Dicko,
toe-to-toe
, was a bitter thing for Stevie to consider, even if, pound for pound, he reckoned by now that he could burst his old mate.

A fortnight hence Armstrong the manager had summoned Stevie to his small office, Stevie restive before he sat, knowing the issue would be their policy on recreational narcotics. Dicko, just like Stevie, was under instruction to act on any suspicion of
possession
or partaking, by search, confiscation and expulsion. It was no science, and such a drill had for months been yielding steadily mounting returns – ever more wraps of speed, fistfuls of pills, small slate-like squares of tack. Dicko assumed charge of their safekeeping, and at the end of each night he gathered Stevie’s
takings
into a strong-box with his own, so as to pass them to
management
for disposal. But Armstrong, evidently, hadn’t been having it.

‘I’m no fool, Stevie, I know it’s coming in the door, and if I’m not seeing it then the two of you’s have to be doing me a
disservice
. Cos it’s joint responsibility as I see it.’

‘If you’re that bothered,’ Stevie shrugged, ‘get the police.’

‘We don’t “get the police”, son,’ Armstrong snapped
witheringly
.

‘What do
I
do then?’

‘You keep an eye on your pal, Stevie.’

He would be nobody’s pet rat. It was, though, undeniably the case that Dicko had developed certain tendencies. No fashionable door they had ever worked had welcomed unaccompanied lads ill-favoured in the facial department. Dicko, indeed, had a store of rejoinders to send the sad cases on their way. ‘No, no, flower, this ain’t for you, you want the wanking festival down the road.’ Now, though, there were some notably queer-looking rabbits whom Dicko merely bade welcome with a nod and a muttered greeting, even as it was searing Stevie’s lips to step forward with ‘You’re fuckin’ kiddin’, aren’t you, pal?’

One such was a manchild with a moon face, spectacles and bum-fluff moustache, perennially togged out in a blue tonic suit, white polo shirt and loafers. One night Stevie determined to never let this nerd stray from his sight, and so watched him stand,
surveying
the dance floor, elbows on the bar, hailed and greeted by umpteen punters, though none lingered long. He sipped the same pint of lager for an hour, yet his trips to the toilet were continual. Finally Stevie tailed him on one such visit, and cleared the toilet of punters with a jerk of his thumb. Then he stooped and saw two pairs of shuffling loafers in the gap under a stall door. He
straightened
, and – with one, two, three brutal heaves – splintered the door from its hinges. His prey he seized by the throat, got his
wallet
in his fist, and found that this Mickey Ash had twenty little wraps packed tightly into a zip-pocket. But after shutting time he tossed these into the Tyne, for he couldn’t face calling Dicko out.

As a team they had prospered, taking fewer gigs for better money, moving into a smarter two-bedroom rental, a new build on the Oakwell Estate out west. Dicko treated himself to a black Nissan, though Stevie still shunted about in a knackered Ford. But the camaraderie seemed to have been leeched out of their friendship,
something arctic in its place, like the wind off the Tyne in late November. To Stevie’s mind the draught emanated from one
corner
. It was all the fault of the drugs.

In Hoxheath he took on a few casual commissions, cash in hand, commensurate with the hassle. Over a quiet pint in the Gunnery he fell to chatting with the new landlord, fairly tearing what was left of his hair over some radgy Asian called Kumar who was selling drugs in the back bar, and was rumoured to carry an axe strapped to his thigh under loose-fitting pants. Stevie pledged to sort the little problem, and he didn’t have to wait, for that same night Kumar stalked into the pub, a rangy lad with a shaved head and a manic stare. Once Stevie had his throat he was putty. ‘I’ll
give
you a bit of it, man,’ Kumar protested, and Stevie slapped his face with a stinging report before booting him out onto the seat of his baggy trousers. ‘Come back with your axe, eh, bonny lad?’ he called out into the night, and was cheered to the rafters within. This, Stevie knew, was not how matters would be coming to a head with Dicko.

The needful conference didn’t come at the door of Club Zeus but after closing time and a nightcap, when they were ensconced once more in the Hoxheath gaff, kettle on. Stevie had no savour for Dicko’s company and was minded to retire. But Dicko bade him sit.

‘Look, Stevie, I’m about right for moving on.’

He had decided to return south, to Bristol from whence he hailed. ‘I’m sick of it, son. It’s small time, this. Anyone shows a bit of initiative, wants to get on, there’s always some numpty
wanting
to slap ’em down.’

Watching the shot-putter’s frame slumped in a comfy chair with mug of tea, Stevie decided that this was indeed a man en route to the knacker’s. He was gratified, too, that it was Dicko who seemed to be the one struggling to unload a burden from his chest.

‘Stevie, the job we do’s a serious old job. We earn our keep. We should be paid proper. And if we’re watching others we shouldn’t have others watching us. It can’t operate that way.’

Stevie didn’t like what he was hearing, and decided to ignore it.

‘Well, I’m right sorry you’re off, Dicko man.’

‘I’m sorry to leave you in the lurch with this place, flower.’

‘Nee bother. Reckon I’ll keep it on.’

‘You planning on moving that blonde bird in?’

Karen was Stevie’s current girl, a somewhat unlikely conquest, a regular at Zeus amid a gaggle of similar girls. She was a cashier at a building society, long of leg, all teeth and yellow mane, her complexion too the colour of turmeric from regular sun-bed
sessions
. She had seemed stand-offish, until Stevie gave her some old chat and found that her poise was about as true as her tan. ‘Me big
maaan
,’ she would drawl as she draped herself over his chest after a third cocktail.

No, Karen would not be moving in.

The final goodbye when it came was brisk and tense. Stevie helped Dicko fill his car, unsure – though, frankly, unbothered – as to whether his old comrade saw him as Judas. But their parting handshake, Stevie was sure, had an edge to it.

Batman and Robin was a tough act to follow, and Stevie didn’t bother to seek a new partner, simply permitting his regular
venues
to pair him with new hired hands. There came then a
succession
of mad young blokes, and Stevie began to feel like Clint Eastwood, breaking in the rookies. His technique had reached a level that in working a room – amid the heat, the boozy aggression and egotism – he glided serenely above it all. It pained him, though, to find there was little he could tell his younger
counterparts
, or, rather, little to which they listened. Some had the vexing habit of telling
him
what for, then moving on. It dawned upon Stevie that the venues were no longer the real sources of
employment
– rather, they preferred to contract private firms. Stevie didn’t want to be Dicko the Second, the big lunk overtaken by events. So he asked around, made some calls and was taken on without fuss by Titanium Security, appointed supervisor to a ‘mobile unit’ of three. Since the units seemed to favour in-house tags, he chose ‘Team Sharky’.

The first assignment was a pub in Battle Field that wanted to shed its belligerent element so that the place be more amenable to college students, whom the landlord fancied his best customers. Stevie duly steamed in, grabbed some collars, banged some heads, made the toerags unwelcome. But the students who began to slouch through the doors he found he didn’t care for one bit. The landlord told Stevie quite sharply that he didn’t want them searched, gallingly, since there were more than a few –
bright-eyed
, talking an incessant stream of shit – to whom Stevie would have gladly handed out a pasting. It began to gnaw at him that he was no longer his own man. He retained his patch at Club Zeus, yet on inspection of the Titanium pay-slip he saw that his nut – less tax and National Insurance – was less than previous. He could see
that
much.

As the summer of 1988 dwindled, Stevie came late and a bit drunk to a dinner-date with Karen. In his heart, he knew, the princess had metamorphosed into something of a nag. He had been dazzled by hair and suckered by fragrance, for she was less than the sum of her parts, full of pointless wishes and demands. On this night she would not take even her customary glass of Mateus Rosé, and when Stevie told her pointedly that she was as much fun as a hole in the road, she appeared to puff like an adder and spat, ‘That’s cos I’m fuckin’ pregnant, man.’

He had never pictured himself as a father, nor Karen as a mother, not given the sum of her outgoings on cosmetics and vodka-based cocktails. For her part, she let him know that her mam and her friends thought this turn of events a tragedy, and her boss at the building society had looked fit to choke. ‘Am I the last fuckin’ one to knaa then, Karen?’ Stevie growled, the kettle of his temper starting to rattle. He had to remove her from the restaurant by some duress, and their exchanges back at her flat were no more tender.

The months that followed were joyless. While Karen bulged steadily, Stevie paid the rent of two men, his shifts too relentless for him to find a new lodger. He was out front at Zeus one cold Friday night in January, an hour shy of opening, and he could feel
a stinking cold coming on, his back stiff, feet leaden, mouth like sandpaper. Then he saw them, coming on foot from a way down the Quayside, four men in hats and hoods walking abreast, built like weightlifters. Before they reached the door Stevie had radioed his back-up for the night, Anthony, a short but tenacious lad from Cullercoats. And then the leader of the foursome declared himself.

‘All change, Stevie, all change, son. You not been telt? This is our door now, me and these uns.’

‘You reckon? Maybe I should get Armstrong down.’

‘He’s not the boss, Stevie. You’ll not get owt off him. New
ownership
, see. So you and your midget want to step aside now, get on your way, like, there’ll not be any bother. If you
want
bother, we’ll fucken burst ye.’

As Stevie glanced from lunkhead to lunkhead, saw the fists clenching and the ears peeled for the word ‘Go’ – as he accounted for Anthony’s position, and the usual computations whirred through his brain – the desire to simply turn and walk away rolled right through him, boldly as never before. He would swap his kingdom now for ten hours’ sleep and a mug of tea, no stress and no fuss. It was, by any reckoning, a tenth-rate kingdom that could be usurped by four such ratbags. But it was in this sure sense of how the tale would get told in all the pubs round town that Stevie suddenly felt his pride revolt.

The team leader he annihilated with four lightning rights. Even off-colour, he had his club-hammer hands. Now they would see his stamina too. He bawled at Anthony, who made himself useful, if only by drawing some fire. They threw bodies onto Stevie, but none could get behind him or manage to restrain him. He took a succession of uppercuts and belly-blows but never fell, and with fists and feet and elbows he made himself the last man standing. A police vehicle was pulling up by the time the last of the
foursome
limped away, cursing.

When they were gone, Stevie sought Armstrong for a private interview. He wasn’t going to pound on a fellow so much punier, but he made sure he got him against a wall, his frame occluding all light and means of escape. ‘Steve, you know me,’ Armstrong
babbled, ‘I wouldn’t have had it like that for the
world
. It’s not me, man, my hands are tied, the owner got himself a new partner, he put some money down,
he’s
the one said how it had to be.’

They made it through that night. It was a sort of a buzz. But when the adrenalin receded, Stevie felt despondency creep back. Who was there to trust?

He was loyal to the shed that was Morton’s of Wallsend, no
turncoat
for the fancy new gym near St James’s Park where space got wasted on Aerobics for Women. He was cooling his muscles on the seat of the pec-deck when a pair of chestnut brogues planted themselves on the mat before him. He looked up into the small smile of a flash character, musky with aftershave, his tanned
temples
shining about his widow’s peak. Even indoors he wore his camel-hair coat.

‘Another heavy shift, eh, Stevie?’

Roy Caldwell had a Scots burr that conjured in Stevie some trace of his granddad Corbett. Dicko had introduced the two of them once, and he knew the guy to be a purveyor of cheap steroids, though some of the other lads had taken to calling him ‘Mr E’. But a peddler, that much was for sure.

‘Eh, but there’s not a harder man than you in here, is there, Stevie?’

‘You wanna suck us off or summat?’

‘Ha. No, son, point of fact I fancy talking some business. About you and your team. “Team Sharky”. Isn’t that right?’

After Stevie had showered and quit the shed, Caldwell was waiting outside in pale sunlight at the wheel of a black BMW. ‘Shall we take lunch at Altobello? Aye, I think we shall …’