Crusaders (25 page)

‘Aye well, it’s top division football, I suppose.’

So he accompanied Roy to St James’s Park and saw Newcastle trounce the Scousers with three identical goals from the imperious Cole. It occurred to him anew that a man could get used to
anything
.

1994 kicked off poorly – a rank odour round the pubs and clubs for months after the fatal shooting on New Year’s Eve of a highly rated bouncer, one Viv Graham of Rowland’s Gill, who was said to have got above his station. The council and police were soon insisting on a register of all doormen working in Newcastle. Stevie had twenty-odd men on the books of Sharky’s Machine, serving thirty or more premises. Now there was the drear prospect of hard questions being asked of each and every employee – and, all ‘diversification’ aside, Stevie needed those doors. He now had real cause to rue a twelve-month suspended sentence for assault he had received in late 1990. The plaintiff had got all that was coming to him, certainly in respect of his loutish conduct inside Club Zeus, but the law had been blind to Stevie’s motive and overly attentive to some admittedly wince-inducing CCTV footage. That prior conviction now, very abruptly, spelt the end of Stevie’s term on the doors. The lads threw him a party in the back of the Gunnery, and they raised their glasses solemnly.

Stevie was pensive that night. For some time, he knew, he had been above the blunt graft of the doors, more engaged in Roy’s tax collecting – in business. The old walk of life, its habits and denizens, had never been cosy. Always there had been the
procession
of gadgies making distant threats, big-mouthing in pubs about how Steve Coulson wasn’t long for the world. Customary had become the calls or furtive approaches from associates to tell him that his name was being cursed to the heavens in the Loose Box, taken in vain at the Block and Tackle. Stevie knew he had attained such eminence that a lot of that shite was to be disdained for the small-dick Dutch courage that it was. Just sometimes, though, face-to-face it had to be. He would note the address, track the offender, see how much they liked it up them in front of their mates, if mates they had. Sometimes it was enough to appear, like a bear with a sore head and a low growl, right in the midst of
whoever’s
slovenly excuse for a local, and to point a sharp finger.

‘Fucking show us respect, you.’

‘Aw but he respects you, Stevie, totally man. There was nowt meant by it, not a bit …’

Respect
. It was all a lot of fucking
bollocks
. The whole stinking sham made Stevie’s temples pulse. He had begun to feel the
gravity
of his mid-thirties, to count the furrows of his brow, to look into remedies for sciatic pain.

His friend Roy’s unprompted response to these unvoiced woes was to put down money on a club called Teflon, a Quayside joint by the city end of the Swing Bridge. Stevie was to be manager, his name over the door. The move into management was logical, timely, not to say a blessing. How swift and glad was his embrace of the routine, assuming a black single-breasted suit and an open white shirt, strutting the buffed floors vodka-tonic in hand through the calm early hours of trade! And at a stroke he was a businessman, albeit one just as happy swapping the fine duds for his pub suit, his Gold’s Gym sweatshirt and arse-frayed denims, at whatever time suited.

On the first day of 1996 that felt like springtime – a morning
nipping
at the extremities, yet blessed with a hazy sunshine, effulgent over Nuns Moor Park – Stevie took in the view at leisure from his bedroom window, prior to blending a protein shake and heading to his garage number two for a brisk half-hour’s workout. He was due to rendezvous with Roy on the far side of Town Moor at eleven. It could be something or it could be nothing, but he would be locked and loaded as ever.

In the gloom of the garage he hunkered and stretched out on the cool vinyl of the bench, drew in breath, then launched his assault on the four-hundred-pound bar-bell – one furious set, then the strain of another, the torture of a third. He trained almost entirely at home now. Over the winter a fellow called Porter had been shot and killed by some radgy as he left the shed at Morton’s. Stevie had a boxer’s heavy bag suspended from the ceiling of the garage, and he pounded it for five solid minutes. He was steeled for
combat
, should the enemy appear.

Back upstairs he showered and dressed – black jeans and boots, clean gym vest and hooded sweat-top. When he donned his good leather coat, smelled the fine hide, felt its form wrap close about
him, it was though he were assuming not so much an apparel or an armour as a secondary skin. The leather had a rigidity that Stevie considered akin to his mindset: pliant, but unpierceable. It was his right and proper raiment.

In the driveway he unlocked the Lexus and peered over the road, expectant of locating his lookout, the day’s volunteer from his Charver Squad, as he called those lads. There indeed was the kid in the backward baseball cap, poised like a bush-cat up on the pedals of his bike. Stevie nodded, the kid coolly returned the favour. They were good kids, surprisingly susceptible to his
attention
and consideration. He gave each a mobile and solemn instructions, and he had yet to be let down. If anyone was
loitering
around his main places of business, he got the call. One more line of defence.

He took the North West Radial, a ten-minute drive, and pulled into a space near Exhibition Park. Striding into the grounds he felt a fine familiar stirring, a sad sort of fondness for the lovely biting cold of old Newcastle. There was no place like it. Other so-called hot spots had no atmosphere fit to compare, not that he had seen. He didn’t romanticise the trouble-zones, the half-done demolition and the dog dirt and the Sunday morning snowdrift of
burger-boxes
down the street. But that was just people for you. He played his part in clearing things up, keeping the city upright and
orderly
, ready for business.

And now he could see Roy, loitering near the bandstand by the foot of a beech tree, clad in a dark cashmere coat, mobile phone pressed to his ear, his lately acquired black labrador Buster padding about at his heels. As he neared, Roy clocked him and nodded but continued his business. ‘Aye, so a shade under five? The right side,
consigliere
. No, no problem, Barry, son. I am guided by you in all things. It’s like all these things – could be something, could be nothing, I don’t mind either way.’

‘You buying a used car?’ said Stevie once the phone was
consigned
to the coat pocket.

‘No, no, son, I’m donating to the Labour Party.’

That sounded like prime Roy bollocks.

‘You alright?’

‘Nee bother.’

‘You’d a visit the other day? At Teflon?’

That was correct. Stevie had thought it a matter on which he might keep his own counsel rather than trouble the boss. Now, regrettably, it looked to be the matter at hand. For a year or more there had been no problem with the law, at least nothing of the sort experienced by venues with less auspicious connections. Last week, though, there had been a snide visit from some DI, wanting to interview all door staff in relation to complaints from
unidentified
patrons. Who this buckshee copper imagined himself to be was a matter for more thought, but for the time being it was clear that a certain understanding was no longer being honoured quite so rigorously. Thus did Stevie conclude his report. Roy looked grim. ‘I wonder, but. Fitzy’s not talking to me. Someone’s maybe pulling someone else. Somewhere in the bloody chain.’

‘Some cunt-stubble?’

‘Aye.’ Roy sniffed. ‘That, or Fitzy’s had a bright idea. You’d be amazed how some of these pigs get used to your money. Like it was their own.
Greed
, I tell you – everybody’s after a score.’

Stevie was sombre, knowing Roy’s hatred of loose talk and
disloyalty
to be much as virulent as his own.

‘I don’t know, Stevie.’ He was shaking his head, clearly
genuinely
perplexed. ‘Who’s meaning us mischief? There’s maybe a fair old list. Them Codys I thought I was square with. This Skinner boy out of Manchester, he’s maybe throwing money around. It could just as easy be one of ours, but. How are your lads?’

‘They’re sound, man. Sound. We have a drink every other week in the Gunnery, I always knaa what’s gannin’ on.’

‘Aw, you’re not still drinking in that fucking Gunnery?’

Stevie shrugged. The venue was hardly the point – rather, that there had in fact been some matters arising between him and the team. Dougie, he suspected, might just have heard by now that Stevie had consoled his estranged wife. Then the few overt
trappings
of his promotion had nonetheless ruffled some feathers. Shack had been first to bang on to him about wanting the same cut
‘through the till’. But they weren’t getting through the work he was stuck with, not the headwork anyway. Such was the division of labour, as Stevie saw it. He was the chief asset of the business still. Broadly understood, he had done right by them all. And Roy didn’t need to know about a small falling-out between friends.

‘Do a sweep, eh? Give everybody just a wee shake. I dunno, could be one of them middling dealer boys. I hear Mickey Ash wants to get married again, the wee git. Some blonde object he met on holiday. Musta give her a ton of free charlie.’

‘Doesn’t give up, that one.’

‘He doesn’t. So he’s maybe thinking of retiring.’ Caldwell sighed. ‘Not the worst idea.’ He stooped and rough-housed his big drooling dog about its ears. ‘Who’s your pal, eh? Who’s your buddy?’

Stevie gazed at them without seeing. His agreeable mood was off, away into the long grass. Roy spoke without looking up. ‘I’ve gotta be extra-wary, Stevie. You know that. But I’ve got you. Haven’t I? I’ve got you, Stevie.’

There was a disconcerting edge to Roy’s tone, or so Stevie thought he detected – a hint of an implied reproach, as bad as an outright slur. Yes, Roy had to take these matters seriously. All the same, he had to know who he was talking to.

‘Roy, you’ll never have to worry about us, man.’

‘Oh I know, Stevie. I know
that
, son.’

Back in the saddle
, thought Gore as he smoothed out his notes, upstanding in a strange pulpit, another man’s perch. Below him in the pews of St Mark’s was a respectable turnout of forty to fifty bodies. The onus was all upon his shoulders, for Michael Ash would have no eulogist today, no schoolyard mate or kind
colleague
to tell a benign story or summon up some other felt tribute.

That no one could be persuaded to speak for the deceased struck Gore as unutterably sad. Had the dead man left so meagre a mark? Or were people just embarrassed – of their own feelings, or the absence of same? He was familiar with a certain poor
sensation
of sham, imposture, that arose when orating over a stranger’s coffin. But that unease had no claim on him today. He saw this awkward situation as one in which he could do no worse than what would otherwise pertain.

In the front pew were Clive and Hazel Ash, and a younger
sister
of Michael’s, Gill, up from Manchester for the day. Earlier he had greeted them solemnly in the vestibule.

‘And have the police made any progress? Have there been any arrests?’

‘Police, whey, never,’ muttered Clive. In his funeral suit the poor man looked shrunken, anger not quite surpassing some form of shame. His diminutive wife propped up his flank as though the customary duty of bearing up had been exchanged. In the
churchyard
beyond the vestibule Stevie Coulson’s huge presence was conspicuous as he trundled to and fro among the mourners. Gore took note of just how many greeted Coulson warmly, as ever.

‘Ee Stevie, what an awful thing, but …’

Mr and Mrs Ash were looking at Coulson too, a little oddly, or so it seemed to Gore. The look was not hostile, yet nor was it
affable
. Perhaps it was just the glassy, non-specific gaze of those who managed acute and incommunicable feelings. Or perhaps they felt as Gore did – that on such a dark day there was something newly stupendous about Stevie’s frame, the rude life of it. Their son was gone, the gathering listless, and yet this man in their midst looked so very much alive. Funerals, Gore knew, were always like that.

‘I’ll never understand, but,
never
understand,
or
forgive, how a lad could be stabbed in the face.’

Gore placed a redundant hand on Clive Ash’s shoulder. He badly wanted to give these people something for their
unanswerable
pain, without stammering or overstating. Face to face was far too intimate.

In the pulpit he cleared his throat and bade welcome to all, moving hastily from the set text to his own prepared remarks. The resonant echo of the high nave underscored his growing
confidence
.

‘What can we say of a life cut short, so cruelly and inexplicably? We know, for it is written, we have but a short time to live, and like a
shadow
we flee. The wind passes over the ground and we are gone, and the place we leave behind will know of us no more. All this is true. And yet, there is a very singular painfulness that breaks upon us with the sad news of a death as untimely as Michael’s. It is hopelessly inadequate to say that we live in violent times, for the evil of the violence visited on Michael cannot be tolerated. But when one of our number is taken in such a manner, it is a test of our faith. What comfort can we possibly obtain?’

Gore looked up and outward, certain he was being heard and heeded.

‘For Michael there is the hereafter, the life beyond this life, promised us and won for us by Our Lord Jesus Christ. For ourselves there is this life that remains, and its challenge to us – the challenge to repair the damage wrought by violence, and to renew our oneness. We face that challenge together. The bells that heralded our service today summoned not only I,
the preacher, but yourselves, the congregation. Never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.’

Again he looked up, and detected at least one nodding head.

‘Those the famous words of the poet John Donne, who wrote so
eloquently
of how we are all one in the Church – how all mankind is of one author, and one volume. And for the loss of any one, we are all of us diminished. But when one man dies, a chapter is not torn from the book but, rather, translated into a better language.’

Gore turned open his Bible and read from Paul’s eminently quotable First Epistle to the Corinthians. It was another strong suit.

‘Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed – in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last – for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised, incorruptible.’

Gore heard weeping from close at hand, and when he raised his gaze he saw Mr Ash, shaking and sputtering, unable to contain his misery, fingers clenched around the arm of his stoic wife.

‘Please now let us pray.’

His work done and an amen put to matters at St Nicholas’s Cemetery, Gore planted himself on the stony pathway bisecting the long graveyard and there accepted handshakes from
mourners
. Bob Spikings hustled past, Jack Ridley by his side, and offered a thumbs-up. Ridley then detached himself from Spikings and took up an almost proprietary stance a few yards from Gore. As people took turns with limp grips and mumbles into their chests, Gore had no special sense that the rites had signified much to any party, until Steve Coulson drew near – draped in black, shrouded in customary gravity – and took his hand in a vice.

‘Father, I want to thank you very much,
very much
for that. It was true, all what you said. Very appropriate, like.’

A woman loitered at Stevie’s side – blonde, suntanned,
subdued
, wearing a creamy trouser-suit, more of a wedding outfit to Gore’s eye.

‘Father, this here’s Ally.’

‘Glad to meet you. Can I introduce you to Jack Ridley, my churchwarden?’

Stevie’s eyelids flickered. ‘Jack I know. How you keeping, sir?’

‘I’m well, thank you,’ Ridley muttered. ‘Excuse me, John,’ he added no more happily, and walked off. The breach in manners seemed to Gore compounded by Stevie’s remaining intractably polite before him.

‘You and Michael were friends, Stevie? Hazel showed me some photos?’

‘Oh aye? Aye, I knew him a good few year.’

‘What do you make of this awful business?’

‘Well …’ His shaven crown shook slowly. ‘Y’knaa what people are like when they start yackin’, Father. Chinese whispers and that.’ Gore saw that this Ally, too, was watching Stevie with
interest
. ‘I doubt Michael ever did owt wrong. He was a good lad. You’ll have heard that. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time, y’knaa? When your luck runs out.’

‘Worse than bad luck, though. I mean, the violence of it.’

‘John, you get people in this life would just as soon murder a fella as take his money. Pure evil. Absolute s
cum
.’

Stevie’s features had been disfigured fleetingly by a look of such virulence that Gore hastened to close a book in his mind. In the subsequent silence, Stevie clapped him on the back and peered round the sunlit graveyard. Then he fixed Gore anew. ‘Aye, but you were canny back up there.’

‘Thank you, Stevie.’

‘Like I said. Professional. I do admire that.’

‘It’s what we’re here for. What we do.’

‘Aye, well, you do it proper. So when do we see your home debut then? Eh? Ally, the Reverend here’s gunna start doing his own church at St Luke’s School.’

Ally briefly animated her sloe-eyed features. ‘Aw really? Nice.’

‘You’ll be full of busy then? When’s the big day?’

‘Sunday after next, October thirteen.’

‘Well, I tell you what, I know me and some of my lads would like to come along, show you bit support.’

‘You’d be very welcome, Stevie.’

‘Aye, we’ll be there. Lined up at the altar with wor tongues out, eh?’

Gore had to laugh. ‘Well, there’ll be a Eucharist, but no altar as such.’

‘Why not?’

Gore mimed the yanking out of empty pockets. ‘Skint. We’ll be lucky if everyone has somewhere to sit.’

Coulson appeared overcast. Again the big mitt found Gore’s shoulder. ‘You’re not serious, John. How bad is it?’

‘We’ll do our best but … We’re bound to be a bit deficient in the decorative department. It’s a poor man’s church. An experiment.’

‘We can’t have that, Father.’ The hand stayed on Gore’s shoulder.

Ridley had drifted back, his eyes near-comically vigilant, as if to rescue Gore from assault. ‘We’re moving on now, John.’

Stevie persisted. ‘If you need an extra hand, then me and my lads are here, John? You understand us, aye?’

Once again Gore felt the firm impress of this man’s
consideration
as something to be fruitlessly resisted. ‘Okay, Stevie. You’re not coming on?’

‘No, we won’t, we’ve paid our respects.’

And with that Steve Coulson and the graceful Ally took their leave. Ridley looked sourly at their retreating backs. ‘“Me and my lads” …’

The venue for the reception, Gore decided, had not been the
wisest
choice – allegedly that of Ms Gill Ash. But he padded across the quiet dance floor of this Club Zeus with his slender bottle of Dutch lager, passing various elders who were wandering a little dazedly round the dim-lit and slippery laminate floors. The Ash clan had repaired to one dark corner, as if this were a final
indignity
from which to hide. Gore left Spikings to wait upon them and sought out Jack Ridley in a corner of his own, peering with
suspicion
at a pint of bitter with a freakish plug of thick foam. His flat cap was still atop his head, his fleshy face set in high dudgeon. Gore, though, felt he had unfinished business to raise.

‘Not a bad day’s work, all things considered.’

‘You did canny.’

‘Thanks. And I seem to have made a friend.’

‘Like who?’

‘Steve Coulson.’

‘Steve
Coulson
? Aw, bloody hell.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Don’t try to bully me with silence,
thought Gore. ‘Jack?’

‘Man alive. Well, for starters, you saw that blonde object he was carting round? Her in virgin white?’

‘Ally?’

‘Alison Petrie. Who was Alison Ash.’

‘Not related to Michael?’

‘Married to him. For six months maybe. Then she run off with a mate of Coulson’s.’

This was information Gore wished he had gleaned in the course of his preparations. Now he did the extra headwork.

‘
Dougie
Petrie?’

‘Aye, Dougie Petrie. You know all Coulson’s mob then, do you?’

‘No, but I’ve met Dougie. So he and Ally aren’t together any more?’

‘Whey, divvint ask me, man. What I’m saying is Coulson helps hi’self.’

Silence ruled again, Gore a shade less assured than when he had revived the dispute. ‘Is that why you’re so opposed to him?’

Ridley looked elsewhere, seemingly lost in a mist of disgust. ‘That bugger, he used to knock about with my son. Up to all sorts.’

‘Like what?’

Ridley shook his head. ‘John. You’re an intelligent fella, for God’s sake. What do you think a man like that does for money? What’s the use of all that heft if it’s not for badness?’

‘Well, I know it’s his job that he’s got to be a big enough sight to stop people from – misbehaving.’

‘“Misbehaving”? Oh, that’s champion, that is.’

‘Jack, I’m not stupid, okay. He’ll have seen a bit of bother in his time.’

‘Just a bit.’

So Ridley was on his high horse and would not be dismounted. Gore felt irritation rise, seeing the old man self-appointed as his invigilator once more. ‘Jack, I should say that he made me an offer of help today. A very genuine one, I think. He seems quite
committed
to being helpful. As committed as anyone I’ve come across – yourself excluded, of course. And, frankly, I’m starting to think you have to take your community-mindedness where you can find it round here. So I’ll not be spurning a hand of help from any man. Including Steve Coulson.’

Ridley stared stonily at Gore for some moments, then his mouth tightened and he shrugged as to say he had expected no better.

‘I’ll see you Sunday morning then, John.’

And he stood, abandoning his gaseous and mostly full pint to the table. Gore took a vexed swig of his beer, which foamed upward as if in a tetchy lather of its own.