Ecstasy (16 page)

Sturgess began reflecting back on his life, something which he
tended
to do quite a lot since his retiral. This generally never gave him anything less than satisfaction. The afterglow from the knighthood had still not worn off. It was good to be called Sir Bruce – not just for the best restaurant tables, hotel suites, directorships and all the other trappings – it just sounded good to him, aesthetically pleasing to his ear. – Sir Bruce, he repeated softly to himself. He did this often. However, if anyone deserved it, they all said, it was him. He’d steadily climbed the corporate ladder, moving from a professional scientific research and development background into management, then into the boardroom at United Pharmacology, the drugs, food and alcoholic beverages conglomerate. Tenazadrine had undoubtedly been something of a blemish. Heads had rolled after it, but it was just another corporate disaster for Bruce Sturgess to worm out of. Somebody less senior and less shrewd would always be there to take the rap, and there were many in that position
vis-à-vis
Bruce Sturgess. His cool manoeuvrings on this issue had only increased his stock as a smooth operator.

The tragedy had been one he assessed purely in terms of pounds: the monies lost to the company. Sturgess refused to look at the newspaper ‘human-interest’ reports and the television pictures of the Tenazadrine children. Limbs and deformities seldom entered his thinking. There was a period when it was not so: during his stint in New York, where the tempting anonymity of life in that city had become too much, he had been forced to come to terms with a side of his sexuality he’d repressed since his schooldays. It was then he realised what it was like to be different, and a terrifying empathy had stricken him for a while. Thankfully it hadn’t lasted.

He remembered the very first time his Tenazadrine legacy forcibly impacted on his life. He had set up a game of cricket with his two young sons on Richmond Common. The stumps were positioned and Sturgess was ready to bat when something crossed his line of vision. In the distance he saw a small child without any legs. The boy was propelling himself along on some kind of trolley, like a skateboard, using his arms. It was perverse, obscene. Briefly Sturgess felt like Dr Frankenstein in the Baron’s lowest moments.

He didn’t make the drug, he told himself over and over, he only
bought
it from the Krauts and sold it. Yes, there were the murmurings – more than murmurings, there was the report he suppressed indicating that the tests were not as stringent as they could have been and that the toxicity of the drug was greater than at first believed. As a former chemist, he really ought to have taken a greater interest in that side of things. But this was Tenazadrine, the wonder pill for pain-relief. Nothing had gone wrong in the past, with similar products. Besides, there were competitors for the franchise to market the drug in the UK. They would not hang about and Sturgess felt that he could not afford to either. He signed the deal with the German, the strange fellow, in the lounge at Heathrow. The Kraut had got cold feet, started bleating on about more tests needing to be done, and passed him over a copy of this report.

Too much, though, was invested in the drug not to put it on the market. Too much time, too much money, and too much in terms of the credibility of certain corporate careers, his being one of them. The report was never passed on, it was incinerated on the open fire at Sturgess’s West London home.

All this flashed back when Sturgess saw this child, and for the first time he felt a crippling flood of guilt. – You chaps carry on, he squeaked to his bemused sons as he staggered back to the car, trying to compose himself, breathing hard until the apparition had gone from his sight. Then he got on with the game of cricket. You coped, he reasoned. It was the English way: that ability to compartmentalise pain and guilt into a separate and secure part of your psyche, like burying sealed vats of radio-active waste inside granite.

He remembered old Barney Drysdale; Barney who had been with him all the way.

– I feel bloody haunted, Barney, he had told his colleague.

– Pull yourself together, old son. We make one dodgy product and we get all this bad publicity. We just have to tough it out; the gentlemen of the press will soon find another fad to concern themselves with. All the life-saving work we’ve done through advances in drug technology and nobody gives a monkey’s. We all have to stand together at a time like this. All those prying journalists
and
bleeding hearts think you never have to pay a price for progress. Well, they are wrong!

It had been a good talk; done wonders for Bruce Sturgess’s state of mind. Barney was a reassuring fellow. He taught him to be selective about what one deliberates on, to concentrate on one’s virtues, to leave the guilt to our foreign friends. Yes, it was the English way. He missed Barney greatly. His friend had perished in a fire in his Pembrokeshire cottage several years ago. They blamed some Welsh Nationalist extremists. Scum, thought Sturgess. Some might say just retribution, but Bruce Sturgess didn’t believe in that. It was just bloody bad luck.

Who was the Kraut again? he sleepily thought as he dozed in the heat. Emmerich. Gunther Emmerich. Sir Bruce drifted off with the sun in his face. I never forget a name, he thought smugly.

Fitted Up

We got just over a hundred of the Firm together to trash Newcastle. Things were getting a bit fucking tight. With this Taylor Report and these all-seated stadiums on the way, this might be one of the last seasons for a full-scale terracing ruck. They were already starting work on grounds up and down the bleedin country. Killing the fucking game, those cunts.

For this one we knew that the filth would be out in force so there was no prospect of a major toe-to-toe. Bal and I gave strict instructions on Friday night down the Grave Maurice: no cunt was to be tooled up as such. The filth were arresting people for anything these days. The whole operation was to be a show of strength, a bit of PR: show them fucking fat Geordie gits that the Cockney lads ain’t lost it. We’ll fling them a few sharpened pound coins, sing a few songs and generally treat their slum like the fucking toilet it is. But we won’t do nothing in the ground itself: nothing that’s gonna fill the cells with the Firm. Bal n me was giving all the orders; nobody from the Ilford was batting a fucking eyelid, nor none of them other fuckers.

Anyway, thirty-two of us were to get up on the train from King’s Cross, hitting a boozer we’d picked out in Geordieland for opening time at eleven. Another thirty-odds would be coming up on the nine o’clock to get into this other pub, a few hundred yards away. The third were coming up on a supporters’ bus, done up as scarfers for the journey, and they would get into Newcastle about one. The idea was that they would split up into two factions and head for both the pubs. They would be the bait to entice out the Geordie gits who wanted some, then we’d steam in and do them. We’d sent two Scouts up on Friday lunchtime, and they were keeping us posted on the mobiles.

Well, as the old man would say: the best laid schemes of mice n
men
and all that shit, cause it didn’t flaming well work quite as we planned it, did it. Newcastle’s one of my favourite trips, cause of edge. It’s so bleedin far, for one thing, so different. Let’s face it, those cunts are more like Jocks than real Englishmen: sort of all dirty and uncivilised. There’s something about the place that gives you the fucking creeps. It’s all bleedin hill, with them ugly bridges hanging over that dirty river. The geezers are typically thick northern sods who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, but they can fair dish out the old stick, and take it, when it comes to a punch up. Generally takes quite a bit to put one of them cunts down. Anyway, that don’t bother me none cause usually I’ve got quite a bit, and I’m usually drinking fucking vibes like these, but today I just ain’t feeling up for it. I wanted to be back with her; miles away, back in the bleedin Smoke. Some fucking club, or maybe even a full-scale rave or something like that, E’d up. Just me and her.

Anyway, we gets up to the station. There were a couple of pigs at King’s Cross. They got on the train, but they got off at Durham. I thought they’d be radioing Newcastle and I was prepared for a reception of the local Old Bill. When we got off at the station, though, it was almost deserted.

– No fucking filth! Where’s all the fucking coppers then? Bal shouted.

– What’s happening ere then? Riggsie asked.

But I could hear something. A rustling sound in the distance, then shouting. Then they came, steaming across the concourse, some of them tooled up with baseball bats.

– IT’S A FUCKING SET-UP! I shouted, – THESE FUCKING GEORDIE BASTARDS AND THE OLD BILL! WE BEEN FUCKING FITTED UP!

– NO CUNT BACK OFF! GET THESE CAHHHNNTS! Bal steamed in, and we followed suit. I got hit fucking hard across the back but I kept swinging, driving on into the centre of them. It felt good. I forgot everything. There was no tension now, just the connection. I was on a run. This was what it was all about. I had forgotten how good it felt. Then I slipped on the concourse and went down. I could feel the boots going in, but I didn’t even curl, just kept
writhing
, lashing and kicking out. I managed to get up, cause Riggsie had made space by picking up a mobile barrier and charging them with it. I caught this skinny geezer with Coke-bottle T.Rex and just kept punching the cunt as hard as I could. He dropped this note-pad and I realised that he was just some poor little trainspotting cunt who’d got caught up in all this bother.

The Old Bill eventually showed and this was the cue for everybody to scarper off in different directions. Out in the street, this geezer with a swollen eye approached me. – Fuckin Cockney bastard, he said in a Geordie accent, but the cunt was laughing. I started to n all.

– Aye, that was a fuckin good one n ahl, he said.

– Yeah, it was pretty tasty, wasn’t it, I agreed.

– Ah man, ah’m too fuckin E’d up to get into ahl this just now, he smiled.

– Yeah, right, I nodded.

He gave me the thumbs up, and said, – Ah’ll see ye later, man.

– You can count on it, Geordie, I laughed, and we went our different ways. I headed back down towards the pub we was in. Two other Geordies approached me and I couldn’t be bothered fighting, my adrenalin had dipped.

– You fuckin West Ham? one asked.

– Git tae fuck, ah’m fae Scotland, I growled in my Jock accent.

– Aw right, man, sorry bout that, he said.

I left them and hit the boozer. Riggsie and some other geezers were there so we made our way down to the ground and took up seats in the stand surrounded by fucking Geordies. I thought that I’d start swinging to see what happened, but Riggsie spotted some undercover filth, who’d clocked us. We stayed for the first half, but we was bored shitless so we left and went back to the pub. I gave a couple of geezers on the pool table a good slapping and we broke some glasses and kicked over a couple of tables before heading off.

When we got out into the streets at the end of the game, we saw the main body of the Firm getting a police escort down to the station, a baying Geordie mob behind them. The filth were well in control, they had the horses and the cars out in force now. We couldn’t do no
more
, but I was glad that I was getting on the train and back down to Samantha.

Bal was well high on the choo-choo home. – These cunts fucking well know who we are! he shouted.

There wasn’t no cunt, Ilford, Grays, East Ham or that, who was saying otherwise. I took an E off Riggsie and came up somewhere around Doncaster.

Sheffield Steel

I see the fucking cunt. Sturgess. That’s the cunt that must die; for what he did to my Samantha. I’ll fucking well have you, you cunt.

The cunt stops his motor on Piccadilly Circus and in jumps this young geezer and they swing round the roundabout and head down the Dilly, taking a right to detour at Hyde Park. I’m in pursuit. The car stops by the Serpentine. I can’t see a lot in the dark, but I know what that queer-beast is doing, don’t I.

After about half an hour, the car starts off. They head back up to Piccadilly Circus and this young fucking sleaze-bag gets out. I can spot a sodding arse-bandit a mile away. I drive round for a bit and then this rent boy’s back in the same fucking location and Sturgess is well gone. I pull up alongside the young queer-beast.

– Oi, want a lift? I ask.

– Yeah, all right, he says, in a northern accent, but not a real northern accent, not a lad’s northern accent like.

– What about a blow-job then, sweetheart? I ask as he climbs in. Dirty, that’s what he makes me feel like. It don’t bear thinking about too much.

– He looks carefully at me with those sodding girl’s eyes. – Twenty quid, Hyde Park, and I get driven back here after, he says.

– Done, I say, starting up the car.

– To this very spot, he minces.

– Yeah, all right, you’re on, I tell him. I put the car stereo back on. ABC:
The Lexicon of Love
, my favourite album of all time. The greatest album ever fuckin made, innit.

We drove into the park and I pulled up at the same spot this fucking sick thing had stopped at with Sturgess.

– You’ve done this before, he smiled. – Funny, I didn’t think you
looked
like a punter … you being so young. I’m going to enjoy this, he lisped.

– So am I, mate, so am I. So where about’s is it you come from then, eh?

– Sheffield, he says.

I finger a scar on my chin. I got that at Sheffield two years ago. Bramall Lane: bicycle chain. I’m a poet and I don’t bleedin well know it. These geezers were pretty classy at United. Never rated the Wednesday mob though: fucking wankers.

– You an Owl or a Blade then?

– What? he lisped.

– Football, innit. You support Wednesday or United?

– I don’t really care about football, he said.

– This band, ABC, they was from Sheffield. The geezer in the gold suit. That’s him on the stereo: ‘Show Me’.

I get the little scumbag working on my dick. I sit there smiling, looking at the back of his head, his close-shaven queer head. Nothing happens.