You Can't Make Old Friends Page 5

  So why was this considered such a bad place? In the little time I had to think about it I could only come up with two reasons. The first was aesthetic. It wasn’t exactly a beautiful place. Twentieth century social housing, or thereabouts, all brick boxes with no interesting features. No history here, in Bevendean. And the Whitehawk transmitter tower looming above everyone at the top of the hill didn’t exactly give the place a relaxing atmosphere.

  The second reason was perhaps the most obvious: because this is where poor people live. And if poor people live somewhere then it must be terrible. But with the same money, and given a choice between a bungalow in Bevendean and a cramped Hove or seafront flat I think I know which I would choose. Not that anyone was giving me that choice.

  That had to be it: Bevendean was a bad area because poor people lived here. Poor people like Thalia. And like me.

  Maybe I was being a bit too sentimental about the place. The speed bumps I was weaving past told me this was the kind of place where the sound of mopeds wakes you up throughout the night.

  I parked up at the end of the road, and strolled in the right direction. The roads were eerily quiet. Maybe it was the weather. There was still an uncomfortable mist lingering in the air, giving everything an unnatural sheen. A pearlesence.

  I was looking for number seventeen and counted the odd numbers on the odd houses with their cracked rendering as I passed them. Seven, nine, eleven... I could already see where seventeen was: the door was open and I could hear someone shouting. I broke into a jog, then marched up the two-or-three steps to the open door, ready for anything.

  There was Thalia, in the hallway. A very tall, broad man my age had his big hands around her little throat.

  ‘Where is it!?’ he was shouting.

  Another man my age, shorter, skinnier, and hairy all over, was leaning against the wall, watching with frisky yellow eyes. He looked insultingly relaxed with what was happening. It was him who noticed me, standing up off the wall and blocking my path.

  ‘This is none of your business, mate.’

  He had a pointy face, and was gangly, which in tandem with his wiry body hair that seemed to tie itself in knots around his wrists, gave him the odd persona of a weasel. He was no real threat.

  I pushed him into the wall. Hard. Something smashed, and he crumpled to the floor. The big man was too slow to react, only just having time to release his grip on Thalia before I kicked him in the stomach. It sent him backwards through the kitchen door and out of sight. It was a saloon door, and it definitely needed oiling as it swung back and forth on its hinges.

  She had just a second to regain her breath, ‘Thanks—’ but before she could finish he was back up.

  I grabbed her by the arm and threw her into the next room. Luckily she landed in an arm chair. I would later claim this was deliberate.

  He squared up. Angered, he seemed to have swelled to an even bigger size, filling the entire hallway. Everything about him was double sized, even his features.

  Sweat ran down his back. Adrenaline shot through my veins. He snorted and huffed, his hot breath condensing in the cold air, looking for all the world like a shaved bear.

  He jabbed. I jumped backwards, dodging it. He jabbed again. I jumped backwards again. I was going to fall out the door at this rate. He jabbed a third time and followed it with a right hook. I deflected it and used his enormous momentum to send him sailing past me towards the door, but he stopped just short.

  The thin man climbed back up and tried to take a swing at me. It was so poorly thrown that I just leant backwards and took the time to slip my hand into my pocket, into my trusty brass knuckles. When I came back at him my fist connected right in the middle of his face. His nose shattered, and he fell backwards, past the big man, out the door and down the front steps.

  The bear then jabbed again, I deflected as I had before, but I hadn’t seen him pull a belt knife. Deflecting that cut my hand up pretty badly.

  Now all the rules had gone, which is the way I like to fight. So I kicked him as hard as I could in the groin. He dropped the knife and dropped to his knees. I gave him a helping shove and he rolled out the door and down the front steps. His friend half caught him. Clutching him whilst he clutched his broken nose.

  There they lay, the bear and the weasel. And as I looked down on them, I thought that I recognised them. I had almost realised who they were when the thought was interrupted.

  ‘Do you know who we work for!?’ the weasel spat.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ I barked, ‘Run.’

  They picked themselves up and took about a second too long doing it, so I marched one step towards them. They left. Quickly.

  Once they had rounded the corner I headed back into the house to find Thalia brushing herself down. I got up close. Perhaps too close. Perhaps just the right amount of close. And checked her neck for marks. It was a lovely neck. She would be all right. She smiled at me, nervous. I was very close. I nodded and turned to leave but she grabbed my arm. Suddenly I realised that my hand had been hurting badly for the last minute or so.

  We sat, and as she bandaged me up we spoke very little.

  ‘I remember,’ she started, ‘when you and Rory pulled Laurie Norman and Amy Rattley off me, it was the only time I’d seen you be the tough ones.’

  ‘That was Rory. I just helped.’

  ‘What were the names of those three boys who bullied you?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ I lied.

  That was all we said. I spent the rest of the time glancing around the room. The place was filled with what I assumed was other people’s old furniture, donated or bought cheap online. She had done her best to make a virtue of it. Shabby-chic, upcycling, and all those things where people ruin great craftsmanship and for some reason it increases the value. Despite her efforts it was clear she was struggling. After all, she was living in Brighton on minimum wage.

  As I listened to the sound of her neighbours screaming the place down through the walls, I decided she wasn’t safe here, and there was only one place that would do.

  I had to stop into my office first so we headed down that way. She held on tight to me as she rode pillion, her ample assets pressed against my back. I enjoyed giving her a couple of shakes and scares over speed bumps and round chicanes. When we made it to the Lanes I parked up and lead her toward the office. Lenny had already left for the library.

  With my bandaged hand I pushed open the door with my name on it, ‘I just need to grab something,’ and headed into my office at the back.

  Thalia waited in the outer office where clients are supposed to be received, taking a look around. It was quite dark, with it being an overcast winter day and the only windows being in my office. There was a desk covered in a dirty sheet, a pot plant quietly dying in the corner, and little else.

  The floor was bare wood, unvarnished, and scuff-marked. The walls could do with more than a lick of paint. More like a big wet snog of paint. And I’ve never been very good at dusting. Kids would’ve had a great time drawing pictures in it. Also, if there was a world prize for the best collection of dead flies, I would have won hands down. I had a great big one as the centrepiece exhibit.

  I could hear her stepping on the court summons and placing it on top of the covered desk.

  ‘Are you decorating?’ she called.

  ‘I decided to stop pretending my secretary was running errands. Plus...’ I sighed, dropping one piece of armour, ‘business has been a little slow the last few months. Since the police blacklisted me.’

  ‘You can’t have relied on them for all your jobs?’

  ‘No, but I did rely on them for my reputation. I like to be able to pick my clients.’

  ‘But now you take whoever?’

  I found what I was looking for, a small kit case in my bottom drawer, and came back out to join her.

  ‘Only when I really have to eat.’

  The short winter day was turning to evening by the time we made it to my place. We walked along the Old Stei
ne and up London Road to Preston Circus. It’s only a short walk and I still haven’t been able to find a cheap lock-up nearby.

  My flat is the only one I could find in my price range anywhere near the office. It sits almost within the shadow of the viaduct, opposite the Duke of York’s cinema, next to a pub, and two stories above a hearing aid shop.

  We trudged up the stairs, stress-tiredness catching up with both of us, and after my key made a good fist of not letting me in, I showed her over the threshold.

  ‘This is it.’

  It was the first time, probably in a couple of years that I had let anyone into my flat. Not that you need to feel sorry for me, I just like my own space. But seeing it through someone else’s eyes for once made me see it unbiased. It was a dump. A one-bedroom place with no bed. Just a mattress on the floor. In the other room there was a sofa, a few kitchen units, and a television. Everything was dirty.

  ‘It’s… lovely.’

  Thalia was kind, but she still did that awkward dance people do when they’re not sure where is safest to sit down.

  We ordered a couple of pizzas, but we both ate less than half. We were physically hungry, but too caught up in our own thoughts to put the effort into actually eating. Once they were cold I put them in the fridge so that I could have a breakfast without debt for once.

  I relaxed her with a drink, I had some Tuaca in the freezer, and she stood and stared out the one window.

  I always thought that view was a great microcosm of modern Brighton. The arthouse cinema, the independent coffee shop, the permit-only parking spaces squeezed tightly against the side of the road. The once-noble four-storey buildings carved up into pokey flats. The bicycles chained to railings. The franchise corner shop complete with owner out front, nonchalantly smoking a spliff.

  Thalia lit a cigarette. I was worried this would make her look too much like her mother for my liking, but rather than the thick, branded ones her mum smoked, she had rolled some minutely thin ones that gave off nothing but tiny wisps of smoke that disappeared into nothing soon enough. No doubt she was trying to quit.

  I felt like I had seen her for the first time today. It was as though someone had cleared the cache of small memories you keep that make up your knowledge of a person. Maybe I had erased them myself, deciding they weren’t important. Just Rory’s little sister. Now I had to create a new impression from what I saw in front of me.

  She really was unlike her mother in every way. Curvy, rather than stick thin. Long dark hair, rather than a dyed bob. And wearing her troubles heavily on her shoulders, rather than carefree. Then again, Elaine was wearing her troubles all over her face these days.

  I felt sorry for Thalia, as much as I’m capable. She needed to smile more. But what was there for her to smile about?

  I was sitting at my little work table. For a guilty moment I imagined her thick, strong legs wrapped around me, and I decided to concentrate harder on using the kit from my office to clean and disinfect my, bloody, knuckleduster.

  As her cigarette burnt down to the last millimetres of rizla, she spoke out of nowhere.

  ‘You know, I asked him about you recently.’

  ‘You saw him?’ I realised that was stupid after I said it. After all, she had a key to his flat.

  ‘Every couple of weeks we would meet up for coffee.’

  ‘Coffee? The last time I saw him he didn’t drink anything other than Red Stripe. Probably washed in the stuff too.’

  ‘When was that?’

  When was that? Could it be as long as ten years ago? We had already started to drift apart even before we turned twenty. I liked to think it was because he turned to crime, but really it was because we turned to different crimes. He had started selling weed, getting in with some pretty shady people. And selling something actually harmful to people in the process.

  I, meanwhile, was busy “housebreaking” as it was known. A victimless crime in my mind, if people were smart enough to have contents insurance. Ten, twelve, fifteen years ago when DVD players and stereo systems were still expensive and worth buying and selling on the sly. I would follow people, study their routine, and wait until I knew they were away. Then I would pick my way in, old style, and half-inch everything I could carry. I would sell it to Big Dave down in Whitehawk, and soon I was becoming one of his regulars. It got to the point where sometimes Big Dave would send a kid with me so I could pass him out a load and keep at it. Thankfully for me, someone rescued me and turned me into a private detective of all things.

  I thought I could do the same thing for Rory. “Grabarz & Sweet,” it had a nice ring to it. Rory had all the same skills I had, pretty much, and the different ones were complimentary. We could be a hell of a good team. It would be like the fantasies we had played at school, but for real.

  I arranged to go for a drink with him, expecting to have my old mate back, but he was already gone. I remember sitting in The Signalman, with butterflies in my stomach like it was a blind date. It might as well have been.

  A man entered, smiled at me, slapped me on the shoulder, and said ‘‘ello, Joe,’ and I had absolutely no idea who he was. I honestly didn’t know. Five seconds later, when he asked me what I wanted to drink, I realised he must be Rory. It was terrifying. My brain didn’t recognise the man who had been my best and only friend since as long as I could remember. Maybe there was a reason why.

  The man who sat in front of me and sank drink after drink was some deluded loser who really thought that drug taking and drug dealing was the route to wealth and happiness, and not a cancer that slowly eats down to your bones. I didn’t even try to argue with him, this Rory might beat the shit out of me if I did.

  I tried to walk him home, genuinely fearing for his life, he might choke if he passed out. It was just my luck that he lived in Moulsecoomb.

  I listened to his bullshit all the way down Lewes Road until it really becomes the A270 and leaves Brighton. In the dirty underpass opposite the bottom of Coldean Lane he started to throw up and collapsed.

  I stared dead-eyed under the flickering urine-coloured strip lights, inhaling the stench of actual urine, watching Rory’s wild hair fluttering as he struggled and slipped in a pool of his own vomit. I felt such contempt for him. It was as though someone else had taken the Rory that I loved, the best man I had known, and destroyed him. He faded into unconsciousness. I just walked away.

  ‘Years ago,’ was how I answered Thalia. ‘On top of swimming in beer he had just started selling weed.’

  She sat down and began sinking into the sofa.

  ‘He started selling because he couldn’t afford the amount he was buying. That’s when you dropped out.’

  ‘I didn’t drop out,’ I almost snapped.

  ‘Fine, drifted away.’

  Fair enough.

  She continued, ‘It got to the point where I would never see him. Just a text on my birthday. Christmas if I was lucky.’ She sighed, even she was disappointed, ‘Then he started taking coke. So he started selling that.’

  ‘He was always a pushover.’

  I had finished cleaning my knuckleduster and put it away.

  ‘But then he got clean!’ She said it with a smile.

  ‘When?’ I turned to properly look at her, back in detective mode.

  ‘A few months ago.’

  ‘That’s when you started seeing him again?’

  ‘Yeah. He finally wised up!’ She was smiling somewhat unconvincingly, as though she wanted me to believe it because if I believed it, maybe she could to.

  ‘Maybe,’ I offered.

  She didn’t like that, frowning at me and flaring her nostrils. This was a sore subject already.

  ‘You were always too hard on him.’

  ‘He still dealt, Thalia.’

  ‘No he didn’t! He was finished!’ She shouted it like I had been saying it a thousand times.

  I had pocketed a bag of starz at his flat. I threw them down on the table.

  ‘They call it a legal high,’ I wasn’t
hiding my anger now, ‘but I’ve seen what these things can do.’

  She didn’t look at them, instead she looked disappointed at me now.

  ‘So, what?’ She slammed her drink down. ‘Now you don’t care? I can’t pay you. Mum definitely can’t.’ I knew what they thought of me.

  ‘He was my friend—’

  ‘Didn’t you live with us for a bit!?’

  ‘Just for a couple of years.’ It was true.

  She was holding back tears. I wasn’t trying to upset her, so I calmed down.

  ‘You said you asked him about me. Why would you do that?’

  ‘I thought you were a good influence,’ she mumbled.

  I almost laughed. I’ve been accused of a lot of things in my time, but never that. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said if I was ever in trouble, go find you.’

  That hurt more than anything.

  6

  The Bastard Behind It All

  i stood with thalia, over the mattress.

  ‘You can sleep in the bed.’

  ‘Oh, ok. Where are you going to sleep?’ she asked.

  ‘In the bed.’

  ‘Oh… ok.’ She didn’t move, ‘I’m not some little girl with a crush anymore, Joe.’

  ‘I know.’ Believe me, I knew.

  We lay in bed, together, but separate. I think we were both awake for the two hours that passed, listening to the sounds of the city. The window in the bedroom looks out onto flat roofs, and is inside a small square that all the other flats look into. It was what I imagined a New York tenement building was like. You could hear everything. And I mean everything. In this case a couple I worried about who did nothing but argue and fuck. This evening it was fucking, and there’s nothing more awkward than lying next to someone in bed whilst you can hear other people fucking. Why aren’t we doing that? That’s what you’re thinking. But you can’t do that, because then you’d have to admit the sounds were turning you on. No, you just have to lay there and listen, pitching a tent in the process.

  From the other window, the one in the living room, we could hear the far more sanitary sounds of the city at night. Drunk people. Sirens. Taxis idling. But we ourselves were completely silent. That’s until I heard a quiet mewing. I could feel the moisture in the air. Thalia was crying. She was trying to hold it in, but soon she was sobbing and sniffling. I know I should have comforted her, but I was busy grappling with my own emotions, and I didn’t even know what they were yet. So I got up.