Crusaders Read online

  *

  At twelve after six they were still abed, watching Blind Date in a fuzzy image on her portable television. She snuggled into his chest. Sipping another tea, Gore was starting to feel tolerably hefty and masculine – at least a plausible imitation of the same, he thought, were his picture to be taken in the act. Not something for the church newsletter, admittedly, nor any of his recent media outlets. ‘The vicar among the people.’ Just another Saturday night for some, a determinedly strange one for himself. Blind Date was followed by Gladiators, muscle-bound members of the public in athletic contest with pro-bodybuilders. Few of the professionals, he decided, had anything like the forbidding brawn of Steve Coulson and team. He couldn’t picture any of them in coloured spandex, snarling and clawing the air. A chuckle escaped him. ‘Dear me. What posers.’

  ‘Say that to their faces, would you?’ Lindy murmured. ‘I know you’re big and all, but I divvint reckon you’d last in the ring, pet.’

  It was perhaps the minor disparagement that told Gore it was past time that he be elsewhere. The feeling grew swiftly and acquired a solidity, the urge to be gone much more resolute than his earlier decision to linger.

  ‘Lindy, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to push off.’

  She only looked at him, in some dubiety.

  ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday. I’m afraid I’ve a fair bit to get done.’

  ‘What, have you got a sermon to write or summat?’

  ‘I do, actually …’

  He dressed quickly, as Lindy seemed to remain absorbed in her show. But once he was buttoned up, she sighed. ‘Off you go then, thief in the night …’

  She fastened herself once more into the kimino and led him flouncingly down the stairs. He simply couldn’t decide whether or not she was joking. By the door he embraced her, kissed her lips, but felt her withdraw from him first. He measured what should be the parting words. She intervened.

  ‘See you tomorrow then?’

  ‘Are you – won’t you be busy?’

  ‘I’ll see you at your service.’

  ‘You’ll be there? Great.’

  ‘I’ll be there. And I’ll maybe see you in the week? Maybe do something?’

  ‘Yes, let’s.’

  She gave him that wry smile. What was she thinking? Gore could not tell, and had no time to weigh it any further. He strode off into the darkness. The evening was crisply cold – he could feel it, most unusually, in his thighs. He spun round at the end of the alley, so as to wave, and found that Lindy had not dallied at the door.

  Chapter VI

  AN ENCROACHMENT

  Saturday, 26 October 1996

  ‘No. No, I’m not best pleased, fellas.’

  Stevie looked from Roy – his mien, indeed his whole posture, lugubrious and troubled – to the sludgy heaps of newly tilled earth stretching out for an acre beyond the Maginot Line of the rear fence. They had dawdled a hundred yards from Roy’s house, down the full length of the damp landscaped lawn, to this lonely end of the garden shrouded by towering pines, sweet sharp scent in the air, needles crinkling underfoot. It was quiet, unnaturally so. In days gone by, on little strolls of lesser purpose, Roy would tote his shotgun along with him, loose an occasional shell into the air. Not today. For starters he wanted Stevie and Shack to observe this, the ominous ugliness of a soon-to-be new neighbour.

  ‘It used to be an old tip, as I heard. I thought, “Who’d want it?” Didn’t think they could ever build. Stupid of me. Prices round here.’

  ‘Did your lawyer not pick it up, like?’

  ‘Aw, probably did. He’s good. I just wasn’t too fixed on the particulars. See, that’s how things slip into the shit.’

  Roy shrugged. And Stevie could see him shouldering the burden of matters grave and regrettable, if perhaps ultimately manageable. But Roy wasn’t quite the bolshy force in the camel-coat that he used to be. Shack, by contrast – on this his first outing to Darras Hall – seemed brimful of frustration, a bridling lieutenant waiting permission to report. Stevie, for his part, was feeling the cold of the dwindling afternoon, wanting to be elsewhere – another city, another calling, another set of associates.

  ‘Least you’ve got them trees,’ he offered. ‘Tall, like. Natural barrier.’

  Roy scoffed. ‘I doubt I’ll ever see the birds in them again. Not once this fucker’s a proper building site. No. You can’t stop people doing whatever they bloody like if they set their little minds to it – throw enough money at it. As for that fucking Morpeth Council … some arsehole’s getting paid for this, you can bet. Aye, well.’ He sighed heavily. ‘If this were the sum of our woes we’d call ourselves happy.’

  For the first time that day Stevie saw Roy give Shack the full glare of his foglights. ‘So what did the polis say then, Shack? About Teflon?’

  ‘Aw, it was arson, for sure, Roy. They only got in as far as the lobby, then they just dumped a bloody great petrol can. Lit it and ran off. Police reckon it was between three and half-past in the morning.’

  Roy blew out his cheeks. ‘Christ. Good job somebody talked us into putting all that fucking steel in the foyer. The old velvet would’ve burned until Christmas. A petrol can, but. Dog-shit way to go about it.’

  ‘Dog shit’s about what they’re like,’ Shack muttered. ‘The state of them gadgies come into the Gunnery that night.’

  Roy was pensive. ‘Aye. Aye. So that was the start of all this, right?’

  Steve worried a pile of needles with the cap of his boot. ‘Only if you reckon all this is cos of Skinner. Not them Codys.’

  ‘Whey of course it’s bliddy Skinner, Stevie man,’ Shack snapped.

  Roy was switching his gaze back and forth between them. ‘You’ve not had so much bother before, no? Not at Teflon?’

  ‘We’ve had plenty,’ said Shack evenly.

  Stevie rounded on him. ‘What was that, like?’

  ‘You’ve not always been looking, Stevie, so you’ve not been seeing it. If some radgy Manc tells us I’m a dead man, I remember it.’

  ‘So do you just tell us the half of what gans on then, Shack?’

  ‘It’s only the half what you listen to, Steve.’

  Stevie felt himself knotting up all over his body. They had swung for each other twice before – once as mere lads, then a ‘straightener’ out the back of the pub Shack used to guard in Hebburn. They had shaken hands over a draw, though Shack had been on his knees at one stage. Round about now, though, it was starting to look like a rematch.

  Roy slashed the air with his hand. ‘Alright, for fuck’s sake. Jesus. I shoulda dug ditches for a living. Like my old man. This is where we are, whether we like it or not. Let’s not be dickheads about it.’

  Stevie countered Shack’s stare until Shack looked to his feet.

  ‘Now, obviously, all this bother – the main slight is directed at me. But you might want to take it personally too, Stevie. People aren’t meant to like you, right enough, but all this is pushing it. Who’d be giving the orders? Who’s Skinner’s man like you are for me? Is there one?’

  ‘This bloke Crowley, I hear,’ Shack said quietly. ‘The one come in the Gunnery that time. The leader.’

  ‘I put him in the General,’ said Stevie.

  ‘Aye, well, now he’s out, so he must want putting back.’

  ‘He wants putting in a fucking box is what he wants.’ Roy’s jowls were newly thunderous. ‘We know that, don’t we? No use tarting it up. They need a proper wind up ’em, that lot – blow ’em right the fuck back to Moss Side or wherever. No more than what they’re giving you, Stevie.’

  Shack nodded. ‘Givin’ all of us. Mickey, like. That was a fucking outrage.’

  Stevie glared. ‘It was me at his bloody funeral, neither of you’s.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ Roy had produced a cigar, and he jabbed it at Stevie. Stevie well knew that for Mickey he had no deep feeling, nothing much more than the shudder of disgust that such a ten-stone weakling should have been hacked into by a mob, left wit
hout a prayer. That was grievous. That was the sort to whose level they were getting lowered.

  ‘Okay.’ Roy winced. ‘So here’s my point. There’s gotta be some comeback here, fast, or we look like cunts. That’s not – it’s not sustainable. Stevie, I’d have thought looking down a gun-barrel would have cleared your head. You’re not just gonna give this guy a bollocking, right? Invite him out for a bit of the old Gentleman Jim?’

  Stevie was silent, staring aside into the trees. Roy laid a hand on his arm and he could smell the Cohiba Robusto, like burning leather. ‘Are you with us, Stevie? I’m saying it’s just where we are. Daddy can’t make it go away.’

  The tone was anathema to Stevie. But Roy had a hold on him, his voice slipping down into a low burr. ‘I can get it done for me, Steve. Someone’d do it for me. But it’d cost me twenty grand I can ill afford.’

  Stevie glanced back to the formidable house, to Roy’s Donna, worriedly vigilant on the patio, being tugged about by the leashed labrador. All bought and paid for. One didn’t acquire such a castle, he knew, through an excess of sentiment. ‘You’ll be alright,’ he murmured at last.

  The burr, insistent. ‘Steve, my money’s not just there to piss into a river. What do I pay you for? Pay him? All your team?’

  Stevie had never ever wanted to hear it phrased like so, like this – as if his livelihood were a mere handout, not his own diligent handiwork.

  ‘See, I’m just as concerned about you, Steve, you know that.’

  ‘Aw aye?’

  ‘Aye. You’ve had a good run. Good years, you and me. But you might have run into a bit of a wall here, personally. That’s what I’m seeing. You back away from this one, it’ll still be you that’ll end up paying for it.’

  ‘He’s right, Steve.’ Shack had picked his moment. ‘They’re walkin’ all over you, man. It goes on and where’s your respect? That’s what it’s about.’

  That word, bandied endlessly, emptily. Stevie’s stomach was turned by it. And he had never heard such scant ‘respect’ from his deputy.

  ‘Look, bollocks, I’ll do it,’ Shack was saying. ‘I’ve done it. Nowt new to me.’

  Roy’s eyes evinced a new interest. Stevie shook his head sharply. It was Shack’s stock Goose Green story, how as a private he had ‘finished’ some Argie, pumped bullets into his back and head as he tried to crawl off. Until now Stevie had thought Shack’s fleeting Para career an unqualified boon, the likely root of his calm in the gale, his hundred-yard stare, his dependable presence at shoulder. But he didn’t want any of that pitched against him now.

  ‘It’s my decision,’ he muttered.

  ‘But you’re not makin’ it, man. It’s not just about you, see. They’ll get after us and all – me, Simms, Dougie. They’ll get onto your girls, your bairns. They’re just giving you two fingers, man, they don’t care.’

  Roy nodded. ‘Right enough. It’s a what’s-it. Gauntlet.’

  ‘You need to get your head on straight, man. You’ve not got a choice. Divvint kid yourself. There’s money out on you, right? We know that. Just cos one pair of numpties fuck it up – there’ll be teams looking for you, man. Lawrie Skinner’ll just pay out whenever he has to. Cos one of ’em’ll manage. Even if they just get lucky.’

  The weight was on him and before him, just as if he were lying recumbent beneath the four-hundred-pound bar, its oppression blindingly obvious. So why lift a finger? No, there was always a choice – always the option to leave it, rise up and walk, disappear. And was there a hole big enough, one where he would never again need to look at himself? Unable to say, he merely nodded.

  ‘I’ll have your back, y’knaa that,’ said Shack – redundantly, by Stevie’s reckoning, for today had seen sedition that would not be forgotten.

  Chapter VII

  A PROPOSITION

  Sunday, 27 October 1996

  Gore had imagined he might not sleep through into Sunday, such was the mazy nature of his thought that Saturday night. He had hardly undressed, though, before a concrete heaviness set on him and carried him under. When he awoke – sharply, from uneasy dreams – his telephone was trilling and his alarm clock, untouched from the night, told him it was five after nine. He hared from under the covers as if kicked. Monica Bruce was the perplexed caller. He inserted himself scratchily into his vestments and tore some sketchy notes from the printer.

  Bursting through the doors of the school hall he found Ridley, stooped and laying prayer books onto seats. Mrs Boyle sat solo at her piano, seemingly discomfited. A short distance hence Steve Coulson and Brian Shackleton looked to be deadlocked in testy conference – Shack smoking, as was his wont, but Stevie, too, most unusually, puffing away in fidgeting draws. Gore hastened to Ridley’s side. Wordlessly Jack transferred the pile of books into Gore’s hands and lowered himself into a chair, producing his pipe and tobacco. ‘If them uns are allowed then so am I.’

  ‘Where’s Susan Carrow, do you know?’

  ‘I reckon she might be lodging a protest, that one. You might have lost her. Not best pleased, I don’t think.’

  ‘That’s responsible of her. Shows real commitment.’

  ‘Aye well, she’s not paid for this, John. None of us are. ’Cept you.’

  Gore decided there and then to quit Ridley’s company. He wandered up to Stevie and Shack with a nod of the head.

  ‘Stevie. How’re you keeping?’

  ‘Been worse, John.’

  ‘Shack. How do.’

  Shackleton grunted. The mood music was altogether discordant today.

  ‘Aye aye, here he comes, Billy the Kid …’

  Shack was looking past him and Gore turned to see Mackers striding down the hall toward them – the little working man, visibly straining to appear as pugnacious as sixteen years could permit.

  ‘I didn’t know you were pals?’

  ‘Mackaz? Aw aye, he’s rock hard, this man,’ nodded Stevie. ‘We’s right then? Let’s get shifted, bonny lad.’

  And so Gore found himself alone with Shack, who stared fixedly aside, snorting, and sucked at his dog-end tab. Then he laughed, not pleasantly.

  ‘Can’t get over this, mind.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘This. Here. It’s just weird, isn’t it? No offence, like.’

  ‘None taken. I’m glad of your help.’

  ‘Divvint thank us. It’s Stevie, man. Soft touch, he is. Soft as clarts.’

  ‘That’s – well – not how I see him.’

  ‘Whey, even you could walk over him if you wanted. Give it a bash.’

  Shack tossed the butt to the lino and trod on it.

  *

  If the omens had been poor, the turnout was passable. As they groaned together through ‘Rock of Ages’, Gore head-counted forty-odd. A slight drop-off was probably inevitable. He had intended to get more dynamic this week. How had time beaten him again? Where had it gone?

  He had not expected any of Kully’s kids to appear and they had not – save, of course, for Mackers, who sat apart with Steve and Shack, chomping on gum, a raw maquette of the hard man he clearly desired to be, not so tough yet clearly seasoned. Lindy sashayed into the hall, in good time for once, minus her boy. My sweetheart, thought Gore.

  His sermon was shreds and patches on the page, but he improvised, his chosen text the fifty-first Psalm, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.’ He spoke disjointedly of fresh starts, clean slates, revelation and self-transformation, beginning in the bathroom mirror. Surveying his sedentary flock he knew, in his heart, that he was essentially pissing into a stiff wind, and might as well have recited the Hums of Pooh. Yet he stayed his course.

  In the aftermath he had half-expected Jack Ridley to make himself scarce, and yet the stalwart came forward, cap in his hand, his bagged eyes yet more dolorous than usual.

  ‘You should know, John – I can’t be here for the Sundays nee more. Meg’s been missing us for this and that. You’ll manage, but, won’t you?’

  �
�I suppose. I’ll be down to bare bones soon – you, Susan.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got your extra hands. The heavy mob.’

  Reflexively Gore rubbed at one eye-socket. ‘Look … Jack, I do know your feelings, I’d just rather think you’re not going off – I don’t know, vexed at me.’ No sooner said than Gore saw its wrongness in Ridley’s obsidian eyes, knew that he sounded juvenile, an impenitent child persisting in folly.

  ‘I’m not “vexed”, John. It’s your job. You make your choices, they’re yours to make. Any road. I’ll still see you at the meetings.’

  ‘Well then, thank you.’

  ‘Nee bother. Good luck to you. I’ll help finish up here now.’

  He put out his hand and Gore took it, accepting the resignation since he had no alternative. Then he studied the scuffed back of the olive-green car-coat as it retreated.

  Lindy Clark was waving the fingers of one hand at him. Now seemed the moment to cross the hall, give his regards – a peck on the cheek? – if he could circumnavigate the stern Albert Robinson and friends. Then Stevie Coulson’s broad back moved across and masked his sight of her, and her bright laugh carried across the hall. He felt something ever so oddly poignant clutching in his chest, and tried to discount it. Yet he also found himself rooted to the spot, a sensation of detachment building, his will receding like a rope ladder winding upward.