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  Crossing the central reservation, into the face of oncoming.

  The Squirt saw him, was off his seat and rising. Stevie swatted at the waitress, she crashed aside, and now he was thrusting up the gun into both his hands and squeezing the trigger once, twice, thrice – sharp, barking detonations that coursed up his arms and tossed the Squirt back against the wall, broken.

  The Chief was only starting to shift half-free of his chair as if rapt. Stevie jammed the gun one-handed to the side of his head and fired again, a roar that burst open the Chief’s face, throwing him off and to the floor like a deadweight sack.

  Shrieking chaos all around – chairs scraping, minor bodies running out past him to the forecourt – Stevie took it as his due, knew himself its centre and begetter. His hands had felt heavy as lead until he felt the lancing recoil of those first shots. Now there was energy all through his limbs, the weapon seeming light as a toy. He stepped round the table for a better view of where the Chief’s left ankle lay twitching. The eyes in the head strained upward but the bottom of the face was a red crater of gelatinous slime, an abysmal wound. The broad chest made itself an elementary target. He fired again, and again.

  Then he turned to where the Squirt was trying to claw his way up the wall, clutching his right flank as if to knit it together. Stevie stepped smartly around the table and fired two-handed at his neck – devastating it – then again and again into the back of the prone figure, bellowing punches that jerked the body about the grey-tiled spattered floor.

  Finished, he wheeled round to the tumult behind him, and his kneecap smashed into a table-edge. Cursing through pain, he saw appalled faces – punters, staff, some other pimply-faced slip of a waitress, moaning. Detail was bleeding back into his field of vision – he understood now there was some sort of Roman mural around the restaurant walls, temple girls in togas, pouring water. He waved the gun in the direction of those faces.

  ‘Shut up and divvint fuckin’ do nowt, you’ll all be alright.’

  His knee was throbbing, his pulse felt like a pain in his heart, there was pain too in his gun-hand, but no worse than that of a careless punch. He swapped the weapon to his left, shook out his fingers. He would address it all presently, once he was in motion. Walk, he told himself. Calm, control. Get it all behind you. He moved to the doorway and beyond he could see his ride, the motor running. Then he sensed a presence, to his peripheral left, and he flinched and spun and levelled the gun again. But it was only Mackers, staring at him, wet as a dog, rigid, seemingly petrified. Fuck, don’t just stand there catching flies, son, get yer’sel offside and all.

  *

  Shack was burning rubber down the Coast Road, the clutch was squealing, Simms was squirming and rubbing his head as if carsick. Stevie, with as steady a hand as he could summon, slipped the safety on the gun.

  ‘How was that, then?’

  Of all the fucking idiot things.

  ‘Steve, man, are they dead?’

  They were, weren’t they? The doubt reared up, a very sick and sudden fright. He rewound the scene in his head again as best he could. The red crater. The floor, grossly smeared with guts. No. Not a chance, no man got up and walked away from that.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Aye? You’re sure, like?’

  ‘Aye, they’re fucking dead, now slow down, will ye?’

  Shack shot him a look. ‘Not till we’s get on. I’m takkin us through Shiremoor, the garage is in Longbenton.’ And he coughed out a short scorning laugh. ‘Not their lucky night, then, was it? Them cunts?’

  ‘Not too lucky, naw.’

  ‘Aye, fuck ’em but, eh?’

  They travelled then in silence to the roadside service station, nestled between the darkened farmlands of Shiremoor and the concrete industrial sprawl of North Shields. Shack steered them into the hushed cover of the garage and got out to confer with his mate, the proprietor. Simms, too, clambered out, into another vehicle, and zoomed away into the black with a solemn wave. Stevie stayed slumped in the gloomy back seat, adrenalin receded, making inventory of his aches and pains.

  He saw now the shocked white abrasion and bright blood in the webbing between his right thumb and forefinger. The firing hammer – it must have snagged at his skin.

  He drew the gun from the bag once more – held it to his nose, breathed in the odour of burnt powder. Then he realised that his coat and jumper were as if sprayed with mist. Not rainwater – thicker, globule-like – blood, he realised – still slick on the leather, but drying into flecks on the dark wool of the jumper. He hadn’t believed he had stained himself so. He licked his palm and rubbed it across his chest, until a cooler head told him, What the fuck you doing, man? Divvint do that.

  Who are you, but? Who are ya?

  Steven Leonard Coulson.

  And he sat back, feeling the strangest current travelling through his body, bearing no relief – more like a hollow premature climax, one that had released toxins into his bloodstream, caused something rancid to settle and congeal, tumour-like, within the vitals. He wanted to drink a bottle of good whisky, tot after tot, straight down to the amber heel. That, or crawl into his pit and lie curled there like a dog. But he couldn’t conceive of sleep, not in this new place where his buzzing brain was stationed, stonily bleak.

  That’s it, done it now. All done for.

  Shack was returning – time to change cars, he supposed. He restored the weapon carefully to the bag.

  ‘You want us to get rid for ye? The gun?’

  ‘Nah, I’ll get shot of it.’

  Get your fucking nose out of it, Shack, man. No question, these had to be the dog-end days of their long association. If he could have had one wish, it would have been to end it right there. Call it a handshake, eh? Then you gan left and I’ll gan right. But the night shift had an hour to run. He still had need of a ride.

  And he would not be losing the firearm, no fear. Waste not, want not. Something in his gut told him its usefulness was not yet at an end. It didn’t quite bear thinking. But the thought of discarding it, even sinking it to the bed of the Tyne, seemed lunatic – infinitely less sane than stowing it away in a place of safekeeping. At least, small mercy, he knew just such a place, just such a safe-keeper.

  Chapter II

  THE NIGHT CALLER

  Friday, 15 November 1996

  They clung to one another, yet neither could seem to find comfort.

  ‘You’re manic, you. It’s like kipping with a dog.’

  ‘Sorry. Am I keeping you up?’

  ‘Nah, you’re alright … I’m the same. Got a bit itch.’

  In the early evening hours, confined to quarters, he had hankered after her company – was glad of her voice on the phone, glad of her invitation. They had talked of this and that, without consequence. Now, in the dark around midnight, he felt emptied and pensive, resigned to passing the night under her frilled and slightly soiled duvet. On her bedside table lay the wilted latex sheath, his semen bagged and knotted like kitchen leavings and wadded up in tissues – a used dobber, to be dropped, he assumed, into the crowded bathroom bin, there to nestle amid toilet-roll tubes and spent sanitary towels. For the moment, though, Lindy seemed unbothered by housekeeping, and Gore didn’t care to be her tidy-up fairy.

  She yawned, flipped her pillow, nestled her profile resignedly next to his. ‘You never told us how it started with you? Taking the cloth and that?’

  ‘Christ, you don’t want to talk about that, do you?’

  ‘Why not? It’s what you do.’

  ‘We don’t talk about what you do. Your many jobs.’

  ‘S’not worth talking about. Yours is a story, like. How, just tell us, man. You’ll maybe get us off to sleep.’

  He sighed, rolled onto his back. ‘I was born in Pity Me. You know? Just north of Durham. I thought for a living I might try and pity other people.’

  ‘Get away. Divvint act the prick wi’ us.’

  He blew out his lips. ‘Well, okay, the truth is – I felt a call.
That’s the only way to say it. I went to France one summer for work. I was maybe twenty? And I had a, a sort of a religious experience, basically.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A sense of God. That just came at me. And was overpowering.’

  ‘What was it like, but?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just felt all of a sudden like – the world was a perfect creation. And there was no way it couldn’t have been willed that way. I’d never thought that was remotely plausible before. Then it just seemed obvious.’

  ‘And that was it for you then?’

  ‘What else do you need?’

  She scrunched her features. ‘Sounds a bit mental is all. A bit touched.’

  ‘Well, maybe it was. I’m just saying – I felt God. I’m not trying to sell it to anyone. People have to feel it for themselves.’

  ‘Aye, well. We’s can’t all gan off around France.’ She rolled aside, groped for her alarm clock. ‘And have you ever felt the same since? D’you ever look round Hoxheath and think, “Eee man, it’s just perfect, this”?’

  ‘I do, sometimes.’

  ‘Get away.’

  ‘No, I do. God is here, Lindy. He’s on this estate.’

  ‘Hallo, God,’ she hooted. ‘Divvint mind wuh.’

  He shrugged aside the duvet, swung his legs out over the side of the bed, sat up, presenting her with his broad back. And he rubbed at his stiff neck.

  ‘Well – you’re maybe right.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘It’s not the same. That time in France, I still remember the feeling. In my whole body. I do wonder, but. If I didn’t maybe – read it wrong. Back then? The wrong end of the stick. I was shattered, see, I’d done a hard day’s work. For once. Maybe I should have been a stonemason, you know. I maybe missed my true calling. Honest labour.’

  He had decided not to care whether his musings aloud sailed clean over her head. Indeed, turning to look at her, he saw she beheld him coolly from over the bedcover.

  ‘Wouldn’t that be funny? Eh?’

  ‘I’m not trying to be funny, John. If you felt it, you felt it.’

  ‘Thanks. No, but you’re right, really. Just in that one moment – I cashed in an awful lot of reservations. Doubts I’d had.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, that Christ was born of a virgin? That God became a man. Died for our sins, all that, you know – it sort of underpins quite a lot of what we do. You’ve taken communion off me, you should know.’

  ‘I don’t think about it.’

  ‘Yes, but if you don’t believe Christ rose, then what you’re doing in the act is a sacrilege. You’re just mocking it.’

  ‘No I’m not. I wouldn’t do that.’ She raised herself from recumbent to her elbows. ‘Fuck off, you. I’m not the one wears the dog collar. It’s your problem, pet.’

  He laughed softly into his chest, since clearly there would be no sleep tonight. ‘Well. Sorry. You did ask, Lindy, so – that’s what you get.’

  ‘Aw, bloody sod you, man.’

  She threw aside her own share of covers, stomped round the bed and out of the room, flushed in her loose tee-shirt and knickers.

  Gore lay back, stretched, heard the crank of the tap running in the kitchen below. There was no point in pretending sweet harmony between them. When she had unrolled the condom upon him – after bobbing with her lips and running fingers quicksilver across his perineum – however undeniable and desired was the effect, he had sensed something tired and perfunctory in her performance. He had to face himself, had to wonder indeed how many others had been privy to her conscientious manners in the act. And he could no more guess now than on prior occasions quite how Lindy felt in its aftermath.

  Tonight she had not looked too thrilled – rather more patient, indulgent. Could she have reached the terminus of her curiosity in him? Or had he dismayed her inadvertently once more, as seemed to be his gift? Over a glass of wine he had made the blandest of remarks about time and the demands of childrearing. ‘Aw God, I’d love another one,’ she had avowed instantly. ‘Little brother or sister would be magic for him.’ He smiled and said nothing, deeming this by far the wisest course. The prophylactics, box-fresh, nestled in his coat pocket, and whilst he would offer them as a gesture of shared responsibility he knew he had acquired them more by way of insurance.

  *

  He must have dropped off, for the next he knew he was blinking confusedly in the semi-dark, eyes swimming toward the angle of light through the doorjamb. There were noises below, the front door clicking closed, heavy boots shuffling on the bristly doormat, hushed voices in conference. Groggily Gore lifted himself up and out of bed, and with a crooked finger lightly pulled the door open a little wider.

  ‘Y’alreet? What’s the matter wi’ you?’

  ‘I need a bit kip, Lind. I’m done in. S’alright if I crash out?’

  ‘Aw not tonight, man, I’ve got company.’

  ‘You’ve company, pet? Man alive. Anyone I knaa?’

  ‘Naw, man –’

  ‘Got yer’sel a new little friend then, pet?’

  ‘Just a fella I’m seeing.’

  ‘Aw, I see. Well, you’ve let us down there, like. I get lonely an’ all but, sometimes Lind. There was me dreaming of you fixin’ us breakfast.’

  ‘Stevie, I canna, man, please –’

  ‘Naw, you’re alright. You’re alright, divvint get yer’sel het.’

  In the silence that followed, Gore could think only of Coulson’s pulverising size, the uselessness it made of all resistance, usually.

  ‘Honest, but, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Nowt. Just the normal.’

  ‘Just you look really off, man. Peaky, like.’

  ‘I’m canny. Just fucked is all. Here.’

  Gore heard a tread on the lowest stair, and his scalp prickled.

  ‘Leave it, Stevie, just leave it there, I’ll take it up.’

  The stair creaked again, but only in relief, it seemed. Gore stepped back to the bed and slipped back under the duvet. The conversation ebbed in and out of his earshot.

  ‘Lad’s al’reet?’

  ‘Canny.’

  ‘You’re on for the shop the morra neet?’

  ‘Aye, and Saturday and all, I’ve talked to Claire.’

  ‘And you’ll do ours Wednesday? Aye? Good girl.’

  He heard the front door click once more, weighed his options, then rose, pulled on his jeans and trod down the stairs with deliberation. Lindy was curled in her armchair, chewing a fingernail, staring into space. Finally she favoured him with her gaze.

  ‘Thought you’d got off …’

  ‘No chance. You had a visitor?’

  ‘Aye. Just Stevie. You know Stevie.’

  ‘What about? This time of night?’

  She scoffed through her enervation. ‘Peak hours for Stevie, this. Naw. There’s a bar I work in some nights. In town. It’s Stevie’s place. He runs it, his lads on the door and all that.’

  ‘That sounds a bit rough.’

  ‘Naw, it’s just like a clubby sort of bar. For young uns. Ravers and that. He wanted checking I was on for doing a night in the week.’

  ‘What’s it called, this bar?’

  ‘The bar? Teflon.’

  ‘And it’s okay, is it? Okay place?’

  ‘Aye, it’s fine. Just the odd night a week I do.’

  ‘Maybe we should have a night out there. Together.’

  ‘Get away.’ Her eyes narrowed, as if hostilities had recommenced prematurely after a seasonal ceasefire.

  ‘Wouldn’t that be nice, though?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s your scene, John.’

  ‘Can’t know ’til I try.’

  ‘Look you, don’t be making promises you’ll not keep, alright?’

  ‘I thought you wanted us to do more together?’

  ‘Not like that. God. It’s where I work, man. I wouldn’t go near it otherwise. It’s not my scene neither, not any more.’

/>   ‘Well then – maybe I could just drop in at the end of your shift one night. Pick you up, bring you home.’

  ‘In what? On your bike? Two in the morning? I’m tellin’ you, John, you’d not like it. You’d stick out like an arse in Fenwick’s window.’

  ‘I’d only be there to see you, Lindy. See what you get up to.’

  ‘Well I don’t want you seeing us, not particu’ly, thanks. I’m on my bloody feet all night pulling pints for a load of jakey lads. I’d not be comfortable with you there, John, can you not see that? I’d be shy, man.’

  ‘Shy? You?’

  ‘Aye, fuckin’ me.’ She eyed him blazingly, and it crashed in on him, just how crude he had sounded. ‘I mean – what do you think, like? Do you think I’m just some trollop, John? Do you think it’s just fun and games for me all the time? Am I just here for your pleasure any fuckin’ hour of the day?’

  Gore blinked under her barrage, thrown, grasping mentally for some respite, a temporary pause, something to re-exert the force of his silence.

  ‘No, Lindy, no. I don’t think any of that. I only want us to have a few things in common. Like you say. Given the … the disparities of our lives.’

  The line of her mouth was bitter and crumpling. ‘It’s not a life I’ve got, man. I never know if I’m bloody coming or going.’ She thrust a balled fist to her lips. He moved impulsively toward her, open-armed. ‘Naw, look, just don’t, man, alright? Don’t.’

  So he lowered himself gingerly onto the arm of her chair. She did not look at him.

  ‘It’s just fucking hard sometimes. You know? So hard.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I know you’re not like a lot of fellas, I do know that, John. It’s just sometimes … you’ve stood there like a bloody statue, man. I dunno what you’re thinking. And – oh, I dunno – sometimes I just can’t be arsed.’ She gave him the full weight of her gaze. ‘What I need to know is, am I wasting my time with you?’

  ‘You’re not. Of course you’re not.’

  ‘Well then, look, you. I’m not just here to tickle your fancy. When you can be bothered. I’m not just gunna be, y’knaa, your little breath of fresh air. Liza bloody Doolittle. Alright?’