33

Friday 9 January

‘Yer could have fucking knocked,’ Terry Biglow whined.

Knocking had never been Darren Spicer’s style. He stood in the small room, in the semi-darkness from the drawn window blind, clutching his holdall and trying to breathe in as little as possible of the fetid air. The room reeked of ingrained cigarette smoke, old wood, dusty carpet and rancid milk.

‘Thought you was still inside.’ The elderly villain’s voice was small and reedy. He lay, blinking into Spicer’s torch beam. ‘Anyhow, what the fuck you doing here at this hour?’

‘Been shagging,’ Spicer replied. ‘Thought I’d pop by and tell you all about her, and pick up my stuff while I was at it.’

‘Like I need to know. My days of shagging are over. Can hardly get it to piss. What do you want? Stop shining that bleedin’ thing in my face.’

Spicer flicked the beam around the walls, found a wall switch and clicked it on. A gloomy overhead light in an even gloomier tasselled shade came on. He wrinkled his face in disgust at the sight of this room.

‘You gone over the wall again?’ Biglow said, still blinking.

He looked terrible, Spicer thought. Seventy, going on ninety.

‘Good behaviour, mate, yeah? I’m on early release licence.’ He tossed a wristwatch on to Biglow’s chest. ‘Brought you a present.’

Biglow grabbed it with his gnarled little hands and peered at it greedily. ‘Wossis? Korean?’

‘It’s real. Nicked it last night.’

Biglow hauled himself up a little in the bed, scrabbled on the table beside him and put on some reading glasses that were unfashionably large. Then he studied the watch. ‘Tag Heuer Aquaracer,’ he announced. ‘Nice one. Thieving and shagging?’

‘Other way around.’

Biglow gave him a thin smile, revealing a row of sharp little teeth the colour of rusty tin. He was wearing a filthy-looking T-shirt that might once have been white. Beneath it he was all skin and bone. He smelt of old sacks.

‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Very nice. Wot yer want for it?’

‘A grand.’

‘Yer having a laugh. Might get yer a monkey if I can find a buyer – and if it’s kosher and not some copy. Otherwise, a one-er now. I could give yer a one-er now.’

A monkey was £500; a one-er £100.

‘It’s a two-grand watch,’ Spicer said.

‘And we’re in a bleedin’ recession and all.’ Biglow looked at the watch again. ‘You’re lucky you didn’t come out much later.’ He fell silent, then when Spicer said nothing he went on. ‘I ain’t got long, see?’ He coughed, a long, harsh, racking cough that made his eyes water, and spat some blood into a grimy handkerchief. ‘Six months they gimme.’

‘Bummer.’

Darren Spicer cast his eyes around the basement bedsit. It shook as a train thundered close by outside, emitting an eerie howl. A cold draught of air blew through the room. The place was a tip, just like he remembered it when he had last been here, over three years ago. A threadbare carpet covered some of the floorboards. Clothes hung from the dado rail on wire hangers. An old wooden clock on a shelf said it was 8.45. A crucifix was nailed to the wall just above the bed and a Bible lay on the table beside Biglow, along with several labelled bottles of medication.

This is going to be me in thirty years’ time, if I get that far.

Then he shook his head. ‘This it, Terry? This where you’re ending your days?’

‘It’s all right. It’s convenient.’

‘Convenient? Convenient for what? The fucking funeral parlour?’

Biglow said nothing. A short distance away, across the Lewes Road, adjacent to the cemetery and the mortuary, was a whole line of undertakers.

‘Ain’t yer got running water?’

‘Course I have,’ Biglow spluttered, through another fit of coughing. He pointed across the room at a washbasin.

‘Don’t you ever wash? It smells like a toilet in here.’

‘You want a cup of tea? Coffee?’

Spicer looked at a corner shelf on which sat a kettle and some cracked mugs. ‘No thanks. Not thirsty.’

He shook his head as he looked down at the old villain. You were a big player in this city. Even I was shit scared of you as a lad. Just the name Biglow put the fear into most people. Now look at you.

The Biglows had been a crime family to be reckoned with, running one of the major protection rackets, controlling half of Brighton and Hove’s drug scene, and Terry had been one of the scions. He wasn’t a man you messed with, not if you didn’t want a razor scar across your cheek or acid thrown in your face. He used to dress mean and sharp, with big rings and watches, and drive fancy cars. Now, ruined by booze, his face was all sallow and shrunken. His hair, which used to be freshly coiffed, even at midnight, now looked more worn than the carpet, and was the colour of nicotine from some off-the-shelf dye.

‘On the nonce’s wing, were you, in Lewes, Darren?’

‘Screw you. I was never no nonce.’

‘Not what I heard.’

Spicer looked at him defensively. ‘I told you it all before, right? She was gagging for it. You can tell a woman that’s gagging for it. Threw herself at me, didn’t she? I had to push her away.’

‘Funny the jury didn’t believe yer.’

Biglow pulled a packet of cigarettes out of a drawer, shook out a cigarette and put it in his mouth.

Spicer shook his head. ‘Lung cancer and you’re lighting up?’

‘Big lot of difference that’s going to make now, nonce.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Always nice to see yer, Darren.’

He lit his cigarette using a plastic lighter, inhaled and was then lost in a coughing fit.

Spicer knelt down, rolled back the carpet, removed some floorboards, then extricated the old, square leather suitcase which had three chains around it, each secured with a heavy-duty padlock.

Biglow held up the watch. ‘Tell you what. I always been a fair man and don’t want you thinkin’ ill of me after I gone. We got three years’ left-luggage fee to negotiate and all. So what I’ll do is give you thirty quid for the watch. Can’t say fairer than that.’

‘A fucking carpet?’

In a fit of fury, Spicer grabbed Terry Biglow’s hair with his left hand and jerked him up, out of bed, and held him in front of his face, dangling him like a ventriloquist’s dummy. He was surprised how light the man was. Then he slammed a rising punch under his chin as hard as he could, with his right hand. So hard it hurt like hell.

Terry Biglow went limp. Spicer released him and he fell to the floor in a crumpled heap. He took a few steps forward and trampled out the cigarette that was burning. Then he looked around the squalid bedsit for anything that might be worth taking. But other than recovering the watch, there was nothing. Nothing at all. There really wasn’t.

Lugging the heavy suitcase under one arm, and his holdall containing all his basics, he let himself out of the door, hesitating for one moment, in which he turned back to the crumpled heap.

‘See you at your funeral, mate.’

He closed the door behind him, then climbed the stairs and went out into the freezing, blustery Brighton Friday morning.