A Fifth of Bruen: Early Fiction of Ken Bruen
- Автор: Бруен Кен
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Busted Flush Press
- ISBN: 978-0-9767157-2-6
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «A Fifth of Bruen: Early Fiction of Ken Bruen». Краткое содержание книги:
“The stairs are steep, why don’t I help you.”
She looked round, but no other offers were available.
“O.K.,” she said.
They’d just gotten to the escalator when Danny was jostled and the skinheads raced past, a breath of badness lining their speed. One roared,
“Yo’ nigger lover... give ’er a bit o’ white, John... eh.”
The girl appeared not to hear. You traveled on the Northern Line often enough, you developed a selective deafness. It was that or get a walkman... or a magnum.
Danny smiled.
“Do you like the four tops?”
“Who?”
“Motown, the hits machine...”
She looked blankly at him. He shrugged and said,
“Never no-mind.”
The skinheads were baiting a guy who was attempting to sell The Big Issue.
“Geroff... buy The Big Issue... Yah prick... hey, gis a job man.”
Danny walked straight to them, said,
“Excuse me?”
The skinheads, surprised, took a moment before the sneers set.
“Wotcha want, nigger-fooker?”
“I wonder if I could interest you chaps in some money.” He hoped his plum accent would hold. They looked at each other.
“Yea, how much then?”
“A hundred pounds, how does that sound?”
“Each.”
“Well... Oh dear, all right, a hundred each... you chaps drive a hard bargain.”
The two now leapt to suspicion.
“Hey, is this some gay-boy thing... you wanna play bumboys, is it... you get somefin’ in your arse all right mate, yea, a fookin size 12 Doc Martin.”
Loud guffaws engulfed them. Danny waited, he never expected this to be easy. Then he said,
“Good Lord, no, I’m doing a magazine on the youth of London. I’d like you two chaps on the cover.”
“Yea’... wot’s the magazine, then?”
“Borough Life.”
“Yea’, well... when do you want to do it, then, like we got fings to do man.”
Danny shot his hand out, he couldn’t resist a leap out of them. His hand narrowly missed one of their faces.
“See St. Mark’s Cathedral, over there? We’d like that as background. This evening at 7, where the benches are.” Uneasiness passed between the two, and before they could protest, he added a sweetener,
“I’ll bring along a case of beer. You chaps aren’t averse to a little drink, I hope.”
“Yea’... get special brews.”
“All right then, see you at 7.”
As Danny walked briskly away, he felt a river of sweat cascade down his back. He muttered,
“Jesus.”
The pain in his back hovered.
Danny... Danny Taylor was forty-six years old. He’d worked as a site foreman for the past fifteen. Two years ago, a fall had injured his back. An industrial tribunal had awarded him substantial damages, and he lived from that. The years on the sites had kept him fit, and his 5’10” height was free from flabbiness. Brown hair was graying fast. It didn’t give him a distinguished look, it looked like brown hair graying. A slightly crooked nose gave a hard look to his face, and he didn’t discourage it. Brown eyes with heavy laughter lines. Danny didn’t believe laughter had much to do with them. His mouth was set mainly in a hard line but transformed completely when he smiled. A rare event.
Danny owned the ground floor of a house on Vassil Road. He kept it Spartan and functional. The sole luxury was music. One wall was lined with albums. He hadn’t yet joined the C.D. revolution and felt a record belonged on a record player. Mainly, he just liked the feel of a disc and to handle the sleeve of a record. He made coffee and let the Moody Blues re-sing the seventies. A Scot on the building site said once,
“I came to London on a Sunday for a Moody Blues concert.”
... And...
As “Knights in White Satin” kicked in, the face of Kathy tried for a foothold in his mind; he blanked it and sang.
He took down the metal aerosol container and checked the spray was loose and ready.
“Test time,” he said.
In his small bathroom, he took a newly purchased sponge and set it in his bath. The sponge was shaped as a pink duck. Then he judged the distance...
“Get up close... O.K.”
And he pressed the nozzle.
Later that evening, he dressed for the meeting. A worn faded track suit that, apart from being comfortable, gave him ease of movement. Dark trainers that gripped and weighed almost nothing. He put four cans of special brew in a hold-all, and then carefully laid the aerosol alongside. Taking a deep breath, he said aloud,
“Let’s rock and roll.”
After he left, a faint hiss still came from the bathroom. Shreds of the pink duck lay in the bath. Part of the enamel from the bath’s side was fully dissolved as the last of the acid burned through. On the floor were the usual creams and cleansers. Nigh hidden among them was a full jar of Brylcreem, the old style formula. Glue like it sealed the hair when applied.
The end of March, and Danny had clocked up three events. He called them that as he refused to use the word, “Attack.” Each event, he’d used the aerosol. A white chart hung in his bedroom, and in black script it read,
1. Two skinheads
2. One punk
3. Two teenage girls
The newspapers were slow to pick up the thread. But now they’d sensed a pattern, and the “events” got to page 2 on most of the tabloids. He hadn’t made the quality papers yet, but he wasn’t in any hurry. It was time for a new weapon, and he’d gone to High Street Kensington.
“... we learnt more from a 3 minute record than we ever learnt at school.”