"One of them sounded northern."

"Those f.u.c.kers never need an excuse."

"They had one."

"You got verbal with northern c.u.n.ts?" He pursed his lips. "Not like you, Harry."

"I never said a f.u.c.king word. They jumped me from behind. Never even seen them coming."

"So why?"

I drank the rest of the brandy, pushed the gla.s.s forward for a refill.

"He told me to stay away from her."

"Her? Who her?"

"He didn't say. All he said was, stay away from her. Otherwise it'll be Ben next time."

"Sc.u.mbag." He drained the dregs of the bottle into his own gla.s.s and said: "Katie?"

"I doubt it. She used to be engaged, some bloke who did a runner. He's hardly following her around, knocking lumps out of every bloke she meets in a pub."

"So who her?"

"Who else? Helen f.u.c.king Conway."

"You were seen? Today?"

"Maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am."

"No one's that smart, Harry. Think it was the bloke or her that sent the lads?"

"Does it matter?"

"Depends on whether you're taking it any further."

"With the Dibble?"

"It's what any law-abiding citizen would do."

"That'd be right, give the boys on the nightshift a laugh."

"Give them something to do, at any rate."

I shook my head, the brandy kicking in nicely. I was tired, sick and sore. Tired, mostly. No, sore mostly, and tired. And sick. I thought of the backroom in the office, dark, cold and empty. It made me want to puke.

"Drive me out home, Dutch. I'll sort you with a cab when we get there."

"You're going to Dee's?"

"I'm paying for the place, Dutch. Since when is it Dee's?"

"Since she keeps chucking you out if it."

I shrugged. It was too late to get into it about Gonzo. He said: "If you want to stay here, Mich.e.l.le won't mind. The bed's made up in the spare room. Don't worry about the kids, a bomb wouldn't wake them."

"Cheers, Dutch, but no. I want to die in my own bed, boots off."

I was lying, naturally. I didn't want to die in my own bed, boots on or off, or in any other bed for that matter. I didn't want to die, period, but even then I didn't know then how fragile life can be, and how permanent death is. How squalid and black and final death really is.

Dutchie rang for a cab to meet us back at the house. I limped down the alleyway at his shoulder, the side he was carrying the baseball bat. He poured me into the car and we drove for home.

"What are you going to tell Conway?" We were pa.s.sing the hospital.

"That a bottle of brandy is going on the expenses."

"You're keeping the case? What are you, f.u.c.king insane?"

"Only now and again. You'd go mad otherwise."

"Cop on, Harry. What about Ben?"

"Ben'll be okay. I'll look after Ben."

"You'll look after Ben? Check the mirror, Harry, you've got mail."

"No f.u.c.ker'll touch Ben when I'm around, Dutch. I'll be cute."

"You look cute. Cute like Quasimodo. And what happens to Ben if you're not around?"

"I don't know, Dutch. Give me a clue."

"Jesus, Harry. It's loonyf.u.c.kingtoons."

I don't like agreeing with people, it gives them the confidence to contradict you next time out, so I left that one hanging. The cab was waiting when we arrived. Dutchie turned as he was about to get in. I waited on the doorstep, not wanting to hear what he had to say.

"Let it go, Harry. It was only a hammering. Don't take it personal."

"I hear you."

"Yeah, that'd be a first."

"Take care, Dutch. And cheers."

I should have listened to Dutchie and not taken it personal. Maybe that way I wouldn't have ended up at the bottom of the river, a bullet under my ribs. Then again, maybe I'd have ended up there anyway, things have a way of working themselves out. Look at the platypus.

9.

The lights were on in the sitting room, and I could hear the low murmur of the TV. I padded upstairs to the bathroom. Hoping the mirror would hold, because I still had three of seven left to serve on my current run of bad luck.

I'd got off light. The only visible damage was a bruised nose, a cut above my right eye. I mopped up with a handful of toilet paper, stuck a Band-Aid on the cut, went back downstairs.

Denise was curled up on the couch, a duvet tucked around her legs, smoking a joint, a fire dying in the grate. She didn't offer the jay so I slumped into the armchair, wincing at the dull bolts of pain, and looked at the TV too.

She looked lifeless, sprawled out on the couch, worn, tired. Denise could sparkle when she scrubbed up but when she wasn't interested she really let things slide. Shrouding her body under baggy jumpers, hiding behind a stony mask that emphasised the lines around her eyes. Laughter lines, she called them once, but nothing's that funny. Nothing had been that funny since Ben was born, anyway. That day, Denise retreated behind a wall there was no climbing over, no going around and no tunnelling under. A damsel in distress, waiting in her tower for a handsome prince to saunter by, or maybe just a different frog.

It wasn't post-natal stress either. Denise loved Ben right from day one and without reservation. Denise just hated Ben's father, hated herself for succ.u.mbing to his soft-chat. I didn't blame her. I didn't much like Ben's father myself, and I liked him less with each day that pa.s.sed.

There was a movie on, based on a true story, Denise loved true stories, they made her feel that her own life wasn't as bad as she thought, or maybe they just distracted her from how bad it actually was. We sat in silence for about ten minutes until the ad break kicked in. When she spoke her tone was flat.

"I presume you've a good reason for being here."

"I lost my keys to the office."

"Well, I hope you're here to pick up spares."

I sidestepped it.

"I thought Gonzo might have arrived."

"You couldn't ring to find out?"

"I did ring. You weren't home."

"You couldn't ring again?"

I shrugged. She tried another tack.

"You drove in that condition?"

"Dutch drove. He wasn't drinking."

"And what happened your face?"

"I slipped in the alley. That's where I must've lost the keys. It looks worse than it is."

"Pity."

"Jesus, Dee."

She whirled, face flushed.

"Don't Jesus me, Harry! Coming in here half-p.i.s.sed, giving me grief."

"I'm giving you grief? You need to get out more."

The words were out before I realised what I'd said.

"Think I don't know that? Think I like sitting at home on my own while you're out gallivanting? Think I prefer sitting in this... this f.u.c.king hole while you're out enjoying yourself?"

"You're the one chucked me out, remember? And all I had was a couple of pints in Dutchie's."

"Really? And how is Dutchie? I haven't seen him in months. Oh that's right, I haven't been out in months."

Part of the problem was that Denise didn't have many friends. Some of them had moved away from town, some married, most of them wanted to talk about something other than their kids when they went out for a night on the tiles. There were times when Denise bordered on the obsessive when it came to Ben. It was probably because he was an only child, but the time had never seemed right for us to have another kid. The fact that we'd had s.e.x maybe five or six times since Ben was born didn't help.

"Give it up, Dee. I was always asking you to go out."

"To the pub. That's not going out, it's a life sentence."

She shook her head, disgusted, and then realised the ad break was over. We sat in silence for the rest of the movie. When it was over, and Sally Fields had finished crying and kissing the lawyer who'd vanquished the fiendish Iraqis, Denise got up. She emptied the ashtray, stood on a stool to put the joint makings on top of the bookcase, picked up the duvet.

"By the way," she said, the door half-open, "Gonzo left another message. Said he has a couple of things to do tomorrow but he'll meet you in Dutchie's, after ten."

She closed the door. I stayed sitting in the armchair, feeling like someone had just kicked me in the gut, how I'd puke if I tried to get up. Then I remembered that someone had already kicked themselves happy on my gut, how there was nothing left that nature hadn't screwed down tight. I went out to the kitchen, made a sandwich, washed it down with a pint of milk. Then I went back to the sitting room and put on some mellow trip-hop, the volume low because Denise hated trip-hop and pretty much everything else I liked to listen to. I rolled a joint, for medicinal purposes only.

Gonzo, the Eight Ball Gonzo, was coming home. I sparked the jay, waited for the lightning to crack, the earth to erupt beneath my feet.

10.

Dutchie had a theory about Gonzo. He reckoned Gonzo wasn't a bad bloke as such, it was just that the universe was too small to cope.

Halfway down the jay I took Gonzo's photograph down from the mantelpiece. I'd have binned it years before but Denise had insisted on keeping it, Dutchie playing shutterbug the night Ben was born, Gonzo flat on his back, panned out on Dutchie's pool table. Long and skinny, shoulders hunched, like he was always waiting for someone to sandbag him from behind. Laughing up at the camera, face flushed and eyes small, a jay smouldering between the fingers of his right hand, the black ball in his left.

Gonzo cut to the chase, reckoned that pool was a simple game. People complicated things, trying to play shots you'd need a degree in quantum physics to understand. He reckoned the only eight ball worth worrying about was a gram of crystal meth, which he claimed was just about enough to keep you wired for the weekend. For Gonzo, playing pool was all about getting the black ball into a certain position and letting gravity do the rest. Which was why, in the photo, his left hand was hovering over the centre pocket of the pool table, ready to drop the black. It was the only trick shot he ever learned, the only angle he ever worked out. He called it the Eight Ball Boogie.

We'd been close for brothers, close enough to want to kill one another and too close to actually follow through, although he'd tried it on one night, out back of Dutchie's place. Late enough to be getting early, a lock-in in full swing, the doors bolted. A couple of jays doing the rounds, a game of cards on the pool table, stud poker, two cards down, a three-card flop showing. I was sitting on a pair of tens, a king showing in the flop. We were the only two left in the pot, and it was all paper but not so much you could have dressed a skinny stripper. Gonzo wasn't too flush, and he needed the pot to stay in touch. He dug in the watch pocket of his jeans, dropped a wrap of silver foil into the pile.