THE RECOLLECTION.

GARETH L. POWELL.

PART ONE.

UP AND OUT.

Who has gone farthest?

For I would go farther.

Walt Whitman, Excelsior.

CHAPTER ONE.

LONDON.

The two Serbian butchers had Ed Rico pinned to a table. They were getting ready to break his wrists with the flat edge of a meat cleaver. He'd been playing cards with them since yesterday lunchtime, in a store room above their shop in Bethnal Green. Now it was late afternoon and he couldn't afford to pay the four grand he owed them.

The room was dark and squalid, with meat-filled chest freezers humming against the walls, and a single brown light bulb overhead. The Serbs had him face down across the wooden packing crate they'd been using as a game table, his arms stretched out, hands and wrists dangling over the crate's edge. He felt the pile of betting chips digging into him through his shirt. The big guy holding him smelled of coffee and stale cigarette smoke. His name was Pavle and Ed could feel his hot breath on the hairs at the nape of his neck.

"Time's up, Ed, my friend."

Ed struggled. Through watering eyes, he watched Grigor, the smaller of the two men, hefting the cleaver from hand to hand.

"He'll be here with your money," Ed said, "I know he will."

Grigor looked up at the clock on the wall above the sink. He shook his head and his tongue clicked behind his gold teeth.

"He is already late."

He placed the cleaver carefully on the top of one of the freezers and rolled up the sleeves of his polyester shirt, like a backstreet surgeon preparing for the first incision. He had crude tattoos on both of his forearms, and fat gold rings on his fingers. His bald head shone like a bullet.

"It was a good game," he said, smoothing his thick moustache with the index finger and thumb of one hand. "And I am genuinely sorry it has to end this way."

Ed tried to pull free, but couldn't. Pavle's hands were like iron clamps.

Grigor leaned down. "Ed, you are a good taxi driver. I also know you are an artist, and for whatever it's worth to you, I very much like your work. But you must understand that this is a matter of honour."

Grigor cleared his throat and spat. Ed squeezed his eyes shut and gripped his hands into fists. His heart thumped against the wooden crate. He'd gone into this game hoping to hustle a few hundred quid for rent and art materials, but as usual, he'd pushed it too far. He'd been stubborn and reckless and dug his heels in when he should have folded. Now he could almost feel the flat edge of the knife striking his wrist, shattering the bone. Bile rose in his throat. He squeezed his hands until his fingernails dug into his palms.

This was really going to hurt.

He heard Grigor lift the cleaver. The floorboards creaked as the Serb took up position, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he prepared to deliver the first blow. Stretched over the crate, Ed winced in anticipation, every muscle tensed against the coming pain. He heard Grigor grunt as he lifted the knife high above his shoulder, ready to strike- Thump! Thump! Thump!

The noise from the door startled them all. Still holding Ed's arms, Pavle recovered first.

"For your sake, I hope that's him."

Ed opened his eyes, blinking away tears. Hardly daring to breathe, he watched Grigor lower the knife, stalk to the door and crack it an inch.

"You have the money?" The Serb demanded.

"I do."

Grigor took a step back, making way. Beyond him, standing beneath a dusty bulb on an uncarpeted landing, stood the one person Ed had been praying for: his brother, Verne.

Verne worked for the BBC as a war correspondent. He was a well-built man with thinning hair, rimless glasses and an expensive olive trench coat. He stepped into the room as if afraid of getting his shoes dirty.

"It's all here." He pulled a fat envelope from his inside pocket. "Now, let him go."

Grigor snatched the envelope and tore off the end. He thumbed through the contents and then, obviously satisfied, muttered something to Pavle. The pressure on Ed's forearms eased.

Ed slid to his feet. He felt like crying. He rubbed his wrists, reassuring himself they were still okay. His legs were shaking. He stumbled over to his brother, who caught his arm, holding him up.

"Are you okay?"

Ed gave a nod. There were tears in his eyes. He swallowed hard.

Grigor slid the money into the pocket of his butcher's apron.

"Okay then, we are quits." He brandished the meat cleaver. Its sharpened edge flashed in the pale brown light from the room's solitary bulb. "But if we ever see you or your cheating brother again, we fuck you both up, you understand?"

Verne looked down at him, clearly unimpressed.

"Perfectly."

And then they were out of the room, stumbling down the narrow stairs to the front door, Ed's weight resting on his brother's shoulders, and a wild laugh bubbling in his throat.

Half an hour later, Ed sat hunched in the back bar of a high-ceilinged Tudor pub in Holborn, a few short steps from the Chancery Lane tube station, in a carved wooden booth that reminded him of a confessional. Verne was at the counter. He came back with two pints of bitter and a glass of brandy, and pushed the brandy across to Ed.

"Drink that. It'll stop you shaking."

"Thanks." Ed did as he was told. Then he coughed, and wiped his eyes.

"It wasn't my fault," he said. "They were cheating. They kept talking in Serbian. I knew they were up to something."

Verne heaved a sigh. "Then why did you stay? Why didn't you just walk away as soon as you realised what was happening?"

Ed shrugged. He'd been pushing his luck and he knew it.

"This is typical of you, Ed. It's just one disaster after another. When are you going to grow up?" Verne took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "You know, I had to call in some pretty big favours to get that money."

"I'll pay you back."

Verne shook his head. They both knew Ed hadn't sold a painting in months, and could barely afford to buy the materials he'd need to paint new ones. Since his mother's funeral, he'd been at work on a triptych depicting the half-scavenged hulls of oil tankers being broken up by gangs of ship-breakers on the grey mud flats of Chittagong in Bangladesh. Put together, the three panels formed a panorama showing fourteen, maybe fifteen ships. Yellow sparks flew in the twilight. Gangs of thin, grimy men clambered over the wrecked ships, like crabs attacking beached whale corpses. He'd layered the mud in thick daubs of brown and grey paint. Most of the men were stick figures. It looked like hell on Earth, and of course, no-one wanted to hang it on their wall.

Ed looked miserably at the office workers crowding the bar. It was only five o'clock, but it was already dark outside and felt much later. The pub itself dated back to the 1920s; it had a high pitched roof and a long bar counter sitting beneath a row of large oak vats. Many of the fixtures and fittings had been rescued from the previous building to stand on the site, the latest in a long line of ale houses, dating back as far as the seventeenth century.

"I'm sorry, Verne. I mean it. You've always been there for me."

His brother waved a dismissive hand. Today was the first time they'd spoken since their mother's funeral, six months before.

"Look, forget the money, okay? I've got more important things to worry about right now." He replaced his glasses and sucked the froth from the head of his pint.

"I was going to call you anyway," he began. "There's something I want to ask you."

Ed raised an eyebrow. "What is it?"

Verne put his glass down and hunched forward, resting his weight on his elbows. "It's Alice. I think she's having an affair."

Ed's drink tried to go down the wrong way. He coughed and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

"What makes you say that?"

Verne looked over the top of his rimless spectacles. "I don't know. Has she said anything to you?"

Ed dropped his hands out of sight and squeezed them into fists, knuckles brushing the smooth denim of his worn jeans.

"No. No, she hasn't."

Verne's fingernails rapped against the tabletop. "She's been different since I took that assignment in Somalia. Distant. And she's been taking more photo jobs here in town. You know she kept her apartment in Peckham? She spends two or three nights a week there now. Or says she does, anyway."

He let out a long, ragged sigh.

"I know she came to see you, Ed, when I was away. Did she say anything...?"

Ed shook his head. What else could he do? He couldn't forget the night Alice had shown up on the doorstep of his first floor studio flat. She'd been lonely and restless, looking for company. He'd asked her in and opened a bottle of wine, and they'd sat drinking by the window. The night had been warm and he'd left the blinds and windows open, letting in the lights and sounds of the city.

He remembered her auburn hair and the print her lipstick had left on the wineglass.

"It's not like Verne and I don't love each other," she'd said, looking down at her drink. "It's just that we don't know how to live together."

Ed had been sitting on the edge of his work table, beside his easel.

"I'm sure you'll work it out."

Alice had her legs crossed at the ankle. She wore black stockings. Her shoe dangled carelessly.

"Sometimes I think I chose the wrong brother."

Ed shifted position. He looked down at his hands.

"Don't say that."

She twirled the stem of her wineglass between thumb and forefinger. Her cheeks were flushed.

"Why not? It's true."

His mouth suddenly dry, Ed turned to look out of the open sash window.

"Okay," he said, "but you don't have to say it."

Outside, the streets were hot and quiet, and bathed in electric orange light. He watched a car slide past, its tyres making a soft ripping noise on the warm tarmac.

Ordinarily, he would have jumped at the chance to be with a girl like Alice, married or not. She was clever and funny, and fiercely independent. And he'd known her longer than Verne had. Yet he couldn't get away from the fact that she was his brother's wife. That was one line he didn't want to cross. He didn't want to be that kind of guy.

He drained his glass and rose to get another bottle. As he did so, Alice slipped the wedding ring from her finger and dropped it into her handbag. She sat up straight and brushed a strand of auburn hair behind her ear, and started to unbutton her blouse.

"I know how you feel about me, Ed."

That had all happened over a year ago. Thinking about it now made Ed's hands shake all over again.

"She didn't-I mean, she didn't say anything to me." He could feel his cheeks burning.

Watching him, Verne's eyes narrowed the way they did when he caught the scent of a really good story. He sat back and used an index finger to push his glasses firmly back onto the bridge of his nose.

"Ed? Is there something you're not telling me?"

"No."

Verne leaned across the table, almost out of his seat.

"What is it, Ed?"

"Nothing."

Ed's eyes were watering. He bit his lip, fighting back a nervous laugh.

"I know when you're lying, Ed, and you're lying now. Look at you. Come on, if you know something, anything, you have to tell me."

In his peripheral vision, Ed saw faces turning their way, drawn to the brewing confrontation like sharks scenting blood in the water. He brought his hands up.

"Verne, please-"

He looked up and saw his face reflected in his brother's specs.

"I'm sorry, I can't. I don't know anything."