The Concrete Grove

CHAPTER SIXTEEN





FRANCIS BOATER WAS used to waiting. He had been waiting for something good to happen for his entire life, and still the much-anticipated event was yet to arrive. Whatever it was – and Boater didn’t really know what that thing might be or where it would come from – he was still waiting.

“Is she gonna be long?” He stared at the skinny barman, flexing his massive chest in a way that he knew intimidated people. Boater used his bulk like other people used words: he hid behind it, communicated with the mass of gone-to-seed muscle that had turned to heavy fat. He couldn’t remember a time when he had been anything but big – but at least when he was younger, in his early twenties, his physique had been hard and knotted, like a stocking filled with conkers. Now that he was in his forties, he looked like an ageing mountain – or, as he thought on bad days, a stockpile of lard.

“I’ll just go and check.” The barman – what was his name again? Terry? Trevor? Some soft-shite student-type name, anyway – put down the glass he’d been cleaning and hurried through into the back room, where he vanished up a narrow flight of wooden stairs.

“F*cking bitch,” said Boater, necking almost his full pint of lager. He knew about bitches: knew them well, in fact. His mother had been the biggest bitch of all, and she had created what she lovingly referred to as her Own Little Monster when she f*cked with his mind during childhood. He remembered coming home often to find her rutting on the sofa with strangers; sometimes she’d even told him to stand and watch, staring at him as her latest beau thrust into her, his eyes closed and his wet mouth pressed against her neck. On these occasions, her smile was like a razor: sharp and dangerous.

Even with intelligence as limited as his, Boater knew that the woman had deliberately twisted him, turning him into what he was today: an enforcer, a man who enjoyed hitting people more than he did simply touching them; a violent sociopath more comfortable in a fight than a lovers’ embrace. Yes, even he was aware enough to realise these facts. He’d read enough true-life crime books, and seen too many documentaries on men of violence not to know the limits of his own broken mind.

He glanced around the bar, willing someone to give him a wrong glance, or speak out of turn about him to their drinking partners – a word passed behind a raised palm, a glance held too long or not long enough. But there were no takers; everyone knew who he was, and even if they didn’t, his musk was strong enough to scare them. He was a fighter, a warrior, a barely caged tiger. He was Monty Bright’s top man, and his reputation went before him like a sword thrust into the darkness.

“She’ll be just a couple of minutes.”

Boater turned back to the bar, glaring at the stupid little bastard who’d come back with the message. Boater hated the bloke’s thin forearms, his pale skin unsullied by prison tattoos, and the keen brightness in his eyes. “Another pint. Now.”

The man scurried the length of the bar to use the pump farthest from Boater. This made him smile. Other people’s fear always did.

He drank his next pint more slowly, and felt the alcohol dull his rage. No doubt it would flare up later, after a few more beers, some cheap shots, and whatever drugs he could score during the course of the evening. But for now he felt calm and easy. He was out on a promise, and the girl he was waiting for was just about worth the delay.

A few minutes later she came sashaying out from the doorway behind the bar, wearing a skirt so short that it looked more like a belt, a little leather jacket over the top of a low-cut vest top, six-inch heels, and an orange tan from a bottle.

“You look great,” he said, leaning towards her and almost swallowing her in his bulk.

“Ta. You look f*cking massive, but that’s just how I like them.” Her smile was plastic, a warped Botox grin, and her eyes were as flat and lifeless as those of a sex doll.

“Let’s get the f*ck out of here. I hate this shite-hole.” He grabbed her tiny hand, swamping it in his warm flesh, and dragged her towards the door.

“Hey, my dad loves running this place. It’s his private little hidey hole from the world. Just him and the hardcore drunks.” She began to laugh, almost manically, and Boater was confused about the reason why. What was funny about the words she’d said? He just didn’t get it, but he rarely got anything these days. Sometimes he felt that the work he did, the life he had led, made him different from everyone else. Another kind of human; one not entirely in step with the others he saw around him. A man apart; a breed not fit for the company of others.

“Where are you taking me, then?”

They emerged from the grotty little pub under the Tyne Bridge. Boater glanced up, at the steel and concrete underside, and for a fleeting moment he realised that the sight represented the prison bars of his life. Then, shaking off such idiocy, he thought about how he was going to shag this bitch until she screamed. Maybe leave her blackened and bruised; her own private tattoo, to remember him by. Where was he taking her? Right up the arse, that’s where.

“Well?” her voice was starting to get on his nerves; it sounded small and tinny, like a faulty tape recording.

“I thought we’d have a little dodge along the Quayside for an hour, and then go back to Far Grove for a few beers and a smoke with my mates. I can score some good gear there – something that’ll keep us going all night.”

She laughed again. The sound grated on his nerve endings. “I like it when you keep going all night, Fran.”

It was starting to rain; the charcoal sky looked like someone had slashed it repeatedly with a knife, showing the flat blackness beneath. The clouds were low and heavy, lumbering like pregnant beasts, and the air was turning cold. Boater ducked into a pub doorway, losing his grip on the girl’s hand for a moment, and made his way through the hot, sweaty crowd to the bar.

They had two drinks, and during the time it took them to finish he realised that he was already bored of this girl. He didn’t even know her name; she was pointless, just another way of wasting time as he waited for that good thing to appear – the event that he knew, deep inside, would never happen, not even if he lived for a million years. Where had he even met her, anyway, this plastic sex toy? He reached inside his memory and plucked out an image: she owed Monty Bright some money, and had taken the option of servicing him once a week to bring down her payments. Growing tired of her, Monty had given Boater permission to take her on, and it had all clicked into place.

It happened all the time, this trading of bodies. Monty got sick of them fast, and he passed them on to his men. This time it was Boater’s turn, but each moment he spent in the girl’s company was another inch towards the thought of killing her – one more step along the road to oblivion.

He was glad when his mobile phone rang. It pulled him up out of the swamp of his thoughts, made him realise where he was and who he was with – another empty vessel, a cast-off he was about to use as a receptacle for his dead dreams and his dull desire.

He pulled the mobile out of his inside pocket, where it was vibrating against his ribs, and flipped open the lid with his thumb. “Monty. What can I do?” he always answered the same way whenever his boss called; it was a ritual, a habit that he enjoyed. It placed him inside an ordered moment, like a well-oiled hinge in time and space, and made him feel important. ‘Doing things’ was what he was good at.

“Where are you?” Monty’s voice was calm, unhurried – that was good, at least. There could be no trouble if he wasn’t on edge.

“In some shitty pub down at Newcastle Quayside.” The sound of the revellers inside the building swelled, threatening to steal Monty’s response, but he pressed the mobile handset tight against his ear.

“Get your fat arse back here. I’ve had a phone call. We’re going to have some fun.”

He could imagine Monty’s face and over-gelled hair shining in the low light, and the way he would be leaning back in his chair, perhaps even fondling his crotch as he spoke, anticipating the night’s pleasures.

“I can be there in about half an hour. Who is it?” The crowd surged, dragging him sideways. He lost sight of the girl as a host of people spilled between them, moving in a clot towards the back of the narrow space.

“You know – that bitch from the other day. The Fraser woman. The one with the daughter. She’s decided to take us up on our offer. She wants to negotiate a deal, payment in kind.” His laughter spewed through the phone handset. It was a terrible sound, like the gurgling of a backed-up drain.

“Okay, I’ll just dump this slag and be right with you.” Her face came into view, over the shoulder of a thin black man in a sparkly shirt that made Boater want to reach out and slap him. She looked afraid, as if she knew what they had in mind for Lana Fraser. “In fact, I’ll probably be there even quicker than that.” He smiled, but somewhere inside he was aware of something tugging as it threatened to break: a small hand, tightening around his guts. The smile felt wrong, as if it had been manufactured. It didn’t quite fit his bloated face. “Just let me deal with this situation, and I’m gone.”

Static crawled along the connection, reaching for him. More small hands, but these ones made up of sound. Then, just as quickly, the static cleared. “Okay,” said Monty. “Don’t be late or we’ll get this show on the road without you.”

The line went dead but the words hung there, like objects suspended in the darkness of space.

Boater put away his mobile and finished his pint. Then he looked at the girl, wishing for a moment that he knew what to say, how to act like other people. He jerked his head, indicating that she should follow him, and then he set off for the main entrance, barging people out of his path.

“G’night, Boater,” said the tall, lean doorman who was lounging against the wall to his right. Boater couldn’t remember his name, but he might have sparred with him years ago.

Boater turned around, glared at him. A dull, uninspired rage moved through him, coiling like snakes. “What was that, fella?”

The man’s eyes flickered – whatever confrontation was brewing, he had already lost. That was all it took: a faltering glance, a tiny show of weakness. “Nothing… just saying goodnight, like.”

Boater squared up to him, straightening his back so that he reared to his full height and with his chest pushed outwards, narrowing the space between them. “No. What did you say, exactly? What were the exact words you just said to me?” He clenched his hands into fists; they were like steel, the joints between fingers sealed shut, welded with sweat.

“I… I just said ‘G’night, Boater’.” The man took a step back, his spine hitting the wall. That was another show of weakness, his second within the space of a minute; an unforgivable act of defeat that could not go unpunished.

“I’m Mr. Boater.”

The doorman nodded, looking to his friends for assistance. He raised his hands, but they were open; he held out his palms, surrendering before the fight had even begun.

Boater didn’t even need to look over his shoulder to know that the other two doormen would not intervene. He was a known face; his violence was both feared and emulated all across the region. Nobody f*cked with Francis Boater, not unless they wanted their face remade into a sculpture of flesh and bone and their family beaten like dogs. He didn’t know where to stop; violence was his fuel, his food. He lived to hurt, to cause pain. It had always been his way. That’s why Monty Bright had brought him in, trained him up, and trusted him with his life.

“That’s Mr. Boater, you piece of shit.” His hand moved so fast that he barely registered the motion. He was so keyed-up, so attuned to the moment, that he didn’t even feel the impact of the blows, just knew in his heart that they had landed true. He saw a splash of red, a blur of pink, and a flurry of spastic movement… then the man went down, hitting the floor like a felled tree.

It was over in seconds. Barely anyone had seen it happen, and those who did failed to understand what they had glimpsed: the raw, brute power of the blows, the finality of the knockout, and the strange compression of time and energy which resulted in Boater walking away the victor. He was always the victor; nobody he had ever met could even come close to besting him.

He left the building, trusting that the girl would follow. They always did. It never failed him, the allure of violence. Not with this type; not with a girl like this one, who always mistook savagery for heroism and confused a beating with a show of passion. He hated her; hated them all. These bitches, these bastards: these f*cking empty shells tottering around with nothing on their minds but badly dyed hair.

“Where are we going, Fran?”

He was facing the thick black tongue of the River Tyne, watching people caper like cartoon characters on the other side, waiting in line to enter The Tuxedo Princess, the decommissioned car ferry that now served as a grotty floating nightclub. He refused to turn around, to look at her, but she insisted. Her hand clutched his arm, pulling at him, trying to get his attention.

He focused on the boat and the fact that it was soon to be sent to Greece, where it would probably be scrapped. He’d once worked the door there, pushing around scrawny students and estate kids, flexing his muscles to make the men shake and the women giggle. The end of an era; another local landmark stripped down, floated away, soon to be forgotten. He often felt like his world, his private northeast, was being slowly demolished, bit by bit, memory by memory. Soon there’d be nothing left of the life he’d once known.

Finally, with regret, he allowed himself to be turned.

“Where to now, then?” Her eyes glittered like the stars above them; the skin of her neck was flushed a deep shade of red; her cheeks trembled. She was aroused, she wanted him.

“F*ck off, pet. I have to go somewhere.” He breathed deeply, trying to get his rage under control. Even a random act of violence had failed to clear his system, to give him that fix of blood and thunder he seemed to need more and more often these days.

“Take me with you. I’m game. Whatever you want: you, your friends. We can all have a party.” She was so eager to be abused, so keen to submit to even a hint of cruelty. What was wrong with these people? What was wrong with him?

He imagined breaking her spine with his passion. He thought about cutting off her lips with a pair of scissors. He felt sick; he was dead inside.

That coiling sensation from deep within him had returned, but this time he could not ignore it. There was something going on, a feeling that he couldn’t even explain. He felt like crying. That was why he’d given the doorman a slap: because his emotions were running away from him, breaking free, and he needed to at least try to get them back under control. He was not a man who could allow himself to experience normal human emotions. Empathy, understanding, pity, mercy, redemption… these were not for him, not for his kind. He had been flensed of such concerns, a layer of epidermis surgically removed by a blade so keen that its edge was invisible.

The girl seemed to hover before him; her feet were raised several inches off the ground. Her bottle-blonde hair shone like a promise of something better and her eyes glittered again, this time even brighter than the stars. She reached out, reached inside, and Boater felt her small hand grip his ribs, pull them apart, and expose his heart. He heard it beating, beating, and the sound was so close that it was terrifying.

Then, as a crowd of revellers spilled out of another pub and onto the pavement, yelling and screaming and chanting football songs, the moment ended. The cage of his ribs sealed shut and his heart was locked away, where it belonged, deep inside the prison cell of his body. The vision, for what it was worth, had ended.

“F*ck off,” he said, turning away and stumbling along the stained footpath like a drunk at night’s end. His cheeks were wet; he was crying, but silently and trying to pretend that he wasn’t. For a moment, someone else had taken him over – someone real, someone normal – and he hated the feelings that weakling interloper was forcing him to endure. He had been invaded by normality, and it felt… wrong, unnatural.

The Fraser woman – that bitch, just like his mother was a bitch – was really going to get something special tonight. If he had felt sorry for her before, there was no more room for sympathy now. Someone had to pay for the way he felt, and she was going to find herself impaled on the sharp end of his confusion just to settle that debt. He promised himself that it would be an experience she would never forget – even if she walked away with her body intact, her mind would be crippled by the memory.

Boater hailed a cab, flopped down onto the back seat, and told the driver to take him to the Concrete Grove, where the edge of a familiar abyss awaited his arrival.