An excerpt from my forthcoming novella...
"Could I be so bold and say new contemporary British fiction doesn't get any better than u.v.ray?"
- Sean McGahey, The Beat.
Denzil and Glue had an appointment to meet a bloke known as Priest in there. Priest was said to be the hardest man in Birmingham. No question. He used to drink in another criminal riddled pub called The Lyndhurst but hadn’t been there since shooting off the owner’s nose in a brawl. So now he’d shifted camp to the Trade Winds. Priest was a nut case. And he had a sidekick called Little Jimmy, a rough little bastard who’d just done a stretch in Winson Green for blagging a Securicor van.
The thing was, Glue did much of his business in the Trade Winds. In fact more money swapped hands for drugs in that pub than it ever did for drink. Priest had informed Glue that Little Jimmy had a Browning 9mm to sell. Glue had said he might know someone who was interested, and set up the appointment with Priest and Little Jimmy.
So we jumped in the Merc and headed over. Much of the furniture in the Trade Winds had been reduced to matchwood. Most of the floor tiles were shattered, making the floor like walking on rubble. We found Priest and Little Jimmy sitting in the corner. A handful of locals stood at the bar emitting an oppressive wave of tension that hung in the air with all the cantankerous despondence of a pig awaiting slaughter. It was like that feeling you get before a thunder storm. You can sense it coming. As far as I could tell this heavy presentiment of aggravation was the Trade Wind’s defining characteristic and perpetual state of affairs.
I had a bleached blonde bob and was wearing high Cuban heels with tight leather jeans and a striped Breton top. They were staring at me and there was no doubt: I could foresee whisperings of trouble.
We made our way over to Priest’s table and we all sat down. Priest’s massive hands rested on the table; he had F.U.C.K and T.I.T.S tattooed across the knuckles of each. Denzil didn’t look an inch out of place in there. I could feel the wall of hostility around Priest. He was big, bald and broken nosed. “Who’s this fucking muppet?” he demanded. I told him my name was Mark.
“I wasn’t speaking to you, sweetness,” he said.
Any hope of me finding sanctuary at his table was dashed.
He looked at Glue and jerked his head towards me, “Who is it?”
“He’s okay, Priest. He’s sound.” Glue told him.
Little Jimmy also glared at me suspiciously. He had beady eyes. They were the silvery pinpoint eyes of a pigeon. He was small and haggard looking, his face contorted into a perpetual paranoid grimace. He had dirty brown hair and a tattoo of a swallow on his neck.
Priest turned his bulging eyes back on me. “Fuck off and sit somewhere else while the men here talk business.”
I nervously surveyed the room. There wasn’t really much choice. There was a bar stool free at the opposite end of the bar to where the group of staring men were standing gripping their pints. I made for the stool and sat down. I asked for a whiskey. The owner had a shaved head and a glass eye. I’d been wondering why Denzil wanted the gun. But I hadn’t said anything. I was still listening out to pick something up but nothing became apparent.
One of the men walked over showing rotten, black teeth. He had a scar running horizontally across his face. He grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. “Only fucking queers have hair like that,” he said. Then, cocking his head to one side, he faked an intense frown of puzzlement and asked, “Are you a fucking man dressed as a woman, or a woman dressed as a man?” Everyone in the room, including the owner behind the bar, laughed.
Priest looked over and gestured with his thumb, “Kosh, leave her alone. You don’t hit a lady.” I had to hand it to them: these people definitely had a sense of the theatrical.
This place wasn’t full of criminals, junkies and prostitutes. This was the underbelly of a society where a completely different sub-class of human being thrived, like an infestation of termites embedded deep in the pores of an animal’s flesh.
I drank my whiskey and waited for the “men over there” to conclude their business. They had their backs to the room and were all talking quietly into the corner with their heads down. Eventually they stood up. Denzil had what I presumed was the 9mm wrapped in a gingham cloth, the type your grandmother used to wash the dishes with. As I got up to leave, Priest waved me over. He leaned close and said quietly, “I saved your skin this time, son. But if I see you in here again you might not be so lucky, if you get my drift.”
Little Jimmy continued staring me down with his unblinking pigeon eyes, he had a derisive smirk of satisfaction wiped across his face. He was itching, just itching, for me to say one fucking word so that he could see me get a kicking. He was a little bastard.
“Jesus H. Christ, Glue. You didn’t tell me we were going to a closet fucking homos pub,” I said, when we were safely back in the car. Denzil in the back seat began to laugh, “Ha ha ha...
closet... ha ha ha... homos.” He had the gun still wrapped up in the cloth on the seat beside him. “Ha ha ha...closet homos... Ha ha ha ha. Serious, man.”
Glue crashed Denzil and me a cigarette and held the glowing car cigarette lighter for each of us in turn. “Yeah,” he said, reaching in his pocket and tossing a small packet in my lap.
“But without these people the world would stop turning.” He pointed at the packet and winked. “That’s the stuff you asked for. And it’s on me.”
“You sure it’s going to be okay... I mean, safe?”
“Let me tell you summat. Priest’s a sound bloke. Straight down the line. He didn’t mean you any harm, nah, he was just testing your mettle. Trust me, Mark, if he’d have meant you any harm you’d be in fucking traction now.”
“Why’s he called Priest, anyway?” I asked.
Glue turned to me and gave me a look as if the answer should be obvious, “Because if you get on the wrong side of him you’ll be administered the last rites.”
Denzil laughed until his face went red. When he’d stopped laughing he unwrapped the Browning and gripped it in his right hand. The chamber was empty. He lined up a target somewhere outside, squinting along the barrel, and fired off three imaginary rounds.
