Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

Then I wanted to bite down on the barrel of a gun. Because there was no beauty left in the world once the semen started to dry.

My nights were spent like this. Too many to count, far too many to admit. I had a flatmate but I waited until he’d gone to bed. Daryl spent his days watching Trisha and old movies, smoking his weight in tack. Sometimes I’d join him for the movies, the old black and whites. Burt Lancaster shaking in his boots because The Killers were after him.

Daryl: “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

And then he’d stick Lethal Weapon in the video. A lot of people forget, he told me, that Mel Gibson is the lethal weapon of the title. He’s the nutcase. He’s crazy. Look at him jump off that building; watch him try and get the stubbly guy to shoot him. He’s fucking bat-shit. Look at him in his trailer with that gun. The hollow point bullet so he’d be sure to take the back of his skull clean off.

“You know why I don’t do it? The job. Doing the job…”

Daryl: “Franco Zeffirelli offered him Hamlet because of that scene.”

(Daryl was the one who got me the gun.)

Daryl: “You’re not gonna do this.”

Me: “You don’t know that.”

Daryl: “I know it. I know you. You’re not that fucking mental. You’re trying to draw a psycho pension.”

Like a movie. He even pointed. I even turned away. The light from the telly cast dark shadows over my eyes, I’m sure. I lit a cigarette while he puffed on the joint.

I heard someone say: “God hates me. That’s what it is.”

And I said: “Hate him right back. Works for me.”

Daryl said: “You talking to the telly again, mate?”

But I was already out the door.

I’d shaved my head. Did it as a ritual, like a monk. Had a Bernard Herrman accompaniment as I did it, watching the hair fall to the floor, my skull prominent in the stained mirror. I took a Bic to the rest, made sure I was clean by the time I’d finished. She wouldn’t recognize me; nobody would. I’d spent most of my life with curtains in front of my face; now I had nothing to hide behind. I ran a hand over my head. It felt weird. And cold.

Most cities in the world, they have a porn district. There was a hooker pub up on City Road before they turned it into a media watering hole, but there was no real porn district. We didn’t have pornographers in Newcastle. Something about the Geordie accent that put people off their wanking stride.

I caught the Metro into town, sat near the back. Fat girls on a night out further up the carriage, singing a song I’d never heard of. Not that I would’ve recognized it, anyway. There was the clink of WKD and Breezer bottles, the high-pitched squeals after a dirty joke. There were plenty of dirty jokes. I pretended not to notice them, but I was watching them all the same. Thinking all of them naked and gagged and going down on each other. Thinking if they refused, there really was a gun in my pocket and I wasn’t just pleased to see them. Screaming and lapping and shuddering all at the same time.

Fuck them.

I said we didn’t have pornographers in Newcastle. That wasn’t right. We did. They called themselves something different. They toted the monikers of “indie film producer”, “adult entertainment CEO” and “erotica entrepreneurs”. Like a turd covered in gold leaf.

I got headaches. Bad ones. Like when you have too much ice cream or milk and you have to close one eye if you’re going to get any relief. We all have bloody thoughts. Morality’s like some twisted fucking thing you never get to understand because no matter what you do, there’s always someone waving a pamphlet, denouncing you as an animal. There was always someone, thought they knew better than you, lived more than you, understood the ways of the world more than you. What did they understand? They understood fuck all, just meshed their experience into some kind of bullshit ethos. The parents who despised corporations, booking their kids into a McDonalds party because they were too fucking weak to say no, had no way of explaining it. Fighting for multi-culturalism and crossing the street when they saw a gang of pakis coming.

I loved curry. Loved the pakis. Hated what they did to me.

This bloke I was going to see, he was a paki. I think. He looked like a paki, dressed like a paki, but he could’ve been Turkish, Somalian, whatever the fuck refugees we were letting into the country this fucking week without the proper papers. That’s why they bombed us, I thought. They bombed us because they could. It was the same reason the big smiling clown kept poisoning the kids, making them fat and useless. Because we were too scared to stop them.

Sometimes fear only gets you so far. Then you crawl out the other side angry as fuck.

And then you get a weapon.

Didn’t take too much persuading. Daryl got off on the idea of playing a Leo Getz (“You get it? Leo… gets!”) or Morgan Freeman in Shawshank, the kind of bloke, you want something, anything, he’s the bloke to go to. He’ll hunt it down, he’ll be your finder.

I mumbled: “This is a real badge, I’m a real cop, and this is a real fucking gun.”

And it was a weight against my rib cage, that recommissioned replica. Daryl knew this guy on the Leam Lane who sold them for a tonne apiece. I thought it was a bit steep at the time, but feeling the heft of the gun, I knew I’d spent wisely.

Daryl: “You want a proper pistol, you pay proper money. You want something to scare the fucker with, then you’re better off with a replica.”

Me: “I don’t want a fucking replica. I want a real one.”

Got off the Metro at Monument. I had to walk through the Saturday night orgies on the streets. Orca girls in tight tops that didn’t cover a thing. Screaming, screeching in the shadows, like a feeding frenzy. The low humping noise of a dozen blokes in that same check-shirt-gold-chain combo coming up the street. Red faced, stinking of alcohol, itching to slap some cunt because he’s looking at them fuckin’ funny, like he’s a fuckin’ poof or a fuckin’ nonce or something.

I kept my head down as I walked. Started towards the Bigg Market and the crowds got heavy, packed together. A sudden yell at my left and I saw this young lad get dragged out of a club across the ground. He was shirtless. The bouncer dragging him made sure he went over a pile of broken glass. Planted a fist in the lad’s throat.

“I TELT YEH NOT TO FUCKIN’ COME BACK, YA CUNT!”

Put my head down again, cradled the gun in my coat. The heavy throb of bass underfoot, I ducked into an alley, passed by All Saint’s Church, lit up. Fucking incongruous to have a church here. I crossed myself, pushed down to the Quayside. There was a God. He was away on business, but he’d come back.

What was it? The meek shall inherit. Aye. The meek and the armed.

Up towards City Road now, where the office buildings jostled for attention with the council flats. Building new student accommodation up here, another push to get the undesirables out. Ship ‘em off to the West End. Let ‘em breed like the fucking pigs they were, then shut ‘em in and drop the pellets.

A ratty woman with knock knees under a street light. She had a mobile pressed against her ear.

“I telt yeh yeh had to pick us up, didn’t I telt yeh… ya fuckin’ cunt, divven’t… divven’t LIE to us… yez’re a fuckin’ LIAR… a FUCKIN’ LIAR CUNT… how, me fuckin’ battery’s gannin’, it’s gannin’… pick us up… yer not at yer mam’s, I fuckin’ knaa yer not at yer mam’s… CUZ I PHONED YER FUCKIN’ MAM THAT’S HOW I FUCKIN’ KNAA… Aye… Aye… pick us up… pick us up… fuckin’… howeh, pick us up, ya cunt… me fuckin’ battery… PICK-US-UP.”