Steven Dunne - Deity

Jock squinted at the pack and grinned. ‘Giz un.’ He reached for the pack but Brook lowered his hand.

‘When you let me in.’

Jock eyed Brook then nodded. ‘Aye. Well, one more won’t di any harm, Jimmy.’ He stood back from the window and Brook clambered in. ‘What’s yer name, Jimmy?’

‘It’s Jimmy,’ said Brook, standing upright and surveying the room. He could see clearer now by the light of an old guttering lantern in the middle of the bare room. Half a dozen uninterested, glazed expressions fixed on him briefly then returned to gape at the floor.

‘Straight up?’ Jock coughed, laughing.

As soon as Brook was in, Jock went to Brook’s hand and pulled the cigarettes from him. He yanked one out and held it to the barely alight lantern. He pulled the first drag deep into his lungs and coughed the smoke back up. ‘Lovely. Here, Jimmy. Warm yer cockles.’ Jock tossed a bottle towards him and gestured to the floor. ‘Take a pew and join the party.’

Brook examined the bottle and pulled off the stopper, taking a sniff. ‘What is it?’

Jock laughed and coughed at the same time. ‘What is it?’ he repeated, and looked round at the other bearded faces. ‘We got a conn’sir with us, gents.’ He cackled this time and took another huge pull on the cigarette.

A small man with a baseball cap flashed a gap-toothed smile back at Jock, and then narrowed his eyes at Brook. ‘What does it matter, friend?’ he said in a faint Yorkshire accent. ‘It’s barley wine, if you must know.’

‘We finished all the whisky for breakfast.’ Jock laughed again.

Baseball Cap continued to look at Brook as best he could. ‘Have a sip,’ he urged, looking over at Jock. ‘Maybe you can tell us what year it is.’ This time Baseball Cap laughed hard and wheezy and Jock joined in, shaking his head and muttering ‘What is it?’ to remind himself why he was laughing so hard.

‘Thanks.’ Brook stuck his tongue in the neck and faked a swig, as was his custom all those years ago in the Met when his old boss Charlie Rowlands passed over his flask at eleven in the morning.

‘Go on, finish it,’ said Baseball Cap. ‘Plenty more where that came from, Jimmy.’

Brook looked around at the floor and saw several empty whisky and barley wine bottles at the men’s feet. ‘You knock off an off-licence or something?’

Baseball Cap smiled thinly at him. He seemed to be the least inebriated of the group and Brook was becoming uncomfortable under his gaze. ‘Let’s just say we have a benefactor.’ Baseball Cap grinned across at Jock but fortunately his head had slumped forward into unconsciousness. ‘You know? A sugar daddy.’

‘I know what a benefactor is,’ said Brook. He scratched his itching beard again, eyes still locked on Baseball Cap. ‘You sound like you’ve had a decent education.’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Baseball Cap said. ‘You think only stupid people end up on the skids?’ He flashed a quick look round to check his roommates were too befuddled to follow. ‘Education,’ he hissed. ‘That’s where I know you from. Damen, isn’t it?’

‘The name’s Jimmy,’ said Brook softly.

‘Fuck off, Damen. It’s me. Phil.’

Brook didn’t reply but squinted through the gloom at Baseball Cap. He obliged Brook by removing his cap and brushing the lank grey hair away from his face. From nowhere two jigsaw pieces of Brook’s memory clicked together. ‘Phil? Phil Ward? My God.’

The newly anointed Phil nodded. ‘Cambridge Athletics. Alverstone’s against the Centipedes, remember? We ran against each other in the five thousand metres.’

‘Not for long,’ recalled Brook. ‘You were a lap in front of me at halfway, I remember.’

Phil looked away, pleasure tinged with sadness. He took a pull on his barley wine. ‘I was quick back then. And I didn’t smoke or. .’ He held up his bottle to save further explanation. ‘I assume you’re new to the life.’

‘Why?’

‘You look like you could interview after a wash and brush up.’

‘You don’t look so bad yourself,’ Brook lied. Without his cap he could see the ravages of vagrancy on Phil’s face — pockmarked ruddy cheeks which sank in towards his jaw, missing teeth, greasy thinning hair and the telltale jaundiced eyes which spoke of a liver failing under the assault of drink and drugs. ‘What happened? You were going to be a dentist, I seem to remember.’

‘Pharmacist,’ Phil grinned. ‘And I kinda still am.’ The black grin faded. ‘You haven’t got any rock to spare, have you, buddy? I’ll pay you back.’

‘No,’ answered Brook. ‘Fresh out. And you haven’t answered my question. What happened to you?’

Jock stirred at that moment and lifted his head at the same time as the bottle went to his mouth. ‘Nuttin’ happened,’ he mumbled after a long draught.

Phil’s eyes flicked at the door and he disentangled himself from the scrum of semi-conscious men as delicately as possible. Brook followed him quietly out. Fortunately Jock’s head had begun to loll again. Up the bare stairs and into a room that looked out over the heavily overgrown back yard. There was just a mattress in the room but the floorboards were scattered with drug paraphernalia — torn-up Rizla packets, scorched wire gauze, needles, blackened empty bottles for the crack smokers.

Brook turned back from the window as Phil closed the door behind him and stooped to pick up a needle. He held it like an axe above his head. ‘What’s happening, Brook? Is this a fucking raid? I know you’re not in the life, man. You’re fucking famous. You’re The Reaper detective. I’ve read the newspapers. I’ve wiped my arse on you. You’re still a copper, aren’t you? ’Cos if you were on the street for real, you’d know the golden rule.’

‘Golden rule?’

‘What we did no longer exists. We don’t have pasts any more. We don’t have futures neither. We live in the present. The next score, the next high. That’s all we think about in here. Dead men walking.’ He moved towards Brook raising the needle higher. ‘That answer your question, Detective Inspector?’

Brook tried not to look at the needle and held up his hands. ‘This is not a raid, Phil. And that needle’s empty.’

‘Course it’s empty, you sanctimonious cunt,’ hissed Phil, now eyeball to eyeball with Brook. Brook could smell his breath, the sweat pouring off him, the stench of death. ‘I emptied it into my veins. But what else is on there? AIDS? Hepatitis? You won’t know until the first bout of flu, baby.’

Brook urgently tried to make eye-contact. ‘Phil, you’re not going to get busted. Listen to me, Phil. You’re not in any trouble. I’m not here about the drugs. Put down the needle and let me help you.’

Phil couldn’t hold the pose; tears filled his eyes and he crumpled to the ground, dropping the needle on to the mattress. ‘I beat you by a lap and a half,’ he wailed.

Brook stooped and picked him up by both arms and forced his way into his face. ‘You probably still can, Phil. Why don’t you let me help you? I could put in a word, get you on a programme.’

‘I’ve been on programmes. They don’t help.’

‘So you just give up and stick a needle in your arm?’

‘D’uh.’

The two men looked at each other in the gloom then simultaneously broke into silent laughter which lasted more than a minute.

Phil took a deep breath and wiped the tears away. ‘’The fuck are you doing here, Brook?’

‘Looking for someone,’ said Brook after a moment. ‘I spoke to Mitch. He sent me. He was here last night.’

‘I know Mitch. He went to Millstone for a bath and a bed.’

‘He told me about Tommy McTiernan. He was here in this house.’