Gary McMahon - Silent Voices

“What the fuck?”

“You don’t recognise me, do you?” Simon grabbed the kid’s face with both hands, letting his fingers sink into his stubbly cheeks. “Where’s my fucking wallet, you chav vermin?”

Realisation dawned; the kid’s eyes took on a panicked look. His mouth started to work but he said nothing.

“My wallet. Now!”

Scooby shook his head. “That’s gone, mate. We cleaned it out and stuck it in the post box in Near Grove, by the community centre. You should get it back in a few weeks.” There was a cocky little half-smile on his face.

Despite the situation, Simon did not feel as if the boy was afraid enough of him. Still, he wasn’t threatening, the people he met did not respect his aggression.

“You little bastard.” He pulled back his right fist and punched the kid in the face, just below his right eye.

Scooby cried out. He tried to fight back, but Simon held him down, shifting his body weight so that he was kneeling on Scooby’s shoulders, pinning him down.

“Fear me,” he said. “Be fucking afraid of me.” He started punching again, and he did not stop until Scooby lay still, his eyelids flickering and his lips slack and bloodied.

Simon stood up and backed away, pressing his back against the wall. What the hell was he doing, beating the kid senseless? What had come over him to make him act this way? He rubbed his face with his hands, and then wiped them on his trousers. He glanced over at Scooby, sprawled on the dirty floor, his face damp with blood.

He looked at the palms of his hands, and then at his fists. His knuckles were red and angry. He rubbed them on his trousers.

Simon went to the door, opened it, and peeked outside. The street was empty. Nobody came along here unless they were up to no good — he suspected that Scooby had come inside the burnt-out gym to smoke some weed or perhaps even to make a drugs drop.

Shit , he thought. That means someone else might be on their way here to pick up the merchandise .

He returned to Scooby’s body. The kid was stirring. He made moaning sounds as his legs twitched. Simon hadn’t killed him; that was good news, at least.

He checked Scooby’s pockets and found a large plastic baggy filled with white powder in the left hand pocket of his tracksuit bottoms. A drugs drop, then. He put the bag back in Scooby’s pocket and returned to the door. He slipped outside, closing the door behind him, and then jogged to the end of the street, where he turned back towards the Arcade. Nobody paid any attention to him, despite the fact that his jacket was dusty from where he’d leaned against the wall. He hoped that there was no blood on his face, from when he’d touched it with his hands.

As he walked, heading towards the relative safety and security of the Grove Court flats, Simon felt better about himself than he had in quite some time. That exultant moment of opportunist violence, the way he’d handled the scruffy little upstart back at the ruined and abandoned gym, had served its purpose: right now, at least until the shame and the guilt kicked in, he felt like a man again.

IT WAS ALREADY growing dark when Marty arrived at Doc’s house. He couldn’t believe it was summer; it was only seven o’clock. The darkness was creeping in early, as if trying to get a head start on the season and usher in the short days of autumn.

He looked up, at the churning sky, and realised that the light was being blocked by a dense layer of dark clouds. The day was still there; he just couldn’t see it.

Marty had a few enemies in this part of Jesmond, mostly from the days when he’d worked regularly as a pub doorman, so he didn’t come around here often. He’d learned long ago to walk away from possible friction; life was too short to risk making it shorter in a kerbside brawl. A younger Marty — maybe even the Marty from five or six years ago — would have laughed at that and called his older self a coward. But these days, he knew the score. He realised that his life had been lived far too long in the line of fire and sometimes it’s better to dodge a bullet than to try and catch it in your teeth.

Doc’s place was a three-storey Victorian terrace with a large garden and an outbuilding. There was a greenhouse tucked along by the fence. This had surprised Marty in the past; he hadn’t figured Doc for a gardener. He’d been to the house on a couple of previous occasions, having various knocks and bumps treated, but had never before turned up on such short notice.

Nobody knew the old medic’s real name. Or if they did, they hadn’t bothered to remember it. He was simply Doc, and the old man never complained about it. According to local legend, he’d been a popular ringside doctor at pro bouts back in the day, but the drink and an ex-wife with expensive tastes had wrecked him, leaving him to scrape a living by less conventional means. Marty had once been told that Doc was struck off by the Medical Council, but nobody seemed to know why.

He knocked on the door and waited. A few seconds later a light went on in the hallway, shining through the decorative glass panels in the door. A small shape shuffled towards the other side of the door and opened it.

“Thanks for seeing me,” said Marty.

“It’s no bother,” said Doc, turning to the side. “Please, come in. You know the way through, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’ve been here before, remember?”

Doc nodded, but clearly had no idea. “Come on in, then, and let’s take a look at that stab wound.”

The house was filled with old things. Expensive things. The ex-wife must not have been fully successful in her endeavours to ruin the man, if he’d managed to hold on to this house and all the possessions crammed between its walls. There was clutter everywhere; the walls were covered with paintings (real paintings, not prints), and every piece of furniture — even those in the wide hallway — looked antique.

“Nice place,” said Marty, walking through into the huge reception room.

“Thanks. I’ve lived here for a long time. It probably needs renovating, but I haven’t the heart. I enjoy age; even in myself. I was never happy as a young man.” He smiled.

There was a leather medical table with wooden drawers in the sides set up at one end of the room. Marty remembered it from his previous visits, and guessed that it was always set up for business, ready and waiting for paying customers. He knew that Doc had a little sideline tending the stab and bullet wounds of gang members and drug dealers, and was paid handsomely for his services. The wounds sustained in the kind of fights Marty took part in were probably light relief compared with that.

“Take off your shirt, Marty. Lie down over there, on the table.” Doc was scrubbing his hands at the sink against the opposite wall. He did not look up, just stared closely at his hands as he slathered them in blue fluid beneath the hot tap.

Marty did as he was told. The pain had returned, and the dressing he’d applied to the wound was coming loose. He folded his shirt and set it down on a chair, and then climbed up onto the table. He lay flat on his back, with his arms crossed over his chest. It was a death pose, and it made him feel uncomfortable. He moved his arms to rest by his sides and stared at the ceiling, the sculpted plaster rose at its centre, and the bright light that hung from it.

“So what’s the trouble?” Doc stood over him, his pale arms pink and hairless in the harsh light. “Is it infected? That’s what you suggested over the phone.” He leant over Marty’s torso. His breath smelled of whisky and ginger.

“God, man, how much gauze did you use?” He peeled back the dressing and cleaned out the wound. “What happened to the stitches? Have you been picking at these?”