Nicola Barker - Darkmans

‘ Ah. …’ Beede suddenly caught on. He smirked. ‘So would that be Pachen with bluffs you’re playing there?’

Gaffar stared at him, blankly.

‘No bluff,’ he finally murmured, hurt.

While Beede wasn’t entirely convinced by the accuracy of this stranger’s report, he was impressed, nonetheless, by his good bearing and air of self-containment.

‘I’m afraid Kane is my son ,’ he mused quietly, almost regretfully. Gaffar’s dark brows rose, but he didn’t respond.

‘I am his father , yes?’ Beede persisted (like a rookie attending his first AA meeting; determined to confess everything). The penny suddenly dropped.

’What?’ Gaffar pointed accusingly towards the oblivious Kane. ’This big, fat, useless Yank is your seed?’

Beede nodded. ’Cruel, isn’t it?’

Gaffar cackled, ’Well your arrival home was timely. I was just planning to fleece him.’

‘Then you would’ve fleeced me ,’ Beede declared, almost without rancour, ‘because this is my flat. Kane lives upstairs.’

He pointed towards the ceiling.

As he spoke the washing machine clicked quietly on to its spin cycle.

Gaffar grinned, slammed down the Tupperware beaker (in brazen challenge), pulled a nearby stool closer and patted its seat, enticingly. ’Then let’s settle this the traditional way, Old Champion ,’ he wheedled. ‘ Come . Come and join me. Let’s play .’

Kane slept for three hours. When he finally awoke he found himself in his father’s flat, curled up on the sofa (covered in a blanket: Beede’s clean but ancient MacIntosh tartan, which had been so neatly and regularly darned over the years that the restoration work constituted more than a third of its total thread content).

The air was moist and scented (Gaffar had partaken of a shower — eschewing Beede’s carbolic soap in favour of Ecover camomile and marigold washing-up liquid). There was some kind of tangy, tomato-based concoction bubbling away on the stove.

Kane blinked, dopily, as Gaffar emerged from the bathroom in an expensive — if slightly over-sized — Yves Saint Laurent suit.

He struggled to remember the exact course of events which had led him here–

Three Percodan

Seven joints

Half bottle Tequila…

His mouth was dry–

Dry

His stomach hurt. He shook his head. He cleared his throat. He inspected Gaffar more closely (his hands flailing around to locate his cigarette packet). Who was this man, again?

’Ah, you’re awake. I just lifted £200 off your father,’ the Kurd informed him, chirpily. ‘ Father ,’ he quickly repeated. ‘ Beede , eh?’

Kane sat up, alarmed. ‘Is Beede here?’

The Kurd nodded. ’Now there’s an intelligent individual. Very generous. Very hospitable…’ Gaffar expectorated, then swallowed, then blinked and swallowed again. ’But a miserable gambler… ’ He shook his finger at Kane, warningly. ’Never, ever let the old man gamble with me again, eh?’

‘The bathroom?’ Kane rapidly threw off the blanket, still panicked. ‘Is he in the bathroom?’

‘No,’ Gaffar shook his head as he strolled into the kitchen. ‘He— uh— work. He go. From…’ he shrugged, ‘half-hour.’

‘ Jesus .’

Kane closed his eyes for a moment, in relief. ‘Thank fuck .’ Gaffar frowned, then abruptly stopped frowning as he peered into the bubbling pan on the stove.

‘So did you explain about the dogs?’

Kane’s eyes were open again.

‘ Huh? ’ Gaffar tested the edible medley (a large tin of Heinz baked beans with chipolatas). He winced–

Hot

— then sucked his teeth–

Too salty

How the English loved their salt.

‘The dogs? The…uh… Woof! On the stair,’ Kane valiantly continued, observing a cigarette-packet-shaped object in Gaffar’s suit pocket. ‘Did he see? Did you explain about Kelly?’

Gaffar half-smiled as he returned to the living area. ‘Yes I do,’ he said, with exactly the level of conviction most calculated to fill Kane with doubt. And then, ‘W oof! ’ he mimicked, satirically (with a huge grin), in a way that (Kane presumed) might be considered ‘cute’ in whichever godforsaken part of the planet he originally hailed from–

But not here

Kane rubbed his face with his hands (he was finding the Kurd rather exhausting). ’Would you get me some water?’ He mimed turning on a tap, holding a glass under.

Gaffar did as he was asked. He was accustomed to following orders. There was a kind of dignity in submission which the quiet ox inside of him took an almost active pleasure in.

‘Thanks.’

As Kane drank he assessed Gaffar’s suit.

‘Nice suit…’ He exhaled sharply as he spoke, then burped and wiped his mouth with his hand.

Gaffar nodded.

‘Where’s it from?’

‘Beede.’

Kane blinked. ‘No way.’

‘Yes.’

‘No,’ Kane reiterated firmly. ‘Beede would never own a suit like that. It looks foreign, for starters, and he religiously supports the British Wool Trade…’

Gaffar scowled. ‘ He give to me. Beede . In exchange for his losses , yeah?’

‘What is it?’ Kane casually flipped open one of the front jacket flaps (feeling the seductive, semi-hollow crackle of his Marlboro packet through the lining). Gaffar immediately slapped it shut.

‘Yves Saint Laurent,’ he announced, haughtily.

‘Not a chance, man,’ Kane snorted. ‘It’s gotta be knock-off.’

Gaffar (rising like a pike to the bait) shrugged the jacket from his shoulders and showed Kane the label.

‘ Wow .’ Kane perused the label at his leisure (it looked legitimate), while casually slipping his free hand into the pocket and removing his cigarettes.

’So there you go, huh?’ ‘So there you go,’ Gaffar echoed, scowling, as Kane tapped out a smoke and flipped it into his mouth.

He pulled the jacket back on (wincing slightly as it snagged on his neatly re-bandaged arm). Kane relaxed down into the sofa again ( matches? Lighter? ), his expression one of tolerant bemusement. As he leaned he felt something crumple behind him. He shoved his hand under the blanket and withdrew a large, slightly dented brown envelope. He stared at it for a while, frowning.

Gaffar, meanwhile, had returned to the kitchen and was dishing himself up a large bowlful of beans. In the bread-bin he’d located a half-used wholemeal loaf from which he’d already torn a sizeable portion. He balanced the bread on top of the beans and carried the bowl over to Beede’s desk, placing it down, carefully, on to the battered, leather veneer and taking off his jacket (hanging it over the back of the adjacent chair).

He sat down and began to eat, employing the bread as a makeshift scoop. Several mouthfuls in, he noticed a large World Atlas on a bookshelf close by, hauled it out, one-handed, opened it, and began casually paging through the maps.

Kane watched Gaffar for a while, patting away — like a zombie — at his pockets (impressed by the Kurd’s apparent ability to make himself feel at home). The suit (Kane wryly observed) gave Gaffar the furtive air of a man struggling to pass himself off as Minister of Sport — or Information, or the Arts — in a tin-pot military dictatorship (somewhere much too hot) after his brother, Sergio (the ambitious, pissed-up lieutenant), had shot the bastard general and promptly stepped into his highly polished, size eleven lace-ups–