***
Johnny Mondays and Jack Oddbins stood smoking at the graveside, feet away from the other mourners. The cold was intense, the sky a churning mess of thick black cloud. Oddbins’ good eye was teared up but it was the drink, the wind too. Once the rest had started back to their cars, a fleet of identikit silver saloons, Oddbins crouched to the sodden earth and scooped a handful into his palm.
“Goodbye Billy,” he said, and threw the mud onto the coffin lid. It hit like fast-falling shit after a good night out and spread out forensically over the wood. The council gravediggers were waiting in the digger, rubbing their gloved hands together and rolling their eyes; a tinny portable radio they had on in the cab was playing American Girl. Oddbins took a last drag on his smoke and tossed the butt down into the grave. “Goodbye,” he said again, and scooped another handful of dirt up, which he offered to Mondays. Mondays looked at the dirt and squinted against the wind, flicked his own smoke into a deep tea-coloured puddle, the paper unfurling from the scrap of tobacco like a fitting kid spread on a couch.
“Nah,” he said, and started to walk off. Oddbins face spewed disgust. He threw the mud into the grave a second time, less ceremonially, and grabbed Mondays by the shoulder.
“What the fuck Mondays? That’s Dryskin in there. Dryskin is dead. Does that not mean anything to you you cold hearted piece of dick?”
“Dryskin’s alive,” he said. “He’s in the car.”
“You what?” His face turned to real hurt as the realisation sank in, that or disgust. Or idiocy. Fucking last-to-know-Oddbins.
“Come the fuck on,” said Mondays, walking towards the car park.
***
He opened the boot of the shit Merc and Dryskin was inside it, an empty bottle of scotch laying next to him and sandwich crumbs all over the front of his jumper, chunks of corned beef and Branston pickle dotted among the white sliced. Mondays slapped him on the legs with the back of his hand.
“Dryskin,” he said. “Get up. It’s done.”
Dryskin opened his eyes and blinked the grey into focus, saw Oddbins, hoisted himself out of the boot with both hands gripping the car, picked some of the larger crumbs from his jumper and put them in his mouth, brushed the rest onto the floor, streaks of pickle left in their wake like raw skidmarks.
“Oddbins,” he said. “Great to see you. What’s it been, three days?”
“Why the fuck are you alive? I’ve just been to your fuckin funeral. I’ve just thrown fuckin mud on your fuckin coffin. You’re dead, Dryskin, you hear me? There was a funeral. Dead! Why didn’t either of you pricks tell me?”
“You know now,” said Mondays, looking around the cemetery. They probably weren’t safe there. Probably.
“It’s a shit story,” said Dryskin, lighting a smoke and pulling a fresh bottle of scotch from the boot of the car.
“I like shit,” said Oddbins. “So shit on me.” They embraced a little, Mondays grimacing as they did.
“Lovebirds,” he said. “We need to be gone.”
“Right,” said Dryskin.
“Let’s get back,” said Oddbins slamming the boot shut. “Shoot up.”
“Hey,” said Dryskin. “Let’s Animal Police.”
Mondays sighed and took a hit of scotch and they climbed in the car and got gone.
***
Some days earlier the Animal Police had formed a broken semi circle, Mondays, Oddbins and Dryskin, right around the bar. Oddbins felt the elbows of his denim stick to the unwiped surface, months of spilt beer and worse all left to congeal, so thick you could carve your fingernails through it. The barman’s heavy face smirked towards them from a cloud of smoke, fluming out of a prison-thin roll-up clenched filterless and flat between his tarry lips, his poached venison fingers clutching at the splintered wooden edges of the bar.
“Rumours,” said Oddbins, draining the business end of a single house scotch. It was eleven fifteen, morning, although the scotch made it taste later. Much later.
“Rumours indeed,” followed Mondays, throwing a peanut into his waiting mouth. The sound of his chewing felt hard against the struggling jukebox, all of Phil Collins’ pathos lost in poor treble, in inadequate speakers.
“What the fuck’s this about?” asked the barman, measuring himself out a couple of fingers of sauce. “I mean.” He swallowed the drink and coughed until his face turned the colour of his hands, bloody and purple. The cigarette had burnt out, unsustained by the low-end combustibility of its own paltry amount of tobacco product; his meat face was wet with tears of effort as he relit, sucking hard at the soaked mouthpart. “It’s fucking morning. This morning.”
“It is fuckin morning,” agreed Mondays. “And this fuckin morning, we heard a fuckin rumour.”
“Fuck your rumour.” The barman leaned back, folded his arms over his chest, almost pleased with himself. Mondays looked at Dryskin. He swept the scotch off the bar and slammed the barman’s face down into the spilt drink and the upset ashtray.
“Meaty bastard,” said Dryskin. “Manners take a holiday, slab of shit?” He pulled him back up and shoved him backwards into the optics. Bags of pork scratchings and Big Ds nuts fell to the floor like cheap snow.
“Who the fuckin hell are you?” he said, clutching his hands to his busted chops. “The three cunts?” Mondays threw a card onto the bar. It said Animal Police and listed their names: J. Mondays, B. Dryskin, J. Oddbins.
“Who we are isn’t much of your fuckin concern,” said Mondays. “Just tell us what we need to know and we’ll be out of your face.”
“Animal Police? You don’t look like fuckin RSPCA from where I’m fuckin slumped.”
“Shut your opening,” barked Oddbins. “And clean this fuckin bar up.”
“RSPCA,” spat Dryskin.
“Listen, bastard,” Mondays went on. “We don’t have the time to be dealing with a prick like you. You’re storage at best, bulk, an empty fuckin room. No one’s gonna trust a dumb shit like you with anything concrete. But we fuckin know you know people, people we wanna know too.”
“Storage? Do you know who the fuck...”
“Wipe the shit words out of your dirty arse mouth and listen: Murakami. Name mean anything to you? Mura-fuckin-kami?”
“Murakami, Murakami.” He smirked over his teeth, great yellow canyons. “No, I can’t say it does. My mind’s a blank.”
“That much I can see. Try harder.”
He made a show of thinking that felt gratuitous, even in that dive.
“I meant no. It means nothing to me. Definitely.”
“I think you’re a fuckin liar. Now keep thinking your tiny mind around.”
“Murakami,” said the barman, rolling the syllables around his thick tongue, savouring his opportunity. “Murakami. No. Sorry lads. Must be one of those... empty days.” He straightened himself up and measured out four house vodkas, passed one to each of the Animal Police. The four men swallowed the drinks. Mondays passed his glass back for another.
“Is that a fact?” he asked. “Murakami? Nothing? Nada?”
“Afraid so.” He passed the drink back. Mondays swallowed it alone.
“Think harder,” said Mondays. “Murakami. Try it. Cat. Called Murakami. Cat. Missing. Murakami. Feline. Stolen. Think.” Mondays slapped him, just lightly, across the face, an impulse. The barman pulled slowly backwards.
“I’d like to help you fuckers, but time’s getting on and I do have a pub to run so...”
“You couldn’t run a fuckin flex,” said Mondays loudly. The barman walked round the bar and up to Oddbins. He was tall and stood inches over him, Oddbins’ blind eye kind of uncomfortable in the dusty light.
“Don’t you fuckin dirty talk my business acumen you cunt,” said the barman, pushing Oddbins a first time, then harder a second, jerking his thumb towards the door as he did. “Now off you fuck.”
Dryskin flipped the pool table over, its few balls cracking hard against the uncarpeted floor, flecked with decades of excretion, the very fixtures coated in countless thousands of farts. Mondays swung a pool cue into the side of the barman’s face. He dropped to one knee and clutched at the damaged bone, but stood up immediately, tears streaming silently from his eyes. He didn’t seem to notice the tears. Mondays hit him again, three times, until he eventually went to both knees and Oddbins moved in to punch him.
“Alright for fuck’s sake,” shouted the barman, holding up a hand in self-defence. “Alright I’ll fuckin well talk. But what can you do for me?”
“You talking money?” asked Dryskin. The barman nodded.
“Dangerous people,” he said conspiratorially, pawing at the side of his head. “Fifteen.”
“You’ll have ten if the knowledge’s good,” said Mondays, pulling out his wallet. Empty. He felt his pockets. Appointment slip. Eleven thirty. He looked at the clock.
“Fuck. Check your pockets,” he instructed the other two. They came up with about a pound in small coins. “We’ll have to go to a cash machine,” he said.
They left the barman on his knees, and could hear him laughing over the car engine and the Norwich traffic.
***
They were back half an hour later. The barman had patched himself up some, bar snacks still on the floor. Oddbins shook his head gravely.
“Look out,” said the barman, throwing back a shot “The fuckin trinity. Father,” he said, pointing at Mondays, “son,” pointing at Oddbins, “and Holy Twat.” He looked at Dryskin, laughed himself into a suicide cough. Dryskin reached for the in tact pool cue as a throat was cleared somewhere around the edges of the room that were left in permanent darkness by the filth on the windows, and the thick cloud of dust in the feeble sunlight exposed like unwanted genitals.
“Mr Mondays,” said a voice. They couldn’t put a finger on the accent but it sounded fucking ridiculous, high-pitched and youthful. “I believe you require some information that my associate and I may be able to assist you with.”
“I believe I do,” said Mondays, nodding to Dryskin to lower the pool cue. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Allow me to introduce myself.” A kid walked out of the darkness. Not a bloke who looked like a kid, an actual kid, in a beige pinstripe suit and these tiny brown loafers. “Name’s Donnie.”
“Ho fuckin ho,” said Dryskin, yanking the pool cue back up. The barman flinched backwards.
“That’s Donnie-the-five-year-old-pimp you mug,” he said, hand up in self-defence. “Do you know who he is?”
“No,” said Dryskin. “I do the fuck not, and care even fuckin less.”
“Gentlemen,” said Donnie. “Let’s take it fuckin easy can we.”
“This is his town you poor cunt,” said the barman.
“Shut your fuckin mouth I said Jefford,” snarled Donnie. He was five years old. Mondays was surprised, he supposed, but had seen weirder shit than this.
“Murakami,” said Mondays, throwing a crumpled tenner onto the floor. “You going to talk, kid?” Donnie picked up the money and pushed it back into Mondays’ damp hand, pulled over a chair and stood on it and patted Mondays on the cheek. He tensed, Mondays, and they heard the sound of firearms – two? three? – cocking at the room’s edge. Bodyguards.
“I don’t need your money Mr Mondays,” said Donnie.
“Then what the fuck do you want?” said Oddbins. “Tell us what we need to know and we can fuck right off, everyone’s a winner, it’ll be alright on the night, stars in their eyes, family fucking fortunes. You get me?”
“It’s not that simple friend,” said Donnie. “These are dangerous men we're dealing with. Powerful men.”
“Ha, more powerful than you? A fucking kid?” Dryskin’s mirth was futile, ugly. A shot guffed out the pitch, hit Dryskin in the chest. He was down instantly. The shooter strode forward and shot two more rounds in.
“Don’t ever underestimate me Mondays,” said Donnie, lighting a smoke, straightening his sunglasses. “You two,” clicking his fingers at the barman and the other heavy, “get this one outside in the alley. Put a fucking box over him.” They did as he said, the barman’s moist arse creeping from the top of his brandless denim like a buoy on the water.
Oddbins had frozen, his mouth wide open.
“Mondays,” he said. “They’ve just…”
“I know,” said Mondays. He lit a smoke and took a bottle of brandy from behind the bar, took a deep hit. “To Billy,” he said, and took another, passed the bottle to Oddbins. He threw it against the wall.
“To Billy? Mondays, they just fuckin killed him.”
Mondays reached over the bar took another bottle, another hit, passed it to Oddbins again. He smashed it.
“Are you fuckin deaf and a cunt?” said Oddbins. “They. Killed. Him.”
“Shut. It. Up.” Mondays said. “Now. I’m handling this.”
“You’d do well to listen to your man Mondays, friend,” said Donnie. “He’s the only friend you got left.”
Oddbins sat down and sparked up, cried some, though he’d have never admitted to it. The barman came back in, whistling some theme tune. He passed a few cold beers round, stuck a straw in Donnie’s. They all of them drank pretty hard.
“Murakami,” said Mondays. “Can we talk now?”
“You know, I’m kind of sorry about your friend,” said Donnie. “I needed to know I can trust you.”
“No chitchat kid cunt,” said Mondays. “Murakami. Give me what I need.”
“There’s a guy. Goes by Parkinflap. Pimp.”
“I don’t give a shit about pimp feuds,” said Mondays.
“This isn’t a pimp feud. He does dogs.”
“Some guys have some weird fuckin tastes.”
“No, as in canines. Like, actual dogs.”
Mondays dropped his smoke and sank the last of his beer, just foam really.
“What does he want with Murakami?”
Donnie sucked at his straw for five, six seconds, slurped around the bottom of the bottle.
“Suggest you ask him,” he said eventually. “Now fuck off the pair of you.”
***
Donnie had said this Parkinflap worked the Riverside all the way between Cow Tower and Frankie & Benny’s. Mondays parked the Merc in the Zak’s car park and gave a couple of quid to the middle aged waitress scowling in the doorway, flattered her a little, alluded to futures in the way that makes some people weak at the knees. He was a people person, in that he couldn’t stand them.
“We’ll be back in a few,” he said.
“Minutes?”
“This car gets clamped,” he said, “and so do you.”
He and Oddbins went on foot along the river, past a couple of bridges and a whole bunch of scum.
“Fuck Mondays. They killed Dryskin. Just like that.”
“He was a decent man.” Mondays lit two smokes and gave one to Oddbins. “Died on the job. It’s the risk we take, you know, day in, day the other.”
“Decent man? He was our friend, Mondays. He was my fucking friend.”
Just outside of some AngloThai restaurant – everything with frites and ketchup and lettuce leaves – on a moored-up boat that they kept open despite, or because of, widespread reports of huge investment coming through corporate orgies, heavy-duty bukkake and ritualised humiliation within the vessel’s lower decks (the city’s urban regeneration targets couldn’t allow any other Riverside business to fold, not after the Costa situation and the Brewers Fayre. The council were happy to turn a blind eye to perversion if it kept the enterprise figures at the less shit end of fuck up), they found him, peddling his wares. He was a pint-sized prick in goliath trainers, highlighted hair caked to his scalp with poundshop gel, ground meth teeth like a shattered plate behind his stretched rodent lips, stinking of smoked fags and corrosive aftershave.
“Look at these two,” Parkinflap said, clapping his hands together a whole bunch of times. “You look like a couple of fun gents. Like a bit a fun. You guys wanna have some fun, huh? Have some? Fun? Good fucking fun? Gents? You gents want it? I got it all for you mates. ’satian! Cocker! Collie! Dachshund! Bloody Yorkshire! All the fuckin terriers. I got your Great Dane. Like it rough? I got your Doberman, your pit bull. Like it tight? I got your Jack Russell. Goes like the fuckin clappers, almost always shits itself. Brilliant. You fuckin name it you cunts, we fuckin got it all, all beautiful, all dog. Fucking NAME IT!”
“Murakami,” said Mondays, blowing smoke in Parkinflap’s face, which dropped to flat record-quick when he heard the name. He shoved Mondays backwards just gently.
“Get the fuck outta here,” he said, turning around to recommence his spiel on the few passing suits from the recruitment agencies up the street who were loitering a short distance away, their pockets bulging with wallets stuffed with cash, half-cut on strong lager and primed for dog cunt. “We’ve got it all ladies and gentle-fuckin-men,” he said. Mondays looked at Oddbins, who nodded and flung the pimp onto the pavement, a cautious circle around them almost instantly. Oddbins knelt on his back and held the back of his head down, his face pressed into pure floor. Mondays stamped on his arm and heard the bone snap clean and Oddbins pushed his mouth down harder into the pavement to keep the scream down.
“Who the fuck you working for?” said Mondays. “Pimp needs a pimp, so fuckin talk.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Parkinflap dribbled, half-blind with pain. “I’m self-employed.”
“Aren’t we all, in this climate?” said Mondays. He knelt down and broke two-three of Parkinflap’s fingers, one at a time.
“Oh shit!” said Parkinflap. Oddbins was digging his knee down hard into his spine. “Okay okay I’ll fuckin gabble.”
They pulled him to his feet and dragged him over to the station car park. His arm was limp at his side and he was trying to tie it up somehow with his shirt sleeve but it hurt too much for that.
“It’s a kid,” he said. “A fucking kid.”
Oddbins and Mondays looked at each other, at their watches. Past teatime. Kid’ll be home now, back by teatime or grounded for a week. They’d wait. “Motherfucker,” said Oddbins.
“Donnie, he’s called,” said Parkinflap. “You must know him. Everyone fuckin knows Donnie, and nothing happens in this city without his say so.”
“One thing does,” said Mondays, punching Parkinflap in the face.
“Sweet dreams Donnie,” said Oddbins.
***
“Look, I know all of that shit,” said Oddbins. “I was fuckin there. Question I have is, is how are you fucking here? I watched them kill you.”
“Oh that,” said Dryskin, kind of dismissively. “It was simple really. Mondays had a feeling. Ain’t that right Mondays?”
“I suppose,” said Mondays, focused on the road. Less than a mile to Mile Cross. Donnie. His grip tightened on the wheel. I’d clocked the two apes in the bar pretty early doors,” he said “saw the glint of their shooters from the lights of the Terminator Pinball. Guess I knew what was coming but wanted what that little bastard knew nonetheless. Needed him to trust me.”
“So?” said Oddbins.
“So,” said Dryskin, “when you got out of the car to go to the cash machine? Put a vest on.” He held up the bulletproof vest pierced three times, put his index finger through the holes.
“But your body.”
“Those lazy twats just dumped me in the alley out the back,” he said. “I gave it five or ten minutes and just walked away.”
“And the funeral?”
“All staged,” said Mondays past a burning smoke.
“Fuck,” said Oddbins. He opened a beer and swallowed it in a couple glugs. “And the body?”
Mondays looked at Dryskin in the mirror. “Let’s just say I didn’t want Parkinflap tipping little Donnie off.”
He pulled the car over in a two-hour parking bay a couple of corners away from the bar, cut the engine and checked his pockets for blades, smokes, for his shit, all of which he had and always did.
***
“Handful of large scotches,” said Mondays striding into the bar, alone and smoking hard. Donnie was hunched over one of the tables playing Operation, entirely engrossed in trying to extract the bread basket. “Fuckin right child,” said Mondays again.
“Mondays wait,” snapped Donnie, one hand up to stop him. “I need to fuckin…” Twat lost it, the buzzer went off, the nose lit up. “GODFUCKINDAMMIT!” Donnie screamed it out, threw the board and the ailments over his shoulder and the table over too. “You fuckin satisfied Mondays you sad sack of shit? That what your fuckin here for, to fuck up a fuckin boardgame? Fuck!”
“It’s you,” said Mondays. “You’re behind all of it. Parkinflap, the whore dogs, Murakami, Christ knows how many other AWOL pets. What the fuck do you think you doing?” Donnie smirked indifference.
“How is Parkinflap?” he said. “Not seen him around.”
“He’s been busy,” said Mondays. “But less busy than your going to be.”
The apes flanked Donnie and the barman came out of the toilet with a piss stain across the front of blue jeans. Mondays took it in. They raised their shooters up. Oddbins and Dryskin came silent through the saloon door at the side and slit the pair of their throats and they slumped without a shot popped to the floor, swimming in their own spillage.
“Fat fucks,” said Dryskin, taking the guns out of their dead hands. He shot the barman through the throat. “Holy Twat,” he said.
Donnie had taken off his sunglasses and his lip was trembling. He really was only a kid.
“I just wanted to play with them,” he said, blinking a couple of tears out. “They were so soft.” “Where are they now?” said Mondays. Donnie’s lip was shaking too hard to get anything out. “WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY?” said Mondays. Donnie pointed to the back room of the bar, the accommodation. Oddbins went through and was back a minute later. He nodded at Mondays.
“You’ve been bad Donnie,” said Mondays, grabbing hold of him by the scruff of the neck. He sat down on vacant chair and dragged the kid across his lap. “Call this little shit’s mother,” he said to Dryskin. “She can take care of this herself.” He kicked off his trainer and kicked off spanking Donnie with it, about thirty strokes in all, kid sobbing into Mondays jeans the whole way through. Poor shit wouldn’t sit down for a week.
Some half hour later his mother stormed in, usual type, screwjack bottle blonde, fag on, savoury tang of Gregg’s under her nails.
“He’s all yours,” said Mondays, the Animal Police all laden with cat transporters they were carrying to the car.
They pulled the door shut behind them, Donnie’s mother slapping him and cursing her luck and wishing God knows what amongst the dark and the death as they started loading the cats into the car, Donnie begging and pleading and praying for change, a lifetime’s grudge built in a second.
***
“So to clarify then,” said Oddbins, shoving the last of the cat transporters into the rear footwell, “why did Dryskin have to die?”
“Fuck, will you let it go?” said Dryskin. “We had to give Donnie a chance to trip himself up. Give a kid enough rope, you know? Mondays had heard talk of some kid pimp targeting pets for some time and just needed to wait until he had the opportunity to nail him. My death,” said Dryskin proudly, “was just that opportunity. The more a guy thinks he’s invincible the more flawed he becomes.”
“But this could have all gone pretty wrong,” said Oddbins. “What if they’d shot me? Or you, Mondays. We didn’t have bloody vests on.”
“Actually I did,” said Mondays, sticking the keys into the ignition. “Seemed a sensible precaution, given what I knew.”
“Fuckin terrific. What if they had shot me? I’d be…”
“Look, who gives a shit?” said Dryskin. “They didn’t. You’re not.”
“I’ll drink to that” said Mondays, rifling through a carrier bag he’d filled with bottles from behind the bar, passing one to each of the others. “Let’s fuckin go.”
They did, slowly. The Norwich traffic was a bitch.
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