Bucket Nut Read online

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I’d rather bang heads.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Let me think about it.’

  Just then Gruff Gordon came barging in. He said, ‘What’re you girls doing in here – perming your eyelashes?’

  Can you believe the nerve of the man? I shoulder-charged him, right in the soft bit under his ribcage. And when he was outside I said, ‘See what it says on the door, bollock-drip? It says “Ladies”. Ladies is us, not you, so bugger off till we’re ready.’

  When I got back Goldie was laughing so hard there were tears in her eyes.

  ‘His face,’ she said, ‘did you see his face?’

  I hadn’t looked at his face but I guessed it must’ve been pretty funny, the way she was carrying on.

  She wiped her eyes and started to put on more eyeliner.

  ‘Will you really?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Think about the solicitors.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, looking at me in the mirror. ‘If you want.’

  I did want. She was right. I don’t know how to talk to people. I always rub them up the wrong way. I don’t know why – I only say what I think.

  And looking at her I realised why she knew so much more than I did about solicitors and things. Really and truly, she was one of them. Which made me feel weird, because she was broke and homeless, and I wasn’t.

  But now I felt light and easy when only an hour before I had felt blue and heavy. I didn’t care about Gruff Gordon and Pete Carver and the silly pantomime they were rehearsing with Goldie. I didn’t care that she was Gruff Gordon’s valet and not mine. Who needs a valet when they’ve got a friend to talk to?

  And besides, I wasn’t fighting Bombshell at the bottom of the bill any more. I was fighting Sherry-Lee Lewis, the Star of the East, who knew how to get a bit of respect. I was on my way.

  I don’t know about your life, but mine is a bit like a coin. Flip it once and it comes down heads, flip it again and it comes down tails. Heads, tails – I never know which side I’m going to land.

  I wasn’t exactly thinking about this. I was minding my own business, watching Gruff and Pete go through their moves – battle of the Titans, my arse! Battle of the bellies more like. Maybe I was enjoying feeling so good when last night I was feeling so bad, when in walked Harry Richards with his Adidas bag and my coin took another flip.

  I wish I knew who was doing the flipping – I’d have a word with him about it if I could.

  Anyway, in walked Harry Richards, with his smiley moon-face. He used to have to fight in a mask because he looked so harmless. He always has a pleasant word for everyone.

  He walked in saying, ‘Yo, Mr Deeds. Yo, Gruff, Pete. What’s happenin’?’

  And then he saw me, and his moon-face just froze. He stood stone-still staring at me. And then he saw Goldie. His mouth dropped open and his chewing gum fell out onto the floor.

  ‘For fuck-sake, Eva,’ he said. ‘I thought you was dead.’

  If I’d had any chewing gum in my mouth it would’ve dropped out too. I mean, what a thing to say.

  ‘Watcher, Harry,’ Mr Deeds said. ‘You come to work out? When you going to put your mask back on and fight for me again?’

  ‘I don’t feel so good,’ Harry said. ‘Think I’ll go off home and rest.’ And he turned round and went out the door.

  I caught him in the hall.

  ‘What’s up, Harry?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t talk to me, Eva,’ he said, pulling his arm away. ‘If you not dead you in big trouble, and I don’t want no trouble.’

  ‘What you talking about?’ I stood between him and the street and every time he tried to go around me I stood in his way.

  ‘You fuck me up, Eva,’ he said. ‘They give me hell about you an’ that little girl from the band. I didn’t know you was friends with her.’

  ‘How did I fuck you up?’ I asked. ‘You said “help out”, and I helped out. There wasn’t bugger all I could do after the polizei came except leg it.’

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have asked you to help out except I thought you was workin’ for the Chengs. And what else for does Bermuda Smith pay Mr Cheng?’

  ‘I don’t know. What does Bermuda Smith pay Mr Cheng for, Harry?’

  Harry gave me the nearest thing he had to a dirty look.

  ‘You tellin’ me you don’t know?’ he said. ‘You come draggin’ your arse in every month, bad mouthin’ all, like you was Mr Cheng himself. What you talkin’ about, girl?’

  I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that was how Harry Richards saw me. I always thought we got along.

  ‘Listen, haemorrhoid,’ I said, ‘I don’t bad mouth anyone. I’m just trying to make the rent and get by. I run errands for Mr Cheng – or I used to – but he never tells me dipsy-doodle about nothing. I’m just a round-eyed chunk of muscle to him, like you are to Bermuda Smith.’

  ‘There you go, calling folk names again,’ Harry said sadly. ‘At least I work for my own kind.’

  ‘Well, what is my own kind Harry? Tell me that. I don’t have a “kind”. So I work for anyone who pays.’

  ‘Then you should be loyal to who pays. Not go shack up with the enemy. Not bite the feedin’ hand.’

  ‘I don’t!’ I shouted. I was really shocked now. ‘I’ve never done that, Harry.’

  ‘Then what you doin’ with that little girl from Count Suckle band? I saw you, Eva. I saw you take her away. An’ she’s here now. That band. They throw gas, they wreck our club.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘What?’ And I sat down on the cold floor. I didn’t know what to think and I wanted to lie down and go to sleep.

  Harry said, ‘What you think Bermuda Smith give you to take to Mr Cheng, Eva? Every month you come, what you think you carrying? Hair oil? Bananas?’

  ‘Money, Harry,’ I said. ‘I thought I was carrying money.’

  ‘Yeah, money,’ Harry said. ‘And what sort of money was that, Eva? You think Bermuda Smith pay Mr Cheng instalments on his wife’s fridge-freezer?’

  He looked at me with pity and then walked slowly out onto the street. He stood there for a minute watching the traffic. Then he turned round and walked slowly back.

  He said, ‘Maybe you not bad, Eva. Maybe you just very, very stupid.’

  I couldn’t look him in the face. I just looked at his poor old flat feet. ‘You don’t understand, do you?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand anything.’

  He squatted down so that his face was level with mine.

  ‘Cheng send you to Count Suckle’s place with a bomb, Eva. And you still don’t understand. You supposed to be dead.’

  ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘And someone locked me in. I couldn’t open the door so I broke it and I saw it had been locked. Then the wall exploded.’

  ‘I’m sorry for you, Eva,’ Harry said. ‘You work for people you don’t know. You supposed to be inside Count Suckle’s place under all them bricks. You supposed to be two birds killed with one stone.’

  ‘Why, Harry? Why did they do that to me?’

  ‘Protection war,’ Harry said. ‘Everyone think you on the other side. Count Suckle, he want Bermuda Smith’s account. He say Bermuda Smith should stick to his own kind, not pay good money to bad Chinese. Mr Cheng say Count Suckle messing around on Cheng territory. Bermuda Smith pay Chengs for protection. Bermuda Smith stupid too. He book that band without checking where it come from.’

  ‘Who is Count Suckle, Harry?’ I asked.

  ‘Just another bad man who take in weaker folk’s dirty linen,’ he said. ‘Like Mr Cheng. Big man in community relations. Big man in entertainment, Eva. Got accounts in half the clubs in North West London. Got his own little place – but you saw that, Eva.’

  I nodded.

  ‘That little place like his home, Eva. That where he started out. Count Suckle sentimental about that little place. Cheng know that.’

  Harry was tired of squatting so he sat on the floor too. />
  ‘Bermuda Smith’s club is closed,’ he said. ‘I got no job no more.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Three people dead at Count Suckle’s place.’

  I covered my face with my hands. I did not want to hear.

  ‘Three, Eva.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘That band. They from Count Suckle. He sent them. They bring in tear gas. It was all behind the stage, Eva. The roadie threw the first can. You don’t use your eyes, Eva? Other folk use their eyes. They see you take up that little girl and go.’

  ‘But it wasn’t her, Harry. She was rat-arsed.’

  ‘Her foolishness. She had the cans in her bag. She’s that pretty-boy singer’s woman, Eva. That singer, he Count Suckle’s man.’

  ‘No.’ I said.

  ‘Your foolishness, Eva,’ Harry said. He straightened up and rubbed his thighs. ‘You just a dumb fighter like me. Got no brain in your head.’

  I said, ‘What am I going to do?’

  Harry looked away. ‘I don’t know what you going to do. Me, I’d get rid of that little girl pretty damn quick. And I take a plane somewhere. See, nobody owe you nothin’ but evil, girl. Not Bermuda Smith, not Cheng, not Count Suckle people. Lucky for you everybody think you dead.’

  Harry walked away to the street. He did not look at me. It was like he said – I was dead. I did not exist.

  But then, like the first time, he turned round and came back.

  ‘Dumb as you, Eva,’ he said. ‘I come to talk to Mr Deeds – ask him for a job.’ And he walked past me into the gym.

  I sat on the floor in the hall. I couldn’t have moved if I’d tried.

  Chapter 16

  I know how to build a house in the snow. You can make trenches, caves or igloos. You make three levels: the top one for the fire, the middle one to sleep on and the bottom one for storage and to trap cold air.

  If I was alone in the Arctic I could survive for ages. I read about it in my SAS Survival Handbook.

  ‘Mark out a circle on the ground about 4m (13 ½ft) in diameter and tramp it down to consolidate the floor as you proceed…’

  I could do that, easy.

  Harsh walked in with a couple of blokes I know. The others went straight into the gym without saying hello, but Harsh stopped and said, ‘What are you doing out here in the cold?’

  ‘Waiting for Goldie,’ I said. ‘Harsh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I talk to you? I’ve got a bit of a problem.’

  ‘Later, Eva,’ he said. ‘I’ve got work to do.’

  He followed the other two into the gym.

  The bola is a weapon Eskimos use to bring down birds. You wrap stones in circles of cloth and you knot lengths of string round each bit of cloth. Then you tie the other ends of the strings together and, shazam, you’ve got a bola. I like the bola. You don’t have to be clever to make one and you don’t have to be a great shot to aim it right. You just whirl it round your head and let fly in the general direction of what you want to hit.

  I could make a spear or a bow and arrow, but really the bola is best. I had a brilliant thought – suppose I use ball bearings? There were loads of ball bearings back at the yard.

  I got up. Harsh was right. It was pretty cold in the hall. Perhaps that was why I was thinking about Eskimos.

  You think I’m stupid. Go on – you can be straight with me. You think I don’t know what you’re thinking. You think I don’t know what’s going on.

  Well let me tell you something – Harry Richards did not say much I didn’t know already. Even while he was talking I kept saying to myself – ‘I knew that.’ Except about the band. I didn’t know about the band.

  And as for Goldie, well, she practically told me, didn’t she? She was going to tell me what was in the bag she was so worried about. She was. But we were interrupted and later, when she knew I was working for Mr Cheng she said it was drugs in her bag. She told me it was drugs but if she hadn’t been frightened of the Chengs she would have told me about the cans of gas. She would.

  Anyway, what she told me about the drugs was probably true too. She was sick, very sick, and it wasn’t just booze. I know about booze.

  Goldie didn’t lie to me. She just left a few things out. You can’t blame her for that. I left a few things out too. People leave a few things out all the time. What are you going to do about it – shoot us?

  I went back to the yard.

  I should have told Goldie where I was going but I didn’t. I didn’t because I wanted to think about what to do.

  You think I was wasting my time sitting around in the cold thinking about Eskimos. Well, that’s how much you know. I wasn’t wasting my time at all.

  If you suddenly hear that you are in danger you think about protecting yourself. If you don’t think about protecting yourself then you really are wasting your time. I am not as stupid as you think.

  On my way back to the yard I stopped off and bought a ball of nice strong string. And when I was home at the yard I collected a lot of heavy stones and handfuls of ball bearings.

  Now do you get it? A weapon the Eskimos use to catch birds in the Arctic is also used by gauchos in South America to bring down larger animals. The bola gets tangled in their legs and they fall over. And what is a human being if it isn’t a larger animal? Tell me that, or do I have to explain everything?

  I did not make one bola. I made three. Because it wasn’t as if I was only in trouble with one person. I was in trouble with just about everyone. Of course everyone that counted thought I was dead, but that wouldn’t last.

  Because I was going to be famous, wasn’t I? I was fighting Rockin’ Sherry-Lee Lewis, Star of the East. And after that, who knows. You can’t be a famous wrestler if everyone thinks you are dead. Nobody gives a wet fart about a dead wrestler unless you are someone like Milo of Croton.

  I like working with my hands. It takes your mind off your troubles. You think about what you are doing instead of about what you are thinking. But when you’ve finished what you are doing, you often find that your brain has been carrying on without you. Which is nice of it really – it gets its own work done without upsetting you.

  Brains are funny things. You’d think a brain would do what you tell it, like an arm or a leg. But it doesn’t. Sometimes it does the opposite. I don’t know about yours, but my brain has a mind of its own.

  If you don’t believe me, listen to this. When I finished making my three bolas I found I had made them about a foot shorter than the SAS Survival Handbook says. I was quite pleased with myself about that because bolas are supposed to be used in wide open spaces and there aren’t many of those in London. In fact, when I pictured Mr Cheng all tangled up and falling bum-over-bonce, it was always in his own restaurant.

  That was all right, but the funny thing was that I found I had solved the problem of how to get Simone’s address out of the solicitor. It was simple. I would get that artist dweeg, Dave de Lysle, to do it for me. He had exactly the right sort of voice. He could pronk-off to a solicitor for hours without breaking wind. All I had to do was to let him draw a couple of drawings of me. After all he did say I was ‘perfect’. And perfection has a price.

  Just to prove that some things are fated – when I went to look for the solicitor’s letter I found that Goldie had put it with Dave de Lysle’s catalogue. They were one on top of the other under the jam pot just like she said. Which went to prove that Goldie was straight with me.

  Right then and there, the thought that popped into my head was, ‘Golf balls’. First – I bet myself that Dave de Lysle and the solicitors were golfing types. Second – you could make a super-de luxe model bola with golf balls. Now tell me the brain isn’t a peculiar thing.

  All this time I had been feeling quite safe and comfortable. But I was getting prepared. I packed a bag. I replaced everything I had kept in my survival tin. And I added some tins of stew, beans and soup. Because in my head were two pictures. In one picture I was cam
ping in a derelict house eating the stew. In the other picture I was swinging the bag with amazing force and hitting someone over the head with it. Tins of stew are good for that.

  I kept looking at my London Lassassin poster. It was me, and it was not me. I am the villain – the one in the black costume – the one they love to hate. That’s me, but it’s not me. An assassin is a paid killer. I’m not. But I am. Three people dead at Count Suckle’s. I did it. And I did not do it.

  To tell you the truth I was not sure what I was. I can’t expect you to understand, so there’s no point talking about it. It made me feel bad – bad like a villain, and bad like angry and sad. But there’s no point talking about it so I won’t.

  All I wanted was to be ready.

  Someone knocked on my door and I was ready for that. I went to answer it with a bola in one hand and a tin of soup in the other. You never know who you’re going to find behind a door.

  But it was only that tart-raker, Rob from the yard, looking for Goldie. The nerve of him!

  ‘Eleanor here?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought she’d want a drink later.’

  Blokes like him take it for granted women will want what they want.

  ‘She ain’t here,’ I said.

  ‘Tell her I asked,’ he said, without a please or thank you. Which is typical.

  ‘Tell her yourself,’ I said and shut the door.

  He knocked again.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, when I opened up, ‘I asked you nice

  ‘And I told you nice. She’s out.’

  ‘When’s she coming back? Only someone’s been sniffing round. I didn’t say nothing, but she’ll want to know.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I’ll tell her myself.’

  ‘Then you won’t tell her at all,’ I said. “Cos unless I know who to look out for she’ll find another place to stay.’

  He thought about it. You could hear the gears grinding. Then he said, ‘Couple of sammies. Big bastards. None of us here’d give them the time of day.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Hour or so ago.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Thanks. I’ll warn her.’