#britgrit #noir: Solitary Man by Paul D. Brazill

SOLITARY MAN

The morning that I killed Charlie Harris, the air tasted like lead and the sky was gunmetal grey. Suddenly exhausted, I slouched in a white leather armchair and gazed out of the grubby window of the East London flat, barely focusing on the rows of concrete blocks being smudged by the winter rain. I was starting to get used to these bouts of mental and physical fatigue, putting it down to my age, but they still draped me in a cloak of gloom. My brief moment of morbid self-attention soon melted into annoyance, however. Annoyance with Charlie, of course, but with myself, more than anything else. I’d been messy.

Eventually, I turned to look at Charlie’ corpse and sighed. He was flat on his back on the fluffy white rug, where he’d collapsed five minutes before. His was a big man, dressed in an off-white linen suit and a gaudy Hawaiian shirt. His Panama hat and sandals lay on the floor next to him. He gripped a string of rosary beads in his right hand. His attire was certainly at odds with the miserable English weather but, then Charlie Harris had always been a queer fish. And now he was as dead as a duck, a bullet in his forehead and one in each eye. As was my wont.

I had an empty grave over Shoreditch waiting to be filled by Charlie’s corpse but there really was no way that I was going to be able to get his dead weight into the rackety lift, get it out of the block, and then into my car, without being seen.

The Highgate Estate, like most council estates, was full of mercenary eyes, even at this time of the morning. It was riddled with drug addicts who would sell their grandmothers to get their next fix. Or bored pensioners looking for a cheap thrill to enliven their dreary fall toward the grave.

Why Charlie had chosen to live on the 13th floor was beyond my ken. The lifts in those old blocks were notoriously unreliable and so, when they were broken, Charlie was presumably trapped on the ground floor. He was far too heavy to manage the stairs easily, that was for sure.

Still, as I looked around the spartan, pristine living room, I could see that Charlie had used his time in the witness protection programme well, cleanliness being next to godliness and all. The place seemed to have very little to signify the presence of a personality. Nothing to give away who Charlie really was, or, more to the point, the person he had been before The Ministry had ensnared him.

There was an old plasma screen television with a DVD player next to it. A stack Clint Eastwood DVDs was piled up next to them. A cursory look around the kitchen showed that Charlie had pretty much lived on take away food and pub grub. His wardrobe contained a collection of similar suits to the one that he now wore.

And then there was the safe.

When I’d walked into the flat, I had immediately spotted an old floor safe in the corner of the room. It was rusty and beaten up and looked quite incongruous. I knew I’d have to crack it if I wanted to find The Skull Ring. I sighed.

With Sisyphean resignation, I walked over and knelt in front of the safe. It looked familiar, probably from the 1960s, complete with a dial on the front. My mother would certainly have been able to give me more information about it, since she was such a safe enthusiast. But all I needed was to be able to open the bloody thing, and I really was no safe cracker despite the many arduous lessons I’d endured at the hands of my mother over the years.

I went over to Charlie’ body and checked his pockets. I took out a heavy, well-stuffed leather wallet and sifted through it until I found a sheet of pink paper with the numbers ‘666999.’ Hardly a difficult sequence to remember but it was worth a try.

I knelt down in front of the safe and groaned as my aching joints creaked. I held the dial and carefully twisted it, using the number sequence on a pink sheet of paper. I pulled on the door but it didn’t open. I sighed, glanced at the sheet of paper and put it back in the wallet. I really hadn’t expected a safe, though I really should have, of course.

Although I always hated asking for his help, I knew that I’d have to contact Lulu. It would cost me in the long run, for sure but I didn’t really have a lot of choice. I sent a text message then fished in my coat pocket for my blood pressure medication. I popped a pill out of its packet and dry swallowed it. The taste was bitter but comforting. I plugged the earphones into my iPod, put the buds in my ears and closed my eyes. I listened to Lana Del Rey sing about being young and beautiful and focused on controlling my breathing. For some time, I hadn’t been haunted by the spectres of people I’d killed. Whether or not they were real ghosts or just guilt induced illusions seemed really rather here nor there. Still, the help a ridiculously expensive Harley Street quack, controlled breathing and regular medication seemed to have given the spectres the boot, for the most part.

I was lost in the music until a loud banging and a shrill ‘HELLO LAD!’ pierced my reverie. I opened the front door to see a priest wearing black sunglasses. Unlike Charlie, Lulu had got himself in shape of late. Ever since his marriage to Ashan he’d started working out again.

‘Morning, Lulu,’ I said.

‘Morning, lad,’ said Lulu, taking off his sunglasses. His eyes were red. ‘Well, this is a bit of a surprise. You’re looking pretty bloody sprightly, considering the last time I saw you, you were knock, knock, knocking on deaths door.’

I shrugged.

‘It’s all fake news these days, isn’t it? But you should now that. The Ministry spread enough of it.’

‘What can I say?’

‘Quite a lot, usually.’

Lulu laughed. He took an energy drink from his jacket pocket, cracked it open and took a swig.

‘Had a bit of a night on the tiles?’ I said.

Lulu grunted.

‘Yes, unfortunately. I had to spend the evening at the Royal Festival Hall, enduring the tedium of a Radiohead gig just to keep the hubby happy,’ he said. ‘And then he dragged me to The Red Kimono, that shitty hipster bar in Whitechapel, for the fancy dress karaoke. Hence the clothing.’

‘And what particular tune did you massacre this time?’

‘Would you believe Bohemian Rhapsody, though even I have to admit I was far from magnifico. I thought Ashan was going to die with embarrassment.’

‘Ah, yes. He’s such a sensitive soul.’

I smiled. Ashan Khan was The Ministry’s most successful killer. Hardly a shrinking violet.

Lulu yawned and massaged his temples.

‘You look like death cooled down,’ I said. ‘Which is actually quite comforting since I always take great pleasure in someone looking much worse than I feel.’

‘Well, you know where you can stick your schadenfreude, lad.’

Lulu stuck out his tongue and I chuckled.

‘So, what’s this all about? I thought you were still on sick leave?’ said Lulu.

‘I was, but as you can see, something came up … dead.’

I sighed and nodded toward the corpse.

Lulu shook his head.

‘Ok, so who the hell is that bloke, anyway?’ he said. ‘I can’t say that he looks familiar. Unless he was in a Hieronymus Bosch painting that I once saw.’

‘I’m pretty sure you’d have encountered him over the years. It’s Charlie Harris. Former enforcer for the Robinson gang. Ring any bells?’

‘Oh, like Quasimodo, lad!’

‘I had a hunch you’d say that.’

Lulu frowned.

‘So what happened?’

‘Well, I’m supposed to croak him and then ransack the place to find a Totenkopfring?’

Lulu pulled a face.

‘And what one of them when it’s at home? Is it another brand of expensive Swedish cider that I haven’t yet tried?’

‘It isn’t. It’s Himmler’s Skull Ring. What do you know about it?’

‘Not a lot,’ said Lulu.

He took out his iPhone and tapped the screen.

‘Now, let me see,’ he said. ‘Ah, yes. The Totenkopfring was some sort of honour ring. It had a skull and crossbones design and was sometimes known as a death’s head ring. Himmler dished them out to the SS elite, back in the day. They’re collectable for sure and Himmler’s own is super collectable. Yes, it seems a lot of people really want to get their hands on Himmler’s ring.’

‘Innuendo and out the other,’ I said. ‘Anyway, the particular Skull Ring that I’m supposed to purloin was apparently given by Himmler himself to a senior member of the British government during the dying days of World War Two. It apparently contains a very … damning engraved dedication.’

‘And I’m guessing that if the ring fell into the wrong hands …’

‘The British government would be so far up shit creek, an outboard motor wouldn’t help, let alone a paddle.’

Lulu knelt over the corpse.

‘Hey, I tell you, it’s a dead-end job this one,’ he said, with a cheeky grin.

‘Arf arf, yes, very sharp,’ I said. ‘You’ll be cutting yourself if you’re not too careful.’

‘Speaking of which, do you want me to go and get my chainsaw? Sever Charlie’s contract.’

I waved a hand in the air.

‘No, not yet. Too messy. Too noisy. I’ve an empty grave waiting in Shoreditch and there a funeral booked for tomorrow so they can park someone on him.’

‘The old bunk bed trick, eh. Reminds me of Robert Maxwell … but that’s another story.’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I need a quick tinkle.’

I headed off to the bathroom. The blood pressure tablets that the quack had given me certainly did the trick but their main side effect was that I had to head off to the little boys’ room more often than not.

As I urinated I started to feel dizzy. I was feeling quite worse for wear but since I was a kick in the arse off sixty, that was to be expected. I washed my hands and returned to the living room. Lulu was going through Charlie’s pockets.

‘Anyway, that’s the main reason I called you.’ I pointed at the safe.

Lulu walked over to it and caressed it.

‘Ah, now there’s an old classic.’

‘Do you think you can manage it?’

‘Of course. Is the pope a bear?’

‘Er, no.’

Lulu chuckled and knelt down in front of the safe. He fiddled with the dial.

‘Open sez me,’ he said and opened the safe door.

‘Wow! That was bloody fast,’ I said. ‘Even for you.’

Lulu grinned.

‘It was already open, lad. You didn’t pull it hard enough, as the bishop said to the actress.’

‘Let’s have a gander inside, then.’

Lulu pushed a hand into the safe. He took out a pink jewellery box.

‘Mm, wonder how much I could get for this on the dark web?’ said Lulu.

‘Well, you know what curiosity did,’ I said, taking the ring box from him.

‘Led to many major scientific breakthroughs and innovations?’

‘Aye, there is that. Who’s the client, by the way?’

‘It’s your lot, actually.’

‘The Ministry?’

‘Yep. I got the gig via Big Mother.’

Lulu shuddered.

‘Really? I am surprised. She usually likes to keep things in-house rather than use independent contractors such as yourself.’

I shrugged.

‘Ours is not to reason why and all that,’ I said.

‘Ah, best not botch this then,’ said Lulu. ‘She’s not exactly known for her laissez-faire approach is Big Mother.’

The Ministry were Lulu’s employers. A shadier than shady government department that dated back to World War Two when they’d been known as The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Officially, they no longer existed. I’d worked for them many times and trusted them as far as I could throw Charlie Harris. If there was no honour amongst thieves, Whitehall’s spooks were even more dishonourable.

Lulu walked over to the window.

‘You know this area is known as Suicide Central, don’t’ you?’

‘I didn’t. You’re a wealth of useless knowledge, aren’t you?’

‘No, well yes, but, as my old Sergeant Major used to say, if you can’t fix it, smash it. We could just throw Charlie out of the window. I doubt he’d be missed.’

Lulu walked over to the corpse.

‘You grab the burping end and I’ll grab the farting end. Let’s get it over and done with.’

‘Do you think he’ll fit? He’s a bit on the … lardy side.’

Lulu tutted.

‘What have I told you before about your body fascism. Come on, let’s at least give it a try.’

‘Yeah?’ I said. I shrugged. ‘Actually, why not.’

I went over to the window and opened it up. The room was filled with a sharp, cold wind and heavy rain.

‘Bloody hell, lets get this over and done with,’ said Lulu.

‘Heads or tails?’ I said.

‘Oh, I’ll grab the top bit, lad.’

I bent over and grabbed Charlie by the ankles. Lulu slipped his hands under his armpits and we lifted him up. We both gasped for air.

‘Here we go,’ said Lulu.

We lifted the body and tried to push it out of the window but Charlie slipped from my hands and crashed into a glass coffee table which immediately shattered.

‘Buggeration,’ I said. ‘This is no good.’

‘So what do you want to do?’ said Lulu. ‘If you want, I can get The Ministry involved but it might get … messy.’

‘No, thanks but best not., Big Mother may not be too pleased for one thing. She must have her reasons for keeping this job off the books.’

‘So what do you want to do with Sleeping Ugly?’

I put on my hat and opened the front door.

‘Heel and toe and off we go,’ I said, as I took hold of Charlie’s ankles.

*

I stripped to the waist in the morning dew and started to dig. With great effort, I hurled Charlie’s corpulent corpse into the grave and then paused for a moment to evacuate my guts. I took a swig of tea from my thermos flask.

‘You could help you know?’ I croaked.

Lulu leant against my battered old BMW. He chuckled.

‘Aw, don’t you worry lad. I wouldn’t want to get in your way. It looks like you’re doing a bloody good job by yourself.’

He smirked and lit a joint. As I watched the spectres of smoke drift upwards, I considered my predicament and decided it was best to just get on with it.

Sweating, I finished filling the grave and walked over to the car. The frost coated grass crackled beneath my heavy feet and I opened the car boot and wiped myself all over with one of the puke coloured towels that I’d taken from Charlie’s flat.

I took out a clean shirt and put on my jacket, wiped down the shovel and placed it back against a gravestone where I’d found it. There was nobody there but me, Lulu and a chewed up old mongrel that crawled towards a crumbling mausoleum as if seeking sanctuary.

A church bell echoed through the granite winter morning as I got in the car. Lulu put out his spliff and got into the passenger seat.

‘All done and dusted, then, lad?’ he said.

‘Aye. I’ll just need to wait to hear from Loren to do the exchange.’

‘Well, since you’ve time on your hands, you can start paying me back for this little favour.’

He smiled.

‘I was waiting for that, so?’ I said.

‘Well, the first thing you can do is buy me breakfast,’ said Lulu.

*

I sat in the wan light on a damp bench outside a Cabman’s Shelter on Embankment Place as Lulu finished his joint. I was starting to feel a fair bit better than I had earlier. The rain had turned to sleet and I actually found it quite refreshing.

I sat listening to the sounds of the of the city come to life, watching its denizens. This was one of the things I liked about living in The Big Smoke. How easy it was to be anonymous.

A car pulled up nearby playing a French hip-hop song loudly. There were shouts and then it skidded off. A few minutes later, two heavily pierced, snivelling, shuffling smackheads wearing identical black hoodies dragged themselves past us. Their ratty, red eyes glared out from sweaty, spotty, green tinged skin. They were almost identical in their appearance and movements, like a mad scientist’s experiment gone badly wrong.

One of them almost slipped over as he spotted Lulu, who was still wearing his priests’ dog collar.

‘Oh, forgive me Father,’ he said.

‘Yeah, yeah, lad,’ said Lulu, making the sign of the cross. ‘Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch.’

They laughed and stepped over a tattered and torn placard that proclaimed the imminent end of the world.

‘More fake news, eh?’ said Lulu.

‘Indeed,’ I said.

A couple of ruddy faced Champagne Charlies staggered out of a nearby casino, swearing like troupers. The smackheads stepped towards them.

‘Spare us a quid, guv,’ said one of the smackheads, a tremor in his voice. ‘For a bite to eat, like.’

‘Oh, for god’s sake,’ said a toff wearing the cravat. ‘Kindly just fuck off and die, will you? I really can’t be bothered with …’

The smackhead jabbed him in the throat and punched him in the face.

‘Hey, you!’ said the toff’s friend.

He grabbed the smackhead’s arm.

The other smackhead swiftly head-butted him and within minutes, the toff and his companion were on the rain-soaked pavement, groaning with pain, blood bursting from their noses.

‘And a Merry Christmas to you, too,’ said the smackhead, as he removed the toff’s cravat. ‘Ho ho ho.’

Lulu chuckled as the smackhead put on the cravat and sauntered down the street singing ‘Last Christmas I gave you my arse and the vey next day you said you were gay …’

My stomach rumbled.

‘I can name that tune in one,’ said Lulu. ‘Come on, let’s get some grub.’

We got up off the bench and went inside the cafe. It was super-hot and smelt of hot fat. A radio played a phone in talk show. The only other customers seemed to be a raggle-taggle bunch of hippies nursing their hangovers and whispering to each other in croaky voices.

Behind the counter, Suzie Q was serving a big mug of tea to a Las Vegas era Elvis. Suzy was the last woman in London to have kept her beehive hairstyle from the fifties, and she always dyed it an array of bright colours. Today it was a Day-Glo pink.

Elvis chuckled, burped, and knocked his guitar over.

‘If it’s not one thing, it’s another,’ he said to himself, in a rough Welsh accent. ‘You just don’t know, don’t know, you just …’

‘Oh, but I do know, pet,’ said Lulu. ‘I really do.’

‘Well, look who it isn’t,’ said Suzy, as we walked through the door. ‘Tommy bloody Bennett. Long time, no see,’

I grinned.

‘Morning Suzy,’ I said.

‘I haven’t seen you around in donkey’s years, stranger,’ said Suzy.

‘Yeah, well, I’ve been abroad,’ I said.

‘Yeah? So, what are you now?’ said Suzy, filling a massive plastic tomato with ketchup. ‘A bloke?’ She laughed loudly at her own lame joke. I smiled and winked at her.

We sat down and took off our hats and coats. I took a napkin from the table and wiped the steam from the lenses of my horn rim glasses. I scrutinised a laminated menu that was stained with brown sauce, holding it by my fingertips. I quickly perused the items on the menu.

‘The usual, Tommy?’ said Suzi from behind the counter. ‘Veggie breakfast and black coffee?’

‘Yes, please,’ I said.

‘And the carnivore’s option for me, lass,’ said Lulu.

I slouched back in my chair and closed my eyes. I yawned as I listened to a news report about a link between the Royal Family, fox hunting, and Brexit.

‘It’s all bread and bloody circuses, eh?’ said Lulu. ‘Smoke and bloody mirrors.’

I smiled.

‘You could well be right,’ I said.

Elvis shuffled closer. I recoiled from his acrid breath.

‘You know, gents, they’re interesting places, these Cabman’s Shelters,’ said Elvis, taking off his wig.

‘It that right, lad?’ said Lulu.

‘It most certainly is. For example, did you know that they were actually set up at the end of the nineteenth century to give the cabbies somewhere to pop into for a mug of slosh or a bacon sarnie? The law at the time stated that the Shelters could be no larger than a horse and cart, so that they didn’t block the traffic. Oh, there is even a legend that Jack the Ripper once turned up drunk at a Shelter in Westbourne Grove at the height of his reign of terror in the East End.’

‘Is that so?’

‘It is indeed. The story goes that the teetotal cabbies convinced Jack to take the abstinence pledge and so ended his wicked ways. Once upon a time were hundreds of the Shelters across London but these days they are few and far between and usually only in the posher areas.’

‘Well, well, well, you learn something new every day,’ said Lulu. ‘Most of it shite, eh?’

He smiled at Elvis.

Suzi brought over the food and placed the plate on the table.

‘Get stuck into that little lot,’ said Suzi.

‘Don’t mind if I do!’ said Lulu, snowing salt over his food. He smothered it with brown sauce before tucking in.

‘So what have you been up to lately?’ I said.

Lulu tapped the side of his nose.

“Loose lips, sink ships,” he said.

‘Speaking of which, today is Helen Duncan’s birthday,’ said Elvis, who had been earwigging the conversation.

‘And who, pray tell, is Helen Duncan when she’s at home? The name rings a bell but then so does Quasimodo,’ said Lulu.

Elvis pulled a face.

‘Helen Duncan, I think you’ll find, was the last woman in England to be imprisoned under the witchcraft act. In 1944. She was a medium who held seances in Portsmouth during World War Two. She said that a ghost had informed her of the sinking of a al Navy battleship. Some people thought that she was a spy and, well, there were all manner of theories but that was Helen Duncan, who was born on this day over a century ago.’

‘You do say!’

‘Yes, I do.’

Lulu raised his mug.

‘Happy birthday to Helen,’ he said.

Elvis raised his mug.

‘To Helen,’ he said. ‘The only crime is getting caught!’

Lulu finished off his food and stood up.

‘Right, I’d best bugger off and get back before Ashan wakes up,’ he said.

‘And what are your plans for this gloriously grey winter day, oh gentleman of leisure and pleasure?’

‘Oh, well I’ll be indulging in a little liquid lunch with Ashan at Fortnum and Masons, would you believe?’

‘Oh, how very La di dah!’

‘Probably but I’ll be glad when he heads back to Brighton, to be honest. I really can’t keep up with his pace these days. I’m feeling my age, I really am, lad.’

I laughed.

‘Well, grandpa, I hope you’re going to get showered and changed. You’re a tad too … crumpled and … fragrant for Fortnum and Masons, if you don’t mind me saying.’

Lulu yawned.

‘Aye, I’ll have to collect my stuff from the launderette on the way home. Good job you reminded me.’

Lulu left and I sat watching the streamers of steam rise from my muddy coffee. The Café was stiflingly hot and cluttered with its usual hodgepodge of misfits, waifs and strays. Oddballs and Oddfellows. Has-beens and never-beens. The flotsam and jetsam of London life. And I felt pretty much felt at home in such places, most of the time. As snug as a bug in a rug, as my old gran would have said.

Beside me, a gangling, red-haired biker slurped his tea with all the enthusiasm of an ex-con in a bordello. Each sip was like leaky tap drip, drip, dripping throughout a sleepless night. I closed my eyes and counted to 10.

Everyone in the cafe seemed to be listening intently to another radio news report about foxes and tutting accordingly. Apparently, London was now riddled with the vermin and the grubby tabloid I had in front of me told pretty much the same tale of woe. Someone had even suggested a mass fox culling.

‘You see, that’s not a bad idea, really, is it?’ said the biker, to no one in particular. ‘but, of course, there’ll be the inevitable bleating from the bloody bleeding-heart liberals. Foxes are like dogs, a waste of space, if you ask me. Just shitting machines. The world is better off rid of the lot of them.’

I was a little surprised by the biker’s upper-class accent although I’d been around the block enough times to know that there were arseholes in all walks of life.

My smartphone pinged and I checked the text messages. There was a message from an unknown number giving me a time and a place to meet. It was certain to be from Loren LaSalle. I replied in the affirmative, relieved that everything had turned out right in the end.

I took out my smartphone and put in the earplugs. I took a sip of coffee, closed my eyes and listened to Amy Winehouse as time slipped away.

© Paul D, Brazill.

SOLITARY MAN is included in the anthology Dead-End Jobs: A Hitman Anthology, edited by Andy Rausch featuring yarns from Joe R Lansdale, Max Allan Collins, Michael A Gonzales and MORE!

And if you enjoyed this Tommy Bennett yarn, you can get stuck into Last Year’s Man, if you fancy.