Rhinoceros 10
As Alan drove through the estate he told himself, with crystal clarity, that he was a rational being, and that his actions were his own. Nobody was making him do this. It was Friday. Everyone got off early on a Friday, avoiding the Head by taking the side door under the stairs. They dashed home to their families, or to the pub with old colleagues, or caught an early showing of a film followed by a pizza. Alan would normally shower and go for a walk with his music in his ears, and then eat while waiting to see if Annie had included him in her social arrangements. In fact he could be at home right now listening to Laurie Taylor on the radio, a coffee at his elbow, the Sheffield Telegraph on his lap.
And yet he wasn’t. His car was not even heading the right way. Instead he was driving around the frustrating curvature of a 1930s housing estate street, scanning the names of avenues and closes, trying to find one called Lombard. The impetus for doing this was entirely the product of his internal reasoning. The processes were mysterious, but nevertheless ultimately under his direction. Even as he parked his car on Lombard Close and climbed out he was aware of the straightforward alternative of reversing his actions – perhaps with an apologetic shrug at the neighbour watching him closely (“Oops, wrong street, silly me.”) And yet, whilst weighing up the balance of improbabilities, and considering the preposterousness of the journey he was embarked upon, still he walked slowly down the Close, counting the numbers down, 17, 15, 13, 11… The houses were nondescript, unable to provide Alan with any clues as the nature of his destination, or factors influencing the success or failure of his operation. There was no way of reading the brick and glass countenances for a sign that he should turn back, cut his losses, open the box and take the money. So he carried on.
Of course he had some ideas about his destination. PC Scammell was probably fairly accurate in his description. “Out and out thugs.” Well, OK, but Alan worked with people described thus everyday. You just had to give them a little of what they wanted, and then retrieve from the transaction what you needed. This wasn’t courage, just pragmatism. Even as he contemplated all this, skirting around two small children throwing rocks into a puddle, and then stepping over a dog turd with someone else’s shoe print in it, he knew that at this late stage he could still turn back. It would, after all, be so easy to find an excuse. 7, 5, 3. There it was. An ordinary council house. Front garden a wasteland of car tracks and a few bricks attempting to fill the puddles. Curtains drawn upstairs and down. A blank-faced house. A show of indifference.
A mangy ginger cat sidled up to him. A magpie looked down from the guttering. The remains of an overgrown privet swayed in the breeze and interfered with his jacket. But none of them persuaded Alan to behave differently. He knocked.
A square built, shaven-headed man opened the door. He was wearing overalls without a shirt, showing arms that had once worked out or worked the dodgems. Alan put on his most appeasing face and looked at a folder he happened to be carrying with him and then pretended to look for a number on the house.
“Yeah?”
“Is it Mr Mitchelson I’m speaking to?” He really should’ve rehearsed his opening line.
“What if it is?”
“I wonder if I might come in. I have some information… that is to say, I’m hoping we can help each other out.”
“We don’t need no help.” Mr Mitchelson took a step outside to fulfil his obligations to territory and status.
Alan stepped back. “Ryon Walker sent me,” he blurted out. He realised how panicky he sounded – not the impression of implacable assuredness he had intended at all – and he took a deep breath back towards assuredness.
“You don’t look like no friend of his.”
“Well, more an associate, actually.” Alan avoided the word ‘teacher’ for reasons his mind calibrated but didn’t explain.
“Who is it?” A woman’s voice from within the darkened house. “Is it about our Gary?”
“Shut it,” the man shouted over his shoulder. He was exercising his knuckles, Alan noticed. He turned back to Alan. “I don’t trust you.”
So this is Gary’s father, thought Alan. Okay. “Look, I know this sounds strange, but I might be able to help you. I’ve got some information that could, possibly, save you a lot of trouble. And,” Alan rushed ahead, like a car jumping a red light, “And your son might have something I want – I’ll pay good money for it.” Alan gasped in relief mixed with fear.
Mr Mitchelson looked up and down the street. “I still don’t trust you. Come in.”
Alan walked down the hallway, bare except for a whimpering pit bull in a cage, and into the front room. Either this room was very small or very full. Three huge TVs occupied corners and walls around the curtained window, each switched on to a different channel but all, thankfully, with the sound muted. The rest of the room was some kind of holding station for an impressive array of electrical goods in their boxes, stacked to picture rail height and three deep in places. That was it, really; except for the three large, frowning men sat on a sofa and an armchair in the middle of the room looking intently at Alan.
“Hi,” Alan said, as carelessly as he could muster in the circumstances. Which was not carelessly at all. “I was hoping we could talk in private.”
“This is private,” stated Mr Mitchelson flatly.
“Is it the Social again?” said a woman with a lot of make-up, lacquered hair in an arrested tsunami, and enough jewellery to open a market stall.
“Dunno yet. Start talking,” and Mr Mitchelson looked expectantly towards Alan, along with everyone else. He was calm yet ready, a centre of power. Alan felt trapped already, as though by an invisible force.
“I may have made a mistake.” Alan found himself swallowing saliva.
“I think you have. A bit late now, though, eh?” Mr Mitchelson took a step forward. Alan noticed that one of the tattoos on his arm depicted, for some reason, a 1950s American car.
“It’s just that I have, or rather had, a valuable item, well, valuable to me, and I overheard… I was told, that it might… It might have ended up here.”
A long stretched out pause, about as comfortable as toothache. The three men continued to stare at Alan with faces that suggested dogs waiting for a bone.
One of the TVs showed a war somewhere, soldiers behind a broken wall in bright sunlight staring into the distance for an unknown assailant.
“So what you are suggesting is that I somehow have your stolen property.” Mr Mitchelson bit a piece of skin from a fat finger and spat it onto the carpet at Alan’s feet.
“Well, not necessarily stolen. I mean, I might have lost it, it could be a simple mistake.” Alan was aware already that words were quickly losing their currency.
“Who put you up to this?” Mr Mitchelson was moving his arms, making some anticipatory movements, as though he knew the conclusion of this conversation already and was privately acting it out.
“So he’s not from the social, then?” asked the woman.
“Shut up, will yer? I smell a rat here. I’m no fucking thief, mister. I’m a businessman.”
Alan missed the irony of this statement in these surroundings. But in hindsight, he located the turning point of the meeting to the following words that, almost of their own volition, spilled out of his mouth. “You need to be careful. I think the police are about to visit.”
Instantly, as though pulled up by the same set of strings, the three silent men stood up and moved towards him. Goodness, Alan just had time to think, they’re very tall. Mr Mitchelson indicated that the woman should leave, giving a cursory nod of his head. Alan tried to use his eyes to plead with her, an act of unqualified futility.
There was a moment when it seemed so certain to Alan that nothing was really going to happen, that the threat, like the arms race, would remain just that. And it was with this reassurance in his mind that Alan began to say something but it turned to a gurgle as a hand grabbed him by the neck. He instinctively held the arm with both hands. It felt like iron. The four men now seemed to act in concert. His arms were speedily and violently wrenched behind his back and held in an efficient shield. Even in the flash of surprise and pain Alan had time to appreciate the quality of their restraint techniques. An arm now wrapped itself around his neck and squeezed, anaconda-like.
Mr Mitchelson moved to within Alan’s limited viewpoint. His face was a ill-lit mask of amusement and contempt. “So, where you from?”
Alan tried to speak through the bristles of a fat arm. “I – “
His stomach suddenly caved inwards with a mighty burst of gut-wrenching pain, and as the arm was removed from his neck he stooped forward as far as his arms would allow and gasped. Tears stung his eyes, and he felt saliva dribble down his chin. He wheezed and tried with all his strength not to cry. He blinked several times.
One of the men behind him was chuckling quietly. Another still held his arms so that they were almost dislodged, pointing straight down behind his back. He pulled Alan upright and Alan winced. Mr Mitchelson moved closer to Alan. He was, if anything, slightly shorter than him. He spoke quietly, but each word was precisely etched, like an epitaph on a gravestone. “I don’t fucking care who you are, or where you are from, fucker. But if you show your ugly little fucking face anywhere near my house again I will deck you so hard you won’t even know what fucking year it is. You got that, fucker?”
He was very close now. Alan could smell him, smell the dog ends and sweat and ingrained brutality. He managed to gasp, “Yes.” Then Mr Mitchelson gobbed in his face. Alan felt the strings of phlegm stretch across his eyes and work their way into his rasping mouth. Oh god, he thought, just get it over with. Two hands clamped his shoulders and he winced, awaiting the next onslaught. But then, without further ceremony, Alan found himself propelled, with astonishing speed and ease, out of the room, down the hallway, past the now shaking dog, and out of the still open front door. He landed on his knees and hands, and as the door slammed shut he remained there, retching and gasping, bringing up drools of salty bile to mix with his hot tears.
After an indeterminate time he painfully climbed onto his feet and stumbled forward, holding onto a gatepost without its gate for support. The cat watched him but kept its distance. The two children, rocks in hand, watched him with calm contempt. Another period of time passed by when the street seemed to rock gently around him and shift in and out of focus, then he steeled himself to set off for his car. And even as he limped away he could hear the ingomious sound of ribald male and female laughter from within the house, followed by the scudding of small rocks along the pavement at his staggering feet.
***
Clever, really. No injuries. Not a bruise. Sure, his innards were rearranged, he felt permanently nauseous, and his arms felt like they needed repositioning back into their sockets, but there was nothing to show for it. Not externally, anyway.
Alan thought that maybe he should go away. There was a friend in Huntingdon he been promising to visit for over a year now. But really he just wanted to curl up in a ball on his bed with the lights out and cry rivers of bitter tears. He really didn’t want to remember anything of the events of the evening, but a series of impressions flashed across his memory as though to taunt him. Involuntarily, he remembered the streets growing dark, seen through the steering wheel as he drove in an agony of stomach cramps. His head filled with the sound of his own retching and spitting in the car, the impression of Mr Mitchelson’s spit always there on his lips. There were car horns sounding as he weaved through an uncertain world of obstacles. Passers-by seemed to be pointing and gesticulating wildly at him, and a wing mirror was banging against the window of his car and swinging crazily on a single cable. A pavement was jerkily mounted by his own car, with him in it, apparently driving it, a tree swaying in mockery, and a deafening squeal of tyres. Then there was a blur of street lights down drunken roads, all looking the same, going round in circles until he finally found a way out of the estate. And then a final dash across a bus lane on the ring road.
His car, somehow released from its previous adventures, became inexplicably lodged in a shrub by the car park of the block of flats that he, Alan, lived in. And then the long and blinding stairwell to his flat. All of this to a constant backdrop of noises that he thought was the wind in the trees and the tyres on the road until he realised that they were the sounds of his heart and the sobs choking in his mouth. And then, in the bathroom, his pale face with reddened eyes, his forehead resting on the cool rim of the toilet. And his bed, deep in the gloom and stale smell of his flat, the dark and longed-for womb of numbness and emptiness. And then nothing.
