19. Courtesy of Eugene O'Neill

Chatter, up to a point

Friday, while the Boyd were snoozing on that sofa

“He’ll know,” says Paulie, pointing at Hersh as he steps up to the bar, digging deep into his pockets for his cash. “Who did it?”

“Who did what?” says Hersh.

“Haven’t you heard?” says Alden, plonking the pint on the bar.

“You mean Aaron?” says Hersh.

“What else could he mean?” says Archie, hunched at the bend.

“They’ve sold out of Welsh Dragon over the market,” says Hersh with a sniff, pushing his change back into his jeans. “Could be that.”

“Not fuckin cheese, mun,” says Archie.

“We’re talking murder,” says Rod with a raise of one eyebrow.

“Fuckin murder,” says Archie.

“A lot of disappointed faces over the market,” says Hersh.

“Not fuckin cheese, mun,” says Archie.

“Who killed Aaron Bailey?” says Paulie, his little round bald head furrowing at his own question, and he glares down into his pint.

“I hear it was an accident,” says Marv who’s just come in. Alden has already poured Marv’s pint and put it up on the bar and Marv hands over a fiver. “Cheers,” he says, and takes a slug.

“Cheers,” says Alden handing over Marv’s change.

“Not a fuckin chance,” says Archie about the accident claim.

“No chance,” agrees Rod.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” says Archie.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Marv says with a shrug. “Just saying what I heard.”

“Funny bloke, you are, eh?” says Archie.

“I’m just saying: what do we know? What have we got to go on?” says Marv, leaning one arse cheek on a bar stool.

“It was Aaron fucking Bailey,” says Archie. “I mean, if you wanted to make a whodunnit movie you couldn’t have more suspects.”

“Did you do it, Arch?” says Paulie.

“I didn’t. I wouldn’t have the energy.”

“What about motive?”

“Nor that, really. I should lead with that if the police come asking, eh?”

“I would if I were you.”

“Do you think they’ll come asking?” says Marv.

“I doubt they’ll be bothered,” says Paulie. “Scoop him up and have done with it.”

“He won’t be missed,” says Alden.

“Could have been anyone,” says Hersh.

“Well, not anyone,” says Paulie. “It wasn’t me.”

“But it could have been,” says Alden.

“But it wasn’t,” says Paulie.

“But it could have been,” says Alden.

“I heard he was terrified of that footbridge going over the tracks,” says Med who’s just come in to start her shift and is taking her coat off and stuffing it in the cupboard behind the bar where the coats get stuffed.

“Yeah, so what was he even doing out there?” says Archie.

“Somebody lured him,” says Med.

“Something got him out there,” says Paulie.

“Unless his body was dumped out there.”

“How would anybody do that without being seen?” says Hersh. “Guy was a unit.”

“The guy was a unit,” says Marv, who himself is the least unit-y of all the boys at the bar at this moment.

“Maybe he got loaded and just wandered up there and fuckin dropped dead,” says Rod.

“Nah, he was around this morning,” Archie says. “Whistler sold him a pocket of bacon. He was right as rain.”

“Right as rain as he ever was, the fuckin knuckle-dragger,” says Paulie.

“Hey, he wasn’t as dumb as he was stupid-looking,” says Alden.

“He was no Nobel prize winner,” says Marv.

“Hardly makes him a minority figure in this esteemed company,” says Hersh.

“Just saying, he could have wandered up there,” says Marv.

“Nah, he was lured,” says Med.

“Of course, he might have fallen because he was shit scared,” says Marv.

“So, what was so important he couldn’t go around?” says Alden. “Not like he’d never been over that side of the tracks before. He just didn’t like the footbridge.”

“He always had some woman on the go,” says Raul who’s been at the back end of the bar passing some bootleg CDs around he’s ripped of Napster and now is back at the bar sorry to have been missing out on the gossip already. “I reckon his missus finally did him in.”

“How would she get him up there?” says Paulie. “She couldn’t even get him to come home.”

“Nobody ever knows the truth of a relationship,” says Alden. “What goes on behind closed doors.”

“It had to be drug connection,” says Med.

“He outlived his usefulness,” says Rod, nodding knowingly.

“It’s not Goodfellas,” says Hersh.

“Ah, yes, we always forget about your experience in this field,” says Rod.

Hersh half-smiles. There’s some laughter.

“You’re all overthinking it,” he says. “Accidents happen.”

“What are you, the fuckin chief of spoiling our fun?” says Archie.

“Don’t mean to spoil your fun, boys,” Hersh says and raises his palms in surrender.

“Game?” Paulie says to Archie as he raises his finger to Med for another pint.

“Go on then,” Archie says, and as Med pulls a lager with one hand she opens a drawer behind her with the other, takes out a small oblong box and a pack of cards and puts them down on the bar next to the pint.

“I heard he got wrecked with Moses and Vardamanie last night and he was out looking for them this morning,” says Raul.

“Well, they didn’t kill him,” says Rod.

“Could have been anyone,” says Paulie.

“Not them, though. Nah. They wouldn’t have it in them,” says Rod and he finishes his pint. Without a word, Med pulls him another.

“Not jealous, are you?” Med says to him.

“Jealous that they did it?” says Rod.

“Jealous that they might have it in them,” says Med, and cocks him a half-smile.

“Cheeky fucker,” Rod says and hands Med some shrapnel.

“Could be a serial killer, of course,” says Marv.

“How do you work that out?” says Med, dropping Rod’s cash into the till.

“Wouldn’t it be the twist,” says Hersh, “that there are a thousand suspects with good reasons to chuck Aaron off a bridge and it turns out he was a random, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it was some freak with a cage in his basement?”

“Wouldn’t fit Aaron in a cage,” says Rod.

“Exactly,” says Marv. “So, had to kill him and move on.”

Paulie and Archie have been arranging their paraphernalia – beers and fag packets and Archie’s folded newspaper sporting the scribbled half done crossword – and are now set up for a game of crib, pegs slotted into the oblong box and cards dealt.

“There is a good point in there somewhere,” says Paulie from over the top of his fanned playing cards. “That it could just be random. He could have been killed by someone just passing by.”

“Do we even know he was thrown off the bridge?” says Hersh.

“How else would he get down there?” says Raul.

“I’m just saying… do we know he wasn’t hit by a train?” says Hersh.

“Sure somebody would have said if he was scattered all across the place,” says Paulie.

“Splat,” says Raul.

“Eh?” says Archie.

“Splat more than a scatter,” says Raul. “He’d be like a burst bag of offal.”

“Literally,” says Marv.

“Eh?” says Archie.

“That’s all we are really, isn’t it?” says Marv. “A bag of offal.”

“True though,” says Med. “You can see the scene from up on the hill. Look right down on the tent and it doesn’t look quite so grizzly as all that.”

“You can see him?” says Marv.

“No,” says Med. “That’s what the tent is there for.”

Marv has been intently watching Paulie and Archie since they started their game, and now they are five or six hands into it, he says, “This game makes no sense.”

“You just don’t know how to play it,” says Paulie.

“Because it makes no sense,” says Marv.

“To you,” says Paulie. “It makes no sense to you.”

“You just fuckin make it up as you go along,” says Marv. “I know games, and you’ve not done the same thing twice.”

“I can show you how to play if you like?” says Paulie.

“Aha, not a chance. And then you win. It’s all a scam to get money out of me.”

“Please yourself,” says Paulie.

“Don’t waste your fuckin time on him, Paulie,” says Archie.

“I think it was a hit,” says Raul.

“A hit?” says Alden.

“Yeah, I reckon. Got too big for his boots.”

“If we were going to shoot everybody round here for that,” says Hersh, “this would be a very quiet pub.”

“A very quiet pub,” says Med.

“It would be empty at this very moment,” says Alden.

“Yeah, but none of us are too big for the boots our drug dealer bosses gave us,” says Marv.

“Somebody sent somebody down,” says Raul.

“And now that somebody will be long gone,” says Archie without taking his gaze off his cards.

“They’ll never fuckin catch him,” says Raul.

“Or her,” says Med.

“Or her,” says Raul.

“So definitely not Moses and Vardaman, then?” says Med.

“This was a professional job,” says Raul. “Take my word for it.”

“Based on what?” says Hersh.

“I just know,” says Raul.

“How do you?” says Hersh.

“Just do.”

“Bollocks,” says Rod.

“How do you know it’s bollocks?” says Raul.

“You want me to prove an absence?” says Rod.

“More bollocks,” says Raul.

“I’ll put a quid on it being a professional hit,” says Paulie.

“I’ll have a bit of that,” says Archie.

“Yeah, I’ll have a quid on it being an accident,” says Marv.

“Wait wait wait,” says Alden. “We should do a sweepstake.” And he gets a notepad out of the drawer.

“Oh yeah, haven’t done one of them in a while,” says Raul.

“Not since Robin got the Pope,” says Marv.

“He didn’t get the pope,” Med says. “He won the sweepstake is all.”

“He was in fuckin Rome when the old guy died. Coincidence?” says Marv.

“Yes,” says Med. “Massive fuckin coincidence.”

“Took a photo outside the Vatican with the sweepstake form in his hand,” says Archie snaping three cards onto the bar. Paulie exhales.

“How much?” Med says.

“Eighty-two quid,” says Archie.

“Nice,” Med says.

“He must have spent more than that going over there to assassinate him,” says Marv.

“Worth it,” says Paulie.

“Totally,” says Archie.

“He didn’t kill the Pope,” scoffs Rod.

“Yeah whatever,” says Marv. “Just a coincidence.”

Alden comes over with a few sheets of paper in his fist on which he has quickly scrawled a list of names in his near-illegible hand. “Right; tear these up someone and put them in a pot,” he says. “You can all draw and then the boys can draw them as and when they come in until all suspects are gone.”

There is a studious silence as Med folds the pieces of paper along the names and tears them at the seams.

“What if it was an accident?” says Paulie.

“Accident’s in there,” says Alden.

They all watch Med tear the strips.

“An unidentified assassin?” says Marv.

“In there,” says Alden.

“Serial killer?” says Hersh with a half-smile.

Alden nods.

“His missus?” says Rod.

“Fuckin yes everyone’s in there,” Alden snaps without taking his eyes of Med’s precision.

“I better not be in there,” says Paulie.

“Okay here we go,” says Med dropping the strips of paper into a pint pot. “You first,” she says tilting the pot to Paulie to shut him up.

He ruffles his fist around in there for a few seconds and some eyes roll as he makes it last, and then he pulls out a name, looks at it, curses and searches around in his pockets for his reading glasses, takes them out, fumbles as he tries to get the one arm to unfold and ends up pushing it with his chin, and then puts the glasses on the end of his nose. It changes his entire look, from angular welder assembled around his Roman nose to elder statesman with silver emerging at his temples – the old Mod he would have preferred to be seen as.

“I got myself,” he says, with a whispered fuckin hell off the back of it.

“That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” says Med, but she says it up close as if she had real sympathy for him.

“Can I just have another go?” Paulie says, and Med is maybe about to let him, but Alden pushes in and says, “Definitely not.”

“If it was you,” Archie says, his cards still fanned up in front of his face, “Eight-two quid will buy you plenty of boxes of fags in jail.”

Paulie looks to the ceiling and curses under his breath again.

The pot goes around the bar.

“And what’s the criteria?” Raul says. “Whose decision is final?”

“Police, I guess,” Alden says, with a shrug, watching the pot being passed around, and the boys reading out who it is they have in the sweep.

“What about a conviction?” says Rod.

“What if there’s no conviction?” says Marv.

“Court of public opinion if all in agreement,” Alden says.

“Agreed.”

“Agreed.”

“Agreed.”

“Within reason,” says Rod.

“I got accident,” says Med, the penultimate picker.

“Strong,” says Hersh.

“The girl’s a contender,” says Raul.

“I got Raul,” says Archie, the last to pick. “Bugger.”

“Could be me,” says Raul.

“The double bluff,” says Marv.

“Can’t see it,” says Alden. “Too easy.”

“Cheeky fucker, Mr Alden,” Raul says.

“I got Moses and Vardaman,” says Hersh. “Shouldn’t they be two different bets?”

“Nah, lump them in together,” says Alden.

“They’ll drag each other down if it comes to it,” says Med.

“Harsh,” says Rod. “I thought you and Moses were…” he rolls a whistle.

“No,” says Med.

“Hell hath no fury,” says Raul.

“It’s not like that,” says Med.

“Cynical bastard,” says Alden.

“Would you drag me down with you?” Marv says to Paulie.

“In a heartbeat,” Paulie says back to him. “I’ve the pigeons to think of.”

“I’ll look after them,” Marv says.

“They need me,” Paulie says. “Not any old fucker.”

“Okay, okay,” Marv holds up his hands.

“I’ve got the Doc,” says Raul.

Silence.

“Surely not,” says Rod.

“Could be in with a shout there,” says Archie.

“Yeah, nice one,” says Paulie, and he turns to his cards.

“Can I swap?” says Raul.

“No, you fuckin’ can’t,” says Alden.

“Who’s the sweepstake on?” the woman at the bar who Alden is serving asks.

“A man we know died,” Alden says. “Not a nice man. We’re sweeping on who the police arrest for it in the end.”

The woman rolls her bottom lip and shows some interest. “And who do you like for it?” she says.

“Literally could be anyone,” Alden says and puts her half glass of lemonade on the bar.

“That enough?” the woman says and holds up a pound coin.

“Sure,” says Alden, and she hands it across to him.

“What about you lads?” the woman says to the sweepstakers at the bar. “Who do you think is good for it?”

“Definitely a hit,” Raul says. “The fucker had it coming.”

“Maybe his wife,” Rod says.

“Literally could be anyone,” repeats Alden handing across the change.

“I fancy Moses and Vardaman, though,” Med says. Is she joking? Half-joking? Deadly serious?

“Who are Moses and Vardaman?” says the woman.

“Two lads who drink in here,” Archie says. “Totally harmless, really, but it’s dead fuckin weird they were out with Aaron last night and they never drink with him, and they went back to his place, so I hear, and there he is out looking for them this morning and WHAM there he goes and turns up dead on the train tracks.”

The woman nods.

“Uh, fellas,” Hersh says. They all look at him. “Are we talking to a copper?” he says, looking the woman dead in the eye.

“This Vardaman and Moses expected in here this evening?” the woman says to Alden, but it’s Raul who answers when there’s a moment of silence as they all think on what Hersh has just said.

“Definitely,” he says. “Always in on a Friday cuz they DJ up the Loft.”

Rod knocks Raul on the forearm and a few of the other boys roll their eyes.

“Would you be so kind as to let me know when they come in,” the woman says to Alden. “I’d love to have a chat with them.”

Nobody says anything, and Alden doesn’t say yes but eventually in the awkward silence a short nod comes from him, and everyone sees him do it, and Med stops chewing her gum and begins to roll it out the front of her teeth.

“Thanks,” she says, and she takes her half glass of lemonade and sits down the bottom near the frosted bay windows and sits facing the bar, watching the men there and the one women barmaid do everything they can to stop themselves from talking about her and what just happened.