James Connolly

Extract from Contempt

Chapter One

I spat brown on the Finsbury Park pavement.

Shite coffee and nicotine.

A pigeon had a quick peck before thinking better.

‘I just don’t see it,’ said Somya through a mouthful of Marlboro Gold. ‘The last thing our readers want to hear is what a load of white people think about a Sri Lankan family murdered in their beds.’

‘But that’s not what this is,’ I said, shouting into my phone over the hiss and howl of the buses.  ‘They’re making the place out to be some sort of fascist hotbed when it’s just not. People up there  are distraught, Somya. They’re angry.’

Could sense her sizing the story up. Viable angles, potential backlash.

There’d be enough of it no doubt.

I took a raking hit off the vape – shuddered.

Christ knew what was in them.

Purely chemical you’d think, had to be.

Another hit.

‘I just think vilifying an entire town based on the actions of one nut job isn’t exactly the strongest  look,’ I added, laying it on thick and exhaling a cloud of Pineapple Mango Punch.

She laughed. ‘And it just so happens to be your home town, yeah?’ 

Not a word.

Keep it shut, dickhead.

Somya sighed – took a last drag right the way to the bone.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘No more than a thousand words. And nothing too syrupy, okay? Speak to the  neighbours, friends, anyone raising money or what have you.’

‘Will do. Thanks Somya, I appreciate it.’

‘I’m not saying we’ll run it,’ she added. ‘Just write the bloody thing and we’ll take it from there.’

‘No, of course. Bye then,’ I said, getting out before I crushed another good thing.

In the front door and up the stairs, slippy with chicken shop menus and months-old threats from  TV licensing. 

Pricks. Didn’t even watch the thing anymore, no time for distractions.

I slung a bag together and forced down a protein bar on the way to Euston; third-tier station and  eternal gateway to The North. 

No such thing as a coincidence, these cunts counted every last penny.

Somewhere outside Wolverhampton, coach B of the Avanti West Coast rocking side to side like a  bastard ghost train as it passed through bogs, scrap yards and endless alien estates.

A black canal thick with dead swans as Pradeep Jeganathan’s hands closed tight around my throat, his features melting and dripping to the floor like rendered fat.

Powerless. Trying my impotent best to scream as all the while his grip tightened, eyeballs distended, teeth bursting like popcorn in the heat. 

Talking to me, at me.

I don’t understand, I wanted to say. But the words refused to form. 

Into a taxi, still drowsy and in a cunt of a mood.

The slug behind the wheel tried talking politics once he gleaned I was up from London, but I  quickly put a stop to that. 

That fucking Zuckerberg had a hell of a lot to answer for.

They all had an opinion now. Whatever happened to apathy?

Just drive the car mate, do as you’re fucking told.

Sam had insisted I stay with them. 

Plenty of room and a full fridge she had said. But I decided it was best to get a hotel.  I was there to do a job. I’d no interest in a holiday or some self-indulgent jaunt down memory lane.  Anyway, fuck all here worth remembering.

How long had it been since I’d seen my sister?

A year at least. Maybe two. 

There’d been Weymouth in the rain. Whining kids and bad food. Sam trying her best and me  sulking, horrified that Anna had seen who I was down at the grim, gnarled root of it all. Probably ironed a few things out for her, in fairness.

We were just a few months in then and the shame was such that I didn’t call for a week after. I’d been absolutely convinced she’d leave.

Then a twitch in my gut, lower left hand side, as if something was living in there, burrowed deep in  the flesh.

Tomorrow, I whispered.

I’ll deal with it tomorrow.

I paid up front and in cash for two nights at the Ridge Peak Hotel, hoping to Christ that was all I’d  need. 

When I was a boy the place had sparkled on winter nights, a fleck of glamour amid so much ash.  Now the whole thing wanted ripping down.

The gaping lobby sat empty but for an anaemic receptionist with a bob the colour of cement, one of  those faces that could have been thirty-five or deep into its sixties.

No shortage of them up here, something to do with the air I’d wager. 

That or the water.

She handed over a key card and I went up to dump my bags in a room that hadn’t been touched  since before the Twin Towers went down, carpets older than me and doing nothing for the gaff.

Then I was back in the lift, chewing the inside of my mouth and getting to fuck out the place as if it  were haunted – at least that’s how it felt to me.

On foot down a Queens Road choking with traffic toward the scene of the crime, the air jungle thick and close.

Storm season. Not quite winter but by no means spring either, so you never quite knew where you stood.

Beyond the mad ocean of chimneys and rooftops, the Eight Towers of the power station, stubborn on  the horizon, winking at me.

Welcome home, knobhead.

Couldn’t for the life of me remember when I’d last been back but it was the same down to the  smell, like cheap bacon and diesel.

I thought about Sam and her existence here, surrounded by life but somehow still drowning in  loneliness.

Bit rich coming from you.

Still, I should call more.

But as I turned down the alley that ran like a collapsed vein through the Fir Tree estate, I knew all  too well that I was full of shit.

The Jeganathan home – what was left of it any road – was a big, mock-Georgian new-build with terraces stacked either side like dominoes waiting to fall.

Nearly a fortnight on and it was still burnt black. 

Claws of black soot reaching up the walls toward black holes where windows had once stood.

Atop it all the skeleton of a roof teasing collapse. 

The flowers sat three-foot thick on the charred pavement. A pink mass of candles, teddy bears and handwritten letters.

Poor bastards. Two little girls and all. 

I thought of Darryl Maguire. 

The mugshot, the CCTV, the list of convictions as long as the M62.

Fucking animal. 

None of it made any sense.

Then the shimmy of a curtain in my peripheral. Second terrace on. 

Again. Two eyes now. Bespectacled, reptilian.

I checked my watch, a gift from Anna I’d never liked but which had been too expensive to ignore. It had always felt heavy on my wrist, awkward.

Almost three. Still plenty of time for a chat before I was due at Sam’s.

‘Do you take sugar, lovey?’

Jan Sealey was all vowels, her accent stretching out the words like pastry.

‘I’m alright, ta,’ I said, taking the too-full mug, made to look like a spaniel’s head. I slurped off the excess as she removed the lid from a biscuit tin. 

Merry Christmas, 2001!

‘Help yourself.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, watching her snatch two custard creams. Quick on the draw. ‘You’re the first person who’s been in days,’ she said, sinking into an armchair.  Her chair. 

‘Thought all the journalists had left by now.’

Gave her the meat of the story as she dunked a biscuit and disappeared it in one.

‘I wouldn’t have said you were from up here,’ she said when I’d finished, as if that was appropriate for the carnage I’d detailed. ‘Where’s your accent gone?’

‘Oh it comes out after a few pints, don’t you worry,’ I giggled – goofy.

I hadn’t had a drink in years. 

Jan nodded and slurped her tea before resting the mug on that heaving chest. She’d a look of Rod Stewart, I thought, unable to stifle a smirk.

‘What you laughing at?’ she asked, suddenly severe, as if it happened all the time. ‘No, nothing,’ I said, burying my face in the mug and trying to think of anything else. Maggie fucking May.

‘They were good people, you know,’ she said eventually. ‘Very well to do. Always said hello of a  morning. Brought a lovely bunch of lilies when my Archie died.’

She glanced at the mantle. 

Archie’s fat head in an oval frame. 

Too many biscuits, I’d wager.

I smiled politely as Jan Sealey brandished a crinkled bit of tissue from up her sleeve, dabbing at her  pig’s eyes.

‘The kids were gorgeous little things, happy as anything. I can’t stop thinking about what they must  have went through,’ she said, biting her lip.

‘Awful,’ I replied, autopilot well and truly activated.

A gulp of tea. Piss weak and too milky. 

A cheap clock ticked away somewhere in the kitchen. Poundland job no doubt. Embarrassment came on like an embolism.

‘So you spoke to the police, then?’ I asked, impatient.

‘Course,’ she said, perking up. ‘And a load of your lot, too. Had them in from all over. The Times,  The Guardian, The Evening News. Went through three sleeves of these.’

She dunked the second biscuit, scoffed it. 

She’d be with Archie before long, I thought. Probably what she was after.

‘Not that I had much to tell them, mind. I was fast asleep,’ she said through a gulp of tea. ‘My  room’s in the back, see. I made Archie sleep in the front as he snored like a bleeding Gatling gun.  To this day I wear earplugs, so didn’t hear a thing.’

‘Right.’

‘And you can imagine the shock I got when I come down in the morning to a scene like that,’ she  said, spilling tea on her tits.

‘No, of course…’

‘Do you not fancy a biscuit, lovey? You’re awful thin.’

‘I’m alright thanks. Not long ate,’ I lied.

‘Not to worry,’ she said, grabbing herself another.

That clock again.

How did she put up with it? Maybe she was deaf and all, stood to reason.

‘Anyway,’ she said, waving the biscuit at me. ‘They should hang the bastard if you ask me.’ I knew she’d been waiting to say that since I walked through the door. 

‘The Yanks still do it, you know.’

You had to laugh. 

‘They certainly do,’ I said. ‘They’ve kids with machine guns and all.’

A skin had formed on the tepid tea. I necked it anyway. Horrid.

‘Best be off now,’ I said, standing.

‘Are you sure you won’t have a biscuit?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

‘Another cup of tea?’

‘No, honest. I’m fine.’

Ask again, Mrs Doyle. Dare you.

She shifted in the chair. Wobbling and white like a panna cotta.

She wouldn’t have known what that was. Blancmange maybe.

‘Don’t get up,’ I said – we’d be here til June otherwise. ‘I’ll see myself out.’  She sighed. Either relief or exhaustion.

I flashed a benevolent smile.

‘Just to check,’ I said. ‘You’re happy for me to print what you told me?’

‘About hanging him?’

‘No,’ I laughed. ‘The bit about them being good people, the flowers and that.’ ‘Oh,’ she replied. ‘Course you can, lovey.’

That smile, like condensed milk gone off.

‘Ta,’ I smiled back. ‘Bye then. Thanks for the brew’

‘Take care, lovey. Hope to see you soon.’

That makes one of us, I thought, stepping out into the nothing of a provincial afternoon, the door  rattling to behind me.

Walking north. 

Greys became greens as the town fragmented into quasi-rural affluence. 

A strawberry farm gave way to an abattoir, beyond that the raw chorus of the junction, the  motorways, eventually the city.

Nice and quiet up here, bit of money about.

Saloons pouting in gravel drives, thick hedges ten foot high, reams of space. That was the trade. A load of space but sod all to do.

I understood the allure though, how couldn’t I.

You could breathe up there, think if need be.

Not that anyone did.

Still, London wasn’t much better. 

Nine million narcissists fighting over scraps, telling themselves it was all worth it for a few half decent restaurants, a load of art galleries nobody ever went to. Bill fucking Nighy.  Do one.

It had only been a few hours and already I felt that my life down there – the manky bedsit, the  fourteen-hour days, the interminable fucking bus journeys – all of it could have belonged to  someone else. 

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that this was absolutely the case.

I passed by the garden centre, a new carvery they were putting the finishing touches on. It reminded me of a church. 

They hadn’t quite got round to putting the signage up but I knew it was a chain job, breezeblocks  and a Tudor facade, the flag of St George limp in the damp heat.

GRAND OPENING NEXT SATURDAY 

BOOK NOW TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT

DOWNLOAD OUR APP TO CLAIM YOUR FREE DESSERT TODAY

Christ, it made you want to give up altogether, jump the first train back to London and forget all  about the Jeganathans, Maguire, Jan fucking Sealey. 

Leave them to it and never come back.

Something caught the light through a web of dead hedgerows and after a second or two I spotted it. Three floors of glass, steel and Swedish spruce.

I’d heard about the thing but this was my first time actually seeing it.

Graham’s Versailles, a monument to social mobility. 

A fucking eyesore is what it was.

Four on the dot. Sam alone and two-inches deep into a bottle of Shiraz. 

Kisses and hugs. Smiling with her mouth but not her eyes.

‘God I’ve missed you,’ she said, holding on tight in the gaping hallway, more a foyer really. ‘Me too,’ I told her. 

And for the first time in a long time it felt like I was telling the truth.

My sister looked older in the kitchen. 

Must have been the skylights. 

There were enough of them, throwing down their bleached, unkind light.

Maybe she looked her age, I don’t know.

What was she now? Forty, forty-five?

Fuck knows. Didn’t matter anyway. Point was we were old now, the pair of us. ‘I’ve not long boiled the kettle,’ she said, as if this was something we did all the time. ‘Fancy a  brew?’

I nodded, stood there with my hands in my pockets like I was waiting for the southbound to  Brixton, looking about the place.

They’d gone with a minimal, semi-industrial sort of thing. 

Exposed concrete, iron beams, pre-distressed worktops.

Like something out of a design magazine. Might have worked in Copenhagen or Tel Aviv. Up here  it just seemed pathetic.

Graham clinging on to his youth no doubt, a last ditch attempt to be edgy.

Too much Grand fucking Designs. Most people buy a Porsche.

What an utter fucking gobshite he was.

Even worse, the kitchen alone was ten times the size of my flat. 

What would it have been worth in London, I wondered. 

Three mil, four? Potentially much more depending on the postcode.

Fuck me. They were shitting money.

Sam handed me a mug and I gripped tight hold of it, welcoming the burn on my palms. Number One Dad.

You had to laugh.

My sister stood there smiling at me, pulling a thick cardie the colour of charcoal close to her  shoulders.

She was the only person I could really say that I loved, and already I’d the urge to leave. The fuck was wrong with me at all?

‘You’re thin,’ she said, looking me up and down.

‘Not really,’ I replied.

‘Come off it. You’re like a racing snake.’

I laughed.

‘You’ve turned into Mum,’ I told her.

‘Could be worse,’ she said. ‘Could’ve been Dad. I suppose you’re taking care of that, though.’ ‘Christ,’ I said. ‘Don’t.’

‘I’m only pulling your leg,’ she smiled. ‘So how long will you be gracing us with your presence for?’

She pecked at the wine and I saw that the inside of her cheeks were stained, like she’d been eating  Blackjacks.

‘Few days,’ I shrugged.

‘Sure you don’t want to stay? There’s plenty of room.’

There was hope in her eyes and it hurt me to have to kill it.

‘Already in the Ridge Peak,’ I said.

She laughed, a trickle of Shiraz running down her chin.

‘God. Gone to shit hasn’t it.’

‘I didn’t notice,’ I said, slurping at the hot tea with a half-smile.

‘Last time I was there must’ve been Gemma’s wedding. It was falling apart even then.’

‘Gemma got married?’ I asked, irritated by my interest.

Sam laughed again.

‘Christ, it’s a few years ago now, love. He’s a lovely fella, works with Graham. They’re good  together.’

‘That’s nice.’

The words felt alien in my mouth, like sand or glass or a stray bit of bone.

‘She deserves it after everything she’s been through, poor thing,’ added Sam. I nodded in agreement, keen to move on.

Bullet rain on Velux windows. An overfed tabby brushed past my legs and I stifled the urge to kick  out at it.

Fucking cats, no time for them. Brash little fuckers.

Sam topped up her glass. She certainly wasn’t shy and why not. I could hardly judge anyone. ‘Graham and the kids will be back soon. They’ve just nipped the shops,’ she said, replacing the  bottle on the worktop and sending an echo through the place.

Course they have, I thought. Fucking number one dad indeed.

‘How’s Anna?’ asked Sam.

‘Fine.’

‘Still working for the same company?’

‘Yeah. She loves it.’

‘That’s good,’ said Sam.‘And what about you, how’s work?’

I mentioned the story, the national that was definitely going to run it. 

She listened for a minute or so before picking up her phone. 

Sam had never taken much notice of my work, which I thought strange because it was the only  interesting thing about me.

‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said into her glass. ‘It’s just unbelievable.’

‘I know,’ I said, annoyed at her change of tack.

‘The youngest was in Gracie’s gymnastics group. Lovely little thing. I used to say hiya to the Mum  all the time.’

‘I’ve just come from the house,’ I said.

‘We went with flowers last week. The girls kept asking.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘Is it still there?’

‘What?’

‘The house,’ she said.

‘Just about,’ I replied. ‘Burnt to fuck isn’t it. Looks like falling any minute.’

Sam’s nose crumpled and she took a sip of wine.

‘Gemma said the council are tearing it down.’

‘Oh yeah? When?’

‘I don’t know. Seems a bit soon though, don’t you think?’ she asked.

I shrugged, thinking not really no. They’re all dead, aren’t they.

The rain softened.

Everything we’d been through and after five minutes neither of us knew what to say.  ‘Have you been to the cemetery yet?’ she asked eventually.

I winced.

‘Christ Sam, I’ve only been here five minutes,’ I said, my voice pitching up. ‘I was just asking,’ she smiled, pained. ‘We can go tomorrow if you like.’

‘Nah, think I’ll go on my own,’ I replied, a lick of pleasure in my chest.

‘That’s fine,’ she said.

But we both knew it was anything but.

A key turned in the front door, tiny voices muffled in the hall.

Panic in my blood like a controlled fucking substance. 

Gracie and Georgie. Five and eight. One liked football, the other horses. 

That was everything I knew about my nieces and I repeated it like a mantra before they bounced in,  all limbs and expectant eyes. 

The pair of them froze when they spotted me. 

An intruder in their perfect little lives.

The youngest disappeared behind her mum’s legs and the other just stood there looking, eyes  everywhere but on me.

Sam tried her best but they weren’t sure and I couldn’t blame them.

I didn’t even try.

Kids saw right to the core of you and this pair certainly weren’t daft. 

Then Graham, Gorilla-big these days, shoulders like two joints of topside trussed up in an Italian  sports jacket.

I found myself in a hug.

‘Here he is,’ he shouted into my ear. ‘The prodigal.’

‘Alright mate,’ I said, wriggling away and noticing the kids had disappeared.

‘To what do we owe the pleasure this time around?’

I mentioned the story, trying my best to be brief, already edging toward the door. ‘And to see you, of course,’ I added, suddenly all cheeky-chappy, hating myself. A beefy laugh, a whack on the shoulder. The usual shite.

‘You know the worst thing about that fire, don’t you?’ Graham said.

He was straight to the fridge.

‘What’s that?’ I said.

‘Bloke I know’s just finished a job for him,’ he said. ‘Jegana-what’s-his-name, I mean. Full  renovation on one of his houses. Gonna be a right bastard for him to get paid now.’ Then he gave a weird, empty laugh and I wondered how many times he’d dusted that one off in the last fortnight.

‘Hard luck that, mate,’ I said, my face twisted into something halfway between a smile and a  grimace.

Why did I always pander to him like that?

He took a can of Diet Coke from the fridge, offered me one. I refused, thinking of the additives.

He wasn’t a bad person, I thought. Just a wanker.

‘Have you seen the house?’ he asked.

Seen it? I’m fucking in it, aren’t I?

‘Yeah, amazing,’ I said.

‘Alright isn’t it?’ 

Alright. Pull the other one, mate.

‘We’re thinking of entering some architectural awards, aren’t we love?’

He turned to Sam.

‘You are,’ she replied without looking up from her phone.

I smiled, relieved someone else saw it too.

‘How long you up for anyway?’ Graham asked.

I told him.

‘Fuck me, you don’t hang about mate, do you?’

‘Busy mate, you know how it is,’ I said with a shrug, dying.

‘Too right pal, no rest for the wicked. I’ve not stopped myself, have I love?’

Sam didn’t move.

‘Sam?’ Graham shouted.

She looked up, three-parts-pissed by now.

‘I was just saying. I’ve not stopped working, have I?’

‘Oh,’ she said, motioning for her wine glass only to find it dry. ‘No, you’ve been a very busy boy.’  She refilled the glass with the dregs of the bottle.

Graham turned to me, rolled his eyes as if this was something we all did on a Wednesday afternoon. ‘Big contract with the buses,’ he explained. ‘Finishing off the station and then it’s straight onto the  new retail park. And that is a big fucking job, let me tell you.’

I watched as he sucked down his Coke, noticing the glimmer of his watch.

A big daft thing of course, Omega.

James fucking Bond.

Must have been bringing in six figures nowadays, easy. The exact number I didn’t want to know but  I was sure it was something outrageous.

Fuck this, I thought. Time to tap out.

‘Best be off,’ I said, clapping my hands together and rubbing them for some reason.

‘Christ, we’re not that bad, are we?’ said Graham.

I threw out a mad, apologetic smile. 

‘Work to do, mate.’

‘Fair play,’ he said. ‘But if you’re after a scoop you’re a couple of weeks late, pal. The prick that did  it’s confessed. Bang to rights they’ve got him.’

He seemed pleased with that.

‘Yeah,’ I said, nodding. ‘But that doesn’t mean there’s not a story, does it?’

Back at the Ridge Peak. 

Procrastinating under a nicotine ceiling and hoping they’d died of asphyxiation before the flames  got them.

Darkness fell like a bit of bad news, sudden and unfeeling.

I lay watching the rain form like molten steel on the window – tried to catch the bones of an  argument from the room below, something about money.

After the afternoon I’d had I didn’t want to move. 

My ribcage felt heavy, as if all the dead air of the place had sunk deep into my lungs and was  suffocating me from within.

Eventually I found the energy to switch on a lamp, mix a 3in1 and scribble down an introduction.  A sea of flowers, a wave of anger, the town in mourning.

It wrote itself.

I necked the chemical dregs of the coffee and transcribed the widow Sealey’s contributions from  memory.

Always said hello. Gorgeous little things. Hang the bastard.

I had to laugh, the ruthless auld fucker. 

Still, I reckoned it was a common enough view.

Violence was rarely the anomaly up here.

In fact, more often than not, it was very much the rule.