Killing Tim

It was a hot Sunday in June - the hottest in fifty years, the radio
said - and Tim was on his way home after dropping off his daughter at
his ex-wife. As he reached the busy junction leading onto Brixton Hill,
his car stalled. Tim emerged from his reverie like a pearl-diver
emerging for air. He turned the key in the ignition, but all he got was
a metallic rasp. Sweat trickled over Tim's corrugated forehead, as his
mind flipped through the Rolodex of options: ring the AA, have a look
under the bonnet and see if there's a wire hanging loose somewhere,
abandon the vehicle and let the police tow it away -

Someone behind hooted.

"Arse-hole!" Tim shouted, flipping the bird through the open
sunroof.

Tim's temper was incandescent, but it tended to fizzle as quickly as it
flared, usually leaving him embarrassed, but sometimes beaten up. He
looked in his rear-view mirror, wiping the sweat off his brow with his
forearm. The car behind was a silver BMW with tinted windows. It bobbed
from side-to-side from the thud of 80 watts of ragga.

Im speaking the truth, mi nuh mean yuh nuh harm
Nuh try dis di corn tek the slam an jus gwaan

The driver of the BMW stepped out. Tim watched the wall of muscle
rearrange something under his jacket as he approached the stricken
Vauxhall. He knew embarrassment was not going to be the problem this
time. Tim hit the central-locking and fumbled for the ignition. The man
grabbed the door-handle and yanked it. Unable to pull the door off its
hinges, the giant stepped back and kicked the side-window, violently
rocking the car. Tim tried to shout for help, but his mouth was dry
with fear, all that came out was a reedy whine.

I dont care I gonna bus up dem salad
Sexually speaking dem should know mi mad

Ragga-man opened one side of his Fubu jacket revealing the butt of a
large pistol.

"D'ya want some, bumba clot?" he said. "D'ya want some?"

The sun bounced off Ragga-man's gold teeth, shattering Tim's
eyeballs.

"Our Father which art in heaven," Tim prayed. He cranked the ignition
again and the engine coughed into action, blindly lurching into the
path of the oncoming traffic. Horns blared and tires squealed, but Tim
heard none of it, only the rushing of blood in his head as he slalomed
down Brixton Hill.

Five minutes later he was home, trembling, peeping out from behind the
curtains of his terraced house. When he was sure that he hadn't been
followed, he got himself a couple of Lorazepam and washed them down
with a slug of Jim Beam. His problems evanesced in a pharmaceutical
haze. Slumped on his sofa-bed he watched the shifting patterns of light
emanating from the TV. WWF played on Channel 4, but it could just as
easily have been the Teletubbies; the images meant nothing to Tim, they
were just there to mesmerise and soothe. A filament of spit ran from
the corner of his mouth to his shoulder.

Two years before, Tim's boss had sent him on an anger management course
after he lost it with the tea-lady over his dosage of saccharine. The
course taught him how to do abdominal breathing and positive
visualisation. He had an opportunity to try it out a few weeks later
when he bumped a man's arm at Starbucks and sent a venti latte
cascading down his chinos.

"Look where you're going, idiot!" the man said.

Tim felt the familiar surge of blind wrath. He wanted to smash a fist
into the man's retrousse nose, instead, he closed his eyes and
visualised himself swimming with a Southern Right whale off Cape Point.
His "visualisation" was interrupted by a shove to the sternum. The man
had fled before Tim could pick himself and his dignity off the
floor.

Nowadays Tim relied on chemicals to regulate his mood swings, some
supplied by his GP, some he grew in his loft.

When Tim awoke, it was Monday morning and the television was still on.
An annoyingly perky Big Breakfast crew messed about on bright
furniture. Tim switched the set off and called work to say that he was
coming down with the flu. Then he took his car down to Mike's Motors to
get it fixed.

He explained the problem to Mike, omitting the part where he almost got
killed. Mike got technical about solenoids and starter motors; Tim
switched off. He'd never got to grips with even the basics of the
internal combustion engine, and he felt less the man for it. Still, it
wasn't good to show the bastards you were clueless; like rottweilers in
a breaker's yard, they'd move in for the kill.

"Blah, blah, one-hundred and eighty quid," was what Tim heard.

"One-hundred and eighty quid!" repeated Tim.

"That includes labour and VAT," said Mike, magnanimously.

"You can pick it up tomorrow," he shouted after Tim.

Trying to retain some manhood, he spat on the oil-stained, concrete
floor. He was sure he heard laughter as he made his way to the bus
stop. The weather had changed for the worse. It was raining, but the
bus stop was just meters away. He joined the gym-slip mums and their
buggies under the shelter. Across the street, something caught his eye.
A silver BMW 3-series. The personalised registration said CLASS. In
spite of the torrential rain, Tim felt a cold sweat dribble down his
arm. Can it be? he wondered. Surely there are plenty of silver BMW
3-series in London, even with tinted windows. Then he saw the
unmistakable lump of brawn and the flash of metallic teeth. Ragga-man
was standing outside the bookmakers with a couple of
men-in-big-jackets. They were oblivious to the rain.

Tim turned up the collar of his reefer jacket and the brim of his Nike
cap down. He attempted to hide behind the mums, but they weren't much
older than twelve, and offered little protection.

"Come on bus. Come on," He muttered into his collar.

The incantation worked. A City Hoppa hissed and belched to a halt. It
wasn't going where Tim wanted, but he got in anyway.

He spent the rest of the day walking round Soho, wondering whether it
would ever be safe to go home. It was dark when he got back. He grabbed
the dun envelopes and pizza delivery fliers from his letterbox. That's
when he saw it, the badly scrawled note: "I kill you," it read. He
froze, half-expecting the cold barrel of a gun to nuzzle his
neck.

He wobbled to the sofa and flopped down. It had to be a message from
Ragga-man, but how did he find him? He was sure he'd lost the BMW on
Brixton Hill. He'd even scanned the street for half-an-hour afterwards
to make sure he hadn't been followed. Unless . . . unless it was his
Portuguese neighbours. Yes. That was possible. He had recently filed a
complaint against them for playing Euro-pop at distortion level.
Lambeth Noise had sent them a written warning, and threatened to
confiscate their hi-fi if they persisted. After that someone had keyed
his car and smeared dog shit on his front-door. He knew it was Miguel,
but he had no proof. The police said there was nothing they could
do.

I kill you bumba clot. Tim tried to imagine how Ragga-man would say it.
I kill you. I kill you!

In spite of heavy medication, Tim barely slept that night. Every sound
in the street below was amplified a thousand times. Every footfall was
a hit man coming to get him. Every scratch, every tap, every rustle
signalled his imminent demise.

Tim spent the next day plumping the cushions on his sofa, rearranging
the books on his shelf and checking the locks on the front door, again
and again, round and round, like a dog chasing its tail. He couldn't
sit for more than a few seconds. A couple of times he picked up the
phone, not sure who he was going to call (the police? his ex-wife? a
travel agent?), then replaced the receiver.

About midday there was a commotion outside, squealing tyres, shouting.
Tim peered out the lounge window, trying to conceal himself behind the
giant rubber plant he'd placed there for that purpose. A group of
Miguel's mates had gathered round a souped up Escort, chatting
excitedly in Portuguese and pointing to various parts of the car:
alloys, spoiler, go-faster stripes.

"Bunch of yahoos," said Tim to the empty room.

Miguel turned and looked straight at him. He said something to his
mates in Portuguese, gesturing towards Tim's flat. They all turned and
stared at where Tim had been standing. They must've seen him peeking.
Miguel spat at Tim's rose bush.

"Morons," muttered Tim, plumping the cushions on his sofa for the
umpteenth time.

He decided to check letterbox, just to be sure. There was nothing new.
He surveyed the locks. The barrel bolt looked a bit iffy, like it'd
come off with one hefty kick. He looked closer. There was a small nick
in the bolt he hadn't noticed before. Had someone tried to saw through
it while he was out? Maybe the same person that sent him the note. Nah,
that cut's probably always been there, I'm only noticing it because I'm
freaked out, he reassured himself. He continued to inspect every minor
ding and abrasion on the door, like a police dog sniffing for drugs.
Satisfied that nobody had tried to break in recently, he returned to
sorting his books, this time by genre.

Tim continued his self-imposed house arrest for the next two days,
then, on the Wednesday afternoon, he heard someone messing with his
door. The scrape of the mail flap was like a jab with an electric
cattle-prod. He leapt to his feet, blood whooshing in his ears. Was
this it? Was this the moment? He hadn't even said goodbye to his
daughter. "Chloe, Daddy loves you," he shouted, approaching the front
door. There was only one way to deal with this. Head on.

He jerked the door open, but there was nobody there. He ran onto the
street, seeing the guilty party ambling up the street. It wasn't
Ragga-man, but Tim was sure it was one of his henchmen. He carried a
florescent courier-bag . . . probably had the gun in there. Tim ran
after him, consumed by rage. Hearing someone approach at a trot, the
young man - who had just that morning taken his first job, dropping
leaflets through people's letter boxes for Khan's Curry House at ?2.50
an hour - looked over his shoulder and saw a maniac bearing down on
him.

Tim caught up with him and swung a right-hook to the back of his
head.

"What's your problem?!" said the young man, parrying and countering
with a hammer kick to Tim's cranium. Tim crumbled on the pavement like
a discarded marionette. He only woke when the gurney he was lying on
bashed through the doors of the Accident and Emergency department at
King's College Hospital.

"Have I been shot," said Tim.

"Try not to speak," said the paramedic.

Two days later, after MRI scans and a period of observation, Tim was
released from hospital with a neck brace and a prescription for
pain-killers. The police had been and taken a statement. The first
question they asked was, "Was he black?" They lost their patience when
he couldn't remember this simple detail.

"He had a courier bag," said Tim, tempting them with a different
morsel. They didn't even write it down. The fact that someone was
trying to kill him, didn't appear to interest them all that much.

So the hit man is still out there, thought Tim as he scanned the road
for suspect characters. He decided to walk home. It was a crisp, clear
day and he needed some time to think about a survival strategy. He
found walking difficult, each step jarred his spine and sent pain
rocketing to his cranium. Crossing the road wasn't easy either. He
almost got run down trying to cross Coldharbour Lane. When he reached
his street, over an hour later, he noticed a crowd standing near his
house. It was his Portuguese neighbours and the Ford Escort Admiration
Society. A teenager with greased back hair was doing something with an
angle-grinder. The others stood around, offering advice.

Tim walked softly, praying not to be noticed, but God was having an
away-day. They turned and laughed, big forced laughs, like cruel
children in a school yard.

Inside Tim headed for the bathroom cabinet for a dosing of Lorazepam.
He figured it would take at least four just to get him on an even keel.
He couldn't get his head under the tap with the brace on, so he
crunched the pills and swallowed them with some spit. The bitterness
made him gag, but he managed to get them down. He lay on his unmade,
musty bed. What a pig he'd become since Felicity and Chloe moved out.
The house seemed deathly quiet, but the more he listened, the more he
heard. The cistern whispered, the fridge hummed, pipes creaked and
clattered. Tim reached for the box of tissues next to his bed and
fashioned some earplugs. The sounds didn't get any softer, they just
distorted in an undersea way.

Then the Euro-pop started up at full whack. The Escher print on his
wall fell off from the impact of Danna International, the glass
shattering on the floor boards.

"Right! Now you've had it!" Tim swung his legs out of bed. He stumbled
into the lounge and, after much huffing and heaving, got his speakers
to about-face so they were flush with the wall adjoining his Portuguese
neighbours. He put a blanket over each to muffle the sound on his side,
found a tape (The Balanescu Quartet) and programmed the hi-fi to play
it on a loop.

Tim lurched back to bed, but he couldn't sleep. How was he meant to
hear the door when the music was blaring on both sides of the wall.
They'd come for him soon, he was sure of it. He retrieved the baseball
bat from under the bed and put it under the duvet. The heft of it made
him feel marginally more secure.

He imagined his wife and daughter at his funeral. They were both
crying, holding each other for comfort. Tim cried at the thought. Then
he visualised Felicity at the wake, telling everyone that he'd probably
brought it on himself. "He could drive anyone to it," she was saying.
"I don't know how I put up with him for eight years. Honest, I don't."
When he couldn't bare to hear his ex any longer, he threw back the
duvet and weaved his way to the bathroom. He was groggy as hell, but
not enough to get to sleep. He shook some Temazepam into his hand and
popped them into his mouth. He crunched and crunched, but there seemed
to be a lot of them, so he turned the cold tap on in the shower and
stood under the nozzle with his mouth open to flush the crumbs of
barbiturate down his gullet. Dripping and shivering, he returned to
bed.

The Balanescu Quartet screeched through a rendition of Autobahn in the
other room.

Tim drifted in and out of consciousness for a long while. There was a
distant voice saying, "He's in here." Was this it? Had they come to
kill him? Then he began to levitate and he knew it was the end. He
floated towards the door. It wasn't smooth and celestial, there was
lots of bashing and clattering and voices all around. A rush of cold
air. A blue light strobed across his face.

"I jus' hear dis fuckin' music all night, so I call da police."

Miguel?

"You may have saved his life," said a voice at his shoulder.

"You tell him, when he wake up, I kill him."

Then it went dark again.