animal police 2 (1 of 2)

 

There were less than ten people there for the funeral including clergy and organist. Aside from the obvious Dryskin hadn’t had friends, barely even acquaintances. He was a profoundly forgettable man, the vicar had said as much in his eulogy. They’d all laughed, appreciative of something to cut through the gloom of the setting if not sadness – there was no real sadness, just boredom, some resentment maybe – though he hadn’t meant it as a joke, only an adherence to the one agreed fact as recounted by the odd couple of people he had conversed with in his research, all of whom had very little to say. Gone, the vicar had said, and – as in life – very much forgotten. Which is the way he might have wanted it. We just can’t remember. Let us say goodbye to, uh – he thumbed through his notes, back and forth a couple of times, eventually shifted his vestments up some and took a small black diary out of a trouser pocket, then flicked through that – yes, to William Dryskin. “Billy”.

 

***

 

Johnny Mondays and Jack Oddbins stood smoking at the graveside, feet away from the other mourners. The cold was intense, the sky a churning mess of thick black cloud. Oddbins’ good eye was teared up but it was the drink, the wind too. Once the rest had started back to their cars, a fleet of identikit silver saloons, Oddbins crouched to the sodden earth and scooped a handful into his palm.

 

“Goodbye Billy,” he said, and threw the mud onto the coffin lid. It hit like fast-falling shit after a good night out and spread out forensically over the wood. The council gravediggers were waiting in the digger, rubbing their gloved hands together and rolling their eyes; a tinny portable radio they had on in the cab was playing American Girl. Oddbins took a last drag on his smoke and tossed the butt down into the grave. “Goodbye,” he said again, and scooped another handful of dirt up, which he offered to Mondays. Mondays looked at the dirt and squinted against the wind, flicked his own smoke into a deep tea-coloured puddle, the paper unfurling from the scrap of tobacco like a fitting kid spread on a couch.

 

“Nah,” he said, and started to walk off. Oddbins face spewed disgust. He threw the mud into the grave a second time, less ceremonially, and grabbed Mondays by the shoulder.

 

“What the fuck Mondays? That’s Dryskin in there. Dryskin is dead. Does that not mean anything to you you cold hearted piece of dick?”

 

“Dryskin’s alive,” he said. “He’s in the car.”

 

“You what?” His face turned to real hurt as the realisation sank in, that or disgust. Or idiocy. Fucking last-to-know-Oddbins.

 

“Come the fuck on,” said Mondays, walking towards the car park.

 

***

 

He opened the boot of the shit Merc and Dryskin was inside it, an empty bottle of scotch laying next to him and sandwich crumbs all over the front of his jumper, chunks of corned beef and Branston pickle dotted among the white sliced. Mondays slapped him on the legs with the back of his hand.

 

“Dryskin,” he said. “Get up. It’s done.”

 

Dryskin opened his eyes and blinked the grey into focus, saw Oddbins, hoisted himself out of the boot with both hands gripping the car, picked some of the larger crumbs from his jumper and put them in his mouth, brushed the rest onto the floor, streaks of pickle left in their wake like raw skidmarks.

 

“Oddbins,” he said. “Great to see you. What’s it been, three days?”

 

“Why the fuck are you alive? I’ve just been to your fuckin funeral. I’ve just thrown fuckin mud on your fuckin coffin. You’re dead, Dryskin, you hear me? There was a funeral. Dead! Why didn’t either of you pricks tell me?”

 

“You know now,” said Mondays, looking around the cemetery. They probably weren’t safe there. Probably.

 

“It’s a shit story,” said Dryskin, lighting a smoke and pulling a fresh bottle of scotch from the boot of the car.

 

“I like shit,” said Oddbins. “So shit on me.” They embraced a little, Mondays grimacing as they did.

 

“Lovebirds,” he said. “We need to be gone.”

 

“Right,” said Dryskin.

 

“Let’s get back,” said Oddbins slamming the boot shut. “Shoot up.”

 

“Hey,” said Dryskin. “Let’s Animal Police.”

 

Mondays sighed and took a hit of scotch and they climbed in the car and got gone.

 

***

 

Some days earlier the Animal Police had formed a broken semi circle, Mondays, Oddbins and Dryskin, right around the bar. Oddbins felt the elbows of his denim stick to the unwiped surface, months of spilt beer and worse all left to congeal, so thick you could carve your fingernails through it. The barman’s heavy face smirked towards them from a cloud of smoke, fluming out of a prison-thin roll-up clenched filterless and flat between his tarry lips, his poached venison fingers clutching at the splintered wooden edges of the bar. 

 

“Rumours,” said Oddbins, draining the business end of a single house scotch. It was eleven fifteen, morning, although the scotch made it taste later. Much later.

 

“Rumours indeed,” followed Mondays, throwing a peanut into his waiting mouth. The sound of his chewing felt hard against the struggling jukebox, all of Phil Collins’ pathos lost in poor treble, in inadequate speakers.

 

“What the fuck’s this about?” asked the barman, measuring himself out a couple of fingers of sauce. “I mean.” He swallowed the drink and coughed until his face turned the colour of his hands, bloody and purple. The cigarette had burnt out, unsustained by the low-end combustibility of its own paltry amount of tobacco product; his meat face was wet with tears of effort as he relit, sucking hard at the soaked mouthpart. “It’s fucking morning. This morning.”

 

“It is fuckin morning,” agreed Mondays. “And this fuckin morning, we heard a fuckin rumour.”

 

“Fuck your rumour.” The barman leaned back, folded his arms over his chest, almost pleased with himself. Mondays looked at Dryskin. He swept the scotch off the bar and slammed the barman’s face down into the spilt drink and the upset ashtray.

 

“Meaty bastard,” said Dryskin. “Manners take a holiday, slab of shit?” He pulled him back up and shoved him backwards into the optics. Bags of pork scratchings and Big Ds nuts fell to the floor like cheap snow.

 

“Who the fuckin hell are you?” he said, clutching his hands to his busted chops. “The three cunts?” Mondays threw a card onto the bar. It said Animal Police and listed their names: J. Mondays, B. Dryskin, J. Oddbins.

 

“Who we are isn’t much of your fuckin concern,” said Mondays. “Just tell us what we need to know and we’ll be out of your face.”

 

“Animal Police? You don’t look like fuckin RSPCA from where I’m fuckin slumped.”

 

“Shut your opening,” barked Oddbins. “And clean this fuckin bar up.”

 

“RSPCA,” spat Dryskin.

 

“Listen, bastard,” Mondays went on. “We don’t have the time to be dealing with a prick like you. You’re storage at best, bulk, an empty fuckin room. No one’s gonna trust a dumb shit like you with anything concrete. But we fuckin know you know people, people we wanna know too.”

 

“Storage? Do you know who the fuck...”

 

“Wipe the shit words out of your dirty arse mouth and listen: Murakami. Name mean anything to you? Mura-fuckin-kami?”

 

“Murakami, Murakami.” He smirked over his teeth, great yellow canyons. “No, I can’t say it does. My mind’s a blank.”

 

“That much I can see. Try harder.”

 

He made a show of thinking that felt gratuitous, even in that dive. 

 

“I meant no. It means nothing to me. Definitely.”

 

“I think you’re a fuckin liar. Now keep thinking your tiny mind around.”

 

“Murakami,” said the barman, rolling the syllables around his thick tongue, savouring his opportunity. “Murakami. No. Sorry lads. Must be one of those... empty days.” He straightened himself up and measured out four house vodkas, passed one to each of the Animal Police. The four men swallowed the drinks. Mondays passed his glass back for another.

 

“Is that a fact?” he asked. “Murakami? Nothing? Nada?”

 

“Afraid so.” He passed the drink back. Mondays swallowed it alone.

 

“Think harder,” said Mondays. “Murakami. Try it. Cat. Called Murakami. Cat. Missing. Murakami. Feline. Stolen. Think.” Mondays slapped him, just lightly, across the face, an impulse. The barman pulled slowly backwards.

 

“I’d like to help you fuckers, but time’s getting on and I do have a pub to run so...”

 

“You couldn’t run a fuckin flex,” said Mondays loudly. The barman walked round the bar and up to Oddbins. He was tall and stood inches over him, Oddbins’ blind eye kind of uncomfortable in the dusty light.

 

“Don’t you fuckin dirty talk my business acumen you cunt,” said the barman, pushing Oddbins a first time, then harder a second, jerking his thumb towards the door as he did. “Now off you fuck.”

 

Dryskin flipped the pool table over, its few balls cracking hard against the uncarpeted floor, flecked with decades of excretion, the very fixtures coated in countless thousands of farts. Mondays swung a pool cue into the side of the barman’s face. He dropped to one knee and clutched at the damaged bone, but stood up immediately, tears streaming silently from his eyes. He didn’t seem to notice the tears. Mondays hit him again, three times, until he eventually went to both knees and Oddbins moved in to punch him.

 

“Alright for fuck’s sake,” shouted the barman, holding up a hand in self-defence. “Alright I’ll fuckin well talk. But what can you do for me?”

 

“You talking money?” asked Dryskin. The barman nodded.

 

“Dangerous people,” he said conspiratorially, pawing at the side of his head. “Fifteen.”

 

“You’ll have ten if the knowledge’s good,” said Mondays, pulling out his wallet. Empty. He felt his pockets. Appointment slip. Eleven thirty. He looked at the clock.

 

“Fuck. Check your pockets,” he instructed the other two. They came up with about a pound in small coins. “We’ll have to go to a cash machine,” he said.

 

They left the barman on his knees, and could hear him laughing over the car engine and the Norwich traffic.

 

***

 

They were back half an hour later. The barman had patched himself up some, bar snacks still on the floor. Oddbins shook his head gravely. 

 

“Look out,” said the barman, throwing back a shot “The fuckin trinity. Father,” he said, pointing at Mondays, “son,” pointing at Oddbins, “and Holy Twat.” He looked at Dryskin, laughed himself into a suicide cough. Dryskin reached for the in tact pool cue as a throat was cleared somewhere around the edges of the room that were left in permanent darkness by the filth on the windows, and the thick cloud of dust in the feeble sunlight exposed like unwanted genitals.

 

“Mr Mondays,” said a voice. They couldn’t put a finger on the accent but it sounded fucking ridiculous, high-pitched and youthful. “I believe you require some information that my associate and I may be able to assist you with.”

 

“I believe I do,” said Mondays, nodding to Dryskin to lower the pool cue. “Who the fuck are you?”

 

“Allow me to introduce myself.” A kid walked out of the darkness. Not a bloke who looked like a kid, an actual kid, in a beige pinstripe suit and these tiny brown loafers. “Name’s Donnie.”

 

“Ho fuckin ho,” said Dryskin, yanking the pool cue back up. The barman flinched backwards.

 

“That’s Donnie-the-five-year-old-pimp you mug,” he said, hand up in self-defence. “Do you know who he is?”

 

“No,” said Dryskin. “I do the fuck not, and care even fuckin less.”

 

“Gentlemen,” said Donnie. “Let’s take it fuckin easy can we.”

 

“This is his town you poor cunt,” said the barman. 

 

“Shut your fuckin mouth I said Jefford,” snarled Donnie. He was five years old. Mondays was surprised, he supposed, but had seen weirder shit than this.

 

“Murakami,” said Mondays, throwing a crumpled tenner onto the floor. “You going to talk, kid?” Donnie picked up the money and pushed it back into Mondays’ damp hand, pulled over a chair and stood on it and patted Mondays on the cheek. He tensed, Mondays, and they heard the sound of firearms – two? three? – cocking at the room’s edge. Bodyguards.

 

“I don’t need your money Mr Mondays,” said Donnie.

 

“Then what the fuck do you want?” said Oddbins. “Tell us what we need to know and we can fuck right off, everyone’s a winner, it’ll be alright on the night, stars in their eyes, family fucking fortunes. You get me?”

 

“It’s not that simple friend,” said Donnie. “These are dangerous men we're dealing with. Powerful men.”

 

“Ha, more powerful than you? A fucking kid?” Dryskin’s mirth was futile, ugly. A shot guffed out the pitch, hit Dryskin in the chest. He was down instantly. The shooter strode forward and shot two more rounds in.

 

“Don’t ever underestimate me Mondays,” said Donnie, lighting a smoke, straightening his sunglasses. “You two,” clicking his fingers at the barman and the other heavy, “get this one outside in the alley. Put a fucking box over him.” They did as he said, the barman’s moist arse creeping from the top of his brandless denim like a buoy on the water.

 

Oddbins had frozen, his mouth wide open. 

 

“Mondays,” he said. “They’ve just…”

 

“I know,” said Mondays. He lit a smoke and took a bottle of brandy from behind the bar, took a deep hit. “To Billy,” he said, and took another, passed the bottle to Oddbins. He threw it against the wall. 

 

“To Billy? Mondays, they just fuckin killed him.”

 

Mondays reached over the bar took another bottle, another hit, passed it to Oddbins again. He smashed it.

 

“Are you fuckin deaf and a cunt?” said Oddbins. “They. Killed. Him.”

 

“Shut. It. Up.” Mondays said. “Now. I’m handling this.”

 

“You’d do well to listen to your man Mondays, friend,” said Donnie. “He’s the only friend you got left.”

 

Oddbins sat down and sparked up, cried some, though he’d have never admitted to it. The barman came back in, whistling some theme tune. He passed a few cold beers round, stuck a straw in Donnie’s. They all of them drank pretty hard.

 

“Murakami,” said Mondays. “Can we talk now?”

 

“You know, I’m kind of sorry about your friend,” said Donnie. “I needed to know I can trust you.”

 

“No chitchat kid cunt,” said Mondays. “Murakami. Give me what I need.”

 

“There’s a guy. Goes by Parkinflap. Pimp.”

 

“I don’t give a shit about pimp feuds,” said Mondays.

 

“This isn’t a pimp feud. He does dogs.”

 

“Some guys have some weird fuckin tastes.”

 

“No, as in canines. Like, actual dogs.”

 

Mondays dropped his smoke and sank the last of his beer, just foam really. 

 

“What does he want with Murakami?”

 

Donnie sucked at his straw for five, six seconds, slurped around the bottom of the bottle.

 

“Suggest you ask him,” he said eventually. “Now fuck off the pair of you.”