animal police 2 (2 of 2)

Donnie had said this Parkinflap worked the Riverside all the way between Cow Tower and Frankie & Benny’s. Mondays parked the Merc in the Zak’s car park and gave a couple of quid to the middle aged waitress scowling in the doorway, flattered her a little, alluded to futures in the way that makes some people weak at the knees. He was a people person, in that he couldn’t stand them.

 

“We’ll be back in a few,” he said.

 

“Minutes?”

 

“This car gets clamped,” he said, “and so do you.”

 

He and Oddbins went on foot along the river, past a couple of bridges and a whole bunch of scum. 

 

“Fuck Mondays. They killed Dryskin. Just like that.”

 

“He was a decent man.” Mondays lit two smokes and gave one to Oddbins. “Died on the job. It’s the risk we take, you know, day in, day the other.”

 

“Decent man? He was our friend, Mondays. He was my fucking friend.”

 

Just outside of some AngloThai restaurant – everything with frites and ketchup and lettuce leaves – on a moored-up boat that they kept open despite, or because of, widespread reports of huge investment coming through corporate orgies, heavy-duty bukkake and ritualised humiliation within the vessel’s lower decks (the city’s urban regeneration targets couldn’t allow any other Riverside business to fold, not after the Costa situation and the Brewers Fayre. The council were happy to turn a blind eye to perversion if it kept the enterprise figures at the less shit end of fuck up), they found him, peddling his wares. He was a pint-sized prick in goliath trainers, highlighted hair caked to his scalp with poundshop gel, ground meth teeth like a shattered plate behind his stretched rodent lips, stinking of smoked fags and corrosive aftershave. 

 

“Look at these two,” Parkinflap said, clapping his hands together a whole bunch of times. “You look like a couple of fun gents. Like a bit a fun. You guys wanna have some fun, huh? Have some? Fun? Good fucking fun? Gents? You gents want it? I got it all for you mates. ’satian! Cocker! Collie! Dachshund! Bloody Yorkshire! All the fuckin terriers. I got your Great Dane. Like it rough? I got your Doberman, your pit bull. Like it tight? I got your Jack Russell. Goes like the fuckin clappers, almost always shits itself. Brilliant. You fuckin name it you cunts, we fuckin got it all, all beautiful, all dog. Fucking NAME IT!”

 

“Murakami,” said Mondays, blowing smoke in Parkinflap’s face, which dropped to flat record-quick when he heard the name. He shoved Mondays backwards just gently.

 

“Get the fuck outta here,” he said, turning around to recommence his spiel on the few passing suits from the recruitment agencies up the street who were loitering a short distance away, their pockets bulging with wallets stuffed with cash, half-cut on strong lager and primed for dog cunt. “We’ve got it all ladies and gentle-fuckin-men,” he said. Mondays looked at Oddbins, who nodded and flung the pimp onto the pavement, a cautious circle around them almost instantly. Oddbins knelt on his back and held the back of his head down, his face pressed into pure floor. Mondays stamped on his arm and heard the bone snap clean and Oddbins pushed his mouth down harder into the pavement to keep the scream down.

 

“Who the fuck you working for?” said Mondays. “Pimp needs a pimp, so fuckin talk.”

 

“I don’t know what you mean,” Parkinflap dribbled, half-blind with pain. “I’m self-employed.”

 

“Aren’t we all, in this climate?” said Mondays. He knelt down and broke two-three of Parkinflap’s fingers, one at a time.

 

“Oh shit!” said Parkinflap. Oddbins was digging his knee down hard into his spine. “Okay okay I’ll fuckin gabble.” 

 

They pulled him to his feet and dragged him over to the station car park. His arm was limp at his side and he was trying to tie it up somehow with his shirt sleeve but it hurt too much for that. 

 

“It’s a kid,” he said. “A fucking kid.”

 

Oddbins and Mondays looked at each other, at their watches. Past teatime. Kid’ll be home now, back by teatime or grounded for a week. They’d wait. “Motherfucker,” said Oddbins.

 

“Donnie, he’s called,” said Parkinflap. “You must know him. Everyone fuckin knows Donnie, and nothing happens in this city without his say so.”

 

“One thing does,” said Mondays, punching Parkinflap in the face.

 

“Sweet dreams Donnie,” said Oddbins.

 

***

 

“Look, I know all of that shit,” said Oddbins. “I was fuckin there. Question I have is, is how are you fucking here? I watched them kill you.”

 

“Oh that,” said Dryskin, kind of dismissively. “It was simple really. Mondays had a feeling. Ain’t that right Mondays?”

 

“I suppose,” said Mondays, focused on the road. Less than a mile to Mile Cross. Donnie. His grip tightened on the wheel. I’d clocked the two apes in the bar pretty early doors,” he said “saw the glint of their shooters from the lights of the Terminator Pinball. Guess I knew what was coming but wanted what that little bastard knew nonetheless. Needed him to trust me.”

 

“So?” said Oddbins.

 

“So,” said Dryskin, “when you got out of the car to go to the cash machine? Put a vest on.” He held up the bulletproof vest pierced three times, put his index finger through the holes. 

 

“But your body.”

 

“Those lazy twats just dumped me in the alley out the back,” he said. “I gave it five or ten minutes and just walked away.”

 

“And the funeral?”

 

“All staged,” said Mondays past a burning smoke. 

 

“Fuck,” said Oddbins. He opened a beer and swallowed it in a couple glugs. “And the body?”

 

Mondays looked at Dryskin in the mirror. “Let’s just say I didn’t want Parkinflap tipping little Donnie off.”

 

He pulled the car over in a two-hour parking bay a couple of corners away from the bar, cut the engine and checked his pockets for blades, smokes, for his shit, all of which he had and always did. 

 

***

 

“Handful of large scotches,” said Mondays striding into the bar, alone and smoking hard. Donnie was hunched over one of the tables playing Operation, entirely engrossed in trying to extract the bread basket. “Fuckin right child,” said Mondays again.

 

“Mondays wait,” snapped Donnie, one hand up to stop him. “I need to fuckin…” Twat lost it, the buzzer went off, the nose lit up. “GODFUCKINDAMMIT!” Donnie screamed it out, threw the board and the ailments over his shoulder and the table over too. “You fuckin satisfied Mondays you sad sack of shit? That what your fuckin here for, to fuck up a fuckin boardgame? Fuck!”

 

“It’s you,” said Mondays. “You’re behind all of it. Parkinflap, the whore dogs, Murakami, Christ knows how many other AWOL pets. What the fuck do you think you doing?” Donnie smirked indifference. 

 

“How is Parkinflap?” he said. “Not seen him around.”

 

“He’s been busy,” said Mondays. “But less busy than your going to be.”

 

The apes flanked Donnie and the barman came out of the toilet with a piss stain across the front of blue jeans. Mondays took it in. They raised their shooters up. Oddbins and Dryskin came silent through the saloon door at the side and slit the pair of their throats and they slumped without a shot popped to the floor, swimming in their own spillage.

 

“Fat fucks,” said Dryskin, taking the guns out of their dead hands. He shot the barman through the throat. “Holy Twat,” he said.

 

Donnie had taken off his sunglasses and his lip was trembling. He really was only a kid.

 

“I just wanted to play with them,” he said, blinking a couple of tears out. “They were so soft.” “Where are they now?” said Mondays. Donnie’s lip was shaking too hard to get anything out. “WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY?” said Mondays. Donnie pointed to the back room of the bar, the accommodation. Oddbins went through and was back a minute later. He nodded at Mondays.

 

“You’ve been bad Donnie,” said Mondays, grabbing hold of him by the scruff of the neck. He sat down on vacant chair and dragged the kid across his lap. “Call this little shit’s mother,” he said to Dryskin. “She can take care of this herself.” He kicked off his trainer and kicked off spanking Donnie with it, about thirty strokes in all, kid sobbing into Mondays jeans the whole way through. Poor shit wouldn’t sit down for a week.

 

Some half hour later his mother stormed in, usual type, screwjack bottle blonde, fag on, savoury tang of Gregg’s under her nails. 

 

“He’s all yours,” said Mondays, the Animal Police all laden with cat transporters they were carrying to the car.

 

They pulled the door shut behind them, Donnie’s mother slapping him and cursing her luck and wishing God knows what amongst the dark and the death as they started loading the cats into the car, Donnie begging and pleading and praying for change, a lifetime’s grudge built in a second.

 

***

 

“So to clarify then,” said Oddbins, shoving the last of the cat transporters into the rear footwell, “why did Dryskin have to die?”

 

“Fuck, will you let it go?” said Dryskin. “We had to give Donnie a chance to trip himself up. Give a kid enough rope, you know? Mondays had heard talk of some kid pimp targeting pets for some time and just needed to wait until he had the opportunity to nail him. My death,” said Dryskin proudly, “was just that opportunity. The more a guy thinks he’s invincible the more flawed he becomes.”

 

“But this could have all gone pretty wrong,” said Oddbins. “What if they’d shot me? Or you, Mondays. We didn’t have bloody vests on.”

 

“Actually I did,” said Mondays, sticking the keys into the ignition. “Seemed a sensible precaution, given what I knew.”

 

“Fuckin terrific. What if they had shot me? I’d be…”

 

“Look, who gives a shit?” said Dryskin. “They didn’t. You’re not.” 

 

“I’ll drink to that” said Mondays, rifling through a carrier bag he’d filled with bottles from behind the bar, passing one to each of the others. “Let’s fuckin go.”

 

They did, slowly. The Norwich traffic was a bitch.