Evidence is what he’s gathering. In order to gather evidence he needs the tools. The tools for evidence gathering are his work. Whatever you do now Martin John don’t jeopardize the job or Baldy will come crumbling down on you.
More and more people are visiting Baldy Conscience in the house. It’s hard to gather evidence with all these people.
The evidence is taking a while.
He examines Baldy Conscience’s toothbrush and, using a set of tweezers, tries to find anything that will prove the theft of one of his biscuits. He buys a variety of biscuits, adds them to his tin marked Gaffney MJ. He scrawls a sign that reads Landlord and Home Owner on the back of the tin. He even places sticky tape on the bottom of the tin so he can monitor whether or not it has been moved. In a more inspired moment, and such moments join, breeze and buzz Martin John hourly, he imagines using Super Glue to adhere it to the shelf. He imagines Baldy having his arm ripped out of its socket and this image calms him down. Calms him to a place of satisfaction where he imagines that fucker suffering and it brings him peace.
The small cluttery house is getting taken over by young men wearing black donkey jackets and dark red Dr Marten boots. They’re everywhere. They are stamping all over his life with their bloodied hooves. The house, which he has to remind himself he is in charge of, has become the Butlins Holiday Camp of Damp Indie Bands. Martin John wonders how they all fit up there in the bedroom. Every now and again, between the guitar bashing and worse than a bag of cats singing, he hears one of them thump, thump their boots down to his toilet. He tries to count based on these thumps how many men might be up there. Each time the door opens he can hear them laughing and the smoke seeps under his door downstairs.
The knock comes.
Martin John knows it’s him. Doesn’t answer.
The knock keeps coming.
And coming.
And coming.
He opens the door.
— Toilet’s blocked.
Away he walks. Fortunately Baldy Conscience doesn’t dally, for Martin John would have to lunge at him to save himself. For days Martin John has not been near his own bathroom. He has urinated into bottles and buckets and put them down the kitchen sink. Whoever has blocked the crapper up there it is one of the Radar Love boys. Now he must go up and face what the Butlin boys have done to his bathroom. He is terrorized in his own house. He fears the enemies. The infidels up on the landing. It’s obvious Baldy Conscience is dirty. He’s probably infected and discharging. Martin John does not want to tread where he has trod, which becomes very challenging when they both share the same stairs, carpet and kitchen.
Martin John constructs and hangs a fallacious Wet Paint sign. He sticks it to the hallway wall and then, much further along, another, which reads Paint Wet and between the two a Don’t Tred Here sign. He officiously adds a fourth notice that reads Gaffney MJ, LANDLORD. Since Baldy Conscience is a chancer he adds a BLOCK CAPS BY ORDER sign before the Wet Paint, Don’t Tred Here, Paint Wet, Gaffney MJ, LANDLORD. Even though he is pleased with how it looks and wishes to remain and admire it longer, he forces himself out of the house because Baldy Conscience is stirring and he does not want that fuckface to come and sneer or he may just have to strangle him. Also, he has not fixed the toilet because he has no intention of fixing the toilet because, after all, Martin John is not even a fan of using the toilet to begin with. Mam told him to stop going upstairs.
It’s morning and he, Gaffney MJ, is thunderous.
The books he so carefully laid out in the hall to create two passages, in order to separate from Baldy Conscience’s occupying plague, have been moved. Not just moved. Kicked. They form a toppled trail, zagging down the hallway. A correction has been added to the sign on the word Tred. TreAd it reads and his name has been changed to Daphney.
Worse, there’s an ashtray in the middle of his kitchen table. This is the final desecration. He returns to his room and puts on a Flash Gordon video to try and calm his nerves so he might think. He must move on Baldy Conscience. He must do something. Because Baldy is crushing him.
One morning, Baldy Conscience enters the kitchen, throws open the window, pushes out the back door and says, It’s too fucking dark and hot in here.
Martin John closes the door and lowers the window. He doesn’t speak. He just infuses silence. He stands at the window with his hand keeping it firmly shut.
— Wha?
— It stays closed.
— Wha?
— It stays closed.
Strangely, Baldy retreats, boils the kettle, stabs his teabag and departs without a word. His ankles look angry.
Martin John has figured out he needs to be more terrifying. The more terrifying he is the more likely Baldy will repent.
He commences the labelling. Incessant labelling. Forensic labelling. He employs gaffer tape and a marker. Plus he purchases an identity stamp. It costs him 26 quid to have the rubber prepared with precisely the long-worded warning he wishes.
Code 1066 sounds formal and legal. In fact it’s the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. One of the few dates that has stayed with Martin John. Oh 1066 he’ll say, wasn’t that 1066? Everything worth anything took place in 1066. Once he told mam he was in a 1066 type of situation. Shut up, she said. For the love of God, shut up with the numbers.
The warning, though rambling vague and rectangular, is stamped onto every copy of every newspaper, every cassette and every possession he has. He considers stamping it onto the cutlery, but the sticker would wash off and block the sink.
He labels his cloth bag in bold marker GAFFNEY MJ SECURITY GUARD until he notices people staring at him on the Tube and bus, and then he places his hand over the word GUARD. Only SECURITY is visible and it ensures he always has a seat empty either side of him.
He has learnt something has Martin John. He has learnt when people are afraid of you they move away, they move back, they back away off. They only need an inclination that you’re someone to be afraid of. He sees now where he failed with Baldy Conscience. He did not establish that he was fearsome. He has not yet unnerved him. He will not do that again. In future he will be fearsome. He will display behaviour that is to be feared.
Martin John has a problem. And it’s a sleep problem. All day, when he should be asleep after working the night shift, he’s crouched in bed, attentive, listening for every squeak Baldy makes upstairs. Baldy’s room is directly above him. Martin John’s sleep is reduced to the two hours the BC sleeps in during the morning that coincide with Martin John knocking off his shift.
Increasingly he sleeps very little. This is not good. Things are not good when Martin John doesn’t sleep. He’s like a hunted mole, crouched behind the door, on edge of constant anxiety, jumping to at any ding. Even in the streets a piece of litter blowing ahead of him takes on startling proportions. Everything startles him. Everything startles him now that Baldy Conscience has his claws firmly inserted into his brain.
He worries a great deal about the nights does Martin John. The nights he’s not in the house. He worries about what’s happening and each morning he returns from work he carries a nagging fear that the Baldy Conscience will have burned the place down.
He worries a great deal about how much power the BC must know he has and what he might do with that power.