Craig shuffled over to the side of the garages. One of the walls had the wobbly-lined shape of a goal painted on it. He stretched his arms and legs wide.
I put the heavy leather ball on the penalty spot and stepped back for a run.
“Blow a whistle,” I shouted at Craig.
“Eh?”
“A whistle.”
He pursed his lips, looking more than a bit girly, and I started to giggle.
“No, like this, yer big girl’s blouse,” I said, and put my fingers inside my mouth to show him. But before I could start, I heard a shriek.
I jumped, but not as much as Craig. An overweight woman wearing a sleeveless, polka-dot dress was running towards him, her bingo wings flapping.
“Get here now,” she said, clasping him towards a bosom that would be accurately described as ample, before pulling him back to the betting shop.
FOUR
It was now creeping towards the part of the night that I really hated. It was close to midnight and Craig was hammered.
“The pint of no return,” he said. He downed a pint in one and staggered across the sticky carpet to the dance floor.
The Grand was crowded, hot and clammy. Billy Blockbuster, the DJ and quizmaster, was playing smoochy songs back-to-back. As “Betcha By Golly Wow” played, Craig canoodled with a couple of members of the cast of The Golden Girls. He could hardly stand up, and the pensioners were doing all that they could to support him, but it wouldn’t be long before Goliath would crash down.
And before you could shout “Timber!” he was over, crushing one of the women beneath him. Two bouncers in Crombies, Darren and Dane Greenwood, ran over, but when they saw it was Craig they just stepped back and looked at me.
You could hear the screams of the old woman who was trapped beneath Craig so Billy Blockbuster quickly changed the song to The Jam’s “Going Underground” and pumped up the volume.
“Well?” said Dane.
“Aye,” I said.
Darren went back to the door and Dane bent down and grabbed Craig’s ankles while I took hold of him by his, frankly minging, armpits.
He was a dead weight as we dragged him up, just enough so someone could pull the woman from underneath him. We struggled and turned him on his back. He was in a deep sleep, snogging with Morpheus and snoring like a Kalashnikov.
And then it was the hard part.
FIVE
Craig’s father, Glyn Ferry, was a terrifying man by reputation although he was rarely seen in action. His foot soldiers were his boys: Alanby, William and Dafydd. William did most of the muscle work while Dafydd did the greasing of palms and the like. And Alanby, well, he was known as The Enforcer and he was in prison for murder for most of my childhood. But, of course, one day when I was about thirteen he got out.
I’d just finished my supper, cheese spread on toast, and was sitting with my mum watching Callan. My dad was on night shift at the Lighthouse and the house was calm until there was a rapid knock at the door. My mother, ever stoic and unruffled, slowly got to her feet and, keeping one eye on the television, looked out of the window.
“By the cringe!” she said. This was as much as she swore. “What does he want at this time of night?”
Callan and Lonely were arguing on TV and I wasn’t really paying attention to her but I looked up when she came back from the door with Craig, who was white and shaking.
“It’s Wednesday,” I said, angrily. “Comic club is Thursday nights.” It had been a tradition over the last few years that every Thursday, Craig and a couple of other waifs and strays came to my house and we swapped comics.
“It’s our Alanby,” stuttered Craig.
“What?” I said. My mother was giving him a sympathetic look, which was grating on me. There were another twenty minutes of Callan left.
“Why not sit down, luvvie?” said my mother. “I’ll make you a cup of sweet tea and you can tell us all about it.”
She pushed Craig down into Dad’s armchair and went into the kitchen. I turned my attention to the TV until the adverts came on.
Mam gave Craig his tea in a Seatown FC mug and he took sips, making annoying slurping noises.
The story that tumbled out of Craig, in fits and starts, was that Alanby had been released from jail after ten years inside. And he’d come home with a bride, Trish, a Scottish prostitute he’d met two days after getting out.
Craig’s parents were none too pleased and had kicked them out of their home shortly after they arrived. So, Alanby and Trish moved into a flat above one of the betting shops. Short of cash, and with a big heroin habit, Alanby had put Trish back on the game.
That night, she’d picked up a Dutch sailor down at the docks and sold him her wedding ring in the Ship Inn. Alanby had turned up at the pub in a drunken rage and sliced Trish to pieces. He’d then turned up at his parents’ home covered in blood and wanting a change of clothes. Craig had opened the door to the blood-splattered Alanby and had freaked out.
He spent the next few nights staying at my house, working his way through my mam’s Reader’s Digests, and the Ferrys got into the habit of packing him off to stay with me whenever they wanted him out of the way.
Well, at least these days they paid.
SIX
I’d never set much stock on all that heredity cobblers. Bad blood and the like. I was more of a nurture over nature man. Though it did seem to me that the Ferry family were all born under a bad star.
Except Beverly, that is. Beverly was the only girl among the Ferry siblings. She was a qualified accountant who did the firm’s books and worked in the local civic centre. And her business acumen was a real boon to the family, especially when their enterprises became more and more legit. And she was the one who had decided to hire me to keep a bleary eye on Craig.
Beverly was in her late-thirties. She was well read. She was good-looking. She was fun to be with. And I had been arse over tit in love with her for as long as I could remember. And, of course, she was married. To a local Councillor, to boot.
I’d managed to manoeuvre Craig in and out of the taxi and through the front door of his flat but was having trouble getting him up the stairs. I was still aching from all that digging I’d done and was considering giving up the ghost, and leaving Craig where he lay, when his mobile started to ring.
I took it out of his pocket and looked at the display. It was Beverly. I switched off the Bonanza theme and spoke.
“Craig’s phone, Peter Ord speaking.”
“Oh, God, is he trashed again, Peter?”
“Either that or he’s rehearsing for his Stars In Their Eyes appearance as Oliver Reed.”
A chuckle.
“All right, I suppose I’ll see him tomorrow,” she said. “It was just that he had a delivery job to do earlier and I wanted to make sure it had gone well. Know anything about it?”
“Er… yeah, I think…”
“Shit, he bolloxed it up, didn’t he?”
“Well…”
“Peter, I can tell when you’re telling pork pies. I’ll be there in bit.”
SEVEN
Bev was looking very business-like in a sharp black suit and high heels, her blonde hair tied back. And she looked more than somewhat pissed off.
“So, who was the idiot with the Luger?” she said. She had to raise her voice slightly as Craig’s snores were now echoing through the living room. We’d managed to get him on the sofa and left him there. We moved into the cramped kitchen and I took a can of Foster’s from the fridge.
“Fancy one?”
Bev shook her head.
“So, the Shogun Assassin?”
“Dunno who he was. Craig said that the bloke pissed off on a motorbike before he could get his hands on him. Was dressed head to foot in black, like a ninja, apparently.”