The Great Pretender

by Ray Banks

I know I’m in the shit the moment the short one asks us for a light.

“Don’t smoke, mate,” I say, try to move on.

He nips in front of us, blocking the way. Streetlight catches his face. Looks like he’s waiting for us to get violent. Behind us looms a bloke so big he couldn’t hide in a pitch black room.

Two hands in my back, shoving us on. A flash behind my eyes, flaring pain in the back of my head, find myself spine to brick. The short one kicks out my knees and my legs go. So does my bladder, just a little, and that’s not something I like to admit, but I’m beyond pride right now.

“Fuck d’you –”

The rest of the sentence gets slapped out of my mouth. Something cold about the hands. In the gloom, they look too white, flurrying wild at us before a heavy blow catches us in the side of the head and I reel into the little one, who rips the wind out of us with a trowel dig to the ribs. My vision falls into a stream of black sand and I put one hand out to stop us from going over, but it doesn’t make a fucking lick. I hit the ground hard, feel something snap in my wrist, suck breath and let it out in a cry even though I don’t want to show pain. Then there’s freezing concrete against my skin, something gritty and sharp against the palm of my hand. I push up just before the big one takes what little breath I have left with a boot to the ribs.

I drop. I curl. Should’ve had the nous to do it sooner, but by the time I think of it, these blokes are a two-man downpour of heel-kicks that tear chunks out of my torso and arms. I only stop screaming when my throat closes up.

After another barrage, they step back. I don’t move. Too busy trying to breathe through broken teeth, the cold tweaking exposed nerves. I make a whistling sound. It’s about the only sign that I’m still alive.

The little one snorts something thick into his throat.

He says, “You know what you did.”

I shift a little on the pavement. I focus on the little bloke’s hands, then look at his partner. They’re both wearing white latex gloves.

Aye, I know what I did. My mind might be in fucking tatters, but I still remember last week.

I was a dead man walking, a strip of decaying flesh in a three-piece funeral suit and spit-polish shoes. Thick carpet nicked the footsteps out from under us and either side, glass corridor walls gave us a view of London eighteen storeys up, made us feel like I was walking through the sky.

Like maybe this was heaven.

Like maybe I was already gone.

Like someone like me would go out peacefully, comfortably.

Like fuck.

The bloke leading the way called himself Mr. Dobson’s personal assistant, but his job description might as well have read “tight-arsed fuck puppet” for all the secretarial skills he’d shown so far. He acted like he was eighties Bowie when he was nowt more than a hipster with a floppy blonde fringe and a fragile walk. He put knuckle to the only solid door in the building, set deep into the only solid walls I’d seen in the last five minutes. Someone muttered from inside the office. Bowie opened the door, then moved to one side, arse pressed to wood and a thin smile slashing his face. I had to pass close as I entered the room. Noticed Bowie was wearing eyeliner.

His smile grew wider, the lips thinner.

My mind played tricks on us. Couldn’t always trust what I saw. And what I saw then, what the voices were telling us, was that this lad’s a pure bender, and I reckoned maybe he could smell the disease on us. But I didn’t say anything, just pushed on through into the room and blinding sunlight. I heard the door whisper click-shut behind us, heard someone shifting in their clothes somewhere up front. Giving us the once over, most likely. That same someone cleared his throat.

My eyes didn’t really react to the bright light, on account of my AR. Called ’em prostitute pupils because when the light hit them they accommodated, but they didn’t react.

Having that?

Fucking wey aye, course y’are. Gallows humour.

In the light from the floor-to-ceilings that made up three walls of the office, Dobson looked like an overexposed photograph and for a second I wasn’t sure it was actually him. I moved to one side. The furniture in here was strong and dark; the gadgie who owned it is anything but. Looked like he’d been sewn into that bespoke suit, but there wasn’t a tailor in the world could hide the fact this bloke had a body like a duvet.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. He wasn’t sorry at all. He was wary is what he was.

I lowered my voice and said, “Not at all, Mr. Dobson. I appreciate you taking the time out to see me at such short notice.”

Because that was the way I did things then. The way of the world I was slipping into and slow-dancing through. Same world George Dobson lived and breathed when he wasn’t slouching in the shadows of a limo interior. And it was the world that meant I had to prep before I called in a request for the appointment, get my voice plummed up and a nice suit to go on my back. George Dobson, you see, was a difficult man to get up close and personal with. You had to be class to get through the door.

He was a professional Yorkshireman, this one. Said he played for Barnsley when he was Harrogate-born and bred. Straight talking — said what he liked and liked what he bloody well said — but it was a bluff to cover a schooling down That London, and which helped his image as a man of the working class as he backslid around Westminster, siphoning money from the public purse into his own. Called himself a macrofinancial executive consultant, which was just a fancy way of saying he was another in a long line of sticky-fingered bastards who were shady on the details, big on bluster, and richer than God. His teeth were capped, his eyes washed. I could just about see my reflection in both if I concentrated. When he came round the desk, one hand out to shake, it was less of a walk, more a glide.

He was a fake. A pretender. Just like me. Except he’d been at it long enough to be more than a put-on accent and a suit nicked from Moss Bros.

“Good to meet you,” he said.

Skin touch, palm to palm. A pang of nausea that threatened to bubble up into a dry heave before I pulled my hand away, clammy with his sweat.

“Tristan mentioned your name,” said Dobson, “but I have to admit, it’s gone right out of my head.”

“Gillespie,” I said.

“Gillespie. Right.”

Even if it was my real name, he wouldn’t have known it. Never swapped names the last time we met.

He motioned for us to follow him as he returned to his desk. He perched on the edge, waved one hand at the seat in front of him. I didn’t take it. I knew better than to put him taller than us by sitting down.

“Well,” he said, “what can I do for you, Mr. Gillespie?”

I smiled at him, decided to give it to him straight: “Compensation.”

“Compensation,” said Dobson.

“That’s right.”

The pause that began confused drifted into uncomfortable as Dobson waited for us to explain. I didn’t. Wasn’t going to give him the easy way out. Instead I let him dredge the old grey matter for answers. He knew my face, even if it was a little paler, a little more sunken, a little more lined. That was the only reason I wasn’t out on my arse right now. I was familiar. He just didn’t know where from.

Something sparked, but the connection was fleeting, gone in an instant, and irritation rippled his face.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Oh aye, you’ve had that, kidda.”

Dobson frowned at us. He passed a hand over his mouth.

“Know us now?” I said.

He pushed off the side of his desk, tried to bring himself up to his full height, which was still a couple of inches under my six foot. “No, I don’t. What’s your story?”

“It’s a long one.”

“You’ve got five minutes.”

“Then I’ll stick to the facts.”

And I did. I told him how old I was — twenty-one — and where I was from — Benwell, Newcastle. I told him that I hadn’t been back up there for about five-six years now, not since my step-dad Grant came out of Frankland. Grant had turned prison poof inside, but he’d always been a closet case, and he’d never been able to live with it without some poor cunt getting the short end. It’d been the rage that had put him behind bars in the first place — some milk-faced prick called him a bender in the Shepherd’s Arms after last call and Tony put him through the back bar. They’d called it aggravated assault. When it happened at home with the added pillow-push, it was just par for the course. I would’ve told my mam about it if she’d been sober more than ten minutes a day.

Anyway, I wasn’t hanging around for a repeat, so I skipped the East Coast Mainline and headed south. Didn’t have much of a plan outside of bright lights, big city and as soon as they kicked us all off at King’s Cross, I went looking for work.

I looked a long time. Didn’t find much more than a couple of days here and there. After a while, I couldn’t afford to stay on at the hostel. Then I went onto the streets, getting my tea from whatever was dropped outside the chippy. That was where I met a gadgie called himself Sida. He was African, mostly spoke French, but he had enough pidgin English to tell us parts of his story and that he’d been born with the virus. When the others on the street heard that, they gave him a wide berth. Nobody wanted the fucking taint.

I didn’t give a shit. The man had a blanket and I was cold. Plus he was the closest thing I had to a friend.

Sida was there when George Dobson turned up. And he was the one told us not to go.

We heard the limo before we saw it. Sounded like a big cat’s growl. Then there was the whine of the window coming down, the savoury smell of tobacco. The driver asked us if the white boy wanted to make a bit of money.

The fuck did he expect us to say? I left Sida to his blanket and got in the back of the limo.

Dobson looked at us then, his lips bunched. He squinted into the sun.

“You didn’t force us,” I said. “There was the offer of money. I wasn’t daft. This isn’t about you picking up trade. It’s about what happened after.”

The place we went, he had to remember it. The carpet made a noise when you walked on it. The lampshade was nicotine yellow and cast a sickly glow over everything. The bathroom, such as it was — a flaking bath and a cold tap sink — was up the hall under a stuttering bare bulb and an inch of piss-water. I didn’t see much more than that. The time I spent there, I saw mostly the back end of a mattress and a pillow that smelled like meat.

Dobson called us names. I didn’t hear half of them, but I could tell by the grip on the back of my neck and the spittle that flecked my bare back that they were bad. Once he got to a steady thumping rhythm, he brought his free fist across the back of my head like he was all set on pounding my skull into the bed. Happened before to us, I’d long stopped feeling it, but I tightened up like I knew he wanted us to and it was over with shortly after.

When he pulled out, breathing hard, I dropped to the mattress because I knew he wanted that, too. He wanted us beaten and used, one big fucking tissue. I felt warmth. Later on, I’d see a milky trail of blood in snakes down the back of my thighs. Right then, though, I stayed still. I heard him step back, zip up, grab his suit jacket from the back of the chair.

Last thing I saw of him was the couple of chewed up twenties he tossed onto the bed before he left.

“You know us now,” I said. “You remember.”

He shook his head, looking at the floor. “I really don’t.”

“You know us,” I said. “You infected us.”

“Infected you?” He smiled. “No, I don’t think so, son. I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”

“Nah, it’s definitely you.”

“How do you know?”

Because, I told him, the next john after him backed off with his cock hanging like a broken little finger, muttering something about sores. John didn’t want nowt to do with them and once I managed to get a butcher’s myself, squatting over a broken bathroom mirror in Waterloo gents, I couldn’t say I blamed him. Whatever they were, they looked nasty. More than that, they looked contagious. Then, a couple of weeks later, the rash arrived, a sprinkling of reddish-brown spots that looked like dried blood, all over the palms and soles. With that came everything else: sore throat, banging head, aching muscles, that creeping warmth that followed us everywhere like an unwanted hug. Sida told us to go to the hospital. I told him he was full of shit.

Then came the scrap with Gail Thorne, a bulldyke who hated renters and didn’t like us kipping out the front of her club. One night when the Morningside dictated her mood, she decided to make an example of us. I got jammy and managed to put out a couple of her teeth. She did better and put me in a curtained booth in the A&E.

The nurse didn’t look us in the eye. I was used to that. The doctor kept his hands off us, but looked more serious than I thought he should. I wasn’t used to that.

When he told us I had syphilis, I laughed in his face.

Syphilis was a punchline, like scrofula or scurvy or smallpox or fucking rickets. It was a joke disease. It was something your ancestors got, not you.

Dobson let out a laugh that belongs in the back room of a private club. “I can assure you, Mr. Gillespie, I’ve never had syphilis my entire life.”

“It’s a pretender,” I said. “That’s what the doctor told us. You’ve got it. You just think it’s something else. It hides. It can be dormant for years.”

He held up a hand as the laugh wound down to a chuckle. “Alright, son, I can take a joke as well as the next man. Let’s just say for a second that I’m the type of bloke who goes around picking up rough trade and infecting them with syphilis. What’s the compensation you were talking about?”

“Fifty grand.”

He shook his head and sat back on the desk. “Where’d you get that from?”

“Stop laughing. You’re lucky I haven’t already gone to your fuckin’ wife.”

“What wife?”

I didn’t say anything.

He was still smiling, but his tone hardened. “I asked you a question, Mr. Gillespie. What wife?”

“Your wife.”

“I’m not married.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I haven’t been married for a long time.”

“You’re a liar.”

A single nod, then: “I think I’ve heard enough.” He pressed a button on his phone. “Tristan, would you mind sending security up here, Mr. Gillespie may need an escort out of the building.”

“Fuck’s that mean?”

“It means we’re finished. I suggest you leave before you embarrass yourself further.”

“I’m not embarrassed, mate. I know you’ve got a wife because we’ve been checking up on you. And even if she’s not bothered, someone will be. I’ll make trouble for you like you would not believe –“

“Don’t threaten me.”

“Fuckin’ promise you.”

“Listen, I’m sorry about whatever happened to you, but you’ve clearly got the wrong man.”

The door opened behind us. I didn’t need to turn around to know the cavalry had arrived.

“Good luck,” he said, and nodded at someone behind us.

The weight of a hand on my shoulder. Another weight in my pocket. I wished it was a gun, something big and scary, but wishing wasn’t going to turn it into anything more dangerous than a Stanley.

Still, it was better than nowt.

“Come on, time to go,” said someone behind us. Deep voice. Big bloke.

He tightened his grip on my shoulder. I clicked the blade on the Stanley and swiped it quickly across the bastard’s knuckles. A sharp suck of breath and he snatched his hand back. By the time blood welled up in the wound, I was already halfway across the room. Dobson darted behind his desk and I vaulted over it, leaving one of the blokes behind us stumbling over a chair. Three steps and I had Dobson by the tie. Slammed him up against the glass and the whole window wobbled. I put the Stanley blade to his throat, nicked the skin, forced his eyes up to mine.

“Say it,” I told him.

“I don’t know what you’re –“

The blade drew blood. It looked black. “Fuckin’ say it.”

Something flashed in his eyes, but my head was banging so much I couldn’t recognise it. Could’ve been amusement. Something else, maybe pity.

I didn’t know anymore.

Another hand on my shoulder, pulling us back. I lashed out, but I wasn’t dug in enough to land a decent hit. By the time I got turned, the other security bloke had one massive hand clamped over mine, grinding my knuckles to make us drop the blade. I yelled, turned on my heel, made for Dobson again. He was thrown back against the window. I prayed for a crack to spread across the glass, for him to go eighteen floors to the pavement. When it didn’t happen, I tried to twist and slash, but these two security blokes had my elbows pinned to my ribs. One of them brought something cold and hard across my face and my legs went loose, my vision blurred with tears.

I saw the Stanley drop out of my hand, hit the floor.

I saw the far windows move away from us.

I saw one of the security blokes snap a disposable rubber glove onto his hand before he hit us again. I broke one arm free, grabbed onto a passing doorway, felt a rush of cold air, and then saw a flight of concrete stairs rising up to meet us.

Fireworks. My own blood.

And then nothing for a while.

But that was then. This is now.

They’re gone. I haven’t moved from the pavement. The pain has turned into a sickness that means they’ve done some hard damage to us. Broken bones. Internal bleeding. No walking away from this. It’s a message written bold and underlined. Like Vic and Bob used to say, I should’ve let it lie.

It’s my own fault.

Sida was the one who told us about Dobson. He was the one who spotted him after I found out. He was the one said I should do something about my situation, that this bloke owed us something for my disease, especially now the disease was me and no amount of penicillin could purge us of it.

“I wish,” he said, “I find the man who put this in me.”

I nodded. “I know.”

“Then make it good. Do something. Do not let him pretend you are not a person.”

So when I went to see Dobson, I expected to do that. Make him face up to what he did, give us some money to go away. Not just for me, but for Sida, too. And when Sida got sicker, when he caught pneumonia and struggled through his last liquid breaths, he told us to carry on, and I’m not the kind of bloke to renege on a dying wish. A little investigation turned up a well-fed son doing an economics degree. A little more investigation found us a way to slip in there and tug his sleeve. I sat him down in a campus coffee shop and laid it out for him the same way I’d told his dad.

And Ewan Dobson listened to everything I had to say. Took it back to his dad. And his dad took offence. Obviously.

“You need hospital.”

Sida’s voice, whispering in my ear, too close to be real. I smile and feel the string of spit and blood webbing my broken mouth. I breathe out through my nose, see a bubble burst in my peripheral. I hear Sida singing the same old song he used to sing whenever it was too cold to sleep, a low and melodic mutter in a language I never learned, but which sounded pretty enough when Sida sang it. I feel the pain begin to drain out of us, and the concrete become warm to the touch.

When I close my eyes, I see myself walking through London eighteen storeys up in the air, and I think that maybe this is it, end of the line. When I see Sida huddled under a blanket up ahead, I know there’s no maybe about it. I try to move my hand in a wave, but I can’t manage it. The blanket flaps in a low, cold breeze. He smiles at us.

“It’s okay,” says Sida, and his voice sounds so calm it makes us tired.

So I close my eyes. And I smile.

Didn’t get the cash. Doesn’t matter. Don’t know what I would’ve done with it, anyway. Besides, it wasn’t about the money. It was the principle. I didn’t need reward. I needed someone to note us. Note my situation. Give a fuck. That was all.

Ewan did that for us. I can’t move, but I thank him. And even if this is it, I don’t give a fuck. Because Sida’s telling us to go to sleep, and the concrete under my cheek is warm and comfortable, and for once, despite the beating, the bleeding, the disease, I feel alright.

And that’s a good a feeling as any to go out on.

Ray Banks is the author of eleven novels, including the Cal Innes quartet and, most recently, Trouble’s Braids.

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash