Stegs was sitting on the lounge sofa alongside the missus. They were watching Celebrity Wheelchair Challenge in which three so-called celebrities, for reasons better known to themselves, travelled across the country in wheelchairs in aid of charity, or something like that anyway. Stegs wasn’t really paying much attention. The only reason he was sitting there at all was because he didn’t know what else to do. He was suffering from writers’ block, having spent three hours that day in a pub in Mill Hill trying to pick up where he’d left off at the beginning of chapter three of Undercover Cop. Five pints of Stella, a pack of fags and half a gram of speed later, and he’d written about a page of absolute shit. He’d read somewhere that booze and drugs were meant to get the old creative juices flowing, but whoever was claiming that was either a liar or a crap writer.
He’d got home a couple of hours earlier, somewhat the worse for wear, and had had a stand-up row with the missus, who’d smelt the drink on him and had told him that either he got help or she and Luke were leaving. Promises, promises, he’d thought, but hadn’t said anything, recognizing that once again he was the one in the wrong. It annoyed him, because the previous day he’d picked up many a brownie point by taking her and Luke on a trip to Odds Farm, a place out in the country near Beaconsfield where kids could go on tractor rides and feed farm animals. Luke was a bit young for it all really, but it made a nice day out, and the weather had been OK, with the sun putting in its first appearance for as long as he could remember.
In a bid to return to the good books, Stegs had gone out and got fish and chips for them both while she’d put Luke to bed, and had bought her a bunch of flowers from the Co-op at the same time. She’d given him a stern look but had accepted them with the beginnings of a smile, and by the time they’d finished eating he’d even begun to sober up as the effects of the speed had worn off. It had been the last of his stuff as well. He was going to have to get some more.
So now he and the missus were back on an even keel and Stegs was bored. Bored and restless. Wanting to get the next stage of his plan moving. It was a risky one, there was no denying that. And one that could get him into a lot of trouble. But as he sat watching Gaby Roslin in her wheelchair looking very irate as a taxi driver ignored her outstretched hand and drove on by, and wondering where the fuck his life was going, he decided that the risk was more than worth it.
‘It does annoy you when they don’t stop just because someone’s handicapped,’ said the missus. ‘It’s not like they don’t charge an arm and a leg for a trip anyway.’
‘It’s not worth taking a leg off her,’ said Stegs, ‘not when it’s in that condition. That’s probably why he’s not stopping. That, and the fact that it’s Gaby Roslin.’
‘I’m serious, Mark. It’s not right, and it’s not a laughing matter. If you were handicapped, you wouldn’t be laughing.’
Stegs immediately regretted speaking out of turn. It was always best simply to agree with the missus. Start contradicting her pronouncements and you ended up in a bigger quagmire than the Americans in Vietnam. And with about as much chance of victory.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ he said with suitable vagueness. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
He was saved from further admonishments by the sound of the home phone going. It was on the missus’s side of the sofa, and she reached over and answered it, quickly immersing herself in conversation. It was her sister. Stegs knew that because the missus kept saying stuff like ‘Don’t worry, Linda’ and ‘It’ll be all right, Linda, honestly’. He got up and took the opportunity to go outside for a fag.
When he got back inside a few minutes later, the missus had come off the phone.
‘What’s happened with Linda?’ he asked.
She gave him her wide-eyed expression that signified that some sort of minor drama had occurred. ‘Well, Clive’s away in Abu Dhabi on business and she’s just had a crank call. Some man saying he wants to become a porno star and telling her the size of his you-know?’ She lowered her eyes in the direction of her groin, just in case he didn’t know what she meant by a ‘you-know’.
‘That’s terrible,’ said Stegs. ‘How big did he say it was?’
She laughed in spite of herself, and he thought he saw a twinkle in her eye. ‘Oh, Mark, I’m serious. She’s very worried. You know what Linda’s like.’
‘He didn’t threaten her, though, did he?’
‘Apparently not; in fact, he was talking like she was someone else. But she said he got very annoyed when she claimed she didn’t know what he was going on about. He even told her to fuck off.’
‘She’ll be all right. The excitement probably did her good. Especially after a few years married to Clive.’
‘At least Clive provides,’ she said sternly, her good mood evaporating almost as fast as it arrived.
Stegs couldn’t help thinking that where his missus was concerned he was incapable of saying the right thing. She lightened up; he spoke; she darkened again.
‘Yeah, well,’ he said, sitting down. ‘He’s got to be good for something.’
The conversation dissolved into sullen silence. Celebrity Wheelchair Challenge came to an end and the missus went channel hopping across the whole gamut of Sky’s satellite offerings, including such gems as When Good Pets Go Bad and Britain’s Worst Plumbers Part 2, before settling on one of the early editions of Friends.
The sound of Mission Impossible came from the pocket of Stegs’s jeans. The missus sighed theatrically and turned up the volume as Ross tried to justify himself to Rachel about something he’d said to Phoebe which had subsequently been misinterpreted. Stegs had seen variations of this sub-plot a hundred times before on Friends. He’d liked the programme once, in the old days before the arrival of Luke, when he and the missus would snuggle up on the sofa and watch it with a bag of popcorn and a bottle of wine. Now it had just gone on too long. Like the relationship, really.
He pulled the phone from his pocket and went out into the hallway. If it was that hound Trevor Murk phoning again to find out what was happening with his reward, then he was going to get a serious ear-bashing. But it wasn’t. It was Tino. Stegs walked into the back garden and lit another cigarette. It was a nice evening, mild for the time of year.
‘Hello, Tino. I hope you’ve got some good news for me.’
‘I still do not know what you are trying to do here, man.’
‘I’m trying to keep you out of jail. That’s what I’m trying to do. Now, have you made contact?’
‘Ja, I went by her work tonight, the cafe you told me about. We got talking. She says she will go out with me later. It was pretty easy, man. She was, how you say, very keen. I think she likes me.’
‘Well, you’re a handsome fellow,’ said Stegs, pleased that it had gone smoothly. It hadn’t been that easy finding out where Judy Flanagan did her part-time job, but it seemed the effort had been worthwhile.
‘Thanks, man. That’s a nice compliment.’
‘So, you’re going to take her back to your room, OK?’
‘I think she wants to go out somewhere a bit nicer. She was talking about a bar, maybe a meal.’
Trust Flanagan’s flesh and blood to go for a freebie. ‘Wine her and dine her a bit, then. But make sure you get her back to the apartment.’
‘I don’t have a lot of money, Mark. Things are not going so well for me at the moment.’
‘Maybe you should flog some of those pills you’ve got.’
‘Flog?’
‘Sell. It means sell.’
‘Do you know any buyers?’
Stegs was getting tired of this conversation. Tino had got the power to wear out men as well as women, though for very different reasons. ‘Listen, there’s still three years in jail hanging over your head. Find some money. I’m sure they have credit cards in Holland. But whatever you do, make sure you get her back to your place and keep her there. Understood?’
‘For how long? That is the problem, man. How long am I meant to be keeping her for? And why? I still don’t understand what this is all about.’
‘You don’t need to understand. And it isn’t going to be for long. A couple of days at most. I’ll be round first thing in the morning to let you know what’s going to happen next.’
Tino started to say something else but Stegs heard the sound of movement behind him and finished off the conversation by telling the Dutchman to do what he was instructed and leave it at that. He then flicked the phone off and turned to see his missus coming out of the back door. She was holding Luke’s baby monitor in one hand, a pack of Silk Cut in the other. Smoking. It remained the missus’s only vice. Everything else had been consigned to the dim and distant past, but, like so many people, when it came to the dreaded weed she’d been unable to break the habit.
She put the monitor down on the rickety patio table, then lit one of the cigarettes. Stegs noticed that she was wearing the red clogs she’d bought recently, and he gave an inward cringe. He was obsessed with clogs. To him, they were one of mankind’s worst fashion abominations, something that, like Tino, he could never quite forgive the Dutch for. And what was more, it seemed they were now a real clothing accessory among the local brood of mothers with whom the missus seemed to be spending more and more time. Some had even taken to wearing them with socks in what Stegs could only assume was a full-on bid to keep their husbands away from them in the bedroom. He had no doubt that it worked.
‘Who was that on the phone?’ asked the missus, a suspicious look in her eyes.
‘Work,’ he answered, taking a lug on his Marlboro Light.
‘It didn’t sound much like it.’
He wondered how long she’d been listening but didn’t let it bother him, retaining his casual stance. ‘One of my snouts,’ he told her. ‘He’s setting up a sting for me. It’ll go down well on my record.’
She sighed. ‘You always tell me how well you’re doing, but you’re still a DC after all these years, even though you seem to work every hour under the sun. That bloody mobile’s never off, Mark. But you’ve been stuck at the same level for what? How long is it now? Ten years?’
Her criticism hit him hard, not only because it caught him off guard as well as being essentially true, but because it wasn’t delivered in her usual whiny rant, but in much more even, pitying tones, as if she no longer felt sorry for herself being stuck with a dead-beat husband, but felt sorry for him instead. Which was far worse. He’d show her. One day, he’d show her that he was more than just a bog-standard copper doing what he was told day in day out for pitiful amounts of cash. For now, though, he needed to keep his mouth shut.
‘It’s not always going to be like this,’ he said, but he could hear the doubt in his own voice.
‘Really? What is it going to be like, then? Are you going to go to work one day like Paul Vokerman and not come back? Leave me and Luke on our own with nothing more than a feeble widow’s pension to keep us going? Everyone’s life’s moving forward, Mark, except ours. Is that what you want?’ Again her voice was calm, as if she’d been thinking about this for a long time.
‘Of course it’s not what I want.’
‘Or are you just going to keep on going like this? Treating this place like a hotel where you can come in drunk like you did today and put your head down, not putting anything into the relationship, either with me or your son?’
‘It’s not like that,’ he said, his voice a forced whisper in case the neighbours heard them.
‘It is like that,’ she said firmly. ‘And how much longer do you want me to put up with it? Something’s got to give, Mark. Things just can’t carry on like this.’
He felt a pain in the pit of his stomach, a grim realization that she no longer loved him. And the thing was, he’d never even spotted it.
‘What are you saying, love?’
‘I’m saying, either buck up your ideas and accept your responsibilities or move out. Understand?’
What could he say? Half of him felt like telling her to ‘fuck it, he’d walk,’ but there was another part — one that had been dormant for a while but which had showed itself briefly the previous day when they’d been at Odds Farm — that thought that maybe having a wife and kid wasn’t such a bad way to live after all. And it was that part that was beginning to make its presence felt again now.
‘I understand,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll be better, I promise. I know things have been difficult, and that I haven’t been at my best, but there’s been a lot of pressure on, especially with what happened with Vokes.’
‘I know, but that ought to make you think whether it’s all worth it. Because, to be honest with you, Mark, I don’t think it is.’
He finished his cigarette, stubbed it underfoot, then put the butt on the table. It was their rule. The butts went on the table, and were then cleared away at the end of the night, and the table wiped. The missus finished hers and repeated the operation. Then she yawned.
‘I’m off to bed. I’m shattered. Are you going to sleep in the spare room tonight?’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘Well, if you’re late you can. I don’t want to be woken up. At least not by you.’
‘OK,’ he said, conscious that he sounded sheepish. As if he’d been put in his place.
She said goodnight and disappeared inside. Stegs waited until the light came on upstairs, then he went into the kitchen, pulled a beer from the fridge and went back out to the table with it, lighting another cigarette. He was going to have to do something about his drinking, he knew that. He also knew the missus was right. The job was destroying him.
He wondered at that point whether he still loved her, and concluded that he wasn’t sure. Then he wondered whether he hated himself and what he’d become. He took a swig from the beer and wished he had some more speed, even though a good night’s sleep would do him the world of good.
No, he thought, I don’t hate myself.
It’s just all the other bastards.