Quick and the Dead Girl by Ziggy Kinsella

I’ll spin you a thousand stories around Clubland – how it began, the type of people who come here to drink themselves to death, the people who sit in the shadows, those who live high up above the city, the kings and princes of organised crime.  But really there is only one story here. 

Clubland is like a dentist drill, whizzing in your ear, making you feel sick and dreadful and ready to run. Clubland is that moment of ecstasy when your balls empty and the world comes into sharp focus, it’s coffee and cream that’s been left overnight or warm beer or a hundred other things that sound peachy but aren’t.

Most of all, Clubland is your front row seat to a bloody death.

The girl is ordinary although she tries not to be.

She is arguing with a boy, her hands moving in expansive gestures.  Her nails are long, perfectly manicured, French polished.  She wears a short skirt and a thin camisole top and she’s not wearing a bra.  He can see the outline of her nipples.  Her face is angular (a breath away from pretty) and the shade of lipstick she’s wearing is too harsh for her features.   She says something to the boy that is full of spite and storms away towards one of the bars, her gait awkward in block heels.   An ordinary girl.

Except for the hair.

Quick loves the hair and that is why he begins to follow her.  

Sometimes it’s just a look.   Sometimes, it’s the clothes, even the smell of a person.   There is no rhyme or reason.  With the girl it is her hair.   The street fizzes around him.   He feels alive because of the girl, because of her hair.   He sees each strand, smells the last shampoo she gave it, dreams of it falling over his face as they kiss.   She will taste of strawberries this girl and he will love her for a long while.

He follows.  He buys a drink and sits close enough to watch and hear her conversation.

“I don’t see what his problem is.”  She tips the bottle of ice beer to her lips.   She’s intent on getting drunk as quickly as possible.  The girl loves life in the fast lane.   She despises the mediocrity of her current existence. 

She leans on her elbow and pushes a cigarette at her lips.   “Bastard,” she adds.

“You can’t blame him, Nik,” the boy says.   “If I was your old man, I wouldn’t bail you out either.”   She stares at the kohl lines around the boy’s pretty eyes.  She’s not convinced.  The boy continues with a shrug, “I thought your credit rating was so low you couldn’t get anything.”   He runs his eyes over her costume and smirks, his rouged lips spreading across his face like a bloody scar.  He would make a beautiful corpse.  If it wasn’t for the girl, Quick may have chosen the boy.  The boy, too, is ripe for love.

“There’s always a way round that.”  She winks and presses the bottle to her lips again.   She looks clever and guilty and stupid in the same moment.   She stubs out the cigarette and grabs her bag and gets to her feet.

“Oh, yeah,” the boy calls after her.   “What?”

She turns back to him, swinging her bag, showing him her curves.   “J & M Financial Services for one.”

The boy chokes on his Bacardi Breezer.   Fluid spews over his shirt and froths for a second before soaking in.   He wipes his hand over his chest.   “You stupid fucking bitch!”

“What is it with you?”  She scowls.  “Turning into my old man?”  She pushes her way to the ladies, beating a tall, spider-eyed drag queen to the only cubicle.   Quick closes his eyes and concentrates.   He can do this when he wants.   He takes a slow, deep breath and follows.  He does it mentally, not physically.   It’s a gift and he’s never tried to explain it.

She slams the door, hitches up her short skirt and pulls down her panties.   She hovers an inch or so above the metal toilet bowl (you never know what you can catch in a place like this) and pisses long and hard.   The sight of her thrills him and, from the safety of his seat, he feels himself grow hard.   He resists touching it because that will break the spell.   He thinks briefly of dead flesh before returning to the girl.   She hears the ladies’ door crash open and watches the boys shiny black heels pace below the cubicle door.

“Ed Mallory?”  He shouts.   “You borrowed fucking money off Ed Fucking Mallory?”

She grimaces as the strain of crouching sends a pain up her thighs.  “Tell the whole fucking world why don’t you?”

“How much?”

“None of your business, Freak.   None of your fuckin’ business.”

His head appears over the top of the cubicle as she searches for toilet paper, her panties around her knees.   The dispenser is empty and the leftovers are a gooey mess on the floor.   There are scrawled messages on the door and walls.   Numbers.   Obscenities.   A heartfelt plea from a girl called Angela who wants to kill herself.

“How much?” Growls Freak.

She pulls up her panties and straightens her skirt.   “Three.”  She runs hands through her long hair.

“Hundred?”

She pulls a face.  Blows a kiss.   Her lips will taste of strawberries and hope.

Freak drops out of site.   “Three grand.  You stupid…”   He can’t finish the sentence.   She smiles.   A self-satisfied smile.   Freak goes back to the bar, shaking his head.   The girl emerges from the cubicle.   She rummages around in the mess of her bag and finds her lipstick, hidden below an old, caked foundation compact and cotton wool buds.   She sweeps the dark gloss over her lips, presses them together and then pouts.   Her beautiful hair hangs from her scalp like a black waterfall.   This girl is vain.   The vanity suits her.   She draws a heart shape on the mirror, an arrow through it.

She heads back to her table.  A big brute with tree trunk arms has his tongue down the boys throat.   She sneers.   “Child molester.”

The hulk stands up and smiles at her, then moves away having had a good sample of the goods.   Freak smiles too as if he knows he’s scraped her spine.

“Slut,” she says, sitting down, opening her purse.

Freak cocks his head.   “Threeee grand?”  He reiterates and whistles.   “You ever met Mallory?   I mean the guy owns these streets.   You know what he did to Micky.”

“No.”  She doesn’t look like she needs a lecture.

“Threw him out the plate glass window at Brahms.”

“So,” she replies.   “I borrowed money.  I didn’t steal it.   Oh, Jesus, what’s the big problem?”

“You going to pay it back?”  Freak shakes his head.   “You borrowed money off Ed fuckin’ Mallory.   You think that twat got where he is by being nice to people?   He’s not Littlewoods Catalogue.  Grow up, Nik, for godsake.”

She snaps the purse shut and takes another slug from her bottle of beer.   “He doesn’t know who I am.   And even if he gives me any hassle, I’ll just tell daddy or I’ll call the police.”

“He’ll blow your dad’s kneecaps off.   He owns the cops.   Don’t you understand?”  She stares at him hard, daring him to continue.  “He’s a gangsta, babe.”   Freak shrugs.   “Fuck.”

“I was depressed,” she explains.  “You know I have to shop when I’m depressed.”

“You had three grand’s worth of depression?”

“Sammy chucked me for that pink haired bitch at Flamingo’s.   Besides, I’m a good shopper.”

“Cultivate a cheaper habit,” the boy sighs.  “Drugs maybe.”

“Really.”

“Give it back Nik.   For  fucks sake, the man’s bad news.  How much have you got left?   We can go see him now.  Tell him it was a mistake.”

“What?  In real terms?”  She looks over at the bar.  A couple of queens are falling over each other.   The girl behind the bar looks more interested in her nails.

“In cash,” presses the boy.

She opens her purse again and smiles as if she knows this is just going to piss him off so much.   “Five pounds and thirty two pence,” she says, firing the words at him with mean precision.

Freak buries his head in his hands.   “Fuck,” he says over and over again.

“I was on a roll.  Don’t suppose you could lend me a tenner,” she adds in all seriousness.

“Jeeze Nik, don’t expect me to visit you in hospital, that’s all.”  He gets to his feet and pulls on his jacket.   As an afterthought he reaches in his hip pocket and pulls out a crumpled note.   “I’m going home.   You might like to start saving for a life abroad.   Some small island where Mallory won’t be able to find you.”

“You’re such a woos,” she says, straightening out the note and kissing it.   She watches him leave, wiggling his backside as if every soul in the bar is giving him the once over.  

Music beats across the floor.   The pub fills some more.   She goes to the bar, orders a Red Witch and takes it back to her table where she sits alone.   The light shimmers in her hair.  For a moment her eyes settle on Quick.   He feels a shudder of electricity as their eyes meet and for that moment, he thinks she has discovered his thoughts, hanging visibly in the room.   Thoughts of sex and death.   He breathes in deep and amongst the smells in the bar is hers, ripe, beautiful.

“How’s it going, Eu-nice,” croons a tall, wiry man decked out in leather and chains.   He’s bald and a wormy vein pulses lazily at his temple.   He is sun-bed tanned, in his fifties.

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps.  The man sits down uninvited.   She doesn’t like him, you can tell by the look on her face, the way she flicks back her long hair and looks down at the table. “You’re such a queen,” she adds.

The man waves her taunt away with an idle movement of his right hand.  “A little mouse tells me you’re living beyond your means, sweetie.”

“Oh, for chrissakes, has everyone got an opinion on my spending habits?”  She drinks.   Squeezes her eyes.

“We all worry, you know that,” he says without sincerity.  “You’re part of the furniture round her after all.   We’d hate to lose you.”

“Sure,” she growls.  

The man leans towards her and waves his right pinkie at her.   It has been severed above the first knuckle.

“See that,” he whispers.   “I tell people that a young whore bit it off in the heights of passion when I gave him a little more length than he wanted.  I tell people that ‘cause it makes them laugh.   They don’t really believe it.” He sits back and flips a beer mat over.   “Everyone knows I got a dick like a pencil and young bucks run a mile when they see me.”  She eyes him suspiciously.   “No,” he says with a melodramatic hiss of breath.   “Mad, bad Ed Mallory cut it off with a spoon.”

“Bollocks,” she retorts.   She sticks a cigarette between her lips and lights it.  “Fuckin’ spoon.  Huh!”

The man shakes his head and smiles.  Then he continues: “I borrowed a tenner off him a long time ago.  Before he became the big-time bastard he is now.   Anyway, I conveniently forgot about it.”  The man smiles.  “Mallory didn’t though.   Him and some of his mates caught up with me and I didn’t have it on me at the time so he took the little finger as a down-payment.   Fed it to his dog.”  He stroked the stub. “I paid up after that.”

“That’s just shit,” the girl says.

“So, how much do you owe?  Please tell me, Freak wouldn’t say.”

“That boy’s got a big mouth.”

“Oh, sweetie, you’d better not be late with your payments.”  He gets up with a look on his face that says he’s glad he’s just said something to fuck her up.   He waves the stub at her and joins a group.   They start laughing and the girl thinks they are laughing at her.  Quick shares her anger.   He takes a good long look at the bald man.  Perhaps he’ll pay a visit when he’s given the girl what she needs.

She downs her drink, grabs her bag and leaves.   It’s easy to follow her.   Her mind is preoccupied and even if she saw him in the bar she has worse things to think about than what he could do to her.  

The Canal bars aren’t busy.  Not on a Wednesday in October. There are some young gays on a street corner howling at some passing transvestites.  There’s a tramp outside Fosses, begging for change with a Styrofoam cup.  He follows the girl with the long dark hair to another bar.   He’ll watch her work.   He can hide in a corner and she won’t notice him.   He can be invisible when he wants to be.   The tension begins to rise in him.   His skin tightens and his breath shortens and he feels a little light-headed thinking of her.  

What surprises are in store for her back at the cottage?

He watches her try to palm herself off on a man in a business suit, bending her small tits towards him and fluttering her eyelashes.  She giggles and flirts desperately and for a while the man responds.   Maybe she can see a three grand fuck in his grey silk suit and gold-plated cuff links.  The man becomes bored with her after a while and ends up leaving with a young man with a close-cropped T-shirt and a muscular torso. The girl consoles herself by stealing a bottle of Bacardi Breezer.   Her shift ends at midnight.

She finds her way up to Minshull Street and stands on the corner watching the prostitutes ply their trade.   Cars cruise up and down the road, slowing in front of tarty women and boys barely out of their teens.   Foul language and laughter spikes in the cold air.   He can smell their lust and it makes him sick.   Over by the canal bridge, a police van waits, the occupants watching the street but doing nothing.   The police like to have the whores and tricks in one place where they can keep an eye on them.

It starts to rain and the girl ducks her head, folding her arms across her chest.   She walks along the road and almost bumps into him.   She looks up and their eyes fasten together.  It’s a beautiful moment.   Love almost explodes in his heart.

“Jesus,” she gasps.

He smiles.   “Sorry,” he says and looks around uncertainly.  “I’m kind of knew at this.”

Her forehead creases.  “At what?”   She looks around at the pros.   Then she snarls.   “Fuck off.”  

“I’ve got money.”  He pulls a wad of notes from his pocket.   It’s a couple of tenners, wrapped around monopoly money but it looks a lot.   “It won’t take long.   Really.”  He smiles goofily

He watches the fight in her eyes.   Behind her a whore screams with laughter and stumbles against a wall.  The trick she is with fumbles in her blouse.   The girl looks.  Stiffens.  She’s wondering if that is where her future lies.  Her eyes water a little and for a moment she seems to shrink in the gloom.   Then she takes a deep breath.

“Fifty.”

He surprises her by saying: “Okay.”

He smiles again.   Rain glints on his spectacles.   He wants to tell her he is in love with her.   That all he wants to do is lie somewhere soft and warm with her until the world stops spinning.  He can help her find peace.   She won’t have to worry about money or gangsters like Ed Mallory.

She says:   “Where do you want to go?”

He nods towards the low light of a car park across the canal.  It looks so cold and impersonal.  She’s made the decision now.   She’s going to whore herself for fifty quid.  She leads the way, her hips swivelling, heels clopping on the ground, hair shimmering with rain.   He can’t take his eyes off her hair.   There are moments when he can feel it envelop him.   He is close to tears.

“Your hair is beautiful,” he says as they take the ramp down into the car park.   Her heels explode like gun shots on the concrete.   He can see his van now, parked alone in the corner.   He reaches into the pocket of his jacket, takes her arm and leads her towards the van as he flips the top off a bottle and soaks the cloth.

“That yours?”  She asks.   She sniffs the air.  “What’s that?”

“Nothing,” he says.   His voice is dark.  Deep.   Demonised.

He tugs her back and brings out the cloth, pressing it firmly to her mouth and nose.   Her eyes widen and she kicks out and struggles.   He ignores the pain as she connects with his shin.   He will never let go of her.   Never.  Her scream is muffled by the cloth.   Her struggles subside and her eyes begin to close.   Her arms drop loosely to her sides and her body becomes heavy.   He puts the cloth back in his pocket and opens the door of the van and lays her inside.   Before he closes the door he gently kisses her on the lips.   She doesn’t taste of strawberries.

He drives out to the suburbs.    His heart is pounding – with love, with devotion.   She is his. On the seat beside him is the evening paper.   He’s making headline news now.  He never intended that, but it isn’t an unpleasant feeling, to be hunted.   They are hunting him but they don’t know who he is.  They have no idea.   He has a sense of invincibility.   There is also a sense that everything is predestined.   He thinks about the girl.   He thinks about her hair.   He is calm.  He is about to pull into his hideaway when he notices there is a truck on the path.   He stamps on the brake.   The van stalls.   For a moment, he can’t get it to start again.   The engine wheezes.  Dies.  Coughs.   Dies.   He hears the girl moan in the back.   People.   Two men in white protective clothing stand beside the truck.   Lights flash.  Above he can hear the sound of a helicopter.   The engine kicks and starts.   He reverses a little and then turns back onto the main road.   He’s angry.   He bangs his palm against the steering wheel.  They have stolen his hideaway.  Spoiled the moment.

Quick knows they don’t understand love.