Headhunters Read online

  In Britain, over three-quarters of suicides are carried out by men. These rates increase in times of economic hardship. A male’s average life expectancy stands at three years less than for a woman, and that is a gap that has recently been reduced. There are big differences due to social background, with those from poorer areas dying much younger, while the decrease is said to be due to the greater pressure being placed on women, which is hardly a positive. The fact so little is said about this reflects the way all men can be made to pay for the sins of some, which is sexist in itself. Few would equate the levels, but there is a fundamental unfairness there, and this novel suggests that people from the same background have more in common that those from different classes who only share a gender.

  Out of work and with no money coming in, panic grips a man. The mind spirals out of control and he feels like a failure, thoughts stretching out of shape, rebounding and smashing back in to cause more damage. He sits in a park and thinks about life and wishes he had never had to grow up, as that dread he’s known since he was small overwhelms him. The unemployed man remembers a bad father, someone who mistreated his mother, but he is not that person. He looks back at a lack of opportunities, the searching for self-confidence, the ebb and flow of positivity, finally reasons that despite being poor and unloved he at least he has his fists. Anger plays out, while a little slack from higher up the pecking order could stop a row that leads to an escalating violence. One escape many of the poorest imagine is a win on a horse race, or a series of numbers on a lottery ticket. Or a return to childhood. He wants to run away, but where can he go?

  Britain is much more than London, and there are always new pubs to discover. In Blackpool, in the North of England, The Lifeboat Inn is tucked into a small street not far from the seafront, its low ceilings magnifying the sound of an electric keyboard and a series of pensioners who step forward to sing their favourite songs, from Frank Sinatra doing things his way to Jeff Beck’s silver lining. And there is The Horseshoe in Glasgow, a five-minute walk from Central Station, with its old wood panelling and etched glass and hazy interior, a cavern of murmured chat. And in Penzance, at the tip of Cornwall, there is the Lamp And Whistle, run by a Londoner who has left the city behind, built into the corner of a terrace, rows of fisherman’s cottages running down to the harbour and the sea.

  These were my three top finds of last year, and moving around the pubs of Blackpool I remembered being there years before and using the setting for the Beano chapter of this novel. Holidays are the holy days when the masses leave the hardships of their working lives behind, and in the UK people head for the coastal resorts. On the old Victorian promenades there is no great rush to change with the capitalist’s idea of time. The front is lined with amusement arcades and fish-and-chip shops and bingo halls, grand shows in the music-hall style, a sense of vaudeville that runs from Liverpool’s Ken Dodd back to London’s Harry Champion. We all like to be beside the seaside.

  Mango is at his happiest with his friends in Blackpool, removed from the company with which he has chosen to make his fortune, and these holidays with their low-cost B&B accommodation and caravan sites take us back to better days, when responsibility belonged to our parents. Millions go back to these dreamlands every year, braving the showers and freezing sea and wandering down the pier to ride dodgems as Motown booms, eating donuts and candyfloss. The Sex Division strolls along, dipping into Blackpool’s pubs and hotel bars, but then their time is over and they are sucked back to London.

  The daydream believer pictures the woman who will love him when he is rich, but knows that money is not the reason. It is a coincidence. She loves his personality and his soul. Because the drinking men of fiction are the secret romantics of London’s pubs, and the new archetypes are little different to those who went before. Despite the language and bravado, deep down they know there is no sex war, just Us And Them. The rest of it is a game, not much more than handbags at dawn, as we are all looking for a happy ending.

  John King

  London, 2016

  PART ONE

  BEAUTIFUL GAME

  Carter was first off the mark, and it wasn’t much of a surprise. He walked into The Unity with a smile that didn’t need explaining. The dirty cunt had been dabbling again. The others likened him to the Ooh Ah Cantona Man United side—he had flair and the ability to grind out a result when the occasion demanded. The lads did this on the quiet as they didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. He got enough of that elsewhere.

  The other four members of the Sex Division nursed half-full glasses, watering hangovers, prepared to wait for confirmation of the Carter score-line. If the result wasn’t in much doubt, then there was still the small but important matter of totting up the points. But the shag man was going to take his time and passed the rest of the boys on his way to the bar. He ordered a pint of 4X and chatted with Eileen behind the counter, enjoying the warm smile, talking about electric shavers that break down a week after they’ve been given as Christmas presents and the odds on it snowing before the end of the week, both agreeing it would be nice to see everything painted white, though in London snow usually translated as slush. Carter finally went over to the Sex Division HQ in their usual place by the window. Will had left for the fruit machine while Carter was ordering, feigning disinterest but listening to the conversation with Eileen.

  ‘Well?’ Harry asked, forcing a note of indifference into his voice, not wanting to break rank with the rest of the service crew, but keen to get the facts sorted and filed so he could get on with life, always needing to have things straight in his head.

  ‘Well what?’ Carter settling into his seat, dipping his hand between his legs to pull the chair under the table, lifting the glass to his lips and savouring the taste, taking his time and doing his best to wind the others up.

  ‘How many points did you get last night, you flash cunt?’

  Carter smiled his Well Lads I’ll Tell You When I’m Good And Fucking Ready smile and continued with the lager, exaggerating movement of arm and hand. He wondered if 4X was brewed in Australia by Australians. Crocodile Dundee’s cousin giving it the big one down the brewers in between knocking off sheep in the middle of a radioactive desert, oversized wellies for the back legs just like the sheep-worriers he’d heard about on the Scottish islands; shearing the bastards then slipping them a length. Mad Max holding the poor little fucker still, rusty Harley parked up with an overheated engine. Probably not. The Aussies were all in Earl’s Court and Dundee was working for the yankee dollar. Him and the yardies. He looked at Harry and Balti, the Fat Bastards, then Mango, all of who’d stopped drinking and were waiting for an answer. The season was under way with a vengeance and they had to know exactly where they stood. Perhaps it was early doors yet, as Ron Atkinson would say, but what did the northern gold merchant know anyway?

  ‘Well lads, it was a free-flowing game as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, taking into consideration the quality of the opposition round here. I was up against a feeble defence trying to con its way through with a clean sheet, and I’m glad to say the old skills didn’t take long to have the desired effect. I was pissed and can’t remember the build up, but as you’ll imagine it was quality footwork, playing it through the midfield, out to the wing, a bit of skill, dribbling and all that, end of the knob job, a bit of muscle getting past the hatchet tackle, a quick one-two, chipping the keeper. You know how it is when you’re one-hundred-per-cent quality.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Balti smiling despite the headache he was carrying and narked he was behind less than a day into the season, already following a leader he’d never catch. If only a self-made millionaire would turn up on the doorstep and offer to bankroll a successful championship push. But that kind of thing only happened up north.

  Will came back to the table and remained standing. Carter got on his wick sometimes, but he said nothing, waiting for the mouthy bastard to get his bragging over and done with. He didn’t like the idea of competitive football, turning th
e beautiful game into a business. He wasn’t a tart like the rest of them. His sex was his own business. Even as a kid he’d never been into all the mouth, getting a couple of fingers in and running off to tell everyone. But he was signed up now and had to go along with it otherwise he’d look a prat. That’s what a moment of pissed weakness did. The resolution had been made the previous night and if he bottled it he’d be branded.

  He would keep his ideals, though, and wouldn’t be changed by blatant commercialism. Play his natural game and bollocks to the rest of them, do an Ossie Ardiles even though Will was a Brentford man, do a Brazilian orange-juggling-on-Rio-Beach effort. It meant a place at the bottom of the table because he was no Pele and Ardiles was Argentinian, worse than that Tottenham, and they were charging over the top for oranges at the moment, vitamin C a luxury, but at least there was no chance of relegation. He could handle the tag and would live off the respect due a man with convictions, though when he left Rio and started filtering back into the pub, sucked under a dirty London sky, he knew it wasn’t worth holding his breath.

  ‘Get on with it will you,’ he said, more to his Guinness than Carter. ‘My pint’ll be solid by the time you get your report filed.’

  ‘It was a four-pointer.’

  ‘Four points?’

  ‘Four points. That’s what I said. That’s the way it goes. I got lucky. I was expecting three and ended up with a bonus for good behaviour.’

  ‘You gave that bird one up the jacksie?’

  ‘That’s right. One point for a knuckle shuffle, two for a shag, three for a blow job and four for six inches up the arse.’

  Will shook his head, more in sarcastic mock awe than real disbelief. Balti smiled and yawned, rolling a stiff neck. Harry sipped his drink, frowning, looking at the floor, following the faded pattern, an intricate network of faded red and black lines, a bit of yellow tucked away, holding the information for a while before storing it in his memory. Only Mango wasn’t letting the unstoppable sex machine claim instant glory and further develop his cult status. If he wanted to go round shafting birds up the arse, then that was his problem. Must be a fucking iron on the quiet. He couldn’t imagine a bird taking it voluntarily first time between the sheets. Not unless you paid them.

  ‘You’re a fucking bum bandit mate.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Carter fixed on Mango’s eyes without much humour in his voice. ‘Four points in the bag and the bird’s got a dose of vindaloo fall-out for the next couple of days. Serves her right as well. Do you think I’d have shit-stabbed her if there was no points in it? It’s total football. I’m like the fucking Dutch. Johan Cruyff and Neeskens. A touch of Rudi Krol and Johnny Rep. Keep the tradition going. It’s like that with the clogs. Bit of blow and black tarts sitting in the window waiting for their share of the Englishman’s wage packet. Pride of Ajax. Cross their palms with guilders and sample the dark African continent, or at least the Dutch colonies. Have a Jakarta special with the gado gado at half-time. Total fucking football. You should try Amsterdam. The Dutch have got it sussed.’

  ‘Were Cruyff and Neeskens bum bandits as well?’ Harry asked, confused by the carpet, formation spinning and sending his head into orbit, red and black doing something to his brain, wondering what the fuck gado gado was. ‘Cruyff’s got a son. Seems a shame somehow, brilliant footballer like that, European Footballer of the Year and everything. I didn’t know he was a shirt-lifter.’

  ‘He’s not, you cunt, it’s the football I’m talking about.’

  ‘That wasn’t what total football was about,’ said Balti snapping awake, big belly grin on his face. ‘Total football was the whole team attacking and the goalie the only one at the back playing sweeper. It was scoring more goals than the other side. They just went out on the pitch and played the game and didn’t give a toss how many they let in. Didn’t follow systems and did whatever they felt like. No rules. Natural, free-flowing football. If the other side scored five then as long as the Dutch got six they won and went home happy. It was a sound attitude. Like that Brazil team with Pele, Tostao, Jairzinho. Remember the keeper Felix. Dear oh dear.’

  ‘Didn’t they have Rivelino as well?’ Mango asked. ‘I remember him. Big bushy tash and always bending the free-kicks round the defensive wall.’

  ‘We’re talking total football, Dutch style. I’m a fucking Orange man stuck in Black Town, adding colour to London’s black-and-white approach to the beautiful game. What do you know about football apart from how much Man U are worth on the stock exchange.’

  Will sat down and deliberately placed his glass on a beer mat, Germanic lettering and a red coat of arms covered by the Irish stout. He was half cut. He still hadn’t got over last night, New Year’s Eve, and his right eye was murder. He’d left the party about four or so and was waiting for a cab with Mango. Fuck knows where the rest of the lads went. Pissed, stoned, useless. Except Carter on remote control looking to get his end away. Then Mango wanders off for a piss and the taxi pulls up. Three blokes appear from nowhere and try to nick it, a bunch of chancers, and when the barney started he got smacked in the head but was too pissed for aggravation and ended up in the gutter with decaying leaves for company and a kick in the head for good luck, that split second when he focused on the foot driving into his eye, like a slow-motion replay waiting for some expert analysis from Alan Hansen.

  The cab left without Will, the driver only bothered about getting a fare, ignoring the body in the street. Mango returned too late, as usual, and found Will sitting on the kerb, shaking his head, pissed off that they’d have to call another car, knuckles wedged into his eye socket replaying the kick. He didn’t even know what they looked like. Didn’t know them from Adam. Dark shapes with dark hair. White faces without eyes, noses, mouths. Moving, living, stroppy waxworks. Any one of them could be sitting in the pub and he wouldn’t have known. Will hated violence.

  ‘I’ll tell you, Carter,’ he said. ‘You’re more like Liverpool. The old Liverpool. Grinding out a result. Going home with a 1–0. Or Arsenal. Boring, boring Arsenal. Up the arse with the Arsenal; 1–0 to the bum bandits. Tony Adams pushing up all the time playing offside then moving upfield for a ninety-eighth minute corner heading in the winner. Bad news that, getting a length off the Gooners.’

  The Sex Division stopped talking and watched Denise, who’d just come in the pub. She nodded their way as she went towards the bar, dressed almost to the point of looking like a King’s Cross tart; one of the girls Mango admitted shafting just before Christmas. A youngster. A nice treat for Santa. Not more than sixteen, he’d said, though he secretly reckoned she was fourteen tops. Plastic mini-skirt and six-inch heels, and the cut so short there was an inch of childlike flesh exposed, goosepimples and something extra in her Christmas stocking, just the strap of the suspender belt against innocent white skin. He’d paid his money and rolled the rubber on, knobbed her up by Regent’s Park near the mosque, then dropped her off again in King’s Cross. He had class, he told them. He wasn’t shagging some Halifax teenybopper in the back of his car round the station, not with junkies and dossers everywhere, bloodless faces pressed up against the window screaming heaven and hell, AIDS and smack and rich punters in the blood, a dose of new-economics care in the community. He got his money’s worth and said the bird offered him the night for free. She’d liked him. Will knew it was bollocks, about the girl offering Mango a freebie, but the others believed him, reckoning he was bang out of order shagging a kid that young forced on the game, sixteen still the right side of a kicking. A year or two younger and Mango would’ve been in trouble. He knew as much. Will reckoned they were mugs. The lot of them. Especially Harry, who pissed his wages up the wall worse than the rest of the lads, a big man with his square, shaved head and dreams. Mango was a cunt. Someone’s daughter, sister, lover.

  ‘I’d love to knob that,’ Balti said, watching Denise disappear into the back of the pub. ‘She’s beautiful. I’d settle down and work all hours to bring her the good life. I’d give up the drink an
d curries and eat bean sprouts and grated carrot on crackers, lose four stone in a week, leave the coffee alone and drink grapefruit juice. I’d go and buy myself some decent gear and get my hair cut in an Italian unisex effort rather than a Greek butcher’s. We’d have babies. Snotty-nosed brats puking up all over the place, shitting themselves twenty times a day for fun, dribbling like they’re a minute from the grave. Anything Denise wants. I’d even change them as well. I’d take electrocution lessons and have my teeth capped, get those broken fuckers at the front mended so I look good when I get to meet her mum and dad, roses in one hand, bottle of sherry in the other. I’d do anything for that woman. Build a family and live happy ever after in the Green Belt away from you lot. And if you called up and wanted to go out for a pint I’d just have to tell you to fuck off and put the phone down, get back to the dishes.’

  The others were laughing, Will pointing out that if he took electrocution lessons Denise would get a shock first time he tried it on. Denise was a cracker in anyone’s book. She was also going out with Slaughter, who happened to be a Grade 1 nutter, a bloke whose jealousy wasn’t worth stirring up for something as minor as sex or love. They all knew the score. Denise could prick-tease as much as she liked when Slaughter wasn’t around. Winding the blokes up. Flashing her teeth and the top of her tits. Bending forward to collect the glasses and leaving it that extra couple of seconds that made all the difference, showing off her figure. She enjoyed it because they were a bunch of hooligans in The Unity. Dead lager on their breaths next day and black eyes, like that Terry watching her bum move tight inside her jeans when she arrived. She liked getting them going, knowing they’d bottle it if she offered them the business. None of them would chance it with Slaughter around. But she liked Terry, specially when she heard the others call him Carter. An unstoppable sex machine they said. Denise liked blokes who preferred women to drink and football. Mango gave her the creeps though, and Terry wasn’t exactly a teetotal or football-free zone. She wondered if he had the guts. Maybe, with a bit of encouragement.