The Elephant Tree Read online

  Twinkle was an ageing drug dealer that they’d known for years as a regular around their most frequented drinking establishments. He’d taken a shine to Neil early on, which allowed them to get good prices on the speed and ecstasy they’d take whilst clubbing. Quickly becoming regulars themselves, they’d started buying a little more each time and made a little cash selling them on inside the clubs.

  The Highlander was their next stop. Among others a lot of bikers hung out there, especially at the weekend. The function room upstairs played a variety of rock and metal so the clientele were a pretty mixed bunch. It was a lot brighter than the last bar. The landlord was conscious of the drug dealing and taking that went on, so he kept the place relatively well lit to stop it being too blatant, forcing all deals to take place under the many thick oak tables scattered around both upstairs and down.

  They switched roles this time, Scott surveying the place for customers while Neil went to buy their drinks.

  When Scott had finished he made his way back down and through the crowd by the bar, glancing around the room to see where Neil had ended up. He spotted him at a table near the back of the room beside the pool table, and made his way over.

  The air was thick with smoke, and empty glasses and bottles were piled up on tables and ledges all around them. Neil, playing around with his phone, looked up and saw Scott returning, took his feet off the stool he had been saving and pointed to a bottle of Budweiser on the table.

  ‘Listen Scott, I kind of need a bit of a favour,’ Neil said, leaning in towards Scott and resting his elbows on his knees. ‘This Emma bird, the one from Jam.’

  ‘Apparently it’s Gemma,’ Scott chipped in.

  ‘Yeah whatever. Well I kind of told her that we were having a party back at yours and there’d be loads of people going,’ Neil said.

  ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘She wasn’t up for clubbing tonight and I kind of wanted to spend some time with her. It’s still early though, we can round up a bunch of people and get shot of everything back at your place instead. What do you think?’

  ‘Alright man, but this is your project. You invite everyone and make sure you don’t go vanish with whatever she’s called before your pockets are empty.’

  ‘Thanks Scott, I owe you one,’ Neil said, happily tapping away at his phone again. ‘Looks like there’s someone we can invite straight away.’

  Scott followed Neil’s gaze and saw Twinkle and another guy he recognised but didn’t know the name of, walking into the bar.

  ‘Alright Twinkle, you heading to Blitz later?’ Scott asked, when they came across.

  Twinkle was probably around fifty, Scott reckoned, although depending on the severity of his current drinking and drug taking binge he could appear ten or fifteen years older. He was below average height with a mass of dark curls flecked with grey that spilled down his head, usually obscuring much of his deeply lined face. Years of substance abuse had left his frame very thin and frail looking. If the onset of wrinkles in middle age were referred to as laughter lines then to look at him, Scott thought, Twinkle’s life must have been hilarious. He had sharp eyes that often seemed to visually contradict the lack of intelligence that could be derived from listening to him talk. There might not be a lot to respect in Twinkle, but Scott liked him. He just didn’t want to end up like him.

  ‘Maybe yeah, just got some stuff to do first,’ he said to Scott before turning to his associate. ‘Dom, why don’t you and Neil go have a game of pool.’

  Neil curiously looked up from his phone but went along with what he’d suggested, allowing Twinkle to sit in his vacated seat, leaving him and Scott alone at the table. Twinkle looked at him with squinted eyes and a pained expression, as if operating under the weight of a heavy hangover.

  ‘You look a bit rough mate, big night last night?’ Scott asked innocently, but for a moment felt Twinkle’s gaze sharpen.

  ‘Was up drinking, pretty late yeah,’ Twinkle said evenly, composing himself.

  ‘Thought after you weren’t out last night that maybe you’d been picked up by the cops for something.’

  Twinkle took a swig of the beer Neil had left on the table before looking at Scott again and answering, ‘nah, I’m not holding anything, mate, so nothing they could get me for.’

  ‘It isn’t like you to come out with empty pockets Twink. You got other stuff going on?’

  Again Twinkle took a long drink from the bottle and for a few seconds seemed to carefully select his words before answering. ‘There’s gonna be a chance to make some good cash coming up, Scott. The kind that need someone who has their head on right, not some daft fucker.’ The look Scott got from Twinkle told him this was no longer just a conversation. He had the feeling of being weighed up, like he had accidentally walked into a job interview for a position he didn’t want to fill.

  ‘ To be honest, maybe it would be better if I didn’t hear anymore,’ Scott said, backtracking while he felt he still could.

  ‘I know you’ve got ambitions above shit like this,’ Twinkle said, waving the beer casually around the room. ‘I’ve heard you trying to get Neil to step up for bigger deals in the past. Fair enough, I won’t say anything else now, but if you decide you want to hear more, come find me and we’ll talk then.’ He finished with a smile that suggested he knew what Scott’s response would be, before adding ‘just don’t take too long.’

  Twinkle finished Neil’s beer, fetched his friend from the pool table and they both left.

  ‘What was that about?’ Neil asked as he sat back down, but Scott just shrugged. ‘I don’t know what Twinkle is up to but he wants to watch mixing with people like that.’

  ‘Who was the other dude then?’ Scott asked.

  ‘Dominic Parish. You heard of him?’

  ‘The name sounds familiar, who is he?’

  ‘Supposed to have been a decent boxer in the day, middleweight I think. He got mixed up in some shit after he retired from boxing and did some time inside. Now he’s pretty tight with Paul McBlane and that crowd. What I heard was that he could have avoided jail pretty easy, but kept quiet and maybe did McBlane a favour.’

  ‘Twinkle always was looking to move up in the world, maybe this is his chance,’ Scott said, and swallowed the last from his bottle. It was true that Twinkle had always been looking to swim with the big fish. He craved the notoriety that life as a gangster would provide; the same notoriety that Scott had worked so hard to stay away from.

  ‘The only moving up in the world he’ll do is if he gets the top bunk during a ten year stretch,’ Neil said, and they both laughed.

  ‘I’ll get two more,’ Scott said, and went to the bar.

  Twinkle was a close associate in a circle that both Scott and Neil preferred to keep small. A bigger network would mean better prices and better selection when it came to their buying power, but it also meant bigger risk. Twinkle might want to turn heads when he walked into a room, see people whispering as he went by, ‘Do you know who that is?’ but that was the last thing Scott wanted. Any progression Twinkle might hope to make through the ranks made Scott nervous and he didn’t like it.

  He saw that Angela was serving and edged around to her section. She wore a pair of faded jeans that had worn so thin in a couple of places on the thighs that areas of pale skin were visible beneath. Her current hair colour of choice was a deep red and was held back loosely in a pony-tail, with just a hint of her natural blonde roots beginning to show through. She was smiling a polite rebuttal to the slurred flirtation of a customer, but when she caught sight of Scott her smile became more natural and touched her eyes. She handed some change to the guy and turned to Scott as he eased through to the front.

  ‘Hey Scott, what you having?’

  A neon sign advertising Heineken buzzed steadily behind Angela, so Scott ordered two of those. He reached into his pocket to extract a note while watching Angela saunter over to the bottle fridge. All the other guys at the bar watched her too. She opened the fridge and
crouched to pick the bottles from the bottom shelf. Scott noted the thinly veiled looks of disappointment from some of the spectators that she hadn’t bent over to get them, leaving them with a colourful memory to take home that night. Angela was a beautiful woman, anyone could see that, but she wasn’t the type to gratuitously flaunt it just to make more money in tips.

  She exchanged the uncapped bottles with Scott as he handed her a ten. He held her gaze for a second before she went to make change, and grinned at the glint he saw in her eye. She knew the power she held over these guys, but for her this was just a job, and none of them would ever get more from her than a cold beer and a warm smile.

  ‘You staying out clubbing after you finish work?’ he asked her as she gave him his change.

  ‘I got a message off Steph earlier saying she had an unexpected night off. She’s coming in here at some point and we’ll probably head to Blitz after my shift. I haven’t seen her in ages so it’ll be nice to catch up again. You gonna be in there?’

  ‘Nah, Neil has arranged a last minute party back at mine so we’re gonna head there instead.’

  ‘Very nice, and am I on the guest list then?’ Angela asked, grinning.

  ‘Sure, VIP all the way. I’ll inform the staff,’ Scott said and pushed back through the crowd towards their table.

  The air thrummed and reverberated with the music from the room above the bar now, drowning out most of the jukebox volume downstairs. He dropped the two bottles onto the table and sat back down. Scott licked his finger and casually dabbed it into a wrap of speed in his pocket he had carefully unfolded. Taking his now white-coated finger back out, he covered his mouth as if stifling a cough and quickly sucked off the bitter powder. His attention drifted around the room, taking in only snatches of everything as he drank his beer. A group of four Chinese men gathered around the fruit machine behind him, talking quickly in their native tongue. The familiar sing-song notes playing out as the reels spun and dropped into place were punctuated by bursts of laughter from the Chinese like machine-gun fire. Neil continued his texted flirtation with the barmaid from Jam and Scott felt his own phone vibrate, glanced down and saw it was a message from Angela. He looked up and saw her give him a little wave from behind the bar.

  ‘Meet me outside here when I finish my shift, I’ll tell Steph we’re going back to the party instead.’

  Chapter 2

  The first time Scott met Angela was under very different circumstances, where the last thing on his mind was finding someone he could grow to feel so close to. He was going to meet a contact that he and Neil had been introduced to in a bar by Twinkle. The guy’s name apparently was Putty, and for years he’d been a regular supplier to Twinkle, able to get cannabis deals at a reasonable price, even at times when other suppliers were suffering from a drought. Twinkle told them after Putty left that he always did business at his own place, a bit strange as most preferred to stay off home soil in case the deal went south and everybody had to scatter. Twinkle had also warned them that before discussions took place many joints would be passed around to create the right mood, and that this guy could smoke till it came out of his ears without any problem at all. Hearing this, Scott decided that it would be best if he went alone. Neil would likely get carried away by it all and end up agreeing to a terrible rate that they’d be unable to back out of later.

  Following the directions he’d been given by Putty, Scott made his way through the run-down estate in the western quarter of Garden Heights. Around a third of the houses had been boarded up and graffiti grew over everything like ivy on an old country cottage. Scott was aware the locals would be suspicious of new faces as they never got any sightseers. If you were there, you were there for a reason, and not knowing what it was could make some of them nervous. Scott avoided any prolonged eye contact and kept to the route he’d been given, ignoring the direct stares from two oil-smeared guys who were either dismantling or reassembling an old Ford, pieces scattered across the road like flotsam on a beach. The three-storey flats came into view at the end of the road, and Scott walked to the far entrance of the middle block. He’d heard that all of the flats and some rows of houses were due to be demolished in the next few years in the name of redevelopment. The whole area reeked of decay and looked to have been given up on by the local council, who were just waiting for the bulldozers to move in and give them a blank canvas to start over.

  When Neil had asked at their initial meeting over a few drinks why he was called Putty, he had grinned and replied that it was because he used to have a little motorbike years ago that went put-put-put. Twinkle had further informed them, after Putty’s departure, that it was actually because where women were concerned, he wasn’t particular in the slightest, and had been known to put his cock into pretty much anything.

  Scott pushed open the heavy steel door and went into the stairwell. Enveloping him along with the gloom was the smell of stale smoke and urine. He climbed to the middle floor and checked door numbers until he found the one he’d been given, although even without the number it would have been impossible to miss. The other doors on the landing were all painted wood, whereas this one appeared to have been reinforced with a thick steel plate. He banged on it and after a moment a muffled voice asked who was there. He gave his name, heard the rasp of a large bolt being withdrawn and the door swung inward allowing him inside.

  The interior was dark and pungent but otherwise nondescript. Small chinks of light snuck through gaps in closed curtains in the dimly lit corridor. He was led into the living room. Most of the light was supplied by a large screen plasma TV that was currently hooked up to a games console. Three tracksuit-clad males in their late teens or early twenties were sat on an old couch against the right-hand wall. They were holding controllers and jostling for superiority on a racing game that Scott didn’t recognise. The air was thick with the scent of cannabis resin. The smell made Scott think of black coffee and old cupboards. He greeted them briefly, before turning to Putty who sat pride of place in front of the giant TV. He was reclining in a big black vinyl chair, an ashtray perched on one arm and a tall glass of Coke on the other.

  Putty looked reasonably in shape for someone who, Scott had been told, would only get out of his chair, or throne as Twinkle had called it, in the face of a dire emergency. He looked to be mid to late forties, with thinning slicked back brown hair, and a face that looked as if something was missing, as if he’d recently shaved off a lifelong moustache.

  The other chair was now occupied by the heavy set black guy with close cropped hair and a goatee beard who had let him in at the front door. Putty took one last slow drag from a joint, leaned towards the black man and said Keep, although it was in more of a grunt so as not to let any smoke out of his lungs. Scott didn’t know if this was an indication that the joint was now his, or if Keep was actually his name. Putty slowly eased back into the chair and turned towards Scott, exhaling a thick stream of smoke.

  ‘Greetings Scott, welcome to my humble home,’ he said with a grin that reminded Scott of the cat in Alice in Wonderland. The man Putty had identified as Keep stood up and went to the couch, taking the joint with him. One of its current occupants moved to sit on the floor without taking his eyes from the screen, and Keep sat in the spot he’d vacated. Putty motioned to the now empty chair and Scott sat down. Leaning forward Putty picked up the tray covered with joint making paraphernalia and began to roll up. ‘You like to have a bit of a smoke then Scott?’

  ‘Yeah I’m partial, but usually just in the evenings. Slows me down a bit much during the day, you know?’

  ‘I like the pace,’ Putty replied, ‘like those darkies in the adverts for the Caribbean or wherever ‘we likes to taake it eeaaasssyyyy’ he said in a badly imitated West Indian accent and cackled. Scott glanced over at the room’s only black occupant but the remark elicited nothing but a casual grin. Brief sniggers from the other three showed that they were at least half conscious of the conversation, and that such comments were not out of the ordinar
y.

  Scott figured he had his bearings here, pretty much as Twinkle had indicated. Putty would keep smoking and delaying talking about the deals Scott was here to discuss. Putty obviously figured that either peer pressure or passive smoke inhalation from the lack of ventilation would have Scott pretty much wiped before long and then talk would turn to business. The guy was obviously just a low level dealer and this was his domain, but according to Twinkle he did have useful connections, so Scott planned to just wait it out and get the best price he could. He could see Putty was an old hand at this kind of situation. A set-up like this tended to be a young man’s game so either he was bad at plying his trade and therefore unable to move up into middle management, or he was good at what he did but with no ambition and happy to stay a big fish in a very small pond. Scott watched as Keep passed what was left of the joint he had to the guy who had given up his seat. Putty nudged Scott’s arm with his elbow, holding out the joint he had just lit. Scott took it with a smile and a nod, which obviously pleased the host, his smile turning feline again. As Scott took his first drag there was a knock on the front door. Keep stood up and went to check it as Putty reached down to retrieve the tray and again began rolling another.

  A moment later Keep returned, followed by a pretty young woman that Scott at first assumed must be here to score a deal. She looked to be about 21 with the figure of someone who either regularly works out or is naturally blessed with an athletic frame. She wore a tight white t-shirt with a baby blue cardigan over the top, washed out green army fatigues and Nike trainers. Her hair was long and mostly blonde with a few blue streaks running through it, but looked brittle like it had been bleached too many times. She said ‘hi’ in no particular direction as she entered the room, walked over and kissed Putty on the cheek. As she bent down, Scott noticed that she wore little if any make-up and no jewellery other than a small silver hoop in her right ear. Her presence in the room was also the only thing that had distracted the three gamers’ attention from the screen since Scott had entered, although a steady gaze from Putty refocused them back onto their racing. She walked out into the kitchen.