Page 11 of Fury
The engine of the big truck roared loudly, my foot as heavy as lead on the soft accelerator, my head filled with her words. Fucking police presence at a Kings’ funeral. The only presence we’d ever had was certain members of the force coming to pay their respects covertly, fearing either repercussions or being outed by their own for affiliation with us. There was no way in hell we were going to allow some woman to dictate to us how this gig was going to go off.
The engine revved. The lights changing, amber joining red, and I tore forward from the cars behind me. Who the fuck was she to rock up here in our territory, with that tight suit and those blue fucking eyes? Who the fuck was she to challenge us, me, with that London twang to her accent and plump, amazingly shaped lips? Fuck. I thumped the steering wheel, a fire pumping through my veins and burning at my chest. I’d never felt so angry in a long time. Or at least not since we’d found the broken body of Indie’s ol’ lady crumpled and beaten on the floor of her own house. And despite the circumstances being a shit load better, that feeling was building in me again.
Instead of turning for the Kings’ clubhouse, where church would start in a mere few hours, and where the liquor would quench the anger in my belly, I doubled back, returning through the city I’d just left. The traffic slowed me down, cars spilling from the centre, filling the roads, weaving between lanes as they battled for space, desperate to get home. I drove east, and east again, driving out from the penthouse apartments that lined Newcastle’s quayside and into the doldrums of Byker, where the cars became older, and the odd drug dealer looking blatant with a shiny new vehicle, a mistake they wouldn’t make a second time when the coppers took it off them.
The houses changed again, from the stout red-brick seventies council housing to the sprawl of Victorian terraces, the ones that had survived the onslaught of Hitler and his boys nearly eighty years ago. Eventually, as I crawled down the longest surviving street of terraces, I came to a house three from the end. And now it was my truck that stood out like a drug-dealer’s with its dark purple paint job and the tinted windows. The only thing that stopped the cops pulling me over everywhere I went was the towing equipment on the back and the ‘Kings’ Roadside Rescue’ signage. And a few good contacts in the police force who didn’t want their bad habits becoming public knowledge. Knowledge was power. Even against arrogant women in tight suits, stomping over club business with those stiletto heels.
My mind drifted down well-shaped legs from where that navy skirt ended just below her knee, over the slight bulge of calf-muscle. Not too much that it looked like she was a bodybuilder, but enough that I suspected those pins had some strength. I shook my head; the door opening from the key I hadn’t even realised I’d inserted.
Heat rushed to meet me. Central heating and home-cooked food. The scent of onions and garlic simmering in whatever feast my mam was making, sending my stomach somersaulting with hunger.
“Is that you, Freddie?” She called from deep inside the house, her voice carried on the cooking smells.
“Aye, mam.”
“Tea’s just about ready. Not that I was expecting you. But now that you’re here…” she paused, a timer beeping away demanding her attention. The sound switched off. “Why are you here?”
“Just need summit from my old room.”
“That sorta day, huh?”
I don’t know why I didn’t tell her that I needed to imagine my worst enemy suspended from the basement ceiling whilst I tore my fists into it? She knew when I went downstairs that I needed to let off steam. Yet I could never tell her that’s what I needed.
The basement was dull, the only natural light from two, six-inch by ten-inch windows in the very front. The creeping winter didn’t help, the dark nights stealing daylight hours bit by bit. The lightbulb that dangled from the ceiling snapped on, flickering overhead as my mam walked back and forwards on the floor above, sending shadows chasing over the walls like retreating spectres.
I moved to the corner, pulling off my leather jacket and wrapping my hands in the strips of material that lay on my workbench. The first punch landed hard, my knuckles cracking under the impact with one of three bags that hung on the far side of the basement room. It smarted at first, the sudden impact of bone on the thick, padded leather, and I swung with the right hand, feeling the same mix of discomfort and warmth across my fist. But that discomfort went away with each fist that hit that bag. Left, right, left, right. Hook, move, back-hand, jab, jab. And on and on I went until the blue eyes and high cheekbones, and well-shaped lips that curled at the edges so that you couldn’t tell whether it was a smirk or a smile, faded from my mind, and all I could feel was the thump of my heart and the heavy breaths of my lungs.
“Freddie!” a voice a little further away.
Jab, jab, back-hand.
“Freddie!”
Left, right, hook, back-hand.
Something connected hard with the back of my head, making me spin sharply.
“For God’s sake Freddie. I’ve shouted for you four times. Your tea’s ready. You need to eat before church tonight, son. And I’ve got some for you to take for Indie, Emmie and the kids, so hurry up and get upstairs.”
I stared back at the woman stood in front of me. She was over a foot smaller, her once dark hair taken over by streaks of white, and as stout as ever, with her hands planted on her wide hips, staring at me like I was a naughty little boy, not a forty-one-year-old man.
“Ok, mam. I’ll just grab a shower.”
Big dark eyes rolled upwards towards her forehead, and then she turned and waddled away, yanking herself up the steep wooden stairs from the basement. Sweat poured down my face, my exertion soaking my clothes, as my heart still pumped furiously in my chest, and the face I chased away on the bags reappeared. The sharp points to the cupid’s bow of her lips, well-proportioned and full, and now I wondered how they would taste on mine. Fuck.
*****
Indie peeled the tinfoil from the corner of one of the covered plates I handed to him.
“Mamma Dot’s been cooking again, huh?”
“Aye, mate. Panacalty today.”
“What? Who’s got Mamma Dot’s Panac?” Magnet dived across the space from the doorway of the Dog on the Tyne.
“Just Indie, mate. It’s not for the rest of you.”
“Fuck’s sake. I’m starving!”