Remoras

(Contains violence and some swearing.)

The pub has a hierarchy and those higher up are always served first, get the best booze, get the best food.

At the very top of the pyramid is Tank – a hard name for a man as hard as nails. He has his own table in a corner. A stranger tried to sit at it once and gave Tank a bit of lip; they found him in the alley out back later, his guts holed like a colander. That’s Tank’s preferred weapon: the knife. He has a favourite one he calls ‘Lucille’, like BB King’s guitars. He uses it on his steaks, slicing through them like they were butter.

He doesn’t look much, and the name Tank’s a bit of a misnomer in that respect: he’s a slight man in his 50s, receding, with quite delicate features. But he’d drop you as easily as he’d belch or fart, which he does often, loudly. That’s another thing about Tank: he simply doesn’t care about what people think of him, or about anything much. And he seems not to care that he has no friends, as if they’d be a sign of weakness.

Oh, he has hangers-on, people who stick to him, within his aura of impregnability, like those fish that swim tight to a shark’s skin – remoras they’re called. They assume they’re safe because no one would dare get involved with Tank, and generally speaking, they are. That’s if they don’t drop a misplaced word, spill a drink at his table, give him an odd look… In fact, almost anything could trigger him and you’d find yourself in the alley, wondering where so much blood was coming from.

If Tank’s at the apex of the hierarchy, there are two or three on the next level down. Stevie is a mad bastard who’d punch you in the teeth as soon as look at you, but unlike Tank, he’d stop at killing you … unless you tried to flirt with his girl, Alice, or insult her, or harm her in any way. Then he’d wait for the right moment – and it might be weeks later – but he’d get you; he has the memory of an elephant. Once the affront is committed, there’s no escape – your fate is as sure as tomorrow’s sunrise.

His preferred method to dispose of you would be an ‘accident’, something that looks innocent, like a fall down the stairs or a car hitting you in the night, for instance. The funny thing is that Alice can easily look after herself; she’s at the second level on her own merit. I once saw her throw a guy – he’d tried to feel her up – and drive her stiletto heel through his hand. I heard he died in a traffic accident a few days later. Stevie and Alice are inseparable. They don’t talk much, just canoodle, obviously deeply in love.

Tank and Stevie don’t really get on, but there’s tolerance through grudging mutual respect. I like to wonder what would happen if Tank ever tried something on with Alice. I’ve seen him give her looks now and then. If it came to a fight, Tank and Lucille would do for Stevie for sure. But if it were a stand-off, and they stood down, then I’m convinced Stevie would find a way to get back at Tank later.

At the same level as Stevie and Alice is Kim. He’s Korean, quiet, inscrutable, and absolutely deadly with his hands. I’m not sure what the name of the martial art he favours is, but when called upon, he’ll finish you off with a lightning-swift flourish of hands and feet. The owner of the pub, Ron, had a bit of trouble with a group of drunken yobs one evening; Kim had three on the floor and the rest fleeing within seconds.

Further down the pyramid you have the seasoned pimps, thieves, burglars, GBH-ers, most with prison time under their belts and not to be messed with. Then there are the hangers-on – like Tank’s remoras – and various other ne’er-do-wells. Then you have me.

I’ve been coming here now for a good six months. I was treated with suspicion from the word ‘go’, but my natural reserve – I keep myself to myself – slowly built me a reputation, I think, as someone who was never going to cause trouble to anyone there. I did get a bit of casual interrogation at the start, and having sized up the kind of place it was, I had to invent stuff that would be difficult to check – a prison sentence for burglary in Portugal, membership of an obscure gang in Spain. I was super-careful not to give away any clues to my real identity because that would have been a death sentence for sure once word got out. Which brings me to why I’m grateful to this motley crew of gangsters.

One night a couple of months ago, there were maybe a dozen of us in the pub: Tank at his table polishing Lucille, Stevie and Alice snogging, others chatting discreetly. Ron was moaning to a clearly uninterested Kim about his cash flow – how he found it difficult to keep tabs on costs and takings. It seemed he’d been winging it the whole time, and now the pub was going through a rough patch; he didn’t know where to start to put it right.

I was at the bar waiting to be served and heard all this. I’ve always been proud of my true profession, so my expertise and a little bit of cockiness got the better of me.

“What you need to do to start with, Ron, is put it all on a spreadsheet,” I said breezily. “That does all your calculations for you automatically.”

He and Kim stared at me warily; I rarely spoke, so this was strange for them.

“What do you know about it, Manel?” Ron said. “You an accountant or summat?”

Ron has a loud voice, so now the whole pub was looking our way, including Tank, Stevie and Alice, who’d paused their respective activities.

I was already regretting opening my trap; the reason I’d chosen this place was that it was off the beaten track and I could be anonymous. I stammered a hastily invented response.

“No, no! It’s just … I knew someone when I was in prison. Always talking about this kind of stuff, he was.”

I’d piqued Ron’s interest, though.

“What was that again? What kind of sheets?”

I wanted to cut the conversation off right there and then, but extricating myself was difficult.

“Er … spreadsheets, I think that’s what he called them.”

Naturally, my response now was at odds with my initial intervention, which had smacked of confident know-how.

“That summat you could help me with, Manel?” Ron asked.

“Me?” I said, laughing nervously. “Nah. What you need is a real accountant.”

I looked round. Most of the pub had returned to what they’d been doing before. But one guy at the end of the bar was still gazing at me over his beer glass, hiding most of his face.

That didn’t stop me recognizing him, though, from his hard, blue eyes: Clarkey, one of the minions belonging to Harrison – the man I’d been hiding from for six months. The man I could put away for a long time with what I had on him.

“Know of any?” Ron said, but I was out of there. I knew that area pretty well already, so I made a couple of doglegs and used alleys to shake off Clarkey if he tried to follow me.

Back in my apartment, I weighed up possible plans. I could try to set up somewhere else, maybe up north; I could go back to Portugal; or I could stick around, hoping that Harrison would think I’d fled.

I stayed at home for a week or so, getting food delivered, peeking out through the curtains at the street below, becoming increasingly uneasy and cursing myself for my arrogance back at the pub.

It was there I headed for, though, when I’d plucked up the courage to set foot outside; call it ‘seeking the comfort of familiarity’.

Ron was at the bar, talking to – or rather at – Kim; it was almost as if they’d been waiting for me to finish the previous conversation. Tank, Stevie and Alice hadn’t come in yet.

“Where you been?” Ron asked, a bit of accusation in his tone.

“Under the weather, Ron,” I said, putting on a sniffle. “Give us a double, will you?”

He served the whisky, eyeing me all the while.

“They’ve been asking after you,” he said finally.

“Oh yeah? Who?” I asked, feigning indifference.

“A couple of shifty-looking geezers. Came in twice last week.”

“Bad men!” Kim added.

“I wonder what they wanted?” I muttered, making my way to a table by the door, the ice cubes in my glass rattling.

Ron and Kim continued in conversation, glancing over at me occasionally. Tank came in after a while and settled at his table, Stevie and Alice a little later. Whenever I looked over at them, they had their eyes fixed on me.

I cradled my whisky, taking the occasional sip, wondering which part of Portugal I could go to; I was now convinced that it was the best option from the plans I’d gone through in my head.

Then at about nine o’clock, they came in. There were three of them this time. They passed by my table without noticing me and went up to the bar. I could see them grilling Ron and him trying to keep schtum, but at one point, he couldn’t help himself and his eyes flickered in my direction. The three turned. One of them was Clarkey, whose face lit up. They sauntered over. The biggest one – I’d seen him before but couldn’t remember his name – was obviously in charge.

“So, Manel,” he said, his voice like sandpaper. “We meet again.”

“Have we met?” I said, my voice like a mouse’s squeak.

He grinned and leaned in.

“Mr. Harrison would like a word with you,” he whispered. I could smell garlic on his breath.

My number was up, and my stomach felt as if it were about to surrender its contents.

But then I spotted movement behind the three men. They became aware of it too and spun around. Standing facing them were Tank, Stevie – with Alice just behind him – and Kim.

“Can we help you gentlemen?” Tank said, softly but with just enough malice to put the fear of God into you, if you knew him. The big guy didn’t.

“You can help by fucking off,” he said. I saw Clarkey blanch; he did know Tank.

Tank gave the three a searing look, then took a step back, behind Stevie and Kim. Alice took his position in the line.

The big man chuckled, apparently welcoming a scrap. The chuckle died in his throat, though, when Kim whirled round and caught him with a kick to the side of the head. Clarkey and the other one went for Kim, but Stevie and Alice were quicker, Clarkey getting a knee in the groin from Alice, the other a fist in the face from Stevie, blood splattering and splashing into my whisky.

The big guy recovered and drew a knife, slashing wildly and catching Alice on the cheek. It was a big mistake; this was Tank’s kind of fight.

He strode in now, punching … only it wasn’t his fist he was using – I could hear Lucille rasping into the man’s guts. He fell to his knees, then crumpled to the floor.

Clarkey and his mate had seen enough and scrambled out of the door, Ron hurrying over to bolt it.

There was a lull now as Tank wiped Lucille on the big guy’s jacket and Stevie took care of Alice, leading her to the toilet to get her fixed up. Kim gave the prone body a kick and returned to his drink at the bar.

I was about to take a gulp of whisky but remembered the blood. No problem, though; Ron was already there, plonking a large one on the table in front of me.

“We’re going to have to talk,” he said mysteriously before joining Kim.

They let me have my whisky in peace while Tank’s remoras dragged the body away; I didn’t know what they were going to do with it and didn’t dare ask.

Later, Stevie, Alice – with a plaster on her cheek – Kim and Ron sat around Tank’s table in animated discussion, glancing my way from time to time.

Then Tank waved me over. I’d never been near his table before, let alone sat there.

“Tell us all about it,” he said. His tone was flat, matter-of-fact.

I opened up about Harrison, about the accounts, about my attempt to escape his employ. It came out in the conversation that my back-story was all invented. Tank tutted, but in a good-humoured way, it seemed to me.

“They’ll be back,” Ron said eventually.

The others nodded in agreement.

“Leave it with us,” Tank said, patting me on the shoulder.

Months of unassuming presence in the pub had apparently made me an honorary member of the family. I felt a warm wave of belonging wash through me, together with a sense now of qualified security; I was like one of Tank’s remoras, and I wasn’t forgetting the associated risk.

“I … I don’t know how to tha–” I began. Ron interrupted.

“You can thank me by helping with them … whatchamacallits!”

“Spreadsheets?”

“Them’s the fellas!” Ron said with a grin.

Kim walked me home that night, and I stayed put until a few days later when I read a piece of news on-line: Harrison had been killed at one of his warehouses – an accident involving a fork-lift truck.

And I wondered then whether Alice’s wound was healing okay.