The JD Sports bag

The JD Sports bag

It was an unseasonably hot day, so the door to my building had been open all day. Walking in, I was not met with a roving crack head, but a black JD Sports bag on the floor of the entrance hall. When I first saw it, I thought there was a dead dog in it. I don’t really know why. It had the look of a bag with a dead dog in it, I suppose.

There are moments in your life that you look back on and think what might have happened if you had done something different. Yeah, this was deffo one of them. Should I have left well enough alone? Maybe. But had I done that, I wouldn’t have a story.

I walked over to the bag, unzipped it and saw that it was filled with money. Yes, money, as in notes, pounds, cashola. I quickly pulled the zip back up and stepped away from the bag. I held out my hands to indicate that I wanted to lay no claim to it. For a moment I listened to the hum of the traffic and the paper-tearing sound of a passing airplane from outside. Then I stepped back to the bag, zipped it open, peeked at the money to see that it wasn’t something else, like a shirt with money printed on it, saw that there was definitely a lot of money in the bag, then zipped it shut again. I searched for a name tag or some such on it, maybe a bit of tape with something written on it, but it was just a JD Sports bag with a shitload of money in it in the shape of a dead dog.

I stood there stunned until I heard a door bang from somewhere up the stairwell, then steps started slapping down the stairs and without thinking grabbed the bag. It was heavy. The footsteps continued to descend so I walked to the left-hand side lift, which was already down, punched the button to get the door open and stepped inside, bag in hand. I pushed button for floor five and after a polite pause the lift started climbing, before the person walking down the stairs had even appeared. I examined myself in the dirty, scratched mirror. I lifted up the bag in front of me like a portly baby and gave a cheeky smile to my reflection, correcting the sunglasses on my face with my left hand. I may be getting up there in years, but I continue to be a decent looking fella.

I also thought: The fuck am I doing?

My floor arrived with a ding, so I got out and headed for my flat. No one in the corridor, no one around after I turn the corner, no one anywhere when I fumbled open my lock. There was a thumping bass coming from somewhere on my floor or the one above. I quietly wondered if anyone was just dancing or, more likely, filming themselves for a video.

The real tragedy is that kids have lost dancing. They think dancing means learning a choreography, setting up a phone or a camera and then getting it down perfectly so you can post it online for likes. That’s not dancing, that’s performing!

When we raved, we did it in empty factories that smelled of gasolene and solvent and industrial grease, with itchy torn up insulation and pokey balls of wire about. If you fell down, you probably got cut by something, definitely smudged your clothes. Sometimes it was so dark, you had to just kind of swing instead of dancing so you didn’t bump into anyone. Sometimes it was so cold, you had to dance with your hands in your armpits. And on top of being in the dark, cold and woozily off your tits, you had to be constantly ready to leg it if the police came. Still - we danced. Oh yes. And none of us knew how to bloody dance, we just danced!

We worked soul-sucking jobs or studied boring wank just to go out during the weekend and move, shut down our egos, give into the music and the crowd, leave behind the misery and slog of everyday life. Now everyone wants to bring the slog everywhere with them, they’re all connected to it by an electronic tether. Kids today won’t go to a rave off their tits because are afraid of being caught on an embarrassing video. Honest enjoyment is cringey now. We built places for going and being embarrassing, to look silly and cringey and to get down like no one was watching. Nowadays, you have to be constantly looking out for your bloody brand.

When did we all get branded? It used to be a term for overpriced shite, now it’s a second soul.

Inside my flat I walked over to my bed and threw the bag on it. I unzipped the zip and pulled the flap halfway open. Pale purple peeked out from the black.

“Fuck,” I said.

I got a chair from my living room and sat down on it, facing the bag.

“Fucking hell,” I said to the bag and the cash, and got no reply.


It was not just the fact that it was there, but that it was there, physically, factually, in big fucking wads of bills instead of numbers on a screen. I’ve never wanted to be super rich and I actually find money somewhat unpleasant, but when there’s a pile of it, it’s like standing next to a fire – it’s undeniable.

I lifted up all the packets of money and put them in piles of four. Then I counted the piles, one by one. Each packet was held together by a strip of paper and a piece of tape. The paper felt and looked like regular printer paper, and the tape looked and felt like your average Scotch from the maintenance cupboard.

I felt myself sweat and grow hotter. I thought: These have to be fake. Property of Netflix.

I took out a single note and examined it. A royal head on a plum-coloured ocean of details, decorated with holograms and arches and crests and all the other things they have there. My untrained eye considered it legit. I suddenly realised how long it had been since I had held one in my hand, because no one uses actual money for anything anymore, do they? We’ve all gone digital, zapped our moolah into the matrix, just like we’ve done with friendship, politics, shopping, music and sex. I googled up the latest design of a 20 pound note and compared with the one in my hand; they looked identical.

I counted up the bills in one bundle: thirty. They were all twenties, so a single bundle was 600 quid. I didn’t bother counting each individual note in every bundle, but assumed that each one had roughly the same number. There were close to 250 bundles in the sports bag, so my quick maths told me the grand total was something like 150 large. I piled them on the bed. The pile looked like the model of Fort Knox in Goldfinger.

Inside my head, a police detective appeared and started asking a lot of questions about the owner of the money, the legitimacy of the money, whether someone was searching for the money (likely) and what kinds of methods there were to possibly launder and use the money. I apologised to him for lacking in answers. The police detective told me that it was all right, son, and to listen up good. Then he me told that the first step was to get rid of the bag itself. The bag was worn and stank of plastic, sweat and Axe body spray, but I didn’t find a locator tag or anything else in it. Nevertheless, I crumpled it up and shoved it inside a black bin bag.

I threw on a denim shirt, left my flat and dumped the black bin bag with the JD sports bag in it into an outside receptacle on my way to JD Sports. Don’t know why I headed there, I guess I just had JD Sports on the brain.

Inside JD Sports, wandering around between the running shirts and yoga mats, I felt kind of giddy and happy and unexpectedly started grinning like an idiot. The idea of the pile of money on my bed was nearly pornographic and I felt a bit of a tingle just thinking about it. Funny to think that some gland in my brain was going haywire producing loads of hormones because I had stumbled upon a big pile of paper. I was quickly gripped with an equal amount of horror, though, at the thought of someone walking in and violating my slutty little pile and for a fevered minute became convinced that it was exactly what was happening right nw in my absence. I found a similar bag, black with grey and blue detailing, took it to the till, paid for it and walked out. In hindsight, choosing a similar bag was stupid, because it was exactly the kind of bag the owner would be looking for, but as my grandmother said: you can’t take back a fart, sonny. It wasn’t until I walked out that I also realised that I had paid for the new bag with my card, instead of taking one of the bills with me. I wanted to slap myself, since using the money would have been a perfect test of its authenticity. If the alarms had gone off I would have just told them that I got it as change from Greggs.

When I got home, I found Fort Knox unviolated. I sat down on the chair in front of it and I looked at it, and I looked at it, and I looked. In the film, Goldfinger wanted to nuke the place, if you recall, to make the world’s gold reserves unusable. It’s very quaint to think that there was a time when the actual wealth of nations was tied to something so tangible and real. Now it’s all spider webs made out of digital code.

If I had any good sense in me, I would have called the police then. Who knows, they might have actually paid me a finder’s fee for handing in the money. It sounds a little Disneyland, but it conceivably could have happened. After a bit of Googling I found out that you can claim money if it goes missing for six weeks without being claimed by someone else, but I thought that it couldn’t apply to hundreds and fifty grand; there would definitely be an inquest. And I realised that I just Googled something on my phone about finding a lot of money right after finding a lot of money and quickly wiped my internet history for the last three hours.

I did not call the police, or anyone. I just stared at my square of money.

I considered the ethics of my situation. What was I expected to do when stumbling on it? Leave it there? My building has over sixty apartments in it. Anyone could have found the dosh, but I happened to be the first person on the scene. Anyone who found the bag would have taken it, of that there was no question.

I packed the money in the new JD Sports bag, mostly so I could stop being hypnotised by it. I took it to my closet, folded some old shirts and jeans on top, zipped up the zip and placed the bag on a high shelf, then immediately took it down and instead put it on the floor, then placed an old, empty suitcase on top of it. I pushed the bag and the suitcase next to the wall and put an old, broken speaker I’ve been meaning to fix for ages in front of it. Very quickly it melted into the surroundings and looked like it belonged there.

I stepped out of my closet, flicked the light off and closed the door.

I thought: can police dogs smell money?

I walked over to my kitchen, poured myself a glass of water, drank the water so quickly it ran into my beard and dripped down onto my chest, put the glass down and stared at the wall. The image of the money was burned onto my retina and hovered like a ghost like an afterimage you get after staring at a light for too long.

“Jesus,” I said.

What I should have done is sit down with a pen and pad and sketch out a plan of some kind, but I didn’t, because I never do. Instead, I got to the closet, moved the things I piled on the bag mere minutes ago, unzipped it and took out one packet of money. I put on a coat, even though it was warm, and put the packet in the coat’s breast pocket. I opened the door, then got back in and checked all my windows and my gas burner, my washing machine and my dish washer, then got out into the hallway again and check half a dozen times that the door was closed and locked. I then got on my way to Camden to meet Legendary Dave.


I had three good reasons for doing this:

1. Even if I was ultimately going to return at least the balance of the money, or find a good use for it, I felt like I was entitled to enjoying a finder’s fee of sorts. At least for making sure that the money wasn’t in the hands of neo-Nazis or a gang of roadmen.


2. Legendary Dave is a drug dealer and drug dealers accept cash, in fact they prefer it.


3. I wanted to get high.

Sitting in the bus, watching the houses and the road roll by, I considered different avenues for spending the money.

For instance, I could buy a gun. I am not a gun person, far from it. Some strange connection between ill-gotten cash and weapons occurred in my brain and I followed along its path. I know some lads with shaved heads who like amphetamine and steroids who could probably fetch me a heater. Admittedly it might have come in handy in the kind of situations a person in possession of a load of money might find themselves in. I thought I could maybe wave a gun around but I knew I couldn’t keep bullets in it, since I had, and still do, no idea how to shoot a gun, at least beyond the basic principles. Also, how would I get rid of a gun, if I needed to?

The bus passed three ex-shops – an Asda, a Marks & Spencer and a bookshop – all with signs reading COMMERCIAL SPACE AVAILABLE on their empty windows.

I thought to myself: I could just buy a shit load of drugs. But buying drugs would be just about as risky as getting a shooter, and I’ve never been much of a drug dealer; I always preferred the consumption end of that arrangement.

The bus breaked with an urgency and me, along with everyone, leaned forward to the backs of the seats in front of us. Then the bus lurched forward, throwing me back, and I thought to myself: these buses are a piss take, I should buy a car.

Immediately a voice noted: For cash? No questions asked?


No. Maybe 40 years ago, but not these days. Somewhat possible through a web site, but handing anyone several thousands in cool, crisp cash might raise suspicions. No, it was too risky.

Buy a house?

Nope. See previous answer, although I think even way back in the seventies and eighties a real instate agent would have lifted up their bushy eyebrows if they were offered a literal suitcase full of dosh as payment.

The bus turned and shoved me towards the window. I allowed my face to press against it, clattering and vibrating with its frantic resonance and smearing my forehead grease on it, then pulled back.

The most obvious thing was to stash the money in my flat and just pinch a cheeky twenty every once in a while when I went down to the shops. No one would notice anything and over months and years the effects would be barely noticeable, even to myself. Eventually the police would stopped looking, as would the owner. The real kink was the security aspect. How long could I live with a huge pile of cash in my closet without dying from paranoia? I would have to get a safe or a case for it, although it would take a bloody big one of either. And where would I keep that? In my closet? What if there’s a burst pipe, or a house fire?

The bus either passed by a storage service building or I saw an advertisement, I can’t remember which, and I thought: storage. I could lease out a storage locker, put the money in there, possibly inside the aforeplanned safe. No one ever checks those places as long as the rent is paid, right? And if they have cameras, I could bring in the money inside something, such as, again, the safe.


Oh, Lordy, I thought. That one rapper was right: more money, more problems.


Still can’t remember who it was. Fuck my memory.

Who was he?

Tupac?

I could ask the interweb right now, but I won't. Bloody machines do enough of people’s knowing and thinking and remembering already.

On the bus, I reached into my coat pocket for my writing pad and instead found the money packet. Instinctively I looked around, but there was no one even anywhere near me, the closest passenger being an old lady three rows behind me. I reached into the left-hand pocket and fetched out the pad and pen, then got to work sketching out a shopping list.

Legendary Dave is a mate from way back, although “mate” may be a rather generous word for someone you never interact with outside the sale, purchase or shared consumption of drugs. Dave is big into Northern Soul, which I respect but don’t really understand, and he likes classic cars and bowling, which I have never cared for, and wants to do speed, which I’m also not a huge fan of. His wife has never liked me, though she’s cordial enough, I suppose. The few times I’ve met either of his kids, they looked at me like I was a rough sleeper who had just wandered in from the street. I get it, though; I suspect that there is a steady crowd of slightly off-putting uncles who come to see their good mate Legendary Dave out in the park or in their car. I’m not his best customer. Jesus, I’m not even a good enough friend to know what legendary thing he did to be called Legendary.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anyone interested in flammable gases?” Dave asked, cigarette jumping up and down on his lips. We were in his garage, where he usually smoked in, although the place smelled as if the walls, possibly the floor and ceiling as well, were doused with petrol.

“Uh... no, quite honestly,” I said, staring at the cigarette’s orange tip.

“No? I’ve got loads of acetylene, butane and ethane and it all has to go.” He drew on a stupid grin. “Burning a hole in my pocket, mate.” He actually winked at me. “Get it? Because it’s flammable.”

“Nice one,” I said, looking around at the crates and boxes covered in tarpaulins and old blankets. “They’re not in here, right?”

“Nah,” Dave said, and took another big puff, then pointed his fag at me. “So, you don’t know someone who might need, I dunno, some welding done, or something?”

I shook my head and showed him my teeth. “Can’t say that I do.”

Dave drew a heavy sigh and stared at his cigarette. “Yeah, me neither.” He yawned and stretched his hands up, waving them about for a moment, then looked at me from under the weight of a rough fifty years. “So... what are you after?”

I took out the list I had drawn up on a piece of paper on the bus. I was finally using my brain by not writing a long list of illegal substances as a phone memo right after I’ve stumbled on illegal moolah. I handed it over to him.

“A brick of home-grown cannabis,” he read from the list. “Ten grams of cocaine, preferably uncut, ten grams of psilocybin mushrooms, thirty doses of LSD on a blotter and a medium bag of ketamine. And...” He squinted. “Any amount of MDMA, if you have any.”

He looked at me and I just nodded, grinning. I still have that list. That “if you have any” is kind of unnecessary, but whatever.

Dave returned to the list and his eyebrows lifted up. “Got a birthday coming up or what?”

My smile widened. “I happened on some money.”

“Oh, nice,” he said, gruffly, then grinned and started nodding, then looked at me. “So you want all of this now?”

“Whatever you can spare now, I can take,” I said. “I’ll pay for all of it and come back for the rest when you get it.”

“Right,” Dave said, nodding in agreement. He finished the fag and ground it to the concrete floor. “This money you happened upon.” He lifted up the crunched up butt and placed it on the edge of a metal shelf. “How much are we talking about?”

“Scratch card,” I improvised. “Got a few grand.”

“Oh,” Dave said and examined the list again. “If you want all this, you won’t have much left.”

I shrugged, and grinned. “Happy birthday to me.”

Dave grinned back at me. “Better to have some dope and no money than some money and no dope, eh?”

The druggist credo.

“Indeed,” I said with a smile, reaching into my pocket. “You take cash, right?”

Dave looked thoughtfully at the wide door at the other end of the room. “You know, butane is a kind of a drug.”

On the returning bus back, I stared at the drizzle. The water streaming down the bus windows made me think about using the money to leave the country, but there were plenty of obvious problems with that idea. First of all, flying was right out, since no one was going to let anyone on a plane with a bag of money. They check everything nowadays, and I mean everything. I could have taken the channel tunnel to France. They don’t X-ray your bags on the trains, possibly. But then I would be in France with a load of money and nothing would have changed, really. I always hated studying French, though I did watch most of the Emmanuelles. Nevertheless, my mind was set on travelling. I was flooded with imagery of tropical islands, the Cayman’s or the Seychelles or the Bahamas, ivory-coloured yachts drawing white wakes across azure blue waters. But, I thought, can you really do that anymore? It seems like a very eighties/seventies thing: walking down a gangway plank with chinos, a linen shirt and a panama hat on, checking into a hotel with an attaché case and then hitting the casino. Now they trace your phone, even if you turn off all the GPS and location services, even the phone itself, and keep tabs on all of your spending. Passport use they definitely track, especially nowadays. Brexit just continues to fuck everyone up the jacksy.

Still, the idea wouldn’t leave me alone.

I thought: what would I actually be leaving behind?

Well, there’s Eric (my son, name changed), but he has his mum and new step-dad now and he’s a teenager who’s embarrassed of his old dad, who doesn’t have a proper job and is always running out of money and can’t hold on to a girlfriend, which is actually not what he should call the women he’s involved with at his age anyway. There’s also Holly, my ex (name also changed, as will be others), who mostly keeps up with me because of the shared custody of our aforementioned son. My dad is dead and my mum is cranky. I see my brothers only a few times a year. I’ve got friends and acquaintances in the cultural and musical circles – actors, writers, DJ’s, musicians, film and TV producers, theatre people – but most of them are settling down in one way or another and I seem to see them less and less with every passing year. I know some people who are like me, who’ve kept moving, unwilling to put down roots, moving from place to place, doing odd jobs, always meeting new people. But now they’re ageing too, and learning that the human body just can’t keep moving forever.

I decided to play “Let The Wind Carry Me” by Joni Mitchell when I got home.

Back home, I spent some time Googling (private mode on, even though I’m not sure it really is all that private). I looked up some cruise companies – I still had luxury travel on the brain – but was having a hard time finding out how thoroughly they inspect people’s luggage, and was anxious enough not to just call them up and ask. I flipped down the lid on my laptop and relocated to the couch. I set down the travelling bag Legendary Dave gave me and opened it up. A cloud of cannabis fragrance lifted up to meet me. I opened the bag to see two glass jars, two hard plastic boxes and a plastic bag. Dave came through all right. I realised it had only been a few hours since I found the money. I took everything except the weed and the shrooms to my bathroom.

Back in the living room, I turned the telly on, then turned it immediately off and went to find the Joni Mitchell record. I forgot its name until I found it: “For the Roses”. The cover has a picture of Joni sitting on top of a mossy bit of rock with some trees and a lake with some pine trees, probably somewhere in Canada. Funny story: Joni originally wanted the cover to be a picture of a bunch of roses up a horse’s arse, reflecting her feelings about the music industry, and after that she wanted it to be a picture of her on a rocky beach with her bum showing, which is the picture on the inside sleeve. Fucking legend.

I found the song put the needle down on. Joni started massaging her piano and soon the woodwinds joined in. The song is an anthem to autumn and pining for youth and never having a home. I rolled a joint on top of the cover while I listened. It’s such a cool, melancholy tune and she’s singing like she’s lived through all of it.

I get that strong longing

And I want to settle

And raise a child up with somebody

But it passes like the summer

I'm a wild seed again

Let the wind carry me

Fucking brilliant. None of it rhymes but it is absolutely poetry.

The record spun on to other songs and other moods and I sank into the sofa with the joint dangling from my lips.

I woke up in the middle of the night, bleary, trembling and bathed in sweat, to the sound of my front door slamming closed. I sat up in bed (yes, I had managed to drag myself there before passing out) like a cartoon character, feeling my whole body vibrate.

They found me, I thought, without knowing who “they” are, then thought: should have bought a bloody gun, knowing full well I would have most likely shot myself with one.

The silence around me squealed with the tune of my tinnitus, something acquired from a lifelong love of loud music and a dislike for hearing protection. I finally started wearing earplugs 10 years ago, when it was much too late. I struggled to hear anything in the din: footsteps, breathing, the clank of a wooden bludgeon, the squeaking of leather gloves about to close around my throat.

A car passed by outside. Rain rattled on the window sill.

I slowly pushed away the covers and gingerly lifted myself out of bed. I took slow, sneaky steps towards the living room door, which was slightly ajar, over scattered piles of clothes on the floor. I was still desperate to hear something, or not to hear something, preferably. And I heard nothing apart from the chorus of a loud past. After six extremely lengthy and deliberate steps I reached the bedroom door and slowly pushed it to squeakily open. I stepped into the dark living room and considered calling out “hello”, but didn’t. (Why do people in horror films always do that? It’s never a good idea.) Some animal part of me could sense the proximity of a warm, predatory being in the darkness. My heart was giving the single note played by the violin in my ear a steady and prominent drum beat. I examined the vague shapes of the kitchen, familiar in outline but submerged into phantasmagorical darkness. I considered sneaking to the cupboards to get a saucepan, or a knife, or meat-tenderising mallet. But, I reasoned, wouldn’t that just make whoever was there even more likely to attack me? My brain made a mad scramble to estimate who it was and concluded that it was either the police or a criminal or a supernatural being. My brain told me that the money would soon be gone and that I should concentrate on not losing my life. I finally decided to reach for the light switch, then hesitated. I listened one last time before flicking on the lights.

My couch, telly and old IKEA shelves, lovingly decorated with hanging clothes, books, piles of dirty dishes, DJ controllers, boutique synths and tape recorders all blinked into blinding existence. At least there was no one sitting on my sofa like a horror movie vampire. On the coffee table in front of the sofa sat my joint rolling station from last night, with oregano-like cannabis sprinkled everywhere. The kitchen was in its familiar state of disarray, and stood equally unoccupied. The energetic assurance of someone else being in my flat started immediately to fade, becoming more like a leftover sensation from a dream. I suddenly felt stupid, then giddy.

It was all in my head, my mind told me, then added: I still have the money!

Without thinking, I scrambled to the JD Sports bag in my closet, even though it was the one place left in the flat where I might run into a possible intruder, if the bag was indeed what they wanted. The bag was there, under all the stuff I had placed on it. I didn’t pull out the bag, just put my hand against the side and determined that the notes were still inside. I turned the light off, then noticed that the light in the toilet was on. I stepped gingerly towards the door of the loo before pushing it gently open. I sensed that the loo was empty, but there was definitely something wrong. At first it looked like someone had thrown up or taken a diseased poo in the bowl, which was swirling with colourful flour. There were plastic bags on the floor around and in front of the bowl. I leapt forwards and confirmed that the ketamine, the cocaine and the MDMA crystals I had bought from Legendary Dave were floating in the toilet in a sickening, lumpy yellowish-white porridge.

“Fucking hell,” I breathed out.

I suddenly started laughing, because the only logical explanation to the events of the night was that I was struck by the ninja-commando unit of the UKNA. Also, I was immensely relieved; I was only the victim of a misguided drug destruction operation, not the tragic casualty of a robbery gone wrong. After a moment of laughter and shaking my head, I flushed the toilet and collected the derelict wet baggies and threw them in the bathroom bin.

I returned to the kitchen and found my bong in the sink. The bowl was filthy and black so I scraped it out with a bit of wire and fetched some crumbled-up bud from the station. I filled the pipe with hot water, loaded the bowl up, kissed the weed with my torch lighter and drew my lungs full. As I exhaled a big, grey cloud, I finally felt myself soften and relax, allowing my shoulders to fall loosely on either side of me. I cleared my throat a little and caught a drink of water from the tap. I clicked the lighter on, scorched up what was left, walked over to the couch and collapsed on it, making it complain.

I looked out of the window at the street light outside. Errant streaks of rain crawled along like glas ladybirds.

Had I seriously just been visited by a madman who somehow knew I had just gone out and visited Legendary Dave and didn’t like that at all, enough to throw most of what I bought in the toilet?

What if it had been Eric? The notion was quite ridiculous, although my son does have a key to my flat. But how would have he known I bought drugs? And did he seriously care enough to come over to his old pa’s, break in, dump all his gear in an act of youthful rebellion, then leave without saying a word? If he did, I would be touched, in a weird way.

Option 2: I was sleepwalking and out of a sense of self-preservation, my brain made me get rid of the awful poison.

It was a stupid then and it’s a stupid idea now; an idea from a worse story than this.

What was it, then?

At this point, I had no clue, so I returned to my bed and passed out.

The next morning, which is to say around noon, there was a knock on my door, which was strange, because usually my ex wife or my son or any other visitor use the buzzer or sends me a text message beforehand, so I was somewhat suspicious. I put on the safety chain and glimpsed through the peeping lens to see the top of someone’s head, with a cap on it.

My first thought was that the drug terrorist from last night had returned, but my second thought was that my first thought made no sense. Why would they come back? And why would they ring the doorbell and not just come in like last time? However, I felt that there had to be some connection between the events and I felt that I needed to get some resolution, or at least additional information. Therefore, I decided to open the door.

The person on the other side was a diminutive and balding man with a face tinted grey by stubble, wearing a brown track suit and a beige cap. He looked vaguely ethnic, possibly Eastern-European or Mediterranean and smelled of Old Spice or some other forgotten, overly masculine deodorant, and fags. His most prominent feature was that he was fuck-ugly, with v-shaped eyebrows slanting over a mushroom nose situated above a crooked mouth full of stained, uneven teeth that he revealed to me in a smile that was probably meant to be friendly. I apologise for being too hard on anyone’s outward appearance, but I think you will find that this man – this being – is a rare, walking confirmation of the medieval idea that ugliness equals ungodliness and evil.

“Good day,” the man grunted and nodded.

“Hello?” I asked, from behind protective chain.

“Sorry to bother you,” the man said, looking straight up at me, then behind me in my flat. “But I’ve lost something and I’m looking for it.”

Instant cold sweat set in as I wondered if this pig-eyed, leather-faced goblin was the owner of the money and whether his face would be the last human visage I ever saw. I glanced at my protective chain to indicate that it was definitely staying on.

“Oh,” I said. “Lost something?” I tried to look as quizzical and unknowing as I possibly can. “What has gone missing?”

The man examined me from the small opening with an expression that communicated silent hatred, although I’m not sure if he just always looked like that. I thought that constantly looking like that probably came handy in his line of work, which had to be crime. Either that or a sports teacher.

Don’t say a bag, don’t say a bag, I prayed silently.

“It’s a big, black bag. A sports bag.”

Fuck a fucking duck!

Shivers ran down my spine, creeping coldness crawled over my shoulders, but my face flushed red in a valiant effort to maintain body warmth.

“A bag,” I repeated. “What’s in it?”

Now the ugly man squinted and leaned forward to examine me again. I tried to smile for a moment, then change my mind and dropped my expression back to neutral.

“It actually belongs to my son, the bag,” the man explained. “And even though it’s not that valuable, it has his football stuff in it and it would mean a lot to him if I could recover it.”

“Oh, football stuff, footy... things,” I said. “So it’s not really valuable.”

The man shrugged. “In terms of monetary value, no, but in terms of the wossit now... sentimental value, it’s right up there.” A ghastly smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “You understand, don’t you?” He nodded at me. “Got any kids, sir? They like football?”

I nodded my head eagerly. That “sir” touched my heart, or at least it should, were I not stricken by terror.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve got a son, and he plays, sometimes.”

“Well, just look at us, a pair of dads,” the man said, with a one-syllable laugh and sneering smile that was probably intended as very matey. “Have you seen a bag like that recently?”

“No,” I snapped, much too quickly, then hurried to add, thoughtfully: “I don’t think so.” I made a show of thinking about it and looked up at the stains in the hallway ceiling. “When exactly did you lose it?”

“Few days ago. I didn’t lose it, my son did.”

“Right, yes. And he lost it here?” I pointed upwards. “In this building?”

The man grimaced and made a throaty laugh. “Well, you see the real problem is that my son went out with a few of his mates and had a couple of drinks, you know.” The man made a folksy drinky-drinky motion with his hand. “And for some reason doesn’t remember exactly where he left the bag.” He gave me a conspiratorial smile and another monosyllabic laugh, then looked around. “This building is one possible location where I might find it, one of his friends lives in this building so I decided to start here.”

The story actually sounded likely, if not for the fact that it was a goddamned lie. Probably.

“Have you tried the lost and found?” I suggested.

“Yes, I have,” the man told me. “They told me they’ll contact me if something turns up, but I decided to try my luck and ask around.” He smirked at me again. “My boy would love to have his bag back.”

In any other situation, this scenario might have struck me as a delightful example of old school parenting you just don’t see that much anymore. I tried to smile at the man for being an excellent dad to his possibly completely fictional son while quietly begging Jesus, Buddha, Allah and all of the gods of the Cosmos to make me as forgettable as possible so that I would never see this goblin again in my life.

“Well, like I said, I haven’t seen a bag anywhere here,” I said, cheeks burning, my own little biological lie detector. “But maybe I can contact you if I do?”

He nodded his swine-like head. “I’d appreciate it, sir. Here’s my card.”

And the man actually slipped a cardboard card with his contact information on it between the little gap. I didn’t think anyone used calling cards anymore. His name was Louis, which was funny, because he was the least Louis-looking person I had ever met.

“And if you don’t mind asking your neighbours about the bag, I would appreciate that,” the man said, finally looking like he was about to leave. “Also if you have a Facebook page or a group chat for the residents of the building. Yeah?”

I knew that there was a notice for a group chat for the residents posted in the lobby and I was in fact a member of said group chat since I wanted to check if the smell of marijuana or the sound of loud music was ever connected with my apartment, but I was not about to do this gremlin any favours, so I nodded my head and closed the door. After it clicked shut, I spent some time staring at it. I didn’t look through the peephole, because I was afraid that the man would still be standing there, staring up at me. I heard his footsteps fade away, but I stood still as a statue. I listened to my heartbeat, my breathing, felt my body slowly shed its electricity through the lightning rod of my spine.

How did he find me? How did he know it was me? a voice asked in my head.

Maybe he didn’t find me, the voice suggested. Maybe he is just asking around.

I felt the need to light up a spliff to fully relax myself, so I turned and headed for the living room. At the fridge, I stopped. There was an old dry marker board on there. Back in the days of an intact family, it would list missing items of the fridge, tell us that Eric was at practice, or that today was the first day of the rest of our lives. I wiped it clean ages ago and haven’t thought of anything to write down.

There were two words on it, in blue marker: BAD GUY.

I knew, and still know, that I had not written those words.

I spent the rest of the day indoors, even though the rain was finally done and it was a beautiful spring day outside. I put on some Steve Reich. I rolled three spliffs and smoked half of one. I tried to chill the eff out and continue to evaluate my situation.

I was still in possession of the money – good. I was in possession of less narcotics than before – initially bad, but on second thought actually good. If the cops came knocking I would only be in possession of a load of money, not a load of money plus a load of drugs. Perhaps buying the gear was a stupid idea in the first place, especially so soon after finding the money. Not to imply that Legendary Dave would have told anyone about our dealings, but you never know. Maybe the smartest idea would have been to wrap the money up in plastic and bury the lot in Epping Forest for twelve months.

I still had no idea what happened the previous night, and no clear way to investigate the matter, which was troubling. I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been in my place, though. It occurred to me that the thing that woke me up was probably the door closing as the intruder left, not when he/she/it arrived. However, the whole scenario continued to be mad: someone broke in, walked into my toilet, threw my stash in the loo, then left, slamming the door behind them. No one does that, do they? The scribbled BAD GUY added a sinister twist to the visitation, but I decided to disregard it for the moment.

Being visited by Louis the goblin wasn’t exactly a tick in the positive column, but I hoped and prayed that I had not given him any particular reason to suspect me over any of the other people he might have talked with. I checked the building group chats where people sent messages asking if they had met with this man who was looking for his sons sports bag. A few people posted that they had indeed heard the strange man ringing their doorbells, but hadn’t opened their doors to him, and I wanted to kick myself, because the real way to stay inconspicuous is, naturally, being a rude twat!

Around four in the afternoon I ordered some pizza from a local place. It was actually the old kind of pizza, the kind people don’t really appreciate anymore, because all of their pizzas have to be made in a real stone oven. I prefer the disgusting kind of pizzas of old, where all the ingredients are from cans and tins and there’s entirely too much cheese and oil. A delivery receipt was attached to the pizza box and it was at least a foot long, folded several times. I looked at it and saw that two words were written over and over in the section for notes and special requests: AIDAN CONNIFF.

I didn’t know who that was. I had never heard that name in my life.

I checked the delivery app on my phone and in my order history the name was written, just as it was on the receipt, typed over and over and over. I assumed that the delivery company had either thought it was written by someone who didn’t know how to use their app, or it was for a birthday, or something. But I distinctly remembered writing nothing at all in the notes when I made the order – in fact I couldn’t recall ever writing a single note when ordering anything. I called the restaurant and asked them if they had noticed the note, and they told me that they had, but assumed it was the name on my door for the delivery driver. I then called the technical support for the delivery company, and they told me that they had no way of interacting with the additional notes a customer added. They did say it was strange that it was such a long string of words and said that they would notify their technical support about the issue and thanked me for calling.


For a while I was feeling seriously lost. I stood in my kitchen just staring at my kitchen-cum-living room, trying to decode something from its layout, as if there had been some weird shift in the Matrix that would show up in my wallpaper. I saw my phone light up, which I assumed was because it was receiving a call. I walked over and it wasn’t – it was dialling a number. And not just any number, the damned thing was calling 999. And they picked up!

“Hello!” I shouted into the phone after grabbing it and slapping it on my face. “I’m sorry!”

“Emergency, which service?” the voice on the other end asked.

“No, no service!” I shouted. “There’s no emergency! Sorry, I accidentally made this call. Very sorry, bye!”

I punched the red phone at the bottom of the screen with all my might while panting and swearing, then stared at the device in disbelief as the phone pulled up my recently dialled calls list by itself and redialled 999 in front of my eyes. I punched the red button again, the call terminated, and the accursed appliance quickly dialled again.

I spent the next several minutes in a sweaty struggle to turn my mobile phone off. These new bloody phones don’t even have a proper power switch! Not to mention a battery you can just yank out. Most people never turn their phones off, which suits the surveillance state fine. At this point some sort of cyber attack was all I could think of, as I scrambled around the living room for one of those thin pins you need to eject the SIM card, except they always vanish right after you use them, which is the first (and usually only) time you turn the phone on, so I stared in disbelief as the progress bar appeared on the screen and my phone rebooted itself. I finally found a needle I use to scrape out the bowl of my bong and managed to slide the SIM card’s toboggan out before the thing had managed to start calling the cops again. After that, my phone gave up and just sat there, shining a ghostly light.

“That’ll teach ya,” I growled, sitting down on the sofa and lighting the half-finished spliff with trembling hands. It didn’t really do much to help me calm down, if anything, the exact opposite. My head buzzed with increasingly unhinged ideas with what was happening to me, from being stalked by an international conspiracy to me entering a narcotic psychosis, but mostly, my nervous system was just shot and I was less challenged by any thoughts at all and feeling sick and confused. I extinguished my joint and leaned back on my sofa, then assumed the lotus pose, which is no small feat with my current knees. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, which was utterly impossible, but at least I could take a break from being at the centre of a hornet’s nest and for a while just looked at the hornets buzz around me. Some of them tried to attack me, but I allowed them to fly through me.

After some time I opened my eyes and decided to take a shower. Under the blast of warm water, I became more relaxed. For a moment, I was a child of nature beneath a tropical waterfall, with no knowledge of the evils of civilisation, I was Adam bathing myself in the garden of Eden, way before my partner told me about the joys of fruitarianism, and I was a satyr soaked by the gentle showers of Albion.

Stepping in front of my bathroom mirror, I found that someone had written “WIFE” there. That by itself was not the strangest or most upsetting thing to have happened to me lately, but it did obliterate any measure of calm or ease I had managed to accrue. I was once again bathed in sweat (despite having just showered) and feeling ill. I was suddenly struck by a memory of finding things written in my fogged up mirror. Back when me and my ex were still good, I would find hearts and funny faces and tits and bums and cocks drawn in my bathroom window when it fogged up. The written "WIFE" had none of their gentle humour.

Back at the sofa, I re-inserted my SIM card into my phone. Some part of me knew that it was not going to start calling the cops again, and it didn’t. My home screen sat there as it always had, displaying its bricolage of little icons, awaiting commands. I found Holly (my ex) from my recent calls and dialled her up.

“Hey you,” her voice meowed. “How are you?”

“Hello. I’m fine. How are you?”

She coughed into the phone. “Bit of a sniffle, otherwise fine.”

“Ah. That’s too bad, a spring cold. They’re the worst.”

“Yeah, but I’ll live.”

She sounded like she was fine.

“So how are you?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m pretty good,” I lied.

“Okay. Working hard or hardly working?”

I laughed. “The first one.”

“Yeah? What are you working on?”

A bag of money.

“It’s a project. Good money, though.” I almost made myself laugh with that.

“Oh, okay,” she said, sounding sceptical. “Hey, whatever happened with that film soundtrack you were doing? You said something about it last time we talked.”

“Oh, right,” I said, realising that she didn’t know that they had run out of money. “Yeah, no, I decided to back out of that one. It was... messy.”

“Oh. All right, then.”

“Listen...” I said, and realised I still have no real idea exactly why I was calling her. “Has anything happened to you lately?”

She sniffed. “What do you mean? Something bad or something good?

“Anything, just something significant or unusual.”

“Unusual,” she repeated. “I don’t think so. My dad finally got the right medicine for his arthritis.” She then gave me half a dozen other minor things that have happened, none of which seemed in any way interesting or related to my situation.

“Right,” I told her. “So nothing really unusual or strange?”

“All right, you’re starting to worry me now. Unusual or strange? What, like someone following me around?” She made a little noise of disapproval. “Is Alan cheating on me? What do you know?”

“No, no! I don’t know anything. I just got this really strange feeling that I needed to call... my wife, ex-wife, if we’re being completely accurate and I just... called you.”

There was a sigh on the line. “What have you taken? Is it research chemicals again?”

“What?” I shouted, indignant. “No! It’s not that! I haven’t taken anything... really. I just got this strange feeling and felt like checking in.”

“All right. Well, thanks for checking in, but everything is fine.”

“Right. Good. I’m glad.”

I wanted to ask her about how Eric was doing, but he’s a teenager now, with a smart phone, and I’m supposed to ask him directly how he’s doing and apparently he’s become a proper person with his own motivations and thoughts and a bloody personality instead of being a jolly, fat little boy who’s always giggling and laughing and wants to do all kinds of shit with his dad and turns incredibly soft when he goes to sleep when I’m reading to him.

“Hey,” I said into the phone. “Do you remember an Aidan Conniff?”

“Who?”



“Aidan Conniff. You remember him? Or know him?”

“No. I don’t think so. Who is it?”

I laughed a little. “I was hoping you’d know.”

“I don’t think I do. Where do you know him from?”


“Not sure. The name just kind of popped up.”

“Oh. No, I don’t remember him.”

“Okay. Well, it isn’t that important.”

“Okay,” she said, and a voice mumbled something loudly in the background. “All right, I think I have to go. Call you later.”

“Bye.”

I returned to the sofa, glanced at the spliffs, but decided to take a momentary break to have at least a somewhat lucid and logical mind at my disposal. I stared at an old poster I had bought in Rhodes twenty five years ago and focused on the question: what had actually happened?

Well, my phone had started calling the emergency services and then I saw “WIFE” written on the mirror in the bathroom, so I supposed my brain decided that “emergency number” plus “wife in the mirror” equalled “Holly is in danger”, but apparently it was something else. Now, it was entirely possible that my phone had gotten to the end of its planned obsolescence and was doing random shit to tell me I needed to get a new one. Possible, but not all that likely. Phones that are breaking down don’t start calling the cops, do they?

I went back to the kitchen (table) and found the receipt, thanking myself for not just throwing it out. There it was: Aidan Conniff.

I hopped on the interweb and quickly found that he was dead. An article about him was posted on a local indie music website. I also noticed he had a Facebook page, but read the article first. Aidan had died two days before. Apparently Mr. C was in his early thirties and had been given a prison sentence for tax fraud recently, though the website espoused his innocence. He was a fixture in the local punk and hardcore scene, a singer in a band and a manager of some other bands, and organised a lot of gigs and concerts. The death was unexpected and unfortunate. Apparently, he had died from a gunshot from unrelated gang violence, very much the kind of “wrong place, wrong time” incident that makes you seriously doubt the existence of a singular, loving god.

Next, I went over to his Facebook page. It had been changed to an online memorial, with a lot of people paying their respects with sad emojis and the finest of artisan GIFs. I hovered my cursor above the friend request-button for a while before I clicked it. I figured that whoever was taking care of his personal page, presumably his wife or girlfriend, probably didn’t know every person who wanted to express their grief and a nosy charlatan such as myself might squeak by. As expected, I was added to his friends-list in a matter of minutes and I took a gander. There were a lot of pictures of him on stage, bald-headed and holding a microphone, usually bent over it and screaming into it, but also lots of pics of him smiling and laughing with a bunch of people. I liked a few of the pictures at random as I browsed through. He had a female partner and two children, or at least he had someone in his life he would occasionally kiss and had access to a little boy he occasionally carried around. All in all, my sleuthing amounted to the impression that Aidan Conniff had been a decent bloke, may he rest easy. I found nothing to connect him with a JD Sports bag full of money.

My phone buzzed and lit up and for a second I was struck with a panic, fearing it was calling the police again, or they were calling me, but it turned out to be a message from my current lady love asking me to let her in, which I did via the buzzer.

“Hey, babes,” I told her as she came in. “Come in. Do you want anything?” Before she has had a chance to reply I added: “Actually, do you feel like a shag? Or maybe a BJ? I’m in a bit of a state and I could do with some TLC.”

And she did indulge me in a lovely bit of oral sex, the absolute pumpkin.

I am not typing this to brag, but it is nice to have such a person in your life, right? And Angie, which is her name in this story, does play an actual part here, because of a conversation we had after she paid me a wonderful kindness with her mouth, while sharing a spliff. I finally got to expulse to her what had happened to me recently. The only alteration was that I told her that I only found two of the cash packets. I showed them to her as well. It was not because I didn’t trust her, but I wanted to keep her safe – she didn’t really have anything to do with the whole affair. Also, she’s either bipolar or has a borderline personality disorder and those things make one do some wild shit sometimes, and not always in a fun, sexual way.

“Bloody hell,” she told me, after I’ve got the story out. “That’s heavy.”

I nodded in agreement.

“Seems like you’ve got some blood money,” she told me, passing me the number. “Could do with a cleansing.”

She self-identifies as a witch and likes to have rattling bones in a pouch and burn that nice smelling Brazilian wood every now and then. It’s lovely.

“Yeah,” I admitted, pulling smoke into my lungs. “I mean, no one just throws away clean money.”

“I think this money is haunted by the spirit of whoever was wronged to get it. Which is obviously Adrian Conniff.”

“Aidan,” I corrected her, before I’d even had a chance to absorb what she just said, then did and said: “Wait... haunted?”

Angie nodded. “Possessed by his agitated spirit. He tried to tell you his name through the pizza order, then communicated to you that it’s an emergency by calling the emergency number, and tried to tell you to contact his wife, because she can help you.”

I stared at the smouldering joint between my fingers, feeling like it was winter and someone had just opened up a window behind my back.

“Babe... that’s completely mad,” I said, which was true, but also, distressingly enough, an accurate interpretation of recent events.

Two days later Aidan Conniff’s Facebook page announced that there would be a funeral and a wake and that everyone who was his Facebook friend was invited. The post gathered likes and hearts and in some cases apologies for absence that maintained that Aidan would rest in power, whatever that means. It took me a bit of hesitating before I decided to go, since there definitely is a creepy and off-putting element to going to a stranger’s funeral. However, even without the supernatural connection I think my attendance was entirely justified, since the money indeed might be related to Aidan C. He might have been carrying it past my building, noticed he was being followed and chucked it in. The question that really needed answering was: how was he involved with the money? I thought the funeral could provide me with some answers. So with my visit thusly entirely justified, I put on a scruffy but clean long-tailed suit jacket and my cleanest black jeans and made my way to pay my last, and first, respects.

The funeral was in Abney Park. The day was appropriately drizzly, although I suppose any weather in a funeral is “appropriate”. If it’s sunny you’ll just think that the dead person is sending you their last warm farewells and if it’s pissing down you think the angels are crying along with you. There were fifty or so people in attendance, scattered about. The crowd was divided quite neatly between family members dressed in black and beige suits and dresses and tattooed, pierced people wearing black jeans and suit jackets; I suppose I was somewhere between the two main groups. Walking through, everyone seemed to get along and a lot of the punks paid their respects, weepy-eyed to the parents and other family members. I recognised the wife, Sheena, from Aidan’s photos.

The service was mostly over when I arrived, which is how I had planned it. I snuck into the crowd and mostly hovered about, looking around the church grounds, trying to stay in the sidelines, although I did visit the mother and father and pay my respects, telling both that I was very sorry, and I really was. They had lost their son and as a father I can only imagine that it is the most harrowing and agonising experience in the world. Fortunately, there were a few other solitary figures in attendance and the general mood of the wake was conducive to random hovering, with a lot of loose people wandering around, unsure of where to sit and who to talk to. As more time passed, I started feeling more and more like an uninvited guest as the pressure to leave was slowly building. When the widow Conniff thanked everyone who had come and told that there would be a wake in some nearby convention centre, I stepped up to her.

“Hey,” I said. “Sheena, right?”

“Hello,” she said. “Yes, that’s me.”

She was a nice-looking brunette wearing dark brown glasses, a sensible black dress and a slightly haunted expression. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her cheeks puffed, and she kept dabbing at different parts of her face with a paper tissue. She was probably in her mid-twenties or possibly early thirties, although determining someone’s age gets harder the older you get, especially when estimating someone at the other end of the spectrum.

“I knew your husband.”

She looked at me with her tired eyes. “You did?”

“Yeah. I used to play bass in Blood Storm and he got us some gigs.”

“Oh,” she said. As far as I knew, there was a local band called that, but I had gathered from her writing that she was never much interested in her husband’s life in music.

“Yeah,” I said with a sad smile. “I played bass in his band for a few gigs as well, when their regular guy was ill. That’s when I really met him, talked with him. Obviously we weren’t great mates, but I know he was a bloody great guy.”

Her eyes welled up and she started blinking and smiling, looking like she might burst into tears. “Thank you. He was great.”

I cleared my throat. “Yeah, totally, totally. But the real reason I came to talk to you is that I actually owed him some money, and I wanted to pay it back.”

Her moist doe eyes looked up at me. “Yeah?”

I nodded, my face serious. “I don’t like to leave things like that hanging. And since he probably would have given the money to you anyway, I figured...”

She nodded her head eagerly. “Wow, thank you so much for that. I have kind of a money situation on my hands right now, and my mum told me that she was going to help, but...” She blew out a breath. “I kind of need everything I can get.” She met my eyes. “How much was it?”

“Well...” I said, and looked around. “I was thinking that we could maybe meet up and discuss that. Would that be all right?”

She told me she lived in Hackney and I told her I live in Islington and we decided to meet halfway in a pub on Southgate Road. When I got home, I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered if I had crossed some kind of line. However, that night was one of the best-slept nights of my life, so it seemed that Aidan’s spirit was, for the moment, satisfied.

There were another two days between me going to the funeral and meeting Sheena at the pub, so I took the time to further contemplate my situation. I partook in some of the mushrooms acquired from Legendary Dave (I kept them with my weed, not in the bathroom, so they were nice and dry) and settled in to again ponder the situation I was in.

As you might have already deduced, I am a raver, a rebel, a recluse, a renegade. I believe in equal rights, self-expression, art, dance, inspiration, freedom and love. I want to see people smile and get drunk on life rather than slaving under capitalist machinery. I believe in life and love and liberty. I believe in humanity. But I found myself in a quandary no person of my persuasion ever wants to find themselves in. It’s really easy to sit in a pub and over a pint tell whoever’s sitting next to you that if you were put in charge of things, you would definitely know what to do. If you had any power or money, you would use them to put things right and help out your fellow man, rather than bribing politicians for upper class tax cuts. It’s perfectly all right to be a mad rebel who stays up all night partying and raises a middle finger to the system when you’re a teenager; that’s the age where that kind of rebellion is most pure, the most joyous and also the most tragic, it burns bright but it’s also the most impotent, since you lack the ways and means to direct or manifest it. In your twenties the rebellion becomes real, which means that it gets a little saner and a little cleaner, closer to a guiding principle among many rather than something at the centre of your being. In your thirties it starts to shrink and shrivel and most people leave it behind at that age. In your forties there’s almost none of it left and in your fifties onwards there are younger and angrier people who are better equipped to carry on the flame, although the way they’re doing it seems wrong and misguided to you. Past your sixties you are growing so close to death that the life energy of youthful rebellion has become antithetical to you, it frightens you and it reminds you of the things you can never have again. And even if you ignore this kind of high-minded pabulum, advancing age makes you more attracted to comfort and stability, softness and routine. You learn that there are systems in place for a reason and discover that the generations and generations before you who have come and gone did very little actual rebelling and youthful idealism is always ground to dust by the much more efficient behemoths of history and economic reality.

All this typing is done to get to the heart of the issue: how much of the money should I give to the grieving widow? Or to put it in another way: how much of it should I keep for myself? These were the questions that I wrestled with for two days with the assistance of some psilocybin and 1970’s Ennio Morricone.

The day of our meeting arrived. The Wootton Arms was a nice little bistro pub. I found the widow Sheena Conniff already waiting for me. We exchanged hellos as I removed my jacket and hung it on a hook on the wall.

“Want a drink?” I asked, glancing towards the bar. “A pint?”

“Cider,” she told me. “Dry.”

“Coming right up,” I announced, perhaps a little too cheerfully, and made my way to the bar. I got a glass of Somerset cider for her and a pint of lager for me. I brought the drinks back and we both shared cheers and our initial sips. There was some initial chit chat here as well, but let’s just leap to the interesting bit.

“Did Aidan... talk about me?” Sheena asked me. “Or us, his family?”

I shrugged. “We just had the usual gig chats, mostly about music and previous gigs and whatever. He did say that he was married and had a kid. Maybe told some stories I can’t recall.”

She nodded. “I met Aidan when I was twenty-one. We moved in after three months of dating and I got pregnant before we had our first anniversary. My best mates told me it was all happening too fast and they were absolutely right. But Aidan was so different from the arseholes I had dated up until then.” She smiled. “He didn’t drink or smoke anything, he was straight edge and vegan. He cared a lot about people and animals and about our community.” She tilted her head to the left. “I didn’t really care for his music, but he was actually completely fine with me not liking it, and when we were together he just listened to normal music.” A sad smile lifted the corners of her pouty mouth. “He liked normal music as well.”

I nodded and gave her a smile. “Right.”

Sheena took a pull from her cider, then set down the glass and looked straight at me. “Did you hear he was going to prison?”

I nodded.

She stared at me relentlessly. “It wasn’t his fault.”

I sipped my pint and nodded. “What happened?”



“Tax shit, but it was really his business partner, this wanker called Geoff. He had this plan of opening a kind of a startup, but non-profit, like a gathering place that could act as a restaurant or a gig space or a theatre or an art gallery depending on what people wanted. It was the kind of stuff Aidan liked, about communities and about having spaces for the people to do stuff in, without having to pay for everything.” Her eyes got a little shiny. “But Geoff fucked him hard and pocketed loads of money and did some crooked shit to the company financials. That finally got the attention of the HMRC.”

“Right,” I said. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” she said, wiped at her eyes, and smiled a shaky smile at me. “Geoff is still going inside, so he got what was coming to him. Would have liked it if he hadn’t pulled down Aidan with him, but at least Aidan was going to do only two and a half years.” She took a good gulp out of her cider. “And then this happened."

“Fuck,” I said, sympathetically. “I am really sorry, that is brutal.”

She nodded and leaned back against the wall, then hissed out a burp from the side of her mouth. She was definitely not bad looking, I noted, and I really hoped my growing fondness and empathy towards her would not express themselves as a sad attempt of me trying to shag her at one point or another.

“You got any kids?” she asked.

“I do.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. A boy, he’s sixteen now.”

She nodded. “Are you close?”

I winced a little. “Me and his mum got divorced, so I see him every once in a while. And he’s getting to the age where’s he’s starting to clam up on me and considers me an embarrassment no matter what I do. So... I don’t know.”

“Right,” she said, sympathetically.

“Yeah. But you know, he’ll come around; I know I did.”

“My girl’s ten and I’m already dreading her puberty, if she turns out to be like me. I used to have shouting matches with my mum when I was a teen. I’d smash plates and coffee cups when I was properly angry with her. Ran away from home like five times.”

“Wow,” I said, daring a little laugh. “When I was a teen I just holed up in my room listening to Pink Floyd and wanking.”

She laughed a full laugh for the first time since I’d met her. I loved her laugh and I loved that she laughed at my joke. I grew increasingly worried about my feelings towards her. I mean, I had the sweetest girlfriend of my life, plus this woman was a widow.

“So, uh... not that I’m not enjoying the convo,” she said, looking at her cider. “But you said that you owed Aidan some money.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. Let’s talk about it.”

“What was the loan for?”

It was my time to suckle on my pint. I arranged the pieces of my story in the correct order in my head while I swallowed and wiped at my upper lip. “My sister needed money for a medical operation on her knee. We couldn’t do it in NHS, because the wait was too long, so we had to go private. Aidan was kind of my last chance, since I didn’t know anyone who could lend me that much. I wasn’t even planning on asking him, honestly, until we just got talking about money somehow, I think we were talking about rental space prices or something. He told me that he had suddenly stumbled on some money.”

Sheena’s brow furrowed. “Stumbled?”

“Yeah, or come across, or something. It almost sounded like he found it.”

She blinked and squinted. “Really?”

I gave her a sympathetic smile. I felt bad about having to continue on with the charade, but I was not ready to tell her that I suspected her former fiancé of being so dedicated to her monetary independence that he became involved in criminal activities, not to mention that he was continuing to empower her from beyond the grave.

Sheena took another sip. “I mean, I was a little suspicious for the last few weeks before...” She drank again. “Because he was going out to band practice constantly, and didn’t pick up if I called him. Although he said there was no reception at their underground studio, or whatever that place is... I just thought he needed to catch up with his friends before going away, so I turned a blind eye. Or tried to.”

“Yeah, it felt a little funny, him giving me the money, because we didn’t know each other that well and I didn’t expect him to say yes.”

I started to feel even worse about this fiction I concocted, especially since she seemed to believe me. I kept telling myself that it was all for a good cause.

“He was a generous guy,” she told me, with a sad smile. “Sometimes too much. He trusted people, you know. You get fucked over for that.” She took another drink. I noticed there was about a quarter of her drink left while my pint was still half full. “So... was it a lot, what he leant you?”

I took a thoughtful pull of my pint, then wiped away the froth from my moustache. I suppressed a belch and looked thoughtfully at the wall.

“Well, I don’t have it with me,” I said. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

Her eyes opened wide and she lowered her voice to a whisper. “That much?”

I shrugged. “It was a tidy sum, and it felt a little funny bringing it to a pub.”

At this point a part of me had already come to a decision that she would receive at least some of the money, if not all of it. However, I still had not determined whether donating the money was safe for her, or for me.

“So... can I have it?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“How?”


“Come with me to get it.”

She didn’t flinch, but hesitated, which was understandable. It is a little sad how cynical the times are and that we don’t just traipse to each other’s houses and flats like we used to in the 1960’s, but maybe the male gender showed between then and now that we're not worthy of that kind of trust.

“You can text a friend to tell them where you’re going,” I said. “It’s just good sense, since you don’t know me.” I reached for my wallet. “But I really am who I say I am. I have picture ID if you want to see.”

Sheena stared at me, then took out her phone. “What’s the address?”

I gave her my coordinates and showed her my driving license, which had admittedly expired, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care. She sent a message to a mate of hers telling her where she was going and to start calling in an hour’s time if Sheena didn’t call her. I nodded at the arrangement while smiling. Once she and our pints were done, I stood up to get my coat, but she stayed on her seat. I lifted my eyebrows in a silent question.

“I’m sorry, man,” Sheena said. “But I’m going to have to ask something of you now. I would love to not have to be this blunt, but most men are thick as pig shit, so here we go.”

She held a pause and I said nothing, still holding my jacket. My neck was growing warmer.

“My husband is recently dead,” she said, very plainly. “And I am not in need of any kind of sexual-”

“Jesus!” I rushed in to say. “I mean... no, Sheena, believe me, it’s not about that. I would never take advantage of anyone in your situation.” I meant what I said, but some part of me, namely the trio of things below my belly, stung with disappointed.

We went outside. Snowy mountain ranges made of clouds had sailed into the sky, giving it a wonderful baroque look. Massive shafts of light shot down on London from between celestial mountain ranges as if the city was under attack from the avenging armies of God. I looked up at the sky in admiration and kind of expected Sheena to do the same. However, when I looked back down, she was staring at me. She was different, much less warm and smiley. Something was bothering her.

“You know, I was talking with someone a few days ago,” Sheena said, then looked at me as if she was looking for something on my face. “Eddie Barrow.”

I nodded non-committally, though I had no idea who Eddie Barrow was.

“Do you know him?”

I burrowed my forehead and look towards the ceiling, then shrug. “I don’t know. The name rings a bit of a bell.”

The intensity in her eyes didn’t falter. “He was in Blood Storm and he’s never heard of you.”

My stomach collapsed, as if it’s just dived down onto the floor beneath my chair. I tried to make myself look as mystified as possible. “Really? When was he in it?”

“Always,” Sheena said, banshee eyes fixed on my face. “Eddie was the drummer. He started the bloody band.”

I released a little laugh. “Oh! Yeah, of course. The thing is–”

“Stop,” Sheena said, staring at me intently. “Stop lying to me.”

I swallowed hard.

“Who the fuck are you? Why did you come to Aidan’s funeral? Why did you meet me here? What’s this bullshit about lending money?”

I said nothing, because for perhaps the first time in my overly verbal life there was almost nothing I could have said to improve my position, which had honestly never happened to me before.

“Did you ever even meet Aidan?” she breathed out in a whisper that is intensely passionate, almost sexual. She seemed to read my response perfectly, because the next thing she breathed to me is: “Was this all just an attempt to get in my pants?”

I was quite insulted by the insinuation. Although I did find her attractive, I wasn’t some pussy-mad deviant who couldn’t be in the same space with a woman without trying something with her. I mean give me some credit, I’m a motherfucking feminist! Always have been, always will be! I’ve been a male feminist in times when it was kind of cool and subversive and I will continue to be one now that mainstream male culture is swinging back to being self-centred pricks again. Unfortunately, I was so offended that I stood in indignant silence for too long to formulate a reasonable reply and Sheena was finally done with me.

“All right,” she said, turning around. “I’m going.”

I felt my face flush, hot and cried out, desperately: “I’m really wishing you wouldn’t.” It wasn’t much of a line, but I couldn’t manage anything better.

She turned back to face me. “I don’t know what kind of game this was, what you got out of all of this...” She stared at me like she was trying to set me on fire with her mind. “But you are a sick fuck, whoever you are.”

I reached to my pocket and pulled out a money packet, then held it out in front of me. It looked like one of those novelty books, something they don’t make anymore. See, there used to be thin, pamphlet-like books with cartoons about playing golf or being forty or owning a dog. People used to give them as gifts and you could find them on bookshelves and night tables, mostly in the possession of people who didn’t read very much. Once people stopped books altogether, the funny little novelty pamphlets died out. People do still collect books to put on their bookshelves to give the impression of reading, although all reading is now done either by listening or watching shows or films.

“What’s that?” Sheena asked, examining my offering.

“Money.”

She stared at me again, eyes like glass. “What?”

“It’s his money, Aidan’s money. He would have wanted you to have it.”

She looked at me, then at the packet.

“I’m serious,” I told her.

She grabbed the plastic bag, opened the top and looked inside. She pulled out a note with her thumb and forefinger, then pushed it back, but it bent and didn’t budge. It took her a while to finagle it back inside.

“Did he borrow this to you?” she breathed at me. “Or did you find it?”

“I found it. I never met him, but all kinds of weird shit have lead me to him. And to you. I think this is some money he got for you that kind of... drifted to me.” I bit my lip. “And it doesn't even matter where it's from, actually. You need the money and I don't.”

For a brief, shining moment she stared at the package. The sky above was from a renaissance painting. The city hummed and clanked and smelled of itself.

“I’m not a bad guy,” I said, clumsily. “And I want to do the right thing here.”

And then she turned and walked away. Not a word, not a sound, not even a finger or two raised in my direction as a not-so-fond farewell. If I were more dramatic, I might have fallen on my knees and keened at the sky, but no one really does that. Plus, my knees are kind of going anyway.

She turned a corner, and was gone.

I walked to a table sitting outside the pub and fished a fag out of my coat pocket, lit it and stood puffing on it. I actually kind of hate smoking cigarettes, but it’s a really fun way to chat up people outside of pubs and clubs. I also smoke them when I get my heart broken. I watched the painted sky through wisps of smoke and felt incredibly sad. My project had collapsed and now I was stuck with the money that I assumed would stay haunted by Aidan until I got rid of it, which I still had no way of doing. I wasn’t looking forward to spending it and just putting the whole lot aflame had only a kind of sick fascination now. My thoughts were interrupted by my phone buzzing in my pocket. I slipped it out and saw that it was Sheena and I quickly picked up.

“Hello?” I said into the phone. “Sheena.”


For a minute there was only the static of the line. Then there was a sigh.


“Were you serious, just now?” her voice on the phone said. “About the money?”

“Yes, completely.”

The line crackled and hissed. The sound of a car passing whooshed in my ear. “And you are aware that if you’re lying to me right now to lure me into your flat, it’s criminal?”

I drew a breath. “Yes.”

“And I would like to note if you are planning to exploit my sorrow in any way, you are a giant piece of shit.”

I nodded my head and I smiled a little. “Yes, I agree. However, I’m not a giant piece of shit.”

She sighed. “Okay. Hold on, I'm coming back.”

So she came back, and suddenly all was right with the world again. The magnificence of the angel-painted sky reflected the state of things instead of being a strange and ironic counterpoint to them. Had I fallen in love with her, then? Maybe. But people, especially men, are too afraid of falling in love, I think. Falling in love doesn’t always have to lead anywhere, in fact it’s often better if nothing happens, at least initially; a lot of times it’s just a school boy crush anyway. It’s also possible that my feelings were more those of accomplishment. Whether I was actually giving her the money it because it was the right thing to do or because I wanted to get rid of the haunting spirit in my flat was immaterial. I was feeling so satisfied and relieved that it felt like love. Maybe.

Sheena held the packet of cash in her hand. “So you don't know where this is from?”

I shook my head. “No clue.”

“You just want to... give it to me.”

“Yes.”

She gave my being one final scan and apparently I passed, since we went back to mine. I apologised for the state of my home. After the brisk outside air, the place stank of cannabis, sweat and that kind of sharp and sweet plastic smell that comes out of audio equipment when they’re on. (A smell I rather like.) I hurried to open the balcony door and the window. I had cleaned the most egregious piles of clothes away, gave the floor a run with the hoover and deconstructed my cannabis station, but the place was still a mess. She didn’t seem particularly disturbed, but not entirely enthused either.

We sat down around my kitchen table and I told her the story. I started with the JD Sports bag, much as I did here, and went on from there. To give my story credence, I retrieved two more packets of money from the closet, but they didn’t prove much more of anything. I showed her the pizza receipt and she nodded at it. I also showed her the text on the white board, but she said that it didn’t look like his handwriting. I then asked her if she wanted me to run the shower so I could show her the word WIFE written there, but she said no. I turned on the hot water anyway. Finally, I received a bolt of inspiration. I took out my phone and placed it on the kitchen counter, expecting that Aidan would somehow manifest himself there, as a text message or a video call from beyond the grave.

We sat there and stared. The silence that descended upon us was deafening, blinding and excruciating. Every step I had taken had moved me further and further from the activities of a sane person to the domain of tinfoil hats and lizard people. This wasn’t just manifesting and crystals and reiki massages, I was veering dangerously close to David Icke territory.

“You could say his name,” I suggested, meekly.

She blinked at me. “Have you done that?”

“No,” I admitted. “But you could try.”

She looked up, as if expecting to see his floating phantom. I smirked a little. She cleared her throat and, while staring at my stained kitchen ceiling, called out the name of her dead husband.

“Aidan?”

The word ended in a curious upward note. The sound was immediately swallowed by the squelching of the fridge and the hum of traffic floating in from the balcony.

“Aidan?” Sheena repeated. “Babe? You here?”

No answer.

She called out her name half a dozen times, eyes moving around from the ceiling, to the kitchen cabinets, to the table, to me, to my bedroom door and to my suffering house plants. With every repetition something seemed to seep out of her. The silence that filled every interval crushed us beneath its glacial weight. Finally Sheena sat down opposite me.

“God, this is...” she said, biting her lower lip and squinting, then from between clenched teeth hissed: “Am I losing my fucking nut? I mean, it was mad enough to come meet you in the pub when I found out you were lying about who you were.” This stung a little bit, even if it was true. Sheena cupped her face in both hands and drew in a sharp breath, staring at midair. “Is this what happens when people go mad from grief?”

I wanted to step to her, hold her in my arms, but hesitated.

“Want a hug?” I asked, and stood up.

Sheena looked at me, bright-eyed and red-faced, cheeks streaked with tears.


“Non-sexual friendly hug,” I said, gently, with a little smile. “Yeah?”

“All right, yes,” she said and hopped over to me.

She wrapped her arms around me and pressed her head in my chest. I placed my left arm on her shoulder, letting the other hang down in a neutral position. I was breathing in the scent of her hair.

“He used to hold me like this,” Sheena said, voice flat. “I have a basic need to be held like this, same as food and drink.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I’ve thought before that we need cuddling cafes, or hug restaurants where you can order a five minute cuddle with a nice pat on the head at the end.”

She let out an amused huff, then said: “Hug me properly.”

“Pardon?”

“Other arm.”

I lifted my other arm up and placed it on her back and there we stood, me holding her in my arms. I was getting high on her presence, her warmth and the scent of her hair in my nose. I thought to myself: please, please don’t get a boner right now. You can have a nice wank later if you're a good boy.

“Okay, Aidan may be elsewhere right now,” I said, after the silence had gone on for too long and I could no longer in good conscience hold Sheena in my embrace. “But I think we should talk about the money.”

We deconstructed the hug and I went and fetched the JD Sports bag from my closet. I showed it to Sheena, who looked into it and her eyes spread wide, then jumped up to meet mine.

“How much is there?” she whispered.

“One hundred and fifty k.”

Her eyes spread even wider, looking like they might loose their hold on her eyeballs. “Jesus!”

“Yeah. I think we should be careful about handling and transporting it.” I glanced at the tote bag. “We have to make a plan.”

She looked down into the bag again, looking like she’d just seen a ghost (ha). “Right. A plan.”

Yes, a plan, which was incidentally something I had been hatching by myself for the last week or so. It was more or less done, with the only real risk factor being the goblin creature that had visited me a few days past.

“Hey, by the way...” I said, handing her the calling card. “Do you know who this is?”

“Louis,” Sheena said, after looking at the card with a growing look of profound contempt. “He’s a friend of Geoff’s.” She gave the card back to me. “Remember Geoff?”

“Yeah,” I said, taking the card and looking it over. “The arsehole.”

She tapped on the card. “This is his buddy. He’s a gangster, involved with drugs and money laundering. He gave a testimony that got Aidan locked up, or it helped, at least. He’s a piece of shit.” Sheena examined the card again, then handed it back. “Where did you meet him?”

“Here,” I said. “He rung my doorbell. Told me he was looking for his sons sports bag; the kind of sports bag the money was in.”

“Fuck,” Sheena whispered. “Oh, fuck.”

A chill crawled over me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s hope that he doesn’t call again.”

I presented Sheena with my plan for the transfer of the money and I told her to give me notes wherever she felt they were appropriate. We decided that the best method of transferring it was in small instalments over a month or two. I would act as the courier. We discussed whether we would use public transportation or one of these new taxi companies that are obliterating the old taxi companies, and decided that public transportation, preferably a mixture of several kinds, was better, since it would make following me more difficult. We debated whether to do the transfer during the night or day, but couldn’t really agree to which was safer or less suspicious and landed on daytime for the first time. The plan was that I would wear a vest I had with lots of pockets and stuff the cash in there, then wear a cardigan and a coat. No bags or carrying cases to minimise the possibility of the money getting snatched. We agreed that I wouldn’t wear something mad like sunglasses or a wig or a mask or something, but I thought I might gather up my hair into a bun and pop on a hat.

The formulation of the plan was such a pleasure. Sheena got really into it and some of the dour heaviness clinging to her seemed to lift, at least momentarily, and I was given a glance of the bubbly and eager person beneath. I loved her cinnamon freckles, the way her cheeks flexed when she smiled and the cappuccino colour of her eyes.

So, yes – we devised a plan and we felt that it was pretty good, halfway decent. We certainly didn’t expect it to go tits up immediately.

We’ve now reached today in our story, this morning to be specific. It’s Thursday, three days after we drew up the plan. I got up this morning, had a spliff and a coffee, put on the vest filled with money (21 packets, totalling over 12 thousand pounds sterling), put on a cardigan and put on the jacket. I was instantly bathed in sweat and the wads of cash clung to me like slugs before I was even out of the door. I was surprised at my state of twitchy anxiety, since for some reason I had convinced myself that I was James Bond – if I was any kind of Bond, I was Roger Moore in A View to a Kill, a doddering, unsure old man. Anyway, I stepped out of my flat, took the lift down and went out, not through the front door, but rather what I considered the back passage, the more covert and secretive route that lead through the parking garage. A figure stood next to a concrete pylon, a figure I had seen once before: Geoff’s arsehole mate Louis.


“Woah, woah, woah,” the goblin said, stepping towards me and holding his palms in the air in front of me. “Wrong way, wrong way. We’re going back.”

I stopped in my tracks and took a few backwards steps as the man walked towards me. Then I stepped to the side to let the man pass, but he mirrored my movements and kept walking straight at me. I reversed until I was literally backed up against the coarse, dusty and rough wall of the parking garage.

“All right, pal,” he grunted at me, voice reverberating in the large space. “Let’s go and get the bag.”

“What?” I asked, feeling myself turn crimson, then added: “The fuck?”

“Look, man, I don’t have time for this,” the goblinoid grunted. “I followed you two when she came here. I know you have the money. Now give me the bag before I fucking shank you.”

I wanted to note that “shank” wasn’t actually a verb, but my brain was too busy processing what the monstrous man had said to allow any extra resources to my lips. My insides had turned liquid; I had become a big water balloon for this guy to pop. However, I was aware that he had no real evidence of me actually having the money and although he was an underground dwelling creature that didn’t really give half a toss about anything having “evidence”, it meant there was wiggle room – I love wiggle room.

“Jesus, mate,” I said, with a convincingly shaky voice. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear. Please don’t hurt me, I haven’t done anything.”

Louis the goblin hesitated, to my delight, but only for a moment. “I fucking found the bag, mate. It was stuffed in a bin near the door.” He pointed to where he thought the front door was and scowled at me and I nearly kicked myself for not taking the bag to a bin miles away. The beast glared at me. “You still got it in your flat or have you moved it somewhere?”

“It’s in storage,” I said, swallowing hard. “It’s in a storage container.”

To my relief, the evil imp took a moment to consider this proposition. I had not even an inkling of an idea of the storage facility I would be forced to lead this miniature monster, or what I’d do when we got there. I immediately started considering jumping out of the car at a traffic light, though I imagined Louis having a child lock in his car for exactly these kinds of situations. He made his mind up and shook his head.

“Fuck off,” the pig man said. “It’s in your flat, isn't it? You’re trying to drive me around, aren’t cha?”

I swallowed a few times.


“Some of it is in storage,” I said, then glanced up. “But some of it’s in my closet.”

The beast examined me again, seemingly believing this. It was not a bad thing to tell him, I realised, since in order to get all of the money he would have to visit two places now before he could kill or deliver a decent stabbing to my stomach. I felt an anticipatory pain flash there already.

“All right,” he finally told me. “Give me your phone, then we’ll go back to yours.”

I froze.


“My phone,” I said, even though I had meant to ask a question.

Louis sneered at me. “Yeah, your fucking phone.”

The goblin produced a knife and unfolded it. It was meant for hunting or for military use. It had a black handle and a charcoal-coloured blade serrated apart from the last few inches at the tip.

“Fuck!” I squealed as my hand shot to my pocket to retrieve my phone. “Jesus, man, put that thing away.”


The goblin confiscated my phone and we went back to the elevator. After closing the door behind us, Louis told me to get the money, and I went to fetch the JD Sports bag from the closet. The money packets glued to my skin seemed to weigh me down and make every movement stodgy and awkward, as if I was wearing some comedy outfit for a clown, but my tormentor didn’t notice. When I placed the new bag in his feet, his face split into the widest smile I had seen on it yet (not a pretty sight – it was like a melon being dropped on the ground and breaking open) and I saw for the first time that some of his back teeth were gold. He bent over to unzip the bag and was equally happy to see the insides.

“Nice, nice,” the monster said, grinning, then his eyes shot to me. “And now we’re getting the rest of it.”

I nodded quietly, feeling my stomach rumble.

“Sorry,” I told him. “Can I... skip to the loo first?” It wasn’t my best joke ever, and I definitely didn’t expect him to let me, but I suppose he thought that as long as he had my phone, I couldn’t do much. Now that he had his money bag, he seemed slightly less malicious.

Inside the toilet, I turned on the faucet. I quickly stripped myself of my cardigan, then peeled the moist money vest off me and gently placed it in the bath. I drew the cardigan back on and sat down on the loo, because I did actually have a funny tummy. You would have had one too, don’t even kid yourselves. On the toilet, I stared at my filthy and torn hand towels and tried to think of a plan and got nothing. This was fine, ultimately, since my plans are more like rough outlines, with plenty of space for improvisation and flashes of inspiration. I finished my business, cleaned up and got out.

“All done in there?” Louis the goblin said, mockingly, showing me a mouth full of brown and yellow teeth.

I stared at the blighted creature and for the first time my revulsion translated into anger. “Did you kill him?”

Louis’ face assumed the familiar hateful scowl, which was probably its resting state. “Who?”

“Aidan Conniff.”

A scowl. “The fuck’s that to you?”

I shrugged. “Just want to know.”

“Keep your fucking beak out,” Louis said. “It’s better for your health.”

I sighed. “Are we going?”

“Yes,” the goblin promised me. “You got a car?”

“No,” I said and felt a sudden pulse of pleasure – if we were going to move about town on public transportation, even a taxi, there would be plenty chances to get away from my captor.

Louis grunted. “We’ll have to take mine, then.”

And so the soaring dove of my hopes was blasted into bloody bits by an evil gremlin with a shotgun. Still, I thought, there are ways to escape from a car; I just have to find the right moment.

“Can I have my phone?” I asked.

I didn’t really have any kind of plan with this one, it was just me throwing a wrench into Louis’ machinery.

The goblin scowled. “What?”

“I can’t remember the name of the storage place.”

“The fuck you can’t,” Louis said.

I shrugged. “I haven’t been dealing with them much. I don’t want to raise any suspicions.”

Louis did not release my phone, only nodded towards the door. “My car, buddy. Let’s go.”

At my door, Louis stopped. I suspect there was something wrong with his leg; I had noticed a slight limp earlier. He put the JD Sports bag on the floor next to him and placed his right hand on the door frame for support while he massaged his ankle. I felt a pinch, like a spark touching the back of my neck, then I leapt forward to grab the door handle. I saw Louis’ face turn towards me, eyes wide, as I yanked the door towards me. On its way it slapped him on the hip, but didn’t slow much and after a split second collided with the door frame, wanting to fulfil its purpose of isolating my apartment from the corridor on the other side, where strange food scents lingered and floors were dirty. When the wood bit into Louis’s fingers I didn’t hear a crack or a pop, because a godless, desperate, groaning shout, a moist, tearing sound straight from the back of his throat had already drowned out everything else, as if Louis knew the pain was coming a split second early before it hit. The door bounced back and the monster pulled back its claw. I desperately pulled on the door again, this time managing to slam it shut without anything caught in between. The door slammed against my knee and knocked me backwards. I felt my knee sparkle as my head landed in some greasy trainers, but judging by the continuing roar of agony from the other side of the door, I was getting the least of the damage. I stared up at my ceiling, head pressing against my sand-encrusted floor mat. My heart was trying to kick its way through my solar plexus. I was panting.

“YOU BLOODY CUNT!” I heard Louis the pig-man of east London roar. “YOU ARE FUCKING DEAD, MAN!”

The words were drowned in another animalistic howl of pain. I heard the mute opening of another door, followed very quickly by the sound of its closing, then the vague sound of someone shouting something. After that, there was a moment of heavy breathing and monstrous grunting and cursing from the other side, which I kind of enjoyed while lying down on a field of shoes, face flushed, panting, knee stinging, eyes wide. I was just about to gather myself to a standing position when Louis either fell or ran into my door, making the letterbox clang and the safety chain tingle and making me jump as if I’d been electrocuted.

“You fucking watch your step, mate,” Louis’ voice growled from the letterbox, soppy with mucus. “You fucking watch your back next time you go out. Because I’ll be watching out for you. Can’t hide forever, pal.”

I heard my tormenting demon shift his weight from my door and slowly walk away: clack clack clack. There was another vague sound of someone saying something to someone at a distance from the hallway as the tapping of the goblin’s shoes trailed away. I became pathetic with gratitude, absolutely awash with it. Admittedly my torturer was still on me, but I had been granted a temporary clemency at least. Crushing his fingers might have been strong enough to scare him off or humiliating enough to warrant vengeance. It was also possible he had just been talking tough and had bigger fish to fry than some old hippie. Since he had the money now, he might just leave me alone. Satisfied with these thoughts, I kind of curled up into a ball and for a moment lay there, breathing.

I was awakened by a loud honk from outside my window, then a sharp crash. I stood up unsteadily and walked through the kitchen and to the window. Out on the other side of the the glass a car had run into a bollard across the street. At first I thought it had been someone swerving to get out of Louis’ way, but something told me it was his car. It sat there, nose crumpled, exhaust running, both indicators blinking, headlights casting two white cones onto the street and the wall. As I stood there, the door of the car didn’t open and no one came out. Someone on the street shouted something.

Here’s a thought that just occurred to me: in the context of this whole ghost thing, could it be possible that it was Aidan Conniff’s spiritual form that made Louis crash his car? I mean, the goblin was operating on probably several broken fingers, so he probably had considerable difficulties with his steering, but it's still a nice, weird thought.

I didn’t bother with the lift, but flew down the stairs three at a time, sliding my hand along the handrail. I hit the ground floor panting and ran outside. The car was there, exhaust running out of it like a fog machine from a bad movie, but I didn’t see many curious bystanders or police officers. I jogged to the car and rounded to the driver’s side. The engine hummed, the indicator ticked and tocked. Louis’ head was lying against the steering wheel, which the bollard-crumpled front of the car had pushed against his chest. Half of his face was covered in blood. There was glass everywhere, and there was blood on the glass. I felt my stomach boil. Then my eyes snapped on something familiar: my phone. It was sitting on the glass-strewn floor below Louis. I reached out to pick it up. The screen was cracked, but it seemed to be working. I brushed glass shards and blood off the screen, causing my hand to both sting and stain the screen with red. I stepped back, pocketed my phone and made my way to the boot of the car. It was unlocked. The bag sat right in the middle, pretty and black like a prize pig from Devon. I grabbed it and looked around. To my right, two teenage boys were sitting on their bikes, looking at the crashed car eyes wide.

“Oi,” one of the boys said to me, eyes wide. “Did you call the coppers, man?”

“Yes,” I lied, and lifted the bag to my side. I quickly unzipped the zip and grabbed two packets of notes and started to make my way back to my house.

“What’s that?” the boy asked, craning his neck, as I approached. “Is that...”

The question floated in the air while I took the few remaining steps. Walking by, I handed each boy a packet with both hands, one to my left, the other to my right.

“There you go, lads, something for the weekend,” I said, as they accepted my gifts. “Now let’s get out of here before the boys in blue, yeah?”

Had the two lads been in possession of more aspirations and less moral fibre, they might have pulled out a blade or two and asked me for the whole bag. They were really young for being a pair of gangsters, but Lord, sometimes they start young. Fortunately, the boys looked like Christmas had come early and after the widest grins started jogging over to their bikes. As they rode away, the other one threw me one last smile and I gave him one in return. I looked around for the police, but so far none were coming. An old person of indeterminable sex was looking at me on the other side of the street.

“Have you called an ambulance?” she, or possibly he, shrieked.

“You go ahead!” I shouted in reply.

I returned to my flat, quietly vibrating, exuberant, but also tired and dazed. I peeled my several layers of clothing off and sat down on my couch in my pants. I lifted up my hand a little and watched it shake, as if I was freezing cold instead of bathed in sweat. I wanted to do the usual, roll one up and put on some tunes, but suddenly knew what needed to be done: the JD Sports had to go.

My voyage to Hackney was a really strange experience. The further the bus drove, the better I felt. It started as a kind of yielding, unwinding relaxation from the stress of what had just happened. But it got deeper and somehow wider. Some part of my brain had become convinced that I had not only dodged not only a bullet, but several sprays from a machine gun, and that I had received the a supernatural blessing. The exact source of this blessing, be it God, a god, or Aidan Conniff’s ghost, was unknown to me, but that wasn’t really a problem. All that mattered was that for today, for right now, I was leading a charmed life. The really funny thing was that this feeling impacted my vision, making everything around me seem golden and shiny. It was like being on some really good drugs I had never tried before.

I got off at a bus stop in Hackney and went to St. Thomas’s Long Burial Ground, which is a nice little park near Barclay House. I sat down on a bench, placed the bag beneath it and sent Sheena my location by text, nothing else. I waited for some time before she arrived.

“Hey,” I said, simply. “Have a seat.”

Sheena looked at the bench I was sitting on and noticed the bag. She looked at me. “Is that...?”


I nodded my head.

She blinked and looked at the bag again. “I thought we said...”

“Louis came to my flat.”

Sheena’s mouth opened and she put a hand to her forehead.

“Yeah, but he’s out of the picture. He drove his car into a bollard.”

She clamped her mouth shut and bit her teeth. “Fucking hell!” She dropped her voice and glanced around. “Is he dead?”

For some reason, I laughed. Sheena grinned a little too.

“I don’t know, the last time I saw him he was in his car unconscious,” I admitted and lifted myself up. “So I figured now would be the perfect time to get this whole ordeal over with in one go. Before he sends someone or the police come knocking.”

Sheena nodded.

I sighed, feeling good despite everything (or maybe because of everything). “Does he have any friends who might come after me? Or underlings?”

Sheena held the bag like a giant, fluffy teddy bear. “I don’t know. He didn’t have many friends. Most people just kind of put up with him.”

I felt sympathy towards anyone and everyone who had to put up with Louis then.

“Listen, I’m going to go, just to make sure everything is all right back home,” I said, standing up. “Are you OK?”

Sheena looked at me with her lovely cappuccino eyes and nodded. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” I said, then made the telephone gesture with my hand. “Call me.”

And I walked away. In a way, I had completed my mission for Sheena: she had the cash. We could possibly do some further strategising, see how Louis ended up, estimate how the authorities might get involved. I could have shared with her my conclusions about the money, which weren’t that great, since I still didn’t have a good way of actually getting to spend any of it. And I did have the money in my vest in my bath tub, which I hadn’t told Sheena about. So if she calls me we have something to talk about, but it would also be a very sensible decision for her to never text or call me again.

Approaching my house, I took a side street so that I would approach the house from the site of goblin-Louis’ car crash. There were two police cars there now, as well as plenty of blue-and-white tape. The car was still there, also decorated with tape, but Louis was absent. A crowd of half a dozen people was ogling the scene, with one person being interviewed; it might have been the elderly person who I told to phone to police.

“What’s happened here?” I asked a nearby man wearing a cap over ears sprouting prodigious tendrils of grey hair.

“Sunday driver,” the man explained, then laughed. “Or somebody let their missus have a go.”

And thus, through the magic of that last, little bit of old school sexism, we’ve reached the present moment. I’ve probably been much too detailed in the telling of this story already.

So.

Here I sit, in my kitchen. It’s a bit of a mess, as always, but it’s the kind of mess I like. Well, it does smell a bit acrid here, now that we’re on the topic; should probably empty those bins. The fridge squawks and rattles. Traffic hums outside my window. The marker board on my fridge still reads BAD GUY. I was kind of expecting TA MATE or THANK YOU now. The JD Sports bag is gone from my life. The money vest is resting on my sofa like the skin of a gutted fish. Still a lot of cash in those pockets – more than I need or deserve.

My knee keeps smarting.


I really hope she calls.