Is This Yours (Ten)

Jim led with his left forearm. Although he couldn’t see the rod he’d been beaten with he assumed the guy had it secreted somewhere. He was three feet from the man when he braced the elbow into position and in the settling mist looked like a fire-fighter practicing the tango as a building began to burn around him. The guy turned too late to avoid the incoming assault and Jim pinioned his head to the wall behind him by jamming the point of his bent arm into his assailant’s neck. The man recognized Jim immediately and offered no resistance as surprise was against him this time.
“You sly cunt” Jim snarled “Where’s your fight now, or shall I turn around?”
“Okay, okay…take it easy” the guy pleaded
“Still got your big stick have you? Can’t fight like a man?”
Jim punched him in the gut with his right, but the guy couldn’t buckle as Jim kept him fast to the brick. His breathing was hard and his face flushed.
“That felt easy to me shithead, and they’ll get easier the more I throw”
“Look, I didn’t want to hurt you”
“Thank fuck for that. I guess I’m overreacting to these scratches then!” and Jim pushed his bloody nose and bruised eyes into his face.
“I’ve got kids mate, a wife too. I’m broke. I lost my job. I could lose my house, everything”
“You could lose your balls too in a minute. Who sent you – the manager?”
“What manager”
“That prick who runs the betting shop”
“No, no. It was only the last act of a desperate man”
“Look pal, don’t give me all the melodramatic loser drivel; I’ve passed the pamphlets around”
The man looked totally bemused.
“What the fuck did you hit me with?”
“Something I found on the floor. A broken pipe”
“Where?”
“No, no –I threw it away”
“And you killed a fucking dog. Why?”
“It leapt at me and I just struck out at it. I didn’t think I…guess I got lucky”
“No wonder you’re such a sap – if that’s what you call luck”
“I was being sarcastic – to myself” he added hurriedly to stifle Jim’s wrath.
He heard a shuffle from behind him and guessed it was a passer by who’d come upon the tussle unexpected and had hastened themselves back into the safe haven of the mizzle.
No-one else disturbed them. The hill was as bleak as any tor in Dartmoor or peat bog in the west of Ireland.
“I was carrying seven and a half thousand in cash and you beat the crap out of me for a bloody phone”
“I know”
“Bullshit”
“You didn’t fool me when you left the shop. I knew you had the notes on you. Didn’t want the old lady to know”
Jim was cynical. He recognized the diseased mania a losing addiction infects you with, but, then again, wasn’t that the logic behind taking the cash. “You wouldn’t have been able to resist lifting it if you knew it was there”
“It doesn’t matter anyway”
“Okay so all this for what…”
“Inside knowledge”
“What?”
“I saw you – in the bookies. No-one gets a horse like that without the nod. He was sending you them wasn’t he, on this” and he lifted up the phone.
“If he was that’s my affair. Buy your own tips” he growled and then as suddenly released how hollow that sounded.
“I’ve done all that. They’re shit. I’ve lost a small fortune chasing it”
“But a stolen phone – how far could you have gone?”
“Two or three decent bets at those prices…”
“And you’re set for life – yeah, okay – I wrote the book on that one” Jim interrupted, unable to tolerate hearing his own thoughts articulated by such a desperate soul.
Jim relaxed his arm and then flexed again. “Don’t try to run” he warned
“It’s no good anyway” the man moaned. His diaphragm deflated somewhat but his face retained a bright scarlet colouration and sweat poured from beneath his crown.
“If you mean Strange Meeting I know. It must be running tomorrow”
Despite his injuries Jim felt a pang of sympathy – he knew that this was him without Cassie. Let him share the tip; get himself out of the gutter. He’d be saving a family not just an inveterate gambler. He put his hand into his breast pocket.
“If it wins or places, promise me you’ll use it to get yourself out the mire” and stuck the £50 into his other hand.
“I don’t understand” said his bemused beneficiary.
“Well give me the cash back then”
“No, no, not that – I’m grateful, truly I am. What’s all this about a Strange Meeting?”
“That’s tomorrow’s tip isn’t it?”
“No”
“Listen you didn’t hit me that bleeding hard. The tip is Strange Meeting 18:20 but no race course was given”
“No - that’s not right. Five minutes after I stole the phone I received a text. Look it’s still there”
Jim stared at the black leviathan.

Sudden Stroke
18:15

“That’s fucking queer. I never saw that”
“I’ve checked every single horse racing card here or abroad and every dog meeting too. There isn’t an animal running on four legs with that name”
“Tomorrow then”
“Maybe, but something’s not right about all this; I want you to take it back. Somehow hunger feels like the better bedfellow” and he handed it over to Jim.
“Put it this way mate, both of us could be on a huge double tomorrow. Just keep it to yourself.”
“It might not be enough to help me”
“It’s a start isn’t it? A stop gap” He paused genuinely affected. “I know what you’re thinking but I’m let me be honest with you. It’s not my phone either. I found it in a café. Chances are these horses will be the last we’ll ever get from this mysterious tipster.”
“I understand” the man pined cynically.
“That’s what you get for lying Jim. No-one ever believes a word you say even when you finally tell the truth” he thought
“It’s over now” he said almost nonchalantly
“Listen, what’s your name?”
“Rex”
“Rex, I was in the gutter too once. My wife saved me” there was no trace of scorn now. “You’ve got a family”
Rex nodded “Three kids”
“Let’s forget what happened. I understand how low you can get. I’m bruised but I’ll heal; and we’ve got a chance to turn our lives around here. Let’s hit the bastard bookies tomorrow. I’ll stay with you. We’ll share the winnings and I’ll go home with you, explain things and you can get help – like I did. Give your wife the money. Treat her and the kids – make a fresh start” After this oration Jim realised he was beginning to sound like Cassie.
“I’m in deep though – too deep”
“No you’re not. There’s more than one way to swim”
“I’ve got £20 to my name. I owe £30,000”
“I’ve got the ante – for both of us”
“You’d do that…for me?”
“No for the three of us” said Jim, thinking of Cassie
“Three?” Rex said bemused
“Forget it, it doesn’t matter. What’s does is that we may get two more bets I reckon and that’s it”
“It really isn’t your phone?”
“No. And we can hand it back when we’re done –guiltless and loaded”
“It’s true…oh my god, look….” the sentence died in Rex’s throat and he turned deathly pallid and began to swoon. The right side of his face began to wilt, sag almost and he collapsed. Jim held on to him, breaking a little of his fall but couldn’t prevent him cracking his skull against the pavement.
“Christ I think he’s dying” and grabbed the man’s wrist twisting his own to check any pulse against his watch. Then he saw the time: 18:15.
Something rolled over him from behind; perhaps a freak wind or a malevolent breeze, but suddenly, there on that miserable misty hill, the most awful premonition of danger suddenly prompted a huge surge of devotion he’d never experienced before. Like a lightning bolt from Zeus shattering his selfish consciousness he suddenly knew how much he loved Cassie. She was a selfless beautiful soul who asked nothing from him. She never even asked for his love, but worked every moment to try and earn it, as if she should be the grateful one. She was all. What good would it do him if he gained the world and lost his Cassie?
The mobile throbbed for the last time and he gazed down at his hand as the sharp fingernails of sinister comprehension clawed their way along his spine. Once again the text read Strange Meeting 18:20 Rex, beneath him, gained consciousness for the last time and whispered to Jim, struggling to finish the sentence he started when the stroke attacked him: “Look…behind…you”
Jim turned, but knew as he did so what he’d see, or rather, what he wouldn’t see.
It wasn’t much of a hill but it wasn’t much of a handbrake. Cassie always said he should change the Fiesta before he killed somebody. When Jim pulled up the car’s nearside front wheel was resting against the kerb. With little or no restraint from the handbrake gravity had been pulling the Fiesta forward and down the incline. The tyre scraped alongside the kerb inch by inch until the wheel straightened out and allowed the Fiesta to roll away unaided.
By the time Jim turned it was forty feet away and picking up speed. He began to sprint after it hoping, begging the fates that the car would hit a lamppost or a telegraph pole or maybe collide with parked vehicles but Troy Rise was a clearway with double yellow lines extending down to the traffic lights.
At one point he felt confident he would catch it and have enough time to rip open the door and steer the Fiesta into a wall or garden, but like a tease it seemed to accelerate as if that ghostly presence behind the texts was driving the car.
After a few seconds it vanished into the fog, now thick and deep with Jim following it into the earth bound cloud screaming “Cassie! Cassie! Cassie!”
The trial took place six months after the accident. Jim had been charged with involuntary manslaughter. He was given a five year sentence but he’d always be behind bars.
When the Fiesta was 20 yards from the traffic light they began to change. It was red as the Fiesta sped over with Jim far behind, an invisible and dislocated voice screaming from the mist.
Cassie was at the head of the queue waiting to turn right at the T junction. The Chinese take-away just happened to be on the parade of shops opposite. Normally she used the restaurant closer to home but she’d dropped a colleague off around the corner whose car was in for a service. She never gambled with lights. It was fully green before she took off. She never saw her husband’s car as it swept out of the fog.
The Fiesta hit the Audi’s front passenger door and propelled the vehicle into the opposite traffic light. Cassie had only seconds left of her brief, selfless, successful life. Her car ignited and the fire soon spread to the Fiesta. They exploded together. Ten minutes earlier she’d been marking homework.
By the time Jim reached the accident both cars were ablaze and virtually unrecognizable, and yet he knew the other vehicle was Cassie’s. To his everlasting shame a fleeting thought about his seven grand going up in smoke briefly crossed his mind.
Cassie’s parents confirmed the news to Jim. Her mother, once nearly as youthful and pretty as her daughter, now looked twenty years older than her true age. Her father’s face was the colour of bad chalk and he stooped as he approached his son-in-law, as if that erect and proud back could not bear the weight of her loss. “She was a good girl” her father said “She had a good heart; she wouldn’t want us to hate you” But Jim did; he did want them to hate him. Later, back in his cell, the guilt overwhelmed him and he bawled like a new-born child, punching and biting himself.
When the trial started Jim sat impassive and unemotional. Those in court, the media, the officials and the people, labelled him cold and cruel, but it was simply that he had nothing left; no tears, no sensation, nothing. Without a display of remorse or emotion there was little hope that his solicitor could rescue him from a custodial sentence. That was fine by Jim who sat and listened to his brief and behaved in complete antithesis in order to secure the maximum punishment.
There was only the text burning like a branding iron into his memory.
Who could control events so? Whose finger had tapped out those evil messages? Perhaps it was his iniquity, entirely, that had manufactured the words out of electronic thin air. He would never know. The instrument itself was a key article during the trial. As Jim was found at the scene clutching the phone it was assumed he’d deserted his vehicle, without applying the handbrake firmly, to answer a call rather than ignoring it. The police relieved him of it. There was a text on it and they noted it down.

Too Late Now
14:15
Brighton

One local paper castigated him with the leader: “Husband inadvertently kills wife through combination of greed and folly”
This news of this appalled Cassie’s loved ones, especially as she’d done her best to rescue Jim from his addiction to gambling. Jim did nothing to dissuade their suspicions; it remained the pure truth regardless if events differed from the conjectures of the authorities. Cassie’s parents now had a decent excuse to hate Jim and both went to their graves with their odium unadulterated.
The irony was that Too Late Now romped in at 25/1, a fact not lost on the Desk Sergeant who had filed the original report.
As exhibit A, the mobile phone should have been doomed to sit among the police archives undisturbed. Years later it would re-emerge, antiquated and valueless. It would be thrown away. But none of that happened.
The article disappeared mysteriously from the case box it was kept in. This came to light because Jim’s solicitor lodged an appeal to re-open the case, feeling that Jim had suffered enough and hoping to obtain an early release. Jim was advised but by this time had entered a cocoon of silence from which he’d never emerge. The authorities within the station were relieved that the appeal foundered after discovering that the phone was missing when preparing to release the case files.
Nobody knew exactly who took it and why but six months later an ex-Police officer who had previously worked in the station was crushed to death in an elevator. He’d left the force shortly after Jim’s incarceration to pursue what turned out to be a successful career dealing in share trading. He’d got on the lift at the ninth floor of the building that housed the private bank that held his swelling deposit account. After a brief visit to check his balance, he was on his way up to the thirteenth to finalise another deal when the cable snapped and he plunged to his death.
His bank manager, interviewed later, found the affair brutally ironic. Apparently the ex-copper was about to sell shares in the company responsible for the manufacture of the lifts in the building. A shrewd move, which did nothing to deprecate the accusations of insider trading that were frequently levelled at him, as true enough the following day the company posted enormous first quarter losses due to a series of technical and physical product anomalies. Consequently its share price plummeted, rather apposite, considering what had happened to the ex-policeman the day before.
For the brief period he was involved in share trading he became infamous as ‘the share king’, instantly recognisable as he was never seen without his black mobile. Other traders either envied detested or were in awe of him because he always got it right, up to the point where he failed to notice the manufacturer’s logo on the lift before riding on it. After his death a gloating competitor proclaimed that “The only thing that he ever got on that went down was the elevator” Uncannily the phone was never found.
The last Jim saw of the phone was at the trial during which, at one point, he erupted with an uncontrollable short burst of manic laughter, cracking the placid demeanour he had displayed up to that point and to which he returned immediately afterward. Those present squirmed uncomfortably at the unprovoked and unseemly display and he was threatened with contempt of court if it were to happen again; but the warning fell on ears that had re-sealed like a flower in the evening.
After the trial the prosecuting counsel was asked by a reporter if he knew the reason for Jim’s outburst but he shook his head, explaining that all he did was pick up exhibit A, the mobile phone, walk over to Jim and say “Is this yours?”