All stories

After a long while, Jimmy blinked. He seemed aware of his surroundings again, eyes focussing upon the pistol in his right hand as though it were an old friend. He found the glass in his left wryly amusing, carefully tilting it back to almost true before it slopped down the front of his shirt. He raised the glass slowly, but not to drink; eye to the pint and pint to the light, looking through the golden hue with a goofy grin.

He focussed on the figures beyond the pint, and said, ‘Oh. You guys.’

The two armed officers were stood just a few feet from Jimmy, guns drawn but pointed slightly to the floor. Jimmy was sitting on a bar stool, his back against the bar and from here he had the perfect view of the suddenly empty bar; drinks scattered, chairs flopped to the floor.

Jimmy addressed the female officer. He said, ‘I want it known – I’m not miss-o-jin-istic, and if I take you out it wasn’t intent, it’s just you’re closest to my gun.’

She said, ‘You can try it.’

Jimmy smiled again. ‘Can I drink my pint?’

‘Why don’t you put the gun down first?’

‘I don’t know, why not?’

Jimmy grimaced. ‘Oh, yeah. Something about three murders, maybe?’

‘We can talk about it. Find a way out of this. But you have to put the gun down.’

Jimmy smiled a little sadly. ‘Only one way out, yeah?’

He twitched his pistol, and the officers tensed. It made Jimmy smile wryly once more and then he drank from his pint. The guns of the police rose then fell in time with the glass.

Jimmy was shaking his head. ‘Bloody housing market.’

The female officer nodded. ‘Tell me about it. We’ve spent five years saving our deposit; still getting nowhere.’

‘It’s a scam,’ Jimmy said. ‘How many times you see a place go online? Literally, I mean. It’s not there, you hit refresh, and it’s there. Then you call up, and they say sorry sir, already under offer.’

‘It’s crazy. Half the time I swear they’ve sold them before they put them online.’

Jimmy pointed at her with his pint. ‘Thank you.’

He relaxed back against the bar.

‘The way they talk, how smug they are. _Sorry sir, it’s a seller’s market at the moment. Smart buyers come down to the office in person.’

Jimmy grinned again.

‘Think I registered my interest pretty good, you reckon?’

Neither officer said anything. Neither took their eyes from Jimmy with his gun.

Jimmy said, ‘Talk about your jobsworth though. There’s more to life than making your quota on parking tickets, right? Come on? She couldn’t hear the gun going off? It’s really loud.’

A moment later, Jimmy said, ‘And you know whose fault I took so long getting down to the estate agent? That bitch of a salesman. You know what she said to me? “Nice little runner”. Talk about your clichés.’

Jimmy raised his glass again, but didn’t drink.

‘Maybe it does run good, when it’s not stalling at the lights five times in a row.’

Up once more with the glass, then another pause. He squinted at both the officers, grinning at them. He said, ‘You know who wasn’t a nice littler runner though?’

They called the four of us the Three Musketeers. We used to argue over who got to be D’artagnan.

Sometimes it was Adam, because he had to live with his grandparents after social services intervened at home. Other times it was Lucas because he could throw terrible tantrums if he didn’t get his way.

It was never Richie. He only ever wanted to be Athos, the leader.

Most of the time D’artagnan was me because the book was mine and I knew it best. We passed it between us, reading it aloud in the flat above Mam’s pub until we knew the story by heart and the cover was gone and the pages had all curled up.

The nickname trailed us to high school, where we never quite drifted apart. Adam spent his time buried in books. Lucas studied drama. Richie took to business studies. Said he was going to be rich in more than name.

I never really studied. I had the pub, so I messed about, scraping passes, ignoring the future. We grew up together in the damp cellars and creaking rafters of the Sword and Musket, Billy Joel on the jukebox and Milady DeWinter behind the bar.

We might have gone our separate ways after school, too, if it hadn’t been for all that.

Adam, who could never bear the real world long enough for a career, became a traffic warden, a paperback in his pocket for quiet moments.

Lucas funded his acting habit with work as an estate agent, at which he reluctantly excelled.

Richie sold second hand cars and, if he was never quite rich, he certainly wasn’t poor.

And me? When Mam died the bailiffs were a shock. She never told me about the debts and suddenly there was no pub and no backup plan.

I tried a few jobs; cleaning, temping. Nothing stuck, but I got by - enough for my flat and a pint with the others, when they weren't busy. They all had kids now, and bald spots. Paunches and mortgages and responsibilities.

When they heard I was sick, they downed tools and came. Was there anything they could do? No, there was nothing anyone could do.

Well maybe one thing.

The Sword and Musket. The owners were selling - I had some savings, but not enough. I had some time, not enough, but maybe, together, we could make it work?

We gave it everything, but it wasn’t enough.

The young couple signed the forms at auction and planned the death by renovation of our childhood home.

It was over.

Then, when things were pretty far gone for me, Richie appeared at my hospital bedside.

“D’artagnan -it is I, Athos, Porthos needs you - no time to explain”

So they stole me, bundling me off to nowhere. A clothes-line, a neat lawn, a swing set.

An ancient shed with orange light spilling a welcome from its open door, Billy Joel seeping out into the night.

They stood beneath a hand-made sign, beside a stack of crates and bar stools. They wheeled me to the ‘bar’ and let me pour cans of piss-warm Fosters into brand new pint glasses. My first and last shift at the Sword and Musket, here in Adam’s hard-won family garden.

“All for one” we toasted. Time for one final pint before last orders.

The Car Salesman sat at the usual table in the corner of the Green Dragon. He couldn’t help but notice the smell of farts that used to be covered by a thick fug of smoke before the ban. He checked his watch and drained the last inch of bitter from his glass. “Last Orders” shouted the barmaid. He had fancied her once he recollected, before her décolletage had wrinkled and her jowls had dropped.

“They better bloody hurry up” he grumbled under his breath as he made his way to the bar.

“Pint of best please” he said.

“Make that two” said a voice behind him.

“Make it three – cheers mate” said another voice.

The Car Salesman turned round and saw the Estate Agent and the Traffic Warden.

“Cut that fine…drinks on me again is it?” he sighed.

The three men sat around the table, barely talking, sometimes glancing over to the door, sometimes at their watches or the mirrored pub clock bearing the legend “Barstons Beer – Mans Best Friend”.

“Nice Pint” said the Estate Agent. He had loosed his collar and tie but still a sheen of sweat shone from his receding grey forehead.

“It’s the same blood pint we always drink in here, why do you need to say anything about it at all?” Car Salesman was edgy, he didn’t like this day of the week, being here in this smelly dark pub.

“Relax.” said the Traffic Warden “It’s nearly 11:00.”

The Care Salesman winced and fidgeted in his seat. The Estate Agent glanced at him from the corner of his eye and slowly put his drink on the table.

“What’s the matter with you? You’re even more nervous than usual. Is there anything you need to tell us?”

The Care Salesman wiped his eyes and took a big gulp of beer. He looked at the Traffic Warden and wondered what would happen to him? He thought perhaps he should tell them now, get it over with, explain how he didn’t have a choice. Just then the men became aware of a figure approaching them across the sticky carpet. They all sat still and waited for him to speak.

“Alright!” greeted the large man, “what you got for me?”

His enormous belly was only an inch away from the Estate Agent’s face, he nearly gagged on the stale meaty smell that emanated from the man they knew as the Bin Man.

They all produced a folded brown envelope from their pockets, lumpen and dirty and passed these over to the Bin Man.

“Any problems?” he asked

The Traffic Warden and the Estate Agent replied “No” straight away.

The Car Salesman was staring at his glass.

“Oy, any problems?”

“Uh oh no, all smooth”

“Lovely, see you next week” and with that the Bin Man and his stench left the pub.

“Time ladies and gents” called the barmaid.

The men stood up, nodded a cursory goodbye and walked out of the pub for another week. The Car Salesman wondered if he would ever know their names and decided he better go back and just check that he had dug a big enough hole.