Graven Image Read Free

your trouble away from this pub. We’ve welcomed you here, while other places perhaps wouldn’t. Me and Madge don’t like to judge, and we expect some respect in return. Get me?’
    ‘Alright,’ I said, containing myself. ‘What happened?’
    ‘This ain’t that sort of pub, Leon. I’m sorry but I’d be happy if you stopped drinking here for a while.’
    ‘I’m just looking for my daughter, Jim! Have you seen her or not? About so high, slim, long curly hair, skin a bit lighter than mine...’
    ‘I’ve seen nothing.’
    ‘For fuck’s sake, Jim!’
    Jim’s son Jonathan stepped up to the bar beside me. He was hardly ever here and I knew something must have happened. He was a big lad, but soft, not having the upbringing like I’d had.
    ‘You gotta leave our dad alone,’ he said, a tremor in his voice.
    ‘Or else?’
    ‘Or else whatever you want.’ Not so much of a tremor now. When something don’t hurt them straight away, people get cocky fast. ‘You ain’t getting any kind of answer here though, right? You got problems, mate, and you need to get ’em sorted. That’s what I say.’
    I stepped away and sat for a moment at a table, getting my thoughts together. I knew I was being dicked around here but the question was why? From what I could see it was either:

    1. Because they’d heard I was in the shit with Graven
    2. That old dear in the gift shop was Jim’s mum
    3.
    4. Because I’m black

    Number four you’ve always got to consider from the day you’re born until the day you die. Especially in a town like this. Even when people are being alright to you, you never know what’s going on behind their pasty foreheads.
    Numbers one and two, they could go fuck themselves if those were true.
    Three I didn’t even want to think about, let alone say out loud.
    I couldn’t.
    If you say the words, they might come true.
    I looked around the pub instead, recognising three or four of the ten or so in there, all of them acting like I didn’t even exist. Wankers. I should have known I was only here on sufferance.
    No, they weren’t wankers really.
    You couldn’t blame them.
    I’d have expected more to be in at this time though. Half six and no one was at the fruit machine. Early evening, Tyrone was normally on it, pissing away whatever he hadn’t lost down the bookies at lunchtime.
    I was wasting my time here. I knew I should admit that and go look elsewhere, but something kept me on my stool... something small and pink and shaped like a pyramid, I realised when I finally spotted it a couple of tables away. I only knew one person who could fold an empty crisp bag that way, and she did it with her prawn cocktail flavour every Thursday when I met her in here.
    I went straight out the main door, not even looking back at the non-wankers who you couldn’t really blame. As I went round the side I started getting a sick feeling in my guts, like someone was playing a bass guitar in there. I wanted to shit and puke at the same time, shout and punch walls because I knew what was happening here and I was powerless to fix it just now.
    The toilets at the Rose and Crown are outdoor ones. You reach them from the back door but I didn’t want the non-wankers to know I was there, so I went round the side. There were two cubicles in the bogs and one was closed and locked. I climbed on the wash basin and leaned over the partition, looking down at Tyrone, him of the fruit machine. He was picking his nose.
    ‘I got shit on you,’ I said.
    He jumped and made a little noise, then his nose started bleeding. I think he’d rammed his finger too far up it. ‘Look what you done!’ he said, looking at me. ‘What did you do that for? You made me... erm...’
    ‘You got two chances to give me the right answer. Fail once, you get the small forfeit. Fail twice, the big one. Get past ’em both and you’re a winner.’
    ‘I dunno nothin’ about no—!’
    ‘Who’d she leave with?’
    I didn’t know for sure that she’d