* * *
Daniel’s game is atrocious. Only Threadbare rescues any hopes of a place in the final. Jerry’s support and encouragement hold fast as his workmate bungles shot after lousy shot, missing easy pots, downing nothing but whites and opponents’ colours, but the rest of the crowd are quick to switch loyalties. When it’s all over, the team gives him a thorough pasting. Daniel hangs his head and offers no defence. But once they are through, he corners Threadbare and draws him away from the bar.
“I’m worse, Freddie. Much worse. You know, the depression? You saw how it buggered up my game. I just can’t sit still. I can’t sleep. I think I’m going nuts. You remember those pills you gave me? I really need more.”
Threadbare looks doubtful. “Christ, Daniel. I don’t know what you’ve been up to ol’ son, but I’d say you need something a bit stronger than Cipramil.” He lowers his voice. “Maybe you should talk to Jerry.”
Daniel looks at him blankly. “To Jerry. Why??”
“He knows people.”
“Yeah, the fuck he does.”
Threadbare shakes his head. “No, straight up, mate. You didn’t know?”
No. He didn’t know. In fact, the thought of Jerry having anything whatsoever to do with the criminal underworld – for him to put even a toe outside the law – was so laughable that Daniel can only assume Threadbare is winding him up. He snorts, pulls a face, and wanders back to the bar, where Jerry is still dissecting the game shot by shot for the longsuffering barman.
“Sorry. I need a word, Jerry.” He hadn’t meant it to come out so mysteriously. Jerry agrees keenly, perhaps expecting more juicy morsels of game strategy to pick over. Daniel leads him to a far corner, well out of earshot from the rest of the group, and carefully puts his request again, quite expecting Jerry to recoil at the very subject.
For a second, Jerry stares at him, and then answers calmly, “I do have a contact. Give me twelve hours. I can sort it by lunch tomorrow. I’m afraid he’s not cheap. Two hundred: one bottle, it contains about sixteen hits.”
Daniel is inclined to pinch himself. Of all people; ‘No surprises, no tidal waves Jerry’. His boss is waiting for his answer, but Daniel is too dumbfounded to respond. He had not been looking to experiment. In any case, that kind of money was quite out of the question. Jerry, though, has more to say. “I know you wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, Daniel. Compassionate leave, right? For a sick relative?” He thinks for a moment. “I’ll see what I can arrange. Pay in instalments. I can deduct it from your pay packet each week.”
He pats Daniel on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. Colin’s checked it out on the Internet. He says it’s quite safe.”
Threadbare, Jerry, and now Bladder. So, all this time Daniel has been hanging out with a ring of bloody smack-heads. He knew that dealing went on at the Millwrights: soft stuff, like dope, E’s, maybe even a little speed. But all that shit just wasn’t Daniel’s scene. Even the Cipramil episode was a one-off. The only reason he’d accepted them in the first place was because of Scoff; because of the callous death-sentence the bastard vet had pronounced over him. For two nights Daniel hadn’t dared to sleep. He’d kept an almost unbroken watch over the poor creature, convinced that their last few hours together had come. When he did put in an appearance at the pub (a key practice for another important pool match), Threadbare had been so anxious for his welfare that he’d handed over the tablets free of charge. For a few days afterwards Daniel had taken them, but as the crisis over Scoff’s kidneys gradually passed so the pills were abandoned, left forgotten in his kitchen drawer. Until a fortnight ago.
“Okay,” he says. “It’s a deal.”
Jerry shakes his hand and they part.
Someone a little more clued up might have been more wary of the substance Jerry slips into his pocket the following day. They might have thought to question its origin, why the absence of labelling, why there was no accompanying leaflet listing dosages and potential side effects. And they might even have thought to consider the risks to personal safety, and moreover, to the safety of anyone in their care.
Someone might have. But that someone was not Daniel.
That evening, as arranged, he makes time to visit Gulnaz. Climbing the stone stairs, he runs again through the words he’s been rehearsing all day. Tonight he must be the peacemaker. As she stands at her door, he pulls a bunch of flowers from behind his back and waves them in her face (a last-minute touch courtesy of the florists’ shop below). Stepping inside her intoxicating harem, he begins to kiss her with an urgency that spells a need for sex. But Gulnaz pulls away, visibly unsettled. He’s forced to hear out her telling him to ‘go slow’. He has to bear her saying that she can’t cope with his hot-and-cold behaviour. A trapped feeling he’s had all day begins to crowd in on him. His hands are becoming clammy. Little trickles of sweat start itching his back. He needs the confidence of the old Daniel, the one who can charm a bit of skirt from garden centre to bed in under a week. Only one thing for it: the tried and tested strategy – he’ll cook her a meal.
Her response is lukewarm, but affirmative.
“Okay, tomorrow lunch, then,” he insists. “Roast beef with all the trimmings. Twelve thirty.”