‘Alright, alright,’ he said quickly, putting a hand on my knee to calm me down. ‘I know you’ve got a soft heart. I know you’re a compassionate sort. That’s the beauty of ya, and there it is. You’ve even got compassion for motorcycles, may God have pity on you. But you don’t like my plain talk. You don’t like it when a man calls a spade a heathen, or a faggot a mincer.’
‘I think we’re done here, Concannon.’
‘Hear me out, man. I know it offends your sensibilities. I understand that. I truly do. I don’t like that about you, and I don’t respect it. I’ll be straight up about that. You can’t respect kindness. Not really. You know what I’m talkin’ about. You’ve done time behind the wall, on the other side of things, as I have. But you’re a compassionate man, even though you’re more like me than you think.’
‘Concannon –’
‘Wait. I’m not finished. Compassion’s a very strange thing. It comes from deep inside. People know it when they see it, because you can’t fake it. I know. I’ve tried. I was terrible at it. I got sick, when I tried. I had to go back to being a genuine, uncaring cunt, just to get well again. It’s genuine, see, even being an uncaring cunt, and I’m drawn to genuine things, even if I don’t like them. Do you see what I mean?’
‘You don’t know me at all,’ I said, meeting his eye.
‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ he smiled. ‘I’ve been in Bombay for a while, you know. A few days after I got here, I heard your name in a conversation of unsavoury types at an opium den. Then I heard it again, twice in quick succession. At first, I thought it was two foreign fellas they were talkin’ about, until I figured out that Lin and Shantaram were one and the same bad-mannered miscreant. You.’
‘So you were following me.’
‘I didn’t say that. What I said was that I got intrigued. I started asking about you. I made it my business to get to know people you know, and people you do business with. I even know your girlfriend.’
‘What?’
‘She didn’t tell ya that she met me?’
He grinned. I was beginning not to like that grin.
‘I wonder why she didn’t tell you? Maybe she likes me.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘It’s no big deal,’ he said. ‘I met her at an art exhibition.’
My raised eyebrow provoked him.
‘Oh, what? Because I’m a big lump of a Northern Irish potato-muncher, I can’t be interested in art? Is that it?’
‘Get to the point.’
‘There is no point, boyo. I met Lisa – that’s her name, right? – at an exhibition. We talked, that’s all.’
‘Why?’
‘Look, I didn’t even know she was your girlfriend, until one of her friends mentioned your name, then I put two-and-you together, so to speak. I swear.’
‘Keep away from her, Concannon.’
‘Why? She seemed to like me. I think we hit it off, a little bit. I certainly liked her. You’ll have to let her go, one of these days, but I’m sure you already know that, don’t you?’
‘That’s it,’ I said, standing.
‘Wait a minute!’ he implored, standing with me and putting a hand gently on my arm. ‘Please. I don’t want to fight you, man. I didn’t . . . I mean . . . I’m not tryin’ to upset you. It’s just my way. I know it’s fucked up. I really do. But I don’t know any other way to be. It’s like I said before, about you. Even if you don’t like it, you have to see that it’s genuine. This is what me being genuine looks like. I truly don’t mean to hurt your feelings. And I truly would like to talk.’
I resisted, staring back at him and trying to read his eyes. The pupils were tiny: pinpoints vanishing in an ice-blue tide. I looked away.
On the road nearby, a traffic warden’s truck pulled up beside the Scorpion gang motorcycles. Leaping from the back, the team of lifters dragged the motorcycles to the side of the truck, then hoisted them onto the back, cramming them up against others that had been seized for parking illegally.
Concannon followed my gaze as I watched the operation.
‘If I hadn’t come along when I did,’ he said softly, ‘it might’ve been your dead body bein’ thrown onto the back of a truck.’
He was right. I didn’t like him, and I was pretty sure that he was crazy. But he’d stepped in at exactly the right time, and he’d saved me.
I sat down again. Concannon called for two more glasses of chai. Working quickly, his thick fingers made a small joint.
‘Will you smoke with me?’
I took it and puffed it alight as he held the match in the lantern of his cupped hands. After a time, I passed the joint back to him.
‘Seein’ as how you’re always gettin’ so offended, and jumpin’ up, and wantin’ to fight with me or run off somewhere, I’ll come straight to the point,’ he said, exhaling a stream of grey-blue smoke.
‘The point of what?’
‘I’m startin’ a new gang, and I want you to join me.’
It was my turn to laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘How about . . . why?’
‘Why a gang?’ he asked, passing back the joint. ‘The usual. So we can buy guns, do a little menace and mayhem, scare people into giving us truckloads of money, spend the truckloads of money, and die in the effort.’
‘Dying in the effort? That’s your sales pitch?’
Just then a man named Jibril, a horse-breeder from the stables in the nearby slum, approached me. I stood to greet him.
He was a gentle man, shy and a little uncomfortable speaking with human beings, but talkative and loving when dealing with his horses.
His eldest daughter had developed a fever a few weeks before that day, and had become desperately ill. Jibril called me, and agreed to have the girl screened via wide-spectrum viral toxicity.
I’d paid for the testing at a private clinic, and the tests had revealed that the girl was suffering from leptospirosis, a sometimes fatal disease carried in the urine of rats. Because it had been detected early, the girl was responding well to treatment.
Holding my hand between his, Jibril assured me that his daughter was feeling much better, and invited me to take tea with him and his family in their home.
I thanked him in return, and invited him to join us for a glass of chai. He declined, apologising for the refusal, and hurried off to an appointment with a grain merchant who supplied feed for his horses.
‘You see what I mean?’ Concannon said, when I sat down again. ‘These people like you. They don’t like me. And I don’t want them to. I don’t want to eat their food. I hate their bloody food. I don’t want to watch their movies. I don’t want to speak their fuckin’ language. But you do. You understand them. You communicate with them, and they respect you for it. Think about it. We’ll be unbeatable. We could take over this part of the city, you and me.’
‘Why would we want to do that?’ I laughed.
‘Because we can,’ he said, leaning in close to me.
Because We Can: the motto of power, since the idea of power over others was born in our kind.
‘That’s not a reason, that’s an excuse.’
‘Look around you! Ninety-nine per cent of people are just doin’ what they’re told. But you and me, we’re in the one per cent. We take what we want, while the rest of them, they take what they’re given.’
‘People rise up.’
‘Aye, they do,’ he agreed, his pale blue eyes gleaming. ‘From time to time. And then the one per cent take all their privilege back from them, and usually their pride and dignity for good measure, and they go back to being the slaves they’re born to be.’
‘You know,’ I sighed, returning his stare. ‘It’s not just that I disagree with what you’re saying, it’s that I actually despise it.’
‘That’s t
he beauty of it!’ he cried, slapping his thighs with both palms.
He read my mystified frown for a moment, and then continued in a softer tone.
‘Look . . . me Ma, she died when I was just a baby. Dad tried his best, but he couldn’t manage. There was five of us kids, all under ten years old, and he was a sick man. He sent us to these orphanages. We were Protestants. The girls went to Protestant places, but me little brother and me, there was no place for us, and we ended up with the Catholics.’
He paused for a while, allowing his gaze to fall to his feet. The rain squalled again, striking the plastic awning of the chai shop with the sound of drummers at a wedding.
His foot began to scrape away at the earth slowly, his running shoe leaving a pattern of scrolls and whorls in the muddy ground.
‘There was this priest, you see.’
He looked up. Fractal patterns in the irises of his ice-blue eyes glittered around the pinpoint pupils. The whites of his eyes were suddenly red, as if burned by the sea.
‘I don’t talk about this,’ he said, lapsing into a leaden silence again.
His eyes filled with tears. He clenched his jaw, swallowing hard, and willing the tears away. But they fell, and he turned his head.
‘You’re a fuckin’ cunt, you are!’ Concannon snapped, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘Me?’
‘Yeah, fuckin’ you! This is what all your nice reasonableness does to people. You turn ’em into weak cunts. That’s the first time I’ve let a tear fall in many a long year, and it’s the first time I’ve talked about that fuckin’ priest in longer still. And that’s . . . that’s why we’d be so good together, don’t you see?’
‘Not . . . really.’
‘I got out of that orphanage when I was sixteen. By my eighteenth birthday I’d killed six men. One of them was that fuckin’ priest. Shoulda seen how he begged for his life, the miserable sick thing.’
He paused again, his mouth pressed into a bitter wrinkle. I was hoping that he’d stop talking. He didn’t.
‘I forgave him, you know, before I killed him.’
‘Concannon, I –’
‘Will you not hear me out, man?’
He seemed desperate.
‘Alright.’
‘I never forgave anyone, after that,’ he began, brightening with violent recollection. ‘I was a full ranked volunteer with the UVF. And I went on breakin’ heads, shootin’ Catholics in the knees, sendin’ pieces of the IRA cunts we captured to their widows, and a lot more. We worked together with the cops and the army. Unofficial like, of course, but we had a fuckin’ green light. Hit squads, killin’ and maimin’ on demand, no questions asked.’
‘Concannon –’
‘Then it all fell apart. It got too hot. I got too hot. Too violent, they said. It was a fuckin’ war. How can you be too violent for a war? But they sent me out. Scotland first, then London. I fuckin’ hated the place. Then I went on the road, and ended up here.’
‘Look, Concannon –’
‘I know,’ he said quickly. ‘I know what you’re thinkin’ and I know what you’re gonna say. And it’s true. I can’t deny it. I like hurtin’ people who deserve it. I’m a twisted cunt. Lucky for me, there’s a lot of twisted girls out there, so I’m happy bein’ twisted. But you’re not like that. You have your principles. Don’t you get it? You’re the talk softly, and I’m the big stick. You look ’em in the eyes, do business with ’em, and shake their hands. I chop their hands off, if they disobey.’
‘Chopping people’s hands off. There’s a leap forward.’
‘I’ve given it a lotta thought,’ he said alarmingly. ‘That’s why I’ve been tryin’ to pull you away from that French mincer.’
‘You just don’t know when to quit, do you?’
‘No, wait, hear me out. It’s . . . it’s like . . . if you strip a religion down to its most basic parts, the parts that make it work so well and last for hundreds and hundreds of years, it boils down to this – nice words and the fear of horrible punishments that never end. You and me. You can’t beat a combination like that. Popes and heathen mullahs have got fat on it for centuries.’
I let out a long sigh, and put my palms on my knees, preparing to stand. He reached out to put a hand on my wrist. The grip of his hard fingers was fierce, and there was enormous strength in it.
‘That’s not advised,’ I said.
He released his grip on my arm.
‘Sorry, I . . . just . . . think about it,’ he said, the grin leaning in through the doorway of his eyes again. ‘I’ll talk to you in a few days. We won’t be alone in this, if you throw in with me. I’m already talkin’ with others, and there’s plenty of them that’s interested, make no mistake. Think about it. That’s not too much to ask for savin’ your talk softly arse today, is it? I’d like to have you in this with me. I’ll need someone to talk to. Someone I trust. Just think about it, that’s all I ask.’
I rode away, leaving him standing there under the blue plastic awning. I didn’t think about his offer, but I did think about him, that afternoon, as I made the rounds of cafés and bars we used as passport drops.
I talked with my contacts. I listened to gangster street music: gossip, slander, lies and denunciation. Always funny. But in every idle moment my thoughts returned to Concannon, and to those tears he resented so bitterly, but failed to stop.
What dream, what hope, what despair drives us to the things we do, just to desert us when the deed is done? What hollow things are they, motive and reason, born at night to fade so quickly in the sunlight of consequence? What we do in life lives on inside us, long after ambition and fear lie frosted and opaqued on forgotten shores. What we do in life, more than what we think or say, is what we are.
Concannon was running into crime, and I was already running away from it. For too long I’d done things because the fear of capture became a mirror, a face in the water, not really me, and I absolved myself of my own sins. But the waters were stirred, and the face I’d always put on the things that I did was blurred, and vanishing.
Chapter Seventeen
I waited for Lisa outside the Mahesh hotel, enjoying the city. It had rained intermittently but heavily through the afternoon, yet the early evening air was hot and dry beneath the brooding sky.
Occasional waves struck at the low sea wall, crashing up and over to splash across half the wide street. Children courted the waves, running from spray to spray, while couples skipped away.
Hopeful carriage drivers slowed beside the strollers, trying to entice them into their rickety, high-wheeled carts. Peanut sellers wandered among the walkers, fanning the glowing coals they carried in baskets around their necks. Smoke from the little fires, filled with the flavour of roasted peanuts, drifted among the strollers, temptation turning their heads.
The whole city, washed clean by the heavy rains, was more fragrant than usual. The cloud-soaked sky locked in scents of food cooking on hundreds of small street stalls, bhel puri, pav bhaji, pakodas, and sweet pungencies from paan sellers, incense traders, and the frangipani garlands being sold at every traffic signal.
I counted thoughts on perfumed strands, and then I heard her voice.
‘A penny,’ Lisa said.
I turned.
‘They don’t make pennies any more,’ I said, pulling her close to me and kissing her.
‘Are you forgetting this is Bombay?’ she asked, not resisting me. ‘People get arrested for kissing in public.’
‘Maybe they’ll put us in the same prison cell,’ I suggested, holding her close.
‘I . . . don’t think so,’ she laughed.
‘Then I’ll escape, and come bust you out.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then I’ll bring you back here, on an evening just like this, and kiss you again, just like this.’
‘
Wait a minute,’ she said, studying my face. ‘You’ve been fighting again.’
‘Are you kidding?’
‘Come off it. You’re trying to distract me! That’s a dirty trick, buster.’
‘What?’
‘Jesus, Lin! Fighting again? What the fuck?’
‘Lisa, it’s cool. I’m fine. And I’m right here, with you.’
I kissed her face.
‘We better go,’ she said, as she frowned out of the kiss, ‘or we’ll miss him.’
‘Miss who?’
‘Miss whom, writer,’ she said. ‘You’ll find out, soon enough.’
She led me on the short walk from the seafront to the promenade that surrounded the nearby Air India building. The offices were closed, but the dim night-lights in the ground-floor reception area revealed the desks and doorways within.
When we reached a locked glass door, close to the back of the building, Lisa signalled me to wait. She glanced around nervously at the wedge of street we could see from the rear door, but there was no-one in sight.
‘So . . . what are we –’
‘We’re waiting,’ she interrupted me.
‘Waiting . . . for?’
‘For him.’
There was a flicker of light within the building. A security guard carrying a torch approached the door. He opened it with a key on a heavy chain, and held the door open for us. He urged us to enter quickly, and then locked the door again behind us.
‘This way,’ he said. ‘Follow me closely.’
Weaving his way along a series of corridors and between rows of silent desks, he brought us to a service elevator at the rear of the building.
‘Emergency lift,’ he said, smiling happily. ‘After stop at top, walk two floors to roof. My bonus, please.’
Lisa handed him a roll of notes. The guard saluted us, pressed the button to open the doors of the elevator, and waved us inside.
‘So, we’re gonna rob the Air India company,’ I said as we ascended in the lift. ‘And ten minutes ago, you were worried about a public kiss.’
‘I wasn’t worried,’ she laughed. ‘And we’re not here to rob the place. We’re here for a private party.’