Invisible

by Andy Rivers

Me head’s banging and I’m moaning like a whore on overtime. The light from the stark lamps is bouncing off the grey walls, penetrating the defensive cover of me eyelids and eating me brain, eating the fucker it is. I can hear the whispers of the bizzies in the room with me as well, big stage ones, think they’re clever the sad, bullied as kids, twats.

‘The stupid bastard only broke in with no gloves on and then set the alarm off.’

‘Daft get, how did he think he’d get away with it?’

‘He’s a fucking pisshead man, has been since his daughter got done in a few years back.’

‘Aye you can tell like, he smells like the Fed Brewery. Stinks man.’

He’s right; I smell like George Best’s first liver, you know you’re in a state when you’re aware of it yourself.

The drunk in the corner of the bar had been quiet for some time, maybe it was the amount of alcohol he had consumed that day, indeed that week, maybe for once he had nothing to say or maybe, just maybe, the entrance of the man who raped and murdered his daughter had something to do with it. On the very day his daughter would have celebrated her twenty-first birthday her killer had entered his local and left her father dumb with rage and sadness. At first the eyes of every patron were upon him but they soon tired of this as he just slurred quietly to himself and seemed to not even notice the presence of the other gangland royalty that had also entered the pub.

‘They reckon he’s been on a bender for a week, done the whole of the East End from Wallsend to Byker.’

‘What every pub?’

‘Every fucking boozer on every fucking street – anniversary of the daughters death see.’

‘Why did he try robbing the paper shop then? Drink money?’

‘Probably, who knows why a washed-up old tramp like that would do anything. He wouldn’t have made a mistake like that back in the day, his nickname was the invisible man back then, the fucker was in and out of places all night long. A proper little money-maker this lad was, certainly wouldn’t have bothered with a shop like this one. He was just asking to be banged up. They reckon he was falling all over in the Butchers Arms, shouting about how he had a big job on that night.’

The young gangster, having ensured peace between the two major crime families on the estate simply by acknowledging One-Punch’s shithouse offspring as he entered the bar and still high on the adrenalin of breaking another man’s jaw ten minutes ago, was noisily making merry with his friends and hangers on. When the barman presented him with a whisky, assuming it to be a gift from a sycophant or hanger-on of the McGilligan family, he downed it greedily, the drugs in his system aiding his thirst, before announcing that, as promised, he was now going to the cash machine. Anyone sharp-eyed looking over at the old drunk in the corner at that point may have noticed him pocketing a small plastic bottle before necking his pint and staggering towards the side door.