GRIT LIT: Tim Lay – an extract from novel “Rats With Wings”

Tim Lay reading at Grit Lit

At recent Brighton Festival fringe literary event Grit Lit, Tim Lay read an extract from his second novel Rats with Wings, which tells the tale of a London copper – Lewis – who is dragged down to Brighton by her sinister patrol partner Letch for an unknown and dodgy pretext.

They’ve just left a swingers’ party outside of Brighton and return to find an outdoor rave on the seafront and are about to take some drugs.

‘You doing one?’ he asked. She stuck her tongue out so he could see the yellow tablet sitting on it.
‘In for a penny in for a pound,’ he said with a nervous smile and popped his.

The rave was easy enough to find. They’d cut down to the beach and driven up and down the seafront until the crowds and the sound of music had led them to it. Rob breathed a sigh of relief as Letch parked up the car. He’d survived the journey, hair-raised but unscathed, and was thankful that home was only a walk away from here. His new acquaintances didn’t seem to be in any rush to leave the car – the interior light was on and new lines were being carved – but Rob needed some fresh air. He got out of the car and walked his way up to the rave.

A couple of hundred people were spilling out of a concrete recess, cut into the side of the hill, an alcove that must have dated back to the Victorian times. Colonnade pillars and high ceilings gave it an air of majesty, despite its popularity as a shooting gallery. The speakers were set into a smaller alcove at one end. It was a small system but came out swinging, the punchy bass boomeranging around the alcove and spinning its way outside.

A single strobe threw shadows from the tightly packed dance floor on to the white ceiling above. People spilled out of the alcove and crowded the area outside, talking, drinking, smoking, laughing and dancing. Some sat, or lay on the steep grass bank.

Rob stood for a while, hands in pockets, bobbing his head, self consciously, his eyes on a girl wearing a silver bikini top and fairy wings, a glow stick in each hand. He felt a bit disjointed, like everyone else was in on something that he wasn’t. He couldn’t feel anything from the pill Lewis had given him, but he wondered if he was just too drunk to notice its effects.

In the car, the drugs were kicking in and Letch’s body had begun to hum, a little like a plane warming on the runway. He felt good. Alert but relaxed, and satisfied too – just the way one is when they’ve done a good job. And the swingers’ party had been just that.

‘So what’s the score then?’ he asked, watching Lewis chop. He took a quick glance out of the window to make sure that Rob wasn’t near the car.

‘Four, two,’ said Lewis.

‘Sarcastic bitch,’ he said, flicking the top of her shoulder.

‘What fucking score?’ said Lewis. She leant forward, taking the whole line up one nostril because the other one had become too blocked.

‘What’s his name.’

‘Rob?’ Lewis shrugged and handed him the note. ‘Nothing.’ She sniffed. ‘He just seemed like a laugh.’

‘Some laugh,’ Letch muttered. ‘Any of that vodka left?’

‘No. Got this though.’ She pulled a bottle of Jack from under her chair. ‘Swingers’ compliments,’ she grinned.

‘Ooh. You’re a sly one!’ Letch broke the seal and drank heavily before wedging the bottle in the pocket of his door. Stooping low he snorted both of the remaining lines. He pinched his nose and rode out the sting that was so far up his nostril his eye hurt.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘That one’s for him.’

‘I need it more than he does,’ grunted Letch. Through watery eyes he saw the expression on her face. ‘Fuck sake. Make him another. There’s enough of it. Do the same again for me while you’re at it.’

‘It’s not a race,’ she tutted, reaching for the bag.

‘So did you fuck him?’ Letch asked, liking the way the word sounded to him. Very definitive, he thought. Starts soft and ends hard. F-U-C-K.

‘Not my type. We were having a laugh.’

‘Shall we ditch him and go somewhere else?’ asked Letch, stroking the steering wheel.

‘Like where?’

‘I’m sure there’s some little drinking den that’s open all hours,’ he purred. He was massaging the back of his neck, massaging away the stress of the day. He moved his head rhythmically from side to side, and the more he did it the more he found himself wanting to do it.

‘It’s not fucking Hackney,’ shot Lewis.

He didn’t reply. Just carried on moving his head from side to side, letting his fingers probe the muscles of the lower neck, feeling the skin ripple beneath his touch…

‘Why, who did you fuck?’ she asked, looking over. Letch was slouched in his seat, head lolling against the window, a knee crooked and resting on the upholstery. He had his eyes closed and she knew he was fucked because, unusually for Letch, he was smiling.

‘No one special,’ he replied.

‘I wasn’t impressed with that Letch,’ she said, her tone more serious. ‘That was out of order not telling me what sort of place that was.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Letch. He opened his eyes, had the words in his mouth that he wanted to say, but his vision was flickering and the words were suddenly lost as the humming inside his body began to intensify.

‘I know,’ was all he could manage. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes again, unable to carry on talking, trying to hold back the sweats.

‘Oh well,’ said Lewis, gazing out of the window. ‘I suppose it’s another tick in a box. Fucking swingers’ party,’ she laughed softly.

‘Got to get out,’ said Letch urgently, groping for the door handle.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Out,’ he hissed, and literally tumbled out of his door.

He shouldn’t have double dropped those pills, she thought. Could’ve been anything in them. Served him right really. She didn’t even know if he’d done an E before. Letch was more booze and charlie. She thought about going outside and seeing if he was ok, but Letch wasn’t the really sort of person you did that with.

She was glad she’d slowed down when she’d got to the swingers’ party. She felt all right now, could go on through the night. No worries. She leant over and pulled the driver’s door closed, then snorted one of the new sets of lines. There was a knock on the window and the back door opened.

‘Thought Letch had scared you off,’ she laughed.

‘Nah,’ said Rob, although his smile was just a little too thin.

Letch was flying now, but shit had it been a rough take off…

One minute, he’d been fine, sitting in the car, snorting coke and shooting the breeze with Lewis and the next he’d been clawing to hold it together as that hum in his head had just got louder and louder until he’d thought he was about to do a Leah Betts.

He’d thrown up and sat on a kerb for a good long while, head in hands, until the hum had gone quiet. Only when he’d been absolutely sure his head wasn’t going to cave in, had he started walking. He hadn’t a clue where he was heading, just put his head down and walked until the feeling wasn’t so bad anymore, and his jaw had stopped grinding like an industrial compressor.

He’d stopped by the pier, smoked a cigarette, done a self-assessment and passed himself fit, then turned around and walked back the way he’d come feeling like Forest fucking Gump.

He was aware that the world around him seemed different now, as if the edges had been sanded down and softened. He felt different too. Half an hour ago he’d been praying to a God he didn’t believe in, pleading to him to make it to the other side, but now he felt fantastic, like a superhero incarnate, ready for anything. His mind was clear and alert and his body felt fully charged. His stride was purposeful and he had the sudden notion that walking had never seemed so enjoyable before.

The sea front road was lively considering the hour, people walking this way and that along the seafront path, gangs of boy racers huddled around car boots stuffed with stereo speakers, and the occasional roar of engines as souped up saloon cars raced off down the long straight road. Letch reached a shuttered café beside a deserted playground. A solitary figure sat on one of the wooden tables, his white puffer jacket shining him up like a beacon in the darkness. He had some cans on the table beside him.

‘Hey mate, you don’t want to sell me one of those do you?’ Letch called over.
The figure didn’t reply straight away. He looked at the can in his hand and to the cans beside him.

‘Yeah all right,’ he said. ‘Cost you five.’

‘Five quid for a can?’ Letch laughed contemptuously.

‘It’s the only bar round here geez. Take it or leave it.’

‘I’d better take it then son,’ said Letch. ‘You got change for a twenty?’

‘I’ve got change.’

Letch veritably skipped over to where the cockney was sitting.

‘Let’s see your money first.’

Letch smiled. ‘Here, ‘he said, pulling out the bundle of notes he’d taken from Swinger’s party.’ ‘Satisfied now?’

The cockney nodded and gave the can over. ‘You like acid mate? Got some Superman blotters if you fancy.’

‘Superman eh?’ asked Letch, doing a little jig on the spot. It was too good to be true. ‘Why the fuck not! The night’s still young wouldn’t you say?’

‘I suppose so,’ the other shrugged, unimpressed with Letch’s enthusiasm. ‘How many?’

‘How many you got?’

‘Ten.’

‘I’ll take the ten then please my good man.’ Letch quipped. He cracked the can open while the cockney removed his shoe. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said without looking up. ‘They’re wrapped in cling film.’

‘Good. I’d hate to get Athlete’s mouth.’ Letch began to laugh at his joke.

The cockney didn’t laugh. He held the plastic wrap out to him. ‘Go on then mate,’ he said. ‘Thirty quid and five for the beer.’

Letch pulled his wallet out. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said. ‘Why don’t I take those ten, this can, and another for luck…’ He nodded to the lagers on the table. ‘… And we’ll call it quits shall we?’

The cockney cracked a smile. It was part bemusement but part something more sinister. ‘You’re having a fucking laugh pal.’ His hand dropped down and behind, reaching for something in his waistband.

‘You’re right,’ said Letch. ‘I’m having a real fucking laugh.’ He snapped his wallet open and flashed his Met ID. ‘Now give me another can and fuck off.’

Letch could see the white of the puffer jacket bobbing away in the dark of the distance as he tore the plastic wrapping away and ripped off a cardboard square. ‘OK superman,’ he said out loud. ‘Let’s see if we can make this party fly shall we?…

The tab stung his tongue and he drained half the can to drown the battery taste away.

Tim’s first novel, The Sewerside Chronicles,was the winner of the 2007 Undiscovered Authors prize. His short stories appear in QueenSpark’s Alt Future and the upcoming ‘Urban’ anthology published by Phoenix Press