Ashes by Now by Mark Timlin Read Free Book Online

were on licence you had to have a fixed address.’
    â€˜You are. I gave them me uncle’s, but we don’t get on. Anyway, I’m in Deptford tonight. D’you know a boozer called the Live And Let Live?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜It’s off Creek Road. Going down to the river. Deptford Green, I think it is.’
    â€˜Sounds attractive.’
    â€˜It’ll do,’ he said.
    â€˜I’ll find it,’ I said.
    â€˜I’ll be in there about twelve. Saloon bar. Got a nice view of Greenwich Reach. It reminds me of me days at sea. And I like to see a bit of space these days. It’s with being banged up for so long.’
    I didn’t want to get into his memoirs. And suddenly I didn’t want to go at all. My heart sank at the thought of meeting an ex-con in a dump of a boozer, in a scruffy part of town, and listen to him bellyache about ancient history.
    Or did I suddenly remember that night in the interview room, and Collier and Lenny Millar beating the shit out of Sailor, and me doing sweet FA about it?
    â€˜Look, Sailor,’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best to get there, but I can’t promise anything.’
    â€˜But you said –’
    â€˜I know. But I don’t know that it’s such a good idea after all.’
    â€˜Please.’
    How could I resist?
    â€˜I’ll try,’ I said.
    â€˜See you then, Mr Sharman, and thanks.’
    â€˜Don’t thank me yet,’ I said, and hung up in his ear.

13
    In the end, of course, I went. I knew that I would all along, I suppose. I got up about ten, made myself a bacon sandwich, and drove to Deptford.
    I got to the boozer at about twelve. It was close to the old docks. But no one had had the time, energy or money to gentrify that part of south London. It hadn’t changed much in twenty-five years, since back in the swinging sixties, when they pulled down the old back-to-backs and stuck up the council tenements, and took all the life out of the place. The Live And Let Live was down at the end of a dusty, dirty, litter-strewn street off Deptford Green. Which was nothing like as colourful as it sounded, and where it looked like the council cleaners hadn’t been seen for months. I pushed open the nicotine-coloured door, walked into the saloon bar and looked round for Sailor Grant. I didn’t even know if I’d recognise him, but it wasn’t hard. He was the only punter in the room. He sat on a red leatherette bench seat, behind a scarred wooden table on which sat a pint of beer, with just a sip taken out of it, a tin of Old Holborn and a packet of green Rizlas. A prison-thin roll-up sat dead in a metal ashtray next to his glass. Next to him was a single, battered khaki bag which probably contained all he owned in the world.
    Sailor looked like shit. Worse. His thinness had gone gaunt, until he looked like he was just a step away from a wooden overcoat. His blond hair, what was left of it, was grey, and his face was seamed with more lines than a map of the London underground system.
    He looked up as I entered, and his eyes were as dead as the grate of the fireplace in the corner of the bar. I walked over to where he was sitting. ‘Mr Sharman,’ he said, and his teeth were dark brown in yellow gums. ‘I knew you’d come.’
    â€˜You knew more than me, then,’ I said.
    â€˜You’re here.’
    I felt like asking him: ‘What is here?’ But I didn’t feel like getting into an existential argument right then.
    â€˜Yeah,’ I said. ‘Nice place.’
    He looked round the bar. It had seen better days. But then so had he, and for that matter so had I.
    â€˜Drink?’ I asked.
    He half rose to his feet. ‘Let me get them in.’
    â€˜Save your money,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t look like you made your fortune in jail.’
    â€˜I am a bit short.’
    â€˜Want a chaser to go with that?’ I asked, nodding in the direction of