Novel fragment: "The Don", crime, Oxford, gritty, man

And so they agreed to wait there longer. It was not raining much, so the MCS boys in their white to grey nylon, down in the neat field where the river somehow wasn’t, paused in stalled lines, drizzled but taut, tauter than the ball which would be replaced tomorrow. Ez drooped over their side of the bridge and extended his light eyes, his mouth unrolled in idleness, his fat tongue undermining and overhauling an irking strip of lodged saltfish from Rice N’ Peas.

“Who do you reckon”, Padraig asked him. At a further distance from the bridge’s rampart, he was yet taking more in. “Count the blonds, blonds are strong.”

Ez did not give away whether he thought anything of the tip or not. He said “Lot nearer us. Nearer the teacher, right. Four on them.”

“Four? Boy, your mind’s not on this.” Padraig gave an exaggerated, pointed, lashed out kick. His brown shoe brushed Ez’s calf and the dusty gum from its pad gripped into the wedges of the jeans.

“Maybe,” Ez said, slashing his tongue from gulf to gulf, severing the saltfish’s last tenacity and spitting in the solid competence of victory, “not. But I’ll still win. You taking?”

“I took that ten minutes ago. My lads scored third minute, that counts.”

“You can’t start ahead.”

“Can’t?”

“The situation was less than fully assessed. Unsafe.”

“Fuck off. Two ahead now, mine slamming yours. You should stop backing the yid looking ones, Ez, it’s like I say, blond is strong.You see where they are, you like what you…”

A bus was passing back down to beyond the roundabout. Ez got onto it. Padraig gathered his sinuous burden off the bench that had broken his fall. Beneath it lay the saltfish scrap, a new human tooth claimed, chipped at its side. Padraig gulped back the ichor and felt a bit drunkened by it, on top of recent happenings. Three goals, he thought, blond is strong. He put a battered hand in a harpooned canvas pocket and clawed. Wallet, two cameras, keys, keys to home, receipt, bag, phone. All of the techy metal was shiny enough to make Padraig look like a devout touching up his relics. He rang Mad, and began to walk the opposite way the bus had gone, into the city with a mediaeval heart.