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drinker. Everything was white. We caught a taxi and told the driver where to go. When we arrived at The Edward, coloured Christmas lights were flickering on and off in the windows. Dawn was behind the bar—Jimmy King liked to call her “Dawn the Prawn” because her husband had a stall in Billingsgate Market and she loved a winkle. The boys were in the back office drinking. We could hear Harry the Syrup shouting as we moved toward the door, and Kelly opened it just as Harry was taking a swing at Frankie Toast. Harry’s silly looking wig slipped off his head and landed on the floor beside Big Pat. Pat kicked it across the room. Jimmy King started laughing. Harry went for Pat with a knife and Jimmy kept on laughing. Harry was hollering “You want some of this, you fucking lanky cunt?” and Pat was forced to hold him off with a barstool. Frankie told Harry he hadn’t meant to be disrespectful, it was just the Jew had gone about things the wrong way.
    “That’s right!” Harry roared. “The cunt kept schtum about those diamonds thinking he’d have ‘em all to himself. But he’s one of us!”
    Frankie told Harry to put the knife away. Harry spun around and would have plunged the blade into Frankie if Jackie hadn’t intervened.
    “Put the knife away, Harry.” Jackie sighed.
    Harry stared at Jackie for a few moments and then he lowered the knife.
    “Sorry if I was out of order,” Harry said. “But it makes my heart shrivel like some earthworm scorched by the sun on a paving stone to hear anyone in the firm talk about one of our own in such a way.”
    Harry put the knife away. Big Pat lowered the barstool. Frankie picked up Harry’s wig and brushed it off. Then he handed it back to Harry. Jackie glanced across the room. He saw Kelly and me standing in the door with snowflakes on our coats. He smiled, waving us over, and then started to croon, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”

    Lagers can run from sweet to bitter, and from pale to black. The word itself comes from the German, Lagerbier (beer made for storage) from Lager for storehouse, and bier for beer. Most are pale, fizzy as fuck, have an alcohol volume of three to five percent, and are brewed from malted barley, hops and water at low temperatures. My lager of choice was Stella Artois. Kelly liked Budweiser, Big Pat went for Tennetts, Frankie choose Carling, Harry drank Harp, Jimmy went for Carlsberg, Jackie liked Lowenbrau (but only bottled) and Hymie never drank. In any case, Jackie stocked the lot. The Edward was his pub after all, and he could do just as he pleased. Whilst Jimmy got the drinks in, I told Jackie, Harry and the others about Father Fayhee. I said a girl had been nonced and killed on one of the estates in Somers Town, and that the Father wanted us to top the nonce but couldn’t pay for it. When I finished everyone was silent. “Merry Xmas Everybody” was playing on the jukebox in the public bar. Harry looked in a mirror and fiddled about with the position of his wig for a few moments.
    “We can’t do it,” he eventually said. “There’s no money in it. It’s only right when we do it for the money, because then, if anyone asks us about it, we just pull out the money, and let it do the talking for us.”
    Harry was right and everyone nodded accordingly. I said I’d told the Father time and again nothing would get done without money, because there were certain palms that had to be crossed with silver, so to speak. But all he said by way of reply was that his collection plate could only stretch so far, and what right did any of us have to expect parishioners to put up what parishioners couldn’t get.
    “He made threats,” Kelly added. “Said he’d go to the police and tell them what he knew about us.”
    “But he soon thought better of that,” I said, “when I told him it was true we all had our own crosses to bear, and I wondered what skeletons the police might find lurking inside his cupboards.”
    Jimmy King