Thirteen Candles: Hell Money

“What did the money look like, Meadows?” Ricky said, snuffing out the first candle.

“It was solid gold, but stamped with the Satan’s heraldry and inscribed in the Dragon’s Tongue. Why do you ask, Ricky, have you been paid in the Devil’s coin?”

“It just sounds like the coins that keep cropping up on Prescott Road. People have been finding then from Kenny down to Old Swan, they say the Devil is on the 10A and he’s chucking his money out of the window” Leaning in close, his face bottom lit by the remaining tapers, Ricky continued. “But it reminds me of another story and all, one closer to town…”

One of me Mam’s ex-boyfriends, Billy Reid, was dosing around outside St George’s Hall, in the gardens, round the back with one of his no-mark mates. It was dole day, so they’d been the offy and got a few cans and they weren’t planning on doing much else. They were sat on the bottom step talking shit about their next get rich quick scheme. That’s how they’d met, see, the pair of them ended in Walton nick for flogging dodgy jewellery; turned out the fella they were palming it all off on grassed up the pair of ‘em when got lifted himself.

Anyway, they were trying to figure out how to knock off an offy without a gun when this bird walks past them up the steps. When my Mam was out of hearing, Billy said she was the fittest woman he’d ever seen, which was odd ‘because he said she was wearing a black veil, but, apparently, the dress she was wearing was tighter than bookie’s fist around a fiver. Sheer black silk from her neck to her knees and then she was wearing a pair of black leather jack boots. Between the veil and the elbow length gloves she had on, I don’t figure Billy saw the slightest scrap of skin, but she made an impression on him anyway, if you get my drift.

So as she’s walking up the steps, she drops her purse, a long black leather job and it falls- practically- into Billy’s lap. Billy was never the sharpest tool in the box, but he was faster than his mate, John, and was on the purse before he was. I’m not sure how much of this I believe, because Billy said he was all for giving it back, but more likely he was just gonna keep it all himself.

“It’s common decency, Billy,” John said. “We’ve got to split it even. Whatever happened to ‘honour amongst thieves,’ eh, Bill?” Billy said he was gonna go and find the woman, probably so he could try it on with her, like. But John Hagerty wasn’t as soft as he looked, or acted most of the time. “Fair enough, la, you keep it,” he said. “I’ll just go down the bizzies and tell ‘em you just lifted a widows purse. Form like yours, they’ll make it stick.” His didn’t give Billy much choice, so they opened it up and nearly shat themselves.

It was full of notes: fives, tens, twenties and four crisp fifty quid notes. They was nothing else in there except for a few thick gold coins- the same coins that kept cropping up in Kensington by the sounds- and a hand written card, gold ink on thick black card:

Mrs Lillith Cluefir

6 Greek Street.

So they divvy up the money and go their separate ways; Hagerty leaves our Billy the purse, he’s got what he wants, what does he care about an old purse and some tarts address, right? Both of them go into town to flash the cash and go on the lash, so it’s about half-ten when Billy finally gets round ours, smelling like an alehouse. He comes in and chucks me a bag of toffees. Usually, all I’d get off Billy was a mouthful and a clout, so I wasn’t complaining. Until I bite into the first one and one of me fillings comes out with it. Apparently, that had been happening all day.

Once he’d explained where he got the money from, not that me Ma was arsed- as long she got her share- Billy told us how everything he’d bought had had something go wrong with it. He’d bought a new pair of trainers and trod in dog-shit the minute he was out of the shop. He’d got the bus back, but dropped off on the way and missed his stop; he would’ve been better off walking from town. It was all too much to just right off as a bad day, ever since he’d picked up the purse, he said, it was all going down the pan.

It wasn’t as bad as what happened to Hagerty, mind. He’d been into town and gone to some strip-club. He mustn’t have been able to believe his luck when he brought two sluts back with him. Only he’d forgotten that his missus was coming round. The poor bint had cooked him his tea and everything. Anyway, after two bottles of wine, she’s had enough when he rolled in at god-knows-what in the morning. She smashed his head in with her shoe. He would have lived, apparently one of the tarts had called an ambulance, only a truck hit them side-on and John got tangled up in the tubes they’d filled him with. If the two ambulance types hadn’t been out cold, they probably could’ve helped him, but he ended up suffocating.

This was enough for our Billy. He took everything he had left of the notes, got the coins back from the hock-shop and took the purse back to Greek Street. My Mam quite liked the purse, so he didn’t bother asking her for it; it wasn’t like it was the first he’d been in her bag without her knowing anyway. When he knocked on the door, some old biddy opens the door, shaking like a shitting dog. Anyway, Billy does his best to be polite and asks if Mrs Cluefir is in.

“Oh no,” wails the old girl. “Not another one! Is this about the purse? You’re the fourth person since the start of May who’s brought it here. So many for one year! Please just throw it away, and please see a priest. You have too, it’s the only way you’ll be free.” Billy didn’t have a clue; he was always a bit slow on the uptake. Once he’d had it spelt out for him, it seems that people have been finding this same purse for years and they’d always complained how it had brought them misery and misfortune. It seems our Billy didn’t notice that Cluefir was actually an anagram…

The last we saw of him was then next day. He got up early, put the kettle on, had his cornflakes and went to see the priest. Dunno how he got on, mind, but that was the last we saw of him…