Top Hard

by Stephen Booth

  He was already at the door of the car before he looked up, and we recognised each other.

  "Rawlings."

  He didn't have time to talk, his expression seemed to say. He opened the door and shouted something to the bloke at the wheel. As I came up, the driver turned quick and looked at me with those dead eyes. I was too slow to dodge the door that flew open and cracked me hard across the knees. Hell, that hurt.

  That was how I came to be lying sideways on the pavement as they drove away. And that was why I could only remember part of the registration number, on account of my head being at the wrong angle. Oh, and my eyes being shut with the pain.

  "Stones, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

  "Hello, love. Just resting."

  Lisa stood over me, looking less than sympathetic. "You're making a fool of yourself. Get up."

  "I think I might have broken my leg."

  "Rubbish. Get up, you pillock."

  I struggled to my feet, wincing at the agony in my shins, and worrying that the fancy pattern on my boots might have got scratched. Dan Posts these, you know. Three hundred dollars, at least.

  Lisa did nothing to help me, just stood there with her hands on her hips, looking just like my mum when I hadn't washed behind my ears properly.

  "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were drunk."

  "At this time of the morning? In any case, you've only had your eye off me for two minutes."

  "Mmm. You're up to something."

  "Me? Never. Can't you see I'm injured here, woman?"

  "You're always pissing about, Stones. Always."

  * * * *

  Then we called in at the Cow for an early lunchtime drink - me hobbling and Lisa wearing that tight smile she uses when she disapproves of me. I couldn't have got any further than the Cow just then, with my injuries. Fortunately, Lisa's not proud about where she drinks. Good job too. I've been banned from all the places that have ash trays.

  It was only two days since I'd been in this same bar with Nuala, of course. But it didn't worry me. People in the Cow don't talk more than they have to, not about each other. It's likely to shorten your life span a bit, which is why I had to lean on Moggie Carr so much. No daft bugger's going to come wandering up and ask who the other bird was that I was with the other day.

  In a way, it would have been a relief if they'd done that. I hadn't come up with any good ideas yet on how to ease Lisa out. I was hoping Michael bleedin' Cavendish would do the job for me, but I might have to give her a bit of a push. Sounds cruel, I know, but that's me. Love 'em and leave 'em and move on to the next thing. You take root if you stand still.

  "Hey, Stones."

  I looked around me. In the corridor to the gents, Slow Kid Thompson was lurking behind a doorway, out of sight of the bar.

  "What you doing there, Slow? You owe somebody money again?"

  He shook his head. "I've got something to tell you."

  "Spit it out, then. Let's go in here."

  He followed me into the gents. I wouldn't normally have felt uneasy about this with Slow, if it wasn't for the way he kept looking around like a guilty old pervert.

  "What is it?" I said as I let a golden stream hit the stainless steel. It made a nice hollow drumming noise that you could almost play tunes with. I fancied something with a bit of a heavy beat today.

  "Eddie Craig," he said.

  The stream faltered and the tune became a harpsichord sonata. Sir Thomas Beecham described the noise of the harpsichord as 'two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof'. How appropriate.

  "What about him?"

  "He's looking for you, Stones. He thinks you had something to do with the ram raid that went wrong."

  "What gives him that idea?"

  "Talk."

  I was dry now, mainly around the mouth.

  "I don't particularly want to see him just at the moment, Slow."

  "What you going to do then?"

  "Go back and talk nicely to Lisa."

  "Right? So - "

  "You wouldn't understand that, Slow. Sometimes that's what you have to do with women. Talk nicely to them."

  "To keep 'em sweet, you mean?"

  "No. I mean when you want something."

  * * * *

  We went in Lisa's Fiat. It wasn't fast, it wasn't posh, it wasn't even clean. But with a bit of luck it wouldn't be recognised by Craig and his boys, or anyone who felt like blabbing to them.

  "I'm not sure how long I can put you up for, Stones," she said. "I'm a bit busy right now."

  "I know, love. But I won't be any trouble. It'll just be until they get the problem sorted out."

  "It was a bit sudden, wasn't it?"

  "These old gas pipes, you know. The council should have replaced them ages ago. I suppose it's been building up for years, then suddenly the gas leaks into the house. If I stayed in there another night it could have been 'poof' - no more Stones McClure."

  I just had one overnight bag with me, containing a few clothes and stuff. But I also had a rather important sports bag, which I have to admit did not contain my tennis gear. It had arrived by special courier one night, sent by a business contact who'd recently taken delivery from me of a French-registered lorry full of leather jackets, jeans and denim shirts.

  "It's terrible," said Lisa. "I hope you get compensation from the council."

  "Well, you know - I don't like to insist on anything like that. It's all our money, isn't it? Us taxpayers. The Council Tax, I mean."

  "Still. They'd better do a proper job."

  "I'll complain to Councillor Border if they don't."

  That made her laugh. "I didn't think you liked him. I once heard you call him a grade one plonker."

  "Just because I'd rather vote for a rabid dog doesn't mean he's not there to represent my interests."

  "I'm sure he'd love to give you some advice."

  "Yeah, I can imagine."

  It was going to be hell shacking up in Lisa's house. The frilly curtains and the pot pourri were really depressing. After a day or two, I'd go away smelling of patchouli oil and rosewater. I'd probably get banned from the Cow's Arse for offensive behaviour. And then there was the teddy bear. I've had a problem about sharing a bed with furry creatures ever since my older brother slipped a mouse under my sheets when I was eight. So I could foresee a bit of bedtime conflict there.

  We stopped at the little shop in Lisa's village to stock up with a few bottles of wine. Lisa came out with pasta, red peppers, sun-dried tomatoes and a bottle of olive oil. It looked like we weren't on fish fingers and chips tonight then.

  Once in the house, Lisa headed for the kitchen while I found a discreet place to tuck the sports bag away. It would have to stay there until I got chance to take it to the bank. I wasn't worried - if Lisa noticed it, she'd just assume it was my dirty laundry or something. Then I grabbed the TV remote control and got my feet up on the settee, remembering to take my boots off first. It was getting close to news time, and you've got to keep up to date.

  After a while, Lisa stuck her head round the kitchen door a couple of times to look at me. I caught her expression one of these times, and expected it to be a bit of irritation about this obnoxious bloke idling about on his backside while she did the cooking, getting inside her house and straightaway taking her for granted as the skivvy. But that wasn't what I saw on her face at all. It was something much more worrying. I missed half of what Anna Ford was telling me about the latest Middle East crisis while I turned the subtleties of that expression over in my mind. Impatiently, I thumbed the remote and got a load of adverts about cars and clothes and electrical gadgets that we really had to own. Then it came to me. That was the expression on Lisa's face - possessiveness.

  I nearly walked out of the house right then. Any self-respecting bloke who values his independence would feel the same. But, to be honest, I was getting a bit peckish and the aroma from the kitchen was starting to smell pretty good. It even overpowered the pot pourri.

 
I hit the remote again and went back to Anna. In Scotland, a gang had raided the Microsoft factory and nicked half a million quids' worth of software CDs. That's something I've never got into. None of the lads round here would recognise Windows from a wildebeest.

  Later, we sank a bottle of wine with our meal and chatted about this and that. The fate of Lord Byron's Newstead Abbey, where old mining activity was likely to send the building crumbling into a big hole, tourists and all. A scheme to plant millions of trees on the slag heaps to restore some of the old Sherwood Forest. I can talk quite intelligently on subjects like this with Lisa. Especially when she doesn't mention Michael Cavendish once.

  I looked out of the little front window into the street. The terrace opposite was starting to disappear as dusk fell, and lights were coming on in the houses. I could hear Lisa washing up in the kitchen, singing quietly to herself. The pot pourri was starting to beat back the scent of pasta and Liebfraumilch. Porcelain nicknacks and dried flower arrangements stared at me from every corner of the room. The rug looked so comfortable in front of the gas fire that it ought to have a sleeping cat on it. Upstairs, a teddy bear waited.

  "Lisa?"

  "Yes, Stones?"

  She pulled her hands out of the sink. She was wearing yellow plastic gloves covered in green suds, and the kitchen smelled of artificial lemons. A tea towel with greetings from Edinburgh hung invitingly over a chair, waiting for someone to pick it up and start drying.

  "Can I borrow your car for a bit?"

  "Well... yes, I suppose so."

  She waited for me to tell her where I was going.

  "The keys are on the sideboard, aren't they? I noticed you put them there."

  "That's right."

  I pulled my leather jacket on and collected the keys. There was an old dog lead lying next to them on the sideboard, and it seemed to be attached to the key ring. I recalled that Lisa had once owned a dog, a cocker spaniel, but it had got the push for disturbing the scatter cushions or something. I couldn't get the lead free from the keys, so I took it with me.

  "Will you be long?" Lisa had picked up the tea towel and followed me to the front door with it, as if offering an irresistible temptation.

  "Just a bit of business I have to see to."

  We kissed on the doorstep, and she watched me as I drove away, back towards Medensworth. On the way, I finally managed to get the dog lead untangled from the keys and shoved it in my pocket. I immediately felt better.

  * * * *

  I got hold of Dave straightaway on the mobile. I don't know what he does with his spare time, but if it doesn't involve food, then it's probably an activity unknown to anthropologists. When he answered the phone he sounded as though somebody had just switched him on and his valves were still warming up.

  "Donc, it's Stones."

  "Lo."

  "Are you doing anything?"

  "Nope."

  "Can you meet me in about ten minutes?"

  "Yeah."

  "Not at my place or at the Cow. Outside the churchyard at St Asaph's."

  "Right."

  "You know where I mean, don't you?"

  "Yeah."

  "And Donc?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Don't go shooting your mouth off to anyone about me, right?"

  I was at the churchyard first. I parked Lisa's Fiat on the little lane that runs up the side of the church and killed the lights. Dave was pretty recognisable, and I wanted to be able to see him coming, in case he had unwanted company. It was a dark spot here, with no street lights past the last cottage across the road. In the churchyard, there were plenty of shadows to lurk in.

  I got out to stretch my legs for a few minutes while I waited. The church is built on a mound above the level of the street, and I could easily see in the direction that Dave would come from as I walked past the porch towards the graveyard. Dark graveyards don't hold any terrors for me. There's only one ghost that I'm ever likely to meet here, and it doesn't frighten me.

  But where was Dave? I looked down into the street. No sign of him. Then I looked the other way, and forgot about Dave for a second. There was a car outside the vicarage. Not the Rev's puke-coloured Metro, but something bigger, flashier, with tinted windows. When I got closer I saw that it was a Jaguar, lovingly polished and with a pony-tailed thug sitting tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

  I thought of Eddie Craig, and it wasn't a nice thought. If Craig was in the vicarage talking to the Reverend Bowring, it was a fair bet he wasn't there to ask for the Rev's advice on filling a yawning spiritual vacuum in his life. Craig had so many sins to confess that hearing them would take a regiment of Revs working twelve-hour shifts until the next Millennium.

  I suddenly had a cold feeling in my stomach. Whether Craig was in there himself or not, there would be at least two of his louts. I didn't think he'd want the Rev hurt too badly. It was information he was after - information about me. He wanted to know where to find me. And if the Rev had any sense, he'd tell what he knew rightaway, before the knuckle dusters came out and 'love thy neighbour' degenerated into a bit of Old Testament brutality.

  But hang on, this was the Reverend Gordon Bowring we were talking about. Sense didn't come into it. This was the bloke who was stupid enough to give me an alibi whenever I asked for one, because he thought I was 'good at heart'. This was the same brainless jerk who went round to visit Badger Watts in his sick bed when he got both his legs busted by three blokes with baseball bats - even though the Rev knew perfectly well it was Badger who'd smashed in the vestry door two weeks before and nicked all the collection plates.

  Well, you don't talk sense to this man - he works by some mysterious rules of his own. Chances are he'd refuse to tell Craig anything on principle. Principle? That's a word I've heard him use sometimes. I'm not sure what it means.

  When the Rev eventually came round in hospital, he'd probably be pleased that he'd done his Christian duty. Just how stupid can you get? But if that was what he wanted, then where was the point in me trying to stop him? Let the fool get his head kicked in if he liked. He ought to know better after all this time living on the Forest. There was no sense in me walking in and getting my head kicked in as well.

  No, the only thing to do was to slip quietly away, pack a bag and spend a few nights at the Travel Lodge in Blyth. You can't get more anonymous than that. When things had quietened down a bit, I might drop by one night after dark and offer to push the Rev's wheelchair round the churchyard for a while, as a way of saying thanks.

  While I was planning this sensible course of action, I found to my amazement that my feet were moving of their own accord. They were edging me round the back of the Jaguar, as if they were set on getting me nearer to the lad at the wheel, putting me in his blind spot. At the same time, my hand reached into my jacket pocket and found the old dog lead I'd picked up at Lisa's.

  Before I could puzzle this out, my brain had joined in. The sound of acid house music thumping into the street told me that the driver's window of the car was partly open. That was a mistake, of course, even on a warm night. In two more steps I was at the door. The driver saw me coming in his wing mirror, but it was too late by then.

  "Come on now, Rusty, come on. Leave the gentleman's car alone. We'll find you a nice tree in a minute. Just hang on, lad. No, no, not the tyre. Oh dear, oh dear. Sorry about that, mate."

  I grinned at the thug inanely, clutching my dogless lead at arm's length as if struggling to control an extremely small but stubborn canine.

  "He has a bit of a thing about car wheels. I don't know what it is, but he can't pass one without watering it, if you know what I mean."

  The bloke curled his lip as he stared at me, no doubt classifying me as a local halfwit. Then he made his second big mistake. He stuck his head out of the window to peer down at the imaginary mutt that was supposedly cocking its leg against his Michelin radials.

  "Hey, there's no bloody - ."

  But he didn't get any further. My right hand whipped
in through the open window and grabbed his pony tail hard. I've always been keen on pony tails - they're dead handy in an emergency. While he thrashed around trying to turn his head towards me, my left hand got the car door open. I pulled hard and the bloke flew out of his seat and hit the tarmac head first, with a loud crack.

  He twitched a bit, then lay still, his legs still trailing across the door sill. That was good. It saved me the trouble of hitting him. I felt guilty enough about the dog trick already. I'd only been taking the piss.

  There was a sound of running feet on the road behind me. I didn't look round, because from the way the whole street vibrated at Richter scale eight I knew it was Doncaster Dave coming up fast, scowling no doubt, because I'd got into a fight without him.

  "No problems, Dave," I said.

  "Yeah?"

  Rather than go straight up to the vicarage I climbed the steps into the churchyard and went through a little wooden gate at the side, which led to the Rev's back door. It isn't one of those old vicarages with fifteen bedrooms and drafts from hell. The old one had been demolished years ago and replaced by this red brick bungalow. Fortunately, it has a set of French windows onto the back garden. So by the time I got to the end of the path I could see people standing about in the sitting room admiring the furniture. Well, two of them were standing around. The Rev was sitting in an armchair. His back was to me, and I could just make out the top of his head. He wasn't moving much, but his visitors were smiling. Bad sign.

  Only two, though. And neither of them was Eddie Craig, and neither of them was Lump Hammer Stan. Good sign.

  Dave arrived behind me, following like the faithful dog that the lead belonged to. Time to make a move, before the bloke by the car came round. I gave Dave his instructions, then sent him round to the front to ring the doorbell. What? Did you think we were going to bust straight in like the SAS? That sort of stuff is for kids. Why bother with all that energy and aggro, when you can use brains and make it easy?