Take the A-Train

by Mark Timlin

  ‘Go down, get help.’ I yelled into the lift and a second later I heard the mechanism engage.

  I looked round and two men were coming at me fast. Both of them were armed with handguns. I turned again and made for the illuminated sign that said STAIRS and pushed through the fire door. The stairs were concrete with black iron banisters and they were lit as brightly as Runway One at Heathrow. I started down them. I was awkward on my bad leg and the walking stick was no help. I hopped, skipped and jumped down but couldn’t get a rhythm going and I broke into a sweat under my clothes.

  There were a dozen or so flights between me and the ground floor. I had got down three or four when the door I’d come through at the top of the stairs crashed open. I kept going but looked up and a head popped over the railings above me. I kept going faster. Whoever the hell it was above me fired down into the stairwell. The noise was deafening and a bullet whined off the rail beside me and hit the wall in front of me and went buzzing away down the stairs.

  I jumped half the next flight and my leg shot a bolt of pain right up into my head. Another shot and concrete splintered by my foot. I almost fell down the next flight and I could hear someone running down the stairs above and behind me. I went down the last flight and hit the fire door and I was on the ground floor.

  There was no sign of Fiona but the Sovereign screeched down the ramp and skidded to a halt beside me and the back door nearest me opened and a man got out. I backed away and the fire door behind me crashed open and slammed against the wall and I saw who had been shooting at me. He was big and hard looking under a wool worsted suit and I’d never seen him in my life. He was middle aged with hair the same colour as his suit, grey flecked. The one who had got out of the back of the car was younger and slimmer with bushy black hair. He was also wearing a dark suit and I’d never seen him before either. He’d put his gun away but the older man was carrying a Browning model 1935, Hi Power, 9mm Parabellum automatic pistol with an exposed hammer and a thirteen shot clip. No wonder he could afford to waste a few shots down the stairs. He had plenty.

  ‘Sharman, you are fucking dead,’ he said, and pulled back the hammer of the gun with his thumb, and my bottle went completely.

  Oh shit, oh fuck, no, I thought and moved. I still don’t know to this day where I thought I was going. It was goodnight time and the thing I most regretted was that Fiona was involved. The two suits looked as happy as hyenas circling a warm body. The younger one kicked my stick away and I fell on to one knee. Pain shot up my leg and I looked into the muzzle of the automatic. I could almost see the bullet spinning down its cold metal rifling towards my head.

  Then the yellow Spitfire came tooling down the ramp far too fast, and instead of braking it accelerated and spun across the greasy concrete towards us with a roar from its engine, a scream from the tyres and a cloud of rubber and exhaust smoke. The little car skidded broadside, and the edge of the front bumper caught the geezer with the gun on the knee.

  I heard bone crack like a bread stick breaking amplified a hundred times, and thought that someone else would be limping for a bit. He went down without a sound and lay in a puddle of oil and water with a thin crust of ice around the edges. The liquid began to soak into his jacket. The force of the blow knocked the gun from his hand. It clattered to the floor and slid within my reach.

  The young guy went for something under his jacket. I fumbled the gun off the floor and fired without aiming. I hit him in the meat of his right arm and the parabellum bullet chopped a fountain of flesh and blood and material. He screamed and grabbed at the wound with his left hand.

  The Spitfire’s engine was howling as Fiona rode the accelerator and jockeyed the clutch. I saw the attendant peering out of his booth and then duck down. I pulled myself to my feet and jumped over the top of the passenger door, catching my foot a whack that exploded stars in front of my eyes. I held on to the door frame tight and fought back the tears. The tyres laid rubber as we took off.

  I should have shot one of the Daimler’s tyres out or blown some glass but I was too shaken up. The barrier was down in front of us and Fiona took it out with the top of the frame of our windscreen and smashed it to matchwood which splintered down around us as we skidded into Endell Street. She almost lost the steering wheel then and the car rocked as the tyres grabbed for traction on the icy road. I felt G-force and turned my head as we sped between parked cars.

  As we reached the roundabout and swung left into the eastern end of Long Acre, I saw the Daimler hang a fast left behind us with headlights blazing. We lost sight of the car for a second, then it was on our tail as we shot across Drury Lane into Great Queen Street. It stayed with us as we jumped the lights and turned right into Kingsway heading towards The Aldwych and the river beyond.

  I clawed myself round to kneel on the passenger seat, feeling the drag of the slipstream, poked the gun over the back of the car and fired. I got off two shots that went nowhere before the gun jammed. I slammed the weapon hard on the metalwork of the car, something that is not recommended by gun freaks, and pointed the weapon back again and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked and the right headlamp of the Daimler blew out. I fired again and the bullet knocked sparks off the bonnet of the car. I squeezed the trigger once more and a third bullet spanged off the bumper. There were just a few pedestrians about and they probably thought we were making a film. The driver of the Daimler and I knew it was only a matter of time before I did serious damage. He dropped right back as we tore into the Strand and pulled over to go back into The Aldwych as we drove on to Waterloo Bridge.

  ‘Slow down,’ I screamed into Fiona’s ear, and she did so. I tossed the gun over the parapet of the bridge from the car as we were still moving and sat trying to hold myself together as the lights of Waterloo Station came up very fast in front of us.

  10

  We passed the station on our right and turned into Bayliss Road at the traffic lights. The only witnesses were some dossers taking comfort from the all-night coffee stall under the railway bridge. They were too busy dreaming of their long-lost mothers and the heat from the cardboard that they burnt under the arches to keep themselves alive to bother with us.

  Then Fiona lost us in a warren of Dickensian squares backed up to black brick warehouses with high, barred windows that slashed our headlights back at us. The squares were connected by narrow back alleys, double yellow-banded, still hung with gas lights, where you could shake off a Siamese twin, the turns and bends were so sharp and tortuous.

  We approached the estate where she lived from the Oval end and she swung round to her lock-up. We hid the car and ourselves away from prying eyes behind double-locked doors.

  We climbed out of the car and Fiona spoke for the first time. ‘I don’t believe that happened. Not for real.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go downstairs like I said?’

  ‘I didn’t know what was going on. I went down one level and back up the ramp. I saw the car that chased us going down and then I heard shots and I went and got my car.’

  ‘You could have been killed.’

  ‘You would have been killed.’

  She was right. ‘Thank Christ you did,’ I said. ‘Come here.’

  I held her tightly and she dug her fingernails into my arms. ‘Oh, Nick. My God, what have I done?’

  ‘You saved my life,’ I said. ‘Simple as that.’

  She went a bit green then under the fluorescent tube that lit the inside of her garage and I held her more tightly. ‘All right. I’m all right,’ she said.

  ‘I owe you one.’ Several, I thought.

  ‘Not between us, no debts,’ she replied. And we didn’t have to say any more.

  We picked our way through the broken glass and empty beer cans and dog shit to the entrance to the flats, and pretty soon we were heading upwards. I thought of all the lifts in the world that stank like toilets, and how far away and yet so close they were to neon signs that wrote BISTRO across the night, and the cold soup and warm duck salad and chocolate pudding
tasted sour in the back of my throat.

  We went through the security locks into her flat and bolted the door behind us. I went to the kitchen and found a litre of vodka and took a hit straight from the bottle. Fiona looked at me. I offered her a drink and she shook her head. I drank some more and the spirit was oily in my mouth and burnt my throat right down to my gut but didn’t warm me.

  Fiona took me by the hand and led me into the living room. I followed silently, still carrying the bottle. The room was shadowy, lit only by the hall light reflected through the half-open door.

  ‘Make love to me,’ she whispered, all throaty and shivery. ‘Here, now.’

  And the way she said it turned me on, so I did. Half on and half off the oatmeal-coloured sofa, both of us half dressed. I pushed her skirt up and tore at the thin piece of silk that barely covered her crotch. The two buttons that fastened it between her legs flew off and fell God knows where and her pubis was exposed, all wet and tangled under my hands. And when I entered her, her cunt was like a hot swamp. But I couldn’t come because as we slammed against each other I thought of what had happened and how close it had been. Each time I got near I heard the sound of the assassin’s leg breaking, and I lost it. She came once quickly, and then again, but all I got was sore and frustrated while my mind jumped around like a cat on a hot-plate. Afterwards we went upstairs to bed but I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking I was back in trouble, bad trouble, and this time Fiona was all the way in it with me.

  She went out like she had dropped off a cliff. I lay next to her for half an hour, smoking, then got up, pulled on a pair of jeans and went back to the vodka for comfort.

  I walked around the flat, going from one window to another, looking out over London. Everywhere lights gleamed like jewels but on the streets themselves I knew it was cold and dirty. I heard the sound of sirens all night long, some close, some far away. They moaned and screamed, and I imagined that they were searching for me on the hard blacktop. But I knew there were plenty of other clients of tragedy. People who were robbing and killing each other and burning down their own houses like rats made crazy on a treadmill.

  I looked up and there were blood spots on the moon. I watched it quarter the clear sky and the stars went out one by one as the dawn approached.

  We made the four o’clock and five o’clock and six o’clock news on LBC. ‘An incident’, it said. No busted up bodies lying in pools of ice water, no yellow Spitfire or gunshots. Just ‘an incident’ made ordinary by the tone of the newsreader’s voice, and I looked at my hands in the moonlight and they seemed to be as spotted with blood as the moon itself and shook like they had a life of their own.

  Around seven I went into Fiona’s bathroom cabinet. It was like a mini Boots the Chemist. She visited dodgy quacks in Harley Street about once a month and for a tenner or so got enough scrips to paper the walls. I found a bottle of Duromine half full of shiny turquoise and grey capsules. They were each equivalent to about a quarter of a bomber, so I swallowed three. I was going to have to be alert for the day but I didn’t want to be wired so I took a few DF 118s to buffer the speed and rolled a joint of DP and mixed some vodka with orange juice for vitamin C and natural goodness and to wash down the pills. By the time I woke Fiona at eight, I was a different man.

  ‘Shit,’ she said, when I stuck a cup of black coffee under her nose. ‘I had a terrible dream.’

  Then she saw my face and realisation dawned. ‘It wasn’t a dream, was it?’

  I shook my head and saw tears fill her eyes. ‘Keep it together, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Don’t go on me now. You saved our lives. You did right. They wouldn’t be crying over us this morning.’ I squeezed her shoulder. ‘You were great.’

  ‘It was so unreal.’

  ‘Real enough that we’re on the news.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Relax, no names, no car reg, nothing to tie us in.’ She fell back on to her pillow and the coffee slopped over the side of the mug.

  ‘I got that bastard good and proper, didn’t I?’ she said, and grinned, and I knew she was all right. South London girls – I fucking love ’em.

  ‘What are you doing today?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Good, I’m going to need a chauffeur. We’ve got places to go, people to see.’

  ‘Who? Where?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet, but I’ll know the places when we get there and the people when I see them. Now get up, shower, dress, and let’s go.’

  11

  Fiona put on Chinos and a leather jacket. I wore similar. We looked like we were going out on a bombing raid over Berlin.

  ‘Got any tools in that garage of yours?’ I asked.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Screwdrivers, spanners.’

  ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘I’m going to get you a new set of number plates for your car.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘It’s a V-reg, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From any V-reg car we can find in a quiet spot.’

  ‘Swop them?’ she asked.

  ‘Steal them. We’ll keep yours.’

  ‘But I thought you said there was nothing about the car on the news?’

  ‘So I did. But that doesn’t mean the boys in blue don’t have the number. The attendant in the garage could’ve got it as we drove out, and it doesn’t hurt to have a spare set of plates, just in case.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  We went down to the garage and got the car and cruised the streets for a bit. I spotted a V-registered Granada Ghia parked up an alley behind a launderette and had the plates off in less than two minutes. We drove to a back street in Brixton and with a Phillips screwdriver I punched extra holes in the plates and tore a fingernail getting the registration off the Spitfire, then fitted the new plates neatly into place and hid the originals under the carpet in the boot.

  ‘Can’t do much about the colour,’ I said. ‘We’ll just have to live with it.’

  I got Fiona to drive me to my office. The telephone was ringing when we arrived. I hitched myself up on the edge of the desk and picked up the receiver. It was cold in the room and Fiona lit the gas fire. ‘Sharman,’ I said.

  ‘Teddy.’

  ‘Hi, Teddy. What’s cooking?’

  ‘Not a lot my end. Uncle’s in front of the beak this afternoon. I’m going down.’

  ‘I need to see you first.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Someone tried to kill me last night.’

  ‘Straight?’

  ‘It’s on the news.’

  ‘Christ, what happened?’

  ‘They didn’t succeed,’ I said dryly.

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Where are you?’ I asked.

  ‘At home.’ He didn’t elaborate.

  ‘Give me a clue, where’s that, Teddy?’

  ‘Peckham.’

  ‘A lovely spot.’

  ‘Get off my case, man.’

  ‘Hey, don’t talk about cases. You’re speaking to someone who was almost brown bread last night. And it wouldn’t just have been me.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘The woman I was with.’

  ‘Yeah, man,’ he said slowly. ‘Sorry. Forget I said it.’

  ‘Right. Now it doesn’t take great deduction to work out that it probably had something to do with Emerald’s little problem. I knew I should have nished the whole deal.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘And now I think I need to see Mr Lupino, and sharpish.’

  ‘You reckon he was behind it?’

  ‘How the hell do I know? But if he was, it’s worth letting him know I don’t frighten that easy.’ Frighten, who was I kidding? ‘And I’m not on intimate terms with the gentleman. Your little firm obviously is.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Cancel seeing Em. Come here instead.’

  ‘Where’s here?’

  ‘My office.’ I told him where it wa
s.

  ‘And?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you know how to get through to Lupino?’

  ‘I’ve got a number.’

  ‘Bring it.’

  ‘I’ll be with you in an hour.’

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  ‘Bye,’ he said and hung up.

  I picked up the receiver again and rang Endesleigh. He was in court, due back after lunch. I left my name but no message and put the receiver down. The telephone rang again immediately.

  ‘Sharman,’ I said again.

  ‘Mister Dark wants to see you.’ The voice was hoarse and Cockney and didn’t fill me with bonhomie. Just the way he chose his words pissed me off.

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Jack Dark,’ the voice replied.

  I said not a word, just stayed with the telephone receiver getting warm in my hand and looked at Fiona still sitting by the fire. She looked up and smiled, although it seemed a little forced. I winked back.

  ‘Are you there?’ the voice asked after a moment. Its tone was hoarser and the accent harder as though the speaker was used to people he called up paying strict attention to his wishes, if not being so terrified that they just babbled away in overdrive. I wasn’t impressed.

  ‘Yes, I’m here,’ I said, and wished I was somewhere else.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. I don’t want to see Jack Dark, whoever he is, and don’t bother to give me any cryptic clues until I fall in. I guarantee I won’t.’

  ‘Mister Dark is a very important man.’

  ‘That’s purely subjective,’ I said.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Who or what’s important to one person, in other words you, may be of sublime disinterest to another person, in other words me.’