Taking off up the street, feet pounding, my eyes peeled over the identical mansion blocks. Was it further up? Further down? I spun and twirled. Did the road narrow at some point?
“Er, bloody … bloody hell, what’s this? Hey, hey look there’s something buried in here …”
“Damn right, boy. Lemme see that.”
“Well bless my goodness, so there is. Well-spotted Mr Grayson.”
“Hold your horses old stick, I saw this first …”
Shit shit shit. I was panicking now, head thudding with voices. I checked my watch. Ten o’clock.
I scanned up and down the wide, empty street. What the hell was going on? Was I in Redcliffe Road by mistake? Redcliffe Crescent? Redcliffe Drive?
My heart thundered, a deadening bass-beat blocking out the voices in my ear.
“Is … fastened … try … here … me … Holy . . !”
I spun around crazily. This was definitely the place. I remembered the tree. The Pekinese poop underneath. The street lamp. The residents’ parking sign. And all the residents’ BM –
No. No, oh no.
Cursing spitty curses over and over, I slammed over to the van, hauling open the door, rummaging in the carrier bag, pushing the leaden chamois leather parcel aside and pulling out my mobile phone. I scrolled down and thumbed Laura’s number quickly, my earpiece crackling.
“Is this … ? Mah gawd, you know what we got here boy?”
“By jove, what a haul! What the bally bum-burps is it doing buried here do you think?”
“Stolen maybe? Someone stashing it?”
“Mah gawd …”
“Hello?”
“Laura. Laura shit, it’s me.” I paced and flapped and flustered. “The parking. It’s all … Shit, I can’t block the street. I’m not wide enough. I’m not fucking wide enough!”
“What are you talking about? Redcliffe Gardens? You’re definitely at Redcliffe Gardens?”
“Yes I’m at Redcliffe fucking Gardens! There’s nobody parked here! They’re all out screwing the third world and chivvying little Lottie to cello lessons. Christ, you could park Edward’s three fucking Bentleys across the middle of the street and you’d still have room for him to stroll about between them with his belt off. We need to rethink this. We need to rethink this now. Can you persuade Julio to come another route? I can’t block him here.”
“Too late. He’s headed your way now.”
“Now?”
“They’ve found the satchel. They’re arguing over it as we speak. Aren’t you listening? Julio’s headed across to the pub to set up. He’ll be passing you in … in about six minutes.”
“Six – ?!”
“Come up with something,” and the line went dead.
Holy crap. I tossed the mobile onto the van seat and tried to keep calm, pacing quickly, mind thudding. There was nothing else for it. I grabbed the keys from the steering column and hurried around to the back of the van. Throwing open the doors, I began to grab armfuls of memorabilia. Poster tubes, postcards, books, photographs, stills, display material, dumping it all to the wet tarmac. C-3PO, Bogart, Allen, Dorothy, cardboard rolled, cardboard stuck, paper fluttered and flew, photos splashed in great stripes of colour all over the road. Boxes brimming with junk, stacked one on top of the –
Blaaaaaaaaaaaare
I jumped, heart in my throat, dropping a box of black and white stills, sending them spilling out at my feet. I turned. A small Citroën 2CV was trying to pass.
Shit. Kicking boxes, kicking tubes, I scrabbled about with gritty fingernails, apologising, gathering the fluttering debris, clearing a narrow path.
“Jesus, man. Who the fuckin’ ’ell died an’ made you a Lollipop Lady?” the driver yelled.
I stopped. I turned.
In the windscreen, sat low, a ruddy, goateed face scowled, hairy hands waving. The driver pumped down the side window. “What tha fuck is all –”
It was then his turn to stop. He blinked, hairily.
No. No, not now. Why now? Why now?
His rusty door cracked, swinging open and he clambered out, expanding, filling the street with his wide pyjamas and fat boots. Christ knows how he fitted in the car. Citroën must have taken on some of the engineers from the TARDIS.
“You?!” he bellowed.
“Maurice,” I squeaked, chasing a wind-snatched Fantastic Four. “Maurice, God, how … er how are you? Sorry, you want to get through?” and I grabbed up a couple of stray tubes and stood to one side, boxes stacked about me, waving him past.
“What in fuck’s name do ye think you’re doin’, man?” he barked, peering at the mess. “Settin’ up a little off-shoot street stall here, eh? Settin’ up a little Earl’s Court annexe?”
“Look, look Maurice, I’m sorry, I haven’t time to –”
“You know you’re due in court on Monday, right? Three o’clock? You are aware of …” and he stopped, staring at the barricade of boxes at my feet. “Is this all your shit?”
“It … it is,” I said.
“You told me it was all lost in flooding?”
“It is. I-I mean it was. This is literally everything I have left. Six boxes. I lost as much as you did. I’m down to my last postcard. The shop is empty.”
He seemed to think about this for an agonising moment, before stepping forward and hefting up the top box in his thick arms. He turned and staggered back to his car with it.
“Maurice?!” I yelped. “What are you – ? Christ, no, Maurice, please!” I checked my watch.
10.02.
Opening his boot, he dumped the box inside and clomped back towards me.
“Thirty-six thousand pounds,” Maurice growled. He hefted up another box. “Thirty-six thousand pounds you took from me.” Again he lumbered to his car and dumped a box in his boot. “I guess the court will decide how best for you to repay it. But this’ll do for starters.”
“Maurice. Maurice not now. Please. Not now …”
“I trusted you with that stuff. Trusted you. Couldn’t be arsed to send off a little cheque though, could ye eh? Couldn’t be arsed to call a plumber. Too much fuckin’ trouble. That was my livelihood. That was every fuckin’ thing I had. You know what it’s like to lose every fuckin’ thing you had?”
“Yes!” I bellowed, feet almost leaving the floor. “Yes I do! Please, Maurice, you’ve got to –”
10.03.
“Christ, please Maurice, listen to me.” I danced about in a jive of panic. “I know how you feel, okay? I trusted someone too and now I’m about to lose everything I have, okay? Everything. I trusted someone but they screwed me and now I’m about to lose more than just money. My daughter, my wife, my home, my business, everything.”
“So now you know how it feels.”
“I do!” I yelled. “I do. Yes. Yes I know exactly how it feels. And I know … shit, I know it’s easier to get angry. Give up. Sell real estate for fat Irishmen when you should be saving the whale. I understand that.”
“Saving the whale?”
“I’m sorry, I’m babbling. And that’s because a green Bedford van is going to turn that corner in the next three minutes and I have to disable this Transit so I can get in the Bedford and do something unspeakable in the glovebox and I really am babbling now –”
“You really are babbling now.”
“I am, Maurice. But that’s because it’s important. I will come to the court on Monday. I will stand up at three o’clock and swear on a Bible and pay you back what I owe you. I will. But only if I do this thing first. If I don’t do this, then you won’t see me at three because I’ll have lost everything and nothing else will matter. I have to do this one thing. And this one thing means blocking this street which means you giving me those boxes back, right now, getting in your car and driving away very quickly and not asking any questions.”
Breathless, panting, I checked my watch. Four minutes past.
“Please.” I gripped his arms hard. “Learn to trust again. Start now. Get a job on a
trawler in the Arctic. Write your dad a letter. Trust me on this.”
“Trawlers? Write my what a – ? And trust you?”
“I don’t lie, Maurice. I fuck up. Oh I fuck up big. But I don’t lie. I used to. Lied to my wife. To my daughter. My father-in-law. But a few weeks ago I lied to a smelly man in a woollen hat about what a photograph was worth and I am never lying again.”
Maurice looked me in the eyes. Looked at the floor. At the grey November sky, finally turning and trudging back to his car, hefting up both boxes and returning them to my feet.
“If you’re conning me … ?”
I had to smile. I couldn’t help it. The smile of the helpless.
“Maurice, the last thing I have time for is conning you.”
“Then I’ll see you in court on Monday,” he said.
“Three o’clock,” I said, heart hammering. “I promise.”
He gave me a sideways look and turned, taking a slow walk to his car. Clambering in, he wheeled around the debris and sped off with a honk-honk.
10.05.
In a desperate flurry, I began to scatter the poster tubes about again, spreading out the heavy boxes, until I heard, distantly, amongst the sigh of traffic, a rev. Then a gear change. Louder.
Then louder still.
Leaping over the debris to the van, I heaved open the bonnet and stared dumbly at the filthy mess of boxes and pipes.
The revs were louder.
Shit. I bustled around to the cab, shoved the keys back in the steering column, grabbed the carrier bag and dived off the street, tumbling behind a low scrabby wall, clattering into some bins.
I lay there, heart hammering, chin in my chest, not daring to move.
My earpiece, loose, gave a crackle. People were talking. Three voices in urgent discussion.
The revs got louder. Louder still, blurring into the roar of a heavy engine.
The engine slowed. A horn hollered. And hollered again, loud and long like a wounded cat.
I shut my eyes.
Another horn. Longer. Louder.
Engine off.
The scrape of a van door. Angry footsteps, scuffing. Mumbling. Quickly.
Then the clang of a box being heaved into an empty van. And another.
Teeth tight, I rolled over onto my knees and peered over the brick.
Julio. Muttering, spitting, cursing, hurling my litter out of the road, checking his watch.
Head thundering, I lifted myself to my toes and fingertips and, sliding the heavy chamois from the bag, scuttled, low, out into the wide street. Quickly, feet flying fast, until I dropped again to the floor behind his van.
Licking dry lips, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the second set of keys Laura had provided. I swivelled on the ball of my feet with a wet squeak, raised up and slid the key into the lock.
Turning, it clicked and I felt the old doors sigh out of their frame.
With a wince, I eased open the back and stepped inside, keeping low, closing the doors behind me.
In the cool darkness, through the windscreen I could see Julio, still trying to clear the street of the bulging boxes of stills and 10×8s, checking his watch.
I pressed the earpiece in properly as I reached the front. An American voice was crackling.
“Take a seat, take a seat. Let me get some drinks and we’ll talk about how to split this.”
Squeezing through the gap in the front seats I reached out and flipped the catch on the glovebox, easing it open, praying that Julio –
Shit!
Glovebox crap began to spill out of the sides. A mobile phone, an A-Z, a tin of cough sweets all clattering to the metal floor of the cab. Panicking, I pushed through the seats, ribs crushing, scrabbling them all together, stuffing them back inside. The map, the sweets, the –
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
The jolt had knocked the mobile’s battery cover loose. I tried to click it back on, but it wouldn’t take. It … shit, it wouldn’t take.
No time. Dammit, no time.
Shoving it all back in, I reached into the glovebox and slid out a blue J-cloth, wrapped tight, holding something. About the weight of a brick. With the dull smell of dead batteries.
Quickly, laying it out on the seat, I unwrapped the gun, swapped it for the one in my cloth and wrapped it again, stuffing the blue parcel back into the glovebox and Julio’s blank revolver into my belt. I stole a quick low look through the windscreen to where Julio had been clearing the remains of the street to pass.
Had been.
Not any longer.
Panic rising, building, I felt my gut tense, hard and tight.
Footsteps. Near.
Outside. Approaching.
Heart leaping, I jolted back, tiptoeing panicked footsteps back, breathless, into the dark body of the van, hands out against the cool walls.
A crunch and a clang as the driver’s side door was wrenched, metal scraping metal.
“Now here we go genner’men. Let’s juss see if we can’t come to some kind’a agreement shall we?”
I ducked, low, almost double, edging backwards quietly against the metal shell.
Julio clambered into the van, muttering to himself.
“Jesus Christ, just have your booty-car sale wherever you like! Do not mind me! Christ, eight minutes past …” He buckled himself in and craned forward to the glovebox.
Breath held, crouched in a tight ball at the van’s rear, I waited, heart banging wildly in my ears over the crackle of distant voices.
“Awww fack!” Julio spat, the glovebox contents clattering to the floor. The back of his head disappeared as he bent to retrieve his phone and I stepped backwards quickly, falling against the door.
It held fast.
Crouched low, heart thundering, I flew my hands over the doors in the darkness, pushing, easing my weight against them silently.
Locked.
I started, spasming as the enging gunned into life beneath me. The shell rumbled, grumbled, vibrated. Mouth dry, head thudding, I began to panic. The van lurched forward with a crunch of gears.
No. No no no.
“Hello?” Julio barked from up the front. “Hello? Laura it me. I run late, get word to bossman, some arsehole park his … Hello? This fack battery. Hello … ? Hello?”
The van gunned and revved, squealing off, through the few remaining posters, buckling tubes and sending photos fluttering past the windscreen.
Throat tight, I lowered myself down, blank revolver pressed in the small of my back, hard against the cold metal of the rear doors, bouncing and bumping. Oblivious, Julio lurched the van left sharply, sending me toppling, hands out, clanging against the metal.
“Laura, can you hear … ? This damned thing …”
“He’s coming back,” Andrew was whispering in my ear. “He’s got drinks and he’s coming back. I-I’m not … I’m not sure about this …” I pushed the earpiece in harder, engine noise revving and echoing about me.
“Take it easy. Just take it easy.” Christopher. “Let the mark do the talking. Bag still secure under the Hulk there?”
I threw my hands out against the filthy aluminium, steadying myself, acceleration pushing me back, hard against the doors, skull banging and thumping with the jolts.
“Fuck it,” Julio spat, and in the silhouette of the windscreen ahead, he tossed his knackered phone among the faded dashboard crap of maps and cups. He churned the gears again and put his foot down with a blare of horn.
Crouched low, terrified, head full of noise, oil and rust, I closed my eyes and thought of Jane. Of Lana.
We headed west. Towards the pub. Towards Christopher. Towards Grayson. Towards Andrew.
Towards who the hell knew what.
twenty-eight
“And what? Yur suggestin’ we just trust you? Ah got no idea who you are, boy. Where the hell you get off –”
“That’s eighty grand’s worth of comic book – who should hold on to it? You?”
“Why the hell not me?”
/>
In the rolling tombola darkness of the freezing van, my watch said 10.14, my earpiece said the negotiations were going as planned and my bowels said they very, very much wanted to go home now, thank you very much.
I had managed to prop myself in the back corner, jammed low. Scruffy Converses against the peeling plastic of the rear wheel arch, my back hard against the door hinges, hilt of Julio’s gun gnawing my spine, I buried my chin in my chest, feeling the panicked heartbeat pound my skull. Bumping and bouncing, engine roaring in my head, Julio wheeled the Bedford left, my teeth tight against every pothole.
“A bond? What are you talking about, a bond?”
“To show you fellahs faith.”
“And how much faith did you have in mind?”
Swallowing hard in the half light, trying to keep a lid on the panic, I fumbled in my greasy jeans, tight pockets biting the skin on my cold hand, and I slid my mobile phone free. Hunching down even lower amongst the filthy black ridged floor and the snagging rusty edges, I tilted the phone at an awkward, wrist-aching crick to keep the dim screen light hidden and selected: Create Message. I jabbed away a predictive plea.
H … E … L …
HELLO
Delete, delete, delete.
Screw it.
Messaging off, I scrolled down the address book and thumbed the number, lowering my ear to the handset, joints screaming and pinching.
One ring.
Two rings.
God where the hell – ?
“You done? All swapped?” Laura crackled. “Where are you?”
“Shh, it’s all gone wrong,” I hissed, hunching low against the metal.
“I can’t hear you? Where?”
“Shhh! I’m in his van! I’m trapped in the back of the van!”
“Fifty thousand?”
“What? Fifty – ?”
“Cash. Divided between the pair of you guys, naturally.”
“I said can he see you?”
“What?”
Conman Page 38
