Paint It Black

by Mark Timlin

  ‘It’s ’armless, that gear. You should try one. It might put you in a better mood.’

  ‘No thanks. I don’t take things like that.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ said Paula. ‘According to Jude, you’re always at the dope.’

  She was right of course. I couldn’t argue with that. But it’s different when it’s your daughter. A lot different, believe me. Just have one of your own and see.

  ‘Not when I was her age,’ I said.

  Paula’s sneer became more pronounced.

  I turned back to Eno and Spider. ‘What the hell were you thinking of, bringing these two with you? Judith’s only fourteen and Paula’s the same. You realise that the police are looking for them?’

  Eno’s face turned from red to a sickly green and he looked first at Spider, then at Paula. ‘They told us they were sixteen.’

  ‘I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means, son,’ I said. ‘If anyone’s messed with my daughter–’

  ‘No,’ protested Eno, taking a step back. ‘They said it was all right. That no one would miss them.’

  ‘And if you believed them, you must be more stupid than you look,’ I said, and clenched my fists.

  ‘Relax,’ said Paula. ‘No one’s touched her. I made sure of that.’ She seemed to be extremely self-possessed for one so young. Much more than I’d been at that age. But maybe they make them tougher north of the border. ‘It was just a laugh,’ she went on. ‘An adventure. Things were boring at home. We fancied getting away for a few days.’

  ‘A bit of a holiday,’ I said sarcastically.

  She ignored the sarcasm. ‘That’s right. A weekend break. You know the sort of thing.’

  ‘But your weekend break involved calling in the police of two countries and frightened your mum and Judith’s half to death. Not to mention me.’

  ‘You’ll get over it,’ said Paula.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That makes me feel much better.’

  ‘So what now?’ said Eno.

  ‘Now I take these two back where they came from, and if Judith comes down all right, it’ll be the last you hear of me. The police haven’t been told about you. But if she doesn’t, or if I find out that anything bad happened to her whilst she was with you, I come back and find you. I don’t care how far you run, believe me I’ll do it. Then I’ll finish what I started outside by the fire. By the time I’ve done with you, your mates will think you’re related to Colonel Sanders. Get me?’

  He nodded. He knew that I meant it and I knew he knew.

  ‘Where are the rest of your pals, by the way?’ I asked.

  ‘Gone into Banbury in the microbus to get something to eat and scope the pubs. We stayed behind to mind the kids.’

  ‘Right. Paula, get any stuff of yours and Judith’s you want to take and let’s go.’

  ‘I’m not coming,’ said Paula.

  ‘Yes you are.’

  ‘You going to make me?’

  ‘No,’ said Dawn. ‘I am. I used to be a little bitch like you, now I’m a big bitch. Big enough to take you on any time.’

  ‘Get fucked,’ said Paula.

  Dawn’s right hand snaked out and caught her round the side of the face with a sound like a gunshot. Paula’s head flew back and I could clearly see the imprint of Dawn’s fingers on her cheek.

  ‘Rule one,’ said Dawn. ‘Respect your elders.’

  Paula put her hand up to her face and tears leaked from her eyes. ‘You cow,’ she said.

  Dawn’s other hand caught her on the other side of her face. ‘Rule two,’ she said. ‘Obey rule one or you’ll regret it.’

  ‘Get your stuff,’ I said. Then raised my voice. ‘Laura. Bring Judith. We’re leaving.’

  Reluctantly Paula went back behind the curtain and I heard a mumble of female voices, and she returned a few moments later with a small carry-all and a rucksack. Laura followed her supporting Judith who was still singing to herself as she came.

  At that moment, seeing the two of them there, my heart almost broke.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get outta here.’

  Everyone but the two babies left the bus and we walked into the glare of the Range Rover’s brights, but before we got to the vehicle a voice said, ‘Stay where you are,’ and half a dozen figures walked from behind the Vogue. I recognised them as the inhabitants of the bar of the Poacher’s Friend, Tweed Jacket at the front. All were armed with shotguns or wicked-looking farm implements that I imagined during the day they used to eviscerate innocent dumb animals.

  There were four guns in all. Tweed Jacket toted a serious-looking pump, the bloke he’d been talking to at the bar had a regular double-barrelled shotgun with a lot of fancy scrolling on the metal that might have been a Purdey. There was a young kid, not much older than Paula, toting an old single-barrelled job that looked like it had come out of the ark, and another geezer, a chinless wonder in a green Barbour, had an over-and-under. He didn’t look too happy about the whole thing and I fancied he was the weak link in the chain.

  ‘I might’ve guessed you were with this scum,’ said Tweed Jacket.

  ‘I’m with the two women I was with at the pub,’ I said. ‘And these two girls.’ I indicated Paula and Judith. ‘One is my daughter and she isn’t feeling too well. I’d like to leave now without any unpleasantness.’

  I’d’ve liked to take his pump action shotgun, stick it up his backside and keep firing till it was empty, but I didn’t think it was politic to say so.

  ‘You’re going nowhere,’ said Tweed Jacket.

  ‘And who’s going to stop us?’

  ‘We are. These aren’t toy guns.’

  ‘And we’re not some poor animals you can just blow away at your heart’s content,’ I said. ‘And we’re not a bunch of hippies you can frighten off by showing them a couple of shotguns. I’ve had people point guns at me before, son. They’re easy to point but hard to use. Ain’t that right, squire?’ I aimed the question at the ice cream in the Barbour.

  He licked his lips and said, ‘Maybe we’d better leave it, Tom.’

  ‘Maybe you’d better,’ I said. ‘You’ve walked into a situation that you know nothing about and doesn’t concern you. And I suggest you turn around, go back to the boozer, buy each other a load of drinks and tell yourselves how brave you’ve been.’

  Tom in the tweed jacket didn’t take kindly to my advice. He stepped closer and stuck the barrel of his gun in my chest.

  I hate that.

  ‘OK,’ I said placatingly. ‘What do you want us to do?’

  Tom smiled. It wasn’t a pretty sight. ‘You all move round out of the way. We’re going to drive these vehicles up to the motorway, then disable them so that you can’t come back. If you do as you’re told, no one will be hurt.’

  ‘What about our Range Rover?’ I asked.

  ‘That too.’

  Like fuck, I thought. ‘My daughter is sick,’ I said. ‘We need transport.’

  ‘Too bad,’ said the geezer with the Purdey.

  ‘Let them go, Tom,’ said the guy in the Barbour. ‘The girl doesn’t look too well.’

  ‘Probably on drugs,’ said Tom.

  He was right, but it was none of his business.

  ‘This is public land,’ I said. ‘You’ve got no right –’

  The geezer with the Purdey swung it at my head, which was his big mistake. Instead of jumping back, I moved in, wrenched it out of his grasp, nutted him on the forehead, which probably hurt me as much as it did him, but surprised him more, turned the gun round and stuck it into Tom’s face. ‘Drop the gun,’ I said.

  He made no move to obey and I thumbed back both hammers on my shooter and said, ‘I will fucking use this. I’ll blow your head off then piss in your neck.’ That told him. Hey, I almost frightened myself.

  He did as he was told that time.

  ‘The rest of you, the same. All weapons on the ground now, or I’ll use this fucker.’

  There was a clatter as the guns and other utensils hit
the deck. Dawn went for the pump and came up and covered the men, and shit, the look on her face frightened me more than all of them put together had, so Christ knows how they felt.

  ‘Now get lost,’ I said. ‘Go back where you came from and leave these people alone.’

  They made no move to leave and Dawn shoved the barrel of the pump hard into Tom’s stomach, so hard that he bent almost double from the force of the blow. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘There are children here.’ The men shuffled where they stood, before silently vanishing into the darkness behind the lights of the Vogue.

  The seven of us stood for a moment before Eno broke the silence. ‘Thanks, man,’ he said. ‘You saved us a lot of hassle there.’

  ‘I saved you fuck all,’ I said harshly. ‘Those cunts were holding guns on my family. And they were going to take our motor. I need it to get Judith back to our hotel. I couldn’t give a fuck for you, you stupid little shit.’ And I hit him across the face with the barrel of the gun I was holding. I’d had enough. More than enough of arseholes taking the piss and I wanted some payback.

  ‘That was for giving my daughter bad dope,’ I said.

  The blow probably broke his nose, from the amount of blood and snot that poured out of his nostrils and the way he cried as he fell to his knees in front of us.

  I threw the gun down and Dawn tossed the pump beside it. ‘Come on, you lot,’ I said. ‘Let’s get the fuck outta here.’

  We went to the Range Rover and I used the key to spring the central locking. Paula didn’t look too happy, but Dawn grabbed her arm and dragged her along.

  I climbed in behind the wheel and stabbed the key into the ignition and fired up the motor, but as it caught I heard the sound of another engine and a VW Microbus pulled in behind us blocking our exit back to the road.

  ‘Shit,’ I said as the doors of the bus opened and half a dozen or more hippies piled out.

  I whacked the Range Rover into four-wheel drive, slapped the gear stick into second and took off across the field away from the newcomers. As we went I saw Spider kneel, then stand again with a shotgun, long and ugly in her grasp.

  Shit, I thought, the guns, I’d forgotten about them. ‘Get down,’ I shouted. ‘On the floor,’ and I slammed my foot down hard on the accelerator and as the Vogue fishtailed past her, she fired. The first blast blew in the side window at the back filling the car with chunks of safety glass and shotgun pellets, the second slammed against the back of the truck.

  Not a tyre I thought. Please God, not a tyre.

  The Range Rover reached the edge of the field, ploughed through the waist-length grass there, then the brush between two trees, and I saw for a brief second in the headlights a fence which disintegrated as the front bumper slammed into it, then the ground dropped and the front of the car went into a ditch, the note of the engine changed and I thought we were stuck. I dropped the gear lever down another notch and the front of the motor lifted and the back wheels went down into the gulley. The car slid sideways, then the wheels caught and we were up the other side, through another fence, the wood bouncing across the bonnet, and speeding through a field full of wheat or corn that rattled against the side of the car as we beat a trail through it. Then the car destroyed a final fence and I wrestled the Range Rover round on to a rutted lane. I spun the wheel to the right and the motor took off like a scalded cat in the direction that led us away from the camp and towards the lights of Banbury that I could see reflected redly on the dark sky in front of us.

  ‘Is everyone all right?’ I asked, as I fought the wheel of the Range Rover.

  ‘Paula’s got a cut on her face,’ said Dawn. ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘How’s Judith?’ I asked.

  ‘She seems all right,’ said Laura. ‘But we should get her to a hospital.’

  ‘No hospitals,’ I said. ‘That’ll bring in the law and I don’t fancy talking to them tonight. When we get back to the hotel we’ll get a doctor in.’

  I thought my ex-wife was going to argue, but for once she kept quiet, and I kept on driving.

  After about a quarter of a mile the lane ended at a minor road, which in its turn led us to a roundabout with a signpost for the town centre. I took the second turning off the roundabout and within ten minutes drove the Vogue into the car park at the back of our hotel.

  We all piled out of the car, and I picked up Judith in my arms and walked through the back entrance of the hotel and into the foyer. As I went, she suddenly opened her eyes, looked up at me and said, ‘Daddy, I love you.’

  I’d never been happier to hear any four words in all my life, and I looked down into her face and said, ‘I love you too, baby.’

  Inside the reception area a young blonde in a grey suit was on duty. She looked in astonishment at our little band, and I said, ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’

  Judith giggled, which told me that her rather poor sense of humour, inherited from me, was still intact. ‘Sorry?’ said the blonde in reply.

  ‘Do you have a local doctor on call?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s my daughter. She’s taken something she shouldn’t, and I want her looked at.’

  ‘There’s a hospital in town with a casualty department.’

  ‘Not a hospital,’ I said, echoing my earlier words to Laura. ‘Not unless the doctor thinks it’s absolutely necessary. She seems to be all right, but I want her checked over.’

  ‘We do have an emergency number we can call.’

  ‘Then call it. I don’t mind paying. We’ll be upstairs in . . . what’s your room number, Laura?’ I said to my ex-wife.

  ‘Two-twenty-eight.’

  ‘Two-twenty-eight,’ I said to the blonde. ‘Tell him to be as quick as he can,’ and still carrying Judith, I went to the stairs and up to the second floor, closely followed by the rest.

  Laura opened the door of her room and turned back the bed. I laid Judith on the bottom sheet and said, ‘Get her undressed and tucked up. Dawn, take Paula to our room.’

  Dawn did as I said and left, taking Paula with her, and as Laura stripped Judith down to her T-shirt and pants I said, ‘We’ll see what the doctor has to say. If he says hospital, then hospital it is. Otherwise she can stay here. I’ll sit up with her. You can go in with Dawn and Paula, unless you’d rather I got you another room.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine. But I still think hospital would be best.’

  ‘I think she’s OK,’ I said. ‘She’s awake, just about, and doesn’t seem any the worse for wear.’

  ‘We could have been killed out there,’ said Laura. ‘All of us.’

  ‘But we weren’t. Except for a couple of scratches we’re fine.’

  ‘Are you going to tell the police we’ve found her?’

  ‘Sure. As soon as the doctor’s gone,’ and as if on cue the phone rang. It was reception telling us that the doc was on his way up.

  He knocked at the door a few moments later, and Laura opened it to admit a sixtyish man in an olive mac carrying a Gladstone bag.

  ‘Doctor Saunders,’ he introduced himself. ‘I believe there’s a young lady here who’s not feeling too well.’

  ‘Our daughter, Judith,’ I said. ‘She’s been fed some drugs. An E spiked with heroin.’

  ‘A brown beefburger,’ he said. ‘We get lots of them round here.’

  ‘Will she be all right?’ asked Laura.

  ‘I’ll have to see. No history of epilepsy, asthma or heart disease?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘No,’ my ex-wife and I said in tandem.

  ‘She should be OK then,’ said Doctor Saunders. ‘Let’s have a look-see.’

  He pulled back the covers from Judith’s bed and did an examination, talking to her as he went, and eliciting at least some response, which seemed hopeful. After ten minutes he tucked her back under the duvet and said, ‘She’ll be all right. She’s a very healthy young female. But she might not be if she keeps taking the tablets.’

  �
��We’ll try and make sure she doesn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Good. Times have changed. Once it was a drop of alcohol or a joint. Now little children are taking drugs that can kill a bull.’

  ‘Thanks, Doctor,’ I said. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘With Judith. Nothing. She’ll sleep it off by morning. Just try and make sure someone stays awake with her all night. If there’s any change in her condition, get her down to the hospital.’

  ‘We’ll do that,’ I said.

  ‘Any other patients?’ he asked me. ‘Apart from you of course. You look like you’ve bumped your head.’

  I felt the knot in the middle of my forehead where I’d given the geezer with the double-barrelled shotgun a Glasgow kiss. ‘I’ll survive,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sure you will. But let me look anyway,’ he said back, and took me under the light and made a humming sound in the back of his throat as he checked me over. ‘Not too bad,’ he said. ‘There’s a small break in the skin. Do you want me to dress it?’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ I said. ‘But there’s another girl in a room down the corridor. She got hit with some flying glass.’

  ‘Quite an evening you’ve had,’ he said.

  ‘Not one of our best.’

  ‘Let’s have a look at her then,’ he said, and I took him out of the room and down to the double room that Dawn and I were sharing, where she and Paula were drinking coffee and digging into a huge pile of sandwiches that they’d ordered from room service.

  ‘All right for some,’ said Doctor Saunders, but refused the offer of a snack. I wasn’t so shy, and helped myself to some food and drink, and Dawn took a cup of coffee and a plate of beef and ham on brown up to Laura, whilst the doctor took a look at Paula’s neck where there was a dry trickle of blood that disappeared into the top of her sweatshirt.

  ‘She’ll be fine too,’ he said after a minute, when he’d cleaned the slight wound, dabbed on some antiseptic and put on a plaster. ‘But might I suggest that you and your friends and family try and lead a quieter life in future?’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea, Doc,’ I said in reply. ‘I’ll see what we can do.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be off now,’ he said. ‘Unless someone else in your party is lying with flesh wounds in another part of the hotel.’