by P. R. Black
He grinned at Vonny. ‘But we’re forgetting the star prize.’ He unlocked the boot, tugged it open, sighed, then slammed it back shut before locking it again.
‘Nothing,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Still. It’s done. I think we’ll do as you say, Vonny, and get someone to take it away.’
Susie said: ‘Hey, maybe you should both pose in front of the car? It’ll be an amazing shot.’
‘Nah,’ Seth said. ‘I don’t think we should focus on the car. It’s a rust bucket. Let’s ignore it. Give me a hand and I’ll cover it up with the tarp. I know a guy who works at a scrappie – he might give us a decent price for it. You get some guys who are into the classic cars. They’ll maybe pay for the bodywork. Big industry, these days. TV shows and all sorts – people like to see these things restored.’
Vonny frowned at this sudden volte-face by Seth, but she didn’t argue. She followed him out of the tangle of trees once they’d pulled the tarp back over the car, and Susie came after.
Vonny whispered in Seth’s ear: ‘Was there definitely nothing in the boot?’
‘Cross my heart. Go and have a look yourself. It was my first thought – that’s where the body will be. But no, all clear. Just the usual fluff and stuff you get in a car boot. I’ll check the seats as well, before you ask.’
‘Weird one, this,’ Vonny said.
‘For sure.’
Susie called out: ‘How about a shot or two out by the lake?’
12
Jim Lester kept the taxi for two minutes beyond the regulation five. He had the base call the mobile phone, and he even beeped the horn, before deciding he had a no-show. When he disengaged the handbrake, he grunted along with it, checked over his shoulder, spun the wheel savagely… and that’s when the twat appeared at the front of the block of flats.
Student, or someone who wanted to look like one. Tall, one of those rock star haircuts that he was sure had been out of fashion a long time – out of fashion when he was young – and a backpack over his shoulder. Trainers – new ones, as well, would you believe. Legs last seen on a heron, though not quite so elegant. The kicker was the biker’s jacket. Biker’s jacket! This prick would fall off a tricycle, never mind a motorbike.
He strolled, strolled by God, over to the taxi. Jim Lester bit his lip, hard.
The student grinned and raised a hand. ‘Sorry, mate, I was just saying “night night” to your mum.’
‘What? What did you just say?’
‘I said, I was saying “night night” to my bird.’
‘You taking your time, son? Because if you are, you’re taking my money.’
A sullen look came into the young guy’s face, then. He was pale, with thin slashes for eyebrows. Bereft of any genial expression, the large dark eyes were bloodshot, and might have been difficult to look at if you weren’t Jim Lester. Jim Lester saw his hard stare, and raised him.
‘Sorry,’ the kid said, tugging open the passenger-side door.
‘Quite all right. You had the manners to say so. And that’s fine. Where we off to?’
‘We’re doing a pick-up around the corner. At 24 Bournebank Street. Then we’re off for a jaunt around the locks.’ The kid sat down, resting the backpack beside him, then engaging the seatbelt.
‘A jaunt? You didn’t order a jaunt when you called the base,’ Jim said.
The young guy nodded towards the meter. ‘I’ve got the money, if you’ve got the time.’
‘Well, I’ve got an airport job at half twelve… but yeah, OK. You’re on.’
‘My man!’ The young guy leaned forward and offered a fist to bump. Jim Lester bit his lip again, and offered a half-hearted bump in return.
Bournebank Street was another dump of a block of flats. The previous pick-up point had been a block on the road down, and had been good at one point. But Bournebank Street had never been a good place. Jim’s wires were buzzing the minute he parked up; one of the windows on the lower-ground floor was boarded up, the outer edges blackened with smoke damage. The car ticked into silence as Jim cut the engine. There was no one on the street; no one came to the windows.
‘Hope you don’t work on the railways,’ Jim muttered, checking his watch.
‘They’re coming now,’ the young guy said, tapping something into his phone.
Jim saw some movement in his wing mirror. His jaw dropped as he spotted someone jogging up towards the car. If his wires had buzzed before, they were shrieking now. He caught a glimpse of another figure approaching from behind, this one much thicker-set. He reached for the keys. It was too late; the passenger doors on either side burst open and two figures got in.
Then something prodded Jim in the guts. He turned to the left, and saw the kid with the haircut grinning, and staring straight into his eyes.
He held a hunting knife perhaps twelve inches long from the hilt to the end of the cruel, serrated blade.
Jim’s words stuck in his throat.
In the wing mirror, two horribly familiar faces loomed. One was enormous; when he sat down, the left-hand side of the taxi sagged. On the right was a face that matched that of the person sat to his left in the front seat, although his skull was shaved and his neck was tattooed with orange, red and black flames.
‘Take us to the locks, please, Jim,’ said the kid in the front with the biker’s jacket, still smiling, but not blinking. ‘In your own time.’
‘Christ’s sake, lads,’ Jim said, his hands quivering as he tried to get a grip on the ignition. ‘What’s going on here?’
The shaven-headed lad sat forward. ‘You know what’s going on here, Jim. But drive to the locks. We’ll tell you when to stop.’
The immense man in the left-hand back seat said nothing. He simply glared at Jim, two tiny black eyes in a set of thick eyebrows. Jim saw that he was wearing a white collar and a black tie, loosened about the throat.
The knife stayed at Jim’s belly. ‘Go on, Jim. I dare you,’ the young guy to his left said, and laughed.
Jim’s feet quivered on the pedals as the car moved off, heading into greener spaces.
‘Won’t keep you in suspense,’ said the shaven-headed man – Sebastian, obviously the twin brother of the dark-haired lad in the front seat. ‘We’re here on behalf of Ally. He’s indisposed at the moment, you could say, but he sends his regards.’
‘How’s he getting on?’ Jim said. The question, and the querulous tone it was delivered in, made the two brothers laugh, and the massive, twenty-stone man half-smiled.
‘He’s peachy, Jim. Still a bit sore about that bit of business from a little while ago. It took us a while to track you down. Minicabs, our sources told us. They were right, too. Well, how do you get a hold of a minicab driver, I asked myself?’
‘What business is that, Sebastian?’ Jim asked, querulously.
‘Don’t mess us about, Jim.’ The shaven-headed young man leaned forward, and the sunlight caught a piercing nestled in his fine, sandy eyebrow. ‘Dan Grainger wouldn’t tell us anything, and neither did Mark. I respect them for that. We tried to persuade them. Not many people can withstand that kind of persuasion. Can they, Jay?’
‘Nah,’ said the immense man. ‘They usually start screaming, the minute I start on the balls.’
‘But fair play to Dan, as I said. A fitting death. You’ll have heard he didn’t really kill himself, I suppose? And you’ll know he’d rather have cut his own hand off than harm a hair on his son’s head. Or someone else’s hand, more likely.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jim croaked. But he did know. They were getting close to the locks, now, a quiet road running parallel to the canal.
‘Some pad he had. No sign of the stuff, mind.’ Sebastian scratched his tattooed neck. ‘You know what we mean, don’t you? The stuff? Our stuff?’
‘Lads, take this up with Simmy. He’ll tell you – I don’t know anything about that.’
‘Simmy’s dead,’ Sebastian said. ‘Before he drowned, he agreed with everything we said. He
agreed that the deal was ours, and Dan had taken a bit of a liberty. And he told us that you tipped Dan off about the shipment coming in. Places, dates, times… that’s what you’re good at, apparently.’
‘If you’ve got the money, he’s got the time,’ his dark-haired brother said from the passenger seat. ‘Thing is, it wasn’t just any shipment.’ He jabbed Jim in the belly with the knife. ‘This was the big one. The one that was going to put us over the top. The big ones only come in once in a lifetime, really. That was it. Ally was really, really disappointed when you tipped Dan off, you know. Do you know, lads, he actually cried?’
Jim looked like he wanted to cry, himself. Scenarios flashed through his mind. Crash into the canal; ditch the car; roll out onto the road; take his chances.
Instead, he began to talk. ‘Dan set it up from start to finish. He said he wanted the competition to be put in its place. He said… he said he wanted to see what you’d do.’
‘We know all that,’ Sebastian said, impatiently. ‘We also know the stuff hasn’t been moved yet. If it has, it went offshore again, sharpish. But we don’t think it did. We think it’s still out there. We went to a lot of effort, Jim. I went to a lot of effort, personally. And I know Ally Cramond put everything on the line to get that deal. So, do us a favour. Cut to the chase. Tell us where it is.’
‘It’s on Dan Grainger’s estate. It’s somewhere on the grounds.’
‘We searched that house, top to bottom. It wasn’t in the house. I can tell you that for a fact. It wasn’t in any safes, his wife’s knicker drawer, anywhere.’
‘He hid it somewhere. On the estate. That’s all I know.’
‘Where?’ The kid in the passenger seat increased the pressure on the blade. Now it was starting to hurt, jabbing into Jim’s skin, and he shrank from it, belly muscles undulating beneath the fat.
‘I don’t know.’
‘We’ll find out if that’s true,’ Seb said. He gestured over Jim’s shoulder, towards an overgrown place hiding a boarded-up industrial unit. Jim knew this used to be an office block, long gone to the rats from the canal, a place even the squatters shunned. ‘We’ll find out just here. Pull up, Jim. That’s it.’ He grinned; the slant of his mouth matched the angle of the flames creeping up his neck.
‘Honest… I think it was hidden in something, I’m not sure what…’ But by then, Jay had disgorged himself from the car with surprising speed, and had already tugged open the driver’s side door. A clamp in the form of flesh and five fingers settled on Jim’s shoulder; from the other side, the knife went to his throat, right under the chin. Jim whimpered as he was pulled out, as a father might lift a son onto his shoulders. And then his last day truly began.
13
On the day the paper went to print, Vonny took a trip to the shops. Seth indulged himself with a lie-in, in the caravan. He dozed, watching the wood pigeons’ claws scrape the skylight above.
Then the phone began to buzz on the table next to his head, startling him.
It was his mother, in tears.
‘Hey, slow down,’ Seth said, heart racing. ‘What’s going on?’
‘It’s Jake,’ she wheezed. ‘We’re at hospital. He’s being seen to now. He got striped, on his way to school this morning.’
Seth closed his eyes. ‘You’re joking – Jake? Our Jake? How bad?’
‘They cut his face. They’re putting stitches in now, Seth. They got him across the cheek. He got away, but lost a lot of blood. He won’t be the same, Seth.’
Seth’s hand tightened on the phone. ‘When did this happen? Today?’
‘An hour, two hours ago. They spotted him while they were going past on a bus…’
‘Who spotted him? Those idiots he’s running about with?’
‘No. Different ones. He owes them money, Seth. Won’t say how much. He needs help. They threatened him before.’
‘Then why didn’t you tell me this before?’
‘You had enough on, with the house and the music and everything. I didn’t want to worry you.’
Seth pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyes were tearing up – in fury, as well as sorrow. He tried to picture Jake’s face, slashed open. He envisioned blood on the collar of his school shirt.
His baby brother, fourteen years younger. His mother and father’s little surprise. The boy who was going to make it; the boy with the GCSEs.
‘Tell me everything you know, Mum. Start from the start.’
*
Vonny triggered the remote control from her car, cursing as she struggled to stop her phone slithering from her grasp. The sensor responded and the gate opened inwards. She was never sure if she had simply imagined a red eye winking at her from the digital display. Once the door had made its ninety-degree turn, she drove the car along the driveway. The gravel crunched underneath the wheels – a sound from a thirty-year-old TV show about yuppies; a sound from a script; a sound she would have never associated with a house she owned, let alone a plot this big – and she knew that the driveway had been laid out properly, so that it didn’t spew debris here and there under the wheels. Right kind of gravel, sourced from the right kind of quarry. Sometimes she hated herself.
The workmen were on site when she pulled up close to the house, and she waved at Devin as he came out to greet her from the balcony. A week of tests had come to an end; they’d even installed the Wi-Fi and changed all their passwords, although the official opening of the cinema room was yet to take place.
One of the workmen appeared as she came out of the car, dragging a bag of shopping with her for the caravan – the youngest-looking one, with his puppy-fat face bulging out from beneath his hard hat like bedding hastily stuffed into a cupboard. ‘Nice picture of you and the boss,’ he said, proffering a newspaper.
She smiled. ‘Who’s the boss, then?’
The workman blanched. ‘I meant, the big fella. Seth.’
Seeing his terror, Vonny ignored the remark, and unrolled the paper. She already had three copies, of course, hidden among the bags of shopping – for her and Seth, and for their families. It was a weekly, probably facing the same issues as every other print publication these days until they finally disappeared. Its lead story was a council matter on wheelie bin collections. Stuffed in at the bottom right corner – and not as well separated from the lead item as she’d have liked – was a picture of Vonny, Seth and the nuclear yellow Datsun Cherry.
TREASURE TROVE – Brenwood Green couple hit the jackpot again! See pages 3, 4–6
‘I’m a page three girl,’ Vonny said, listlessly, though the paper visibly quivered between her fingers. The pages were largely taken up with a photoshoot of the new house. It looked wonderful, but there, again, was the Datsun Cherry, a glaring yellow stain, dead centre. ‘Hmm. The car’s the star. Not how I wanted it to go.’
‘Should get a few viewers for the house, eh?’ he said to her.
‘Not really the intention. Is it OK if I take this?’
‘Well sure… I was just heading to the, eh, toilet… In fact you’re fine, you’re fine,’ he said, backing off, and blushing.
She let herself into the caravan, and Seth grunted a greeting.
‘Have they shown it to you?’ she said.
Seth, who was sat in front of a bowl of cereal at their minuscule fold-down table, nodded. The caravan would have appeared ludicrously cramped to any observer, but over-cosy-to-the-point-of-asphyxia accommodation was nothing new to Vonny and Seth. ‘The paper? Yep. The car’s the star, after all that,’ he muttered. ‘You probably warned me that might happen.’
‘I’m not sure I did, but, yeah – probably.’ She laid the paper down. ‘Susie has caught the breakfast bar in the kitchen really well, though, I have to say.’
‘She shouldn’t have done that. I mean… It’s a good story, and all. She used it for a news story on the front page – it’s a good lead. We said that. I just…’
Vonny sat down beside him. ‘Want to tell me what’s bothering you about the car?’
‘Exactly what you told me,’ he said, without a pause. ‘Exactly the thing that bothered you, and that I should have paid more attention to. The possible reasons why someone’s buried that car in among a load of thorn bushes and it should probably have stayed there. It could be stolen. It could have been involved in a crime.’
‘That being the case – why not burn it?’
Seth drummed his fingers. ‘Good question. Anyway. Done now, I suppose.’
‘Did you speak to the garage?’
‘I did. You were spot on – the guy almost swallowed his phone when I told him what we’d found. Might have to check the licence plate, make sure it’s kosher, check the previous owner, but… if it turns out it’s ours, he’s happy to take it off our hands. Decent enough fee. He was excited about the upholstery, would you believe – not too bothered about the engine being full of mouse shit. He said he’ll refit the engine and can sort out the bodywork. There’s always a market for these things.’
Vonny noticed he was still tense; that he wouldn’t look right at her as he spoke. ‘So. What is it, then?’
‘What is what?’
‘Come on. Want to tell me what else is bothering you?’
He shrugged. ‘Nothing. Just… the exposure. I’m all talk in the studio, but I’m a shy boy onstage. Plus… I now realise what a prick I looked in those clothes. It’s all to the good, though.’
‘Yeah, you said. Good marketing. You looked natty in your Toad of Toad Hall suit, incidentally.’
‘Toad of Toad Hall? Really?’
‘Sorry… I might have just thought that, but never said it out loud.’ Vonny snapped shut the newspaper. ‘Did you speak to Devin?’
Seth ate the last of the cereal, careful to fill his spoon with the remaining milk. ‘Yep. All systems go to move in on Tuesday.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. The house is just about complete, one or two things outstanding, here and there. He mentioned “snagging is never finished”, which is true. He said he wants to make a start on the garden next week.’
