Lazy Blood: a powerful page-turning thriller

by Ross Greenwood

  Darren had taken to just going out in Will’s car whenever he felt like it. He had gone out one Saturday night in it and not come back until Monday morning. Will had missed a date with a girl from work because of it and he had been going spare as Darren’s phone had been turned off and he had been wondering how the hell he was going to get to work.

  Darren had finally walked through the door at seven a.m., looking like he hadn’t slept for a month, thrown the keys on the kitchen table next to where an astonished and exasperated Will was sitting and simply said ‘I’m going to bed’.

  He went to the fridge and got a bottle of Will’s mineral water out, walked out the room and up the stairs. Will couldn’t believe it. He had driven to work in a rage and returned ready for a showdown, but Darren didn’t get out of bed for two days. Eventually Will cornered him and delivered an ultimatum. ‘You have a month from today. I will be changing the locks.’

  He had expected a scary meltdown but Darren had surprised him and made him feel like he was in the wrong. Unbelievable. He had acknowledged his unreasonable behaviour, saying he hadn’t been taking his medication religiously and he knew it was time to go. He then thanked Will for putting up with him, saying he didn’t know what he would have done without his support.

  As Will recalled all this he gritted his teeth and resolved to put more effort in with Darren. Well, after he moved out anyway. He had promised to water Aiden’s hanging baskets so went out the front to do that. Who would have thought Aiden would end up so house proud. His house was like a show home, with classy furnishings and luxurious carpets. It was clean and felt airy and relaxing. It was massively annoying Will decided. He couldn’t believe his house was the exact mirror of Will’s. His own home could reasonably be called a shithole. It looked like the cast of Ben Hur had been round to continue the party after a particularly hot, dusty and thrilling chariot race.

  As he pondered not watering the plants so they died, he was startled by a car roaring down their street and with screaming brakes, juddered to a stop at the end of Aiden’s garden. Waves of ‘Two Out Of Three Aint Bad’ reached him. He couldn’t believe it. It was Darren and after everything he had said about those bloody brakes. He looked at his watch, well at least he had only been twenty minutes.

  Darren practically fell out of the car with an expression on his face like the hounds of hell were chasing him. He ran toward Will and threw the keys at his chest causing him to involuntarily catch them. Darren growled ‘Fuck’ and ran back to the driver’s side of the car with the still open door and reached across and pulled his rucksack from the passenger seat. He then sprinted past Will shouting, ‘You haven’t seen me,’ and disappeared up the path to the back of the house. Will cringed as he heard Darren kick the gate open which bashed hard against the side of the house and thumped shut again.

  It was only then that he heard the sirens. If Darren’s music hadn’t been so loud he would have heard them sooner, but it was only when the unmarked police car with the orange siren on top careered round the corner of the road that Will put two and two together. Oddly enough he didn’t feel panic, not then, he was just totally dumbstruck. He stood there in his shorts and T-shirt, the light breeze billowing his clothes and watched the angriest looking policeman he had ever seen scramble out of the passenger seat and hurtle towards him. He was in jeans and a casual shirt and was holding what Will assumed was a police badge.

  He wasn’t a huge man, about the same size as Will. A similar age as well, with a shaven head trying to disguise advanced balding. He wasn’t particularly muscly either but he must have been fit as he sprinted toward Will across the grass as though he had just come round the home bend in the Olympics. It was then that Will became scared.

  ‘Stop, Police,’ he bawled when he was about three metres away from the stationary Will.

  His face was so contorted with such a combination of rage and hatred that it was like staring at a charging Viking. As he got closer Will found himself putting his hands up in surrender. Will was actually surprised that when the policeman reached him he didn’t pull out an axe, scream ‘Argghh’ and cut his head clean off. Instead he grabbed an arm and roughly twisted it behind Will’s back just above his hips. Then the copper seized his other hand and wrenched that behind his back into the same position too, before yanking them both up towards his shoulders into arm locks. His head started to bow down and he was propelled forward.

  Whilst he was being frogmarched back towards the waiting police car, he could hear the man muttering under his breath, ‘You fucking piece of shit. Absolute scum, what is wrong with you people.’

  He was thumped into the side of the car so hard that his head shot toward the bonnet of the car. With his hands behind his back he was unable to block his fall and as he stared at the rapidly approaching piece of metal he did the only thing he could think of and looked up. He later suspected that manoeuvre saved his nose, but he hit the surface with such a clunk he felt a wave of pain fly up his jawline and out the crown of his head. Higher level thought seemed to evaporate from his skillset. It was as if he went into survival mode and shut down the non-essential functions just to get through this terrifying situation.

  He was then straightened up and as he swayed around like a wobbling weeble he was incredibly roughly cuffed by the other officer who had struggled out of the driver side door. Will let out a pathetic sounding ‘Ow’ as he was shaken like a rag doll. The second officer was well over six foot, his huge hands fumbling with the cuffing mechanism as he tried to release the big piece of skin he had pinched in them the first time he had shut them. This man was much younger but God knows how he had passed the fitness test as he was as fat as butter. Maybe he hadn’t started out that way but judging by the unmistakeable stench of recently eaten Big Mac sauce wheezing in his face it was easy to see the reason.

  Angry cop bellowed in his ear.

  ‘I’m arresting you for dangerous driving. You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  Will was so stunned it was as if someone had filled his mouth with golden syrup. His tongue felt as though his mouth was full of sludge and didn’t seem to be able to make sounds. His brain felt like it had been over stimulated with the shock of what was happening and shut down. He would look back many times later and wonder why he didn’t try harder to tell them it was Darren driving, not him. Every time he started to say something the angry officer bellowed in his face to ‘Shut the fuck up’. Surely covering for a mate didn’t stretch this far and this was completely beyond grassing on anyone. He assumed he would be able to explain what really happened later.

  Even in his befuddled state he wondered whether they would have believed him anyway, such was the fury of the arresting officer. An enormous meaty paw thwacked his head down and he was manhandled into the back of the police car. Will looked out of the car waiting for someone to help, or maybe even to wake him up, but no one came, the horror was real. The driver reversed into Aiden’s drive and they drove off at an improbably sedate pace in the direction of Thorpe Wood Police Station.

  It was mercifully a short journey. As the car was unmarked it just felt like an uncomfortable taxi ride. Incredibly surreal, with the only interactions between the individuals present being a few evil looks from the front passenger. Deathly silent too, even the police radio only gave off the odd piece of static.

  * * *

  Soon enough he was standing at the custody desk. He was pushed into a seat as they waited for the custody officer to finish processing the girl in front of him. He tuned into the row they were having. She was so obviously a prostitute that even in Will’s befuddled state he couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. She had the shortest skirt on Will had ever seen, high heels and a halter neck top on. Definitely a hint of Pretty Woman about it all. Attractive in a thin way too. Her hair concealed her face but she was swaying on those heels lik
e a reed of grass on a gusty day despite being held at the elbow by two officers.

  ‘I was not selling my pussy,’ she slurred.

  ‘The plain clothes policeman, whose car you got into, whom you offered full sex to, for twenty pounds, begs to differ Mandy.’

  ‘He’s lying, I thought he was a taxi.’

  ‘Is that how you pay for your taxis Mandy?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  The officer shook his head and nodded to the officers next to the girl. They manoeuvred her round and escorted her past Will who did a triple take. So addled and haggard was she that she was the spitting image of Medusa. Body like Baywatch, face like Crime Watch sprang to mind. Her eyes had the look of someone who never slept, only passed out. There were some sick men out there if they were willing to pay for that. He would rather have put his dick through a cheese grater than in that honeypot of HIV. She focused her red rheumy eyes on Will as she was practically carried past.

  ‘Don’t believe them for a minute son, run if you can.’ She disappeared cackling through some double doors leaving an acrid sweet smell in her wake.

  The fat officer, fat cop, gave him a look that said just try it, which made Will incredulously smile again. He had the physique of someone who could only run when the canteen was running low on doughnuts. For that measure he got a pinched arm as he was dragged to his feet and pushed into the custody desk. He looked up into the face of a tired looking uniformed officer.

  The arresting officer, angry cop, explained to the Sergeant that he had been arrested for dangerous driving. He agreed to give blood for alcohol levels, praying last night’s debauchery would have left his system by now. As though in a dream he confirmed his personal details, had his rights read to him again, handed over his personal belongings and was escorted to a cell. He was ordered to remove his belt from his shorts and his trainers and quickly found himself alone, sitting on a thin blue mat like he remembered from the gym at school. He lay down on the mat and put his arm over his eyes to try and compose himself. It was cold and empty in the room, just him, the mat and an aluminium toilet with no seat. He found himself shaking slightly and wondered if it was the temperature or if he was going into shock.

  * * *

  Having handed over his watch he had no idea how long he had waited until they came for him, but it must have been well over an hour. As he sat up the mat came up with him, stuck to his head with some yellowy substance he hadn’t noticed before. He had to remove it like peeling apart Velcro and felt another piece of his withering composure die.

  He walked in his socks to an interview room and sat opposite the two arresting officers. There were no windows in there and it was even colder, as though they were in the bowels of the earth. Fat cop pushed a warm drink over to him and smiled. It was a humourless smile but it was the first positive piece of human contact he seemed to be able to remember. Angry cop glared at him though.

  ‘You can have a solicitor if you want, but the duty one is busy and you will probably just want to get home. We just need to ascertain what happened and then you can be off and start putting this incident behind you.’

  If Will had been on his game he would have seen through the angry smile a mile off, or held his tongue, but not knowing what he’d done, meant he had no idea how serious the trouble he was in. He looked at the two men, one by one and nodded. He didn’t know what dangerous driving meant, it couldn’t be too bad he thought, it was only driving after all. He just wanted to take a police caution or some points on his licence and get the hell out of there.

  Fat cop reached over and pressed a button on a recorder in the corner of the room, and talked to the camera.

  ‘Interview with William Reynolds, date of birth seven ten seventy-three, on Monday the twenty-fifth August at eighteen hundred hours exactly.’ Three hours he had waited then, Will realised.

  ‘So Mr Reynolds, tell me, what happened?’

  ‘I wasn’t driving. Someone else was.’

  ‘We saw you get out of the car and run away,’ angry cop said.

  ‘You can’t have, it wasn’t me.’

  ‘You were holding the car keys when we caught you,’ angry cop added, waving Will’s car keys in an evidence bag.

  ‘Who was driving then, if it wasn’t you?’ Fat cop asked.

  Will bowed his head as he thought. Incredibly he realised he wasn’t going to be able to drop his friend in it even if he wanted to. They had their man and were not going to believe anything different. He suspected he wouldn’t have if the roles had been reversed.

  ‘Tell us exactly what happened?’

  If only I knew, thought Will. He rummaged through his chaotic brain like a tired mother who was late for the school run looking for her car key in a bulging handbag.

  ‘It all seems a bit of a blur now, I know I was wrong, but I just had a moment of ummm, lack of, ummm, I was ummm, hmmm, maybe you could tell me and I will tell you if that is a fair reflection.’

  The two officers looked at each other, a little confused.

  ‘OK,’ said angry cop. ‘We were parked up, observing a Bookmakers that had been the subject of an armed robbery the day before, when we heard a car being driven fast. I looked in the wing mirror and your maroon Vectra flew past us at a speed no less than sixty miles per hour. We pulled out, put the flashing lights on and activated the sirens. You drove through a red light, failed to stop for us and due to the speed you were going we lost sight of you for approximately thirty seconds. We then found you, running away from your car and trying to hide in your property. Would you agree this is an accurate reflection of this afternoon’s events?’

  Will looked in horror at the man. This sounded way more serious than he thought.

  ‘Can you give me a minute to recollect?’ he asked. He shifted on his unforgiving seat and looked at the ceiling, trying to remain calm. He had a pretty good idea that failing to stop for the police was frowned upon in a big way, but there wasn’t much hiding away from the fact he had clearly been speeding and if two of them said he went through a red light his protestations were likely to come to zero. He stared at the single white bulb hanging above him, at least it wasn’t so clichéd as to be missing a shade, but what was there was distinctly functional. The ceiling needed painting too he thought. A hand slammed on the table, jolting his attention back.

  ‘Focus,’ he was ordered.

  There was a voice inside his head, saying ‘Say nothing’ but the two officers were now almost smiling at him, giving him encouraging looks.

  ‘I may have been driving fast, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t sixty, maybe forty. I did go through a light, but it was amber not red. I didn’t hear the sirens, or see the lights. I just went home. I wasn’t running when you pulled up. I didn’t realise you wanted to talk to me.’

  Angry cop looked at Will like he had told him black was white. Fat cop cut in.

  ‘Do you agree though that driving at that speed in a built up area with a school nearby was dangerous?’

  ‘No-one was at school today.’

  ‘No, but it was still dangerous at that speed.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Will mumbled. As he said that he noticed a spare chair in the corner and thought that’s my solicitor’s chair. ‘I think I would like to wait for the solicitor.’

  ‘Let’s get you in to see the nurse first eh?’

  He padded through to a bored-looking nurse, who gave him the most cursory of onceovers.

  ‘Any issues?’ she said.

  ‘I’m cold.’

  He found himself back on his mat, this time with an off-white blanket. He turned the mat over and checked for more sticky patches. Finding none, he lay down and pulled the cover over him. God only knows what it was made of, as it seemed to provide virtually no heat whatsoever, but made him sweat profusely. He tried to sleep but the increasing arguments and drunken shouts of the later residents of the holding cells prevented any of that.

  He had no idea what the time was as he was led back into the interview roo
m and came face to face with an attractive heavily made up girl in her late twenties. She flirted with angry cop as he left and gave Will a wet weak handshake that instilled zero confidence. She pushed her solicitor’s business card over.

  ‘Hi, I’m Jennifer,’ she breezily introduced herself as though she was his waitress for the evening. ‘I hear you have admitted to dangerous driving?’

  ‘Well, not really, I just admitted to driving too fast.’

  ‘Well that is dangerous.’

  He let out a puff of breath.

  ‘Do you have any previous convictions, or any kind of criminal record?’

  ‘No, nothing at all, not even a speeding conviction, or a parking fine.’

  ‘OK let me tell you what’s going to happen tomorrow morning. You will be taken to Magistrates Court in the morning. The case may be transferred to Crown Court. If you have no previous you will be released on bail, and you will receive a court summons ordering you to go court for your plea.’

  ‘So I have to stay here tonight?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Is there anything I can get you?’

  ‘A cigarette please.’

  She looked at him as if he had asked to rub his greasy face against hers, but she eventually nodded. Will rested his head on the table.

  30

  26th August 2008

  He woke up after a maximum of two hours sleep by a deep voice shouting ‘Court in thirty minutes’. For a few seconds he thought he was at home. His protesting back soon shattered that thought and then it all came back to him. His stomach tensed, he felt sick and needed a dump at the same time. He looked over at the toilet and considered his options, concluding that any time spent near that shit-splattered tin pot would be horrendous and he definitely wouldn’t be putting his face anywhere near it.

  He was disturbed by a young uniformed officer bringing in a tray with some congealing microwave breakfast on it.