‘He tried to take my shekels when the fruity paid out. Helping me out, he said, but he wanted the shekels for himself, like.’
‘Bastard. So you see what I mean? You need to be getting home, eh?’
‘You got to watch him, Ben. You sure you don’t want me along coz if she’s gone bad it’s going to be two against one, like.’
Up ahead the light shone against the heavy dark of the forest with odd flakes of snow floating through its beam. A body sat slumped against the iron post.
‘That’s not Wynona, is it, Harry? She don’t look like she’ll be much help to us.’
‘That isn’t Wynona,’ he said. ‘You’ll know her when you see her, because we was talking with her at the pig sty.’
We stopped at the lamppost. I kicked at the snow-speckled body. ‘It’s Tommy the Car,’ I said. ‘How bizarre. If it snows any harder he’ll wake up dead.’
‘Do I know Tommy?’
‘Probably not. He’s just a mate I hang out with. This explains why he didn’t make it to the police station. The bastard had better things to do. Last time I saw him, he was hitching a ride with the paramedics.’
‘Do they do taxi’s?’
‘No, but they do ambulances.’
‘Cool. That’s got to be a good ride, like?’
‘Not if you’ve been shot, it isn’t.’
‘Wow. Gunshot wound. You think he’ll show me where he was shot, like? That’d be so cool.’
‘You been there. He was shot at Blacky’s place.’
‘Yeah, good one, Ben. Why you call him Tommy the Car? Is he a cool driver?’
‘No, Tommy just likes to nick cars. His driving isn’t so good.’
‘So wake him up.’
I kicked him again. This time my boot produced a grunt but no sign of consciousness. An empty bottle of vodka rolled from his lap and clattered to the path.
Harry knelt by his side and poked Tommy in the ribs. A limp hand brushed at thin air. Harry poked him again and a giggle erupted, short and sharp. The pale light gave his features a bluish shade, his lips purple. A pool of drool had frozen to his chest. His hat rested by his side as he snored and mumbled.
‘Wynona,’ Harry cried. Wynona wore her dark army garb with her face smudged in black. ‘That’s Tommy,’ Harry said. ‘He nicks cars.’
‘Does he just,’ Wynona said.
‘Oi, Harry,’ I said. ‘You’re talking to the law. She might walk about at night with a wolf, but by day she sits behind a police desk.’
‘No, Ben, Wynona’s cool. She looks out for us at night when we’re on our bikes. Where’s Wolf?’
A set of yellow eyes appeared in the fringe of the trees. ‘Cool. You brought Wolf. Look, its wolf, Ben. Can I pat him? Please Wynona, can I?’
‘Easy, Harry,’ Wynona said. ‘Wolf doesn’t respond well to excitement.’ She looked at me. ‘You right with him?’ She pointed at Tommy. ‘I’ve been watching him the past thirty minutes and he seems comfortable, but it’s getting cold.’
‘Yeah, I’ll look after Tommy. You taking the boy home?’ I looked at Harry and sighed, fearing the boy might not survive his mother’s wrath. ‘You know Tilly?’ I said. She nodded. ‘She’ll be right pissed off with me keeping the boy out all night. Can you tell her he hasn’t been in any trouble and I’ll catch up with her tomorrow, maybe. Make me look good somehow, eh?’
‘That’s not one of my super powers.’
‘No, that’s a bugger.’ Harry walked toward me and put out his hand for me to shake. ‘Look after your mum Harry?’ I looked back to the girl, the wolf stood next to her with its tongue lolling to the side. ‘You cool with her?’ I asked Harry. ‘I mean you feel comfortable going with her, because I should take you home, but so long as you’re happy, then it’s all good, eh?’
Harry punched me and smiled. ‘Me and Wynona are cool. She cases houses for us. We work with her loads, like. Wynona rocks.’
‘You know the way to Linda’s?’ I asked ‘Weismann was telling me.’
‘Keep to the track. It’ll end just south of Ostere town opposite a playground and not far from the school this child’s meant to attend. Take the road past the school and turn right. She’s halfway down the road at number thirty-two.’
‘You know Linda?’
‘I’ve got to know her disabled mate and he’s not a pleasant man. Ex-army and bitter about his treatment since he took bomb shrapnel to the leg and torso. He seeks justice from all quarters and is a one-man killing machine. Should have hazard signs attached to his chest and back. You need to be careful with him. And her if she’s taken up with him.
‘This bag is turning people crazy. If I’d known better I’d have told Marvin to bury the bloody thing and forget about it.’
The wolf blended back into the dark of the forest with Harry trying to catch his tail. Wynona turned to follow, but stopped, looking back at me. ‘You understand Linda’s mate is a Cooper? Rotten to the core this one.’
‘It appears to be written in their genes.’
She caught up with Harry and took his hand as the darkness swallowed their path.
Chapter Thirty-One
Billy’s no Killer
‘Wake up, Tommy,’ I said.
‘I’m all right,’ he mumbled. His head fell to his chest, so I kicked him again. ‘No, I’m all right.’ His voice sounded loud in the quiet of the snow and the feeble light from the lamp. ‘I thought Billy was a killer.’
I bent and slapped him hard across the face. He opened his eyes and smiled. ‘Hello, Ben, it’s snowing.’ He held his hand out to catch the flakes. I lifted him up and leant him against the lamppost and he cried out as my fingers gripped his right arm.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Is that your bad arm?’ Under the feeble light he looked mortuary slab pale.
‘Ben,’ he said. He touched the thick padding on his upper arm. ‘I’m a bad man and a bad brother.’
‘Yeah, for sure. You’re just bad, but let’s get walking, eh?’
He leant against my side as we stumbled along the path, our footsteps muffled by the dusting of snow. At one point he placed both arms around me, pushing me hard toward the line of dark trees.
‘You know what, Ben?’ He looked at me, his feet following mine. ‘I truly believed my brother killed Marvin.’
‘Why?’
He stopped, grabbed my shirt and fell against my chest. ‘What brother thinks that of his brother?’
I shrugged his head off my chest and pushed him forward. Headlights flashed across our path.
‘Billy didn’t kill Marvin,’ Tommy said.
‘Who said he did?’
Tommy stopped, pushed away from me, stumbling backward toward the main road. ‘I did. I thought it was Billy because he wore Marvin’s missing shoes, which meant Billy killed Marvin.’
‘Slow up,’ I said. ‘How does Billy’s new shoes suggest he killed Marvin?’
‘He didn’t kill Marvin. Aren’t you listening? Billy didn’t kill Marvin. He nicked his shoes, you know? He told me he didn’t feel good about it, but Billy’s shoes were rotten and Marvin had smart shiny new shoes.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you got that sorted. How is Billy and his shiny new shoes? Last time I saw him he didn’t look clever.’
He heaved an almighty sigh.
‘He’s dead.’
I stopped our journey by the edge of the road looking out over the school playing fields before us. We needed to cross the fields and hit the road and turn right, but I remained teetering on the gutter unable to move forward.
Tommy stumbled onto the road and I grabbed his arm, drawing him close against my body. ‘I’m sorry, Tommy,’ I said. ‘We shouldn’t have left him to face those men alone. We let him down.’
Tommy’s shoulders shook in silent grief. ‘No, we couldn’t have,’ he said into my chest. He pushed me away and held his hands out. ‘He was pissed with me and he wasn’t going to let that happen. Billy was born stubborn, mum used to stay. Too damn stubbor
n to grow. If he didn’t want to do something, nothing and no one could change his mind, you know. And I’d accused him of killing Marvin. It was my fault.’
Tommy looked up at me as tears spilled from his eyes. His face shone wet in the streetlight. I grabbed him and hugged him tight. His chest heaved and he clutched at my coat, his fingers digging into my back. Together we stood by the road the headlights of a car splashing across our bodies while we mourned Billy Two Guns.
After a respectful period, I pushed him away from me. He patted my chest and wiped at his eyes with his coat sleeve.
‘But I was there for him at the end,’ he said. ‘When the doctors had given up and the nurses were unwrapping the shroud I was still there and he spoke.’ Tommy strode back toward the path we had followed. ‘I held Billy as he took his last breaths and Ben, he confessed to nicking Marvin’s shoes. He wanted to set the record straight on the shoes, you know. He didn’t feel good about it, but he said Marvin didn’t need them.’
Tommy gazed at the park, flinching at the shouts and cries from bonfires dotted across the grassland. He turned back, placing a new cheroot in his mouth.
‘Billy nicked the bag. You know that bag you been looking for. He nicked it, but I never knew. He shared that with me on his death bed.’
‘No.’
The ‘no’ sounded soft in the night and struggled to be heard amid the tribal cries from the bonfires lit in the park, but Tommy understood the words importance.
‘The little shit,’ I said. ‘Does he understand the grief that bag’s been giving me?’
‘He’s dead, Ben. He don’t care.’
‘How?’ I said. ‘When? Fuck that Tommy that bag has given me untold grief.’
I watched the figures dancing in the glare of the fires. Fireworks fired into the air and the toxic scent of rubber billowed from the bonfires as a thick black cloud drifted toward the road.
Chanting sounded deep and slow and a woman screamed.
‘Why?’
‘He’s dead. I don’t know why. He was obsessed I guess and wanted to see what was in it. Billy dreamed of wealth and he thought the bags could make him rich.’
‘I thought you two had bets on the bags being filled with body parts?’
‘That was just talk.’
‘Fuck off Tommy. Just talk. You both knew Marvin died over that bag. You both knew I was getting grief from Jackie John and the Black Hats about that damn bag. So I ask you again…Why?’
‘My brother is dead.’
‘He is and I’m sad about his death.’ But had Billy Two Guns been alive I’d have throttled the little shit. ‘So how’d he end up with the bag? Can he answer that if he’s not too busy being dead?’
‘Billy followed Marvin after he left Blacky’s.’ Tommy touched my arm, waiting for me to turn back to him. ‘He saw Marvin on the slagheap and he definitely had two bags. That’s what Billy said.’
‘So there are two bags, but when did he take the bag I had?’
‘The night the bombs took out the square. He and Pete moved it from the seat while Jackie gave you shit about the bag. He don’t like Jackie.’
‘So the glasses and the jacket were bought courtesy of the bagful of money.’
‘He didn’t get it open, because of the locks, but he said there was stacks of stuff in the side pockets. Like Marvin’s license and passport and loads of cash. But and this is important because he was upset I thought he’d killed Marvin, you know, but he told me he saw the killer. He was there.’
Tommy walked straight at me and grabbed my shirt. ‘He was my brother, Ben. They didn’t need to set him on the fire.’
We stood by the side of the road, two men bordering on breakdown, reliving the horror the Black Hats inflicted on the small man. I touched his hands with mine, easing them off my shirt and wrapped my arms around his body. Tommy’s head nestled against my shoulder, his body shaking as he sobbed.
An orange streetlight flickered above our heads. The street experienced a lull in traffic. Over in the park, Ostere’s finest citizens danced around crackling bonfires cheering and chanting as they broke stuff.
‘You know we weren’t really brothers. We was both adopted, but he always looked out for me. When I dodged the draft, he ran with me, you know. He was pissed that the Man didn’t want him fighting for his country. Billy didn’t think that was right. He reckoned that was discriminatory.’
I pushed him away, wrapped an arm around his shoulders and guided him across the road.
‘I could see Billy with a rifle and wearing the army fatigues,’ Tommy said. ‘And he was small, so much harder to be shot at. Our dad went to war and Billy was always mucking about with his medals. I think it was the medals he wanted.’
Tommy offered a big sigh as I pushed him onto a seat away from the fires and tribal chanting of the disgruntled youth. I clapped him on the back.
‘Don’t go anywhere, Tommy. Linda lives back of the school at number 32, okay?’ He looked up at me and nodded. ‘I won’t be long.’
As I stepped to cross the road I stopped and looked back at Tommy. ‘Your brother didn’t tell you where he hid the bag, did he?’
‘In Blacky’s loft,’ he said. ‘Billy said he’d hidden it against the far wall, behind your bedroll.’
‘Really,’ I said. ‘And who killed Marvin?’
‘Same as the Feral man said. Tall like you. He thought he’d been in the square the night the bombs went off and was giving Marvin grief about the bag.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Good girls gone Bad
I straightened my coat and patted my hair before striding to Linda’s front door and giving the door a sharp rap with the heavy black knocker. The girl lived in a pleasant part of our borough with ornate street lights and patterned foot paths. Houses displayed wide front gardens crammed with vibrant shrubs and ancient trees sprouting gnarled limbs.
A sprinkling of snow decorated the paved stones and flat green leaves of the potted plants lining the front wall and path of Linda’s front yard. A light shone above the front door, but the house offered no sign of occupancy. I offered the metal ring a firm rap, stood back and adjusted my clothing hoping I presented well for my childhood love.
It took the girl an age, but footsteps sounded on wooden floorboards and a quiet suspicious voice called from behind the door.
‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s Ben.’
‘What do you want?’
An aggressive bent to her suspicious tone. ‘To talk. We seem to be getting side tracked and I’m hearing stuff that’s not clever.’ A silence answered my last statement.
‘Linda?’
‘Hang on a minute.’
Footsteps padded away from the door and the light in the left room lit up the heavy curtains drawn across the bay window. Curious behavior and I patted the gun. I didn’t trust the girl, but I couldn’t enter her house with a gun in my hand. That bordered on rude. The footsteps returned and bolts clanked as the door swung inward. I peered into a dark hallway. A light shone to the back of the house. Linda held the door as a shield.
‘Come in.’
Her voice beggared no courtesy and didn’t suggest she and I might relive the good times of our childhood. I stepped into the darkness and walked toward the light. The door closed behind me.
‘Keep going,’ she said as I slowed. ‘Step into the kitchen and take a seat with your back to the window.’
A clock ticked in the room to my right. The scent of lavender caused my nose to itch. Coffee and the aroma of burning wood greeted me on entering her warm kitchen.
‘This is curious,’ I said. ‘You always treat your guests like this?’
‘Shut up and sit down.’
‘Jesus, girl. Why the grief?’
The small gun pointing at my chest suggested I not question her reasoning.
I sat on a light wooden chair before a pale sanded table with my back to the hallway wall and the rear window to my left. Pastel yellow dominated the walls
complimented by black work tops. Coffee percolated on the counter in the right hand corner below glass cupboards and pots hung on crude hooks from her ceiling. An old country style cooker took up most of the far wall, breathing rustic warmth throughout the room. Large thick cookery books lined the wall to my right, stopping at a two door fire red fridge. A small white phone sat dead center on the table.
‘Pick up the phone.’ I reached for the device and the screen lit up. ‘Arrow down to Chicklet and tap OK.’ I looked at her before I pushed the button. ‘I call him Chicklet. Get over it. Just tap the buttons.’
It vibrated, the little green animation rattling its handset. Linda stood behind me, leaning against the sink beneath the window. A voice answered. ‘Now tell him where the bag is.’
I laughed and shook my head. ‘Up my arse.’
She stepped forward fast and hit me with the gun. I fell to the slate floor, pausing as the pain registered, before reaching for the knife in my leg pocket. A loud click in my ear and the icy touch of the guns muzzle pushing at the back of my neck suggested I forget about the knife.
‘Get back on the chair and tell my friend where the bag is.’
I eased myself into the chair, a sharp pain to my jaw radiating through my left arm. I picked up the phone. ‘Back of the loft space in Blacky’s workshop.’ I threw the phone across the room and stood. ‘You happy?’
Linda picked up the phone and turned her face away as she spoke into the handset.
‘What’s Blacky’s?’ she said.
‘By the old brewery,’ I said. What did I care? The bag wasn’t mine.
She dropped the phone and stepped away from the table, leaning against the fridge. She wore a white shirt, the ends tied beneath her tits. Ah, the old days when I tried to peer into the recess of skin and school shirt, the girl teasing me with the top two buttons undone. One hand held the gun by her side tapping against her beige pants. Her bare feet sat flat to the floor, her toenails painted blood red. The hair seemed darker than I remembered and the styling slick. I preferred the pigtails.
No More Heroes-#1 Dystopian Thriller Heroes Series Page 21
