by Gary McMahon
But is it worth changing your life for such an amount? Is a quarter of a million enough money to make him walk away and set up somewhere new, far enough away from this town that he doesn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder? He thinks it might be; it just might be. There’s nothing to keep him here, and even Martha has often expressed a desire to leave. They rent everything they have, so can easily pack up a few belongings and be a hundred miles away in less than two hours. They own nothing: not the apartment, the furniture, or even the pictures on the walls. Any records or information they need is stored on an external server-based system, and the only physical things he requires are his passport, a few clothes, his bag of tools and the laptop in the spare bedroom. Everything else is losable, temporary, easily left behind.
He puts the money back in the bag and glances at the kitchen doorway.
A clock ticks; one of his or Martha’s electronic devices makes a small chirping noise; somewhere outside a motorcycle engine revs.
Clarke rises and moves across to the door, walking out into the hall. He stands outside the bedroom door, pressing his forehead against the cheap wood. “But were you serious about leaving?”
Martha can’t answer, of course; she is asleep.
He opens the door and stands there, just watching her. She isn’t much more than a dark mound on the bed, the duvet bundled up around her. She’s snoring softly—she suffers with her sinuses, especially now, since she’s entered the second trimester. Her body is making itself heard, and it isn’t entirely happy.
Closing his eyes, he shuts the door. Turns and walks back to the kitchen table. The bag is still there. Of course it is. Where else would it be?
He sits back down and begins to think things through.
Three of the team are dead—one of them didn’t even leave the building, and he witnessed the other two being shot outside as they tried to make it back to the car. The organizer, McKenzie, is still alive somewhere.
Okay.
Nobody knows where he lives. They know nothing about his personal life—he always uses a go-between to arrange jobs.
Clarke always keeps things clean and simple; he never gives anything away that he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t even use his real name—among the criminal fraternity, he is simply known as Driver Z. He was taught a long time ago, by the man who trained him in the supreme art of the getaway, never to reveal too much of himself. He is the most important member of any team, but he is also the least interesting. Nobody cares about the driver until it’s time to get away.
So he has some time, then. Until morning at least, when he can speak to Martha, let her know what happened and what he plans to do. He has a feeling that she will agree with everything he says.
Or should he just wake her, and get them both out of here right now, before the heat can start to build?
No, that’s unnecessary; and he has also been taught not to make any moves unless they are strictly necessary. He doesn’t want to draw attention. The best way to move is slowly, carefully, and when it is least expected.
Nobody knows who Driver Z really is. His identity is a secret. Nobody has ever known who he is, not since his father died. Even Oakes, the go-between, the man who trained him, has only ever seen a mask.
Nobody is interested in the driver until it’s time to get away.
He finishes his drink and washes out the glass, then turns out the lights. He waits in the darkness for a little while, enjoying the sense of his vision growing accustomed to the lack of illumination. Seeing in the dark. After a few moments, he goes to the bedroom and takes off his clothes. Martha moans once, sharply, as he climbs into bed beside her, shifting her body away from him to protect the small bump. He smiles. Reaches out and rests his hand on her thigh. Her skin is warm; it feels somehow malleable, like heated rubber.
Clarke has never needed much sleep; he usually survives on two or three hours a night. His alarm is set, as always, for 5:30 a.m. But tomorrow morning there will be no early morning four-mile run, no chin-ups on the bar across the bathroom door frame, and no long, leisurely breakfast of natural yogurt, fresh fruit and black coffee. No, tomorrow morning there will be a serious talk, and then there will be yet another getaway—this one permanent.
“Morning, you.” Martha stretches out on the bed and smiles up at him, the palms of her hands pressed against the fake leather headboard as she elongates her body along the mattress. She looks sensual, catlike in her movements.
“I made coffee. Toast’s in the machine.” He sets down a cup on the cabinet at the side of the bed and sits on the edge of the mattress, placing his hand on her arm. Her skin is warm, just like it was last night. Warm skin; cold heart.
“Have you been out running already? What time is it?”
He shakes his head. “No running this morning. We need to talk.”
Martha suddenly becomes incredibly focused. She stops stretching, sits up with her back against the headboard, and stares into his eyes. “What happened? Did things get fucked up last night?” She rubs her belly with her right hand. It is an unconscious movement; she’s taken to doing this whenever she needs to clear her thoughts.
Clarke stares at her belly, trying to imagine the life that is growing inside there. He always has problems visualizing the baby. It’s something that scares him so much he struggles to believe it’s real.
“Things went…awry. Drink your coffee, get dressed, and we’ll talk about it. I’ll wait for you in the kitchen.” He leans over and kisses her forehead. He feels the skin wrinkle beneath his lips as she frowns. “It’s okay,” he says. “This is good. Or it can be, if we handle things right.” He smiles, stands, and leaves the room.
He sits at the kitchen table and takes out the money. He’s already counted it: there’s three hundred thousand pounds in the bag. His initial guess was incorrect—there were more bundles of notes hidden away underneath the top layer. This isn’t a fortune, of course. But it is enough to set up him and Martha somewhere else, to give them a start somewhere that isn’t here. It’s a big enough sum of money to give them a chance in a place where nobody knows him; a town where nobody has even heard of Driver Z.
He rests the flat of his hand on the pile of money, trying to think about what he is planning to do. He doesn’t make a lot of money driving, but he makes enough to keep them in this nice apartment, and to rent the things they need. This cash represents a shift in gear. It’s more than he’s ever made during a single run, and if he handles this thing correctly, he can get away with keeping every penny. He’d been happy with the way things were going until Martha told him she was pregnant. Now everything has changed. There is more than just the two of them to think about, to worry about. Now he has two passengers to take care of.
It all boils down to the fact that he has to stop driving for criminals. It’s too dangerous. He’s risking making an orphan out of a child who isn’t yet born. Clarke doesn’t want that. He wants to meet his unborn child, to get to know it. He wants a normal life—or as much of a one that he can handle. Maybe later, when the kid is older, he can return to driving. Or perhaps this windfall could fund the kind of move he’s only ever dreamed of in the past: America, Hollywood; a career stunt-driving in the movies.
He could make it real—all of it. He’s sure he could, if he just has the capital to fund the move…and now he does. Now he has more than he needs to set things in motion.
He takes his hand away from the money and stares at the notes. It’s like poetry; the money gives him a glimpse of all the beauty he’s suspected might exist in the world but has never had a chance to see.
Money can’t buy you love, that’s what the old song says. And the song is right, but money, Clarke realizes, can buy you something much more important: the space and the time to go looking for whatever it is you need.
“Okay, so I’m all ears.”
He turns around to face her. She’s standing in the doorway with her weight distributed to her right leg, the opposite hip thrust out in a pro
vocative manner. She’s combed her shoulder-length blonde hair straight and put on a faded football shirt and a pair of skintight denim jeans.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” He reaches over and pulls out a chair.
She ghosts across the room—always so graceful; she moves like a dancer—and sits down next to him. “Talk,” she says, leaning her chin on one open palm. The other hand remains flat on the table, knuckles down.
He closes his eyes for a moment, just to focus his thoughts. Then he opens them again and begins to speak, keeping things low-key, not wanting to panic her. “Last night went bad. Some people were killed.”
She leans forward in the chair. The wooden frame creaks softly under her weight. “Jesus…were you hurt?”
She is cold like that. Always so cold, yet it’s underscored with concern for him. She doesn’t give a shit about anyone else—like Clarke, she is an orphan; from what little she’d told him about her parents, they were abusive so it was a blessing when they died in a car accident. Martha is guarded. It takes her a lot to care, but when she does, it’s always for keeps.
“I’m fine. It was pretty scary, but I got out of there okay. None of them knew my real name, or anything else about me. Remember? I’m just Driver Z. I’m the mystery man.” He smiles, as much to put her at ease than anything else. The last thing he feels is amused.
“What happened to the money?”
He’s been waiting for the question. He knows her so well that he could’ve predicted when she would ask. Him first; then the money.
“I have it. I have it all.”
“How much?”
He smiles again, but this time it’s for real. “Just over a quarter of a million.” It sounds like more when he says it that way.
She blows air through her lips and it makes a soft whistling noise. She rubs her hands together, putting on the old Fagin act. The fact that people are dead is forgotten now; a minor consideration. It’s been dealt with, the information processed. She’s all about the money.
“Yeah. It’s mine. Ours. But we need to act fast.” He stands and walks to the kitchen sink, pours himself a glass of water. When he drinks the water, it’s cold and sharp and pure. Not like tap water at all.
“So we need to get out of here?” She is already standing, scraping the chair legs across the floor.
“Yes. If you could start packing, I’ll dodge over to see Oakes and make sure everything’s still cool. If there’s anything about this on the wire, I’ll need to know before we start to run. I owe him. I can’t just say good-bye over the phone. I shouldn’t be long; about an hour. By the time I get back, you’ll be ready.”
She nods in reply, despite the fact that it isn’t a question. “I’ll be ready and waiting,” she confirms. She switches on the television on the counter. “There might be something on the news. Have you checked?”
“Not yet,” he says, rinsing the glass. He places it on the draining board. “There was nothing last night, but it was probably too early to have broken.”
Martha changes channels until she finds a local news program. After the end of a report about job losses in a nearby factory, the newsreader starts to talk about last night:
“Three men were killed last night in what seems to be a gangland shooting incident. Police suspect that a drug raid took place in the early hours of the morning. The bodies were found in a building that once served as a Masonic lodge and became infamous for meetings of the Victorian society The Order of the Darkened Veil—a band of prominent figures who practiced the occult. One man is said to have escaped the scene on foot. There were no witnesses…”
Martha turns down the volume. “One man,” she says, looking at him. “On foot.”
Clarke walks over to her and holds her hand.
“That means they don’t even know you were there.”
He nods. “Seems that way, doesn’t it? I heard no mention of a getaway driver—did you?”
“That means nobody’s looking for you. We have a window here. We can be out of the country before anyone even realizes we’re gone.”
He squeezes her hand. “Who mentioned leaving the country?”
She presses her warm body against him, lifting and wrapping one leg around his thigh. “Hollywood, baby.” She kisses him on the mouth, licks his lips as she pulls away. “Isn’t that what you’ve always talked about?”
“I’ll be back in an hour.” He grabs his coat off the back of the chair and leaves the building. Traffic is starting to build up on the street outside. The beginning of the slow-moving commuter crowd: all the rush-hour wage slaves packed into their sensible cars. He feels as if he is above them, superior. He is a breed apart.
He walks around the corner and opens the underground garage. The lights flicker on as he crosses the cavernous space. Most of the bays are empty because the apartment block’s other residents have already left for work, part of that same herd he turned his back on years ago.
The Lexus RS4 is parked in its usual place, covered with a gray tarpaulin sheet. He moves towards it and whisks off the sheet. The dark blue car seems to flex at his approach, as if it is a living muscle.
The vehicle is ten years old but still has a lot of life left to give. He bought it as a treat—his only one—when he first made enough money to justify such an extravagant purchase. He rarely uses the thing; it mostly just sits here, hidden away, its immense power curled up under the hood like a cat in a basket. But buying a car like this one, brand-new off the dealer’s showroom floor, helped to make up for a lot of the deprivation he’s suffered in the past: his painful childhood—much of it forgotten now, or at least repressed; the empty teenage years; the decade he only survived because Oakes discovered he had a raw talent for driving cars.
Clarke thumbs the key fob and the doors click quietly open. He climbs in behind the wheel and starts the engine, gunning it and enjoying the roaring sound in the enclosed space of the car park. Then he pulls out of the parking space and makes for the ramp, his mind set on saying good-bye to his only friend.
As he drives, he allows his mind to drift. He thinks about something that bugged him about the news report. Last night he saw two men shot outside the building, so how come all the bodies were found inside?
Oakes lives in a small detached house on the east side of town, down near the river and on the edge of the rough housing estate where he was born. Clarke knows that he’ll be taking a risk parking the Lexus on the street, but he has no choice. There’s no time to use public transport, and he doesn’t have another vehicle in his possession right now.
The sky is low and somber. Dark gray clouds move sluggishly, like fat bumblebees. The city streets turn from one-way lanes to dual carriageway and Clarke opens up the Lexus, allowing it to breathe.
He checks the clock on the dashboard: it’s already 7:30 a.m. Twenty minutes to get to Oakes’ place, thirty minutes to talk with the man, and then another twenty to get back home. No problem.
He drives past boarded-up factories and a busy retail park. The people he sees in their cars all stare dead ahead, unaware of the world around them. They live in their heads, most of them: at an early age, Clarke was given the opportunity to step outside of his. If he was forced to live like them, he would probably kill someone. He isn’t made like everyone else. His DNA is different, his blood and bones are more fluid.
Clarke always feels strange when he leaves the hard heart of the city. He doesn’t connect well with the suburbs and the countryside frightens him. There are too many wide-open spaces; the fields and woodland are populated by too much wildlife that he doesn’t understand. He is a city dweller, an urban predator. Long ago he accepted this fact about himself, and it has proved accurate time and time again. He has a simpatico with the urban environment: its roads and streets, the gridlike layout of its infrastructure. The rules of the city are ones he feels comfortable with. They are solid, nonnegotiable. Clarke has always liked rules—they make him feel as if he is in control; give him a knowledge that he ca
n use to his advantage.
He switches on the stereo and listens to Beethoven. Martha was surprised when she learned that he liked classical music, but to him its rules and rhythms are like a lullaby. He feels this kind of music; it speaks to him, just like the cold, hard city streets and the cold, hard people who make their home there.
Soon he’s driving along Oakes’ street. He pulls up to the curb and kills the engine. Instead of moving right away, he sits inside the car for a few moments, listening to the cooling noises inside the engine, the tick-tock sound made by the expansion and contraction of metal parts.
He watches three small boys walk into the middle of the road and start kicking a football, passing it between them with smooth, easy strokes. The boys all wear the same style of clothing: tracksuit bottoms, hooded tops, white sneakers. They are a breed he knows well. There is no chance these youngsters will grow up to be like the commuters he noted earlier; there is more of a chance of these ones turning into the kind of men who were killed last night.
He opens the door and steps out onto the footpath.
“Hey!” He waits for the kids to notice him.
One of the boys—the tallest by about three inches—ambles over. After a pause, his friends follow him.
“What you fuckin’ want?” The kid’s face is narrow, his cheeks pale.
“I’ll give you twenty quid to make sure nothing happens to this car while I visit my friend.”
The boy chews on a piece of gum, the movements slow and exaggerated. He glances back at his friends. They shrug.
“Well?” Clarke takes out his wallet and holds it between two fingers, teasing.
“Yeah. ’Kay.” The boy sticks out his dirty little hand to receive the money.
Clarke slips a ten-pound note out of his wallet and places it on the boy’s palm. “Half now, the other half when I come back.”
“Whatever, mate,” says the boy, turning away to rejoin his friends. “Easy fuckin’ money either way, innit.” They once again start to pass the ball around, glancing furtively in Clarke’s direction with each side-footed kick.
