Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid

by Rob Johnson

  ‘Yeah, until he opened the bloody thing,’ Trevor had said.

  Since then – and up until the moment that Sandra commented on Milly’s antics on the back seat – the two of them had barely exchanged more than a few words. Sandra had been concentrating on finding her way out of the city as quickly as possible but without damaging any innocent pedestrians, and Trevor had simply stared through the windscreen in a daze of catatonic stupor. His mind had gone into rewind and then fast forward, freeze-framing intermittently as he struggled to make sense of the last couple of days, and especially the last hour or so. It wasn’t that long ago that his only excitement in life was sitting down in front of the TV on a Saturday night to check the lottery results or finding there was fifty per cent off frozen peas at his local supermarket.

  He tried to tell himself this was precisely why he’d finally decided to jack in his mind-numbingly tedious job at Dreamhome Megastores, buy himself a camper van and set off in search of adventure. In hindsight, though, being held at gunpoint and threatened with extreme acts of violence – not to mention being accused of murder and chased by the Secret Service – wasn’t exactly the sort of adventure he’d had in mind.

  He remembered having hummed a few bars of Born To Be Wild just before the van had broken down but couldn’t recall anything from the lyrics that seemed particularly life-threatening. Hitting the open road and seeing where it took you. All pretty harmless really. And he very much doubted that the kind of adventure-seeking Steppenwolf were singing about involved ending up rotting in some prison for the rest of your life or some psychopath depriving you of your kneecaps or an unnatural and very bloody death.

  He’d always thought that spending day after endless day advising ungrateful members of the public about the respective merits of different brands of drain rod was a living hell, but recent experience had taught him that hell was perhaps not a finite concept after all. There seemed to be degrees of suffering so that hell was more like a continuum where Satan’s eternal fires increased in intensity between working in a DIY superstore and being subjected to all the nonsense that had happened to him since he’d broken the lid of the toilet cistern at the hotel in York.

  ‘You want me to drop you somewhere?’ said Sandra.

  The question was straightforward enough on the face of it, but Trevor’s brain wrestled with the words as if trying to evaluate their true meaning.

  ‘You’re letting me go?’ he said eventually, sensing there might be some kind of trap for the unwary in what she’d asked.

  Sandra shrugged. ‘You’re not exactly my prisoner.’

  ‘Not any more, you mean.’

  ‘That was then. The situation’s different now.’

  Trevor pondered this statement and decided that the situation had certainly changed, but for the worse rather than for the better. This was even truer in her case than his. It was Sandra who still had a chunk of Harry’s cash, so it stood to reason that it would be her that the psychos would be after, not him. And if MI5 really was involved, this whole business with Harry and the money was most likely to be the reason for their interest. No, all he had to worry about was that the police were probably still wanting to pin Imelda’s murder on him so, all in all, his most logical course of action would be to get as far away from Sandra as he could and sooner rather than later. At least then he might be able to get some much needed solids into the gaping black hole which was where his stomach used to be.

  ‘Where are you heading anyway?’ he said.

  ‘Bristol,’ said Sandra. ‘Which reminds me. Have you still got the card with the address on it?’

  Trevor rummaged in the pocket of his fleece and pulled out the two index cards. He looked at them both and returned the card with the locker details to his pocket.

  ‘You actually going to this Cabot Tower place then?’ he said, scanning the address on the second card.

  ‘That’s the plan.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Call it professional curiosity if you like. And I also want to know what I’ve let myself in for if MI5 come knocking on my door.’

  Trevor grunted. ‘Well you know what curiosity did, don’t you?’

  She gave him a broad smile. ‘But then again, I’m not a cat.’

  ‘Which also means you don’t have nine lives either,’ said Trevor, studying her profile as she turned her attention back to the road. He hadn’t really looked at her this closely before, but now that he did, he saw that she was really quite attractive in a no-oil-painting kind of way. Her blonde hair was an inch or so too short to be shoulder length and was obviously dyed, but the colour was tastefully understated and looked as if it had been professionally done. Despite the variety of mascaras and lipsticks which had been tipped out of her bag at the hotel, she seemed to wear a minimal amount of makeup, although this might have been simply because she’d had little opportunity to add any in the last few hours. Even so, to Trevor’s eye, she had no need to enhance her already prominent cheekbones or the naturally rosy tint of the complexion beneath them.

  His eyes flicked upwards when she glanced back at him again, and he pretended to be examining some minor defect in the roof lining directly above her head.

  ‘So do you want me to drop you off or not?’ she said.

  Trevor chose to answer the question with one of his own. ‘What do you expect to find when you get there anyway?’

  ‘Hard to say.’

  ‘Are you always this cryptic?’

  ‘Only when I don’t want to commit myself to a straight answer and especially when I’m distracted.’

  Trevor noticed she was taking a particularly keen interest in the rear-view mirror and started to turn in his seat.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Sandra, putting a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t do anything to attract their attention.’

  ‘Oh God, it’s not the Scottish bloke, is it?’

  ‘Nope. It’s the boys in blue this time. Been behind us for nearly five minutes now. Maybe it’s just coincidence.’

  Trevor gave a nervous laugh. ‘Yeah. Course it is.’

  ‘There’s one way to find out.’

  Sandra flicked on the indicator and took the next turning on the left.

  ‘Well?’ said Trevor after a few seconds, fighting the urge to look round and see for himself.

  ‘So far, so g— Shit.’

  ‘They’re still behind?’

  ‘Seems like it really is us they’re after.’

  ‘Oh terrific. Now what?’

  ‘First, we wait and see if they pull us over. If not, we keep going and hope they get bored. There’s no way we can outrun them, and I certainly can’t see the petrol trick working this time. I’m already down to a quarter of a tank.’

  Trevor squinted into the wing mirror on his side of the car, but the angle was too acute to see anything. He folded his arms and felt the pounding vibration from inside his chest. He closed his eyes and lowered his head as if in prayer, but it wasn’t praying in the strict sense of the word. Rather, he was concentrating hard on wishing the police car would simply disappear – a wish that wasn’t addressed to anyone or anything in particular. He’d tried the “Oh Lord, if you make X happen, I’ll devote the rest of my life to your service” gambit too many times in the past to know that God wasn’t easily fooled.

  ‘Oops.’

  Trevor’s eyes snapped open at the sound of Sandra’s voice, and a split second later he heard the wail of a siren. He watched in dismay as the police car drew level and the cop in the passenger seat jabbed his finger at them.

  ‘I think he wants us to pull over,’ said Sandra, acknowledging the policeman’s gesture with a cheery wave.

  The cop car pulled in front of them, a bank of blue lights flashing on its roof, and after about fifty yards it turned off the road into a lay-by. Sandra followed, brought the Peugeot to a halt behind it and switched off the engine.

  ‘Of course,’ she said as they sat and waited for the cops to get out of their car, ‘it’s probably you t
hey’re after.’

  ‘Oh thanks,’ said Trevor with a sarcastic grin.

  ‘Well think about it. Okay, so I’ve got a bunch of gangster headcases who would be more than keen to have my arse on a plate – and maybe MI5 as well – but as for the Old Bill, I think that’s down to you, my friend. After all, you’re the wife murderer, not me.’

  Trevor rounded on her, his eyes blazing. ‘Listen. How many more times do I have to—’

  ‘Shut up. They’re coming,’ said Sandra, once again placing a firm hand on his arm. ‘Leave this to me, and don’t say a bloody word.’

  ‘Oh right, so you can drop me in the shit and be off on your merry little way.’

  This time, Sandra punched him hard just above the elbow. Trevor winced, and then his whole body tensed as he watched the two police officers walk slowly towards them – one male and one female. He eased himself down in his seat and pulled up the hood of his fleece.

  ‘Jesus, Trevor,’ said Sandra out of the corner of her mouth. ‘What did I say about not drawing attention to yourself?’

  The male officer carried a clipboard and began making a cursory inspection of the outside of the car while his partner bent down to peer in through Sandra’s open window. ‘Afternoon, madam… Sir.’

  Trevor would have preferred not to have made eye contact with her but decided that continuing to stare straight ahead through the windscreen might be construed as highly suspicious. She smiled warmly at them, but he guessed this was probably a mask they learned to put on during the first day of basic training.

  By now, Milly had leapt to her feet on the back seat and was panting enthusiastically at the policewoman, simultaneously depositing large gobbets of saliva onto Sandra’s shoulder.

  ‘Nice dog,’ said the officer. ‘Yours is it?’

  ‘Mine,’ said Trevor, producing his own false smile and just managing to suppress a sigh of irritation.

  ‘Anything wrong, officer?’ said Sandra with a look of innocent congeniality that made Trevor wonder whether all three of them were taking part in some kind of charity Smile-athon. If it had been a competition, he would have lost there and then as the quivering grin vanished from his face altogether, and he braced himself for the response.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  As far as MacFarland was aware, there was no logical explanation for Harry’s aversion to travelling or his particular reluctance to go anywhere by road, which bordered on the phobic. He had never been involved in anything even approaching a serious car accident, and as for his own “death”, it hadn’t actually been him that was in the car when it exploded.

  But whatever the reason for his pathological fear of cars, buses, taxis or any other mode of transportation by road, the outcome was that he was now fast asleep in a First Class carriage of the 15.50 from Sheffield to Bristol, his head lolled back and his gaping mouth periodically erupting in an explosion of volcanic snoring. MacFarland and Delia sat opposite him, Delia staring out of the window at the blur of the countryside and MacFarland staring at Harry and wondering how even he could look quite so innocent when he was asleep.

  Being a tight-arse, Harry had bought tickets for Second Class, but when they’d boarded the train, it was heaving with pissed-up football supporters. They had presumably spent the night in whatever northern town they’d been to the previous day, and judging by the state of them and the mountains of empty cans, most seemed to have been swilling beer solidly for twenty-four hours or more. Happy-drunk would have been irritating enough, but this lot were boiling over with alcohol fuelled aggression, which made them louder and even more annoying. MacFarland could only assume that whichever club they supported had taken a severe hammering.

  Soon after the train had pulled out of the station, Harry’s rocketing blood pressure appeared to add several decibels to the volume he achieved in making himself heard over the din, and he had issued a general warning as to what he was going to do to ‘you bunch of shitheads if you don’t shut the fuck up’. The threat seemed to have had the desired effect as a sudden and eerie silence had descended over the entire carriage, but almost immediately, three shaven-headed cave trolls with as many piercings as tattoos sauntered over to where they were sitting. The biggest of them had opened his mouth to speak but had instantly closed it again when MacFarland eased his jacket back to reveal the butt of his shoulder-holstered gun.

  ‘Now fuck off and let me get some kip,’ Harry had said when the three window-lickers backed sheepishly away.

  He’d settled back in his seat and closed his eyes but had opened them again after less than a minute when the noise in the carriage had risen to an even higher level than before. MacFarland hadn’t been sure exactly what Harry had in mind when he’d given him the nod and begun to lever himself to his feet, but it was probably going to result in some serious shedding of blood – very likely their own included. With almost precision timing, however, a ticket inspector had appeared at the far end of the carriage and started battling her way through the mass of staggering bodies.

  ‘’Scuse me, darlin’,’ Harry had said as soon as she was within shouting range. ‘Can’t you do something about this lot? I mean, I didn’t pay good money to ‘ave to put up with this sort of shit.’

  The inspector had shrugged and said, ‘They lost five one apparently’ as if this was a perfectly valid reason for doing nothing at all to try and restore some kind of order.

  Harry had smashed his fist down onto the arm of his seat and was presumably about to give her a mouthful when the inspector pre-empted him by saying, ‘Of course, you’d be much better off in First Class. It’s only ten pounds each to upgrade at weekends.’

  Tight-arse or not, Harry hadn’t hesitated before reaching for his wallet. At first, though, he’d only asked for two upgrades, telling MacFarland he could stay where he was as he seemed quite at home here amongst his own kind. But then he’d changed his mind and forked out the extra tenner with the explanation that ‘Useless twat as you are, if Bracewell really is on my tail, I want you with me twenty-four seven from now on.’

  They had left the hotel in a hurry, partly because Harry wanted to get down to Bristol as quickly as possible, but mainly because he didn’t want Julian Bracewell paying them a visit. MacFarland had never seen Harry in such a state of anxiety, and it had shown no sign of abating as they had driven the short distance to the railway station. He had been constantly alert to anyone or anything that struck him as being in the least unusual and paid the utmost attention to any vehicle which stayed behind them for more than a few seconds. Only now in the comfort of the sparsely populated First Class carriage did his lolling head and the sound of his baritone snoring indicate that, for the time being at least, he felt safe from whatever Julian Bracewell had in mind for him.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, CrossCountry trains would like to apologise for the delay. This is due to essential engineering works on the line.’

  It may have been the shrill, distorted tone of the announcement over the tannoy or the absence of the train’s soporific motion that shook Harry from his slumbering, but he spluttered awake with the same look of anxiety as before.

  ‘Wha—? What’s ‘appened?’ he said, scanning his immediate surroundings for any sign of danger.

  ‘We’ve stopped,’ said MacFarland.

  ‘No shit.’ Harry’s voice was thick with sarcasm as he looked out of the window at the static view of fields and hedges stretching into the far distance. ‘How long we been ‘ere?’

  ‘Five or six minutes,’ said Delia without diverting his attention from the same snapshot of rural England. ‘Engineering works apparently.’

  ‘Bloody country’s gone to the dogs if you ask me. That’s why I got out in the first place.’

  It was all MacFarland could do to stifle a hoot of laughter. Surely even Harry couldn’t delude himself that the real reason for his self-imposed exile was that he’d had no desire to spend most of the rest of his life in jail. He wondered if it might also have had something to do
with getting away from Bracewell, but that didn’t make sense because, at the time, Harry’d believed he was already dead. Now he came to think about Bracewell, MacFarland realised he knew a fair bit of the story but not all the details. Maybe he should do a bit of homework in case he did show up again and was as dangerous as Harry thought.

  ‘So ye wanna tell us about this Bracewell guy, boss?’ he said.

  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Harry would have treated any question of MacFarland’s with contempt and told him to mind his own business. On this occasion, however, he seemed to actively welcome the invitation to tell all as if giving voice to the cause of his fear might have some kind of therapeutic effect. Whatever the reason, he launched into his story and began by explaining that he and Bracewell had once been the heads of two rival gangs operating in the same area of south London. The mutual animosity between them had eventually reached a peak with a particularly bloody spate of violence which culminated in the death of one of Bracewell’s men. A few days later, when both gangs had turned up to rob the same security van at exactly the same time, Harry and Bracewell decided that enough was enough. Both had agreed they were committing a disproportionate amount of their resources to fighting each other when they should be getting on with the real business of stealing other people’s money.

  After a series of arguments over a suitable venue that would be equally acceptable to both of them, Harry Vincent and Julian Bracewell had finally sat down together in the back room of a seedy little nightclub in a neutral part of the city to try and thrash out the terms for some sort of truce. Any idea that there could be a positive outcome to the meeting had seemed doomed from the start as the two men spent the first hour or so hurling abuse, recriminations and threats at each other. However, about halfway down the second bottle of Chivas Regal, the atmosphere slowly began to mellow, and there was even the occasional manifestation of mutual respect. By about five in the morning, it was as if they had been soulmates since childhood with never so much as a harsh word between them. By six, a deal had been struck and cemented with handshakes, backslaps and – much to the amazement of everyone present – a prolonged and almost tearful hug. From now on, the two gangs would amalgamate into one with Harry and Bracewell as joint bosses, and everything they made would be put into a pool and split fifty-fifty.