Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid

by Rob Johnson

  ‘You bastards just gonna let me bleed to death, are yer?’

  Patterson turned slowly and stared down at Harry Vincent’s sweat drenched face with undisguised distaste. ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Fucking wanker.’

  ‘What are we going to do with him?’ said Statham. ‘The boss wants us to tidy up here and get the hell out of it.’

  Tidy up? Patterson found it amusing that she’d used such a seemingly innocuous phrase when what she really meant was: “Get the stiff to some place where he’s more likely to have been when he croaked, and as for Vincent—”

  ‘Guv?’

  ‘Sorry, Colin. Miles away.’

  ‘Vincent.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Patterson. ‘Leave him to me. You go next door and tell the others to start packing up. And get rid of the plods, but make sure you scare the crap out of them with the Official Secrets Act and all that stuff.’

  ‘Righto.’

  Patterson followed Statham to the door and closed it behind him before taking his gun from his shoulder holster. He walked back over to Vincent, screwing the silencer into place as he went. He knew that he ought to make an effort to find out what had happened to the ransom money, but he doubted Vincent would tell him anything. Besides, it wasn’t his money. Why should he give a toss any more? He planted his feet either side of Vincent’s bulging waistline and aimed at the centre of his forehead, trying to avoid the inevitable look of terror when realisation dawned.

  ‘What the fuck d’you—’

  That’s something, I suppose, Patterson thought as he began to remove the silencer. This is the last time I’ll have to do this sort of shit. Ever. Not that he felt particularly bad about Vincent. The world would be better off without him, and in any case, how could you kill somebody who’d already been dead for two years?

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Trevor didn’t even notice Sandra’s hand reaching towards the toast rack in the centre of the table. His eyes just happened to be pointing in that direction.

  ‘What?’

  The indignation in Sandra’s tone snapped him out of his brooding contemplation. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’re keeping count, aren’t you?’ she said, her fingertips hovering within half an inch of the last remaining slice of toast.

  ‘Er… sorry?’ Trevor said again.

  ‘You’re thinking: That’s her third piece. No wonder she’s fat.’

  ‘No I’m not.’ He hadn’t a clue what she was on about. His mind was awash with rather more important matters than keeping a tally of how many slices of toast she’d eaten. Besides, he’d told her before that he didn’t think she was fat.

  ‘Was Imelda fat?’

  Twelve hours or so earlier, Sandra’s use of the past tense would scarcely have registered, but in the present circumstances, it was especially poignant. He’d been in denial for over a year that Imelda might actually be dead, and it had taken several more months to get used to the fact that he’d never see her again. Then all of a sudden she pops up large as life on a bloody computer screen. It was bad enough that she’d deliberately subjected him to all that grieving and misery for no reason, but to discover that she’d only married him in the first place for the sake of “convenience”… What a bitch.

  ‘Well?’

  Once again, Trevor had no idea what Sandra was asking. ‘Well what?’

  ‘Oh never mind,’ she said, spreading a liberal amount of butter onto her toast. ‘You’re not really with me at the moment, are you?’

  ‘And that’s surprising, is it? I mean, I’ve just been told by my missing-presumed-dead wife that all the time I knew her, she was an MI5 field agent, and to cap it all, she tells me she was ordered to get herself wed to any old sucker so her cover would be more convincing.’

  ‘Yes, I think she could have left out the bit about “the more ordinary the better”.’

  Trevor didn’t respond. Imelda’s remark had certainly wounded him deeply, but when he’d thought about it later, he’d realised that the depth of the wound was directly proportional to the truth of her statement. He couldn’t deny it. He was as ordinary as they came.

  ‘Still,’ said Sandra through a mouthful of toast, ‘I suppose you’ve got to be grateful to her in one way.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She got you off a murder charge, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, but if she hadn’t decided to disappear off the face of the planet because – what was it? – some enemy agent was on to her, none of that stuff would ever have happened.’ Enemy agent? Good grief, the whole situation was totally bizarre. ‘And anyway, it was only by pure fluke that I spotted her on the computer.’

  ‘Gotta thank Milly for that one, I guess.’

  ‘And what if I hadn’t? You think if it had gone all the way and I’d been convicted she’d have stepped in and saved the day?’

  ‘Yes, I do actually.’

  ‘Huh.’ Trevor slumped back in his chair and folded his arms.

  ‘Your sister thought so too.’

  ‘Oh she did, did she? What is this? Some kind of female conspiracy?’

  Trevor was aware of Sandra’s mouth moving, but he heard nothing of what she was saying. His mind had already drifted back to the events at Janice’s house the night before. It had been close to midnight when they’d got there because Logan had insisted on getting confirmation that Imelda really was who she said she was, and he’d dragged them to the nearest police station and kept them hanging around for almost three hours until he was satisfied. “Satisfied” was perhaps not the most accurate description though. The guy was fuming and had issued all kinds of threats, including charging Trevor’s mother with wasting police time if she hadn’t been ‘completely off her bloody trolley’.

  Not surprisingly, Janice had demanded a detailed explanation of exactly what her brother had been up to that had brought the police to her door in full view of all the neighbours. She had fed them soup and sandwiches, and when Trevor had finished explaining and wolfing down the food, she’d rung their mother, who had flatly denied all knowledge of any murder accusation and added that Trevor needed his head seeing to.

  As it was so late, Trevor had hoped his sister would put them up for the night, but there was no way his ‘hooligan bloody mongrel’ would ever cross her threshold again. He had no intention of making Milly sleep in the car, so he and Sandra had found a couple of rooms in a nearby guesthouse which allowed pets.

  ‘So long as it’s well behaved,’ the guesthouse owner had said, casting a doubtful eye in Milly’s direction.

  Trevor had lied – convincingly for once – and they’d been shown to their adjacent rooms.

  ‘’Night then, Trev,’ Sandra had said when the proprietor had headed off back down the hallway. ‘Sleep well.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s been a long couple of days,’ he’d muttered, suddenly aware that Sandra had taken hold of the doorknob to her room several seconds earlier but had so far shown no sign of actually turning it. Afraid that the slight reddening of his cheeks was about to develop into an incandescent beacon of embarrassment, he had mumbled a final goodnight and almost hurled himself and Milly into his own room before she could notice.

  Utterly exhausted though he was, it had been almost four in the morning before sleep finally overcame him. Even then, he had slept only fitfully, his subconscious bombarding him with all manner of dreams, none of which were in the least bit pleasant. There was Harry Vincent, brandishing a chainsaw which dripped with blood and tottering towards him on stumps of legs that ended at the knees. Then there was Patterson and his crew carrying him at shoulder height towards an enormous cauldron of boiling water and chanting ‘Guts for garters, yum yum yum’ over and over again in a quasi religious monotone. Next, he’d lifted the lid of a toilet cistern and inside was Logan’s severed head singing We’ll Meet Again in a heavily Glaswegian accent. But weirdest of all was the sight of Sandra, completely naked and strapped into an armchair with the butt of a gun in her mouth and aiming it directly at
his genitals. Blimey, if Sigmund Freud had got hold of any of that lot, he’d be—

  ‘Sssh!’

  Trevor shook his head free of unbidden images of trains and cigars and focused on the reality of a fully clothed Sandra with nothing more in her mouth than a generously buttered piece of toast. ‘What? I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Look,’ she said, pointing in an upward angle above his right shoulder.

  He skewed himself round in his chair to see the flat-screen television mounted high up on the wall in a corner of the dining room.

  ‘That’s him, isn’t it?’

  Trevor looked at the picture of a grey-haired man in collar and tie with a Remembrance Day poppy fixed to the lapel of his jacket and recognised him immediately.

  ‘…for Baileyhill and Redbridge,’ the newsreader was saying, ‘was found dead in the early hours of this morning at the Royal Lansdown Hotel in Bath. Initial reports suggest that the sixty-two year old MP died instantly from a massive heart attack, and police have already ruled out any question of foul play. Other sources have also revealed that Mr Quicke had been suffering from a serious heart disease for several months and that doctors had informed him that it was only a matter of time before—’

  ‘Well there’s a surprise,’ said Sandra.

  The image on the TV then switched to a shot of the Prime Minister being mobbed by reporters and having apparently just emerged from a tour of some factory or other. He wore a suitably solemn expression as he trotted out the usual “deeply saddened”, “greatly missed”, “thoughts are with Gerald’s family at this difficult time” kind of platitudes that drip with insincerity.

  ‘I still don’t quite get it,’ said Trevor. ‘I mean, why all the hush hush?’

  Sandra laughed. ‘Oh come on, Trev. Even you can’t be that naive.’

  Still reeling from Imelda’s affirmation of his mind-numbing ordinariness, Trevor winced inwardly at this latest assault on his self esteem. He attempted to conceal his hurt by pretending to concentrate on pouring himself a third cup of coffee but realised he had failed when he felt Sandra’s palm rest lightly on the back of his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I really didn’t mean that.’

  ‘No, you’re quite right,’ said Trevor. ‘Ordinary and naïve. Trevor Nice-but-dim.’

  ‘Nobody said you were dim.’

  He felt Sandra’s hand slide from the top of his and instantly regretted the petulant self pity in his tone. ‘Okay,’ he said, trying to recover the situation with a show of positivity. ‘Let’s see if I can work it out for myself. MP gets kidnapped and government pays the ransom – or tries to – but in the meantime, the MP snuffs it. Prime Minister’s been banging on for yonks about not giving in to terrorist demands and all that, so it’d be a bit embarrassing if the whole ransom thing ever got out. Um…’

  ‘General election coming up. Plenty of other recent scandals without another one to deal with.’

  Trevor felt slightly peeved at Sandra’s prompting, but he decided to stifle his irritation in the interests of restoring the amicable equilibrium. ‘The Honourable Member’s already dead, so where’s the harm in playing let’s pretend? No kidnap, no ransom. Situation normal.’

  ‘Bravo,’ said Sandra, clapping her hands together in mock applause. ‘I knew you could do it if you put your mind to it.’

  Her accompanying wink reassured him he wasn’t meant to take her patronising manner seriously, and he smiled back at her to show that the irony hadn’t passed him by.

  ‘All the same,’ he said. ‘I don’t have to be happy about it. I mean, why should we let the bastards get away with it? What’s to stop us going straight to the press and—’

  ‘Whoa there, Batman,’ said Sandra, her wrists resting on the edge of the table, both palms towards him. ‘Before you get too carried away with your new-found role as saviour of the universe, I’ll remind you exactly what’s stopping us, and that’s a little thing called the Official Secrets Act. Mess with that and you could be talking serious prison time – or worse.’

  ‘Worse?’ Trevor genuinely didn’t know what she meant.

  ‘You think people like Pitter Patterson give a monkey’s who they…’ She seemed to be searching for the right word. ‘… Liquidate if they get in the way? It’s what they do, for Christ’s sake.’

  Trevor resisted giving voice to any of the thoughts which sprang into his mind. Any one of them would have reinforced Sandra’s opinion of his naivety, and besides, he had the distinct impression she was losing patience with him. He stirred his coffee even though he’d added neither milk nor sugar.

  ‘Look, I don’t like it any more than you do,’ said Sandra, ‘but shit like this happens all the time, and there’s not a damn thing people like us can do about it.’

  Yep, she was definitely getting pissy, but he was grateful she hadn’t added “Deal with it” or “Get over it” at the end. He continued pointlessly stirring his coffee, once again in the belief that silence was his best form of defence. After several seconds, however, he was beginning to doubt the effectiveness of his strategy when he heard a sharp tapping sound in front of him. He looked up to see the silver toast rack poised a couple of inches above the table, and his eyes traced a route from Sandra’s hand and up her arm to her face. It was wearing a broad grin.

  ‘You want me to order more toast?’ she said.

  Trevor shook his head. Sandra had arrived in the guesthouse dining room a few minutes before him and ordered the full English for both of them, but he had hardly touched it. By rights, he should have been ravenous since he’d hardly eaten a thing all weekend apart from a handful of biscuits, a Mars bar and the late night snack at his sister’s the night before. But his appetite had deserted him. In fact, he felt decidedly nauseous whenever he pondered the events of the past couple of days, which was most of the time. The queasiness was particularly intense when he recalled the shock of seeing Imelda on the— Oh hell, I’m going to throw up.

  He jumped to his feet, almost knocking his chair over in the process.

  ‘You okay? You’ve gone a bit… pale.’

  ‘Need a pee,’ said Trevor through ventriloquist lips but was able to appreciate Sandra’s look of genuine concern despite his current preoccupation with finding the nearest toilet as quickly as possible.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said as he frantically scanned the room for the appropriate sign. ‘I’ll sort out the bill while you’re gone. It’s quite a schlep back to your van, so the sooner we get started, the better.’

  He nodded, suddenly remembering there was a Gents in the hallway just outside the dining room, and he was about to set off when Sandra interrupted his mission once again.

  ‘Still, it’ll give us plenty of time to talk about how we’re going to spend the twenty-five grand. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had a decent holiday in years.’

  It was as if she had recited some kind of magical healing charm, so rapidly did Trevor’s nausea vanish. His mind had no room for anything other than what she had just said. ‘We?’

  ‘You got a problem with that?’

  ‘Well no, but—’

  ‘The thing is,’ said Sandra, ‘you came so close to screwing up this job that I could quite cheerfully have throttled you the moment I caught up with you at the festival.’

  Trevor scratched the back of his head and stared down at his feet. ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. All I—’

  ‘But then I was lying in bed last night, thinking it all through, and it struck me that without your untimely and totally unwelcome interference, I’d have ended up with two grand instead of twenty-five. Fair’s fair. We split the difference.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  Sandra sat back in her chair. ‘I thought you said you needed the loo.’

  He didn’t any more, but he decided to make the trip anyway if only to give himself the space to try and get his head round what she was suggesting. He weaved his way past the three tables that stood between him and th
e dining room doorway, each occupied by a solitary man in a suit and tie, all intent on reading their newspapers. As he passed the last of them, he heard Sandra’s voice calling out: ‘And don’t forget to wash your hands.’

  There were no urinals in the Gents, just a single toilet and a small washbasin. He locked the door, lowered the lid and sat down. High up on the wall behind him was a small open window through which he could hear Milly’s familiar banshee howling. Dogs weren’t allowed in the dining room, so he’d taken her for a short walk when he’d come down for breakfast and then left her in Sandra’s car.

  ‘Quite an adventure eh, Milly?’ he said aloud. ‘Bet you never thought it’d turn out like this.’

  As if in response, Milly gave a particularly ear-piercing shriek, and Trevor laughed for the first time in days. It gave him a much needed boost, and the conversation he’d just had with Sandra meant that – for now at least – his mind no longer had room for the nausea-inducing thoughts of Imelda, Harry Vincent, Logan, Patterson and all the rest of them.

  What was it she’d said about a holiday? Did she mean they should go somewhere together? He closed his eyes and concentrated hard to conjure up the vision of a tropical beach, complete with white sand, palm trees and gently lapping turquoise waves with Sandra lying beside him in an exceptionally skimpy bikini. But try as he might, all he could come up with was a depressingly vivid evocation of the last beach he’d visited about three years ago – a windswept Cleethorpes, complete with a relentless grey drizzle and the fetid stink of seaweed and fried onions. Fortunately, however, he was still able to picture the scantily clad Sandra with impressive clarity even though he wasn’t quite sure why she was leaping up and down on the floor of a bouncy castle with an enormous piece of toast in her mouth.