Anachronist

by Andrew Hastie

  9

  Lenin

  As Josh walked out of the hospital, he could hear the bass of a jacked-up sound system in the car park. The sound followed him as he made his way towards the exit. A BMW X5 with tinted windows slowed down to crawl beside him.

  ‘All right, bruv,’ said a familiar voice from the half-open passenger window. ‘You need a lift?’

  It was Billy, the not-so-clever bike thief, his face half-hidden by a scarf. A cloud of dope-scented smoke escaped through the open window.

  ‘Nope,’ Josh replied as he continued to walk.

  ‘Wasn’t asking.’

  Josh knew better than to argue. He got into the back. Lenin was sitting in the rear seat, smoking a large joint. He was wearing sunglasses and a large blue parka as if he were about to go on some polar exploration. The music was so loud that it made talking impossible. As the car pulled out into traffic, Josh noticed that Lenin had a gun resting in his lap.

  They went back a long way. Lenin had always been the bossy kind of kid, the clever one that got the bullies on his side and then told them who to beat up. His actual name was Richard Leonard Belkin, but over the years various versions of nicknames had led him to adopt ‘Lenin’. There was some link to the Marxist philosopher and founder of the communist movement, but he certainly didn’t follow the teachings of his namesake.

  Lenin had got into drugs at a young age. He was selling dope to kids way older than himself and making a tidy profit — enough to afford all the luxuries that Josh had always dreamed of. When his mother had to quit work and move to the Bevin estate, Josh had found he had two choices: be beaten up every day or join a gang and have some protection. It was not much of a choice: he was no boy scout. He managed to stay away from the drugs by being incredibly good at getting into other people’s cars — without their permission or their keys.

  ‘So, Crash. Am I going to have to use this?’ Lenin broke Josh’s reverie, waving the gun at his face like a gangster.

  Josh had been so angry when he’d thought his mum was in danger that he would have killed Lenin. But, since seeing his mother, he realised that he was mad at himself. Lenin had no choice but to make an example of him: Josh hadn’t played by the rules. He’d never been afraid of Lenin, not in all their years, but the guy was starting to do some serious drugs, and his behaviour was changing. What Josh had decided, sitting beside his mother in the ward, was that he needed to get away from this life altogether. It was not healthy. There was no future in it. He just had to cut all ties and move on, move away. Which meant settling the debt.

  ‘No, Len, we’re cool.’

  ‘No, Crash! We! Are! Not! Bloody! Cool!’ he said in a loud voice, punctuating every word by pointing the gun in Josh’s face.

  The two guys in the front shrank down in their seats a little, as though trying to disappear.

  ‘You disrespected me. You little shit! You owe me!’ He was getting more wound up with every word.

  Josh could feel his anger rising too. No one spoke to him like that, not in front of others, but he knew he had to control it. One wrong word and Lenin would probably shoot him.

  ‘I have the money, Len.’

  ‘No, you fricking don’t! We just went through your flat, remember? You don’t have shit!’

  Josh remembered the chaos. They had gone through everything, invaded the sanctity of his home.

  ‘Len, seriously, stop waving the gun around. It’s going to go off!’ Josh said nervously.

  Lenin’s eyes seemed to clear for a moment. Whatever he was smoking was obviously messing with his brain. Josh couldn’t read him at all.

  He levelled the gun at Josh’s head, and Josh closed his eyes. Could this be it? Had Lenin finally lost it? He could hear Lenin breathing hard, could smell the oiled metal of the gun. There was a long pause when nothing happened, and Josh opened his eyes, realising that his hands were over his head.

  Lenin was smiling like a Cheshire cat. He pointed the gun at his own head and pulled the trigger. There was an empty click — the gun wasn’t loaded.

  Lenin began to giggle and then broke into a bout of hysterical laughing. The others in the front joined in.

  ‘I so had you there, Joshy! You were shitting it!’ Lenin said between fits of laughter. He drew in a deep breath and started coughing. ‘It’s a replica, you dummy. Haven’t had it modded yet.’ He threw the gun into Josh’s lap.

  The weapon was heavy, not that he knew what one should feel like, but it certainly seemed real. Josh knew better than to retaliate. He smiled to show he took the joke and placed the gun on the seat between them.

  ‘So how’s your mum?’ asked Lenin. ‘We were real worried when we found her. Collapsed on the floor she was. Billy called the ambulance.’

  Billy looked round from his seat and gave Josh a wink. Josh nodded his thanks.

  ‘Bad. The doctor says it’s going to be a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Not cool. Do you want some more weed?’

  ‘No, they have her on stronger stuff, steroids and shit like that.’

  ‘Diazepam or some other benzodiazepine.’

  One thing you could say in Lenin’s favour, Josh thought, was that he had a very extensive knowledge of pharmaceuticals. In another life, he would have made an excellent chemist or maybe even a doctor.

  ‘Did you have to turn the place over?’

  ‘It was overdue. Debts gotta be paid, dude.’

  He wanted to complain about them taking the TV and leaving the place in such a state, but Lenin shook his head as if to say that this conversation was over.

  ‘Anyways, Josh-man. I’m going to be needing some of your specialist skills soon — just wanted to make sure you’re up for it. Considering what you owe me.’

  ‘How much is it now?’

  ‘Three K still,’ Lenin said, flashing a gold-toothed smile — holding up a hand before Josh could protest. ‘The TV just paid off the interest.’

  Josh was about to tell him about the medal, but something caught his eye out of the window. It was the sight of the colonel sitting down in the middle of the busy street, rummaging through bulky shopping bags, looking for something.

  ‘Hey, look, there’s old Colonel Cuckoo!’ said the guy next to Billy. ‘What’s he doing?’

  As they crawled past him in the traffic, the old man looked directly at their car and for a second Josh thought he was going to shout something at them, but he went remarkably quiet and took out his book and wrote something in it. A few seconds later he was being helped up by a couple of security guards.

  ‘Damn! The man is a total nutter,’ said Billy.

  ‘That’s what happens when you don’t take your meds,’ said Lenin. ‘So, Josh, get your shit together. I’ll be in touch about the job. Going to need a fast set of wheels for this one, so find me something special. Yeah?’

  With that, the car pulled over to the kerb and Josh was left standing on the pavement.

  He dug his hands deep into his pockets and walked away. The colonel was shouting at the top of his voice as the guards dragged him off in the other direction. Josh could have sworn he heard the old man call his name, but he’d had his fill of madness for one day. Right now all he wanted was to escape. Right now he needed to drive.

  10

  Cars

  For as long as he could remember Josh had loved everything about cars: the smell of the leather, the sound of the engine and the acceleration were all exhilarating. It was like being on a ride at Disneyland and way better than any video game, or at least it was until that day Gossy died.

  It all began when he was eleven. His best friend, Steve Goss, dared him to break into an old Ford Fiesta. Josh discovered that he had a knack for starting cars without a key: he just had to touch the ignition and the engine would kick in. By twelve, he had refined his abilities to a point where he could disable virtually any alarm with a simple touch on the bonnet — Gossy nicknamed him ‘the Keymaster’.

  Soon they were stealing to order, and between him
and Gossy they were bringing in two to three cars a week. Lenin had an older brother who sold them on to a local dealer and started to get requests for certain models. Gossy and Josh turned it into a game and competed against each other to fulfil the orders, which led to more than one race across town as they rushed to be the first to get their stolen vehicle to the drop-off.

  Neither ever really thought about the danger, or the consequences. Walking up the darkened, urine-stained stairs of a multi-storey car park, Josh thought back to the last time he’d been here. He could still see the wide grin on Gossy’s face as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the Porsche Boxster.

  They’d stolen from this car park so many times that he knew it was very unlikely he would need to go up more than three levels to find what he was after.

  Level 3 was full — it was mid-afternoon, and the locals were at work or shopping. Josh scanned the lines of bonnets and boots looking for a likely candidate — they were all newer models. Anything over a ’52 plate was going to be too conspicuous.

  The next level down was more promising: a Renault Clio RS16 dwarfed by two larger, gleaming Land Rovers. The Clio would have a simpler security system, without an immobiliser or tracker. As he touched the handle, he felt the usual tingle on his fingertips. Like a static shock, it interfered with the electrical system.

  There was always a buzz when Josh sat behind the wheel of someone else’s car: not because it was illegal but because it was like stepping into someone else’s life. For a moment he wasn’t himself; he could imagine what it was like to be them.

  Every car had a unique essence, one that gave him a hint of the owner: the salesman with a glove box full of receipts and condoms, the meticulous old lady with potpourri scent sacks hanging from the rear-view mirror, or the student with the three-day-old McDonald’s wrappers festering in the footwell.

  This one smelt of engine oil and damp; the seals must have gone under the wheel arches. He considered going for another but changed his mind when he touched the ignition and it started up the first time. It was a four-cylinder turbo with a decent 2.0-litre engine and a six-speed gearbox, a powerful rally car that could corner well and squeeze through narrower escape routes. The only thing that would be able to follow it would be a motorbike, and they could be stopped.

  He drove the Clio slowly out of the car park, obeying the speed limit so as not to attract attention. He took it out of the town centre, and then made for the nearest A-road so he could test it properly.

  Driving helped to clear his head — to focus his mind on something other than the crap life was dealing him.

  Speed was his ‘obsession’ the prosecution had told the court, ‘one that could have easily ended his life or, at least, endanger that of others’. He had been twelve years old when the accident had killed Gossy — too young to be locked up. At the time, the words of the judge were nothing more than a series of sounds strung together. He wasn’t really paying that much attention to what the adults were saying. He was numb, lost in grief, trying to come to terms with the death of the nearest thing he had to a brother. He didn’t realise at the time that they were basically banning him from ever doing the one thing he was any good at.

  As the world rushed by at 90mph, Josh felt the left front pulling slightly. The differential was slightly out as he cornered, the brakes were soft and third gear was not particularly happy below 3,000rpm. With a bit of TLC, it would’ve been a perfect little car, which was all the more saddening as by the end of this job it would be nothing but a burnt-out shell.

  The petrol gauge was reading just over half, and he eased back on the accelerator — he didn’t want to be forking out for any more fuel. He took the next exit, the plates would need to be changed and Shags would need to give the brakes a once over.

  11

  Friends

  Most of his friends, those who weren’t doing time, would spend their Saturdays hanging out in the abandoned industrial estate at the end of Dickens Lane. Once the home of a caravan factory, it had quickly fallen into ruin and was now nothing more than a dumping ground for random bits of household junk and industrial waste. They’d managed to create their own skate park from the discarded parts of abandoned mobile homes, and there was enough open ground for some decent car stunts, should you wish to burn off a few inches of rubber.

  As he turned into the estate, he spotted the usual crowd collected around a pile of burning wooden pallets, at the top of which someone had dumped a badly dressed mannequin.

  He swung the Clio into a tight circle, locking the wheel so he could leave a donut skid mark, balancing the clutch perfectly as the car’s back wheels drifted around behind him. The crowd stood frozen to the spot, their heads rotating like meerkats as their eyes followed the orbit of the car. He reversed the lock on the steering to weave a series of slick figure 8s that produced clouds of dust and burning rubber until he’d virtually disappeared, then slammed it into reverse and parked it with a handbrake finish between two rusting freight containers.

  ‘Yo, Josh. You still got it, bro,’ said Shaggy as he raised a can of Red Bull in salute.

  ‘Shags. Benny. Coz. Lils,’ Josh acknowledged each of them with a nod as he approached. ‘Where’s Dennis?’

  ‘Looking for something else to burn,’ said Benny, pointing to a scruffy-looking boy in a tracksuit digging through a pile of recently dumped fly-tippings.

  Josh had known them all since they were in primary school, they were wasters with no real ambition, other than to score another high, get hammered or laid — whichever came first. Unlike the Ghost Squad, they were harmless, and they were all he had left of an ever-diminishing set of friends.

  ‘S’up?’ Coz asked Josh as he handed Shags a joint and started to roll another.

  ‘Will you give it a once over?’ Josh replied, nodding towards the Renault. ‘The brakes are soft on the left front, and I’m going to need it running sweet in a couple of days.’

  ‘No probs. You got a job on?’ asked Shags, who was one of the best mechanics Josh had ever met.

  Josh sat down on what was left of an old car seat and told them about Lenin and what he’d done to the flat.

  ‘Shite. He’s out of control, dude!’ said Benny.

  The rest of the gang nodded in agreement.

  ‘You got to disappear, J,’ added Shags, blowing out a copious amount of smoke.

  ‘And go where exactly?’ Josh replied. ‘It’s not like I can just up and leave mum, is it?’

  They all agreed glumly.

  Benny vocalised what they were all thinking: ‘It’s proper bollocks.’ The joint made its way round the circle until it reached Josh.

  Lils, officially a girl, although she’d been treated like one of the boys since anyone could remember, had obviously been giving the matter a lot of thought, because she suddenly jumped up and announced: ‘You have to go, Joshy. You’re way clever. You could do anything if you put your mind to it. Take your mum and ... and ... go be a racing driver or —’ she pointed at the half-hidden Renault — ‘or test them or something. I don’t know just, like, get out there and be who you were meant to be.’ She sat back down again, exhausted by the effort. The others nodded their heads in agreement; they were all a little taken aback by her speech — no one could remember Lils saying that much ever.

  ‘Lils. I’m afraid that only happens in the movies,’ Josh replied.

  ‘Well, yeah, maybe, but you know,’ she muttered staring down at her trainers.

  Dennis returned with a couple of boxes full of toys: discarded and broken Barbie dolls and other random parts of old board games.

  ‘Who wants to play dead-Barbie Monopoly?’ asked Dennis with a broad smile. He was obviously as high as a kite.

  The others helped him unpack the various items as he described how the game would work. Josh sat and watched them as they each chose a severed Barbie head to act as their game piece, and Dennis handed out the scraps of paper that would serve as money.

  ‘What we gonna do for d
ice?’ asked Benny, taking the whole thing far too seriously.

  Dennis looked about for something; then his eyes landed on a dented tin box, and he picked it up with one hand and scratched numbers on each side with a rusty nail. Josh thought the tin looked familiar — it reminded him of the ones in the colonel’s house.

  ‘There you go, Benny,’ Dennis said, throwing it to him. ‘You can go first.’

  ‘I hate going first,’ muttered Benny as he caught it.

  ‘Do you ever wonder where this stuff came from?’ asked Coz, picking up one of the eyeless heads, ‘like who owned it before?’

  ‘Before what?’ asked Dennis, rearranging the pieces on the board.

  ‘Before they chucked it away. These things came from somewhere, someone made it, someone played with it — it meant something to someone.’

  ‘Not any more,’ replied Dennis with a twisted smile that made everyone feel a little sorry for the toys.

  ‘Yeah, who cares? They chucked it out. Their loss,’ said Josh spinning one of the heads round on his finger.

  Lils was staring at Josh as she took the joint. He rarely smoked dope — he’s seen what it did to his mother.

  ‘You should go, Josh,’ repeated Lils.

  ‘Where, Lils? Where can I go?’

  Her naive outlook was beginning to annoy him. She approached life in a very childlike way. There were times when he wondered if she wasn’t a little autistic.

  ‘I dunno. Do something different, have a night off. Your mum’s not going to need you for a while yet, is she? Go wild. Go be someone else for a night!’

  She was right, of course, Josh was sick of his life. No matter how hard he tried, it never went his way. He knew he had to break out of this cycle somehow, start taking some kind of control of his life.