A Cool Head (2 page)

‘Gravy? You paying attention?’

‘Yes.’

‘You need to pay attention.’

‘Yes, Benjy.’

‘I need to hide somewhere. How about your boss’s hut?’

‘Did he say it was all right?’

‘Sure he did. I just spoke to him.’

‘That’s fine, then.’

‘Is it locked?’

‘He always locks it.’

‘But you’ve got a key?’

I shook my head. I used to have a key, but then my boss found me sleeping in the hut one morning. I’d been there all night. It was so peaceful and quiet. Benjy was making a hissing sound. Then he started coughing, and the spit that came out of his mouth was pink, like he’d been eating sweets. He tried wiping it away again, but the bag was too heavy.

‘I need to hide,’ he repeated.

‘Didn’t he give you the key?’

‘No.’

‘That’s a shame.’ I thought for a moment. ‘How about hiding behind the hedge?’ I pointed to it. That’s where the bonfires happen. It’s where the compost is kept. And the digger. Not a big digger, but big enough for a hole six feet deep.

Benjy didn’t seem to be listening. He fell to his knees and I thought maybe he was going to pray. ‘Tired,’ was all he said.

‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘You must be.’

He managed to look up at me. ‘Nothing gets past you, Gravy.’ Then he shoved the bag forward. It was sitting on the ground in front of him. ‘Hide this for me.’

‘Sure. Will you be wanting it back?’

‘Not a chance.’ His head slumped forward again. I could see his chest and shoulders rise and fall. He really was tired, so I left him there and tiptoed to a different part of the graveyard, and did some more raking.

It was almost dark by the time I got back to him. My wheelbarrow was empty. I’d left it with the rake next to the digger. I kept my gloves with me. They would go home with me. They were good gloves.

‘Benjy? I’ve got to lock the gates now,’ I said. ‘Boss doesn’t like them left open. People come in at night. They leave things lying around. Sometimes they paint things on the headstones or try to start fires. There’s a big chain for the gates. Do you want me to move your car? Benjy?’

His shoulders weren’t moving. He still looked like he was praying. My mum used to pray. She would be on her knees at the side of her bed, hands pressed together. I did the same thing, and sometimes I still do. But I always whisper the prayer so the other people in the house don’t hear me.

‘Benjy?’

I placed my hand on his shoulder and watched as he fell forwards until he was face down on the pathway. I knew what that meant. And when I turned him over, his eyes were closed, his mouth wide open. I pulled up his shirt and saw the hole in his chest. Blood had stopped coming out of it. His skin was cold to the touch.

‘Bad,’ I said. It was the first word that came into my head. ‘Bad, bad, bad, bad.’ Five times for luck. There was a dog barking somewhere. Dogs like the graveyard. So do cats and foxes and rabbits. Birds, too, in the daylight. I’d never seen or heard an owl. Or a bat or a rat or a mouse. One old lady from the estate told me there were badgers nearby, but she couldn’t tell me where. She said she could smell them sometimes. I always wish I’d asked her what they smelled like, then I’d know.

‘Bad badger, badger bad,’ I said, liking the sound of it. Four more times for luck, then I looked inside the blue bag. It was a gun. It looked like a real gun. There was blood on the inside of the bag. The gun smelled of oil or grease. I’d hidden a knife for Benjy in the past, but never a gun. First time for everything, I thought to myself.

Then I noticed the car. There was a light on inside it, and that gave me a shock. But the door was open, and that had to be the reason. When you opened your door, a little light came on. I walked over to the car and looked inside. More sticky blood on the seat and the steering wheel, and a balaclava on the floor. The key was in the ignition. The car smelled of leather, and there was a little green tree hanging below the mirror. Benjy had forgotten his other bag. It was the kind people carried when they were going to play football or visit the pool. It was red and shiny and, when I opened it, it was full of bits of paper. I lifted out one of the bundles and held it up to the little light in the car’s ceiling.

It was money.

The notes all had 20 on them. That meant each one was worth twenty pounds. I put the bundle back in the bag and looked through the windscreen. Benjy was still there. So was the blue bag with the gun inside. He wanted me to hide the gun. But what about the car? What about the red bag?

And what about Benjy?

Chapter Two

George Renshaw’s Scrapyard

‘I’m not happy,’ Gorgeous George said.

This was true. But then he wasn’t gorgeous either. As Don Empson stared at his employer, he wondered how George had ended up with the nickname. Maybe it was ironic, a sort of joke. Like calling a glum bloke in the pub ‘Smiler’. Gorgeous George was as wide as he was tall, and he wasn’t exactly short. He always wore his shirtsleeves rolled up. His arms were hairy, with a lot of tattoos. The tattoos were from his days in the Royal Navy. There were thistles and pipers and naked women. George was completely bald. His scalp gleamed. There were nicks and scars on it, and more scars on his face and neck. He wore a large gold ring on each and every finger, right hand and left, plus a heavy gold ID bracelet on one wrist and a gold Rolex watch on the other. When he laughed, which didn’t happen very often, you could see a couple of gold teeth towards the back of his mouth. His eyes were small, almost childlike, and he had no eyebrows. His nose was red and pulpy, like an overripe strawberry. He sat behind his desk and drummed its surface with his jewelled fingers.

‘Not happy at all,’ he said.

‘You’re not the only one,’ Don told him. ‘How do you think I feel? Nice easy job you said. A simple delivery. I mean, someone sticks a gun in my face. I’m not happy either.’

Okay, so it had been his stomach rather than his face, but Don reckoned face would sound better.

‘Time was,’ George muttered, ‘you’d have taken that gun away from him and slapped him about a bit.’

‘Time was,’ Don agreed. It was true, he was getting old. He’d worked for George’s dad for the best part of thirty years. When Albert had died and George had taken over the business, Don had reckoned he’d be put out to pasture. But George had wanted him around, ‘a link to the old days’. Don hadn’t been keen, not that he’d said anything.

And now this.

‘You sure you didn’t recognise him?’ George asked again.

‘He was wearing a mask.’

‘And he was on his own?’

‘As far as I could see.’

‘And there were three of you? Three against one?’

‘Looked to me like he was the only one holding a shooter.’ Don paused. ‘Are you sure we should be discussing this here?’

He meant bugs. George was worried the cops had planted bugs in his office. George scowled at Don’s question, but then thought about it and nodded. ‘Let’s take a walk,’ he said, rising to his feet.

The office was a Portakabin and the Portakabin stood in the middle of a scrapyard. Don was wary. He knew what those words could mean,
let’s take a walk
. Didn’t always end well for people, the walks they took in this scrapyard, walks they took with Gorgeous George.

Don’s shoulders and arms were tensed as they stepped outdoors. The crane, the one with the big magnet swinging from its arm, had finished work for the day. The compactor sat in silence. In the past, it had crushed its fair share of cars. Sometimes those cars had contained evidence . . . and sometimes body parts.

‘I’ve told you,’ Don said to his boss, ‘I’m getting too old for this. World’s changing too fast. It’s younger guys like Sam and Eddie you should be relying on.’

‘But it comes down to trust in the end, Don,’ George replied, ‘and I wouldn’t trust either of them the way I trust you. My dad always told me, “Don’s the guy. Any problems, Don’ll sort things out.” ’

‘All in the past, George.’

George had slung an arm around Don’s shoulders. They were walking past the German Shepherds. The two huge dogs stared at them, tongues lolling from their mouths. But they didn’t bark. They knew better than to bark at George. If Don was on his own, they’d be straining at the leash, keen to sink their teeth into a leg or an arm. But right now, George was protecting him.

The two men were heading into the heart of the scrapyard. Cars and other vehicles were piled on top of each other. Many had been hauled here from the scenes of accidents. People would have died in those accidents. People would have lost limbs and loved ones.

‘So tell me again,’ George said. ‘Tell me how it all happened.’

Don thought for a moment and took a deep breath. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I drove into the garage, like you told me. Hanley wasn’t there yet, so it was just me and Raymond. Raymond was working on a Bentley, polishing the dashboard, really doing a thorough job . . .’

‘He’s a car valet.That’s what he does.’

‘Not any more.’

George managed a sympathetic look. ‘Not any more,’ he agreed.

‘So anyway, I was talking to him, just the usual stuff . . . and then Hanley arrives. He drives on to the forecourt but leaves his car there, keeps the engine running. He wasn’t planning on sticking around. The bag was in the front seat of my car. Should only have taken us two minutes . . .’

‘So when did the bandit arrive?’

‘He came out of nowhere. Balaclava pulled down over his face. Just a couple of holes for the eyes and one for the mouth. He was carrying a pistol. Funny thing is . . .’

‘What?’

‘Well, I had this wild thought when I saw him. I wondered if you’d sent him.’

‘Me?’

‘That way you’d get your money back, and Hanley couldn’t complain. He’d still have to keep his side of the deal.’

George was shaking his head. But he was thinking too. Don reckoned he knew what he was thinking,
Wish I’d thought of that . . .

‘And you just handed the cash over to him?’ George asked.

‘I’m not a martyr, George. The gun was real.’

‘So how did the shooting start?’

‘There were the three of us, me, Hanley and the mask. Nobody was paying attention to Raymond. He must have had the gun tucked away somewhere. He shot twice. It was deafening. ’

‘And he got the guy?’

‘First bullet went wide, second one hit him in the chest.’ Don paused for a moment. It was painful for him, remembering this. He made a show of clearing his throat. ‘But by then he’d fired back at Raymond. Went straight into his skull and he dropped. The money was still in my car, so the mask got into the driver’s seat and backed out of the garage. Headed across the forecourt and was gone.’

‘Before you could pick up Raymond’s gun?’

Don just shrugged.

‘What did Hanley do? Besides wetting himself, I mean.’

‘He ran back to his car and hightailed it.’

‘Same direction the bandit took?’

Don shook his head. ‘You reckon Hanley . . . ? But he was going to get the money anyway.’

George thought about this and nodded. He folded his arms. ‘This isn’t good, Don. How did you get out of there?’

‘Well, the Bentley had its keys in.’

‘Where is it now?’

‘Parked up behind the Portakabin. Reckon it needs to go in the compactor?’

‘Of course it does!’

‘Shame. Raymond did a beautiful job of cleaning it.’

‘Well, Raymond was a pro, wasn’t he?’ George gave Don a look, as if to say,
And I thought you were too.

‘I’ve never shot anyone in my life, George. In the old days, fists were enough, maybe a bottle or a knife now and again.’

‘These aren’t the old days.’ George thought for another moment. ‘I need to talk to Hanley, make sure he’s okay. Meantime,
you
need to find your car. And there’s still that other little matter to be taken care of.’

Don nodded. ‘What about our bandit friend?’

‘He’s wounded, maybe badly wounded. He’s got to have ended up in hospital.’ George jabbed a finger at Don. ‘So start making some calls.’

‘Then we pay him a visit?’

George just nodded. ‘Was Raymond married? Is there someone we should send flowers to?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Find out, will you?’

‘Before or after the other matter?’

George glowered at him. ‘What do you think? No, never mind what you think. Whoever was wearing that mask, they knew the cash was being handed over. That means it’s someone we know, or someone Hanley knows. It means someone somewhere has blabbed or else got greedy. It means they’re close, Don. And if they’re close, we’re going to have no trouble finding them.’

Don nodded his agreement. Thing is, George, he thought to himself,
you don’t know how close.

‘When do we tell Stewart?’ he asked.

‘When I’m ready,’ George snarled, marching back towards his dogs and the Portakabin.

Don waited for another minute, then headed in the same direction. The German Shepherds snarled and spat, baring their teeth. They were up on their back legs, front legs off the ground and pawing at the air, willing their studded collars to break. Don ignored them and headed for the Bentley. He didn’t know whose car it was. There was some dust on the windows and a bit of mud on the tyres. Plus some of Raymond’s blood and brain matter on the right-side wing. A wipe would get rid of it. Or a hose, if you wanted to be really careful. But the inside of the car was clean, immaculate in fact. He considered his options. But if he kept it, it would be noted as missing, and the cops would assume Raymond’s killer had taken it. No, Gorgeous George was right, it had to be turned into scrap. Shame, though.

But Don had plenty of other problems. He knew he should be angry, but all he really felt was sorrow. There was no way out, that was the truth of it.

No happy ending.

Chapter Three

Gravy’s Story (2)

It took me a while to find her house. I don’t know that part of the city. Benjy’s car had one of those little map-readers, but I didn’t know how to work it. I can drive a car, though, not much different from dodgems. Benjy’s was an automatic. Those are the cars I can drive. So I drove to her address. The piece of paper was in the glove box. Why is it called that, a glove box? I tried it with my own gloves, but they wouldn’t fit without squashing them, and I didn’t want to do that. But I found the piece of paper and it had her name on it, plus her address. She was called Celine Watts. I stopped the car beside some kids on bikes and showed them her address. They shook their heads. Then I tried at a bus stop and a man pointed up the road. So then I got lost a few times but a woman on her way home from the shops told me exactly what to do. Right, and right again. I write with my right hand, that’s a good way to remember left from right.