Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid (27 page)

Lenny did his chin stroking thing again, apparently giving some serious consideration to his options. ‘Prints,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Fingerprints. Ours. They must be all over the place.’ He waved his arm aimlessly around the room to reinforce the point.

Carrot’s mouth hung open for a moment before he released his grip on the holdall and let it fall to the floor. ‘Bollocks,’ he said and snatched the toupee from his head once more. Reaching the kitchen area in two strides, he began frantically rubbing the ginger hairpiece over the nearest work surface.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Milton Street was firmly ensconced in one of the seedier areas of Bristol, far away from the bistros and art galleries of the gentrified dockland area. The pavements were strewn with piles of plastic garbage sacks, many of which had been ripped open – presumably by a variety of scavenging animals – and their contents spewed into the road. Swarms of food wrappers and empty carrier bags scurried this way and that according to the fluctuations of the light summer breeze, which itself was tinged with the scent of decay and degradation.

A faint odour of stale urine and burning rubber invaded Trevor’s nostrils as soon as Sandra parked the car and he wound down his window. He looked across the street at the shabby block of flats and craned his neck to peer upwards at the fifteen or so storeys with all but a few of its myriad windows firmly closed to the outside world. Lowering his gaze to ground level again, he took in the grimy glass of the aluminium-framed entrance and the faded gold lettering on the pane above the main door, which was barely decipherable as CABOT TOWER. A more brightly printed estate agent’s sign was attached to a wooden post at the side of the entrance and announced that Flat 12 was TO LET – or it would have done if some wit hadn’t added an “I” between the TO and the LET.

Very appropriate, thought Trevor.

Milly’s olfactory sense appeared to be not in the least offended by the aroma of her new surroundings. On the contrary, she had woken from a near comatose sleep on the back seat of the car the moment Sandra had switched off the engine and was now poking her snout through the open window, sniffing the air with obvious enthusiasm.

Trevor wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing here. After he’d bolted down the King Size Mars bar back at the motorway services, he’d felt better able to cope with something approaching rational thought again, and Sandra had repeated her offer to drop him off somewhere, but he had eventually declined. His mind had reeled at the barrage of contradictory advice offered by all of the competing voices inside his head, each of them determined to be heard above the others:

Where are you going to go if she does drop you off? You’re totally out of cash, and you left your bank cards in the van, which is miles away. And even if you managed to hitch back, the police are probably still keeping tabs on it.

Trevor had had a vision of scores of heavily armed police officers in riot helmets descending on his camper van as soon as he turned the key in the ignition.

Get the hell away from this woman. She’s trouble. You really want to be cut up into little pieces by a bunch of psychopathic gangsters?

The image of his own disembodied head rocking gently from side to side in a pool of blood and surrounded by a variety of internal organs and severed limbs had made him feel decidedly unwell.

You’re the one who wanted an adventure. You’re the one who wanted to do something with your life. So you want to quit the moment things start turning a bit dodgy? What are you, a man or a mouse?

He had pictured himself in his black and orange Dreamhome Megastores uniform but with the addition of enormous whiskers and huge mouselike ears, nibbling on a lump of cheese whilst sweeping up an avalanche of broken plumbing accessories in Aisle Three.

Okay, so you think this Sandra woman’s attractive. So she reminds you a bit of Imelda. Get real, Trev. You seriously believe she might be interested in a loser like you? She worth getting killed for, is she?

Well of course she’s not worth getting killed for, he’d replied to himself, but I have to say that I strongly resent being referred to as a loser. After all, that’s one of the main reasons I set off on this trip in the first place – to prove to myself that that is precisely what I’m not.

‘Besides,’ he’d said aloud as if Sandra had been privy to his internal debate, ‘I’ve got a sister in Bristol.’

Even allowing for the fact that he hadn’t seen Janice since soon after Imelda’s disappearance more than eighteen months ago, Trevor had been well aware that the convenience of being able to call in on his younger sibling was hardly a valid reason for putting his life in danger. The decision hadn’t been simply about whether to carry on to Bristol or not. Staying in Sandra’s car instead of letting her drop him off meant that he would be committing himself to an encounter with whatever might be awaiting them in Flat 12, Cabot Tower.

When he had finally told Sandra he’d decided to go with her, she hadn’t seemed as surprised as he would have expected. Naturally, he’d been somewhat economical with the truth when she’d asked him his reasons, and the bit about being an ideal opportunity to visit his sister clearly hadn’t washed. Even so, despite her doubts about his motives, Trevor thought he’d detected the faint trace of a smile when he’d observed her reaction in profile. Perhaps she’d been secretly pleased that she wouldn’t be on her own if anything hit the fan. Okay, so maybe he wouldn’t be his own first choice as an ally if things got out of hand, but she’d have to admit that it was because of him she’d escaped the clutches of Harry Vincent – for the time being anyway.

Regardless of what her true feelings had been, the result was that they were now sitting in her car opposite a shabby block of flats, inside which they would soon discover the unknown object of their quest.

‘Flat Twelve, right?’

He pulled the two index cards from his jacket pocket and smoothed the worst of the creases against his thigh before reading out the address. ‘Flat Twelve, Cabot Tower, Milton Street.’

‘Might as well get on with it then,’ said Sandra, unfastening her seatbelt.

Trevor wound up his window, and Milly withdrew her snout just in time to avoid it being trapped between the glass and the top of the frame.

‘I suppose we’d better leave her here,’ he said, remembering that Milly was well overdue for a pee and turning round in his seat to clip a lead to her collar.

‘She can guard the car,’ said Sandra. ‘At least then it might still be here when we get back.’

Her use of the word “when” rather than “if” struck Trevor as encouragingly positive, and he hoped her optimism didn’t turn out to be misplaced. He opened the door, and Milly hurtled across his lap and down onto the street. It was as much as he could do to keep hold of the lead and stop himself from being dragged headlong out of the car. He shouted at her and pulled back on the lead, but Milly was far too intent on investigating the nearest pile of busted rubbish sacks to take any notice.

The lead went slack as soon as they got there, and Trevor stood patiently as the dog began a detailed examination of the rotting debris in search of anything edible. While he waited, he watched Sandra go to the back of the car and open the tailgate. She leaned inside and then re-emerged a few seconds later. Slamming the tailgate shut, she sauntered over to him and held out her hand. Lying flat on her palm was a gun.

‘You ever used one of these?’ she said.

Trevor stared at the pistol and shook his head.

‘Oh well, never mind. You’d better have this instead.’

‘Is that—?’ Trevor began when she held out her other hand and offered him a small black aerosol can.

‘Pepper spray. It’s what I used on MacFarland back at the festival. Totally illegal of course, but I have my sources,’ she said with a wink and a smile.

Trevor took the spray from her and examined it briefly before thrusting it into his fleece pocket. He felt the blood drain from his face and the cold sweat begin to ooze from his pores. Whilst they’d been on the road, he had, to some extent, been able to curb his fear of what unpleasantness might lay in store for them in Bristol. But now that Sandra had produced the gun and the pepper spray, the potential danger seemed all too imminent.

‘You can always change your mind, you know,’ she said when she noticed him wiping his palms on the front of his fleece.

What he really wanted to say was: ‘Okay then, I’ll stay here with Milly and mind the car’, but instead he shrugged and said, ‘In for a penny.’ He wasn’t at all sure what he meant by it though. If it was an attempt to reassure himself with an expression of casual bravado, he had failed completely.

All this hanging about wasn’t doing him any good. His imagination had too much opportunity to fuel his anxiety. He tugged at Milly’s lead, but although her hunting expedition amongst the rubbish sacks had so far proved fruitless, she was not yet ready to give up the search. Trevor had other ideas, however, and he needed most of his strength to drag her back to the car.

* * *

Trevor was surprised at how hard Sandra was breathing as she pressed her ear against the faded blue paintwork of the door to Flat 12. The lift had been out of order, so they’d had to take the stairs, but there had only been two flights – hardly a major climb unless you were asthmatic or seriously out of condition.

Then he became aware of the rapid rise and fall of his own chest, and the realisation struck him that, even though she was an ex-smoker, Sandra’s rasping breath might have had nothing to do with any lack of fitness. It might just be that she was as scared as he was.

After listening for a few seconds, she looked at him and shook her head before bending down to put her eye to the keyhole. Almost immediately, she stood upright again and beckoned to Trevor to follow her. She took a dozen or so paces along the dank, graffiti-infested hallway and stopped.

Turning to face him, she spoke in a low murmur. ‘Can’t hear a thing. And there’s a key in the lock, so I can’t see anything either.’

‘Maybe there’s no-one in there,’ said Trevor, knowing full well that the presence of the key tended to indicate the exact opposite.

‘Now that
would
be disappointing.’ Sandra smiled mischievously at him and took the gun from her jacket pocket.

Trevor swallowed hard as he watched her eject and then reinsert the ammunition magazine. As far as he was concerned, the nobody-in-the-flat scenario was by far the most popular choice on his list of possible outcomes. Not only would it mean he could feel proud of himself for not bottling out of a potentially dangerous situation, he would also be able to walk away from it with all of his body parts still intact.

‘So what do we do?’ he said.

‘First, we do what any normal person would do.’

‘Run like hell?’

‘We knock.’

With that, Sandra set off back down the hallway, and Trevor followed close behind, wondering whether a simple knock on the door would achieve anything more than alerting whoever was inside to get their own guns at the ready.

She motioned to him to stand beside her against the wall on the hinged side of the door and whispered to him to take the pepper spray out of his pocket. The gun in her right hand, she reached out with her left and rapped hard. There was no response, so she knocked again. Nothing.

She took a step forward and grasped the doorknob, turning it millimetre by millimetre until Trevor heard a faint click and saw a crack of light appear. As soon as she realised the door was already unlocked, she let go of the doorknob and stood back. Nodding to Trevor to make sure he was prepared, she smacked the sole of her foot against the lower part of the door. It flew open, and both of them were inside the flat even before it reached the full extent of its hinges and started on the rebound.

There was no sudden burst of gunfire, and the only apparent occupant was sitting in an armchair in the middle of the room, the top of his head just visible above the back of the chair. Alert for any sign of movement from either of the two open doorways leading off from the main living area, Sandra raced up behind him and rammed the muzzle of her gun into the nape of his neck. His head lolled forward, and, taking a couple of steps to the side, Trevor could see that his wrists were fastened to the chair arms with silver duct tape.

Without stopping to check whether the man was dead or merely unconscious, Sandra edged towards the nearest of the open doors. Trevor hesitated as he looked over to the second doorway and took a deep breath to try and calm the enthusiastic excesses of the Japanese drummers in his chest. Then, holding the can of pepper spray outstretched in front of him, he sidled over to what seemed to him to be the gateway of hell itself.

As he drew closer, however, he recognised that it was in fact the entrance to a rather shabbily equipped bathroom. Three feet from the threshold, he came to an abrupt halt when he caught sight of a face staring back at him from the opposite wall. He aimed the aerosol and was about to press down on the button when he saw that the other guy was doing exactly the same thing. He adjusted his focus and realised he’d been on the point of macing his own reflection. The terrified eyes which studied him from the mirror above a chipped enamel sink were his. He averted his gaze, unable to bear the sight of his own fear, and as he did so, the reflected image of the open door came into view. There was no-one lurking in the shadowy corner behind it, nobody ready to pounce on him as soon as he set foot through the doorway.