Wasted Years (27 page)

When he ran past the baked potato salesman, the newspaper seller advertising
Viz,
the old boy playing “K-K-K-Katy” on his harmonica, back up the steps that took him towards the Playhouse and the old General Hospital, nobody as much as looked twice.

“Where the hell d’you get this?” Darren asked, throwing himself into the front seat.

“Broad Marsh, why?”

“If you wanted to advertise, wonder you didn’t hijack one of them buses with slogans all over the sides.”

“It’s a DS,” Keith said, striving for the proper respect; “Collector’s item. Give an arm and a leg for one of these.”

Darren gave him a quick flash of the Colt .45. “Let’s hope it don’t come to that,” he grinned.

The building society office was close to a cinema whose final program had been a double bill of Jerry Lewis in
The Bell Boy
and Elvis Presley as a half-breed American Indian in
FlamingStar.
Since then it had been a cut-price furniture store, a Kwik-Save supermarket, and a Fast-Fit tire center. Now it was standing empty, boarded up. Keith swung the Citröen smoothly onto the forecourt, applied the handbrake, and left the engine running. So quiet, it was like listening to a CD between the tracks

“Don’t go anywhere,” Darren said.

“Sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Keith asked, hoping the answer would be no. He was enjoying this less and less.

“After last time?” Darren laughed. He had the mask stuffed inside his zipped-up jacket, the broken handle of the toy gun poking out of his trouser belt. “Second you see me come back out that door, that’s when you move. Right?”

Nervously, Keith nodded.

There were two people queuing inside the building society, a man in plasterer’s overalls and a woman with a shopping trolley, waiting in front of a video monitor that was entertaining them with a tape loop testifying to the virtues of borrowing to your credit limit. Own a yacht. A time-share in the Scottish Highlands.

At the counter an Afro-Caribbean woman was checking that her wages had been credited to her account that month. Darren waited until she moved away and slipped into her place, circumventing the queue.

“Hey up!” said the plasterer. “Think we’re stood here for us health?”

“There is a queue, sir,” said the clerk. It was only when she looked up properly that she realized the person who had pushed to the front was wearing some kind of mask.

“All the cash you’ve got,” Darren said. “Hand it over.”

“Here!” the plasterer made a move forwards and Darren pulled the pistol from his belt and waved it in the man’s face.

“Oh, dear God!” the woman with the shopping trolley exclaimed and wavered sideways, colliding with the television set and knocking it from its stand onto the floor.

“Eunice,” Darren said, reading her name from the badge attached to the apricot uniform blouse, “don’t bother counting it, just push it through here. The lot.”

Another employee came through from the back, wondering what all the commotion was about. A quick look and they ducked back from sight.

“That’s not a real gun,” the plasterer exclaimed. “It’s only a chuffing toy!”

“Eunice,” Darren said, seizing the last bundle of fifties and stuffing them into his pocket, “anyone ever told you you’re a darling?”

Later on, giving her account to the reporter from
East Midlands Today,
Eunice had to giggle; the last time she’d been called darling had been by a mechanical parrot at Goose Fair. Made her jump half out of her skin it had. “D’you know,” she confided in the camera, “gave me more of a turn than what happened this afternoon.”

Keith saw Darren dart through the door and eased his foot onto the accelerator. “What on earth you wearing that for?” he asked as Darren sat there, chuckling to himself beneath the mask.

“Video cameras,” Darren said.

“What?”

Darren pulled the mask over his head and pushed it under the seat. “Video cameras. On the ceiling. Got them in that branch haven’t they?” He laughed. “What d’you reckon, I want to see myself like a fool, plastered all over every TV in the country, next edition of
Crimewatch
?”

Sweating more than a little, Keith bit gently into the inside of his lower lip as he tested the engine’s acceleration along a clear stretch of the ring road.

“Know what?” Darren said happily, counting the notes into his lap. “Lot more here’n I bargained for.” Reaching across, he gave Keith’s leg an enthusiastic squeeze. “Our luck holds, soon be able to buy yourself one of these.”

Forty-One

Jeans? Debbie used to say how much she liked him in jeans; about the only time he didn’t look like a policeman. Trouble was, he never really felt comfortable in them. Not the pair he was wearing now, Levi Silver Tabs he’d bought eighteen months back at Bankrupt Clothing Company, nor the ones he’d got in the Gap sale. Simply, they didn’t feel right. Like going out on an undercover and being spotted within the first few minutes. He pulled them off and draped them over the back of the chair. Where were those beige jobs he’d worn to the last police smoker? Those and the dark jacket, the blazer, at least he felt smart in that without being dressed up like a dog’s dinner. All that was left now was the tie, yes or no, finally deciding no, much too formal, definitely not, then slipping it into his side pocket in case he felt like changing his mind.

Any minute now the taxi would be here.

Watch, credit card, cash, keys.

Kevin hesitated by the bathroom door; the aftershave with a tang of lime—was that the one brought Debbie out in a rash or not?

Divine had stopped off at WH Smith no more than ten minutes before closing. “These tapes,” he’d asked, pointing towards a boxed set of
French in Five Easy Stages,
“they any good?”

The assistant thought Divine looked more the type for Club Med, somewhere with a beach and sun enough to show off a good body. “We do sell a lot,” she said hopefully.

“Yes, but do they work?”

She giggled lightly. Not bad, Divine thought, take away the crossed front teeth and surplus facial hair, fair pair of tits though, wouldn’t mind giving it a pull.

“See, I’m off to Paris. Pretty soon. Business.”

“Oh. Well, there is this one here, two double-length cassettes or one CD and accompanying booklet. See?
Eurospeak Languages for Today’s Businessman.
That might be more the kind of thing.”

“Thing I’m looking for,” Divine confided, leaning a well-muscled arm on the top of her counter, “something more personal. You know, relaxing after hours. Hard day’s graft. Can’t enjoy the night life, no point in going. Stay here and get legless at the Black Orchid, eh?”

“Miss Armitage,” the supervisor sang out like a frost in summer, “let’s see you cashing up now.”

“What d’you reckon then?” The picture on the box showed a girl with a long blonde pony tail and a black beret, pointing excitedly up to the Eiffel Tower. “Biggest one she’s ever seen.”

Maybe he wasn’t cut out for Club Med after all, the assistant thought. Works outing to Skegness, more his kind of thing. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we are closing now.”

Divine settled for a pocket phrase book and a paperback visitor’s guide to Paris, thumbing through the latter as he stepped out on the pedestrian precinct, stopping short at the picture of a girl in a scarlet G-string from the Crazy Horse Saloon. A mother with a pushchair ran into the back of him and most of the child’s Mr Whippy ice cream slid down his leg.

“What the chuffin’ heck d’you think you’re doing?” Divine bellowed.

“It’s you, you great lummux!” the woman shouted back. “Parking your great backside right in front of us without a by-your-leave. What’ve you got in that head of yours for brains, sawdust or what?”

And she swung pushchair and wailing child around him, leaving Divine to wipe away the ice cream that was still slithering down his second-best pair of trousers.

Naylor stood close by the plate glass front of the upstairs, looking out at the groups who were beginning to swarm the square. Down the hill from the Concert Hall and the Theatre Royal, along St James Street and past the Bell opposite; from the right past the cinemas, the Odeon and Cannon, spreading the length of the old Market Square itself, past the fountains and the lions to the underground lavatories and the mobile stall selling hot pork rolls and beefburgers with glistening onions. Pushing and shoving and laughing. The police van alongside the bus stop. Listening to the plods in the canteen it got worse week by week, month by month, but Naylor remembered Resnick saying that when he’d been out there in uniform twenty years ago there’d been trouble Friday, Saturday nights just the same.

He wondered about finishing his half and going back into the bar to fetch another, maybe get one for Debbie too, save queuing later when she turned up. If she turned up. He was rehearsing her excuses in his head—my mother, the baby—when he saw her alighting from a double-decker over on Beast Market Hill. Dark blue skirt or dress, silvery top, thin blue jacket, leather bag slung over one arm. Forehead pressed against the inside of the glass, he waited for her to look up and, stepping off the crossing onto the broad curve of pavement below, and, smiling with surprise at her own pleasure, that was what she did.

Keith knew chances were if he simply dumped the Citröen, abandoned it, it would get trashed before it was found. Normally that was part of the point, only this was not a normal car. Gliding along the A52 on his way back into the city, engine close to silent, suspension like feathers, Keith thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

He knew it was a risk, but for the first time ever, he was determined to return the motor to the exact spot where he’d found it.

Our luck holds, Darren had said, you’ll be able to buy one of your own. Keith chewed at a hangnail on the little finger of his right hand. Mixture of his luck and Darren’s stupidity and he could see himself ending up back in court. Back in prison. Just thinking about it was enough to turn his bowels to water. Never in his miserable life had he been as serious as when he’d tried to top himself in that cell. And Darren, hollering for help, unfastening the sheet and lifting him down. What for? So that he’d have someone to boss around the rest of his life? Someone to look up to him, run errands, steal cars, drive him from one increasingly risky robbery to another.

Hear him running off at the mouth before Keith had dropped him off. About how he was going to trade up from that pathetic toy pistol to a real one; how he was going to walk in on that Lorna Solomon and show it to her, see the look on her face, do the thing right.

Keith had felt grateful to him for saving his life, in a way at least: each day now he was less and less sure. Turning with the traffic in front of the big MGM night club, Keith indicated that he was moving across into the inside lane, looking to park.

“Where are we going?” Debbie asked, as Kevin Naylor took her arm and steered her around a group of young white males in short-sleeved white shirts.

“You’ll see,” he grinned. “Surprise.”

The restaurant was quite dimly lit, tasteful, round tables with a single flower in a white vase at its center; the menus were padded and thick and pages long.

“What d’you think?” Kevin said, looking round. He’d asked Graham Millington, who went out for a meal with his wife first Friday after payday, regular as clockwork. Lynn Kellogg, too. The consensus seemed to be, of all the Chinese restaurants in the city, this was probably the best.

“It’s nice,” Debbie admitted. “Only …”

“Only what?”

Only you know I’m not all that keen on Chinese food, was what she’d been going to say, but instead she shook her head and gave him a quick smile and said, “Oh, nothing.”

He had looked nice standing up there in Yates’s, waiting for her, really nice, and although talking at first had been a bit of a strain, now they were both beginning to feel more relaxed.

“You watch out for him,” her mum had said, “got to be after something, you mark my words.” Then she’d got that look on her face, the one she’d paraded when Debbie had first told her she was moving back home, smug and prophetic. “I wouldn’t mind betting he’s found himself somebody else, that’s what this is all about. Wanting to talk you into one of those do-it-yourself divorces. You see if he isn’t.”

If that was the case, Debbie thought, he’d hardly be sitting there, wedding ring shining from the back of his hand. Without warning, she thought she might be about to cry, so she picked up her bag and excused herself, went to the ladies, leaving Kevin to order.

Keith phoned his mum and his stepfather answered so he hung up; his dad was still hauling bundles of old papers and magazines up from the cellar, sorting through and arranging them in piles all over the front room floor.

Keith made himself baked beans on toast and ate it watching TV. If there had been a tape player in the first-floor room he’d taken over as his own, he would have gone up there and listened to some Luther Ingram or some David Peaston, Galliano, or Dream Warriors except that he didn’t have the tapes either, they were still back at his mum’s. Truth was he didn’t know what on earth he did want to do.