Bone and Cane (7 page)

When asked about his relationship with sexy Sarah, March said ‘no comment’. Bone swore at photographers, but our picture tells its own story. Sarah wouldn’t be the first female MP to have the hots for the Tory heart-throb, who is separated from his wife. But she is the first from the Labour benches. What will Tony say when he finds out?

Nick had to read the story twice before he took it in. Sarah had become an MP. In Nottingham. When Joe arrived, he showed the paper to him.

‘Did you know about this?’

‘I don’t follow politics. Didn’t even vote last time. Here’s Bob.’

Nick nodded at Bob before going on. ‘This is my Sarah, the one I went out with for two years. And she’s an MP just down the road?’

‘I thought she joined the police,’ Joe said. ‘Isn’t that why you dumped her?’

‘She’s my MP,’ Bob interrupted. ‘Got in at a by-election two years ago. Nice lass. She came to the door. I voted for her. Won’t last though. Nottingham West has always been Tory. I’m a Tory myself, but I fancied a change.’

‘Fancied her you mean,’ Joe said. ‘As for not telling you, Nick, I never knew your Sarah’s surname. And, let’s face it, she was mousy in those days, little glasses, didn’t show off her chest. Whereas here . . . I’m surprised you recognised her.’

Sarah used to dress down. Political women did in the 1980s. Nick was always encouraging her to grow her hair, with limited success. In the photo in the
Sun
it was long and wavy, perfectly styled. Nick felt a surge of he-didn’t-know-what: some kind of reverse jealousy the Germans would have a word for. Sarah had finally become the woman he had always known she had the potential to become. That didn’t surprise him. What did surprise him was that she was fucking a Tory frontbencher.

Nick did a school run followed by calls to Carlton and Top Valley, on the edge of the city, to and from the Meadows, then Hyson Green, which had Nottingham’s biggest black and Asian population. Evening came quickly. Nick was tempted to pick up one of the punters coming out of the pubs, but only licensed city cabs were allowed to pick up on the street and in the taxi ranks. They paid for the privilege. An unlicensed driver would get a fine if the police spotted him. A beating, if he cut up a licensed cabbie who’d had a bad day. Even so, everybody did it, especially on quiet nights like this. But Nick was keeping his nose clean.

One good thing about working nights, there wasn’t time for heavy drinking. Nick would have to cut down on the dope, too. He wasn’t a kid any more and he was on probation. From now on, he would only take calculated risks and the fewer of those, the better. He wasn’t going back.

He kept a low profile around the taxi office. Anybody, at any time, could grass him up: to the dole or the probation. He’d been grassed up once already. He’d refused to believe that at the time, putting his arrest down to a combination of bad luck and good police work. Inside, he’d learnt that the idea of police investigatory work was a nonsense: the drugs squad relied on grasses and confessions like every other detective. And Nick hadn’t been stupid enough to confess.

The will for revenge eats at the soul: that was another maxim he’d made up for himself inside. Let it go. But this was a hard one to stick to. Nick wanted to know who’d put him inside. Revenge might’ve been their motive, too. Best not to keep that wheel turning. He’d like to be sure, though, so he could put it behind him. There was a modern cliché saying success was the best form of revenge. Nick ought to devote himself to becoming a success. That wasn’t going to happen when he was driving a crappy cab for his brother.

At one in the morning he stopped for diesel. He always left more in the car than when he borrowed it, but if he’d had a bad night, the fuel, on top of the car hire, might mean him working for only a couple of quid an hour. Tonight he’d worked long hours, though, done pretty well. He got out of the car. At night you had to pay at the front of the petrol station, through a small gap in the window – another change while he’d been inside. The cashier’s voice through the grille was disembodied.

‘Hey, don’t I know you?’

Nick looked up.

‘Mr Cane, right?’

‘Right.’

‘You were my English teacher – like, ten years ago.’

‘Sure, I recognise you – Neville?’

‘Nigel. What are you doing driving a cab? Couldn’t hack teaching no more?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘You were a good teacher. Got me a C. Only C I got.’

‘Thanks, Nigel. I’d better go. Got a pick up.’

There was somebody behind him waiting to pay. Nick took his change.

‘All right. G’night Mr C, g’luck.’

‘Same to you.’

And what happened to Nigel, Nick wondered, that he was working as a night cashier at a petrol station when he was twenty-five? He’d not been a dim kid, just unsuited to school.

At two, there was a call to Mapperley Road. A working girl was finishing for the night and wanted to go to Aspley. Most of the older prostitutes lived a long way from their beat. That way, their neighbours wouldn’t know what they got up to. This woman was Nick’s age, nearly past it in sex worker terms.

‘Mind if I smoke?’

‘You’ll have to open a window,’ Nick said, apologetically. ‘It’s not my cab.’

‘Thanks, duck.’

She didn’t speak again, making her Nick’s favourite kind of customer. He knew where he was going, could relax while listening to Radio One. He’d missed hearing new music while he was inside. Late nights, Radio One played dance, Indie stuff or techno, which was pretty new to him. He’d picked up the difference between techno and drum’n’bass. If it sounded like it had been programmed by a computer, it was techno. The best record was called ‘Born Slippy’, by a band called Underworld. When that came on, Nick was inclined to turn the radio up, though the punters sometimes complained. They wanted Radio Trent or Gem AM, bland commercial pop pap. Tonight, though, when Nick put a couple of notches on the volume for something trippy by Orbital, the woman in the back said, ‘Yeah, louder.’

They got to her place and she leant forward, her tits hanging out and having the intended effect.

‘Do you want to come inside for a few minutes?’ she proposed. ‘Party?’

‘Sorry,’ Nick said. ‘I don’t pay for it.’

‘Maybe you wouldn’t have to. I’ve got some beer, a smoke. If you could just run the babysitter home first.’

‘The journey cost six quid, duck. Sorry. I’m tempted, but I’ve got a living to earn.’

Best not to offend anyone unless you had no choice. This was the new, sorted Nick (
sorted
was one of the words that had taken on new meaning while he was away). He hadn’t had sex in five years, but the first time wasn’t going to be with a pro. He hadn’t fallen that far.

‘
All right. Another time. Here’s a tenner. The sitter will be out in a minute. She’s only five minutes away. You can keep the change, all right?’

‘Thanks.’

The sitter took her time. Probably fallen asleep. He nearly sounded his horn, but figured that would draw attention to the working girl’s late hours, so he got out of the car to see, locking it, because you couldn’t be too careful. The other drivers all had stories about times they’d been robbed, the tricks that had been played on them in the most unlikely places.

The girl came to the door in shorts and a vest. She looked about thirteen. The bloke with her was at least twenty, a wiry, sour-faced youth with matted hair, a ring through the nose and jeans more torn than together.

‘Sorry about the wait,’ the woman called.

‘Where are you going to, love?’ Nick asked the girl.

She told him. ‘And can you take my friend, too?’

‘I’ve only been paid to take you home.’

‘He’ll pay.’

They got in the back, sat separate as strangers. Through the rear view mirror, Nick saw the guy rolling up. The girl’s place was two minutes away. She got out and ran to the door. Her boyfriend didn’t say goodnight.

‘Where to?’ Nick asked.

‘City.’

‘Any particular bit?’

‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ he said, putting the roll-up in his mouth.

‘Sorry,’ Nick told him. ‘You can’t smoke in here.’

‘Yeah, but someone has, han’t they? I can smell it. Tell you what, I won’t tell if you don’t,’ the guy told him, lighting up.

Sometimes a cabbie was like a teacher. Discipline had to be instantaneous and consistent, otherwise you lost control. Nick slammed on the brakes.

‘Either the fag goes out or you do. Rules.’

Nick didn’t look in the rear view but he could feel the guy staring at him with hatred, or something like. Then he heard the door open.

‘All right. It’s out.’

‘The ride into town’ll be four quid. Let’s have it now.’

While you were in control, use it. This was an ordinary saloon. There was no way for Nick to lock the doors to prevent the guy doing a runner at the end of the ride if he chose to.

‘You’re joking.’

‘It’s the rules.’

‘Who makes the rules?’

‘I do.’

‘Sod that,’ the youth said. ‘I’ll pay you when we get there.’

He didn’t have the money. Nick could sense it. He could smell the street on the guy, too. Even if he had the money, he wouldn’t pay if he could help it.

‘Get out,’ he said, turning so that the crusty couldn’t jump him.

‘Make me.’

Nick reached beneath the seat with his right hand. The guy went into one of his pockets, probably had a knife. Nick darted forward with his left, pinched the guy’s bollocks so hard that tears ran down his face. A trick he’d had to learn inside.

‘Stop, stop!’

Nick let go.

‘You’re a fucking maniac,’ the pipsqueak said, opening the door.

‘S’right, but at least I don’t have to get my rocks off fucking thirteen-year-olds,’ Nick shouted as the guy hobbled along the side of the ringroad, leaving the door open. Nick accelerated so that the door caught the jerk on the side before slamming shut. What chance for the girl he’d been screwing? Nick had few scruples where sex was concerned, but he’d never knowingly had an underage girl.

Stop moralising, Nick told himself. For all he knew, it might have been the girl who did the seducing. Nick used to be professionally responsible for girls her age, otherwise he might feel differently. Was he really concerned about the girl’s welfare? No, what it came down to was that girls under sixteen didn’t turn him on. He needed to put all the old liberal, seeing both sides of the story crap behind him. Ethics were a luxury he couldn’t afford. He should take whatever was on offer, but keep to the law, even when he didn’t agree with it. Without law there was chaos:
tough on the causes of crime,
he’d heard that one inside. He wondered what Sarah made of all that. Sarah, who had been on his mind all day. Sarah, who had never been far from his mind for the last fifteen years. Sarah, with her Tory-boy lover.

8

T
he call-out took Nick to a library in one of the city’s biggest council estates. He was early and got out of the cab for a smoke. A sign on the library door announced that this morning there was a surgery with Sarah Bone, MP. The photo was a bad one. Sarah wore a forced smile and big hair that didn’t suit her. The red jacket she was wearing matched her lipstick. Red might be the party colour but it made her face look ghostly-pale. He wanted to see what the real Sarah looked like, but before he could summon up the nerve to go inside, a woman came out: bottle blonde, ample chested and hard faced – one hundred per cent Nottingham.

‘Waiting for me?’

‘Polly Bolton?’ Nick stubbed out his rollie and opened the cab’s back door. ‘Meeting your MP?’

‘Recognised her, did you?’ She sounded bitter about something.

‘Saw her in the paper a while back. She was dating some Tory.’

‘They were having a work meeting, she says.’

‘In that dress?’ Nick glanced in the mirror, checking out the woman’s breasts again.

‘If I went out in a dress like that, I’d be looking to pull.’

‘If I saw you out in a dress like that, I’d be first to make a move.’

The woman laughed. ‘You flatter all your punters, do you?’

‘No, love. Only the ones I fancy.’

In Sheffield, where Nick came from,
love
was the equivalent of
duck
in Nottingham, a friendly endearment. In Nottingham, his home since university, he used it more sparingly. He parked outside Tesco. Polly leant forward to pay and flashed him a smile that was more than friendly.

‘Can you pick me up just after ten? By that door?’

‘Sure.’

‘It’ll be you, will it?’

‘I was planning on finishing around then, so I’ll make it my last stop.’

He watched her hurry into the supermarket and wondered why he’d volunteered that last piece of conversation. No, he knew. She might be a little older than him and her hair colour came out of a bottle, but Polly Bolton was still handsome. Maybe Sarah, after all these years, had done him an unintended favour. She owed him one.

Six hours later, in New Basford, Polly’s babysitter left, taking a toddler and a sleeping baby with her. Polly and Nick went straight to the bedroom. They kissed and undressed in the dark, then had at each other. After five years without a woman, Nick was desperate for a coupling of any kind and Polly’s need seemed as urgent as his. Their bodies were raw meat. Their encounter felt more like wrestling than an act of love. For both of them it ended too quickly.

‘Will I see you again?’ Polly turned the light on. Her naked body was fuller than he’d expected, yet softer, more youthful. He’d forgotten how much better some women looked with their clothes off.

‘Try and keep me away.’

‘You can stay if you want.’ The words teasing rather than tender.

‘If I didn’t have to return the car, I would.’

‘Best excuse I’ve heard in ages.’

‘Hear a lot of excuses, do you?’ He pulled his trousers back on.

She wasn’t embarrassed. ‘How easy do you think I find it to meet a decent bloke when I have four kids to look after? You’re the first I’ve been with in a long while.’ The neighbour who had been looking after the kids was also a single parent, she said. They took it in turns to babysit so that they could each work the few hours they were allowed before it cut into their benefits. Some nights, therefore, she had six kids to see to.