DONNA AND THE FATMAN (Crime Thriller Fiction) (18 page)

She shut her eyes, saw Joey lying on the ground, scarlet trickling from his mouth. Mervyn squatting, toad-like, on his stomach. He clears his throat, then the gob of spit and
bang on the eyeball, fucking brilliant
. The field, the mist, the grinning boys.
Can’t abide milk-skin. Makes me queasy.
He leans towards her, sniffs the air.
Cause if I’m being honest, here
. . . She could smell the toothpaste on his breath . . . 
I’m not sure I’d want it myself, old mate.

She opened her eyes. The Fatman smiling.
The belly, Mervyn, if you wouldn’t mind.
She stared at the screen. The endless field, the grinning boys. Iron band around her chest, and the blood kept pounding in her head, and—

‘Hello, darling.’

All shower-gel and aftershave. He checked the rows in front and behind, then eased himself down beside her.

‘Keeping well?’

‘Getting by.’

‘That’s nice,’ he said.

He picked up her bag and zipped it open.

‘I’m glad you’re getting by,’ he said.

He shoved a hand inside and rummaged round.

‘Because if you weren’t quite getting by, I might be worried.’

He zipped the bag shut, let it drop to the floor.

She felt him staring in the dark.

‘So here we are,’ he said, ‘the two of us.’

Legs spread wide. So cool, he was. Such a total lad. A smart, young thug with attitude. He took out a hip-flask and unscrewed the cap.

‘You back on the brandy?’

‘Passes the time.’

He told her how he’d dressed up just for her, got smartened up especially. Put on his best grey suit and his Chelsea boots, stuck a fobwatch in the waistcoat pocket. For her, he stressed. He’d done it all for girly.

She listened as he swigged it back, heard it sloshing down the tube.

‘You enjoying that, are you?’

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Always had a noisy swallow.’

‘Is that a fact?’

‘Been told I got it from my mum.’

‘Didn’t know you had a mum, Merv.’

‘You don’t know much, then.’

‘Thought you might have been found on someone’s doorstep. Thought you sort of
appeared
one day. Like a herpe.’

He shook his head.

‘No, sugar. Just dropped out the hole and there I was.’

‘Must’ve been nice for her.’

‘I think it was.’

‘I mean, nine whole months . . . ’

‘ . . . and then there’s me.’

They sat there quietly for a moment, contemplating motherhood, and then she said:

‘Business all right, is it?’

‘It’s booming, sweetheart. Money’s fucking rolling in. Got too much, sometimes. Don’t know what to do with it. Got it coming out my ears, and things. I mean I go round on the pick-up and I have to take a briefcase, don’t I. And I hate doing that, cause it makes me look like I’m flogging insurance, like I’m some wanky salesman, some yuppie tit from Docklands.’

He frowned.

‘Which I’m not.’

She watched the movement on the screen.

‘You got it with you?’

‘The briefcase . . . ?’

‘The money.’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’

He slipped the hip-flask back in his pocket.

‘So I’ll be walking back to the car, see, carrying a good few grand, and I’m thinking: am I going to be mugged today? Is today my mugging day?’

‘You waste your brain on stuff like that?’

‘Course I do.’

‘But you’re a
yob
,’ she hissed.

He looked at her reproachfully.

‘Yobs have feelings too, you know.’

‘Well you needn’t worry.’

‘You reckon, do you?’

‘I mean you won’t be mugged. It’s not going to happen.’

‘Not ever?’

‘Never.’

‘You sure of that?’

‘I’m positive. I’ve got this feeling in my fanny.’

He smiled at her.

‘You been thinking of me?’

‘Each waking moment.’

‘I’m warming to you, darling. I’m liquefying, at this moment.’

‘Well don’t start dripping.’

He touched her cheek.

‘Such a sweet young face, and such a dirty mouth.’

‘Have I?’

‘What?’

‘A sweet, young face?’

He didn’t answer, just inched towards her.

‘You know what I’ve got to do now, my love?’

He began clicking his knuckles, perhaps out of habit.

‘Got to search you, sugar, so just relax.’

He was leaning over, blocking the picture.

‘Pat you down, then off we go.’

So slim she was, he could wrap a hand round both her wrists.

‘Pockets first, if you wouldn’t mind.’

You could almost hear his wideboy grin.

‘Then all your little nooks and crannies.’

She kept her eyes on the screen while he felt her. Kept them locked on the screen while his palms pressed over, and under, and slowly around. He frisked her very carefully, taking his time, a methodical man. Like kids they were, like a courting couple, clamped together in the dark.

‘Sorry, sweetheart, but I’m only checking. Have to be sure, see . . . ’

The brandy gusting from his mouth.

‘ . . . have to be certain.’

He slipped a hand beneath her skirt. A rueful shrug.

‘Henry’s orders, what can I tell you.’

His fingers brushed against her crotch.

‘Enjoy yourself, he said. You have a good time, he said. Just keep it tasteful, cause we don’t want any scenes, old son, we don’t want the punters getting distressed. That’s what we truly do not want.’

He pressed his mouth against her neck and murmured in her ear.

‘I mean we both know Henry, don’t we? Likes to observe the niceties, see. Got his sense of Fatman decorum. So I’ll do my best, I said. Anything for a mate, I said. So here we are, and away we go.’

He felt her moisten through the cotton and allowed himself a grunt of satisfaction.

‘Just remember, right? I’m not like Billy. Because I’ve always liked you, haven’t I? Basically, I mean. You know that, don’t you?’

‘That you like me?’

‘Deep down,’ he said.

‘Down where?’

‘Down there.’

The fingers wormed between her thighs.

‘Be mine,’ he breathed.

‘My heart belongs to Henry.’

‘But your cunt belongs to me.’

‘I want the colonel, not the corporal.’

‘Not a nice remark.’

She removed his hand and placed it in his lap.

‘Never said I was nice, Merv.’

He leaned his head towards her. Whispered in her ear.

‘You want to forget him, precious. He’s an old man, see, and they shouldn’t let the old do things like that. It’s what I’d class as out of order. Makes me shudder, frankly. Should be a law against it, if you want my opinion.’ He quietly sniffed. ‘And even if you don’t.’

‘You think you’d make me happy, Merv?’

‘I think you’d be ecstatic.’

‘And you’d do what I want . . . ?’

‘I’d do anything you asked.’

A cautious glance.

‘Within reason, that is.’

She nodded slowly. Sounded fair enough. She fixed her gaze on the screen, and said:

‘So you’d kiss it, would you?’

A sudden intake of wideboy breath as he mulled this over in his brain, and then he murmured:

‘Course I would.’

He smoothed down his tie and examined his nails.

‘You pay me enough, and I’ll kiss it for you.’

She shook her head.

‘I never pay for it, darling.’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘And I never kiss it, sweetheart.’

They grinned at each other in the cossetting dark, almost friendly, almost bonding.

‘Glad you’re coming back,’ he said. ‘Thought maybe you wouldn’t, after what happened . . . ’

She looked confused.

‘Sorry, Merv? Miss something, did I?’

‘The other day,’ he prompted. ‘That bit of unpleasantness . . . ’

‘Oh, that.’ She pulled a face. ‘One of those things.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘What I thought, too.’

He glanced at the screen. It was a kiddies’ movie, and he’d seen it before.

‘Hope Joey didn’t mind too much, cause it was just a laugh, see, a bit of fun. So I hope he’s not gone off in a sulk, hope he’s not going to be an arsehole . . . ’

Pause for unembarrassed burp.

‘ . . . no pun intended.’

Hot in there. He loosened his collar.

‘How is he, anyway? Bit green round the gills? Bit pink round the edges? Bit tender, is he? A bit inflamed? Because he should have used some Nivea, shouldn’t he. You tell him from me, so he’ll know for next time — he should smear on the cold-cream and it won’t be so bad. Just ponce along to Boots and buy himself a large-size tub. Tell him Mervyn said, and give him my best. We were mates, see, darling. That’s why I care.’

He slid himself down, made himself comfortable.

‘So tell me, darling, how’s your lad?’

A soft voice floated from behind:

‘Surviving.’

A nylon wire flicked through the air. Mervyn lifted slightly in his seat. His body gently arched, the legs began to tremble, and Joe was leaning forward, head bent low so he’s nearly butting, almost kissing, grinning hard through gritted teeth, quietly weeping as he pulled the cords, as he crossed his hands and pulled them tight.

The ripples spread along the seats and made them shake, as in a train. It felt like sitting in the train when it goes over the points, when two tracks merge and the wheels almost jump. The train begins to shudder as it cuts across the intersection, and you feel it in your seat, you feel the movement in your seat. It spreads across your back and between your legs, and everyone’s staring at the floor because the train’s vibrating in their crotch, which makes them happy, for a moment. Or at least contented, if they’re hard to please.

It didn’t take long, once Joey started. Ninety seconds, give or take. You’d think it might take longer, but it didn’t. Even someone like Mervyn, someone in a pale grey three-piece suit, with a fobwatch in his waistcoat pocket, in hand-made shoes and aftershave, with a tasty business up and running, a well-dressed yob with slicked-back hair, even such a man can still be snuffed out fairly quickly.

You have to get up right behind him, though. You’ve got to come up close behind, and you slip the cord around his neck and quickly pull it tight. But nice and smoothly, nothing nasty. Then you listen to the sound he makes. You tilt your head, and cock an ear, and listen very carefully. The final, mortal gurgle of the one who held you down. And you realize something, if you’re Joey. Your brain kicks into gear again, and you realize something beautiful: They’ve always said revenge is sweet. But it’s more than sweet. It’s a crème brûlée.

He didn’t look like a dead man when they’d finished. People see what they expect to see, and you don’t expect to see a dead man in the Gaumont, Leicester Square. Comatose, perhaps, but not quite dead. She’d brought along the morning paper, and she covered his face, for decency. Then she slid a hand inside his jacket, fumbling for the holster. He hadn’t brought along his dosh, but he’d remembered to bring his automatic. Bastard hadn’t brought the money, but at least he’d brought his pistol, bless him.

She gave herself three blissful seconds to hold it in her hand — a loaded, matt-black pistol in her small and dainty hand — then dropped it in her bag and zipped it neatly shut.

‘We going, Joe?’

He didn’t answer. He took her by the arm and they walked up the aisle and into the foyer. Keep on moving, they’d agreed. Look self-absorbed, and don’t look back. So they’re quietly talking, almost smiling, just two young sweethearts on a date.

Into the street, and the comforting roar of a confident city, the reassuring stink of Leicester Square. She watched the girls go walking by. Not like me, she thought, they’re none of them like me, she thought. They haven’t sat there in the dark, with Mervyn’s thigh pressed hard against their own, with Mervyn’s smell, and Mervyn’s scent and Mervyn right beside them, and felt their lover strangle him, felt him be garrotted, felt the man they let inside pull tight on both the cords. Choke the air from Mervyn’s lungs. Snuff him out entirely.

Joe led her down a side-road, took a left, then left again, and they were in a yard, an unlocked space with cardboard boxes and polystyrene.

‘Where’s this?’ she said.

‘Just somewhere quiet.’

He had a bloodless face. Cadaverous, almost. Worse than Mervyn, if one’s honest. She touched his hand.

‘You all right?’

‘Yeah I’m all right.’

Pale blue sky and winter sun. Just him and her and an empty courtyard.

‘So what now, then, Joey?’

‘Thought we’d play a game.’

‘You mean another one?’

‘Yeah, another one.’

‘What kind of game?’

‘It’s called the can-be game. Know it, do you?’

She shook her head.

‘It’s simple, really, got very few rules. I mean it’s all a matter of who I can be. Cause I can be Joe, or I can be Henry.’

She gazed at him, at the broken mouth and the drained-out eyes.

‘Be Joey, Joey.’

His body seemed to shrivel. He became smaller, rounder, feminized. A sweet young boy, not one to take advantage.

‘May I kiss you?’

He held her hand so gently she could barely feel it, barely feel the pressure of his fingers on her skin. Didn’t press or rub against her, didn’t want to take what wasn’t freely given.

‘May I hold you?’

The one she loved, the self-effacing one she loved.

‘Be Henry, Joey.’

He wrapped his fingers in her hair, jerked back her head and jammed his broken mouth on hers. He pushed his tongue between her teeth and rubbed his groin, his hard, hot groin, against her crotch. Then he pressed her back against the wall, pulled down her tights and pushed himself inside, he shoved himself inside, he pressed his mouth against her neck and tunnelled his way inside.

* * *

CHAPTER 24

Billy eyed the daughter uneasily. Every time she passed she seemed to brush against him. Nothing obvious, not so close he could shove her off. Not her, he thought, too fucking smart. She’d just sidle past and brush him with her fingers, sometimes with her hips, her large and generous hips, which made it even worse. So Rubenesque she was it made him want to gag, just stick his fingers down his throat and gently retch. For he didn’t like them round like that. The curves got on his nerves.