DONNA AND THE FATMAN (Crime Thriller Fiction) (8 page)

‘I’m fine.’

I wiped your debt, she nearly added, got a bonus, too. She’d stuffed it in her bag, she’d crammed it in and snapped it shut. Safe within her leather bag she had the Fatman’s money, the only thing of his she wanted buried deep inside. It made her panties moisten, frankly. Made her start to lubricate. All that money, on her lap, it made her melt between her legs. Because she likes it when they give her things, she loves it when they spend a bit, but she adores it when she takes it, for that’s the kind of girl she is.

For they’re forgetful types, the three-legs. They forget to take her out, forget to buy her what she wants, forget her name, forget the way she likes it. But they always remember to stick it in, they’re always ready to push it in, they never forget to shove it in. So they owe her, really, the way she sees it. In her Donna-centric worldview, they owe her in abundance.

‘We off, Joe, are we?’

‘We’re going, babe.’

He turned up his collar and put on his shades, for he liked to act the part, he liked to get in character. She blew on her fingers.

‘So we’re splitting, yeah?’

A final drag, and he chucked the roll-up out of the window.

‘We’re on our way.’

He turned the key. The engine coughed and spluttered out.

‘Right,’ he said, and tried again. The motor almost caught. It very nearly almost fired. Three endless seconds in which it almost sparked, then quietly died. He pumped the throttle.

‘You’re flooding the engine.’

‘You know about cars?’

‘You’re flooding it, Joe.’

He tried a third time. One turn to the right, and ignition on. A half-turn further, and the motor turned over, and then the tubercular sound you get, that sick, familiar, wheezing sound, when the battery starts to fade.

A spasm shook her gut.

‘We off now, Joe?’

‘We’re up and running.’

‘So we’re going, are we?’

‘In a
minute
, okay?’

She twisted in her seat and stared back at the house. Lights were coming on upstairs, shadows moving behind the curtains. Henry’s face appeared, a blob of livid malice, framed in the second-floor window. His mouth kept changing shape, for he was shouting something, expressing himself in his favoured way. She watched the hole as it opened and closed. Imagined the insults spewing forth, the globs of Henry spittle arcing through the air before landing, with a soft and glutinous hiss, on the window-pane.

‘No need to rush, but I think he’s watching.’

‘How’s he looking?’

‘Not too happy.’

Joe worked the motor.

‘We better shift then.’

She kept her eyes on the Fatman’s face and moved her fingers in mute farewell.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘We better had.’

Merv and Billy beside him now, and he’s pointing down, giving his orders, the black-hole aperture growing and shrinking. Like watching a silent film, she thought, and suddenly realized the boys had gone, they’d disappeared, they’d scooped up their testosterone and vanished. There was just the Fatman, alone in the window. And she couldn’t be sure, she couldn’t be certain, but it looked like he was grinning.

‘Will you start the car?’

‘I’m trying, aren’t I?’

‘Fucking start it, will you?’

‘You swearing, now?’

‘Just press it down. Don’t pump it, right? Press the pedal
down
.’

‘I been
doing
that, sweetheart.’

‘Well this time, fucking
keep
it down!’

The front door burst open, like a bad, bad dream. Mervyn boiled out of the house, a six-inch length of metal pipe protruding from his fist. She thumbed down the door-lock. Joe put the gear-stick into second and floored the throttle. Mervyn running up the drive, skinhead Billy close behind. A sudden vision of being dragged upstairs, being bent and spread, abased before the Fatman. Vomit-panic in her belly. Not that, she thought. Not me, she thought.

‘God . . . ’ she moaned.

He jerked the key, the engine turned over. Then he lifted his foot, he was doing it right, and the sweet, sweet sound of a borrowed motor when it finally starts to fire. He released the clutch and the car shot forward, rear wheels spinning till they found the ground. The seductive smell of burning rubber, and Merv and Billy almost had her, they were almost touching, they were almost there.

Then the car went skidding towards the road, slamming her back against the leather seat. Like when a plane takes off, so good it was, all speed and light and potency. The Fatman-booty in her lap, and Mervyn screaming just behind, and adrenalin coursing through her veins.

‘Joe,’ she breathed, ‘we’re in the movies, Joe . . . ’

And he gunned the engine, and they were out of there.

* * *

CHAPTER 8

Once they’d cleared Heath Drive he cut the speed. He might not know how to start a car, but he knew about stuff like that. You keep your right foot light on the pedal, you don’t go shooting off up Redington Road, panicking all the decent folk. Be like having a sign on the back of your car: Phone in my number, cause I’m a robber. It’s things like that that he knows about, being quite a knowing guy. So having cleared Heath Drive he cut the speed, then just cruised along, went sailing along. Nice and slowly, sweet and easy, like he did it every night.

He palmed the gearstick into fourth. Cold air was blasting from the vents, droplets forming inside the windows. He switched on the heater, listened to the fan. And then he asked, apropos of nothing much:

‘How much you get, then?’

She didn’t react. You might even have thought that the girl hadn’t heard. She merely said . . . 

‘We eating soon?’

. . . and turned her head to look at him. He was a good-looking boy, and she liked to look. There was stubble on his cheek, for he didn’t care to shave too much. Just now and then, when he got the urge. He said he’d do it, if she wanted, but she told him not to bother, for she likes her men to look like blokes, she likes them post-pubescent.

He hung a right into Arkwright Road.

‘You hungry, babe?’

‘Well . . . not exactly.’

‘But you wouldn’t say no?’

‘Might pass the time.’

‘So how much you get, then?’

Because he hadn’t forgotten.

‘Get, Joe?’

‘Get, babe. Off of Henry.’

‘What makes you think—’

‘I can smell it, can’t I. You got that money smell.’

He was coasting down, engine in neutral.

‘I’m interested, that’s all. I mean it’s no big deal.’

She frowned at the dashboard.

‘You just want to know . . . ’

‘I’m a curious bloke.’

‘And it’s finders keepers. Right, Joe?’

‘Right.’

She wrapped her arms around the bag and clutched it to her belly.

‘I got plenty, Joey.’

She nodded to herself.

‘I’m loaded, see.’

He slipped into first.

‘What you probably mean . . . ’

He went sharp left.

‘ . . . is that
we’re
loaded, sweetheart.’

She watched the buildings go floating by and drew a large D on the misted-up glass.

‘Yeah,’ she muttered. ‘Probably.’

Stuck in the queue at the lights by the station. Six lanes of traffic, their engines revving. Noise and filth and aggravation, the eternal stink of the Finchley Road. He adjusted the mirror, rooted for a fag.

‘So how’d it go, then?’

She touched a filling with her tongue.

‘All right, I guess.’

‘No problems . . . ?’

‘Not really.’

He crushed an empty pack in his fist and chucked it in the back.

‘Did you wipe my debt?’

‘I sort of wiped it.’ She watched a lad on a mountain-bike go threading between the cars. ‘I also wiped your job.’

‘Never liked that job.’

‘Say thank you, then.’

‘Thank you, then.’

The lights went to orange.

‘You see it, did you?’

‘See what, Joe?’

‘His thing,’ he said. ‘The Henry thing.’

She picked up the pack of loose tobacco and pulled out a generous pinch.

‘Might have caught a glimpse.’

He released the handbrake.

‘I’ve seen it too,’ he said. ‘Such as it is.’

He was holding the clutch at biting point.

‘Bit small, I thought.’

‘Minute,’ she agreed. She wrinkled her nose in pained distaste. To think of what he’d wanted her to do. The cheek of it. The total fucking nerve.

‘Made me stop in Holland Park,’ Joe said. ‘Had to take a leak.’

‘Right in the park?’

‘In Addison Road.’

‘That’s Shepherd’s Bush.’

‘You the A to Z?’

She peeled off a paper and started rolling him a fag.

‘So you stopped the car . . . ’

‘And he had the leak. Did it all over this redbrick place. Right in the porch, right on the door.’

She shook her head.

‘Not nice, that, is it.’

Joe nodded sadly.

‘Quite nasty, really.’

The line of traffic began surging forward. He took a right, and they sped through Kilburn. Then Kensal Green, the Scrubs Lane junction, and before too long they were hitting Harlesden, with its corrugated lock-ups and quick deals for cash, no questions asked.

‘You done my fag, yet?’

‘I’m doing it, Joe.’

He pulled off the high street and looped round the houses, riding the brake so he could check the numbers. Night had fallen, and he dispensed with the image and took off his shades. She looked up from the ciggy, stared out through the tinted windows. There weren’t a lot of cafes, really. Not a lot of night-life.

‘We stopping here, are we?’

‘Just taking a spin,’ he said. ‘Just passing through.’

‘And then we have our dinner, yeah?’

‘Soon, babe,’ he said. ‘Few minutes, okay?’

He drove up on to the pavement, beside an eight-foot, fly-postered wall.

‘Have to do some business first.’

‘What kind of business?’

‘Motor business, precious. Not your thing, I would have thought.’

She licked down the paper and passed him the roll-up.

‘You dumping the car, then?’

He cut the motor.

‘It’s got to go.’

‘I like this car.’

‘We can’t all get the things we like.’

She pulled down the vanity mirror and moistened her lips.

‘I think you get plenty, Joe.’

‘You reckon, do you?’

‘Yeah, I reckon.’

The warm engine was ticking over. They smiled at each other in the deepening gloom. He got out of the car and went through a small door cut into high wooden gates. A couple of minutes later, the gates swung open and he came back out and drove them through. He circled slowly round, parking next to a stripped-down Bristol.

They climbed out and stood in the yard. Fluorescent light was shafting down, and the smell of paintspray hung in the air. She watched the owner heave the gates shut.

‘All right, is he?’

Joe sucked his lip.

‘More or less.’

He’d brought them to someone he vaguely knew, a man called Phil, a friend of a nodding acquaintance. A lanky, thin-haired man with bloodshot eyes and a runny nose. There was an Austin-Healey parked nearby, and a Mercedes hard-top round the back, because Phil was quality, only dealt in the best. They watched him wipe his hands on his overalls and stroll towards them, barely glancing at their motor. A brief nod to Joe, and he took the matchstick out of his mouth.

‘How much?’

Joe looked him in the eye.

‘It’s worth over thirty.’

‘I know what it’s worth,’ Phil said. ‘Give me a figure.’

‘Twenty.’

The man’s face creased into a smile.

‘Three,’ he said softly.

‘Do me a favour . . . ’

‘I’m trying to.’

Dust was shimmering in the artificial light.

‘Fifteen,’ Joe muttered.

The man wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

‘You’re not really in a strong position,’ he said. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Not for bargaining, if you get my drift.’

‘It’s a bit hot, that’s all.’

‘It’s scorching, my son.’

‘Twelve, then.’

‘Three and a half,’ Phil said. ‘And I’m being generous.’

The man shoved the matchstick back in his mouth.

‘Done?’

For a moment, Joe hesitated. He scuffed the toe of his shoe against the tarmacked ground and seemed to shake his head. And then his body sagged, his whole frame drooped. It was as if he’d been shoved against a wall, as if they’d pinned him by the arms and punched him in the solar plexus.

‘Done,’ he muttered.

They waited out in the yard while Phil disappeared into a prefab shed to get the cash. She was beginning to feel vaguely bereft. No more trips in Henry’s car. No tender, Donna rump on the shiny, leather seats.

‘Never mind,’ she soothed. ‘It’s only money.’

(The most mindless thing she’d said in at least four hours.)

Phil came out again after a couple of minutes and walked towards them. He was tossing a set of keys from one hand to the other.

‘Fancy a new motor?’

‘I’d like that one,’ she announced, pointing at the Austin-Healey.

Joe grinned and punched the man lightly on the shoulder.

‘Don’t go winding up my lady.’

Phil grinned back at him.

‘Can’t help it, squire.’ The grin went stiff. ‘But you need some wheels, right?’

‘Might do.’

‘I mean you need them bad, right?’

‘You making an offer?’

The man fiddled with his nose again.

‘Just a suggestion.’

‘So what you got, then?’

‘Mark Two Capri.’

Joey nodded, thinking it over.

‘Runner, is it?’

‘Like a rocket. It’s a wideboy motor, if you know what I mean.’

He led them round to the back of the shed and there it was, in shades of blue: a two-tone Ford Capri. Joe lifted the bonnet and peered at the engine.

‘Bit clean,’ he muttered.

‘It’s for the punters. You know they’re fussy.’

Joe started walking slowly round, kicking the tyres, running his fingers over the body. He squatted down in front of the radiator and squinted along the wing.