DONNA AND THE FATMAN (Crime Thriller Fiction) (9 page)

‘Got a new door,’ he noted.

Phil chewed the matchstick.

‘I’m not saying it hasn’t had work.’

Joe hauled himself to his feet.

‘Can we get it on the ramp?’

‘Bit late for that. Have to think of the neighbours.’

‘Yeah,’ Joe grunted. ‘Sure.’

He glanced at Donna and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged and nodded.

‘I’ll give you eight hundred,’ he said.

Phil snorted. He pulled out the rod and banged the hood closed.

‘You don’t get it, do you?’

‘Get what?’

‘Punters like you get special prices.’

‘A grand,’ Joe said, ‘and we drive away.’

‘Three and a half,’ Phil countered, ‘and I’ll fill the tank.’

Joe gazed at him.

‘You know what you are?’

‘I’m a dealer, son.’

‘You’re a nine-carat cunt.’

Phil shrugged.

‘Same thing.’

* * *

CHAPTER 9

‘We could always go abroad.’ she said

It was only a suggestion, her way of being helpful, her modest contribution for the evening. They’d found a room in Finsbury, a quite appalling room, but she’d blocked it out, she’s not complaining. Small double bed, an unshaded bulb, and it’s twenty-three pounds, all charges included. There wasn’t a telly, though you had your own shower. But it’s got a smell, and she knows that smell, a syrupy compound of damp and decay, like a place she’d stayed in Camden. For Donna’s been around a bit, been shifting herself around.

‘Just shoot off abroad, just the two of us.’

She looked at herself in the mirror.

‘Be quite romantic. Like a honeymoon.’

‘You mean somewhere foreign?’

‘Somewhere like that.’

She put a finger on the shadowed skin beneath her eyes and pulled it gently down. Inflamed, she thought. I’m dying.

‘Where they do pasta,’ she added.

‘I don’t like pasta.’

‘Where they do burgers, then.’

He was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He had his shoes on, which bothered her, but only slightly. She leaned towards the glass and scrutinized her reflection. A small, pink lump had formed on her chin.

‘I’ve got a spot, Joe.’

‘I know.’

‘Maybe it’s a guilt-spot, because I took an old man’s money.’

She peered closer.

‘My conscience must be troubling me.’

‘You haven’t got a conscience,’ he murmured. ‘You’ve got a spot.’

‘Do you think that bloke downstairs noticed?’

‘I think he did.’

‘Is it very noticeable?’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Say no.’

‘No.’

‘I’ll put some stuff on it tomorrow.’

‘Why don’t you just squeeze it?’

‘Makes them spread, if you do that.’

‘They’re spreading already.’

‘That supposed to mean something, is it?’

‘It means you had one the other night.’

‘Which night?’

‘The night we met,’ he said. ‘Round at Carlo’s.’

‘That was a period spot.’

‘A what spot?’

‘You remember, sweetie: off our food, and blood everywhere . . . ?’

‘Oh yeah.’ He rolled over on to his side. ‘I remember.’

It had been gone eleven when they got there. A bed-and-breakfast cheap hotel, the sort of place you hate on sight because it strips away the fantasy and reminds you that you’re poor. They’d had to pay upfront, so they booked themselves in for just a couple of nights. Forty-six pounds, plus fifty on top in case of breakages. Everything costing, everything dear.

When the guy in reception handed over the keys, he’d had that look on his face, that caretaker’s smirk. She saw it in his eyes, a ‘hello, darling’ type of look, as though she were a working girl, some piece of painted flesh that rents it by the hour. She’d had a sudden urge to tell him who she was, to let him know the things she’d done, that she and she alone had been the one to rob the Fatman. Instead of which, she held her peace. Just followed Joe upstairs, and stepped inside the room, and peeled off the skin-tight jeans and talked to him of spots and pasta.

She crossed to the table and picked up a ciggy, sliding it smoothly between her lips. There was a soft grunt as he heaved himself off the bed, a muted exhalation as Joey made an effort. He struck a match and held the flame a few inches in front of her face. She leaned forward and sucked heat into the weed. Nothing like it, she was thinking, for it’s her all-time, second-favourite sensation. She took a long and perfect drag and held the smoke inside her lungs, almost beyond the limit, until it seemed the lungs would burst.

‘You shouldn’t do that,’ he said.

‘Do what?’

‘That smoke thing.’

He shoved the matches back in his pocket.

‘One day you’ll go too far.’

‘I know.’

‘One day you’ll die.’

‘I know.’

Her bag lay on the bed. She pulled him down beside her, shoved a hand inside, and took out the wad of currency, a big, thick wad of fives and tens. And the Donna bitch can’t help it, but just holding it, just gripping Henry’s money in her hot and eager fingers, makes her quietly start to lubricate.

‘Looks a fair amount,’ he said.

She nodded.

‘Yeah. Done well here, Joe. Going to live in style.’

She spread it all out on the nylon quilt, and almost ached with adoration. Crisp, new notes, unfingered by humanity. Unsullied bits of paper they could use to run away. All mine, she thought. She glanced across. All ours, she added.

He flexed his fingers.

‘You want to count it?’

She shook her head.

‘I took it, Joe. You count it.’

He leaned forward and collected several tens into a small pile.

‘That’s a hundred,’ he said.

‘Good start,’ she said.

‘There’s heaps more,’ he said.

‘Loads,’ she agreed.

It didn’t take long to add it up, but they still checked twice, just to be sure. Six hundred pounds, which is not a lot to take, not too much to liberate. Not when you’re the Donna bitch, and you like the feeling of silk against your skin. Six hundred quid off a millionaire. It’s nothing, frankly. Fuck-all, if you’re counting. Six hundred lousy quid to start a life.

Better not take a sum like that. When you rob a man like Henry, you’d better take it all, or leave him be. You shouldn’t dip your fingers in his pocket and steal a bit to tide you over. You should take the bread from his mouth and the clothes off his back, and leave him naked in the street, alone and helpless in the street. Just take it all, or leave him be.

For there’s one thing Donna ought to learn: never provoke a rich man, because rich men take revenge. So when she slipped the notes inside her bag and left him dripping on the floor, she was being soft, too tender-hearted, letting charity prevail. Should have flogged his things and burnt the house, just torched it to the ground.

The bastard would have understood. Might not have liked it, but he’d have understood. Some poor, mad bitch who comes in from the cold and looks around with hungry eyes. They half-expect it, men like him, for it’s what their nightmares are made of. And when they wake up sweating in the night, they’ve been dreaming of girlies like Donna.

She gathered up the tens and twenties.

‘I mean you don’t like abroad, anyway,’ she said, ‘I mean, do you, Joe?’

Stacked them together in a small, neat pile.

‘Cause East, West — home’s best. That’s what they say, see?’

He nodded.

‘I guess.’ He shrugged. ‘But mustn’t grumble, eh, babe? Keep on smiling, right?’

‘Yeah, Joe. Sure.’

For she knows they’re losers, him and her. Just punters, really. The sort of kids who get screwed a lot. They’ve got it written on their foreheads: I am nothing, on this earth. They touch a diamond and it turns to dust, for as Henry would have put it, as the Fatman might have said, it’s their true and only destiny to live a shitty life.

She’s always known she’ll lose. It’s in her blood, inside her bones, this recognition that she’s something less, she’ll never bridge the gap, she’ll never reach the other side. And Joey-boy, her man of choice, is a poor, soft lad. Been born like that, and he’d stay like that. For he didn’t understand, it hadn’t yet impinged upon his throbbing Joey brain, that he’d been robbed before he’d even started, crushed before he had a chance. They’d stolen his life before it began, and all he could do was to pull on a mask, take out a cosh, and do his best to steal it back.

But Joey was devoid of rage. That was one of Joey’s troubles. Even when they kept him down, had their foot on his face and his face on the ground, he never hungered to finish them off, just wipe them out, just blow a neat, round hole in the back of their heads and slowly walk away.

So that was Joe. Big, stupid guy. Called him Joey, to show how much they liked him, the way they’d like a dog. They’d slipped a collar round his neck, clipped on the leash, and led him round, their Joey-boy. Kept him down on all fours, his tongue hanging out and his tail tucked away.

She sighed to herself as she got undressed. Didn’t say anything, because there’s nothing to say. Just folded her clothes and stowed them away. A five-minute shower with lukewarm water, then in the bed and move up close. The touch of skin on tender skin, the almost copulation.

Because they might be losers, him and her, they might be nothing, on this earth, but mustn’t grumble, keep on smiling.

That right, Joey? Eh, Joe? Eh?

* * *

CHAPTER 10

A half-remembered sound seeped in from the corridor and forced her awake. She opened her eyes in the dark. The smell of the room billowed over her, everything seedy and everything soiled.

She couldn’t fuck, in a room like that. Couldn’t spread herself and let her boy inside in a twenty-pound room in Finsbury. For that is one of Donna’s problems, this is one of her neuroses, that she can’t just do it anywhere. She can’t start rutting, in a place like that, can’t lubricate beneath a greasy blanket, can’t let the boy amuse himself when bugs might plummet from the ceiling, when there’s grime embedded in the carpet, and some nameless slime beneath the bed. She starts imagining the germs inside the pillow-case, the insects crawling in the sink, the dust-mites breeding in the wardrobe. She can’t help it, really, for it’s how she thinks, and she’s always been quite thoughtfully inclined.

Her fantasy, the major Donna-wish she’d like to see fulfilled, is a first-floor flat in a stucco-fronted house, the decoration minimal, all empty space and polished floors, without the detritus of other people’s lives piled up around, their pustulent belongings squatting on the carpet. Instead of which, instead of being someone of significance, she’s lying on a bed a vagabond would burn, in a dismally ungenerous room that reeks of takeaways and urine.

That sound again, that urgent whisper, just outside. A smothered laugh, high-pitched and slightly female. And suddenly, the beating Donna heart, the vomit-panic churning in her belly, the consciousness of Joe asleep beside her.

Outside in the passage, someone pursed his lips and softly blew, and a spurt of skinhead breath came jetting from his mouth.

‘Psssst!’

It’s strange when you can hear someone grinning in the dark. When you listen to the air as it’s forced between his teeth, and you know he’s standing outside, with his hand on his crotch, and he’s grinning, quite benignly, in the dark.

Laughter bubbled in the corridor and a steel-toed boot thudded into the door. There was a sudden, whiplash crack as the lock began to give. So loud it was, you could have heard it miles away, could well have heard it in Redington Road, if you’d been listening hard enough. The footsteps moved away, and she clutched the blanket, allowed herself to half-believe they’d gone, then heard the feet come running back, heard them pounding up the passageway, and the floor shook beneath the bed, it trembled underneath, as something heavy slammed against the door.

It’s never happened, a thing like this. This is something new for her, a first in her eventful life, and it takes a while to comprehend. For although she took a rich man’s cash, and ran off with a boy called Joe, and should have had the sense to know what might transpire, it takes a while to recognize that her shabby little world, pathetic as it is, is about to be invaded.

The middle panel sagged, caved in, split apart. A gloved fist appeared in the gap. Like that film, she told herself. Joe, she thought, we’re in the movies, Joe. She couldn’t breathe. She knew she ought to, but she found she couldn’t. They’d stolen all the air, they’d sucked away the warm, damp air. She moved her lips. High-pitched sounds inside her head, little whimpers of disbelief. That’s me, she thought, that’s Donna bitch. There was an endless splintering of cheap wood and chipboard, and the hinges abruptly gave. The door buckled and swung open. The boys erupted into the room.

The ceiling-lamp flicked on. A moment of sweet silence.

Billy scratched his cheek.

‘Hello, scumbags.’

The vomit-panic churning in your gut, because you’re only a soft-boned girly, and you didn’t mean to cause offence, and now they’re through the door and standing by the bed, they’re standing smiling by the bed.

Mervyn’s sweet, cherubic face.

‘Thought we’d just pop in,’ he said. ‘Seemed the decent thing to do,’ he added. ‘As we were passing, so to speak.’

He was holding a cream-coloured baseball bat. There was a red stripe painted round the tip. About two a.m., it must have been, that dead and buried time of night when no one hears, when every sound is muffled. The skinhead frowned.

‘Think we’ve disturbed them, Merv?’

‘I think we have, Billy. I think the fuckers were fast asleep.’

‘So we woke them up.’

‘Looks like we did. I feel bad about that.’

‘Don’t feel bad, Merv.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

Billy reached inside his Crombie coat and pulled out something chrome and black. He pressed a button, and a blade shot out.

‘Do you think they are, though?’

‘Are what, Billy?’