Rant (5 page)

Wednesday May 5
th
. Later, but still early.

Running on fumes, we reach Bristol at dawn.

I stop the car, get out to stretch my legs and breathe in the air, like sucking on a damp flannel. Funny how particular places give you a particular feeling as soon as you step out of the car or off the train. I always know I'm in London because straightaway I feel in too much of a rush and get agitated, ready to barge anyone and everyone out of my way because
I'm more important and so is the pathetic little day's work I have to do
. (At the same time, you can feel the money being sucked from your pockets as you buy crap. Not just any old crap but capital crap, as in capital punishment or capital crime.) Birmingham, I instantly feel depressed and wonder when the next train out is. In Manchester I feel as though I should be a hard-hitting heroin addict getting ready to swear on primetime TV, or camping it up down Canal Street. Newcastle just feels like home, with a clippy mat on every floor and a whippet for every lap (hey, this is my list – you feel as stereotypical as you like wherever you want to feel it).

And Bristol. I step out of the car and immediately know I'm in Bristol because I'm wet. They say Bristol is one of our greenest cities and I'm not surprised, it's always bastard raining here, everything's probably covered in a fine layer of mould. I did a couple of shows here on tour and in less than a week the costumes were all covered in mildew.

But we're here; I'm still not sure about the contacts of my American friend but I am fairly short on options at the minute. I know that even if I had a plan then nothing would be going to it.

I look at the guy in the back seat.

‘Are you okay?' A nod. ‘Do you need to use the bottle again?' A slow, pensive shake of the head. Relief from both of us. I hope I never have to find out what it's like trying to pee in a bottle held by a man with a gun and a twitchy disposition while my hands are cuffed. Though I may use it as an exercise next time I run a drama workshop. Just as an icebreaker. ‘Dealing with distraction', I could call it. Aimed at people who work in call centres. Not that I'd want them to learn anything from the experience, it would just make me feel better.

I try to find something comforting to say to my passenger but the conversation seems to have run its course, so I just scowl back at him as I get out and open the boot, waiting while Uncle Sam grimaces into the spitting rain. I help him to stand up and he looks a little wobbly, blinking in the early morning light. I ask him if he's okay and he nods distractedly, staring at the man on the back seat.

‘We need another car,' I tell him.

He nods.

‘Any ideas?'

He gestures towards the boot of the car. There is a small leather wallet tucked next to the spare wheel. I open it. It contains various picks and tools.

‘Lock picks?' I ask. Obviously I should have searched him, I hear you say. Well I can't think of everything – it's all very well for you looking at this from the outside, Mr/Mrs/Ms Smarty Knickers (delete as appropriate).

He nods. I'm getting bored with this. I ungag him.

‘Who in hellfire is that son of a bitch,' is the first thing he gasps, looking at the man on the back seat.

‘Look,' I say, ‘I need you to be calm right now. I'm trying very hard to be calm but my personality doesn't seem to support calm at the best of times and now is definitely just about the worstest of times I can possibly imagine and maybe that's because I'm low on imagination too but who can blame me, eh? Eh? Maybe your lot have to put up with this carry on all the time but I'm just a poor, humble, ordinary guy – well maybe not so ordinary, but the others seem to fit – and I am what you might call a tad tetchy just now. So, that being the case, can you do us both a big favour and just be nice to me and the man in the car and don't get violent and if you've learnt anything from your time in the naughty corner of the trunk of this car it should be that I am sick and tired of being given shitty advice by people that I don't know very well and being made to do horrible things for no apparent good reason—'

‘Do you think you could stop shouting,' he says. ‘Curtains are twitching.'

I take advantage of his interruption to take a breath, suddenly feeling dizzy, then start again. I can't remember what I said – I was in a highly excited state at this point – but for some reason I must have started waving the gun around, which I only discovered when I clonked myself on the head with it.

I stand panting, trying hard not to cry. When I start talking again my voice wobbles up and down the octaves as if I'm about to hit puberty.

‘Sorry,' I say, ‘I think I'm a bit tired and emotional.'

He stares at me. I push the gun back into my trousers and squeak as the cold metal catches my foreskin, almost making me pull the trigger. God, I must stop doing that. It's fun the first couple of times but it soon wears a bit thin. Try it if you don't believe me.

‘Can I have a hug?' I mutter, forlornly.

He stares a bit harder.

‘Okay, well at least be nice to me,' I said. ‘And I'm sorry about last night. You pushed me too hard.'

‘Not as hard as you pushed me.' He looks at me long and hard. Then huffs out a big old sigh. ‘Fair enough,' he says cautiously. ‘But I'd like to know who he is. Please.'

‘Don't worry about him, he's nobody.'

‘How come he gets to sit in the car if he's nobody? And I get shoved in the boot?'

‘Look, you can change places now if you want, it's not important—'

‘Maybe it's not important to you, you get to drive and decide who sits where. My piles are giving me hell back there.'

‘Well, lucky for you I picked up some cream for that back at the…. Look, this doesn't matter just now.' I hold up the lock picks. ‘Can you use these?'

‘No, I just bought them because I thought they were pretty.' I resist the urge to point out that he has spent the best part of twelve hours locked in the boot of a car and his precious picks haven't helped him get out of that. ‘Untie me and I'll show you.' His voice is pretty croaky and I remember guiltily that he hasn't had a drink in about eight hours.

Can I trust him? No. Do I have a choice? No. This will have to be handled very carefully. If I let him get the upper hand then I will have lost my one chance at getting out of this. Plus I certainly don't fancy applying his haemorrhoid cream myself.

And after all, he hasn't given me any trouble since yesterday.

‘What about our mutual friend, there?' I ask.

‘He's probably better off handcuffed, and I imagine we can't really let him go just at the minute since he probably knows too much, thanks to you and your big mouth.'

I start to argue, but realise he's quite right. As usual.

‘Should we off him, then?' I ask, in my best menacing goon voice, which comes out sounding a bit like Sue off
Sooty and Sweep
. I really need some sleep.

Two pairs of eyes stare at me like the loser I am.

‘Only joshing,' I say, pathetically.

‘C'mon, Mike.' He sighs. Holds out his wrists. ‘At this moment we need each other. I'm not about to do anything stupid while you're holding a gun on me.'

Oh yes, the gun. I pull out the gun (carefully) from my trousers and hold it on him whilst I undo the knot at his wrists, watching him closely all the time. Watching his every move.

Paying particular attention as he removes the gun from my hands, nuts me in the face, and then swiftly kicks me in the testicles so hard I swear long-dead distant relatives back in Northumberland must have winced.

I lie down quickly, squeaking like a guinea pig on heat with a mouthful of cotton wool (never heard one? You don't know what you're missing).

Captain America scowls at me.

‘You brought that on yourself,' he rasps, then reaches into the front seat and takes out the water bottle. ‘I'm in charge now, so let's get a few things straight.'

He takes a huge swig from the bottle, a huge gulp of Backseat Boy's wee, and then spits it out in a rather impressive arc across the street.

God help me, I laugh. I know it's wrong and childish and pathetic but I laugh. I laugh and I laugh and I laugh until he kicks me in the testicles again. And then I laugh no more.

Tuesday May 4
th
. Lunchtime-ish.

So I was running, running, running because, let's face it there's not really much else to do on a Tuesday afternoon when you've just accidentally, um, defrauded…misappropriated funds from…okay,
robbed
a bank
and
you are carrying several thousand pounds of hit money apparently from some Mexican terrorist group
and
you have a particularly vicious-looking handgun tucked into your underpants (have I mentioned how much that chafes when you run?)
and
you know your wife is going to give you such a hard time when you try to explain that either you or she may well end up shooting you, just to make the point that you appreciate, that you understand fully, that what has happened, what you have done, is very, very, very naughty indeed.

After a bit of running (seven minutes tops, maybe a bit less – must start exercising again), I decided that I needed to sit somewhere quiet, turn my lungs the right way out and think things through a little. One of my big problems, according to Anna, is that I spend too much time thinking and talking and not enough doing.

Well. I certainly seemed to be addressing that imbalance at the moment. Or does it not count if you're having things forcibly done to you?

(Actually, the word Anna uses most often isn't
talking
but
ranting
. You're having a rant. You are doing a Rant. I'm being Mr Rant – see how clever my stage name is? These things don't just happen at random, you know.)

I realised I was standing next to the Sensory Awakening Garden for the Visually Impaired that the council put in last year, and it looked quiet and secluded enough to hide a desperate fugitive. In I went.

Nice. I don't know why the place wasn't stacked out. I'm sure your average visually impaired person could get a lot from standing on a pile of broken glass, hoovering up the overwhelming smell of dog shit and the sound of an old alcoholic alternately throwing up and singing snatches of ‘I Will Always Love You'. It certainly awakened my senses.

I forced myself to organise my thoughts. A list. A script of sorts, that's the order of the day.

1) I needed to think.

2) I needed to talk to the guy who was supposed to receive the parcel delivered to me and find out where it's from and what it's all about. Preferably without either of us assaulting the other.

3) Before this I needed to go home – avoiding aforementioned wife – and safely hide the gun and ill-gotten gains. Or maybe I should take the gun with me until I figured out who said recipient of hit money was.

4) In order to do this I would have to avoid the police and/or whoever sent me the money (or rather, accidentally sent me the money – or rather again, sent the money to someone else and had probably since discovered that I was now in possession of it and wished to eliminate all trace of me, the money and the weapon before I contacted the police or ran off to wherever people who steal hit money run off to. The Costa del Sol? Brazil? Bognor?)

I was lost for a moment in the nightmare of sitting in a “Traditional English” Taverna surrounded by wrinkly old villains with no necks and Cockney speech impediments (that's Bognor for you), being hunted by Speedy Gonzales look-alikes, when I realised

5) I needed to find fifty pee for a cup of tea mate.

I shook myself out of the pleasant reverie.

‘What?' I said.

‘Got fifty pee for a cup of tea, mate?' the Whitney Houston fan bellowed at me, obviously assuming I had some kind of sensory impairment that enabled me to enjoy the hedonistic pleasures around us, not to mention his camaraderie.

I muttered something to do with the Labour party and their promises and stupid bloody theme tunes that even I didn't quite understand, and then an idea came to me all at once.

I didn't have any change on me but reached into the bag and offered the first note I came across. ‘Here, take this—' I started to say, but he cut me off with a strangled laugh and bellowed at me again.

‘NO – MATE – THAT'S – A – FIFTY – POUND – NOTE – YOU –WANT – TO – BE - MORE – CAREFUL – WHERE'S – YOUR – HELPER—'

‘Shut the hell up!' I said, in as friendly a manner as possible under the circumstances. I took off my sunglasses and fixed him with what I hoped was a steely stare. ‘Shut up and take the money and—'

‘I can't take that!' he bellowed. ‘What d'you think I am? Some kind of scrounger?'

I nodded blankly but he didn't even notice in his incensed state. He leant over so that he could get a good clear spit straight into my face.

‘I only want some money for a cup of tea, not to set myself up in the bleedin' heroin trade! I don't know what this country's coming to, I really don't, people making assumptions left, right and centre just because you're a bit down on your luck. I fought for this bleedin' country in two Eurovision Song Contests when I used to play trombone, but you just assume I'm a nobody and always have been because of my externals, but you should have a look at me internally, young fella-me-lad!'

I shuddered so hard the gun slipped under my waistband and lodged itself firmly in the crotch of my underpants. I shuddered somewhat harder.

‘Ha! That struck a chord, didn't it! You're not so dapper-looking yourself, but do I make assumptions about you? Well, maybe I do but they're not all bad. Coming in here pretending to be blind – I'm sure there's a law against that you know…and…stop fiddling with yourself down there…anyone could come by and I don't want to get picked up for cottaging or summat, leastways not with someone like you and—Why are you crying?'