Driving Big Davie (Dan Starkey) (17 page)

'Are you okay? Are you all right?'

'He pulled a gun on us! He made us cut the line!'

'You're going to sue us, aren't you!'

'You signed a disclaimer, you can't touch us!'

'Word gets out, we're ruined!'

'We haven't phoned the cops!'

'We thought you'd like to negotiate!'

But I couldn't afford to get caught up with them now. I had to stop Davie. I pushed through them. I said, 'My lawyer will be in touch! My lawyer will be in touch!' and started to run down the sand towards the Don. I glanced back once and saw that the BBBB and his colleagues were now gathered around the wooden beach hut. They appeared to be arguing amongst themselves about their options. Call the cops, get rid of the drugs they were selling or buy me off. Possibly all three.

My T-shirt and shorts were soaked and stained with sand and salt, my sun cream had been washed off and my forehead was burning red again. I pounded along the beach with a stitch in my side and a lump in my throat and grit in my eyes in pursuit of Davie Kincaid, my friend, my revenger.

I bounded up through the sunbeds and the sloping path to the swimming pools. Nobody tried to stop me. Nobody cared. I cut between the pools then up the steps to the set of wide doors which formed the largest of the rear entries to the Don. I hurried down through the empty piano bar and across to the lifts. A few moments later I stepped out on the seventh floor.

Everything looked normal. The Don had wide corridors, the kind you just had to run down. There were large mirrors mounted on the walls at either end which gave me a distorted view of myself as I progressed. Or maybe that was the way I looked — elongated and slightly out of focus. It was certainly the way I felt. I was running to meet my fate, and my fate, in my own hands, was running towards me.

I hesitated. Things were happening too quickly. I had been snatched from the mouth of
Jaws
— well,
Flipper —
and then hit the shore running. I had not stopped to think this out. My only concern was to stop Davie from doing what he was going to do. He was an ex-cop with a gun and a not so hidden agenda. But The Colonel was a monster who surely would not be taken by surprise wherever in the world he was resting his reptilian soul.

I had had enough of death, of cold stinking murder. I wanted it over. I wanted home to Trish and eggs and bacon and eggs and fertilisation. I would be a new Dan, same as the old,
better
than the old. I had promised this before, but this time I meant it, now that I knew how she really felt. I had to accept that she knew more about me than I ever could. She had the keys to my head.

And I had the keys to hers.

She had admitted herself that she was messed up over Stevie, and it was to my eternal shame that I had failed to properly recognise it. Now I knew why she'd gone along with Davie's bizarre plot to exact revenge on Michael O'Ryan, The Colonel. Because she wasn't well — she wasn't the real Patricia. I loved her. She didn't plan murders. She just needed help. We needed to help each other. But not like this. Not like this.

There was sand on the richly patterned carpet. What had the leaflet said, English Axminster? It wasn't quite formed into footsteps, but I was able to follow it along the corridor and then left at the mirror and into a smaller corridor leading to the suites at the very front of the hotel.

The tracks led along it for just a few metres, and then stopped abruptly outside Room 707. The sand was Davie's and the room was The Colonel's. What if I banged on the door and Davie wasn't there at all and it was just The Colonel? What would I do, what would I say? Would he even remember me?

I knocked on the door. There was a pause, and then: 'Go away! I'm sleeping!'

The voice was rough and disturbed, and Davie's.

'Davie! Don't do this!'

'Fuck off, Dan!'

'Davie! I swear to God, I'll turn you in if you do this!'

'Get the fuck out of it, Dan!'

I banged on the door hard, and kept at it. 'Let me in! Let me in!' It was spoiled child as saviour. 'Davie, please! Please! Let me in!'

Then a bolt went back, and the door was opening, and there was a flush-faced Davie Kincaid, gun in one hand, trained somewhere beyond him, and beckoning me in with the other. .

'Davie, please God you haven't—'

'Shut up.' He closed the door after me and locked it. I walked on into the suite, my body pulsing with dread. There was a short corridor which led into a lounge. Two men were on their knees with their hands folded behind their heads. One of them was Michael O'Ryan. If he recognised me, there was no indication. I walked up and kicked him hard in the stomach. He let out a groan and keeled over. The other guy was a lot younger, maybe in his late twenties, with prematurely receding hair and a thick black moustache. He looked scared to death.

'Who the hell's this?' I said.

'Assistant Manager.'

'Great,' I said.

'I haven't done anything,' the Assistant Manager said.

'Yeah, right,' said Davie, and gave him a kick as well. As the AM went down, The Colonel rolled back up like a Weeble, and he was just as attractive. He said, 'If you're going to fucking kill me, just do it.'

Davie snorted. I knelt down beside The Colonel and stared into his eyes. 'Do you know who I am?'

'The Angel of Death? The Toxic Avenger? Save the speeches, Redskin, and do your business.'

I stood. 'You don't then.'

The Colonel shrugged. 'You're just another boyo with a chip.'

'You killed my son. You put him in a bunker with my wife and you starved him to death.'

'Ah.' The Colonel nodded slowly.

'Is there anything you want to say to me?'

'What, like Last Will and Testament? I don't think so. He was a casualty of war. You don't apologise for war.'

Davie came up beside me. 'And you want to let him live?'

The Colonel's eyes had been cold and dark and resigned, but at Davie's words the merest spark of hope flitted across them, and then left, chasing his vicious response.

I didn't nod, but neither did I shake my head.

Davie was right. Now that I was face to face with him, my desire was to shoot him. No — to cause him the maximum amount of pain for a long, long time, and then shoot him.

But it was nothing more than an instinct, like hunting and procreating and supporting Liverpool. A man thing. Something you were born with but which you didn't necessarily have to follow.

There is instinct, and then there is right and wrong.

Davie was breathing in my ear. 'I got you here, old son. I knew I'd get you here.'

I nodded. It was obvious now. It was all part of his plan. He had lured me there in a ridiculously roundabout but nevertheless perfectly calculated way. 'Look at him,' he hissed. 'Look the fuck at him, Dan. Look what he did to you, look what he did to your son. This is your chance. Do it. Here, take the gun. Take the fucking gun.'

But instead I said, 'What about him? What's he got to do with it?'

'Nothing. Forget him.'

'I can't forget him, he's a witness, he's—'

'We have to kill him as well, Dan. You know that.'

Terror peeled down the AM's face like a botched wallpaper job. 'You don't need to kill me! You don't! Take it — just take it. I wish I'd never heard about it!'

I glanced at Davie. 'What's he talking about?'

'Nothing. If you don't do it, I will.' He raised his gun.

'No, please!' the AM shouted. 'Take the gold! I was just greedy — I didn't mean to harm anyone. I didn't know about a baby . . . I'm sorry — just take it.'

'Davie?'

Davie sighed. He had the gun trained on O'Ryan still, but he said, 'Go look in the other room,' and nodded his head back slightly.

I walked down a small corridor to another door and hesitantly pushed it open.

It was a bedroom, but if I'd been The Colonel I'd have complained to the management. There was a huge King-sized bed, but you could hardly see it for bricks, plaster and loose masonry. Behind and above the dust-covered mattress a large hole had been drilled into the wall. I could tell it had been drilled because there was a huge drill sitting to one side of the bed.

I shouted back into the lounge: 'What the fuck is going on?'

'There's a case on the floor,' Davie called back. 'Open it.'

There was a battered-looking old case sitting on its side on the ground on the other side of the bed. It wasn't exactly Louis Vuitton — more like the kind of string and cardboard effort my old dad would have stuffed his de-mob suit into and hidden away in a cupboard. I bent to lift it up onto the one clear spot in the bed; but I couldn't, mostly because it weighed a ton. And clinked.

I bent to it for a closer look. The flimsy locks had already been punched, so the lid just lifted up.

I blinked. I closed the lid. I opened it again. I closed it.

Gold bars.

Thirteen of them. I counted.

'Davie? What the fuck is this? Who robbed the bank?'

'Nobody did,' he called back. 'Well, at least not for seventy years.'

'What the hell are you talking about?' I walked back into the lounge.

Davie continued to stand over The Colonel. 'Ask him. He's the criminal mastermind.'

I looked at The Colonel. 'I don't want to ask him anything. I don't want to get into a conversation with him. I want you to tell me what's going on.'

'What's going on is that The Colonel here is just like us in one respect. He has his heroes. We had Joe, he had Al.'

I was confused. 'Jolson?'

'No, you Clampett, Al Capone.'

'The gangster?'

'No, the washing-machine repair man. Of course the fucking gangster!'

'I don't follow.'

'I studied Al Capone all my life,' said The Colonel.

'Shut the fuck up,' I said.' Davie?'

'Let him speak, Dan. He's not going to talk me round. He's tatie bread.'

I stared down at The Colonel then gave the slightest nod.' What's it all about, fuck face?'

He ignored the abuse. It wasn't big, and it wasn't clever, but it was right.

'I studied him all my life because he was the best. That's what I wanted to be. And I am.'

'You don't look so hot from here,' Davie snapped.

The Colonel ignored him. He wanted to talk. He wanted to impress us with how clever he was. He knew he was going to die, but he didn't want his story to die with him.' You remember Geraldo Rivera?' He looked from me to Davie and back.

The AM was nodding.' Trash TV,' he said.

'Twenty years ago Geraldo staged this live show on TV, supposed to be the opening of Al Capone's secret bank vault behind a wall in a Chicago hotel. Millions watched, but those were the only millions involved. Nothing in there but dust and rat shit, but it got me thinking about what he'd done with his money. It had to be somewhere. He travelled a lot, he was a superstar, he had the best of everything, stayed in the best hotels,
lived
in the best hotels.' He was talking quickly, sweating freely.' So when I was left stuck in prison last year when every other son of a bitch was being let out, I had to do something with my time. So I started tracking him down.' He was smiling now, full of his own cleverness.' How, you ask?'

'Get fucking on with it, Agatha,' Davie snapped.

'The Internet. Prison provides it free of charge. There's so much info out there, so many newspaper reports, I could practically trace Capone from day to day over the last couple of years before he got put away. The net was closing in, he had to stash it all somewhere.'

'If I wanted to listen to
Jackanory,'
I said, 'I'd have stayed at home.'

This annoyed him. I detected a redness through his tan.' I swear to God, I worked it all out from my cell. Where the money came from, why he wouldn't keep it in notes, why he suddenly took off for here but didn't take any of his women with him. I checked the local papers, knew for sure when I found out the Assistant Manager here turned up shot dead a couple of days after Capone left town. Don't you see? He was in on the secret, helped him to hollow out the wall in there, then Capone offed him to make sure he didn't help himself to the gold.'

'Assistant Managers,' the AM said, 'we're always getting shit upon.'

'You shut your mouth,' Davie said.

The AM sighed, but he wasn't to be stopped. The adrenalin was running.' And we get no pay to speak of. I was weak! Mr O'Ryan bribed me. I'm not proud, but he bribed me to let him stay in here, to keep the cleaners out, to enter it on the computer that we were having repairs done so he could rip out the wall without anyone complaining. It was stupid. I shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry. Please don't kill me. I swear to God I'll never tell another living soul.'

'No,' Davie said, 'you probably won't.' He raised his gun.

'Davie?' I said.

'It has to be done.'

'Both of them?'

'Both of them.'

'But why?'

'You know why.'

'I can't be a part of this.'

'Then go.'

I cleared my throat.' What about the gold?'

'We take the gold.' He smiled down at The Colonel.' If it was a war crime, you warped fucking bastard, then consider your death and that gold as reparations. Except it's not one tenth enough.'

'Please don't kill me,' the AM whispered.

'Davie . . .'

'It has to be, Dan.'

'One is revenge, two is murder.'

'Just go and get the gold. I'll handle this.'

'Davie?'

'What?'

'I probably should have mentioned this earlier. I kind of forgot.'

'Dan — will you let me do this?'

'Yes. Of course. I'm sorry.' But I stood my ground.

"What?'

I moved closer. I whispered to him, 'Thing is, when you were in the shower this morning I was looking for your gun. I didn't want you to do anything silly. So I found it and, like, you know, took the bullets out. Just in case there were any accidents. I presume you checked? I presume you replaced them?'

The colour drained from his cheeks. And then he made the fatal error of letting his eyes fall to the gun.

It was the merest of looks, the slightest of glances. But it was enough for The Colonel. He dived suddenly to one side. Davie pumped the trigger twice in the vain hope that I was bull-shitting him, but I wasn't. The Colonel rolled and either from within his shirt or from beneath the sofa he retrieved his own weapon. He was up onto his knees in an instant. He fired once and Davie let out a yelp as he flew backwards. The Colonel was just moving his gun across to me when the AM shoulder-charged him hard from the side and the gun flew from his hands.