Driving Big Davie (Dan Starkey) (30 page)

'Too right,'I said, 'fucking bitch.'

Jamie nodded enthusiastically. We were bonding.

'We're not looking for trouble, Jamie. So I hit the bitch, nothing wrong with that, you're going to help us get away, right?'

'Hell no,' said Jamie.

'What then?' I said.'You going to shoot us all and be the big hero?'

Jamie hesitated for a moment.'Hadn't thought of that.'

Davie rolled his eyes.

Jamie smiled.'I gotta better idea.'He nodded at me again.'You gotta credit card, spastic man?'

'Sure.'

'Well, get it out.'

I handed him a garish First Trust card. He examined it like it was an alien artefact, but then recognising the Visa symbol he nodded and pointed at the computer.'Here's the deal. We get on the net, I call up some porn sites, I use your credit card to watch whatever the fuck I want to watch for as long as I want.'

'And we get?'

'You get to sleep in the next room until morning.'

'We need to use your email,' said Davie, 'or your cell phone.'

'You get one call — when I'm finished.'

'We need it now.'

'When I'm finished or no deal.'

Davie looked at me, then Kelly. I shrugged. Kelly nodded. She was more decisive than I was. Kelly and the rest of the civilised world.

'Okay,' said Davie.

Jamie smiled.' Fucking A,' he said.

Jamie, already ensconced behind the computer, shouted directions to the bedroom he had assigned to us. Clearly there were other brothers who had been allowed to go to the wrestling in Tallahassee. There were two sets of bunk beds, all with the bedclothes carelessly thrown back. Heavily muscled wrestlers glared out from posters on the wall. Jamie was probably the eldest because he'd graduated to his own bedroom. He was a self-confident little shit, and he had us over a barrel.

I pointed this out to Davie.'You're supposed to be the killer elite, why don't you just take him down?'

'What's the point? He thinks he has the upper hand, but in fact we have. We get to rest up, he gets to stand guard over us. Someone comes to the door he'll chase them. He's having way too much fun.'

And he was.

The walls could have been described as paper-thin, but that would have been doing paper-thin a disservice. Every beat, every grunt, every groan — and he wasn't even next door; he was along the hall, and turn left.

Davie lay down on one of the lower bunks, and after a bit of hesitation and a few furtive looks in my direction, Kelly Cortez joined him. He put an arm around her and she put her head on his chest. I had no idea what she saw in him, apart from his good looks and muscles, his commanding ways and roguish charm. But she'd learn. That was all surface stuff. Once she got to really know him she'd soon be begging for a bit of freckle and a bony arse. And I only had her word for the bony arse. Patricia had never complained. At least to me.

So I stood by the window and kept guard. Or, I stood by the window and looked out, but I wasn't really seeing. I was exhausted, but I couldn't sleep, my mind was wandering; it was the kind of hazy twilight world you find yourself in when watching a coal fire late at night, or indeed, a burning police station. There wasn't much of it left. Jamie's brothers' bedroom window gave me a half-view of the back of the main street. The ice-cream parlour had more or less collapsed as well. The third, vacant building was still holding up, but would soon go the way of the others.

Down the hall, and left, Jamie moaned in ecstasy again.

'Christ,' I said, 'how many times can he do it in one night?'

Davie laughed.'What is he, thirteen? How many times could you do it at that age?'

'Fair point,' I said.' We could be here for days.'

Kelly
hhhmmmed
contentedly at the prospect.

I'd known Patricia for twenty years and hadn't known her to
hhhmmm
contentedly at anything, unless you count the time she successfully snaffled my Marks & Spencer chocolate éclair while pretending to rummage for an Alpen bar in the fridge. I smiled at the thought of it. It was now after midnight. Back home she'd be tossing and turning in that unsettled hour before the alarm went off. In another life she would already have been up with Little Stevie. Unaccountably, I felt tears welling up. Stevie in heaven. Usually I detest mawkish things, and always I detest anything Eric Clapton produces, but he had written a song about the accidental death of his son and I had lately found the tune stuck in my head. Even if you didn't know the background to it, it was incredibly moving. Elton John had tried something similar with 'England's Rose', his re-working of 'Candle in the Wind' for Princess Diana. It was a pile of shite.

I lay down on the bottom mattress of the second set of bunks and clasped my hands behind my head.

'So what's the plan then, mastermind?' I asked.

There was no response. Their easy, rhythmic breath told me they were sleeping. Dr Cortez had her head on his chest and her left hand on his stomach. She was a good-looking woman, but there was bound to be a skeleton in the closet. Nobody fell for a man that quickly. Or at least, this man. Or at least, without huge amounts of alcohol being involved. I wondered how much Davie had told her about our misadventures. I suspected very little. They'd only had lunch. You couldn't just slip in murder and mayhem between courses. But he might have brought up the gold. Casually. Or thumped the table and said: 'I've got twelve gold bars in the bank!' Perhaps that was it, she was a gold digger.

Down the corridor, and left, Jamie climaxed again.

Davie was wrong, we weren't in control. Jamie held the upper hand. I just hoped he washed it after he was finished.

I had the most perfect dream: dancing with Patricia while Joe and The Clash sang 'Armageddon Time' in the background; Mouse sat in the corner eating a bag of chips; my mum and dad were putting candles into a birthday cake and Little Stevie ran about the dance floor in his bare feet shouting, 'Michael Owen! Michael Owen!'

And like all the best dreams, it ended abruptly: a crash and bang and I sat up suddenly, hitting my head on the wooden slats of the bunk above me. It was daylight; opposite me Davie and Kelly looked as surprised as I was, staring at the door and the three furious kids standing there.

'What the fuck are you doing?' one of them spat.

'Dad!' shouted another.

The third looked wide-eyed at Kelly, who was pulling her shirt down over her bra.

I'd been dreaming about football and chips, and they'd been fumbling in the dark.

'Dad!'

We got to our feet.

Down the hall, and left, a deep, ragged man's voice shouted: 'Jamie! What the fuck! I told you about that stuff!'

'It wasn't me! It was
them
!'

'Dad! There's burglars!'

'It's them, Dad!' Jamie yelled.' They held me prisoner! They killed DJ's wife! They burned down the police station!'

This was clearly news to the kids in the doorway. They quickly backed away. Davie followed them out into the hall. Kelly went after him. I decided to hold the rear.

'Just hold on a minute,' Davie was saying.

'Jamie, now that's not true. Hi, I'm Dr Cortez, we were just—'

I heard the unmistakable sound of bullets being pumped into a chamber. Davie reappeared in the doorway, with Kelly right behind. He slammed the door shut then hurried to the window and pushed it open. He gave Kelly a hand up and helped her through. I then pushed in front of him and climbed up; he gave me a shove to speed my passage. I tumbled down into an overgrown front garden that fed directly onto the alley at the rear of the main street. Davie jumped down behind me. We'd just reached the top of the garden and were stepping over a low wooden fence, when Jamie's dad started shooting.

He was either a really bad shot, or he only meant to scare us. They were shotgun cartridges, but packed with rice, for maximum effect and minimum damage. It wasn't the sort of rice you could enjoy a good curry with, but if it hit you it could have much the same effect on your arse. If Jamie's dad had appreciated the full extent of our crimes, or the madness that had gone on in the town while he was out at the wrestling, he probably would have used live ammo. As it was the rice shots blasted well above us, but they were incentive enough for us to race away along the alley, keeping our heads down as far as we could without scraping them on the ground.

Jamie's dad might not have been aware of what he had stumbled upon, but the gunfire served as a warning call to the rest of the town. Davie had advanced the theory that daylight would bring sobriety and therefore calm to the mob. Whereas it appeared now that the opposite was true, that instead of subsiding, their anger had mounted with the realisation that they'd dug such a hole for themselves that the only solution was to fill that hole with our dead bodies.

It started with shouting and pointing. With heads appearing at windows and figures at doors.

Then came the abuse and stone-throwing.

We kept moving, ducking down and dancing this way and that to avoid injury. It was like running down the Falls Road in a Union Jack suit. A lump of asphalt whacked into my back and I stumbled. Davie kept me up.'Come on, Dan!' he shouted and urged me forward.

This was bad enough, and we hadn't even encountered the real players. These were just scared residents who believed everything they'd heard about us.

Davie led us into another back garden and then around a house which fronted the main street. We took cover behind a bush and sneaked a look back up the several hundred metres to the Mountain View Bar and Grill. Several vehicles, including our own, were revving up, and as we watched, DJ came down the steps, shotgun in one hand, bottle of wine in the other. Behind him came all his regulars, plus a few I hadn't seen before. One tripped on the top step and pitched forward onto the road, smashing the bottle he was carrying. The others laughed and swore at him.

They'd been drinking all night. Not good.

It was also bad because Davie chose that moment to lead us across to the other side of the road. He had no choice, really, because behind us the stones were starting to land again as the residents ventured closer. But if we'd turned and said
Boo
they might have scattered. Instead we hurried across the road as fast as we could into the shelter of a yellow awning over a hamburger joint, but not fast enough to avoid being spotted by the driver of the lead vehicle.

He let out a shout, the rest of DJ's lynch mob jumped on board, and in a moment their little convoy was speeding up the street after us; they were hanging out of the doors and clinging onto the roof, screaming and yelling and blasting their horns as they came.

Davie pushed us forward again, skirting the restaurant and leading us down amongst the trash cans behind it. Kelly stopped abruptly.

'Kelly!' Davie yelled.

She shook her head.'Go on,'she said.' I'll talk to them.'

'Don't be fucking daft, they'll tear you to pieces!'

'No, they won't. I haven't done anything.'

'Kelly! Please! That's not how mobs work!'

'Davie, go!' She was doing her Captain Oates. Her 'leave me here to die'. If it bought me some extra time, then I was quite happy for her to do it, but Davie looked devastated.

'You don't have to do this,' he said.

'I know. Just go. I'll be fine.'

There came a roar of overly souped-up engines from the forecourt.

'Go!'

Davie hesitated for just a moment longer, then turned away. Possibly he was influenced by me pulling his shirt as well. Kelly stepped back towards the front of the restaurant. We started running again, this time through the back gardens of the houses on this side of the street. Most of the fences were low enough to hurdle, and we took several with matching strides as if we were runners competing in an Olympic event, albeit one in which spectators were free to throw stones and aim garden implements at you.

We came to a taller fence which Davie climbed effortlessly, but despite several efforts I just couldn't pull myself over it.

'Come on, you fat fucker!' he yelled.

'I'm doing my fucking best,' I screamed back, and I was: it just wasn't good enough.

Perched on the fence, he must have been aware of them coming. He must have known that whatever Kelly had mounted in way of our defence had been brushed utterly aside, because the evidence was there before him. DJ, JJ, CJ, all of them, streaming across the gardens behind us, clambering awkwardly over the fences we had taken in one stride. Drunk but determined, a ragged army, but still an army. We had had a lead, but it was like being in front in the Grand National. You still had to get over Becher's Brook. It was a great leveller. They must have seen him, because a shout went up and then they were all hollering. Davie grabbed my hand and pulled me up onto the top of the fence; it was a rickety wooden effort and could hardly hold both our weights. I jumped down onto the other side before it gave way. I was already bounding away towards the next fence when I realised that Davie wasn't following.

I stopped.'Davie?'

He looked back and shrugged.

'Davie, don't be so fuckin' stupid!' I shouted.

'Toffo,' he said, then slipped back down the other side of the fence to face the mob.

Davie gave them a run for it, that's for sure.

I heard yelps and screams and the crack and split of picket fences being demolished; I heard the dull slap of punches and the curses that followed their connection. There were yells of, 'There he is, get him!' 'Don't let him go!' 'Hit him! Hit him!' There were scuffling sounds and screams of pain, then a rush of feet across sunbaked earth as he made a break for it.' Hold onto him, you fucking asshole!' 'Fuck, he's broke my nose!' and 'After him!'

I heard all this, cowering down behind my fence.

And then, when they'd caught him, I saw it as well as I stood up and peered through a knot-hole in the aging wood.

They'd caught him about five gardens away, back the way we'd come. The only way he could have gotten there was to burst through their on-coming ranks. He was done with running away. Davie had
attacked.
To save me. To save this yellow son of a bitch crapping himself behind a wooden fence while his best friend, his face bloody, his clothes ragged, was pinned against the wall of a wooden shed and beaten with gun butts and whacked with baseball bats.