Musclebound (19 page)

‘You really got a shooter?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said Fish-face. ‘You know we have. We nearly took you with it the other night.’

‘Not me,’ I said.

‘Yeah, you,’ he said.

‘You drove off with Mr … with Uncle’s motor,’ said Droopy-drawers. ‘It
was
you. We saw you. We found the motor. The window was blown out. You must of noticed.’

‘I’d of noticed if I’d been there,’ I said. ‘We’re going round in circles, and I still don’t know why you want to shoot me in the back.’

Fish-face and Droopy-drawers looked at each other. You wouldn’t think they had enough jazz between them to lick a stamp, let alone rob a petrol station or walk around with a sawn-off.

I suddenly knew what to do. I said, ‘I’m getting stone hacked off with you two. You got no right coming here calling me a liar. You two’s the liars. Not me. I don’t believe you got a shooter. I don’t believe you. And even if you got one you ain’t got the jazz to use it. So fuck off’

It was a dead simple plan. I’d tease Fish-face into showing me the shooter and then I’d take it away from him. Then I’d have it and he wouldn’t, and he couldn’t shoot me but I could shoot him. Except I wouldn’t ‘cos I didn’t never want to see another dead bloke in my yard again. But he wouldn’t know that.

Fish-face put his hand up to his collar to grab the toggle of his zip.

Droopy-drawers said, ‘No, look, don’t. We’re in enough shit already.’

Fish-face said, ‘That’s just the point. We can’t be any worse off. And I don’t like her. She’s an ugly bitch.’

He grabbed the toggle and pulled his zip down to the waist where it got stuck.

Droopy-drawers said, ‘You can’t shoot her ‘cos she’s ugly.’

‘Why not?’ Fish-face was wrestling with his zip. ‘Why the fuck not? I got a gun, ain’t I?’

I was getting impatient. I was ready. I’d been ready since he first touched his zip.

‘Look, no,’ said Droopy-drawers, ‘she ain’t told us where the sports bag is.’

The zip came free. It was taking for ever, and we was in the open where the men in the yard and anyone passing by could see us. But half of me really truly couldn’t believe that Fish-face, with his little pouty lips and his flat eyes, could possibly have anything as serious as a shooter. The other half was ready.

His zip came free. His anorak flopped open. He
did
have a sawn-off shooter. But it was stuck through his belt pointing at the ground. He grabbed the stock with his right hand.

Droopy-drawers grabbed his right hand. ‘No, listen, wait,’ he said.

Fish-face shook Droopy-drawers off and pulled the shooter out.

I stepped in. One step. Plant left foot. Whoosh-whack. I kicked the sawn-off.

‘Fuckin’ ow-ow-ow,’ I went. I was hopping on one foot.

The shooter popped up over Fish-face’s head and landed in the mud behind him. He stood there like a daisy. He didn’t know where it was.

Droopy-drawers picked it up.

I went, ‘Fuckin’ give me that.’ I hopped at him and wrenched it out of his hand. I was hopping mad because I was hopping, and I was hopping because I hurt me foot. And I hurt me foot ‘cos I kicked the barrel of a sawn-off with me own soft toes. I forgot my sodding shoes.

Why is everything so stupid?

If you read about it in the paper it’d go, ‘London Lassassin Disarms Armed Raider With Karate Kick.’ Well, it would if I was writing it. But it wasn’t like that. It was stupid and feeble. ‘London Lassassin Breaks Toe.’ ‘Show-girl Kicks Better Than London Lassassin. Armed Raiders Fall About In Gibbering Heap.’ Nothing turns out like I want it to.

Except I had the shooter in my hands. Big deal. The only thing you could say about that was it was safer for me. I couldn’t take it serious – it was all too stupid. I couldn’t take the shooter serious, ‘cos I couldn’t take Fish-face and Droopy-drawers serious. My foot hurt and I couldn’t take nothing serious but that.

I never had a gun in my hands before. I thought it’d be really brilliant – a big power surge or something. But when it happened it was no different to a spanner. Or a hammer. And you know what happened last time I had a hammer in my hand.

So I just stood there on one foot with this stupid sawn-off. My big toe blazed and I was getting a toothache. I almost gave the shooter back to Fish-face, but I wasn’t quite that stupid.

It was silly. And I never thought I’d feel silly with a shooter in my hand. I felt so silly I almost blushed. But I ain’t someone who blushes.

The silliest thing was Fish-face and Droopy-drawers backing away from me like I was the Terminator himself. I looked round, but no one in the yard seemed to have noticed. There was three people by the yard gate waving a shooter around at half past four in the afternoon and no one noticed. I began to have a weird feeling that it wasn’t really happening. Or that it was only happening in my head.

But Fish-face and Droopy-drawers thought it was happening for real. They backed away and they was so scared they was nearly holding hands.

So I limped after them, barefoot in the muck. When we got to the pavement they turned to run. And then they stopped. They stopped because a big gold-coloured BMW crept up very slow and braked just outside the gate. The back door opened and a bloke got out.

He was short and wide. He was wearing a big black coat and
hat and he looked like he’d just come from a funeral. He stood for a moment staring at us. And then he stepped forward. He slapped Fish-face once on the cheek with his big black glove.

The bloke said, ‘You won’t mind if I send these foolish boys home, will you?’

I said, ‘I never asked them here in the first place. You can send them to Kingdom Come for all I care.’

‘I doubt if that will be necessary,’ he said.

There was me with the shooter, there was him with the BMW, and in between there was Fish-face and Droopy-drawers with their eyes flicking like pinballs. They didn’t know which of us to be scareder of. They was practically wetting theirselves.

‘Go home,’ he said. He didn’t shout or nothing. He said, ‘Go home,’ quiet and polite. He jerked his chin and the two pillocks took off like a pair of bunnies. I wished I could of done that – just jerk my chin. I’d been telling pillocks to piss off for days, and I didn’t know all it took was a chin.

‘They tell me your name is Eva,’ he said. ‘A pretty name. I am Gregoriou, but you may call me Greg. The English have no talent for foreign-sounding names. Yes, Greg will do nicely. Eva and Greg. Greg and Eva. It sounds friendly, yes? Shall we be friendly, Eva?’

All the time he was spouting this crap he was looking from my face to the shooter and from the shooter back to my face. I wasn’t pointing it at him. It was hanging by its trigger guard from the index finger of my right hand. But he was paying it a lot of attention. And for the first time I began to take it serious too.

He said, ‘Those two boys mislaid an item of my property. And now I see they have lost the weapon with which they were attempting to recover it. What should I do with boys like that, Eva?’

‘Spank ‘em,’ I said. ‘How should I know? Just keep them off of my patch.’

‘I’ll certainly do that,’ he said. ‘But, sadly, I can’t vouch for your privacy in perpetuity. You see, foolish as they are, those
boys have managed to convince me that you found the property they so carelessly mislaid.’

‘Bollocks,’ I said. ‘Are you calling me a thief and a liar too? Are you? ‘Cos I’ve had it up to here with prats calling me names.’

‘Please,’ he said. ‘There’s no need to raise your voice.’

‘Why not? I don’t give a shit who you are. You talk like a sodding BBC newsreader, but the message is the same. You’re calling me a liar and you got no right.’

‘Nothing so crude,’ he said. ‘A BBC newsreader? Thank you. Elocution, standard English usage, yes, I’m proud of that.’

See, if I’d been listening to him on the radio I’d never think he had a care in the world. But on the radio I wouldn’t see those eyes watching the shooter, would I? I shifted it in my hand, taking a firmer grip, and watched his eyes watching my hands.

He said, ‘Aren’t you in the least curious about what it is I’ve mislaid?’

‘You could of mislaid an egg, for all I care,’ I said. ‘I know what you lost. Your “boys” told me.’

‘An egg,’ he said, ‘yes. A nest egg. A lot of money.’

‘Do I look like I’ve got a lot of money?’ I said.

‘A lot of what?’ said Simone. She picked her way out of the yard, all dainty. I wished I’d seen her coming. I didn’t want her hearing any of this.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Simone said. ‘You were gone so long I didn’t think you were coming back.’

‘Introduce me to your beautiful friend,’ said Greg.

‘Fuck off,’ I said.

‘I’m Simone,’ Simone said. ‘Eva’s sister.’

‘Sister?’ said Greg. ‘Remarkable.’

Things were going downhill at ninety miles an hour. If his eyes’d been hands he’d of been stroking Simone’s tits, but she didn’t seem to notice.

‘And you?’ she said.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Gregoriou. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Simone. I’m sure I’ve seen your face before, though.’

He wasn’t looking at her face. I passed the sawn-off from my right hand to my left and back – just to make him concentrate.

‘What’s that?’ said Simone, seeing the shooter for the first time. ‘Eva, what’re you doing?’

‘It’s a complicated situation,’ Greg said. ‘I’m here to recover an item of property. As a matter of fact, the gun, too, is my property. Or rather, I’m responsible for it.’

‘I hate guns,’ said Simone. ‘Eva, give it back to Gregoriou.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s calling me a thief and a liar.’

‘You misunderstand,’ said Greg. ‘Can’t we talk about this in a civilised manner?’

‘No we fucking can’t,’ I said.

‘Of course we can,’ said Simone. And she reached across me and plucked the sawn-off out of my hands.

‘Horrible thing,’ Simone said.

‘Then may I relieve you of it?’ Greg said, holding out his big black glove. And Simone just handed it to him. Just like that. What the cocking hell was she thinking of? She just handed it to him like it was a dead rat and he was ever so kindly going to take care of it for her.

‘
Simone!
’ I said.

‘Don’t shout,’ she said. ‘It isn’t yours. It belongs to this gentleman.’

‘Gentleman, my
arseV

‘
Eva
, please. What on earth do you want a gun for anyway?’

‘Thank you so much,’ said Greg.

So now
he
had the shooter. So now I really truly took it serious.

‘Honestly, Eva,’ Simone said, ‘what were you thinking of – waving a gun around in public? It isn’t legal. Suppose someone saw it and reported you? We’d have the police round here in no time. Think of the trouble we’d be in.’

‘Your sister’s quite right,’ said Greg. ‘Guns are dangerous, not least to those who handle them.’ He turned round and put the shooter on the back seat of the BMW.

‘Gone,’ he said to Simone. ‘I’m so sorry you were anxious.’

‘Not at all,’ she said. Jeez, how could a sister of mine sound so toffee-nosed? I was sweating buckets. But I had to admit she sort of cut the shooter down to size. I’d rather I had it than Greg had it, but she made sure he wasn’t going to use it. For now.

Even so, I was so pissed off I couldn’t hardly speak. Whose side was she on, anyway?’

‘Whose fuckin’ side are you on?’ I said.

‘Yours, Eva,’ she said, and then she turned on Greg. ‘You mustn’t call my sister a thief or a liar. She isn’t. That’s quite wrong.’

‘I take it you know all about each other’s business?’ Greg said.

‘Of course I do,’ Simone said. But she didn’t. And she didn’t know what she was getting into. She thought Greg was a ‘gentleman’. She heard him talk like a BBC newsreader and she thought he was a ‘gentleman’. He wasn’t. He was a thug and a baboon. She just ain’t knocked around with low-life enough lately to recognise one when she sees one.

I said, ‘She don’t know nothing. There ain’t anything to know. I ain’t seen your sports bag. And neither has she. We ain’t seen it ‘cos it ain’t here to be seen.’

‘What sports bag?’

‘See?’ I said. ‘We don’t neither of us know fuck-all.’

‘Let me tell you a little story,’ Greg said to Simone. ‘I am something of a financier. I invest money, sometimes quite a lot of money, in other people’s enterprises. A few nights ago I was called to the bedside of a sick relative. The call was urgent and it came just as I was about to deliver a large amount of cash to a business associate. But family comes first, so I delegated. I asked two young employees to make the delivery. A simple matter. I placed two items, two bags, in the back of a car and told the boys to deliver the car to an address which I had the foresight to write down. I did not tell them what was in the bags. They are not the brightest boys and I thought too much information might confuse them. I told them not to look in the bags but simply to drive to a prearranged address, leave the car and return.

‘Simple as the task was, they failed to complete it. I believe that Eva knows why.’

‘Well I fucking don’t,’ I said. I didn’t want him to say any more. He was telling his story to Simone, not to me. And she was lapping it up, all wide-eyed, like a little kid.

‘What happened?’ she said to me.

‘How the hell should I know?’ I said. ‘I wasn’t there. That’s where he’s wrong. That’s where his little story fucks up. He wasn’t there neither. He only knows what Droopy-drawers and Fish-face told him, and they told him bollocks.’

Greg said, ‘Do you know the story of Pandora’s box?’

‘Yes,’ said Simone.

‘No,’ I said. ‘And I don’t fucking want to. First it was bags and now it’s boxes. Make your poxy mind up.’

‘Pandora’s bags, then,’ he said, smiling at Simone. And she smiled right back at him. Two ever so clever clogs sharing a joke. Only the joke was me. Right?

Wrong. I said, ‘I don’t give a stuff about Dora’s bags. I don’t give a stuff about Dora, and I don’t give a stuff about you. I ain’t seen Dora’s bags, I ain’t seen your bags and I fuckin’ wish I ain’t seen you.’

Greg said, ‘Bags, boxes. Never mind. My point is that there is only trouble inside. Those two boys, being boys, found a sawn-off shotgun. Having found it they didn’t look any further. They found trouble and made trouble with that gun. Enough. It is the other bag which concerns me now.’