Paint. The art of scam. (14 page)

His eyes locked
onto the red flashing digital 00:00:00 on the radio alarm by the bed. It was an
icon of his ineptitude that bloody thing: he could never figure out how to
reset it. Polly knew how to do it and had explained it to him twice, but she
was buggered if she was going to do it again. One day, in a fury, after
attempting every combination of pushing every button, adjusting this switch and
that bloody switch, he had thrown it with all his might at a wall. Reaching the
end of its cord, it had recoiled back and hit him on the head, then dropped to
the floor with a cheap clatter.

‘It's buggered.’
Seymour had told Polly.

Later, in his
absence, she had tried to reset it, in the hope of proving yet again what a
useless prat he was. But Seymour was right. It was buggered. Off the hook again
Seymour.

As the flashing
red 00:00:00 burned into his retinas, Seymour was fighting back the haunting
idea that if he had a problem he would, rather than solve it, get rid of it. A
habit that had become a policy throughout his life.

The downstairs
door buzzer went. That would be the postman. The postman always buzzed when he
dropped the post through the letterbox; ever since they had cut the power off
once and Seymour had ingeniously claimed that he had never received the bill.
To back it up he had complained to the postman that mail had gone missing. This
was based on the fact that someone had told him that postmen, who cleverly slip
junk mail in with the post, have been known to dump the junk mail into dustbins
and still get paid for delivering it: sometimes accidentally ditching real
mail. Those were the days when Seymour felt like he was carrying the world on
his shoulders, even though he had whittled down his numerous household duties
to just paying the bills. Polly paid the bills now, along with everything else
required to run a home in the developed world. Now all he had to do was keep
his heart beating, breath and generally maintain his bodily functions. But
Polly, in a final attempt to give him some sort of responsibility, insisted it
was still his job to actually get the post from downstairs and up to the flat
before Polly got home. It was a duty he carried out with the determination of
man possessed.

‘Right!’ said
Seymour as he hauled himself out of bed, stretched and pulled on Polly's
dressing gown. It was a tight fit, but he hadn't seen his own dressing gown for
some time now. He felt dizzy for a few seconds and hung on to the fourposter,
waiting for the blood to creep up to his brain, before yanking the door open
and going downstairs. There was a substantial pile of ominous, beige, windowed
envelopes that could only contain bad news and several copies of the same junk
mail that offered amazing discounts on things, he or anybody else, he hoped,
never bought. A result, he suspected, of some sort of postman's revenge. He had
considered complaining once again to the post office: but had decided not to
play his infantile game.

But he was
bugging him, that postman. Seymour wanted to see him. Not to say anything, just
to give him a look: to let him know that dumping junk mail in his letter box
was a futile weapon in this war. Seymour picked through cheap leaflets and
found one that stood out: wine tasting night at Bar Paul. Seymour winked at it
and held it with his teeth while he looked for more not so junk mail.

Seymour closed
his eyes as the thud of the apartment door upstairs slamming shut echoed down
to him in the hallway.

‘Fuck!’

He checked
Polly's dressing gown pocket for the unlikely possibility that she may have had
the foresight to put the spare key in it. But no. ‘Make sure you get a spare
key cut and put it under the stairs or something.’ Polly had said four or five
times before when the same thing had happened.

‘Fuck.’ He
muttered again. He knew what that smart ass, dust coat wearing, short, bald,
bloke with bifocal glasses at the glass cutting department of the hardware shop
would say as he straightened his rotary club tie. ‘Same again sir? We do cut
spare keys here as well sir.’

Seymour never
seemed to manage to get the key to the key cutting dept, mainly because he had
taken to hanging the key on a nail under the stairs whenever he went out, thus
eliminating the possibility of losing the key, which he had also done on
several occasions. This time, he had not actually gone out and the key was in
the apartment. If he could somehow get the key copied, with care, this bloody
ridiculous situation would never happen again. The postman would tire a long
time before he would.

Polly was
exhausted. Her frantic drive had led her up yet another lane. The car was
beginning to feel strange: the steering wheel was tugging to the left and the
bottom of the car grounding on the lumpy ridge in the middle of the track. She slammed
on the brakes.

‘Oh Jesus Christ
where the hell am I?’ she muttered as the fear in her suddenly exploded into
her entire body with a convulsing, heart pumping spasm. Her eyes filled with
tears that turned her vision to a blurred kaleidoscope. She grabbed the
steering wheel with her rigid trembling arms and held on, then flung her head
back onto the headrest, looked up at the headlining, closed her eyes and drew
in a huge slow breath, releasing it with a jet blast. Lowering her head, her
eyes sprung open and stared dead ahead. She could see a house in the distance
across a field. She could run for it. Her mind rehearsed it to a bad end. She
had no idea where she was, she could quite easy have driven a complete circle
and be metres away from the barn. Maybe that was the farm there to her left,
just visible through a gap in the bushes. No. No, it's not, can't be. No hill.

‘Shit,’ she
whispered, snatching at the ignition key.

The motor stopped
and she wound down the window and listened. The rain had stopped again and
beyond the mysterious buzz of the countryside, she could hear nothing unusual,
no beating feet, no racing engines: nothing. She checked the rear view mirror
and caught a glimpse of her eyes. They were on fire: it scared her. She had
seen those eyes in that state before, too many times.

Slowly she
opened the car door and eased herself out, her ears pricked. The bushes around
her were tall and the undergrowth thick, it felt like a tunnel: all she could
see was front and back, she checked both. Feeling around the body of the car
like the blind, she made her way to the other side and looked down at the front
wheel. Its tyre had chewed its way off the wheel and lay limp. She checked
front and backwards again. Still nothing. She looked down at the wheel again
and bit at her lip. She thought for a moment then quickly went back around to
the boot and stabbed at the catch, the boot lid slowly opened. Polly took a
step back as her eyes drank in its contents. Two bulging large leather bags sat
there, one lay on its side, its catch slightly open, revealing a bundle of £20
notes. Polly struggled to keep her balance as a cold shiver ran through her.
The skies opened yet again, huge drops of rain poured down, thumping at the car
like drums.

She checked up
and down the lane again. Nothing.

Seymour lay on
the bed where he had thrown himself, his ballooning eyes staring at the crack
in the ceiling. With a feeble contortion of his arms, he inspected his elbow
and began pulling fragments of glass from Polly's dressing gown. The letters
were strewn across the bed where he'd thrown them, some had stuck to his bare
legs like leeches whilst others lay limp on the contours of the ruffled bed
like wreckage floating on a wild sea. Seymour regressed to his childhood when
he would play with toy boats on his bed, rolling his legs around to create a
swell to capsize the little boats so he could rescue everyone with his model
Airfix Westland Whirlwind helicopter. With several kicks of his legs he sent a
couple of envelopes fluttering down to the floor and sat bolt upright. His eyes
flashed across at the door. He hated it, it had cheated him, humiliated him and
now it was sniggering at him. The broken pane still had jagged pieces hanging
in its frame: held in by the fresh putty from the time he'd done the same thing
three weeks before.

He vowed that
this will never happen again.

He had copies of
the keys now, two of them. One was hanging on the nail under the stairs, one
under the carpet of the third step of the stairs. Fail-safe. It was well worth
the bus trip to DIYland, the builder's merchant out of town. The glass cutting
dept and the key cutting machine were at the same counter. Somehow, that made
him feel less foolish about the whole thing and at least he didn't give that
other bastard -who cut the glass before- the pleasure of humiliating him. ‘Same
again sir?’ said Seymour to himself sarcastically. ‘Fuck you.’

He wondered how
he could deal with that postman. Asshole. It was all because of him.

Johnny stood by
the barn door watching the van. The steam had subsided now but there was a
worrying waft of smoke coming from under the bonnet

He felt nervous,
unlike his normal cool, calm, but intimidating, self. The rest of the gang lay
around on the ground in various states of injury, each not looking at each
other under Johnny's orders: to avoid another fight.

Johnny
straightened up as a Range Rover slowly drove up and stopped just past the van.

‘Oh God no.
Please. Gimme a break.’ he whispered. He turned to face the rabble scattered
around. ‘Not a fucking sound OK. Now stay here.’

Johnny calmly
pushed his handgun inside his jacket, tousled his well groomed hair and slipped
out of the barn.

‘Good Morning.’ said
Johnny brightly as he approached the Range Rover. ‘Can I help?’

The elderly man
in the Range Rover, smartly dressed in a sports jacket, checked shirt and club
tie, wound down the electric window. ‘What on Earth is going on here?’ said the
man indignantly.

Johnny pulled a
puzzled face and shook his head. ‘Not sure, probably joy riders. Bloody kids on
drugs I suppose.’

The man got out.
‘And who the hell are you, might I ask?’

‘Name's Forbes,
from South Coast Estate agents. I'm here to assess this place for a client of
ours. And you sir?’

‘I am Sir Thomas
Barrington and this is my property. It is not for sale! Who sent you here?’ said
Sir Thomas sternly as he pulled out his phone and prepared to dial.

Johnny calmly
pulled out his huge handgun and pointed it at him. ‘Drop the phone sir. Please’

Sir Thomas looked
up. His shocked eyes fixed on the barrel pointing at him: he dropped the phone.

‘Kick it over
here.’

Sir Thomas did so
and Johnny stamped on it hard, picked it up and looked at it.

‘These really are
crap phones you know sir. Now, please come this way over to the barn.’ said
Johnny, gesturing the way with his gun.

‘But. What on
Earth? This is ridiculous. What on Earth is going on?’ said Sir Thomas,
distressed, as he stared at the gun, frozen on the spot.

Johnny continued
smiling sadistically, staring into Sir Thomas's eyes as he cocked the gun and
waved it again in the direction of the barn.

Sir Thomas raised
his arms slightly and stumbled toward the barn door followed by Johnny. As they
reached the door, Sir Thomas stopped and turned to face Johnny. ‘Look if it's
money, I can give you...’

‘In the fucking
barn sir,’ interrupted Johnny. ‘You can't afford me."

As Sir Thomas
entered the barn Johnny smashed him on the back of the head with the barrel his
gun with a clean firm thud. Sir Thomas dropped into a crumpled pile next to
Bruno.

‘What the fuck
are you doing?’ screamed Bruno.

‘Right you
fucking rabble, outside. Get in the Range Rover.’ Growled Johnny as he reached
down and slipped Sir Thomas's wallet from his inside jacket pocket.

Stealing the Stolen.

Detective
Sergeant Shoal ambled around the office at Hogarth Heavy Engineering: surveying
the crime scene. His head was bowed, his left hand massaged a lump of
blubber-like tissue below his mouth; which he had hoped in his youth would one
day turn into a chin. It hadn't. His Sheik-like goatee beard attempted to hide
the fact. It didn't.

‘Mmm,’ mumbled
Shoal as he watched the six policemen shaking the peacefully sleeping clerks
sprawled across their desks.

Wandering over to
Mr. Arnold -who was being carefully lifted onto a stretcher by two ambulance
officers- he gently nudged the toupee on the floor with his foot, bent down and
picked it up carefully by a single strand of hair.

‘Interesting. Bag
please, Ricketts.’

Ricketts, who had
been following Shoal step by step, reached into his pocket, pulled off a bag
from a roll and handed it to him.

‘That's Mr.
Arnold's, I think Sarge,’ said Ricketts.

‘Oh really?’

‘Yes, Mr.
Thompson, the bloke who found 'em, he said.’

‘Evidence
Ricketts, it's all evidence.’ said Shoal attempting to negotiate the toupee
into the bag with the skill of a drunk fairground punter. ‘I want the whole
place dusted for prints.’ Shoal handed Ricketts the empty bag and the dangling
toupee. ‘And get statements from everyone.’