Rant (13 page)

Suddenly the rain began lashing down again. What with the distraction of having a corpse in the passenger seat and my fury at Sam and the fact that I was shaking with fear and exhaustion, I misjudged a turn and ended up skidding the car into a lamppost, narrowly avoiding someone waiting to cross. I smashed my chin onto the dashboard and bit down hard on my tongue.

Dizzily rubbing at my bruised jaw and trying to figure out what just happened I heard a sharp rapping sound. I assumed it was Sam in the boot, trying to get out.

‘Pith off, you bathtard!' I shouted. ‘I hope you're thmashed to bit-th in there. Thith ith all your fault.'

The rapping came again, much louder this time, and I looked around to see a rather angry policeman staring in through the driver's window.

I wound the window down resignedly.

‘Thorry Offither,' I said, ‘I didn't thee you there.'

‘No,' he said, ‘Nearly bloody ran me over you did. And it's not Officer, it's Constable. Special Constable Meads. Are you alright?'

‘Yeth, I think tho.'

‘Have we been drinking, sir?'

‘Well, I can't anthwer for you, but I'm thober ath a judge.'

‘Get out of the car, thir. I mean sir.'

‘Are you taking the pith?'

‘Out.'

I clambered out, feeling the blood running down my chin.

The man in front of me was about five foot one, Indian, and determined to make his mark on me, I think. He did look inordinately cross, but I supposed it was just the adrenaline after his brush with death leaving him shaky and pumped up.
Get used to it,
I thought.

When he got a closer look at me, however, his expression turned to one of concern.

‘Goodness,' he said, ‘did you just do all of that in the crash? I think I better call an ambulance.'

He was reaching for his walkie-talkie, and I was reaching out to stop him, saying, ‘It'th alright, honetht,' when he spotted my companion in the front seat. He did a double take, walked around the car and then reached in through the open window.

‘Your friend doesn't appear to be breathing, sir,' he said, panicking, ‘and he's extremely cold. He doesn't seem to be well at all.'

‘That'th becauthe he'th dead,' I said.

‘Oh, come on, the crash wasn't as bad as all that,' he said, trying to open the door. I think it must have gotten bent in the crash, as it wouldn't go. I think my head got bent in the crash too, as I couldn't stop myself from saying whatever came into it.

‘Oh, he wath dead long before the crath,' I said. ‘Honetht.'

He stared at me. ‘Do you seriously expect me to believe you're driving around London with a corpse in your front seat?'

‘Acthually, I'm the corpthe. He'th justht a dead guy.'

Special Constable Meads stopped trying to open the car door and span around, obviously unsure whether to run screaming into the night, reach for his walkie-talkie or whip out his extendable baton. Then he saw the gun I was holding and seemed to be unsure whether to shit or go blind.

‘Look, sir, everything's alright, sir, there's no need for violence sir, please, sir, you go on your way and I won't say a word to anyone, honest, sir.'

You know, it's a sad sign of the times this, but I'd been called “sir” more in the previous couple of days than I ever had in my life. Why? Because, more often than not, I'd been holding a very big gun. Is that really what we have to do these days? Threaten people with violence to get a little respect and civility? I'm beginning to see why the Empire was so hard to maintain. It must have cost a fortune in munitions.

‘I'm tho thorry,' I thaid, I mean, said. ‘You theem like a very nithe man but I'm afraid I might have to inconveniethe you for a thort while. You thee things are jutht a tad mixthed up at the thecond and—'

‘I'm having real trouble understanding you, mate,' said Special Constable Meads, ‘on account of your speech impediment. Could you just slow down a bit?'

‘Don't you “mate” me. What happened to “thir”?' He just stared at me. ‘And I don't have a thpeech impediment, I jutht bumped mythelf when I crathed the car.' He stared at me some more. ‘Look, jutht get in the car and don't touch your walkie-talkie thingy. Oh, and you better give me your handcuffth.'

‘My what?'

‘Handcuff-tthhhh!'

He wiped little flecks of spittle and blood off his face and handed them over (the cuffs, not the spit and blood), and I duly locked them onto his wrists and hurried him into the back of the car.

‘Don't worry,' I told him over my shoulder, ‘ath thoon ath thith ith all thorted I'll thet you free.'

‘Could you face the other way when you talk?' he asked politely. ‘Please?'

I tried to make some light-hearted conversation as I drove back to the house. You know the kind of thing – ‘Thpecial Conthtable Meadth? Ith that like thpecial needth?' and ‘Whothe idea wath it to thpell lithp with an eth?' but my new friend wasn't biting. Or he was only biting his lips and staring at the corpse in the front seat.

‘Don't worry,' I said, by way of reassurance, ‘I thidn't kill him. We've only borrowed him. Ath a kind of, er…diverthion. While I prove my innothenthe. You know the thort of thing, you mutht come acroth it all the time in your line of work – prove that I didn't kill my wife, or rob that bank. Or accthept lot-th of money to murder thome people.'

He didn't look convinced.

‘You thee,' I explained, while a voice in my head screamed at me to shut up, ‘we're going to leave the body in my friendth flat and burn it, tho that the polithe – that'th you – think thomeone'th murdered me and they'll thtop looking for me tho I can go and get thome evidenthe that'll clear my name. He'th dead already, tho what harm can it do?'

He stared at me.

‘I have to conthede,' I said, ‘acthually it doethn't thound quite tho good when I thay it out loud.'

And this, I think in my semi-conscious stupor, is where my troubles really began. From here on in there was no turning back for any of us and just when we thought things couldn't possibly get any worse – well, you've seen how that turned out.

I hefted the body out through the car window and upstairs with very little reward for my efforts (though the look on the special constable's face was some consolation). I removed the things we needed for the journey ahead and sprinkled the flat liberally with paraffin, girded my loins and apologised profusely to this Unknown Soldier. I shot the body in the head and made my somewhat ignominious departure.

It was only once we were on the road to Birmingham that I realised I had successfully confounded the police. I had successfully covered my tracks and for the moment I was a free man, no longer a fugitive, and, as New Labour would have had us believe,
things could only get better
.

Not.

Habeas Corpus

Now

Happy memories. It all seems so long ago now. A different life. When I still thought I had a life, rather than doing life.

I stare at the cell wall. It has not become any more interesting in the last twenty-four hours.

The same hackneyed graffiti under the same standard-issue window. The same thin grey light filtering through the same shabby blinds onto the same damp stains. The same marks where I threw my dinner plate at it yesterday in anger, chipping the façade.

There are days when I can't remember how I got here, how all of this came about.

But, unfortunately, those days are few and far between. Most of the time the memories are crystal clear enough to make me shiver down to my standard-issue socks, even in bright sunshine.

I am so, so sorry that I got into all of this and what it has done to my wife. If I could take it all back… I can now see all of the points where I went wrong, made bad choices. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I have been patched up now, and most of me is healing, though I am reliably informed that I will have a great many scars. Not all of them sexy or endearing, but I am slowly healing.

But there are still some things that I find hard to cope with.

The boredom, for one thing.

In some ways it's nice. I have people who will bring me my meals, do my laundry. I have little or no responsibility for anything. I do not have to worry about money. I do not have to make decisions, simply follow the rules and do as I am told. And the people in charge here are obsessed with the rules. They are jobsworths and anally retentive types who cannot cope with any change from the routine. They will make my life hell if I deviate in the slightest.

Another thing that bothers me is the fact that I am constantly monitored, all day every day. Every movement, every gesture, every word, and every breath I take. They are watching me. Whatever happened to trust?

Though I suppose they are “figures of authority”. And figures of authority are not people to whom trust comes naturally. Not when it comes to people like me. I'm sure they resent the money that is spent on us, the time, the effort. I'm sure any one of them would be glad to take me outside and put a bullet in my head, hang me from a tree. But that is not the way things are done in a civilized society.

So they watch me and I watch them and they watch me watching them and so on and so forth. They are hoping they can learn something from me and I am trying to learn as much about them as I possibly can.
Playing the game,
I believe it is called.

They are waiting for me to screw up so they can jump in and scream and shout and say
I told you so! He's a wrong'un right enough, call the Guv'nor!

I try to be good; but part of me knows that this is just a front and that every second sees me waiting, too. I am certainly a different person right now to the man who set out on this journey. I am beginning to think that we are approaching payback time. Justice will be served. And then it will be over. Soon enough, one way or another, this will be over.

I just have to be patient.

Thursday 6
th
May. Shortly before dawn.

I looked at what was left of me in the cracked and dirty bathroom mirror. I looked like an extra from an extremely low budget zombie flick.

I know what you're thinking: a lesser man would have probably given up at this point, called it quits. Unfortunately I had given up a long, long time before and my options were now somewhat limited.

At least nobody without cataracts would recognise me from the photos and identikit pictures on the television and the newspapers. It would never stand up in court.
You mean to say you recognised the suspect from this? What, had your dog been chewing it? Case dismissed!

If only.

I remembered little of the journey; I'd only really started to come around when we hit the small backcountry lanes of the Forest of Dean. As we pulled into yet another tiny village, someone (Van G, I think) pointed out that Fred West used to live just up the lane there. Now
there
's a sign to put up to impress visitors.
come on in to over-piddlington, moi lover. home of fred west. we welcomes careful d.i.y.ers.

We'd turned into a small winding track and stopped outside a small stone-built cottage where I half walked, half crawled through the door and collapsed onto the moth-eaten old sofa which took up half of the living room.

As I had slipped in and out of consciousness, without really knowing where I was, or why, I was aware of various comings and goings around me. The GIA seemed to have been awake for most of the night, plotting and comparing notes, preparing some plan of action. Occasionally I heard muted laughter and arguments, various hissed telephone conversations, and a string of questions that I presumed were aimed at our Romanian prisoner, who hardly seemed capable of piecing together a coherent sentence in English – but I didn't really take much of it in. I no longer cared. Let the professionals deal with it, as long as I got Anna back in one piece. Ms Agent Smith popped in at one point and gave me a couple of injections to ease the pain. One of them seemed to only increase the pain – or at least give it a new dimension.

‘Don't be such a baby,' she said, as I rubbed my arm and tried not to cry. I tried to think up a suitable reply but was asleep before I'd managed to open my mouth.

At around five in the morning, I awoke from lurid dreams about corpses exploding and Anna chasing me around the house telling me I had to clean up before the homeless man got here for sex. I sighed and turned on the radio. The news was full of half stories about terrorist action, explosions, and a gentleman called Mr Rant. Or Mr Grant. Or Grunt, or Runt – and one commentator suggested I was some disillusioned individual upset because he didn't get an arts grant and had gone on a rampage. Not really so far from the truth, if only they knew.

I switched it off and wobbled to the bathroom. My legs felt like they were made of putty and I kept wanting to throw up. Even after I'd thrown up.

I washed myself as best I could and contemplated what little I could see of my sad face in the mirror.

What the hell have I done?
I thought.
And why is my arm hurting so much?
I felt it; there was a raised bump where I'd been injected. I hoped they hadn't given me the smallpox vaccine just to finish me off.

‘Mr Rant,' called Van G from outside the bathroom door. ‘If we might just have a word…'

I thought of several choice words I could offer him but kept quiet, instead picking up my shirt and following him back into the country-kitchen-cum-parlour that seemed to be their base of operations.

There were a few winces and low whistles as I walked into the room, and at first I thought they were sympathising with my wounds.

‘you-rea-lly-ought-to-look-af-ter-your-self,'
said Joshua.

‘Getting a bit flabby, old man,' said Van G.

‘Get lost,' I said, ‘I'm not in that bad shape.'

‘Youse are having the love handlings,' said the Romanian.

‘Who asked you?' I shouted.

Sam and Special Constable Meads said nothing. Meads just hunched over a plate of Ryvita like someone was going to run in and steal it away at any moment. Mr and Ms Agent Smith weren't around.

I sat down, draping my shirt over my bare chest. ‘Thank you very much to the
Celebrity Fat Club
panel, now if you have something to say… Could we please just bloody get on with it?'

‘Don't you have to be a celebrity to be on Celebrity Fat Club?' asked Special Constable Meads.

‘Not these days,' said Sam.

‘Who asked you, anyway?' I whined in Special Meads' general direction.

‘Children, children. We need to figure out a plan of action,' started Van G. ‘Here's what we know. Bela Barbu has a meeting this afternoon in the London docklands. His lawyer and four bodyguards will accompany him, and he will be meeting with certain dignitaries, as yet unnamed, from various government and local authority offices.'

‘Why?'

‘Not important,' replied Sam, ‘we just have to make sure they don't get in the way.'

‘The building where Mr Barbu is meeting this afternoon,' said Van, ‘would appear to be a purchase he made a few months ago. It's an old disused public building in the East End of London.'

‘What kind of building?' I asked, as it seemed like they were desperate for me to ask something.

‘An old sewerage works, disused now.'

The three of them looked at me meaningfully.

‘Am I supposed to see something important in this? So he's bought a sewerage works. What, he's going to hold us all to ransom and threaten to spread poop all over Ye Olde London town if his demands aren't met? To be honest I'm not sure anyone would notice the difference. It would probably bring more tourists in, if the truth were told, give everything that Dickensian ambience that you Americans love so much. And—'

‘mr-rant, you-are-not-see-ing-the-big-ger-pic-ture,'
said Joshua. Even his voice simulator managed to sound exasperated.

‘What bigger picture? It's an old abandoned shit factory.'

‘Not the sewerage works, old chap,' said Van G. ‘What lies beneath it.'

They all looked at me

I looked back at them. I looked at Special Constable Meads. He flinched and went back to eating his Ryvita.

‘Sewers?' I said.

They tutted.

‘The
land
, Mr Rant,' said Van G. ‘The land that the building occupies.'

‘Oh,' I said, ‘I see.' But I didn't.

‘How much do you think land is worth in London, Mr Rant?'

‘I've never really thought about it.' They looked at me. ‘A lot?' They looked at me some more. ‘Lots and lots?'

‘you're-get-ting-warm,'
said Joshua.

‘And can you think of anything in London that might have affected the price of this piece of land,' asked Van G. I must have looked as blank as usual. ‘Think sport.'

‘The world shit-shovelling championships are coming to London? Don't look at me like that. I don't know. The only thing I know about sport is that if you are in any way good at kicking things or hitting people then you get paid ridiculous amounts of money and then you get all the juicy acting roles come pantomime season. Why don't you just tell me?'

‘No major sporting events that might just have been mentioned in the news recently?' said Sam. ‘Think hard now, boy.'

‘Look! I obviously haven't got a clue what you're getting…at…ohhh. Are we talking about the Olympics, by any chance?'

‘Well done, old chap,' said Van G, as though I'd just successfully tied my own shoelaces without crying. ‘And where are the Olympics to be centred?'

‘The East End of London.'

‘And if someone had, say, a prime piece of brown site land in the middle of what is to become the Olympic village, a piece of land which was bought for half of its true value, what do you think they might be doing now?'

‘By brown site, do you mean shi—'

‘I mean disused industrial land, Mr Rant.'

‘I think I'd be setting something of a premium price on that land and then retiring to a beach somewhere. But hang on, surely none of that matters. Can't the government just step in and slap a compulsory purchase order on the site, then buy it for the going rate? Bela Barbu might be a gangster but he's got nothing on the British government when it comes to getting their way.'

‘That remains to be seen,' said Sam.

Before I can ask him what he means by that, he continues: ‘In the meantime, it would appear that our buddies from overseas are eager to have our property baron killed off and to get hold of whatever…
paperwork
Mr Barbu is carrying with him. My best guess is that they want the deeds to the land so that they can make something of a killing themselves.'

‘So this is all just about real estate? They want me to kill someone for an old factory on the London docklands?'

‘Not just real estate, Mr Rant,' said Van G, ‘it's actually some rather valuable real estate.'

‘How valuable, exactly?'

‘We don't know exactly, but the rumour mill is chugging along quite nicely, and conservative estimates puts the property – and the value of hotel lets and usage of it for the duration of the games, not to mention selling it on afterwards – somewhere in the region of three hundred million pounds. Others put it as high as half a billion.'

‘Wow.'

‘As you so rightly say, wow; worth killing for, if one were to be so inclined.'

‘The important thing,' said Sam, ‘is to get our hands on the cases and get out of there as quickly as possible. Then we arrange to meet the other group, get your wife, and hand them over to the police.'

‘We're going to the police? Thank God. That's the first sensible thing I've—'

‘After, old chap,' broke in Van G, and I caught the harsh look he gave Sam. Strange. ‘First things first. The
briefcase
, then your wife, and then the police.'

I was missing something here.

I retreated to the bathroom to finish getting dressed, then realised that I'd left my shirt on the back of the sofa and went back into the corridor. From behind the not-quite-closed door I could hear a muted conversation.

Van G: So do you think he knows?

Sam: Not yet, but pretty soon he's going to start and figure it out for himself.

Joshua:
(Not quite so muted)
you-think-so?

Sam: Will you turn that bloody thing down! Thank you. As for Rant, he'd have to be pretty stupid not to, once everything starts to come out.