Rant (4 page)

So there I was in the bank. Bright and early. Or early, anyhow. Anna had looked even more dubious when I'd been up and out of the house before her but I didn't want to have the cash and gun hanging around the house any longer than necessary. As I'd come in some scrawny little jerk wearing a cheap suit and a rapper's attitude had sideswiped me with the door and bashed my nose. He glowered at me like I'd forced him to assault me by daring to be on the same planet as him.

As he pushed past I flailed around with my hand and somehow grabbed the tail of his coat.

He rounded on me. ‘Get – your – hands – off – me!' he hissed, pulling himself up to his full five foot two.

‘Well,' I said, ‘I just wanted to say thank you.'

He stared at me.

‘For barging the door into me,' I continued, while he continued to stare. ‘Otherwise we might never have met.'

He looked a little less cocky, and his focus shifted down to my nose, obviously inspecting the damage he had inflicted. He frowned slightly. Maybe he did have some kind of conscience after all.

‘I mean, it's so hard to meet people these days,' I said quietly, leaning into his face, trying to remember the lines from my last stage show. ‘Since they let me out of the home. I have so few friends these days. No one to…
play
with anymore. And then you deliberately push the door into me so we can have a little…human contact. That's why you did it, wasn't it? I know how it is. I've been watching you for months now, and you've obviously been watching me too, haven't you, you cheeky little minx. It's hard to find company these days, isn't it? For people like us, who are so…
choosy
about our friends? And when I look at you I just know we can be
gooood
friends. Can I come back to your house? I know the address, but… Do you live with anyone? Anyone who'll miss you? I – no! Come back! I love you!'

But he was gone.

People stared at me as I joined the queue, grinning to myself. They'd obviously overheard some of our conversation and were giving me some fairly searching looks until I made eye contact. Then they stared at their shoes like someone else had dressed them and they'd only just discovered how cheap and nasty they were.

‘Oh lighten up,' I muttered. ‘Just having a bit of fun.'

My idea (how's this for brilliant?) was to open a safe deposit box and put the cash, the map and the gun inside. I had a passport, which had been made up as a prop for an appearance in
Casualty
and which I couldn't distinguish from the real thing, so I was hoping nobody else would. The moustache I was wearing was from the same episode and matched my photograph on the passport. Whilst working at the BBC, I'd “borrowed” some headed notepaper (oh come on, everybody does it); it had only taken a few seconds to write a letter to myself, using the false name and a false address, and Robert's your mother's sister's husband, I had enough ID to carry out my plan. The huge plaster on my forehead, courtesy of my adventures the night before, helped too. I was just wondering why anybody works for a living when a life of crime and deceit is so simple, when the number light thingy changed at the front of the queue and it was my turn with the cashier.

I walked over, smiled at the bland face of the young bloke behind the counter, whose badge identified him as Norman and tried to say, in my best Lee Marvin voice, ‘Good morning, I'd like to open a safe deposit box, please.'

Now, disguising your voice is one thing, but even I couldn't quite distinguish which words I'd used and whether they were in the correct order, so I wasn't at all surprised when Norman looked at me, all open-eyed, and said, ‘Are you all right, sir?'

I made a great show of clearing my throat and said again, ‘I'd like to open a safe deposit box. I have all of the relevant ID here.'

‘Your moustache would appear to be a little…crooked, sir.'

I looked at my reflection in the countertop and saw what looked like a great hairy caterpillar crawling up the side of my nose.

‘Ah!' I muttered. ‘Haven't quite got used to it yet… I'm just trying it out. Have to wear it in a film next week. I'm an actor, you know.'

Norman obviously didn't know. Or care.

‘Can I be of any assistance today, sir?' he said in a voice which might as well of been supplied by a ventriloquist for all the expression that showed on his face. I know I wanted to shove my fist up his arse. And not in a good way.

Sighing, I pulled off the moustache and slipped it into my pocket.
Low profile,
I reminded myself,
stealthy as a ninja.

‘I want to o-pen a safe-ty de-pos-it box, Norrrrrr-mannnn.'

‘There's no need to take that tone with me. I'm not an idiot, sir.'

‘Well, the chap who was here a moment ago was. Best have a word with him when you see him next.'

He handed me the forms and a tiny pen and sent me off to fill them in. After a few false starts (it's difficult sometimes to resist going onto automatic pilot and filling in the truth on those forms. Banks are so intimidating, don't you find? Or they are if you don't have any cash. Or if you do have a big bag of cash which theoretically belongs to someone else. But finders keepers and all that…) I managed to complete the form and rejoin the queue.

As luck would have it, I got Norman again – it was a fifty-fifty chance to be honest, why don't they have more bloody staff in these places – and handed over the scrawled and scribbled forms silently.

He looked at the forms and then at me like I'd just handed him a somewhat filthy love letter.

‘I'll, er, need to see some identification please. Sir.'

This last sir was even more begrudged than the earlier ones. I thought about laying into his snotty attitude but for once I bit my tongue. I had to stop drawing attention to myself.

Instead, I reached into my bag and grabbed the passport and the letter, which had somehow got stuck down the side. I gave them a tug.

It went ever so quiet in the bank as the gun, dislodged from between the bundles of notes, fell with a clatter onto the countertop and lay pointing at Norman like the finger of God.

Embarrassed, I snatched it up and said; ‘Look, I—let me explain—'

But my vocabulary deserted me. I guess it's just one of those situations you really don't expect to encounter and therefore you've never planned out the correct conversational gambit for it in advance.

Norman's hands had shot up into the air and he said – very calmly, I thought, given the circumstances – ‘I understand, sir. Don't worry, sir, we'll take care of that for you now, sir.'

The manager (
Kathleen, Bank Customer Services Manager Level III, Hapy to Serve You,
according to her badge) noticing the sudden silence, had stepped up, holding her hands palm outward toward me, and said, ‘Good morning, sir. Don't worry, sir, here at Nova Banks we're fully trained to deal with situations like this and no one is going to resist in any way. In fact I was just on a course last week and you'll be glad to know it's all fresh in my mind.' She continued as if she were reading from an autocue in front of her. ‘We all want to get out of here with the least possible fuss, and without anyone being harmed—'

‘No!' I shouted, amazed at how easily I could balls up a simple thing like opening an illegal bank account for some stolen money and a gun and a forged passport.

‘Oh my God!' I heard someone squeak excitedly. ‘He doesn't want the money, he's a thrill killer!'

I span round, gun still in my hand. ‘Who said that?' I asked – a bit crossly, if I'm honest. Nobody answered, but almost every eye in the room pointed to one young woman, who was looking at the ceiling. I walked towards her. ‘I suppose you think that's a clever thing to say, do you? Well you've got it all wrong, young lady. Don't you give me that attitude until you know something about me. I'm—I'm—'
I'm what?
What could I possibly say that was going to make any difference to this situation?

Luckily, Kathleen saved me. The course she'd been on really must have been quite good. I found myself wondering if they needed any actors to do role-play. With my experience…

She must have come through the connecting door silently as she suddenly appeared at my elbow smiling and simpering like a Miss World contestant who's been shown a photograph of a kitten.

‘It's alright, sir, everything is under control here, sir,' she said, as all around her, her staff (and there did seem to be a lot more of them available for customer service than there were a few minutes ago) ladled handfuls of notes into cash bags, ‘Follow procedure four,' she said quietly to the staff – then to me, ‘No one is going to say nasty things about you, sir,' and she directed a harsh stare towards the young woman, ‘or do anything to you. I would just ask everyone to remain calm and then no one will get hurt.'

I sat down on the nearest chair. How could this be happening?

‘Look,' I tried again, ‘I'm really not ready to walk out of here with that amount of money—'

‘Oh, my God,' said the thrill-killer woman, ‘He's going to hold us all hostage and kill us one by one before taking on the police. No amount of money's going to be enough. He's a suicide, I tell you, he's going for death by cop and he doesn't care who he takes with him!'

Everyone stood silently swearing. Well, not everyone. Some of them actually swore pretty loudly, given the circumstances, and Kathleen clapped her hands like a schoolmistress and said, ‘Now that is quite enough from you, madam.'

I stared at the young woman.

‘Do you watch a lot of TV?' I asked.

She didn't answer.

‘I wasn't planning on shooting anyone,' I said quietly, ‘but for you I might make an exception.'

‘Please, Mr…Doolalley…?' said Kathleen, squinting at the form I'd filled in.

‘Donnelly,' I corrected.

She didn't look convinced. ‘Donnelly. Okay. Now, Mr Donnelly, this really is all of the money that we have to hand and everything else is locked into a time-secure vault. And killing anyone, even yourself, isn't going to change that. So I would respectfully suggest that you take what is on offer and make your getaway as best you can. And I'd like to thank you for your custom today, as every Nova Bank customer is a valued customer, no matter what their income bracket!'

She beamed at me and then turned on her heel and walked to the counter.

‘Now listen,' I said, but nobody was, and nobody did. Whilst we were talking, wads of cash were being stuffed into canvas bags and then passed over the counter in my direction. When I didn't immediately go and pick them up, Kathleen herself went over and began picking them up and handing them to me. A few people from the queue even handed over the contents of their wallets, though I noticed that Miss Clever-Knickers Thrill-Killer Fantasist kept hers to herself.

I dropped the bags back onto the floor.

‘Look, you don't understand,' I whinged at Kathleen, ‘Let me explain—'

‘Oh, I do understand, sir,' she said, ‘I understand entirely. Things can be very difficult these days, sir, and there are times when it's impossible to make ends meet. But we are not here to judge. No. That is not our role. And you mustn't blame yourself, sir. But I do have to point out that my priority, insignificant as it is compared to your own priorities, I know, my priority is not to risk the lives of my staff or those of my customers, but rather to defuse the situation and make sure we all leave here safe and well, sir. With everything that we require. Within reason. So if there's nothing else...?'

She had picked up the bags again from the floor and was holding them out to me, nodding sympathetically and smiling. Just for a second, I was sure she was going to wink at me.

And at that moment, also just for the tiniest of seconds, I wanted to shoot someone. God help me, I actually wanted to shoot someone dead just to make it all stop, to make this whole nightmare stop. But instead I said, in a whisper, ‘No. Thank you. Nothing else,' I glanced down at her badge, ‘thank you, Kathleen. By the way, shouldn't there be two
p
s in happy?'

Before I knew what was happening I was being bundled to my feet and rushed out of the door, bags in hand, into the street. The door closed behind me with a thunk, and the bolts shot home.

Somewhere away in the distance, sirens began to wail.

‘Please,' I whimpered at the heavy wood. I slumped against it, making what I can only describe as a keening sound.

The whingey ninja had struck again.

I looked down at my hands and at the three bags of money I now held where there used to be one, I looked at the gun stuffed into the waistband of my trousers, and I looked at the card Kathleen had shoved into my hand that read
if your service today was satisfactory, or if you have a complaint, then ring us on
—and I run, run, run, run, run…

Inspector Mallefant sifts through the debris halfheartedly. Looks despairingly at his feet. Another pair of brogues destined for the bin.

Ashes to ashes.

Or it would be ashes if the fire brigade hadn't reduced everything to a soggy, squelching morass of muddy filth.

He sighs. He's been doing that a lot recently.

He knows that behind his back the constables call him ‘the Flying Scotsman' as he puffs and wheezes around the office. Or ‘the Sighing Scotchman'. Or ‘the miserable old sod with the slow puncture'. He does not care. Soon he will leave all of this behind.

If only it could be like the telly, he thinks to himself. Nice clean villains only too ready to confess, in nice clean houses bought from their nice clean ill-gotten gains.

Inspector Mallefant has been a policeman too long. He no longer yearns for the big cases, the career-makers. He does not wish to be remembered as a gritty cop who always got his man. That way filth and disorder lie. These days he dreams of nothing more than sitting out the rest of his days behind his neat, clean and orderly desk, in his spanking-clean office, in his highly polished shoes. Waiting for the clock to run down so that he can take his orderly and sterile retirement.

His colleagues think him a joke, a dinosaur. But he has been around too long to think he can clean up the sewer of London. It has no desire to be cleaned – and anyway, no sooner have you cleaned up a little patch than someone else is bursting to evacuate their bowels.

He could show you the evidence in the newspapers (if the newsprint did not come off all over his hands, a fact that had caused him to give up the
Daily Telegraph
many years before). Or on the television, those great dust magnets that hoover up the corners of every living room in the country.

People are obsessed with their own filth, and the filth of others. They cannot get enough of it, and they would not thank him if he were to get rid of it. So they are welcome to it.

Anyway, he will be off soon to sit in his highly disinfected little corner of society. Funny – people used to worry about dirt lurking in corners. Now they are terrified that some corner of cleanliness, of sanity, has escaped their clutches. They would seek it out and defile it. But not if he can help it.

And they call us the filth,
he thinks, smiling grimly.

He sighs again, looking across at the young WPC, who is staring at him with a startled expression on her face. He wonders if he has been thinking out loud again (as indeed he has). Muttering about the grubbiness. The dirty, dirty, world.

He tries to concentrate on the matter in hand. And there does seem to be some matter on his hands. He grimaces.

There is little he can do until the scene-of-crime lot have finished sifting through the rubble and mud. Until some kind of identification has been made on the body. Until they've gone through all of the footage from all of the CCTVs in the area. The younger coppers hoping for something they can sell on to the TV or newspapers. Hoping for a break.

Now there's a thought. A nice break with a cup of tea and a sausage butty. He tries to remember if he filled his flask before he left the office.

‘Inspector?'

Could these bastards read his mind? No sooner does he think of sloping off for a minute than they're after him. Wheedling. Drooling and gurgling like babies sitting in their own mess.

‘Inspector Mallefant, sir?'

An off-white, ash-streaked teletubby is peeping at him around the corner of what used to be the living room. SOC woman. Sock puppet more like. He raises an eyebrow towards her.

‘Something you should see, sir.'

He sighs and crosses the creaking floor, wiping his hands and his brow with his handkerchief. He pulls on a pair of rubber gloves. He would like to wear them permanently, but knows this would only draw unwanted attention.

The coroner is bent over the body in the chair. What's left of it, anyway.

Messy business. Inspector Mallefant is a neat person. A clean person.

When he had taken the call from Newcastle, a possible tip that a fugitive of theirs – young actor by the name of Michael Grant, a.k.a. Mike Rant – had absconded to London, he'd been happy.

Young actor; morally filthy, that lot, but generally clean in their habits. Gone off the rails, robbed a bank and headed for the big smoke. Spousal assault, possible homicide. Nice. Especially as the assault occurred well away from his beat. Clean-cut work. Perhaps the young man has gone a bit doolally, temporary insanity. Driven bonkers as conkers by the grubbiness of the world in which we live. Mallefant's first thoughts were pick him up, give him a spank and a confession in the bag before breakfast tomorrow. Lovely.

But now there's arson involved. Murder in his precinct. Kidnappings. Stolen vehicles. Soiled garments left in carrier bags. They certainly dropped this shit-pile in his lap without much warning. Who was this nutter? And who was the corpse in the lounge? Quick game of
Cluedo
before bed, was it?

He walks over to the coroner. Not a job he'd ever fancy, coroning, forensics, any of that gubbins. Too much rummaging around in other people's mess for his liking.

‘Any idea who it is, then?' he asks, hopeful, but knowing that this one was never going to be that clean, that easy, that neat.

‘Not yet,' replies the coroner, ‘but we've got a fair idea who it isn't.'

‘Don't play funny buggers, not in the mood. It's no' Grant, then?'

‘Nope.'

‘No' this Simon chappie, the owner, is it?'

‘I very much doubt it, Mallefant. Off in Cannes, isn't he?'

‘What's left of this one'll fit in a can if we try and move him. Any idea on cause of death?' His little joke, that was, stating the obvious. He gives a little dry chuckle, but not a pleasant one, like someone who doesn't chuckle often, or for the right reasons.

‘Well, no, not really,' muses the coroner.

That gives Mallefant pause.

‘What do you mean, no' really? Bugger was shot, wasn't he? Even Ah ken that, you soft shite. Look at thon hole in his heid. Could keep ma lunch in there, and Ah like a big lunch.'

The coroner shudders. ‘He was shot, yes. That's not what killed him though, Mallefant. And it didn't do this damage either. Heat of the fire caused his brains to boil inside his skull. Sort of like a pressure cooker. Just keeps building up and building up until—'

‘Yes, thank you, Ah ken the very lurid picture you're painting.' Mallefant sighs again. He is beginning to sound like a pressure cooker himself.
Cluedo
it is then.

‘Smoke inhalation? His lungs went oot on him?' A shake of the head. ‘The fire, burnt alive?' Shake. ‘Bashed away up hes back passage with the Professor's plums?' More shaking, this time accompanied by a muffled giggle.

‘Are you takin' the pish or what? Come on then, amaze me, O wise one. How do you know it was none of they things?'

So the coroner tells him.

Mallefant doesn't answer so the coroner shows him. Proof positive, as it were.

And Mallefant stares at the body in front of him.

Filthy wee beggers,
he thinks.