Rant (8 page)

‘Rant! For Christ's sake!'

I hurried to the desk and fiddled with it, trying to get the top to lift off. I couldn't resist peeping around the curtains (nice heavy bit of green twill) and looking across to my house. There were several policemen standing around on the street, one talking to Poodleman, who was looking quite animated. Poodleman that is, not the policeman. The policeman looked rather bored, considering this was probably the most exciting thing to have happened on the estate since it was built. Most of my neighbours were creeping down their drives, desperate to find out what was going on/stick the boot in. It was only a matter of time before one of them said they'd seen me heading in this direction and pointing a gun at a Big Fat Geriatric Intelligence Agent…

‘Rant?!'

‘Just coming!'

I flipped up the top of the desk. There were three suitcases inside, two ordinary sized ones and a small vanity case tucked down the side. I was going to shout down and ask which ones he wanted but I decided it wasn't worth the aggro. I just picked up the lot and staggered downstairs.

Grabbing the keys from the kitchen, I went out through the side door into the garage. I opened up the car (BMW, nice again – being an international man of mystery (semi-retired) must pay well) and hefted the cases onto the back seat, put the keys into the ignition, and cracked open the garage door as quietly as I could. No one seemed to be looking our way.

I crept back to the kitchen and called, ‘Okay, Sam. Let's go.'

There was no reply. ‘Sam,' I called, a little louder, ‘They'll be here any minute. Let's go!'

‘Would you like to untie me from the goddamned chair first?' he called back. Quite politely, I thought.

I hurried back in and freed him from the furniture, leaving his hands tied, then helped him out to the garage.

‘Hang on a minute,' he said, as I opened the car door for him. He started fiddling with the burglar alarm.

‘I think that's the least of your worries,' I hissed. ‘Come on!'

‘Just…one…sec…there we are. Better safe than sorry.' He smiled at me, and though I couldn't put my finger on it, it was a very worrying smile. The kind of smile a cat gets when it remembers it shat in your slippers this morning, right after you forgot to give it some milk.

I bundled him into the car and started it up. I gently eased out into the road and it took all of my efforts to crawl past the police clustered in the road as slowly as possible. I made sure I was rubbernecking as obviously as anyone else just to keep their suspicions at bay. Two policemen came out through the front door, shaking their heads. Carrying a large brown envelope. Time to put my foot down. I started to accelerate, still looking at the police on my lawn, when Sam shouted,
‘Look out!'

I swerved and narrowly avoided squashing Poodleman, who looked as white as his little dog. Both man and poodle stared at me, first in terror, then in anger, and then, recognising me, with a kind of terrified, angry excitement.

I put my foot down and screeched out of the junction at the end of the road, ready to put as much distance between myself and the forces of law and order as possible.

‘It looked like they found the envelope,' I said after a couple of minutes of twisting and turning down back streets and footpaths. ‘I'm really sorry to have got you involved in all of this.'

‘I thought it was me who got you involved, boy,' he said, and there came that wicked little smile again. ‘And don't worry. There won't be much left to find by the time they get a warrant and head over to my house.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘That burglar alarm. It set the timer on the explosive I have hidden in my desk upstairs. It'll blow in about…one minute. There'll be nothing left to find by the time—'

‘In the desk?' I asked, with a tone that made him look over at me with concern.

‘Yeah, why?'

‘Where in the desk?'

‘In the small vanity—'

‘Out of the car!' I screeched, screeching to a halt.

‘What? Why…'

‘A small vanity case!' I screamed, screaming faster than I'd ever screamed before, wrestling with my seat belt and throwing the two large suitcases and my carrier bags out through the door at the same time. ‘Asmallvanitycase – like the one
lyingonthefloorinthebackofthecar!?!?!'

I could only carry one of the cases and my moneybags and still run. Sam, with his hands tied together, wasn't carrying anything. He just wobbled off frantically in his slippers. I had had a vague notion of going back for the other case, but as it was I only got about ten yards when the car blew up, sending me flying and skinning my knees. Quite badly.

Still Wednesday May 5
th
. Still morning.

For a while they have disappeared into the next room while Sam's ear was patched up properly by the Nazi-looking guy and the bandages changed. Nobody seems too worried about my injuries and I give up showing them to my handcuffed companion when he closes his eyes and begins to snore.

They were obviously discussing the situation at the same time because they are gone for quite a while. I can feel myself dozing off when suddenly I am shaken out of my reverie when Sam makes the introductions.

The man in the wheelchair, wearing a bright yellow Lurex jumpsuit that shows off his figure in quite alarming detail, has no hair of any description. Bald, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no stubble from shaving. Nothing except the two bunches sprouting like carrot tops from his nostrils. He could probably plait them and give himself a Fu Manchu moustache. Sam introduces him as Joshua Smith.

‘No relation,' Sam smiles, when I look at him quizzically.

The older (if that's possible) guy, bent over his walking stick like he's been dropped from a great height and impaled on it, and wearing a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, a deerstalker (no, really), and zip up tartan slippers, is Michelangelo Van Gogh (honest – or that's what they told me anyway). Mr Van G has hair aplenty. It sprouts from every hole and crevice and is somewhat unkempt. His eyebrows are like those clots of hair you pull out of the plughole every six months. And everything looks like it's been blue rinsed. Most of his teeth are missing, and his gums and lips are bright red, giving the lower half of his face the appearance of a small hairy animal that's been shot and fatally wounded.

‘Hello, young man,' he wheezes. Coming from him it is, for once, completely apt. Every man in the world must be younger than him. His voice is distinctly upper-class English.

The other two are, Sam guesses, Agent Smith and Agent Smith.

‘That's a CIA thing, right?' I ask. ‘The “Smith” thing. Anonymity and all that.'

‘No,' Sam says, ‘just a coincidence.'

I'm not sure if he's pulling my leg.

‘Now then, Joshua,' he says, ‘how the hell are you?'

‘i-am-very-well-you-old-bug-ger,'
says Joshua.

I look at the voice simulator on the arm of his wheelchair.

‘cool-is-n't-it?'
he says. Or the box says for him.

‘It's one of the newest toys from back home,' points out Sam helpfully. ‘It can simulate any voice based on just a few words recorded and played into it.'

‘Then why…?' I ask, and then trail off, embarrassed.

‘Why does it sound like a robot?' says Sam, cheerfully. ‘Because it is one. I mean, it's Joshua's all-time second favourite television character – remember Twiki, the cute little robot from
Buck Rogers in the 25
th
Century
? He loved it.'

‘beedly-beedly-beedly!'
says Joshua helpfully.

‘Ah!' I say. ‘That's…fascinating. Tell me, Joshua, what was your all-time favourite television character?'

‘pam-el-a-and-er-son,'
says Twiki—er, Joshua.
‘from-bay-watch. but-it-used-to-freak-people-out.'

‘I can only imagine,' I say.

‘Now then, Mr Rant,' says Van Gogh to the floorboards, in a voice very like that of Rex Harrison in
Doctor Doolittle
, ‘it would seem that you have a slight problem and Sam here thinks we might be able to help. Perhaps you'd like to fill us in from your point of view.'

‘I think Sam could probably do it better than me.' I say.

‘Yes, he's given us a brief account, but we'd like to hear it from the horse's mouth, as it were.'

‘Horse's ass, more like,' says Sam

‘gent-le-men-per-lease,'
says Joshua.

So I fill them in. Omitting none of the details and adding all of the gripes and setbacks and little injustices I have suffered during the last two days. At the end of it all, they sit back and consider everything I have told them and then give me their worldly-wise opinion. That they should go with Sam's version of events after all, as they couldn't follow what the hell I was talking about.

After he finishes (and he does make it all sound a bit petty and trivial – enough to make me wonder whether they'll bother helping me at all) they again sit back and ponder.

Eventually, Van Gogh says, ‘Well, this is all rather exciting for a Wednesday morning, isn't it? And you have to speak with them sometime this morning?'

‘Yes,' I say.

‘Tickety-boo. Don't mind if we listen in, do you?'

‘Not at all, old chap,' I say, somewhat sarcastically, ‘that would be spiffing.'

‘Don't be an arse, old boy,' he says, ‘there's a good chap.'

Suitably chastened, I tell them about the arrangements for calling back.

‘have-you-spo-ken-to-them-be-fore?'
asks Joshua.

Oh yes. I have spoken to them before. And I know this is, in all probability, likely to be another long, incomprehensible conversation.

Tuesday May 4
th
. Evening.

I was bone-tired by the time we got to London. The van we had stolen was pretty heavy to drive and I'd been battered and exhausted before we even set off. My head was still ringing a bit from the explosion and my knees felt like someone had taken an industrial sander to them.

Sam wasn't looking too chipper either. The flowers had set off his hay fever big time and his eyes and nose were streaming. Served him right really. If he hadn't gone on and on at me about bringing the vanity case bomb thing I wouldn't have made him sit in the back.

After the bomb had gone off in the car (leaving little more than a hole in the road, which I'm sure the police are looking into, ha, ha) we had staggered off up a side street, heading in the opposite direction to most of the general public who wanted to see what the hell was going on, me dragging the one suitcase I had managed to salvage. After about a hundred yards, just as I was thinking of jettisoning the case and hoofing it on my own, Sam said,

‘Look, over there!'

‘It's an undertaker's,' I said. ‘You reckon we should steal a coffin, bury ourselves and wait until the heat dies down?' I admit I wasn't thinking too clearly at his point.

‘No, fool,' he rasped. ‘Next door.'

A florist. A brief thought about pushing up the daisies came to mind, but Sam hissed, ‘The van. He left the van unlocked.'

We staggered over the road and sure enough, the van door was open and the keys in the lock. Hooray! So off we sped again, under the guise of Flora and Fauna's Fine Flowers and Fresh Fish Market. I wonder if the owners really are called Flora and Fauna. And is fish and flowers a normal combination? Perhaps they specialised in water lilies. Or seaweed.

When we got to Simon's flat, I dragged Sam out of the back of the van and got him inside as quickly as possible. I'm not sure what we must have looked like at that point, both fairly banged up and me still wearing the tramp's coat to keep off the worst of the rain as I hunted around the garden for the flowerpot that Simon left his spare door key in. I then raided Simon's cupboards and got us both patched up a little bit, though my first aid skills leave a lot to be desired. We looked like extras from a budget version of
The Mummy
that wouldn't make the final cut.

Having found some fresh clothes and dabbed at the worst of the still-bleeding wounds, I decided I couldn't put off phoning my sponsors any longer. Sam had already hooked up the phone to the answerphone so we could record whatever was said.

I braced myself.

I dialled the number that Sam had written down from the map and waited tensely while it rang. Eventually, after about twenty rings, it was picked up.

‘What to do you want?' asked a sinister, rasping voice.

‘It's me,' I answered. ‘Mike Rant.'

‘What to do you want?' asked a sinister, rasping voice.

‘I got your message,' I said.

‘What to do you want?' asked a sinister, rasping voice.

‘Look, I've called you,' I said in my most exasperated, I'm-not-going-to-be-pissed-around-by-you-people-any-more voice, ‘like I was told to on the information you sent me. Why don't you tell me what I want? I mean, what's the big deal here? And this better be good!'

There was a long silence.

Eventually he said, somewhat sheepishly, ‘Well, I can recommend the vegetarian and the pepperoni. They come with free garlic bread.'

‘WHAT?' I bellowed. ‘What is this bullshit?'

‘Well, how about a four seasons?' he said in a panicky voice. ‘You get a free bottle of cola with that. And I can throw in some dips.'

Sam was looking at me quizzically, and I covered the phone to tell him what had been said so far. ‘Is it some kind of code?' I whispered.

I held the phone to his ear and he quickly ascertained that we had called the wrong number and this was in fact Sergio's takeaway pizza parlour. Luckily and by sheer coincidence they were only a few miles away, so he apologised for his excitable friend, reassured the pizza guy that we weren't mystery shoppers and ordered our supper while he was on the line.

‘Forty minutes. So, that four must be a three, try again.'

I dialled the new number.

Ringing.

Then, ‘Hello?'

‘Hello?' I said, ‘This isn't a pizza delivery parlour, is it?'

‘Is this being kind of joke? I am not finding funny. Who is this please?' Definitely a thickly accented voice. European somewhere but beyond that I would have been guessing. And as you should know by now, precision and care are my middle names.

‘Who is this?' I asked.

There was a pause. ‘I wonder if maybe, arse you calling about the job?'

‘I may be.' I said. ‘Would it be possible to speak to my wife?'

He sounded positively jolly at that. ‘So it is you!'

‘Who?' I asked, somewhat coyly.

‘It is being okay,' he said, so chummily he could have been talking to a long lost cousin. ‘I knows who you are, but you are not knowing who it is I am, and I am thinking this is probably best for the moment and perhaps always. You will simply be doing as you are told if you are knowing what is in best interests of yourself, and also those of your wife and your child.'

‘Ask him who they want you to kill,' whispered Sam.

I shushed him with my hand.

‘Look, there's been a mistake. I think you have the wrong man. The gun and the money were delivered to me by mistake and—'

‘I am already being aware of some misunderstandment. Do not undermisestimating me. We are knowing this are some problems with deliveries in your area.'

‘Then why…' A cog slowly turned and clunked into place in my head. ‘Wait a minute. You said child. My wife and child. You've definitely got the wrong man. I don't even have a child – who the hell have you got there with you?'

‘Is your wife and child. Mrs Rant. This is being the voice of the Mr Rant, is not?'

‘Look, let me speak to this woman that you think is my wife. I'm sure we can clear this all up quite quickly if—'

‘Waiting please.'

There was a long pause, then lots of shouting and ouching and banging about. The ouching didn't seem to be coming from a woman.
Oh my God, that's my girl, alright,
I thought.

And then Anna came on the phone.

‘You effing bastard,' she said, fairly sweetly under the circumstances I thought. ‘What the eff have you bloody well gone and done now you moron, you better hope these effers kill you before I get my hands on you, you effwit, and I'll tell you something for nothing – you're going to have to find the money that I'll lose from missing work, you wankpot. They wouldn't even let me phone in sick. Can you call them and say we've had some kind of family emergency, that there's a problem at home? They're bound to believe that, most of them have met you.'

‘Anna…darling…dearest…my sweet,' this sentence actually took a lot longer to get out than that but it did eventually make her pause for breath.

‘Don't call me your sweet, tosser. What do you want?'

‘Well firstly I wanted to know if you're alright.'

‘Yes, no thanks to you. And if you—'

‘What about the house?'

‘You bastard! Is that all you can think about? The house?'

‘No, it's not that. Have they hurt you, I mean. There was blood everywhere. What did they do to you?'

‘Not a lot. Most of the blood came from them. Stephan tried to gag me and I bit one of his fingers. The whole thing just came off in my mouth, it was disgusting. Oh, and I stabbed Giorgio in the bum with that fancy corkscrew your mother gave us last Christmas. I knew we'd find a use for it somehow.'

‘Stephan and Giorgio? Nice to know you're all on first name terms'

‘Now don't get jealous. They're not a bad lot really. Stephan wants to be an actor but apart from that he seems okay.'

‘They're not a bad lot really? What, as psychopathic killers and kidnappers go?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, they have kidnapped you, haven't they? Or are you just off on some kind of New Age retreat? Purging yourself by sticking corkscrews up each other's bumholes?'

‘It wasn't in his bumhole; it was in the fleshy bit.'

(‘What is being bumhole please,' I heard a voice ask in the background.)

‘Well excuse me, I stand corrected. Oh and did they mention? They want me to off someone for them.'

‘Off someone?'

‘Kill them. Dead. Shoot them.'

That made her pause briefly. ‘No,' she said eventually. ‘You're making it up.'