Running Stupid: (Mystery Series) (13 page)

Matthew took the money with a smile – his head still lowered – and then left the shop. He paused outside, cursing himself for forgetting to buy a drink. Not only was his thirst in dire need of quenching, but he needed something to wash down the tablets.

He walked into the newsagent’s further along the street. It was a pokey shop, much smaller than the pharmacy. There was only one aisle and it was central. The shopkeeper behind the counter had a perfect view of both sides of the aisle and of the shelves across the perimeter walls.

Matthew allowed himself to be seen. He had no other choice and just hoped he wouldn’t be recognised. He picked three bottles of coke from a fridge and walked straight to the counter, placing the goods before the male shop assistant. He put his money on the counter and then stood in silence, his hands by his side.

Matthew met his gaze. It wasn’t hard to do ...  he was staring straight at him – his face a mixture of confusion, worry and fear.

“Is there a problem?” Matthew asked, his voice peppered with a worried stammer.

The man didn’t answer, his eyes drifting to a large newspaper rack by the side of the counter. Matthew’s eyes followed.

There, on the rack, blasted across the front page of a national newspaper, was a headshot of Matthew Jester. The headline was blazoned in bold across the page. It reached out and grabbed his heart with an icy dread: ‘
Ten Million Reward for the Jester’s Head
’.

He swallowed hard. “Shit,” he mumbled under his breath. He continued to read, quivering at a satirical mention of the words ‘
Dead or Alive
’. He frowned at the numerous attempts at word play on his surname, and flared with anger when he realised it was the paper themselves, along with the help of an anonymous businessman, who had put the reward forward.

Jester slowly turned his attention back towards the shopkeeper. “Listen to me–” he paused when he saw the baseball bat ruthlessly wielded in the shopkeeper’s skinny arms.

“Don’t you fucking move!” he bellowed, slowly making his way around the counter.

Jester backed up, raising his hands. “There’s no need for this,” he said. “Please put the bat down.”

“Stay put!” he demanded.

Matthew did as instructed and halted. The man slowly edged his way closer to Jester, his eyes wide, unblinking; his face a picture of determination.

“Put the bat down,” Matthew said. “There’s no need for violence.”

“Ha!” the man spat. “Coming from you? You’re a fucking murderer!”

“I didn’t kill–”

“You make me sick, you know that.”

“Oh God, not another one.” Matthew dropped his hands.

“Put your hands back up!” the shopkeeper demanded, “or I’ll knock your fucking head off.”

Matthew kept his hands by his side. He looked the shopkeeper firmly in the eye. “How old are you?” he asked.

“None of your business!” the shopkeeper was now right in front of Jester.

“Fifty, sixty?” Matthew offered. “Do you honestly think you could take me?”

The man paused, pondered, and then replied. “I’ve seen a fair share of violence in my time, son. Believe me, I can handle myself.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Matthew said lightly, stepping forward.

“I said, don’t move!”

Matthew casually walked past the bat-wielding pensioner and picked up his three bottles of coke, dropping two in his pockets and carrying the third in his hand. “It’s been a long day,” he said calmly. “I’ve met my fair share of psycho killers and carefree murderers this morning.” He looked the pensioner up and down. “You’re quite a step down.”

“If you move again, I’ll swing for you.”

Matthew paused. “You see,” he said, moving closer to the shopkeeper. “I don’t think you will. I’ve done nothing to harm you; you have no reason to hate me. I don’t think you possess the ability to swing at me.”

The man stuttered and stammered an incoherent sentence. He lowered the bat and took a step back. “I’ll be phoning the police as soon as you walk out of this door,” he said blankly. “Hurry up and get the hell out of here.”

Matthew smiled and left the shop.

Back in the car, he ripped open one of the boxes, popped four tablets out of the blister pack, threw them into his mouth, and chased them with a swig of coke.

With a discerning look back towards the newsagent’s, he started up the engine and pulled the car out of the car park and away from the row of shops. His favourite place would have to wait for another day. He needed to find his safety and serenity somewhere else.

Jester stopped the car outside a derelict and abandoned warehouse. It was in the middle of nowhere, tucked away at the back of a sparsely used industrial estate just outside of the city. The many windows were boarded up and covered in graffiti, a canvas for hundreds of graffiti artists and taggers.

Darren Whittall’s Jeep was the only car in the abandoned parking lot. Matthew Jester clambered out of the vehicle, stood and stretched. The painkillers had kicked in, and the majority of his pain remained but the tablets had dulled it to an annoying ache.

He studied the building with a touch of nostalgia. When he had left care at sixteen, Matthew Jester started living on the streets. The derelict warehouse was where he spent most of his nights, sheltering from the cold. He wasn’t on the streets long. He could thank his great luck for that, but the time he had spent there was enough to scar him for life.

The warehouse was home to crack addicts and heroin junkies. As a teenager Jester had mingled with homeless addicts, despite never touching any hard drugs himself.

He walked around to the back of the building, found the entrance – a large gap in a boarded-up window – and climbed inside. As soon as his feet touched the concrete floor he could smell the familiar stench of cannabis, stale cigarettes and excrement.

The building was huge and, due to the lack of lighting, fifty people could be inside at any time and not see each other. That was the beauty of the place. When he was homeless, he would mix with the addicts through the day and then find somewhere secluded and quiet to sleep at night-time.

As usual, it was dark and dusty inside the building. Light seeped in through gaps in the boards, sheets of pure white, but it barely penetrated the dust. Whenever Jester and his friends were settling inside the warehouse for the night, they would find a corner and light a few candles, or a battery operated lamp if they could find or steal one.  Others would see the orange glow and know that a corner or a room was occupied, and when it was occupied, it stayed occupied; no one tried to move you or steal your place. It was the warehouse unwritten code. Everyone followed it and everyone was happy.

Jester could see orange glows from two different areas. The glows were the only things visible. He couldn’t see anyone behind the orange lights.

He walked down one of the dark corridors for a dozen paces, entered a room he couldn’t see but knew was there, took two steps and sat down. He was in the corner of what used to be a small storage room when the warehouse was fully operational back in the seventies.

As soon as his backside touched concrete a nearby light flashed on. The instantaneous rush of light caught Jester unawares and he quickly closed his eyes, mumbling an incoherent curse.

“Well, I never,” a voice spoke through the light.

Jester opened his eyes slowly, shading the light with his hand. He looked at the source of the voice.

“Matthew,” the scraggly middle-aged man said. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Barry,” Jester said with a smile and a nod of recognition. “Big Baz. Nice to see you again,” he lied.

Barry Brown, or ‘Big Baz’ as he was affectionately known (despite being a feeble and skinny man), liked to think of himself as Jester’s street credibility supervisor back in the day. He looked after him from the day he left care to the day he left the streets. Barry was always by his side.

Barry was a bad influence on Jester as a teenager. He encouraged wild drinking and smoking and often took him on shoplifting expeditions. He was Jester’s peer. He may not have been the best of influences but he was all he had at the time. Jester didn’t like the man and he wasn’t sure he ever had. He had needed him at one point in his life but he had never thought fondly of him. He wasn’t the sort of man that anyone liked; he was crude, rude, smelly, scruffy, illiterate, egotistical, and always drunk or stoned.

When Jester had made his millions he thanked Barry for all his help by writing him a cheque for twenty grand.

“What are you doing back here?” Barry asked, scuttling over to Matthew like a disabled crab, carrying a lit oil lamp loosely in his left hand.

“I just needed a place to lie low,” Matthew watched as the hairy man shifted next to him. He greeted him with a friendly hug. Matthew found himself gagging at the smell of excrement that hovered around Barry’s aura.

“Are you in trouble?” Barry wanted to know.

“No,” Matthew lied. “It’s nothing. I just needed to get away.”

“So, you came back to the streets?” Barry sighed. “I never understood you, Jez,” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pouch of tobacco, laying the lit lamp down in front of them both.

Matthew looked at Barry. The passing years had crinkled his features, the alcohol had turned his nose into a beetroot coloured cabbage and the drugs had yellowed his eyes. Matthew looked down at the hands of his wrinkled old friend. They were riddled with jaundice and warts.

“I take it you never got a job then?” Jester said, hiding his sarcasm.

“No one will take me,” Barry said, rolling a cigarette. “You know how it is ... they don’t want you if you’re homeless.” He licked the ends of the paper, sealed the cigarette and stuck it in his mouth.

“Or illiterate,” Matthew chimed.

Barry frowned and shrugged. “I heard you hooked up with that singer. How are things going with her? I wouldn’t mind fucking that arse.”

Matthew cringed, the thought of Jennifer with Barry sickened him, but the images of Jennifer’s dead body flooded back into his mind and sickened him more.

“Well?” Barry said, not receiving a reply. “What’s she like in the sack?”

“Fine,” Matthew said bluntly.

Barry noticed a twinkle in Matthew’s eye, something that suggested he should keep quiet. With the burning cigarette in his mouth, he pulled a mobile phone from his pocket, tapped in a few numbers and then waited. He spoke after three rings, four words and nothing more, “Ready when you are,” before ending the call and sliding the phone back into his pocket.

“You have a mobile phone?” Matthew said.

“Just because I’m homeless doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the luxuries of life.”

“Do you consider a phone to be a luxury?”

“It’s fun,” Barry said. “Helps me keep in touch.”

“Yes,” Matthew said tiredly. “I heard. Wouldn’t it have been easier to send a text message?”

“A two-second local call is cheaper than a text message,” Barry said, taking a drag from his roll up. “I think,” he added. “I can’t use the texting thing anyway. The thing fucking pisses me off ... too fiddly,” he smiled at Matthew, exposing his set of not-so-pearly yellows.

“How did you afford that?”

“Nicked it,” Barry said bluntly. “These days, kids younger than nine are walking the streets fiddling with phones worth a few hundred quid. It’s easy pickings.”

Matthew shook his head. “Like taking candy from a baby.”

“Exactly. It’s my new job. I nick the phones from the rich kids and sell them. It’s not much but it helps me get by.”

Matthew nodded. He didn’t like being near Barry anymore. He couldn’t stand to be in his company. In the past he could put up with him, but now he found the homeless man completely disgusting.

“What did you do with the twenty grand?” Jester asked.

“Spent it.”

“On what? Twenty grand was a lot of money back then, hell, it’s a lot of money now. What did you buy?”

Barry shuffled about on the floor, finding a comfortable seating position. “Numerous things,” he said vaguely.

“Coke, heroin, booze, dope, speed, LSD,” Matthew paused. “Need I go on?”

“Okay, so I threw the money away on drugs!” Barry admitted. “I had a good year with that money, for one year I could buy what I wanted and take what I wanted. I was still living on the streets but my head was always on cloud nine. I know you wanted me to do something more… ” Barry struggled for the right word.

“Sensible?” Matthew offered.

Barry nodded and continued. “But that’s not the sort of person I am,” he said. “I like the streets and I like my drugs.”

Matthew lowered his head. “You’ll never see that sort of money again,” he said. “You need–” he paused, a loud clattering sound from the main room of the warehouse alerted his senses, a few shouts followed. Matthew turned to Barry who hadn’t flinched. “What was that?” he wanted to know.

Barry grinned a grin that sent shivers down Matthew’s spine. “That,” Barry said, pointing a grubby finger in the direction of the main room, “is my ticket to easy street.”

Jester heard footsteps, heavy and fast. “What do you mean?” he asked, starting to worry.