Stiffed (8 page)

I trail after him.
  ‘We’re just dumping them, okay; burning everything else.’

‘They’re evidence.’

‘They’re people.’

‘Bad people.’

‘It doesn’t matter.  We’re not burning them.’

Paavo pulls Junior forward
across the bed of the van, then flips him up onto his shoulder and starts to head back to the mattress.

‘They’re wrapped in your sheets,
’ he says.

‘I know,
I know, but we can’t.  She’ll need to be able to bury him.’  I can’t get the image of Denise in the diner out of my head.  It’s a body in a sheet to us, but it’s a loved one to her.  ‘We’re just dumping the bodies.  Nobody will be able to connect them to my house.’

‘DNA.’

‘Possibly, but why should they think that the bodies were in my house in the first place?’

Paavo shakes his head and moves to one side,
placing Junior against a wall.  He clearly thinks that I’ve lost the plot.  On a balance between avoiding twenty years of prison and humaneness, avoidance wins hands down.  Nevertheless, I still can’t bring myself to burn the bodies.

‘It’ll be you going to prison,
’ he warns.  He heads to Marino and points at the mummy’s legs.

Reluctantly Jason picks them
up.  ‘You’re frigging nuts, Tadhg,’ he says, wheezing with the strain.  ‘Goddamn certifiable.’

I don’t disagree with him. 
It’s the logical thing to do, but somehow they’re still people, not simply bodies.  They deserve some level of dignity in death.

They drop Marino
down next to Junior.

I uncap the petrol canister, attach the nozzle and soak the bed, mattress and clothes.
  Once I’m finished I throw the empty canister on top.

‘
Have you got the matches, Jason?’

Jason looks at Paavo and then back at me.

‘No.’

‘I told you to get them at John Philips’.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘I did.  I said I’d
get the canister and the gas and you were to get the matches.  It would have looked suspicious if I’d bought them.’

‘Don’t try and blame me.  I …’

‘You stupid fat fuck!’ I explode, unable to help myself.  ‘I gave you one lousy job, but you were too busy rushing to stuff your fat face.  For fuck’s sake!’

‘Here.’  Paavo throws Jason Marino’s trousers.  ‘Use
the cigarette lighter.’

‘What?’ Jason says, angry at the exchange.

‘In the van,’ Paavo explains.

‘Right.’
  Jason disappears out of the mill to the van.

Paavo wanders off to one side,
staring at the old ruins, lost in his own thoughts, probably wondering why he got out of bed to turn up at my house at five o’clock in the morning to supposedly move a mattress.

A minute later and Jason is half waddling, half running
across the jumbled bricks, his right hand flailing Marino’s burning trousers.  The flame is bright and intense and is in danger of engulfing him.

‘Drop them!’ I yell at him.

He doesn’t seem to hear.

‘Jason.  Drop the fucking trousers!’

Something seems to register and he flings the trousers to the ground.  Paavo picks them up using the end of a stick and throws them onto the mattress.  There’s a whoosh, a brief fireball jumping up, and the pile bursts into dancing flames several feet high.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask Jason.

‘Fine.’  He holds up his unscathed hands.

‘And you think I’m certifiable,’ I say to him. 

His hand might be okay, but I don’t have the heart to tell him his eyebrows are singed to practically nothing.

We stand and watch the flames, making sure that the whole lot
catches fire.  The sight is mesmerizing, a constantly shifting pattern of oranges.  Thick black smoke rises into the air and the metal springs of the mattress slowly become visible.

I feel like a great weight has been lifted from my
shoulders.  At least we’ve managed to complete one task without too much mishap.  The next step is to negotiate with Redneck.  We slowly shuffle back towards the van.

4

Any time things appear to be going better,
something has been overlooked

As we near the vehicle a black SUV pulls to a stop a few yards away.  A man crowned in a large, black cowboy hat exits.  He’s wearing a fancy blue shirt with silver collar tips and a leather string tie.  What catches our eye though is the sub-machine gun clutched in his right hand.

Fuck
.

‘Hello
, boys,’ he says with a Southern, mid-East accent.  ‘Going somewhere?’

‘Home,’ I manage to say.
This morning just keeps getting better and better.  As soon as we stumble through one situation, a worse one replaces it.  It’s the day that refuses to stop giving.

‘I don’t think so.  Now I want you boys to take your weapons and place them on the ground real slow.  This thing has a hair trigger and spits out six hundred bullets a minute.  It’ll fill you so full of holes
the worms will use you as a log flume ride.’

Paavo
and I stay stationary.  Jason pats his pockets and then shrugs.  The Raptor is back in his garage.  Not that it would have been of any use if he’d been carrying it.

‘I’m warning you.  Drop your weapons.’

‘We don’t have any weapons,’ I say, feeling like an idiot.  We thought we were getting ourselves back on track.  It hadn’t occurred to us that Redneck’s associates might be out looking for us.  At least, I’m assuming he’s one of Redneck’s associates.

Cowboy
laughs and shakes his head.  ‘Fucking amateurs.  And nobody’s too fat to kidnap, Fat Boy,’ he says, pointing at Jason’s t-shirt.  ‘Now, back up the way you came.  And don’t even think of trying to flee.  Not unless you think you can dodge ten bullets a second.’

We shuffle backwards into the mill, stumbling over the rough ground.  Cowboy circles
around us and stares at the blazing fire.

‘What’
s cooking?’

‘A mattress, a bed frame and some old clothes.’
 

‘Why?’

‘To get rid of them.  They were old.’

‘And what are they?’ He asks, pointing to the two mummies lying to one side.

‘More sheets.’

He circles
back round, keeping the gun trained on us, and approaches Marino and Junior.

‘It looks like two bodies to me, boys.’

‘I can see how they might look like that.’

‘You saying they ain’t?’

‘No.’

‘I thoug
ht not.  It looks to me like you were dumping two bodies and burning other evidence.  For a bunch of amateurs that’s mighty intriguing.  Who are they?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’  He laughs.  ‘You’re in the habit of dumping the bodies of people you don’t know?’

‘We found them in my house.  We thought the police might … well, you know, think we killed them.’

‘Let me guess, Kathy’s house?’

I stay silent. 

‘Sounds like she’s been a busy girl.  First she steals a million dollars, now she’s killing folk.  I guess we’d all better go and have a little chat with Miss Kathy back at the ranch.’

Cowboy
clearly is one of Redneck’s associates.

‘What I want you to do
boys, is put the bodies back in the van.’

None of us move.

‘That wasn’t a request.  Unless you want to join them.’

We shuffle forward.

Paavo pulls up Junior to his feet, tips him over his shoulder and heads to the van.  I grab the shoulders of Marino and Jason lifts up his legs.  We half carry him, half drag him to the van.  We lift him up and push him in.

‘What’s in the boxes?’ Cowboy asks.

I want to say junk, but settle on: ‘Stuff.’

‘Get it out.’

‘No, no,’ Jason says, arms flapping.  ‘They’re collectibles.’ 

Cowboy chuckles.
  ‘It’s junk.  Get it out and put it on the fire.’

‘
I’ll get it out, but I’m not putting it on the fire,’ Jason negotiates.

‘Fine.
  Just get rid of it.’

‘But they’re collectibles!’

‘Get them out of the van, Fat Boy,’ Cowboy says tetchily, his temper fraying, ‘unless you want to be wrapped in a sheet to join your two friends there.  Fuck knows what’s in them.  I’m not having him,’ he points the gun at Paavo, ‘thinking this is an episode of the A-team, making a weapon out of whatever shit you’ve got there.’

Reluctantly Jason pulls the boxes from the van and places them carefully to one side.

Cowboy motions at Paavo.  ‘Now, you, get in.’

‘I’m the driver,’ Paavo says.

‘Not now, you’re not.  Get in.’

Reluctantly Paavo steps up into the van.  Cowboy shuts the door, locking him in.

‘Fat Boy, you’re driving.  Red, you’re going to follow in the jeep.’

‘I don’t drive,’ I say.
  ‘I’ll go in the back, Paavo can drive.’ 

I really don’
t want to get behind the wheel of that SUV.  I can already feel my blood pressure rising and the edgy tingle of an emerging panic attack.

‘Paavo?
  What kind of a stupid name is that?  No, no, you drive.  He looks like a sneaky bastard to me.’

‘I don’t drive,’ I repeat.

‘Son, everybody drives.  Just get in the fucking jeep and follow us.’

‘I can’t.’

There’s a loud rattling noise as a spray of bullets clatters into the ground at my feet sending up a shower of dirt and brick dust.

FFFUUUUU
UUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKK!

HOLY SHIT!

I think I might have more than lubricated my cheeks.  I think that might be a full nappy load.

My heart is pumping blood like there’s no tomorrow. 
If he aims that gun at me, and not the ground, there won’t be.

‘You were saying?’ Cowboy says laconically.

‘Okay, okay, I’ll drive the freaking jeep.’

I shuffle over to the
black hunk of death on wheels.  The keys are in the ignition.

‘Just follow us, okay,’ Cowboy says.  ‘
And don’t try anything stupid, like you did with that other fucker.  I saw that shit you did with the emergency stop.  Caused fucking mayhem.’

Shit.  Cowboy must have been following Barry White, following us.  That’s how he found us.  He probably lost us
, then decided to check out the smoke signals in the middle of nowhere.  We might as well have put up a two thousand feet high arrow with ‘amateur idiots are here’ painted on it.

‘You try anything stupid and Fat B
oy here is going to be losing a lot of weight.  Fast.’

I climb in and turn the ignition.  I’m that tense that if you hit me with a hammer I’d probably twang a middle C. 

I really, really don’t want to do this.  I’d sooner cut the sheets off of Junior and search his pockets.  Fuck it, I’d be prepared to twirl him round a dance floor in a foxtrot.

I still have nightmares about the ac
cident.  The day had started well.  We’d headed out of Denver climbing up into the Rockies.  We were going to visit the continental divide, the line across America where water on one side drains to the Atlantic and on the other to the Pacific.  We were snaking up a pass when a large pick-up truck came careening round a corner on the wrong side of the road.  Instinctively, I swerved to avoid a collision and we smashed through a barrier and flew off down the Pacific side of the divide into a ravine.

The passenger side of the car wrapped itself around a thick trunked pine
, then plunged thirty feet to the ground.  Both of my parents were crushed to death with the impact.  There one minute, gone the next.

I was pulled from the
car with barely a scratch or bruise.

The police concluded that the crash
had been caused by the other driver.  That I’d acted instinctively, but with fatal consequences.

Faced with a split-
second decision, I’d taken the wrong one – launching off into the great abyss. 

I never want to have to make such a decision again. 
Get it wrong and people end up dead.

Of course, people could end
up dead right now.  Cowboy, Redneck and Barry White all seem quite happy to kill anyone who gets in their way in their quest to recover a million dollars. 

That doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to drive the damn jeep.

The van starts to head back towards the main road.  I put the jeep in drive and set off after it, my hands gripping the steering wheel so tight I feel they might meld with it.  Heaven knows what’s in store for us when we arrive.  I just hope Kate’s got the good sense to tell them where the money is.

* * *

Every pore of my body has been open for the last ten minutes and I’m a sweaty mess, my shirt sopping.  The journey has been in full IMAX mode, everything amplified and overwhelming.  It’s been all too real, but I can’t really remember any of it.  It’s as if the journey is producing so much sensory overload that my brain is refusing to take most of it in. 

I recognize
, however, that we’re taking a different route back into Carrick Springs, avoiding the possible traffic chaos we caused earlier.  Running back into Barry White and his sister would not be good right now.  It wouldn’t be good at any time; the man makes Cowboy look like a pussycat.

I
stop at a set of traffic lights and rest my head on the steering wheel.  The van is on the far side of the crossing, its back doors dancing into the distance.  There’s no way I’m going to jump a red light to stay in contact.  That’s how accidents happen; how people end up dying.  Jason was just going to have to slow down or pull over to let me catch up.  I don’t care.  There’s a moral responsibility at play.  Paavo might be willing to risk innocent peoples’ lives by causing traffic chaos, but I’m not.  Well, not unless you count Jason’s and Paavo’s lives, but I reckon they’ll be okay. 

As long as I catch them up.

A couple of horns blare behind me.  I glance up and
see that the lights have changed to green. I set off again, aware that I’m driving like a cautious old lady, but I don’t care.  Cautious is good.  Cautious is safe.  Vehicles are streaming round me like frustrated racing cars. 

I spot Paavo’s van parked at the front of a row of motel rooms. 
It’s been reversed in so its back doors are facing the building.  I turn off the road and head to park alongside the van. Cowboy steps out the passenger door and watches me approach. 

My
mind goes blank.  I know I’m travelling forward, but it feels like I’m sitting in a bubble of water.  I know I need to do something, but I’ve no idea what.  The world has become tunneled and all I can think is FFFFUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKK.

Cowboy is getting closer. 

And closer. 

He’s starting to step backwards and to raise the sub-machine gun.  I’m almost on top of him before I realize where I am and what I’m doing.  The world transforms into slow motion and cognitive overload.

I slam my foot on the brake.  I know exactly how the next few moments are going to unfold.  I am back on the mountain, crashing through the barrier, my foot on a brake pedal that no longer works; the wheels unable to grip thin air.

I can see the white’s of Cowboy’s eyes, then he folds over the hood of the SUV.  The front wheels hit t
he curb and mount it.  The jeep stops two feet from the wall of the motel.  Cowboy continues, however, smacking into the grey concrete like a bad guy in a Marvel comic, the gun falling from his grip.  His hat follows it down, followed by his limp body.

FUCK!

I told the stubborn gobshite that I shouldn’t be driving.  That I couldn’t drive.  Why don’t people listen?  I knew this would happen.  Put me behind a wheel of a vehicle and I
will
kill someone.

My head drops onto the steering wheel with a thud.  I’ve become spineless, my neck rubber.
  Exhaustion washes over me; all I want to do is to crawl into a bed and sleep.

Fat chance.
 

I’ve just burnt my
Goddamn bed!

The world seems to recede
and I feel strangely disembodied.

I’m not sure how long
I’ve been in that suspended state – neither unconscious nor fully awake – when there’s a frantic knocking on the side window.

I crack my right eye open and stare at
Cowboy’s aggrieved face.  His hat is back on his head, but skewed to one side giving him a slightly comic look.  To say he looks pissed off would be the understatement of the year.  He looks like he wants to rip off one of my legs then beat me to death with it.

He yanks open the door, pulls me out with one hand and swings me round hard into the side of the van.  The sub-machine gun is jammed under my chin, pushing my head back so the only
thing I can see is the underside of my cap.