Not Dead Enough

102

Skunk’s phone pinged. An incoming text. He disentangled himself from a half-undressed Bethany, desperately trying to get his bearings. He’d been asleep, his body was all cramped up, he couldn’t find the fucking phone. And he had the shakes badly now.

‘Ouch!’ Beth said as he dug his hand under her thigh.

‘Trying to find me phone.’

‘Think I broke my back earlier,’ she said, then giggled.

‘You’re a dirty cow.’

He found it, on the floor in the front passenger footwell. It was a text from DC Paul Packer:

In place. u ready?

Skunk texted back:

yes

The time display showed fourteen minutes past midnight.

Awkwardly wiggling around, with Bethany complaining that he was squashing her, Skunk got his shell-suit bottoms back up. He still had his sneakers on. He gave Bethany a quick peck on the cheek. ‘See ya!’

‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’

‘Got a meeting in me office!’

‘Tell me about it!’

‘I gotta go.’

He climbed out of the car with difficulty, his body still stiff and very shaky, and stood in the dark shadow of the construction site hoarding, one hand on the car, the other on the hoarding wall. He was breathing heavily, palpitating, and thought for a moment he was going to throw up. Rivulets of sweat were guttering down his head and body. He saw Beth’s face peering out anxiously at him, caught like a ghost by the glare of a street lamp opposite.

He took a step forward and realized he was giddy. He swayed and nearly fell over, just catching the side of the car in time to steady himself. Gotta do this! he told himself. Gotta do this, hang it out a little longer, just take those steps forward, can’t screw this up, gotta do it, gotta. Gotta!

He pulled the hood of his thin cagoule up over his head, then launched himself forward. A breeze had started and the hoarding rattled a little. There were silent cars parked along both sides of the street, bathed in orange sodium glow from the street-lighting. The MG was about fifty yards ahead.

He was conscious that he was walking unsteadily. And aware that he was being watched. He didn’t know where they were, but he knew they were somewhere in this street. Probably in one of the cars or vans. He passed a black Prius. A 2CV Citroën. A dusty Mitsubishi people-carrier blurred out of focus as he reached it, then came back into focus again. The nausea was even stronger now. He felt an insect crawling on his left arm and slapped it with his hand. Then there were more insects crawling over him; he could feel their tiny, sharp feet on his skin. He patted his chest, reached around and patted his neck. Then his stomach. ‘Gerroff!’ he blurted.

In a sudden panic, he thought he had forgotten his levers kit. Had they fallen out in the car? Or had he left them in the camper?

He checked his pockets, each one in turn. No! Shite, no!

Then he checked them again. And they were there, nestling in the right-hand pocket of the cagoule, closed up in their hard, plastic casing.

Get a grip!

As he reached the rear of the MG, he was suddenly lit up with bright, white light. He heard the roar of an engine and stepped aside. Bethany hurtled past, flat out in first gear, waved, then gave him a toot.

Stupid cow! He grinned. Watched her tail lights disappear. Then, moving swiftly, feeling a little better suddenly now he was actually here, he removed the lever set from his pocket, opened the one he wanted and eased the tip into the door lock. It popped open within a few seconds. Instantly the alarm went off, a loud beeping, combined with all the lights flashing.

He stayed calm. They were not easy to nick, these cars, they had shock sensors and immobilizers. But some of the key wiring was right behind the dash. You could short it out, neutralizing the shock sensor and the immobilizer, and start the engine with just one bridge.

The interior smelled nice, all new upholstery, leather and a faint tang of a woman’s scent. He climbed in, leaving the door open, to keep the interior light on, ducked his head under the dash and immediately found what he was looking for. Two seconds later and the alarm stopped.

Then he heard a shout. A woman’s voice. Bellowing in fury.

‘HEY! THAT’S MY BLOODY CAR!’

Cleo sprinted down the street, her blood boiling. She was irritated enough that her carefully planned evening, already messed up by Roy’s unexpected trip to London, had now been totally and utterly ruined by a call-out, to recover the body of a dead wino from a bus shelter in Peacehaven. Seeing some lowlife fuckwit in a hoodie trying to steal her car, she was ready to rip his limbs off.

The car’s door slammed shut. She heard the engine turn over. The tail lights came on. Her heart was sinking. The bastard was getting away. Then just as she drew level with the Volvo parked behind it, the whole interior of the MG suddenly lit up in a bright flash, as if a massive light bulb had been switched on.

There was no bang. No sound of any explosion. It was just suddenly filled with silent, leaping flames, contained inside the cockpit. Like a light show.

She stopped, staring in numb shock, wondering for an instant if the fuckwit hoodie was just a vandal, deliberately setting it on fire. Except he was still inside the car.

Throwing herself forward, she reached the driver’s door and saw his desperate, emaciated face at the window. He seemed to be struggling with the interior handle, throwing his weight against the door, as if it were stuck, then frantically hammering on the door window with his fist, looking at her with pleading eyes. She could see his hood was on fire. And his eyebrows. And she could feel the heat now. In panic, she reached out for the door handle and pulled it. Nothing happened.

Suddenly, there were two men beside her, police officers in black boiler suits and stab jackets, a stocky one with a shaven head and a taller one with a brush cut.

‘Get back, please, lady,’ the stocky one said. He put both hands on the door handle and pulled, as the other ran around to the other side and tried that door.

Inside, the figure in the burning cagoule was turning his head frantically, his mouth twisted open in an expression of utter terror and agony, his skin blistering in front of her eyes.

‘Unlock the door! Skunk, for God’s sake unlock the door!’ the stocky one was yelling.

The figure inside mouthed something.

‘It’s my car!’ Cleo jumped forward and put her key in the lock, but it would not turn.

The policeman tried for a moment, then, giving up, he pulled out his truncheon. ‘Stand back, miss,’ he said to Cleo. ‘Stand right back!’ Then he hit the window hard, cracking it. He hit it again and the blackening glass buckled. Then he hit it again, punched it through with his fists, showering the squealing occupant, ignoring the flames that were leaping out of the window, the dense black smoke, the stinking fumes of burning plastic. Putting his hands on the window frame, he pulled frantically on the door.

It would not give.

Then, taking a deep breath, the officer leaned right in through the window, into the inferno, put his arms around the figure and somehow, with his colleague’s help now, slowly, far too slowly for the poor, squealing man, it seemed to Cleo, dragged him out through the window and laid him down on the street. All his clothes were on fire. She saw the laces of his trainers burning. He was writhing, thrashing, moaning, in the most terrible agony she had ever seen a human being experience.

‘Roll him!’ yelled Cleo, desperate to do something to help him. ‘Roll him over to get the flames out!’

Both officers knelt, nodding, and rolled him, then over again, then one more time, away from the burning car, the stocky one ignoring or oblivious to his own singed brows and burnt face.

The burning hood had partially melted into the victim’s face and head, and his shell-suit trousers had melted around his legs. Through the stench of molten plastic, Cleo suddenly caught a momentarily tantalizing smell of roasting pork, before revulsion kicked in, at the realization of what it actually was. ‘Water!’ she said, her first aid course from years ago coming back to her. ‘He needs water and he needs covering, seal the air off.’ Her eyes jumped from the terrible suffering of the man in the road to the fiercely burning interior of her car, frantically trying to think if she had anything she needed in the glove compartment or boot, not that there was much she could do about it. ‘There’s a blanket in the boot!’ she said. ‘A picnic blanket – could wrap him – need to stop the air—’

One of the officers sprinted up the road. Cleo stared down at the writhing, blackened figure. He was shaking, vibrating, as if he was plugged into an electrical socket. She was scared that he was dying. She knelt beside him. She wanted to hold his hand, to comfort him, but it looked so painfully blackened. ‘You’ll be OK,’ she said gently. ‘You’ll be OK. Help’s coming. There’s an ambulance coming! You’re going to be fine.’

He was rolling his head from side to side, his mouth open, the lips blistered, making pitiful croaking sounds.

He was just a kid. Maybe not even twenty. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked him gently.

He was barely able to focus on her.

‘You’ll be OK. You will!’

The officer came running back, holding two coats. ‘Help me wrap these around him.’

‘He’s covered in molten fabric – do you think we should try and get it off?’ she asked.

‘No, just get these around him, tight as we can.’

She heard a siren in the distance, faint at first, but rapidly getting louder. Then another. Followed by a third.

From the darkness of the interior of his Prius, the Time Billionaire watched Cleo Morey and the two police officers kneeling on the ground. He heard the sirens. A splinter of blue light skittered past his eyes. He watched the first police car arrive. Two fire engines, then a third. An ambulance.

He watched everything. He didn’t have anything else to spend his time on tonight. He was still there, watching, as dawn was breaking, and the low-loader arrived and craned the MG, its interior all blackened but the exterior looking fine, considering, out of its space and carted it away.

Suddenly the street seemed quiet. But inside his car the Time Billionaire was raging.