Ammunition

24

McDonald felt like shite warmed over. He’d come to at the foot of his bed, still in his clothes.

Sort of.

His jeans were round his ankles, and he vaguely remembered bringing some babe home and… oh, Jesus, buying dodgy chicken from some street vendor, muttered:

‘Memo to dumb-arse self, NEVER… like never, buy stuff from these guys, and Christ, never eat the crap.’

Judging by the pool of congealed vomit, near his head, he’d eaten it… some anyway, as he spotted some green-looking meat with thin bones near the door, unless he’d offed the woman.

The way he was acting these days, fuck, anything was possible. He pulled his jeans off and then had to throw up, still on the floor, said:

‘Nice… real class, wouldn’t Mum be proud now.’

He crawled on his belly to the press near the bed, ripped open the door, and thank fuck, the silver wrap was still there. He managed to organize a line, spilling white powder like dandruff, due to his shaking hands, and got a line or four done, if badly, kept saying:

‘So spill freely, we can inhale that later, just get the bastard thing into your system.’ Maybe being still half drunk helped, but the coke hit quick and the ice down his neck was a sign of better things to come. He lay on his back with a sigh of relief, vomit still on his chin, did he care?

Like fuck.

Shouted weakly:

‘I love nose candy.’

And he did.

Whether it loved him was a whole other metaphysical gig he wasn’t prepared to go into.

Ten minutes later, he did a few more, keep the am, lines of communication open, he was laughing intermittently now, knew it couldn’t be a healthy sign. AND AS COKE DICTATES, SOMETHING MAD, he went into his living room, which looked like the wreck of the Hesperus, rooted under some seat covers, and grabbed his newest possession.

A Makarov 9mm automatic, he’d bought it for what… ninety quid, from a Russkie he’d been drinking with, in some dive off the Railton Road. Ivan had told him it was the preferred weapon of the Eastern bloc agents.

Yada, yada, what the fuck ever, but did it work?

He’d meant to test it on the whore but kept getting wasted and forgetting.

The coke hit another level, of almost euphoria, and he said:

‘Happiness is a warm gun.’

Fucking Beatles, yeah. Even of Paul had his troubles, the wife having legged it.

Did he have any Beatles shit?

The phone rang, and he nearly shot himself in the foot, barely got his finger away from the release.

Picked up, it was Falls, and it flashed across his fevered brain, get her over, give her one, and then she told him:

He forgot all about the Beatles.

He was fucked, more so that McCartney and like bollocks, he never got to have a wife who could leg it.

Tears were running down his face. They were going to arrest him.

Him.

Once, the brightest star in the Met.

The Super had said so.

David Grey, on his album, had whined:

Something about where’d it all go wrong?

Ah, sweet Jesus.

He pleaded:

‘Falls, Liz, yeah, it’s Liz, right… what should I do, what can I do?’

He wanted her to save him, was that so damn hard?

There was a pause, and then she said:

‘Run’

He thought it must be the dope, he had music references littered all over his head. Wasn’t ‘Run,’ the title of that Snow Patrol song?

Falls gulping the dregs of her double had the mobile slightly down from her ear, but she still heard the sound of the shot.

She would hear it for the rest of her life.