Pay Dirt

SEVENTEEN

On Friday afternoon Trigg said, ‘What do you mean, too expensive? Don’t you kids get pocket-money any more?’

The kid was about seventeen. He wore a prefect’s uniform. His name was Wayne and he was Trigg’s main supplier at the high school. ‘I’m just telling you what they tell me,’ he said. ‘The speed’s too expensive, so’s the dope.’

‘In my day kids had paper rounds, they mowed lawns, washed cars. Too fucking slack. These days if they’re not hanging around the mall they’re in Mooney’s-’

Trigg broke off. If the kids were in Mooney’s playing the pinball machines, how come Mooney kept holding out on the seven hundred and fifty bucks he still owed? Fucking everyone in Goyder was welshing on their debts.

‘Fucking slack,’ he repeated.

Wayne drank from the Southwark stubbie that Trigg had given him. He let Trigg rave on. The fact that Trigg was bent didn’t mean that he wasn’t like a parent when it came to what kids did these days. Half smiling at Trigg, Wayne said, ‘Some kids are doing all right money-wise. The ones with a few dope plants. They charge less than you do.’

Trigg closed his eyes. It just wasn’t worth the hassle. By the time he’d paid Wayne and the others, and allowed subcontractors like Tobin some leeway on what they owed him, he never had enough to meet the interest payment on his Mesic debt. He would have to start coming down hard on a few people.

‘So if that’s all…’ Wayne said, putting down the stubbie and retrieving his satchel from behind the door.

Trigg attempted a smile. ‘You’re in a big hurry. Why don’t you stay a bit longer?’

Wayne knew what it was about and his face shut down. He swung the satchel at the level of his knees. ‘I have to get home.’

Trigg patted the two-seater couch. ‘Just ten minutes.’

Wayne took charge. He dropped the satchel on the floor again and sat next to Trigg. He trailed his fingers absorbedly over Trigg’s knee.

‘You’ve had a haircut,’ Trigg said.

Wayne shrugged. He kept up the movements of his hand.

‘I suppose your girlfriend likes it?’

‘Now, now, Raymond,’ Wayne said. With the subdued light, the closeness, and the choked breathing, the air in the room was charged and avid. ‘It hurt me last time,’ he said.

‘Oh, babe, you should’ve told me. We’ll do it another way.’

Ten minutes later Wayne said, ‘Ten minutes,’ and he was out of Trigg’s house within sixty seconds.

Trigg made his phone calls then. He felt clammy. He picked at his clothing as he talked.

‘Mooney?’ he said. ‘You’re not getting any younger.’

‘I can give you a couple of hundred,’ Mooney said apologetically.

‘What do you do there, anyhow?’ Trigg demanded. ‘Let the kids play the machines for free?’

He cut the connection and dialled a different number. ‘It’s Trigg. You’re not getting any younger.’

The voice on the other end seemed to come through a mouthful of food. There were chewing noises and then a clearing cough. ‘You’ve got me. You might as well repossess the car.’

Repossess the car? Jesus fucking Christ, Trigg thought, no one’s buying cars to begin with. ‘I’d hate to leave you without wheels,’ he said. ‘What say I come back a bit with the interest? Could you pay me, oh, a thousand by next month?’

‘No good, sorry. The bank’s taken my cheque book away. They’re letting me stay on because they can’t sell the farm. But they’ve seized me new plough, the wife’s microwave-’

Trigg cut the connection. He was about to dial again but he felt fouled underneath and went into the bathroom, stripped off, and had a shower.

It was five o’clock. He changed into clean moleskins, checked shirt, a khaki tie decorated with the wool symbol, and a kid’s sports coat bought in Myer’s, and returned to the Trigg Motors showroom. His day wasn’t made any better by seeing the wrecked LTD on a trailer at the back of the lot. He walked across to the pumps. Sergeant King’s kid was slipping a foil packet to a couple of railways apprentices driving a panel van. He stood back till the transaction was over, then came closer. ‘I’m getting a new shipment in tonight.’

‘I’ve still got half the last one,’ the King kid said.

‘Not you as well?’ said Trigg in exasperation.

Just then a school bus pulled in for diesel on its way back from a run through the surrounding farmland. Trigg turned away in irritation and went into the showroom. Liz was packing up to go home. Trigg checked the time: five-thirty. He sighed and went into his office, wanting badly to crack someone’s skull open.

He picked up the phone, flipped open the rolodex, and dialled. ‘This is Ray Trigg. Is Tub Venables still there?’

‘Just leaving work now.’

‘Ask him to pop in and see me first, will you?’

Trigg hung up and sat down in the chair behind his desk. It was fully ergonomic, with levers for raising, lowering, tilting. Coasters on the bottom. Lower-back support that followed you as you moved. In this chair, Trigg sat high behind his desk. The best six hundred bucks he’d ever spent.

A trick of the light illuminated Tub Venables as he appeared at the Steelgard gate and looked both ways before crossing the road. Trigg watched the fat driver approach, noting the body language. Scared shitless. A useless bit of useless blubber, all piss and wind.

Trigg knocked on the glass. Venables started, looked even more scared, and came around the back way. Trigg waited. A few seconds later, there was a knock on the door.

‘Don’t fucking stand out there,’ Trigg yelled.

Venables came in. He shut the office door behind him and stood as if fearful of the vast stretch of carpet separating him from Trigg’s desk.

‘Come closer, old son.’

Venables advanced across the carpet, taking small steps. He stopped at the desk’s edge. ‘Look, I know-’

‘Do you, now? So why give me a hard time? You think I haven’t got better things to do than chase up welshers all the time?’

‘It’s not easy. My daughter’s braces-’

‘Plenty of kids lead fulfilled lives with buck teeth. But go on, let’s hear the rest. I need a good laugh.’

‘The granny flat’s working out more than I thought. At least five thousand more.’

‘Shove the old bitch in a nursing home.’

‘So I haven’t got the thousand I owe you,’ Venables concluded.

‘What I don’t like,’ Trigg said, ‘is fucking cowardice. You’ve been avoiding me. You get your mates to tank up your van, I never see you, you must go in and out of work through the back door, you’re never in the pub.’

‘The wife-’

‘The wife’s broken your balls,’ Trigg said. He stood up. ‘I want you to come with me.’

‘Pardon?’

Trigg rounded his desk and made for the door. ‘Come with me.’

He led the way out of the office and across the used-car lot. He tapped his knuckles on the bonnet of a newish Honda Legend. There was another shipment coming in tonight, one Merc, one Saab. Why the fuck they couldn’t send him Corollas or Commodores, he didn’t know.

‘In here,’ he said.

They entered the service bay, a long, low structure that smelt of transmission fluid, grease and touch-up paint. Happy Whelan was there, and Venables fell apart. ‘Give us a chance,’ he said.

Trigg ignored him. ‘Hap,’ he said.

Happy Whelan had an undertaker’s face on a massive, bandy-legged, topheavy body. His movements were slow, his mind was slow, but he could conceal rust patches and pack noisy differentials like a pro, and once started on something he was hard to stop. ‘Yeah?’ he said.

‘Let’s see if your new mallet’s got any bounce in it.’

‘Say again?’

‘Bring Tub over here,’ Trigg said, ‘and we’ll do some panel beating on him.’

Happy grabbed Venables by the upper arms and pushed him to where Trigg was standing next to the benches and wall-mounted tools at the rear of the shed. ‘Place his thumb down there,’ Trigg said, pointing at the top of the bench.

The front of Venables’s trousers were wet. He didn’t speak, just closed his eyes and swayed a little.

When the blow came he opened them, and groaned and went limp. Happy held him up. ‘Not much of a bounce,’ Trigg said, looking in mock surprise at the head of the mallet. He dropped it on the floor, its steel head striking a gouge in the cement, and reached for Venables’s hand. ‘You’re going to have a nasty black nail there soon, old son.’

Venables was moaning, looking sick. Trigg stroked the back of the injured hand, letting the tips of his fingers brush across the thumb nail. Blood was welling under the nail. ‘The pressure’s building up,’ Trigg said. ‘We should do something about that. Hap, put Mr Venables’s thumb in the vice. Not too tight.’

‘No,’ Venables said. He was helpless and rubbery on his feet.

Trigg waited until the thumb was ready, then took a Stanley knife down from its bracket on the wall of tools. It had a sharp, pointed blade. Happy used it for trimming upholstery.

‘Your poor thumb,’ he said, and he bent over it and began to pick a hole in the centre of the nail. Venables went white but watched, fascinated. In fact, Trigg was doing him a favour, but it all looked like the end to Venables.

Suddenly the blade cut through to the blood. It spurted out, then beaded, and Trigg said, ‘Now, isn’t that better?’

‘You bastard.’

‘One grand, this time tomorrow, when you bring the van in for servicing.’

‘I haven’t got it. I’ll pay you some other way, anything you like, but I haven’t got it in cash.’

Trigg began to push Venables out of the shed in a series of bitter shoves. ‘You might live to regret that offer. Bugger off out of here.’

Then he stopped. A car transporter was outside, jutting half across the street as it backed in, the reversing signal beeping. The sight unhinged him, bringing back the pain. A Saab and a Mercedes, both newish, both black. Not only didn’t the locals buy expensive models any more, they didn’t buy black ones, not where the roads are dusty three-quarters of the year and muddy the rest of the time. And another batch of pills and videos that no one wanted.