The Boat House

TWENTY-NINE

Pavel checked the needle on the gauge. He was down to a quarter of a tank, and almost into the red-lined sector. The car had never let him down yet but, by God, it used up the juice.

But then this was hardly surprising, given that he was now spending about eight to twelve hours of every day on the move. The times that he didn't spend in the car, he seemed to spend in public phone booths feeding the slots from endless bags of change. Now his cash was getting low again. Not crisis-low, but low enough to nudge him into action; he knew that rock bottom was the hardest place to get up from, and he didn't want to be there again. He'd only let it happen to him once since the very beginning, and he'd pulled himself out of that by shoplifting books which he'd then messed up a little and sold as secondhand. He hadn't liked it, but he'd done it.

He shifted in the seat. A lot of the time he got sore, and his back got stiff.

But he could ignore that.

There was a gang of about half a dozen on the corner ahead. No good, but he slowed and took a closer look at them anyway. They all stared back; all of them black kids in their late teens, one or two of them with their hair in those long knitted caps that looked like overstuffed cushions. One of them broke away, and started to walk toward the car. It was a notorious part of town, and this was unlikely to be the local glee club. That didn't matter, but the numbers were too high; Pavel picked up speed and moved on.

Of course, this had been a police car… and although it had no markings, there was probably something about the make and the year and the neutral colour and the lack of any personalisation that gave off a definite signal like a lowlife's version of a pheromone. But surely, he was thinking, the effect had to be a diminishing one. As the car was roughened up more and more, its driver became rougher still. Nobody now could take a close look at the two of them together and leap to the conclusion that here was a Mister Clean in his Clean Machine. Depending on where he cruised, they'd more likely offer him sex or drugs or perhaps even the services of an underage boy… at which point they'd get a big surprise, and Pavel would wipe out however much of the night's earnings they carried.

He didn't pretend that it was any kind of justice, but it did feel better than plain thieving. Although it didn't always work as well as it might; two teeth on one side were still feeling loose after a kicking he'd received behind a small-town nightclub a couple of weeks before, and the bruises had taken most of that time to fade. But it was worth the occasional risk because the approach had the advantage of causing no official complaints, so that he continued to sail onward and stay invisible. Methods and the local territory might have changed, but there was so much here that he could recognise from his other life.

The car turned another corner. He seemed to see nothing but failed businesses and boarded up shops, with occasional empty lots as if an entire structure had been sucked into the ground and the hole quickly screened-in with sheets of ply. The plywood had been fly posted with ads for rock groups and poll tax protest meetings, and the posters had been oversprayed with layers of graffiti.

But wait.

There ahead of him, a little way on from a defunct carpet warehouse and a place that sold tiles in job lots, a young man was bending over a car that had pulled in by the side of the road. Its engine was running, and its brake lights were on. The side window was open and the young man was talking to the driver. As Pavel moved to draw in behind he saw the young man abruptly straighten and look his way, waving the driver on with a slight but definite gesture as he watched this new approaching vehicle with suspicion.

As he came level, Pavel dropped the electric window halfway. The boy stooped and peered in through the opening, still on his guard.

"How're you doing?" he said. His breath was like dogfood.

"I'm doing fine," Pavel said. "Are you in business?"

"Just hanging around."

"I need to clear my head," Pavel said. "Is there anything you could suggest?"

"Let's stop fucking about," the boy said wearily. "It's twenty a packet, take it or leave it but make it quick."

Pavel pulled out a twenty. It was his last. He glanced around before he held it out, but the rest of the street was empty.

The boy reached for the money. Pavel hit the button by his seat and the electric window rolled up, trapping the boy's hand at the wrist. The hand was filthy, with rims of dirt under the nails. The boy tried to pull back, but his wristbones were clamped tight and there was no give in the window. He screamed.

"Not so loud," Pavel said. "Now come with me."

And he let out the clutch.

The boy staggered and stumbled backward, drawn with the car as Pavel rolled along in low gear. At the next corner he turned, and pulled the boy along with him into an alleyway between two rows of buildings. The boy was cursing and trying to break the window, but he couldn't do it one handed and off balance. Under the grime, the fingers of his trapped hand had turned white.

Pavel stopped the car, and clambered across the seats to get out on the passenger side. The boy was calling him names now, many of which he'd never heard before.

Broken glass crunched underfoot on the stone cobbles. The alley was about three, no more than four metres across, and as sleazy a piece of territory as he'd ever seen. To either side were the rear yards of buildings. Some of them had been roofed over and converted into garages, although with some the walls had simply been pulled down to make a small parking area. All of the yard doors looked as if they'd seen long, hard service in some other place before ending up here; they were various styles and painted in various colours, all of them blasted and peeling. On some of them, street numbers had been daubed in a giant hand.

Pavel winced as he picked his way around the car. An open box of trash had been dumped out behind one of the buildings, and the alley was strewn with soiled disposable nappies. This was no self respecting way to make a living. The boy tried to claw at him with his free hand, and Pavel hit him once in the middle to double him over and disable him.

The boy's pockets were empty. His drugs and his money were all in his underpants. He was gasping and trying to speak, but he couldn't take a breath.

"Take it slowly," Pavel suggested. "Don't struggle for it so much, just relax."

He took the cash. He left the drugs. He opened the driver's door, and the boy swung back with it; but then Pavel reached in and lowered the window, and the boy fell back heavily to sit on the ground.

He nursed his deadened hand.

"Rub it," Pavel suggested. "When the circulation comes back, it's going to hurt quite a lot."

The boy was still trying to speak. Pavel paused before he got in behind the wheel; it seemed only courteous to give him a hearing.

Gasping like a fish, the boy finally managed to get out a few words.

"You're dead," the boy spat.

Pavel looked down at him for a moment.

"I know it," he said.

And then he got back into the car, reversed out of the alley, and drove away.