Wasted Years

Forty

Something about the Citroen DS had always rated Keith’s attention. Not that there was anything special about the performance; plenty of run-of-the-mill motors would whip you along the fast lane of the motorway in half the time. It was more the look of it, that smooth front which helped to make the whole machine seem longer than it really was. And the suspension. Keith had read up on it once, a wet afternoon going through the motoring magazines in the library on Angel Row. What had it been now? Hydrophonic? No. Hydromatic? Anyway, hydro-something, one of those, nitrogen gas and fluid, he remembered that. Like riding on air.

He’d come close to nicking one before, this great DS 23 Pallas, right-hand drive, 5-speed manual gearbox; he’d spotted it gliding off the ramp from the NCP car park at the top of Barker Gate. Practically wet himself, hadn’t he? Hung out there morning and afternoon the next five days, hoping to get close to it again. No such stinking luck.

But today, sheltering by the bus stops below the Broad Marsh from a sudden shower, he’d seen another, black with whitewall tires, queuing to get into the multi-story opposite. DS 21, fuel injection, semi-automatic. High on the top floor, sandwiched between a Fiat Uno and a Metro, that was where he found it. Smooth to the touch. Half an hour and the floor would be full, few motors driving in and out. Keith gave it a quick kiss on the roof for luck and scurried away to the stairs to wait.

All Darren could do that morning, sitting across from Keith in the West End Arcade, not to tell him to fuck off out of his life and have done with it. Keith, fussing around with the ketchup bottle, jinking little dollops of it over the inside of his sausage cob, forever trying to talk him out of it. Too risky. Too close to the last time. Too likely to end up getting caught. That was what Keith was pissing his pants about, getting sent back inside. Knowing they’d be after his arse the moment his feet hit the floor. Miserable little bastard, days like this, Darren was forced to think it served him right. Days like this he thought he should have let Keith go ahead and hang himself, no great loss to the world.

Finally, Darren had had enough. “Listen,” he’d said, grabbing Keith by the front of his jumper, “half-two, top of King Street, you be there.”

“With a motor?”

“No, what d’you think, going to give me a piggy-back, all the way to Bestwood.”

“Where you going now?” Keith had asked, almost plaintively, watching Darren heading for the exit.

“Never you mind, I’ve got things to do. Just do your side, right? And this time, don’t be late.”

One of the things Darren had to do, collect a few supplies. The assistant had been too preoccupied in trying out some new computer game to pay him much attention. Little green men who either changed into trees or else were eaten by dragons, zapped by spears.

“Hey mate!” Darren had finally called. “You work here or what?”

The name on his tag read Robert, pinned to the front of his navy blue, long-sleeved sweater. From the look on his face, Darren was more of a nuisance than anything else.

“You remember hearing about that robbery?” Darren asked, casual as you like, choosing to ignore the salesman’s indifference. “Where they all wore those Mickey Mouse masks, like, sort of disguise?”

“Oh,” the assistant said, already bored, “happens all the time.”

“Yeh? Well, you got any like that? Here?”

“Life-size masks?”

“Yes.”

Stifling a yawn, Robert wandered off, to come back some minutes later with a selection that ranged from an over-jolly Friar Tuck to Cruella De Vil. “This sort of thing?”

Darren slipped Catwoman over his close-cropped hair and adjusted it so that he could focus through the slotted eyes.

“How about guns?” Darren asked, having to shout through the mask to make himself heard.

“What kind?”

“Pistols. Something that looks pretty lifelike.”

Robert brought him a black plastic Colt.45 and a metallic gray snub-nosed.38 with NYPD in relief on the butt.

“Okay,” said Darren, taking hold of the Colt and pointing it at him. “Empty the till into one of these bags.”

“What is this? Some kind of joke? You know as well as I do that’s just a toy gun.”

Darren reversed it and slashed him hard across the face, cracking the plastic and tearing the skin alongside the eye. In seconds he was reaching over the till, loosening the cash drawer, grabbing bank notes, fives and twenties and tens, from beneath the roller clips that held them down.

The assistant called out and made a grab for Darren’s leg. Swiveling on the ball of one foot, Darren kicked him in the throat. “Like you say, Robert,” Darren said, voice muffled through his Catwoman mask, “this kind of thing happens all the time.”

When he ran past the baked potato salesman, the newspaper seller advertising Viz, the old boy playing “K-K-K-Katy” on his harmonica, back up the steps that took him towards the Playhouse and the old General Hospital, nobody as much as looked twice.

“Where the hell d’you get this?” Darren asked, throwing himself into the front seat.

“Broad Marsh, why?”

“If you wanted to advertise, wonder you didn’t hijack one of them buses with slogans all over the sides.”

“It’s a DS,” Keith said, striving for the proper respect; “Collector’s item. Give an arm and a leg for one of these.”

Darren gave him a quick flash of the Colt.45. “Let’s hope it don’t come to that,” he grinned.

The building society office was close to a cinema whose final program had been a double bill of Jerry Lewis in The Bell Boy and Elvis Presley as a half-breed American Indian in FlamingStar. Since then it had been a cut-price furniture store, a Kwik-Save supermarket, and a Fast-Fit tire center. Now it was standing empty, boarded up. Keith swung the Citroen smoothly onto the forecourt, applied the handbrake, and left the engine running. So quiet, it was like listening to a CD between the tracks

“Don’t go anywhere,” Darren said.

“Sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Keith asked, hoping the answer would be no. He was enjoying this less and less.

“After last time?” Darren laughed. He had the mask stuffed inside his zipped-up jacket, the broken handle of the toy gun poking out of his trouser belt. “Second you see me come back out that door, that’s when you move. Right?”

Nervously, Keith nodded.

There were two people queuing inside the building society, a man in plasterer’s overalls and a woman with a shopping trolley, waiting in front of a video monitor that was entertaining them with a tape loop testifying to the virtues of borrowing to your credit limit. Own a yacht. A time-share in the Scottish Highlands.

At the counter an Afro-Caribbean woman was checking that her wages had been credited to her account that month. Darren waited until she moved away and slipped into her place, circumventing the queue.

“Hey up!” said the plasterer. “Think we’re stood here for us health?”

“There is a queue, sir,” said the clerk. It was only when she looked up properly that she realized the person who had pushed to the front was wearing some kind of mask.

“All the cash you’ve got,” Darren said. “Hand it over.”

“Here!” the plasterer made a move forwards and Darren pulled the pistol from his belt and waved it in the man’s face.

“Oh, dear God!” the woman with the shopping trolley exclaimed and wavered sideways, colliding with the television set and knocking it from its stand onto the floor.

“Eunice,” Darren said, reading her name from the badge attached to the apricot uniform blouse, “don’t bother counting it, just push it through here. The lot.”

Another employee came through from the back, wondering what all the commotion was about. A quick look and they ducked back from sight.

“That’s not a real gun,” the plasterer exclaimed. “It’s only a chuffing toy!”

“Eunice,” Darren said, seizing the last bundle of fifties and stuffing them into his pocket, “anyone ever told you you’re a darling?”

Later on, giving her account to the reporter from East Midlands Today, Eunice had to giggle; the last time she’d been called darling had been by a mechanical parrot at Goose Fair. Made her jump half out of her skin it had. “D’you know,” she confided in the camera, “gave me more of a turn than what happened this afternoon.”

Keith saw Darren dart through the door and eased his foot onto the accelerator. “What on earth you wearing that for?” he asked as Darren sat there, chuckling to himself beneath the mask.

“Video cameras,” Darren said.

“What?”

Darren pulled the mask over his head and pushed it under the seat. “Video cameras. On the ceiling. Got them in that branch haven’t they?” He laughed. “What d’you reckon, I want to see myself like a fool, plastered all over every TV in the country, next edition of Crimewatch?”

Sweating more than a little, Keith bit gently into the inside of his lower lip as he tested the engine’s acceleration along a clear stretch of the ring road.

“Know what?” Darren said happily, counting the notes into his lap. “Lot more here’n I bargained for.” Reaching across, he gave Keith’s leg an enthusiastic squeeze. “Our luck holds, soon be able to buy yourself one of these.”