Wasted Years

Forty-Five

When Darren had arrived back at the shop, Rose told him he would have to wait a couple of days. Darren couldn’t believe it. No wonder private enterprise was going to the dogs if you couldn’t get hold of a shooter without going through a lot of red tape and standing in line. It was nearly as bad as signing on for the dole.

“No,” he’d said. “No way. Not two days. I want it now.”

“Fine,” Rose had said, “there’s somewhere else you can get the same, good luck to you.”

But Darren didn’t know anywhere else.

“Look,” Rose said, lowering her voice to avoid being overheard by a couple who were mulling over the purchase of a gas fire. “Look, don’t be a stupid boy. What’s so important it has to be done the next couple of days? Eh? Someone’s slipping your girl friend a little something on the side and you want to catch them at it, don’t you think he’s still going to be the day after tomorrow? There’s a post office you’ve got your eye on, a betting shop perhaps, it’ll still be there, believe me.”

Darren felt like whacking her around the head for suggesting that he was stupid, but she patted him on the arm as if he were a recalcitrant child. “You come by, oh, not too early, eleven, eleven-thirty, I’ll have it all arranged. Okay?”

Darren had grunted that it was okay.

“Good boy!” And she patted his trouser pocket with a laugh. “You keep tight hold of it now. Don’t go spending it on all the wrong things.”

Now Darren was waiting on a patch of disused land close by the canal, across from a disused warehouse from which the letters spelling out British Waterways were steadily peeling. Pigeons bunched on the sills of broken windows, launching themselves without warning into sudden flumes of flight. Darren tightened his hand around the iron bar beneath his jacket for comfort. Half-ten the meeting had been set for and his watch had passed that nearly fifteen minutes ago.

Not far from his feet the water lapped gently and above his head the moon slipped in and out of cloud. If Rose was setting him up, he’d go back to the shop and turn her face to mush.

Even as he had that thought he heard the car engine slowing on the road, the crunch of gravel as it turned towards him. A moment later he was caught in the uneven circle of dipped headlights and the car was slurring to a halt.

One man was black, the other white. Lethal weapon’s right, Darren thought with a nervous grin. Wearing short jackets and jeans, one with Converse basketball boots, the other tan deck shoes, neither of them looked that much older than he was himself.

“Got the money?” the white bloke asked.

Darren nodded: yes.

“Show.”

Darren had a fleeting thought that they were going to mug him and drive off, pitch him into the canal.

“I’ve got it,” Darren said, “you don’t have to worry.”

“Okay,” the young black man said, turning back towards the car, “we wasting our time.”

“No.” Darren lifted the roll of notes from his pocket and held it for them to see.

The men exchanged looks and made their decision. The boot of the car was unlocked and snapped open. Resting on the spare wheel was a canvas duffle bag and it was this that the black man unfastened and reached inside.

There were two guns in thick polythene, bound at each end with wide brown tape. The tape was prized loose from one end and pulled back, the weapons shaken out onto the bag.

“Pistols, right? That’s what you said?”

“Yeh.”

“Okay, this one …” lifting it for inspection “ … Browning. Like new, hardly been fired. Well good. This-PPK, nothing better. Here, cop a feel.”

Darren took first one, then the other weapon into his hand; they felt alien, cold, heavier than he’d expected. He didn’t want them to know this was his first time, but there was no way they couldn’t tell and their eyes found each other in the dark and shared their amusement at his expense. The white man lit a cigarette and the smoke from it showed light upon the air.

Darren liked the heft of the PPK in the palm of his hand. “How much?”

“Seven hundred.”

“You’re joking.”

The black one held out his hand for the pistol. “Joking,” his companion said, “not something we do a lot of.”

The PPK was replaced carefully inside its polythene sheath.

“The other one, then,” Darren said. “What was it? Browning, yeh. How much for that? That can’t be as much, right?”

The pistols were already out of sight.

“What we were told,” closing the boot, “you were serious. Must’ve been a mistake.”

“Six hundred,” Darren blurted. “I can manage six hundred.”

The white man in the deck shoes had the driver’s door open. “Six and a half.”

“Ammunition. I’m going to need …”

“Half a dozen shells.” He was back in front of Darren, holding out his hand. Behind him, the boot door popped up and the duffle bag reappeared.

“You won’t regret it,” the man said, counting out the notes. “Will he?”

“No,” his mate said, shaking six shells loose from a cardboard box. “I doubt it.”

“This is it?” Prior said, staring up at the house.

Pam Van Allen nodded. “This is it.”

A large building originally, it looked as if extra rooms and sections of roof had been added piecemeal, to accommodate unexpected children or, more likely, a live-in gardener, an undermaid. Ivy clung to the face, thick around the windows and above the polished oak door. At any one time there were a dozen ex-prisoners housed there, occasionally more.

Pam walked with Prior into a high, wide entrance hall with the original patterned tiling still on the floor. The staircase would have allowed four people to ascend it side by side without touching.

“You’re lucky, you’ve got the room at the back. There’s a really nice view.”

One of the two beds were already occupied, though not at that moment; the covers had been carelessly pulled back and there were clothes bunched on it in small piles, shirts and socks, a pair of jeans.

A transistor radio had been left playing and Pam walked over and switched it off. “See what I mean,” she said, pointing out over a ragged patchwork of allotment gardens and unclaimed land, down towards the center of the city.

But Prior had already blocked her out. He was sitting on the other bed, hunched forward, rolling himself a cigarette.

Darren had picked up the girl at Madisons. Outside, actually. She had been leaning up against the brick wall opposite the stage door of the Theatre Royal, forehead pressed down against one hand, while with the other she fumbled for a tissue inside her bag. She was wearing a blue dress with a high neck but a deep V slashed out of it that gave Darren a good view of her breasts.

I’ve seen her around somewhere, Darren thought, and as she realized he was watching her and stood away from the wall, ready to challenge him, he remembered where.

“How about,” Darren said with a grin, “a meat feast with extra cheese, garlic bread with mozzarella, and a large coke?”

“Do I know you?” the girl blinked. It wasn’t long since she’d stopped crying and her makeup had smeared.

“Delia, right?” Darren said, moving in closer. “Pizza Hut. Manageress.”

“Trainee,” Delia said, close to a smile.

“Not for long. I’ll bet.”

Aware that he was staring down the front of her dress, Delia pulled the gap together with her hand.

“How come you’re out here?” Darren said. “What’s up?”

“My boy friend’s in there dancing with somebody else, that’s what I’m doing out here.”

“Wants his head seeing to.”

“You think so.”

“I know so.”

Della blew her nose into a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. “Well, I might as well be going.”

“No,” Darren smiled, shifting his balance enough to set himself in her path. “’S’early yet. Why don’t we go over the Cafe Royal? Have a drink?”

“I’m not stopping long,” Delia said, turning on her low heels to look round the room. It reminded her of boarding houses she’d been to stay in with her parents when she was younger, Southport or Filey or places like that. It didn’t look like a room in which somebody actually lived.

“How many sugars?” Darren called from the shared kitchen.

“One,” Delia said.

Darren appeared in the doorway with a mug in either hand.

“I shall have to be going soon,” Delia said, taking one of the mugs and standing in the center of the room. Last mistake she was about to make, go over there and sit on the bed.

“’S’okay,” said Darren, “Lot to do myself tomorrow as it is. Tell you what, though …” sitting back on the bed himself“…’fore you go, you won’t believe what it is I’ve got to show you.”