Crazy Dave’s face didn’t even twitch. He just stared. If he’d been able to move his legs I was sure he’d have put them up on his desk, sat back and chuckled.
‘Write the name down, Dave. N-U-K-A. I need to be there as of yesterday.’
He still didn’t move.
‘There are two reasons why you need to pull your finger out and get on with it. One, it’ll stop me putting the word around about how you tear the arse out of the commission so much you make more money on every job than the fuckers in the field. They wouldn’t be impressed with you, would they? They’d probably take you out of here and give that chair of yours a bit of a roll down the hill, know what I mean?
‘Two. What are the companies going to say when they discover you don’t even check that guys like Charlie have all their pistons working? Sending out cripples isn’t the finest quality control, is it? I mean, if word got out, you wouldn’t be left with much to broker, would you? And these are good times, aren’t they?’
I leaned against the wall. ‘By the way, is that your grandkid on the wall in the hallway there?’
‘A boy.’
‘Congratulations.’
The kettle clicked and I threw a teabag into the Smarties mug. ‘But that’s not to say I ain’t going to bubble you anyway, one day. Charlie shouldn’t have been on that job in the first place. He wasn’t physically capable, and you ripped him off. How much was it?’ I put the kettle down and picked up a Tetrapak of UHT milk. ‘Oh, yeah, I remember. You gave Charlie two hundred grand and kept three hundred yourself. Wasn’t that how it went?’
I looked at Dave. He wasn’t embarrassed, he was angry. He was fuming. His hands gripped the sides of his wheelchair so tightly his knuckles were white.
I squeezed the teabag with a spoon. ‘Just think, Dave, if you’d got all that money you ripped off instead of kindly donating it to Charlie’s widow you wouldn’t be living here now, eh? I bet that grandkid would be all squared away with an education trust and that girl of yours could have had a nose job. But let’s not worry about that for the moment. I’ve come all the way from sunny Switzerland to hear how you’re going to get me to Nuka.’
‘I know where Nuka is. I’m a broker, remember?’ He pushed himself away from the desk and manoeuvred his high-tech chair round it to face me. ‘You finished?’
‘Nope.’ I thought I might as well push my luck. I picked up pen and paper from the desk and started to jot down the details of my Citibank account in Virginia. ‘Let’s say twenty grand in cash on top and we’ll call it quits – for now.’
‘You know, Nick, if I could stand I would. Then I’d fucking chin you.’
He raised himself an inch or two off his seat but only to relieve the pressure on his arse or something. He held himself like that for a few seconds. Maybe he needed a fart.
‘Here’s how it is, Nick. The Gospel according to St Real.’ He sat himself down again. ‘I fucked up, got greedy and regret it. Charlie was a good guy, but I’ve paid my debt to him. Now, I’ll go this extra mile for you, but then that’s it. We’re all square. I want you out of my way. You’ll always be trouble.’
‘I like being around you, Dave.’ I tested the brew: it was good. I had a bit of a weakness for UHT. ‘I like to remind you now and again of what you did to Charlie. Remind you that I could fuck up business and at the same time fuck up that head of yours. Know what I mean?’
‘You can try and fuck up whatever you want. In the short term, yes, you could do business some damage. Long term? Forget it. The blokes want work, the companies need bayonets. Supply and demand, Nick. Who gives a fuck as long as the pay cheques keep coming?
‘Besides, you’ve got more to worry about than what you’re going to do with me. I keep in touch with Hazel, you know. Loves me, she does. Last time we spoke, she sent her regards, told you not to be a stranger. All over me, she is. Seems I did more for her and Charlie than she can ever thank me for. So, giving me the name of that box-head of yours was only a tiny favour. She threw in a cell number, email address and her stepfather’s home address as a bonus. And the news that she works for Mercy Flight. I like to keep records, Nick. I get the odd one or two fuckwits coming in here and going psycho on me.
‘Now, let me see. You don’t need the brains of a bishop to work this one out. Mercy Flight’s all over the place – even in the Congo, if I remember right. What I reckon is, you want to get to her, get something to her, or get her out of there. And it seems to me that if I don’t help you you’re fucked. It’ll take you weeks trawling bars and making grovelling calls. Chances are she’ll be fucked and hanging from a tree by the time you get there. You need me.’
I looked down at him, and he looked up at me. A hint of a smile spread under his porn-star moustache. He was liking this too much. My brew didn’t taste so good now.
‘I’ve got a hundred bayonets on my books. Three are just a press of a panic button away right now. How stupid do you think I am? Try to fuck me around any more and I’ll get them to persuade you to think again. I won’t even have to pay them, just promise to push them up the pecking order.
‘Besides, that isn’t going to get you to the box-head, is it? I have what you need. I’m the broker – that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I’m in a wheelchair, not fucking retarded. Now, can we get down to business?’
There are times when you have to accept you’ve been fucked over, and this was one of them. I was still giving him the long, hard stare, but it became a long, slow nod.
‘Good. ’Bout fucking time.’ He tapped a few keys on his laptop, studied the screen, and tapped a few more. He glanced at his watch, then hit another key. The printer in the corner began to whir.
Crazy Dave wheeled himself away from the desk. He came back with two sheets of A4. ‘Here’s your e-ticket – on the house.’
I gave it a glance. It was for nine thirty that night, from Heathrow. It was just after three now. I’d have to thrash the Corsa.
He handed me the second sheet. ‘Your contact. He’ll get you most of the way. There are people working in the area, they’ll take you in. The debt’s paid. Now fuck off out of my sight.’
I folded the two sheets of paper and tucked them into my jeans pocket, then picked up my brew. I looked at it for a second, then tipped it over his head.
He yelped and his hands flew up like a pair of copulating pigeons.
I frisked his neck for the panic button. I found it, hanging like a pendant, and pulled it over his head.
‘What the fuck are you doing? You don’t realize what you’re doing.’
‘Yep, just getting ahead.’
I grabbed his right calf and started towards the door, dragging him and the wheelchair behind me. He screamed and shouted at me to stop, but I kept going.
We got to the door. Crazy Dave couldn’t hold on to his chair any longer and fell out on his arse. I dragged him through the rain towards the patio doors. He tried to squirm round so his hands could grip me, as if that was going to help.
We bounced over the ramp and through the front room, leaving a long wet trail over the laminate. Crazy Dave wasn’t saying anything. All his effort was going into trying to get himself upright.
I carried on through the front door and only let him go when we reached the Popemobile. He flailed around on the wet Tarmac, trying to pull himself along on his elbows, back towards the house.
I didn’t know why I’d done it. It was immature, gratuitous and got me nowhere – but, fuck, it put a smile back on my face.
I got into the car, wound down the window, and threw the panic button at him.
And as I drove out of Bobblestock, windscreen wipers going nineteen to the dozen, I felt that for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours my hand was back on the tiller. But it didn’t feel as good as I’d thought it would.
I had been continually putting off explaining to Silky what I was. I’d told her just before she met him that I’d been a soldier once and had done a bit of parachuting with Charlie, but that was about it. As for the promise to tell her the whole picture that I’d made myself yesterday? Deep down, I knew it was bollocks. It wouldn’t have happened. The plain fact was, I was scared she’d reject me.
She was everything I wasn’t. I came from the world she hated with a vengeance – the world of war and death, the heartless fucking over the defenceless.
As I changed down a gear to drive up Aylestone Hill, I realized I wouldn’t have to explain anything. If it all went pear-shaped, she might be seeing it at first-hand, and in real time.
