“What's that?”
“This,” Ronnie said.
“What?”
“The Dormobile. I was thinking when I came up: I garage this very private, know what I mean? Secluded, in Kentish Town. Nobody goes there except me. Once the garage doors were locked behind you you could kip down in this, no trouble. I could come round tomorrow and we could sort something out from there. What do you reckon?”
Ronnie and I stood by the garage door.
“I'll take a cab over to the Doll's House,” he said. “Then if anybody asks they can't prove nothing. I was just travelling between one club and another. Anyway it won't come to that.”
“Thanks again, Ronnie.”
“Forget it,” he said. “I'll be round as soon as I can with some nosh and tea and stuff.”
“Look out for yourself,” I said.
“Don't worry about me.”
Ronnie stepped through the inset door and was gone. I bolted the door behind him and went back to the Dormobile.
Sheila had made pillows out of a couple of my sweaters and laid out two blankets apiece: she'd been bright enough to pack one entire suitcase with bedding. At least we weren't going to freeze to death.
We both lay down on our respective bench seats. In the darkness I stretched my arm across the aisle and found Sheila's hand and squeezed it in my own hand. Neither of us said anything. I could hear Timmy's breathing coming from the carry-cot in the aisle between us.
He'd never woken up once.
Ronnie didn't show the next day.
I started getting worried about midday. Timmy was crying for his dinner. Sheila had stuffed some chocolate in her pocket the night before and Timmy had thought this was great, chocolate for breakfast, but by one o'clock he was beginning to get upset with hunger. As to the rest of it, he'd thought it was the best thing yet, waking up in the Dormobile.
“Billy,” Sheila said. “We've got to do something if Ronnie doesn't come soon. I've got to see to Timmy.”
“He said he'd get here early,” I said. “I wouldn't mind if he wasn't so bleeding reliable.”
“Supposing he . . .”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
I wandered round the garage and tried to think of reasons why Ronnie hadn't shown up other than the one that was charging about in the front of my brain. But no reasons I came up with could supplant my real convictions.
I sat down on an oil drum and looked round the garage.
In the van Sheila was trying to get Timmy to go down in his carry-cot. I got up off the drum and walked over to the van and got in the driver's seat and twisted round so that I could see her.
“It's no use, Billy,” she said. “He's got to have something. I mean if Ronnie's been . . . well, we just don't know, do we? We don't know when he'll be back.”
“No,” I said.
“I'll have to go and get something. We could be still waiting this time tomorrow.”
I thought for a while.
“All right,” I said. “I suppose you've got to. So as long as you've got to, you could call Ronnie's flat, see if anything's happened. Then at least we'd know what to do next.”
After the half hour I started to get the twinges. I started to wonder whether I should have let Sheila go. I mean, we could have sat it out. Ronnie might show up any time. Anything could have happened. Needn't necessarily have been the law. He might just be playing it safe.
I looked down into the carry-cot. Timmy was asleep now. I'd soothed him down within ten minutes of Sheila leaving.
I shouldn't have let her go. The last six months cooped in the flat had eroded into my sense of reality. I'd got like some of them get in the nick: unable to sort my thoughts and make the right decisions.
I shouldn't have let her go.
An hour passed. All she'd had to do was to go to the nearest shops and then to a phone box. Where was she?
Timmy woke up. He began to cry immediately. I picked him up and tried to comfort him but he wasn't having any. I looked at my watch. Another quarter of an hour had gone by.
Then the inset door opened. It was Sheila.
“Billy, we've got to get out,” she cried, running towards me.
Still carrying Timmy I scrambled out of the Dormobile and met her halfway.
“What's happened?”
“Ronnie. They've fixed Ronnie.”
“Who fixed him? The law?”
“No, Walter. Walter's boys.”
Walter.
“Fixed him? How?”
“Billy, we've got to move.”
“Tell me.”
“Listen, I phoned Ronnie's flat. First couple of times there was no answer, right? Then Doreen came on. She was in a hell of a state. They came for Ronnie in the night and took him away. They found out he'd been helping you and they knew about Pettit and they wanted to know where Ronnie'd taken you. So they took him away. They brought him home half an hour ago. They did him something awful. Fingers, everything. Doreen's . . .”
“Did he tell them?”
“He must have done. You know yourself.”
We looked at each other.
“Christ,” I said. “Ronnie. That cunt Walter. I . . .”
“Billy, we've got to move.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Right. You're right. We'll take the van. You drive.”
I put Timmy down in his cot and hurried over to the garage door and slid the bolts back on the main doors. Sheila was already backing up the Dormobile. I was about to swing back the doors but something stopped me. The sound of a car drawing up in the street outside.
I looked at Sheila. She was twisted round in her seat, wondering what was stopping me. A car door opened. Footsteps. Whoever it was stopped on the other side of the garage door. Listening to the Dormobile's engine. I pressed myself against the door. Then the latch lifted on the inset door. The door swung open. Sheila screamed at whoever she could see. The barrel of a sawn-off shotgun appeared round the door.
“They're here,” a voice called. “At least the bint is.”
Another car door opened.
I moved.
I stepped forward and took hold of the barrel of the shotgun and pulled with all my force. A figure fell through the inset and I lashed out with my foot before the geezer hit the floor, catching him low in the gut. He hit the floor face first and I put the other boot in the side of his head and grabbed the shotgun.
I looked through the inset.
Halfway between me and the car the other heavy stood frozen in the road. There were three more heavies in the car, a driver and two others about to get out. All staring at me and the wrong end of the gun.
“Right, cunt,” I said. “Don't move a fucking eyeball.”
He didn't.
I pulled back the garage door. The heavies in the car were still motionless.
“Can you get through, Sheil?” I shouted.
Sheila let the handbrake off and the van began to back out. I walked out of the garage and stood between the car and the van. I was close enough to the heavy to smell his aftershave.
Inside the car there was a movement. It was only a slight movement, but it was enough.
I fired one barrel into the windscreen. The other I fired into the nearside front tire. The heavy in front of me screamed and dropped to his knees, covering his head with his hands. I walloped the visible part of his head with the barrel of the shotgun and threw the gun to the ground. The heavy reached the ground first.
Behind me Sheila was grinding the Dormobile's gears, almost hysterical with panic. I jumped in her side and pushed her over on to the passenger seat. Timmy was screaming in the back. Sheila was saying something about how I should never have used the shooter but all her words were running into one another, one senseless shriek. I swung the Dormobile round and jammed down on the accelerator and took off down the street. In the driving mirror I could see the car doors open and the heavies fall out and take off on foot in the opposite direction before the street filled up with sightseers.
I went up through Finsbury Park and Manor Park, making for the A11 and the forest. If the law was going to be in on this one the Dormobile would be suicide in London. The quicker we were out of it the better.
Sheila was calmer by the time we reached Epping, but not calm enough. I was still having to go over what had happened, to try and make her see that I'd had no choice in doing what I'd done.
“What could I do?” I said. “What could I bleeding well do? Just stand there and say, âYeah, well, I know I took a dead liberty in leaving Wally behind, I'll come along and take what's coming?' Sure. I mean, they might even have been after taking me to Tobin. That would have been great, wouldn't it . . .”
“It was the gun, Billy,” she said. “You shouldn't have used the gun.”
“Then what should I have used? Timmy's pea-shooter?”
“There'll be real law in on it now and everything. And when the papers find out you were involved the law'll really pull its finger out.”
“Love, there was nothing else I could do. Tell me, what else could I do?”
“I don't know. But . . .”
“Right. You don't know.”
She fell silent for a while. Eventually she said:
“So now what do we do?”
“Spend tonight in the forest. Tomorrow we dump this and get back into London and get a new place.”
“Just like that?”
“Well, what else can we do?”
“We can't risk going back without a place to go to, Billy.”
“So what do we do? Stay in the forest for ever?”
“I'll have to phone Mum. She'll have to fix something up.”
“And how long's that going to take?”
“I don't know. No longer than it'd take us to fix something up. And a damn sight safer.”
I didn't answer. But she was right. Her mother could sort a place for us, then Sheila could go into town on her own and fix it up for us. There was nothing else we could do. But the forest was only safe for a couple of nights at the most. And staying in a hotel was out.
I saw a telephone kiosk a hundred yards ahead of us.
“You better phone her now, then,” I said. “Get her on it straight away.”
It was getting dark when we finally parked the Dormobile. We were as deep in the forest as we could get. Sheila unpacked what she'd bought at the shop earlier: bread, butter, cheese, corned beef, tinned ham, biscuits, milk, tinned beans and a tin opener. She opened one of the tins of beans and we had them cold, then she made bread and cheese. After that she gave Timmy some chocolate and a drink of milk and he went down without any bother. We both felt exhausted after the day we'd had. Too exhausted to think or to worry or to consider the future. It was enough just to lie down on the bench seats and close our eyes and black out everything with sleep.
At eight next morning I drove the Dormobile as close to the edge of the forest as I could without the van being visible from the road. Then I left Sheila and Timmy and the van and took some money from my money belt and left the forest and walked back into Epping. Sheila had kicked up about me going instead of her but I told her I had to take the chance: she might be even more suspiciousâa bird buying a used car, cash. I stopped at a newsagents and bought the
Express
. The shooting incident was written up as a second lead on the front page. There was a photograph of the street and the car and the police had pulled in the two heavies I'd laid out but there was no mention of me. Which meant either that Walter had intended for his boys to finish me off, or that Tobin had been involved and it wouldn't have looked good for him that Walter's heavies had been bringing me in on his behalf. I skimmed the rest of the paper. There was also no mention of anything connected with Pettit. I hadn't really expected there to be: that would have meant a mention of myself. Pettit must have decided that discretion was the better part of valour. But none of all this meant that I was clear. The whole of West End Central could know where I'd been yesterday and have kept it out of the news for their own reasons, surprise value being perhaps one of them.
I folded the paper and carried on walking until I came to the garage I'd sorted as we'd driven through the day before. There were about fifteen cars for sale parked out on the forecourt, set out in two neat rows. I walked along the front row until I came to a clapped out '66 Mini marked up at a hundred and ninety-five pounds. It was the cheapest car on the lot and its anonymity was just what I needed. I tried the doors and looked inside and waited for someone to appear. A minute or two later one of the lads came out of the service kiosk and strolled over to me.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“Just looking at the Mini,” I said. “That its real mileage?”
“Course.”
“You must he joking. 1966?”
“Maybe you'd like to try her out? Then you'd know how well she's been looked after.”
“Looked after? I look after my old lady better than that.”
I walked away from the Mini and looked at the next car, a Cresta marked up at three-five-five.
“Make me an offer, then,” he said.
“You really must be wanting it off the lot.”
“Just interested to see what you think.”
I turned and looked at the Mini and pretended to think about it.
“A hundred and thirty,” I said. “That's what I think.”
He smiled and shook his head.
“And I think you've got a sense of humour.”
We went on like this for a couple more minutes until I told him I'd got cash. A hundred and fifty quid worth. Five minutes later I was driving the car off the lot.
I parked the car near the first phone box I saw and rang Sheila's mother. She'd managed to fix up a flat in Beckenham. A basement. One room. Use of toilet and bathroom. Eight quid a week. She'd told the landlord we'd been up in Scotland and I'd changed my job fast and needed her to fix something for us while we travelled down. The landlord had swallowed and she'd paid a month in advance plus a bit over the top. We could pick up the keys from the landlord's office any time during the day. After she'd told me all that I came in for the usual earful but in the light of her getting us fixed up I let her go on for more than usual. I finally got off the phone by pointing out that Sheila was waiting for me and the longer I was away the riskier it was for her.