Dennis sneered. ‘Hardly worth the bloody trouble.’
‘What about all that gear in the back of the van?’ the one with the accent said. ‘Drums and guitars and shit.’
But to my relief Dennis shook his head. ‘Too big. We’d need to take the van as well. And we’d only get pennies for the stuff.’ He leaned in towards us, leering. ‘If you’ve got any sense you’ll get into that van and head back up the road. It’s way past your bedtime. Your mammies’ll be wondering where you are.’ Then he grinned. ‘If you can ever find the keys, that is.’ And he turned and hurled the ignition keys through the darkness, over the wall and into the cemetery. ‘Happy hunting. Or should that be haunting?’ Which brought guffaws of laughter from his mates. ‘And you’ll not be needing this.’ He held up Jeff’s driving licence and tore it into little pieces before casting them into the night.
They jumped into their car and its engine kicked and revved. With a squeal of tyres it kangarooed out of its place of semi-concealment, accelerated past us to squeeze by the van, two wheels gouging deep ruts in the verge, and sped off into the dark.
We stood then without moving or speaking, hearing the sound of the car slowly vanishing into the night, watching its lights track back along the road we had travelled just ten minutes earlier, until both sight and sound of it were lost to us.
Jeff sat down suddenly in the middle of the road and put his fingers to his neck, bringing them away smeared with blood, startling and red. ‘Aw jobbies.’
Maurie said, ‘I’ve got some first-aid stuff in my bag.’ And he ran round the van to get it.
Dave’s voice, laden with sarcasm, injected itself into the gulf of silence he left us with. ‘Thanks, Jobby Jeff! That’s a really gen bloke. I’m not leaving him here.’
Jeff’s head swung slowly round to turn dangerous eyes on Dave. ‘Fuck off,’ was his only comeback. But then, ‘And don’t call me Jobby Jeff!’
‘Fighting among ourselves is not going to do us any good,’ Luke said. ‘We’ve got to figure out what to do. We’re not going to get very far without any money.’
Maurie returned to more silence and knelt beside Jeff to wipe the blood from his wound and slather it with antiseptic cream, before crudely covering it with a sticking plaster. We watched despondently, each of us nursing his own private despair.
Until Dave said quietly, ‘They didn’t get all the money.’
Every head turned towards him, and he opened his jacket to start pulling his shirt out of his trousers, revealing a canvas money belt strapped around his waist.
‘Got it as a Christmas pressie a few years ago and never used it. Till noo. Thought it might be a good way of carrying my cash.’ He unzipped one of its many compartments and pulled out a wad of notes. He held them up. ‘Twenty quid. Should get us somewhere.’
And suddenly our predicament didn’t seem quite so bleak.
‘More than enough to get us back home,’ Maurie said, provoking a chorus of unanimous dissent.
Luke said, ‘No fucking way am I going back.’ His determination to see this thing through was resolute.
It took me a moment to realize why I was so shocked, before I understood. It was the first time I had ever heard Luke swearing.
‘So what are we going to do?’ Maurie’s voice was almost plaintive.
I said, ‘Well, the first thing we need to do is find those keys.’
‘How are we going to do that in the dark?’ Jeff winced as he placed his hand over the gash on his head.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ I said. ‘But I’m sure you’ll figure it out.’
‘Me?’
‘Aye,’ Dave said. ‘We wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t made us give that bloke a lift.’
I stooped to pick up the lighters that the thieves had left lying on the ground. They had taken our cigarettes, so we hardly needed the lighters any more. But I chucked them at Jeff. ‘You’ll get some light off these till they run out.’
He snatched them up and scrambled to his feet. ‘And what are the rest of you going to do?’
‘Get some sleep,’ Luke said, and he headed off to climb back into the van.
Jeff looked nervously towards the pool of darkness that engulfed the church and the cemetery beyond the wall. ‘That’s a Christian cemetery?’
I glanced at the sign, which read Church of St Mary the Virgin.
‘So?’
‘So, I’m Jewish.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘The spirits might not like a Jew poking about a Christian burial place.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’
‘Exactly!’ Jeff glanced at Maurie. ‘Will you help me?’
But Maurie just raised his hands. ‘You’re on your own this time, pal.’
To his credit, Jeff accepted his fate, punishment for his role in talking us into taking Dennis on board, and I almost felt sorry for him as he tentatively pushed open the gate to the churchyard. A tangled arch nurtured over decades from the intertwined branches of two trees led to the church itself. Beyond and around it the cemetery lay in deep pools of darkness cast by the shadows of trees in the intermittent moonlight. I was glad it was Jeff going in there in the dark, and not me.
I returned to the van and curled up in my big furry coat in the front passenger seat. The others had made themselves comfortable in the back. But sleep was not quick in coming. It had been a long day, and although we were all tired, the adrenaline was still pumping. It hardly seemed credible that this was the same day that had begun with Jenny and me being summoned to Willie’s office. Already that seemed like a lifetime ago.
Dave’s hushed voice came out of the darkness. ‘Why does Jobby Jeff always have to say that fucking word?’
‘What word?’ Luke said.
‘Jobbies. I hate that word.’
Which was met with silence.
Then, ‘Are you asking me?’ Maurie’s voice came out of the dark.
‘You’re his pal.’ Dave made a noise of snorted disgusted. ‘I mean, every time he says it I get this picture of brown, stinky sausages dropping oot a dug’s arse.’
Maurie said, ‘It’s to stop him swearing.’
‘Why does he want to stop swearing?’
‘He told me he was shocked when he started work at Anderson’s. He’d always thought it was just us, you know, kids that swore. I mean, you don’t hear your folks swearing, do you? Then he’s in among all these adults. Grown men. And they’re all swearing like troopers. So he thought he would try and stop.’
I raised my head from my coat. ‘What about you, Luke? I never heard you swear before tonight.’
‘Oh, I decided years ago that I wasn’t going to swear.’ Luke’s was the sweet voice of reason illuminating the night. ‘Seemed to me that if you had to swear it demonstrated a lack of vocabulary.’
There was a further silence as we all absorbed this.
Until Luke added, ‘Mind you, there’s times when nothing else’ll fucking do.’
And we all roared and laughed, and heard Jobby Jeff’s plaintive voice calling from somewhere beyond the cemetery wall.
‘What’s so funny?’
III
I woke up freezing cold as the first sunlight of an early-spring morning slanted through the trees and crept slowly into the front of the van. I was stiff and sore from sleeping in a bizarrely twisted position in the front passenger seat. But slept I had, without stirring all night. I stretched and peered into the gloom behind me to see Dave and Maurie on the settee, locked in what was almost an embrace, and wished I had a camera to capture the moment. There was no sign of Luke.