However, the unexpected return of Spencer crashing through the door, bearing food, was some sort of motivation to do something.
‘ Give us a chip,’ she demanded.
He leaned forwards protectively over the meal which he’d spread out on the paper over his lap. ‘No, fuck off.’
‘ Oh, come on, you tight-assed get,’ Cheryl whined. ‘I’m starving.’ She hoisted herself up from her position deep in the settee and reached across to help herself from Spencer’s pile of greasy chips.
He saw her hand approaching and moved his knees just far enough to keep the food out of her reach. ‘I said fuck off.’ He took a swig of beer, belched loudly from the pit of his guts.
‘ Oh, come on,’ she pleaded, getting annoyed. ‘I haven’t had owt all day. I’m starving.’
He sighed, turned to look at her. ‘Why the fuck should I give you anything, eh? You stupid bitch. You deserve sod all.’
‘ Oh, fucking forget it.’ She slumped back, folded her arms and crossed her legs haughtily.
‘ No, I won’t forget it. I still want to know why you didn’t tell me about that fucking Charlie. If I’d known, I would’ve kept my gob shut on the plane, wouldn’t I? Then we could have sold the gear ourselves, made a few bob out of it. But no, you didn’t have the bottle to tell me, did ya?’
It was not so much the issue about carrying drugs that was driving a wedge between them, more the fact that Spencer felt cheated because he’d lost out on the opportunity to sell the drugs himself to his pals in Blackpool.
‘ Coulda made a fortune,’ he wittered.
‘ Oh, like, yeah,’ sneered Cheryl, ‘as if they’d really let you do that. Are you fucking stupid or something, Spencer? You could never have walked away with those drugs. You’d be dead if you did… I might be dead now, for all I know,’ she concluded desolately.
‘ Bollocks,’ he spat in disbelief. ‘We could be rollin’ in it now, but because you never told me, we haven’t even got your pay packet, have we? An’ how much was that gonna be?’
‘ Three hundred quid,’ she replied sheepishly.
‘ And now we’ve got fuck all, you stupid cunt.’ Spencer folded a particularly large chip into his mouth and washed it down with a swig of beer.
‘ Yeah, you’re dead right there.’ Cheryl’s face pinched tight. ‘I’ve got you and that’s as good as fuck all because I’m fucking sick to death of you.’
Spencer shrugged. He grabbed the TV remote and flicked channels to Star Trek. ‘You know what you can do.’
‘ No, you know what you can do,’ she retorted, her anger bubble bursting. ‘It’s my flat, so you can go. Go on, piss off and leave me alone. I hate the fucking sight of you.’ Cheryl was now gearing up for full throttle and her mouth was beginning to take over before her alcohol-riddled brain cells advised caution. ‘It was a fucking pleasure to give that guy a blow job. At least he had a proper-sized dick.’
Spencer blinked as the words filtered through his own alcohol barrier.
Cheryl covered her mouth. Too late, the words had already left.
Spencer turned his bleary eyes to her. ‘Blow job? What blow job? What guy?’
‘ The one I carried the drugs for.’
Spencer stared uncomprehendingly at her for a few silent moments, his mouth lolling open stupidly. One or two things slotted into place for him. Mysterious absences by Cheryl on their holiday. He’d not bothered about them at the time, mainly because he’d been drunk or recovering for the bulk of the time. And — over one two-day period — with a bunch of guys he’d met out there, he’d gone walkabout anyway and ended up screwing some nameless girl in an apartment somewhere in Los Cristianos. They had all screwed her and her four mates. Cheryl did not need to know about that, Spencer reasoned.
‘ You slag!’ he uttered, as though disgusted by her behaviour. For a drunken person he moved quickly. He rose from the chair, shifting the fish-and-chip supper on to the palm of his right hand. He catapulted across the room and before she could react, he had slammed the takeaway full into her face, following it up with a punch and a scream.
Cheryl was a mean fighter. She had been raised tough in the world of alcoholic and abusive parents and children’s homes. One of her bare feet connected hard with Spencer’s scrotum, sending him stuttering back across the room, clutching his balls.
‘ You bastard!’ Cheryl jumped to her feet, picking the broken fish and crushed chips off her face and out of her hair, throwing the bits down with exaggerated flicking of her fingers. ‘I’ll get you for that.’ She hunted round for a suitable weapon, found nothing, so went for Spencer like an alley cat.
He was no slouch in the fighting arena either, but the lucky strike on his testicles had taken his breath away. It was all he could do to fend off her blows. He went under until he was curled up in a tight ball with her raining punches and kicks on him — most fairly ineffectively — until she collapsed exhausted on the settee.
Silence fell between them, punctuated by the sound of the adventures of Captain Kirk on the TV.
Eventually and cautiously, Spencer raised his head. ‘You finished?’
She nodded. There was a tear in her eye. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled.
‘ Yeah, me too.’
They were not the kind of couple who bore grudges against each other. They lived hand to mouth, mostly for the moment, wondering where their next drink was coming from, or their next spliff. They didn’t have the time or the intellectual capacity or complexity of thought to dwell on things for too long.
Still smeared in chip grease, Cheryl slid off the settee on to her knees and shuffled across to Spencer. He pushed himself into a sitting position. The pain in his lower abdomen had become a dull ache. ‘I didn’t mean what I said. I love you really.’
‘ An’ I love you.’
Their mouths clashed and locked in a ferocious kiss.
‘ I want a blow job too,’ Spencer broke off with a gasp.
‘ Sure, sure,’ she panted, planting kisses all over Spencer’s spotty face and neck. She drew him on to the floor and pushed him back, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, followed by the zipper on his jeans. She rolled down his underpants to reveal his eager but droopy penis. Cheryl tried to hide her disappointment: The man who said his name was Loz, whom she had fellated on Tenerife in order to get the courier job, really did have a very large one. She took Spencer whole in her mouth and worked diligently on him. He reached down between her legs and inserted his fingers into her.
Billy Crane did not return to his home town of Blackburn. Instead, he was driven to the Lancashire coast where he took a room at the Imperial Hotel, Blackpool, which had been booked for him under an assumed name. The hotel was on the sea-front, North Shore, and was the one in which high-ranking politicians usually stayed during political conference week. He was shown to a suite on one corner of the building, overlooking the promenade. In the past, he was reliably informed by the porter, the room had been occupied by Prime Ministers during their stay at the resort.
When the porter left, Crane gazed round the room fairly unimpressed. It seemed a lot of money for not much. But it was fine for his needs and it was unlikely he would be recognised in this environment. He walked to the window and looked at the grey Irish Sea, his countenance set grim.
Then he lay on the wide bed, set his alarm and dozed off. Travel was very tiring. He woke before the alarm, showered, shaved and dressed smart but casual. Fifteen minutes later he was in the bar ordering a gin and tonic.
Not long after, another man sauntered in. Crane’s business partner. After a quick drink, they gravitated into the restaurant and ordered dinner.
Anyone observing them would have found it difficult to guess that between them, they operated one of the most successful drug-smuggling operations in Britain, or that, unless the observer could lip-read, their conversation that evening revolved around the subject of murder.