Any minute now the taxi would be here.
Watch, credit card, cash, keys.
Kevin hesitated by the bathroom door; the aftershave with a tang of lime-was that the one brought Debbie out in a rash or not?
Divine had stopped off at WH Smith no more than ten minutes before closing. “These tapes,” he’d asked, pointing towards a boxed set of French in Five Easy Stages, “they any good?”
The assistant thought Divine looked more the type for Club Med, somewhere with a beach and sun enough to show off a good body. “We do sell a lot,” she said hopefully.
“Yes, but do they work?”
She giggled lightly. Not bad, Divine thought, take away the crossed front teeth and surplus facial hair, fair pair of tits though, wouldn’t mind giving it a pull.
“See, I’m off to Paris. Pretty soon. Business.”
“Oh. Well, there is this one here, two double-length cassettes or one CD and accompanying booklet. See? Eurospeak Languages for Today’s Businessman. That might be more the kind of thing.”
“Thing I’m looking for,” Divine confided, leaning a well-muscled arm on the top of her counter, “something more personal. You know, relaxing after hours. Hard day’s graft. Can’t enjoy the night life, no point in going. Stay here and get legless at the Black Orchid, eh?”
“Miss Armitage,” the supervisor sang out like a frost in summer, “let’s see you cashing up now.”
“What d’you reckon then?” The picture on the box showed a girl with a long blonde pony tail and a black beret, pointing excitedly up to the Eiffel Tower. “Biggest one she’s ever seen.”
Maybe he wasn’t cut out for Club Med after all, the assistant thought. Works outing to Skegness, more his kind of thing. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we are closing now.”
Divine settled for a pocket phrase book and a paperback visitor’s guide to Paris, thumbing through the latter as he stepped out on the pedestrian precinct, stopping short at the picture of a girl in a scarlet G-string from the Crazy Horse Saloon. A mother with a pushchair ran into the back of him and most of the child’s Mr Whippy ice cream slid down his leg.
“What the chuffin’ heck d’you think you’re doing?” Divine bellowed.
“It’s you, you great lummux!” the woman shouted back. “Parking your great backside right in front of us without a by-your-leave. What’ve you got in that head of yours for brains, sawdust or what?”
And she swung pushchair and wailing child around him, leaving Divine to wipe away the ice cream that was still slithering down his second-best pair of trousers.
Naylor stood close by the plate glass front of the upstairs, looking out at the groups who were beginning to swarm the square. Down the hill from the Concert Hall and the Theatre Royal, along St James Street and past the Bell opposite; from the right past the cinemas, the Odeon and Cannon, spreading the length of the old Market Square itself, past the fountains and the lions to the underground lavatories and the mobile stall selling hot pork rolls and beefburgers with glistening onions. Pushing and shoving and laughing. The police van alongside the bus stop. Listening to the plods in the canteen it got worse week by week, month by month, but Naylor remembered Resnick saying that when he’d been out there in uniform twenty years ago there’d been trouble Friday, Saturday nights just the same.
He wondered about finishing his half and going back into the bar to fetch another, maybe get one for Debbie too, save queuing later when she turned up. If she turned up. He was rehearsing her excuses in his head-my mother, the baby-when he saw her alighting from a double-decker over on Beast Market Hill. Dark blue skirt or dress, silvery top, thin blue jacket, leather bag slung over one arm. Forehead pressed against the inside of the glass, he waited for her to look up and, stepping off the crossing onto the broad curve of pavement below, and, smiling with surprise at her own pleasure, that was what she did.
Keith knew chances were if he simply dumped the Citroen, abandoned it, it would get trashed before it was found. Normally that was part of the point, only this was not a normal car. Gliding along the A52 on his way back into the city, engine close to silent, suspension like feathers, Keith thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
He knew it was a risk, but for the first time ever, he was determined to return the motor to the exact spot where he’d found it.
Our luck holds, Darren had said, you’ll be able to buy one of your own. Keith chewed at a hangnail on the little finger of his right hand. Mixture of his luck and Darren’s stupidity and he could see himself ending up back in court. Back in prison. Just thinking about it was enough to turn his bowels to water. Never in his miserable life had he been as serious as when he’d tried to top himself in that cell. And Darren, hollering for help, unfastening the sheet and lifting him down. What for? So that he’d have someone to boss around the rest of his life? Someone to look up to him, run errands, steal cars, drive him from one increasingly risky robbery to another.
Hear him running off at the mouth before Keith had dropped him off. About how he was going to trade up from that pathetic toy pistol to a real one; how he was going to walk in on that Lorna Solomon and show it to her, see the look on her face, do the thing right.
Keith had felt grateful to him for saving his life, in a way at least: each day now he was less and less sure. Turning with the traffic in front of the big MGM night club, Keith indicated that he was moving across into the inside lane, looking to park.
“Where are we going?” Debbie asked, as Kevin Naylor took her arm and steered her around a group of young white males in short-sleeved white shirts.
“You’ll see,” he grinned. “Surprise.”
The restaurant was quite dimly lit, tasteful, round tables with a single flower in a white vase at its center; the menus were padded and thick and pages long.
“What d’you think?” Kevin said, looking round. He’d asked Graham Millington, who went out for a meal with his wife first Friday after payday, regular as clockwork. Lynn Kellogg, too. The consensus seemed to be, of all the Chinese restaurants in the city, this was probably the best.
“It’s nice,” Debbie admitted. “Only …”
“Only what?”
Only you know I’m not all that keen on Chinese food, was what she’d been going to say, but instead she shook her head and gave him a quick smile and said, “Oh, nothing.”
He had looked nice standing up there in Yates’s, waiting for her, really nice, and although talking at first had been a bit of a strain, now they were both beginning to feel more relaxed.
“You watch out for him,” her mum had said, “got to be after something, you mark my words.” Then she’d got that look on her face, the one she’d paraded when Debbie had first told her she was moving back home, smug and prophetic. “I wouldn’t mind betting he’s found himself somebody else, that’s what this is all about. Wanting to talk you into one of those do-it-yourself divorces. You see if he isn’t.”
If that was the case, Debbie thought, he’d hardly be sitting there, wedding ring shining from the back of his hand. Without warning, she thought she might be about to cry, so she picked up her bag and excused herself, went to the ladies, leaving Kevin to order.
Keith phoned his mum and his stepfather answered so he hung up; his dad was still hauling bundles of old papers and magazines up from the cellar, sorting through and arranging them in piles all over the front room floor.
Keith made himself baked beans on toast and ate it watching TV. If there had been a tape player in the first-floor room he’d taken over as his own, he would have gone up there and listened to some Luther Ingram or some David Peaston, Galliano, or Dream Warriors except that he didn’t have the tapes either, they were still back at his mum’s. Truth was he didn’t know what on earth he did want to do.