Питер Ловси - Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose [Stories]

“Foolproof.”

Gary shook his head. “Too simple.”

“The simple ideas are the best.”

“What if he susses us?”

And now Jason shook his cropped head. He made you believe in his wild ideas, did Jason. Those pale blue eyes of his, as still as the stones in a mosaic, watching you. The mouth like a crack in the earth.

“What’s my action, then?” asked Gary, weakening.

“Collect the readies.”

“Five grand?”

“More if we like. We set the fee.”

“Five is enough,” said Gary with the measured calculation of a young man behind with his rent and trying to subsist on unemployment benefit of forty-two pounds a week. “And all I do is collect?”

“And look the part.”

“How?”

“Suit. Tie. Shades.”

“What do I say?”

“Not much. You just collect, I said.”

“Alone?”

“I can’t hold your bleeding hand, Gary. I’m doing all the heavy stuff, aren’t I?”

There was a pause for thought.

“All right, Jay. You’re on.”

“How’s it going, Mr Cronk?” Jason asked, grasping the crowbar he used to strip the casing from the frames of the wrecks that were brought in.

“Same as usual.”

“Mrs Cronk still giving you grief?”

“Don’t ask, Jason.”

Jason hauled on the crowbar and exposed the burnt-out interior of a Vauxhall Cavalier. “Not much here worth keeping.”

“Pity. Try the engine, son.”

With two or three expert stabs at the front of the car, Jason forced up the bonnet. “Battery looks all right. I’ll have that out.”

His employer prepared to watch the swift dissection of the mangled vehicle. In other parts of the yard, other beefy youths were dismantling derelict pieces of machinery, fridges, cookers, lawn-mowers, for scrap metal. It was not a bad living in these grim times. There was money in scrap. Call it waste disposal, recycling, totting, what you like, it paid. Not many overheads. Low wages. These were young lads straight from the dole queue, glad of anything. With the basic tools, a breakdown lorry, a second vehicle to cart the good stuff down to the dealer and fly-tip the rest, you were set up. Cash for trash.

If only his domestic life worked as neatly as his business.

Jason leaned over the bonnet, peering at the way the hoses were fixed. Then he ripped them out with his large hands. He was the pick of the bunch, in spite of his aggressive looks, the nearest thing to a foreman on the site.

“I knew a bloke had grief from his old lady,” Jason said, turning to pick up another tool. “Funny business. She couldn’t get enough of it. Know what I mean, Mr. Cronk? Big, healthy woman. Soon as he got into his pit, she was on him, regular, and when I say regular I mean three, four, five times a night and coming from all directions. Too many hormones, I reckon. No bloke could have stood it. Knackered, he was. His work suffered. His pecker was in permanent shock. He gave up going out with his mates. Got the shakes. Anyway, he faced facts in the end. It couldn’t go on. So he went to the Fixer, paid the fee, and slept soundly ever after.”

Mr Cronk reflected on the matter while Jason lifted out the battery.

“What do you mean by the Fixer?”

“I thought you’d know about the Fixer, Mr Cronk.”

“I don’t mix in your circles, Jason.”

Jason applied himself to the heavy work, his biceps rippling.

“He takes care of problems. This geezer’s problem was his old lady, so the Fixer fixed her.”

“How?”

“Disposal.” Jason ripped out the radiator and slung it onto a heap of rusted metal. Unlike the others, Jason never confused ferrous and non-ferrous.

“You mean he...?”

“Yup. It wasn’t crude, mind. The Fixer’s a pro. No comeback. This bloke is free now. Free to marry again if he wants, but I don’t think he will. Once bitten...” Jason gave a coarse laugh and picked up the bolt-cutter.

“What happened to the woman?”

“Accident, they said. She didn’t know nothing about it, that’s for sure. Drove her car off the road. The thing was, this road was next to a two-hundred foot drop. The coroner reckoned she fell asleep at the wheel.”

“Accidental death?”

Jason grinned.

Mr Cronk gaped.

“The insurance paid up, easily covered the Fixer’s fee.”

He severed a bunch of cables and wrenched them out. There wasn’t much left of that engine.

“What sort of fee does he charge?” Mr Cronk eventually asked.

“Ten grand.”

“As much as that?”

“It sounds a lot, but it’s like cars. You pay for a decent motor and you get value. Believe me, he’s the Roller of his profession. He don’t let people down.”

Towards the end of the afternoon, Mr Cronk passed Jason again.

The parts worth keeping had been stripped from the car, sorted and stacked neatly nearby. He was already sledgehammering another vehicle. He was a lad you could depend on.

“Er, Jason.”

“Mr Cronk?” He rested the sledgehammer on his shoulder.

“You’re feeling hot, I expect.”

“What do you expect? I ain’t picking daffodils.”

“How would you like a cool swim? I’ve watched you working. You deserve it. Come home with me. I’ve got a thirty-foot pool.”

“What, now?”

“Now’s the right time.”

“I’m covered in muck.”

“You can take a shower at my place. We do have soap, you know.”

Mr Cronk’s house and garden were so palatial that Jason wished he had put the Fixer’s price higher than ten grand. The pool had a glass roof that retracted at the push of a button like the sun-roof on a posh car. The bottom of the pool was lined with blue, green and gold tiles. There was money in recycling, more money than Jason had dreamed was possible.

He took a slow shower, soaping himself thoroughly in the shower-gel Mr Cronk had provided. He watched the grime go down the chromium plughole. Then he dried himself with the huge, pink, fluffy bath-towel and put on the boxer shorts Mr Cronk had lent him.

“So there you are, clean as a vicar,” Mr. Cronk shouted from across the water. “Come and meet my good lady.”

Mrs. Cronk.

She was reclining on one of those long, padded swing-seats suspended in a large frame. She must have been twenty years younger than Mr Cronk because she looked terrific in a black two-piece. Blonde, bronzed and superbly groomed, she was the biggest surprise yet.

Friendly, too. “Hi, Jason. Check those tattoos.”

She didn’t budge from the recliner, so he had to move in, crouch down and show her his biceps. She smelt expensive.

“Pure art. And on such an expansive canvas. Do you pump iron?”

“No, I break up cars for your old man.”

She laughed. “So do I, but it doesn’t give me muscle tone like that.”

“You don’t want it.”

Mr. Cronk said, more to himself than the others, “Many a true word.” Then he turned to Jason. “Why don’t you try the water?”

“Cheers. I will.”

He wasted no time. He took a header, needing to get submerged fast, and not just because he was coming out in a sweat again. The water was deliciously cool. He was not a bad swimmer and he showed off a bit with his powerful crawl, doing a racing turn at the deep end.

After six lengths he stopped and stood up in the shallow end.

The swing-chair was no longer occupied.

“She’s getting changed,” her husband said. “She’s got to get to her flamenco class.” Mr Cronk had changed too, into a T-shirt, shorts and sandals.

“Is she learning flamenco?”

“She teaches it, four nights a week.”

Jason swam another four lengths, lazily, on his back, thinking about Mrs Cronk dancing the flamenco. After a bit, he turned over and swam on his front.