Gordon Reece - Mice

‘So what’s it to be then, luv?’ he said. ‘Are you gonna pay the twenty grand or do I go to the cops?’

‘I’ll pay the money,’ Mum said, without hesitation.

‘Good,’ he beamed. ‘Very sensible. Now, how long will it take you to get it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, gnawing again at her bottom lip. ‘I’ll have to apply for a mortgage, but it shouldn’t take long, no longer than two or three weeks.’

‘I can wait a few weeks,’ he said magnanimously. ‘And how much can you give me today? Right now?’

‘I’ve got about fifteen hundred pounds in the bank,’ she replied, after a moment’s thought.

‘Can you get that for me today?’

‘Yes, I can. If we go to my bank in town I can take it out of the ATM—’ She inhaled sharply. ‘No, I’ve just remembered — there’s a daily limit on both my accounts. I can only take out three hundred from each.’

‘That’ll do for a start, that’ll do for a start.’ He slapped his thighs and beamed warmly at me as if all was right with the world and there was nothing for anyone to feel the slightest bit down about. ‘What are we waiting for then?’

I was amazed at his light-hearted breeziness. It was as if he was completely unaware that he was committing any crime at all. He seemed totally untroubled by any guilt or bad conscience, as if he was merely collecting a debt that Mum owed him, recovering money that was rightfully his.

Mum took a few agitated paces around the kitchen and then came back to the table, her hands gripping the back of the empty chair like the claws of a bird alighting on a branch ( but what kind of bird — a songbird trapped in the hunter’s net or a bird of prey with a victim in her sights? ).

‘I’m not going to hand it over just like that!’ she burst out.

‘I don’t see that you’ve got much choice, luv,’ the blackmailer replied. The baby face darkened and the stunted arms unfolded themselves and dropped menacingly onto the kitchen table. ‘I know you killed him. I know you killed Paul Hannigan.’

The name meant nothing to Mum. But it meant everything to me. To hear it spoken out loud like that made me flinch as if struck, and even though I was standing at the other end of the kitchen, as far away from them as possible, I shrank even deeper into my corner.

‘Before I give you any money,’ Mum persevered bravely, ‘there are things I need to know.’

The fat man made a series of disgusting grunting noises from deep in the back of his throat, raking phlegm up into his mouth. He whipped out a handkerchief with surprising dexterity, spat a green wad into the dishevelled nest, then fumbled it away into his pocket. He impatiently poked his glasses back into place, and eyed Mum quizzically.

‘Like what?’ he said. ‘What things? You ain’t in a position to make demands.’

‘I need to know how you found out.’

He gave a deep, treacly chuckle. ‘That’s easy enough,’ he said. ‘I know what happened, luv, because I was with Paul Hannigan the night he came out here to rob you. I was with him! I was here !’

Although Mum did her best to disguise it, I saw the shock register on her face, a crease like a crack in a wall breaking across her forehead, a sudden slacken ing around her jaw. We’d always assumed the burglar had been alone. It had never entered our heads that he’d had an accomplice. But that was exactly what the grotesque clown in our kitchen was saying.

‘I want to know everything,’ Mum said, recovering remarkably. ‘I want you to tell me everything that happened that night.’

‘You want to know everything,’ the fat man repeated.

‘Yes.’

‘And why’s that, then?’

‘So that I can move on, so that I can put it all behind me. I have to know everything that you can tell me about that night.’

‘Everything, eh? No details spared?’

‘Everything.’

‘And then we’ll go and get the money?’

‘And then we’ll go and get the money.’

‘OK,’ he said, but for the first time a suspicious look clouded his features. He glanced at Mum and then at me as if he felt he might be walking into some sort of trap. What he saw must have reassured him, because the look disappeared as quickly as it had come. After all, what possible threat could there be from this neurotic, mousy woman and her neurotic, mousy daughter? He wiped his hands on his thighs and raked a little more phlegm up from his throat, which he was content to swallow this time.

‘All right. Let’s see — I bumped into Paul Hannigan in the pub that night. It was a Monday. Monday, April tenth. I didn’t know him that well — I’d bought some knock-off from him and he’d come back to my flat a few times, but I wouldn’t say we was close. More acquaintances, like. He’d only been down this neck of the woods a few months. He’d been in prison up north, and he said he’d moved down here hoping his luck would change.’

His luck changed all right , I thought to myself. But it had changed for the worse. It had changed for the worst .

‘After closing time, he came back to my flat and we carried on drinking. We really gave it one that night. We got through the best part of a bottle of whisky and a bottle of vodka and God knows how much we’d had in the pub beforehand. Anyways, he kept going on about how desperate he was for money. He said he had an idea for a job, but he needed a car, and because he knew I had a car he kept on nagging me to come in on it with him.

‘His idea was to rob a secluded house in the country. He said that houses out in the country were easier to rob than houses in town — they had old windows that were easy to force, they often didn’t have alarms, and there were no nosy neighbours nearby to call the police. Like I say, I didn’t know him that well, and to tell you the truth I wasn’t over-fond of him. There was something about him that weren’t quite right. He had a bit of a screw loose somewhere, he talked a load of old rubbish most of the time. He was a real loose cannon, you know, always flashing this big hunting knife he carried around with him everywhere. He tried to tell me he’d been inside for murder, that he’d cut someone up who’d double-crossed him, but I knew from other people that he’d only been inside for drug dealing.

‘Anyways, he kept on nagging and nagging me to come in on this job with him. He kept on about the antiques that people kept in these country houses, and that if we got lucky we could find something worth a fortune and we wouldn’t have to worry about money for a good long time after that. Anyways, I was so drunk I ended up saying I’d go with him. We agreed that if anyone in the house woke up he was just to tie them up, there wasn’t to be no violence. I found some old rope in the cupboard under the sink and we had a snack before we set off because we was both starving by that time.’

A snack. Paul Hannigan’s last supper. I remembered the loud, sour belch. Sorry, ladies. . I shouldn’t have had them eggs. Them eggs was off .

‘Paul wanted to drive. He said he knew where to go. I didn’t mind ’cause, to tell you the truth, I think I was in a much worse state than he was. I’d drunk so much I could hardly see straight, let alone drive in the dark.

‘I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I kept dropping off to sleep in the car. We seemed to be driving for ages, going round and round all these twisty country lanes. . and then Paul spotted this place.

‘We parked out the back there.’ He gestured vaguely with his thumb in the direction of the lane, where I’d first seen the car from my bedroom window. ‘It was late, round about three-thirty. The plan was that I’d stay in the car and keep lookout while Paul did the actual robbing. I was to honk the horn three times if anyone showed up. Paul got out the car and I saw him slip through the hedge back there and into your garden.’