Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid Read online

  ‘Quite honestly, I’m at a loss as to know what to—’

  This time, it was Trevor who had interrupted. He couldn’t be sure that he was about to be sacked, but he’d already had his quota of verbal and written warnings and thought he’d get in first with: ‘About this voluntary redundancy thing…’

  And that was that. Decision made and not a bad little payout. Added to what he’d squirreled away over the last couple of years or so, he could buy the van and still have enough left to live on for a few months as long as he was careful. He’d have to look for another job when the money did run out of course, but he was determined not to worry about that until the time came. At least, he was determined to try not to worry about it.

  ‘What the hell, eh, Milly? This is it,’ he said and shoved a tape into the cassette player.

  He caught sight of the dog in the rear-view mirror. She briefly raised an eyebrow when the opening bars of Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild bellowed from the speakers above her head. Then she went back to sleep.

  Trevor tapped the steering wheel almost in time with the music and hummed along when the lyrics kicked in. A song about hitting the open road and just seeing where it took you seemed particularly appropriate for the occasion, and when it got to the chorus, he’d begun to lose all sense of inhibition and joined in at the top of his voice.

  Moments later, the van’s engine spluttered and then abruptly died.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Carrot and Lenny hauled the Suit to his feet and, with an arm slung around each of their shoulders, half carried and half dragged him up to the first floor landing. As Carrot had predicted, Lenny’s contribution amounted to little more than providing a largely ineffectual counterbalance, and by the time they’d lurched and staggered to the top of the second flight of steps, every muscle in his neck and back was screaming at him to stop whatever he was doing.

  ‘I’m gonna have to… have a break for a minute,’ he said, fighting for breath as he altered his grip and lowered the Suit to the ground.

  ‘Come on, mate. We’re nearly there now,’ said Lenny, but his words of encouragement were meaningless, given that he did nothing to prevent the Suit’s descent.

  Carrot groaned as he sat him down against the frame of the fire door and so did the Suit.

  ‘’Ang on a sec. He’s not coming round, is he?’ Lenny squatted like a jockey at the start gate and brought his face to within a few inches of the Suit’s. ‘He is, you know.’

  The muscles in Carrot’s back grumbled as he crouched down to take a closer look and spotted the faintest flicker of the eyelids.

  ‘You can’t have given him enough,’ said Lenny.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The injection.’

  ‘Yeah, stupid me,’ said Carrot, slapping his palm against his forehead. ‘I should’ve allowed extra time for all your fag breaks.’

  Even though he resented Lenny’s accusation, he’d worked with him on several other jobs and was used to getting the blame when things went wrong. Not that this was surprising since Lenny always avoided making any of the decisions, so any cockups were never his fault.

  ‘We’ll have to give him another shot,’ said Lenny.

  “We” meaning “you”, Carrot thought and shook his head. ‘Stuff’s still in the van.’

  ‘Jesus, man. What you leave it there for?’

  Carrot bit his lip, aware from his peripheral vision that Lenny was staring at him, but he had no intention of shifting his focus to make eye contact. The Suit’s eyelids were twitching more rapidly now and occasionally parted to reveal two narrow slits of yellowish white. Maybe the guy was just dreaming, but it was two hours or more since they’d given him the shot, so—

  ‘Better bop him one, I reckon,’ said Lenny.

  It was Carrot’s turn to stare at Lenny. ‘Bop him one?’

  ‘Yeah, you know…’ He mimed hitting the Suit over the head with some blunt instrument or other and made a “click” sound with his tongue. ‘Right on the noggin.’

  Carrot continued to hold him in his gaze while he pondered which nineteen-fifties comedian Lenny reminded him of, but he was shaken from his musing by a strange moaning sound. The Suit’s eyes were almost half open now.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The tiny room in the hotel near to York Minster was ridiculously expensive but all he could get. He and Milly had trailed round all the cheaper places in the city for a couple of hours, but they were all full. In the end, he’d been fit to drop and couldn’t care less about the money as long as he had somewhere to sleep for the night.

  The van was in a local garage, waiting for parts.

  ‘Tomorrow lunchtime at the earliest,’ the mechanic had told him.

  ‘But I have to be at my brother’s funeral in Newcastle by then,’ Trevor had lied.

  The mechanic had tutted and rolled his eyes, which could have been interpreted as an expression of sympathy or an indication that he didn’t believe a word of it. ‘As soon as we get the thing, we’ll get straight onto it.’

  He hadn’t actually said “the thing”, but Trevor had no idea what part it was that had to be replaced.

  ‘So what do I do till then?’

  ‘There’s plenty of good hotels in the city.’

  ‘Can’t I sleep in the van?’

  The mechanic had repeated the tutting, eye-rolling routine and said something about not being covered by the garage’s insurance policy.

  ‘Can’t we push it out onto the road then?’ Trevor had asked.

  Just the tut this time and something about the local coppers taking a dim view of New Age Travellers.

  ‘Well, thanks a bunch for your help, you greasy-arsed toerag,’ Trevor hadn’t said, but the idea of having his windows smashed in with police batons in the middle of the night hadn’t appealed, so he’d pulled a few essentials from the van and wandered off into the city with his dog.

  * * *

  He lay sprawled on the single bed, listening to the sounds of dinner being prepared for a hundred-or-so residents directly beneath him and wondered why it was that people on their own were always given the crappiest rooms in hotels but still had to pay well over half the cost of a double.

  The heat was becoming unbearable. Trevor guessed this was probably due to the restaurant ovens working overtime, and he went over to the sash window and raised it as far as it would go. He took a deep breath of the cooler air and caught a strong whiff of cabbage and onions before releasing his hold on the window. No sooner had he done so than it slithered slowly downwards and closed again with a dull thud. Rummaging around, he found a large Gideon Bible in a bedside cabinet and propped it open with that.

  He fell backwards onto the scrawny little bed again with his feet hanging over the edge until he remembered where he was and how much he was paying. – His Doc Martens joined the rest of him on the bedspread and shuffled about to make themselves at home.

  Milly looked up from her abortive sniffing of the empty wastepaper bin and then launched herself onto the bed. More precisely, she launched herself onto Trevor and wriggled between him and the wall until he gave way and she could lie down properly.

  It had been a bit of a problem getting Milly into the hotel in the first place. Before he’d even overcome the initial shock of how much the room was going to cost him, he’d asked the receptionist if they allowed dogs. Milly was, at that moment, tied to a lamppost outside the hotel entrance and was shrieking wildly.

  The receptionist had paused in the middle of entering Trevor’s details onto her computer and given him a sickly and unconvincing smile. ‘I’m sorry, sir, it’s company policy not to allow pets within the hotel premises.’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ Trevor had flustered. ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘Unless of course it’s a guide dog,’ the receptionist had added in a tone of voice that made it sound like an accusation.

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ Trevor had repeated and immediately wondered why he seemed to be apologising for not b
eing blind. ‘Just wanted to check. I’m er… I’m allergic, you see.’

  The receptionist had smiled her unconvincing smile again and then returned her attention to the computer screen.

  In the end, he’d gone up to his room and waited a few minutes before going out into the street to rescue the howling Milly. He could see the receptionist from where he stood, and as soon as she’d left the desk, he’d whisked Milly into the foyer and up the stairs to his room.

  He put out his hand to where she lay next to him on the bed and stroked her head. ‘Doesn’t seem quite so bloody expensive now there’s the two of us, I suppose.’

  Trevor dozed for a while, and when he woke, realised that he was starving hungry. He was then faced with a dilemma. The restaurant would be closed by now, and if he went out to get something to eat, he would either have to smuggle Milly out of the hotel and back in again or leave her in the room. The first option was almost too tiresome to contemplate and, as for the second, he knew she would howl the place down the moment he’d gone. He tried to convince himself he really wasn’t that hungry after all, but the sounds which came from his stomach reminded him otherwise.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he said as he manoeuvred himself upright on the bed. He looked down at Milly, who was snoring contentedly beside him. ‘Listen, I’ll do you a deal. If you stay here quietly, I’ll bring you back a whole McDonald’s McDoggyburger all to yourself.’

  Milly shifted slightly in her sleep.

  ‘And chips?’ Trevor threw in as an extra incentive.

  Milly shifted again and groaned.

  ‘Okay, okay, large chips.’

  Trevor eased himself from the bed and edged towards the door. All the while, he watched to see if Milly would wake. Just as his hand touched the door handle, Milly opened one eye and pointed it in his direction.

  ‘But I’m bloody starving,’ Trevor said. ‘It’s not as if there wouldn’t be anything in it for you.’

  MiIly opened her other eye and then rolled onto her back, all four of her legs crooked playfully into the air.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Milly. Why can’t you be a proper, well-behaved dog for once like other people have?’

  Milly wriggled herself comfortable.

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ said Trevor as he strode back towards the bed. He fixed her with a stare and raised a finger. ‘I’m going to be out for ten minutes – twenty at most – and if you make a sound while I’m gone, I’ll… I’ll… Well, just don’t even think about it.’

  He backed up to the door, willing her to silence with his eyes. Out in the corridor, he’d gone no more than ten paces when he heard the sound of a wailing banshee. He burst back into the room to find Milly sitting squarely on the bed, her nose pointed vertically towards the ceiling, baying at an imaginary moon.

  ‘Milly!’

  She stopped abruptly mid howl and turned to face him, lowering her head as she did so, as if to convey her awareness that she had done a bad thing and that she was truly sorry, but to be perfectly frank, the situation he had placed her in had left her with very little alternative.

  ‘And don’t give me that butter wouldn’t melt crap. You’re a pain in the arse and you know it. – And get off the bloody bed, you… you… bitch.’

  Milly slithered down onto the floor and under the bed. Trevor flung himself onto the mattress, and there was a yelp from beneath him.

  ‘Serves you right,’ he said. ‘Because of you, I’m probably going to pass out through lack of food. I may even die. What about that then, eh? Who’d look after you then, eh? I mean, who’d be stupid enough to take on a… ‘

  While he continued to rant, Milly emerged from under the bed and went in search of a safer, if not quieter, resting place. Making her way towards a small but comfortable-looking armchair beside the window, she suddenly stopped and began sniffing the air. After a few moments, she seemed to have located the source of olfactory interest and placed her front paws on the top of a low, oak-effect table in the corner of the room. Her sniffing intensified as she examined the contents of a round plastic tray – an electric jug kettle; a cup, saucer and teaspoon; a small wicker basket containing teabags, sachets of coffee and sugar, and individual pots of UHT milk; and— Just then, in her enthusiasm to investigate her discovery more closely, Milly’s nose brushed against the cup and saucer.

  Trevor snapped his head round to see where the sound of rattling china had come from.

  ‘Now what are you doing?’ he said. ‘Get down off there before you break something.’

  Milly stayed where she was, glanced briefly in his direction and then resumed her examination of the tea- and coffee-making facilities.

  Trevor swung his feet over the side of the bed. ‘I thought I told you to—’ But he had completed only two of the three or four strides that lay between him and Milly when he spotted the object of the dog’s attentions.

  * * *

  An hour or so later, Trevor sat on the toilet of the tiny en suite bathroom contemplating one of life’s many little mysteries, as he was often wont to do at such times. On this occasion, he was attempting to resolve his newly formed hypothesis that hunger could be at least partially alleviated by the retention of bodily solids. The two small packets of biscuits (three custard creams in one and three shortbreads in the other, less half a custard cream and half a shortbread grudgingly given to Milly as a reward for her discovery) had, if anything, made him feel even hungrier.

  His particular concern was that he might lose what meagre benefit he had derived from the biscuits if he had a dump, and his philosophical musings had almost convinced him to pull up his jeans and abandon the operation altogether when he remembered an article he’d once read. As far as he could recall, it had said that food takes several hours to pass through the digestive system, and that being so, the custard creams and shortbreads would not yet be anywhere near the disembarkation area. If he walked away now and then suddenly became desperate in the middle of the night, he might lose everything. On the other hand, if he did it now, the biscuits would still be safe until he was within sight of breakfast the following morning.

  Smiling to himself at having satisfactorily resolved yet another of life’s conundrums, he coiled one down.

  Mission accomplished and respectably dressed once again, his hand reached towards the chrome-plated flush handle. Trevor had believed his adventure had begun as soon as he had released the clutch and set off in his camper van, but in fact the adventure only began in earnest the moment he started to exert a downward pressure on the flush handle. It was like pulling a lever to let down the drawbridge to a whole new way of life.

  Trevor, however, was totally oblivious to the momentousness of the occasion, particularly as, when he pushed the handle, nothing happened. There was no familiar sound of water cascading into the toilet bowl, just a dull mechanical clunk from somewhere inside the cistern.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Detective Sergeant Logan peered into the large, ornate mirror above the fireplace and plucked a single grey hair from his temple.

  ‘And you’ve no idea where he is now,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ The old woman addressed herself to the window and the empty street outside as she had done for most of the time since they’d arrived nearly an hour ago.

  Detective Constable Swann shifted her position on the battered, bottle-green settee, her pen poised above the small notebook on her knee in case something might be said that was worth recording.

  ‘Your son?’ Logan said, and Swann caught the sag of the head and the closing of the eyes in his reflection.

  ‘What about him?’

  The detective spun round. ‘Oh for—’

  ‘I think what DS Logan is wanting to confirm,’ said Swann, pre-empting his outburst, ‘is that you don’t know where your son went after he left here at lunchtime.’

  ‘Trevor, you mean?’

  ‘That’s right. Trevor.’

  ‘No thought for me. No thought for his invalid old mother, oh no. His brot
her wouldn’t have gone. God rest his soul.’

  ‘The thing is, Mrs er…’ Logan appeared to have recovered his composure but gestured to Swann for a prompt. She mouthed the name as clearly as she could, and he ran with it.

  ‘Er… yes. The thing is, Mrs Dawkins—’

  ‘Hawkins,’ snapped the old woman. ‘Mrs Haw-kins.’

  ‘Sorry, yes. – Mrs Hawkins, if there’s anything at all you can remember about the conversation with your son that might help us to find him, it would save a lot of valuable time.’

  ‘All I know is he went off on that silly little moped of his and that was that.’

  ‘So as far as you’re aware, he could be absolutely anywhere.’

  The old woman raised her shoulders by no more than half an inch and let them fall again.

  Logan rested his arm on the mantelpiece and drummed his fingers. ‘Mrs Hawkins, you do realise you’ve given us very little to go on here. You’ve made a very serious accusation about your son, and it’s essential that we find him as quickly as possible. As it stands though, we don’t even know where to start looking.’

  ‘That’s why you’ve got computers and all that stuff, isn’t it?’

  ‘Computers aren’t crystal balls. You have to put something in to get something out. All we’ve got at the moment is a name and a photograph.’

  ‘He’s got a dog.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘He’s got a dog,’ she repeated. ‘Mangy little thing. He brought it here once, but that was the first and last time. I told him I didn’t want it near this house ever again. He’s probably taken it with him.’

  ‘On a moped?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Well I suppose it might help to identify him if he has got the dog with him. What does it look like?’

  ‘Mangy, as I said.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘I don’t know. Black and brown probably.’