Eight Ball Boogie - Declan Burke [49]
I dug my keys out of the Puffa’s pocket, unhooked the leather keyholder. Folded it over, bit down hard. Then I balled my handkerchief, twisted it into a knot, took a deep breath and poked it into the hole. An electric shock shot down through my leg and bounced back up to fry my brain. I gagged on something hot and sour, collapsed back into the doorway, waiting for sirens to sound on the clear night air.
Noises wafted past the outer limit of my consciousness, strange noises, sounds I had never heard before. I realised I was talking to myself in a guttural tone, the words chopped up, blocky. My eyes blurred and cleared, blurred again. Sweat poured down my face, soaked my back, warm against the chill. I wondered, idly, if I was shaking from cold, or shock, or septicaemia.
I imagined a blazing log fire, a mute television screening Willy Wonka, a Christmas tree blinking in the corner. Ben a warm lump sprawled across my chest. A black hole in the corner of the room that seemed to be oscillating, expanding and contracting, enticing me to investigate further; warmth came in waves from its core. The temptation was too much. I put Ben to one side, carefully, so he wouldn’t wake. Got off the couch, struggling towards the darkness, feeling my body starting to thaw. Something nagging at the back of my mind, something important, something I couldn’t afford not to remember…
Ben.
And then it was dark and cold again, and I was jammed in the doorway of a deserted warehouse. Dying, shivering so hard parts of my body were splintering, I could hear them shatter. Slowly, precisely, I started putting the pieces back together again. There were some parts left over when I was finished so I just left them out, pretending not to notice.
I sat up, eased my shirt back into my jeans, zipped up the Puffa, hands trembling. Peered around the corner of the warehouse. Four hundred yards away, the bridge was deserted under the orange streetlights.
I knew there were at least two of them and that they were pros. I knew they had a sub-machine gun and that they wanted me dead. That was all I knew but that was plenty to be getting on with, if they were still around I didn’t need the news to get any worse. All I had going for me was that they couldn’t be certain I’d made it out of the river, which meant they’d have to split up to search both shores. It wasn’t much, but I was alive, which just about gave me bragging rights over Gonzo.
A shiver passed through me, top to bottom, that had nothing to do with my sopping clothes, the biting wind. I didn’t indulge it, I had Ben and Denise to make safe. I was guessing that, if the pros knew I’d be crossing the bridge, they’d know that the bridge was taking me home.
There was a public phone-box in the industrial estate, on the far side of the docks, which gave me a simple choice. Cutting through the docklands would get me to the phone quicker, but also increased the chances of bumping into the pros again, and I was pretty sure I’d already used up all my nine lives. Avoiding the pros meant going all the way down to the end of the deepwater quay, away from the bridge, doubling back up the far side, coming into the industrial estate from the rear. Which was twenty minutes in a flat-out sprint, and I wasn’t even sure I could walk straight.
I thought of Ben, asleep in bed, his behind sticking up in the air. When I had him fixed in my mind I pushed myself up out of the doorway, took off at full tilt.
I was doused in sweat after fifty yards. After five hundred, my lungs were on fire again, the branding iron wiggling around in my side, legs useless stumps of marble. It was maybe five hundred yards more before I remembered Gonzo’s mobile,