One Last Job

The arrhythmic thudding of my running feet is almost as loud as the thundering of my heart. I taste blood, adrenaline. Just gotta keep going. Over the fence, down the alleyway and I’ll be away from the top of the village where the large houses are too far apart to give me cover.

I can hear him gaining on me.

‘Oi,’ he shouts.

Looking over my shoulder, I twist slightly too far and a firework of pain shoots up my knee. That’s game over for me. Hands up in the air, I stop, and wait for a different kind of explosion.

It’s Christmas Eve. When my mum finds out about this (and I’ll have to tell her considering I’m supposed to be having Christmas lunch at hers straight after Queen Liz’s speech tomorrow), she’s going to go ape. Maybe, all things considered, it’ll be best if I’m locked up. For my own protection, like. I promised her I’d go clean, you see. And I had until I saw Big Dave in the pub last week.

***

 ‘Alright, Trev,’ he said, slinging his tattooed arm around my shoulder.

The pub was decorated in the traditional gaudy affair of blown up Santas and reindeers; reams and reams of tinsel so thick you could probably strangle a grown man with it; and multicoloured flashing lights that would give you a headache if you looked at them for too long.  

I was sitting at the bar, almost full pint of Guinness in front of me. ‘Alright,’ I said.

‘Look,’ he did a quick recce around the pub to see who was about and said, ‘I’m a man short for a job next week. You up for it?’

No, was the honest answer. I knew there’d been a lot of looting going on in the area this year. Even more than normal. Well, round Christmas time houses might as well have neon signs pointing at them whether folks are in or not. Christmas tree lights are on, they’re in. Lights are out, they’re not. Lights are out for more than 24 hours, they’re out of town. Simples. ‘I’m not so sure,’ I said.

‘Come on. It’s an easy job. Little Dave has been watching the houses. Keeping notes, like, of who’s in and out and Beanpole-’

‘This is a job for Beanpole?’ Beanpole was, as suggested, a very tall, very thin man. And a very mean man. But also a very fair man. He always paid people well for a job well done. I’d been trying to go straight, even had a job stacking shelves in a supermarket, but it paid bugger all. Would be nice to have a little top up. Especially around this time of year.

He grinned at me, more gaps than teeth. ‘So, you’re in?’

‘I’m in.’

***

I hop round to face the village policeman. He’s not in uniform, but he doesn’t need to be. I know who he is.  

‘Well, well,’ he says, hands on hips, big plumes of breath erupting in front of him.

 There’s a garden wall a few feet away. ‘Can I sit down?’

He nods, pulling out a little black notebook and a pen, which he clicks on and off three times before saying, ‘Name?’

‘Trevor Donaldson.’

‘Age?’

‘Seventeen.’

He leans forward a little, peering at me the whole time. ‘Aren’t you Janice and Tony’s boy? The one who was a dancer?’

I roll my eyes. ‘Yes,’ I say, and brace myself for the worst.

***

I was never a dancer; I was a gymnast, which was a hard sell in a small rural village full of men who used to be steel workers when the country still had steel, but were now mainly men who sat in pubs bemoaning the state of the country and everything in it, including boys who were prancing around “like girls”. And the rest.

Have you seen Billy Elliot? The film about the boy who becomes a professional ballet dancer? That was my life, like, unfolding in one hour and fifty minutes. You’d think it would’ve helped, having someone do it before me, paving the way, and it might have done if anyone in my village had actually watched it. Ironic that I was a source of such gossip, yet no one spoke to me. Only shouted. And none of that is worth repeating.  

None of that mattered, though, because I loved it, and it was going to be my ticket out of there.

The day my world fell apart, it was raining. Not lashing, but that steady drizzle that fools you into thinking you’ll get away with it, but you end up soaked within minutes. Roads were wetter than they looked too and a car skidded, knocking me off my bike. He didn’t stop. Maybe he didn’t realise, but more likely is he just didn’t care. I knew who owned every car in that village.  

Next car stopped and Mr Potts drove me to the doctor. I sobbed the entire ten minute journey. Mr Potts said to the doctor, ‘He must be in real agony, poor lad.’ But I wasn’t crying about the pain. I knew it was over.

***

‘I thought it were you,’ he says, relaxing into his accent. ‘What are you doing, lad? I thought you had a job now?’

‘I do. Nearly six months now.’

He cocks a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Well, what you doing getting involved in that lot then?’

The sky is black with a smattering of stars and gunmetal grey clouds skidding across it.

I shrug, not wanting to say anything. Don’t need to see cop shows on the telly to know it’s best to keep schtum in these situations.

‘How’s that knee of yours these days?’

‘Not good for running.’

‘Or for…’

‘Gymnastics. Not good for that either.’

He clicks his pen three times before putting both his pen and notepad back in his pocket. ‘I’m going to let you go, son. Just this once.’

I look at him, waiting for him to start laughing, or pull out the handcuffs.

‘Don’t make me regret this,’ he says.  

‘You won’t.’

 ‘Do you want a lift? I can pop home and get my car?’

‘You’re alright, thanks.’

There’s no way I’m getting in P.C. Dickson’s car.