Just The Driver: Part Eleven

~ beetleypete

This is the eleventh part of a fiction serial, in 876 words. **May contain swearing!**

Driving away from Cleaver Square, I was so annoyed with myself for stupidly venturing into Tony’s pub. Little Legs was far worse than the Shaughnessys, at least you knew what to expect from them. He was a Jekyll and Hyde character, amiable one minute, unstable and dangerous the next. I called up on the cab radio and made myself available for work.

Anything to take my mind off encountering Brian.

Before I started work on the Saturday, I drove down to the office to pay my radio rent. Sue was taking calls in the back room, and she waved at me to stop as I was leaving. When she came off the phone, she stubbed out her cigarette and reached for a piece of paper. “You have a booking, tomorrow night. They asked for you specifically, Paul”. I thanked her and took the job slip, then waited until I was in my car to read it, already guessing what would be on it.

Sure enough, I was to pick up ‘Mickey’ in The Ancient Foresters, at ten tomorrow. I worked the rest of that Saturday shift in a daze, wondering what was going to happen the next night. I took a late run to Heathrow at half-six, a couple jetting off to some exotic destination, holding hands in the back and excited. I envied them.

There was no point going into work before picking up Shaughnessy, so I slept late and had some dinner before leaving around nine on Sunday night.

Mickey told the barmaid to give me a drink when I turned up. His brother Pat was talking to two men at the other end of the bar, and as he left he turned to Mickey. “Off to get the van, see you there”. The three of them walked out, and Mickey swallowed his drink. “Okay, let’s make a move, we have to pick up you-know-who at Cleaver Square”.

Little Legs was waiting ouside his house when we got there. He got in the front next to me, dropping a canvas toolbag onto the floor as he sat down. He looked distant, perhaps tense. I said nothing, and let Mickey do the talking. “Pat’s gone to get the van from the lockup, by the time we get there he shouldn’t be far behind us”. Then he spoke to me, just a few words. “Pages Walk. I will tell you where”.

No need to ask where that was. I had lived just up the road from there from the age of eight, until my parents moved us to the suburbs when I was fifteen.

The street was mainly industrial. Warehouses, workshops, that sort of thing. Mickey told me to stop outside a premises that had a heavy shutter door, locked on both sides with big padlocks. We then had to sit there waiting until Pat and the two men drove up behind the car in a large van marked up in the livery of a bread company. Brian got out with his tools, and didn’t even bother to check the street before applying heavy bolt-cutters to each padlock in turn. When he had freed the locks, one of Pat’s men brought over a long crowbar, and it took both of them to lever up the shutter, which was obviously bolted on the inside.

Pat reversed the bread van into the opening, and Brian took a pistol out of the toolbag. Mickey shook his head at him. “No need for that, there’s no watchman. Besides, I have that covered”. He patted his suit jacket. Raising his voice as he spoke to me, Mickey snapped me out of my nervousness. “Driver! You go to the end of the road. If you see any coppers coming, drive past here again and sound the hooter, okay? Come back in half an hour if not.” As I drove off, he pulled down the shutter.

I wasn’t sure which end of the road Mickey had intended me to wait at, so chose the junction with Willow Walk. I hadn’t banked on being used as a lookout, and having that job suddenly made me extremely nervous. Fortunately, very few cars passed me, and none of them were police cars. Checking my watch, I was back outside the place as Pat drove the van out, and Brian pulled down the shutter. Taking off a pair of leather gloves, he threw them into the toolbag, and handed that to one of Pat’s men. Then he turned to me. “You want a new telly son?” I shook my head, and thanked him. I didn’t want to run around with a stolen television in the back of my car, or explain to my mum how I had acquired it.

When they got back into the car, Brian smiled, and handed me a hundred in ten pound notes. “Take us back to The Foresters, and if anyone ever asks, you were with us all in the bar until closing time, okay?” After dropping them outside the pub, I breathed a sigh of relief and took the rest of the night off.

If any cops had turned up in Pages Walk that night, I would never have got away with saying I was just the driver.

30 thoughts on “Just The Driver: Part Eleven”

  10. (1) I’d be unstable on little legs, too. #TopHeavy
    (2) Overheard on 12 February 1542:
    Susan, the royal servant: “Your Highness, I’ve heard that you’ll have a ‘Boo, king!’ tomorrow night.”
    Henry VIII: “I don’t care about that. Catherine Howard’s head will follow Anne Boleyn’s.”
    Susan, the royal servant: “Is that your final word?”
    Henry VIII: “Yes! Now go fetch the basket!”
    (3) Bad citation: “The couple in the back was so excited to be jetting off to some exotic destination that I felt compelled to tell them that there was a problem with the airplane’s industrial strength glue. However, they were not convinced, and stuck with their vacation plans.”
    (4) Always take a four-leaf clover with you when visiting Cleaver Square. You’ll need all the luck you can get when the baker jumps out of the bread van and comes after you with a four-loaf cleaver.
    (5) Overheard:
    King: “Scribe! Write this down: I hate how all my pages walk!”
    Scribe: “I hate that, too.”
    (6) Bad citation: “Driver! You go to the beach at the end of the road. If you see any Coppertone girls there, drive past here again and tell me all about their hooters, okay?”
    (7) Overheard:
    Little Legs: “You want a new telly son?”
    Paul: “Yes, but only if it’s a TCL 40-inch Class 3-Series LED Full HD Smart Roku TV.”
    Little Legs: “No problem, but I’ll need some time. Let’s say one year for every inch, okay? Now, don’t go away. Wait right here until I get back!”
    Paul: “Don’t worry. I won’t move an inch!”

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