As we drove, Ferdinand kept glancing warily in the rear-view mirror but there were no other vehicles on the road, even the buses had stopped running. I tried to make polite small talk with him although he seemed distinctly taciturn, if not downright moody. He did, however, finally volunteer the information that he was out prowling the streets looking for a dog.
‘Yellow mongrel, rather sanguine temperament?’ I hazarded.
‘How did you know that?’ he asked, looking at me in amazement. His eyes narrowed and his face grew menacing. ‘You’ve not been following me, have you?’
‘Of course not, Ferdinand,’ I said.
‘How do you know my name?’
~ I think you should kiss him before he disappears again, my giddy mother (but not – et cetera) interjects.
Personally, I think it better if this kind of thing develops naturally between two people, rather than as a result of intervention. On the other hand, I may never get this opportunity again.
Suddenly, and without any preamble, Ferdinand leant over towards me and placed his hot lips on mine and began to kiss me fiercely.
~ I hope he’s parked the car.
Luckily, we were stopped at a lengthy traffic light. Ferdinand’s kisses tasted of a combination of things – marijuana and Irn-Bru, turpentine and Tunnock’s Teacakes, with a slight undertone of fried onions – a strange brew you could probably have marketed successfully, especially to children. Heaven knows where things might have gone if the traffic light hadn’t changed at that moment.
A little further on, Ferdinand parked the car, rather carelessly, outside a shop that was still open on the City Road and said, ‘I won’t be a minute.’
Another car loomed out of the snow and glided to a silent stop behind the Hornet but no-one got out and the snow was too thick for me to see who was inside it.
I was just nodding off to sleep when Ferdinand came out of the shop, but hardly had he taken a step onto the snowy pavement when two men got out of the car behind and approached him. One of them said something to him that I couldn’t hear and then almost immediately the other one punched Ferdinand in the stomach. He doubled up in pain and fell to his knees. I opened the car door although I had no idea what I was going to do, they hardly seemed the type to respond to polite female remonstrance. But before I could make a move to get out of the car one of the men slammed the door shut again. My forehead bounced off the glass of the car window and I could feel a bruise start to form immediately.
The man leant down so that his face was close to the window. He grinned at me, showing rotten, crooked teeth, and then suddenly produced a knife, a huge hunting one that could have felled a bear, curved like a scimitar, with a serrated edge that glinted beneath the street light. He tapped this malevolently against the glass, grinning all the while like a storybook bandit. The message was clear and did not need words.
Then the men yanked Ferdinand to his feet, pulled his arms behind his back and bundled him into their car and drove off in a great flurry of snow, skidding round the corner onto Milnbank Road and disappearing from view.
This wasn’t going at all well. I sat for a while waiting for my pulse to slow a little, worried my heart was about to give up. I wasn’t sure what to do next – reporting the incident to the police was the first thing that came to mind but I wouldn’t get very far if I tried to walk in this weather, and I certainly wouldn’t make it as far as the police station in Bell Street without succumbing to hypothermia. The car probably wouldn’t make it either, as the whole world had now turned white and anyway I hadn’t driven a car since taking lessons in Bob’s ill-fated old Riley 1.5 (a tale that still doesn’t need telling).
~ What about the shop? Nora says, the shopkeeper will have a phone.
But, no, he won’t, because the shop was now in darkness with all the metal grilles and shutters in place.
~ Knock on a stranger’s door.
I was about to do that, but before I could even get out of the car the blue flashing lights of a police car appeared from nowhere out of the snow. Hardly had I had time to think to myself what good timing this was on the part of the forces of law and order when I found myself being dragged out of the car, handcuffed and pushed into the back of the panda car, whereupon one of the policemen informed me – in a polite, rather disinterested way – that I was under arrest for being in possession of a stolen vehicle and for being an accessory to a robbery.
‘Robbery?’
The policeman nodded towards the shop which was once more brightly lit and open for business. The owner was standing on the doorstep and observing my predicament with satisfaction.
The other policeman looked at his watch and said, ‘Night in the cells for you, I’m afraid,’ and started up his engine and—