Lifting the Lid(5)

‘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.