‘Well?’ said Lenny from his position behind the chair. ‘Is he dead or what?’
Carrot straightened, grateful for an excuse to transfer his attention away from the almost mesmerising gaze of the man’s eyes.
‘Looks like it,’ he said, wrenching the underpants from his head and using them to mop the beads of sweat from his brow.
‘Shit,’ said Lenny and sidled round to the front of the chair to see for himself. He bent down and repeated the same action as Carrot, waving his hand in front of the man’s face, and then added a few clicks of his fingers for good measure. ‘Maybe we should get something with a sharp point – like a pen or something – and shove it at his face. That’d make him blink if he’s still alive.’
Carrot finished wiping the perspiration from his neck and hairless head and flung the underpants towards his holdall. They landed on top of his ginger toupee. ‘Do shut up,’ he said. ‘And stop bloody hitting him, will you?’
Lenny had resumed his cheek patting routine from before but with increased vigour so that the sound of slapping resonated off the walls of the apartment. He stopped the slapping and gave voice to the question which was suddenly uppermost in both their minds: ‘So now what do we do?’
His toupee firmly back in place, Carrot was already packing his bag. ‘I don’t know about you, mate, but I’m gone. Harry’ll be here in a couple of hours, and I don’t intend to be around when he arrives and finds out our Mr Stiff has croaked. And nor do I want the filth after me for murder.’ He closed the zip on his holdall and scanned the room for anything he’d left behind that might incriminate him. ‘Come to think of it though, a life sentence would be a damn sight preferable to what Harry Vincent’ll do if he ever catches up with us. – You coming or what?’
Lenny did his chin stroking thing again, apparently giving some serious consideration to his options. ‘Prints,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Fingerprints. Ours. They must be all over the place.’ He waved his arm aimlessly around the room to reinforce the point.
Carrot’s mouth hung open for a moment before he released his grip on the holdall and let it fall to the floor. ‘Bollocks,’ he said and snatched the toupee from his head once more. Reaching the kitchen area in two strides, he began frantically rubbing the ginger hairpiece over the nearest work surface.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Milton Street was firmly ensconced in one of the seedier areas of Bristol, far away from the bistros and art galleries of the gentrified dockland area. The pavements were strewn with piles of plastic garbage sacks, many of which had been ripped open – presumably by a variety of scavenging animals – and their contents spewed into the road. Swarms of food wrappers and empty carrier bags scurried this way and that according to the fluctuations of the light summer breeze, which itself was tinged with the scent of decay and degradation.
A faint odour of stale urine and burning rubber invaded Trevor’s nostrils as soon as Sandra parked the car and he wound down his window. He looked across the street at the shabby block of flats and craned his neck to peer upwards at the fifteen or so storeys with all but a few of its myriad windows firmly closed to the outside world. Lowering his gaze to ground level again, he took in the grimy glass of the aluminium-framed entrance and the faded gold lettering on the pane above the main door, which was barely decipherable as CABOT TOWER. A more brightly printed estate agent’s sign was attached to a wooden post at the side of the entrance and announced that Flat 12 was TO LET – or it would have done if some wit hadn’t added an “I” between the TO and the LET.
Very appropriate, thought Trevor.
Milly’s olfactory sense appeared to be not in the least offended by the aroma of her new surroundings. On the contrary, she had woken from a near comatose sleep on the back seat of the car the moment Sandra had switched off the engine and was now poking her snout through the open window, sniffing the air with obvious enthusiasm.
Trevor wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing here. After he’d bolted down the King Size Mars bar back at the motorway services, he’d felt better able to cope with something approaching rational thought again, and Sandra had repeated her offer to drop him off somewhere, but he had eventually declined. His mind had reeled at the barrage of contradictory advice offered by all of the competing voices inside his head, each of them determined to be heard above the others:
Where are you going to go if she does drop you off? You’re totally out of cash, and you left your bank cards in the van, which is miles away. And even if you managed to hitch back, the police are probably still keeping tabs on it.