Read Online DONNA AND THE FATMAN (Crime Thriller Fiction) by Helen Zahavi - Free Book Online Page B

likes it. But they always remember to stick it in, they’re always ready to push it in, they never forget to shove it in. So they owe her, really, the way she sees it. In her Donna-centric worldview, they owe her in abundance.
    ‘We off, Joe, are we?’
    ‘We’re going, babe.’
    He turned up his collar and put on his shades, for he liked to act the part, he liked to get in character. She blew on her fingers.
    ‘So we’re splitting, yeah?’
    A final drag, and he chucked the roll-up out of the window.
    ‘We’re on our way.’
    He turned the key. The engine coughed and spluttered out.
    ‘Right,’ he said, and tried again. The motor almost caught. It very nearly almost fired. Three endless seconds in which it almost sparked, then quietly died. He pumped the throttle.
    ‘You’re flooding the engine.’
    ‘You know about cars?’
    ‘You’re flooding it, Joe.’
    He tried a third time. One turn to the right, and ignition on. A half-turn further, and the motor turned over, and then the tubercular sound you get, that sick, familiar, wheezing sound, when the battery starts to fade.
    A spasm shook her gut.
    ‘We off now, Joe?’
    ‘We’re up and running.’
    ‘So we’re going, are we?’
    ‘In a minute , okay?’
    She twisted in her seat and stared back at the house. Lights were coming on upstairs, shadows moving behind the curtains. Henry’s face appeared, a blob of livid malice, framed in the second-floor window. His mouth kept changing shape, for he was shouting something, expressing himself in his favoured way. She watched the hole as it opened and closed. Imagined the insults spewing forth, the globs of Henry spittle arcing through the air before landing, with a soft and glutinous hiss, on the window-pane.
    ‘No need to rush, but I think he’s watching.’
    ‘How’s he looking?’
    ‘Not too happy.’
    Joe worked the motor.
    ‘We better shift then.’
    She kept her eyes on the Fatman’s face and moved her fingers in mute farewell.
    ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘We better had.’
    Merv and Billy beside him now, and he’s pointing down, giving his orders, the black-hole aperture growing and shrinking. Like watching a silent film, she thought, and suddenly realized the boys had gone, they’d disappeared, they’d scooped up their testosterone and vanished. There was just the Fatman, alone in the window. And she couldn’t be sure, she couldn’t be certain, but it looked like he was grinning.
    ‘Will you start the car?’
    ‘I’m trying, aren’t I?’
    ‘Fucking start it, will you?’
    ‘You swearing, now?’
    ‘Just press it down. Don’t pump it, right? Press the pedal down .’
    ‘I been doing that, sweetheart.’
    ‘Well this time, fucking keep it down!’
    The front door burst open, like a bad, bad dream. Mervyn boiled out of the house, a six-inch length of metal pipe protruding from his fist. She thumbed down the door-lock. Joe put the gear-stick into second and floored the throttle. Mervyn running up the drive, skinhead Billy close behind. A sudden vision of being dragged upstairs, being bent and spread, abased before the Fatman. Vomit-panic in her belly. Not that, she thought. Not me, she thought.
    ‘God . . . ’ she moaned.
    He jerked the key, the engine turned over. Then he lifted his foot, he was doing it right, and the sweet, sweet sound of a borrowed motor when it finally starts to fire. He released the clutch and the car shot forward, rear wheels spinning till they found the ground. The seductive smell of burning rubber, and Merv and Billy almost had her, they were almost touching, they were almost there.
    Then the car went skidding towards the road, slamming her back against the leather seat. Like when a plane takes off, so good it was, all speed and light and potency. The Fatman-booty in her lap, and Mervyn screaming just behind, and adrenalin coursing through her veins.
    ‘Joe,’ she breathed, ‘we’re in the movies, Joe . . . ’
    And he gunned the engine, and they were out