Read Online Rant by Alfie Crow - Free Book Online Page B

‘He’s fine. He just wanted me to—’
    â€˜Can you speak up a bit?’ says Bond-girl in a lovely refined English accent.
    I clear my throat. Project, man, I think. Always give your audience your best, even the ones in the cheap seats. And especially the ones with big guns.
    â€˜Sam,’ I say, as loudly and clearly as I can, ‘Sam Smith, he’s in the car. He wanted me to check things out and then he’s coming in—’
    â€˜Stop shouting, for Christ’s sake,’ says Bond-girl, ‘and get inside. And did you just fart?’
    I go in and she waves across to the car. Or I think she’s waving at the car. Maybe she’s just wafting away an unpleasant aroma. But like I said, I can’t help it when I get stressed.
    As I go in I see Sam opening the car and staggering out, bringing our new best friend with him.
    Mr Nazi prods me in the back with his gun and I sashay through to the living room, bow-legged and shaking. The men waiting for us are everything that the gun-toting Nazi is not. Small, shrivelled, short-sighted judging by the great thick glasses they wear, unarmed and in a wheelchair. Or one of them is in a wheelchair, anyway. Maybe he’s unlegged, ha ha. The other only looks a very short step away from one. And I imagine short steps are all he can manage at his age. Wheelchair Man looks about a hundred years old and the other chap looks old enough to be his grandfather. The walking dead man grins a toothless smile at me and belches halfheartedly.
    â€˜ell-lo,’ says Wheelchair Man, sounding like a cross between Stephen Hawking and Sparky the Magic Piano. ‘you-musst-be-Mayu-kel.’
    Tuesday May 4 th . Afternoon.
    Admit it, Michael, you’re finished, I thought.
    All I could do now was phone the police and hand myself in. Maybe join the Wormwood Scrubs Amateur Operatic Society and learn to sing soprano – bound to be a big hit with the boys.
    I was actually reaching for the phone when it occurred to me that if I did call the police, then my chances of ever seeing Anna again would be reduced to nil. Even assuming that whoever had taken her didn’t kill her, I couldn’t imagine her ever coming to see me. Unless they brought back hanging. Then she’d probably have booked a front seat.
    Think, Mike . What would George Clooney do?
    Hire in a new scriptwriter, I imagined. Or have his name taken off the credits. Or start suing people. That’s the American way.
    Oh. Hello!
    The American. I had forgotten about him. He must know what’s going on. Hoorah! So, I decided I would go to the police if the American couldn’t think of a way out of our little predicament – because it was ours now. A trouble shared and all that. I felt better already.
    I picked up the carrier bags and the gun and a few extra bits and pieces I thought I might need and peeked out through the front door. Apart from the fact that lots of other people were peeking out through their front doors, and disappeared rather quickly when they saw me, everything appeared normal.
    I left the front door ajar and walked to the corner with as innocent an air as I could. Pure nonchalance. Gene Kelly couldn’t have done it better.
    I hesitated at the foot of the path. Looking around in that obviously furtive sort of, Hey, I’m being furtive, so you pretend you can’t see me, and I’ll pretend it’s working and I can’t see you seeing me, kind of way that all the best amateur spies go in for. Then I see the Big Fat American looking straight at me from his doorstep and it’s so obvious that he can see me that I stop being quite so furtive.
    â€˜Well if it isn’t Mr Stinky,’ he said, somewhat smugly. ‘Come for another peek at my pants, boy?’
    Yes. He did. He really said “boy”, just like Rod Steiger in In the Heat of the Night . Now I’m no Sidney Poitier, but I did a good impression of righteous