Hit and Run | страница 42



Later, as a man, the only fights he’d known were times he’d intervened in drunken mêlées. One time, three lads were kicking seven shades of shit out of another man. Chris had pulled them off, yelling that the police were coming. He got a shove or two and a load of abuse but the trio legged it. The broken nose helped. Made Chris look like a boxer. Another time, he’d got mixed up in a lovers’ fight. The man had been slapping the woman about the head, hard enough to break her jaw. ‘Leave her be,’ Chris had told him, one hand raised in warning. ‘That’s way out of order.’

The man had turned to Chris and let go of the girl. Released, she flew at Chris. ‘Get off him,’ she shrieked, oblivious to the fact that Chris hadn’t laid a finger on the guy, ‘yer wanker, eff off.’ And she had clouted Chris with her handbag then kicked out at him with one vicious looking stiletto which raked a neat quarter-inch furrow down his shin.

Now he wasn’t frightened or agitated because it was like he was on automatic. He imagined that soldiers maybe felt like that before battle or someone jumping out of a plane.

He knew the way. He’d done a few jobs on one of the estates on the fringe of Wythenshawe. Sort of places people bought because it was near the airport and the motorways. They wouldn’t be there more than a few years and they could buy it newly built and sell it for a neat profit and it even came painted, carpeted and fully fitted. Move in a couch and a bed and you were in business.

The address he was making for was less desirable. Council flat in the worst part. No one here ever rang a plumber; under the tenancy agreements they’d all be fixed up by direct works, or they wouldn’t – depending on who you talked to. Regular items in the free newspapers featured scenes of council tenants pointing to leaking pipes, giant field mushrooms on the wall and sodden carpets.


*****

She’d just finished feeding Charlotte and Pete had his coat on and was kissing the baby goodbye when Richard rang. ‘Bad news. Stone and Gleason, obbos have lost them.’

‘They’ve lost them! Shit!’ She flushed with irritation. ‘Circulate descriptions to all patrols. Get Butchers and Shap and anyone else you can pull in on standby, we’d better bloody well find them. Keep me informed.’

Tom picked up on the language like a shot. ‘Aw! Mum said the s-word and the b-word.’

‘How did they lose them?’

‘They were on foot, our lads were following but they weren’t quick enough. Stone and Gleason gave them the slip. There’s more,’ Richard added.