Gareth Dawson Series Box Set

by Nathan Burrows

  ‘Fuck me, this one’s heavy,’ Fat Alan said as he dragged one of the industrial blue bins to the back of the lorry. He hooked the bin onto the back of the lorry, and Jimmy pressed the button that would lift it a couple of inches into the air and weigh it.

  ‘Hundred and forty-three kilograms,’ Jimmy said out loud, reading from the small LCD screen on the back of the lorry. He pressed the button again to empty the bin and wrote the weight down in a notebook just like he always did. He didn’t have to write the weight down, but he didn’t trust the machine to record it properly. A couple of years ago, the scales on the lorry had gone wrong, and it was only his written notes that had saved the council a few thousand pounds in revenue. He’d not seen any of the money, but got a bonus at the end of the year that had seen him and Milly at one of the poshest restaurants in Norwich for an evening.

  ‘Eighty-four kilograms,’ Fat Alan called out as he hooked up the next bin. Behind him, Robbie and Marmite were already lining up the next bin to be emptied. The sooner they finished their round, the sooner they could all go home, and there was no place that Jimmy would rather be.

  Chapter 6

  ‘Come on, Jimmy,’ Robbie pleaded as they drove towards the roundabout. ‘I’ll only be a few seconds, and I’ve got a dead cert for the half-past three at Aintree.’ Jimmy stifled a smile as his friend trotted out almost the same lines, word for word, that he always did when they drove along this stretch of road. Just off the roundabout ahead was Robbie’s bookmaker, carefully chosen because there was plenty of space behind it to park a large refuse lorry without annoying too many of the locals. Robbie was only ever going to be a few seconds, and he always had a horse that was absolutely going to win.

  ‘I’m going to time you, mate,’ Jimmy replied. ‘If you’re a second over ten minutes, we’re leaving without you.’ Fat Alan chuckled in the rear seat.

  ‘Oi, Robbie,’ he said, nudging Marmite in the ribs to get his attention. ‘If your horses are all that bloody certain, how come you’re still working the bins?’

  ‘Mate, I’ve got fifty quid in my pocket,’ Marmite joined in. ‘Can you put it on the same horse? I’ll buy you a bacon butty when we’re done as a commission?’ Except for Robbie, they all laughed.

  ‘What a bunch of bloody comedians you all are,’ Robbie muttered as Jimmy brought the lorry to a stop with a loud hydraulic hiss. ‘One day I just won’t turn up, and the next thing you’ll get will be a postcard from Bermuda with a picture of me with a giant fish.’ He hopped down out of the cab, and Jimmy rolled the window down to call after him.

  ‘You might need to put more than twenty pence on each race for that one, mate.’ Robbie didn’t reply, but extended a middle finger in Jimmy’s direction as he hurried towards the bookies.

  ‘He’s a bloody one, isn’t he?’ Marmite asked no-one in particular. ‘Wouldn’t catch me in that Bermuda, I’ll tell you that for nothing.’

  ‘Why not, mate?’ Fat Alan replied. ‘I bet it’s bloody great over there. Better than sodding Norwich, at least.’

  ‘Nah, full of foreigners.’

  ‘So’s Great Yarmouth,’ Fat Alan shot back. ‘That doesn’t stop you playing the slots there, does it?’

  ‘Not the same though,’ Marmite said. ‘Different type of foreigner.’

  ‘Anyway, isn’t Bermuda British?’

  ‘Can’t be, it’s miles away.’

  ‘I think it is, mate,’ Fat Alan continued. ‘That come up in a pub quiz a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Still foreign though.’

  Jimmy sighed and tried his best to tune the two men out as they bickered about whether Bermuda was in fact British. It wouldn’t be long before Marmite put forward that the reason Bermuda wasn’t British was because of the colour of most of the population’s skin. The last time the two of them had a similar argument it had resulted in a stony silence for the rest of the round, and Jimmy just wasn’t in the mood. He was annoyed about what had happened back at the hotel.

  They had been just about to empty the final bin when the driver of the Bentley had put in an appearance. He was, as Robbie had noted when they eventually left the place, a stuck-up idiot who drove a nice car. The man had appeared from a set of fire doors just as they were attaching the last recycling bin and spent a moment exaggeratedly examining his car in case Jimmy had brushed against it with the lorry. Which he hadn’t.

  Jimmy had called him out on it, explaining that he’d not gone anywhere near the car with the lorry, but the man hadn’t replied. The Bentley’s owner, a slim, middle-aged man in a suit that Jimmy would never be able to afford just looked down his nose at Jimmy and the rest of the crew. Eventually, he murmured something in a cut-glass public-school accent about getting a move on. The crew’s reaction was unscripted but coordinated to perfection. Marmite suddenly forgot how to hook up the recycling bin to the back of the lorry. Robbie made out as if he was going to help him, but ended up sucking air through his teeth and staring at the lifting mechanism as if he’d never seen it before in his life. Fat Alan decided he had lost something on the floor of the cab and had to look for it at that very instant. Jimmy just climbed back into the lorry’s cab to wait for the others to finish annoying the man in the suit.

  He watched through the rear-view mirror as the Bentley’s owner stared at the lorry for a few seconds before disappearing back through the open fire doors and into the hotel. There might be a complaint put in to the council, but Jimmy didn’t care and neither would the others. It wouldn’t be the first time, nor would it be the last.

  Jimmy reached forward for his phone to check for any messages from Milly, but there was nothing. According to the screen, it was almost half-past nine, so she should be up and about by now, even if it was only for a few hours before going back to bed. Jimmy started composing a text message, but decided just to call her. She was more likely to respond to a phone call than a text message, anyway. They rarely called each other, and it was almost an unwritten code between them for it’s urgent.

  Jimmy pressed the phone to his ear and listened to the brr brr of the ring tone. After what seemed like ages, there was a click at the other end of the line and he heard his daughter’s voice.

  Hello?

  ‘Milly, it’s me,’ Jimmy said, even though his name would have come up on her screen. ‘Listen, are you about this–’

  Hello? Milly’s voice continued, cutting him off. Oops, sorry, she said with a brief laugh. It’s not actually me. I’m either screening my calls and ignoring you, or I’m actually busy, so just leave a message if you want to find out which one it is.

  Jimmy swore under his breath before disconnecting the call. He remembered Milly laughing about how many people that recorded message had caught out. At least she would see that there was a missed call from him and call back. When Jimmy saw Robbie emerge from the bookies, he decided on a quick text message instead asking her to call him when she was free.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Robbie said as he climbed back up into the cab. ‘Bit of a queue.’ Jimmy ignored him and started up the lorry, grateful for the warm blast of air from the heaters.

  ‘Hey, Robbie,’ Fat Alan leaned forwards from his position in the back. ‘Is Bermuda part of Britain? Only Marmite here reckons it’s not because they’re all black.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Jimmy muttered under his breath. ‘Not again.’

  Two hours later, it was almost midday. It wasn’t just the tachograph in the lorry that made Jimmy park up. It was the gnawing in his stomach. Time for lunch. As he always did, Jimmy parked in the large car-park behind the Heartsease pub in Thorpe St Andrew, a suburb on the outskirts of Norwich that used to be a village in its own right before a large, sprawling council estate joined it up with the rest of the city. Compared to the estate that Jimmy lived on, it was almost posh.

  ‘Here we go, boys,’ Jimmy said as he turned the engine off. ‘Lunchtime.’ The four of them had their own routines for lunch. Robbie would nip into the Tesco’s for a meal deal and come back
grumbling about the sandwiches. Fat Alan would just disappear somewhere, and Marmite would stay in the back of the cab with his carefully prepared sandwiches. Most of the time, Jimmy would stay in the cab with Marmite, but he decided instead to nip into the Heartsease pub.

  ‘How do, Jimmy,’ the landlord of the pub boomed out as he walked into the bar. ‘Bit early for you, isn’t it?’ Jimmy looked at his oldest friend—Big Joe to his friends, Big Bastard Joe to his enemies—and gave him a brief smile.

  ‘Alright, mate?’ Jimmy said. ‘How’s tricks?’

  ‘Mustn’t grumble,’ Big Joe replied with his trademark response as he looked around the almost empty pub. ‘But until I win the lottery, this is it.’

  Jimmy shrugged the fluorescent vest that the council insisted they all wear off his shoulders and sat on a barstool. The pub extended Big Joe’s character—tired, rough around the edges, but welcoming.

  The first time he’d met Big Joe, they’d both been eleven years old and back to back in the playground in their first week at the big school. A few short moments later, they’d been outside the headmaster’s office, waiting to explain how the five older boys in the school’s infirmary had got there. Despite the suspension they’d both received, the two men had been firm friends ever since, and it wasn’t the last time they’d been in a spot of bother together. Jimmy looked at Big Joe, remembering for a few seconds their time at school together. Big Joe was just Joe back then, and he didn’t have tattooed arms or a huge beer belly like he did now, but forty years and plenty of booze did a lot to a man.

  ‘Can I get a coffee, Joe?’ Jimmy said, checking his phone yet again. Nothing.

  ‘Sure,’ Joe replied, turning to the fancy-looking machine on the bar which he claimed to have bought at a car boot sale but was almost certainly stolen. ‘What type?’

  ‘Just coffee.’

  ‘No worries,’ Joe said, fiddling with a few buttons on the machine. As it whirred and clunked, he turned his attention to Jimmy. ‘I might get you to have a look at this sodding machine at some point, mate. I think it’s on the blink.’

  ‘They didn’t have machines like that when I was at college, Joe.’ It wasn’t just that, but Jimmy had never actually finished the electrical engineering course that he’d started all those years ago. He’d dropped out when he realised he could earn money on the bins without any qualifications.

  ‘You alright, mate? You look, I don’t know, a bit off?’

  ‘It’s all good,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Just tired, that’s all.’ Joe looked at him through rheumy eyes and crossed his heavily tattooed arms across his expansive stomach.

  ‘Bollocks. What’s up?’

  Jimmy looked at his friend and felt a lump at the back of his throat. In an instant, Big Joe had sliced through every defence Jimmy had. The two men stared at each other for a few seconds, Jimmy desperately trying not to lose control. Joe tightened his arms across his belly before sighing.

  ‘Yeah, well, you know where I am when you’re ready.’ He turned away from Jimmy and fussed with the coffee machine.

  ‘You don’t know any lawyers, do you?’ Jimmy said, surprising himself. Where had that come from? At least it was a change of subject, of sorts.

  ‘Really?’ Big Joe replied with a throaty laugh. ‘Why, you been nicked?’

  ‘No, not that,’ Jimmy said, allowing himself a wry smile. It wasn’t as if he was about to tell Joe that he needed one to go over his will. ‘I just need a spot of the old legal advice, you know?’

  ‘That sounds like a story for a beer or two,’ Joe replied, placing a cup of coffee on the bar between them. As he put it on the counter, some dark brown liquid slopped into the saucer. ‘Sorry, spilt a bit. Do you want some food as well?’

  ‘Got any sausage rolls?’

  ‘Of course I have,’ Joe replied. ‘Do you want it nuked or half frozen?’

  ‘As it comes mate,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’ll take it with me and have it later.’

  Joe busied himself with a sausage roll that Jimmy was sure had been bought from the Lidl over the road before nodding at the only other customers in the pub.

  ‘Him over there, the big guy?’ Joe said, looking at the small group of men huddled over a small table in the pub’s corner. The largest of the group was a hard-looking man in his mid-twenties, deep in conversation with another couple of men. ‘That’s Gareth Dawson. He’s been hanging around with a lawyer a lot. He denies it, but he’s definitely having a sniff. She works for a mate of mine. Paul Dewar?’

  ‘Never heard of either of them,’ Jimmy replied, picking up the sausage roll and stuffing it in his pocket.

  ‘Top bloke.’

  ‘Who?’ Jimmy replied, looking at the man in the corner. ‘Him, or the Dewar one?’

  ‘Both of them,’ Joe said, leaning forward conspiratorially. ‘Him over there—Gareth—was in nick a while back until Paul Dewar got him out. The girl Gareth’s hanging around with works for Dewar, see?’ Jimmy blinked. He didn’t see at all, nor was he particularly interested. All he wanted was someone to talk to about making a will.

  ‘Right, okay,’ he told Joe. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

  ‘Do you want me to talk to him?’

  ‘No, mate. Don’t worry.’ Jimmy took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. ‘Bloody hell, Joe. Is that really coffee?

  ‘It should be,’ Joe replied with a laugh. ‘I pressed the button for coffee. At least, I think I did.’

  ‘Jesus wept,’ Jimmy said. ‘You might want to check the instruction booklet. That’s rancid, that is.’

  ‘Well, you can fuck off to Costa in that case,’ Joe shot back with a grin.

  Jimmy was just about to ask Joe how much he owed him for the coffee and sausage roll when he felt his mobile phone buzzing in his pocket. With an apologetic glance at Joe, Jimmy skipped to his feet and made his way towards the beer garden at the back of the pub to take the call. It had to be Milly, and he didn’t want to talk to her in front of Joe, no matter how long they’d known each other.

  He pushed the door to the beer garden open and stepped out into the small concrete yard, pulling his mobile phone from his pocket as he did so. According to the screen, someone was calling from an unknown number.

  ‘Milly?’ Jimmy gasped as he answered the call. It was a woman’s voice that replied, but to his dismay, it wasn’t Milly’s.

  ‘Mr Tucker?’ the voice said. ‘My name’s Angela. I’m calling from the neurology team at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jimmy replied, utterly deflated. He sat on the graffiti scarred bench in Big Joe’s excuse for a beer garden. The lump in his throat from earlier was back. ‘Hi.’

  ‘I was wondering if we might organise an appointment for you to come in and speak to us?’ Angela continued in a lilting Irish accent.

  ‘Sure, when do you want me to come in?’

  ‘How about tomorrow?’

  Chapter 7

  Jimmy stared out the window of the bus at the red brick houses rushing past, half distorted by the rain running down the glass. It was a miserable morning, and he was glad that he wasn’t out on the lorry even though he could have stayed in the cab and let the others do the bins. At least his boss had been reasonable about him having another day off for the hospital, but he needed a letter from the doctor at some point.

  More concerning to Jimmy than whether his boss minded if he had another day off for a medical appointment was the fact that Milly still hadn’t come home. He’d got back from work yesterday afternoon fully expecting her to be curled up on the sofa with a cup of hot chocolate, watching Desperate Housewives on the television. But there’d been no sign of her, other than the untouched mug of tea still in the bathroom.

  Jimmy had spent the rest of the previous day sorting out his fish tank, which he normally found relaxing. He had such a set routine for doing it that he could do it in his sleep, and once he’d completed the water changes and chemistry tests, he sat in front of the tank to enjoy watching its inhabitants. Milly helpe
d him out here and there, calling out the timings for the various tests that measured things like nitrate, magnesium, and calcium in the water. They all had to be just so, otherwise the fish and corals wouldn’t thrive. He’d not enjoyed it last night, though. Jimmy had been half-way through changing the water, lugging a full barrel of fresh reverse-osmosis water in from the utility room. The barrels weighed twenty-five kilograms when full, and he could normally manage two of them with no problem at all. Last night though, he was hit with a sudden and unexpected pain in the back of his head as he was carrying a single barrel.

  Convinced his aneurysm had burst, Jimmy had dropped the water and limped through to the lounge where he had sat for a good twenty minutes, waiting for the pain and breathlessness to subside. He had considered for a moment whether to call an ambulance, but decided against it as the pain had faded the minute he sat down. Once it had receded completely, Jimmy sat alone as he experienced something he’d not experienced for a long time. Fear.

  The bus ground to a halt outside a youth club on the outskirts of Norwich, and two young lads wearing hoodies got on. One of them gave Jimmy an enquiring look, as if to say Who are you looking at? but he looked away when Jimmy returned the stare with interest. He might have forty years on the youngsters, but he still had an air about him when he wanted to. The two boys shook rainwater from their hoodies and huddled in the back of the bus, sniggering to themselves. Jimmy figured they were probably sniggering about him, but he couldn’t care less.

  When the bus got to the hospital, Jimmy thanked the driver and hurried through the rain into the main entrance of the sprawling complex. When it had been built ten years previously, replacing a tired and wholly unsuitable Victorian hospital in the city centre that was now apartments, it had been a state-of-the-art facility. Now, it just looked like Jimmy felt. Tired.

  He was way too early for his appointment, but made his way to the outpatients department, anyway. The coffee shop by the main entrance was full of people, and Jimmy wasn’t really in the mood to be around them. When he reached the outpatients department, Jimmy checked in with the reception desk and sat down to wait.