Nurse Becky Gets Shot

by Gary Baker

  She leaned close to the big man saying something which got a response that sounded like 'fuck off' but couldn't have been, surely. She looked nervous. Passed a silly small handbag from hand to hand. Tugged at her skirt. Why do women wear those things when they're clearly so uncomfortable?

  A jagged voice sliced through Roger's thoughts. 'What you looking at, cunt!' The big man glared straight at Roger.

  Someone behind me? Only a wall.

  An adrenaline hit blanched Roger's face, caused his head to dither slightly.

  The man advanced heavily towards him.

  'I said: what you fucking looking at!'

  Roger stood up. His right knee felt unsteady under him.

  'I'm sorry?' Damn! His voice trembled. All those eyes on him.

  The man bulldozed through a fairy-ring of small stools to within inches of Roger. 'I don't like your fucking face, cunt!' he spat, making Roger flinch from the flying spittle. 'You're eyeing up my fucking woman and you're not man enough to shag a fucking hamster!'

  My God, why was this happening? 'Look -' began Roger. The man's left hand clamped around Roger's throat cutting the sentence dead. It hurt. Roger couldn't breathe. He grabbed the man's wrist. It was like grabbing a piece of scaffolding tube. Roger could feel panic taking hold.

  Roger B thought, sod this, and brought his right knee up hard between the man's legs. The grip released. Roger could breathe. How does that feel, big boy?

  Roger C was impressed. Nice one, but what happens now?

  Roger staggered back gasping for air. He felt and heard his chair being knocked over. Something hit him hard in the face. He felt his lower lip give against his teeth. The last time he'd felt that was when he had been kicked in the face by a girl on a rope-swing when he was six years old. She'd swung across the brook and planted him with both feet. No pain. But a kind of rattled dizziness.

  Roger didn't fall over when he was six and he didn't fall over this time either.

  A high pitched scream. He made himself focus on the woman by the bar. She screamed again, wide eyed with both hands to either side of her face. Edvard Munch's The Scream, but with hair. What was she looking at?

  Roger's aggressor was bent over in pain but had a gun. It looked toy-small in his hand. It was pointed at Roger.

  'You fuck!' snarled the man straightening up and raising his arm.

  Jesus.

  'I'm going to fucking kill you, you fuck!'

  A figure flew in from Roger's left. It was Lenny. He grappled with the man's arm. The gun waved about as the two men struggled.

  'Help me!' shouted Lenny.

  'Get off me you fuck!' yelled the man.

  Roger leaped forwards grasping for the gun, trying to turn it away. Turn it down. The three struggled and staggered. A threesome parody dance that turned and jerked, panted and cursed.

  Rosemary Clooney belted out, 'Hey mambo, mambo Italiano. Hey mambo, mambo Italiano'

  Roger searched blindly among thrashing limbs. Where was the gun?

  BANG!

  Unbelievably loud. Deafening. Roger let go jumping back. His ears rang. Something hit his foot. The gun!

  The big man ran from the pub. Lenny was looking back, open mouthed, towards the bar. Roger followed his gaze. The top left quarter of mock-blonde woman's head was gone. She fell forward, legs stiff, smashing into the floor. Blood, flesh and brains splashed out. A grotesque, red, paintball hit.

  Lenny pointed at Roger. 'My God,' he said, 'you've killed her.'

  Everyone held their breath. Looked at Roger. Looked at the body.

  Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

  Lenny picked up the gun, took Roger's arm.

  'It's a so delish a ev'rybody come copisha

  How to mambo, Italianoooooo!

  'Ats nice!

  UNH!'

  'Come ON!' Lenny pulled at Roger.

  Jesus.

  They ran.

  *

  Lenny insisted on calling back in at the Salvation Army Centre.

  Sat opposite Lenny on his cot, Roger finally spoke. 'But I didn't pull the trigger. That … lunatic did.'

  'Maybe so,' said Lenny, keeping his voice low, 'but it looked to me like you shot the fucking gun then dropped it in a panic, like.' Lenny reached under his mattress and pulled out a half bottle of Bell's whisky and a small stack of plastic cups borrowed from beside the water cooler. 'And if that's what it looked like to me then chances are that's the way it looked to every other fucker.'

  'But, that's ridiculous. I was just sitting there. This stranger suddenly started shouting at me for no reason.' Roger's mind a tumble-drier of thoughts. Round and round they tumbled. Sense evaporated out of them.

  'He looked to me like he'd been kicked in the fucking nuts.'

  There was the tiniest hint of pride in Roger's response. 'Well actually I did. I did knee him. But purely in self defence.'

  'Somebody shouted at you so you kneed him in the fucking nuts? Not what you'd call very fucking diplomatic, like.'

  'What was I supposed to do? He had hold of me. Round the neck.' Roger's own hand demonstrated the grip. 'I couldn't breathe, for Christ's sake.'

  Lenny began to unscrew the top off the whisky bottle. A tattoo around Lenny's wrist caught Roger's eye and he stared at it, not really seeing. Thoughts tumbling.

  Lenny noticed the direction of Roger's gaze. 'KOPALDA,' he said. 'It's the name of a gang, from when I was a kid.'

  Roger's tumbling thoughts made him feel ill. He shook his head. 'What?' he managed at last.

  'Only kidding,' said Lenny. 'KOPALDA is an old girlfriend of mine.' He prepared to pour whisky into one of the plastic cups. 'Polish she was. Biggest fucking tits in Darlington,' he laughed. 'Very obliging. Buried in a Y shape coffin.' Lenny laughed again spilling whisky onto the cot.

  Roger was not amused. 'That's all extremely interesting but … ' Anger took hold of him. 'We can't just sit here!' he shouted standing excitedly. 'We have to … ' Roger stopped, conscious of eyes. He was drawing attention to himself.

  'What? Go to the fucking police?' said Lenny in a barely audible hiss. 'Own up to killing that innocent girl? And running away?'

  'But I didn't do it. And even if I did it was an accident,' Roger hissed back. 'This is ridiculous.' He sat back down on the cot, leaned forward and put his head in his hands. What would Julia make of this? What is Julia to me, anyway? This is all wrong. What would Harry think? His dad is a killer. 'No, I'm not a killer. That … man is. Not me.'

  Lenny offered a plastic cup to Roger. 'Drink this,' he said. 'It won't make it go away but if you drink enough you won't give a fuck.'

  Roger took the cup. Gazed into it, didn't drink.

  'Look,' said Lenny, 'no one knows who the fuck you are. Or me for that matter. I didn't know anyone in there at all. I don't think.' He poured a drink for himself. Took a swig. 'Won't be long before they come knocking on these fucking doors though. Might be prudent to repair to an alternate fucking venue, like.'

  Lenny looked at the ceiling. Thinking. Came to a decision. 'Ever been to Hull?' he asked.

  An image came into Roger's mind of an iron fireplace in the room of a small terraced house. A man with a bald head, hairy arms and a string vest told him stories of river expeditions, tireless black warriors and crocodiles, as Roger sat enthralled in a tin bath pushing dead skin and grime between his toes.

  'Yes,' said Roger. 'When I was a child, a long time ago.'

  *

  'Hull,' said Lenny, 'the arsehole of Britain. Even the fucking name is depressing.'

  Roger huddled beside him in the passenger seat of the red Peugeot Generic. His seat squeaked at every bump in the road and the rear axle protested with a low groan at every corner. He looked out at the bleak rows of typical semi-detached housing blanded even further by orange street-lighting and found it hard to disagree with Lenny. You could be anywhere, in any town in England. The outskirts of the vast majority of towns all looked exactly like this. Bleak at best. Great Britain. GB. Grimly Blea
k. But there was an estuary somewhere low and to the left in Roger's mind, an estuary where he'd hopped over sandy rivulets during a school trip. And somewhere a moor. A windy moor with an old Roman tower crumbling back into the heather. It had been fun. When was that? Roger braced himself as Lenny braked to avoid a bus pulling into the traffic.

  'Jeez!' Lenny went on to complain more colourfully about all drivers of large vehicles.

  The red Peugeot, driven by Lenny, had miraculously appeared two hours earlier in Darlington. Lenny's, 'Just nipping off to get a ride,' was obviously a euphemism for something Roger didn't like to think about. Even so, the offence of twocking was trivial next to … murder.

  And Lenny was a sign reader: 'A66 … A1 South … Barton 3 miles … Scotch Corner … Moto … 24 hours … Catterick … Kirkby Fleetham … ' He read random number plates out loud too. Not just interesting combinations, but any his gaze happened across. The backs and sides of trucks were fair game, as were petrol prices and Travel Lodge charges.

  But one word Lenny never uttered sat in the back seat like a giant Water Buffalo snorting with suppressed rage, primed to cause chaos and carnage at the mention of its name. Roger expected to hear the word at every junction, at every glance in the rear view mirror, emerging from every slip road. Police.

  After half an hour's drive, Roger had finally snapped. 'Please stop reading out each and every poxy sign, for Christ's sake!'

  'All right, all right. Keep your fucking hair on, killer.' Lenny stressed the last word, twisting it like a child would sneer 'poopy-pants' or 'smelly-socks'; accusingly.

  Roger, in an exaggeratedly mature tone said, 'I'm sorry, but I can see the damn things as well you can. You don't have to read out every bloody sign.'

  'All right, all right. I get the message. Fuck me.'

  But Lenny couldn't help himself. Couldn't stand so much silence. He was soon whispering each sign as they drained south towards Hull. His whispering slowly becoming normal speech.

  Roger concentrated on blankness, managed to tune Lenny out, even dozed for a short time.

  Lenny kept to the speed limit and his disparaging remarks about Hull were his first words spoken directly to Roger in over an hour.

  'Keep your eyes open for a sign to Sculcoates,' said Lenny. 'I nearly always fucking miss it.'

  Roger sat up shaking the sleep from his mind. Looking for signs. Harry was creeping back into his thoughts again.

  Two birds with one stone: stop the thoughts and stop Lenny reading signs.

  'Do you come to Hull very often?' Roger asked not expecting a reply of any substance.

  'Half a dozen deliveries a year, probably.'

  That was a lot more than Roger expected. 'You're a delivery driver?'

  Lenny smiled. 'Well,' he began, pausing to negotiate a turn, 'I like to think of myself as more of a fisherman.'

  Roger knew he was supposed to ask Lenny to explain what he meant but elected to keep quiet knowing he would be told anyway.

  'A fisherman,' said Lenny after a few seconds, 'tests out the water, sets out the bait, waits patiently then – wallop! Strikes, gathers up in the net and delivers to the kitchen a prize fucking specimen all ready to be cleaned, scaled, gutted, stuffed and presented for … eating, mounting, or selling.'

  Roger didn't think he could feel more uneasy, but he did. 'And am I for eating, mounting or selling?'

  'You?' Lenny laughed. 'You're special, you are. You're a fucking killer.' That childish, sneering, accusing stress on the last word again.

  The acid injustice of the word dripped on a nerve. Roger's unease flash-changed to anger. 'Stop the car!' he commanded. 'Let me out!' Be more forceful, demanded Roger B. 'Now! This instant!' shouted Roger.

  'No fucking way. I'm not letting you out to go running around getting yourself caught and blaming everything on me, like. No fucking chance.' Lenny's tone changed, cutting through Roger's anger. 'Sit tight and don't even fucking think of getting out because I'll chase you down and cut your fucking head off. Right!?' He underlined his point by elbowing Roger hard in the chest making the car swerve and the tyres squeal.

  The sudden violence caught Roger by surprise. He felt sick, unable to breathe, strained forward against the seatbelt.

  The memory-door opened a fraction. The elbow in the chest, the sickness, were familiar sensations. A coach trip altercation had ended with a boy from another school thumping Roger hard in the stomach. He had not retaliated. Fear had kept him in his seat. An inaction Roger regretted through to his adult years.

  But to retaliate against Lenny now would be stupid. He could lose control of the car. Roger B was not impressed, what would young Harry think if he knew?

  Roger C pleaded, don't do it. It's not worth it.

  'Why did you do that?' said Roger, sounding whiney even to his own ears. 'What the bloody hell did you have to go and do that for?'

  'Just sit fucking tight and shut the fuck up,' said Lenny.

  'Is that your … types answer to everything? Violence?'

  'Just calm down.'

  'Calm down? Calm down? You just elbowed me in the chest for no bloody good reason and you want me to calm down.'

  'Just calm the fuck down.'

  'That's it isn't it? You're just a … ' Roger ran out of words. A heat rose from his belly. A furnace burnt in his chest. Dancing blue hot flames cauterised his brain. Injustice screamed in his head, filling it, threatening to bursting through his skull. He fought against his seatbelt then tore into Lenny's head with fists and fingers and bites. A whirlwind of rage and hurt. Unaware that Lenny had lost control and the car had mounted the pavement and thumped into a brick wall. He just wanted to tear out his eyes, rip off his head, see blood, kill him. Lenny managed to open the car door and struggle out. He was forced to drag Roger, still clinging to his coat, over the gear lever, across the driver's seat and out onto the pavement. Roger didn't feel the blows. Didn't care. Kill! Blood! Kill! Whirling punching kicking clawing, kill the bastard, never see Harry again, DIE YOU BASTAAAARD!

  Exhaustion at last left Roger on his hands and knees on the pavement gasping for air.

  'Fucking hell!' said Lenny bent over slightly out of breath. 'I'm impressed. If you weren't so unfit you could have fucking had me.'

  Roger sank back onto his knees, breathing hard, his heart pounding in his chest. He lifted a finger and pointed up at Lenny. 'Don't you ever… ' began Roger.

  Lenny's right foot caught Roger hard against the side of his head knocking him into darkness.

  Chapter 2

  The threat of rape made Jennifer Penrose consider suicide again.

  They had shaved her head, stripped her naked and given her a hospital gown to wear. Taking away her clothes and hair had exposed her.

  She tugged and smoothed the gown, coaxing it, begging it, to cover more of her thighs, back, buttocks.

  They had shown her a handy-cam film of Loki talking to her mother; asking directions. Loki was not his real name. He was big, had fluffy brown hair, an accent from the North East somewhere, evil blue eyes and he was tricky. He could switch from being Jennifer's best friend to being her worst nightmare mid-sentence. Unpredictable and terrifying, he paralysed Jennifer. Naming him after the Norse God of mischief and evil was her secret insult.

  *

  They had taken her during her birthday celebrations. She had been tipsy and happy, looking for the loo in The Ship Inn in Saltburn. Loki, like a handsome doorman in a dinner jacket, said that this toilet was out of order and she should go through the door he pointed to and use the other one.

  Jennifer was proud that even tipsy she'd realized that 'out of order' didn't mean it was in the wrong place, but that it really meant 'broken'. She remembered opening the door and wondering hazily which way across the car park she should go when someone's gloved hand came from behind covering her mouth. Fear and a horrible chemical smell made her vomit onto her assailant's arm. A curse and something cracked the back of her head.

  Jennifer lapsed in and out of
consciousness while being bundled into the back of a car then driven hard and fast for what seemed hours.

  She finally woke tied to a wooden chair in a windowless brick walled room. The air was thick and damp and smelled of dead things. Her head pounded. Buttocks, shoulders, arms and wrists ached. Loki stood over her. He had changed from his dinner jacket into a checked shirt and jeans and held an electric shaver. The type used by professional barbers.

  'How are you feeling, pretty one?' he asked.

  Jennifer started to protest; indignation and anger making her spit abuse at him, demanding he let her go. A back-hand across her face rocked her brain and turned her anger to terror. She lost control of her bladder. Hot urine ran down her legs, pooling around the chair.

  'You filthy bitch.' Loki switched on the shaver. He clamped her neck with his free arm then forced the shaver across Jennifer's skull. Again and again.

  Half way through the ordeal, Loki stood back to admire his handiwork, brushing clumps of hair from his forearm. Blood ran down Jennifer's forehead from the multiple cuts and scrapes, dripped onto her flushed cheeks and mixed with her tears.

  'Very pretty,' Loki said, smiling with satisfaction. 'Crying makes you look much younger, you know. Puffs your lips up. Very sexy.' A splashing noise made him look down and he realised he was treading in Jennifer's urine. 'My fucking shoes!'

  Jennifer sobbed.

  'Filthy bitch.' Loki wrapped his arm round Jennifer's neck once more. He dragged and scraped at her skull with the shaver until all her hair lay in blood and urine-clotted clumps around them.

  Loki stood back, slightly breathless, and looked at the buzzing instrument. 'Pretty good thing this shaver. I wonder what else it can cut through.'

  He walked round behind Jennifer. She strained to see where he was going, what he was doing. Wet eyes wide with fear.

  She felt vibrations against her hands. Loki used the shaver to cut the rope that painfully bound her wrists together. Jennifer was free and tried to stand but Loki had grabbed the collar of her blouse. He yanked her hard down into her seat. She thought he just wanted her to stay seated but he did not stop pulling down and back. Her favourite blouse resisted briefly then ripped and gave.