The Hit-and-Run Man

by Derrick R. Bickley

  “Cut the holier-than-thou crap.” The Beard began to show uncharacteristic signs of becoming irritated. “You're about to become part of this wretched trade.”

  “Not for personal gain,” Morgan was quick to point out. “For the cause.”

  “I piss on your cause.”

  There was enough of a hint of menace in the way the Beard said that for Morgan to consider it unwise to pursue the conversation further. He also realised he had lost control of his emotions, so coming close to jeopardising everything he was trying to achieve. Lapsing back into silence, the Irishman was in no doubt that he had much to fear from this man who looked more like the traditional image of a captain home from the sea than the purveyor of evil that he was.

  Morgan was glad when the journey finally ended. Sitting quietly had served only to give him time to think and he was unable to quell a growing sense of unease that stirred within him. He had become very aware of the loneliness and vulnerability of his position. He was totally at the mercy of this man, whose warped sense of morality saw no wrong in removing from this life a redundant pusher, but was fired with hate and anger at the thought of killing in the name of a political cause. Morgan was sure of only one thing. He was bloody scared.

  Dashing through the rain, which continued to hammer down relentlessly, he followed his two travelling companions into a large, detached red-brick house. The Beard instantly disappeared, while Morgan settled uncomfortably on a settee, with only the uncommunicative Horace for company. Why, oh why, did his every instinct tell him to run? Get the hell out of this place and away from these people, not in a minute's time or a few seconds even, but now, this very moment. It was impossible, of course. He had come too far. There could be no turning back.

  His fears and apprehensions were accelerated when the Beard returned with three men at his side. Something was happening, but what? There couldn't have been anything wrong with the sample.

  “What's the verdict on the goods?” asked Morgan.

  “Our lab boys say it's top grade stuff,” confirmed the Beard. “There's just one more test we need to make.”

  “What's that, then?”

  The words were hardly out when Horace's arm came around Morgan's neck from behind, squeezing his windpipe in a vice-like grip. He kicked out viciously as the Beard's three comrades descended on him, but a hammer blow to the stomach knocked all the wind out of his body. Gasping, he was thrown heavily to the floor. There was no escape this time. There were too many of them.

  Morgan screamed with horror when he saw the full syringe. Holding it up to test the flow, the Beard said. “We're just going to put this little lot inside you. If you are still alive in the morning, I would say you've got a deal.”

  The Irishman tried to writhe and kick as the Beard came forward, but he was pinned too firmly to the floor. The thought of that massive dose of heroin pouring into his vein filled him with terror and revulsion. Further efforts to resist, as his coat was pulled from him, proved futile. He was never going to succeed against such superior numbers. He became frantic, squirming, yelling.

  “No, no, no you crazy bastard,” he screamed. “I don't want that stuff inside me.”

  “Think of the cause, Mr Morgan.” The Beard made no attempt to disguise the pleasure this moment was giving him. “All for the good of the cause.”

  A rubber tube was tightened around Morgan's arm just above the elbow. He felt his veins begin to swell.

  “No, no, no!” The screams died on his lips, turning to sobs of helplessness and despair as the needle went in. His last recollection before losing consciousness was of a great wave of nausea sweeping through his body.

  Tommy Morgan was soaked through. He lay face-down on the steps outside the front door of the house in which he had his apartment. How long he had been there, he had no idea. His coat had not been put back on him despite the torrential rain. Shivering with the cold and wet, he knew he had to get inside. Otherwise, if he managed to survive the massive heroin overdose, he probably wouldn't survive the pneumonia.

  He found the door key in his pocket; reaching the latch was another matter. There was no strength in his limbs. His mind was floating, drifting away from the helpless shell of a body that hauled itself slowly up the rain-soaked door. He had to concentrate, force some semblance of co-ordination between mind and body, but it was such an effort. It would be easier to just lie down in the rain and die.

  When the key finally slotted into the lock, the door swung open under his weight and Morgan fell inside. Lying on the floor, exhausted and breathless, he marvelled at the stroke of fortune that had seen him put his door keys in the pocket of his trousers, rather than his coat, when he had left the flat earlier. An involuntary action, seemingly insignificant at the time, done without thought or consideration, may well have saved his life.

  He still had to get up the stairs. The darkness was total, yet there was no point in using up valuable strength to haul himself up to reach the light switch. As the cost of the electric to the stair and landing lights was paid for by the owners of the property, the push-in switches were adjusted to pop back out again with the minimum of delay. Even at normal pace, there was barely time to reach the top of the stairs before the light went out.

  How long it took him to crawl up, one stair at a time, defying momentary lapses of consciousness, he had no idea. It seemed an age. On reaching the landing at the top, he lay on his back. He could go no further. If he was to die, this is where it would have to be.

  A sudden bursting into life of the light forced him to screw up his eyes and turn his head away. The accompanying noise was unmistakeable. Someone was coming up the stairs.

  Incredibly, Morgan's muddled, meandering mind registered the fact that it was Friday night. That meant it had to be George. He was later than usual, but there was no-one else it could be. Although Morgan wanted desperately to drag himself out of the way, his body no longer responded to the feeble messages being sent out by his weakening brain. The light would go out as his neighbour made the top of the stairs. The landing switch was beyond where he lay.

  And so it was. George's dash ended as he pitched forward on contact with the unseen, inert body spread across his path. In the darkness Morgan could see nothing. But, as he drifted back into the realms of unconsciousness, his ears told him that this was one Friday night George had not made it to the end of the landing on time.

  Chapter Ten

  Pauline Greenfield sat in a corner seat in the lounge bar of a country pub some ten miles from where she lived. When she had a lunch-time drink with David Maddocks, she always thought it best to be off her own doorstep. People so often came to the wrong conclusions. For the past couple of years she had occasionally had a lunch-time drink with David when her husband was away on trips. It helped break up the loneliness for her, compensate for the lack of contact with other people. How David always seemed to know when her husband was away, she was never really sure. Yet he could always be relied on to telephone as soon as she was alone. Today was different. She had rung David.

  Pauline saw nothing wrong with her relationship with David Maddocks, though she did keep it from her husband. To her he was simply a friend. She knew she had too much to lose to even contemplate allowing the relationship to become anything more. She enjoyed the home and comforts her husband's career had brought her. This was, after all, why she had set her sights on him years ago, spotting the potential before it really blossomed.

  David lacked her husband's ambition. Although holding a respectable position in the sales department of a local firm, he would never aspire to the same heights. A couple of years younger than her husband, he was taller and more powerfully built. He was a handsome man, charming and fun to be with, but he would never, to quote a cliché, be able to keep her in the manner to which she has become accustomed.

  David Maddocks stood at the bar wondering what it was about this woman that made such an impact on him. Certainly she was a good-looking woman, but there was more to it than th
at. Somewhere there was an extra ingredient that made her just that little bit special.

  The moment he had first set eyes on her, preparing for the opening of a charity shop in a small shopping centre close to where he and his then wife, Linda, lived, would live in his memory for ever. The shop was to raise funds to support a nearby, newly opened hospice, a project close to Linda's heart, as her mother had died a few months earlier after a long battle with bowel cancer. She suffered greatly through her final months, but died in a hospital bed, much to Linda's distress, as no adult hospice care was available in the area. Though having no direct criticism of the hospital staff, Linda regretted not being able to find accommodation where her mother could have received more individual care and comfort through her final days. So when plans for a new, local adult hospice entered the public domain, Linda became an enthusiastic, vigorous supporter of the project and was the main driving force behind the opening of the shop. She still worked in the shop and helped out at the hospice.

  Pauline was helping to set up displays when David had driven over to the shop in his lunch break the day before the opening, feeling he should show an interest, however forced. The hospice had become something of an obsession for Linda, which he was unable to share. Devoting so much leisure time to the welfare of the sick and the dying did not fit in with his fun-orientated philosophy of life and had created some conflict within the marriage.

  Even an old, baggy sweater, looking saggingly a couple of sizes too big for her, and a pair of well-worn, faded jeans, noticeably fraying around the trouser hems, clothes obviously dug out in case she had ended up with a messy job to do, failed to lessen the impact of his first sight of Pauline. He was captivated, not just by the way she looked, but every little movement of her body as he watched her meticulously lift collected, second-hand clothes from a large bag, sort them onto hangers, before placing them as invitingly as possible on a display rail. For him, she was a vision of total and complete perfection. He was unable to take his eyes off her, leading to an awkward moment when Linda became aware of his distraction.

  Following that, there looked little chance of approaching Pauline, until Linda, for some reason, unexpectedly retreated to the storeroom at the back of the shop. David seized the opportunity, if only to be close to her for a few seconds. He even managed to talk to her, but only to introduce himself and compliment her on how well she was putting together the display, before the conversation was cut short by a withering look from his wife as she returned to the shop front.

  He wasn't sure, and he had thought it better never to ask, how the two had met. Pauline obviously wasn't a close friend of Linda's, as that was the only time he had met her until the chance meeting three years later.

  Divorce had come a year or so after the shop opening and David had slipped easily back into the single life. He had a respectable apartment, was capable of looking after himself, comfortable with his own company, but had also dropped happily back into the social scene. Always good company, believing life was there to be enjoyed, he was never short of friends, relishing a busy social life. There had been women too, but nothing serious had developed, possibly because none could bear comparison with the image that had never left his mind of Pauline in the shop that day.

  He could think of no way of getting in touch, other than asking his ex-wife, who was unlikely to be forthcoming, so had given up on ever seeing Pauline again, until the evening he walked into a supermarket he never usually frequented.

  Despite the years that had passed, he didn't need a second glance to know it was her. The long hair had gone and she was, not surprisingly, dressed differently to their previous encounter, looking so beautiful and elegant in a simple, pale blue dress, coatless in the early summer warmth. The sight of her had no less an effect on him than the moment he had first seen her, setting up a display in the hospice shop, a moment vividly embedded in his mind. He stood there mesmerised, unable to take his eyes off her, as she shuffled along the extensive shelving stacked with variously-priced bottles of wine from countries around the globe. He took in every little movement of her body, every little shifting of her dress, as she reached up to take down bottles, examine the label, and replace on the shelf, unable to choose a preference. He had to grasp the moment. Coming up behind her, as she once more replaced a bottle, he said simply, “Too much choice.”

  When she turned, a look of surprise was quickly eclipsed by a smile that seemed to light up the whole of her face.

  “Hello David.” He couldn't believe she had remembered him. It was more than he could have ever hoped for. “Never thought I would bump into you again.”

  Normally David was not one for platonic relationships with the opposite sex. It simply wasn't his style. If a relationship was slow to go the way he wished it, he usually let it die. Yet, he had never been able to bring himself to do this with Pauline. No woman, not even the wife he was married to for nine years before his divorce, had managed to arouse such desire within him. She dominated his thoughts. Night or day, no matter what he was concentrating on, she would appear. Yet Pauline had never offered him any encouragement. After the first chance meeting, he had visited the supermarket more frequently, on the same day around the same time, and the encounters had become more frequent. Eventually there followed a coffee in the store restaurant, moving on to the occasional lunch-time or afternoon drink, usually when her husband was away on business trips. David had a wide circle of friends, including one who worked for the travel agency that booked all business travel and accommodation for Impact Publicity Services, so he was privy to information on her husband's travel arrangements. Throughout, Pauline had never given any indication that, while she enjoyed his company, allowing him some leeway with his flirtatious comments, she would let the relationship to develop into anything more. In his mind he had possessed this woman's body a thousand times. In reality, she was unattainable. He preferred not to dwell on how much that fanned the desire.

  Returning to the table with the drinks, he sat as close beside her as he was able without censure. The longing to reach out and touch her had to be resisted. That surely would be a wrong move, almost certainly bringing an end to their relationship, such as it was. He enjoyed being with her too much to risk that. Also, of course, while he continued to see her as a friend, there was always a glimmer of hope, however remote, of it drifting into something deeper. Had she not telephoned him this morning? She had never done that before.

  “I would like to believe you rang me because you couldn't go another day without seeing me,” said David, sipping his gin and tonic, “but I expect I would be deluding myself.”

  Pauline smiled. “David, you know I like to see you, but yes, there was more to today's 'phone call than that. I desperately need to talk to someone.”

  The events of the previous evening had left Pauline greatly distressed. Alone in the house that morning, she had been overcome with a need to unload her anxieties onto someone, try to make sense of it all. With her only family a sister who lived sixty miles away, it had to be David. He was the only friend she had. She had drifted away from the friends she knew before her marriage and had built up no new ones except David.

  “So you weren't overcome with a sudden urge of lust for my body,” said David, with an exaggerated sigh.

  “Please David, just for once, let's be serious,” snapped Pauline. “I'm not in the mood for this nonsense.”

  She immediately regretted her reprimand. When they had first started to meet, he had made no secret of what he was looking for in their relationship, but she had treated his propositions light-heartedly. Now they were treated as a standing joke between them, yet there remained just enough of an undercurrent of seriousness about them to please her. Howard never said anything to make her feel desirable or beautiful. A woman needed that sometimes.

  There were times when she felt guilty about using David. She didn't need actual physical fulfilment, the look of longing she caught occasionally in his eye being enough, so it was possible th
eir meetings were somewhat frustrating for him. So long as he continued to see her, she presumed he was content.

  “David, I'm desperately worried about Howard.”

  “Good Lord, have you brought me here to talk about Howard?” He raised his hands at her instant reproving look. “All right, I'm sorry. What's Howard been up to?”

  She poured out the whole story, from the dubious accounting for the frightening lump on the back of his skull on returning from Barcelona to the drunken end of the previous evening. David listened in silence, staring intently at the pithy slice of lemon floating on top of his drink.

  “Pauline, what do you want me to say?” he said at the conclusion of her report. “That it makes some sort of sense to me?”

  “Not really, I suppose.” There was a sad note of resignation. “That would have been nice, but was too much to hope for. I think I just needed someone to unload it on instead of bottling it up inside.”

  “Well, at least I've done that much for you.”

  David found it hard to sympathise with Pauline's obvious concern for her husband, his desire for her overriding all other emotions. From the outside, her marriage to Howard had seemed perfect. She had always seemed to be content. From the start she had made it clear they were nothing more than friends, so that David's attempts to turn their relationship into something deeper had become futile. God knows what Howard was up to, but he may well have made the first move for him. Suddenly there was a hint of vulnerability about Pauline. Could the ball really be drifting into his court?

  “Look, I don't think you should go back to your empty house this afternoon,” he suggested. “How would you like to go down to the park?”

  “Isn't it a bit cold for that?”

  “We've got our coats. It'll do more good than sitting in that empty house brooding all afternoon.”