Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose

by Peter Lovesey

  Gloria fished out the thermals and the keys.

  She held the thermals at arm’s length. The passion killers. Would anyone believe they belonged to her mother? she wondered. Better leave them in no doubt. There was a way to do it.

  One of the drawers in the antique hallstand was full of wrapping paper and padded bags people had sent that might be used again. Mother, being economical, kept everything that might be used a second time. When she needed to send a padded bag, she would carefully tear the stamps off one of her collection and cover the old labels with new sticky labels for readdressing. Gloria selected one of appropriate size, folded the pants and slipped them inside. She removed the stamps, but did nothing about the label, which still had her mother’s name and address typed on the front. Just perfect. She didn’t seal it, either.

  As a precaution, just in case some nosy neighbour might see her in the street, she unpinned and unfastened her plaits. Nobody ever caught her with her hair loose. Like this, she suddenly felt a different person, not the high-minded young lady she liked to be known as usually, but a free agent.

  She slammed the front door as she went out. The lovers could relax now, believing she was gone for at least two hours and a half. Sheep may safely graze.

  The rain had stopped. Darkness had set in some time ago. The street-lamps in King George Avenue were more decorative than effective, but she spotted Mr Hibbert’s BMW parked opposite number 31. There could be no question that it was his car because it was well known that he’d paid for a registration with his initials, HPH—a clear sign of vanity, in Gloria’s opinion. Nobody seemed to be about, so she went straight across and tried the key on the passenger’s side. It was a central locking system and she heard all the doors unlock. When she pulled open the door an interior light came on, so she got in quickly and shut the door and the light went out. Simple.

  The glove compartment opened at the press of a button. Inside were a couple of maps, a roll of peppermints, a half-eaten bar of chocolate and some petrol tokens. She stuffed the bulky envelope inside and closed it.

  Now what? There was a sense of anticlimax. Gloria hadn’t thought how she would spend the evening now that she wasn’t going to choir practice. To go back to the house was out of the question. She’d be a prime suspect if she did. It was a chilly evening. She’d sit here a moment and think.

  She’d never been into a pub unaccompanied and she wasn’t going to start tonight. She wouldn’t feel very safe walking the streets for long. And there was no one she could visit.

  The best plan was to go to a film. She’d walk down to the Cannon and find out what was showing.

  She was on the point of leaving the car when she heard footsteps close behind. She glanced into the mirror mounted on the side, but saw nobody on the pavement, so she turned her head.

  A figure was walking slowly along the centre of the road between the rows of cars. She couldn’t see too well, but she was fairly certain that it was a male wearing some sort of crested headgear, a fireman’s helmet, perhaps, or a policeman’s.

  Panic-stricken, she ducked right down with her head over her knees hoping he’d walk past without looking in. She could feel her heart thumping against her thigh. Please, please go by.

  The footsteps had the heavy tread of boots. They were agonizingly slow. They stopped right next to the car.

  She nearly died of shock when he opened the door on the driver’s side and got in. The light came on in the car.

  “Bloody hell!”

  She remained quite still.

  “Are you ill, or somefink?”

  If he was really a policeman, he ought to have sounded more assertive, more in control, but she dared not check.

  “You just give me a nasty turn, any road.”

  She was petrified. He took a grip on the hair at the back of her head and pulled her upright.

  She had another shock when she turned to face him. The crested helmet was in reality a punk hair-style, a bright green Mohican tuft presently being squashed against the roof of the car. He was a youth of about sixteen. There were three silver rings through his left ear and a glittery stud through his nose.

  He asked her, “This motor—is it yours?”

  She shook her head.

  “Your old man’s? What you doing, then? Nicking stuff? You deaf, or somefink?”

  She succeeded in saying, “Who are you?”

  He said, “I asked you a question.”

  “You asked about five questions.” She was beginning to feel safer with him. She was close enough to see that he was just a boy.

  “I don’t know you,” he said, as if the fault were Gloria’s. “I don’t know you, do I?”

  She said, “If you pulled the door properly shut, this light would go out.” Immediately she’d said it, she realized that she might be misinterpreted. She was only anxious that nobody should see her sitting in Mr Hibbert’s car, with or without a boy with green hair.

  He closed the door and said, in the darkness, “Want a smoke?”

  She said, “Look, this is someone else’s car.”

  “He won’t come out. He’s watching telly in one of them houses, I bet. Long time since I tried a BMW.” He put his hands on the wheel and it clicked. The steering column must have locked. “Bleedin’ hell.”

  Gloria said, “Mind your language.”

  “Sod off.”

  At least she’d registered disapproval.

  “If it ain’t yours,” he said, “how did you get in?”

  “With the key. I, em, nicked it,” she added, to forestall the next question.

  “Jeez. Where?”

  “From his pocket.”

  “Cool.” He didn’t ask about the circumstances. Instead, he said with admiration, “You’re class.”

  She liked that. Nobody—certainly no boy—had ever referred to her in quite those terms before.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Gloria.”

  “Gloria—blimey. I’m Mick. Want to go for a ride, Gloria?”

  “What do you mean—in this?”

  “What else? You just said you got the key.”

  “Can you drive?”

  “I wouldn’t be here, would I? Give us the key and I’ll show you. I could start it easy, but the wheel’s locked.”

  He was a joy-rider. He’d walked up King George Avenue trying the doors of all the cars to find one open and it had happened to be Mr Hibbert’s.

  The keys were in her lap. Mr Hibbert’s keys. Mr Hibbert, who had laughed at the idea that she might spend the night in bed with someone. She handed them over. “Just a short ride.”

  He slotted the key in and turned it to free the steering wheel. The engine started first time.

  “Nice motor,” said Mick, switching on the headlights and revving the engine. He released the handbrake and they moved out of line and cruised quite quickly to the end of King George Avenue, where it met the High Street. Gloria felt an upsurge of excitement. She was joy-riding—and in Mr Hibbert’s car.

  “Open your window. Get some breeze through.”

  It worked electronically. She found the button and pressed. The wind was noisy. She glanced at the instruments and saw that the car was doing sixty in a built-up area.

  “We can have a burn-up on the by-pass,” said Mick apologetically. “These can do a ton, easy.” He switched the radio on. A Mozart piano concerto was being played. “God ’elp us. See if you can get somefink with a beat.”

  She tried the controls, found some rock music and turned it up loud.

  “Ace,” said Mick.

  They were flashing past parked cars at reckless speed. Gloria was scared, but enjoying it in the way you can enjoy a roller coaster ride. She wasn’t even using the seat-belt. That, to a full-blown punk like Mick, would surely have been chicken.

  They succeeded in getting to the by-pass without being stopped by the police. On the triple carriageway, Mick moved out to the fast lane. “Let’s see what this heap can do.”

 
Gloria’s skin prickled. To think that this could have been choir practice. The wind stung her face and stretched her hair in what felt like a comic-strip illustration of speed. Mick was steering one-handed, with his free hand resting on her thigh. She didn’t mind.

  They overtook everything. When anyone had the temerity to block the fast lane, Mick used the horn and headlights together. They weren’t held up long.

  Gloria looked at the speedometer and saw the needle hovering near 110. They passed the sign for a roundabout. She drew it to his attention in the most tactful way she could. “Let’s go round and come back the other way.”

  “You go for this?” Mick shouted. “Does it turn you on?”

  “It’s magic.”

  The hand on her leg moved higher, exploring, but he had to use both hands to swing the car around the roundabout, the tyres screeching, and by that time Gloria had brought her legs up to her chest with her heels on the edge of the seat and her arms tucked around her shins. The one-handed driving was all very macho, but she felt it required Mick’s undivided attention.

  They raced back along the stretch they had just travelled.

  Someone in the fast lane refused to give way, so Mick overtook on the inside and made an obscene gesture as they passed. Gloria did the same. She had never felt so delinquent, or so alive.

  “You know what?” shouted Mick.

  “What?”

  “You’re neat.”

  “You’re neat, too.”

  “I’ll get you a present. What do you want—jewellery?”

  She didn’t know what to say.

  “Somefink to wear? Leathers?” said Mick.

  “There’s no need,” said Gloria. “You don’t have to get me anything.”

  He reduced speed. They were coming to a slip-road that would take them off the by-pass.

  “Have you got a telly? Portable?”

  “Look, I don’t want anything, Mick. If you want to get me a drink—”

  “A drink? All right. You like fizz?”

  “Fizz?”

  “Champagne. You can have champagne if you want.”

  She laughed. “All right.” If he wanted to be extravagant, she’d settle for a glass of champagne. Immediately she wondered if she’d made a wise choice. With some drink inside him, Mick might take even bigger risks with the car. Maybe she’d be wise to walk home.

  They cruised at a mere seventy along the main road into town, ignoring several pubs. Gloria decided that Mick was driving them to his favourite haunt, some place where punks and rockers met, with wood floors and music and one-arm bandits.

  In the High Street, he slowed and turned his head, as if looking for someone. He cruised quite slowly, past Woolworth’s and Boot’s and the Laundromat. Gloria didn’t know of any pub along here. There was just the County Arms Hotel, with four stars in the RAC Guide, and that, surely, wasn’t the sort of place Mick would frequent.

  Like a mind-reader, he said, “We’ll get it in the Wine Mart.”

  “Fine,” said Gloria.

  “Put your head down, right down, like you had it before.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you fink? We’re going to ram-raid the place. These fings are built like bloody tanks.”

  She was horrified. “No, Mick!”

  “Do what I say—if you want to keep your face.” He spun the wheel sharply right.

  She had a glimpse of the shop window of the Wine Mart straight ahead. She plunged her head between her knees. She felt the wheels mount the curb and then the terrific impact as the shop front was ripped apart. An alarm bell jangled. Mick forced open his door and stepped through shattered glass into the shop’s interior. Gloria sat up, twitching with fear and shock.

  The car’s bonnet was covered in glass.

  Mick was back, brandishing a bottle of champagne that he’d taken off a shelf at the rear of the shop. This was a nightmare.

  Gloria said in a voice shrill with panic, “You’re crazy!”

  Mick shouted above the blare of the alarm, “Burst tyre. We got to run for it!” He opened the car door, grabbed Gloria’s arm and tugged her out. “Come on! Let’s get out of here.”

  They abandoned Mr Hibbert’s car, still blocking the pavement with its front wheels inside the Wine Mart. Regardless of the people who must have heard and were certain to be watching from flats above the shops, Mick dashed up the High Street with Gloria following. At the first opportunity they turned left up a side-street. Gloria leaned against a doorway to recover her breath.

  Mick swung around. “You can’t stop here. We got to go on.”

  If she’d had any breath left, she’d have shouted back at him, told him he must be a head-case to have done such a thing, made it clear that she would never have consented to it. That—far from impressing her—it proved that he was a pathological idiot.

  A police siren frighteningly close interrupted her resentment. She forced herself to run again. They were coming into a paved area where cars couldn’t normally pass, but she was sure the police car would pursue them if they were spotted. A couple of derelicts shouted at them from a shop doorway. They’d seen the bottle that Mick was still carrying and they were asking him to share it. Mick was too fast, but one of them stepped out to try and grab Gloria. He caught hold of her wrist with a filthy hand, and his face came close to hers, unshaven, bright pink and foul of breath. She screamed, pushed at his chest and managed to wriggle free. He stood in the middle of the walkway yelling obscenities as she dashed on.

  Mick waited for her by the parish church beyond the shopping mall, a pathetic figure now with his stupid green hair in disarray like daffodil stalks after the flowers were picked. “Over the top, right?”

  She nodded, too breathless to speak.

  The wall around the churchyard was about four feet high. She put her hands on the coping and half-jumped, half-hauled herself off the ground. Mick shoved her backside unceremoniously higher and she scrambled onto the wall and jumped down. He followed, then stooped to pick up the champagne, which he must have tossed over first. Why he bothered with it, she couldn’t imagine.

  “Come on.”

  Stumbling between ancient headstones in the near-darkness they made their way as well as they could across the churchyard to the accompaniment of the police siren. At one point Gloria thought she could make out the sound of running footsteps quite close, but Mick was unconvinced. He’d stopped from sheer exhaustion, leaning against a tombstone. “They’d have searchlights and torches if they was trying to follow us.”

  Gloria said, “I can’t run any more.”

  “Have some of this.” He started fiddling with the foil wrapping on the champagne.

  “I don’t want any, you moron. I didn’t want it in the first place.”

  He was loosening the wire around the cork. “You did. You said.” He sounded like a six-year-old now.

  “I didn’t know you were going to break into a shop to get it and ruin Mr Hibbert’s car.”

  The cork popped and Mick’s hands were covered in froth. “Have a swig.”

  “I don’t want any.”

  “I don’t want any,” he mimicked her. “Snotty-nosed bitch.”

  “I’m the one who stands to lose most,” she pointed out. “I’ve never been in trouble with the police.”

  “Who says you’re in trouble? We got away, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, but I took the keys from his overcoat pocket when he was visiting my Mum. It’s going to be obvious.”

  “He was visiting your house?”

  “Yes, he’s probably still there.”

  “What’s he doing with your Mum?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “Is he staying long?”

  “I don’t know—a couple of hours.”

  Mick fumbled in his pocket and produced the car-keys, dangling

  them in front of her face.

  “You’ve still got them?”

  “Now who’s a moron? You can stick them back in his pock
et and he won’t never know.”

  “Give them to me.”

  He closed his fingers around them and hid them behind his back. “Who’s a moron?”

  “I’m sorry, Mick. I didn’t mean that. Please.”

  “Come here.”

  “Mick, I said I was sorry.”

  He curled his finger, beckoning.

  She felt her stomach clench. He wanted her. This was what it had all been leading up to, the joy-ride, the ram-raid, the champagne.

  Almost every day of her life since she had first learned about sex she had tried to imagine how it would happen to her the first time—the situation in which she would consent. Never, remotely, had she pictured it like this, among the gravestones in the bitter cold, with the police searching for her.

  She said, “There isn’t time.” She could have added that it was dangerous and squalid and unromantic, but those were concepts that would make no impression on a punk. In his scale of values they might actually be incentives. And—in spite of everything that had governed her life until this moment—Gloria herself was being swayed.

  She was a different person now, a law-breaker. Impulsively she stepped towards him and offered her lips. He jammed his mouth against hers so hard that their teeth scraped. She could feel his hand fumbling low down at the front of her coat.

  He said, “Take ’em, then.”

  It was a moment before she understood that he was trying to hand her the car keys. He pushed them into her hand. Then he drew back and so did she, bewildered. Apparently all he’d wanted was the kiss.

  “You’d better leg it now,” he told her.

  “Yes.”

  “See you.” He turned and walked away.

  She put her hand to her mouth as if the act of touching her slightly numb lips would somehow preserve the kiss. She didn’t want him to leave her. She knew it was the sensible thing, the safe thing, but tonight she’d stopped being sensible and safe.

  “Mick!”

  He turned his head and said, “Leave it out, will you?”

  Despairingly, she echoed the words he had used. “See you.”

  He walked on.

  She bit back her distress. If she really wanted to be accepted by people like Mick she had to be tough with herself. She left the churchyard by a different route from Mick’s and—to borrow his terminology—“legged it” through the streets towards home. So much had happened that she hardly expected to see the houses still lit—but they were—almost every one she passed. She couldn’t believe that Mr Hibbert would still be in the house with his coat hanging in the hall, but in fact the entire adventure had lasted less than an hour and twenty minutes. It might still be possible to return the keys and pretend she had been at choir practice.