The Killing Jar

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The Killing Jar Page 19

by Nicola Monaghan


  Pills are good for happiness and dancing though, and for staying awake. The morning after that rave, me and Jon lay in the park with our eyes glued open.

  ‘Got any more pills?’ I asked him. I didn’t want to come down. But he didn’t. ‘We could steal a car,’ I said to him. ‘Go riding.’

  ‘You shun’t drink and drive,’ he said, swigging water from a bottle, and we both laughed.

  We walked down Strelley Road towards home. We wouldn’t be stealing a car from round there, not for proper riding when you might wreck it. You didn’t do that, shit on your own doorstep. People on our estate didn’t always have insurance, so it wasn’t fair. As we walked past the end of Coleby Road two men shot out in front of us on kids’ scrambling bikes. This wasn’t that surprising in its-sen cause people round our estate didn’t exactly keep normal sleeping hours. But it were Chris and Duggy, and that was a shock to me. A damn lucky break, too, I thought, remembering what Mark wanted me to do. I waved at them.

  ‘Hey boys,’ I shouted. ‘Giz a lift.’

  ‘Course, darling,’ said Duggy, pulling over. Chris stopped behind him.

  ‘Where you going to?’ Duggy asked me.

  ‘Down Aspley skanking cars,’ I said.

  ‘You should do Wollaton. S’better,’ he told me. I climbed onto the back of the scrambler.

  ‘Yeah, Wollaton,’ I said. Jon climbed onto Chris’s bike and the back dipped like the end of a seesaw. Chris looked worried to death.

  ‘It’s too heavy wi-us both together,’ he told Jon.

  ‘It’s too heavy wi-just you. It’s a kid’s bike,’ Jon said. Chris shrugged and the two of them wobbled off, the bike revving full throttle.

  ‘Fast as you can,’ I told Duggy.

  ‘Hold on baby,’ he said.

  I was skinnier than Jon and so Duggy’s bike flew off much quicker. We caught up and overtook the other two after a couple of minutes. By the time we got back up to the new road near Strelley we were miles ahead. Duggy didn’t give way at the junction and we got beeped at by a small white van. I stuck two fingers up at the driver and squealed with delight. I loved it when we nearly crashed. Life’s not worth a toss if you don’t know how easy it is to lose it.

  We headed up Bilborough Road and on to Trowell, up to the posh houses with the fast cars. Most of them’d have alarms, I knew that, but there would be some what didn’t or what hadn’t been switched on. People didn’t learn. Then I saw it. A yellow Boxster. Cake and custard, sitting there on the road. The tosser hadn’t even garaged his car, too pissed to manoeuvre it through the doors when he parked up the night before, problies. Duggy pulled up and we checked it out. It had an alarm but I knew the owner hadn’t switched it on cause the light wasn’t flashing.

  ‘You sure?’ Duggy said. I knew Duggy had a flick knife so I asked him to give it me. I hacked at the soft top, then peeled the car open like it were a can of sardines.

  ‘Jump in,’ I said. Duggy hesitated so I went first. The alarm didn’t go off. ‘Told you,’ I said. Duggy jumped in. As he landed soft on the seat the plush interior took a deep breath. The smell of cut leather was everywhere. Chris’s bike stuttered up beside us.

  ‘Nice wheels, baby,’ he said.

  ‘You coming for a ride, sugar?’ I asked him, one hand on the huge steering wheel and one on the door, lips squashed in a moist, round pout. I was imitating the prostitutes in American movies.

  ‘Nah,’ Chris said. ‘Once I get this bogger off I’m happy wi-the bike.’ And it were like it couldn’t of worked out better if I’d planned it with Chris and he knew what I was on with. Jon muttered summat under his breath and got off the bike. It rose up from under him and bounced. I could see the springs in its suspension. He vaulted over the side of the car and into the seat beside Duggy, all Starsky and Hutch.

  ‘Ow,’ said Duggy. ‘Yer too big for tricks like that.’ Jon was wide eyed as he jumped in the car. I was laughing. I didn’t know how many pills he’d took but it must of been at least three or four cause he was really fucked up. There was a steering lock on the floor, summat else the owner’d forgot about. I picked it up and smashed it round the ignition column till it came off. I used the knife to tease out the right wires and connect them up. I heard the engine spark alight like a struck match. I pressed hard on the gas pedal and made the car growl, then jammed the accelerator to the floor.

  I took the car out down the A610 at record speed. There’s nowt like doing a hundred and ten on pills. It’s like being on the Space Shuttle. When we were past Kimberley and Eastwood I veered off onto the country roads. I turned the stereo up loud as it went. Its owner’d left a Mondays CD in it, like he was cool enough to know summat about this music. Jon and Duggy were dancing in their seats.

  We passed one of them signs what are a picture of skids. I booted down then, flooring the gas pedal. We were heading straight at some fluorescent arrows and I yanked the wheel left at the last minute. I saw the cats’ eyes wink at me from the middle of the road. I saw how fast we were going, via the picture in the wing mirror. We all screamed like we were on the Corkscrew at Alton Towers. This was better though. I was a great driver.

  I glanced sideways as I spun the car round another mad bend. Jon’s seatbelt was done up virtue of all the times I’d bullied him about it. My seatbelt was done up cause I knew what I was planning. Duggy was crouching over the handbrake like he was about to give birth.

  ‘You should be up n-dancing,’ I screamed in his direction but the words got picked up by the wind and buffeted down the road miles behind us.

  ‘You should be up n-dancing,’ I told him again, but this time I whispered in his ear so’s he heard. He turned and grinned at me. He stood up, straddled between my seat and Jon’s, and bounced from leg to leg, looking at his feet the way the bloke does who sings that song. As we flew at the next hedge, I slammed the brakes full on. I saw Duggy’s face as he realised what I’d done. I looked him in the eye as he caught on where he was going. And I smiled. He clocked me smiling.

  The Mondays blasted out from the speakers, turned up so high we couldn’t hear the tyres squeal. You’re twisting my melon man, the vocalist said, cool as shit. You’re twisting my melon man. Whackah, whah, whah, the guitars ground notes, close to feedback, the drums rattled and I was fourteen again, waving my arms and swinging baggy jeans against my shoes on a packed dance floor.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Jon was curled up like a foetus on the seat beside me, sweating and shaking. I was driving fast, back down Trowell Road to get Duggy’s bike. When Duggy was thrown from the car, Jon totally whited-out on me. I loved Jon but he could be crap like that, no good in a crisis.

  We reached the place I took the car from. There was no sign of life in the house. The Porsche’s owner was probably snoring upstairs in his big posh bedroom, dreaming about fucking some gell from the movies, hand on his dick. Saddo. Didn’t know what living was. I opened the boot of the convertible and checked it out. It were empty and looked big enough to fit the toy bike. I pulled on Jon’s arm and shook him.

  ‘I need you to help me lift this thing,’ I said. I gestured towards the scrambler and he walked over as instructed, head in front of his body like a gell I used to know at school who’d got tunnel vision. We both grabbed an end of the bike and lifted. It were heavier than it looked. ‘Hold up Jon,’ I said. I wheeled the bike over to the boot and told him to lift again. We scratched the car as we hoisted the scrambler in, but that wouldn’t matter later. I heard more scraping as I slammed the lid down on top. It reminded me of men getting rid of bodies in gangster films. The boot closed and was tight shut.

  We’d pulled Duggy’s body from where it landed, and left it somewhere behind a hedge near Moorgreen. I’d walked over and checked his pulse, just for Jon’s sake, but it wasn’t really necessary. I knew he was dead. Had made sure of it.

  It were weird the way he’d left the car. I’d imagined he’d fly up into the air and fall a long way but it wasn’t like that. He shot straight forwar
d and flew down the road, scraped against it like a plane crashing. I don’t know if he screamed or not cause I wouldn’t of heard his voice above the roar of the engine as I revved the car. I put my foot right down then and let the clutch out. Jon was looking open-mouthed down the road. And that was when I did the worst thing. I booted down and ran him over, to make sure. I had to make certain, see, cause nowt would of been worse than him waking up at the Queen’s Med and telling them how he’d ended up left half dead in the middle of the countryside.

  I maxed-out the car on the way back. I didn’t think much about the vicious thing I’d done. I couldn’t. I had too much to do and I’m like that, the kind of person who’ll forget about stuff till I get the practical shit out the way. Then it hits you twice as hard.

  ‘For fuck’s sake slow down,’ Jon screamed as we scraped past a hedge. His cheek was bleeding, but it were just a scratch.

  I found the stretch of road where it’d happened.

  ‘You sure it were here?’ Jon asked me. I didn’t even bother answering him, but pulled Duggy’s bloodstained leg through the privet to prove my point.

  ‘Sometimes I don’t like you very much, Kez,’ he said. I lifted my hand and he flinched, as if he thought I’d hit him. But I was just touching his shoulder, trying to calm him down. He had a point. I didn’t like me-sen much right then, neither. According to Mark it were just another side of the business, but I knew I couldn’t ever think that way me-sen.

  We dumped the bike skewed across the grass bank near the hedge. It clanked heavy to the ground. Jon argued we should put it on the road but I didn’t want to risk causing another accident. I felt bad enough as it were. It were about five-thirty in the morning and we needed to sort things fast. Driving a yellow Boxster with its roof cut open was likely to get us noticed.

  We came back a different route so’s I could do Beechdale Road chicanes. Jon called me heartless after what’d happened, but it were my tradition. The top speed I’d managed without crashing was about fifty-five. It were a big challenge, weaving in and out of the beautiful wedges of concrete. This mate of Jon’s reckoned he’d done sixty but I didn’t believe him. I’d been riding with him and he wasn’t as good a driver as me. He cared too much about mashing his-sen up in a crash. I was half-hearted that night though and only managed fifty. Before I knew it, we were driving down Lindfield Road. I was getting tired, the MDMA waning in my bloodstream.

  I drove through a great gaping hole in the fence at Broxtowe Park and onto the grass. There were a load of burnt out cars. The place made me think about an elephants’ graveyard, like I’d seen on The Discovery Channel. It’d always been a graveyard of sorts. When I was little it were Cinderhill tip, and there were piles of stinking old fridges and babies’ prams with huge metal sprung suspensions. I didn’t know what they’d done with all that junk – buried it, I guessed. Now it were where cars came to die. I had a beer bottle I found on the street on the way, and a bit of hose I carried round for just this kind of shit. I drove the motor right into the carcass of another, which creaked, and bits of sooty metal fell to the floor. I wrenched out the CD player cause I could get good money for that.

  Jon was asleep so I pulled him out the passenger seat and made him walk a safe distance away. His snoring stopped, and he muttered, but didn’t exactly wake up. I thought I might have to leave him there to sleep it off cause it wasn’t going to be easy to drag him home. I opened up the petrol cap. Underneath the cover there was another seal what locked with a key but I found Duggy’s flick knife, still in my back pocket, and managed to force it off. I pushed one end of the pipe down inside the petrol tank and sucked on the other till liquid hit my lips. The first time I did this I got a mouthful, which wasn’t very pleasant, but I’d come a long way since then. I connected the hose to the bottle and filled it up.

  Jon was snorting in his sleep on the grass nearby. I went into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out his lighter. I found his Rizlas too and rolled one up to make a fuse. I took my homemade bomb and lit it, chucked it at the car. The flame ripped through the soft top and leather seats like they was made of butter, the air smelled like an animal melting. The yellow paint on the outside of the car blackened and crackled and charred black. I watched the Boxster burn. I walked over to where Jon was lying and spread me-sen next to him. His arm reached out and squeezed me into him. I was dozing, slipping in and out of sleep. I felt the burn of the fire on my face and the soft heat of the morning sun on my bare legs. I let me-sen slip away.

  Jon’s loud snoring woke me up about midday. We were lucky we weren’t picked up, lying next to a burning car. Maybes the police came by and thought it couldn’t of been us being as we were lying blatantly next to the burnout. Maybes the police didn’t come by no more if they could help it, went places there’d be less trouble to deal with. I was wide awake but my head felt fucked up. My fingers were spread across my face to keep the sun off. I pushed them away a bit and the backs of my hands came into focus.

  I stared at my hands in that post-pilled blur you get, when you feel like you haven’t slept for weeks. I noticed there were veins making my skin stick up, and thought this were interesting at first. I looked at my fingers for a bit, then turned my hands over and noticed the same thing was happening with my wrists. I wondered then if this was summat what was supposed to happen or not. I sat up and looked at my arms, lumps of vein sticking up on the surface. Blood vessels bulging, pushing up mounds of my sickly, pale skin. ‘Stop, fucking stop,’ I said. I rubbed the veins to try and break up the clots I was sure were forming. I shook Jon awake.

  ‘I think summat’s wrong wi-me,’ I told him. His eyes opened but I could see nowt were going in. Jon always took ages to wake up. I shook him harder then slapped him.

  ‘I think summat’s wrong,’ I said.

  ‘What the fuck yer bugging me for, gell?’ he said, swatting me away like I was a fly or a gnat.

  I showed him the swellings on my arms and hands. He shrugged. ‘It’s probably nowt,’ he said. This was hardly the kind of comment to put my mind at rest. Jon really was crap at this stuff.

  ‘Will you come wi-me to casualty?’ I said.

  We got the thirty-five bus from the Co-op to the Queen’s Medical Centre. We didn’t go home and change or wash even and I wondered if it were obvious I’d been out all night. I checked me-sen out in the bus window as it pulled alongside the shelter. My hair was frizzy and matted up, and looked a bit like Jon’s dreads. I pulled out some grass what’d stuck to me and threw it on the pavement, smoothed my fingers through my ponytail to try and pull out the lugs.

  I registered at the casualty reception desk, hoping I was wasting their time. I’d read about this reaction you could get to E, summat what made your blood clot up all over your body. Maybes Jon was right that I read too much. I showed the reception guy the swellings on my arms.

  ‘Could be an allergic reaction,’ he said.

  ‘Can an allergy cause this kind of thing?’ I asked him.

  ‘An allergy can cause anything,’ he said. But this guy knew fuck-all, not a minute of medical training to his name. ‘Area Four,’ he said.

  I walked round the corner and found Area Four. There were a load of people standing and sitting round with minor injuries, twisted ankles, torn ligaments. I wondered if he’d sent me to the right place. I looked at the form he’d given me. Lower arm complaint, it said. But it wasn’t like I’d banged it or dislocated summat. I thought I might of been dying cause of blood clots in the lungs and they’d sent me to the fracture clinic.

  Jon went off to get some coffee and I stood waiting for a nurse to come so’s I could hand over my form and get a place in the queue. My brain was sending sparks of panic down my spine and all over my body. The electricity crackled through me, making me want to shake my limbs and run for help. I tried not to freak out.

  There was this old man in the cubicle I was stood opposite. He had a big cut on his head, an oozing red orb like the sun first thing that morning. />
  ‘I want ter go-ome,’ he said. ‘There’s nowt wrong wi-me.’

  ‘You’ve had a bump to your head and you’re on warfarin and you don’t remember it,’ the nurse told him.

  ‘Have I had a fall?’ he said. She nodded. ‘Oh,’ he said. He screwed up all the little muscles he could find in his face, making the wound leak more blood.

  Some woman came in and wheeled him over beside me. He was grinning his head off. I wondered how she knew him. Perhaps she was his daughter, or one of his neighbours, or a warden from his sheltered complex. I loved that idea, sheltered housing. My estate was the opposite of sheltered. In some ways the shit-coloured brick things we lived in might as well not of had roofs.

  ‘I want to go home,’ the old man said again. ‘There’s nowt wrong wi-me.’

  ‘You can’t, Dad. You’ve had a fall,’ she told him. It disappointed me to find out the connection.

  ‘Have I had a fall?’ he said. ‘Oh.’

  I wondered what warfarin were, this drug he was on. Seemed to me it trapped the old sod in a grinning déjà-vu loop, like I sometimes got when I took mushrooms. I wondered if I could steal some from the hospital and sell it on. Then I remembered my swelling veins, my clotting blood.

 

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