Lazy Blood: a powerful page-turning thriller

by Ross Greenwood

  ‘Still donking Deidre?’ Darren chuckled.

  ‘Yes, I love her lads. I would see her all the time, but she’s a slippery one. I asked her to move in but I can’t seem to pin her down. She has all these amazing plans to save the world’s most needy.’

  ‘Is she still in Liverpool?’ Will asked.

  Momentarily Carl lost his candour. ‘Yes, I only get to see her every couple of months, she works for a charity. One day lads, one day.’

  Will decided to ignore that unusual comment and stated the plans he already knew. ‘So Christmas at hers then?’

  ‘Yep,’ Carl gushed. ‘Meeting the family, well her sisters anyway. She was adopted or something.’ Carl seemed to collapse into his seat and then manfully tried to get his money’s worth from the ‘Eat as much as you can’ fare. Alarm bells rang in Will’s head. There was a lot of information there that didn’t add up, but he wasn’t in the mood to dissect it. So Will changed the subject.

  ‘Tell Dean about that Christmas morning.’

  Carl brightened up immediately and almost glowed. ‘It was the best Christmas Eve ever,’ he began. ‘Well, we had a party, didn’t we Will? Booze, drugs and girls. Anyway, after the others left in the morning, Deidre said she was still horny, so not wanting to disappoint a girl, I took her back to bed. We must have fallen asleep. I woke up to someone shaking my shoulder and looked straight into the eyes of my parents.

  My mother was almost catatonic with shock. My dad took me downstairs and made me look at the lounge. It looked like the field at the end of Glastonbury. They ended up having to replace the carpet and some knob head had put a joint out on my mum’s prized Buddha.’

  He leaned in to the table and said in a hushed voice, ‘Well I thought my dad was going to rip me a new arsehole. Instead he held his hand up, I was waiting for him to belt me with it. Instead he high fived me! He said ‘We won’t mention this again on two conditions. One, you tell your mother I really told you off and two, it never happens again’.

  My mum came down after and asked who had been in her room. I said I couldn’t remember. I was expecting her to go off pop too, but she just looked dead shifty and began cleaning. It wasn’t until I told Will that he confessed to spilling coffee over my mum’s giant dildo!’

  Carl creased over with laughter, his forehead resting on the table. To give Dean his credit, he also laughed, although Will could tell he wasn’t sure if he was amused or alarmed.

  Will looked at the two squaddies who were now eating like it was their last meal on death row. The two boys from the pub all those years ago were long gone. They ate like soldiers and they looked like soldiers. Will smirked to himself as they devoured the food, synchronised as the food went from plate to mouth. Not a scrap of spare flesh could be seen on either of them. They even had similar shirts on; two different shades of blue, but both tight and very short sleeved, showing off tanned veiny forearms and muscled biceps.

  Darren caught him looking at them.

  ‘Good to see you Will. That was some fucked up shit earlier.’ His mouth laughed, but his face didn’t. ‘This is a new start for me. I’m a corporal now. I’m going to finally put Freja behind me. I’ve dealt with it now and it is time to move on, and up. You should have joined up Will, we need guys with brains, not like this dip shit.’

  He rolled his eyes in Dean’s direction, who looked up and spluttered ‘What?’ spraying food on the table and laughing.

  Will wondered whether shagging everything that moved had been an appropriate way of dealing with his girlfriend’s demise but smiled at his friend who emanated good health and vitality.

  ‘So where are you going lads?’

  ‘Kosovo,’ Darren and Dean barked and clinked beers.

  ‘I can see the future,’ Darren declared with jaw clenched affirmation.

  If Darren had that vision, he would have stayed at home.

  22

  11th December 1999

  The drive up from London had been uneventful, but it had been good to try and get his thoughts straight in his head. He couldn’t believe Darren was getting married. It was quite a surprise. He can’t have known her two minutes as he had never mentioned her before, although Darren did like to play his cards close to his chest. Will pondered the fact that people did get married and maybe his shock when Darren had rung him was more a reflection of his own inability to commit. His main concern was more likely that today’s events were going to shine a spotlight on his own relationship with Sara.

  It had been a quick call with Will barely saying ten words. The usual congratulations, even if you didn’t really feel that way. So stunned was he that he hadn’t enquired into how they had met, if there was a stag do, a best man or any of those things. He had just written the date down, said ‘I’ll be there’ and then Darren had rung off, saying ‘Carl next’.

  As Will parked outside Aiden’s house he found himself thinking about the millennium in less than three weeks. It felt as though everything was changing and changing faster than he could process the information in his brain. The millennium was like a huge iceberg lurking in the dark, destined to be hit at high speed. A lot had happened. He had lost his job for one.

  Lost indicates carelessness and he had always been guilty of that, but this hadn’t been his doing. Rumours of financial horrors lurking in the company accounts had been around his office for years. Overheard shifty comments from managers at the coffee machine had spread through the building like a flu virus. Worrying cost cutting had also been rife. His department had then been called to a hotel for a meeting yesterday.

  Will smiled as he recalled the meeting. When they had arrived the Director was there. Ironic really, as Will had never even seen him before then except in the shiny annual financial results statement. There was a nervous buzz of excitement in the air as they shuffled into the room, as though a bolt of electricity was leaping from person to person.

  He sat next to Donald. He was in his late fifties and possibly the most boring person on the planet. The only interesting fact about him was the overabundance of dandruff he seemed to produce. Huge flaking chunks of it would tumble out of his hair as you talked to him. Will gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder and tried to knock some of the bigger bits off. In the not so distant past that sort of thing would have grossed him out, but seeing death knocking on the door of Aiden’s house seemed to have hardened him. Also he would do anything to distract himself from hearing about how many more years Donald needed in the pension scheme before he could retire.

  Donald mouthed ‘Restructuring,’ at him and gave him a thumbs up. Will felt like mouthing ‘Redundancy’ back, but figured he would find out soon enough. He could almost hear someone quoting John Donne in a doom laden voice, ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee’. Today’s news was going to be a blow for many. Will had searched for his own feelings on the topic and was not surprised to find he didn’t really have any.

  He didn’t care about his job, the people he worked with or his pension. He was bored with London. He had found it was a place where rich people had a good time. Everyone else was overcrowded, overworked and he was over it. Change was going to be forced on him and he was grateful for something to knock him out of his inertia.

  As it was, he had quite enjoyed the meeting. As the main man stood at the front and cleared his throat, Will decided to face-watch as the news came out. Snippets came back to him now as he stared at the ‘Sold’ sign in Aiden’s front garden.

  ‘No easy way to say this, financial black hole, overextended, onerous commitments, unemployed with immediate effect, garden leave, redundancy terms.’ Will had almost laughed out loud as he saw the faces around him change. Eyes widening as the news sank in, looking at each other as though waiting for someone to say it was a joke. Then tears from the girls, great sobs of despair, people hugging, and Donald, well Donald was angry. His retirement dreams escaped from him and fluttered out the window like an elusive moth.

  Where had these idiots been t
hese last six months? They had run out of pens last week. Donald however had argued the case as if it was still up for debate. It wasn’t. The best bit was the redundancy terms and Will had to stop himself getting out his seat, punching the air and shouting ‘Yeeeesaaahhhh’. Will quickly worked out he was going to get ten grand and wasn’t going to have to go back to that depressing warehouse of an office again. Result.

  He had left the meeting and gone back to his house - a shabby six bedroom house where a room cost you five hundred pounds a month and for that you got to live with a steady flow of other disillusioned transients who had fallen for the story of Dick Whittington. The last person he had liked had moved out a week ago; an insane Australian agency crash nurse, who earnt five hundred pounds a shift in London’s poorly organised and frequently desperate hospitals. He used to lie on the sofa, smoking bongs and laughing at daytime television and if he got a call to go in, he used to have a shower and leave, stating ‘I’ll be straight by the time I arrive’.

  Very concerning. Nice guy though and he had given Will his car when he went back to Oz. Will had tried to give him some money but he had refused saying it wasn’t worth much and he couldn’t be arsed to sell it. So Will drove him to Heathrow, and at the departure terminal received a dead arm, a ‘Good on yer, cock’ and a shit Renault Clio.

  Will had woken up this morning with a small celebratory hangover and without much thought, packed all his stuff into his new car and with no backward glance, drove home. He was two months behind on the rent too having been successfully playing dodge the landlord when they found out he lived in America. So with that little bonus in his mind he had whistled his way round the M25 and up the A1 to ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’, ‘Tragedy’ and ‘Mambo No.5’. It was funny how he still called Peterborough home, seeing as he hadn’t lived there for years. It wasn’t until he got to the outskirts that the radio had played ‘Nothing Compares To You’ and thinking of Freja his mood had soured. Not helped by the fact the radio was broken and he couldn’t change channel or turn it down or off.

  Aiden let him in the back door when he arrived and showed off his gardening prowess. Brutal was how Will would have described it. There was nothing left, as though it had been napalmed. The house looked much the same. Grandpa’s seat was gone, as were all the photographs and it looked like no one had lived in it for years. He could see why he was selling up. There were a lot of bad memories here.

  ‘When does the sale go through Aiden?’ he asked.

  ‘Three weeks,’ came the gruff reply. ‘I thought I would get a head start.’

  ‘Where are you going to live?’

  I’m not sure yet,’ said Aiden as though it wasn’t important.

  ‘Jesus, do you not think you should start considering it?’ Suddenly Will had an idea. ‘Why don’t we get a place together?

  He hadn’t seen Aiden look so happy in a long time and he felt a warm affection for the big man. ‘What about your job Will?’

  Will held out his hand and as they shook, he smiled and said, ‘I will give that up for my friend.’

  23

  Sara picked them up in her brand new car, a Honda CRV 4x4. A chuckling Will clambered over Carl who had been kissing Deidre in the backseat and sat between the two lovebirds. Aiden had to go in the front or they all would never fit in.

  ‘That’s enough of that rubbish you two, especially on such a serious day.’

  ‘To the church, driver,’ Aiden said. Sara flicked him her middle finger and drove in the direction of Peterborough’s registry office.

  Sara drove in her usual manner, oblivious to the rules of the road and he again wondered how she had passed her test. She pulled up in the last remaining space as though she was parking a cement truck and they all got out. Will mentally relaxed each muscle and saw the others do the same.

  ‘Busy isn’t it,’ Deidre commented. ‘I didn’t realise Darren had so many friends.’

  Will shook his head at Deidre’s clothes. She had some awful multi-coloured baggy romper suit type thing on, with the customary Dr Martens and resembled the back end of a pantomime horse. She had no make-up on and was sporting a hairstyle Ken Dodd would have been satisfied with. She was about as appealing as a turkey sandwich on Boxing Day evening. Carl however was proudly clutching her hand as if he was about to announce the winner of a beauty pageant.

  Sara was dressed in a tight-fitting, light blue trouser suit. Her hair was in a taut, long ponytail which she knew always did it for him. She was laughing at something Aiden was saying, or maybe she was just amused by his ill-fitting brown suit which looked as though it had a secret double life masquerading as his pyjamas, so creased was it. In comparison he thought he looked pretty good, catching a clear view of himself in a nearby window. One of the few bonuses of working in an office; you have a lot of suits. He kept himself trim by jogging and used the tightness of his trousers as motivation to keep the weight off.

  They walked into the place and Will spoke to an old lady who seemed to be there to give guests directions. There were people everywhere, all in smart dress, laughing and joking and taking photographs. The lady directed them to a room and held the door open so they filed in. This room had just five people in it. Darren and Dean both dressed to the nines, two large foreign looking shaven headed men in their mid-twenties and a tall achingly beautiful girl in a white dress.

  Will found it hard to pull his eyes away from the girl. She had an olive complexion, high cheek bones, hair swept up in a bun and everything about her screamed ‘model’. Her dress was white and simple, but clearly accentuated her slim lines and the bump that sat high on her stomach. This dress indicated she was pregnant and wanted everyone to know. As Will processed that face, Darren came into his line of sight.

  ‘I know, she is amazing,’ he said.

  Will shook his hand, until Darren broke it off and hugged him. It was good to see him. He looked well too. His features seemed to have softened slightly. Whereas before his gaze sometimes felt like it could carve through you like being swept over by a diamond laser his smiling face had a happy twinkle to it. He hugged everyone in turn then beckoned the three foreigners over.

  The girl glided over and stood proudly in front of them. No demurring bride was this one.

  ‘This is Kristina, from Pristina,’ Darren said with obvious affection, a laugh and even a little bit of awe. ‘These are her brothers Agon and Alban. Pristina is the capital of Kosovo. This is Carl, Aiden, Sara, Deidre and Will. Everyone who is important to me is now here.’

  ‘Who are that lot out there?’ Deidre asked.

  ‘God knows, previous wedding maybe.’ Darren looked over her shoulder and shrugged. They all stood there for a few seconds, in two rows, two banks of five. Will noticed these three strangers had hard eyes. Maybe it was normal where they came from, but the extremely light blue eyes seemed out of kilter with their tanned skin and they all looked like they had lived tough lives. Just as Will started to think it was beginning to resemble a scene before a shooting a man came in.

  ‘OK, the time is here, let’s get you youngsters married,’ he declared.

  They naturally went to the seats on the side they knew. Darren and Kristina stood at the front. Dean stood to one side of Darren, the best man puzzle resolved. Will considered this briefly and wondered if he or one of the others should feel put out. They had known Darren for a long time and maybe that role was better suited for one of them. He then realised he hardly knew Darren at all now. He was hardly ever back in town and his letters and phone calls were perfunctory at best. As for being best man, Will concluded he didn’t care about that either.

  Will had never been to a registry office do before and found it unsettling. It was like getting married in a meeting room in a hotel. There was no music and it all seemed rather serious. Maybe that was the point. The registrar put in some personal touches about fresh starts but it was clear he had only met the pair of them very recently. They all applauded at the appropriate stages, with particularly nois
y thunderclaps coming from the two henchmen types.

  * * *

  Soon it was all over and they found themselves walking through some French windows into an area with a kind of stone love seat. The happy couple sat on it and gazed into each other’s eyes. One of the brothers, Will would never know which was which, whisked a disposable camera out and began taking photographs.

  ‘Get your camera out Will,’ Sara whispered in his ear.

  ‘Why, I thought you didn’t like cheese?’ he joked.

  She shot him a dirty look. Will suddenly could picture his camera perched proudly on Aiden’s kitchen worktop and grimaced.

  ‘Oh no, please tell me you didn’t. You useless, selfish, twat. One thing he asks you to do and you can’t be bothered to take responsibility for that,’ Sara spat at him.

  She gave him a last angry look, then got her own camera out and moved away. That was a little vitriolic he thought all things considered, but alarm bells began to ring. He had been concerned that this event would highlight his own relationship’s status quo and it now looked like that was going to happen.

  It was definitely for the best that he didn’t tell her today about coming back home and moving in with Aiden. It would make as much sense as lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite and placing it in his underpants. He then had a dawning thought. Sara had bought her first house a few months back; a three bed sensible place at the top of her budget. A family home he now realised. He also now remembered snatches of drunken conversations about the future and children and the dreaded ‘M’ word. As they took pictures of the bride and her brothers he found today’s events hadn’t helped to change his mind about this heavy commitment. He didn’t want any part of it.

  It seemed like a huge step to him. Just one girl for the rest of your life, everything joined in the middle, until you separated and she got it all. Someone having the right to tell you what to do. It didn’t sound very appealing at all. Not for the first time in his life did he realise he might be missing something. Surely if you wanted to get married you would be dead keen and he certainly was not that. Maybe he was with the wrong girl he ruefully admitted. He did love her, in his own shallow way. She was bright, funny, good in bed, ambitious, sensible and faithful. Six adjectives he suspected would not be used to describe his good self very often. It all seemed so serious this marriage lark. He considered whether he would be more excited about doing it if they eloped and went to Paris, or a beach without all this guff, but that held no appeal either .