Night Driver

by Marcelle Perks

  The one he loved was Hans, a dark blond. He gave Hans every cent he earned while the good-for-nothing was out doing God knew what. Without him the boy would be nothing.

  He was feeling lucky. He pulled into a rest stop. There was just a stand selling hot sausages, and a toilet. The bare basics for a hunting ground. He stepped out to take a cigarette, every part of him focused on the other patrons.

  A couple were rowing outside their car. The girl, flabby, boringly dressed, was being loud about something. Lars drowned her out. Her boyfriend was about eighteen, far too good for her. Type II, slender. He was inhaling a cigarette as if he’d only just got the hang of it. Lars bought a sausage to get closer to them. He made his face look affable, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. His sharp white teeth sank into the meat. Their voices got louder. Lars could hardly breathe; if anyone had looked, they would have seen that his knees were quivering.

  ‘Get there yourself, then!’ The girl flounced off and jumped into her red car, squealing out of the car park. The boy held his hands out in the air. Then he stumbled over in the direction of the booth, all big eyes and hunched shoulders.

  Lars just gave him a friendly nod when he bought a beer. He didn’t have to start anything; the boy took one look at his warm eyes and that was it. Some of them even called him Onkel.

  ‘Second time she’s done that,’ the boy said, looking down at the floor. He carried on slugging at his beer.

  ‘Mmm,’ agreed Lars, affably, as if everywhere he went he saw the same thing happening.

  ‘Are you going Hannover way, by any chance?’ said the boy.

  ‘Yeah, as it happens,’ said Lars.

  ‘Can I get a ride?’

  Lars nodded his head. He enjoyed this bit: being the thoroughly normal guy doing another guy a favour. When they’d finished, he opened the door of the cab for the youngster.

  ‘Thanks, I’m in a bit of a fix!’ the boy said, pink in the face.

  ‘I’ve got a drop-off at the Moonlights Club,’ Lars said, casually wiping his mouth. ‘You can jump out at Pferdeturmkreuzung or you can walk from the club to the train station.’

  The young man blinked a lot. His face was mulling it all over.

  ‘Fags are in there; beers under the seat in the cooler,’ said Lars as if he’d been expecting company. His face was open, natural. He was neither handsome nor ugly, but he smiled so much that people opened up, especially when they wanted something.

  ‘That’s the third time Vera’s left me,’ said the boy.

  ‘Oh,’ said Lars, stroking the handle of his gear stick. ‘And who might you be?’

  ‘Peter,’ the boy said, his cheeks still flushed a brilliant pink. He was a blusher. Lars loved to see blood suffusing under the skin.

  ‘If you like, I can get you into the club. My mate is part-owner. There’ll be plenty of Veras there,’ said Lars. His tongue darted energetically over his lips. He had to push his body further down in the seat to hide his erection.

  ‘Really?’ said Peter, his young face caught in a half-smile.

  ‘Sure, just say the word.’ Lars beamed at Peter again. But his smile was clearly just a shade too eager…

  ‘You know, I’ll get out at Pferdeturmkreuzung,’ Peter said, not so sure suddenly.

  Lars laughed as if he didn’t have a care in the world. ‘Jawohl.’

  From then on, he drove like a crazy man. He jabbed his foot down and turned the lorry abruptly out of the slow lane into the middle one. A car had to shoot into the fast lane to avoid him. Lars knew the full spatial length of his vehicle and drove erratically in and out of lanes, scattering motorists like ants. It felt as if all the raw vibrations of the truck were being pounded through his inner thighs.

  Peter’s flush had spread to his neck. His lower lip shivered. For some reason he looked down at the gear stick and noticed Lars’s hard-on. He squeezed his eyes shut. He shouldn’t have got in the truck and he knew it.

  The high pitch of a mobile phone broke the tension. Lars answered, taking both hands off the wheel to do so. Peter’s face glowed crimson.

  ‘Another one?’ Lars said. ‘Now, right this minute?’ His voice wavered, like a child disappointed at not getting his favourite ice cream. ‘If you could just give me half an hour.’

  The person on the other end answered and Lars frowned at the response, his fat stomach flapped over his jeans. Whatever he was doing now, this looked like work.

  Peter’s expression was frozen like a wounded animal. Perhaps he thought that if he was quiet and still enough, the truck driver might forget he was there.

  ‘KONZENTRIEREN!’ shouted Heinrich directly in Frannie’s face. She couldn’t even look at him, dared not take her eyes off the busy road. The other vehicles continually changed lanes, slid off on slip lanes or overtook each other. She was terrified she would drive into the back of someone who had abruptly changed lane, or that someone would ram her from behind. The B6 had a speed limit of a hundred and twenty kilometres per hour. It was way quicker than her comfort zone of below seventy. Driving faster was both physically harder, and also mentally: she had to react quickly at this insane speed to the numerous traffic lights waiting to catch her out.

  To make things worse, it started raining.

  Heinrich shouted a word she didn’t know. He must mean the bloody windscreen wipers. Her panicked fingers blindly pressed buttons, but she got the indicators instead. Shit! She hated fussing with any extras: lights, wipers, indicators; didn’t even know where the horn was. Keeping the car in forward motion was hard enough. She was gripping the wheel so hard that it was hot. The rain pattered down remorselessly. Temperatures inside the car started to rise.

  To Lars the truck was an extension of his personality. When he was calm he drove solidly. When his mind was torn up, everything became erratic. When Peter had said he didn’t want to join him at the club, he had driven like a two-year-old. He rumbled up to the next traffic lights as if he didn’t know what a red light was. He hit the brakes sharply at the last minute, working up a sweat. The smell of him crept into the cab. Peter looked as though, if he had to endure much more of this, he was going to be sick.

  A little grey Volkswagen emblazoned with ‘Heinrich’s Driving School’ was crawling in the slow lane in front of him. Lars grinned to himself. He pushed his foot down on the accelerator, feeling his body thrum to the extra vibrating movement of the truck. The learner driver was driving as slowly as she dared. He didn’t have any tolerance for learners. He drove to within a few centimetres of her bumper. See how she found that! He laughed out loud. The car tried to speed out of danger and then was abruptly braked back. The instructor was obviously insisting on the speed limit. From the frantic head movements of the passenger and driver, a row was in full swing.

  The car signalled left and moved to the next lane. Lars did the same, squeezing in behind in hot pursuit. The instructor turned his head to look back at him and Lars nodded affably. Never look pissed off when you want to frighten somebody. If they’re confused you scare ’em worse. The learner driver went back into the slow lane. Lars once again followed them, forcing two cars to hastily brake. A horn hooted. He was really playing them.

  Lars laughed to himself. He went on tailgating the little car. Peter groaned. His mouth made lots of swallowing noises. The learner driver’s movements were becoming more and more frantic. In a minute she was going to shoot through a red light. The cab echoed with the sound of Lars’s maniacal laughter.

  Frannie couldn’t think straight. All she wanted was to get away from the goddamn truck. Her thick blonde hair kept falling into her eyes. This bloody truck driver was practically leaning on her bumper! She just wanted to put as much distance between them as possible. Shit. The light had just gone red. The car was already over the line; she had to go for it anyway.

  ‘Nein!’ There was a screech as Heinrich performed an emergency stop.

  Frannie’s head was jerked forward. She could feel the vibrations down into her solar plexus.
She screamed. It was as if something deep inside her had been wrenched. Oh, my God, the baby! Frannie’s hand immediately went to her stomach. Her middle had absorbed the jerking motion like a punch. She had to resist the urge to go and yank the driver out of his cab and give him what for. She couldn’t believe this was happening. The car was clearly marked as a driving school vehicle. Everything started to get dark; she remembered what the nurse with the pink hair had said on her pre-natal course and tried to slow down her breathing. Her every thought was concentrated on keeping the baby safe.

  Heinrich was too shocked to carry on shouting. He’d written down the licence number of the truck and looked as though he was thinking about what to do with it.

  She pushed on the hazard lights and forced her way out of the door. ‘I can’t…’ she said, oblivious to the honking cars that minded very much that she was holding up the traffic on the B6. She had to breathe. No longer cared what anyone thought. She took in huge gulps of fresh air as the rain battered down her fringe and stood there trying not to look eight months pregnant.

  ‘I drive.’ Heinrich leapt round into the driver’s seat.

  She got back in the car. The green traffic light had been on for some time and the car leapt forward to escape the angry motorists who were lining up and gesticulating.

  ‘Baby OK?’ He was trying to speak English.

  ‘Not sure,’ she said, waggling her head. Her stomach had swelled into a dull zone of discomfort.

  As Heinrich drove, he kept glancing at her. Something warm trickled down her leg, soaking her dress. At first, she thought she had wet herself, but it was much worse. Heinrich saw the blood before she did. Her white dress showed up every trickle of it.

  ‘Shall I take you to the hospital?’ said Heinrich, pulling over, his face creased in concern. He had turned from adversary to support in minutes and it made Frannie want to weep with gratitude.

  ‘No, they have no records for the pregnancy,’ she said, her hand holding her stomach. ‘My gynaecologist is just around the corner.’ She showed him her doctor’s card for the address and Heinrich seemed to understand.

  She tried to think positive, but it was hard to suppress the tears that kept forming, however hard she blinked. She had to learn to drive in order to function in the sticks, but she hadn’t anticipated anything like this would happen. How often did your driving instructor forcibly perform an emergency stop? Her hand shook as she took her mobile out of her handbag to call Kurt.

  ‘We go there, now,’ Heinrich said, as concerned as if he were the baby’s father. He put his foot down and drove as if he had a flashing blue light.

  Chapter

  Three

  Lars drove on relentlessly for another kilometre, but the game was over. He’d gone too far. The driving instructor might call the police. And if he got pulled over they’d see the boy. Hans always said not to take chances. He had another one back at the club anyway.

  Without warning he squealed into a lay-by. The truck teetered on its axle for a second before settling into place. Peter had pushed himself down into a little ball on the seat. He started trembling when the brakes stopped fizzing and the engine stilled.

  ‘Pferdeturmkreuzung is just there,’ Lars said, as if the ride had been perfectly normal. ‘Now off you go, son – quicker than you expected, eh?’ he added with a laugh.

  The boy scuttled out of the van, barely able to believe his luck. Lars clamped his mouth tight. Now he’d see what Hans had for him.

  The Moonlights Club was just outside Hannover, on the Autobahn. Lars actually owned thirty per cent of the club, which he had bought with an inheritance, but it was his lover, Hans Grans, who was the manager. The club had previously been the Niedersächsische bank vault. There were all kinds of brick-lined nooks and crannies that shimmered with candles. Red crushed satin drapes adorned the walls. Its clientele liked fast cars and wild women. There was a cavern-cum-hall where the punters could dance if they had drunk enough; the DJ was schizophrenic and did techno one night and goth rock the next. Other rooms offered more immediate pleasures. Hans loved all kinds of women, but especially strippers, hookers and lap-dancers. Sometimes Lars thought he’d only got the job of manager in the first place so he could staff his own exotic playground. There were girls of every type. If they flirted with him in the interview he hired them.

  One thing Hans had got right was getting a guest chef from California. The club served the most authentic American food this side of the Atlantic. The perfect burger, a chilli that was spicy but flavoursome, some Mex-Tex dishes that the locals went crazy for. Despite its sexual licentiousness, it had a diverse clientele; the ex-chancellor was known to dine there.

  Hans liked to walk around conspicuously, greeting guests personally as they sat at their little rickety cellar tables sipping their drinks. In America he’d have had his own TV show.

  When Lars pulled into the club, Hans was waiting for him outside at the service entrance. As usual, he was impeccably dressed. Among his addictions compulsive shopping came high on the list, and the more he paid, the better he wore the garment. Today he was wearing a dusk-coloured skinny shirt and an ink and cobalt silk tie with his white Gucci suit. He could have been a model with his perfectly proportioned features. Although the good-for-nothing was dazzlingly corrupt, nobody wanted to dent their illusion of him.

  Everybody knew that it was Lars’s money that had been used to buy his share in the club. They could only guess at why he chose to deliver drinks instead of being up front with Hans.

  There was something sexual between them, but their relationship was also more than that. Lars treated Hans like a son, and the younger man had been a willing pupil to all sorts of con schemes. But now Hans wanted to go his own way. Lars would often look hungrily at Hans for some sign of recognition of their intimacy, but he only looked away, his eyes little pebbles of nothingness.

  ‘Can you give our guest the VIP treatment?’ said Hans now as he approached. That was their code for eliminating someone. They had a very exclusive soundproofed room that served a variety of purposes. Normally they shared in the excitement. Lars yearned for the look they usually exchanged but was shrugged off. He said nothing. Hans was like Peter Pan, the perennial spoilt child. It was time the bloody kid grew up.

  ‘OK, it’s his lucky day,’ said Lars in a tone of unconcern, walking with measured steps to the club entrance. Hans looked as if he wanted to say something, to call him back, but Lars could play games too. He strode to the club’s entrance without a word. Weaving through throngs of people, he headed towards the main bar and slipped through the side door.

  Not many people knew about the VIP room. Even fewer came out.

  Although Hans had a feel for what Lars liked, Lars preferred to procure the boys on his own. It was unnatural not to hunt them down himself. His mouth went dry with expectation as he put his hand on the door. Sometimes he and whoever was waiting inside would do no more than touch. Occasionally, if he came in time, he let them go. He never really thought about the end point until he was in a frenzy. Thinking about it made his knees tremble. It was getting harder and harder to get to that point, though. He no longer dominated Hans, could not even control his own arousal. Everything was slipping through his fingers.

  Even now he hesitated, but after he’d done it, he would be pumped full of confidence again. He needed this like the working girls needed their plastic bags of coke and wraps of smack.

  He knocked smartly on the door. When it automatically whooshed open, he took a step back. Instead of some smart boy, it was that silly cow Anna.

  Hans’s latest hooker infatuation had caused ripples through the club. A network of casual sexual relationships only worked if they all had the same weight. Anna had come to mean too much. And now, she was standing there with a champagne bottle and a glass in her hand. Lars smarted from his own jealousy. The thing of it was that women just couldn’t stop themselves being stupid with Hans. If he said no, they’d jump him anyway. Hans just accepted sexual
favours. He was too bloody good-looking for his own good!

  Lars’s eyes bulged. So that was why the little blighter hadn’t been able to look at him just now. Schweinehund! He had what Hans called his ‘predilections’, but he didn’t kill women.

  As Heinrich drove, Frannie slumped in the passenger seat. Her whole body radiated fear and self-loathing. She was too hot, and, when she swallowed, everything in her mouth tasted metallic. The good thing was that she could feel the baby kicking, but her stomach felt volatile. She felt angry with herself for not passing her driving test years ago when she was young and fearless; when being pregnant was just a stray thought. For any normal person driving was just a routine thing they didn’t even need to think about, but in London it had always been easier to get on the tube than to try to drive somewhere.

  She had sent Kurt frantic texts which had gone unanswered (it was his habit to turn his mobile off at work). She’d emailed him at his work address and left a message, but so far he hadn’t replied. She felt as alone as ever. When she needed him, physically or emotionally, he was never available now.

  When had it started to go wrong? This year, when she’d got pregnant, or the last one on their holiday when he’d paid too much attention (for her liking) to the other guys from the adjacent balcony that had drunk with them every night. In her darkest thoughts she imagined he might be having an affair. He’d had a powerful sex drive once. Maybe he was channelling it in some kind of romantic frisson with someone else. She’d heard about websites where you could hook up with like-minded people. There were things that he liked sexually that she was not into; maybe he was exploring that. He seemed to prefer the company of men. All she knew for certain was that she sure as hell wasn’t the focus of his attention.