by M T McGuire
“I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t see it was you. I may be desperate and hungry but I’m not stupid. I didn’t—I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—”
“You wouldn’t dip The Boss,” said Big Merv.
“Not if I could help it, sir, no. If you can find it in your heart to let me go, rest assured you will never see me on your manor again.”
“What about my dosh? Will I see that? How do I know this ain’t some ruse so you get to palm a few notes?”
“Look at me! I’m shaking like a leaf. Do you really think I’m capable of palming anything?”
“Maybe not now, but you done alright getting hold of my wallet. Tell you what. There’s a policeman over there, p’raps we’d better go sort this out, proper like.”
“No, no, no,” said The Pan, too quickly. A flicker of recognition crossed Big Merv’s face. Yeh, he’d guessed The Pan was blacklisted, a naive political felon rather than a streetwise criminal one. “Please, Mister Merv, sir ...” The Pan felt a vice-like grip take hold of his arm.
“That’s Mister, BIG Merv, SIR, to you, sunshine,” growled Frank the Knife, digging his thumb into The Pan’s elbow joint.
“Mister Big Merv Sir,” said The Pan through gritted teeth. The pain was almost unbearable. “I’m sure you’d rather not involve the police, all that paper work. Look, if we go and count it and it’s all there, couldn’t you let me go? I mean what I’m saying. You would never see me again.”
“No, sonny. See, it ain’t that simple. I tell you what. You’re gonna stop begging for your life and listen to me. And if you have any brains in your ’ead you’ll listen good.”
“Yes, sir,” said The Pan.
“There’s a lot of folk in this town looks to me for protection.” Yes, didn’t they just, although the protection in question was usually paid to Big Merv to protect them from, well, him; the police, too, The Pan supposed, in so far as anyone could protect you from them. Big Merv continued,“I’m a businessman and I like things neat and ordered. That’s why some choose to call my profession organised crime, see? Coz it’s organised and tidy. Nothing happens on my manor without my permission. Everything’s nice and predictable. People like predictable. They know where they are, even if it ain’t always where they wanna be. D’you get me?”
The Pan nodded.
“Good,” said Big Merv. “So, you’ll understand that when my people tell me some little scrote’s running round nicking anything that’s not nailed down, I get concerned—coz that’s not tidy—and when I get concerned I get angry. You still with me, son?”
“Mmm,” said The Pan, who could feel more sweat running down the sides of his face and his back. If he didn’t need a bath before, he would after this, but not in the River Dang with concrete boots, please no.
“This little nonce I’m telling you about. He’s a slippery cove. Oh I got people looking and they’ve all seen him around, right boys?” As The Pan looked up at Frank and Harry, they nodded. “Yeh. He ain’t so hard to find but catching the little numpty, now that’s a different kettle of fish. Except that here you are. It must be my lucky day.”
“But probably not mine,” said The Pan. Argh. Arnold’s pants! Stupid, stupid, stupid. He was too scared to think about what he was saying of course but that was no excuse. He had to think straight or he was going to end up dead. Now what? Big Merv glared at him. “I’m sorry,” stuttered The Pan, “it’s just my fear talking.” There was a moment of silence and Big Merv’s glare increased in intensity but nothing else happened.
“Well, mate,” Big Merv continued. “When somebody makes my manor untidy, usually, the boys and I clean up the mess, we bag it up and dump it somewhere no-one’ll find it.” The Pan gulped. “On the other hand, today it might just be your lucky day, an’ all.
“See, there’s errands need to be run in my organisation. I need someone who can deliver stuff; items of sentiment that have to be carried from one person to another discreetly, if you get my drift. An’ right now I could do with a guy who can run those errands without any interference from the security forces. The way I see it, mate, you have a skill that, maybe, I can use; one that takes you out of my hair, stops you messing up my nice tidy patch and also benefits me. So, you got a choice. You can run one of my errands and I may forget you dipped me, or we can take a ride out to the Outer Ring Road with the boys here.”
Not exactly a choice then, but the option to stay alive, even with compromised integrity, had to be better than the alternative.
“I don’t want to die,” said The Pan.
“Good answer, son,” said Big Merv.
For the price of a bath, a meal and a trip to the laundrette, The Pan was prepared to run any errand Big Merv liked. Even so, he pretended he was in a position to negotiate.
“What would I be delivering?” he asked.
“’S my business.” The Pan eyed Big Merv. He was aiming for an expression of calm control but was happy to settle for a hint of anything, other than the blind fear he felt.
“It’s mine if I’m carrying it,” he said. That was pushing it but he had to ask. There was a long silence.
“I don’t think so,” said Big Merv. He regarded The Pan thoughtfully. Holy Arnold let those not be second thoughts. The mere idea that Big Merv would rescind his offer started another torrent of cold sweat down The Pan’s face. Arnold in the Skies, at this rate it was going to be dripping off his chin. Too late now.
“In my position, sir, wouldn’t you want to know?” said The Pan. “I’m a coward. If I’m going to take a risk I need to know how big it is.” He waited but to his surprise, instead of carting him straight off, Big Merv nodded.
“Yeh, you ain’t got no spine, that’s obvious, but you’re smarter than you look. ’S a fair point you’re making so let me put your mind at rest. You ain’t gonna be carrying nothing more than information, instructions, news; stuff I don’t want the security forces to see. None of it’s gonna kill anyone.”
The Pan breathed a sigh of relief.
“Fair enough, then. It looks like I’ll be running your errand ...” Frank and Harry tensed. Ah yes. “Sir,” The Pan added hastily.
“Yeh, thought you might,” said Big Merv dourly. He opened the wallet and peeled two notes off the enormous wad inside. “Get yourself cleaned up and Frank and Harry here will meet you at the Parrot and Screwdriver at six. You know it? It’s on Turnadot Street.”
The Pan nodded. Yes, he knew it, although he’d never ventured in.
“Be on time, son. The boys here ain’t as indulgent as me. You turn up late and you’ll be late, you get me?”
“Yes, sir, I get you.”
“Good. You run my delivery nice and I might see if there’s a few more jobs for you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Yeh, the pleasure is all yours, now git.”
The Pan turned and fled.
****
Few Are Chosen, K’Barthan Series: Part 1
Chapter 1
For the first time in months, The Pan of Hamgee was about to spend a night indoors. Not any old indoors, either; this was a luxury apartment, in a luxury area. The Planes was the swankiest place to live in the entire city: central, near the financial quarter and full of the loaded gentry. Outside, a gale battered the trees and flung hailstones against the windows. Inside, The Pan relaxed a little further into the easy chair and smiled to himself, enjoying the rare sensation of being somewhere pleasant.
“Oh yes. The Hamgeean has finally arrived,” he murmured drowsily. Yeh. Let’s face it, it was about time.
The flat was warm, and as long as he was very, very careful to discharge his caretaking duties correctly, it was his for the duration. All he had to do was live there, keep the place clean and not break anything. The not breaking anything part worried him, but in theory, the rest should be easy. Surely he could cope with that.
He stretched and tipped his hat lower over his face. His eyes felt heavy and, as he let them close, he enjoyed the soft firelight and
then, the feeling of drowsiness and warmth as he dozed. Such a luxury: he hadn't let his guard drop like this in months.
“Firelight ...” he thought and yawned. He had a small inkling there was something wrong but he was looking forward to his first night in a bed for two months and he was too tired to care.
The flames leapt and crackled, warming his feet, but the worrying feeling continued to nag him. An orange glow flickered across the walls and filled the room with an eerie light.
It was also filling the room with smoke.
“Pants!” shouted The Pan, leaping to his feet.
What had he done?
“No no no no noooo.” All in all, it would have been a lovely fire if it wasn’t for one small technicality. It was in the middle of the carpet.
By The Prophet, this was serious. He was supposed to be looking after the flat not wrecking it!
He stood looking about him, raking his hands through his hair as he tried to think. What had possessed him to leave the candle on the table?
Idiot!
Despite his fear, part of him couldn’t help being fascinated, in a dangerously detached manner, at the speed with which the flames were taking hold. Please don’t let the rug be valuable.
No time to panic, stay calm. Breathe ... good. It was only one carpet. So long as nothing else got damaged, the flat’s owner, Big Merv, would probably spare his life. What to do? Easy, smother the flames. Quickly, he folded the edges of the rug over the top of its burning centre, but he merely succeeded in igniting them, too.
By The Prophet’s hair! What now? He cast about him with mounting panic. The window. He would carry it over there and hurl it out. No wait; it might melt and stick to him, charring his arms to a crisp or, worse, it might stick to the wall and set the whole building ablaze. Burning Big Merv’s carpet was bad enough, torching his entire block was another matter entirely.
Right. There was only one thing for it. He would have to sacrifice his supper. Sole and chips would be fine on its own. He could live without the peas.
The Pan scuttled into the kitchen where the peas bubbled merrily away on the stove. It was a pity to waste them – he liked peas – but it was quicker than running a bowl of water, and he could put some more on once he’d put the fire out. The peas were easily replaced. The Pan, on the other hand, was not. However, he had a small chance of surviving another week if he could put out the flames NOW before they did any more damage.
He had already learned how well Big Merv’s saucepans conducted heat, even the parts which weren’t supposed to, so he put on the oven glove, grabbed the handle and went back into the sitting room. It was even smokier in there now. His eyes stung and he coughed as he blundered through the acrid fumes towards the fierce glow of the fire.
He tried to hold his breath and think of the moment when he'd doused the blaze with the water from the peas and the danger was past. He held the pan out and poured the contents deliberately onto the centre of the flames.
There was a sound. A loud sound. “Whump!”
Ah. That was wrong. A gust of boiling air lifted him bodily from the floor and hurled him into the kitchen.
Very wrong. He looked at the pan in his hand. He’d used the chips. How could he be such a monumental cretin?
Trying not to cry, he shut the door and put on the extractor fan. There was nothing he could do about the sitting room now. It was better to keep the flames in there, stay where he was and try to save the rest of the flat. Which reminded him: he called the fire brigade. As he explained his predicament, another worrying thought occurred to him. He’d set fire to the carpet and then, instead of putting it out, he’d poured a couple of pints of boiling cooking oil over it. Big Merv was bound to think it he’d done it on purpose; nobody normal could be that stupid.
The Pan realised his future wasn’t looking bleak, so much as short. Big Merv would kill him, horribly, most likely. He didn’t want to die young, especially now, when he’d almost got it together.
Oh well. Back to life on the run.
“Trust me to screw it up,” he said aloud.
Such a simple, straightforward assignment, and he had blundered on day one. He glanced at his watch. Where was the fire brigade, for Arnold’s sake? His nerves couldn't stand waiting around for much longer. He had to be gone before Big Merv arrived.
He glanced out of the window. No sign yet.
“Come on ...”
How could one stupid wisecrack to a Grongolian police officer have brought him to this? How he wished he’d kept his giant gob closed. He’d be back in Hamgee or at university by now and his family – well, OK, he would probably never have managed to patch things up with his dad – his family would have been dysfunctional at best but at least he would have had one.
He’d messed it up again, but wallowing in self-pity wasn’t going to help. Being sacked from Big Merv’s organisation was terminal. The fire brigade would have to sort this out alone. He grabbed his hat and hurriedly put on his cloak. It was time to run away. He noticed that the grill was still on and without really thinking what he was doing, checked the sole.
“Done to perfection,” he told himself and then put on his best mumsy voice. “This is the last meal you’ll have for a few days so you’d better eat it.” He called this self-parenting. In the absence of any real parents, he sometimes tried to imagine what they might have said, and say it for them. The accent didn’t sound remotely like his mother but it made her imagined utterances that bit more believable.
“Yes,” he agreed with himself – he did a much better impression of his father. “You’ll need all the energy you can get.”
He couldn’t normally afford to eat a luxury item like sole, but he’d wanted to cook something healthy that morning so he’d got up very early in order to steal it fresh from the fish market.
“Yeh. It would be a pity to waste this after going to all that time and effort. I had to run for ages before that fishmonger gave up the chase.”
Another sigh. He was too old to do this any more. Children had imaginary friends although, as an orphan, he supposed an imaginary family wasn’t so strange.
“Except that you’re nearly twenty-one now, a little old for imaginary anything, aren’t you?”
Yes. Of course he was. Never mind. This was wasting time.
He scooped the fish onto a plate, drained the peas, turned off the stove and, glancing out at the driving rain, placed a second plate over the top of it. It would be a shame if it got waterlogged. A quick rummage in Big Merv’s fridge and he found a plastic squeezy lemon. He would have preferred a real one but it would do. He stole it, along with a knife and fork, and grabbed his keys. Pausing by the mirrored oven door to give his reflection the bird – what a brain-dead twerk – he ran into the hall, plates in hand.
The fire brigade would turn up before long and so would Big Merv. They could take care of everything. If he played his cards right he would be on the other side of the world by that time, living under an assumed name. He left the door on the latch, so the fire brigade could get in if they arrived first, and ran outside.
A crowd was gathering.
“Not good,” he muttered.
He ducked behind a parked burger van which was setting up, like some evil-smelling vulture in reverse, to churn out food for the spectators, and ran across the road through the sheeting rain. He had gone a couple of hundred yards before he dared turn round. One of the windows of the flat blew out. Flames poured into the night air, licking hungrily at the side of the building and the dry wooden sills of the windows on the floor above.
“Please no. Please not the whole block.” He raked his free hand through his hair.
The Pan didn’t make a habit of retrospection. Dwelling on the past didn’t change anything, and he had enough to regret without continually reminding himself of each and every single thing he’d stuffed up. He turned his back on the carnage and walked away, into an uncertain future.
****
Afterword – a messa
ge from the author
There you go. If you liked that excerpt you can get the rest of the book, free. For more information about that, click here: http://www.hamgee.co.uk/freebookfac.html.
Feel free to visit my website; www.hamgee.co.uk/books or read more about the K’Barthan Series below. If you enjoyed this, or any of my other writing, enough to write a review I would be incredibly grateful. Don’t sweat it but if you have time, anywhere you like will do.
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Cheers
M T McGuire
Who is M T McGuire?
M T McGuire enjoys the real world but wouldn’t want to live here full time. That’s why she writes books. She grew up, or at least, got bigger, halfway up a windy down in Sussex. Her home was also the first location choice for Hogwarts, in the Harry Potter films, so maybe it’s not so strange that she’s ended up writing spec-fic. Perhaps there’s something in the water up there, apart from chalk.
M T now lives in Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, with a McOther, a McMini and a selection of very silly cars. She hasn't found a way to make any of the cars fly, and none of them are fitted with ordnance, but she and her team of evil scientists are working on that.
Despite being 45 now, and supposedly, an adult, M T checks all unfamiliar wardrobes for a gateway to Narnia. She hasn’t found one so far but she lives in hope.
The K’Barthan Series by M T McGuire
If you’d like to, you can read more adventures of The Pan of Hamgee in the series of K’Barthan novels.
Few Are Chosen, K’Barthan Series: Part 1
3rd place winner in The Wishing Shelf Book Awards, 2011
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