Running Stupid: (Mystery Series)

by James Kipling

  In minutes they had arrived at their destination. Leaving the engine on and the headlights fixed on the caravan, Charles jumped out of the front door, braced the harsh wind, and sprinted towards the door. Jester watched as the driver fiddled with the front door. The caravan was larger than he had expected, much larger. More like a mobile home or a villa-on-wheels than a simple caravan. In Jester’s head, the word caravan conjured up images of rusty shells propped up on bricks, blind to the benefits of a good wash. But this one was different. It was elegant.

  It was big, the length of a bus and wider. Matthew counted three windows, all along one side. All around the caravan someone had planted flowers. Some were blooming, some withering, others already dead. Next to the large window at the tip of the caravan, someone had laid a rockery adorned with large stones and little cherubs.

  Jester turned his attention back to Charles who had just managed to open the door. He turned to Jester and beckoned him over. Jester quickly rushed out into the cold and clambered into the caravan.

  He expected to be hit by a solid wall of warmth, but he wasn’t. It was just as cold inside as it was outside. Behind him Charles rushed back into the cold, closed the doors on his wife’s car and then returned to the caravan. He slammed the door shut whilst removing his coat.

  “Nice,” Jester made his way into the living room. The room itself was bigger than any caravan he’d ever seen. “This place is huge.”

  “Thank you.” Charles draped his coat over the back of a mahogany chair, pushed up to a mahogany table. “Julie always liked caravans. I was never a fan myself, always thought they were too small.” He crossed to the living room and tossed himself onto a dark brown sofa. “But then I found this,” he opened his arms, gesturing to the mass of space. “Space, mobility, relaxation, security ... what more could you want?”

  Matthew was standing by the window. He had brushed the curtain aside with his forefinger, peering outside. “Sun?” he offered.

  “I’m going to bring her here when we hit a sunny period,” Charles said. “I was going to arrange it for this month but …” he allowed his sentence to trail off.

  Jester retired from the window and headed into the kitchen area. “Where’s the heating for this place?”

  “Next to the cooker,” Charlie shouted across. “Big white thing.”

  Jester nodded, reached out, switched something on and then took a seat opposite Charlie. “How did you afford this place, anyway?” he asked.

  Charles took his eyes away from the stare of Matthew Jester, an anxious movement instantly noticed by the younger man. “I ...” he paused, hesitated, he brought his eyes back to Jester’s inquisitive gaze. “Mark Chambers,” he said, defeated. “He gave me the money; a few months ago now.”

  “Gave you the money?”

  “Well, it was my and Julie’s anniversary coming up. He knew I needed money.” Charles shifted in his seat, an uncomfortable movement. “I asked him for a loan.” His words were hissed, almost pushed out, overshadowed by a hidden agenda. There was something in his words that suggested he wasn’t telling the truth, or at least not all of it.

  “And?” Jester pushed.

  “He gave me it,” Charlie said.

  Jester leaned back in his chair and straightened an awkward pain in his lower back. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he said, leaning forward again.

  “He gave me the money as an incentive,” Charlie said, his face a mixture of emotions. “Kind of.”

  “You’re confusing me.”

  “The money was all about you,” Charles said blankly. “He knew I needed the money for our anniversary, he knew I would do anything to make Julie happy, so he lent me the money to buy this place.” Charles retained eye contact as he spoke. “I then found out he wanted me to do a few jobs for him.” He flashed Matthew a look of recognition but it wasn’t received, so he explained, “Such as driving you to the court house.”

  “Ah,” Matthew nodded.

  “He used the caravan as part of his ploy.”

  “That guy really has you by the balls, doesn’t he?” Jester said lightly.

  Charles nodded bleakly. “He knows my weaknesses. He knows I love my family and would do anything to keep them happy. He exploits that.”

  “Well,” Matthew sighed and rested back in his chair. “At least he’s only tried to kill you once.”

  30

  “The business man who put forward the reward was Fadel?” Matthew asked.

  “The reward was probably Maloney’s idea. Chances are he used Fadel’s connections and money to do it though.” Charles paused, pondered and continued. “But it could have been one of the punters as well.”

  Jester nodded and threw himself back in his seat.

  They had been in the caravan for nearly an hour, batting the story back and forth. They both wanted answers and justice, but the answers were slim and justice was far away. Charles had found a bottle of whiskey inside a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms. Matured for twelve years, in his possession for another seven, he won it at a charity auction back when he was a working man and was waiting for that, ‘special occasion’.

  He decided that his chances of ever encountering that special occasion had somewhat diminished since he had met Matthew Jester. He poured himself a healthy measure into a crystal tumbler. Jester had turned down the offer of alcohol. His body was rife with aches and pains but also flooded with narcotics. He had no intention of sleeping, and alcohol along with the drugs already in his system, would be more than enough to knock him out.

  They talked breathlessly, but neither of them came to a conclusion.

  “So let’s says someone has bet on me dying … tomorrow,” Jester said, catching Charles’s attention. “What would stop them coming out here to kill me themselves?”

  “Nothing,” Charles said simply. “In all honesty, nothing. They could follow you and kill you when they want. But they’d be taking a risk, a big risk, if one of them tried that and Fadel found out. He’d not only kill them, he’d torture them. Fadel has enough money to make anyone disappear and everyone turn the other way.”

  “How would he find out?”

  “He has a team of men tracing your every move,” Charles explained. “Nothing exact, he can’t pin point your location … but he has a fair idea.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” Charles confessed. “All I know is there are no bugs, no satellites … no need to get paranoid about that sort of stuff.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Jester said, his tone riddled with sarcasm.

  “Although,” Charles said, ignoring the comment, “they might not know where you are. They were going off CCTV, but something went wrong. They lost you.”

  “What do you mean, they lost me?”

  “You went off the chart.”

  “The chart?” Jester said. “What the fuck is the chart?”

  “It’s just something that monitors your situation. It’s like a complex graph, with maps, locations, key points, police spots, traffic hot spots, CCTV hot spots, witnesses, et cetera.” Charles paused for breath. “Everyone contributes to the chart, including the police. Loads of people are in on this. Maloney has paid hundreds of people just to look out for you. All civilians, unarmed, in every part of the city, every town covered. The police and the media are in on it. It’s an elaborate scheme, and I’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. They set it up so that they could follow your every movement, watch as a fugitive tries to evade the police. It’s a game to people like Fadel and Maloney. They have more money than sense, being able to bet on a human’s life, and then watch that very life fall to pieces on a television scene. It is fun to them.”

  “So what went wrong?” Jester said, somewhat astonished by the comments.

  “I don’t know.”

  A silence fell over them. Charles sat staring at his tumbler of whiskey, swishing the amber fluid gently around the glass with a gentle flick of his wrist. Jester was leaning
forward, his elbows on his thighs, his head in his hands. His mind tried to grasp what had been said. It tried to hold the situation and squeeze an explanation out of it, but it couldn’t. It just swam in a peaceful emptiness. He was too tired, too exhausted. Any thoughts that did enter his head were cancelled out by the narcotics before they could begin to clarify.

  ***

  “I’m bored,” Jester said blankly.

  Edinburgh had slumped back, his backside hanging off the edge of the sofa, his head halfway down it. Loosely in his right hand he held the tumbler of whiskey. “Have a drink,” he said tiredly.

  “I was never really a fan of alcohol,” Jester said, almost nostalgic.

  “What?”

  “When I was younger it was okay. I used to drink a lot more than I do now. I was drinking to give me confidence to be sociable.”

  “Courting juice,” Charles huffed, rising from the sofa, a groan escaping his lips.

  “Sorry?”

  “Courting juice,” Charles repeated, now upright. “I would say that more than half of modern day relationships were formed when one of the couple was under the influence. It seems to be the done thing now ... you go to a club, get drunk, meet a girl, go back to your flat … do,” Charles coughed, uncomfortable with finishing the sentence. “Your business, and then … well I guess you wake up in the morning with a headache and a new girlfriend.”

  “One night stands,” Jester affirmed. “I don’t think people actually have relationships that way.”

  “Have you ever taken a girl to the pictures for a first date?”

  “No,” Jester was quick to reply.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to sit through a soppy fucking film for two hours. Have you seen the shit that these women watch? They sit in the house all day binging on Big Brother and chat shows but as soon as you take them out the house, they become fucking film connoisseurs. Why can’t they settle for a good action flick, you know, a few explosions, a couple of decapitations …” Jester smiled.

  Charles shook his head, he too smiling. “You know what,” he said, his speech slurring. “You’re either one amazing guy or one very crazy guy.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Your approach to life. You’re very laid back,” Charles stated. “Even when we were being shot at. When you were having a face-off with that that assassin back in the cabin.” He paused to let out an open mouthed look of surprise, a gesture to express his awe. “You treated it like a joke. I wish I had that talent.”

  “It’s not a talent,” Jester said vacantly.

  Charles smiled and drained the whiskey from his glass. Putting the tumbler back on the table he inspected the whiskey bottle, the amber fluid stopped just below the neck. He poured himself another measure.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to pour you a glass?” he offered, pointing the bottle towards Matthew.

  “No,” Matthew replied sharply. “I’m fine. A drink will probably send me to sleep.”

  “That’s a good thing.” He finished pouring his glass and rested back on the sofa. “You need some sleep.”

  “I can’t sleep,” Matthew resisted. “There’s too much going on.”

  “Which is why you need to rest. How many people have tried to kill you?”

  “I lost count.”

  “How many times have you been punched, kicked or beaten over the last two days?”

  “I forget.”

  “How long have you spent sitting down?”

  “A couple of hours.”

  “Rest,” Charles asserted. “Your body needs all the energy it can get.” He took a small sip of the amber fluid and sighed pleasurably. “Have you eaten?”

  “When?”

  “During all of this,” Charles explained. “Have you had anything to eat?”

  “Yes,” Matthew nodded slowly. “A few hours after the accident in the police car, I had a big meal, tea, biscuits, cherry pie.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “It was,” Jester said with a nod of his head. “Some of the best food I’ve had in years. Good, home cooked food. Can’t beat it.”

  “Who cooked it for you? What happened to them?”

  “They tried to kill me,” Jester said calmly.

  Charles’s face contorted into a mix of confusion and shock. Jester, seeing this, spoke again, “It's okay,” he assured. “They let me finish my meal first.”

  Charles laughed, a spontaneous burst of breath. “If you’re hungry,” he said, “there’s some stuff in the cupboards. Not much, but there should be some things to nibble on.”

  Matthew nodded slowly, his mind running through a series of thoughts. “I think I’ll take you up on that,” he said, rising. “You got anything to drink other than alcohol?” he made his way into the kitchen.

  “Check the bottom cupboards,” Charles said, pointing towards a line of cupboards running along the bottom of the kitchen wall.

  Jester nodded and began probing the cupboards. He checked one after another, easing the doors open on smooth hinges and then letting them fall back nosily before moving onto the next. He stopped at the third cupboard and his head and shoulders disappeared momentarily as he lunged inside. He emerged seconds later with two large bottles, one in each hand.

  “You have Lilt and Coke,” he shouted into the living room where Charles was sitting, his eyes fixed on a clean view of the narrow kitchen. “But I think the Coke is flat,” he said.

  “The Coke came from home, I brought a few bottles. I must have used the rest. The Lilt I got from the shop on site. It’s only been there a week or so.”

  Jester nodded. “Lilt it is,” he said, putting the Coke bottle in the cupboard. “Now for the food,” he said, turning to Charles.

  “The shelves on the top,” Charlie said, his words slurring slightly.

  Jester nodded and began to search through the cupboards. In the first he was surprised to see it well stocked, lined with tins, cans and bottles. He made a mental note of the contents, closed the cupboard and opened the next.

  The second one was as much of a surprise. It was filled with tools: spanners, screwdrivers, nuts, bolts, screws, all overflowed from a black toolbox which had been dumped in the centre of the cupboard. Even if the tools had been cut in half they still wouldn’t fit inside the oddly shaped, rusty toolbox.

  In the third cupboard he found nothing. It was empty besides a small plank of wood and two nails. Someone had started to put up a shelf and then given up. The fourth and fifth cupboards were empty. The final cupboard was bigger than the others, approximately the same size as the well-stocked one at the other end.

  “Holy shit,” he said aloud, his eyes practically bulging as he looked inside the cupboard. “What’s with all the chocolate and treats?” he asked.

  “Julie has a sweet tooth,” Charles shouted from the living room.

  “No shit,” Jester ducked in the cupboard and reappeared with two multi packs of Kit Kats in his right hand. “How big is this wife of yours?”

  Charlie laughed lightly. “She keeps her weight in check,” he said with a smile. “I just wanted everything to be perfect for her. I may have overdone it on the chocolate.”

  Matthew smiled, his eyes back on the cupboard. On the shelf below all the chocolate treats was a large biscuit tin, wrapped in a neat red ribbon. There were also packs of biscuits and cookies. Matthew eyed a pack of chocolate biscuits and removed them.

  He moved back to the first cupboard and made himself a sandwich. Moments later, he walked back to the living room with his hands full. He tucked in before he even sat down.

  “You want one?” Matthew asked, offering Charles a biscuit.

  “No thanks,” Charles refused politely.

  The older man watched in silence as Jester merrily munched away at the crumbly biscuits, taking hungry bites out of his sandwich and large sips from his glass.

  “At least you haven’t lost your appetite,” Charlie offered.

  “Sorry
about the mess,” Matthew said, motioning towards the crumb-covered carpet at his feet.

  “It’s only a few crumbs.” Charles’s tone was relaxed and casual. The alcohol had warmed its way through his system and settled his worries. “It just needs a quick run over with the vacuum.”

  Jester smiled and continued to chomp away, taking large bites and barely stopping for breath. Charles was watching the younger man eat when he fell asleep, his eyes growing heavier and heavier by the minute. Conversation dwindled to single words, then syllables, then mere grunts.