COUNT ME OUT

-3-



Scott Heywood squinted at his bowl of cornflakes. How many were there in a bowl - a hundred? Say five days a week, to allow for days he couldn't face them: five hundred flakes. Fifty weeks a year, excluding holidays - twenty-five thousand cornflakes every year. Which meant that since marrying Claire - and only since then, because he didn't eat cornflakes much before - just since marrying Claire, he must have eaten two hundred thousand of the things. Actually, when he came to think about it, two hundred thousand didn't seem a lot: if he'd had a pound for every cornflake he would still not be rich. Not really. Comfortable, but not rich enough to retire. Though if he invested two hundred thousand pounds at eight per cent a year, he'd have -

"Scott! You've hardly touched your breakfast."

She had a freshly ironed apron over her day dress, so clean and immaculate she looked like an actress in a situation comedy. Nowadays it was as if Claire took her role models from advertisements. She had become one of those bright and brittle paragons of domestic cleanliness; she sprayed lacquers on the furniture, scrubbed her kitchen with abrasive soap, sluiced surfaces with a jollop which killed every household germ.

A cornflake fluttered from his mouth. "I was thinking."

"Thinking!"

Tommy asked, "What about?"

Scott blinked twice, as if he had only just woken up. "Where we should go on holiday. What d'you think?"

His son looked blank. Claire clucked her tongue.

"That's all I was thinking."

Claire picked a breadcrumb from the tablecloth. "Assuming we could afford a holiday."

"Of course we can."

Claire smiled sadly. "We could go to Norfolk."

"I meant abroad. Where d'you fancy?"

"We can't afford abroad. We can't even afford Norfolk unless we stay with Brenda..."

Claire removed another crumb from the tablecloth.

Scott said, "Sometimes it's cheaper to go abroad."

"Not as cheap as Brenda's."

"The later you book the cheaper it is - last minute bargains. Walk into a travel agent's and ask, 'What's on for Saturday?' You know."

"I'm not going this Saturday!"

"Any Saturday, when we're ready. Just ask them what they've got."

He nodded encouragingly, but she shook her head: "I prefer to know where I am. It takes time to pack and sort the house out. Anyway, it's term-time, and Tommy's at school."

Scott grinned at his son. "You wouldn't mind skipping a week, would you?"

Claire said, "Miss a week's school? He'd never catch up."

"Come on, Claire, he's only six."

Tommy frowned, wondering whether six was a good thing to be or not.

"We can't afford abroad. But if you like, I'll ring Brenda on Sunday."

Scott studied her. "Just suppose we did go abroad, where'd you like to go?"

"Tommy, eat that up. - That reminds me, talking of foreign holidays..." She eyed him curiously.

"Yes?"

"Have you moved your passport?"

Scott's hand strayed towards his spoon. "Passport?"

"Yes, it should be in the drawer with the serviettes, in my papers file."

"Ah." Scott filled his mouth with cornflakes.

"I was changing the perfumed lining paper and I peeped inside. My papers file should have been underneath my bank file, but when I moved the cutlery canteen - "

"I wanted to check the date," Scott said. "The renewal date."

"But it's not due."

"No."

"I would know if our passports had expired. They're both due on the same date."

Spoons clinked. Tommy continued to watch his parents, but since the quarrel appeared to have died at birth he resumed eating. Claire said, "Moving things like that when there's no need. They'll get lost."

Scott seemed uninterested.

"I'd have known if they were due."

He nodded, ploughing through the rest of his soggy cereal.

"Not that we're going anywhere."

"No."

"Far too hot and the weather's terrible. We could have gone at Easter in the school holidays, but it's too late to book."

"Well - "

"You know it is, darling. Anyway, England's best. I don't want to go somewhere common."

"Common?"

"Abroad is common. England is civilised. Norfolk is."

Scott tried a rueful smile on Tommy but the boy only stared at him. Sometimes Tommy sat so still at table that Scott wondered if he ate at all. Yet the food disappeared. In fact, usually by the end of the meal Tommy's plate looked so clean that it looked as if it had already been washed up. But nothing from the Heywood table escaped the dishwasher; everything from the table was scalded clean.

Tommy's bowl was empty. He said, "I'd like to go to the Hudson River."

They both stared at him. Scott asked, "On holiday?"

"Of course."

"Where's the Hudson River?"

"North America."

Claire laughed. "Oh, Tommy, that's much too far. We could never afford it."

Scott asked, "Why there?"

"There's holidays where you go on a boat and watch the whales. If you're good, they let you touch one. I'd like that."

"Whales!" scoffed Claire. "Whatever next?"

*

Ticky knew his breath smelled. He was standing at the sink in the corner of his bed-sit, pulling faces in the mirror. He stretched his mouth wide, moved his bottom jaw from right to left, peered into the pink cavity. His false teeth were out. When Ticky had first begun working for Mr Gottfleisch he assumed - like everybody else - that his putrid breath was caused by his blackened teeth. They were anachronistic, those stumps of teeth, the kind seen only in photographs of slum children in the war. Pantomime witches and pirates had teeth like that.

Quite early in his employment, Gottfleisch offered to have the teeth replaced. The offer was not out of character: Gottfleisch paid his employees a salary and ran a healthcare scheme for when they took sick. But he was not a philanthropist - he seldom employed a married man, for example, because he would have to support the wife if the man was jailed. Gottfleisch honoured his agreements, expected others to do the same. Insisted on it.

When Gottfleisch made the offer Ticky did not immediately accept; his teeth might be rotten but they were a part of him. Take them out? That seemed pretty drastic. Besides, he was uncomfortable with the concept of false teeth - they might fall out when he was on a job. Seriously, he explained to Gottfleisch, he could be running from the Bill, say, scrambling to get away, they'd come unstuck. Clatter on the ground. If the cops got their hands on those ivories, they could be as good as fingerprints, leading the law straight back to him. Anyway, how would the existing ones be taken out, he continued nervously - a punch on the jaw? Dental hospital, Gottfleisch had said. But Ticky was terrified of dentists. He had had several teeth removed already, and each one had caused him pain. His seemed to be rooted in more tenaciously than other people's teeth - corroded, maybe, stuck to the jaw. Even sitting in a dentist's chair was an ordeal - the man would jab at him, prick, be hasty with his drills.

Maybe it was Ticky's stench - the dentist wanted the job over quickly, so he snatched at what he did. Another anachronism: spitting blood afterwards into a basin.

Eventually Gottfleisch said it was a condition of Ticky's employment, and he'd hear no argument. He explained that having the whole set removed would be no more uncomfortable (that was his word for painful) than pulling out only one - less, because Ticky would be anaesthetised.

Ticky gave in, said he saw the logic of it. On the fateful day, no one knew the internal battles he went through. He wanted his Ma to hold his hand - and almost patched up their quarrel so she could come. Almost. But in the end, Ticky gathered what little there was of himself together and had a cab drop him at the door. Didn't trust himself to walk there.

For two weeks Ticky was all gums, all soft and tender. He thought his face was changing shape. Then he went back for the permanent set, and was immediately overjoyed; he could not believe how handsome he now looked. - Well, maybe not handsome, he thought, but better, anyway. He viewed his cutters in the mirror, pulled faces at himself, and became convinced that he could smile at people - a full white toothy cheese. Grinning at people felt tremendous, so he did it all the time: walked right up and leered straight in their face. It was several days before he learned that his breath smelled as before.

But that was a minor inconvenience, Ticky felt. People cracked on about his breath, but they were only teasing, that was all. What was important to Ticky was that since the refit he looked like an ordinary person, which was great. Women would be attracted to him now.

Over the next few months he found no increase in the number of women who were smitten by his looks. He didn't care. He looked better, felt better, and although the breath problem had not blown away he was grateful to Gottfleisch for what he'd done. Ticky consoled himself with the thought that, in truth, women only weighed a real man down. The best of them - that wasn't many, but a few - looked great in magazines or on the screen, but in real life had less appeal. Real women had blemishes, just like him. Usually they had too much flesh. They were taller than him - often heavier as well. And real life women never behaved as they did in films. - Obviously they wouldn't perform the tricks they did in porno films, but even in straight films women smiled, wore sexy clothes, were not overweight. Not like real women. Though it occurred to Ticky now, as he gazed in the mirror and ran his finger along his gums, that women in porno films actually were like women in real life: imperfect. Most of th

ose so-called actresses in the porno-flicks were foreign dikey pieces with blemishes, imperfect shapes, and disgusting private parts. Cameramen seemed obsessed with their vaginas, lingering on them close up. Who did they imagine wanted to stare at their overworked half shaven slits? Who gave a toss for them?

Little Ticky, what he liked, what he thought most men liked but would not admit, were young girls with skinny bodies and healthy eyes. Innocent and virginal, smooth-skinned like girls at school. Cheeky. Sweet and trusting.

By the time they married, women were past it.

He had misted the little mirror, so he rubbed it clean. In doing so, he caught a whiff of something - his own bad breath? No, it couldn't be - he was getting a complex about that. Anyway, Ticky decided, plucking his false teeth from the cup of Steradent, the older you get, the smellier, and that's a fact. Ticky hated growing old. Why couldn't he have stayed a kid?

*

The important thing, Cliff Lyons decided, was to get the timing right. So next morning he went back to the yard in the side street off the Old Kent Road. He wanted to see what kind of things might be happening at this time of day, what he might have to contend with. Damn little access roads stuffed with old parked cars: Gottfleisch was right - he should take traffic cones to clear a space. One thing working in his favour was that, throughout the whole business, he could take his time. The morning to get organised, and then, even after the job was done, several minutes before Force Five began to get anxious. There could be ten minutes - certainly eight - before the alarm. Another five before the cops arrived.

Ten to fifteen minutes. Inside five he would be out of the yard, onto the main road, heading south. Before the cops arrived in SE1 he should be in Lewisham.

Cliff paused outside the gates. Locked. Yard empty. But next week he would have the keys - he had considered bringing them today but didn't want to linger, didn't want to be a familiar face around the yard. He didn't want to draw anyone's attention to the yard at all. Even on Monday, this yard should be just one of a hundred places where the snatch could have been carried out.

It was a quiet spot, naturally - out of use, overlooked by blank windowless walls and deserted buildings. Someone ought to knock those buildings down, build something useful, he thought. As it was, the whole area was an invitation to vandals, was asking for trouble. Walking away, Cliff brooded on the fact that there was only one combined entrance and exit. A cul-de-sac allowed no options: one way in and one way out. On Monday, it could be just his luck for some prat of a truck driver to park his own lorry in the side road, or for some stupid accident to block his route. Murphy's Law. Cliff was more concerned about getting out than all the rest of it: the actual job was simple, it seemed to him.

He ran his hand across his crew-cut and jutted out his chin. This would be the big one, without a doubt - and if all he had to worry about was that there might be a vehicle badly parked, he couldn't grumble. If necessary, he could put his truck behind and shove it along the road, eliminate the bastard. Cliff grinned. No, on Monday he would act legitimately. What he liked about this number was that was that if everything went to plan, no one would know quite how it had happened: he could hear the radio now - a baffling disappearance, they'd say, another cargo vanished in the Bermondsey Triangle.

Cliff nodded, optimistic again. Come Monday, he'd make sure no sucker got in the way - no lorries, no workmen, no kids. If someone did, Cliff would deal with them, whoever they were. He was up to that. Christ, he couldn't call Gottfleisch on the radio and say sorry, something's up, how about we try another day?

Next Monday would be the only chance they had.

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