Thick and Fast

pistol, for he was not without courage.

  But Harvey's mind was on how much he could squeeze the movie moguls for, so he eased the car into second and headed towards the garages.

  Ambrose heard the sound of tyres on gravel and knew the time had arrived. He clutched the shotgun to his chest and hid up against the side wall of the garages. His heart was beating wildly, and his breath came asthmatically in short gasps. He was to wait until the car stopped. Please wait until the vehicle has come to a complete standstill. He had told Spotty about how he loved to jump off the buses before they came to a halt and Spotty had laughed. But not this time, Bro. You just wait till it stops, o.k.? Wait till he gets out. He may have a gun in the glove compartment, and we don’t want to give him any opportunities here, so wait till he gets out and is well away from the car. Then he’s yours.

  But even the best schemes can often miss out minor details. Bro had to get Harvey inside the garages. That was o.k. because Harvey would have the keys. But what if he refused? What if he just said no, and stood his ground? What then? Or what if Harvey tossed him the keys and said open it yourself. He couldn’t exactly pick them up and keep the weapon aimed at his rival. So what was he supposed to do? Well Ambrose had gone one step beyond even Spotty’s careful planning.

  It was a nonchalant, whistling Harvey Paulson that pulled to a halt on the forecourt. He checked his bag for the garage keys, pushed his sunglasses back on top of his head, and fiddled with his phone. Should he call Andrea and tell her he had arrived? That would be the most normal thing in the world to do, surely? Especially as she worried so much about everything and always expected the worst to happen. Give her a quick call. Let her know that disaster had not struck, that he had not been killed or seriously maimed in a terrible traffic pile up, or that the house was still standing and hadn’t been burnt to the ground. As far as he could see it had not been occupied by drug dealers or nomads of any kind, either. Just a brief ‘all’s well’ message? The problem was that he would have to mention the name, the place where he had gone and the reason he was not at home now with her. Haute House, Andrea. Maybe it was not such a good idea. She would be happily oblivious of his comings and goings if he simply left her alone. She’d have the girls over, or be flirting with that moron Greg at the beach bar, leading the poor idiot on as she loved to do. Well that was fine, it gave her confidence and was all harmless enough. He’d phone her from town, once the deal was struck and the cars put back. That way he could avoid naming the mansion at all, and focus on gearing her up for his return. He slipped the phone back in his pocket. How was he to know that hundreds of miles away at Kenton Beach Andrea was spiraling down to the cold, sightless depths of depression. Or that they would never see each other again? Or that her premonitions and worst fears were to be proven right?

  He climbed out of the car into the delicious evening light. All around him the garden bloomed in effusive glory and he paused to take in the sight. Bro was wrong; it was not Brendan or Brendan’s son who now looked after the gardens. A private company had been hired, and they too did a marvellous job. He breathed deeply, his eyes half closed. It was then that he saw Ambrose emerge from the side of the garages.

  If Harvey had had a sense of humour he might have been able to see the comedy in the situation. Unbelievable as it may seem, there was Ambrose, Ambrose Ork, dressed in dungarees as if he were back at work doing some menial chore or other. An enormous, unwieldy shotgun held up at shoulder height pointing straight at Harvey though wavering somewhat. His head slightly tilted to one side, and one eye screwed shut as he tried to aim. Harvey hadn’t seen Ambrose since the trial, and quite honestly had not expected or wished to see him again for the rest of his days. The man had been put down, quite rightly, for gross negligence manslaughter, and Harvey had all but forgotten him. And now here he was, pointing that absurd gun at him as if he meant to shoot him.

  After the initial shock and surprise came bewilderment. Harvey was genuinely baffled. What on earth could be going on in this man’s head to make him take this rash course of action? What did the fool want now? Money probably, they all did. Perhaps this ex convict felt he’d been treated too harshly and wanted some kind of retribution for himself and his fat-arsed sister. Yes, of course, it would be Petunia Ork who was behind all this; Bro was far too short to act on his own behalf. Your money or your life, for heaven’s sake. Or maybe he wanted his job back. Wouldn’t put it past the cretin. What an oaf. Though most probably there was no thought process behind it at all. He was acting on impulse, like an animal. Ambrose had never had two thoughts to rub together anyway. He was peeved and wanted to show Harvey something, demand something, though Bro himself doubtless had no idea what he really wanted. Still, there he stood, the dumb bastard.

  They say that your whole life passes before you when you realise you are about to die. But Harvey did not even contemplate that outcome. What was the point of dwelling on the sordid possibilities of a premature demise? Like those whose lives were a constantly updated version of This is Your Life. He was a man of action, of worldly ambitions, and did not waste time on speculating about death and its possible aftermath. He had no truck with hand-wringers or head-bashers, and could not abide living-room philosophers and idle chat about the hereafter. He knew those who talked about and even planned their own funerals, the music to be played, the photos, all so tear-jerking. They were the self-important and vain set that imagined the pain and suffering their departure would, oh most certainly, cause amongst their loved ones. He found it sickening. Or those that had ‘found’ god, and now walked around like junkies, high on religion, smirking smugly at the rest of us poor lost souls like the members of an elite club watching the pedestrians file by from the warmth and exclusivity of their private drawing rooms. No, Harvey had never worried about his own death.

  Until now. If Ambrose was here now, standing right in front of him, pointing at him with his own shotgun….why had the alarm not sounded? How come the gates had swung open so perfectly yet Ambrose had managed to break in and steal his gun? A shot of fear ran suddenly through his whole being. Something was not right.

  Ambrose had a sense of humour, or at least a sense of the ridiculous. He used to love lying on the bed at home giggling with his sister. They would repeat words over and over again until they sounded absurd. Those same words then became like a secret code between them, and if used in the right context could send them into laughing fits which made them cry and sometimes even choke. They also liked to criticize other people, their big noses, their hairy ears, their conversational ticks. So he could have been forgiven for finding the comical side to this moment. In his sights he had Harvey, frozen with fear, dressed in khaki trousers and a pale blue shirt as if he were about to invite you onto his yacht. His chunky adventurer’s watch, his slick leather belt with a logo for a buckle, his sunglasses on top of his healthy head of jet black hair. But Bro did not see the funny side, not at all. He was about to kill a man for the first and last time in his life, and it was not a laughing matter. Harvey had helped drown little Sydney, had managed to shift the blame onto Ambrose, and now he was about to pay for that. It was not going to be a comedy sketch.

  It was the perfect moment for some famous last words. Ambrose had tried over and over again to imagine this moment, to foresee what Harvey might do or say, and he had tried to prepare a dialogue in his mind which would fit the situation. He wanted Harvey to understand a few things before he died. He needed him to see that Bro now knew everything. How he had manoeuvred so that an accident would take place, how he had so cunningly covered his tracks, how he had perversely prepared the ground so that it was Ambrose who eventually took the rap. He knew how, and he knew why. Firstly because Harvey could, because he had been born a bright spark and rarely missed a trick. But also because Harvey was a climber, a selfish, amoral, over-ambitious man with an insatiable appetite for more. He was unscrupulous and unmerciful. He preyed on his fellow men with the sole idea of personal profit, and fuck the consequences;
the rest could go to hell. He imagined how Harvey would try to worm his way out of these accusations, how he would sneer and mock, rant and insult. There would be a string of synonyms – dunce, bonehead, thicko, cretin, idiot, moron, numbskull…. Ambrose knew them all. Harvey would claim his right to be king. He was the strongest, the fittest, the fastest. And he was convinced that every move he made, every decision he took, was the right one. By right he meant that it would lead to self-gain. That, to Harvey, was being intelligent. The rest of humanity he would convert into mere serfs, inferior beings with little or no initiative and even fewer brain cells. Harvey’s defense would be predictable and simplistic: we deserve what we get.

  But Ambrose realized he had no way of expressing all that. They were ideas that were clear enough in his own mind, but that would never find their way into coherent speech. He would muddle them up and choose the wrong vocabulary, he would be thrown off track by anything that Harvey said, especially if he didn’t really understand the true meaning of it. And Harvey loved to confound