Lloyd 2.2
The Violent Client
2.2 The Violent Client
He didn’t go home. He grabbed his coat, his scarf, checked for his keys, lucky albatross and wallet eight times (so he wouldn’t die), jumped in the Luton and poked at the SATNAV. He was going to drive to Seaford, pick up a 47 inch TV, High Spec laptop, lazy-boy leather recliner then go home to bed.
He didn’t need to be ordered around by someone who could not pour piss out of a boot if the directions were on the heel.
Mike Barnes’ debt had went back some four months. Mike, unlike Lloyd’s other bad debt customers, was capable of having conversations with him so long as it was in person.
It was worth using the momentum of the mornings adrenaline hit to get in front of the guy. If Lloyd persuaded him to pay what he owed he would knock a whole percent off the stores debt. In Sharon’s crow-footed good eye he’d be more than vindicated and more importantly, make a mammoth commission.
Mike Barnes was a known drug dealer in Seaford. The reason he’d went so late was a direct consequence of Lloyd’s absent work colleagues calling him incessantly. Mike didn’t own a debit card because he liked to keep all his cash in the house (he’d told them a thousand times using under-the-breathe expletives and mildly threatening tones)
LLoyd tried to frame things better and tip over into a positive state.
He indulged some NLP techniques by way of visualizing successful outcomes
* Arrive outside house and park van flawlessly.
* Request politely that Mike let him in to chat; and without much of a to-do, persuade him to hand over goods or pay up.
* Leave house gracefully with smiles
Five minutes before Lloyd arrived in Mike’s street he started pumping out ‘smack my bitch’ up by ‘The Prodigy.’
As his daydream dissipated he shifted into lower gear and ascended the snow-covered hill leading to Mike’s house with hubris.
When he pulled up over the cusp he stopped the Van on virgin snow before yanking the handbrake prematurely, his stomach sinking like an ill cooked cake. The back wheels of the van skidded on snow and black ice, recklessly coasting down the hill a few meters before thudding loudly into the back of Mike’s parked Seat Ibiza.
Lloyd didn’t have time to ponder or panic about the mistake. Mike peeped out from behind scabby venetian blinds in a white vest and baseball cap like some angry working class stereotype:
His TV and leather recliner (bailiff gold) were situated close enough to the window so he’d always be prepared for situations like this. Lloyd saw him mouth the words ‘wha tha fu’.
Then mike was there, opening the cab door — dragging Lloyd onto the pavement, hitting him hard in the face with a double sovereign-ringed fist. The left made contact followed thankfully, with an unadorned right…five times.
A skin and bone road digger trying to break my face open.
Knocked to the concrete.
Heavy kicks to the torso.
BANG BANG BANG BANG
Lloyd supposed any length of time could have passed since he was last conscious.
The sky soon looked a little darker and there was enough bloody snow around him to suggest he’d been bleeding for a while…
Then Mike was staring out at him from the blinds again, smothering undercoats of uncertainty with ghoulish defiance:
His tattooed arm was waving and his gold-plated wrist chain bounced animatedly.
“Now Fuck off”.
Lloyd’s stomach felt like it had imploded and his face felt like it had been ran over by a Dutch tram.
Shock meant he wasn’t sure if he could feel pain yet.
Then he did.
Slowly, he pulled himself up using the cab door. He dragged himself into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition with his shaking bloody hand.
Pixels of adrenaline populated the touch screen of his brain interface.
He’d go home first before A&E. That was rational. Get bearings.
He could change out of his stained shirt and swallow painkillers, have a cup of coffee to help gather thoughts and labour through what may or may not be a concussion.
He drove home in a daze, swerving aimlessly on dual carriageways.
He thought about the Rocky films,
Driving and reflecting.
Montage.
Burst face and that.
Then he was home. A nicer feeling. Home was important. He needed to remember that. Lighten up
Jess had Classical music on.
He went in the kitchen and took some frozen peas out the freezer; wrapped them in a towel and held them to his face while he took off his bloodstained top. He ascended the stairs carefully, trying not to aggravate his ribs. It helped if he breathed slowly and consciously. He shakily made his way to the Master Bedroom and opened the door. He hallucinated that Alex from next door was in bed with Jess, fucking her.
*
The dizziness quickly became all-consuming; he couldn’t stop himself staggering forward and dumping his body onto the end of the bed, smearing cream sheets with blood, sweat and snot. The whole room was compressing onto him, into him, crushing him.
Alex, feeling an abrupt, alien sensation on the back of his ankles shot out from beneath the covers before doing a kind of ad-hoc army roll on the ground. He started putting on underpants and buttoning up trousers like a real, existing person.
Jess, spiked with adrenaline at the sight of Lloyd found herself lunging straight over to him. The shame that she should have felt for getting caught in bed with another man had been instantly replaced with a dread that her partner might be about to die.
Muted with shock and almost suffocating herself with inarticulate breathing, she checked his cuts and bruises.
Alex grimaced.
Jess turned to him expectantly — delaying hysteria — mascara running freely down her face-cheeks.
“Take us to the hospital Alex”.
“Shouldn’t you phone an ambulance, I don’t really think…I mean, I’ve been drinking”?
“Shut up Alex!…help me.”
Between them they hoisted a semi-conscious Lloyd to his feet and dragged him down the stairs one agonizing step at a time. Alex’s Jaguar just sat there, waiting at the roadside like Greyfriar’s Bobby.
After shovelling Lloyd in the back, Jess tapped his face and whispered in his ear. She’d never had so many conflicting emotions but the main picks were anxiety about his safety, her future and an indelible pissed-offness at being caught out. After shutting the back door on a comatose husband she and Alex stood in silence at the roadside for many seconds.
“Alex!” she finally cried with expectancy.
“What!!” He said, “I’m thinking”. He was sucking on his index finger and grimacing; struggling with something Freudian.
“What’s there to think about”, just get in the car and drive us to the hospital, unless you want my husband to die in the back seat?”
Alex raised his eyebrow cynically; he knew Lloyd’s condition couldn’t be as bad as all that; he was still breathing after all.
“Then what?” He continued, “leave you there with him? How do you think he’s going to react when he wakes up?”
The man was bleeding all over his leather upholstery.
God probably wanted to test him now, that must have been it. He’d a good run of luck the last few years with his parents moving elsewhere and giving him the house. He had a great job that gave him freedom and status and he was fighting fit. Yes, he’d had his way for too long and that was fine. Well played God.
*
Alex’s predicament differed from Lloyds growing up. He was lucky enough to have both requisite parents even though they were not emotionally close. His dad was a carpenter like Jesus’ dad and his mother was a nurse like Florence Nightingale but they seemed more preoccupied with providing financially than spending their time.
Connecting with people outside the family was his catharsis, his compensation. He wanted Love and respect from everyone, no matter how thin on the ground he had to spread himself. That was how he chose to live; spinning plates.
Then Jess moved in next door…
Alex wondered what on earth Lloyd had done to deserve her. She was much more his type. Hourglass figure, big eyes, a walk that made you do a double take; and she liked nice things. He knew the moment he saw her that he had to have her so he’d used Lloyd’s ailing mother as an excuse to get closer to the family again. Non-the-wiser Lloyd was just glad of the distraction at that hard time. Alex was a familiar albeit punchable face.
Jess (with a little encouragement from Lloyd’s mother) soon joined the congregation and whenever Alex got the chance to have a few choice words in her ear, her duties for the clergy became more and more concrete and the time she spent there on a weekly basis grew to be substantial.
She saw with her own eyes how women in the congregation loved it when he bellowed at the Pharisees — threw furniture around the temple in rehearsal scenes for the annual Easter play — and she wanted him too.
“Can we put a blanket down or something, it’s just…….” Alex gazed through the window at the mess.
“He is my husband Alex. Now fucking move”
She waited for him to open the driver’s side and get in. She awkwardly maneuvered her way into the seat behind him so that Lloyd — who was laying on his back with his legs hunched up against the opposite door and the back of the passenger seat — could rest his head on her lap. She stared intently, taking in the alien scratches and bumps, remembering how innocent he looked when they had first met. For one terrifying moment she imagined a life without him.
Alex was glancing back every ten seconds.
Jess wondered what there was to be interested in at this precise moment in time apart from the road ahead. His constant checking hinted at possessiveness and the beat of his countenance wavered.
She needed a rock, not a metronome.
“He looks like he’s been jumped”
“Yes” he replied sharply, “he does”.
It was a fifteen-minute drive to the hospital and the lights on the motorway skittered past in macabre countdowns. Jess could feel her hands shaking and was mindful of that old cliché about ‘life flashing before your eyes.’
She decided Lloyd wouldn’t want to let go of the life they’d built together just because she’d made one silly mistake. That was counter-intuitive. There may come a point in the not too distant future where he’d fuck up monumentally too. In lieu of asking the same forgiveness of her, he should keep that in mind.
She would have to be a lot more careful with Alex, of course. She could stop seeing him for a while perhaps, but…
Oh yeah, you can my book LLoyd on Amazon for £1.80 GBP or $2.99 USD
An absolute steal. Should be charging more really.
Anyway, Just type ‘Scott Lundrigan’ into the Search Engine… Or ‘Lloyd’.
Cheers.
Bye.
