4 : Mary, Mary.
David collected his things from the front desk of the police station, signed the paper confirming all his items were correct, and left as fast as he could.
Glad to be outside, he looked back at the station. ‘Stone Hill Police Station’, the sign read.
“Oh great, I’m miles away from home,” he said aloud, raising his arms as he spoke, as if mirroring the protesting he’d done the night before.
Home was at least ten miles away. Looking in his wallet, he saw he had money, but not enough for a taxi. He checked his mobile phone and saw that the battery was dead.
“Grrreat… train it is, then,” he said aloud once more and headed to the main road, hoping to find his way to the town centre or the train station.
Looking around, he couldn’t see any signs for either. He realised he could have just asked in the police station, but he had wanted to get out of there and away from the police.
Thoughts of being locked up and maybe imprisoned came back and darkened his mind.
Was that Lauren woman right about prison? The police had certainly come straight for me, he reflected, thinking back to himself throwing the gas canister back at the police lines.
Realising he was standing on the street corner with his eyes half open, he shook the thoughts from his mind. He noticed a local shop, which he realised offered the opportunity to ask for directions.
Heading inside, he smelt the sweet and spicy aroma of Indian food. It was far more welcoming to him than the city streets, reminding him of his South Asian adventures.
The man behind the counter looked at him expectantly.
“Know where the station is?”
“The police station? It’s round the corner, innit,” the man replied in a local accent that took David by surprise.
“No, I know where that is, unfortunately — the train station.”
“Oh, just keep walking down the main road and to the roundabout, where the two unfinished buildings are,” the man told him, stretching his arm out and pointing his finger as if trying to reach around the door and outside.
“Thanks,” David said, waving and leaving the shop.
He took to the street and carried on walking. In the distance he could see two tall buildings or, more accurately, the concrete shells of two buildings. They looked like apartment blocks, but no apartments were visible yet. A large sign on the building advertised them as The Mallards.
The Lame Ducks by the looks of it! he thought.
As he walked on towards the buildings, his mind went back to the night before.
The protest about global warming had been a good thing to do. Though a march through the financial centre of the city might be seen as a cliché these days, it was still the de facto way to get media attention.
David kept walking, running the events of the march through his mind, his arrest and the visitor, Lauren, offering him a way out. He wondered what the price was in return. ‘A favour for a favour,’ he recalled her saying to him.
“Yeh, I bet, but it’s always a higher price to pay for the debtor,” he said aloud to himself. He saw the train station, went in to buy a ticket and headed home.
An hour later David was in his bathroom, taking off his smelly clothes.
“Mary!” he shouted.
Since coming in he’d called her name three times but there had been no answer. He hadn’t bothered to look around for her, instead heading straight upstairs to wash.
He turned the shower on, stripped and got into the cascade of water, feeling the warmth relax his muscles, reminding him that he’d not slept well in over two days.
Closing his eyes, he let the water ease him into a near-standing sleep.
The night before the march the group had been up late. Drinking, smoking and plotting into the small hours had become the norm before any event. He was mentally tired of it, physically tired of it and of the group, but giving it up wasn’t an option right now.
His mind went back to the meeting they’d had before the march.
Brother Wolf was always trying to keep the group peaceful and join in any other protests and marches that would give them kudos in the eyes of other eco-warrior, environmentalist groups.
The peaceful thing was fine, David wanted the group low key. The kudos thing he couldn’t care less about.
Greenpeace was planning a march through the city to protest fracking, and Wolf had suggested the group go along too. That was it, a simple decision that should have taken ten minutes, but no.
Instead of that, a group of about six had checked the route on the Greenpeace site, pulled up the area on Google maps, talked about how many police, how many people, if there’d be any press and cameras. On and on, as if any of it mattered.
David could feel the bile building up, thinking of the group. He pulled phlegm up out of his throat and spat towards the drain hole, not bothering to open his eyes to check where it landed.
Little had they known how many people would be there and how many police there would be. The event had been far bigger than any of them had expected.
David finished in the shower and headed to his bedroom. Looking at the room he could see Mary had been back last night, but where she was now didn’t matter.
He pulled the curtains closed and dropped onto the bed. The duvet was cool against his naked body, and it felt relaxing.
The effect was short lived.
He was reminded of the bruise on the back of his head as it sent a few dull pains through his skull in protest at being pressed against the pillow. He rolled onto his side, partly pulled the duvet over himself and closed his eyes.
His ears were ringing and by the throbbing sensation in his limbs and face, he could feel that his blood pressure must be up from the tiredness.
Taking long, deep breaths, he willed his muscles to relax. Images of random places and events, sounds and sensations washed over him as he began to dream. Within a short time, he was asleep.
∞
“David!” Mary shouted as she came in the bedroom, seeing David asleep on the covers, duvet draped across his lower body.
“Mary…” he said, opening his eyes and trying to focus on what was around him.
“Where have you been? Your phone is off and no one knew where the police took you!”
“Didn’t you ask them?” he said sarcastically.
“We couldn’t,” Mary snapped back. “Four of them lifted you up and took you straight behind the police lines. David, what happened?”
“Mary, slow down. I was knocked out, that’s why they had to carry me. I’ve got an awful bruise,” he said, touching the back of his head to show her where. “I was up at the Stone Hill station and just got back a while ago. What time is it?” he asked.
“It’s 2pm, I’ve been calling everyone, even the hospitals!”
“God, Mary, relax, OK? I’m here now.”
She looked at him with one of her hurt looks, but he knew she wouldn’t make a big issue of it, just enough to show concern and stay on his right side.
“Get me a smoke,” he said to her, pulling himself up to sit on the edge of the bed.
She went to the bedside cabinet and pulled out the working-box, as David had called it when they first met. Opening it, she saw that there were no joints ready.
“Hang on,” she said, moving to sit in a chair under the window and then setting to work silently.
David watched her lay out a paper and sprinkle in some tobacco. It was rolling tobacco instead of normal brown, she knew he preferred it. It burned slower and smelt better.
She lifted out a resin block about the size of a man’s thumb, heated and crumbled some of it onto the tobacco and then set about rolling the joint.
David watched her. He had always thought it cute but pointless, the way she rolled joints with such perfection. He felt it was uncommon for someone who smoked so many joints to pay such attention to what they looked like — but that was Mary, a nervous intensity about everything.
When it was rolled and sealed, Mary shoved some torn and rolled card into the end, wrapped the paper back inside the card tube and twisted the other end closed.
Just to finish this piece of artwork, she retrieved a small pair of scissors from the working box and snipped off half the twisted end.
Finally, she handed the joint to David. He looked at it in all its handcrafted perfection, popped it in his mouth, and held his hand out for a light.
“So what happened at the police station then?” she asked, now starting to roll a joint of her own.
David drew on the joint and held the smoke in for a few seconds, before exhaling towards the ceiling.
“I made a friend, it seems, that’s what happened,” he said.
Mary looked a little confused.
“What?”
David sat up, swung his legs out onto the floor and took an ashtray off the bedside cabinet.
“Yeh, I was visited by who really knows who, who offered to get me out of jail free as long as I did a favour in return for her favour,” he said, turning back to Mary.
He knew the mention of a woman would set her on edge.
“Don’t look so worried, Mary. I’ve no idea who she is; well, she’s called Lauren, but I’ve no idea why she helped me get out without charge.”
“Someone just offered to get you out of the police station and you don’t know why or what they want?” Mary said.
David looked at her as she finished her second piece of master crafting.
“Yeh, I know. But after last night, when I threw that canister at the police… well, she suggested it could mean prison time.”
“Prison! Rubbish, you didn’t even do anything!”
“Except lob a tear-gas canister into the police lines, yeh, other than that I was practically spectating!”
Mary heard the anger in his voice and chose to stay quiet, lighting up her own joint and giving him time to feel the effects of his.
She watched him staring out of the window.
“Do you still think about it?” she asked.
A moment went by before David answered.
“Of course, but it was a shithole prison in a shithole country and things are different now. I’m just not keen to get even close to being locked up again.”
Mary looked at him through the haze of their smoke.
Since coming back after his arrest in Thailand and six months in prison, he was weaker mentally and physically now, but angrier too. The tough, risk-taking man she’d known was gone, his sprit beaten and abused out of him in such a short time. Now, instead, here was someone who bullied and manipulated, always looking to lay risk and blame on others, while grabbing for whatever he could get.
“You think they’ll come here? The police? There’s a lot of stuff here, David,” she said, breaking the silence.
He thought about it for a moment. He was safer these days after making a few contacts that helped to keep the heat away. Did Lauren know where he lived and what he did? How about the people she worked for?
“I don’t know about the police bothering with us. We have a little protection now, and those who don’t know us — well, they think we’re just protesters,” he replied.
Standing up, he walked naked over to where Mary was sitting. He could feel his cock starting to get hard. Walking around naked when Mary was dressed was an odd turn on he always enjoyed.
She seemed to him like some innocent young girl, and he was the wise old man, despite them being nearly the same age and her being a virtual drug addict now.
“Want some?” he said, smiling and stressing his groin muscles so that his now semi-erect penis lifted up towards her.
“Oi… David!” she protested, staring at his now straightened manhood.
He stood directly next to her, putting his free arm around to the back of her head. Mary kept looking at his cock, wondering what he was going to do. He grabbed his pyjama bottoms from the back of the chair and pulled them roughly up, the weight of her body stopping them, forcing her to lean forward.
“Hey, you can play later!” he said, quickly turning and walking away, leaving her feeling flustered at his actions.
“What should worry us is Lauren and whoever she works for,” he said, sitting on the bed and pulling his pyjamas on.
He shook his head. “How did they know I was at the police station and she said they’d be in touch, but I never gave my number or address. So they obviously know a lot more about me than I do about them,” he added. The thought of her frightened him.
Mary smoked the joint and looked at David pensively. She never did offer up any advice or suggestions.
He looked at her with his usual blank expression. Do I have to do all the thinking in this relationship? he thought to himself.
He thought about Lauren again. If she needed something doing, he needed someone to delegate it to; he couldn’t take the risk on himself. He thought back to the march and had an idea.
“Mary, do we have a group meeting here tonight?”
“Yes, at 9pm. Why?”
“Good, I’d like to tell them what’s happened since yesterday. I also want to find out who the guy was that came up to me in the crowd. Let’s give Paul a call and see what he knows.”
Mary stood up and walked off to the other side of the room, leaving a trail of smoke behind her.
“Here, let me get the phone,” she said.
David raised his arms in the air as if commanding her to stop.
“No, it’s OK. Let’s go downstairs, I’m hungry.”
Mary knew that was a not-very-subtle way of telling her to go and cook something.
She stubbed out her joint and blew a final cloud of smoke up to the ceiling.
“OK, let me cook some lunch up then,” she said, heading out of the bedroom.
“Pizza and crisps is fine,” he called out to her.
David stood, grabbed a T-shirt hanging off the back of the chair she’d been sitting in and headed downstairs.
∞
David went straight to the den — that’s what they called it, anyway. It was more a spare room with all the crap in it, a desk for the laptop and a house phone.
There was barely room to move about.
The desk was against one wall with an office chair to sit in. Directly behind that was an old sofa they’d got off one of the group a few years back, which stretched from wall to wall.
The layout meant there was barely enough room to squeeze past the desk and get on the sofa, but people could use it so long as they kept their legs up.
The spare room crap was either hanging off nails in the walls or on a makeshift shelf David had put up across one corner.
Looking to the doorframe, he saw the most important feature of the room. Two plastic discs set into the wood, hiding the bars that had been slid through the wall. It was a novel way to secure the adjoining room’s door in place and protect what Mary was most concerned about.
He reached out for the phone.
“Paul, hey. It’s me, David.”
“David, unexpected. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call, then?” the man on the other end of the line asked.
“I need you to find someone for me. Someone who was at the march the other day.”
“You mean the riot?” Paul replied.
“That wasn’t my idea, it just blew up as usual, probably your lot again.”
He chuckled. “Maybe. So, who? Got a name?”
“Nope, but I do have a face.”
The two men talked through the event and the moment Frost had come over to David, at the point that he’d thrown the tear-gas canister.
“That was pretty stupid of you, David. You do remember that if you break the conditions of your suspended sentence, you’ll be locked up again?” Paul asked.
“I know that, it was just meant to be a march, I got wrapped up in the moment.”
“Don’t even be there in the moment,” Paul warned.
“Help me find this guy and he can deal with those moments for me.”
“Clever boy,” Paul said. “You’ll be on our video surveillance from the spotter crews we had out there. Give me until about midday tomorrow. Our lot will probably have him tagged by then anyway.”
“Thanks. I’ll come and see you a bit early this month and we can exchange gifts,” David said.
“Sounds good to me,” Paul said, a hint of seriousness in his voice.
David was convinced that Paul saw him as a small-time dealer and it needed to stay that way. The monthly gifts of cash and drugs were a small price to pay to keep the drug squad off his back.
David thought about the range of drugs he had around the house now.
Blocks of hash were to be expected, but the coke and heroin were on another level.
Mary was right, there was too much stuff in the house, but that was a problem for another time. There was nothing he could do to get rid of what he was holding onto.
He smelt the pizza and felt the hunger that had been building.
Time to eat.
He opened the desk drawer and took a couple of wraps of heroin. Mary would need her evening top-up soon. He could feel himself getting hard again as images of himself using Mary went through his mind.
“And time to get you wrecked for a good fucking, too,” he added, standing up and heading to the kitchen.
Thank you for reading! If you’re enjoying the story, be sure to give a clap or 50 and leave a comment. Connect with me on Twitter @markjdiez for updates on this and other novels and writing. New chapters are published every Monday and Thursday, bookmark this page!
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