Dead Man's Time

did!’
    ‘You paid a hundred quid for them, what’s your problem?’
    ‘They’re worth a hundred thousand pounds – and you just dropped them?’
    ‘Know what they say about family businesses, Lucas? The three-generation rule?’
    ‘What do they say?’ he replied gloomily, his hope of getting out of his mess lying in pieces on the floor.
    ‘The first generation builds it up. The second generation screws it up. The third generation puts it down the toilet. You’ve managed to skip a generation. Congratulations.’
    His father stomped out of the shop. As he left, two men in business suits entered. For an instant, Lucas looked at them hopefully; then he started bricking it as he recognized them.
    One was six feet, with a shaven head and a face like beaten metal; he looked like he hadn’t taken the coat hanger out of his jacket before putting it on. The other, slightly shorter, was
dressed even more sharply than his colleague; he had hooded eyes, circled with black rings, and short, fair, gelled hair brushed forward, and was smoking a cigar.
    Lucas said urgently to Dennis Cooper, ‘Get Krasniki down here, quick!’
    ‘Mr Daly, very nice to see you,’ the shorter one said. He took a deliberately slow drag on his cigar.
    ‘I’m sorry, no smoking,’ Daly said. ‘Business premises – it’s against the law.’
    The shorter one looked down at Dennis Cooper. Then he took another deliberate puff, blowing out the smoke before he spoke. ‘Does the cripple mind?’
    Lucas Daly tempered his anger. He wasn’t in a position to call the shots here.
    ‘Aggression moves in only one direction. It creates more aggression,’ Cooper answered drily.
    ‘Is that right, Quasimodo? Maybe we could apply the same comment to money. That only moves in one direction, too. Into your boss’s pocket, but never back to us. Understand what
I’m saying?’
    ‘My name’s not Quasimodo.’
    ‘Then I wasn’t talking to you, sunshine, was I?’ He turned his attention to Lucas Daly. ‘Nice wife you got. Pretty girl.’ He dug his hand into his inside pocket and
pulled out an old-fashioned razor. He flicked it and the blade opened. ‘I don’t think Sarah Courteney would be doing any more broadcasts with her face slashed to ribbons, do
you?’
    ‘She’s got nothing to do with this,’ Daly said.
    He turned to his colleague. ‘That’s too bad, isn’t it?’
    His shaven-headed colleague nodded. ‘Too bad.’
    Then he turned back to Daly. ‘The thing is, you owe my guv fifty K. I have to persuade you to pay it; that’s my job. Innocents sometimes have to suffer, know what I’m saying?
But really, they bring it on themselves. Sarah Courteney should never have shacked up with a dickhead like you. Look at your cripple over there – what happened to him? Motorbike crash? Fall
out of a loft? Why does he want to work for a jerk like you?’
    ‘Actually, I was in the army and got shot through the spine in Afghanistan,’ Dennis Cooper said. ‘Since you asked.’
    ‘Oh, great, a bleeding hero.’ Then his expression changed from arrogance to fear as he looked past Lucas Daly.
    Daly glanced over his shoulder, and saw his henchman, Krasniki, brandishing a baseball bat, and looking like he was about to use it at any moment. ‘My boss would like you to leave
now,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t like you very much. I’m sorry.’
    ‘Fuck you,’ the taller one said.
    His colleague shot him a glance, suddenly looking uneasy.
    Krasniki took a menacing step towards them, raising the bat. ‘Maybe you didn’t hear me. Get out.’
    The two men backed out of the shop. Krasniki stood waiting until they had exited through the door. They hesitated outside, then walked off.
    ‘Good man!’ Lucas Daly said.
    Moments later his mobile phone rang. It wasn’t a number he recognized. ‘Lucas Daly?’ he said.
    ‘Pull another stunt like that and you’ll be in a wheelchair like your cripple. You’ve one week to find the money. Next Thursday, 5 p.m., we’ll see you in your shop.
Without Boris Karloff. Understand?’
    The line went dead.

74
    The world had changed in a lot of ways during the time he had been inside, Amis Smallbone was realizing. Technologically more than culturally. He needed to get up to speed if
he wasn’t to be seen as a dinosaur.
    Why was it, he wondered, that the instructions for all electronic equipment were written by someone for whom English was his – or her – fourth language?
    The very expensive scanner,