Shooting in the Dark

Janet’ll wonder where I am.’
    ‘Museum Gardens,’ said Ralph. ‘Get a piece of that waitress action.’
    ‘Not me,’ Geordie told him. ‘That’s your date.’
    ‘Come on. She’ll have a friend, they always do. Or we’ll take turns.’
    Geordie shook his head. He got down on his hands and knees to put Barney’s leash on. ‘Janet’s really gonna love that, isn’t she? I go out and get pissed in the afternoon’s one thing. Come home falling over all the furniture. But she’s not gonna get over some waitress in the park. We’d end up, she’d kick me out and get a divorce and take Echo to Australia or somewhere I couldn’t see her.’ He tugged Barney out from under the table and started in the direction of home. ‘Besides which,’ he said, ‘I don’t wanna meet no waitress in the park, even if she does wear her underwear on top. What d’you think I am, Ralph, a philanderer?’
    Ralph shook his head and held out his arms. ‘Philanderer?’ he said. ‘I dunno what you are. Christ, Geordie, I just offered to share a bit of nooky with you, you start talking Greek. How’s Janet gonna know about it? I’m not gonna tell her.’
    ‘It won’t make any difference if she knows or not,’ Geordie said. ‘I’ll know, won’t I? And I’ll have to live with it, knowing that I’ve been a creep.’
    ‘Fuck me,’ said Ralph.
    ‘Yeah, fuck you,’ said Geordie. ‘You’re my brother, Ralph, and there’s lots of ways you’re a good guy. But you shouldn’t’ve done that with the cue, marking up the cloth like that. And this thing with the waitress, you’re way out of line with that.’
    ‘What’ve I done?’ said Ralph. ‘A bit of chalk on the table. It’ll brush off. You don’t wanna get your end away before supper, that’s fine, but I’ve got a real boner just thinking about it.’
    Geordie knelt down to tickle Barney’s throat. He looked up at Ralph. ‘D’you know what ethics are?’ he asked.
    Ralph shook his head. ‘I ain’t got a clue, Geordie. I only know it’s not gonna stop me shagging that waitress.’
     
    ‘Uh-oh,’ Janet said when he walked in the kitchen. She was at the table with a paring knife and a bowl of potatoes. Geordie dropped Barney’s leash, and Janet put the knife down and took the leash from Barney’s collar.
    ‘I need a piss,’ Geordie said. He went towards the bathroom.
    ‘I’ll hold the fort,’ Janet told him.
    He pissed into the bowl, resting his forehead against the tiles. As soon as he’d finished he needed a shit, so he dropped his pants and waited while his back plumbing evacuated a small lake of sewage, fast. It was somehow under control. He couldn’t have stopped it - paused, say, and then gone back to finish it off. It wasn’t that much under control. But he was sitting on the pan. That was something to smile about. As long as the pan didn’t overflow, he’d be all right.
    When everything that was going to come had arrived, his stomach began heaving. He’d got rid of the egg and bacon and mushrooms and tomatoes and a good quantity of the chips by the normal route, but the hash browns, sausage, beans, the rest of the chips and lager all wanted to come out the way they’d gone in.
    Geordie slipped to the floor and rested his chin on the lip of the bowl. His forehead was dripping with sweat. He glanced at his watch. Four o’clock in the afternoon. He retched and a stream of digested vegetable matter ripped through his throat and hit the pan. He looked at it, just managed to catch sight of several vital organs before they disappeared under the water. One of them was his heart.
    He didn’t hear Janet open the door and come into the bathroom. She placed something over his shoulders, felt like a blanket, stopped his teeth from chattering.
    ‘When you’ve finished here,’ she said, ‘go upstairs. Get your head down for a bit. I’ll call you when the stew’s ready.’
     

32
     
    The note read:
     
    five grand and I’ll go away. Get the
    cash and wait. Or you are dead.
     
    The letters and phrases had been cut out of a magazine and stuck to the page with Sellotape.
    ‘What d’you make of it?’ Sam asked. He was at his desk in the office. Celia, JD and Marie were standing behind him.
    ‘Weird,’ said JD. ‘It’s like something out of a book.’ Celia was shaking her head. ‘How did he expect her to read it?’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Marie, looking at JD. ‘The guy’s seen too many movies.’
    Sam had been wearing a smile of