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The kids were long gone, but Randall’s car was ruined. The little bastards had taken his money on the pretence of guarding the vehicle, waited for him to leave, and then smashed the windscreen, slashed the tyres, and even defecated on the front seat. He wondered how they’d managed to do all that damage in the short space of time that he’d sipped tea in the cluttered front lounge with Mrs. Jones, attempting without joy to sell her a life insurance policy that she didn’t really need. He remembered the fear he’d felt like a punch in the guts as they’d approached him, and then the rush of relief when they’d merely offered to “keep his motor safe” for the sum of five pounds (probably to supplement their tobacco and McDonalds diet, he’d thought). This sink estate was so notoriously rough that at the time he’d considered it a good deal. Shit, he thought. Now I’ll have to go back up there and ask to use her phone. The idea of spending more time with the oversexed widow filled him with an almost overwhelming feeling of nausea. He tried to blot out the image of a mottled thigh peeking through the slit in her stained Terrycloth dressing gown, the way she’d fluttered her badly-applied false eyelashes at him over the chipped rim of a cheap cup, and finally how she’d surreptitiously lain a thin hand on his chest and just about begged him to stay as he’d backed out the door and onto the dirty concrete walkway outside her flat. Sighing heavily, he walked back towards the particular tower block that housed her pokey little hovel. He’d quickly use the phone, decline the offer of awaiting the arrival of the AA recovery van inside, and come back here to sit in his ransacked car beneath the shattered streetlight.
**
It seemed that the lift had also been destroyed in the last five minutes: when he pressed the button to summon the cramped steel box, nothing happened. There wasn’t even the sound of grinding motors above him. Shit, he thought again. Heading for the stairs, he was aware of the stale smell of urine; the stairwell was dark and narrow, and obviously used as a bedroom by some local tramp. Breathing through his mouth, Randall began to ascend. Broken glass from the overhead bulbs ground loudly underfoot, and he had the strange feeling of being followed. Ridiculous. The halls of the block were empty, doors sensibly shut and locked against the night. But still there was that sense of someone close behind. He turned to look back just as he reached the first floor landing, where Mrs. Jones would be sitting alone before a no doubt stolen and flickering TV screen behind the door of number 27. There was nobody there. Just shadow, and a curious echoing sound, like that heard in a drained and empty swimming pool. When he faced front once more, they were there waiting for him. Those same seven or eight malnourished youths, sullenly smoking cheap cigarettes and blocking his way onto the landing. He recognised them immediately as the bastards who’d trashed his car. The lad in front was even holding the right wing mirror in his pale hand like some form of trophy, or enticement. Randall stopped in his tracks, completely out of his depth. He thought of his comfortable middle-class detached house in the suburbs; of his pretty wife and her school runs and charity work; his six-year-old daughter and her unbearably cute little ways. And the group of gangly predators parted ahead of him, to reveal Mrs. Jones standing behind, a deeply maternal smile on her haggard face. “I hoped you’d come back,” she said, placing an arm around the waist of the nearest youth. “If only to meet my children.” Then, as one, they all slowly stepped forward. Faces empty. Eyes dead and reflecting nothing but the blackness of the trap they’d set for him.
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