Coffee. Before I went anywhere, I needed coffee. That glorious hit of caffeine. Thanks to a housemate’s snoring, I’d been up since six, and I hadn’t gone to bed until four last night. Same as every night. Usually, I caught up on a few hours’ kip after Stumpy buggered off to do his lunchtime shift, but thanks to Lenny, I wouldn’t have that luxury today.
Tesco came up on my left, and I nipped inside. Lenny could bloody well wait for five minutes. Queueing up in the café, I could have been any other college student longing for her morning fix. Over the years, I’d learned to blend in—black trousers with a blouse or polo-neck jumper if I was hanging out in the Square Mile, leggings and a fitted T-shirt for parkour, jeans for the casual look, and a pussy pelmet and glorified bra when I worked at the club. I leaned my head down to pick an imaginary piece of lint off my trousers as I walked under the CCTV to the right of the counter. No sense in starring on Crimewatch if I didn’t have to.
As I got closer to the barista, I quickly checked my wallet—a genuine Louis Vuitton I’d plucked out of a handbag in this very establishment almost a year earlier—but it only contained a fiver and a handful of change. Mental note: make sure I borrowed a car with a full tank of petrol because I couldn’t afford to buy any more.
“An Americano, please,” I told the barista when he raised an eyebrow. I always picked the cheap option.
“Syrup?”
I shrugged and gave him the shy smile that had worked last week.
He returned it. “On the house?”
I dialled the smile up a notch. “Caramel, and thanks.”
His eyes followed my ass all the way to the table, but I didn’t care. I hadn’t been blessed with many assets, so I had to make full use of those I did have.
My stomach grumbled as I sipped my coffee, and the sight of the guy next to me eating a chocolate muffin didn’t help. Three hours had passed since I’d eaten bread and jam for breakfast. It should have been toast, but the toaster was broken, and I refused to fork out for another one. Someone would only trash it again.
I’d chosen the table by the window for a reason, and as I sipped, I kept an eye on the comings and goings in the car park outside. A Toyota hatchback pulled up—a possibility because I preferred smaller cars—but the woman bleeped the doors locked before disappearing along the street. No go.
“I haven’t seen you in here before,” the guy at the next table said.
Please, not now. I didn’t have time to get hit on this morning. Things to do, a car to purloin.
I put on a puzzled expression. “Nie rozumiem.”
There were advantages to having a Polish housemate. Paulius may have struggled with the washing-up, but he offered free language lessons and his plumbing skills were on point. “I don’t understand” was one of the first phrases he’d taught me, and it came in mighty handy on occasion. The guy beside me shrugged and went back to his muffin while I carried on with one of my favourite activities: people watching.
Not to brag or anything, but I’d got good at reading people over the years. My survival depended on it. I knew which guys would buy drinks off me in the club and which would try to cop a feel. I could pick out the arrogant assholes who’d be so busy staring at my tits that they wouldn’t notice as I nicked their wallet. And I could spot the subtle tremor of a junkie out for his next fix from a hundred yards away. Sure, I made the odd misjudgement—and once, a monumental fuck-up—but my instincts were generally right.
Today, I watched a girl drag a poodle past on a fancy leash, pink and sparkly. Not her own dog. Nobody who’d spent thousands on a designer pooch and accessories would yank the thing along like that. A businessman walked by clutching the handle of his briefcase so tightly his knuckles turned white. He had something important in there. Cash? Jewellery? We were in a posh part of London, after all. Or just that one big contract he couldn’t afford to lose?
A slender blonde climbed out of a Fiesta and tucked the key into the side pocket of her tailored jacket. Pale pink, and it looked like silk. She obviously had money to spend on dry cleaning, yet she drove a cheap car? A contradiction in terms, but when she tried to go in through the exit and had to backtrack, I figured she was the type of woman to own a satnav.
I hastily drained my coffee, grabbed a basket, and caught up with her in the produce section, where she was comparing a bag of regular carrots to the more expensive organic ones.
Oh, to have that luxury. Most of the time, I survived on instant noodles and whatever leftovers Stumpy brought back from his job in the pub. To me, vegetables were a treat. She went with the organic version—no surprises there—and as she turned, I hip-checked her hard enough to send her handbag flying.
“Gosh, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry.”
So far, so good. That shit went everywhere. The woman carried an entire fucking department store in her damn purse, including—I shit you not—a can of mosquito repellent. Where did she think we were? The bloody rainforest? I bent to help her scoop up all the junk and bumped her again.
“Oops, I’m such a klutz.”
“It’s fine.” Her words were polite, but her tone was…not angry, more jaded. “Accidents happen.”
In the confusion, it was easy for me to slip the car key out of her pocket and into mine, and I smiled inwardly as I fished a pair of tights out of a display of cucumbers, handed them to her, and backed away. Phase one: complete.
Where would the blonde go now? If she planned to head straight back to her car, I’d have to abort, and I kept an eye on her while I grabbed a packet of crisps for Lenny and paid. Yes, I considered nicking them, but I figured two crimes in one day would be pushing my luck.
The blonde picked out a bag of apples to go with her carrots, then headed deeper into the store, towards the convenience food and all the other goodies I couldn’t afford. Excellent. Things were going smoothly so far.
Still, I couldn’t shake the niggly feeling that something was wrong as I approached the car, checking carefully for watching eyes. A mum pushing a stroller, more businessmen, a group of teenagers who should have been in school. They hung out in packs. A woman exiting a flashy black sports car caught my eye, not only because of the vehicle but because of the way she walked. Confident. Self-assured. Don’t fuck with me. I waited until she passed before I carried on.
The lights flashed as I unlocked the Fiesta, and I slid behind the wheel. Every time I did this, I got an irrational fear that the car would blow up when I started it. Damn Digger and his endless supply of knock-off action movies. But the engine turned over smoothly, and I took a second to familiarise myself with the dashboard—satnav, headlights, indicators, fuel gauge. A full tank of petrol. My lucky day, other than the fact that the interior reeked of Shimmer body spray. One of the bar girls at work tended to apply it rather liberally and it always made me sneeze, but this was a hundred times worse. It seemed the posh bird bought the damn stuff in bulk.
The first spots of rain fell as I pulled out of the parking space, and I flicked on the wipers. How far was Burnham? I’d figure that out on the way. A guy in a Honda SUV glanced in my direction as I went past, a phone to his ear. A salesman married to his job?
I let a black cab pull out in front of me, feeling charitable since part of my afternoon had gone to plan. My new plan, anyway. When I woke up, I hadn’t envisaged having to rescue Lenny from a farmhouse, although it didn’t come as a complete surprise seeing as I’d had to haul him out of a mausoleum last winter. He’d been doing lines off a coffin, for fuck’s sake.