Lonie30

The office seemed smaller when Brother Connelly and Jerome returned. Everyone was squeezed in together like the audience in a playground fight. Lonie would have sat out the closed-face uneasiness. He knew well the precept of the newspaper trade, don’t leave until you hear something worth reporting, and then don’t hang about when you have. Audrey looked more white faced than normal and clumsily spilled some of her tea. She jumped up from the orange plastic chair, tea dripping down from the table she was squeezed in beside and threatening to spill onto her skirt. It was unlike Audrey. The scared rabbit look in her eyes convinced Lonie it was time to leave. Brother Connelly made it clear he wasn’t sorry to see them go. Brother Jerome led them to the first of the two doors of the secure unit, and with Brother Connelly standing guard, put the key in the lock to let them out. Brother Connelly’s brisk manner made certain Lonie and Audrey were whisked through the other checkpoints. Coming out of secure unit always felt to Lonie like being pushed down stream by the current, whereas going into the place felt like swimming against it. He was glad to be shown outside the last of the locked doors. He put his collar up, a shelter against the smirry rain, and with Audrey standing beside him breathed in the cold clean air of the day. He had a fag in the car park as Audrey reversed out of, what was for her, a tight parking space.

Lonie made sure he flicked the fag butt well away from her car, away from her, before he parked his ass in the front seat of the Hillman. ‘Whit’s up with you? Your face is like fizz.’

‘Nothing.’ She clicked her seatbelt on and carefully drove up to the gates of the first checkpoint.

Lonie sat with his hands folded in his lap like a parson as they whizzed down Hyndland Road towards the Clyde tunnel cut-off. He was worried because she hadn’t said anything when he cleared his throat, hadn’t even found time to say anything critical about him in the last ten minutes. ‘Whit’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’ Audrey’s eyes stared straight ahead. She kept at a steady thirty-five, as cars zoomed past, in a fifty- miles- per- hour dual carriageway. Her fingers clutching the steering wheel went white and she banged the horn in frustration as another car overtook her, but her neck seemed to shorten like a chicken’s, on the chopping board, as she looked over to see a Panda police car in the lane running next to her. ‘It’s just I made such a fool of myself.’

Lonie yawned as he looked out of side window to row after row of brownstone tenements close to where he lived and wondered if he’d enough money to have a pint in The Haberburn Vaults.

‘Are you listening to me?’ Audrey risked looking away from the road and turned angrily in his direction.

‘Aye.’ He’d a quick look at her. She’d a bit of colour in her cheeks which made her look very pretty and with that closed in car smell of her he began to get a bit of a semi-hard- on. He rested his head against the window. ‘You said you made a fool of yourself.’

‘More than that.’ Audrey seemed to be braking by clenching her teeth, well before the upcoming roundabout. ‘I’ve made that much of a fool of myself I might not be allowed back in Goldenwell!’

Lonie looked in the rear view mirror. He turned to check it wasn’t fooling him and looked through the back windscreen at the traffic slowing. ‘Any slower and you’ll need to put the hazards on.’ The Hillman limped up to the grass-verged roundabout. ‘Just let me out here. Ah’ll be quicker walkin’.’

‘Were you listening to me?’ Audrey sounded furious, but she had to carefully manoeuvre round a curve and back onto the dual carriageway which took the edge off her anger.

‘Aye, but Ah’m a bit overcome with the fumes. Ah think you’ve hit forty-miles-an-hour and Ah can smell burning rubber on the tyres. It’s no’ a lawn-mower your drivin’.’

Audrey indicated before pulling off the dual carriageway and into a side road. They could hear metal screaming as it was ripped apart by some kind of saw in one of the black sooted in- shot warehouse workshops. She turned the engine off as she parked.

‘Whit you daeing?’

They were still about two miles from the office.
‘I’m letting you out to walk.’ Audrey looked at Lonie, her eyes a challenge. She leaned across his lap and sprung open the latch of the door near the pavement. ‘Unless you prefer to drive.’ She pulled the keys out of the ignition and held them up at chest height.

Lonie looked out of the front window at a guy strolling beside a stretch of grass with a golden Labrador sniffing about behind him. His index finger poked about inside his ear, as he thought about it. ‘Alright then.’ He grabbed the car keys out of her hand and shuffled his bum over to get out of the passenger’s door. His heart ran a race as he walked around the back of the car and casually put his hand on the roof and ducked his head down to look at Audrey, sitting prim and proper in the driver’s seat. He banged on the window, like a cop. ‘You no’ movin’?’

Audrey huffed and puffed, her hand paused on the car door handle. She looked out at Lonie waiting, his back arched, grizzly face staring in the window at her as if she was on the wrong side of a goldfish bowl. She wound the window down. ‘You have driven before?’

‘Aye,’ Lonie wrenched the car door open.

Audrey felt the draught and rain on her legs and suddenly felt very exposed. She leaned over to undo her seatbelt, swung her legs over and stepped out of the car beside Lonie. He jumped into her warm seat, sitting sideways, looking at his feet, and at the car key in his hand. His fingers traced carefully the round silver metal frame and ruts of the ignition barrel as if hot-wiring it and finally fumbled the car key into the grooves of the barrel. A purple Renault crept past the Hillman. He crouched and leaned forward with his mouth falling open, sweat knitting his forehead, peering anxiously at the dashboard, his body suddenly too big for the car, feet splayed over the pedals like a newly opened Christmas card. He turned the key as if listening for the combination. The engine started. He and the car bumped forward twelve inches and the engine died, his mouth snapping shut as he ricocheted backwards in time, as if he was on the waltzers, at the Kelvin Hall, all those years ago, sitting beside his dad, with the metal bar over their midriffs, keeping them tight together, his mum and wee sister standing licking a sugar-glazed apple on a stick watching them.

Audrey lurched forward, her hand still on the open door of the car. Her body didn’t know whether to be amused or angry. She looked down at him. ‘You have driven before?’

Lonie scratched at his wrist, not looking at her. ‘Ah’ve drove dumper trucks when Ah worked in the building sites. No’ really much difference.’ He looked up at her. ‘Apart from you’ve no’ got a release spring for the bucket.’

‘Out.’ Audrey stamped her foot, as she gave the order. He looked like a schoolboy caught stealing apples. She was more amused than angry now.

Lonie grabbed onto the arm of her new blue wool coat to help jerk him out of the front seat. Standing beside her he caught a whiff of the woman underneath the hint of expensive perfume and felt as close to her as he had when lying in bed. His eyes met hers. ‘Ah can drive you know,’ he complained.

‘You can’t.’ Audrey slapped him on the bottom, through the flap of his coat, as he walked around the outside of the car to get in the passenger’s side. He pulled the car door open. ‘But you can walk, if you want to?’ she offered.

‘Nah.’ Lonie settled back comfortably into the passenger’s seat. He watched her getting into the car, his eyes taking in the glossy swing to her hair, her full mouth and even fuller breasts and her long, long legs. He put his hand up to smother his coughing fit, as she worked the manual gears and drove towards the office. ‘Whit were you so upset about?’

‘Upset?’ Audrey slowed down looking left and right for a parking space. She spotted a space, but it looked too tight. She spotted another, a double space and she knew her luck was changing. ‘I wasn’t upset.’ She eased the Hillman into the parking space as if she was delivering a baby in the back seats. ‘I was just concerned because I don’t think we got any information that we could use. I’ve looked at my notepad and there’s virtually nothing on it. What will we tell Mr McDonald?’

‘The fatman?’ Lonie sat in her car, enjoying the cloying closeness of her and the way she looked to him for answers. ‘Don’t worry about him.’ He scratched his head and shrugged. ‘We’ll make something up. Cause that’s what we do.’ He stole a look. The pupils in her eyes were enormous black disks, cameras with the shutters open. He felt he could see the outline of his face. ‘At least that’s what Ah do.’ Blink and he was gone.

Audrey left the engine running and the car heater on. She scrambled in her bag for her notebook. She wanted to show him physical evidence that she hadn’t been slacking. She also wanted a clue to what had happened to her in Carol’s room. It was as if…she didn’t want to think about it.

‘So what was she like?’ Lonie felt for his fags, but he didn’t want to destroy this new found intimacy.

‘Who?’ Audrey was studying her notebook, with a frown on her face. She could read her shorthand, but there was nothing in it, but scribbles. ‘Oh, Carol Peters. She was…very knowledgeable.’ All she could think of was her saying she was pregnant. The thought hit her like a brick in the stomach, making her feel sick and taking her breath away.

Lonie’s shoulder dropped and his hand twisted and turned as he gestured that he’d need to go outside. ‘Ah need a smoke.’

‘Sure.’ Audrey was relieved. Thankful for the time alone. She watched him -the father of her child, but she didn’t want to think about that- shift his weight and stand outside smoke curling around his unwashed features. It was impossible that she was pregnant. She knew that. But the impossible was commonplace, had happened before. She felt like ripping her clothes and banging her head on the steering wheel.

Lonie flicked the dout into the middle of the road, a bit more clout and he’d have made it sparkle and fly to the gutter on the other side of the road. He popped his head back in car door, suddenly shy, as if to say, finished? She sat bedded in, with her notebook on her lap. He found himself back again sitting in a car with the engine running, going nowhere.

Audrey cleared her throat. ‘Carol Peters did say something that may be of interest.’

‘Whit?’ Lonie was fiddling with the uneven nail on his ring finger.

‘She said she was innocent and shouldn’t be locked up.’

‘Did she?’ A smile crept along Lonie’s cheek and burst into a grin. ‘Ah thought you said we didnae have anything. That’s front page material. We’re no’ just talkin’ regional here. We’re talkin’ national and international.’ His excitement caught fire in his voice and eyes as he turned to her. ‘How did you no’ say?’

‘I tried to.’ She looked demurely at her notebook.

Lonie leaned across the seat. ‘Ah could kiss you.’ He pecked her on the cheek.

Audrey laughed nervously. ‘Thanks.’ She smiled at him, ‘but I think we’ll keep it at arms’ length.’

‘Wait until the fatman hears that.’ Lonie jumped out of the car, his arms slapping and hugging himself.