The Key

The evening had begun inauspiciously. An altercation with a series of subways beneath the largest interchange in the city had left them half an hour late. Robert might have been a good man for the army, in another time and place. He was a born leader, perpetually upbeat, a grand scheme of a man whose supreme confidence inspired others to follow even his most ill-prepared plans.

Tonight he commanded four recruits.
“This way chaps!”
Then, when they were under the centre of the junction: “Let’s think about this now. We need to turn right, but there isn’t a right so let’s take the diagonal that’s closest.”
Past plump-looking beggars and more confused people: “Right, it seems we are in a labyrinth. One of these paths must lead us out eventually. Concentrate, everyone!”
Finding themselves back out on the pavement at the same place they entered: “We have been foiled by the maze. Clearly some kind of black magic is at work. Fuck it, we’re going across the road. Follow me.”
“You tosser. I reckon one of your legs is shorter than the other,” said Matt, one of the recruits, cheerfully.
One of them got stranded for a minute in the centre of the junction, gasping in the eye of the whirlpool before being ejected onto the other side, wide-eyed and breathless.

Then the black car stopped on the side street, right in their path, purposefully. A man stepped out and said, “Guys, I need some help.”
He had a colonial upper lip that showed too much of his teeth when he spoke. A South African lip, pricked with strawberry blond hairs. His body was fleshy in a way that had nothing to do with fun or jolliness, as though his overeating had meant taking food away from more deserving recipients.

“We’re in a hurry,” said Robert, on behalf of the group. “What’s up?”
“The thing is,” he said in a non-native drawl, “my car’s playing up. See?”
He pressed the button on his key chain. Nothing happened.
“Won’t lock. Bloody pain. Thing is. I have to go and see a man, right now. Don’t want to be leaving my car unlocked in this part of town. You know?”
He gestured to the dark and greasy streets.
“I was wondering if you guys could watch it for me. Won’t be long. Say half an hour.”
“We can’t,” said Robert. “Sorry mate. Got to be on our way.”
“The thing is, guys. I really need this favour.” He had the slow arrogance of a man for whom domination was a birthright. “Here’s fifty and I’ll give you another fifty when I get back. Then you can be on your way. The Key, right? Right.”
He handed Robert the keys and the money and walked away quickly.

“Oh shit. We seem to have just won a car.” Robert inspected the fifty.
“Let’s just walk. Free money. The car will be fine.”
“Yes, but he knows where we’re going. He seemed dodgy. I reckon he’d come and fuck us up.”
“I bet the car is stolen.”
“Full of drugs.”
“Dead bodies.”
“Why would he just give us the keys?”

Robert saw that the mood was thinning.
“Now, now. Let’s not go that far. Perhaps where he’s from this is how things work. Urchins look after cars for you. Like in Liverpool. We are the urchins! Urchins one through five.”
“Let’s just go. This is dodgy.”
“We could take the car?” suggested Matt.
“No, no, no. No. There will be no car theft on my shift. We’ll give him twenty minutes then we put the key in the glove compartment and go.” Robert took charge.
“The Key!”
“The Key. That is where we shall be. Have I ever let you down?”

They waited. The problem was, the drugs were starting to kick in.
“Shall we take the car?” asked Matt, like a new thought.
“Yeah. Shall we? It’s still a good half an hour’s walk. We can bring it back later. He won’t mind. No one chubby can be truly evil, can they?”

They spun the car round, kicking on loose gravel.
Robert hummed as he drove.
“The five urchins. We’re like a family, on a trip to the seaside. Who’s got the murray mints?”
“What about cc-tv cameras?”
“Don’t be silly. No one gives a fuck what happens to anyone around here!” replied Robert gleefully.

After twenty minutes, everyone was starting to feel anxious. They did not seem to be getting any closer to where they were going. They reached the canal, which they knew they needed to cross, but all the bridges were pedestrians only. The one road that went over was one-way, the other way. There was nobody around but Robert did not want to break traffic laws in the current circumstances.
“Shit. The roads are just not going the right way tonight. We’ve been forsaken.”
“Let’s just leave the car and walk,” offered Matt.
“For fuck’s sake Matt, this was your idea! Fine.”
He pulled over. Everyone got out.
“I’m going to familiarise myself with the terrain,” Robert announced, walking off in the wrong direction. He was feeling warm and cold equally. The pavement felt soft on his feet, as though gravity had lost its pull. He realised when he looked at the road sign that he had started to go blind in one eye because of the drugs. This didn’t usually happen to him until much later in the night. He walked back down the street with his hand over one eye, trying to see where the car was, pressing the button on the key chain uselessly.
“Either the car has gone or this is the wrong street. Where have the other fucking urchins gone?”

He found the car, which turned up in his partially obscured field of vision. The rest of them had gone.

He tried to open the driver’s door, but it was locked.
“What the fuck? How can you be locked?” He stood for a moment, puzzling and pressing the key chain. “You are broken. How have you locked it then?”
He walked around the car trying all the doors. When he got to the back of the car he started to hear the noise. It was a low whimpering.
“Don’t cry car. We’ll get you home.”
Robert sat down on the pavement near to the boot, thinking. “Shit. Don’t babies die in car boots sometimes? Don’t they suffocate or freeze or something?”
He got up and yanked at the boot again, pressed the button repeatedly and rammed the key into any available gap. It was impervious.

At the end of the street he stopped a couple walking past.
“Please. I need your help. I think there’s something in the car.”
“Whose car?” asked the man, noticing that Robert was holding car keys in a hand pressed to his eye. When Robert looked at the other man the bottom left quarter of his face was blurred. This was not helping Robert’s nerves.
“Not mine. Someone else’s. But I could hear something. I think it might be a baby or a puppy or something. It’s down here.”
The man followed him reluctantly to the black car.
“I can’t hear anything.”
“You see, I can’t get in. It’s someone else’s car. But I’ve got the keys. And it’s crying.”
“You’ve got the keys?”
“Yes.” Robert showed him them.
“But it’s not your car?”
“No. And they don’t work.”
“I can’t hear anything. Go home mate. And don’t drive.”
The man walked away.

Robert pocketed the keys and crossed the canal bridge. He could still faintly hear crying.