The Big One

The vinyl flooring doubles up as an ashtray. The sink, now used as a bin, is beyond repair. They haven’t used the toilet since Dom mixed lager and brandy with madras, when he shat and puked simultaneously for a full fourteen-hour stretch.
After a whole season of laddy after-pub scuffles and bumps, the walls of the caravanette are on the verge of collapse. The metal framework has snapped all the way around, and is only held together by nails tacked into rope, which they nicked out of Mrs Grimshaw’s shed. Problem was, the nails were Chinese.
As they stood, very precariously, the walls have been plastered in pictures of women with their legs cranked wide open, almost to breakpoint. There isn’t one woman pinned to those walls who hasn’t been splattered by a tea bag, baked bean or Stella spurt.
This is not normal living and these are not normal people.
In fact, if it wasn’t for Dom’s talented but enigmatic mind, there’d be nothing even vaguely interesting to take from these two 30-something ex-hippies, unless you like watching a slow death, egged on by the relentless onslaught of dual emotional bankruptcy.

‘I’ve got it!’ shouted Dom. He was only half-conscious, but the moment he bolted upright and woke up proper, he knew this was The Big One.
This was the one he’d been waiting for, the one that would take him around the world for a full year, away from the pubs, the machines, the used-car mags and the useless little dope-deals with the pikey-kids. This idea could be his one chance of making a go of things, of making some real money.
‘James! James, mate! Wake up!’
‘Fuck off,’ replied James, audible but muffled by his faithful sperm-wiping cloth, the pillow.
‘Listen,’ said Dom, approaching him with caution, minding not to kick too many cans on his way across the length of the caravanette. ‘I’ve got an idea that’s gonna get us fifteen grand each in three days and is absolutely foolproof.’
James’ foot twitched when he said that. ‘What? You seen another Sierra for sale in the pub car park? Go back to sleep, twatface.’
‘No, listen. This is the one. Just listen, alright?’
And he did.
For five minutes, Dom explained his idea away and as each minute passed James saw that this was, in fact, the one.
There was no time to lose.
By ten o’clock, they’d washed their faces, got dressed and were in the Escort.
Dom was so excited his eyes looked like they’d pop out. ‘It came to me in a dream. I reckon it was a mix of that film we watched last night- what was it called?- oh, what was it?- the one with George Clooney in- OUT OF SIGHT! That was it! You know the scene, when he goes in to the bank and does a heist without a gun. Well, my idea’s ten times better than that. Don’t you reckon?’
James put the Escort into first and skidded off down the muddy track, splattering the caravanette in a cowpat carpet. ‘I reckon you’re right, mate.’
And he was right. This was a great idea, criminal in its brilliance, unbelievable in its simplicity and yes, utterly foolproof, even for these two scuzzbags.
It was now or never for Dom and James.

First stop was Shopham scrapyard to get the bits of car-seat and seat-belt strapping, then off to B&Q for the gaffer-tape, the cheap (but slimline) LCD alarm-clock, the insulating-tape and the wires. They went to Sainsbury’s to snip off the baby-belt fasteners off a few trolleys. At Halfords, they got the all-important LED remote-control device, used in the main for steering toy-cars, and a little black box with a flashing red light. Two mini-microphones were nicked from Basic Electronics in Horsham, and that was everything.
As Dave, the landlord at The Bell, had a garage out back, the lads tucked into bits of his equipment and made one black strap-around body-pack with the alarm-clock and flashing box sunk into the centre with gaffer-tape and bubblewrap. A cut in the car-seat afforded the microphone pride of place next to the alarm-clock. It all looked very authentic in its own ‘home-made bomb’ way.

Next was the crucial knock at Mrs Grimshaw’s door.
‘Hello, Mrs Grimshaw,’ said James. Pushing the door wide open, he carried the old dear inside.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ she bawled back at him.
‘We’re going to have a little game. Just me, you and Dom.’
Mrs Grimshaw shook with fury. ‘We are not going to play any games. Now get out!’
James showed the terrified lady into her living-room, sat her down and told her precisely what the game was.
‘It’s a simple game, Mrs Grimshaw,’ he mouthed at her, ‘and it’s called Staying Alive’. Dom burst out laughing but James ignored him. ‘All you have to do is listen to the rules and do what I tell you to do. Is that simple enough for you, Mrs Grimshaw?’
She nodded spasmodically, like she’d tasted lime unknowingly.
‘I want you to phone up your bank and tell them that you’d like to take out the sum of thirty thousand pounds in cash for the purposes of a round-the-world trip-of-a-lifetime, and that you would like the money to be made available to you at the first possible opportunity. You must be strict with them if they tell you it’ll take more than two working days. If it takes more than two working days, Mrs Grimshaw, you lose the game. Do you understand the rules?’
Dom burst out laughing again. ‘You cruel bastard.’
The old lady nodded again. This time, she swallowed down hard and said ‘I do’.
‘Your chances have just increased infinitely.’

So, they made the call and Mrs Grimshaw did surprisingly well. James listened on the kitchen-phone while Dom watched her lie through her teeth at the table.
She could pick the money up in full the day after next.
‘You did well, Mrs Grimshaw. Very natural,’ said James, with a dustbin-liner in his hand. ‘Now for the next part of the game.’
Mrs Grimshaw looked with fear at the heavy-duty drawstring bin-liner.
‘See this?’ The makeshift body-bomb appeared from the bag. ‘This is your lifeline for when you go to the bank. It has a small but effective explosive built into it, a microphone so that I can hear everything you say, and this,’ he said, pulling the remote-control from the liner. ‘This allows me to detonate the bomb up to a distance of five hundred yards.’
‘So,’ replied Mrs Grimshaw, ‘You won’t be coming to the bank with me?’
‘Who’s a clever old bag, then. Actually, Dom’ll be in the bank but you may not see him. He’ll be watching you, though, just in case, you know. All I have to do is listen to every word you say to your bank manager and every turn of phrase. If you don’t come out with the money, BOOM! It’s game over.’
There was a silence, after which Mrs Grimshaw shuddered and then blubbered into a tissue.
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Grimshaw. All will be well, just as long as you play the game with us.’ James lit a cigarette while Dom tucked into the racing section of The Express. ‘Another thing. If he asks any stupid questions, like why you want to pay the cruise-liner in cash, tell him to kindly mind his own business and remind him that your husband has only recently died and that you want to live a little, which I hope you do, Mrs Grimshaw, because we don’t want to have to come looking for you when you call the police in a weak moment.’
‘Oh no, I wouldn’t be doing that,’ she replied obediently, eyeing Dom’s laconic attitude towards life as he wrestled with the paper for a winner at Ripon.
Suddenly, she seemed at ease with the idea. ‘I don’t envisage there being any problems at the bank, James. After all, it’s a small price to pay for my life.’
The lads were pleased to see a quick resolution. ‘Now you’re talking.’
They tried the body-bomb on her for size and it fitted like a glove, slimline enough to be unobtrusive. ‘Fits quite snugly, actually,’ said the changed woman, wriggling to find where it fitted best. ‘There. How do I look?’
James just stood still. Her sudden compliance unnerved him. Dom got up and rounded her like a dresser.
‘Couple of baby-fasteners sticking out. I’ll gaffer those on the big day. Apart from that, it’s a perfect fit, madam. How would you like to pay?’
‘Cash,’ she replied.
James felt uneasy, too. How could she joke at a time like this?
‘Right,’ he said, finally. ‘That’ll do. You can take it off now.’
‘Do I have to? It’s nice and warm,’ she replied.
Dom tittered. She reminded him of his mother. James, however, saw no humour in her irony.
‘You might not like it so much when it blows up in your face and splatters you all over the bank.’
Mrs Grimshaw’s face turned ashen with the thought, but she did well to play it down. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, shall we?’

Dom and the old lady spent the afternoon watching telly together. Diagnosis Murder preceded an hour’s worth of Channel Four Racing and then came Countdown. Apart from the obliged absence of the twenty-six second wank in front of Carol Voorderman, it was like any other day for him, only more comfortable.
With the Escort back at the caravanette, James began to relax a little, although he couldn’t help racking his brain for potential obstacles. Their lunch-time absence at the pub may have raised a few bedraggled eye-brows, especially those of Dave, who’d been promised a score for the use of his garage that morning, and they hadn’t signed-on.
Somewhere in his mind, though, there was a fault to the plan, a huge, gaping fault, so big that he couldn’t see it. Blinded by the reward, he tried his hardest to put it down to paranoia and made another joint for himself.
‘You’re not expecting any visitors, are you, Mrs G?’ he asked.
‘Let me think now,’ she replied.
‘That would help.’
‘Oh, yes. My old friend, Mr Taplow, always comes over for tea Wednesday mornings. Apart from that, no.’
‘Well, I’d like you to call up dear Mr Taplow and tell him it’s off for this week. Understood?’
She nodded.
‘Good.’
With Taplow out of the picture, James joined the telly posse.
‘Dom?’ he said. ‘Go and see what there is to eat, will you?’
He did fish fingers and chips with peas all round.
The evening was a dreary one, spent shuffling in armchairs, chain-smoking, coughing and farting.
‘We all sleep in here tonight,’ exclaimed James, as the credits for Watchdog Healthcheck slid down the screen.
‘I need the toilet,’ said Mrs G.
‘Dom?’ he said. ‘Escort the lady to the urinal, will you?’
‘By all means. Madam? Would you like to follow me.’
Dom’s healthy rapport with Mrs Grimshaw was beginning to worry James.
Once all the telephones in the house had been hidden, he collected as many duvets and pillows as he could find, pushed two armchairs to the corners of the room and instructed Dom to sleep the first shift next to Mrs Grimshaw in the middle of the room.

James woke with a start. ‘Where is she?!’ he squealed.
There she was, though, in the half-light of dawn, still fast asleep with Dom. ‘Shit!’ he said, realising how stupid he’d been to have fallen asleep in front of Down, Out and Dangerous, a TV film about a nice all-American family that takes in a drifter, with devastating consequences.
Mrs Grimshaw sat up. ‘Can I make us all a cup of tea?’ she enquired, rubbing her eyes open.
‘No,’ James replied. ‘Dom can do it. You just rest easy. One more day to go, don’t forget.’
The day went well. No one called.
Dom and the old lady watched GMTV, the news, followed by Neighbours, Diagnosis Murder, the tail-end of a Channel Four film and Countdown. Dom excused himself to work one out in the lavatory after seeing Carol in an irresistible red number (cleavage in abundance).
James, however, couldn’t forgive himself for falling asleep. The whole plan could have backfired, but who could he blame? Instead of letting it go, he spent the entire day attacking Dom and Mrs Grimshaw for minor disturbances.
Dom did eggy bread for lunch and frozen pizzas with apple crumble for supper. That night, they watched Coronation Street, Police Camera Action, Neighbours From Hell, Big Brother and Newsnight.
When Crimestoppers came on, Dom jumped up. ‘We’ve been on this, Mrs Grimshaw! Tell her, James. Go on!’ So James confirmed it. He explained how they’d robbed the fruit-machine at Brockleigh village hall, masked faces the only proof of their infamy in night-vision CCTV.
At midnight, James took the extra precaution of locking Mrs Grimshaw in the bathroom with a single mattress and duvet, and then settled down for spliffs and port (the only alcohol in the house) in front of Me, Deceased.

At the foot of Mrs Grimshaw’s bed, Dom watched his friend as he lay there. Even in his sleep, his face sneered angrily.
‘It’s the big day, Jamesy boy,’ he said heartily. ‘Oi!’ with a jolt. ‘There’s a cuppa here.’
‘Nice,’ replied James. ‘What time is it?’
‘Nine-twenty.’
‘You checked on the old bag?’
‘Yep. Gave her a cuppa a minute ago.’
James sat up. ‘Where is she?’ he asked, beady eyes of mistrust already aimed with intent.
‘Keep your hair on. She’s still in there.’
After eggy bread, the three of them sat down for one last session of telly. Both Dom and James looked well. The last few days had seen them drinking very little, and they felt there was a purpose to their life that had been seriously lacking before.
‘I might join the army after this is over,’ said Dom.
James shook his head in disbelief. ‘Don’t be a twat,’ he replied. ‘The army don’t take kidnappers.’
As he said the word ‘kidnappers’, it finally dawned on Dom. ‘Shit. I’m a kidnapper.’
From Monday morning and up till that moment, he’d lived on a fantastic high, praising himself for having thought the idea up, like it was a script for a film, a separate reality.
Just as the full impact reached his brain, there was a knock at the door.
‘Who the fuck’s that?’ mouthed James.
‘I don’t know,’ said the old lady.
‘All of you. On the floor. Out of sight. Now,’ he whispered venomously.
And off they crawled.
Mr Taplow bent down to shout through the letter-box. ‘Hello? Beryl? Are you there? I thought I’d bring you a copy of The Express. Helluha?’
She’d said she was feeling icky on the phone, but, being an admirer, he’d come to see her anyway.
James realised the telly was still blaring out the voices of women talking about pre-nuptial agreements. Somehow, he had to turn it off.
The remote sat faithfully on Mrs Grimshaw’s arm-rest so, using his elbows, he wiggled over and jabbed the red dot at the top-right hand corner. The telly blinked and shut down.
The voice at the letter-box spoke once more. ‘I tell you what, dear. I’ll go down the shops, get some nice organic eggs and make us some scrambles. Won’t be long!’ And off he went.
Once he heard the gate shut, James looked over at Mrs Grimshaw. ‘Nice one, Mrs G,’ he said with irony.
‘What are we going to do now?’ asked Dom, who, shivering in the corner next to Mrs Grimshaw, looked like he’d shat his pants.
James thought long and hard in the silence. ‘We’ll hole up in the caravan and go to the bank from there. You,’ he pointed to the old lady. ‘Write a note and stick it on the door saying thanks for the thought but you’ve got flu and need rest. Understood?’
Dom whimpered like a lame dog, now fully aware of what was happening, and took himself off to the lavatory.
‘Get your make-up on, old woman. And find your wellies.’

They walked through the rain up the toe-path and along the river. Dom carried the equipment well behind James, who accompanied Mrs Grimshaw to make it look like a mother-and-son thing.
When they reached the caravanette, all three were soaked through.
‘Welcome to your new temporary residence,’ said James, guiding her up the three dirt-riddled steps.
Mrs Grimshaw almost puked when the foul stench reached her nostrils, and when she’d taken time to survey her caravanette, she started to cry quietly.
‘What have you done to my caravan?’ she whimpered.
‘Look, lady,’ replied James. ‘We’re blokes, aren’t we, Dom? Besides, you should be worrying about your life, not this poxy caravan. What do we pay you for it, anyway. Thirty quid a week? For this? You’re the one who should be ashamed of yourself.’
But Dom could take no more. ‘Leave her alone!’
‘What did you say?’ replied James, bottom lip quivering with anger. ‘You’re the brainwave who thought this whole thing up. Leave her alone? Mate, you better start thinking straight because we’re two hours from being thirty grand better off. Got it?’
Dom hadn’t got it. His face was full of hatred and as he lunged for James, Mrs Grimshaw screamed and hid under the table with the lager cans.
The force of the fifteen stone maniac, combined with James’ twelve stone, sent them banging into one wall, which, along with the roof at right angles, went tumbling into the field’s mud. They scuffled, but not for long, because the roof snapped away from the wall and landed on top of them.
When they got up, the other three walls had toppled outwardly, one on top of the Escort, the windscreen shattered. Mrs Grimshaw came out from under the table as if she’d escaped an ariel bombing. Their clothes muddied and torn, their faces bloodied and forlorn, the old lady couldn’t help herself and burst out laughing.
The lads looked at one another, dejected.
‘We’d better get changed,’ said James, as if nothing had happened.
‘Yeah, s’pose so,’ replied Dom.
After central-locking Mrs Grimshaw in the back seat of the Escort, they washed themselves down with a hose and then climbed on to the floor-space of the ex-caravanette and rummaged around for their least foul-smelling items of clothing. Mrs Grimshaw looked on, hiding the virility of her laughter as best she could.
James elected for his windcheater and leather biker-pants, while Dom went for his thick woollen top and the old corduroy trousers that he’d only recently started using as a wank-wipe.

Together with Mrs Grimshaw in the Escort, the lads wriggled about to smooth out the shards of glass on the front seats and sat tight for the last two remaining hours before The Big One.
As two o’clock drew near, they took the old lady behind the cow shed and fitted the body-bomb around her midriff.
‘Chuck your mack on and let’s see how it looks?’ said James.
She did so and it was almost seamless. You couldn’t have seen it if you tried.
‘Right,’ he went on. ‘Let’s get the show on the road!’
Just as they pulled off, an almighty downpour started. The drive was awful. Dom was ordered to give Mrs Grimshaw his woolly jumper before she too got wet. She had to look good for the bank at all costs.
‘No expense spared, hey, Mrs G?’ sais James. She nodded. ‘See, when we do something, we do it right, hey, Dom?’ Dom nodded. Or was he shivering?
At the corner of the High Street and Dover Street, in the Coach and Horses car park, they stopped.
‘OK. This is it, old lady. Don’t forget, I can hear every word you say on this radio.’ He pulled out an ordinary handheld transistor radio that he’d spun gaffer around for authenticity. ‘So if you make one mistake, BOOM, you’re dead.’
‘There won’t be any mistakes, I can assure you of that much,’ she replied obediently.
‘I’ll be waiting here and I expect you to be back here in the car in no more than ten minutes. Have you got that?’
She nodded, opened the door and walked in the direction of her bank.
‘Looking good so far, hey?’ But Dom was in no fit state to reply. His entire body was covered in glass, rainwater and bits of dust and grit from the road. He could hardly see.
‘Yep. I think we’re onto a winner here,’ he said finally.
‘Well, go on then, fuck off,’ exclaimed James. ‘She’ll get there quicker than you at this rate, you prick!
Dom ripped the door open and, at the same time as lifting his body out from the seat, did a liquid fart. This wasn’t just a little bit of liquid, though. This was eggy bread, hot chocolate and fear, all wrapped up in a stomach so bereft of health that the lining had already started to pack up.
He looked up at James, wondering if he might understand and go in his place.
‘Fuck off, I said!’ came from James, who hadn’t even registered that his friend’s legs were now covered in liquid shit.
Dom ran and James could just see him overtake Mrs Grimshaw before she got there.

The first thing Mrs Grimshaw did at the bank was put her index finger to her mouth to demand silence as she gave a small piece of paper to a clerk. She walked away immediately to minimise any audible response and joined the queue, hoping that the clerk would act quickly. Dom was too busy looking for toilet tissue, although he knew that banks didn’t normally stock it.
On the note, she’d written; ‘I AM BEING KIDNAPPED! PLEASE DO NOT SHOUT OR SPEAK TO ME. I have a BOMB attached to my chest with a microphone that is being listened to by a man outside the building. If I do not give them £30,000 they will trigger the bomb to go off. PLEASE HELP ME!’
Luckily, the clerk was a fan of late-night TV and had always wanted something like this to happen. He went straight to a cashier and whispered that the old lady in the queue with the mackintosh and the windswept hair would need to be given what she asked for without questioning and that she had a bomb attached to her chest. Then, he scurried off to his desk, called for security to bring a bomb-detector and firearms. All that needed to be done after that was to call through to the police and advise them of the situation. He’d seen it a thousand times on telly.
Response was immediate. A security guard approached the queue where Mrs Grimshaw stood, careful not to exploit the fact that he was scanning her with a bomb-detector. After two separate checks, the detector showed that there was no bomb attached to her chest. Dom had already exited to the lavatory around the corner at the Kings Head, unable to take the shit that had begun to itch all over his legs.
The security guard scribbled on a piece of paper. It read, ‘It’s OK. There is no bomb in the body-pack. Please write down the precise location of the kidnapper’.
She took the piece of paper and wrote back; ‘Coach and Horses car park in a white Escort without a windscreen’.
Then, he moved off and radioed the police team fast approaching that they should go straight to the car park.

In the Escort, James was having a quiet, imaginary conversation with Dom.
‘Shouldn’t be long now,’ he said.
‘Yeah. She won’t mess up,’ replied Dom. ‘I think she’s actually quite enjoyed doing this.’
‘Takes all sorts, I suppose. Where d’you want to go once we get it?’
Dom looked through the broken sunroof. ‘Always fancied Majorca myself. Maybe buy a bar and live out there till the heat blows over.’ But poor old Dom was in his separate reality again. He thought his whole life was a film.
‘I’m looking more towards Colombia. Great girls, cheap coke. The easy life, you know,’ said James.
That’s when he heard the police arrive.
‘Get out of the car with your hands behind your head,’ said one of them through a tannoy. ‘The whole area is cordoned off. Now get out of the car!’
James’ mouth dropped. ‘Shit,’ he muttered.
Dom, on the other hand, was in his element, having smuggled a large towel into the Kings Head lavatory. Doused with warm water, he slid the towel around the insides of his legs, cleansing himself gratefully.
Mrs Grimshaw always maintained that Dom never played a part in James’ attempted robbery.
She always did have a soft spot for him.