Is This Yours? (Eight)

Jim entered a large department store and turned his own mobile on. He tried Cassie but he couldn’t get a signal. Wisely he used the escalators, lifts and staircases can be lonely places in big stores even in the middle of the day. He glanced at each mirror or reflective surface he passed to catch sight of his stalker. It would have to be someone from the Bookies, someone who hadn’t fallen for the cheque bluff. Maybe Bob sent him, a hired repo man. That last thought shook him. “Average Joe I could stand my ground but a professional” he shivered.
He considered trying on some clothes, or visiting the toilets but he knew that those places had no small windows to manufacture an escape thanks to the proliferation of shop-lifting, a crime to which he’d made his own small contribution. It’d be like setting a bear trap and then putting your foot in it.
So he went from floor to floor and back again, one time even forcing his way back down an up escalator through an elderly couple who cursed him roundly, but it gave them something to talk to each other about that evening when the adverts were on. For twenty minutes he rode those steel stairs or wandered between haberdashery and women’s lingerie and then realised this weird walkabout would begin to attract the attention of the CCTV cameras.
Then again he’d hardly noticed a soul in the betting shop, apart from the old man and a couple of others. He hadn’t caught sight of anyone who looked suspicious (but what did that actually in a big city) and decided that this stupid spy stuff was bullshit.
“It’s just me. I’m a different person now. I’m a winner and I just cannot come to terms with it. All of a sudden I have money and the whole bloody world wants it! I’m going to the car”
The car was parked in the huge multi-storey aligning the department store. Between the time spent in the bookies and the MI5 nonsense, it was going on five o’clock. “I’d better get that take-away” What he wanted to do was to take Cassie for a cracking meal at a top restaurant out in the country, but that would give the game away. “Well they’ll be plenty of trimmings tonight”
He retrieved his parking ticket from his trouser back pocket and paid the fee at the pay station located in the amber zone. The other zones were red and green, like a traffic light as if 1, 2 and 3 wouldn’t do. The levels were alphabetically arranged. His little blue Fiesta was on level D.
Cassie drove an Audi. Not new and not too obtrusive. She shied from the prospect of driving a BMW or a Mercedes, although she could easily afford to purchase one. “I mustn’t distance myself from either my staff or my pupils. We could get you one Jim. It might help your prospects, you know, at job interviews”
He didn’t want the car and he certainly wouldn’t want any profession associated with its ownership. Now it wasn’t BMW he was thinking of, it was Porsche or Ferrari. “I’ll miss the old thing though” he sentimentalised and then realised he was counting winnings that he hadn’t accrued yet.
“I can’t help it. It still feels a little surreal” He could barely contain the exciting prospect tomorrow would bring. He had a life now, he felt. I’m not just an addition to Cassie’s.
There were more escalators to ride as he climbed up to level F. It was the top level, a fact that pissed him off when he arrived in town this morning. As early as he was that was the nearest he could get to ground level. “No jobs and a biting recession, eh? Not in this town” he moaned. His trip was patently unnecessary after yesterday’s dismissal. He wasn’t afraid of telling Cassie he just couldn’t face the patronising pat on the head or arm round the shoulder and the inevitable “Aaw, never mind” So he drove into town to sit in the café and hang around just long enough to ensure she’d left for school.
After the first three levels the crowds going to and from their vehicles began to thin out and the further he went the more isolated Jim became until he found himself alone moving slowly along the moving staircase. As he left it he moved toward the glass door leading onto the car park. He heard a noise one floor below and tiptoed back to the top of the escalator but there was nobody following him.
“I’ve spooked myself good and proper” and he tapped his midriff again. The packet was still there, nice and fat. “Wouldn’t mind putting this sort of weight on every day” he laughed.
He walked onto the level. There were plenty of cars but no humans. His shoes clapped on the concrete as he made his way toward the far end. He couldn’t see his car it was that small. It was dwarfed between a Chrysler Grand Cherokee and a Jaguar.
He made his way across the soulless landscape. It was like car heaven or hell as it were. “That’s what an infernal damnation could be – a Sisyphun torment driving a car around and up a continuous high rise with an infinite number of upper levels and no spaces” Then he heard the growl.
The problem with space when it’s encased in concrete is trying to locate the focal point of any sounds originating from within. Jim remembered carrying the shopping back with Cassie late one Saturday when a squeal of tyres from a speeding vehicle had them both spinning like Dervishes. The car was heading down but until it appeared in plain sight, there was no way to be sure.
Although it was equally as difficult to pinpoint the source of this menacing resonance he knew for sure that it wasn’t a man, it was a dog.
Jim hated dogs. One of his old jobs had been a postman. On his first day out he returned with his sleeve ripped off when an ex-police dog mistook his postbag for a swag bag. On the Wednesday of the second week he lost a shoe leaping a gate and denying an irate Great Dane a nice tasty femur. On his 32nd day, he remembered because he was 32 that year, he walked back to the delivery office put down his postbag, which still contained half his delivery and quit.
His manager asked him what was wrong this time (he was convinced Jim was the author of his own misfortune) because he couldn’t see any visible signs of attack. Jim turned his back toward him and bent down as if to touch his toes. Then with a flourish he swept up the bottom of his uniform jacket to reveal a hole in his pants where the seat used to be.
He knew that growl. He couldn’t be sure if it were a big or small dog but it was definitely a dog. He wanted to run but it was still 20 yards to his car and he might be running toward it. “What the fuck was a dog doing up here anyway?” The only entry was either through the store or up the ramp. “Maybe he was left in the car” he mused, “with the window down probably too far. He’s jumped out that’s what’s happened” Another growl.
Jim continued to walk equidistant from both sets of parked cars spinning round every few steps like Gene Kelly but the source of the sound remained elusive. He wanted to drop to the floor and look for a set of four legs but that would be placing his body in a prone and vulnerable position to attack. He paced on. The bonnet of his Fiesta was visible now and he steered left in its direction. He dug in his pocket for the car keys and jangled them as he manipulated the ignition key with his fingers so it sat prepared between his thumb and index finger. With a last turn of his head to check behind him he walked into the gap between his car and the Cherokee and straight into a shag pile with teeth.
The mongrel looked like a cross between some sort of terrier and some sort of hound or maybe some sort of spaniel. It was dirty, scared and lonely. His stomach turned over like it had a builder mixing cement deep in its pit. The dog slavered. It lifted half its mouth and sneered the way a Doberman does just before it savages you because it knows at once that you can’t appease it and you can’t outrun it.
His one terror, back in those days delivering the nation’s mail, was being bitten in the balls, but today they were a secondary concern. “It can have my fucking balls” he rationalized, “as long as it doesn’t rip up the cash”
He lowered the hand with the keys in, in case the dog felt threatened and inched backward. As he did so the dog whimpered and began to wag its tail. “It was as scared as I was” and he relaxed his posture bending down to cajole the dog toward him. Then it reared back again on its haunches and bared its persuasive teeth.
“It’s not me it’s afraid of” he thought and then for the second time in his life everything went black.