“Hey, Duggy,” says my pal, “huv ya noticed that burd over there?”
I look over in direction he indicates with a wave of his cigarette.
“Which one? The one chattin’ up that bouncer that’s flashin’ her knickers so he’ll let her drunk ass in?”
He shakes his head, “Naw! The one that looks like that chick oot the Matrix stauning beside that fuck-off bike.”
It takes me a minute to work out who he means, but then I spot her. Thought it was a guy at first, with the biker boots and the long coat, but then she turns to look around the street and I get a better look at her profile. Something about the way she is standing there feels familiar but I’m sure I’ve never seen her before.
“What about her?” I ask.
“I’ve been watching hur fer the last ten minutes and the weirdest punters huv been walkin’ up to her. I seen some posh bint in a corset, a fuckin’ huge metaller and some guy that has lawyer written all over him. They just come up to her, for like five seconds, and then they fuck-off.”
“Huh.” says I. “Is she passing drugs?”
“I dunno. Maybe. She’s shakin’ hands so maybe she’s passin’ summat but that lawyer prick is gonna be able to afford more’n that, right?”
I tell my pal that I have an idea. I’m going to go up to her and try to score off her, or I’m gonna call the Polis. If she’s not dealing, then I bet there is still something there we can get a piece of.
So I put on my best swagger and head over in her direction. At the road ahead, I can see a black limo pull up and Matrix-chick starts to walk up to it. Then, as I get a bit closer to them, she flicks her eyes to look at me and makes a low gesture with her hand as if to tell me to stop.
Huh? I think to myself… that was odd… like she’d already seen me. I slow down, but I don’t stop. I figure I can time it so that the limo will be gone by the time I get there.
The back window of the limo rolls down and she leans forward to look in and talk to the passenger. The front of her coat gapes open a bit as she does so, and I catch a glimpse of metal. Holy shit! thinks I. She’s got a massive fucking knife under there?!
And then it clicks. That attitude… I’ve seen it before. Reminds me of my uncle, after he came back from Afghanistan and started taking up work for the mob. Never could sneak up on him either and he was fucking terrifying when he got drunk.
“Fuck this.” I mutter under my breath. Then I walk up to a bin and stub out my cigarette as if that’s what I was going to do all along. Then turn back and head towards my pal. The hair on the back of my neck prickles as if I can feel her looking at me the whole way.
I grab my pal by the arm to drag him back into the building and tell him, “Breaks over. Back to work.”
