‘Lit us in yah basturd.’
‘Naw, fuck off.’
‘Look am fuckin’ choking fur a pint so lit us fuckin in.’
‘Naw, yuv been telt before. Ahm no it liberty tae lit ye in.’
‘Sniffs man. Jist cause you dinae bevvy any mair disnae mean the rest ay us cannie hae a drink.’
Sniffs shook his head and continued talking to the inside of the door. This had been going on for about ten minutes and he was getting well pissed off.
Keep an eye on the door, Christine had said,
ah need to go hame cause Ella says there is some fucker in a black coat standn' in the back garden. Jules is oan the bar, bit dinae lit anyone in eftir hauf ten. A’right?
That was about an hour ago.
‘Look Johnston, It’s nowt tae dae wi’ anything else apart fae the fact thit Christine left me in charge o’ the pub and telt us tae shut the door at half ten. It’s ten to eleven. Endy story.’
There was no answer this time but Sniffs knew that Johnston was, at best, a sneaky fucker and though not the most subtle of dudes, would try to stoop to his own brand of blatant subterfuge to get in.
‘Johnston, you there?’
When it came, the voice was barely a whisper.
‘Sniffs, lit us in man. Thir's someone at the side o’ the bank watchin' the pub. I jist noticed him. He looks well dodgy.’
Not only was the voice a whisper but there was something else in it. Sniffs knew that he wasn’t particularly familiar with classical English but the words ‘cold’ and ‘dread’ popped into his mind to describe the way the words had been said, but Johnston
was a sneaky prick.
Sniffs lent forward slightly and placed both palms of his hands on the chipped paintwork of the pub door.
‘Johnston, look man, go hame. Huv you been smoking that shite weed that's goin' about? It makes ye para...’
‘Sniffs.
Alex. Listen.’ There was no hint of ‘cold dread’ in the voice coming through the door. It was all frozen fear. ‘Thir's someone ower the road, and thir lookin right at me man, an he knows I’ve seen him. Thir's something else as well...’ The voice tailed off into silence.
‘Johnston
fur fucks sake', Sniff leant in closer to the door. 'I've seen you batter loads of guys, what the fuck are ye shiteing yersel fur? Just go hame...’ Sniffs stopped, pulled his hands quickly from the wooden door, and stepped back so fast his head banged against the wall behind. Sniffs remembered once when he had been hillwalking, and at the top of Ben Vorlich had walked backwards to get a better photograph of the mountains to the north. The heel of his left foot had knocked against a rock and he had stopped to look around. The rock had been on the edge of the south cliff face and Sniffs had looked around and down and then further down, all the way to the rocks about 400 feet below. Only after he had thrown himself forward, away from the precipice, did he have time to marvel at the cold knot of fear that had driven into the pit of his stomach and the adrenalin rush that was trying to remove the top of his head. The walk back down the mountain had been an exercise in terror after that, Sniffs seeing danger in every turn with vertigo crushing his heart.
He felt the same way now. When his hands had been on the door the same cold terror had smashed directly into his heart, his bowels felt as though they were going to gush, spots bloomed in his vision from the adrenalin rush, and his ears started pounding with his heartbeat. With the same panicked fingerwork in which he had grasped onto the sparse greenery of the mountaintop last year, Sniff’s fingers started to claw at the plasterboard on the wall behind him.
There had been a noise outside, something quick, something organic. Not a slither or a slip but a '
schlap' of something wet, like a cold piece of meat falling on a butchers slab.
Now there was nothing.
‘Johnston, You there mate?’
