Sam Curtis sat in the rented VW Polo, behind yet another skip, and looked again at the clock display on the dashboard. It was eight o’clock. He’d been here three hours now and his bladder was bursting. The skip was beginning to look good. It wasn’t that full and he thought, in half an hour I’ll climb in and kneel down and no one will see me.
There was a pub up the road with a toilet he could use, but he thought, if Hanlon arrives and I’m in there, Dimitri will kill me. And with the giant Russian that wasn’t necessarily a figure of speech.
Curtis thought of being attacked by Dimitri. He had never met a more frightening man in his life.
He was incapable of holding a thought for long. God, I’m bored, he thought. I’ll give it half an hour and then I’ll have a piss in the skip. The evening stretched ahead of him like a long and dull road. He had a low threshold for tedium. He wanted to play games on his phone but he thought, if Dimitri comes along to check on me and sees me doing that I’ll be well fucked. Plus he’ll never use me again.
He rolled himself a joint, with some grass he had in his pocket. This’ll help to kill the time, he thought.
A couple walked along the pavement towards him. He bowed his head and shrugged his body down in its seat, to appear less conspicuous, as he built his joint. They were obviously on some kind of date, she was clutching on to him passionately. He tried to see her face in the car mirror but she started kissing the guy she was with, some big, fat fucker. As they walked by the car all he could see of her was her hair.
There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, but he paid no attention. They were obviously local, nobody would come to Bow on a date.
He started thinking of his own girlfriend, Chantal. He lit the joint. Would it be better to have the window down so the smoke all billowed out at once, or open it a crack and have the car fill up with smoke?
It was a tricky question.