Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome by Richard Rider Read Free Book Online Page A

came in, just in case it had a tracker on it or something, and with every layer he tears through he's getting more aggravated until he finally finds it, the crackle of purple paper, and then he's dragging it out by the handful, unwrapping the bundles and laughing like a madman. "I wanna rip off Steven's head and cover myself in his blood!"
    "...You're a bit mental, really, aren't you?"
    "Yeah. I reckon my mind snapped like a Twiglet with all the strain of being a hostage," he says, "stuck in a house all week with nothing except them two goons while you went swanning off having a wicked time without me," but he sounds kind of absent. He thrusts a big wad of twenties into the front seat, and another and another until the car's covered in ransom like it's been parked under a money-tree in the middle of autumn. "I'm well crazy. I'll be a liability, you're right. We're gonna die, Clyde, me and you, we'll get gunned down like dogs, but it's okay cos I was fucking dying anyway."
    The wind coming in off the sea whips some of the notes away and sends them tumbling down the hill, catching in the long grass. Lindsay manages to grab some of them and shove them in the glove box, but that's at least four hundred quid getting blown away down through the forest.
    "You idiot, we're meant to be keeping a low profile."
    "What, ragging a bright red sports car round the country? It'll be a nice surprise for someone, don't be such a fucking Scrooge."

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    He stops throwing cash around, though, and a few minutes later he seems to have calmed down. He's holding Lindsay's eyes in the rear-view mirror, and eventually he smiles. Small and a bit embarrassed, but still a smile.
    "Hey, I just thought of something," he says. "Ain't they gonna have a problem with it? Your goon mates?"
    "With what?"
    "Me and you."
    Lindsay wants to argue against the 'me and you', but even more than that he wants to come, so he doesn't.
    "No," he says. "I mean, they never have before. More benders there are in the world, more chance they've got of getting a shag they don't have to pay for. They encourage it, if anything."
    "Pervs. They like it. They want you."
    "Don't be daft, they're ball-deep in prossies every spare second."
    Valentine shuffles forward and drapes his arm down through the gap between the two front seats, down over Lindsay's bare chest where the two halves of his shirt have fallen apart. He's still got a handful of banknotes; he lets them go so he can dance his nimble fingers across the sweaty skin, and the paper flutters down to cover the top of Lindsay's legs. "They ain't having you, you're mine now."
    "Would you just stop it?" he snaps, and grabs Valentine's wrist. He's absolutely not used to attention like this, though, and part of him is loving it.
    Craving it, more and more and more of it like how he felt this suffocating need to shoot up ten seconds after he said he was giving up heroin three New Years ago. He remembers the way the shattered windscreen looked, Claxton with his throat torn open by the bullets and shards of glass in his blank staring eyes, and imagines the eyes being green. He only notices he's tightened his grip like a vice when he hears the kid say his name – Valentine's not used his name yet today, he realises, or not his first name anyway, and now he's saying it over and over like a

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    metronome until it doesn't make any sense, it's just another noise like the crash of waves or the squawk of seabirds.
    "What?"
    "You're hurting."
    "Sorry." He lets go. Neither of them speaks for a bit. He hears Valentine quietly repacking and retying the binbag, then he's cramming himself back through the gap between the seats, leaning down to retrieve his CD wallet from the footwell.
    "How quick can you come?" he asks, blithely flicking through pages of discs like the moment never happened. "Two minutes and fifty-four? I'll suck you, I don't mind. Or you can do me if you want, that's okay