Free Acid Lullaby by Ed O'Connor

mine.’
    ‘Erectile dysfunction?’
    Harvey laughed out loud. ‘Not yet!’
    ‘Give it time.’
    Harvey let his eyes wander around the busy little pub.
    ‘Ghosts,’ he said quietly, ending the topic.
    They stayed another hour before the Bolden Arms became too crowded and the noise became too oppressive. It got to Jack first and he suggested an early departure. Underwood agreed and finished his whisky.
    ‘I feel quite pissed,’ he said with a tired smile. ‘I’m out of practice.’
    ‘Don’t forget your keys,’ Jack called out as Underwood began to pick his way carefully through the crowd. Underwood raised a hand in acknowledgement and returned to the table. ‘Where would I be without you, Jack?’
    ‘Standing out in the street all night,’ Harvey observed.
    A minute later they were crossing the lane outside the pub to the car park opposite. Despite the soporific effects of the whisky, Underwood noticed that Jack seemed suddenly nervous.
    ‘Scared of the dark, Jack?’ he asked playfully.
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘You keep looking around.’ Underwood pointed. ‘The car’s over there.’
    ‘It’s nothing.’
    Jack beeped his remote locking system and the lights flashed on his new BMW in acknowledgement. Underwood climbed inside. Harvey locked the car from the inside and started the engine.
    ‘Nice motor this,’ Underwood observed, ‘you been moonlighting, Jack?’
    Harvey steered the car carefully onto the road and turned into the network of country lanes that unwound through Holtskill Forest down into New Bolden.
16
    The rain was warm like spit. Stark enjoyed its touch: God was spitting on him. He was used to that.
    The station was deserted. Most of the late commuters had hurried away to their brick-box dormitories and the late night minicab drivers had long since flicked away their cigarette ends and relocated to the city centre nightclubs. Stark planned to visit the clubs later. He had a new set of imported pills that were coloured like footballs. They were called ‘66’s’ after the world cup victory. The teenage lager brigade would gobble them up. It was fucking smart marketing. The irony was that the pills were made in Germany. Stark found that amusing.
    Pills – ecstasy derivatives and speed – were his cash cows. That part of business was starting to do very well. New Bolden had a growing young population with bulging pockets and starved imaginations. The glitz of the London nightclub scene was an hour and a half away by train; too far for the average teenager seeking immediate gratification. In consequence, the clubs in New Bolden were teeming on Fridays and Saturdays and Stark had cornered the market. He supplied a couple of the club owners with coke and other recreationals. In consequence, he got special privileges.
    Still, if the club scene paid for the little luxuries in Stark’s life, the Car Wash was still a necessary unpleasantness. Behind the train sheds was a disused industrial estate: two hundred acres of low brick buildings with broken windows and deserted forecourts. The Car Wash was sheltered on three sides by the remains of a plastics factory and the derelict offices of a van-hire company. There was only one entrance big enough for cars. Stark liked it that way: less chance of unpleasant surprises.
    The Car Wash was well known to local drug-users. Its secluded but easily accessible location made it a favourite. There was also a wide choice of derelict buildings in which to sample Stark’s product range. Like any businessman, Stark had his regular clients and despite his developing business inthe nightclubs he was too shrewd to desert his core markets. Pills paid for the little luxuries in his life but smack and weed were his bread and butter.
    Besides, he had high hopes for the new batch of heroin his supplier in London had recently delivered; top notch smack from Colombia, Jamaica or some other dope factory. Lovely stuff. Even his dead eyed, skull-faced regulars would lose their