The Hummingbird and the Bear by Nicholas Hogg

Author:Nicholas Hogg [Nicholas Hogg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849017299
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2011-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

THE NIGHT WOMBLE WALKED into the Grove with an empty sports bag I was single and broke, once again hanging around with the local gangsters I’d gone to university to avoid. Siobhan and Marissa were an item, and I’d returned to selling double glazing after the foreman at the plumbing supplies warehouse caught me napping in a bathtub.

It was also the night before I moved from Nottingham back to London, when I realized I was falling down a hole I soon wouldn’t be able to climb out of.

Within minutes of finishing my beer I was helping Womble strip lead from a factory roof. A few years older than me, Womble worked on the bins. When he wasn’t stealing. He knew I needed money for a free-wheeling coke habit, walked into the bar looking for a willing partner in crime, and saw me sitting in a corner.

Like a pair of shadows above the terraced homes of sleeping families, we scrabbled across gables and eaves, trod and hoped for a beam beneath our feet. When the moon crested the clouds, the lead gleamed in our hands.

‘Bastard’s gettin’ heavy now,’ said Womble, dragging the bag across the rooftop like a corpse he had to get rid of before morning.

He shared a flat with his brother, Maz. Before Maz was raided he bought a Reliant Robin because drug dealers don’t drive plastic pigs, and he guessed that a fibreglass three-wheeler wasn’t the kind of car that aroused much interest in the police.

The evening Womble saw squad cars outside the flat, a carnival of blue lights and sirens, he screeched a U-turn and stamped on the accelerator. A bottle of vodka later, a roundabout was a tricky island to navigate.

But maybe it was the only shore for a marooned man, a man driving with no destination.

The Pig finished its tumble on the other side of the barrier. Splashed with blood, Womble lay slumped over the steering wheel. Cars passed, headlights flashed on the shattered windscreen. He crouched behind the dashboard until the road was clear, then put his shoulder to the Pig and pushed.

No wreck. No crash. No one looking for the driver. In one growling effort, he shunted the Pig down the hill until it smashed through the undergrowth. Knackered and drunk, Womble crawled inside and folded back the passenger seat.

The next morning he woke to a blue sky beyond the treetops, the constant hum of traffic. ‘Not that different from the sea,’ he tried to tell me, insisting it was better than turning up for work or going home with the police after him.

Looking around the clearing, a cover of branches and bushes, he found a drain that ran through a short tunnel into a paddock of cows. This would be the front door. The train tracks into town were across the road, and it was just a stroll to the Grove when he felt like a game of pool or had some junk to sell.

At night he walked into the industrial estate and pulled tarpaulin off skips.

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