Driving Big Davie (Dan Starkey) by Colin Bateman Page A

else's sad life, in mine it came down to Joe again. I would sit by the pool and listen to The Clash — Combat Rock, that would suit my mood just right.
    Davie was as bad at unpacking as I was. His underpants and shirts were sticking out of his bag at mad angles; I had to shove at it to get at my own. There wasn't much room in the wardrobe, so I pulled his bag right out of the way. It was made of rather flimsy canvas material, so that when I dropped it and the edge of it landed on my bare foot I shouldn't have needed to shout, 'Aaaooow, Jesus' — but I did. He was carrying something hard and heavy, and I knew right away what it was. Cans of beer. It was just another extension of his selfishness. He was quite happily dipping into my supply in the fridge while keeping his own hidden away. Although not for long. I dipped into his bag to remove and consume the offending articles.
    But it wasn't beer.
    And before I'd unwrapped it from the towel I knew what it was and I just felt sick.
    I laid the towel on the bed; then I went to the door and made sure it was locked. Then I unfolded the towel and looked down at the gun.
    A gun.
    Christ.
    We were on a fly-drive vacation in sunny Florida, and Davie had a gun in his bag.
    I sat down on the edge of the bed. I picked up the gun, then put it down. I wiped at it with the towel to remove any fingerprints. It wasn't a huge Clint Eastwood sort of a gun, but it was big enough to install air conditioning in your head. I've been around guns; I don't always know their makes, but I know what they can do. I picked it up again and checked to see if it was loaded. It wasn't. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he'd just picked it up as a souvenir. Maybe it was a replica. What was he thinking of? How could he ever hope to get it back through airport security? And then I had another sick feeling and I went back to his bag and this time searched more carefully — and sure enough, hidden in a side zip compartment under his socks I found two boxes of ammunition.
    I sat heavily down on the bed again.
    My first instinct was to run out of the room and throw gun and bullets into the sea.
    So was my second and third.
    My fourth was: Pack up, get out — now.
    My fifth said, There's bound to be a simple explanation.
    Like —
    Jesus, we were on a fly-drive holiday in Florida. What was he scared of, alligators?
    I did what all grown men do in times of crisis. I phoned my wife, but the answer-machine was still on and I wasn't about to leave news about Davie's gun as a message. Mostly because she wouldn't believe me, she'd think I was just looking for sympathy. She'd lecture me about the boy who cried wolf and I'd say, 'But he got torn apart by wolves, don't you care?' and she'd say, 'Served him right.'
    I looked down at the gun. I looked down at the ammo.
    Davie had bought them after arriving in America: there was no way he could have smuggled them through security, either in Belfast or at Sanford. He'd gone out to a store somewhere in the vicinity of St Pete's Beach and bought a gun, just like that. You can do that in America. You can do it in parts of Belfast West as well, but that's another story.
    And then I realised.
    It was bloody obvious really.
    Davie had just been jilted by his girl. He was an ex-cop, he'd been forced out for drink-driving. Ulster is littered with bitter ex-cops who've spent their best years protecting us from the bad guys, but who now can't get new jobs because of their former employment. Depression is rife — and so is suicide.
    Christ, I'd come for a break, and now I was on suicide watch.
    There wasn't a girl at all. He was just at the end of his tether, driving around aimlessly or drinking by himself in an upmarket hotel, thinking of all the things he could have had, the women he might have married, depressing himself even further.
    I was really pissed off.
    We hadn't been friends for the best part of twenty-five years — and now he had dragged me halfway across the world just so