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

that I could be around to clean up the mess when he blew his stupid head off. It would put a real dampener on my holiday.
    I opened one of the bottles of beer from the fridge. It was ice cold, just the way it should be, but somehow it didn't taste right. I was picturing Davie by himself in our hotel room drinking himself into a stupor then stumbling across to the bag — Dead Man Staggering — and pulling the gun out, loading it, putting it into his mouth, then pulling the trigger. Cue, brains on wall.
    Poor Davie.
    His mother at the funeral saying, 'But if you knew he had a gun, why didn't you do something about it?'
    I drained the bottle. It still didn't taste right, but it wasn't for wasting. I got another and looked at the gun some more. What was I supposed to do? Confront him with it? Say, 'What the hell are you playing at?' Try to talk him out of it? But if he'd come this far to end it and gone to this much trouble, then he wasn't going to be dissuaded by me. Patricia says I couldn't argue my way out of a paper bag. What if I wrote him a letter? Pen mightier than the sword, and all that.
    No.
    Davie was never much of a reader. He'd scan the first couple of lines, then tear it up and tell me to mind my own business.
    He wasn't down over Joe Strummer's death. He was down over his own.
    Or what if he wasn't depressed at all? Maybe he had some life-threatening illness. A huge tumour on the brain, or a wasting disease. Maybe he wanted to go out now while he still had possession of all his faculties.
    Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. There were too many. Certainly more than four. Only one person could answer all of my questions.
    Patricia couldn't, I couldn't, even the man I turned to in times of trouble, my old friend Mouse, couldn't. Only Davie.
    I wrapped the gun back up in the towel and squeezed it into his bag. I replaced the ammunition in the zip compartment. Then I lifted it and my own bag, removed the Walkman, two sets of underpants and a spare T-shirt and set them on my bed. Then I re-zipped my own bag and carried it and Davie's out into the hall. I walked down the corridor then waited until the Cuban was busy on a call, sitting down low behind the high reception desk so that he couldn't see me. I slipped past him and out into the car park. Davie had taken the car, so that was out. I continued on out to the footpath and walked about two hundred yards down the street, then crossed the road to a branch of the International House of Pancakes. Behind the restaurant there was a half-full dumpster. I checked I wasn't being watched, then hauled both bags into it. I turned and hurried back to the hotel; I put my underpants and T-shirt away, then collected my cool-bag and Walkman from the room, after which I went and sat out by the pool.
    Two hours later I was half-cut and the proud owner of about fifty thousand more freckles when Davie came hurrying up, all wide-eyed and breathless.
    'Dan — Dan . . . have you moved our bags?'
    'What?'
    'Have you moved our bags?'
    'What're you talking about? Sit down. Have a beer.'
    'Dan! Our bags are gone!'
    'Gone?'
    'Gone!'
    'Relax. The cleaners just probably moved them.'
    'They haven't. They've gone. We've had burglars. We've been burgled. Our bags are gone.'
    'Davie, for godsake, they can't just have—'
    'Well, get up off your arse and come and look!' He spun on his heel. I took another drink of my beer, then got up and followed.
    He was right. The bags were gone. I made a big show of searching the room. I cursed a lot. We marched down to see the Cuban together.
    'We've been burgled!'
    'Our bags have gone!'
    'What sort of an establishment are you running!'
    All the usual stuff. The Cuban followed us back to the room, as if a third pair of eyes would somehow reveal the missing bags. He tutted and cursed. He said, 'Are you sure they're not in your car?'
    'Of course they're not! We've been robbed.'
    'And what the hell are you going to do about it?' I said.
    He looked down at the door lock for