Whatever Next? Chapter 28 by Angharad Copyright© 2022 Angharad

(title picture Andrea Piacquadio)

Rodney Meadows wouldn’t have considered himself a sadist—to him that was a person who got a sexual thrill out of inflicting pain. He was a good old-fashioned bully, and his stirring things up was the equivalent of pulling a schoolgirl’s pigtails when he was a schoolboy.

He reminisced about his schooldays at Westham juniors and about his favourite victim, Lorraine Case—they used to call her Quiche, but he used to call her Barbie because she was blonde with long legs and she developed an incredible figure—she went off to London or somewhere to become a nightclub dancer. 'What a waste!. He thought, and yes she did have a waist—a tiny one with nice hips and big knockers—just like the impossibly proportioned doll.

He hadn’t thought of her in years, now this latest bimbo with the blonde locks and cracking figure had reminded him of her. Bit small in the knockers, but otherwise a lovely body which he had promised himself he would destroy. Pity really, she’s very pretty—I’ll try not to damage her face too much, he mused to himself as he loaded cans of Coke into his van.

The drug money was doing quite well, he’d met his overheads which, after seeing the big boys in action, he was pleased to know. The poor guy had only been three months in arrears—now he was dead—Meadows shuddered. His contacts were good, he’d make the money and he had a month’s cash in reserve—he’d be okay.

The paths of our master criminal and the wunderkind crossed without either being aware of it. It happened by pure accident and the carelessness of one of the dealers Meadows supplied.

They were riding, she and Harry, in Weymouth when she realised she hadn’t got a drink with her, leaving her bidon in the garage when she unlocked her bike. She cussed her oversight and asked Harry if they could stop at a shop and grab a drink.

She clomped her way to the counter, her cycling shoes making a racket on the tiled floor. They didn’t have much choice and the idea of a freezing cold cola made her feel bilious for a moment. So when she spotted some still wrapped in plastic standing on a pallet she eased open the plastic and picked out a couple.

She paid for them and left the shop, handing one to Harry, she put the other in her bottle cage. Then they rode off to see Matt at the shop where they’d drink it. She wanted to show off the bike, now it had some miles on the computer—and Harry followed where she led. Mind you half the boys in the school would have done the same given the opportunity.

The two teens sat and chatted with Matt, who’d been doing the books and looked for any excuse to stop, and Tim who was bending over truing a wheel which was not going smoothly at all, also sought a moment’s respite from his task—and what better way than to sit watching the legs of a thirteen-year-old girl, who was totally oblivious to her charms and the effect it was having on the three men.

Finally, Gaby pulled the ring on top of the can and began supping the sweetened fluid. “Ugh, there’s something in this,” she said seeing the plastic bag. “What a swizz, sixty pence and it’s only half full. She showed the can to Matt who looked and saw the plastic and agreed with her. At this point, he thought it was just a foreign body in the can but he cut off the top and once he saw it, he knew what it was.

“Where did you get this?” he pointed to the sticky bag of powder and the damaged tin.

“What is it?” asked Harry having a good idea but hoping he was wrong.

“A shop down the road, why?” asked Gaby the penny beginning to drop.

“Wait here,” he put the little bag back in the tin and walked into the office.

“You might get off with a caution for a first offence,” joked Tim, except Gaby didn’t think it was very funny.

“What is that?” she asked Tim.

“A class A, I expect, either H or snow, probably the latter but I’m no expert.”

“Snow? Wouldn’t it have melted?” asked the naive schoolgirl.

“Snow is cocaine—you know you snort it?”

“Ugh, Tim that is revolting—remember that model who had her nose collapse through doing that—how horrid.”

“Oh shit,” said Harry.

“Nah, that’s cannabis resin—entirely different stuff.” Tim seemed to know a lot about drugs. He came clean, “My dad was a copper, got knifed during a drugs bust—he died. So I guess I know a bit about drugs—and the lowlifes who trade them.”

“I’m sorry about your dad,” said Gaby feeling sorry for Tim.

“Oh that was years ago—he was a good man—and left me with a good sense of right and wrong, and drugs are so wrong.”

In the lull between the conversation they could hear Matt talking in the office—they knew he’d be calling the police—Gaby was beginning to know the copper’s by their first names she’d met so many of them.

She was pleased when ten minutes later a police car pulled up onto the single-car parking space for the shop and PC Andrea Smith got out with a more senior officer, he was in plain clothes, but her deference to him showed the others he was quite important.

“Matt,” said the plainclothes man, who obviously knew the bike-shop owner.

“Rog, all right?”

“Yeah, fine—so what you got for us?”

Matt explained what had happened and showed the can and its contents.

“We wondered how they were distributing it—cunning buggers—sorry kids, ‘scuse my French.”

He wanted to take Gaby’s prints but once he realised who she was he knew they’d have some on file, which they would keep until the Meadows case was resolved.

“What is it?” asked Tim.

“It does what it says on the tin,” said Roger imitating the Ronseal advert.

“Nose rot?” said Gaby who had them all in stitches.

“Okay, now I’m telling you to keep away from that shop—we’ll deal with this and hopefully get their supplier into the bargain.”

“Is Meadows involved?” asked Gaby.

“I have no idea—I doubt it, he’s too small fry for this stuff—this is big money, that bag is worth fifty or sixty quid on the street.”

“Cor, an’ I thought sixty pence was expensive—thank goodness I didn’t have to pay for the free gift as well.”

“Is she always like this?” asked Detective Inspector Roger Wood.

“No—usually she’s worse,” said Harry ducking as Gaby aimed a slap at him.

After the police left, Gaby asked, “What happens next?”

“For you—nothing. I expect the police will watch the place and try and catch the supplier.”

“It’s the real thing,” sang Tim as he went back to his wheel truing.

“It sure is,” agreed Matt.

“Let’s get back home—race yer,” Gaby challenged Harry who shrugged and followed her out of the shop. They both yelled goodbyes and then they were off back towards Radipole Lake and the bike path which runs alongside it.

At some point, if you come north out of Weymouth, you have to climb the chalk escarpment known as the South Dorset Ridgeway. It climbs over three hundred feet and is steeper in some places than others. They opted to cross Weymouth and head off east up White Horse hill, so called because of the image of George III riding away from Weymouth, incised on the Ridgeway slightly north of them.

The hill isn’t as steep as its long—it seemed to Harry to be going on forever and he lost sight of the wunderkind shortly after they started their ascent. “’Snot fair,” he puffed, “light as a bloody feather, she just wafts up these bloody hills,” when he eventually got to the top he felt rather warm and could just have done with a Coke, but not the powdered alkaloid.

Gaby was sitting on the front wall of a garden of a small row of houses at the top of the hill. She hardly looked even warm—Harry was almost hot enough to combust. He drank from his bidon, and she smirked at him. “When you’re ready,” she said and smiled sweetly hiding the killer instinct that lay behind the pretty face.

“Hang on a mo,” he said taking another draught of his water, “It’s alright for you, featherweights—I’m knackered.”

They rode on towards their village, up through Poxwell, which the posh locals call Pokeswell, and obviously refers to a well which was thought to be clean when there was some epidemic of various poxes about—the worst of which was the killer smallpox—now hopefully eliminated except for a few samples in laboratories. However, in days gone by, anything that broke out in blisters or vesicles as doctors call them, was a pox—from herpes to syphilis and all things in between.

None of this was entering the mind of our two young cyclists as they headed on towards Warmwell Cross and the turn back towards Dorchester. By the time they got back, Harry was getting tired and Gaby nicely warmed up—she could have done a further hour’s riding quite easily and she missed her time trialling, but with things, as they were and Meadows still at large, racing would be unwise and putting herself at risk.

They cleaned their bikes at the cottage on some old dusters in the garage. “Wouldn’t it be great if Meadows was involved with those Coke can drugs?” Gaby asked rhetorically.

“Only if they catch him, then we can get on with normal life,” sighed Harry, wiping his wheels—those fiddly bits between the spokes were a total pain.

Yeah, then I can go back to being a boy again, thought Drew pushing away a wisp of hair in a very feminine way, he looked at his nails—damn, another was chipped, now he’d have to like, repaint them—oh poo.

Harry went home and Gaby went indoors to look at her homework—bah, more stupid maths, although it was better than French, especially with no Bernie—the language queen. Drew helped Bern with maths and in return got help with French.
Mad was looking at her computer—“Bah, we missed a cosplay in Bristol.”

“When was that?”

“Last week—we’re in the back of beyond here, nothing goes on—it’s worse than Warsop—and that’s about as lively as a cemetery.”

“All my anime books went up in smoke anyway,” sighed Gaby putting her books on the table and looking up the homework page.

“Yeah, but like mine didn’t, and we coulda used them to make something, especially as you can sew a bit now.”

“Look, I wear fancy dress all the time—remember?”

“Only when you’re out on your bike.”

“What about this,” Gaby indicated the skirt and top she’d slipped on after showering.

“What about it?” asked Maddy looking bewildered.

“I’m a boy—remember?”

“Nah—can’t go that far back,” sniggered Maddy.

“Anyway, once the house is finished, I’m gonna go home and never wear a flippin’ skirt again.”

“Just a bra an’ panties?” smirked Maddy.

Gaby glowered back at her. “You know what I mean.”

“I know that girl’s clothes fit you better than boys, and your boobies will need something to stop them flopping about.”

A vision entered Gaby’s head of Drew running down the road with two apple-sized items bouncing about under his shirt, or of walking down the road with Paul and Clive and having his schoolbag strap part his breasts drawing attention to them and the two boys eyes popping out on stalks. Some sort of bra or support might be necessary, especially as the B cup bra was filled to capacity.

Maddy sensed the sort of things that were going through Gaby’s mind, after all, she’d planted the scene, hadn’t she?

He was too pretty to be a boy—natch, ‘cos after all he looked like her, and she was beautiful—and she had it in writing from her dad and from Drew—in the days when there was a Drew before Gaby subsumed him. His actions, voice, and gestures were all so naturally feminine—once they’d corrected his eating—shoving a whole rich tea biscuit in his gob in one go was gross—now she nibbled it.

The phone rang and both the girls tensed, neither wanted to answer it in case it was Meadows again. ‘I wish they’d catch him, or let me do it,’ Gaby mused.

“Yes, Dave, I should think so—we’ll manage somehow. I’ll call her now. Gaby, it’s your dad.”

Gaby nearly overturned the chair in her rush to the phone, “Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, Kiddo, how’s it going?”

“Alright—me an’ Harry went to see Matt today, took my new bike for a spin.”

“Go alright?”

“Like a rocket, Harry struggled to stay with me even when I wasn’t trying.”

“You take care, young lady—cycling is dangerous enough without the presence of a homicidal maniac. Anyway, the builders have to wait for something or other so won’t be working again until Tuesday, so I thought I’d come and see my two girls—assuming they want to see me of course.”

“Nah—you’d cramp my style as a sex worker.”

Dave who’d just taken a sip of beer sprayed the floor in front of him—how does she always know when he’d just taken a drink to make one of her outrageous statements?

He heard her giggling as he coughed and spluttered. “I hope that was a joke, young lady?”

“Course—we’ve just been doing something on the trafficking of women from Eastern Europe in current affairs.”

“Is that appropriate at your age?”

“Yeah, some of them are my age—disgustin’ innit?”

“Dreadful—so d’you want me to come or not?”

“Is the pope a Catholic?”

“I dunno, is he?” teased Dave.

“Can’t answer for the dark one, though, but I ‘spect she’d be glad to see you.”

“Where is she?”

“I think she was working, not sure—she doesn’t tell me, I’m only the one she borrows clothes from.”

“That’s what sisters are for, isn’t it?” joked Dave well aware of how Gaby felt about it all.

“Yeah, she’s supposed to lend me things not the other way round.”

“She does, I’m sure—she used to when you were at home.”

“Yeah—I s’pose—here she is—you wanna talk to her?”

“Does who wanna talk to me?”

“Daddy—he’s on the phone.”

“Never? I’d never have guessed that in a million years, ya know why you’ve got the phone in yer ’and an’ all.”

She handed her the phone and after what she assumed were generalised greetings, Dave asked her how she was. “I’m good.” Gaby also knew what the response to that would be—good is not an adverb, it should be well—ruddy Americans, why do we always adopt their worst abuses of the English language?—she blushed, Jules that is, and Gaby smirked. Jules poked her tongue out at her sister and waved her away.

“What’re you smirking at?” asked Maddy as Gaby went back to her homework.

“Dad’s coming down next weekend.”

“Oh, that should be nice—how’s the house coming on?”

“Blow, I forgot to ask.”

“Maybe he’ll take you back with him and you can finish painting it or something.”

“Very funny, not—anyway, I’d ha’ thought you’d be pleased to get back to sunny Warsop?”

“Yeah, I guess I will—be good to see the gang again, wonder how they are?”

“Yeah, it’ll be so good to be back with the boys again.”

“Gaby Bond, you have a one-track mind.”

“Eh?”

“Boys, boys, boys—it’s all you think about.” She chuckled as he blushed scarlet and spluttered an explanation.