Bucket Nut by Liza Cody Page A

why?’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Because I’m up all night taking care of business. I don’t go clubbing regular. Got it?’
    â€˜Okay, okay,’ she said. ‘No need to loose your rag.’
    â€˜You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ I went back into the Static and slammed the door.
    This time she went away. I watched through the curtain. She had a very straight back. She’d probably look a treat in uniform, I thought. A back like that was wasted on plain clothes.
    I was feeling pretty cheerful. It isn’t often the polizei let you get the last word in. Maybe the lady copper was new at the job.
    But cheerful or not I had to get rid of the wallets. I nearly got caught in possession and it gave me quite a fright. So I stuck them into last night’s empty stew cans and a couple of baked bean tins, collected all the rest of the rubbish and tied up the plastic bin bag. Then I took it all to the skip. It wasn’t perfect, but it had to do.
    The men in the yard watched me with more interest than usual. They were probably wondering what the polizei wanted. But as usual nobody spoke to me. It was a good thing none of them knew about Goldie or they would have told the lady copper.
    As it was, I could imagine what they would have said to her. ‘Nah,’ they would’ve said, ‘Eva lives on her own. No one goes to visit her.’ That’s what they would have said, because until last night that was the truth.
    It is not a good thing to be talked about. In fact it’s a bad thing. Someone from Bermuda Smith’s club had talked about me and the result was a lady copper on my doorstep. It was funny for two reasons. The first is that not many folk from Bermuda Smith’s talk to the polizei. Second – not many folk anywhere know my address.
    It was not a lot of comfort to know that the polizei were looking for Goldie not me, because they had found me, not Goldie.
    I thought back. All my old probation orders had run out, I was sure, and I didn’t think there was anything outstanding they could nick me for. I’d lived a very righteous life for the past six months since I got a job and settled down. But you never know. Once you’ve got a bad reputation you are never quite in the clear.
    I decided to be extra careful about knocking off wallets and borrowing motors. And I checked all my survival kit just to make sure I could move out at a moment’s notice.
    That reminded me to check on Goldie. She was still sleeping which was a good thing because while she was asleep she couldn’t ask for anything and I could calm down and do my exercises. All the same I wondered what she was wanted for. Lying there in my old sleeping bag she looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
    She was a responsibility. She made me feel tied down. I did forty press-ups to relieve the tension. I wished I could do them on my knuckles like Harsh can but my hands aren’t strong enough. After that I did squat-thrusts, and then bridges for my back. The worst bit was the sit-ups. I don’t know why, but I find it really difficult to develop a good set of abdominal muscles. My shoulders, back and legs aren’t bad, even though I do say it myself. But I sometimes despair of my abs. They just don’t look right. Perhaps it’s fluid retention. Perhaps I eat too much.
    I looked at my London Lassassin poster. The abs didn’t look too awful in that. It was just as well. You can’t be heavyweight champion with a flabby gut. Well, you can, actually. You should see some of the men. But men and women are judged by different standards when it comes to looks. Don’t ask me why, but it’s so.

Chapter 10
    Goldie woke up at ten o’clock. She had slept fourteen straight hours barely moving a muscle. She was a mess – pale and shaky, that golden mop brown with sweat.
    I made some tea and opened a tin of tomato soup. She wanted a shower and I tried to explain