Here we go again indeed. Despite his increasingly addled mien and always confused look, Bobby Shrubbs is still the boss. Many people who know or come into contact with us believe that I am actually his manager (I’m not. That particular honour goes to a man, Wayne Smith, who is almost more childlike in character than our hero – and he doesn’t have 30 years of not being able to say ‘no’ as his excuse. Or at least ‘no’ to some things, anyway), and am in a position to tell him what to do, but that’s not the case. I’m just the hired hand, and, although I’m the hired hand who seems to actually also be a wetnurse, butler, chauffeur, sometimes confidante and bodyguard all rolled into one, that is still all I am.
I often wonder how I got the job. Actually, I know how I got the job. What I wonder about is why I said yes. I was working in Wayne Smith’s office, in charge of this and that, and one day, in one of those alignment of planets moments, everything seemed to go tits up at once. Wayne, an excitable man of about 40 who couldn’t keep it in his trousers, had started having it away with a 19 year old Croatian girl he’d met at the merchandise stall during a gig by one of the bands he managed. There was not a lot new here – I’d only worked for him for about a year and I knew of at least three separate occasions when this happened. But this girl, Ana, had had a curious effect on him. She needed a visa to stay in the country and Wayne had offered Pikey Dan (the young work experience boy who came for a week and stayed, despite never being paid a cent for his efforts) a four figure sum to engage in a sham marriage to keep her in England. Amazingly, the Pike turned him down and so, on the day in question, I get a phone call from a more frantic than usual Wayne who, it appears, is at Heathrow with Ana. He’d left the wife.
“ I’ve left the wife, Micky, I’m going to Croatia to meet Ana’s parents and tell them everything’s going to be okay. I need you to take charge of things for me while I’m away. There’s an envelope in my desk for you. I’m counting on you ma-”
Silence. When I got into Wayne’s office I noted he’d left in such a hurry he’d left his mobile there, on the desk. So he must have been calling me on a payphone, hence the abrupt end to our little chat. I looked in the top drawer of the desk and found an A4 envelope smeared with what I hoped was peanut butter marked ‘MICKY’. I looked inside and found a set of keys and a crumpled bit of paper covered in Wayne’s puerile scrawl. The keys were for a flat on the Edgeware Road that Wayne and Ana had been using as a secret love-nest. The instructions told me to ‘flog the place and send me the cash to Zagreb. And don’t tell Rhona. And look after Bobby.’
I placed the keys in my pocket with the bit of paper just as Rhona, Wayne’s long suffering wife crashed through the front door of the office, shouting at the top of her not inconsiderable voice.
“ He’s done it this time Micky, he’s really done it this time. That stupid prick has run off with another of his dirty little slags. Did you know about this?”
More from Mick and Bobby next time...
