Colin Wragg accelerated over the grass towards an under-twelves game, as Major Dee pointed his Skorpion out of the passenger side window. The compact machine gun was a short-range weapon, designed for close-quarter work like spraying bullets up a staircase when you’re clearing a building. But people don’t know that kind of stuff. All anyone knew was the sound of gunfire and the orange flashes around the muzzle.
The under-twelves scattered; mums on the touchline screamed. Only the referee stood still, hands on hips and whistle in mouth, until he figured that blowing wasn’t going to stop the four-tonne Range Rover ploughing towards him and he began to run.
Whilst the big 4x4 had been used to batter its way on to the pitches, the Mitsubishi Evo behind it had better acceleration. As the ref scrambled away, the yellow car swerved and went after him. The ref looked desperately back over his shoulder as the powerful car closed down and smashed into his legs.
‘Did you see that,’ the man sitting next to Michael in the Range Rover shouted jubilantly, as the referee flew over the bonnet of the Evo and did a full 360-degree flip before slamming down in the mud. The Evo made a slight course correction before the driver floored the accelerator, aiming for boys in shorts and mums heading for the protection of a wooded area nearby.
Meantime the Range Rover and the Jeep Cherokee running behind it threw up mud as Colin ploughed on towards the first team.
‘We’re going for the clubhouse,’ Dee said. ‘Victor, get the stuff outta the back.’
Glass chinked as the dude sitting beside Michael grabbed bottles from behind the rear seat. They were filled with petrol and had pieces of rag stuffed in the necks.
‘Line me up for a shot at the clubhouse,’ Dee ordered, as the first-team players scattered.
Most of the first-teamers turned a blind eye to their club chairman being a major villain. But turning a blind eye becomes hard when six guys with knives and bats jump out of a Jeep and start chasing after you.
Fortunately, most of the first-teamers were fitter than their masked pursuants and their studs gave them better traction in the mud. But the opposition goalie got cornered near the perimeter wall, whilst another player who’d run towards the under-twelves pitch to make sure that his kid brother was safe lost his footing and found three men surrounding him.
The player put his hands up to defend himself, but before he knew it he was taking a savage beating.
Major Dee fired his machine gun into the front windows of the clubhouse, splintering the bar and sending a cascade of glass on to the polished wooden floor.
‘Spread out and look for Sasha,’ Dee ordered, broken glass crunching under his Nikes as he stepped into the clubhouse.
Michael had been sandwiched in the middle so he was last out of the car. The opposition goalkeeper screamed fewer than ten metres away from him, and Michael was horrified to see a streak of blood where he’d been dragged across the floodlit grass by his hair.
He felt sick as he looked to the poorly lit pitches where the Sunday team played, and watched the players scrambling over a wall as one of guys from the Jeep fired a shotgun at them.
‘Michael, check the changing rooms,’ Dee shouted furiously. ‘He must have got away.’
Michael put his hand on the gun strapped to his waist as he stepped gingerly into the changing rooms. Everyone had scarpered, and a breeze blew through open fire doors at the back of the tiled room.
As he leaned into the deserted shower area, Michael realised that Major Dee had put all of his effort into the speed of the operation and none into tactics. If he’d sent the two cars in from each side of the playing field, the Mad Dogs would have been caught in a pincer and the raid probably would have turned into the bloodbath he’d been hoping for.
‘Get outta there,’ Colin shouted. ‘It’s going up.’
Dee and a couple of others had already lit petrol bombs and Michael heard a whoosh of fire in the adjoining clubhouse. As he ducked out through the back doors, a flaming bottle spun wildly across the muddy floor, turning into a fireball as it shattered beneath the changing bench and set light to a nylon backpack.
By the time Michael had run around the flaming building and back towards the Range Rover, the entire back wall of the Mad Dogs clubhouse was ablaze and the metal roof struts were buckling from the heat.
‘We did good,’ Colin said, blasting the horn of the Range Rover as Michael became the last man squeezed back inside the car.
‘I wanted Thompson,’ Dee snarled, ripping off his balaclava as the big car pulled away. ‘Tonight was our chance to win this before it even started.’
And you messed it up, Michael thought, as the 4x4 dropped off a kerb into the Mad Dogs FC parking lot and powered on through the main gates.
*
James made it out of the door behind the bar and ran for his life, with his socked feet skidding hopelessly on the mud. His football boots were in the clubhouse doorway and the rest of his stuff hung from a hook in the burning changing room, including his trainers, his mobile and nine-grand’s worth of carbon-nanotube-reinforced sweatshirt.
The first port of call was Sasha’s house, but Sasha didn’t want the heat and ordered everyone to clear out, including crying kids and a hysterical mother who’d seen her eleven-year-old chased into the trees by an armed man.
There was no sign of Junior, so James did what he was told and headed down a side street. There were plenty of people with cars, but most of the owners were dressed in their football kits and their keys were inside the blazing clubhouse.
It was a frosty night, and within a few hundred metres James’ soles were numb with cold. He was dressed for football and didn’t even have change for a bus fare, but he knew it was best to keep moving. There was a chance some of the Slasher Boys would still be on the prowl and his mud-caked socks and yellow football shirt would tell them exactly who he was.
After jogging for a couple of minutes, James heard a car pull up alongside and blast its horn. He ducked instinctively, but when he bobbed up he saw a woman sitting in the front, three young lads in their Mad Dogs kit in the back and another on the front passenger seat.
‘Would you like a lift home?’ the woman asked, as her electric window purred down. James could see she was shaken, with black streaks of eyeliner down her face.
‘I’m really muddy,’ James said apologetically, as he walked towards the car.
‘All the boys are muddy,’ she said. ‘You’ll freeze out there in this cold.’
The spooked eleven-year-old on the front passenger seat had to climb out and squeeze in the back with his three friends.
‘I appreciate this,’ James smiled, pulling open the door and enjoying his first breath of heated air.
‘I’ve got quite a route dropping all these home,’ the woman said, as she pulled away. ‘Where do you need to go?’
‘The halfway house,’ James said. His socks were absolutely sodden and he peeled them off so that he didn’t trash the footwell. He was pleased to be in the warm, but the four lads behind him were eerily quiet and at least two of them had been crying.
The driver slammed the brakes as she pulled out of the turning without looking, almost flattening a motorbike parked at the opposite kerb.
‘Are you OK?’ James asked. ‘Maybe you should pull over until you’ve calmed down.’
‘I’ve got to get all the boys home,’ the woman said with determination. ‘If the parents hear what happened before I drop them back they’ll go out of their minds.’
‘But drive careful,’ James said gently. ‘It won’t do much good if you crash before you get there, will it?’
The woman nodded and gave James a tiny smile. But her hands were shaking and her eyes were blurred with tears.
‘I yelled at that referee,’ she sniffed. ‘He kept having a go at my Samuel and I called him a pompous tit. Two minutes later he went up over that car. I don’t know if he was killed or what …’
‘It’s over now, Mum,’ one of the kids said, trying to s
ound grown up as he pushed his muddy face between the front seats.
‘How can that happen?’ the woman sobbed. ‘How can you do something like that to another human being?’
31. BUGS
‘… There is some speculation that the savage assault was launched as part of a vendetta against notorious underworld figure and Mad Dogs FC chairman Sasha Thompson.
However, Detective Inspector Robert Hunt who is heading up the investigation has emphasised that none of the people attacked had criminal records or any association with Mr Thompson beyond the football club.
The victim, twenty-year-old Julian Pogue, was a first-year law student at the University of East Anglia. He’d recently returned home for the Easter holidays and had only been called back into the Mad Dogs team following an injury to a colleague. It is believed that Pogue became separated from his team-mates whilst trying to locate his twelve-year-old brother.
Pogue’s family issued a statement asking for privacy and describing their son as a ‘wonderful, caring boy who loved playing football and had a bright future ahead of him.’
The two other seriously injured men have been named as fifty-three-year-old referee Bert Hogg and opposition goalkeeper Leonard Goacher, thirty-one. School nurse Judith Maine was stabbed in the thigh as she tried escaping into nearby woodland with her eighteen-month-old twins in a double buggy. She was later discharged from hospital, along with eleven others treated for minor injuries and shock.’
BBC Radio Bedfordshire, Friday 30 March 2007
The care workers in the Zoo were supposed to be finding James and Bruce places at a local school, but they were taking their time and now the schools were about to break up for Easter anyway.
James couldn’t sleep and spent most of the night with a headphone in his ear, listening to the late-night phone-in and hourly news updates on the radio. By ten on Friday morning Bruce was up and showered, but James could see no reason to get up and he hitched his duvet over his face when Bruce opened the curtains to read his latest martial arts magazine.
James’ phone had melted in the blaze, so Wheels rang Bruce when he wanted to speak.
‘How’s it going?’ James asked. ‘Where were you hiding when the shit went down?’
‘Sasha yelled at me twice yesterday so luckily I gave the football a wide berth.’
‘Jammy git,’ James said. ‘So do you know anything, except for what I can hear on the radio?’
‘One of the Slasher Boys’ cars got stuck over the back of the playing fields. They torched it themselves before the cops arrived, but a couple of our boys caught up with one of them. The cops were swarming all over so they couldn’t do anything except put a tail on him. They followed him home on the bus and woke him up at five this morning with a couple of bricks and petrol bombs.’
‘Top stuff,’ James said, faking enthusiasm. ‘So is Sasha planning revenge?’
‘Not sure,’ Wheels said. ‘There’s talk about storming the Green Pepper.’
‘You can count me out on that score,’ James snorted. ‘That’s in the middle of their turf and there’s more of them than there is of us.’
‘Talk’s all it is, I reckon,’ Wheels said. ‘Sasha’s got a brain. He’s not gonna go charging in like the bloody cavalry. He’s gonna bide his time and then he’s gonna do something that’ll turn the Slasher Boys right over.’
‘Exactly,’ James said. ‘So is this just a social call or what?’
‘Two things, mate. First off, you mentioned that you had some body armour. Now I know you’re not exactly one of our main guys, but Sasha says everyone should be on the look-out for ambushes. Wear your armour, carry a weapon and avoid going anywhere on your own. If you’re not with me, take your little cousin with you.’
‘Sounds sensible,’ James said.
‘And have you got money for a new phone, ’cos we might have to make some fast moves and everyone’s gotta keep in touch.’
‘Sure,’ James said. ‘I’ve still got a bunch of cash from the hotel robbery. I’ll go into town later and grab a pay-as-you-go.’
‘Great. The second thing is that Sasha says not to get bogged down in a war. We need to keep the money flowing, which means it’s business as usual.’
‘Have we got to go back to that supermarket?’
‘Nah,’ Wheels said. ‘The money you got out of the till more than covered what we’re owed and Sasha says the cops were swarming all over, so we’ll be leaving it alone for a while.’
‘So am I still on for that bit of business with the hard front?’
‘You certainly are,’ Wheels said. ‘It’s miles from the nearest Slasher Boys, but things are tense so I’d bring your cousin along. Savvas has got all of the surveillance equipment you need and a set of keys for the flat. He’s gonna swing by with it later.’
‘What about directions?’ James asked.
‘Ask Savvas. He can’t take you up there because he’s a known face, but he’ll show you on his road atlas or whatever.’
*
They missed breakfast and Savvas was late so James and Bruce stopped off for an early lunch at a Pizza Hut buffet. Chloe had arranged it so that she bumped into them. She gave James a replacement phone and said that another stab-proof sweatshirt was being made on campus and would be ready within forty-eight hours. She also told the boys that she was worried: the ethics committee weren’t going to like it when they heard about the latest outbreak of violence and the death of Julian Pogue. There was a chance they’d pull the mission.
James over-ate and felt bloated as they rode the bus out of Luton and into neighbouring Dunstable. The Rudge Estate consisted of three-storey blocks. Quite a few flats had been purchased and renovated by residents complete with window boxes and neat gardens, but much of the estate was still a dump, strewn with rubbish, graffiti and the occasional abandoned car.
The hard front faced on to a second-floor balcony, but it was far from the only apartment with a reinforced door and bars up the windows, so only a nosy neighbour would have figured it was being used by drug dealers.
The blocks ran parallel to one another. James and Bruce had the keys to a second-floor flat in the next block along, with the front window directly overlooking the hard front. The previous resident’s kids had drawn all over the walls, but nobody had lived there in a while and the musk of damp and dust knocked Bruce back as he pushed the door open.
‘What a pen and ink,’ James complained, wafting a hand in front of his face as he kicked the door shut and dumped the large sports bag that Savvas had given him on the hallway carpet. ‘Better open the windows to air it out.’
It was the middle of the day, but James flipped the light switch on and off to make sure the electricity was connected as Bruce walked between rooms, opening windows.
‘There’s a kettle and a fridge in here,’ Bruce yelled. ‘Maybe we can get some tea and milk in or something.’
‘If you like,’ James shrugged. ‘I guess it’ll take a while going through the tapes, but I don’t fancy spending any longer than I have to in this dump.’
‘It’ll be OK once it’s aired and it’s a bloody sight quieter than the Zoo.’
‘I’m not stopping you from moving in,’ James grinned. ‘At least I won’t have to put up with your snoring.’
‘Yeah, I’m so obnoxious,’ Bruce sneered. ‘What about the other night when you kept dropping your guts? My eyes were watering.’
‘It was that dodgy cheese bap Chloe got at the motorway services.’
As James said this, he unzipped the sports bag and looked at the surveillance equipment. The biggest item was a twin-tape surveillance recorder with Property of East Midlands Health Trust etched on top. There were also blank tapes, a bunch of tangled-up leads, a power drill for making holes and a selection of miniature cameras.
‘What a bunch of crap,’ Bruce said.
James shrugged. ‘There’s nothing here that would set the campus technical department drooling, but it’s enough to get the job done.’
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‘Guess you’re right,’ Bruce said, as he pulled some of the wires out. ‘You work out the best place to put the cameras and I’ll start untangling this lot.’
32. BODIES
Seventeen days later
Joe Pledger and his wife had just arrived back from an Easter break at their Portuguese villa, complete with leathery tans and carrier bags of booze. Their lap pool looked unusually dark when Joe peered out through the conservatory and his heart leapt as he noticed that a section of his back fence had been knocked down.
Groggy from the flight and underdressed in short sleeves and holiday shorts, Joe slid the French door and stumbled out to the patio. The water in his pool had a brownish tint, but the shocker was the outline of a man at the bottom. The sight would have sent many souls running back to the house in shock, but Joe had been in the funeral game his whole life and his only concern was for his wife.
‘Don’t come out here,’ he yelled, as he dashed back into the house and grabbed the phone.
Inspector Hunt from the murder squad was on the scene within ten minutes, beaten only by a female constable who’d been walking her beat half a kilometre away. Hunt was knackered and about to go off-shift, but there was no chance of that now.
The ginger-haired detective crouched on the tiles at the poolside and saw that the victim had two twenty-kilo discs strapped to his chest.
‘Looks like he was alive when he was thrown in,’ Hunt said, as he looked at the nervous policewoman.
Unless they suspect that the perpetrator is still in the area, regular cops are trained to stand back and protect a crime scene until detectives arrive. The young constable had her arms behind her back and her face looking up at the sunrise.
‘Not seen one of these before?’ Hunt asked.
‘No, sir,’ the constable said apologetically. ‘I’ve only been on the force three months.’
‘Do me a favour,’ Hunt said, as he leaned further over the pool. ‘Go into the house and ask the owner if he has a long pole, or a rake that he uses to clean leaves off the water.’