‘Major Dee’s drug consignments have a history of being robbed by the Mad Dogs,’ Chloe noted.
‘Exactly,’ Michael said. ‘And it could easily have been Simeon who started up this whole war by telling Sasha where Dee kept his stash of cocaine.’
‘Thanks for your help,’ Chloe smiled. ‘This sounds big. I’ll call you back as soon as I know more.’
‘Good news?’ Bruce asked as Chloe put her phone down.
‘As good as it gets,’ Chloe said. ‘I might even have hugged you if you weren’t still wearing half of the Mad Dogs FC training pitch.’
‘So it looks as if Simeon Bentine is Sasha’s mole inside the Slasher Boys,’ James said. ‘What are we gonna do about it?’
Chloe shrugged. ‘I’ll speak with Maureen and Zara. We’ll need a while to think it through, but this is something we can use to our advantage for sure.’
36. FRONT
It was gone 1 a.m. when James got home, but he lay awake, feeling on edge and asking himself the same questions over and over: Could he trust Bruce not to spill the beans on campus? Could Sasha possibly find out? And Dana … You don’t always realise that you’re taking someone for granted until you risk losing them.
James had never told Dana that he loved her, but realised now that he did. She was hilariously funny and he adored the way she ambled about in scruffy clothes, not caring what people thought about her. Dana managed to be sexy without spending hours plastering make-up over her face and the fact it was all so effortless somehow made it better.
But the weird thing about being fifteen – or maybe just the weird thing about being male – was that at the same time as James felt terrible about cheating on his girlfriend, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever get another chance with Lois. She wasn’t the most amazing person in the world, but she had a great body and he quite fancied trying out sex again when he wasn’t numb with shock.
In the end, James abandoned sleep. He pulled a tiny crack in the curtain on his side of the room and opened a cheesy paperback biography of a motorcycle champion that had been stuck on the front cover of his latest motorbike magazine. James was no connoisseur of literature, but it took him all of five pages to work out that it was a pile of crap and he was back to thinking about Lois in the bath when his mobile rang.
It was 5:57 when he saw Wheels flashing on the display. ‘Hey mate,’ James said.
The ring had woken Bruce, who sat up rubbing his eyes.
James practically swallowed his tongue when he didn’t hear Wheels’ voice.
‘All right,’ Sasha said. ‘Feelin’ fit?’
‘Yeah,’ James gulped. He kept hearing I just shagged your daughter in his head.
‘Sorry about the ungodly hour, James, but I just had a call from a mate of mine; we’re heading over to the Rudge Estate to take care of that bit of business we’ve been planning.’
‘Right,’ James nodded.
‘I wasn’t gonna bring you in on this bit, but I’ve got a couple of my lads dealing with some other business and this has to happen within the next few hours. Besides, I’ve really come to appreciate your loyalty, coming out for training when others have turned their backs.’
As soon as Sasha mentioned loyalty, James worried if he somehow knew what he’d been up to with Lois. ‘Thanks,’ he said weakly.
‘It’s not gonna be a picnic, but if you’re up for it, I can get a car along for you and your cousin in fifteen minutes. I’ll give you a grand a piece and I’m a fair man, so I’ll cut you in if we do well.’
‘I guess,’ James said, still nervous about Lois. ‘I mean … Sure. We’ll get suited and booted.’
‘Wheels reckons you’ve both got body armour and a couple of titchy handguns. Is that true?’
‘Yeah,’ James said.
‘Where’d you get hold of them?’ Sasha asked curiously.
‘Guy we did a couple of jobs for in Scotland. He couldn’t pay us, but he had a ton of dodgy weapons and some Kevlar suits ripped off from an army base.’
‘What about ammunition?’
‘A clip,’ James said. ‘Same for Bruce I think.’
‘Right,’ Sasha said. ‘Wear your armour and bring the guns, but I might have to upgrade your firepower. I want you down on the doorstep when I arrive or I’ll be pissed off.’
‘No worries, Sasha,’ James said.
He realised how tense he’d been as he put his phone down and saw its shape marked out in his palm where he’d been clutching it tight.
Bruce was sitting on the edge of his bed, trying to catch the conversation. ‘Are we on for something?’ he asked eagerly.
James shrugged and rubbed his fingers through his sweaty hair. ‘He says it’s going down at the hard front, but don’t you think it’s just a bit weird that he happens to call me tonight?’
Bruce grinned. ‘What, because of your little bath-time adventure?’
‘Well, what else?’ James snapped.
‘I heard him ask you about guns and body armour,’ Bruce pointed out. ‘You’re being paranoid. This room isn’t secure; if he wanted your gonads on a platter he would have burst in and grabbed you right out of bed.’
‘Guess you’re right,’ James said uncertainly, as he walked to his locker and started grabbing some clothes. ‘But he specifically mentioned loyalty …’
James decided on a baggy polo shirt that would stretch over his body armour as well as his nanotube reinforced jacket.
‘Sounds like he’s expecting serious gunplay,’ Bruce said, as he stood beside James grabbing stuff out of the next locker. ‘You’d better wear the leg armour too.’
‘I hate that stuff,’ James said.
He’d never worn the lightweight leg armour, which covered his bum and the upper section of his legs with a series of cream-coloured Kevlar plates that made him look like an Imperial Stormtrooper out of a Star Wars movie.
Leg armour is much less common than the chest protection that every serious villain wears nowadays; but it wasn’t out of place because serious young criminals and wannabe drug dealers regard a thousand quid’s worth of body armour as a status symbol to go along with their flash watch, mobile phone and the weapon they tuck inside their designer jeans.
‘I know it makes your arse itch,’ Bruce said, as he pulled his armour up his legs and began tightening a series of Velcro straps, ‘but there’s plenty of places where I don’t want to get shot and this covers several of ’em.’
James felt almost obscenely butch as he led Bruce out of the room with the armour bulking out his clothes, a gun strapped to his leg and a knife tucked inside his Timberland boot. He’d worn similar levels of equipment on training exercises, but never on the streets.
‘We’d better let Chloe know what’s occurring,’ Bruce said, dialling her number as they ambled down the stairs, ahead of schedule but with less than four hours’ sleep to their names.
There was a new staff member on the Zoo reception desk and she was still green enough to try enforcing the rule that you had to sign the book if you came in or out between midnight and 7 a.m.
‘There you go,’ James said, handing back the Biro and clipboard as Bruce headed through a door with its shattered glass panels boarded up. The sun was coming up and the sky was a mix of purple and orange.
‘What did Chloe say?’ James asked.
‘Not much,’ Bruce shrugged. ‘She said to be careful and if it gets dangerous we save our arses first and worry about our cover later. Oh, and she’s been on the blower with the liaison at the police station. Apparently the councillor Sasha stomped has got a dozen broken bones including a fractured skull, but he’s not telling anyone how it happened.’
‘Poor guy didn’t have a hope,’ James said, shaking his head. ‘Sasha’s a complete animal.’
‘I’ve heard that his daughter’s a bit of a tiger too,’ Bruce smirked.
*
After all the fuss to dress and get downstairs quickly, their ride was a quarter of an hour late and the wait w
as made uncomfortable by a cop car slowing down to check them out.
‘Sasha’s gone on ahead,’ Wheels said, as he pulled up in his Astra, which was now sprayed black. ‘Get in the back: there’s gloves, masks and guns for each of you in the gym bag. I’ll show you how to use them when we get to the flat.’
James and Bruce climbed in the car and Wheels pulled away almost before they slammed the doors. Bruce opened the drawstring on an orange Nike gym bag, revealing two Glock 9 machine pistols. Glocks were amongst the most powerful handguns available. They were rarely seen out of the hands of Special Forces and close protection officers, and were virtually unheard of amongst British criminals.
The two agents exchanged worried looks. The Glocks could fire twenty rounds in a few seconds; and in a kill-or-be-killed situation, the boys might not have any choice about pulling the trigger.
‘Fully automatic, really nice guns,’ Wheels said. ‘But ammo’s rarer than pink dog turds in this town, so you’d better not fire them without good reason.’
‘So what’s going down?’ James asked. ‘Sasha didn’t tell us much on the phone.’
‘I don’t know all the details myself,’ Wheels said. ‘Sasha’s a master of planning this kind of thing and I pretty much go along with what he says. The only thing I know is that there’s a meeting set up and a major drug deal is going down involving the Slasher Boys.’
‘Cool,’ James said.
He’d been surveying the flat for close to three weeks and he knew that most of the dealers who lived and worked in the hard front looked West Indian, but this was the first time he’d heard confirmation that they were linked to Major Dee’s crew.
*
Sasha, Savvas and a black dude were waiting at the flat. James grinned when he recognised Kelvin Holmes standing in the middle of the living-room. Kelvin had recruited James into Keith Moore’s organisation three years earlier. The mission had resulted in Kelvin getting a three-year prison sentence, but fortunately he had no clue that James was responsible.
‘Blast from the past!’ Kelvin said affectionately when he saw James. ‘You’ve got big! I hear you’ve been up north.’
Kelvin was scarily muscular, but he looked pretty lame in navy slacks and a short-sleeve shirt with a Royal Mail logo over the breast pocket.
‘You’re working for the Post Office now?’ James asked.
‘One day only,’ Kelvin grinned, as he pointed towards a large amazon.co.uk parcel resting against the wall. ‘Special delivery.’
37. POST
It was 7:40 a.m. when Kelvin approached the hard front, with the Amazon parcel under his arm and a mail bag slung over his back. Savvas and Wheels crouched in a stairwell less than ten metres away, with silenced handguns in holsters under their jackets. James and Bruce were behind them, leather gloves over their hands and black balaclavas ready to pull over their faces before they moved in. Sasha was in the next block watching through the surveillance cameras. As the boss of the Mad Dogs, he left most of the dirty work to his younger deputies.
Salty beads streaked down Kelvin’s forehead as he stood at the reinforced door. He could hear a couple speaking inside as he jammed his thumb on the doorbell for a second time.
‘Parcel,’ Kelvin shouted. ‘I know you’re there but I ain’t got all day.’
A couple of bolts slid off and the door opened a few centimetres, still secured by a heavy chain. The instant it moved, Savvas and his three companions jumped out of the stairwell and began moving along the balcony towards the flat.
The woman behind the door was in a state, with a duvet wrapped around her shoulders and a yellow muck weeping from an infected eyeball.
‘Hey,’ the woman yawned, as Kelvin passed a clipboard and Biro through the doorway. Then she screamed back down the hallway: ‘More of your poxy books, Tyler. How come it’s not your arse I see moving out of bed?’
As the woman scrawled her name in a white box, Kelvin slipped a 60,000-volt cattle prod out of his back pocket and jammed it into her belly. She flew away from the door, convulsing as she collapsed backwards into a rack of coats hanging on the wall.
Outside, Wheels pulled down his balaclava and ran forwards holding a giant pair of bolt croppers. Kelvin pushed his trainer against the door to make the chain tight and Wheels cut it.
Kelvin didn’t have body armour or a gun and the woman had seen his face, so he backed off and let the other four take care of business. A woman shouted as Savvas and Wheels charged into the living-room waving their guns. As planned, James raced on down the hallway and burst into the main bedroom, while Bruce pinned the woman to the hallway floor, locking her arms behind her back with disposable cuffs and forcing a rubber gag into her mouth.
A smell hit James as the bedroom door came open: a mixture of urine and old sweat that made him glad he hadn’t eaten breakfast. After weeks of surveillance, James was certain that they’d seen everyone come and go enough times to know exactly who was inside, but he was staggered to find a small boy staring out from between the wall and a chest of drawers. He looked about five, but he had a dummy in his mouth and clearly hadn’t seen bathwater in weeks.
James was so appalled by the sad little figure that he lost concentration, allowing the man in the bed to reach under the mattress and grab a knife. But James ripped the Glock out of its holster and held it in the air.
‘Put that down before I blow your head off,’ James said strictly.
He looked back when he heard a row breaking out in the hallway directly behind him. One of the dealers had tried making a sprint out of the second bedroom, but he’d clattered into Bruce, who’d taken him down with a palm thrust hard into his solar plexus.
‘Get everyone tied and bring ’em in here,’ Savvas shouted from the living-room. ‘Then we’ll search for the gear.’
‘Put this in your mouth and pull the strap behind your head,’ James ordered, as he grabbed a rubber gag out of his pocket and threw it on to the bed.
The man did what he was told.
‘Now your wrists,’ James said, putting the gun to the man’s head as he looped plastic cuffs over his hands and pulled them tight.
All this time the filthy little lad stared dumbly. ‘All right mate?’ James said, trying to be as reassuring as a masked man holding a gun can be. ‘Don’t be scared. We’re not gonna hurt you.’
The living-room smelled funky, though nothing like as bad as the bedroom. There were dirty cups piled everywhere, the ashtrays were stacked and there were about a hundred Playstation games and DVDs in a mound near the TV, most of them out of their boxes.
It was a small space and it got even smaller with three gagged men on the sofa, two gagged women on the floor and the little boy standing in the corner with his bony legs crossed.
James and Bruce stood guard in the living-room while Savvas and Wheels tore the other rooms apart searching for drugs and money.
‘Why don’t you get some toys to play with,’ James said gently, concerned that traumatising a five-year-old with a gun would be yet another item on the long list of things that would keep him out of heaven.
But the boy didn’t move. James noticed a couple of plastic cars jammed under the edge of the sofa and he kicked them across the carpet. After a couple of seconds the boy kicked them back. He seemed starved of attention and after the car had been kicked back and forth a couple of times, the little lad smiled and came over towards James.
‘Can I hold your gun?’ he asked.
James looked down at the matted hair and tried not to gag as he breathed the lad’s smell. There were welts on the back of his arms where he’d been whipped. The sight made James boil.
‘It’s only for grown-ups,’ James said, as he reached down his pocket. ‘But I’ve got some chocolate éclairs.’
James was going to pull out one sweet, but when he saw the little boy’s face light up he gave him the whole packet. The lad scrambled back into his corner and crammed two toffees in his mouth.
‘Take it easy,’ James sa
id. ‘You’ll choke.’
But the boy took the warning as a threat and he crouched down nervously, clutching the sweets to his chest and primed for an explosion of tears.
‘Check this out, kids,’ Wheels boomed, as he struggled into the room with a large backpack. He unzipped it and pulled back the flap, unveiling bags filled with powdered cocaine and honeycomb-like bricks of crack.
Bruce’s eyes were bulging. ‘How much is that lot worth?’
Wheels shrugged. ‘Ain’t had time to weigh it, but it’s gotta be at least seventy grand.’
Savvas looked at his watch as he strode into the room. ‘Looks like we’re all secured. Is everyone behaving themselves in here?’
‘No problems,’ James said.
‘Hey, you’ve got some sweets,’ Savvas said, smiling at the boy in the corner. ‘What’s your name?’
But the lad was too shy to answer. Savvas shook his head in disgust as he stepped towards the two women.
‘Which one of you junkie bitches is his mother?’ he asked angrily.
Neither woman could speak with the gags in their mouth, and neither nodded. So Savvas picked the one on the left at random. He grabbed her by the chin and bashed her head against the wall.
‘Give him a bath,’ Savvas said, as he stepped back shaking his head in disgust. ‘How can you let him walk around in that state?’ Then he looked over at Bruce and pulled a tenner out of his pocket. ‘We’re gonna have to wait here a couple of hours. I’ve put the kettle on, but I’m not eating anything out of that filthy kitchen. Would you nip down to the café across the street and get the bacon sarnies in?’
*
To avoid suspicion, Savvas untied one of the dealers and let him continue the daily routine of taking orders and passing small packets of drugs through the letterbox when the doorbell rang.
James’ little friend seemed half starved. After finishing off his chocolates, the boy ate an entire bacon-and-fried-egg sandwich and shrieked happily as he kicked a small football up and down the hallway with his masked friends. But things got tense as ten o’clock drew near.