Hot Blooded (7 page)

I texted Lily from the deck of the ferry as it sailed out of Dover.

"On the ferry. The frogs better hide their croissants. x"

I don't know why I texted her. We'd already agreed to meet when I got back. I was nervous. Not anything I couldn't handle but a feeling that was becoming alarmingly more frequent, at least since I'd spotted Lily that night in the Streatham Club. There was something else, though. A strange kind of unease, and so mixed up with the anticipation of the job I couldn't quite manage to identify its root cause, let alone explain it to myself.

I told myself it was the ferry. I could have taken the Chunnel - the rest of them did - but something about being underground like that, as well as being under the ocean, just made me want to stay somewhere I could see the sky. I stood on the back deck and watched the White Cliffs receding into the haze as the ship rolled in the choppy water. Lily didn't respond to my text. What was she doing? Working? Sitting in an expensively furnished office somewhere, pretending she was interested in talking about Pandora's latest footwear purchase? Thinking about Lily made me smile. It also started to get me hard.

We met at a car-hire place in Calais and I quickly noticed that only one of the four faces surrounding me was familiar. Dave Wilson, Gazza's son and not a person any sane man would ever have chosen to participate in an important job. Gaz always did have a huge blind spot when it came to his idiotic progeny. The last time I'd seen him he'd been lying on the floor of the ring, bleeding and screaming incoherent abuse at me. It hadn't been my idea to fight him, it had been his. The fact that he'd thought he had a chance was enough to convince me he wasn't a smart man and I'd actually gone easy on him. Since then, we hadn't spoken and I'd done my best to avoid him. Why the fuck had Gazza asked him to join us? Son or not, surely he had some inkling that sending an impulsive, immature young man with a mouth way too big for his body on a job that called for a cool head was risky? Fuck.

"Oi, Callum! You alright mate?"

He was grinning at me, completely aware of his status as Gazza's son. He'd pleaded for the fight in the ring. Outside of it, he was untouchable.

"Alright, Dave," I responded, gritting my teeth.

Before Dave could continue, a thin older man with steel-grey hair and an air of authority spoke up.

"Callum? Ian. This is Mick and Lee." He gestured to the two other men I didn't know and we exchanged nods. "And you know Dave?"

I nodded again. Something in the man's tone told me he was equally unhappy about Dave's presence.

"Right, well now we've got the social niceties out of the way we'd best get a move on."

He then started walking towards an articulated lorry parked at the back of the lot. The irritating feeling of unease in my stomach gripped me a little harder.

"Why do we need such a big fucking vehicle?" I asked. "You could fit a herd of elephants in that thing."

"Gazza's orders. We may have a few extra goodies when this is all done."

What the fuck. What the
fuck.
It was definitely too late to turn back. I didn't even want to, I just hated being sent into situations blind and it was starting to look like this wasn't our usual pick-up.

It turned out Mick was driving the lorry and the rest of us were jammed into a little compact car to make the trip to Paris. Before I got into the passenger seat, I caught Ian's eye.

"You want to tell me what's going on here? Why do we need a fucking lorry?"

Ian turned and looked at me for a few seconds. "It's all worked out, mate. Don't worry, we got a solid plan."

"Alright, cool. But why do we need a lorry for a couple bricks of nose candy?"

Something hardened in Ian's eyes. "You scared, mate?"

I could feel anger rising up in my throat. "This isn't about scared, this is about me wanting to know what the fuck is going on before I get into a situation that could get me sent down."

I watched Ian as he eyed me for a few more seconds, trying to work out how to handle things. He took a step back, smiled and held his hands up.

"No one's getting sent down. We got everything set up just right. And if all goes according to plan - and it will - there's a lot more for you in this than five thousand quid."

Conciliatory body language or not, I knew I was being challenged. I could feel Dave behind me, still wearing that stupid grin on his face, just waiting to see if I was going to back out.

"So what am I here for? Gaz said you needed me for protection."

"We do. That's it. No one's even going to be in any danger, that's just Gaz being paranoid, as usual. So. You in?"

I shrugged and got into the passenger seat of the car. It wasn't like I had a choice. Backing out would have fucked Gaz, and you don't fuck Gaz without consequences. Ian smiled approvingly.

"Right, that's sorted. Off we go then!"

Dave didn't shut up for more than a couple of minutes for the entire two and half hours it took to reach the outskirts of Paris. By the time we pulled off the main road and into what looked like some kind of run-down industrial estate I was itching to turn around in my seat and punch him square in the mouth, just to see the look on his face.

"You alright, Callum? You good, mate? You think you can handle this?"

Jesus Christ. "I'm good, Dave. The real question is whether or not you can handle this. Because you don't seem capable of handling fuck-all, if I'm perfectly honest."

I turned around in my seat to watch Dave's face reddening.

"Fuck off, Callum. You think you're so fucking tough-"

"SHUT IT!"

That was Ian, who also turned around in his seat and shut Dave up before he could say anything else. He then stared him down for a good ten seconds.

"Here we are. Now can you boys keep a lid on your squabbling?"

Dave nodded, and Ian sighed with relief.

"Good, great. Now, hardware."

He got out of the car and walked around to the boot. We followed, Dave skipping ahead eagerly like a schoolboy who thinks he's about to be given a sweetie. In the boot was a brown box and in the box were a number of guns. There was also a slim briefcase lying beside the box. Ian handed the guns out. It had been nearly a year since I'd carried a gun anywhere, and the heaviness of it in my hand felt at once familiar and surprising. When Dave was given his, the first thing he did was hold it up to examine it, inadvertently pointing it at Lee, who grimaced and pushed it away.

"Careful, mate, these are loaded."

Dave tried to play it off. "Oh? They are? Oh, uh, yeah, I thought they, uh, I thought you would be giving us bullets."

Briefly, Ian caught my eye and I could see how badly he wanted to shake his head. The second Dave wandered off, still poring over the gun like it was his first porn mag, I turned to Lee and Ian.

"Are we sure we want him here? Seems like more trouble than he's worth."

"Gaz wanted him here, nothing to do with me. If we can keep him from blowing his own head off, I'm going to consider the day a success."

I shrugged, realizing it was useless to try and get rid of Dave, and looked at Ian. He pulled out his phone and checked the time.

"They'll be here soon. There's three of them. I just need you two to hang back, right? I'll do the talking, you stay back here with the car, we clear? Any sign of trouble and you know what to do." He jerked his head towards Dave, wandering around out of earshot and still entranced with the handgun, and added: "I'll take that fuckwit with me."

"Right, OK," I said as the first fizz of adrenaline started to course through my veins. "When are they-"

I stopped talking at the sight of a lorry - not the one Mick was driving for us from Calais (and where the hell was Mick?) but a slightly smaller one - pulling into the lot from the other end. The sun had come out and it was shining directly into our eyes.

"That them?" I asked, tucking my gun into the back of my waistband and stepping back towards the car.

Ian watched the lorry as it advanced, extremely slowly, until it was about forty feet away. It came to a stop and we all watched, waiting. Eventually, without turning off the motor, two men stepped out, both wearing sunglasses. I remember wanting to laugh at those ridiculous sunglasses, straight out of a nineties action movie. Ian gave them a nod, they nodded back, and he started walking towards them, carrying the briefcase from the boot.

What had been a whisper of adrenaline became a flood with each step Ian took towards the two men. They were armed, too - I could see the bulges under their shirts. My focus suddenly felt very sharp, my hearing extra-sensitive. I loved that feeling, the one of being on the very verge of a precise action, completely attuned to each second as it ticked by. I imagined it as something like our ancestors would have experienced hunting on the savannah. London had Tesco and no savannah, so I had to get my action where I could. Lee and I stood watching as Ian talked to the two men for a few minutes and, eventually, handed the briefcase over to the one who'd been driving. So far, so good. I had started to relax slightly until Ian made a small, sudden movement with his arm that caught my eye.

I saw what was going to happen a split-second before it actually happened, as if I alone had been given the privilege of watching events in slow-motion while the rest of them had to contend with regular time. Both of the men from the lorry had looked down at the briefcase as soon as Ian handed it over and one had started to fumble with the clasp. Ian reached back and pulled the gun out of his waistband. He wasn't very fast, and both men noticed what was going on in time to look up.

Gunshots are so loud. You have no idea how loud they are until you hear them in real life. The reports echoed around the abandoned concrete buildings that surrounded the lot and I watched both the men from the lorry crumple to the ground. Ian turned to Lee and I, shouting, and the slow-motion effect snapped suddenly back to real time.

"Get over here! Now!"

I started to run towards Ian and I hadn't even gotten halfway there when the sound of more gunshots filled the air and my left leg suddenly exploded in pain. It was instinct alone that twisted my falling body to the left. A man was running towards me, his eyes dull with rage. He was pointing a gun at me and pulling the trigger over and over. Either his gun had jammed or he was out of bullets, because by then all it was producing was a metallic clicking sound. I raised my own weapon just before he got to me and squeezed the trigger twice. He fell flat on his face, not moving, and my eyes darted around the scene, desperately searching for anyone else who might be looking to finish the job he'd started.

There was no one else that I could see. Also, I couldn't get up. The only sounds were Ian screaming at Dave to "get the bodies out of sight, pull them out of the way!" and a heavy groaning that I soon realized was me. I looked over at Ian for help but he was already on his mobile phone and taking no notice of me whatsoever.

"Get down here now! Where the fuck are you?!" He bellowed, pacing and gesturing wildly, almost pulling his hair out.

There was no time to think about anything except getting the fuck out of there. Everything else could wait. I looked to my side. The man who had shot me, and who I had then shot, was lying there, face-down in the gravel. He wasn't dead but his breathing was labored and he was bleeding from his neck. As Dave and Ian ran around it dawned on me that I had to get up. They were going to leave me if I didn't.

The lorry - our lorry - pulled into the lot as I was trying to tuck my good leg under my body to allow myself to stand up. Ian ran towards it, waving his arms.

"Hurry up! Hurry the fuck up! We've got to go!"

That was when I realized that there probably hadn't been a fuck-up. That was how it was
supposed
to go down. Shooting the dealers had been the plan from the beginning, that's what Ian had meant when he told me there was more in it for me than five grand. It was only the white hot rage at Gazza, lying to my face about what the job was going to entail, that allowed me to finally get up, all my weight on my good leg, and start to stumble towards the lorry. I saw Lee on my way, dead, curled up on his side in a pool of blood. Mick was using a tool to cut the chains on the back of the other lorry and Ian and Dave were standing beside him, bouncing up and down with nerves, shouting at him to go faster.

I used my good leg to throw my body into the back of our lorry, which was open. I had to lie there panting for a few minutes before rolling over a few times until I was further inside. I was bleeding, my trousers were soaked with blood, but it didn't seem to be pouring out of me. I took a few deep breaths, trying to examine how I felt. Not dizzy, not tired. That was good.

"Get the fuck out of the way, mate!"

It was Ian, dragging a loading ramp off the lorry and positioning it against the back end. I rolled even further back, still conscious of the fact that not one of these men was going to take any time to help me. Then I lay there, watching, as the three of them started to push wooden crates up the ramp, one after another until they blocked my view and I couldn't see daylight anymore. It went on for a long time. So long I started to worry about the police showing up. Just when I was starting to consider getting off the lorry and trying to hide, I heard the door slam shut and was suddenly enveloped in darkness.