Hot Blooded (9 page)

There was a tiny measure of comfort in hearing that he hadn't just shot someone for no reason, but I was still shocked by the scope of the violence. To my supreme embarrassment, and so quickly I didn't even have time to think about suppressing it, I started to cry. My eyes just welled up out of nowhere.

"Oh, shit, Lily," Callum said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have called you. Just - just leave me here. I can deal with everything from here. I-"

I held up one hand for him to stop and then sat there, gulping back emotions and trying to get it together enough to speak. When I did, my voice was wobbly and squeaky and I let out a stupid little laugh.

"No, Callum. I, uh, I don't even know why I'm doing this. I'm sleep-deprived. I never do this. I, uh, I never, I never cry. Not really. I don't know what the hell is happening right now, I-"

Instead of waiting for me to finish rambling, Callum wrapped an arm around my shoulders and squeezed me, tightly.

"Shhh, Lily."

I don't know if it was the 'shhh' or his tone when he said it, but the sweetness of him in that moment was so sharp I could almost taste it. All the embarrassment of my crying dissipated instantly, surprisingly. I turned to look at him, shocked by how easily it had slipped away.

"What? Why do you have that look on your face?" He asked me, his voice quiet with concern.

"I, I don't know. I just suddenly felt better when you said that. When you said 'shhh'. Am I going crazy? I seriously don't cry in front of people."

"Silly girl," Callum whispered, smiling at me. "So smart, and so silly. You felt better because I comforted you. That's what human beings do when someone is hurt or scared. Do you think you're made of stone, Lily Parker? Because you're not."

I sniffled and wiped my nose. "I don't think I'm made of stone. Maybe I just wish I was."

"Exactly."

I could feel the wall going up inside my mind. I knew it was happening, but I was helpless to stop it. Callum was right. He could see my vulnerability and that was terrifying. A lot more terrifying, in some ways, than being woken up in the middle of the night by someone I cared about telling me they were in deep trouble. In the latter scenario, I had some power, some sense of control - I could
do something.
In the former, I was weak.

"I have to go." I said, aware of how unnatural and awkward I sounded."I have work today and you're not going to bleed out. You need to keep it clean, though."

Callum didn't say anything. He just looked at me like he knew exactly what I was doing.

"Alright," he said, gently. "Thank you for coming to my rescue, Doctor Lily. I'm going to take care of this and then I'm going to call you."

He leaned in to kiss me and I turned my head away so he got my cheek. I couldn't even look at him I was so embarrassed. I tried to force a casual tone as I left.

"Get some sleep, too. Talk to you soon!"

So cringe-worthy. "Talk to you soon!" Like he was a colleague and we'd been having a polite discussion about our schedule. Ugh. I banged my head gently against the steering wheel when I was back in the car. It was only an hour later, tiredly wending my way through the endless suburbs of London, that I realized I'd just completely negated the opportunity to question him further with regards to what had happened in Paris.

The spiral of self-blame was only avoided by my own tiredness. I walked in my front door and fell straight into bed, utterly exhausted.

My mum was, thankfully, on her way to work when I got to her flat. She was rushing around in her blue and white pharmacy-assistant's uniform looking for last minute keys, lunch money, her phone, etc. She didn't have time to take a good look at me, although she was surprised I was showing my face so early in the day.

"Callum! Why are you here? Is something wrong?"

"No, mum," I lied, "I'm just looking for an old jacket I think I left here."

"Oh? Well, OK. Most of your things are still in your room, although it's possible Jake has some of them. You should call him."

"Sure, yeah, I'll call him if I can't find it."

She came over to me and kissed me on the forehead before leaving, then pulled back and took a slightly harder look at me.

"Are you sure you're alright? You look - you look tired. Is something going on?"

"No, mum. Nothing's going on. You're going to be late."

"I know, I know. There's Jaffa Cakes in the cupboard if you're hungry. Love you."

"Love you too."

Thank God she was late for work. No one can give interrogations like my mother and even though I'd cleaned up and changed clothes, it only would have taken her a few more minutes to figure out something was, in fact, quite wrong. As soon as I heard the door close and lock behind her, I went straight to the cupboard. For the gin, not the Jaffa Cakes. Mum always kept a bottle of gin on hand, in case anyone dropped by.

Standing in the kitchen, resting most of my weight on my good leg, I unscrewed the cap and took a big gulp, nearly retching at the foulness. How anyone - let alone little old ladies - could drink gin was beyond me entirely. As soon as the alcohol started to work its way into my system I found my mum's sewing kit and took off my trousers. Lily had been right, I definitely needed stitches. The wound kept re-opening every time I moved too quickly or stood up.

Thinking about Lily made me smile. She'd been so sweetly startled by her own vulnerability. It had taken everything in me not to pull her into my arms when she'd cried, but I knew I had to be careful with her. There was something so fragile there, something inside herself that she felt needed to be hidden and protected. She was wrong, of course, but even I could sense she was likely to bolt if I pushed too hard.

But she'd come to me in the middle of the night when I needed her, and her concern - her genuine worry for me - had been like a balm to my soul. If she needed me to wait, I would wait. If she needed me to prove myself, I would prove myself.

My brother Jake arrived about twenty minutes later and found me in the kitchen, trousers around my ankles, gritting my teeth and halfway through the job.

"Callum? What are you-" he spotted the injury on my leg. "What's that? What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing, genius? Baking a cake?"

Jake and I had a good, if somewhat distant relationship. He stayed in school, unlike me, and was busy with A-Levels and A-Level girls and the university applications me and mum thought were mostly pointless.

"What happened? That looks - that looks pretty bad, Callum. I can give you a lift to A and E if you like?"

"Fuck A and E, man. I'm almost finished. Can you hand me the bottle?"

Silently, he handed me the bottle and I took another swig.

"Jesus Christ, why does mum keep this?" I asked, grimacing.

"She likes to have something to offer when people drop by."

"It was a rhetorical question, Jake."

My brother knew what I did. He knew I was a fighter and he knew I did other kinds of work for Gazza. Everyone in the neighborhood knew. It wasn't a big deal.

"What the hell happened?"

Jake was staring at the uneven, haphazard stitches on my thigh. I clamped my lips together and pushed the needle back through my skin, groaning as I pulled the sewing thread through.

"Nothing. I got hurt, didn't I?"

"But why are you doing this here? You're aware that we live in the first world, right? You don't always have to be such a fucking tough guy, Callum, you could just go to the hospital like the rest of us."

That got my back up a little. Jake considered himself the 'level-headed' one, and part of him enjoyed playing it up, acting like I was some kind of screw-up because I decided to leave school and do a job that most people wouldn't really think of as respectable.

"Oh fuck off, will you? I'm almost finished. Get me some of that antibiotic cream from the medicine cupboard."

"The Polysporin?"

"Yes, Jake, the Polysporin. We can't all be highly educated geniuses who know the names of all the antibiotic creams."

He got the Polysporin and I finished the last stitch. It was, to put it mildly, an extremely rough job.

"That looks like shit, Callum."

I couldn't help but laugh. "I know. But it's doing the job, isn't it?"

Jake made a skeptical face. "I guess so. Biccies?"

So I sat at the kitchen table with my kid brother, eating biscuits and talking about his adventures at college for half an hour. It was a nice decompression, actually, as it probably wouldn't have been a wonderful idea to show up at the Club still completely wound up after what had gone down outside Paris. At one point he asked me about my 'girlfriend situation' and I must have given something away in my tone because Jake was immediately all over the topic.

"Have you met someone, Callum? Is that why you suddenly look all sneaky?"

I shrugged. "I'm seeing someone, if that's what you're asking."

"Seeing someone? Wow, I've never heard you use that language before. What are the women of South London going to do without you? Is it someone I know?"

Jake was being sarcastic, but that's how it was between us. If anything, it was affectionate rather than hostile.

"No, you don't know her."

"Well who is she? Have you told mum? Are you going to make me ask for details?"

"Her name is Lily. She's Canadian but she lives in Hackney. What else do you want to know?"

Jake shook his head and laughed. "You're always so full of information. I mean, is it serious? How old is she?"

The second question was actually easier to answer than the first, so that's what I did. "She's thirty, actually."

"Ha, I knew you'd end up with an older woman. Ever since that incident in the parking lot with what's-his-name's mum."

"Fuck off. She's thirty, not fifty. And to be perfectly honest she's hotter than any eighteen year old I ever saw. Hotter
and
a lot more interesting."

"And is it serious?"

Damn. I hadn't managed to throw him off. I squirmed for a few minutes and he continued:

"Shit. It is serious. I've never seen you all bashful over a girl, Callum. You better hope mum likes her, because if she doesn't you're in for a world of trouble. I mean, I don't think-"

I cut Jake off before he could assume too much. "Hold your horses, man. I don't know if it's serious. It might be."

My brother grinned at me. "Uh-huh. If you say so. All I know is I've never seen you with that lovesick look in your eyes."

"Fuck off."

"You fuck off, I can see it there, right now, it's written all over your face. I hope she doesn't break your heart. Although if she does you could say it was payback, of a sort. That girl Crystal still constantly asks about you."

I didn't have a single clue who Crystal was. Obviously someone I'd had some fun with at some point. Jake and I sat verbally poking at each other and eating Jaffa Cakes until he had to go. I had to go, too - to the Club. Gazza had called another 'meeting' - and I knew I had to be there.

Gazza was there when I arrived. So was Ian and another, younger-looking man I'd never seen before.

"This is Liam," Gazza told me, jerking his thumb towards the new guy. "He's Wayne's kid."

"Wayne Karswell?"

Liam shot me a look. "Yes, Wayne Karswell."

Well how the fuck was I supposed to know? Until very recently I didn't even think Wayne Karswell was anybody I needed to know about.

We all sat down in Gazza's office, crammed in too close to each other, and waited for the boss to say something first. I had a lot to say, but I also knew I was now in the position of having killed someone in the course of an illegal drug deal, and that made me vulnerable. It meant I probably wasn't in a position to start throwing my weight around and pissing people off.

Gaz leaned back in his chair and made a big show of taking his time getting out a cigarette, tapping the cigarette on the table and then staring at it contemplatively for a few seconds after his first drag. I wanted to tell him to cut the crime-boss shit.

"So, things didn't go entirely according to plan in Paris?" He said, finally.

I looked around. Ian was shaking his head a little and Liam was just sitting there. Really? No one was going to say anything? I decided I'd have to be the one to speak up - Gazza was asking a direct question, after all.

"Yeah, I'd say they went a little wrong. If you think four dead bodies is a 'little wrong.'"

As soon as the words were out of my mouth both Ian and Liam were staring at me, mouths open.

"What?" I demanded, looking around."Are we just not going to talk about this? What happened to the bodies, anyway? Did we just leave them there to be picked over and prodded by the cops? There's probably DNA all over the fucking show."

Ian turned sharply towards me. "We took care of the bodies, mate. This isn't amateur hour. And now that we're all sharing our feelings, I have to ask why you think it is you can come in here and-"

Gaz held a hand up to stop Ian talking. "Calm down, he's one of my fighters. He's not usually in on the other stuff."

I was getting angry. "Gaz, would you mind telling me just what the fuck is going on here? Did you just forget to mention that this was the kind of deal that necessitated a fucking LORRY to pull off? You know I'm always interested in any work you got going, but for the future, I'd just like to be informed if it's going to involve killing people and getting shot at. And, you know, lorries full of shit rather than a couple pounds."

Gazza took another drag on his cig, not betraying any signs of irritation - yet. "How is your leg, by the way?"

So my leg did warrant mentioning. "It's fine. Do you want to tell me what's going on here?"

He sighed. "You're a fighter, Callum. You're my best fighter. You could go pro if you wanted to, although I'm sure that life isn't for you, you'd never be able to handle it. I've used you as muscle on a few little things, here and there, you know how it goes. But opportunities present themselves, don't they, mate? And when they do, I'm the type of man who embraces them with open arms."

It was one of my dearest wishes that Gary Wilson would learn to speak in ways that weren't roundabout and almost entirely opaque, but I knew that wish wasn't coming true and I was starting to get better at deciphering his bullshit. The subtle dig at my not being able to 'handle' going pro was also classic Gaz - get the insult in, then change the subject.

"So what you're saying, when you say 'opportunities' is bigger deals, right? Much bigger deals?" I asked him.

The room was silent and, after a few seconds of studiously avoiding eye contact, Gazza nodded.

"And you want me to get in on this? Was this Paris thing a test of some kind?"

"I think you could say that, yeah. Ian said you did well. Managed to take that fucker down after he shot you, right?"

Ian leaned forward. "He did do well. He's got a level head, I could use him again. Mind you, I wouldn't object if you wanted to keep Dave back in the office."

I watched Gazza's mouth clamp shut into a tight, straight line. Ian didn't realize what a sore spot Dave Wilson was to his old man.

"The boy's still learning," Gazza said, not managing to keep a note of defensiveness out of his voice. "I'll keep him back the next few times, give him a talking to, but he just needs to learn."

As long as it's not on another job I'm involved in
, I thought to myself.

"Anyway, boys, it's payday."

Gazza took his gold necklace off - the one he'd always worn, for as long as I could remember. On the end of it was a key that he used it to unlock one of the desk drawers. Then he took out three overstuffed brown envelopes - so Liam Karswell was apparently already on the payroll - and handed one to each of us. I took mine and sat back, opening it. Inside was a gigantic wedge of hundred pound notes. I flipped through them with one finger to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. I'd never even seen a tenth of that amount of cash before. It made my head spin.

"Fuck, mate. How much is this?"

"One hundred thousand pounds."

One hundred thousand pounds. Gazza wasn't exaggerating about scaling up. Fucking hell. What was I going to do with all that money? A new car? Holiday? My mind instantly went to Lily. I could take her to one of those fancy restaurants in central London. Hell, I could take her on holiday. The Maldives. I bet she would look fucking amazing in a bikini.