“Why d’you even care?” Morris enquired. “You have a supply straight out of the country. You supply all the fucking kids in the city with this shit.”
“Like I said,” Sanderson began. “The pills floating about now are fucking dynamite. The stuff I sell is cut so much these bastards make them look like
Smarties
. And…” the older man paused; Morris could see a look of extreme distaste spread across his face. “They’re selling for a lot less than my gear. I can’t afford to knock down the prices.” He grinned his sadistic grin again, “I can’t compete with the competition so I need you two to throw a spanner in their works.”
Roach reached for the paper and quickly stuffed it into his jacket pocket, not taking the time to read its contents.
“Here,” Sanderson pointed to two large padded envelopes on the desk. “There’s your cash from the Harris hit. Pull off this one and I’ll consider giving you boys a little extra.”
12
“I can’t fucking believe that guy,” Morris said as he opened the door to the Mondeo, clambering into the passenger seat as Roach seated himself behind the wheel. “We drove for five fucking hours last night to sort out Harris. All because he turned one of Sanders’s boys over -- who, surprise, surprise, also ends up in a fucking body bag. What was the point?”
“It’s all about respect I guess,” Roach offered.
“I don’t know about you but I certainly don’t respect that fucking fat shit,” he said bitterly. “We’ve been carrying out all his fucking dirty work for nine years now, and what do we get to show for it?”
“Looks like six grand,” Roach held one of the padded envelopes in his hand, his piercing eyes scanning the wad of cash inside. “Each,” he added, dropping the envelope onto Morris’s lap and tossing the other into the back seat.
“You ever get the feeling that it isn’t worth it?” Morris questioned as Roach turned the keys and revved up the engine.
“Not really. It’s good money and easy work.”
“It’s murder. If we get caught we’re fucking screwed. Sanders can pay himself off, but if
we
get caught he wouldn’t bat a fucking eyelid. He’d let us rot.”
“That’s the risk we take. He needs people like us to do his dirty work,” Roach said, his eyes on the back window as he reversed the car out of the car park surrounding the warehouse complex, “and we need people like him to pay us for doing it.”
“Do we?” Morris said blankly, his eyes fixed on the bustling warehouse which operated as an import and export business and covered up Sanderson’s illegal activities.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Morris answered, staring off into space.
“Don’t go getting any ideas Darren, we have it good. It’s easy money for people like us, it keeps my wife in fucking shoes, and it keeps you, well... Gambling.”
Morris laughed. “How is your wife?” he queried.
“Still a fucking bitch.”
“Is she still having it away with the milkman?”
“I wish,” Roach replied. “It would give me an excuse to get rid of her, she’s fucking expensive. How about you Darren? Are you still wasting your life away at the bookies?”
“Pretty much.”
“Picked any winners recently?”
“Who knows…I’m just--”
“Just in it for the social interaction,” Roach said, finishing off Morris’s sentence.
“Am I that predictable?”
“Not really, you’re just a shit gambler. If you win I always fucking hear about it.”
Silence veiled the car as the warehouse became a blip in the rear-view mirror.
“Here,” Roach was the first to break the silence; he reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper he took from Sanders’s desk. “Take a look at that, we might as well sort some of this shit out before lunch.”
13
Johnny Phillips felt a niggling nerve pounding a painful beat in the back of his skull, a million minuscule needles sadistically prodding his brain. He could see light through his closed eyelids -- an orange blur through the thin skin which declared that the reality beyond was alive and alight.
Slowly, and with great deliberation, he opened his eyes -- feeling every increment as his eyelashes seemed to stick to each other. With his sticky eyes pried, his vision was still partially blurred and dulled around the edges.
“Morning.”
The slurred and harsh voice came from the other side of the room. Phillips squinted to see the slumped form of Michael Richards, his body lazily tangled over the leather armchair; his eyes half concentrating on the television which had been turned down low.
“How long you been awake?” Phillips choked, surprised at how dry his words were.
“Not long enough to move, as you can see,” Richards’s voice was laden with a dry rasp.
Phillips released a long yawn and pushed his body up. He had been slumped awkwardly on the sofa and as he propelled himself upright he felt a painful twinge in his left shoulder.
“Put the kettle on would you Mickey?” he pleaded. He rubbed his shoulder, trying to restore the proper flow of blood.
“Bollocks,” Richards muttered.
“I’m gagging for a coffee,” Phillips stated.
“That makes two of us, but I aint got the strength to move yet.”
Phillips shrugged and sank back into the sofa. “What are you watching?” he asked, turning his eyes to the television screen as it panned out to show an African wilderness.
“Some animal show, it was on when I woke up, we must have left the TV on last night.”
Phillips nodded slowly. He looked sternly at Richards. “You not gonna turn it over for fuck’s sake?”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The remote control is on the windowsill.”
“Ah.”
They fixed their attentions on the television, their blurred eyes staring unblinkingly at the screen.
“Maybe there’ll be something decent on after this,” Richards offered.
“Maybe.”
14
Howard Price heartily stuffed the remains of his breakfast into his mouth. The final crumbs from a blackened piece of toast collapsed onto his blue pyjama top. He took a sip from his coffee to wash them down, wincing in distaste as the hot liquid burned its way to his stomach.
“You didn’t put any sugar in here love,” he said softly.
Elizabeth Price stood at the kitchen counter, her eyes wondering over the table where her husband and daughter sat eating breakfast, her mind elsewhere. Her blackened and bloodshot eyes stared at Howard in what seemed to be confusion.
“The coffee,” Howard said in confirmation, holding the cup in the air.
She nodded in recognition and walked towards the table.
“Are you still drunk mummy?” Lisa studied her mother’s sullen complexion over the rim of her cereal bowl.
Elizabeth collected the hot cup from her husband and shot her daughter a sly smile. “I’m not drunk I’m just a little tired,” she said softly.
“But daddy said you went out like a light last night.”
Howard grinned to himself and continued to read the morning paper, listening to his daughter’s words with interest.
“I was tired. I still am,” Elizabeth explained.
“How much sleep have you had?” Lisa said inquisitively.
“I don’t know, about eight hours I guess,” Elizabeth said, scooping two mounds of sugar into the full mug of coffee.
“I’ve had about the same, and I’m not tired,” Lisa said matter of factly.
“That’s different, I’m older--” her mother began to explain.
“A
lot
older,” Lisa said quickly, “but you’re not normally like this in the morning.”
“Well, I was drinking last night.”
“You can’t handle your drink can you?” She fed a spoonful of cereal into her mouth and watched her mother’s slow reactions.
“Who said that?” Elizabeth asked with an eyebrow raised in suspicion.
“I just did,” she spilled a drop of milk on her chin, it dribbled over her chin and dropped onto her pink night dress, she dabbed at it disinterestedly with her hand.
“How did…” Elizabeth began but soon stopped herself. “No, I can’t handle my drink. But I
did
drink a lot,” she bargained.
Lisa looked at Howard who shook his head; Elizabeth saw the exchange.
“Stop ganging up on me, I’m tender,” she pleaded.
Lisa giggled and continued to chomp away at her cereal.
“Half the bloody day is missing,” Howard mumbled after a moment’s silence. “It’s past ten and I’m still not dressed.”
“So, we had a lie in, it’s our anniversary…or was. We deserve the rest, and you’re on your holidays now remember?”
Howard grimaced, “I remember,” he said, recalling a conversation the night before in which he agreed to take a couple of weeks off from work to relax and spend more time with his family. “I was just hoping you wouldn’t.”
Elizabeth smiled and replaced Howard’s cup of coffee from which he drunk immediately; the sweetened black caffeinated drink perked him up somewhat.
“Don’t forget to phone in, make sure they know you won’t be there for a while.”
“They already know I took a long weekend, but…” he allowed his sentence to trail off.
Elizabeth smiled, “You took a long weekend on a Saturday,” she said jokingly, “which would have made today your last day off, you’re not very good at taking a break are you? Just chill out around the house. Get some rest, watch some television.”
“Sitting around all day isn’t my style,” Howard said, rising to his feet, leaving half a cup of coffee on the table. “What do you say we have a run into town?” he asked Lisa.
His daughter grinned wide enough to expose all of her teeth. “Okay,” she agreed excitedly.
“Great,” he dipped down to kiss his daughter on the cheek. “I’ll go get dressed, make a few phone calls then we can leave your mother and her hangover alone.”
15
“Do you think it’s wise,” Richards queried as Johnny Phillips stood over him with a cup of coffee.
“Why not?” Phillips offered.
Richards shrugged. His hangover was quickly fading. He couldn’t handle his drink and always suffered, but last night he hadn’t drunk much before falling asleep. His brain trickled off into a spasm of thought. He instinctively took the cup from Phillips and held the hot ceramic mug in his hands.
“Two hits in two days?” Richards questioned without conviction. He took a sip of coffee and revelled in its warmth as the liquid sparked life into his tired body.
“It’s not really two days when you think about it,” Phillips clarified. He had taken a seat on the leather sofa, his own cup of coffee grasped lightly in one hand. “The hit on the Robinson safe took six weeks of planning.”
“It was worth it in the end,” Richards said softly, regaining his voice as he continued to sip the scalding liquid -- moistening his vocal cords with each caffeinated swig.
“I know that, but we still need more cash, we need a quick hit, something we can pull off without much hassle.” Phillips leaned forward. “We need an easy earner.”
“There’s no such thing, you know that.”
“Maybe,” Phillips agreed. “But if we put our minds to it we can do it.”
Phillips looked across at his friend hopefully, but a look of apathy had been etched onto Richards’s face. “What about the construction site job we did two years ago,” Phillips continued. “We pulled that off in two days”
Richards nodded his head in recollection. When he spoke he did so over the rim of the coffee cup, his eyes gazing into space. “We nicked gear from one construction site and sold them to another a mile down the road, we got lucky. What are the chances of two completely different small time construction companies setting up developments within a mile of each other -- again,” Richards paused to take a long drink. “Plus, we already had a van hired from the removals job, we were lucky to find the two construction sites in the first place. If we hadn’t taken a detour to escape the
real
removal company, we would have never latched onto the other con.”
“Exactly, but as soon as we drove past the sites we came up with the idea, and hours later we were using the van to shift the tools from one site to the other,” Phillips said, a spark of excitement in his voice.
“That was a fucking tiring day, two hours to help the family ‘
move house’
a couple more to unload the gear from the van into the lockup, then back to lugging fucking bricks, slates and tools. Took me four days to recover,” Richards confessed.
“It was worth it though right?”
“Definitely fucking worth it,” he guaranteed with a wide smile. “But that was a one in a million, we were lucky.”
“I know, but who says we can’t get lucky again?”
Phillips’s words hung in the air. Richards drained the remains of his coffee, the final drops of the brown liquid still steamed with a powerful heat.
“You have any ideas?” he asked out of interest, putting the cup to one side.
“None whatsoever, but we can find something.”
“Why don’t we just keep playing it safe? We’re still bringing in bundles of cash.”
“We spend all day lying around, getting pissed and fucking local tarts.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“In the old days we’d have shit loads of cons lined up, all big money.” Phillips remembered with a smile.
“Most of which we pulled off half arsed and nearly ended up in jail,” Richards warned.
“Times change, the hits we had back then we could pull off easy now. Then we were just kids, we always fucked up, most of the time we never even left with the money. But we worked the streets, we didn’t wait for the cons to come to us, we found them.”
Richards nodded. “Why the sudden change of heart?” he wondered. “What’s brought this up?”
“We need money,” Phillips said without hesitation. “We need to climb the ladder, we need to open up the bookies, I’m sick of this fucking bullshit.”
“You’re sick of the game? You’re fucking joking aren’t you?”
“I just want the money,” Phillips said softly, resting his back against the plush sofa. “When we open up this shop we’ll be rolling in it.”
“You’re being too hasty,” Richards worried.
Phillips shrugged his shoulders. “We’re pro’s Mickey. We can pull off anything, anywhere. We could have the money by next week if we wanted.”