Authors: Robert Muchamore
23. SAFE
Fay hadn’t forgotten any of the stuff her mother and aunt taught her. She made Ning bunch long hair under a baseball cap and wear a boob-squishing T-shirt and baggy hoodie. Cheap slip-on shoes a couple of sizes too big completed a look that would pass the pair off as young males to anyone who didn’t look too hard.
‘Only speak if you have to, and try to deepen your voice,’ Fay said. ‘If Hagar hears he got robbed by two women, I’ll probably be the first person he thinks of.’
Being July it was 10 p.m. before it got dark enough to leave Nebraska House. It was after Ning’s curfew, so the two girls nabbed a toddler’s ride-on fire truck from the outdoor play area and used it as a step-up before vaulting the back fence.
‘It’s like wearing clown shoes,’ Ning said, as she walked briskly. ‘I’d have put extra socks on if it wasn’t so warm.’
Both girls were sweating when they arrived. The moon was brighter than they’d have liked as Ning took a first glance at the shabby end-of-terrace house. The only hint that there might be something valuable inside were the bars over the front basement window.
‘First-floor windows open,’ Fay said. ‘Flickering light.’
‘TV?’ Ning asked.
Fay nodded. ‘If his girlfriend’s not around, he seems to go up to the bedroom early. I’ve had to be careful on lookout ’cos he sits by the window when he smokes.’
‘So how do we get inside?’ Ning asked.
‘Let me worry about that,’ Fay said. ‘How are your nerves?’
Breaking into a house with one guy inside was mild compared to many situations Ning had been in, both before and since joining CHERUB. But Fay didn’t know about that stuff so Ning made herself appear suitably wary.
‘I guess you know what you’re doing.’
‘For sure,’ Fay said, placing a reassuring hand on Ning’s shoulder before setting off towards the house.
The gate creaked, so Fay stepped over a low wall with Ning a couple of steps behind. Fay started down some uneven steps. Both girls pulled army-green balaclavas over their heads, as Fay took a lock gun from her pocket and approached the basement door.
A lock gun makes opening a lock easier than using a manual pick, but it still requires significant skill. Ning was impressed by how swiftly Fay managed to open a complex deadlock. Then she switched to a larger pick and effortlessly turned the main lock.
The door hadn’t moved in a while and it rained cobwebs and dust as Fay shoulder-barged it. After opening twenty centimetres, Fay felt a jolt as a thick chain pulled tight.
‘Damn,’ Fay said.
Ning thought Fay was lucky that the door had moved at all, because there might easily have been bolts on the inside.
‘Open my pack,’ Fay said.
Ning unbuckled the bag strapped to Fay’s back and pulled out a set of small bolt cutters. As Ning was stronger, she took charge of snapping the chain and led the way into a muggy basement with mildewed carpet and blistered plaster.
Nobody had lived down here for years, but the moonlight gave them a glimpse into a living-room populated with high-backed chairs and family photos from the 70s and 80s. The ground floor had a more modern vibe, but the occupant was a slob. There were mounds of dirty men’s clothes, a bin stuffed with takeaway boxes and a sink spewing dirty plates.
‘Mucky pup,’ Fay whispered.
All the doors were open because of the heat and Ning could hear the TV in the upstairs bedroom as Fay pulled out the Glock holstered to her belt and began creeping towards the flickering colours coming from the TV upstairs.
The last step made a loud creak as Fay lifted her foot, but there was no sign of movement in the bedroom. Gun poised, she craned her neck into the bedroom and was shocked to see nobody inside. She moved quickly to check under the bed, ripped open two wardrobes and looked out the window, instantly concluding that it was too high for Clay to have jumped.
‘Shit,’ Fay said, as Ning stood out on the landing, glancing behind at a couple of closed doors, then up at a loft hatch directly above her head.
Fay jumped when she heard a chirping noise, but it was a text message coming through on an HTC smartphone lying on the bed. The screen said
Imelda.
‘Must have rushed out if he left his phone,’ Ning said, as Fay stepped out on to the landing.
Clay might not have had his phone, but Ning was scared because there was a chance he’d gone to grab a weapon and she’d be a dead duck if he shot through one of the closed doors. She backed up to the wall and reached nervously towards a door handle. It was another bedroom, with a dozen pairs of immaculate Nikes lined up along the back wall.
Fay went for the other door, but it moved before she got there. A muscular arm snatched Fay’s wrist and yanked her forward into a cramped bathroom. She tried aiming the gun, but the jerking motion knocked her off balance and her back slammed painfully against a towel rail inside the bathroom as her gun flailed out of control.
Ning remembered CHERUB teaching her to create as much space between herself and a loaded weapon as possible. But she was fond of Fay and acted on instinct, charging into the cramped bathroom, as Clay twisted the weapon out of Fay’s hand.
The handgun landed on a lemon bath mat, as Clay and Fay wrestled near the edge of the bathtub, getting tangled in a clingy shower curtain. Clay drove up with his legs, knocking Fay back towards the sink, then strained to grab the gun. But Ning got there first, hooking the pistol with her oversized shoe, sending it spinning between her legs and stopping when it reached the hallway carpet.
Fay lunged at Clay, but he pushed her off and shoved her through the tangled curtain and into the bottom of the bathtub. Clay stood up to charge at Ning, but she swiped him around the head with the butt of the pistol.
The blow sent Clay to his knees in front of the sink, blood welling around a cut as Fay sat up in the bathtub. Ning took a half-step forward and stuck the gun in Clay’s face as he thought about making another move.
‘You’re too young to die,’ Ning said firmly. ‘Put your hands on your head.’
Clay’s face stayed angry, but Ning eyeballed him until his palms rested flat against his shaved head.
Ning spoke to Fay, trying to sound manly by deepening her voice but not too sure if it just sounded idiotic. ‘Is there a phone around? Has he called anyone?’
The two girls both glanced around, looking for a handset. They didn’t find one, but Ning did spot a can of pepper spray standing between the bleach and the toilet brush.
‘This what you came in here for?’ Ning asked, as she inspected the packaging and flipped off the lid. Clay winced when she aimed the nozzle at his face, but she just laughed and handed it across to Fay, who seemed dazed as she stepped out of the bathtub, clutching ribs that had banged painfully against a handrail.
‘Thought Hagar might have managed a gun for his little brother,’ Fay scoffed.
‘There’s nothing here for you girls,’ Clay said.
Ning sighed inwardly: so much for passing themselves off as young men.
Fay had regained her composure, and held the pepper spray menacingly as she stood directly behind Clay.
‘I’ve been watching this place for a while,’ Fay said. ‘Plenty of comings and goings. And now you’re gonna show us to the safe.’
‘Ain’t no safe here,’ Clay said.
‘I think there is,’ Fay said, touching on sarcasm. ‘Unless all those visitors were coming here for tea and cakes.’
‘You see any safe?’ Clay asked.
Ning and Fay were certain there was a safe in the house, because Warren said that his cousin had helped to install it. Unfortunately, Warren didn’t know where the safe was, and Fay hadn’t been able to work anything out while surveying the building from outside.
‘You’re gonna tell us where that safe is,’ Fay said firmly. ‘Then you’re gonna open it for us.’
Clay sucked air through his teeth and shook his head. ‘No safe here. You’re tripping.’
Although Ning had acquitted herself brilliantly during the tussle, Fay still regarded her as a subordinate and insisted on taking back the pistol. She kept the gun on Clay’s back as they escorted him downstairs.
Ning began a hunt while Clay sat on the sofa with Fay standing guard.
The fact that Warren’s cousin was a carpenter was a major clue. Ning started by looking behind a couple of pictures on the living-room wall, then moved into the kitchen and checked inside all the cabinets.
She was about to head down to the basement when she noticed a narrow gap running along the wall close to a radiator in the hallway. She rapped on the wall and got a hollow sound, and when she dug a penknife blade into the gap, the radiator wobbled.
‘Bingo,’ Ning shouted, as she grabbed the radiator, which appeared not to be connected to the central heating system.
Behind the heavy panel was a half-metre-deep cavity and a row of green LEDs on the front of a safe built into the floor.
‘It’s a keypad,’ Ning shouted, as she stepped back into the living-room. ‘We’re looking for a number, not a key.’
‘Well?’ Fay said, as she eyeballed Clay.
‘It’s on a timed lock,’ Clay said. ‘Even if I wanted to open it, I can’t do it without getting the master authorisation code from my brother.’
As the words left Clay’s mouth, Ning was already typing the name and model number she’d seen on the safe into the browser on her smartphone.
‘He’s lying,’ Ning said, as she swiped down the page. ‘Tecumax 416R safe with a four- to six-digit code. There’s no mention of any timing facility.’
Fay nodded in agreement. ‘I’ve seen people come and go at all times, day and night. There’s no timed lock on that thing.’
Even with a gun aimed at his temple, Clay still acted cocky. ‘My brother’s gonna get you for this,’ he blurted. ‘He’ll pimp you out to every guy who wants you, and when you’re all beat up and nasty, he’ll slit your throats.’
Fay had done enough raids with her mother and aunt to know that a lot of guys don’t believe that a woman really has the guts to hurt them, even if they have a gun pointing at their head. She’d learned that the best way to shock a man out of this mindset was to do something unexpectedly brutal.
Keeping one eye and the Glock on Clay, Fay reached into her backpack and pulled out a disposable surgeon’s scalpel. She used her teeth to rip off the sterile packaging and flicked off a plastic safety guard with her thumb. Then she swiped the blade, making a huge gash across Clay’s cheek.
As Clay moaned in pain, Fay began a speech she’d learned from her aunt.
‘The human body contains nine litres of blood. The wound I just gave you should clot and heal before you bleed out. But if you don’t tell me the safe combination within one minute I’m going to cut you again. And again one minute after that, if you don’t tell me the combination. By the time I’ve given you three cuts, your chances of dying from blood loss are greater than fifty per cent.’
‘I’m gonna have a scar, you crazy bitch,’ Clay said, clutching his face but apparently still not prepared to believe what Fay was telling him.
‘It would be a shame to completely ruin this nice carpet,’ Fay said, as she moved the reddened blade up to Clay’s other cheek. ‘And please stop calling us bitches. It’s sexist and just as offensive as if I called you a monkey.’
‘You’re crazy,’ Clay shouted.
Fay moved in with the scalpel again. ‘The combination,’ she demanded.
‘Two four one three zero,’ Clay blurted.
Fay looked up at Ning. ‘Go tap it in.’
Ning walked into the hallway, crouched through the gap to the floor-mounted safe and tapped in five digits. The LEDs flashed as a motor drew back the bolts and the door sprang open by a couple of centimetres.
‘We’re in,’ Ning shouted.
A light came on inside as Ning lifted the heavyweight door. It revealed nine vacuum-packed one-kilo bricks of cocaine, and three knotted carrier bags filled with hundreds of mini bags, containing one gram of cocaine each. There were also several large tubs filled with mysterious white powders, which Ning guessed were used by Hagar’s people to bulk up the cocaine when it was sold on the streets.
‘Ten to twelve kilos,’ Ning said excitedly, as she came back into the living-room.
Clay was on the couch with blurry eyes and his shirt collar soaked in blood.
‘Pack all the gear up into our rucksacks,’ Fay said. ‘Then come back here. I’ll need you to make sure he doesn’t try any funny business while I tie him up.’
24. KALIFORNIA
Two days later
Kalifornia Kar Kleen was situated on the forecourt of an abandoned petrol station behind King’s Cross railway station. Eight quid got your car washed by a crew of surly East Europeans in soggy blue overalls. Twenty-five got your car cleaned inside and out, while fifty got you a full valet with detailing. Kar Kleen didn’t accept cards or cheques, which made it a perfect business for its owner, Hagar, to launder cash made in the drug trade.
Ryan was average height for fifteen, but he was smaller than the adults he’d been sent to work with, so he’d landed the awkward job of cleaning car interiors. Vacuuming wasn’t too bad, but customers who dropped fifty quid for a valet expected perfection, so he had to crawl around inside cars with cleaning sprays, cloths and brushes hanging off a tool belt.
Ryan had done a full day at school, and was now into his third hour at the car-wash. He’d begun to hate Minis, because there were millions of them around and there was no comfortable way for a normal-sized human to clean out the back of a small two-doored car.
The Mini Ryan was in right now was particularly bad because the owner had a couple of brats and the back seats were crusted with Ribena stains, crayon and puke. He worked some cleaning mousse into a nasty blotch on the seat, then wiped down the seatbacks and headrests before returning to attack the stain with a plastic scraper and a nail-brush.
Ryan’s neck and shoulder ached as he scrubbed, but the stain just blurred around the edges. He reckoned he’d get another bollocking from Milosh the supervisor, a man whose unwillingness to believe that a stain couldn’t be removed was matched only by his unwillingness to climb inside a car and have a go himself.
After giving up on the seat stain, Ryan delved into dirt and crumbs under the front seat. He was pulling out a Thomas the Tank Engine sock and a mildewed digestive when a rap on the back window made him jolt.
Ryan gently bumped his head on the padded door trim as he rolled on to his back. Craig was eyeballing him, making an aggressive
get out
gesture.
The bottles hooked to Ryan’s belt sploshed as Craig led him across the soapy courtyard and into a large office. It had once been the garage shop. The cashier’s desk was still in place and magazines and newspapers yellowed on a rack by the door.
‘The boss here reckons you’re OK,’ Craig said, grudgingly. ‘You passed your trial.’
Ryan was surprised enough to manage an involuntary smile, because all he’d heard from Milosh was abuse.
‘You’ll work off your debt at ten pounds an hour, starting tomorrow,’ Craig said. ‘You’d better work hard. I want you here every day after school and eight till seven on Saturday. If you call in sick you’d better be dying. If you cause me any kind of grief, I’ll make sure you regret it. Understood?’
Ryan’s feelings were split. On one hand, he’d found a path back into Craig’s good books. On the other, the prospect of slogging it out after school and all day Saturday didn’t exactly leave him brimming with glee.
‘When do I do my homework and stuff?’ Ryan asked.
‘Not my problem,’ Craig answered tersely. ‘I don’t give a shit about
you
. I just want the money you owe me.’
‘OK,’ Ryan said.
Ryan’s OK came out grumpier than he’d expected and made Craig turn nasty.
‘Any more of that attitude and I’ll slap the piss out of you. Now get back to it.’
As Ryan headed out of the office, a Mercedes E-class was pulling up on the forecourt. It looked new, but it was understated, apart from black privacy glass which gave the vehicle an air of menace. As a tall, mixed-race man emerged from the driver’s seat, Milosh rushed across and did a kind of semi-panicked Japanese bow.
‘I’ll get it washed straight away, sir,’ Milosh fawned. ‘Won’t hold you up at all.’
Ryan had seen the driver in dozens of security photos while preparing for the mission, but he’d been knocked off kilter by Craig’s anger so it took a couple of seconds for him to register that Hagar had walked past and was heading into the office to see Craig.
‘You, you,’ Milosh was shouting, as he pointed at a couple of guys and ordered them to start jet-washing Hagar’s car.
Ryan was curious to get a look inside Hagar’s wheels. ‘You want a hand, boss?’ he asked.
Milosh buckled a cleaning belt, as he gave Ryan a look of horror. ‘Finish the Mini,’ he said. ‘Mr Hagar’s car has to be done by an expert.’
*
Fay caught her first glance at Eli’s lieutenant, Shawn, across the food court of Wood Green Shopping City. He had a goatee, a yellow Lakers basketball vest and shiny green tracksuit bottoms over legs so long it looked like he was up on stilts. He sat at the plastic table and used a voice way posher than the gangsta look might have led you to expect.
‘Pleasure to meet two such fine-assed creatures.’
Fay and Ning had Cokes, fries from Burger King, and rucksacks stuffed with Hagar’s cocaine standing between their legs. Fay wasn’t sure she could trust Shawn. She’d arranged to meet somewhere public, but the mall was about to close so it felt pretty desolate. Shawn had also brought muscle, in the form of two guys standing against a shuttered Donut Magic stall.
‘You Shawn?’ Fay asked, sounding uncharacteristically nervous.
‘Who else?’ Shawn asked back. He seemed unnaturally chilled and Ning suspected that he’d been smoking weed.
‘I didn’t know you were bringing company,’ Fay said, pulling back her coat to show the holstered Glock, before making a nod towards the guys across the food court. ‘I don’t want any funny business.’
Shawn smiled like the gun didn’t mean a thing, and rocked his chair on to its back legs.
‘Don’t sweat,’ he said slowly. ‘Here’s how this goes down. I take a couple of tasters from your bricks and hand them to my pharmacist over there. He goes to the WC with his chemistry set, tests the gear and makes sure you’re not ripping us off. As soon as he gives me the nod, I’ve got the cash and we’ll be ready to rock and roll.’
Fay nodded, then pointed at Ning. ‘If your boy gets to look at the coke, my girl gets to check the cash.’
‘Fair play,’ Shawn said, as he produced a T-shaped probe from his tracksuit.
The tool was designed for farmers and geologists to take soil samples, but in the cocaine trade it was used to dig into packets of drugs to ensure that purity was more than skin deep.
Fay kicked her backpack under the table towards Shawn, who glanced around to make sure nobody was looking before furtively taking random samples from three out of the nine bricks of cocaine. He tapped each sample into a plastic tub, then went down Ning’s pack and took samples from a couple more bricks before taking a few of the one-gram bags.
Fay sounded tense. ‘I already told you, the bricks are eighty-five per cent pure. The one-gram bags between twenty and twenty-five.’
Shawn shrugged. ‘I’m not calling you a liar, but I don’t know you ladies and my butt’s on the line if I spend money on the wrong shit.’
The tattooed pharmacist walked between tables, took the sample bottles off Shawn, then locked himself in a disabled toilet behind the escalators. Shawn kicked a bag across to Ning. She opened up and saw five-thousand-pound bundles, made up of fifty- or twenty-pound notes and held together with elastic bands. As far as she could tell it was all genuine.
Shawn broke the tense silence that followed. ‘Pretty gutsy stinging Hagar’s stash house. I hear he’s going all out looking for you two.’
Fay shrugged. ‘That was just the beginning. I’ll be getting my hands on more of his merchandise if you’re interested.’
‘Always,’ Shawn laughed. ‘But if it was me in your sweaty Nikes, I’d take what you earned from this score and clear out. Hagar’s got a lot of bodies and you’ve only got to slip up once.’
Fay smiled. ‘I’ll be careful.’
Shawn didn’t respond because he’d just received a text from his chemist. ‘Eighty-four point six for the bricks, thirty-three on the gram bags,’ he said.
‘Told you,’ Fay said.
‘I’ll give you six thousand per kilo for the bricks. Three for the gram bags.’
Fay growled. ‘We agreed. Seven and four, seventy-five grand in total. Take it or leave it.’
Shawn laughed. ‘You’ve got a heap of merchandise and one of the biggest gangsters in north London hunting you down. Do you really wanna risk shopping this gear around to get a better deal?’
Fay didn’t like being knocked down, but tried to stay cool. ‘I’ve got connections in places where nobody has even heard the name Hagar,’ she said icily. ‘Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast. Eighty-five per cent pure at seven grand a kilo, they’ll be biting my arm off.’
‘If that’s how you roll,’ Shawn said, giving his goon a thumbs down gesture and pushing back his chair like he was about to leave.
Ning looked anxious, but Fay smiled. ‘You’re full of shit,’ she told Shawn.
Shawn raised one eyebrow. ‘How so?’
Fay smiled, as Shawn leaned back across the table.
‘First off, seven grand a kilo for coke this good is stupidly cheap,’ Fay began. ‘Eli will make his entire outlay back just from selling the one-gram bags on the street. You’re just trying to push the price down because Eli will give you a taste of any money you manage to shave off his bill.’
Fay took a big breath before continuing. ‘I’ve spoken to a lot of people on the street and I happen to know that Eli and Hagar hate each other’s guts. I’d bet my last twenty quid that the first thing Eli does when he gets hold of this merchandise is get someone to take a photograph and send it to Hagar, just to wind him up.’
Shawn shook his head slowly. ‘No flies on you, are there?’ he said, as he cracked a wicked smile and pointed at the bag with the money inside. ‘Take the cash, you’ve got your deal.’
Ning nodded to indicate that she was happy with the amount of money in the bag.
‘I’ll be back in touch when I have more gear,’ Fay said.
Shawn snorted as he grabbed the two cocaine-filled backpacks and stood up. ‘You girls be careful,’ he warned. ‘You both seem smart, but that don’t make you invincible.’