Authors: Robert Muchamore
31. LOANS
The Jag had baked in the afternoon sun and Lladro fought for air as Clark popped the boot open.
‘Hey, slaphead, how’s it going?’
‘Let me talk with your superiors,’ Lladro said, trying to hide fear.
‘They don’t wanna talk to you,’ Clark said, smiling as he grabbed Lladro’s belt.
‘I demand—’
Lladro’s sentence ended abruptly, with Clark’s fist smashing into his mouth.
‘You don’t demand,’ Clark shouted. ‘You listen.’
Lladro found himself being yanked out of the boot, by shirt collar and belt. He hit the ground hard. He was dizzy from the heat in the trunk and his vision blurred from the punch, but he could see enough to work out that he was in an underground parking lot, with the headlamps of the Prius aimed in his eyes.
‘Here’s what my superiors have to say,’ Clark said, before booting Lladro in the stomach. After a couple more brutal kicks, he set his heel on Lladro’s belly and turned back to Ryan. ‘You gonna take a couple of shots at our tubby little butterball?’
Ryan felt bad, but figured Clark was going to do whatever he was going to do. He didn’t want Clark to see his reticence, but Ryan’s timid steps gave him away.
‘What are you scared of?’ Clark demanded.
Ryan swung his trainer. Lladro had balled up, so he kicked him in the back, but not massively hard. Clark didn’t look satisfied, so Ryan reluctantly launched a second, harder kick.
‘That’s more like it!’ Clark said approvingly, as Lladro groaned. ‘Here’s another few for you, doc.’
Clark launched more kicks, by the end of which Lladro was slumped on his back, dribbling blood and close to unconscious.
‘Get the petrol can,’ Clark shouted.
Ryan looked confused.
‘From the Prius.’
The driver popped the Prius’ hatchback and Ryan looked inside at assorted weapons and a kids’ plastic cricket set. He found a rusted metal can and tried to think how he might help Lladro escape. The dentist was in no state to run off, so Ryan would have to knock out Clark, then somehow take out the driver sitting in the car ten metres away.
Clark snatched the can out of Ryan’s hand and rust grated as he unscrewed the cap. Lladro screamed as Clark sloshed petrol into his eyes.
‘Fat little piggy like you,’ Clark teased, as he pulled a lighter out of his pocket. ‘You’ll make good crackling when you burn.’
‘You think I care?’ Lladro shouted defiantly. ‘I can be with my wife.’
‘Aww, baby,’ Clark mocked. ‘How much have you blown on whores since the old bag copped it?’
Ryan grasped the extendible baton in his trouser pocket, and took a step up so that he was close enough to whack Clark over the back of the head. Ryan was sure he could flatten Clark with one blow and get to the driver before he had too much time to think. Unless the driver had a gun in his glove box, in which case he’d just have to hope that his stab vest gave some protection from bullets too . . .
Clark erupted in a booming laugh as he squatted in front of Lladro and pocketed the lighter. ‘Death’s just letting you off easy, tubs!’ he said. ‘We’re taxing the Jag and the golf clubs. Hagar’s giving you two weeks. Either pay the three hundred and eighty grand you owe him, or go to a lawyer and get papers written up to hand over full ownership of the dental practice.’
Ryan felt relieved as Clark backed off. Lladro managed to sit up slightly, hands trembling and eyes stinging. Despite the pounding he’d taken, he still managed a patronising manner.
‘If I could just speak to Hagar personally. I’m sure he’ll be more accommodating when he understands the facts.’
Clark looked at Ryan, giving him a kind of
can you believe this
expression, then contemptuously kicked the near-empty petrol can at his victim.
‘One more thing, Lladro,’ Clark said, as he stood with one arm on the driver’s side door of the Jaguar. ‘Just in case suicide or running away seems tempting. A little bird tells me that your daughter is studying History and Politics at Portsmouth. Trafalgar Halls, room 309. If you disappear, she’ll jump right to the top of my visitors list.’
Ryan was shaken by what had happened, but also relieved that Lladro had only been beaten and threatened. The ever present Prius cruised behind the Jaguar as Clark drove up a ramp and out of the underground car park.
‘Have you ever killed anyone?’ Ryan asked bluntly.
Clark broke into a big smile and shook his head. ‘Hagar wouldn’t approve.’
‘Why not?’ Ryan asked.
‘You ever seen a dead man paying a bill?’
*
Clark liked his fried food and Ryan followed him on a sunny ten-minute walk to a café. He threw Ryan a compliment as he tore a corner out of a bacon sandwich.
‘You’re a good lad,’ he said. ‘I spoke to Craig about you last night. How do you feel about going solo on a job?’
Ryan swallowed a mouthful of chips before replying. ‘What kind of job?’
‘You should be familiar with the technique,’ Clark said, smiling. ‘There’s a lad about your age, we’re giving him a bag of drugs – well, icing sugar – to look after for a couple of days, and a place to deliver it.’
Ryan smiled and nodded. ‘And my job’s to make sure he loses it?’
‘Got it,’ Clark said. ‘There’s sixty quid if you handle it right. The kid goes to your school so you shouldn’t have much trouble finding him. I haven’t got the details on me, but I’ll text them through when I get back to my digs.’
*
A Honda moped puttered up a steep hill, crash-helmeted driver looking for house number sixteen, and a box on the back branded with the logo of
Top Pizza – No1 For Delivery.
Number eighteen lived behind a neat box hedge, but the house next door had scaffold up the front and boards from a construction company.
As the moped came to a wobbly halt, the rider’s trainer caught mud dragged off the building site. Getting sent on spoof deliveries was part of the job, but the rider decided to call and double-check the address before riding back to base.
As the teenaged rider unzipped his padded jacket and pulled out a phone, two girls dashed out of an alleyway between houses, one of them waving her arms.
‘You our pizza guy?’ Fay asked. ‘Ham and pineapple. Barbecue chicken wings?’
The driver felt relieved. His boss always acted like it was somehow the rider’s fault when you came back to Top Pizza and had to ditch an order in the yard out back. Every delivery was also a chance to earn a tip.
‘I thought it was a wind-up,’ the rider explained, as he flipped up his helmet visor and stepped off the bike to grab the pizzas from the insulated box over the rear wheel.
‘We’re having a sleepover in the field out back,’ Fay explained. ‘How much do we owe?’
The rider pulled two cardboard boxes out of the pouch and looked at the till receipt taped on top.
‘Twelve twenty-eight,’ he said cheerlessly.
He watched Fay digging a hand down her jeans, as Ning circled behind and reached out, like she was going to take the boxes.
‘Busy night?’ Fay asked.
The driver shrugged. ‘Monday’s always pretty dead.’
As the last word left his mouth, the driver felt his legs collapse beneath him. Ning had taken him down with a sweeping kick behind the knees. As Fay closed in and saved the tumbling pizza boxes, Ning expertly flipped the rider on to his chest. She straddled him, then yanked his arm up tight behind his back.
‘Fight me and I’ll break it,’ Ning said firmly.
The road was muddy and Ning’s knees squelched as Fay joined her on the ground and started undoing the rider’s chinstrap. As his helmet got yanked off and rolled towards the kerb, Ning pulled his other arm up behind his back and bound his wrists with a thick garden cable tie.
Once the rider’s hands were bound, Ning was free to place one hand on his chin and lift his head out of the dirt.
‘Open your mouth.’
The rider ignored the instruction so Ning pinched his nostrils shut. When he had to breathe, Fay moved in, forcing a rubber bouncy ball into his mouth. Then the girls worked together, pulling a nylon luggage strap over his mouth and buckling it tightly behind his head to hold the gag.
‘You’re doing great, pal,’ Ning said, getting a guilty thrill out of the successfully executed takedown as she stood up and locked another plastic tie around the rider’s ankles.
Now that mouth and limbs were all out of action, each girl grabbed the rider under a sweaty armpit. He moaned into his gag as they dragged him into the alleyway between houses.
‘Don’t panic,’ Ning told the rider. ‘We’ll let someone know where you are when we’re done with the bike.’
Back in the street, Ning scooped up the helmet and pulled it on.
‘Are you sure you know how to ride this thing?’ Fay asked.
Ning nodded. ‘Everyone has them in China. I’ve ridden them a million times.’
Fay put the pizzas back in the insulated box, then straddled the bike, pulled on a spare helmet they’d brought with them and shuffled up behind Ning.
‘Hold tight,’ Ning said, as she pressed the electric starter on the handlebar.
The anxious fingers dug into Ning’s abdomen made her suspect that Fay wasn’t confident in her riding skills. But after a wary start, Ning stopped wavering and built up speed as she rumbled off into darkness.
32. HARVEST
It was ten minutes to midnight as the moped stopped in the street outside the bowling club. Fay hopped off the back and flipped up her visor before taking a quick peek into the car park.
‘Van’s there,’ Fay said. ‘You got your patter clear in your head?’
Ning nodded. ‘Show a little faith. I did OK with the bike, didn’t I?’
Fay said good luck as Ning got off the scooter, grabbed a barely warm pizza out of the back and balanced it on one arm as she walked towards the wrought-iron gates. With the crash helmet on, Ning hoped that the guards inside wouldn’t make any connection with the girl who’d squatted and peed on the other side of the building a few days earlier.
The doors had blackout blinds fitted, but enough light leaked around the edges to read the intercom buttons on the door lock. Ning pressed the big button at the bottom, setting off a hearty buzz inside.
After twenty seconds, a gruff male voice came back through the intercom. ‘What you want?’
‘Pizza,’ Ning said brightly.
The voice came back, sounding puzzled. ‘Nobody here ordered pizza.’
Ning assumed they were watching her on camera, so she pretended to read the white address slip taped to the pizza box.
‘Marston Bowling Club,’ Ning said. ‘This is the right place, isn’t it?’
‘You’re at the right place, but we didn’t order no pizza.’
‘Is there anyone else inside who might have ordered pizza?’
Now the man sounded annoyed. ‘There’s
nobody
here ordered pizza. How many times I gotta tell you?’
‘Right,’ Ning said weakly. ‘Must be a mix-up. I’ll call my dispatcher.’
Ning stood at the doorway, flipped up her helmet visor and made a pretend phone call. She had no idea if they could hear from inside, but she went through the motions and made a fake call.
‘Hello . . . This order, they say they don’t want it . . . OK . . . OK . . . He sounded like he doesn’t want to be disturbed . . . OK. See you tomorrow. Bye.’
Ning acted nervous as she pressed the intercom again. ‘Hello?’
The voice sounded even more irritated. ‘For the love of god . . .’
‘Yeah,’ Ning said weakly. ‘I’m really sorry. We close at midnight. My boss says sorry for disturbing you. He got you mixed up with another regular customer. You’re good customers and all, and since the pizza will just go to waste, he says it’s on the house if you want it.’
‘Hang on,’ the man said. Then he turned away from the intercom and spoke to someone else. ‘You want pizza . . . ? OK. Hello?’
‘I’m still here,’ Ning said.
‘What kinda pizza is it?’
Ning tried to think what pizza most people liked best. After a second she had an idea that might raise her chances. ‘It’s a half and half. Ham and pineapple, and pepperoni melt.’
The man at the end of the intercom repeated this, and Ning caught a background voice saying, ‘I could go for some pepperoni.’
Then the man turned back to the intercom. ‘My friend can’t say no to food. His big butt is on its way.’
Then in the background the other guy said, ‘Kiss my arse.’
Ning felt really nervous now. The two guards couldn’t have been more than ten paces from the door because she saw shadows moving on the blind almost immediately. After a couple more seconds the latch turned inside the door, followed by a click as the man pushed a button to release the electronic bolt.
‘Evening,’ the guy said, as the door came open. He was nearly six feet tall, and stocky rather than fat. The air coming from inside was humid and Ning caught a whiff of marijuana plants.
‘Free pizza’s the best kind,’ the man said, giving Ning a smile.
She held out the pizza box, but the man didn’t take it straight away. Instead he rummaged in the front pocket of his jeans until he found a two-pound coin.
‘Couple of pounds for your trouble,’ he said.
As he reached forward, Ning swung the pizza boxes to her left. This meant the guard inside didn’t see as she pulled a short-handled 75,000-volt cattle prod out of her jeans. The dangerous end made sharp cracking sounds as it hit the man’s thigh. Ning squealed in fake shock as he fell forward, knocking the pizzas out of her hand as he hit the ground, roaring in pain.
Ning’s rapid movement with the cattle prod meant that even the guy on the ground didn’t get what had happened.
‘Oh my god!’
The other guard’s voice came urgently through the intercom. ‘What was that?’
Ning made her voice all shrill. ‘He’s shaking. I think he’s having a heart attack, or something.’
Then she went for her mobile. ‘I’m calling an ambulance.’
The guard inside didn’t like the idea of an ambulance on his doorstep. ‘Hold off, I’m coming out.’
‘I just felt this massive spasm,’ the guy on the ground said, clutching a dead leg as the other guard reached the doorway.
This man was a proper giant. He went down on one knee, grabbed his colleague’s wrist and started feeling for a pulse. While he was focused on this, Ning sneaked out the cattle prod again and zapped the back of his neck, then his calf as he sprawled forward.
The guard who was already on the floor now understood what had happened, but he couldn’t react because his giant colleague had just landed on top of him. Still in a crash helmet, Fay started a sprint across the car park. By the time the gasping men had rolled away from each other, they had two girls aiming handguns at their chests from point-blank range.
‘Inside,’ Fay ordered.
The first man tried to stand up, but Ning yelled at him. ‘Down,’ she ordered. ‘Crawl.’
Ning got an intense blast of humidity and the pungent marijuana smell as she followed the crawling men down a short corridor. A room off to one side had the door ajar, and was dominated by a long desk lined with monitors showing CCTV images from both inside and outside of the building.
A thick black curtain had been hung across the end of the corridor, and Ning was almost blinded as she stepped into a growing area lit with huge banks of lights. The flooring comprised spongy green carpet which had once been used for bowling. Lines of cannabis plants grew in long plastic troughs.
The former bowling green had been divided with plywood partitions. Fay opened a door into another area and immediately realised that each room contained plants in a different stage of cultivation.
‘Where are you going?’ Ning asked. ‘We’ve got to tie these guys up.’
Fay kept her pistol on the two guards as Ning swiftly trussed their arms and legs, then used a pair of leather straps to tie each of them to a concrete post.
‘Keep the noise down or I’ll gag you as well,’ Ning warned.
As the tying up got finished, Warren arrived from the swing park. His gaze was drawn to what had once been the club’s lounge. Five PCs stood on a traditional mahogany bar, behind which lay a network of computer-controlled pumps and dozens of clear plastic tubes.
Warren sounded awed as he spoke through his balaclava. ‘This shit looks state of the art.’
‘Hydroponic cultivation,’ Fay explained. ‘Water and fertiliser are in direct contact with the roots, so plants grow much faster than in soil. It looks like each room has a crop in a different stage of cultivation, from seed germination, to plants in different growth phases and finally drying the end product. The computers control the amount of light, water and fertiliser that gets sent to each zone. And by having crops at different stages of maturity, Hagar has a steady supply of fresh cannabis.’
Warren nodded. ‘Eli’s lost a lot of regular custom, because Hagar’s shit is better quality. And now we know why.’
Fay went down her backpack. She pulled out two rolls of extra-strong bin liners and hurled the first one at Ning.
‘Look for product,’ Fay said, as Warren caught the second roll of bags. ‘Drying leaves, mature plants and seed, in that order of importance.’
‘What’s wrong with smaller plants?’ Warren asked.
‘They’re worthless. They’re not potent enough to smoke until they come into flower and they’ll die before anyone gets a chance to replant them.’
‘What are you doing?’ Ning asked, as Fay grabbed a bar stool.
Fay smiled. ‘All these pumps and computers must have cost Hagar a fortune. If I smash it all up, the younger plants will die and he’ll have to start growing again from scratch.’
The humid air and lush green plants had a serene air. Ning didn’t feel like she was in the middle of a robbery as she moved through a couple of growing areas filled with young plants. The networks of tubes and troughs gave a soothing vibe of trickling water, disturbed occasionally by the whirr of an electric pump.
The third room Ning entered was full of larger plants and all the lights were out. She didn’t have a torch, so she used her mobile screen for illumination. Ning realised she’d reached the back of the building, so she cut left through a rubber-sealed door that made a strange sucking sound as she opened it.
The light and heat in this room were less intense. Instead of high humidity, the air seemed to suck all moisture out of Ning’s lungs and the plant aroma was so strong that it stuck to her mouth and throat.
Instead of plant beds, there were deep wooden cabinets fitted with mesh-bottomed drawers. Each drawer was layered with a couple of centimetres of marijuana leaves, ranging from just picked green, to much drier leaves that crumbled when you touched them.
Ning was no expert, but she decided it would be best not to mix up leaves in different stages of the drying process. It seemed the gardeners used bin bags too, because Ning was able to stretch the mouth of a black bag over a wire frame screwed to the wall. She then began pulling out the lightweight drawers and tipping the contents inside.
Within a few minutes she had a pile of empty drawers up to her shoulder and a black bag filled with some of the driest leaves. She squeezed out as much air as possible, knotted the bag, then reached inside her crash helmet and double-tapped her ear to open up her com system.
Ning had used the com on all of her missions, but she still found it creepy having a mission controller’s voice seeming to come from inside her own head.
‘You OK?’ James asked.
‘All going smoothly,’ Ning whispered. ‘Just thought you’d want an update.’
‘Excellent,’ James said. ‘I’m two minutes away if you need me.’
Ning was about to say goodbye when the rubber seal on the door made a ripping sound. She glanced back and was relieved to see that it was only Fay.
‘You found the drying room,’ Fay said happily. ‘Warren’s got two rooms full of flowering plants to harvest. The only downer is, there’s no sign of any finished product.’
‘This is gonna take a while,’ Ning said, as she waved her hand towards cabinets with well over a hundred drying drawers.
‘Chill,’ Fay said, as she looked at her watch. ‘There’s no shift change till morning.’
*
Four hours after they’d arrived, Ning grabbed a set of van keys from a hook in the CCTV room, then reversed the striped Transit van up to the bowling club’s rear fire doors. As Fay and Warren ran around inside the building, dragging bin bags stuffed with dried cannabis leaves and mature plants up to the doorway, Ning opened the van’s back doors and dragged a big bag of garden tools and half a dozen empty fertiliser drums out of the rear compartment to make space.
Ning picked up a couple of bags of dried leaves and was surprised to feel water splashing her legs as she lobbed them deep into the van.
‘How’d they get wet?’ Ning asked.
‘I slit loads of tubes, smashed up the computers and left all the pumps running,’ Fay explained. ‘It’s getting soggy in places.’
‘Just make sure you don’t stack wet bags on top of dry leaves,’ Ning said.
The trio took a couple of minutes to load up the van and, it being high summer, first light was breaking over the surrounding houses as they pulled out of the club car park. Ning drove a mile before pulling up in front of a row of shops. She and Fay took their crash helmets off for the first time in close to five hours.
Warren pulled off his balaclava and laughed as he saw the girls’ sweaty, tangled hair.
‘It’s not a good look,’ Warren teased, as he moved in and kissed Fay’s reddened cheek. ‘But the raid was bloody awesome!’
Ning was irritated by Warren and Fay’s relationship, and became all-out hostile when the pecking turned to a full-on snog.
‘Pack it in,’ Ning moaned, as she put the van back in gear. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, we’re still on Hagar’s turf and the cops will pull us over if they see three teenagers driving a van at four in the morning.’
‘Mum’s right,’ Fay said, as she palmed Warren away.
The tatty van wasn’t a civilised ride and Ning crunched gears as she pulled off.
‘I’d better call Shawn and let him know we’ve got some stuff for his boss,’ Fay said.
But Shawn must have switched phones because the number Fay had was dead. She ended up calling one of Eli’s street dealers, who gave out an up-to-date number after a lot of arm twisting.
Ning could only hear Fay’s half of the conversation from the driving seat, but Eli’s lieutenant clearly wasn’t enthusiastic about a 4 a.m. call.
‘Yes I do know what time it is,’ Fay said cheerfully. ‘But I’ve got news. Good news! Right now I’m riding in a van, stuffed with Hagar’s entire cannabis crop. I’m looking for a quick sale and I’ve trashed Hagar’s grow house at no extra charge.’
Fay paused while Shawn said something. Her face sank and her next sentence sounded wary.
‘OK, I guess . . . You’ve got my number. I’ll wait for your call.’
‘Problem?’ Ning asked, as Fay pocketed her phone.
Fay shrugged. ‘I expected him to be more enthusiastic. He’s gonna call me back after he’s spoken to Eli.’
‘Who’s gonna be enthusiastic at four in the morning?’ Warren pointed out.
‘So where am I driving?’ Ning asked.
‘It’s too risky leaving the van in town,’ Fay said. ‘Warren wants to be dropped off, then we can drive the van up to the allotments.’