The Horse at the Gates (9 page)

‘It’s all there, bruv. Delivery note, itemised bill, the lot.’ He scraped his long hair back and removed a self-rolled cigarette from behind his ear. It had just a little touch in it, enough to give him a buzz, but not enough to get him nicked. He fumbled for a lighter until he realised Imran, or whatever his name was, was staring at him.

‘Smoking is forbidden.’

Danny removed the cigarette from his lips and replaced it behind his ear.
Taking the piss,
he sulked. Normally he wouldn’t swallow shit from someone like him, but he needed this job to go smooth and, besides, the bloke was a big lump. Head like a coconut, shovels for hands and a wide set of shoulders straining at the stupid dress he was wearing. Best not to wind him up.

Imran pointed at the truck. ‘Open, please.’

Danny poked a fat green button and a battered metal tailgate lowered itself onto the loading bay with a loud hydraulic whine. He squatted down and unhooked the latch. With a grunt of effort, he heaved the shutter door upwards and stepped back.

‘There you go, Abdul,’ Danny smiled, pointing at the chest freezer strapped to the side of the truck’s interior. ‘One refrigeration unit. It’s all yours.’

It was big, woven in clear plastic shrink-wrapping like a giant insect cocooned in a spider’s web. Danny was glad he didn’t have to shift the thing himself. It had already been loaded when he picked up the truck in Kings Cross, but he’d definitely enjoy watching this miserable twat struggle with it.

Imran glanced at the unit and sighed heavily. He turned to Danny. ‘Very big, yes? Please, you help? No-one here.’ He waved an arm around the deserted loading bay.

Danny glanced at the cars parked in the reserved spaces nearby. A Mercedes MPV, an Audi, couple of big four-byfours; someone was here all right, they just didn’t want to get their paws dirty. Well, screw it, he needed the money more than the grief. Danny forced another smile. ‘No sweat, Abdul.’

Inside the truck he released the restraining straps and manoeuvred the unit towards the tailgate, relieved the thing was on wheels. Even so it was heavy, and Danny thought that a little strange. After all, fridges were normally pretty light, only the compressor units giving your average fridge a bit of weight. But this unit felt different. The Muslim watched him as Danny struggled to manoeuvre the wheels over the lip of the tailgate.
Lazy bastard.
He braced his arms and pushed with all of his strength.

‘Whoa! Watch your toes!’ warned Danny belatedly as he shoved the unit hard over the tailgate and onto the loading bay. Imran saw it coming and stepped deftly out of the way. ‘Really takes off when you get your weight behind it, eh?’

The man said nothing, steering the front end towards a set of large double doors. Despite himself, Danny was intrigued. He’d never been inside a mosque and he wasn’t sure what to expect. He knew there was a main hall where everyone knelt down and prayed, that much he’d seen on the TV.
‘Watch out, someone’s dropped a contact lens!’
was his favourite joke, though no-one seemed to laugh at that one anymore. Still, it’d be something to tell the others down the King’s Head. On second thoughts, maybe he wouldn’t. You never knew if –

‘Stop!’ barked Imran as they crossed the threshold. He pointed at Danny’s white Adidas trainers. ‘Please remove. Forbidden.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ moaned Danny, hopping around on each leg as he slipped off his trainers, his socks making damp footprints on the concrete. He placed his shoes on the tailgate then glanced up, straight into the lens of a CCTV camera.
I get it,
he realised,
the rest of ’em are up in the office, laughing their beards off at the stupid Infidel. And I bet old Abdul speaks fluent English too. Mugging me right off.

‘Keep me socks on, can I?’ he moaned sarcastically. He’d been stitched up, sure, but he kept his mind focussed on the money and together they steered the unit inside. Danny’s head swivelled left and right as they rumbled along the corridor, stealing a glance inside the rooms along the way. They passed a large kitchen, deserted, only the cold light of a fly-catcher filling the room with its electric blue glow. Further along, they passed a bare storeroom, empty shelving fixed to its walls. In fact, the place had an air of desertion about it, Danny realised. The corridor was devoid of life; instead it was quiet, almost silent, like a proper church. Just ahead, Imran held up his arm and called a halt. Danny straightened up.

‘I think I’ve slipped a bloody disc,’ he complained, rubbing the small of his back.

The big Muslim ignored his banter. ‘In here,’ he commanded.

Danny sighed and swung his end around, wheeling the unit carefully around the doorframe into another storeroom. This one was also empty.

Imran held a finger to his lips. ‘Quiet. Prayers,’ he whispered, pointing at the wall. Danny listened carefully. He could hear it now, the low drone of voices coming from the other side of the grey cinderblock partition. Must be the main prayer hall. He could imagine them all in there now, arses in the air, bobbing up and down like a load of brainwashed robots. He lined the unit up along the wall, then dusted off his hands.

‘There you go, Abdul. All sorted.’ He made a move for the door then looked down, puzzled. ‘Hang on, you’ve got a problem here. There’s no power along that wall.’ He pulled the unit away from the cinderblock and crouched down. Nothing. Then he studied the unit itself, running his hands over the thick plastic. ‘That’s weird. Doesn’t seem to be a power cable.’

Imran waved Danny towards the door. ‘No problem. Come.’

Intrigued, Danny continued his search, dropping to his knees and peering beneath the unit. ‘No compressors, either. Why’s it so heavy then?’ He straightened up and studied the other walls. ‘You got no sockets in here at all. How you going to juice the thing up?’

‘You are fridge expert?’ Imran hissed. He held out a thick arm and ushered Danny out of the room. ‘Leave it, we fix later.’

Danny shrugged. ‘Whatever, bruv. Just trying to help, yeah?’ He wasn’t about to break into a sweat over this idiot. Besides, the job had been done and now he just wanted out of the place. Back in the corridor, his finger scribbled on the air. ‘Just need your autograph, Abdul. You’ve got the paperwork, remember?’

‘Wait here.’

Imran veered away and entered a room on the other side of the corridor. Danny took a step towards the door and looked through the small glass window. The Muslim was hunched over a desk, scribbling on his paperwork, while another couple of beardies were packing several large crates with files and computer stuff. Across the room, someone else was clearing out a book shelf. Imran’s face filled the window and the door swung open. Danny stepped back, a wry grin on his face.

‘Moving out already?’ he teased. ‘What’s up, Abdul? Not paid the rent?’

For a big bloke he moved bloody fast, Danny later recalled. A large hand shot out and grabbed his shirt, pulling him tight to the big man’s barrel chest. The other shoved the signed invoice roughly into his shirt pocket. Danny recoiled as Imran’s hot breath wafted in his face, the stench of garlic and onion filling his nostrils.

‘My name is Imran.
Im-ran
,’ he growled. He shoved Danny away, then waved his hand dismissively. ‘Take truck and go.’

Crimson-faced, Danny swivelled on his stockinged feet and marched out to the loading bay. He fumbled with his trainers, cursing under his breath as he squeezed them on. He tried to fasten his crumpled shirt until he realised two of the buttons were missing. Taking a deep breath and summoning up as much dignity as his boiling emotions would allow, Danny hopped down from the loading bay and climbed behind the wheel of the truck. Thirty seconds later he was steering the vehicle beyond the gates of the mosque and out onto the main road, deliberately forcing a minibus full of worshippers to swerve out of his way.

Fat bastard,
he raged silently,
laying his filthy paws on me
. He breathed heavily, his thin face still flushed with anger as he gunned the truck through busy traffic. He gripped the steering wheel hard as he imagined his bloodied fists pummelling Abdul’s face, raining blow after blow as the bastard pleaded for mercy through split lips and broken teeth. No-one messes with Danny Whelan.

But deep down, Danny knew that was all it’d ever be, a violent fantasy. He wasn’t like the other blokes, the hard core ones who went looking for trouble, orchestrating violence against ethnic gangs and left wing rent-a-mobs. Even in his youth he wasn’t much of a fighter, more of a periphery sort of geezer, someone who got in a few boots after the others had taken the victim down. Like a jackal, in one of them wildlife programmes he liked so much.

Coward,
his inner voice mocked. And it was true. Danny knew blokes who would’ve cracked Abdul the minute he got stroppy, the sort of people who would never back down, even if it meant ending up in intensive care. There were some like that in the army, a couple in the King’s Head, rough fuckers with short fuses, always ready to take offence, even quicker to unleash a whirlwind of fists and kicks. Or a knife. Danny kept well clear, circling them like they had leprosy, unwilling to mix in their company. Nutters. But at least they could hold their heads up high. Not like him. Fucking church mouse.

He fired up his cigarette, the tobacco and narcotic mix assuaging his anger and numbing the shame of his rough treatment at the hands of an immigrant.
Concentrate on the money,
he advised himself. A thousand quid was a lot of dough. He had to use it wisely, not waste it on gear or gambling. Well, maybe he’d burn a couple of hundred of it, as a little reward to himself.

As he idled at a red traffic light, he was gripped by a sudden flash of panic. What if Abdul made a complaint, grassed him up to the fridge bloke? No, he decided, they’d got their delivery and besides, Danny could always chalk it up as a misunderstanding. You know, a cultural thing. Twat didn’t speak English proper anyway.

As the traffic thinned and the miles rolled beneath the nose of the truck, Danny saw the blue sign for the M1 motorway and veered aggressively across the carriageway, heading south. He’d be back in London in an hour, home in two. I’ll give Carlos a bell, he decided, score a quarter of the grade A gear, the real mellow stuff that filtered out all the bullshit. He’d wash it down with a few pints at the Kings, maybe shoot the shit with the boys, spend a little of that hard-earned dough.

After the day he’d had, he’d certainly earned it, hadn’t he?

‘Are we ready?’ Bryce asked.

He buttoned the front of his suit jacket, checking the Tag Heuer Monaco on his wrist as he adjusted the cuffs of his shirt. It was almost time. He felt energised, ready to face his audience; but as he envisaged the expected storm of criticism that would surely follow his speech, his nerve momentarily faltered. He was about to turn into a road he’d never travelled before, with no way of knowing where it would lead him. He refocused his thoughts as Ella fussed around him, all business.

‘Your speech has been uploaded into the teleprompter and these are your notes, just in case.’ She handed over a small white card. ‘The press are waiting and most of the Cabinet are here, too.’

Bryce raised an eyebrow. ‘And Tariq?’

‘Running late,’ Ella informed him. ‘He’s leaving Millbank now.’

Bryce shook his head. ‘Arrogant bloody fool.’ He began rummaging through the neat stacks of folders and documents piled on his desk. ‘Where the hell did I put that Heathrow dossier?’

‘In your safe,’ replied Ella, pointing to the opposite wall.

‘So I did. Where’s Davies now?’

‘I’ve got him squirreled away downstairs. Sam’s briefing him before the media eat the poor man alive.’

Bryce nodded and crossed to the wall safe. His private study was situated on the first floor, a reasonably sized room tucked away at the rear of the building, a quiet bolthole where Bryce could escape the unrelenting demands of office. He liked its size and its light, its lack of formality. It was modestly furnished with a mahogany writing desk and a red leather Chesterfield sofa along one book-lined wall. The opposite wall boasted three large French windows that overlooked the rose garden below, a unique selling point for any study in Bryce’s opinion. It was quiet, cosy and, in the depths of winter, a fire smouldered in the grate at Bryce’s feet.