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.
br /> ‘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.’
33. CALLS
Two days after the raid on the grow house, Ning woke up on an airbed in the allotment shed. She sat up, eyeing a bluebottle crawling up the inside of a dirty window and the striped van parked next to a compost mound at the bottom of their plot.
Ning’s knee clicked as she stood up. She thought about making a hot drink on Fay’s little gas stove, but went for a little bottle of Tropicana orange, which floated in an enamel bowl to stay cool. She needed the toilet, which meant trudging over several hundred metres of dirt and gravel to a smelly shed, where you could hear your waste drop into a big composting tank below.
After pulling on leggings, wellies and a striped T-shirt, Ning made the toilet trek and bumped into a stern-looking Fay on the way back.
‘Morning,’ Ning said.
‘My phone’s hit-and-miss on the allotments, so I walked up to the street to get a better signal,’ Fay said grumpily. ‘There’s still no text or anything from Shawn and his phone’s dead when I try to call.’
‘Probably switched it again,’ Ning said.
‘It’s been two whole days,’ Fay said. ‘What’s he playing at?’
‘Stay cool,’ Ning said. ‘You’re selling, he’s buying. He probably doesn’t want to seem too keen. I bet he’ll make out like he’s already got tons of cannabis and try to screw us on the price.’
‘And I saw that lady from plot twelve, the one who gave us the nice strawberries. She made some comment about how I always seem to be around. I think she knows I’m living on site.’
Ning nodded. ‘You can’t keep staying here full time. I’ll sneak you in at Nebraska House. I need to go back for a proper shower and clean clothes anyway.’
‘I don’t like leaving the van,’ Fay said.
‘You need to take your mind off stuff,’ Ning said. ‘We can go see a movie or something.’
Fay’s face turned sour. ‘I’m waiting on Shawn. How can I sit in a bloody cinema with my phone switched off?’ she growled, as she pointed at the van.
‘All I’m saying is, worrying won’t get you anywhere.’
‘You stating the bloody obvious every five minutes doesn’t help much either,’ Fay snapped.
Ning shook her head. ‘Does it matter if Eli’s crew buys the drugs? Hagar must still be mad that his grow house has been located and trashed.’
‘What about the money?’ Fay asked.
Ning shrugged. ‘We’ve got more than we can spend from the stash house rip-off.’
‘My whole plan is to make Hagar so mad that he does something rash. And nothing is going to make Hagar madder than knowing that I’m ripping him off and selling the gear on the cheap to his deadliest rival.’
‘What makes you think Hagar will do something rash?’ Ning asked. ‘He’s ultra-cautious. Warren’s never seen him, and he reckons that apart from Craig his lieutenants barely see him either.’
‘I know Hagar,’ Fay said firmly. ‘My mum and my auntie robbed him a dozen times. You don’t get into Hagar’s position in the drug business without being smart. But red mist is his weakness. When things go his way he’s cautious and methodical. But if something gets under his skin, he loses it. And that’s when I’m going to pop up and blast his nasty little head off.’
Fay seemed like her old self as she glared at Ning, but a chime from her phone put her straight back into an anxious frame of mind.
‘Is it Shawn?’ Ning asked.
Fay tutted and shook her head. ‘Warren’s texting from school. He’s asking if I want to meet up with him at lunchtime.’
*
The Year Sevens and Eights sat on the floor at the front of the school hall, while older kids filed into rows of metal chairs. It was the end of summer term. The mood was heady with the thought of six weeks’ holiday, while Year Thirteens had gone for all-out anarchy, throwing flour and eggs, stripping off shirts and staging school-tie-burning ceremonies.
‘Quiet,’ a deputy head roared. ‘Year Nine, I’m talking to you.’
But Year Nine collectively told the deputy head where to stick the idea of being quiet and a girl ran off yelping as someone stuck an orange ice pop down her back.
Ryan had made a few friends at school, but he ignored them as he entered the hall, cutting back amidst rows of chairs into an enclave populated by Year Eleven and Twelve kids.
A group of Year Thirteen girls started singing a rude song about one of their PE teachers, before collapsing in shrieks of giggles. A teacher waded in and plucked a titchy Year Eight boy who was whistling with two fingers in his mouth.
‘We hate Tottenham and we hate Tottenham,’ some Arsenal boys chanted.
Amidst all of this randomness, Ryan sat in an empty chair directly behind a stocky kid named Ash Regus. Ash was a typical Hagar recruit: a brighter-than-average kid, who wanted to make some money selling drugs at parties to ease his way through university.
Ash was beefy, with cropped hair and angry pimples all over his neck. There was a black Eastpack on the polished wood between Ash’s legs, and Ryan had just received a text message confirming that he’d collected a package from Craig during his lunch break.
‘I’m happy to wait all day,’ the head said, though most of his fellow teachers looked like they wanted a sunlounger and a cocktail ASAP.
A science teacher made a token effort to stop kids from leaving, but these lads weren’t coming back for Year Twelve so the school had no power over them, and a couple of guilty-looking girls followed.
‘Knoooob head!’ the last lad shouted, having a little tussle with the science teacher as he left the school hall.
Things calmed down slightly as someone dimmed the lights. A big group of Year Thirteens came in, looking a lot like they’d been boozing. They got shushed by a teacher, so they all started shushing each other noisily and grated seats as the headmaster began his drone.
‘. . . so we reach the end of another school year. Some of us have experienced their first year of secondary school, and are just settling into their lives here. Our Year Thirteens are at the other end of this journey and we wish all of them well as they begin adult lives and . . .’
As the headmaster droned in a voice that could have made a story about Jesus riding a unicycle naked down the school corridors seem boring, Ryan kept focused on the Eastpack. Ash clearly regarded the contents as important, with one strap gripped in a tight fist and the other hooked around his ankle.
Just as Ryan decided that his chances of sneaking the package out of Ash’s bag were nil, one of the Year Twelves sitting behind kicked his chair. He glanced back furiously.
‘Go sit with the other Year Tens, saddo,’ a lanky kid said.
‘Or what?’ Ryan asked.
He got his answer with another kick in the back.
‘Move,’ the kid demanded.
The noise made Ash and just about everyone else in the surrounding seats look around. Ryan was annoyed because the last thing he wanted was for Ash to clock him. Ryan tried to ride it out, but he got kicked again.
‘Move.’
Ryan was furious that his plan to spy discreetly on Ash had been ruined. As soon as he stood up, even more kids looked around and at least one teacher was giving him a what the hell are you standing up for stare.
As Ryan made a step towards a group of kids in his own year, another boy kicked an empty chair into his path, making him trip.
‘Mind where you’re stepping,’ the lanky kid who’d kicked him three times said, as all his mates sneered.
Having so many people looking and laughing made something snap. Ryan spun around furiously, yanked a seat out of the way and launched him
self at his tormenter.
Ryan got one arm around the lanky kid’s neck as a roar of excitement ripped through the assembly and he landed several powerful body shots and a smack in the mouth. When the Year Twelves realised their friend was losing, they started dragging Ryan off.
He broke free, at the cost of a torn shirt sleeve, swung at one of the kids who’d moved behind and struck him clean in the temple, knocking him cold. He ducked a punch as two PE teachers came piling between the chairs to stop the fight. But before they got there, another ruck had broken out between Year Tens siding with Ryan and Year Twelves who weren’t.
As Ryan backed up into Ash’s chair, surveying the damage he’d caused – including three damaged and one unconscious Year Twelve – about twenty other boys were facing off, with a big group of Year Tens squaring up to physically bigger but less numerous Year Twelves.
‘Everybody sit down!’ the headmaster yelled.
Ryan looked back and saw that all the Year Sevens and Eights were starting to stand up and turn around to see what was going on behind them. One of the teachers got a hand on Ryan’s shoulder but he was too riled up to submit.
‘Hands off me, prick.’
The teacher didn’t take kindly to this and the scuffle between Year Tens and Twelves kept getting bigger as the teacher started giving Ryan a how dare you type speech.
A few kids had started shouting, ‘Bundle!’ and overexcited Year Nines trying to get a look at the action forcefully shoved a couple of weedy kids into the rows of plastic seats.
‘This is not acceptable,’ the headmaster yelled.
The scuffles didn’t seem to be breaking up, even though more than a dozen teachers were now trying to pull kids apart. Mostly it was just shoving and jeering, but there were a few punches being thrown and at least one bag had sailed across the hall hitting a girl in the back.
At this point a drunk Year Thirteen girl in a shocking-pink wig set off the fire alarm by the main doors. Kids began pouring out. Ryan managed to break free of the PE teacher who’d been giving him a lecture, while the headmaster desperately told people to stay in their seats. Then, after a brief consultation with one of his deputies, the head changed tack and told everyone to follow the fire rules and meet at the assembly points on the Astroturf pitches.