Owen shook his head and sucked air between his teeth. ‘My old home, I miss it so,’ he said, before bursting into laughter. ‘So you here for a K bag? You know, I almost fell on me arse when Major Dee called up so early.’
‘Same here,’ Michael nodded, as Owen guided his socks into a pair of muddy workman’s boots and stood up without bothering to tie the laces.
He put on a pair of gardening gloves before grabbing keys from a catering-sized coffee can and strolling outside towards the men’s changing block. Owen wore his jeans down low, with his boxers showing, but it was a younger man’s look and it didn’t seem right.
Gabrielle followed Owen and Michael into the tiled men’s changing room. The floor was covered with chunks of dry mud stamped out with the shape of football studs, and she could see past the clothes hooks and benches into a toilet cubicle with damp tissue across the floor and diarrhoea sprayed up the seat.
‘Do you need me in here?’ she said, gagging on the combo of old sweat and blocked toilet.
‘Wait outside,’ Owen snorted, as he grinned at Michael. ‘It’s not really suited to the delicate nostrils of females in here.’
As Owen stepped on to a metal changing bench and reached up to grab a kilo of cocaine from behind a ceiling tile, Gabrielle backed into the crisp March air. She tried to wipe the foul smell from memory as she buried her fists in the front pockets of her hoodie and studied the cold breath curling in front of her face.
The playing fields were deserted, except for a dude thirty metres away, sitting on a concrete bench behind a set of goalposts. He was a little older than Gabrielle, maybe seventeen: Adidas tracksuit, with a bike flat on the pavement in front of him and a mobile phone touching a cheek covered in zits. She wouldn’t have given him a second glance, but for his shocked expression when he realised she was looking his way.
He snapped his phone shut, sprang off the bench and wobbled all over the place as he began pedalling away.
‘All set,’ Michael said, zipping the bag of white powder into a Fila pack. He handed it over to Gabrielle as Owen locked up the changing room.
‘Do you recognise that guy on the bike?’ she asked, but the rider had disappeared into the glare of the low sun.
‘Nice doing business, Owen,’ Michael said, waving as the giant Jamaican and his trailing boot laces headed back towards his hut. ‘Maybe I’ll catch you in the Green Pepper.’
‘Not tonight,’ Owen smiled, looking back over his shoulder as he headed for his lock-up. ‘My girl Erica goes to college. I got three babies to look after.’
‘Sounds a blast,’ Michael said, as he and Gabrielle started walking towards the gates.
‘I think we’re being followed,’ Gabrielle whispered.
But Michael wasn’t convinced. ‘Are you sure? I mean, you’re pretty paranoid. Remember that time we came out of the bowling alley on campus and …’
Gabrielle practically growled. Just one time she’d thought some guy was following them back to campus and ever since Michael had accused her of being paranoid about everything.
‘It’s not like that,’ she snapped. ‘That spotty dude can’t have been expecting me to come out of the changing room straight away. You should have seen the look on his mug; and he climbed on that bike like he had a hot spud up his rear end.’
Michael glanced around. ‘Well, we can’t do much except keep our wits and we’re doing that anyway.’
‘I know,’ Gabrielle nodded, as she swung the pack over her back. ‘But I thought this was dodgy and now I really think this is dodgy.’
‘Who could he be?’ Michael asked.
Gabrielle shrugged. ‘He had that whole chavvy thing going on; he looked like a Runt.’
Michael shook his head. The Runts were a youth gang who all came out of a couple of estates on the opposite side of town. They dealt drugs, stole cars and burgled houses, but they were mostly just tearaways. Even the leaders were barely out of their teens.
‘Too sophisticated,’ Michael said. ‘You’re suggesting that Runts are gonna send some dude into the Green Pepper to set up a sale, then keep tabs on all of Major Dee’s couriers so that they can find where he keeps his stash …’
‘OK, you’re right,’ Gabrielle said irritably. ‘It’s way too sophisticated for the Runts. But I’m telling you it’s not me being paranoid; that dude flipped out when he saw me.’
‘Could be a cop,’ Michael said.
Gabrielle shrugged. ‘Too young to be on the drugs squad, but I suppose it could be an informant.’
‘Or some other gang … I mean, Major Dee’s double-crossed everyone from the Russian mafia to his own uncle. Do you think we should call Chloe again?’
‘What’s the point?’ Gabrielle asked. ‘She’s a mission controller, not a miracle worker. I know what she’ll say: we can go ahead and deliver the drugs or pull out if we think it’s too dangerous. But the second we go missing with a kilo of Major Dee’s coke, he’s gonna want our heads on a platter.’
By this time, Michael and Gabrielle were out of the playing fields and walking beside a breeze-block wall, with a parade of small shops across the street. The Green Pepper café was less than three minutes’ walk, but they were both on edge.
‘Are we gonna make this call about the police car or not?’ Michael said, as he slid his mobile from his jeans.
But Michael didn’t get a chance. He heard something behind him and turned to see three bikes speeding down the pavement towards them. The tracksuited riders had scarves over their faces, but Gabrielle glimpsed enough to recognise one from a police surveillance photo. He was a Runt called Aaron Reid: a twenty-two-year-old who’d done three years in youth custody after beating a schoolmate almost to death.
As the bikes closed in, Michael broke into a run whilst Gabrielle jumped off the kerb, shielding herself between two closely parked cars. Two bikes whizzed on to get Michael, but the lad she’d eyeballed in the park threw his bike down and pulled a wooden-handled kitchen knife from inside his jacket.
‘Give us the pack,’ he ordered.
Gabrielle stepped backwards into the road was horrified to see that the knife was smeared with fresh blood. But it was one on one. Gabrielle had passed CHERUB’s advanced combat course and reckoned she could handle him.
She backed into the middle of the road as the guy closed her down. Meanwhile, Michael had disappeared around the corner with the two bikes on his tail.
‘Hand over the coke and you can walk.’
‘Kiss my arse, spotty,’ Gabrielle scoffed, as an approaching car blasted its horn at her.
As the driver got close he realised that Gabrielle had a knife pointed at her, but he just cut into the opposite lane and kept on going.
‘You’re a big spotty chicken,’ Gabrielle goaded. ‘You haven’t got the guts.’
The Runt made a clumsy lunge. Gabrielle sidestepped before snatching his wrist and twisting his arm up behind his back. The giant blade clattered to the ground as she kneed him ferociously in the balls and turned him around to smash the side of his head against the front wing of a Fiat Tipo. The first blow left him dazed. The second left a dent in the bonnet and a dead weight in her hands. She let go and the Runt slumped into the road, to the obvious surprise of a man emerging from the halal butcher’s shop across the street.
Gabrielle looked around to make sure she was out of danger. She was torn about what to do next. Her heart wanted to go after Michael, but her brain knew there wasn’t much chance of catching up before he reached the Green Pepper and she was all too aware of the blood smeared over the knife.
Whose blood?
A crowd was gathering across the street as she began sprinting back towards the playing fields. As she burst through the squeaky metal gate, Gabrielle noticed that the doors of both men’s changing rooms had been kicked in. Her nightmare was confirmed when she rounded a corner and opened the door of the lock-up.
Owen was face-down on the concrete, with a pool of blood around his head. He was a big man,
but he’d been surprised by the Runts and his throat had been slashed with the giant knife, killing him instantly.
Gabrielle realised she was in deep trouble: not only was she standing at a crime scene, but she’d been seen in the area by witnesses. CHERUB could pull her off the mission and tamper with the evidence so that she was never linked with the crime, but she’d be a suspect and the very fact that witnesses had seen her could muddy the evidence enough and make convicting the real killers impossible.
Gabrielle realised she had to leave the area fast, then call up Chloe and tell her that Michael was probably still in danger. Death is always shocking and she trembled as she backed out of the lock-up. Then she jumped with fright as a door slammed less than ten metres away, followed by a youth’s voice:
‘We’ve got two kilos and Aaron should have got the bag from the black girl by now.’
Another voice: ‘Sasha’s boy said there’d be a lot more than four kilos.’
‘Well where is it? We’ve looked already.’
Gabrielle crept back inside the lock-up. It sounded like five or six Runts were stepping out of the changing rooms. She realised that her urgent desire to know if Owen was safe had made her careless. It made perfect sense that a small team of Runts would go after the K bag hooked on her back, while a larger team searched the changing rooms for Major Dee’s main stash. But they were out of sight and it sounded like they were leaving.
‘I’m outta here before the cops arrive,’ the most dominant sounding Runt said.
‘Sod that,’ a younger voice said, maybe only thirteen or fourteen. ‘We haven’t searched the birds’ changing rooms yet. There could be another twenty grand’s worth of coke stashed above those ceiling tiles.’
‘I tell you what, shorty, you stay here and get done for murder when the pigs turn up. I’m gonna head home and start snorting this lot.’
There were some laughs and a few jeers. The lads were egging one another on and it sounded absurdly casual; as if they were busting each other’s balls over the football results rather than robbing a drug dealer and murdering his associate.
‘You know what else,’ another boy said. ‘I need a snap of that dead Rasta man on my mobile before we get out of here.’
The lads all laughed like they thought this was a great idea. ‘You’d better not let your little sister find it.’
There was a round of laughter, followed by: ‘Remember that time your mum found the pictures of Brenda’s boobs …’
Back in the lock-up, Gabrielle considered bursting out and making a run across the fields. But there were at least half a dozen boys and they had bikes which she wouldn’t be able to outrun.
One of the boys started singing to the tune of Ten Green Bottles as they walked towards the lock-up. ‘One dead Rasta, stabbed inside a shed, one dead Rasta, stabbed inside a shed…’
His mates laughed as Gabrielle glanced around at Owen’s tools. The Runts were going to find her within a few seconds and she desperately needed a weapon.
5. PEPPER
Michael was well built and moved fast, but the two bikes were almost on his back as he rounded the corner into the main road. Knowing they’d catch up in seconds, he dodged behind a letterbox and gave the first cyclist an almighty shove as he sped past.
The bike clattered into a bush and Aaron Reid tipped off, hitting the low wall below a hedge and rolling several times before smacking head-first into a gate post.
The second guy managed to brake before Michael jumped him. But as Michael’s fist slammed into his head and knocked him off the bike, he realised that five more sets of wheels were coming from the direction he’d been heading.
Even with CHERUB combat training, five against one was no good. They’d all have knives and they’d come to fight Major Dee’s crew, so at least one of them would be packing a gun. Michael considered turning back, but there was no way he’d outrun five guys on bikes. He needed to get reinforcements out of the Green Pepper café, which was less than a minute’s walk along the street.
Michael bundled the second cyclist and knocked him cold with a blow to the side of the head. He spotted a small axe inside the youth’s jacket and ripped it out with one hand, while sliding his mobile phone open with the other. The five bikes were now less than fifty metres away and Michael flipped through the memories until he found the number for the Green Pepper.
He crouched back behind the postbox, with the axe in one hand and his mobile at his ear. The bikes kept closing and Michael looked for a gap in the traffic that would enable him to buy a few seconds by darting across the road.
A voice sounded in his ear as he sprinted out in front of a delivery van. ‘Green Pepper.’
‘Clive, it’s Michael Conroy here, you’ve got to—’
The blast of a horn drowned out his words.
‘Who?’ the gruff West Indian asked as Michael began running along the pavement towards the café.
‘I’m making a delivery for Dee, but the Runts are all over me. I’m across the street, I need backup.’
Michael didn’t hear the response, because a red traffic light had allowed three of the five cyclists to cut across the road and resume the chase. But Michael was now less than two hundred metres from the shabby frontage of the Green Pepper.
‘Move,’ Michael screamed, as a woman scooped a toddler into her arms to avoid getting mown down by Michael and the line of bikes on his tail.
But avoiding the toddler steered Michael into the path of a concrete bollard. His knee smacked it and his phone went flying as he twisted and fell against a parked car. As he saved himself from hitting the ground by grabbing hold of a door mirror, one of the cyclists skimmed past punching him in the back.
By the time Michael was on his feet, he was gasping for breath and penned between a car and a hedge, with the Runt who’d thrown the punch ahead of him and two more jumping off their bikes behind. He stepped away from the car and made a wild swing with the axe.
‘Come on then, slags,’ Michael yelled, as the axe swished through the air. ‘I’m not scared of you.’
But he was scared. It was a huge relief to see four masked men burst through the windowless doors of the Green Pepper. There was a crack as one of them fired a shotgun blast into the air. Two of his compadres held machetes, while the other wielded a handgun and a full-sized samurai sword.
Major Dee’s crew were serious gangsters. Many of them had grown up in Jamaica’s most violent neighbourhoods; they’d killed rivals and served hard prison time. The Runts were just kids, deep in Major Dee’s territory and suddenly out of their league.
A second blast of shotgun pellets hit one of the cyclists who hadn’t crossed the road. The two guys at Michael’s back grabbed their bikes to flee, but the one in front eyeballed him defiantly as he lifted up his sweatshirt, revealing the stock of an automatic pistol.
Three more tooled-up members of Major Dee’s crew were emerging from the Green Pepper, making a total of seven. The guy with the shotgun was waiting for a gap in the traffic to come to Michael’s aid, but Michael realised there would be a nasty – possibly deadly – stand-off if he gave the Runt time to pull his gun.
Michael lunged forward, swinging the axe. He brought it down hard into his opponent’s shoulder. The kid tried aiming the gun as he collapsed backwards into the hedge, but his arm was crippled and Michael kneed him in the stomach before ripping the gun out of his hand.
Blood was pouring as Michael pocketed the handgun and levered the axe out of the Runt’s shoulder. Another shotgun blast made Michael jump, but it had been aimed hopelessly at the two retreating cyclists.
‘Michael, you OK?’ the gunman said.
Michael was completely pumped. He hadn’t recognised the gunman under his mask, but he knew Major Dee’s voice.
‘I thought you were home,’ Michael gasped.
Major Dee shook his head. ‘I listened to what your girlfriend said. She made me realise that this set-up smelled to high heaven.’
‘We’d bett
er get out of here,’ Michael said.
But Major Dee looked at the bloody Runt slumped against the hedge. He pointed the shotgun at the Runt’s head and pulled up his balaclava.
‘Good news is, I’m gonna let you live,’ Dee smiled. ‘But tell all your friends that we’re on your case.’
After a laugh, Dee lowered his aim and blasted the Runt’s kneecap from point-blank range. Blood spattered over Michael’s trainers as the Runt screamed in pain. Meantime, two saloon cars had pulled up in the road.
‘Everyone outta here,’ Dee shouted.
Within fifteen seconds, Michael, Major Dee and another member of the gang were inside a car and the back wheels were spinning.
As they moved away, Michael felt inside his pockets and realised that he’d lost his phone.
‘Someone give us a mobile,’ he begged. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to Gabrielle.’
*
Stuart was fourteen, a lanky kid in an oversized puffa jacket. He had his mobile phone lined up to take a picture of Owen’s body and he was surprised when the spade hit him in the face. Blood exploded from his nose as he stumbled backwards and collapsed to the pavement.
Gabrielle’s other hand contained a small garden fork – the kind you might use to dig in flowers – and she jammed its three prongs into the belly of an older lad before ripping it out.
Two boys down. Before any of the five other lads got their heads together, she’d burst out of the lock-up and was sprinting along the paved area in front of the playing fields.
She got thirty metres before someone got a hand to her shoulder; but she stopped running and used her opponent’s forward momentum to roll him over her back, slamming him hard against the concrete.
Of the remaining four lads, only two were on her tail and both were losing ground. As Gabrielle neared the gates, she noticed the Runts’ bikes resting against the wall between the men’s and women’s changing rooms. The guys would catch her easily on bikes, giving her no choice but to grab one herself.
Gabrielle pulled up and grabbed a Muddy Fox mountain bike leaning against the wall. As she swung her leg over the saddle, one of the guys chasing kicked the back wheel. It almost knocked her off balance, but she just about kept in the saddle and started powering away.