Den of Snakes

by Damian Vargas

  ‘Let’s get out of here and back over the border before we count our chickens,’ Eddie said. He fully expected an ambush as he exited through the brick gateway, but all was well, and he drove onto the road towards the Spanish border.

  Only once they arrived back at the Repsol garage in Spain did he allow himself to relax. ‘All had gone as planned for once’, he thought. Or so it seemed.

  They parked up in the secluded corner of the expansive lorry park and clambered out from the vehicles. Cigarettes were quickly placed in mouths and ignited.

  ‘We did it,’ said Bill. He was greeted with nods and relieved sighs, amid a cloud of smoke.

  ‘This time tomorrow we’ll have paid them cockney bastards off, and we can get back to what’s important,’ said Roger. He pulled a hip flask from his rucksack, took a swig, then passed it around. Charlie picked up his sleeping bag and shuffled to the truck door. ‘Not want a nightcap, Charlie?’

  ‘Nah, you’re alright,’ Charlie replied as he climbed back into the vehicle’s cabin

  ‘It’s gonna kill me to see that money go to them wankers,’ said Bill.

  ‘Gotta do what we gotta do, Roger,’ said Kenny, his tone morose.

  Eddie checked his watch. It was half-past midnight. He pulled his sleeping bag from its stuff sack, leaned against the car and kicked off his trainers.

  ‘We set off at six,’ he said, yawning. ‘Get some sleep. We’re gonna need it’.

  Eddie awoke to the electronic chirping of his wristwatch. The inside of the windscreen was misty with the moisture of his and Kenny’s accumulated breath from the night just passed. He slid the sleeping bag down and poked Kenny into consciousness. The older man rubbed his eyes and groaned.

  ‘I’ll check on the others,’ Eddie said, pushing the door open.

  Bill and Roger were still asleep, but Charlie was awake already and stood smoking, peering through the chain-link fence at the seascape a few miles beyond. It was still dark, but the perimeter lighting provided sufficient illumination to see each other. A few vehicles were making their way along the main road close by, but it was otherwise a peaceful vista.

  Charlie held out his cigarette packet, and Eddie took one while promising to himself that he would quit again, as soon as things returned to some kind of normality. ‘Pretty, ain’t it?’ said Charlie.

  Eddie nodded as he lit his smoke. ‘You think it’s all over, then?’ he said. ‘After we give Pickering that cash, I mean?’

  ‘Let’s see,’ Charlie replied. It was hardly confidence-inspiring. ‘Hopefully, that money gets the Cockneys off my back, but I’ve still gotta get everything going again’. Charlie sighed, still staring out towards the coastline. Behind them, Bill and Roger had escaped the confines of the truck cabin and were chatting. Kenny stood, arching his back nearby and grimacing.

  ‘Don’t lean too far, you old sod,’ Roger teased. ‘You might not make it back up again’. Kenny responded with a single middle digit.

  ‘So, you’re going for it still?’ Eddie said to his sibling. ‘In Spain, I mean?’

  ‘Ain’t no other way,’ Charlie said. He seemed sad. Withdrawn. Broken, even.

  ‘C’mon girls,’ said Kenny. ‘Can’t stand here all fuckin’ day’.

  ‘Get ready, bruv. I need a quick word with Ken’. Charlie touched Eddie on the shoulder. ‘Remember what I said. None of this was on you.’ He tramped off back to the truck.

  ‘I’m with Eddie,’ said Bill.

  ‘No, you and Roger are with me in the truck. Kenny’s in the car’.

  ‘C’mon, Charlie. I can’t stand another day stuck in there with farty pants’.

  ‘No,’ Charlie repeated.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Coz, I fuckin’ said so. Now shut up and get back in. We’re behind schedule already’. He flicked the cigarette butt away and wandered over to talk to Kenny.

  The years apart had not diminished Eddie’s ability to detect that something was eating at his brother. He didn’t know what it was, and Charlie was not in the most talkative of moods, but it had Eddie worried.

  ‘See you in Marbella,’ he shouted.

  Charlie offered a faint smile in return. It seemed forced.

  It was Kenny’s turn to drive, so Eddie sat in the passenger seat. Kenny nodded towards the glove box full of music cassettes.

  ‘Find something decent. Bit of Sabbath or something. None of that Boy George or “catchy koo koo” shit’.

  ‘They’re called “Kajagoogoo”,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Whatever their fucking called. They’re still shit’.

  Eddie found a cassette on which someone had scrawled, “The Who - Who’s Next”.

  ‘That old school enough for you?’ he asked, holding the tape up for the older man to read the label.

  ‘Fuck, yeah. Stick it in…said the nun to the vicar, haha’.

  Eddie pushed the transparent cassette into the car stereo and turned it on. “Baba O’Riley” started playing from the speakers.

  ‘I saw them a few times back in the late sixties,’ said Kenny. His eyes had an energy in them that Eddie had not seen before. ‘They used to play at the Railway Hotel in Harrow a lot’. He glanced at Eddie. ‘You know it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Eddie replied.

  ‘Back when they were nobodies. Before they went off doing Woodstock and all that bollocks’.

  Eddie sensed this was a chance to find out more about the side of his brother’s past that he knew little about. He opened his cigarettes and offered one to Kenny.

  ‘Yeah, cheers’, Eddie held the lighter up for Kenny.

  ‘I miss them days,’ said Kenny. ‘We had proper music back then. The Stones, Cream, Zepplin, Sabbath, Deep Purple. Proper fuckin’ bands. Not like all this shit today’.

  ‘Did Charlie like all that?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘Are you kidding? He was well into it’. Kenny chuckled as he took a draw on the cigarette. ‘He had this black, leather biker’s jacket what he nicked from a stall up Wembley market one Sunday’. He laughed again. ‘Charlie took a bleedin’ risk doing that, I’m telling you. The geezer what ran that stall was this huge nasty Irish fucker. Chased us halfway back up Wembley Way before we outran him’. Eddie hadn’t seen Kenny like this before. The man seemed twenty years younger as he recounted his memories.

  ‘When was this?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘Sixty-six. Sixty-seven, maybe. Anyway, Charlie loved that jacket he did. Wore it day in, day out for flipping years. We reckoned he slept in it. It ended up in a right scruffy state, but he still wore it every day’. The smile slipped away from Kenny’s face. He seemed perplexed suddenly.

  ‘Something up?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘Nah, I was just thinking I don’t remember when he stopped wearing it’.

  An ambulance car passed by on the opposite carriageway. Kenny pointed at the two-way radio. ‘It’s been a while. Best check in with the boys’.

  They had been on the road for forty minutes. Eddie turned the volume down on Pete Townshend’s wailing guitar and lifted the mic.

  ‘This is Jack Rabbit, are you receiving us Fat Boy, over?’ Roger responded a few seconds later.

  ‘This is Fat Boy. We hear you loud and clear. What’s your status, over?’

  Eddie noted a nearby road sign. ‘We just passed through a town called Talosa. Do we wait for you?’

  Eddie heard his brother giving Roger instructions in the background.

  ‘Not yet. Push ahead. We’re about five miles behind. Let us know if you see any sign of bad weather, over’. “Bad Weather” was the crew’s agreed term for the police and Guardia Civil.

  Eddie smiled. ‘Copy that. The weather looks good where we are. We’ll check in again in thirty, over’.

  ‘Thirty minutes,’ said Roger. ‘Copy that. Over and out’.

  Eddie hung up the mic and turned the stereo’s sound back up. He yawned. The lack of sleep over the last week was wearing him down. Still, he thought, things should calm down once they paid off the Cockneys.<
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  ‘What’s the time?’ asked Kenny.

  Eddie glanced at his watch. ‘Just gone ten thirty’. Kenny seemed to be trying to formulate a question.

  ‘Did you want to swap over yet?’

  ‘Nah. We’ll plough on for another hour then swap over. You get some shut-eye’. Kenny seemed unusually alert, his eyes dancing around their sockets.

  ‘You sure?’ said Eddie.

  ‘Yeah. I don’t want you falling asleep when you’re behind the wheel later’.

  Eddie reclined his seat a few inches, relaxed his head and was asleep in seconds.

  The rapid deceleration of the Lancia and the painful screech of its tyres thrust Eddie back into consciousness. It felt as if mere seconds had passed, but where before there had been craggy hills, Eddie saw only wide open plains. They were now stationary at the side of the road amid a cloud of tire smoke. Kenny was fighting with the radio mic.

  ‘Fat boy, come in. Come in, god damn it’.

  ‘What is it?’ Eddie shouted.

  Kenny didn’t answer.

  ‘Fat Boy. This is Jack Rabbit…Roger…what the fuck’s going on?’ The panic in Kenny’s voice made it evident that whatever was occurring, it was bad.

  ‘Kenny?’ Eddie shouted.

  ‘We gotta turn around,’ he said. He glanced over his shoulder, plunged his foot to the floor and powered the hatchback straight across the road. They bounced over the gravel-laden central divider, and then onto the opposite carriageway. He worked through the gears like a madman.

  ‘Kenny? What the fucking hell is happening?’ said Eddie. The radio gave him his answer.

  ‘I can’t hold them off’. It was Charlie’s voice, and he sounded desperate. ‘They got Bill. Roger’s hit too’. The sound of automatic gunfire cut across Charlie’s voice.’

  Eddie screamed into the microphone. ‘Charlie. What the fuck’s happening?’

  ‘They forced us off the road. Bill was driving -’. More gunfire. ‘Fucking bastards shot him in the face’.

  ‘We’re coming, Charlie. We’re coming. Hold on’.

  ‘You won’t make it, bruv. They’ve pinned us down. I’m almost out of ammo’. Eddie heard more gun shots and the sound of smashing glass.

  ‘Charlie!’

  ‘Ed. Get out of here’. Another brief burst of automatic fire rang out.

  ‘Give me a location, Charlie,’ Eddie shouted.

  ‘I’m out. I’m out. No more ammo’. Charlie’s voice had morphed from urgent panic to utter resignation in the space of five seconds.

  ‘Charlie -’.

  ‘It was a setup, bruv. We both know who’.

  ‘Charlie!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ed. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry’.

  The line turned to pure static.

  ‘Charlie?’ Eddie started at the mic, awaiting a response. ‘Charlie?’ he shouted again. The car was slowing. Eddie slammed on the dashboard. ‘What the fuck are you doing, keep going!’ he bellowed.

  ‘They’re gone,’ said Kenny. He pulled the Lancia onto the hard shoulder, and it lurched to a halt.

  Eddie punched him in the arm, but Kenny barely reacted. ‘We need to get to them,’ he screamed. Still nothing from Kenny.

  Eddie pushed the door open, sprinted around to the driver’s door and pulled it open. ‘Get out!’ he yelled. He grabbed Kenny’s arm, yanked him out of the car then pulled the seat forward. ‘Get in the back’. He shoved Kenny in, jumped into the driver’s seat, threw the gear stick into first and slammed this foot to the floor, leaving a twenty foot-long black mark on the tarmac behind him. ‘Fuck,’ he yelled, punching the steering wheel.

  It didn’t take long before Eddie caught sight of a plume of black smoke. He was still over a mile away, but he knew what it meant.

  In less than a minute, the truck came into view. It had been driven into the concrete drainage gully at the side of the road and was now fully ablaze. Eddie slammed on the brakes, and the hatchback screamed to a halt. He leapt out, sprinted across the carriageway and then vaulted over the steel barrier between the north-bound and south-bound lanes.

  Bill’s body lay sprawled out at the side of the road. His tee-shirt was dark crimson and half of his scalp was missing.

  Eddie tried to get nearer to the truck, but the heat was unbearable and forced him back. Shielding his face with his hands, Eddie spotted Roger lying on his back, a pistol at his side and in a pool of his own blood.

  ‘Charlie,’ he shouted. ‘Charlie’. Eddie moved around the front of the truck, getting as close as possible. The cabin had been punctured with dozens of bullet holes and Charlie’s prize weapon, his Sten gun lay on the tarmac, an empty magazine beside it.

  Eddie peered up towards the driver’s door. The vehicle was a blazing inferno now, smoke bellowing out from the cabin. For a brief second he glimpsed a body slumped on the seat but the flames renewed in their intensity, soaring twenty feet up into the air and forcing Eddie to retreat.

  He sunk to his knees, barely conscious of the sounds of police sirens approaching, and in that moment, Eddie knew that his brother was dead.

  Time passed. Quite how much, Eddie could not tell. He sat slumped in the passenger seat of the red Lancia, as it hurtled along at over ninety miles an hour. Hazy memories of Kenny pulling him to his knees and back to the hatchback flashed by, but it was all a fuzzy montage of heat, smoke, tears and pain. His face stung as if it were severely sunburned. He peered into the mirror on the back of the sun visor. His skin was red and blotchy from the heat of the fire.

  Eddie twisted around to look behind them, grunting as he did so. The road was empty - no sign of the burning truck or the plume of acrid smoke.

  ‘You were out cold,’ said Kenny. ‘For ten minutes. Maybe more’. He thrust a bottle of water at Eddie. ‘Wash your eyes out with that’.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Eddie, coughing. His throat was sore from inhaling smoke.

  ‘As far away from…there, as possible’.

  ‘They were dead,’ said Eddie, only now reconstructing what he had witnessed.

  ‘I know, son,’ said the older man.

  Eddie poured a little water into his hand and splashed it into his eyes to rinse them. The discomfort brought back fleeting memories of being exposed to tear gas in Armagh, several years earlier. The water helped.

  ‘He said it was an inside job,’ Eddie said. Kenny nodded. ‘He said we knew who it was’.

  ‘Mike,’ said Kenny. ‘Has to be’.

  ‘Why would he do that to us?’ he asked, rubbing his eyes again.

  ‘Because he’s a selfish wanker, and because he’s desperate’. Eddie looked at his watch, straining to focus. It was coming up to midday and would take another eight hours to get back to Marbella.

  Eight hours to plan how he would make Michael McNaughton suffer.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  This Is Gonna Hurt. You

  Kenny stood leaning against the Red Lancia Delta outside an apartment in Estepona’s port. It was just approaching nine o’clock in the morning. Eddie, who had got out of the car further along the road before Kenny parked it, was now hidden in the shadows of a nearby restaurant’s awnings. They were alone save for a team of rubbish collectors who were working their way up the street having just passed them.

  Eddie peered up at the apartment on the first floor where Raquel, Mike’s Spanish girlfriend, lived. Mike’s car, the Audi A8 he had borrowed from Roger after his Ferrari had been confiscated, sat in the street behind the red hatchback.

  Eddie nodded at Kenny to commence their pre-arranged plan. Kenny pressed on the doorbell several times in quick succession and stepped back into the street.

  ‘Mike,’ Kenny hollered. ‘Mike, it’s Kenny’. A light came on in the apartment. Kenny kept going. ‘Mikey. I need to talk to you. It’s Ken’. Eddie lifted the Browning High Power and pointed it towards the apartment entrance. The image of the burning truck was still foremost in his mind, and his blood was up. He wasn’t at all sure if he w
ould follow through on the plan, or whether he was just going to shoot Mike on the spot.

  There was a ruffle of curtains at the window and the shadow of a figure moving around inside. Eddie heard a Spanish woman shouting, followed by the muted sound of a male voice. Eddie gestured at Kenny to keep going while monitoring the road for passersby. There were none.

  ‘Mikey. Come on, mate. I need your help’. The light in the apartment came on. Eddie wondered if perhaps the woman had found herself a new sugar daddy, but a few seconds later the apartment block’s front door opened and Mike appeared. He paused with the door open, alive to some kind of threat. Kenny remained leaning against the Lancia and was now feigning an injury. He had wrapped one arm around his belly and groaned.

  ‘What is it?’ Mike asked. He sounded suspicious. Kenny slid down the car door towards the pavement. Mike took a step forward but still had one hand on the door, ready to slam it shut at the slightest sign of danger - he and Kenny were not, after all, the best of friends. Not since the incident at the beach club when he had broken Kenny’s cheekbone.

  ‘Help me, Mike. Help me,’ Kenny groaned. That did it. Mike started down the stairs towards Kenny who was turning his back on him, appearing to be struggling to clamber up from the ground.

  ‘What is it? What happened?’ said Mike. Eddie could see that Mike had a revolver stuffed into the back of his jeans.

  As the big man approached Kenny, Eddie slipped out of his hiding spot and closed up behind him. ‘Don’t fucking move,’ he said. Mike stiffened, realising straight away they had duped him. ‘Go for that pistol, and I’ll end you, right here. Right now’.

  ‘What is this?’ said Mike. Kenny rose up, snaked one of his freckled arms around Mike’s waistline and extracted Mike’s revolver. Eddie pointed the Browning at Mike’s chest. ‘I don’t know what you think I’ve done -’. Kenny cracked him on the back of the head with the pistol butt. Mike’s legs buckled, but he did not fall.

  ‘Fucking traitor,’ Kenny snarled. He shoved Mike, who now had both hands on his head, towards the back of the car. ‘Open it,’ he said, pointing at the hatchback.