‘I’m assuming you want to sell it,’ she sighed as she handed him the book. ‘I’ll be in The Flask from 8 o’ clock,’ she added as she walked off.
Josh took Caitlin’s advice and used the public phone in the library to call a couple of the local dealers. He could tell from their questions that the medal was worth a lot more than Eddy had quoted. Apparently, a similar one had gone for nearly £200,000 a few years ago.
He dropped the calls each time they started asking awkward questions about how he had come to own it — that was going to be a difficult thing to explain unless he could invent a better story than his granddad’s fictitious metal detector.
He lost track of the next hour looking at the grainy black-and-white photos of World War II. There was something unreal about the haunted faces of the men that stared back at him. They were like deleted scenes from a movie, one that he had never seen. He was beginning to wonder if he had imagined the version in which Hitler had died in 1944.
When he looked up, it was nearly 1pm. Lenin’s deadline and his mother’s lunch fought for priority as he ran for the exit.
‘No running!’ the cat lady screamed as Josh cleared the non-fiction section and vaulted over the ‘newly arrived’ display. He was out of the door before she could say another word.
8
Hospital
The front door of their flat was ajar when he got home. The wood had splintered around the locks from the force of someone kicking it very hard.
‘Mum?’ he called as he shoved through the door, and then again louder when there was no response: ‘MUM!’
He listened intently, holding his breath. There was no answer. Various scenarios ran through his mind as he ran down the hall: she had been taken ill and the paramedics had to break in, or there had been a gas leak and the firemen had rescued her — but the gas had been cut off weeks ago . . .
When he saw the state of the living room, it all started to make sense. Like a CSI crime scene, each step he took uncovered more signs of mindless destruction: the breaking of a mirror, the scattered pieces of a cheap vase of silk flowers, a photograph of his gran ripped out of its frame. Small things of sentimental value that gave him all the clues he needed. Lenin had been to collect and had brought some of the Ghost Squad along with him. Mum must have tried to bar the door, but they had kicked it in and then swept the flat for anything of value.
He searched the other rooms, but it was much the same. The television was gone, and so was his mother.
On the mirror above the gas fire they could never afford to put on was message scribbled in thick black marker. He recognised Lenin’s handwriting.
DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID!
Which was exactly what Josh wanted to do. Very badly.
He clenched his fists, angry with himself for spending so long at the library. He couldn’t think of anything other than what Lenin had done to his mum, how scared she would have been when they broke the door down and went through her things. How he should have been there to protect her.
He lashed out, kicking the coffee table over — where the hell was she now?
Mrs B will know.
Heart hammering, he sprinted across the hall and pounded on Mrs B’s door.
‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re back,’ she said as soon as she had managed to undo all of the various locks on her front door. ‘There was a terrible commotion earlier, and then the ambulance came. They’ve taken her to Bart’s.’ She had that concerned look of someone who actually cared.
‘Bart’s? Are you sure?’
‘Yes, one of the nice young men said to tell the next of kin.
‘Thanks, Mrs B.’ He turned to leave and then thought of something else. ‘Will you look after something for me?’
‘Of course, dear.’
He handed her the medal still wrapped in newspaper.
‘It’s all we have left, and I think your place is safer than ours.’ He nodded to the door opposite and the footprint-sized hole in the middle of it.
‘Ooh. Is it precious?’ she asked, starting to unwrap it.
He placed his hand over hers. ‘It’s just one of Great-grandad’s old medals.’
She looked a little disappointed and put it into one of the pockets of her apron.
A thought flew into his mind. ‘Mrs B, do you remember much about the war?’ he asked.
‘Cheeky boy, I’m not that old. I was only twelve when it broke out.’ She smiled, remembering something. ‘It was a very exciting time for a child.’
‘So you remember the day it ended?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, her eyes glazing over, ‘VE Day. Eighth of May, 1945. We had so much fun that afternoon. The whole street came out for the party. It was the best day of all. That was the first time I met my Sydney. God rest his soul.’ Her eyes were full of tears, and Josh wished he had time to hang around for one of her stories.
‘OK, thanks. I’ll give Mum your best.’
‘You do that, love,’ she replied, squeezing his hand.
St Bartholomew’s, or ‘Bart’s’ as it was more affectionately known, was one of the oldest hospitals in Britain. Based in the heart of London, its gothic architecture made it feel more like an asylum than a place for healing the sick. Josh hated all hospitals; the smell of sickness, and the chemicals they used for cleaning, always reminded him of death.
It reminded him of Gossy.
He’d gone in to visit his friend after the crash. The surgeons and their machines had managed to keep him alive for little more than a week. Josh had sneaked in to see him when his parents had stepped out. Gossy was lying in the bed with tubes and wires attached to various parts of his body, but it still looked like him, if a little beaten up. His head was wrapped in bandages, but his face was unscathed. The machines beeped and pinged while the respirator next to the bed breathed for him, and Josh sat there, trying hard to think of something to say. When he moved closer to the bed, the monitors registered a slight change in Gossy’s heart rate.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered to his friend.
For a second Gossy had opened his eyes, the bright blue irises staring right into his. He would never forget that look, the way his pupils were nothing more than tiny black dots. It was a haunting, vacant look of seeing but not seeing — and he knew his friend had gone.
Josh had been so scared he’d run out of the ward.
Gossy died two days later.
Josh made his way along the corridors full of people looking dazed and confused. Hospitals were strange places; they were so massive, so imposing that you felt immediately lost the moment you stepped inside one. They were places of beginnings and endings, but for Josh they were where you learned some awful truth about one of your own.
Instinctively, he found his way through the maze of corridors to his mother’s neuro ward and there he paused at the door. There was always a moment, just before he saw her, when he would convince himself it wouldn’t be too bad this time, that she had just had a mild relapse. Her MS had been slowly worsening, and the doctors had started making noises about something called ‘secondary progressive’, which was another way of saying she was never going to get any better.
She was asleep when he walked in to the ward, her arms and hands drawn up onto her chest where the muscles were locked in spasm. An IV drip ran into her thin arm. He inspected the label — intravenous steroids — they would be trying to help her body back from the edge. The skin was pale and waxy: a sure sign she had suffered terribly. He knew the signs so well now, probably better than most of the doctors. There were no visible cuts or bruises, so he had to assume that Lenin hadn’t harmed her in any physical way. He wouldn’t have — he wouldn’t dare.
A nurse walked over to check the monitor on the other side of the bed. She smiled at him in that way that said, ‘Sorry about your mum,’ and then wrote on her chart.
When she spoke, he could hear the trace of an Eastern European accent.
‘Your mother will be sleeping for most of the day. I woul
d come back later. We will look after her.’
He checked the time on the clock at the nurse’s station. It was 1.40pm and visiting finished in twenty minutes.
‘I’ll stay if that’s OK?’
‘Sure. You’re a good boy,’ she said sincerely, and then walked over to help another patient.
No, I’m not, Josh thought. I’m the one who got her into this.
If he had gone straight round to Lenin this morning, it would all be different. That bloody medal — all he had to do was give it to Lenin, and this would never have happened. It was Eddy’s fault for telling him what it might be worth — that kind of money changes lives.
He had seen a way out, a chance to get a better life for the two of them. Now he would have to sort Lenin — he had gone too far this time.
9
Lenin
As Josh walked out of the hospital, he could hear the bass of a jacked-up sound system in the car park. The sound followed him as he made his way towards the exit. A BMW X5 with tinted windows slowed down to crawl beside him.
‘All right, bruv,’ said a familiar voice from the half-open passenger window. ‘You need a lift?’
It was Billy, the not-so-clever bike thief, his face half-hidden by a scarf. A cloud of dope-scented smoke escaped through the open window.
‘Nope,’ Josh replied as he continued to walk.
‘Wasn’t asking.’
Josh knew better than to argue. He got into the back. Lenin was sitting in the rear seat, smoking a large joint. He was wearing sunglasses and a large blue parka as if he were about to go on some polar exploration. The music was so loud that it made talking impossible. As the car pulled out into traffic, Josh noticed that Lenin had a gun resting in his lap.
They went back a long way. Lenin had always been the bossy kind of kid, the clever one that got the bullies on his side and then told them who to beat up. His actual name was Richard Leonard Belkin, but over the years various versions of nicknames had led him to adopt ‘Lenin’. There was some link to the Marxist philosopher and founder of the communist movement, but he certainly didn’t follow the teachings of his namesake.
Lenin had got into drugs at a young age. He was selling dope to kids way older than himself and making a tidy profit — enough to afford all the luxuries that Josh had always dreamed of. When his mother had to quit work and move to the Bevin estate, Josh had found he had two choices: be beaten up every day or join a gang and have some protection. It was not much of a choice: he was no boy scout. He managed to stay away from the drugs by being incredibly good at getting into other people’s cars — without their permission or their keys.
‘So, Crash. Am I going to have to use this?’ Lenin broke Josh’s reverie, waving the gun at his face like a gangster.
Josh had been so angry when he’d thought his mum was in danger that he would have killed Lenin. But, since seeing his mother, he realised that he was mad at himself. Lenin had no choice but to make an example of him: Josh hadn’t played by the rules. He’d never been afraid of Lenin, not in all their years, but the guy was starting to do some serious drugs, and his behaviour was changing. What Josh had decided, sitting beside his mother in the ward, was that he needed to get away from this life altogether. It was not healthy. There was no future in it. He just had to cut all ties and move on, move away. Which meant settling the debt.
‘No, Len, we’re cool.’
‘No, Crash! We! Are! Not! Bloody! Cool!’ he said in a loud voice, punctuating every word by pointing the gun in Josh’s face.
The two guys in the front shrank down in their seats a little, as though trying to disappear.
‘You disrespected me. You little shit! You owe me!’ He was getting more wound up with every word.
Josh could feel his anger rising too. No one spoke to him like that, not in front of others, but he knew he had to control it. One wrong word and Lenin would probably shoot him.
‘I have the money, Len.’
‘No, you fricking don’t! We just went through your flat, remember? You don’t have shit!’
Josh remembered the chaos. They had gone through everything, invaded the sanctity of his home.
‘Len, seriously, stop waving the gun around. It’s going to go off!’ Josh said nervously.
Lenin’s eyes seemed to clear for a moment. Whatever he was smoking was obviously messing with his brain. Josh couldn’t read him at all.
He levelled the gun at Josh’s head, and Josh closed his eyes. Could this be it? Had Lenin finally lost it? He could hear Lenin breathing hard, could smell the oiled metal of the gun. There was a long pause when nothing happened, and Josh opened his eyes, realising that his hands were over his head.
Lenin was smiling like a Cheshire cat. He pointed the gun at his own head and pulled the trigger. There was an empty click — the gun wasn’t loaded.
Lenin began to giggle and then broke into a bout of hysterical laughing. The others in the front joined in.
‘I so had you there, Joshy! You were shitting it!’ Lenin said between fits of laughter. He drew in a deep breath and started coughing. ‘It’s a replica, you dummy. Haven’t had it modded yet.’ He threw the gun into Josh’s lap.
The weapon was heavy, not that he knew what one should feel like, but it certainly seemed real. Josh knew better than to retaliate. He smiled to show he took the joke and placed the gun on the seat between them.
‘So how’s your mum?’ asked Lenin. ‘We were real worried when we found her. Collapsed on the floor she was. Billy called the ambulance.’
Billy looked round from his seat and gave Josh a wink. Josh nodded his thanks.
‘Bad. The doctor says it’s going to be a couple of weeks.’
‘Not cool. Do you want some more weed?’
‘No, they have her on stronger stuff, steroids and shit like that.’
‘Diazepam or some other benzodiazepine.’
One thing you could say in Lenin’s favour, Josh thought, was that he had a very extensive knowledge of pharmaceuticals. In another life, he would have made an excellent chemist or maybe even a doctor.
‘Did you have to turn the place over?’
‘It was overdue. Debts gotta be paid, dude.’
He wanted to complain about them taking the TV and leaving the place in such a state, but Lenin shook his head as if to say that this conversation was over.
‘Anyways, Josh-man. I’m going to be needing some of your specialist skills soon — just wanted to make sure you’re up for it. Considering what you owe me.’
‘How much is it now?’
‘Three K still,’ Lenin said, flashing a gold-toothed smile — holding up a hand before Josh could protest. ‘The TV just paid off the interest.’
Josh was about to tell him about the medal, but something caught his eye out of the window. It was the sight of the colonel sitting down in the middle of the busy street, rummaging through bulky shopping bags, looking for something.
‘Hey, look, there’s old Colonel Cuckoo!’ said the guy next to Billy. ‘What’s he doing?’
As they crawled past him in the traffic, the old man looked directly at their car and for a second Josh thought he was going to shout something at them, but he went remarkably quiet and took out his book and wrote something in it. A few seconds later he was being helped up by a couple of security guards.
‘Damn! The man is a total nutter,’ said Billy.
‘That’s what happens when you don’t take your meds,’ said Lenin. ‘So, Josh, get your shit together. I’ll be in touch about the job. Going to need a fast set of wheels for this one, so find me something special. Yeah?’
With that, the car pulled over to the kerb and Josh was left standing on the pavement.
He dug his hands deep into his pockets and walked away. The colonel was shouting at the top of his voice as the guards dragged him off in the other direction. Josh could have sworn he heard the old man call his name, but he’d had his fill of madness for one day. Right now all he wanted was to esc
ape. Right now he needed to drive.
10
Cars
For as long as he could remember Josh had loved everything about cars: the smell of the leather, the sound of the engine and the acceleration were all exhilarating. It was like being on a ride at Disneyland and way better than any video game, or at least it was until that day Gossy died.
It all began when he was eleven. His best friend, Steve Goss, dared him to break into an old Ford Fiesta. Josh discovered that he had a knack for starting cars without a key: he just had to touch the ignition and the engine would kick in. By twelve, he had refined his abilities to a point where he could disable virtually any alarm with a simple touch on the bonnet — Gossy nicknamed him ‘the Keymaster’.
Soon they were stealing to order, and between him and Gossy they were bringing in two to three cars a week. Lenin had an older brother who sold them on to a local dealer and started to get requests for certain models. Gossy and Josh turned it into a game and competed against each other to fulfil the orders, which led to more than one race across town as they rushed to be the first to get their stolen vehicle to the drop-off.
Neither ever really thought about the danger, or the consequences. Walking up the darkened, urine-stained stairs of a multi-storey car park, Josh thought back to the last time he’d been here. He could still see the wide grin on Gossy’s face as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the Porsche Boxster.
They’d stolen from this car park so many times that he knew it was very unlikely he would need to go up more than three levels to find what he was after.
Level 3 was full — it was mid-afternoon, and the locals were at work or shopping. Josh scanned the lines of bonnets and boots looking for a likely candidate — they were all newer models. Anything over a ’52 plate was going to be too conspicuous.
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 5
