Layer Cake

by J. J. Connolly

  When I turn around to face Eddy again I realise that one of the guys from the back of his motor is out now, with two arms laid out across the roof of the car, clutching a pistol aimed right at my forehead. His face is completely emotionless and I know that if someone said ‘Terminate the prisoner’ I’d be dead before the words came outta their mouth, before I realised what was going on. I’m starting to regret telling Eddy that Jimmy said he killed his wife. The lights were the simple signal. These geezers, army special-forces types, were plotted-up, camouflaged in a fuckin empty warehouse, in bins, locked office cabinets and water-tanks. Four of our team are tooled-up. They never even got to think about using them, which is probably just as well cos once one person gets shot dead they’d just follow the exercise through, do the lot of us. Eddy wouldn’t be able to fuckin stop them either cos once the switch is thrown, it’s goodnight Vienna to anyone who’s not on their side. This other lot have been in training, wishing and hoping for a fire-fight like this all their fuckin lives. Life’s not fair, who said that? The other guy from outta Eddy’s motor walks silently over to our hired truck and starts the engine. Mister Troop has pushed the button to raise the shutter again. They cover each and do everyone’s hands with heavy-duty cable-ties, like the ones we used as props yesterday to such good effect. I see it now, why he put me off until three o’clock. They needed more rehearsal, time to get it off pat. I can see Mister Troop putting them through their paces till they had it drilled to perfection. Everything’s done to a signal. It’s all about co-ordination, everybody being a designated target.

  This exact time yesterday JD was shaking my hand, telling me he don’t like me but he really respects me, punching me playfully on the top of my good arm and giving it ‘Cheers, brother’. I feel angry now. I wanna spit. If this cunt with a pistol to my head was gonna shoot me he woulda done it by now so I move over to Eddy’s side window with my hands up.

  ‘Stay still! Do not move again!’ shouts the geezer with the gun.

  ‘I wanna word with your boss, pal. You’ve got what you fuckin come for.’

  ‘Stand still!’ he shouts again.

  ‘Look, they’re going outta the door right now. See ya later, next stop Tokyo.’

  The truck moves slowly towards the door. Troop jumps up on the running board, opens the door, climbs in, shuts the door again and the truck speeds away. One of his comrades comes shuffling up, throws me against the car, pats me down, searches me for a shooter. Eddy motions with a finger, Roman Emperor style, to let me to come to the window.

  ‘Son, did you really think I was going to give you two and one half million pounds for those goods?’

  ‘Why not? You can fuckin afford it, can’t ya? It’s called commerce, pal.’

  ‘Listen, son, it’s not me who needs the lesson in the ways of the world. By the time you get outta here, those goods will be airborne.’

  ‘So we are getting out alive. Is it Princess Charlotte’s birthday so King Eddy’s granted an amnesty?’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky. But seeing as you ask, young Charlotte’s found God in Brighton, actually.’

  ‘I’d wondered where he’d been hidin. Where they goin, still Tokyo?’

  ‘Of course, via Romania. They’re waiting for them. The relief flight’s taxiing right now. They’ll go straight into the cargo terminal, straight through customs. They’ll be covered in red crosses by now. They’re travelling out as medical supplies as far as Bucharest then they miraculously turn into much-needed exports for the journey on to Japan.’

  ‘That’s fuckin out of order.’

  ‘Amoral is the word you’re looking for. And you can fuckin talk. I’ve been thinking. Thursday I tell you James is planning on trading you to the forces of law and order and the very next day someone as good as decapitates him with a gun that would kill an elephant and, I hasten to add, shoots his fuckin pet dogs as well. Now that’s some kind of coincidence is it not? Now I knew Jimmy for forty years, from kids. I see these pills as compensation for putting up with him all that time, not to mention, if I’m honest, the sporting angle, of course. Do you think I’d get this kind of satisfaction chasing a fox around? Well, do you?’

  ‘What makes you think we wouldn’t come at ya later?’

  ‘You’re all too clever, can see the way the odds are stacked. Look at Gene and the big black guy, Mister Mortimer, they’re too long in the tooth to be rampaging around looking for revenge. Drug-dealing’s meant to be easy money, not grief. I don’t think they’ll risk life sentences, but as insurance maybe I’ll leave dossiers with my lawyers, to be opened if anything happens to me, destroyed if not. It’s in your interests if this thing finishes here today. Be your age, son. It’s the way of the world. They might not be the Maltese Falcon but those pills, or tablets, or whatever they are, do have a chequered past, so why shouldn’t I be the one to make a killing, someone’s going to. I’ll give my chaps a nice little Christmas bonus out of them. I wasn’t lying when I said they were a gift to the Japanese, I promise you. You’ve got a childish, sulky look on your face. Be a man about it, put it down to experience. One day you’ll look back on this and laugh. In 1965 Dewey caught me with about a thousand lepers, purple hearts, half a crown each or five for ten bob. Drugs were bad news back then. He called it confiscating them, I called it theft, end of the day it makes no difference. It spurred me on to better and higher things. I wanted to get where he couldn’t touch me. Listen, you’re a smart guy, can tell just by looking, and one day you’ll be sat here, in years to come, in the back of the motor, telling some young Turk the facts of life.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You’re born, you take shit, get out in the world, take shit, you climb higher, take less shit. The higher you climb, the less shit you take, till one day you get up in the rarefied atmosphere and you’ve forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake, son.’

  With that he pushes the electric window and without a word the car moves off, swings round in a circle and goes out the door, leaving seven of us with guns pointed at our heads feeling very stupid indeed. It’s all about power and when someone’s got a gun pointed at you, they’ve got the power of life or death over you. It’s humiliating and deep. Suddenly another two cars swing into the warehouse and again on a silent signal the guys with guns walk, don’t run, covering us the whole time, to the motors. They get in and they’re gone.

  My old man used to have this speech off pat, his own composition but rehearsed like some people learn an epic poem, about if you think you’re a tough guy there’s always a bigger, tougher chap somewhere. His theme was bullies and bullying and it used to irritate me before I was old enough to even understand it but right now I can’t get it out of my head. It’s going around and around and around. There’s a big part of me that feels sick to my stomach. I’ve just lost four hundred and thirty-two grand, in cold fuckin blood, but there’s another part of me that feels that what went down here in the last two minutes was the work of an amoral class act, a fuckin masterclass, no two ways. There’s also a feeling that if you’re gonna hang around in this game, that’s where you gotta aim to be: sitting in the back of the box-fresh Range Rover, with highly trained ex-professional soldiers obediently doing your dirty work, delivering the highly suspect philosophical lecture to baffle the enemy and cover yer tracks, make them think you’re doing them a favour, contributing to their emotional development, and then away, at speed, back home to fuck the wife, or the nanny if the misses ain’t home.

  The End of the Road

  It got a bit slapstick, bit ugly, out at the airport. This afternoon’s argy-bargy, push and shove, was for real. Recriminations and pointy fingers aplenty were flying about. Some people pay good money to be tied up and dominated but others, it fucks their heads up totally, gets ’em wild. It wasn’t a group-therapy situation and I got the fuckin very worst of it cos it was my deal. That’s why I was getting a fat chunk if it went right, serious grief if it didn’t. Terry seemed to think I was just a bit too fuckin p
ally with the swell-mob geezer, having a little chat about this and that, maybe even in on the fuckin swindle, brov, while they were having shooters pointed at their heads. Good job the Actionman Posse fucked off with the heavy weaponry, is my thinking on the matter. And fuckin Cody still wants fuckin paying for the drop of work yesterday. Fair enough, brov, but your fuckin timing’s a bit out, you fuckin pick yer fuckin moments. Someone’s gonna put one in his fuckin nut if he don’t fuckin watch himself.

  Eddy’s got Morty and Gene sussed dead-right. Although they ain’t saying it, it’s the end of the road for them on this one. Sometimes yer gonna say something or otherwise people are gonna shit on yer but here and now, they’ve already been shit on, so it’s time to wipe yer mouth and move on.

  ‘Nine letters, to be judged by results, beginning with P?’ says Gene to himself.

  ‘Wassat, Gene? You all right?’ says Clarkie.

  ‘Pragmatic,’ says Gene all enigmatically.

  ‘Yeah, all right, mate, whatever you fuckin say, big man,’ says Clarkie, giving me a who’s-your-mate nod.

  Might take a little while to get over it but if Mister Eddy Ryder ain’t in their face all day long, hanging out in the old neighbourhood, they will forget. It might take a good few Guinnesses with the double-shot of brandy or in Morty’s case a few lick and shines – that’s smoking rocks of crack-cocaine while a hooker sucks your cock – but the sting will go away eventually. I wish Terry and Clarkie had heard Eddy the Swell’s little lecture cos something like this, getting rumped, will definitely propel them both into orbit. I’m cutting out but I can see Mister Clark especially as the geezer sat in the back of the Range Rover in years to come.

  Clarkie had to drive over to Terminal Four and get a taxi to come back for some of us. Gene took Terry, Cody and Mickey over to some boozer in Ealing to get them paralytic, calm them down, cos it was looking to get outta hand, Cody and Terry wouldn’t shut the fuck up. Me, Morty and Clarkie headed back to Loveland to work out how to pay Cody’s little troop. It looked like I was gonna have to tell Mister Lonsdale, my crafty accountant, to find me some funds quick-smart, sell! sell! sell! The blossom on the skinny trees that looked so full of promise a few hours ago, like an omen of new life and hope, now looks like it’s just taking the fuckin piss, wasting its fuckin time even trying.

  As we pull into the alley beside Loveland, Nobby’s outside the back doors smoking a slim panatella. He walks anxiously round to Morty’s side of the car and is looking in the window, waiting for Morty to get out.

  ‘That’s just what I don’t fuckin need, this cunt drivin me fuckin mad.’

  As he gets out, Nobby’s on him like a police dog.

  ‘Morty, I’ve been trying to ring you all day.’

  ‘I know, Nobby. I saw your number come up on my mobile so I didn’t answer it, okay? Does that solve yer little fuckin mystery, Pops?’

  Nobby looks hurt. ‘It’s just you took the wrong boxes this morning. I tried to tell ya as you was leaving but you all just waved and drove off.’

  Morty and Clarkie are grinning. I am too. We’re back in business.

  ‘I fuckin love you, Nobby,’ says Morty. ‘What was in the box we took?’

  ‘Well, it was all that shit you told me to send back to those geezers in Amsterdam. The boys parcelled it all up yesterday after you give ’em the ruckin the other night.’

  I can see it now. Eddy, all kimonoed-up, bowing from the waist, down the number-one paper-tea-house in Tokyo with wall to wall geisha girls and the Don of Dons from the Yakuza. Eddy’s telling him he’s got a little gift for him, you can make a right few bob with these, but listen, my friend, if things ain’t all that clever in the bedroom, you wanna get some of this kit, take the bullet train up to that little cottage you got tucked away on the slopes of Mount Fuji and see what develops. I doubt if those Japanese gangster types like being told they need a blow-up doll or a life-like vibrating vagina to spark up the old love life. It’s all about face and all that funny old Samurai code-of-the-warrior shit. They’ll probably slice his bollocks off, ceremonially, of course. Quite funny, really.

  ‘So, Nobby, listen to me now. Where Are The Other Boxes?’ says Morty.

  Nobby looks at his watch.

  ‘About now they’ll be landing at Amsterdam Airport. It wasn’t anything important, was it? Bit of a fuck-up, I’m afraid. See, the two boys from the shop was like . . . scared, you know, they wanted the job done, so they come in early and took them down the cargo terminal themselves. Have you ever been there? Heathrow? They told the Dutch geezers to collect them the other end. You’re always telling them to show initiative.’

  ‘Nobby, you’re a complete cunt. Didn’t you fuckin stop them after you knew they were the wrong ones?’ says Morty.

  ‘I’m sorry, Morty. I went next door for two minutes to put a bet on. When I came back they’re gone. They ain’t answering their phone either.’

  ‘Here’s what we do,’ says Morty, pointy finger to me and Clarkie. ‘We get Gene, Terry and shit-for-brains Mickey who loaded up the boxes in the first place. We get on a plane out to Amsterdam, right now, tonight, and we go and crash the gaff and get that fuckin parcel.’

  ‘You’d have to be a bit polite with these geezers, Morty, they’re right bleeding heavy,’ says Nobby.

  ‘And we’re not heavy?’ says Morty, rolling his eyes.

  ‘This lot are fuckin Nazis, you know, neon-fascists. That’s why they do all the po–’

  ‘Their Führer ain’t a geezer called Otto, is he?’ I say.

  ‘You must be telepathic, son. Do you know him?’

  ‘We’ve never met.’

  He beckons me to come closer, looks right and left. I can see Donna bouncing around inside. Clarkie’s mobile rings.

  ‘People reckon they’re into drugs and all sorts,’ Nobby says.

  ‘Okay, Dad,’ says Clarkie, ‘he’s here now. I’ll tell him.’

  Clarkie puts the phone away.

  ‘Morty, Freddie Hurst just died. This is gonna cause complications.’

  I’m outta here.

  Curaçao Twenty Miles Off the Coast of Venezuela 1 April 2000 Life Goes On

  When I woke up six weeks later, after floating through the dark, running up tunnels with bright lights at the end then deciding to run back down the other way, tripping out, seeing myself from above and dreaming guys in green overalls were messing with my brain, I was told I was incredibly lucky to survive. Lucky to be shot.

  I better explain that. What happened was I was due to leave London on the Saturday, after laying low for a couple of days, leaving instructions with my accountant Mister Lonsdale and the guys who worked my properties and other businesses for me, but on the Friday I decided to follow my gut instincts and give Tammy a ring. I thought that maybe after I’d got based-up somewhere funky she could come over for a visit and maybe we could take it from there.

  I arranged to meet her in a pizza gaff in Camden Town and the second she walked in the door and skipped down the three steps into the main floor of the restaurant I was hit with a strange but brilliant sensation that come from my heart rather than my dick. I could see us old together, a lifetime away, surrounded by grandchildren and living out in Australia, well-to-do and content, winking at our private jokes, children asking how we met, a few business investments ticking over nicely, shrimps on the barbie. It was to remain to this day a mirage.

  The reality was that jealous Sidney had tailed her across town and into the restaurant with a handgun. He walked over before I had time to think, put three bullets into me, two into my head and one into my chest. Thankfully they were quite small calibre, point two-two. Piece of advice, Sidney, always use dumdums. Anyone would think that if you shot a guy twice in the fuckin canister it would be game over but that ain’t necessarily true. I felt like something had picked me up by the hair and thrown me across the room like I was nothing, a bitta rag. They travelled between my scalp and my skull, they weaved about for a while and then stopped. I ain’t
saying that they didn’t hurt like fuckery but they didn’t fuckin kill me either. As I was trying to crawl under a table, like a paralytic drunk, he walked across the room, aimed, and put one in my chest from about an arm’s length away. He fired more times but the gun was empty, click, click, click, like Geno’s toys. I remember the sound late at night if I can’t sleep. Then he turned round to Tammy, who’s screaming hysterically, covered in my blood, and said that she’s coming home with him, he forgives her. A team of have-a-go on-leave squaddies wrestled Sidney to the floor and gave him a kicking. A psychiatric nurse who knew the basics put his hands over the wounds long enough for a paramedic on a motorcycle to arrive.

  My surgeon, Mister Masters, said it was a fuckin miracle that I’m alive, calculated the odds somewhere up in the millions. He showed me my X-rays, he showed all his mates my X-rays, put them on the internet for all the other surgeons to see. It’s pretty impressive the way the bullet missed the heart and lungs, whistled around the head like that. He started giving me the ‘You are a very lucky man’ speech. Maybe I wanna start believing him.

  I finally woke up outta my coma to be greeted by a team of the top old bill who wanted to ask me a loada questions. I was plumbed into one of those machines that gives you a shot of pure morphine when the nurse pushes the button. You hear a bleep, you get your hit. I’d been coming-to slowly over the previous couple of days, watching and feeling, semi-conscious, then just awake but smacked outta my head, looking forward to the next bleep, a fuckin junkie’s dream, on tap, one hundred per cent pure, top-quality morphine. I could never see what smackheads saw in smack, all that goofing and gouging was never for me, but I suppose if you’ve got nothing planned, nothing going on in your life, it’s a good enough cop-out as cop-outs go, just drifting along in your coma. I could hear through the fog, Mister Masters marching them out, telling them only come back when I’m well enough to be talked to. They argued of course but he was very fuckin insistent, saying his only duty was to me, his patient.