by Timlin, Mark
For the first time, Mark recognised the boy who’d run wild on the streets of south London all those years ago, and he knew that everything was going to be fine. He himself was carrying one of the guns that he’d kept hidden in a secret compartment built into the Range Rover he’d driven back from the Continent – a twenty-shot, fully automatic, drumloaded shotgun, known as a ‘street sweeper’. He’d alternated buckshot and solid shells when loading it and Eddie’s eyes had almost popped out of their sockets when he’d shown it to him. ‘You hardly need us,’ he’d said, and Mark had just grinned and winked at him. It felt good to hold the heavy weapon in his hands and smell the old gunpowder that never went away, despite almost constant cleaning.
Mark dropped the gun on to the back seat, started the car and drove closer to Beretta’s block. He killed the engine and clicked off the mute button on his mobile. ‘Let’s get this show on the road,’ he heard Beretta say, and gave Eddie the thumbs up again.
Back at the pub, the five at the table were the last customers in, the jukebox was turned off and the lights dimmed. Behind the bar, Shorty stood hesitantly, wondering if Beretta’s crew were looking for a lock in, or whether for once he might get to see his bed before dawn.
Bed it was. As the four men rose, Beretta pulled Comfort to her feet and they left without saying thanks. Shorty shook his head and went to the door and locked it.
Outside, the five of them split up to their separate cars and set off towards the estate.
‘We’re on our way,’ was all Tubbs said before surreptitiously switching off his phone.
‘They’re coming,’ said Mark to Eddie, and did the same.
The silver grey Lexus slid like a big fish through the streets of Brixton, its headlights casting long shadows into the night, closely followed by Tubbs’s BMW. Inside the lead car the three black men and their woman sat back, secure in their own invincibility, as the CD player pumped out loud garage music.
The BMW drew up outside the block of flats where Beretta kept his safe house. The engine died and the music and lights were extinguished. The Beemer pulled in two car lengths behind it.
Opposite, in the Ford, Mark said: ‘They’re here.’
He and Eddie looked at each other, pulled the balaclavas down over their faces, pushed opened their doors and stepped out. ‘Oi, junkie!’ Mark shouted over the top of the car. ‘Hold on a minute.’
All four turned as one. Moses and Karl one side of the car, Beretta and the woman the other. The woman hadn’t been in the equation originally, but it was too late to worry about her now. Just another innocent victim. Collateral damage. Tubbs’s driver’s door opened too and he emerged, the Browning in his right hand.
‘Just stand still,’ said Mark and his words rang out clearly into the night air, but Beretta and his men paid no attention. ‘Go Dizzy,’ yelled Mark as he pulled the trigger on the streetsweeper and Eddie fired too, the double blast from the two shots that sounded as one echoing around the flats.
The twin blasts cut Moses and Karl down, one load of buckshot hitting Moses in the chest and the other smashing into Karl’s side. They fell against the body of the Lexus in tandem and bounced back on to the road, their bodies ripped and torn by the lead, both of the car’s side windows imploded into crystal dust.
Tubbs aimed at Beretta, pulled the trigger, but nothing happened and he cursed and slapped at the safety catch on his pistol as Beretta ducked behind the car reaching into his coat for the gun hidden there. The woman just stood, her hand going to her mouth to cut off the scream that was growing in her throat.
Mark fired again and almost blew her head from her shoulders. The hand covering her face was severed from its wrist and flew across the pavement, landing on the scruffy grass verge in front of the block.
Beretta, meanwhile, crabbed himself away from the car, attempting to take shelter behind the low wall that separated the estate from the public road. He produced a handgun as he went. In fact, he would’ve been better employed staying where he was and engaging the gunmen, but the sight and sound of the attack had momentarily panicked him and he’d lost his usual cool as the woman’s blood had splashed over his clothes.
Lights were coming on all over the blocks, and a young white couple heading out to buy a late fish supper at the chip shop round the corner were suddenly illuminated as they crossed the grass, and Eddie turned and aimed his shooter in their direction.
‘Leave ’em,’ yelled Mark, high on adrenalin, and Eddie put up his gun.
That was his mistake. Although dying, Karl had managed to haul the Glock he carried in a holster underneath one arm and fire it once before slumping back on the bloody road. More by luck than judgment, the bullet hit Eddie in the forehead and he was dead before he hit the ground.
‘Shit,’ screamed Mark, firing at Karl; his body jumped and was still, his gun sliding across the street into the gutter.
Tubbs was firing at Beretta, who was sheltered by the wall. Beretta returned fire and knocked Tubbs to the ground. It was all going wrong. Mark kept pumping slugs and shot towards Beretta, sending lumps of brick off the wall, but otherwise producing no effect. Then Tubbs climbed to his feet, blood pumping from his wound and he ran towards Beretta, crossing between Mark and his target and forcing him to hold fire.
‘Get down, Tubbs!’ Mark shouted, but it was too late. At point blank range Beretta fired at Tubbs and he crashed to the ground, blood pooling black under his body. Beretta snaked along the ground to the front door of the flats. As he entered, Mark fired once more and saw a hit, but Beretta double tapped a response and forced him to duck down behind the Ford.
Mark peered over the bonnet, but all he could see was the door swinging shut behind Beretta. Things had gone from bad to worse. A cursory glance at the bodies of his friends confirmed their demise, and he considered getting into the Ford and leaving but he wouldn’t give Beretta the satisfaction. Instead he ran across the street and into the front of the block.
As Mark hit the cracked and filthy frosted glass doors with his shoulder, ready to take his revenge on Beretta in a blast of fire, he saw the lift doors closing.
Shit, he thought. Just my bad luck: this would be the night the sodding lift works. Ten fucking floors. And the only way is shanks’s pony. He carefully opened the door to the stairs, just in case Beretta had tried to fool him and was waiting, but the well was empty. Empty, dark and smelly, it echoed with every step and he climbed up.
Wet with sweat, his legs shaking at the unaccustomed exercise, Mark listened out in case Beretta was lying in wait at the top stairwell, but it was deserted. Must get a bike, he thought. Or, if I get out of this alive, maybe I’ll join a gym, thinking of what Eddie had said in the pub the last time they’d met. No exercise for him now, or romantic nights in the arms of an Irish barmaid. Mark paused for a moment before entering the tenth floor corridor, his ears waiting for the sound of sirens which must eventually come. Surely someone had called three nines after the fire-fight in the very public street outside? But all was quiet.
Gently once again, Mark pushed open the door at the end of the short landing and he peered down the tunnel. All was still and quiet: the lift doors were open and the car was empty.
Mark walked down the corridor on tiptoe until he came to flat number 80. The door was locked and he didn’t have a key.
‘Knock, knock,’ he said, then stood at an angle to the door, raised his weapon and fired at the lock. The sound of the explosions was deafening in the confined space and sparks and smoke filled the hallway. But after the fourth round the reinforced door sagged and he booted it open with his Doc Marten shod foot. ‘Beretta,’ he yelled, although he could hardly hear his own voice after the concussion from the powerful shotgun. ‘Give it up, you bastard. I’m coming in.’
There was no reply that he could hear, so he flattened himself against the wall and peered through the doorway. The flat’s small hallway was empty and the centre light was out, making it dark and shadowy. A thin glow shone under the bot
tom of the door at the end. He tried to remember how Tubbs had described the interior of the apartment. Must be the living room, he thought. But where was Beretta? And how badly was he hit?
Still there was no sound of the cops. But by now, Mark was so deafened by the gunshots and concentrating so deeply on every sound and movement inside the flat that, for all he knew, there could be armed response coppers on the stairs right now toting H&Ks.
Fuck ’em, he thought, as he fully reloaded the streetsweeper, dropping empty, smoking cartridge cases into his pocket. Leave nothing except the dead had always been his motto. He padded across the carpet, bent almost double and leaning to one side to leave as small a target as possible. There were closed doors on both sides of the hall but he ignored them. Go to the light, was all he could think. Go to the light and kill the bastard who had killed his friends.
And then he was there.
At the closed door, behind which, God only knew…
He raised the gun to the door and pulled the trigger. The wood bowed immediately and a huge opening appeared in the centre. Mark dodged back into the closest doorway as more holes were punched into the cheap wood – this time from inside and from a handgun.
Yes, my man, thought Mark. You’re there, and I’m going to huff and puff and blow your house down. Once again his finger found the trigger of the shotgun and he pumped half a dozen rounds at the door, which literally blew off its hinges. He ran to the doorway and tumbled inside, hiding behind a chair. After a few seconds he took a look. The place was a mess, smoke wreathing around a single lamp burning in the corner.
On the coffee table bags of cocaine and stacks of cash were piled high and on the sofa beyond, half sitting, half lying was Beretta, his face grey and old-looking, one hand covering the bloody wound in his side, blood soaking through his white shirt. In his other hand, he held his gun, the weapon almost slipping from his gore-covered fingers.
‘Gotcha,’ said Mark standing, and Beretta looked up through hooded eyes and raised the pistol as if it weighed a ton. ‘Too late,’ said Mark. ‘This is for Tubbs and Eddie,’ and he fired once again over the table at Beretta’s chest, the spread of the buckshot blowing the drugs and money into the air in a cloud of powder and torn paper before ripping another hole in the black man’s torso.
Mark stood in the smoke and dust, licking at the coke that settled on his top lip and laughed out loud. All for what? he thought. All for fuck all. And, just as he was about to turn and leave, he felt a terrible blow to his back. He turned and saw a young black woman standing behind him, a long kitchen knife in her hand streaked with blood, about to stab him again. Lulu he thought. The beautiful Lulu. Bloody hell, I forgot all about her, and there she was hiding, all the time waiting to stab me in the back. How typical of a woman. He pushed the barrel of the streetsweeper deep into her skinny stomach and fired, almost cutting her completely in half and sending long trails of hot blood up the wall behind her. She doubled up, dropped the knife and fell on to the carpet hard, twitched twice and was still.
‘Stupid bitch,’ Mark said aloud to her bloody corpse, as the pain from the stab wound wracked his body and he knew he was in trouble. He looked at the wreck of the room, the cocaine settling on every surface like snow, making Beretta’s face as white as a circus clown’s and contrasting surreally with a thin dribble of blood that trickled from the side of his mouth. Mark knew he had to get out of there, quick. And empty handed, at that.
He went back down the hall into the corridor. A couple of the front doors were cracked open slightly as the inhabitants checked out the results of the short battle that had intruded on their late night telly viewing, but when he raised his gun they slammed shut in his face, one by one.
And then, through his battered eardrums he finally did hear the sound of sirens getting closer, and knew that his troubles might only just have begun.
He ran to the still open lift and pressed the button for the first floor. Slowly the doors closed and it descended, and he could hear nothing but the creaking of its old machinery. Finally, after what seemed like forever, the doors opened to the sound of sirens right outside and he knew he’d have to abandon the bodies of his friends, as well as the Ford and the BMW, to the forces of law and order, and all that that entailed.
When he’d been hiding in the rubbish chute a couple of days earlier, he’d noticed that the opening on the first floor was big enough for a man to slide down. Now he ran down the corridor and pushed himself out through the gap, his legs dangling, and breathed in the first fresh air in what seemed like hours. It didn’t matter that this was ‘fresh’ air fouled by the stink of the inhabitants’ garbage. All was quiet at the back of the flats, the commotion of cops and civilians exclusively at the front. Mark took another deep breath and jumped down to the ground below, landing awkwardly, the shock shooting up to the wound he could feel was still bleeding into his clothes. But how badly he was hurt he had no idea.
He limped off over the scrubby grass towards the edge of the estate. Behind him he heard a shout, which only made him run faster, although the pain of the wound in his back made him feel weak and dizzy.
If I can get to the road, he thought, I’ll be all right. Just the road. Dear God, let me make it to the road.
By this time sirens were coming from all directions and Mark knew that he was close to capture and a life sentence. Not fucking likely, he thought. I’m not going inside, not with Jimmy Hunter due out any time now. I want that bastard, outside, for myself.
Mark jumped over the low wall of the estate before he realised he was still carrying his gun. Not something to be seen with, he reckoned, and straight away saw a skip outside a terraced house being done up by some optimist, convinced that Brixton was going to be the ‘new Notting Hill’. He stuffed it and his balaclava deep into the building waste that littered the skip. And blessing the fact that his dark clothes would disguise any blood stains, he straightened his shoulders with an effort, and walked confidently along the pavement. Just then a squad car came screaming round the corner, seeming to slow at the sight of him, then picked up speed, blues flashing and two-tone sirens yelping, heading back the way he’d come.
Mark breathed a real sigh of relief, even though it hurt, turned the corner, and headed for John Jenner’s house.
It wasn’t much of a walk, but Mark had to stay in the shadows, ducking down behind parked motors whenever a police car showed, which was often, and by the time he got there, he was weak and dizzy from loss of blood. He rang the bell by the front gate, and after what seemed an eternity, Chas buzzed him in.
‘Christ, what happened?’ asked the big man once they’d arrived in the kitchen, Mark sinking into a chair.
‘Gone to shit,’ said Mark. ‘Get me a drink will you? Something strong.’
‘You look like death,’ said Chas, doing as he was asked, and pouring Mark a large brandy from a bottle of Remy on the counter.
‘Not me,’ replied Mark. ‘Tubbs, Eddie. All the spades. She stabbed me.’
‘Who?’
‘Beretta’s bird. Get Uncle John.’
Chas rushed out and reappeared a moment later with John Jenner. ‘Oh my God, Mark,’ he said. ‘What’s happened to you?’
‘I’ve been stabbed. Uncle, I’m sorry, it all went…’
‘Never mind about all that now,’ said Jenner. ‘Let me see.’
Mark slumped forward in the chair and the older man looked at his back. ‘Hospital,’ he said. ‘Chas get an ambulance…’
‘No,’ said Mark. ‘You fix me up.’
‘This is serious,’ said Jenner.
‘No,’ repeated Mark. ‘If it’d hit anything vital, I’d be dead.’
‘You look like you almost are,’ said Chas.
‘I’ll be all right. I just need patching up.’
‘Martine,’ said Jenner. ‘She’s upstairs. She’ll do it. She knows some first aid. Get her, Chas.’
‘Not Martine,’ protested Mark.
‘Yes, Martine,’ insisted J
enner. ‘Go on, Chas.’
Once again the big man left the room. In a few minutes he arrived back with Martine in tow. ‘What the hell?’ she said, seeing Mark’s parchment-white face and the blood that was now beginning to drip on to the floor. ‘What have you done?’
‘You should see the other fellah,’ said Mark with a humourless grin. ‘Can you stop the bleeding?’
‘Let’s see,’ said Martine. ‘Take off your top.’
With difficulty and some help from her, Mark managed to strip down to his bare skin. The blood had started to clot, but pulling away his shirt and T-shirt started it off again. Meanwhile Chas had found a box of medical supplies, including bandages and tape. ‘Haven’t needed this for ages,’ he said. ‘But we’re always prepared.’
‘Right, you two,’ said Martine to Chas and Jenner. ‘Out.’
Reluctantly the two men left the room and Martine said: ‘I’ve got you all to myself again,’ she said. ‘And half naked too.’
‘But not capable,’ said Mark.
‘Don’t you believe it,’ she replied. ‘I can make the dead dance.’
‘I’m not dead yet.’
She reversed the kitchen chair and made Mark sit facing the back and examined the wound. ‘You should get this seen to properly,’ she said. ‘It’s deep and there’s some fabric been pushed inside. It could get infected.’
‘I’ll survive. Just patch me up so’s I can go and speak to Uncle John. And I’m afraid he’s not going to like what I’ve got to tell him.’
‘Not a bad bod,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘A bit scarred up. This isn’t the first time you’ve been in the wars, is it?’
‘I’ve had my share.’
‘I never saw it properly the last time, in the dark.’ She ran her hand down his spine and said: ‘And I could’ve been all yours. Instead of that cross-eyed bitch who always fucks you up.’
‘Martine,’ said Mark. ‘Just do it, will you?’
