A Numbers Game (Mal & Jackie Book 1)

by RJ Dark

  ‘I see you!’

  Fuck.

  He’d got in front of me somehow. Illuminated by a shaft of light breaking through the trees. Looking straight at me. Pointing the gun at me. I rolled as he fired. Bullets sent splinters flying from the tree and I pushed forward, first on all fours, then up. Zigging and zagging, keeping low until I hit a gulley that ran across the strip of woodland. Turned right. Trying to keep my feet out of the small stream so I didn’t make too much noise. Back up into the bracken on the same side I had gone in. I heard Callum land in the stream with a splash.

  ‘Mal?’

  Don’t answer.

  ‘Come out, Mal.’

  He took a step. Couldn’t tell the direction. Toward or away?

  ‘Come on, Mal. Still a chance for it to be quick.’

  Two more steps. Coming toward me. Definitely. The bracken here was low.

  If I moved, he would see me.

  ‘Ma-aaal.’

  If I didn’t move, he would see me.

  ‘I’m coming for you, Mal.’

  So near. Sounded like he was by my feet.

  ‘I’m going to kneecap you first, Mal.’ The splash of feet in the stream. ‘Then shoot out your elbows.’ Another splash of movement. ‘This is your last chance, Mal.’

  I nearly stood up.

  Despite what Jackie thought, I didn’t enjoy pain. Not even slightly. I could weather it if I had to, for a beating. But the thought of Callum Callaghan standing over me, calmly putting bullets into my joints and the ensuing agony was more than I could take.

  If it had to happen. I wanted it to be quick.

  I took a deep breath.

  Heard a sound. An alien sound. Something not at home in this wood.

  The sound of The Afghan Whigs. Tinny riffs echoing through the wood from the rubbish speaker on my mobile phone. I heard Callum laugh.

  ‘You dumb fucker, you left your phone on.’ Footsteps, splashing down the stream. Then I heard him running through the woods away from me, leaping over waist-high bracken shouting, ‘You dumb fucker! You dumb fucker!’

  A body landed beside me and I nearly had a heart attack.

  ‘What a dumb fucker,’ said Jackie. He grinned at me. ‘You look pale, Mal – well paler.’

  ‘I’m shot, in the arm.’

  He put his hand on my forehead. ‘Do you feel nauseous?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you’ll be alright.’

  ‘What do we do, Jackie?’

  ‘Do?’ He looked surprised. ‘We run.’

  ‘Run?’

  ‘He’s got a gun, Mal.’

  ‘I thought you’d do your action-man thing.’

  ‘A gun is a great leveller, Mal. So, right now, we’re going to run like fuck. Get ready.’ He rolled onto his front and lifted his head. ‘Still looking for you over there. Daft bastard. Right, let’s go. Back toward the shop.’

  Jackie grabbed my good arm and pulled me up, forcing me to run through the bracken, pushing me on. I heard Callum shout something but couldn’t make it out for the sound of the snapping twigs against my clothes. Then we broke out of the wood, into the light. A hyperreal world full of colour and life and beauty. I heard four or five pops as Callum fired at us. Jackie let out a small cough, stumbled, but didn’t stop running. Parked in front of the shop was his lime-green Lamborghini.

  ‘Get in.’ He had one hand on his chest.

  ‘Jackie …’

  ‘I said get in,’ he shouted. I slid into the Lamborghini and Jackie revved the engine. Looking in the rear-view mirror until he saw Callum run from the wood. Then he hit the accelerator, sending us fishtailing out of the lay-by. He didn’t speed though. I turned. Saw Callum climb into the van that I had blocked in. A moment later it came to life in a cloud of thick black diesel smoke and he rammed it back into my Ford Ka to get out.

  ‘He’ll catch us, Jackie.’

  ‘I want him to.’

  ‘What?’

  He coughed again.

  ‘How bad are you hurt, Jackie?’

  ‘I’m alright, just tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘Janine Stanbeck – she was the money woman, for Mick. Larry was a front to save face with the Russians. She killed her husband. Had Callum kill Benny. Kept the war going to make Mick weak. Killed her parents for the inheritance.’

  ‘Fucking cold,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do all this?’

  He was gritting his teeth between words, as if to stop himself shivering. I could see his jaw muscles standing out.

  ‘Larry was going to run off with the kid. She is going to buy in to Mick’s organisation, become his second, take over in the end, I imagine. Callum won’t make it out alive.’

  ‘You’re right about that,’ he said. ‘He definitely killed his own dad?’

  I nodded. Glanced back. The van was catching up with us. Callum’s hand came out the open window and fired off a shot. The van swerved from side to side.

  ‘Definitely,’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ said Jackie, and the Lamborghini leapt forward. Up ahead was Crais Curve and Jackie was accelerating toward it, but he wasn’t really pushing the supercar. The van on the other hand was doing all it could to keep up. We hit the bend, G-forces pushed me back into my seat and I felt the grip of the bucket seat holding me in place. I moved my head. Looking through the slit that was the sportscar’s rear window, I saw Callum taking the bend in the van. Too fast. Far too fast.

  ‘You dumb fucker,’ whispered Jackie.

  What happened was inevitable. The van couldn’t hold the road. It slipped sideways. Callum tried to correct. Couldn’t. The van hit the barrier, bounced off it. Then, in a scream of rending metal, it spun around, hitting the barrier again and throwing off bits of metal as it disintegrated. Eventually, coming to stop, a smoking heap in the middle of the road. Jackie slammed on the breaks, skidded the car round in a tight circle and drove back, stopping fifty or so metres from the van. He got out. It took him a couple of seconds to straighten up. There was blood high on the back of his jacket. I got out and followed him.

  I could hear Callum Callaghan shouting for help from the wrecked van. The closer I got to the van, the more I could smell petrol. That didn’t make sense – it was a diesel.

  ‘What’s that smell, Jackie?’

  ‘Petrol,’ he said. Coughed. ‘Probably from Molotov cocktails, or whatever he’s been using to burn places down with.’ Jackie was forcing himself on now, limping, his dark skin looking grey. He took a lighter from his pocket.

  ‘What are you going to do, Jackie?’

  ‘You go back to the car, Mal,’ he said.

  ‘But Jackie …’

  ‘Go back to the car.’ His voice. I knew that tone. No arguing with it. I turned back. Heard his voice again, low. Too low for me to make out the words. I heard Callum begging. Then I heard the ignition. The sound of flames and I heard Callum screaming. I turned. Jackie was backing away from the broken van with the lighter in his hand. He watched the burning vehicle for a moment, then turned back to me, forced a smile onto his face and tottered forward. He was only a few feet from me.

  ‘He might have hurt me more than I said.’ He coughed, blood stained his beard. ‘You might want to call an ambulance now.’

  ‘Jackie …’

  ‘Tell Frank …’ He was struggling with his words. ‘Tell him … Callum had the ticket. That it burned. We did our best.’ He smiled. ‘That should get you off the hook.’

  He fell forward. I caught him. His weight dragged me to the ground.

  I pulled him over. His eyes were closed, and, despite the heat of the burning vehicle and the night, he felt cold.

  So very cold.

  Epilogue

  I’d always hated funerals. I hated this one more than most.

  The bullet hit Jackie high in the back. It passed straight through his lung, nicked an artery and cracked a rib on its way out. If we’d gone straight to hospital, he’d have been alright, appa
rently.

  But we didn’t.

  So, Jackie was placed in an induced coma due to blood loss. He was in intensive care for two weeks, and it was touch and go for most of it. I visited him every day, didn’t really have anyone else to talk to.

  ‘What you looking so morose about, Mal? I’m the one in a wheelchair.’

  He’d got out of hospital two days before. I’m not sure how being shot in the lung meant you had to be pushed about in a wheelchair, but I wasn’t going to argue with Jackie about that, not yet. I hadn’t wanted to come to Larry Stanbeck’s funeral, but Jackie said I had to; and when I said no, he said in that case I could pay Imtiaz Minhas’s fees for keeping me out of jail. Imtiaz Minhas was one of the best lawyers in the North, and so, also one of the most expensive.

  So we went to Larry Stanbeck’s funeral.

  Though, actually, by the time we got there, I’d changed my mind about attending. There are some things that hide in plain sight; you see them, but you don’t notice them. They walk straight by you, and admittedly, a lot had walked straight by me. But there was one last thing, one thing that I thought I had realised, and I was sure no one else had.

  I wanted to find out if I was right about it.

  So, even though I knew this funeral would be full of people I’d rather not see, I was still here. I mean, I was safe, no one was going to break my fingers or murder me. The story had been agreed: Callum Callaghan had gone rogue, killed Larry, killed Janine’s parents, killed his father and then tried to kill me and Jackie for getting too close. The ticket had burned up with him. I shook hands with Janine as we went into the funeral home, and she leaned in close so she could whisper into my ear.

  ‘Stay quiet, stay safe,’ she said and then took a step back. ‘Thank you for coming, Malachite,’ she added. She looked every inch the grieving wife, albeit one very expensively dressed. Mick didn’t say anything, he just sat on his dilapidated mobility scooter and stared at Jackie. Maybe he was jealous of his shiny new wheelchair.

  Of course, Russian Frank wasn’t there. But I’d known he wouldn’t be. I’d been visited by Donald and a Russian man called Dino. They came to tell me that I didn’t have to worry about Frank anymore. Dino was taking over because Frank had gone back to Russia, where he’d been involved in an unfortunate accident that involved shooting himself five times in the head. I didn’t get the feeling Dino was a subtle man, but he had Donald with him, so he probably didn’t need to be.

  We were among the first people into the funeral home. It was likely to be standing room only because Mick had let it be known he wanted his son to have a good send off. It would take a while for everyone to get here, but that suited me.

  ‘You’re sure they’ll let us in?’ I whispered to Jackie.

  ‘Yeah, Matt’s a big petrol head. Honestly, you would not believe the engines in some of his hearses. I’ve promised him a go in a Ferrari if he lets us in the back.’

  One of the funeral home’s ushers wandered over.

  ‘Mr Jones, Mr Singh Khattar?’ We nodded, but we didn’t need to; he knew who we were. ‘If you could follow me.’

  He led us out of a side door of the chapel and down a corridor into a very clinical room that held one coffin. Matt Warrell, who owned the funeral home, was a big, effusive and funny man who could turn on the funeral-director seriousness at the drop of body. He had lifted up one of the half lids on the coffin and propped it open. Now he stood in front of the body with Larry’s crash helmet in his hands, as if unsure what to do with it.

  ‘Jackie,’ he said, ‘we’ll be taking him through in a minute, to get set up behind the curtain, so you don’t have long.’ He glanced at me. ‘You’re not going to do anything that’ll get me killed, are you? I mean, like draw on his face or anything? This is an open-coffin funeral, you know.’

  ‘We’re not,’ I said.

  ‘Okay’ He nodded. There was silence for a minute and then Jackie spoke.

  ‘But we do need a moment alone, to pay our respects, to Larry.’

  Matt looked from Jackie to me and back to Jackie, who twitched his head toward the door. ‘Oh, right,’ he said and started toward the door.

  ‘I’ll take that,’ I said, pointing at the crash helmet.

  ‘Oh, right.’ He passed it to me. ‘They wanted him to go into the fire in his bike leathers,’ he said. ‘I’ve never burned a crash helmet before,’ he looked a bit worried about it, then he left.

  ‘So,’ said Jackie, ‘what’s your big revelation then?’

  I lifted the crash helmet and stared into the darkened visor.

  ‘Sometimes the dead really do talk to us,’ I said. A look of concern ghosted across Jackie’s face. ‘You never met Larry Stanbeck’s kid, did you?’ I added and turned the helmet so it was on its top and I was looking down into the padded interior.

  ‘No, but he’s going to grow up so screwed with her for a mother. Not much we can do about that though.’

  ‘We should try and keep an eye out for him,’ I said, slowly turning the helmet, studying it. ‘He’s really going to miss his dad. He kept telling me, “My daddy knows where it’s at,” then tapping the side of his head.’ I found what I was looking for: a place where the stitching had come undone and been restitched. I took a penknife from my back pocket and opened the blade with my teeth, then slipped the tip of the knife into the stitching, opening the padding up. Inside was a slip of paper. I showed it to Jackie and tapped the side of my head. ‘My daddy knows where it’s at.’

  He let out a long, low whistle.

  ‘That what I think it is?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a lot of money, Mal.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, and I pulled the lottery ticket from its hiding place in the padding of the helmet.

  ‘We probably earned that,’ said Jackie.

  ‘Probably,’ I said.

  ‘It’s your choice though,’ said Jackie. I stared at the ticket and thought about it, thought about all the blood spilled for this bit of paper.

  Broken hands. Broken teeth. Bloodied face.

  I crossed to the coffin and looked down at Larry Stanbeck. He looked peaceful, laying there in his biker leathers. I unzipped one of the pockets on his leather jacket and slid the lottery ticket into it. Then zipped it back up.

  ‘I think you were probably alright, you know, for a Stanbeck,’ I said to Larry’s corpse. Then put the crash helmet on his chest and left him, pushing Jackie’s wheelchair back into the chapel. It was full now. Lots of unfriendly eyes watched us as I pushed Jackie to the back of the chapel so we could endure the service.

  Later, as Janine Stanbeck stood, stoically watching Larry Stanbeck’s coffin move into the flames, she put a supportive hand on Mick Stanbeck’s shoulder. Jackie looked up at me.

  ‘There was an article in the paper this morning,’ he whispered, ‘about how expensive funerals are getting.’

  We got thrown out of the funeral home for giggling.

  The canon said it was unseemly.

  Hard not to agree.

  END

  Acknowledgements

  I depend on and must thank many people for helping bring Jackie and Mal to the public. Some indirectly: my mum and dad for instilling a love of words in me. And some more directly: my wife for supporting me in this, my agent Ed Wilson at Johnson & Alcock for his belief in this book, and my editor at Wavesback, Nick, for loving it as much as I do. Also, Alex Khlopenko of Three Crows Magazine and Dr Sam Hirst for helping me out with Russian*. Stewart Hotston who put some ‘Asian eyes’ on the book and Fiona, Richard and Matt who, as always, provided excellent sounding boards during the writing.

  It’s a funny thing, being a writer and having people live in your head, and of all the characters who have taken up residence in my mind, Jackie and Mal have lived there the longest. Probably longer than a decade. I’ve always loved the ‘mismatched buddies’ thing that American crime writers do – Robert B. Parker’s Spenser and Hawk and Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole and Joe
Pike being the two who I have dragged around with me – and I’ve always had this dream of doing a British version. Jackie and Mal have their genesis in that wish, and in a desire to write about the place I live in and the place I grew up in and the place I love most in the world: the north of England and its people.

  But I could never get it right. Mal was always set and has never changed much, but Jackie never quite made sense until I stumbled across this version. Earlier versions were much harder, and the whimsy was missing, and I think it’s that which makes the friendship seem real, possible. This Jackie is a mixture of people I know and people I’ve worked with in the past, and with Jackie in place, the book was a breeze to write (also helped by realising I’d been trying to write the wrong book for the pair and starting something completely new.)

  I like Jackie and Mal, and they occupy a strange place as their Yorkshire is not actually Yorkshire; Blades Edge estate doesn’t actually exist. And even if it did, it wouldn’t be half as bad as Mal makes it sound because he is a person trapped in the past. He sees Blades Edge through that past and it’s that blindness to change that leads him to get everything so disastrously wrong. But it turns out all right in the end.

  I think what I like most about Jackie and Mal is they are people struggling to do the right thing. They may do foolish or downright stupid things, but it’s from a place of wanting to do the right thing, and I think that’s an important quality. One I try to live by, while staying well away from psychotic gangsters and anyone who may want to kill me.

  I really hope you’ve enjoyed spending time with Jackie and Mal as much as I’ve enjoyed writing about them, and I hope you’ll join me for the next book when they come back and blunder into danger once again.

  *The two things Jackie says in Russian are: ‘I said open your fucking hand’ (P158) and ‘Didn’t we rub each other up on the dance floor in some gay club.’ (P231)

  About the Author

  RJ Dark spent his youth as an underground musician and occasional club promoter. He then moved on to stints as an advertising copywriter, trainer, playwright, music reviewer, amateur historian, TV cameraman, anarchist, contrarian, engineer and fraud investigator.