On the Money

by Kerry J Donovan

  Loring and his people headed east along Palmerston Road and split into three units, each slipping down a different side street.

  Lil’ Aran keyed the lock securing his bike to the railings and rode off without his usual cheery wave. The rest of Barcode’s crew turned west and strolled away.

  As they drew closer to his hiding spot in the bushes, their quiet conversation became easier to hear.

  “…dunno bruv,” Benjie said. “Didn’t see him do nothing. You?”

  Spook shook his head and scrunched up his shoulders against the wind and rain. “Nah, I were looking at the screen, man. You know how TM want us all concentrating when he speakin’.”

  “Yeah, blood. An’ with Barcode being away, he’ll be wanting me to let him know what went down. Me being his deputy, and all.”

  Benjie? My deputy? Yeah, right. Up your ass, weasel.

  Three of the crew split off down Byron Street, leaving Benjie and Spook carrying straight on together. Wouldn’t be long before they separated, neither.

  Barcode spied the area, checked it was empty, and pulled up his hood before peeling himself out of his hiding spot. He followed the pair at a good distance, keeping real silent.

  Two hundred metres later, Spook punched Benjie’s shoulder, all playful like, and ran up the steps to his parents’ place. A shitty flat on the top floor of an eight-floor tower block. Benjie threw him a jibe about being a “Mummy’s boy”, and carried on along Boothe Avenue, alone.

  Perfect.

  Barcode lengthened his stride and closed the gap. The timing needed to be exact. He aimed for silence, tried to stop his clothing swishing together and giving his position away.

  One-fifty metres ahead, the cross junction with Green Lane neared, with its streetlights, and brightly lit houses—no good for Barcode’s plans. Before that, the unlit Pound Lane split off to the right.

  He closed the gap.

  “Hey, Benjie,” he called. “Hold up, blood.”

  The weasel stopped sharp, spun around, and raised his fists before recognising Barcode. His arms dropped, but the fists stayed clenched.

  “That you, BC?”

  “Yeah, s’me. Chill, blood.”

  Benjie’s fingers loosened and he leaned to one side, as though trying to see past Barcode.

  “Wazzap, man? TM said you was on a special mission.”

  “I am, bruv. An’ I need yo’ help. Come wi’ me.” Barcode pointed to Pound Lane. “TM’s had me spying on the Parksiders. We’s gonna hijack their next shipment.”

  Barcode stepped past Benjie and ducked into the quiet lane, beckoning for Benjie to follow. Without looking to check Benjie was behind, Barcode hurried along the lane until the darkness was almost complete. He stopped and turned, waiting for the weasel to catch up.

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “You an’ me, blood. I come up with a plan, but I needs someone I can trust as backup, man.”

  “You mean you ain’t pissed at me no more?”

  Barcode threw him a questioning frown. “Pissed at you for what?”

  “For what I said to Demarcus Williams ’bout what happen with the betty. Sorry, man. Didn’t want to drop you in the shit, none …”

  Nah, ’course you didn’t.

  “…but, you know what it’s like when the Goons ask a question and TM’s prob’ly listening. Truth is needed, you know?”

  Barcode turned his frown upside-down and flapped both his hands in a sign of forgiveness.

  “No worries, my man. We cool. I understand completely. I’d a done the self-same thing in your situation.”

  “Really? We cool?”

  “’Course we cool. In fact, we downright chilly. Why else would I be askin’ you to back my play against the Parksiders? You and me do this right and we’ll be in real tight with TM. He promised me a promotion, and I’ll be bringing you along for the ride.”

  Benjie’s shit-eating grin showed again, this time in relief as much as greed.

  “You fo’ real?”

  “Sure thing, blood.”

  Still smiling, Barcode threw his arm around Benjie’s shoulders and pulled him into a hug. He rubbed the top of his head before releasing him and pointing the way down to the far end of Pound Lane. “Now, my man. We in a rush. Need to be outside Parkside Hall afore the drop.”

  He started walking, hugging the right side of the pavement. Benjie hurried to catch him, pulling alongside and to the left.

  “So, you gonna tell me what happen in the meeting? Why all the secrecy when you guys left the Hub? Look like something serious went down.” Barcode spoke so softly, Benjie had to lean closer to hear.

  At the same time, Barcode reached for the pocket sewn into the inner lining of his jacket.

  “Aw, man. It were real weird. That Mick asshole, Red, accuse Rhino of signalling to someone outside the Hub. Shit hit the fan, big time. TM showed the act on the monitor and they drag him outta the Hub. Don’t think we gonna be seeing ol’ Rhino no mo—”

  Barcode threw his left arm over Benjie’s shoulders, spun him around, and stabbed his belly with his favoured five-inch blade. He sliced up and in, and twisted it around.

  Benjie’s eyes opened wide and his expression, confusion mixed with terror, nearly made Barcode wet himself with glee.

  “Didn’t see that coming, did you? Hey, Weasel?”

  Benjie’s face crumpled. He doubled over, hugging his belly tight, and sank slowly to his knees.

  “You fucking bast—”

  Barcode stepped to one side, grabbed the weasel’s hair, and snapped back his head to expose a scrawny throat. Pressing hard, he slowly drew the blade’s razor-sharp edge from left to right. Blood exploded in a pulsing, steaming flood. Air gurgled through a severed gullet.

  Benjie’s hands flew up from his belly and started clawing at his throat, trying to staunch the flow. It wouldn’t work. Nothing could save the fucker.

  “Nobody fucks with Barcode, blood,” he hissed into the dying weasel’s ear, keeping well away from the spurting blood. “Ain’t you learned nothing since school, shithead?”

  Barcode wiped his blade on Benjie’s coat, slicing deep into the cloth. He released his iron grip on the fucker’s hair, and Benjie slumped into a heap on the ground, writhing, kicking, spluttering.

  For a moment, Barcode considered putting the fucker out of his misery by caving his head in with a running kick, but he stepped away. The asshole turned on Barcode. Deserved all he had coming. Let him live out the last few remaining seconds of his miserable existence repenting his sins.

  Served the fool right. Nobody rats on Barcode and gets away with it. Nobody.

  Quickly—more quickly than the fucker deserved—the wriggling, squirming, choking slowed, then stopped. Benjie Harrington weren’t breathing no more.

  Before turning away from the corpse, Barcode took a baggie from his pocket. He removed the button he’d taken from the jacket of the same Black Bear crewman who’d donated his scarf to Barcode a month back, and pushed it into Benjie’s lifeless hand.

  As a kid, Barcode had spent hours in front of the TV, soaking up the lessons from all them forensics shows and documentaries. Barcode always knew they’d come in handy one day.

  Whistling a jaunty tune, Barcode hurried away. He still had his main mission to complete that night. A mission that would cement his place as the Tribe’s main mover and shaker, and provide an internal alibi for Benjie’s demise.

  After all, not even TM would suspect someone who robbed the Parksiders’ next delivery of murking one of their own at pretty much the same time. The stolen button would likely lead the filth to suspect a turf war, and Barcode needed an alibi or his recent history with Benjie might come back to bite him on the butt.

  No one punished a Tribesman but the Goons, and then only with TM’s okay.

  Ha, no one but Barcode, fuckers.

  Chapter 28

  Sunday 19th February – Medics

  Cambourne Cross Hospital, London

  23:25. />
  Kaine paced the brightly lit, but tired and slightly grimy, hospital corridor. With so much still on his plate, he could have done without the wait, but he wasn’t about to leave his young charge alone.

  He’d caught up with Damian soon after leaving the courtyard and helped him the rest of the way to the rendezvous. The ambulance reached the pickup point a couple of minutes after they did. The green-clad paramedics were quick and efficient. They strapped Damian onto a trolley, hooked him up to the usual array of machines, fed him oxygen through a facemask, and ferried him and Kaine, under blue lights, to the nearest A&E Department—Cambourne Cross hospital, Leytonstone.

  The hospital’s late-Victorian redbrick façade gave it the appearance of a town hall rather than a place for dispensing medical care, but the bright lights at the entrance suggested a warm welcome.

  A few metres beyond entrance, hunched against the weather, a gaggle of smokers enjoyed their cancer delivery sticks in the white halo of a streetlight. Patients in dressing gowns and visitors in warm coats polluted the air around them with a blue-grey fug. The bald irony of smoking cigarettes outside a place dedicated to the treatment of the sick evidently eluded these diehard holdouts to a habit once cherished but now widely scorned.

  Braving the thick smog of toxins drifting towards them from the smokers, the paramedics rolled Damian through a set of double automatic doors.

  Fortunately, Cambourne Cross had yet to fit a metal detector or a knife arch security screen, or Kaine would have had to ditch his Sig. Instead, he followed the team, watching out for security guards armed with handheld detectors.

  There were none.

  The lead paramedic, a jolly forty-something with a roly-poly waistline that didn’t look too impressive in his green jumpsuit, gave a short overview of Damian’s stats to a woman standing in the middle of the admissions hall and carrying a clipboard. From his notes, the paramedic read off heartrate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation and suggested a possible “pneumothorax”.

  The admissions nurse, whose scrubs were as grey as her hair and as creased as her face, pointed them to the nearest empty, curtain-shrouded cubicle and turned to Kaine.

  “Name?” she asked, delivering the question in a voice every bit as bored as it was tired.

  “Sorry?”

  “Name?” the middle-aged woman—Nurse G Emmanuel, according to the nametag pinned to the pocket of the wrinkled scrubs—asked. She barely looked up from her clipboard.

  “Damian Baines, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes, I think,” Kaine repeated.

  “Age?”

  “No idea. Early twenties?”

  The nurse’s blue eyes attempted first to skewer and then to slice him open.

  “What relationship do you have with the patient?”

  “Madam, to what are you alluding?” Kaine asked, unable to resist placing a hand over his heart.

  “Are you a relative or acquaintance of the patient, sir?”

  Her enforced emphasis on the “sir” indicated her adherence to the hospital’s standing instructions to be courteous to patients and clients at all times—according to the notice attached to the wall above Emmanuel’s computer station behind the screen in the corner. Unfortunately, the notice failed to indicate the tonal quality required in the courtesy. A voice that could etch lines in glass didn’t fit the sentiment of the notice.

  “Neither. I was just passing by and tried to help. By the way, the patient is conscious and lucid. The admitting nurse will be able to take a case history, I’m sure.”

  “I am the admitting nurse, sir,” she said, tapping the name badge with the top of her biro.

  Kaine backed away from the cubicle and waved her towards it, saying, “Then please continue, Staff Nurse Emmanuel. I’ll be here if Mr Baines needs me. Although why he should …”

  The nurse’s expression suggested she thought the last thing her patient needed was a total stranger standing over him while he was undergoing any medical treatment, even if said total stranger was a Good Samaritan.

  “Thank you, sir. You’ll find a chair in the waiting area.” She used her ballpoint to indicate the way past the entrance foyer and towards a part of the building that looked about as welcoming as a police drunk tank at Christmas, and just as heavily occupied.

  “Is it okay to use my phone in here, nurse?”

  The pen swung around to point to a sign on the wall behind his head. It had the outline of a mobile phone inside a red circle with a diagonal line sliced through it.

  “So I have to brave the smokers’ den?”

  Without answering, Staff Nurse Emmanuel turned her back to him and ducked behind the cubicle’s curtain.

  Kaine hurried outside, turned away from cancer corner, and finally called Lara, the paramedics having refused to allow him to use his mobile in the ambulance. Lara, of course, took his news with her customary calmness and, after listening in silence to his brief instructions, passed the mobile to her bodyguard.

  “Connor,” Kaine started, “the Doc needs to go out. She’ll brief you on the way. Bring both her and Ariel Danby here to the hospital and don’t take no for an answer. Don’t give Ms Danby time to pack, either. She needs to travel light. Things are probably about to get hairy and I don’t want either Ariel or the Doc out of your sight until you get here. Understand?”

  “Yes, boss. Be there as soon as we can.”

  Kaine ended the call, returned to the internal corridor, and resumed his quiet pacing. Although he aimed for “worried friend”, he was actually standing guard. TM would know the location of the nearest A&E and might order the remaining Goons to finish Damian off. The weight of the loaded Sig—964 grams—gave him little comfort. He’d be hard put to imagine a scenario where he’d be prepared to use it inside a hospital.

  Minutes later, an impossibly young-looking doctor arrived, hurrying from an area deep within the bowels of the antiquated facility. Muddy brown food stains marked the front of his white coat—at least Kaine hoped they were food stains. The clean-shaven but bleary-eyed medic introduced himself as Dr Hamilton, Senior Doctor in Charge, failing to stifle a yawn as he did so.

  “Sorry, sir,” Hamilton said, yawning again. “I’ve been on call for thirty-two hours straight. But don’t worry, the patient is in good hands.”

  Hamilton blinked hard, undoubtedly trying to swipe the fatigue from dry eyes. He dipped his head at Kaine in a tired, sympathetic nod and turned away to join Staff Nurse Emmanuel behind the curtain.

  Inside the cubicle, their hushed conversation was so quiet, Kaine couldn’t follow it even from the other side of the thin, waterproof material.

  Two minutes later, Hamilton reappeared, carrying a clipboard, his expression serious.

  “As indicated by his stats and his history, I strongly suspect a tension pneumothorax,” he announced, nodding thoughtfully. “I’ve ordered a CT scan to confirm the extent of the damage and to determine whether the patient needs emergency surgery.”

  He looked at Kaine almost for the first time since leaving the cubicle and smiled. “Not to worry though, sir. The condition is generally not life-threatening when treated in time.”

  Kaine nodded. Before he could ask how long the CT would take to organise, Hamilton spoke again. “The bruising around the patient’s face, however …”

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  “Was there any loss of consciousness?”

  “Not that I am aware of. He took a couple of kicks to the ribs, and a number of blows to the face, but I wasn’t close enough to the incident to see it in great detail.”

  “I understand,” the medic said, adding a note to his paperwork, “that you were just passing by?”

  “That’s correct. I’m just trying to help,” Kaine said, eyes wide in an expression of total innocence.

  “Would you be able to describe the assailants to the police?”

  Kaine responded by closing his eyes to indicate deep thought, followed by a considered headshake
.

  “Sorry, Doctor. Whereas I’m more than happy to make a witness statement,” he lied, “there’s very little I can say to assist the police in their enquiries.”

  “I understand completely,” Hamilton said, nodding and adding more notes to the form on his clipboard.

  Behind the medic, the entrance doors opened to admit Connor, Lara, and a heavily pregnant woman he assumed to be Ariel Danby.

  Lara craned her neck, searching the entrance hall quickly before she spotted him and beamed. She pointed him out to Ariel and held the pregnant woman’s forearm as they hurried along the busy corridor, shepherded by the reliable Connor Blake.

  “Dr Hamilton,” Kaine said to the exhausted medic, “if I’m not mistaken, this is the patient’s partner. The lady alongside her is my wife, Dr Elizabeth Griffin.”

  Kaine made the full introductions, giving Lara higher accreditation than young Hamilton, and basing her in Queen Elizabeth’s University Hospital, Birmingham. The QEUH was well-known and respectable, but far enough away for it to be unlikely that Lara and Hamilton had ever met.

  The young doctor displayed some irritation at the idea of having a senior consultant looking over his shoulder. After all, this was his turf.

  “Oxygen saturation?” she asked, after Hamilton repeated his initial diagnosis.

  “Eighty nine point three,” he said and reluctantly passed her the clipboard when she held out her hand for it.

  “Oh dear,” Lara said, frowning as she flicked through the pages. “Not good.”

  “But the patient is holding stable.”

  “Yes, I see that. You’re treating with oxygen?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Very well. Needle decompression or chest tube?”

  Hamilton shook his head. “Mechanical ventilation was not required and, as the patient is stable, I considered it prudent to wait for the CT scan before calling in a thoracic consultation. As you know, Dr Griffin, pneumothoraces often heal themselves.”

  “Quite so, Dr Hamilton,” Lara said, smiling gently. “However, we also know that, with trauma-induced pneumothoraces, other organs may suffer damage. And there’s also the question of a potential head trauma. Have you considered ordering an upper body scan?”