Gazza raised a single eyebrow and stared back at me."What was that, Callum?"
"You heard me. I said I'm not bringing her in here. And you don't have to get your back up about it because I'm telling you, it isn't her."
"And how do you know that?" Ian asked. "You think she'd just tell you if it was? I think a pretty lady would probably be the easiest way to do it, actually. Coppers know how men are, and they-"
Gazza cut him off. "Callum, are you under the impression that you're not involved here? You remember what happened in France, mate? You're in this. Bring her in."
I didn't like the expression on Gazza's face. I didn't like what I assumed he was implying, either.
"I'm in this, yeah? You threatening me?" I asked, starting to get properly angry.
"No one's threatening anyone, Callum," Gazza lied. "Calm down. Besides, we got a delivery to make tonight and I need you to drive - you and Mick. If this goes smoothly, if we handle this like professionals, there's more work - and more money, a fucking lot more money - where this came from."
"A delivery? Gazza, I have to be honest, I don't like this. You didn't tell me we were moving up in the world and I'm not sure I'm interested."
"Twenty grand, Callum. Does that help convince you?"
"And what's my cut?"
Gazza caught Ian's eye and smiled. "That IS your cut, mate."
Twenty thousand pounds. Which, added to the hundred thousand I had hilariously stuffed in a gym bag in my closet, made one hundred and twenty thousand. Not bad. Definitely enough to get out of town, if it ever came to that.
"And you just need a driver? That's it? Any chance I'm going to get fucking shot at this time?"
"Yeah, up to Leeds tonight. In and out, easy. If you don't fuck it up, there'll be more jobs just like it coming down the pipeline, too. And no one's going to be shooting anyone, mate."
I kept it to myself that I probably wasn't going to be interested in any more work of that nature and nodded. I should have turned him down-I knew it even as I was agreeing to it. But that kind of money would sway most people, and it definitely did the trick with me.
"Right. I'll do that. But I'm not bringing Lily in. That's not negotiable."
"Have it your way, mate." Gazza shrugged, in a concession that would have stuck out as worryingly uncharacteristic if I hadn't been so goddamn caught up in the idea of another twenty thousand quid. "But I don't want her around here anymore. At all. You got me?"
"I got you," I replied.
I wasn't sure how I was going to explain to Lily that the Club was now off-limits to her, but it was a lot better than having to bring her in, which would definitely have pissed her off enough to end things with me.
"Right. Here." Gazza pushed a torn piece of paper with an address written on it across the table towards me. "Eleven tonight, it's a storage facility in Croydon. Mick'll be there beforehand."
I pocketed the paper and left immediately. Mick had seemed pretty solid on the Paris job - and at the very least, he wasn't Dave.
At some point during the short walk from the bar to the pavement outside, I realized I was done with the Streatham Club. With Gazza. With everything to do with it. Gazza had that look in his eye, that ugly glimmer people get when large amounts of money are on the table. I knew where this ended, because it was obvious where it ended - prison if they were lucky, death if they weren't. My whole life, fucked.
I knew it didn't look like it from the outside, but I'd managed things pretty carefully to be the way they were. No soul-destroying nine-to-five, enough money to pay for necessities and, beyond that, no obligations to anyone except myself. It wasn't an accident, it was how I wanted to live. And now it was in danger. Gazza wasn't an idiot, but he also wasn't as smart or as in control as he thought he was. If I stayed, I was going to have to play his game. And I knew too much already, despite his policy of telling me as little as he could possibly get away with, for him to let me go easily. That was it. After the delivery that night, of course. After that, I was done.
I walked back to my flat with my fists clenched, seething. I knew Gazza wasn't my best mate, but I'd stupidly assumed there was something there. Some shred of decency or loyalty. He'd involved me in all of his shit without giving me all the information, as if I was some kind of errand boy. Well fuck him. As soon as I got paid for the delivery run, I was out.
Mick was at the storage facility that night in Croydon when I got there, bang on time and eager to just get it done and collect my fee. It was the same lorry I'd spent the night in after our adventures in Paris, and the engine was already running. Mick gave me a brief nod.
"You ready mate?"
"Ready, let's get this over with," I replied.
We were on the M25 before Mick said another word to me.
"You should be more respectful around Gazza."
I looked at him, checking to see if he was joking. He wasn't.
"Oh yeah? Why's that?"
Mick kept staring straight ahead at the road. "Look, mate, I know the two of you go way back. I know he's been a bit like a father to you."
I didn't react to that, despite it being a steaming pile of bullshit. Fathers don't send their sons to make drug deals with murderous scumbags. Gazza had as much concern for me as he had for the law - that is: none.
Mick continued. "But he's working on some serious shit right now. Serious shit. He's looking to move up a few rungs on the ladder, play with the big dogs, you understand? And that means you'll be playing with the big dogs, too. And the thing about big dogs, Callum, is that they bite."
I was tempted to snort derisively, the way I had been when I'd spotted Gazza skulking around the parking lot of the Streatham Club like some kind of hardened criminal. The only difference between what we were driving up to Leeds and what I'd picked up in Paris on all the other trips was volume. Gazza was a courier, basically. An illegal postman. It was just another reason to get the fuck away from him as soon as possible, before his delusions of grandeur really went to his head and he started toting gold-plated machine guns around like he was in Grand Theft fucking Auto.
"Yeah, you're right," I said to Mick, pretending I'd taken what he was saying seriously. "I guess I do know Gazza too well, sometimes I can get a little cheeky."
Mick nodded, obviously satisfied with that response. I glanced down at my watch. Just past midnight. My mind had been whirring with plans since leaving the club earlier in the day, but that was details. The main point was I had to leave - my flat, Streatham, my life. Get paid, leave. It was that simple. The only choices were: stay where I was and keep working for Gazza or quit working for Gazza and move. I couldn't quit working at the Club and stay in Streatham, it just wouldn't work. What a gigantic pain in the arse. I thought about the money. At least I'd have some money to set myself up somewhere new, maybe somewhere in the east end?
At some point near Leicester, Mick started to grimace intermittently and lean over the wheel. I said nothing until I noticed sweat starting to bead on his forehead.
"You alright mate?" I asked.
"Yeah," he wheezed, clearly not alright. "Think that curry I had for lunch is doing a number on my guts."
We kept going and Mick's distress kept getting more evident. We'd just passed Nottingham when he spotted a petrol station lay-by and yanked the wheel suddenly, turning in at the last minute. He pulled the lorry into a darkened, empty part of the parking lot and jumped out of the cab, running half bent over into the shop.
Five minutes passed. I thought about Lily. She'd been on my mind all day, just there in the background behind all the immediate worries. How would she react to my sudden change of location? She was definitely going to be curious, and I wasn't sure how much it would be prudent to tell her. I knew she had feelings for me, but I also knew she was level-headed. Women like that didn't tend to go out of their way to get involved with the type of man who suddenly has to drop his whole life and start a new one somewhere else.
Ten minutes. Still no sign of Mick.
I got out and walked the length of the parking lot to stretch my legs. When I got to the back of the lorry it didn't even occur to me not to open it. There was no one around and we were parked away from any CCTV cameras on the premises. I was bored and curious. I wanted to see if the load we were hauling was as big as the one we'd picked up outside Paris or if some of it had been skimmed off the top for other buyers. I pulled the door open.
The lorry was, as I had assumed it was going to be, full of the wooden crates I'd recognized from my bloody, slightly delirious journey back across the Channel. Some of them has sheets of plastic sticking out between the slats. I stepped a little closer and tugged on one of the sheets. Something shifted inside the crate. The sound it made was hard, almost metallic. Bricks of nose candy don't make that sound. I glanced across the parking lot but it was still deserted, so I hopped up into the back of the lorry and lifted the wooden lid off one of the crates.
How long I stood there, staring, I cannot say. Maybe five seconds, maybe five minutes. The crates weren't full of drugs, they were full of guns. Not handguns, either. The kind of guns you see in movies. Black and shiny and malevolently sexy. Who else had Gazza lied to? All of us? Or was I the only one who didn't know I was running a major consignment of illegal weapons in a country that was currently in the grip of a terrorist panic? Jesus H Christ.
I replaced the lid of the crate and closed the back door before hopping back into the passenger seat, my pulse racing. No part of me trusted Gazza to have made sure we were in the clear. Visions of the terrorist squad pulling us over filled my head and I felt my palms starting to get clammy. Drugs are one thing - you still get arrested and you still go to prison, but it's not the same story with guns, not these days. You don't get sent down for a couple of years for guns, you get sent down for the rest of your life.
When Mick pulled the door open my body jerked so hard I almost hit my head on the roof of the cab.
"Jesus, Callum, you're jumpy."
I forced a laugh. "Oh, yeah, sorry. Must have dozed off."
"You alright?"
"Fine. You?"
"I'm fine now, mate. Don't envy the person who has to clean that toilet, though."
Disgusting. I turned and looked out the window, determined not to think of the scene of Mick's stomach troubles.
We didn't say much for the rest of the trip. I just sat in my seat silently praying that we wouldn't get stopped, knowing I wouldn't feel any relief until the lorry was empty and I was as far away from its cargo as I could get.
It was still dark when we got to Leeds and what looked to be another storage facility. A single man, older and serious-looking, met us outside a row of garages. A minute later, three more men appeared, each of them headed to the back of the lorry, which they then began to unload. Mick smoked a cigarette and I paced. It took over half an hour and I spent every second with my skin crawling, just waiting for the inevitable shout of "Police!"
It didn't come. It didn't come and when the last crate was unloaded, all I wanted to do was get the fuck out of there. Apparently Mick did, too, because we were back on the road in almost no time.
"That was surprisingly easy," I said, breathing normally for the first time in hours.
"Clockwork. These people don't fuck about. They got this planned, innit? Down to the last second."
I wanted to push Mick. To try and glean how much he knew about what it was we were transporting. Did he know? He certainly didn't look like a man who knew he was risking his life, but he didn't give enough away for me to get a handle on him.
I was tired, though, and the release of tension in my body had made it suddenly impossible to keep my eyes open. I fell asleep thinking of Lily and the soft, helpless little sounds she'd made when she was underneath me, taking me. All I wanted was to be with her. If I had that, we could be in fucking Antarctica for all I cared.
Gazza met us in Croydon when we got back to London, and after a brief conversation with Mick as to how everything had gone, handed each of us a brown envelope. I looked inside. Rolls of hundred pound notes. That was it, then. I was done. No getting greedy. From there I went straight back to my flat, threw the money in the closet next to the rest of it and crawled into bed, too mentally drained to do anything except sleep.
Chapter 16: Lily
The next time I saw Callum it was at a pub in Fulham, close to the PR agency. I hadn't actually been doing any work. I'd taken the afternoon off - first to go to Boots and pick up a new prescription for birth control, and second to do something I'd never done before - go to a posh spa. Pandora came along - in fact it was her who recommended the place. I'd made the mistake of mentioning I should get my legs waxed and she'd jumped right in.
"Oooh, Lily, I know just the place. We should go this afternoon, I promise you it'll be worth it. I always feel like a newborn baby walking out of there."
So I gave in and weakly tried to tell myself it was just to get Pan to back off, but it wasn't. It was for Callum. I liked the idea of my skin feeling all soft and bare and smooth for him. Pandora was onto me. She elbowed me in the ribs as we walked along the sidewalk and grinned conspiratorially.
"He'll love it, Lily. Men always love it. They sure don't understand the actual effort that goes into it but, I dunno, I guess that's for the best isn't it? Do we really want them knowing how much it takes to not look like a hairy beast all the time?"
I laughed. "Yeah, I suppose so. Am I going to have to take my clothes off?"
"Well, yeah. That's the whole idea."
Fabulous. I'd never been one for public nakedness. Pandora wasn't wrong, though. I did walk out feeling like a newborn baby. Fresh, smooth, hairless, massaged and primped to perfection. She looked me up and down before I left to meet Callum at the pub.
"You look good, Lily. I like your hair like that, it looks sexy. And your skin looks great. He's gonna have to walk out of the pub bent over like a fifteen year old."
It took me a few seconds to get what she was alluding to. "Oh God, Pandora."
"What? Stop being so coy all the time, Lily. Getting their dicks hard is our job and there's no reason to be embarrassed about it, is there? We're adults."
Pandora always had that ability to make me feel like a small child when she spoke to me. She air-kissed me on both cheeks before she headed back to the office and I walked to the pub. My skin, all freshly scrubbed and moisturized, felt very bare and sensitive against my clothes. I really wanted to see Callum again. In fact I was starting to wish I'd just arranged for him to come to my house instead of a public place.
He was seated at the bar when I walked in, facing away from me. My stomach did an excited little flip when I saw him and I decided to sneak up behind him and kiss his neck. As it turned out, I couldn't quite reach his neck so I settled for his upper arm.
"Lily."He turned to me and I could see at once that he was feeling the exact thing I was feeling.
"Why did we arrange to meet in a pub?" I asked, smiling.
"Because you're playing hard to get, missy, and because I'll do anything you ask me to," he replied, reaching out and grasping my waist with one of his huge mitts.
"Ha. I doubt that."
"Should we get a booth?"
It was an older pub, one of the ones with high-backed booths and stained glass. Other than the customers, who were all of the loud and moneyed variety, it was a beautiful little place. I slid into one of the bench seats and waited while Callum got me a drink, watching him out of the corner of my eye and near-bursting with happiness just to be with him. He saw me grinning like a fool as he sat down.
"What are you so happy about, Lily Parker? Did you have a good day? Have you saved the reputations of many D-listers?"
I rolled my eyes. "But of course. I'm like the superwoman of second rate soap stars, don't you know? No..."
I didn't like lying to him. I didn't know when exactly it had happened, but there had come a point where it started to feel uncomfortable telling him falsehoods about my work. I knew I didn't h
ave a choice, but it still felt shitty.
Callum reached across the table and slid his fingers under my wrist, rubbing me gently. "No, what?"
"No, that isn't why I'm happy."
"Why are you happy then?"
"Callum! I'm happy because I'm here with you!" I said, exasperated and still totally unable to stop smiling. He caught my eyes for a few seconds and we just sat there looking at each other.
"Good," he said."Me too. I just wanted you to say it."
"Why do you always want me to say things?" I asked, pushing my smaller hand into his bigger one and reveling in the simple, rushing joy of touching him.
"Because I think you're one of those women who's afraid of being out of control. You know, always trying to act like you've got yourself together. There's nothing wrong with being happy to see someone, Lily."
"I know there isn't," I responded, taking a mock lecturing tone, "and I don't need the man-whore of South London giving me life lessons, either."
To my surprise, his expression darkened when I said that, and I was apologizing at once."Callum, I'm kidding - I'm sorry, that was a joke."
"I know, Lily. It's not that - it's not you. Being here with you, right now, is the happiest I've been since - well, since the last time I saw you. I just, uh, well actually, maybe we should go somewhere more private."
It was on the tip of my tongue to invite him back to my flat. He already knew where I lived, so what harm could it do? None. Well, none to the investigation. But inviting a man back to your place, maybe even spending the night sleeping next to him – that was a big deal. In some ways it was a bigger deal than the sex itself. It meant things had gone beyond sex. I hadn't shared a bed for non-sexual purposes since Thomas, and that was years ago. Callum saw the look on my face.
"Look, Lily, it's alright if you're not ready to have me over. I understand you're trying desperately not to fall in love with me-"
I slapped his wrist and he laughed.
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