by Hugh Fraser
‘Of course, love.’
She puts her hands out to the kids.
‘Come here, my lovelies, let’s go in the kitchen and see what we can find.’
They go in the kitchen. I turn to Claire. ‘I’ve done him.’
‘You haven’t.’
I nod and she looks at me and sees that I have. ‘Fuck me, Rina.’
‘Can you come and help us?’
‘Get rid?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Fucking right!’
She takes her coat from behind the door, puts on a pair of slip-ons and follows me up the steps and back to our place.
Mum and Lizzie have got their coats on. They’ve tied some bits of old rope round the body and they’re dragging it through the door onto the landing.
Mum says, ‘Two at each end.’
We each get hold of a corner and I say, ‘Where are we taking him?’ The three of us look at Mum.
‘The dump down Talbot Grove,’ she says.
‘Serves the cunt right,’ says Claire.
‘Come on. And keep it quiet.’
We half carry him and half slide him down the stairs into the hall. Mum says, ‘Rina, get them shovels.’
I go out the back and find three shovels. I pick them up and when I get back they’ve got him down the front steps and on the pavement. I put the shovels on top of him and we lift him up. He’s bloody heavy and the shovels fall off and clatter onto the pavement.
‘Hang on a bit,’ Claire says.
She runs along and goes down her steps. A moment later, she’s up again and pulling the old pram behind her. She wheels it along to us.
‘Good girl.’ says mum.
We hump him up into the pram; the wheels splay outwards under the weight but it just about holds up.
‘Good job it’s for twins,’ Claire says.
We wheel it to the end of the street, stop beside the derelict shop near the corner and I nip ahead and have a look. There’s no one about except an old bloke slumped in a doorway. I beckon the others and we roll the pram along Golborne Road. We’re about half way along when I see a pair of headlights swing out of Ladbroke Grove and come towards us. A Ford Zephyr slows down as it approaches us.
‘Don’t look. Keep going,’ Mum says.
The car stops a few yards away. The front doors open and two blokes in dark suits get out and stand in our way.
‘What you got there, girls?’ one of them says.
Mum walks up to him and throws a punch at his head. He’s on the floor before I know what’s happened and Mum’s pushed the other one up against the car and chopped him in the throat. While he’s choking and sliding down the car she swings a kick at the one on the floor and grabs the handle of the pram.
‘Come on you lot,’ she says.
We go on down Golborne. Lizzie’s laughing.
‘I think your old man would have been proud of that one.’
‘It’s easy when they’re pissed,’ says Mum.
We swing the pram round into Portobello and down the hill. We pass a couple of odd stragglers who don’t pay us much attention, and then we turn off to the right and get to the dump on the corner of St Mark’s Road. It smells to high heaven. We go round to the back of the dump and shift a filthy old mattress and a rusty bed frame, making a passageway through the sacks of rubbish and broken bottles.
We clear a space near the middle, and me, Lizzie and Claire start digging while Mum keeps watch. The ground’s soft from all the rotting muck that’s laying on it so it’s easy to dig up, and by the time it’s starting to get light we’ve made a good-sized hole. We get the body off the pram and drag it beside the hole, then we roll him out of the carpet and drop him in.
Mum comes to where we are and leans over the hole. She picks up a shovel, turns his head sideways with her foot, raises the shovel up, drives it down blade first and slices his face off. Lizzie clutches her stomach and turns away.
‘Let them find him now, eh?’ says Mum.
I take a last look at him and dump a shovel full of wet muck on what’s left of his head. We fill the hole and stamp the soil down and then we pile some old junk and rubbish on it. We take the carpet and the bed clothes and drop them in different places round the other side of the dump.
We get back to where Mum’s waiting with the pram and she says, ‘If they can’t find the body, they can’t prove a fucking thing. Back to bed now, and well done. You two come and see me tonight and I’ll have something for you. Now off you go. Different ways back now.’
Lizzie and Claire nod and go off in different directions.
Mum says, ‘You take the pram and the shovels and put them back where you found them. I’ll see you at home.’
She walks off up Talbot Grove and I wait a minute, and then follow her. I take a different route back to the Grove and then cut through to Golborne. I get to our street in full daylight and put the pram back in the basement by Claire’s front door. I go into our house, put the shovels back and run upstairs. I really want to talk to Mum but when I go in the kitchen she’s passed out on the mattress with a half-empty bottle beside her on the floor.
I take the gun out of the oven and weigh it in my hand. It looks the same as the one of Dad’s that I found once, and I remember how to open it, by pushing the little lever on the side. The barrel tips forward and I see it’s full of bullets. I close the gun, pick up a kitchen knife and go into the bedroom. The floorboards are rotten all along the back wall and when I prise one up with the knife, it falls apart in my hands. I find a more solid one in the corner and hide the gun underneath.
I wash, make a cup of tea and sit at the kitchen table. I should feel tired but I don’t. I feel like dancing on the table. I look at Mum and I feel proud of her. I fold my arms on the table in front of me and rest my head.
In the half-light a man in a hood is banging on an iron bell with a shovel. I jerk upright. The old clock with the cracked glass above the fire place is dinging its little tune.
It’s time to take the kids to school.
7
I open my eyes and try to move. It’s pitch dark and I’m trapped under a great weight. I try to free my right arm and a searing pain shoots into my shoulder. I’m pinned underneath something solid but I am just able to breathe. My arms are trapped, but I can move my left leg. I raise my left knee and push against a solid edge which shifts a little. I keep pushing until I am able to free my left arm and slowly pull myself out. I get to a sitting position and lean back against something solid. I try to move against the pain and nothing seems to be broken. I look around me and make out shapes which mean nothing, until I remember that I am in the wreckage of a car that has been strafed with machine gun fire. I reach out a hand and encounter a face. The hair tells me it is male and the skin feels like it belongs to Gonzales. I explore in another direction and discover a high heeled shoe that I don’t want to find the owner of.
I grope around to try to find a way out of the wreck and discover a cavity where a window used to be that is just big enough for me to squeeze through. Progress is agonisingly slow as I negotiate jagged metal and shattered glass, but I finally make it out onto flat ground, lie on my back and pass out again. When I come round, the moon emerges from cloud above me and I can see the wrecked car more clearly. The one which contained our guards is lying on its roof some distance away.
After a while I am able to get to my feet. I walk to the rear of the car and try to open the trunk. It seems jammed solid but after a few attempts I am able to wrench it open. I find a tire lever and a torch in the tool compartment, prise open a rear door of the car and shine the torch on Gonzales. He lies on his back as if asleep. His dark blue suit is soaked to a rich crimson. Adelina’s shattered body lies next to him, contorted by the impact. Her face has been exploded by a fusillade of lead and one of her arms is twisted impossibly around her neck as if she is trying to pull her head off her shoulders. Her beautiful body is cratered with bullet holes.
It takes a moment before
I realise Lee is missing. I check the front of the car but only find the driver, bowed over the steering wheel in an attitude of devotion, as if protecting it from the evil bullets that have ripped into his flesh. I search the area around the car in case Lee has been thrown clear and find nothing. I go to the back-up car. Roberto and his colleagues are tangled together inside, in a grotesque collage of death.
I locate my shoes, which are wedged under Gonzales’s legs, and start climbing down the steep hillside away from the wreckage while considering what to do next. I have no money, no identification and I look as if I have just escaped from a massacre. The passport identifying me as Caroline Johansen is in Lee’s pocket, wherever he is, and Manuel’s promise of my own passport and ticket home at the airport, in the care of Pedro Álvarez at the information desk, is clearly a trap.
I clamber down the slope until I come to a dry river bed. Sirens wail in the distance as I walk along the hard cracked surface. I need to get to a place where I can steal money and transport, and then get lost in Mexico City until I can buy some ID and a plane ticket. A lizard whips across the river bed in front of me. I turn to look at the flashing lights now assembling at the scene of the shooting. A helicopter is beating its wings a long way off and I can just make out its winking lights emerging from the glow above Mexico City. I continue along the river bed, hoping that I’ll find a road that will lead me to people and cars.
I reflect on the past twenty-four hours, and wish I had listened to my reservations about working abroad when Martin first approached me with the job. I never liked the drug business. Too many amateurs and too many foreigners, but the profits were big and the risks small, with HM Customs full of disgruntled men and women willing to look the other way for a wad of cash. Villains had elbowed the hippies aside, piled into this new expanding business and started to make a lot of money. Martin had put a lot of work my way and paid well. Things were quiet and I reckoned that, as a freelance, it made no sense to turn work down.
The roar of the helicopter interrupts my thoughts as it sweeps over the hilltop and flies straight over the crime scene towards me. I am blinded by a searchlight and buffeted in its downdraft as it hovers directly above me. I run to the river bank and dive into the undergrowth. The helicopter lands on the river bed and the searchlight follows me as I run up the bank. I hear thrashing in the vegetation behind me.
Hands grip my arms and push me forwards onto the ground. I am handcuffed and carried down to where the helicopter stands on the river bed, its blades whoomfing the air. Arms reach out from the cabin, pull me up the ladder, force me into a seat in the rear, take off my cuffs, and snap a seat belt shut around my waist. My captors scramble up the ladder, the door is closed and we accelerate into the sky.
As Mexico dwindles below us I try to identify the men surrounding me. They look military but are not in uniform. A man in front of me turns suddenly.
Lee.
‘So, how about that?’ he says.
‘Just as it was going so well,’ I reply.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes. How did you get out?’
‘Bullet-proof vest.’
‘You knew?’
‘No way. It was precautionary. That kind of shit happens down here.’
‘Who was it?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘You have a tracking device in your shoe.’
‘You put it there?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?
‘In case you skipped at the reception.’
‘And the chopper?’
‘We were planning to fly you out from the mansion as soon as we got there. When I rolled out of the car, I got to a phone and called the bird over.’
‘What’s going on, Lee?’
‘We’re taking you to Texas.’
‘Why?’
Lee indicates his fellow passengers. ‘We’ll talk when we get there.’
‘How far is it?’
‘Ten, maybe eleven hours.’
He reaches into a compartment in front of him, takes out a small package and offers it to me.
‘Pastrami on rye?’
As he turns away from me, I see the Drug Enforcement Agency acronym on the back of his overalls.
While I’m wondering what Lee can want from me, and considering whether I’d rather kill him quickly or just maim him for life, the helicopter hits turbulence and weaves crazily for several seconds before the pilot regains control.
I can do nothing until we land and so I settle back in my seat, eat my first American sandwich and go to sleep.
• • •
I wake up shivering and aching all over. The helicopter has landed. Dawn has broken and I can see an airport control tower through the window.
‘Where are we?’ I ask.
‘We’re refuelling,’ replies Lee.
I make out the words ‘San Antonio Airport Authority’ on the side of a truck on the runway.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see,’ says Lee.
His tone is hard. Perhaps we’ve left laconic Lee in Mexico. The helicopter engine erupts into life again and we take off. It’s clear they’re not going to give me a passport and put me on a flight home. The tracking device tells me that they planned to abduct me either before or after the hit. Which means they either knew Manuel was going to capture me or decided they could use me when Lee found out who I was. I wonder if they were responsible for the shooting. It seems unlikely they would risk my life as well as Lee’s, and shooting a government minister and his wife probably goes beyond the DEA’s remit.
A couple of hours later, the helicopter keels over into a dive and starts to descend steeply towards an airport below. I find a passing comfort in the drawling monotone of the pilot as he talks into his microphone before lowering the machine gently onto the tarmac. The door is opened and the ladder swings down. The agent next to me handcuffs me and releases my seat belt. I follow him onto the runway and he leads me to a jeep a couple of hundred yards away. After a short journey through the suburbs of some city we arrive at a long, white, bunker-like building with rows of slit windows and a tall wire fence.
As we stop in front of the gatehouse, Lee turns to me and says, ‘There are a couple of things we have to do with you here. Just stay cool and I’ll explain later.’
I am taken from the jeep to a fortified steel door. Lee says something into an intercom and the door slides open. We pass through and it clangs shut behind us. Two more doors are opened by guards and we enter a reception area. I am taken to a side room by two female guards and put through an admission procedure which includes photographs from various angles, fingerprints and a body search conducted by another female guard with an advanced case of obesity and a very long index finger. I am given a white prison overall and trainers in exchange for my blood stained Diane Von Furstenberg and my earrings and bracelet and shown to a cubicle where I change.
Another female prison guard, thin and wiry with a ratty face, escorts me along a wide corridor to a bare room with a table and two chairs. Ratface slams the metal door shut and stands beside it, staring vacantly into space. I sit at the table. After a short while a guard enters and places a tray bearing a cup of coffee and a bowl of what looks like pulled teeth with a small brown nipple at one end covered in some kind of syrup. I ask her what is in the bowl.
‘Hominy grits,’ she says, as she leaves. I taste a tooth and find it slimy and unpleasant. The coffee is reasonable and most welcome. Minutes later a man in a dark suit enters. He looks about fifty, tall, tanned and well-groomed with penetrating pale blue eyes beneath greying hair. He sits opposite me, takes a file from a briefcase and opens it.
He looks at the file, and then at me. ‘You are Miss Rina Walker?’
‘Yes,’ I reply.
‘The State Attorney’s Office is in possession of evidence that you are an illegal alien who entered this country as a fugitive. It also has access to wi
tness statements from members of the Drug Enforcement Agency to the effect that you committed a murder while in Mexico and subsequently entered the United States illegally. You are liable to be charged as such and may receive a considerable prison sentence if found guilty. You will be kept here at Gatesville Women’s Correctional Facility where you will be held until a decision is made regarding the nature of the charges to be brought against you. You will then be formally charged and brought before a court.’
He sees that I am about to speak and immediately closes the file, replaces it in the briefcase and walks out of the room, slamming the door behind him. I’m wondering how Lee got to know about the killing at the hotel when Ratface opens the door again, steps forward and says, ‘OK, come on.’
I drink the last of the coffee and follow her. We walk to the end of a long corridor and turn a corner. A guard unlocks a steel door and we step into the main hall of the prison. The angry buzz of several hundred incarcerated women presses in on me. Three tiers of cells line the walls, iron walkways at each level are accessed by stairways at each end of the hall. Prisoners come to the doors of their cells to see who has arrived. We climb to the first floor to a crescendo of howls, wolf whistles and the rattle of prison bars. Guards shout orders and clatter the bars with their nightsticks to quieten the noise, but to little effect. On the walkway, Ratface steers me past leering invitations, catcalls and vacant stares to a cell at the far end of the block. She unlocks the door and I am relieved to find I am alone in a two-berth cell. The din outside quietens.
I look around the cell in search of any evidence of a cellmate but find none. As I lie down on the lower bunk and wonder what happened to Lee, I hear a voice that seems to be coming from nearby.
‘Hey, honey.’
I decide not to reply.
‘You OK in there?’
I recall a wistful face at the bars of the cell next door as I passed. ‘Yes, I’m OK,’ I reply.
‘It can be rough when you first come in.’
‘I’m OK, thank you.’
‘You ain’t from around here, are you?’
