by Daniel Birch
It was cold as I rode, but the sun was shining, the little wind there was blew behind me and the path was clear in front of me. My foot was firmly down as I just got faster and faster, not paying any attention to how fast I was going.
It seemed like I had ridden for hours. I had to stop because my legs and hands were getting cold. I hadn’t put on my biker gloves, ‘Fuck,’ I thought. It wasn’t safe to keep riding as I was so cold, so I stopped at a service station to get a coffee and some food in an attempt to warm myself up and get my bearings.
Once I was sat with my warm beverage and cheap sausage roll, I started to feel calm as I took slow breaths.
What now for me? Did I continue my career in law? Did I stay in Hull?
Sat at the little table drinking my awful coffee and eating my cement hard pastry sausage roll, I watched a family sat across from me. They looked like they were either going or coming home from a holiday. The dad was helping his son, who looked all of five years old, butter his toast as the mother looked at a magazine with her daughter.
They all looked so close as they laughed and talked. It sounds crazy, maybe even trivial, but to watch this family got me thinking. Family? What is family? How do you define the word ‘family’? The family I had in my mother was dead, sure, but one thing I had worked out over the years was that friends, true friends, were the family you chose for yourself.
Tommy and Emma were all the family I had left. I couldn’t abandon them.
Although the pain of losing Sarah was hard, I couldn’t just run away, I couldn’t leave the people who genuinely gave a damn about me. I wasn’t going anywhere. Hull was my home.
Why should I run? I had done nothing wrong, it was them, all them.
All that I had left in this world was waiting for me. My friends…my family.
Chapter Forty Seven
‘Yeah, this is Trigg. Mario said we may be able to work something out, that you can get me outta the country?’
He was nervous as he talked, wiping the rain from his face. Trigg was clutching at straws in an attempt to evade the law which had his picture on police station walls all over the city.
‘Yeah I know I’m wanted, that’s why I gotta go and now. Mario said you could fucking help me. I can pay the price. Mario will pay once I’m en route, so whatcha say?’
The voice on the other end agreed. It was Roux, coming to Trigg’s rescue. Somehow he had managed to get word to Roux’s people that he needed to get out of England for a while. Roux agreed. The price was 100k, which included a passport, and a safe house in Spain.
In truth, Trigg didn’t care where he went. He just wanted to get out and, more than anything, he wanted to avoid time in jail. Trigg had got word off Mario that the bullets from the Sarah murder had been matched to his gun in his flat when the police found it during the raids this last week.
‘I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this shit, Roux. Once shit calms a bit, I’ll be back, working for you and yours, and earning some serious fucking wedge,’ promised Trigg pacing the car park near an old warehouse where he had been sleeping on the Sutton Fields Industrial estate, and beginning to feel the weight lifting off his worried shoulders.
‘You just keep to the plan, Trigg. Repeat it for me. Remember, you have to be careful. The law is searching for you,’ Roux instructed him.
‘Right, go to the Marina, and then walk along the back, past the boats, yeah? That right?’ asked Trigg, hoping all was right in his head.
‘Yes, then what?’
‘Then wait right near the sea edge for the pick up, right?’
‘Yes, but remember, make sure you aren’t followed, because if you are then my guy on the boat is compromised too, and that can’t happen. Now did you put all your kit in storage, all your clothes? You can’t take anything aboard. You see, it’s a small boat, so suspicion mustn’t be aroused.’
‘No, but Mario can look after that. I’ll ring him. He’ll take care of it.’
‘Ok, now go. My guy can be there in one hour. That good for you?’
‘Yeah, sooner the fucking better, and don’t worry, all I’ll have is the clothes I’m in and my gun. You know I don’t travel without packing. Hope your guy doesn’t mind. I trust you. It’s just I don’t know him, y’know, and I’m pretty on edge at the moment.’
‘Trigg, I would never dream of telling a soldier not to pack his side arm. Don’t worry about it, just make sure the money’s paid, and make sure you’re there in an hour.’
Trigg felt so at ease. He was going to avoid jail time and see some sun in Spain. After he hung up with Major Roux, Trigg called Mario and made the arrangements for his clothes to be put in a lock up until he knew where to get them sent.
He told Mario to be careful and that the law might make a move for him if they found out he too had ties into all this, which he did. Mario stayed cool. Trigg said his farewells and felt happy, although he wasn’t entirely happy. He was unhappy that for now his slaughter of Tommy would have to wait. But he would be back. Tommy and that lawyer would get it someday. A year, two years, maybe even three, but he would finish what he started.
After getting the cash together and tying up some small things, Trigg got out of his taxi near the Hull Marina. He paid the driver, lit a smoke and walked along the marina admiring the boats and wishing he had the money to buy one. ‘One day,’ he thought.
He got to the place. It was quiet and nobody was around, apart from a black van in the distance which looked unmanned.
Deciding to call Mario, Trigg paced the deserted spot just near an abandoned warehouse where he was supposed to meet this man he was paying to get him out of Hull.
‘Hello,’ answered Mario
‘Yo Mario, I’m fucking here man. Where’s the dude?’
‘Relax, Trigg, he’ll be there. Just wait. You got the money?’
‘Yeah I got it. I just want out of here, man, y’know. Fucking shit’s got me twitchy.’
‘Understandable given the shit that’s gone down. Just chill the fuck out and wait for the guy. After that it’s all sorted. You weren’t followed were you?’
‘Fuck no, nobody tailing me on the way in anyhow. I had the taxi do a few detours, then we did a few parallels before coming this way. If we did have a tail, which we didn’t, they ain’t here now.’
‘That’s good. Now just wait now, Trigg. All will be sorted.’
‘Cool Mario. Will catch you soon then, homey.’
‘Yeah, see you in the future I reckon. Take it easy over there.’
‘Easy? Me? Give me a year over there in Spain and I’ll be running some shit, Mario.’
‘No doubt you will, ha-ha.’
‘It’s how I roll baby, please believe it. See ya later, Mario the Wop.’
‘Later, Trigg. Stay frosty.’
‘Always, Mario.’
Chapter Forty Eight
No, no, no. You don’t hold it like that, come here.’
He was weird, so icy…
Standing to the side of me, he helped me to adjust my arms and posture.
‘Remember you grab it with two hands, back straight, keep it steady, aim for your target, remember to breathe, exhale as you see the shot…’
It certainly was helpful advice, because I hit my target perfectly.
‘You see Joey it’s all about concentration, always, my friend.’
I watched as I saw my shot hit. I was amazed to see how, with the proper tuition, you could pick it up relatively easy.
Watching the cloud of crimson mist evaporate into the air gave me a certain amount of closure as Trigg’s body fell to the floor.
‘And that, as they say, is that. How do you feel, Joey?’
In truth I couldn’t really speak at that moment. I was still watching through the scope. He was dead. As Diezan said, ‘that was that’. It was over.
‘Don’t worry, Joey, you had to do it. He would have never stopped. I have seen men like him many times. You have to put them down.’
Diezan
said calmly as he took the Barrat 50 Calibre monster with the enhanced scope off me.
‘I can’t believe how calm the water is,’ I said as I watched the river laying so still. We were on Diezan’s very own little boat a hundred yards or so from the shore. Diezan had christened the boat ‘The Prutnaya’, named after his mother, he said. I used the binoculars to see some men pick up Trigg’s dead body and place it in a black van.
‘I do believe the nautical term is ‘slack tide’, Joey, when the current is neither going one way nor the other. The water remains still. It is very strange, actually, but perfect for making a shot from over a hundred yards. Well done, Joey,’ he smiled, as if proud of me.
I wasn’t seeking his recognition, not at all. I had called Diezan after I got back home that morning. I knew it was the only way we would all be safe. I also knew that if I were to beat this criminal, this fiend, I had to turn to another criminal, another breed of gangster. To beat the darkness I had to embrace the darkness. I had to look inside, if only for a short while.
I know I shouldn’t have felt guilty for killing such a cunt as Trigg, but I did, and it actually made me feel good, that sense that I had done wrong no matter what he had taken from me. I welcomed that guilt; it meant I was human. I was not a killer, I was not a gangster, I was doing what had to be done, like a farmer putting down a stray wolf who takes no joy from the kill but knows in his heart that a stray wolf can be dangerous to those close to him, and that the kill is necessary for their survival.
That stray, evil wolf had to go, and go he did in the shape of a hollow point bullet which whistled through the air like a supersonic needle gliding straight through his head as if it were already made of jelly. Jelly before, jelly after.
Now I had to live with the fact I had killed. That fact would be a constant stain on my spirit, a stain I could never wash off permanently. Sure it could fade but it would always be there.
After that day, I did what I had to do, I moved on. I took refuge in the fact things were back to something like normal, although there was only a certain ‘normal’ there would ever be without Sarah.
Still, there was a new reason to be happy a few months later, and that reason was in the shape of a little girl called Sarah, a bundle of hope, joy and ‘constant dirty nappies’, as Tommy joked.
Seeing the guy with his baby girl, it was amazing. It was the Tommy we all knew was inside but could never get out. But now he was there, I had my friend back, and that, was a good thing.
When I initially told Tommy about my early morning sniping on board the Prutnaya, he was a picture of calmness.
‘So you had to go get some, then, Joey?’ he asked. He never judged me, he said in my position he would have done the same. He even conceded that during his time ‘over there’, his time being tortured, that revenge was never far from his mind. But the only thing he didn’t count on was his own feelings changing when he got home, the change in priorities, the sense that things were no longer just about him.
It was Tommy talking like that which showed in abundance the growth of Tommy as a human being. Working as a Postman doing early shifts, Tommy went to work every day with a smile on his face. He plugged in his walkman, whistled as he walked, smiled at people on the street as he delivered his mail, patted dogs, yeah he was that guy.
As the months went on, I too got my smile back. I remembered the good things. I was studying a new area of law, Employment Law. I figured my clients would be a lot less, well, y’know, that there would be less chance of meeting any Al Capones in an Employment Tribunal.
I’d heard rumours of Diezan’s escapades in the underworld, but in truth I was glad that was all they were, rumours. The fact that I had heard rumours meant I was doing something right. I was no longer hearing it from the horse’s mouth, which could only be good. I knew soon I would hear nothing at all.
At least once a week I let rip on my Harley, made me feel free as I zoomed down them long country roads. I was taking life one day at a time, enjoying things as they came from day to day, enjoying life. I owed it to Sarah. She wouldn’t have wanted me to mope, so I smiled when I could, and gradually as time went on I smiled more and more.
My mother used to say ‘smile and the world smiles back’.
Yeah, I was slowly becoming that guy.
