Hot Zone (Major Crimes Unit Book 2)

by Iain Rob Wright

  On the seventh day of Christmas, I've been robbed, my husband's missing, I've got some weird gangster after me for doping him with ketamine and pegging him with his own leg, and I'm at a New Year's Party drinking Rum and Coke whenever the punch bowls' being refreshed with whatever the hell Mandy's putting in it. The room's spinning. I'm wearing clothes borrowed from god knows where. There are adults laughing and drinking, women dancing in the snow out on a big veranda, some areas covered and some not. The veranda and the women, too, at this stage.

  Men drink, smoke. The women smoke, but they're smoking cigarettes from purple or green packs, menthol cigarettes, or ones with gold bands between the filter and the business end. The men are smoking cigars or cigarettes from France, like Gauloises, or something from further afield, Lucky Strike, cigarettes in paper, rather than card packets.

  I'm inside, in the warm. I've borrowed make-up, even. I don't have anything, but I don't feel bad about it. I'm with friends. Most of these people I've known for years, more years than I can remember. I kind of wish it was a small affair, with mum and the girls, maybe. But I'm so drunk I don't really care that I stumble and slur a fair bit and probably laugh too loud. Most of the others here are laughing and enjoying themselves, too. I don't know what the time is, but kids are still running around everywhere. It's a family do, and a big one.

  It feels warm, like I'm welcome, and like I belong.

  II.

  I wander into the kitchen to find something else to drink. The punch has some kind of fizz and it's making me uncomfortable, like I've a burp or hiccups waiting somewhere in the wings.

  Bottles are lined up like little soldiers along the counter.

  'Hello, boys,' I say. There's Gordon and Bombay and Glenfiddich and Johnny Walker, Captain Morgan's keeping the crew shipshape. There's a bunch of chaps I know very well.

  'Hey, Johnny...miss me?' I say, kissing the bottle.

  'Wow...it really has been a while, eh?'

  'Mandy! Fucking hell I love you!'

  'Why are you shouting?'

  'Am I? Oh...'

  'How are you?' she asks. I can't tell if she's asking with concern, or looking concerned. She's a bit wobbly, to be honest. Actually, I think I am, too. But that's good. Mr. Wobble's a great friend when I'm drinking. We often dance together while we share a drink or two.

  'Cheers!'

  'Seriously...honey? How are you?'

  Oh, I think, hazily. She is concerned. That's her concerned face. I hug her, kiss her, because her face is lovely and scrunchy and it's making me want to cry.

  'Ew!'

  I thought I kissed her. Turns out I stuck my tongue up her nose instead.

  She tastes OK.

  'I'm better. Friends,' I say, waving a wide, dangerous hand toward the row of bottles. 'Friends here...friends everywhere!' This time I wave both hands in the air, indicating, perhaps, everyone in the entire world, but mostly meaning all the people at the party I've known for years.

  'I missed you,' I say after catching myself on the kitchen counter before I fall on my arse.

  'Oh, honey...you're so sweet. I love you, you know that?'

  I'm going to cry, but I'm determined to make a good show of things before I go and find somewhere quiet to collapse. That burp or hiccup feeling's gone, but somewhere lower down, right underneath the last thing I ate.

  'Mandy...what do you mean...when you said why you love me? I mean...I love you...I really love you...'

  'I love you...'

  'I love both of you...'

  I look around and Nicola's there, like a warship, swaying in a heavy storm. She looks about as pissed as I feel.

  'I love you both...but...what...I mean...I...what?'

  I'm determined not to puke. I've had a lot of practice at not puking.

  'When you say you love me, girls, and you say, 'ah, honey, we love you...'...what does that mean?'

  'Oh...' says Mandy. Nicola belches and takes a swig from a can of Red Stripe she picks up off the counter.

  Mandy opens her mouth to talk, but at that moment her husband's behind her. He puts a finger to his lips, like, shh...making me a conspirator when he grabs Mandy's behind and makes her jump.

  'Twat!' she says, laughing, and he grabs her and kisses her hard like I think I'd quite like to be kissed, but Nicola's out of the question. I don't fancy her at all, and she's also turning a funny shade of green as she spits out a cigarette butt from the can of beer she just drank.

  'Murp,' she says. 'Excuse...'

  She doesn't bother with the 'me' bit, but cuts a wide swath through the kitchen in search, I think, of a toilet.

  'Oh, my,' Mandy's saying while I'm thinking about the next drink, or bed. Haven't decided. 'Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?' She puts a hand on her hip and shoots her husband with her finger.

  'A gun, silly,' he says and kisses her. I hear him whisper. 'Bed?'

  Mandy nods and kisses me on the cheek before taking his hand and being led away.

  I'm jealous, smiling, because he's got a gun in his pocket, alright. I can see the bulge. He's built like a .45, I think.

  Then, I think...oh...

  Oh, fuck.

  III.

  I'm so drunk. So drunk. It's like some weird dream. All my friends, from the last twenty years, mutual friends...

  Did I have any friends who didn't know anyone else?

  In this weird dream, I feel all shivery and feverish. I walk around the party, perhaps staggering, but all-in-all, right then, I'm feeling pretty fucking sober. It's not a nice sober, either.

  I look around. Really look.

  All the women look like me. Not exact copies, of course, but they're well turned out. They're younger or older, but with a certain kind of well-kept look about us. We've got money. Kids run around. Kids with good teeth. The boys are wearing suits or shirts, the girls are all wearing dresses.

  The men sit. They don't dance. They're happy, mostly, drinking whiskey, or maybe bourbon...and they've got bulges here and there. Bulges where there shouldn't be bulges. Even well-hung men don't get that horny that their cocks ruffle their suits under their armpits, or round by their hips.

  Other things, too. In the darkness outside the circle of light thrown by the party, outside in the snow, men walk dogs. Big men, big dogs, going for a walk round in circles in the snow while there's a party and warmth and good drink.

  Security.

  My head's spinning like mad. Sober's run away from the sheer volume of drink, been routed. I can see sober's terrified arse jiggling as it runs away from the battle.

  That burp/hiccup is getting about ready to erupt. Either that, or I'm genuinely sick.

  Mandy and Nicola must really...

  Really think I'm so...

  'That's why we love you, honey...you're so...'

  So...stupid.

  IV.

  I rush to the bathroom. There are gold taps that might actually be gold set in marble that's definitely marble.

  I puke and puke and puke.

  V.

  When I finish puking, there's a guy there with a towel. Solicitous, he doesn't try to pull my hair back from the puke or anything, but just holds the towel there so I can take it if I want it. I don't look round at him, but rinse my mouth with water that tastes a lot like money. He's got giant fingers, like he's made of sausages or something.

  I wonder if he's a thug, or a tank, or whatever.

  'You want to clean up?' he says. He's got a big, heavy voice.

  'Are you...are you...?'

  I think I'm trying to say 'one of them'...but I can't quite get the words out. Did I know? Did I always know I was surrounded by gangsters?

  I don't honestly know, but it's easy to fool yourself, isn't it?

  'No,' he says, and smiles a big smile that goes all the way across his massive face. 'I'm just the butcher. I'm Dave. We met...remember?'

  Dave, I think. Dave. I should have married a Dave in the first place, a simple butcher. There's a nam
e you can trust, a man with a good steady job...

  I fall into his arms.

  'Dave...I think I feel a bit...'

  When I puke again, down his jacket, he gets my point just fine.

  VI.

  A new year, and I wake up on top of a massive guy snoring beneath me who in turn is laying on a Herculean pile of coats.

  I think, possibly, we made out in the cloak room like teenagers.

  I don't remember a damn thing. Apart from the men...the men with hard steel under their trousers. I shift...

  He's not doing so bad in that department, I think, but I don't know whether it's the kind of gun that makes women happy or blows people's heads off. Not anymore.

  Dave, I remember. The butcher.

  Thank Christ. He's big and solid and feels like calm seas after a storm. I lay my head right back down and he opens one eye, looks at me, and smiles. Then we go back to sleep for a while.

  Sleep's an answer to an awful lot of problems, and sometimes it's even the right answer.

  The 8th Day of Christmas

  On New Year's Dave

  I.

  On the eighth day of Christmas, I'm comfortable as hell waking up on top of an extremely big man named Dave the butcher. His sausage fingers are wrapped around me, and he peeks, smiles, then goes straight back to sleep with some kind of gargantuan rumbling deep in his chest, like a bear might breathe, but it's just him snoring. It's a comfort. I fall back to sleep, too.

  II.

  I haven't slept like this for such a long time, I've forgotten what true sleep is like, comfortable, unworried, not a care, just a gentle vibration beneath me. It's not erotic, it's not like I'm riding some kind of machine...well, maybe a little.

  When the annoying, shrill little vibration of my phone wakes me for the second time, I fumble around for the phone, yank it, and he wakes with a start. I'm still a little drunk, it turns out, and it's not the phone I'm yanking, but the lump in his suit trousers...

  'Morning,' he says. He grins when I realise what I'm tugging. I'm flustered, like a little girl...but not that flustered.

  'Shut up,' I say, but not in a harsh way. I get the phone on the next go around, then groan.

  It's like waking from a lovely dream into a world that's nothing but nightmare.

  Today.

  Nothing else. Just that.

  Peg-leg.

  Dave turns the phone toward him so he can see it. It's familiar, maybe, but an easy gesture and I'm not offended. Besides, I puked on him. We're past that stage.

  'Friend?' he asks.

  'Not even a bit,' I say. My mouth feels like pretty flowers standing on a casket. I turn my head away from him a little, because I don't want him to smell the grave on my breath. I am zombie! I think. I think, then, about biting him, to drive home the point.

  I'm flustered again, and shuffle myself right off the edge on the bed and land on some bastard's shoes, upturned, the heel of which sticks right into my arse cheek so hard I yelp.

  Turns out they're my shoes.

  He's still smiling, and lays there and puts his hands behind his head, watching me flitting around like some kind of hung over groupie.

  My phone's on the edge of the bed. I need to show it to Mandy, Nicola...one of the...men.

  Dave sees me move and he's faster than me. Of course he would be. He's a butcher, right? Must spend all day chopping and slicing...bet he's pretty good with...with...

  Oh, for fuck's sake.

  Not the first time I think that, or the last.

  III.

  He's an actually butcher...just not of...cows and edible things...

  Just a butcher, I tell myself.

  'Don't worry about the phone,' he says. 'People spend so long staring at these things...there's more to life. Come on, let's go get a coffee.'

  He's sitting up now, and even on the bed his head's above mine.

  'Are you...are you...?'

  Since figuring out I'm in the middle of some gangster family, me and mine included, I seem to have lost the ability to speak without sounding like I've got a serious head injury.

  'Asking you out for coffee? Why, yes, ma'am. I am.'

  'You're taking the piss, aren't you?'

  'Maybe a little,' he says. 'But not so much as you'd miss it.'

  Takes me a while to figure that out.

  'I can't,' I say. 'I have to deal with this.'

  He's big, fast. Probably a very good...butcher. But he doesn't understand. My husband's about to be killed. Maybe I'm about to be killed.

  That bit, I'm sure he gets just fine. But what I can't explain is why I spent the night on top of this giant with a grin on my face and not a single thought about anything else at all.

  I can't explain, because everything else is confusing, and this big, grinning bear is making me feel weird.

  Weird is what I tell myself. Safe is what I mean.

  IV.

  'Morning,' says Mandy with a smile and a cup of tea ready and waiting for me. She's sitting at her breakfast counter, surrounded by her two boys, her daughter and her husband. The boys are young, the eldest, her daughter, is suffering them because it's the holidays. Mandy and her husband look like they had a good night, and they both look like they've showered and tucked themselves away satisfied.

  It's a good look on them. I kiss Mandy and her man on the cheek.

  I tell them about the text.

  'Don't sweat it,' says Mandy's man. 'We'll sort it.'

  'They can get him back?' I don't know quite who I mean by 'they'. They look as though they don't know who I mean by 'him'.

  'Sure,' says Mandy. 'They can do pretty much anything.'

  I sort of half-flick my head to Mandy. She flicks her head at her husband.

  'Come on, kids,' he says. 'Adventure Time.'

  I don't know what that is, but it works on the kids. I think they're all nuts. Kids and adults alike.

  'Are there...enforcers...or something...?' I whisper to Mandy when it's just the two of us.

  'Oh, honey,' she says, and that's just about it for me. I snap. All the way. My patience, my temper, like two great big tits that have been held up by an old, tired bra. I just can't take it anymore.

  'Fucking stop it! Fucking stop that! I...'

  I don't know where I'm going with the next sentence, other than that I intend to make it as un-ladylike as I can, when Dave swoops down behind me and picks me up round the waist and carries me out and to a car. Like that...like the whole thing is one simple action for him. Swoop, grab, through the house, in the car. Like picking up a wallet, or a set of keys.

  I jounce under his arm like a sack of potatoes and he handles me into the car as gently as a person would a carton of eggs.

  I'm fuming. Righteously angry, boiling, pounding blood's making my ears sing.

  But I don't get out of the car.

  'Sorry,' he says as he slides into the driver's seat. The seat's all the way back and he still looks cramped. 'But Mandy's a friend. Sometimes people say things they can't take back. She's a friend, whatever else. Remember that. She saved your life this Christmas. Three days ago, now. Just cool off. Okay?'

  She saved my life?

  And a man said 'sorry'? A man's never said sorry to me in my entire life. I'm actually speechless.

  IV.

  The coffee's thick, strong, and smells like it knows precisely what it's supposed to be. The coffee shop is just a coffee shop. They sell biscuits and cakes, hot chocolate...but it's mostly about the coffee. There's an upstairs and a downstairs, and we go upstairs. It's quiet in there. January sales are in full swing, even though it's New Year's Day. Shops don't rest enough.

  It's still early in the day, but I think it's probably going to be a long one. We both drink our coffee black, no sugar. It's better that way. That way, it's coffee. Otherwise it's just flavoured milk.

  He tells me about Mandy.

  'Her finger? Got bitten off by her horse?'

  'Not a horse?' I hazard. I'm getting better at th
is, finally. I'm late to the game, but now I know what the game is it turns out it's far simpler than most people think.

  He shakes his head. 'Hostage. I got her out. Could've been worse.'

  'So...you've known her a long time?'

  'Sure...but she's a good friend. Good to me, good for you. That's my point.' He shrugs. It's a big gesture that says just as much as it moves.

  We talk about other things, too. It's easy, comfortable. A few people walk to the top of the stairs and see him and head right back down again. It's like he's got this huge 'fuck-off' force field around him...and I'm inside it.

  I like it.

  V.

  He drives me back to Mandy's. 'Be cool,' he says. 'Sorry should do it.'

  He's right. It's a pretty good word. His apology stopped me in my tracks, didn't it?

  'You?' I ask. I'm not sure I want to know where he's going...but I do want to know he'll come back. 'Are you...?'

  'I'll see you again,' he says.

  I pause at the car door, craned down to look at him. 'Good,' I say.

  When I get back into the house, Mandy's in the kitchen. She looks wary, rather than angry.

  'Sorry,' I say, and kiss her on the cheek. She nods against my shoulder, pulls me in tight for a long time.

  'Tea?' she says when she eventually lets me go.

  'Something stronger,' I say. Brandy, I think. 'Coffee?' I say.

  VI.

  I'm on my third cup of coffee for the day, around lunchtime, when Nicola calls Mandy.

  'Oh, shit,' says Mandy to Nicola.

  'What?' I ask.

  But Nicola tells me when Mandy passes over the phone. Nicola's calling for me anyway.

  'Honey...the police are going to call you in about five minutes. Your place is clean...but...'

  'What?'

  'He's not coming home...I'm so sorry...'

  'He's...what? What are you saying? Nicky...did he...run off with the ball-stomper?'