Quick Before They Catch Us

by Mark Timlin

  I stood in the porch and smoked a cigarette whilst I waited for Rajah to return. I didn’t want to blow smoke all over Meena, her being pregnant and all.

  And then, during one squall as the sun burst through the clouds and lit up the tops of hills around me, a perfect rainbow appeared, seeming to start on the tip of the closest pylon and end on the furthest one.

  I couldn’t believe how perfect the colours were as the bow arched clear from one side of the valley to the other.

  Despite everything I smiled as I watched the rainbow, as the wind tugged at my jacket and cold drops of rain hissed on the coal of my cigarette, and I thought about what our future would be like together in the land of sun, sea and sangria.

  The rainbow was beautiful and I wanted to fetch Meena and Paul to see it, but I was afraid that if I turned my back, like so many other things in my life it would vanish, leaving only dark clouds hanging over my head.

  Before I could decide, I heard the hum of a powerful engine in the lane and Rajah swung the Mercedes into the drive. It slid to a halt in a shower of pebbles.

  And I just knew that everything was fucked.

  He jumped out of the car and I went to meet him and together we stood in the rain facing each other. His face was like the thunder that had rocked the house earlier that morning. ‘It’s gone wrong,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘The cops were round my house yesterday. They were looking for suspects in a serious assault that happened in Streatham night before last.’

  ‘So someone got the car number.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘No big deal. We’ll be in Spain by tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s not the worst. Khan’s found out about Caroline Lees being in touch with Meena.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Her father got it out of her. She let it slip that she knew Meena was married.’

  ‘Shit! Stupid girl.’

  ‘You can’t really blame her. It was a big secret to keep.’

  ‘Yeah. Then we’d better go.’

  ‘Come on then, let’s get the others.’

  We walked back into the house and I shook rain from my hair. As we walked into the living room Meena was just putting down the telephone receiver.

  ‘Meena,’ I said, not believing my eyes. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  She jumped and the skin on her face darkened in a blush.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Don’t tell lies,’ I said. ‘Who the hell were you calling?’

  She hesitated. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Tell us.’

  ‘It was Caroline,’ she said in a small voice. ‘She wasn’t there.’

  ‘Caroline Lees,’ I exploded. ‘Christ, girl, your father knows she’s been talking to you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said with a sob in her voice. ‘I had to say goodbye. I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again.’

  A gust of wind moaned in the roof then, and rain beat against the window and when I looked out across the valley I saw that the rainbow was gone, and probably all our chances of a new life together.

  62

  ‘You called her on that phone,’ I said disbelievingly. ‘An open line. Didn’t Rajah tell you not to?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then why didn’t you ask to use the mobile in the car?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have let me.’ She was right about that at least.

  I sighed in exasperation. ‘Well please tell me you masked the calls.’

  She shook her head and looked at Paul who looked equally guilty, as if to ask him what I meant.

  ‘You dial 141 before the number you want,’ I explained patiently.

  She just shook her head again and said, ‘I didn’t know.’

  Jesus, I knew that she’d led a sheltered life, but this was ridiculous.

  I looked at Paul then. ‘But you knew about 141 didn’t you?’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t think,’ he replied.

  ‘How could you, Paul?’ I said in exasperation. ‘After all we’ve been through.’

  ‘But we’re leaving,’ he stammered. ‘I thought it would be OK. And anyway it probably wouldn’t work on a museum piece like that.’

  ‘At least tell me that this is the first time you’ve called her?’ I said hopefully.

  Meena shook her head and looked down at the floor so that her long, lustrous hair covered her face.

  I wanted to tug her head up and scream into her face how stupid she’d been, but I stopped myself short. I wanted to hurt her for her thoughtlessness but I knew it was only ignorance on her part, not malice, and what good would it do? How could I hurt her anyway? The whole point of me being there was to prevent her from getting hurt.

  ‘How many times?’ I asked in a more gentle tone.

  ‘Twice. This was the second time.’

  ‘When did you call her first?’

  ‘Yesterday night,’ she replied after a moment.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Late. After you’d all gone to bed. Midnight.’

  Whilst I’d been drinking tea in my room.

  I looked at my watch. It was just after eight. ‘Oh Meena,’ I said. ‘That means they’ve had the number for nearly eight hours and they’ll get the address from their mates in the police and they could be here any minute. They’re only up the road.’

  Or they could be here right now, I thought, but didn’t vocalise it. By the look on Rajah’s face he was thinking the same thing.

  I went to the window and looked down the drive. All was quiet in the cold autumn rain, but I knew it was just a matter of time and I could taste ashes in my mouth.

  ‘We’d better get out of here,’ I said. ‘We can’t trust anybody but ourselves now. And we won’t be safe until we’re on that ferry.’ The more I thought about it the better I felt about getting clear away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Meena.

  She was crying properly now and Paul knelt by her side. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ he said.

  ‘Come on,’ I said and went to Meena’s side and offered her my hand. ‘Up you get. It’s done now and maybe this exchange isn’t digitalised and they can’t trace the call. The main thing is that we’ve got to get out of here sharpish. This place is blown. Get your stuff and let’s go.’

  Paul ran upstairs to get his and Meena’s things and I went up after him to my room for my spare pack of cigarettes and my dirty clothes which I’d stuffed into a Sainsbury’s bag. When I came back down, Rajah was standing in the tiny hallway all but filling it to capacity. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘Someone’s done the motor.’

  63

  ‘What?’ I said disbelievingly.

  ‘The tyres, the ignition, and they’ve nicked the phone.’

  ‘Thorough,’ I said.

  ‘They always are.’

  ‘What about the guns?’

  He shook his head. ‘Gone.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I told you we should’ve brought them inside.’

  He just shrugged in that way of his.

  ‘Didn’t you hear them?’

  ‘Not a thing. They’re good.’

  ‘As good as us?’

  ‘They found us, didn’t they?’

  ‘No fault of ours.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  ‘Shit. Do Meena and Paul know?’

  He shook his mighty head in reply.

  But they soon will, I thought as I heard Paul walk along the corridor above us.

  ‘Just as well I’ve got this then, isn’t it?’ I said, and produced the Browning 9mm I’d removed from the Mercedes boot whilst out on my trip to the supermarket and that I’d kept tucked down the back of my jeans ever since. Plus I’d loaded two spare clips from the box of ammunition. Amazing what you can get at Sainsbury’s these da
ys. If that wasn’t enough ammunition to get me through the day, then I wasn’t the shootist I thought I was.

  ‘What …?’ exclaimed Rajah.

  ‘I just feel safer with something like this under my pillow at night,’ I said. ‘Makes me feel all warm and secure.’

  ‘Gimme,’ he said, waggling his podgy fingers at me.

  ‘Fuck off, pal,’ I said. ‘Finders keepers, losers weepers.’

  ‘I could take it.’

  ‘You could’ve had the lot if you’d listened to me.’

  ‘You’re a sly bastard, Sharman,’ he said.

  ‘But I think ahead.’

  With that the three of us rejoined Meena in the living room. ‘Bad news, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘They’re here.’

  Meena cried out in fear and Paul pulled her close.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Meena, her voice shaking with panic.

  I told her of my plan to call the police.

  ‘You can’t,’ she cried. ‘You know what happened when we went to the police before.’

  ‘They’re here, Meena,’ I said as calmly as I possibly could. ‘We don’t know what the hell they’re going to do. At least the police won’t hurt you.’

  ‘But they’ll deliver us back to the family,’ said Paul. ‘And you know what her father’s threatened to do.’

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘We’re going to have to do something,’ said Rajah. ‘Eventually they’re going to come in here after us.’

  ‘Then it’s the police or nothing,’ I said and went into the living room and picked up the phone. It was dead. I jiggled the buttons on top to no avail. ‘So it’s nothing,’ I said and tossed the dead instrument into the fireplace in frustration.

  64

  ‘So what do we do?’ asked Paul, when he’d joined us and we’d told him what was going on.

  ‘There’s only one thing for it,’ I said. ‘One of us will have to go out the back, across the garden and into the field at the end. Straight across is the lane to the main road and there’s a phone box on the corner. It’s pretty well hidden by trees and with any luck they won’t have noticed it and smashed it up.’

  ‘You hope,’ said Paul.

  ‘Hope is about all we’ve got left,’ I said. ‘We’ve gone about as far as we can running away.’

  ‘I hope we’ve got that much time before they come for us,’ said Rajah.

  ‘Well we’ve just got to hope that luck’s with us and the cops get here first,’ I said. I was getting pretty pissed off by their negativity.

  ‘Who’s going to go?’ asked Paul.

  ‘Me, I suppose,’ I said. ‘It looks like it’s my gig.’

  ‘How long?’ he asked.

  I went to the window and peered through again. All was quiet and the clouds were gathering again. Dark clouds that heralded another storm. ‘Soon,’ I said. ‘I think it’s going to rain hard again soon. That’ll be the best time.’

  ‘That might be too late.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s wait for the storm. They won’t be able to see if the rain’s as heavy as it was last night. If I get caught, then we’re buggered.’

  ‘And what happens when the police do arrive?’ asked Meena.

  ‘We throw ourselves on their mercy,’ I said. ‘Not every copper in the land is hand in glove with your family. We go with them and regroup. We haven’t done anything wrong. Apart from that punch-up in London and nicking a set of number plates. Hardly hanging offences either of them. And with any luck, when they show, whoever’s out there will just vanish. We need transport and communication. And for that we need some kind of civilisation.’

  ‘And if the cops just tell us to piss off?’ said Paul.

  ‘Then we give them some other reason to arrest us. Nothing serious, just so’s we get away from here.’

  ‘Risky,’ said Rajah.

  ‘You got any better ideas?’ I demanded. ‘We’re in enough trouble as it is. I’d rather face a night in the cells and a bit of police bail than a run in with Meena’s brothers.’

  I looked at their faces and none of the trio came up with an argument. ‘So it’s agreed then?’ I said.

  One by one they nodded.

  65

  ‘Meanwhile we’d better keep alert,’ I said. ‘Rajah. You want to go upstairs, see what you can see? Maybe we’ll get an idea how many of them there are.’

  Rajah nodded and left the room and I heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs. ‘I’ll take the kitchen and check the back,’ said Paul. ‘Meena. You stay here with Nick. OK, Nick?’

  ‘Fine by me,’ I said and lit a cigarette. The condemned man and all that. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ I said to Meena.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘If I wasn’t in the family way I’d have one myself.’ She sat on the sofa and hummed to herself as I perched on the window ledge and watched the gloom from the dark sky thicken across the front garden through the net curtains.

  All was quiet. And a bloody good job as far as I was concerned.

  The rain came about ten minutes later and it was almost as dark as evening outside. I slid off my uncomfortable perch and went to the door. ‘Rajah,’ I shouted. ‘Paul. It’s time I got going.’

  I heard movement from upstairs and went into the kitchen, which was empty. ‘Paul,’ I called again, but no answer came and I knew, even before I tried the back door that opened at a touch, that he was gone. I ran back into the hall and Rajah was on the stairs. ‘Did you see anything?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you watching the back?’

  ‘Back and front.’

  But of course he couldn’t have watched both at once.

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘In here, quick,’ I said. I didn’t want Meena to hear.

  He followed me into the kitchen.

  ‘Paul’s gone,’ I said.

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Fuck knows. But I’d give it a good guess. The silly sod’s gone to the phone, I bet.’

  We stood together in that tiny, cold room and considered the wreckage of our brave attempt to help the couple.

  ‘Damn,’ said Rajah, and as he turned to leave I saw a tiny red dot appear on the collar of his jacket and slowly move up to his neck.

  ‘Rajah!’ I screamed and leapt at him, knocking him into one of the cupboards which his great bulk reduced to matchwood.

  ‘What the –’ he screamed back as we fell together, but his voice was almost drowned by the crash of the kitchen window imploding, showering us with glass, and the twin thumps as the bullets smacked into the wall beside us almost shaking the house to its foundations. Whoever had liberated the silenced Uzi kept firing and the bullets smashed through the kitchen door as if it had been made of papier mâché and carried on through the connecting wall to the room where Meena was waiting.

  ‘Meena,’ I yelled. ‘Get down! Down on the floor now,’ as I clawed the Browning from the back of my belt and bobbed up, firing three bullets into the garden in what I hoped was the general direction that we’d been fired upon.

  Then, when I heard a scream from Meena in the front room I thought at first that she’d been hit. But when she screamed again, a scream that called Paul’s name, I knew that I’d been right all along, and that everything had gone wrong.

  66

  Rajah and I ran into the living room and saw Meena at the window, one hand at her mouth. Looking out over her shoulder I saw her brothers and two other Asians I’d not seen before standing at the end of the drive. The strangers were big blokes. Not as big as Rajah but big enough. One wore a long black macintosh, the other a leather bomber jacket. They were all armed. Macintosh was toting the AK47, Bomber Jacket had the Desert Eagle. Sanjay was holding a vicious looking knife to Paul’s throat in his left hand. His right arm was ar
ound Meena’s husband’s chest, and in that hand was one of the guns I’d been shown in the restaurant back in Manchester. Deepak had his niner hanging down by his side. Daddy wasn’t around to hold them in check and I imagined this time they were prepared to use the guns. The fact that Bomber Jacket had shot at Rajah through the kitchen window rather confirmed that. I dropped the magazine out of the Browning and inserted a fresh clip with fourteen bullets in it and worked the action. ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I hope he made it to the phone box before they got him.’

  ‘Is that all you can think of,’ hissed Meena. ‘Can’t you see that it’s his bravery in going for help that has got him into the hands of my brothers and their gang. If you’d gone when he said, it would be you out there.’

  ‘Cheers,’ I said. ‘But maybe if he’d waited like I said, none of us would’ve been captured. Now he’s just a hostage to all our fortunes.’

  ‘All supposing he was going to the phone box,’ said Rajah.

  ‘And not running away.’

  ‘He wouldn’t,’ said Meena.

  ‘I tend to agree there,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he’d leave Meena and the baby. Not after what they’ve gone through so far. But that’s not the issue. The issue is what do we do now?’

  Meena answered that for me. Before Rajah and I could stop her, she’d darted through to the hall and out of the front door. ‘Leave him be,’ she shouted to Sanjay once she was on the path.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said. ‘What is she like?’

  Rajah didn’t make any philosophical comment this time: he just went out after her leaving me and my Browning alone in the house.

  I looked through the window at the tableau outside and decided I’d better get in on the act.