by Conrad Jones
“Don’t look at me like that, Jinx,” Jessie whispered. “I’ve got fuck all to do with this.” He was at a loss. Jessie knew the fingers of suspicion would point at him and the Turks would be looking for blood if the gunmen took their drugs. They would spill his blood first as a lesson to everyone. The Turks were brutal bosses and they didn’t tolerate failure.
Jinx could see the fear in his eyes and he ruled Jessie out as the culprit for now, but he knew one of the men in the room was involved. They had to be. No one else would have the affront to pull a gig like this. It was an inside job. There was no doubt about it. The poker table slid easily to one side and the chips clattered as they spilled onto the floor when the gunmen moved it. Jinx had won forty-six grand in the last hand against Leon, and two muppets were about to waltz away with the lot. He didn’t care about the drugs, they were for someone else to worry about, but he was sick about his winnings being taken from him at gunpoint. There would be hell to pay when he found out who was responsible.
“What’s the safe code, Jessie?” One of the gunmen asked. He sounded calm and collected.
“Thirty-two, twenty-six,” Jessie closed his eyes tightly as he lied. He was giving them the wrong code because the safe was alarmed. If they entered the wrong code, the bells would ring. Jessie hoped the alarms would alert the small army of armed heavies that were drinking in the club, and they would come to their rescue and annihilate the gunmen. It was a calculated risk.
“You are lying to me. I know the code is forty-six, thirty-two, Jessie,” the masked man corrected him. It was a trick question to see if Jessie would tell the truth. He walked behind the big Welshman and took a pair of pruning shears from his pocket. He held the Uzi in his left hand and used his right hand to place the shears over Jessie’s ear.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jessie hissed. The shears snapped closed and snipped the top of his ear off. Jessie hadn’t been expecting the pain; he fell forward, screaming. Blood flowed through his fingers and down his wrist from the savaged appendage. A kick in the ribs knocked the wind from his lungs and silenced him. The music in the club drowned out any sound from the poker room. The gangsters looked at each other helplessly.
“You are dead men,” Leon growled.
“Spend the money wisely and leave the country,” Dava advised them. “Trust me, I will find you.”
“Take the money and fuck off!” Jinx growled. He was the closest to Jessie. The gunman grabbed the injured man and pulled him upright. Jessie’s eyes looked into his, pleading, but there was nothing Jinx could do for now. “You’re dead men, so spend the money quickly.”
“Shut up, Jinx, or I’ll put a bullet through your brain. I can think of a few of your customers that would have a party if you croaked it, eh?” He shoved the muzzle of the Uzi into Jinx’s back. “Jessie lied to me, so I’ve had to teach him that there is a consequence to that. The next lie will cost him another ear, then his nose, then his fingers, and so on.”
“I have the stake money from the safe. There is one-hundred and sixty thousand here.” The second masked man said as he stuffed a bundle of fifties into his bag. Jinx clocked his accent as local. He was from Liverpool, which meant he would be easy to find. Someone had sold them the Uzis. There were a handful of arms dealers in the city who could obtain automatic weapons. Several of them were in the room already. That would narrow his search down.
“Good, now, Jessie, I need the code for the lockbox beneath the ice machine, please.” The masked man said calmly. He was as cool as could be.
“If I give you that number, I’m as good as dead anyway.” Jessie sucked in a deep breath and steadied himself as he answered. “Do what you have to do.”
The gunman stepped forward again and placed the shears over Jessie’s remaining ear.
“Last chance, Jessie.”
“Fuck you,” Jessie whispered and closed his eyes.
The shears sliced through the gristle as if it were cheese. They snapped together as the blades folded and Jessie tried to cry out, but a gloved hand stifled the scream.
“The code, Jessie, or it’s your nose next.”
“Tell him the code, Jessie!” Leon shouted from a few yards away. He had seen enough. “It’s not your gear anyway, and we’ll square it with the Turks. Just tell the bastards the code!”
“Leon’s right, Jessie,” Jinx nodded. “Tell them the code, and we’ll square it with the Turks. We’ll tell them the gear was stolen.”
“They’ll kill me, Jinx.” A tear ran down Jessie’s face. He was in pain, but he wasn’t going to let them see him as a jabbering wreck. He tried hard not to cry but he was in agony.
“Jessie, listen to me. Tell them the code and we will square it with the Turks. I promise you.” Jinx spoke slowly and calmly. He looked Jessie in the eyes to convince him it was the only thing to do. The sooner the gunmen got what they had come for, the better. He wanted them gone.
“It’s the same code as the safe,” Jessie hissed through clenched teeth. Under different circumstances, it would have been embarrassing to admit that he used the same code, but right now, he didn’t care. His memory wasn’t great so he used the same four digits for everything; the safes, his credit card and pin-number, even the lock on his bike.
“Got it,” the second gunman shouted from behind the ice machine. He stuffed the packages of white powder into a sports bag and moved to cover the kneeling gangsters as they backed away toward the cellar door.
“Goodnight, gents. You men peddle filth in my city, and so you can look at this as compensation for the shit you cause. We will remove your stocks and money, and take the wealth you make from selling this shit. It’s been emotional but also a pleasure doing business with you. The cellar door is booby trapped, by the way, so I wouldn’t try to follow us if I were you. Oh, and by the way, I will be seeing you again!”
The door slammed shut after the gunmen and the gangsters moved as one unit. They ran to the door and began banging at it. They unbolted the locks, yanking on the chains as they shouted for their minders to come and help. The doors began to vibrate violently as heavy blows rained down on them from the other side. There was a three-inch gap between the doors now, only the chains held fast. The wood splintered, but the guards couldn’t gain entry.
“Move away from the doors!” a voice bellowed. The gangsters stood to the side. Three shots rang out and the handles holding the chain blew off. Huge ragged holes appeared where the twelve-gauge shotgun shells ripped through the doors and a small army of heavies stormed into the room.
“What’s happened?”
“There are two men leaving through the back of the club with our fucking money!” Leon shouted. “Get out there and stop them!”
“Which way did they go?” Another minder pulled a Glock-17 and waved it around, looking for a target.
“Through the cellar,” Leon shouted over the chaos. There were men running back and forth asking questions and waiting for hurried instructions. Voices were raised and bedlam broke out as several accusations were made about who was responsible for the robbery.
Jinx watched as two minders ran towards the cellar door. Leon was waddling behind them as fast as he could, trying to keep up. Real time turned to slow motion as he watched them. He remembered what the gunmen had said as they had left. The cellar door was booby-trapped. Was it? The operation had been slick and well planned, so he had no reason to think they were lying. In his mind, he believed them, but his brain wasn’t reacting to the information. Three men walked by dragging Jessie, pressing bar towels to his severed ears to stem the blood. Jinx wanted to shout a warning to Leon and his minders, but they could not have heard him over the bedlam. He covered his ears and ran for the doors as the minders reached for the cellar door handle, glancing back just as they twisted the handle and yanked the door open.
There was a blinding flash as a concussion grenade exploded, blowing Leon and his men backwards off their feet. As the blast knocked Jinx unconscious, he saw four sevens in
his mind and darkness closed in.
Chapter Five
The Gecko
An hour later, the Gecko watched while his accomplice counted the stake money that they had stolen for the third time. Gecko knew there was something very wrong with the man, but by the time he had realised it, he had already been involved with him. He was obsessive-compulsive, always washing his hands and wiping surfaces with a tissue to remove dust. They had eaten together in restaurants, where he constantly wiped his cutlery with his napkin. He was beginning to annoy Gecko immensely. He was becoming a liability. Some of the things he had done in the last few weeks were unfathomable and very evil. When they had first met, Gecko had found him amusing and they had had a mutual enemy, but as time went by, it had turned out that he was a lunatic. He was obviously a clever man, but there was a distinct lack of common sense to his partner’s actions, which Gecko found hard to stomach. Idiots irritated him, but greedy idiots were worse still and careless idiots worse again. It was becoming obvious that his partner was schizophrenic. Gecko was having serious doubts about the man’s past and his present. His future didn’t worry him too much since he did not intend to be a part of it.
“That was easier than I thought it would be,” his accomplice bubbled with excitement as he counted the stacks of fifty-pound notes again. He licked his gloved fingers before recounting another bundle. “Easy money, easy money, easy money,” he chuckled to himself as he counted it again. He stopped suddenly and looked at Gecko. It was as if something had suddenly occurred to him. “What will we do with the drugs this time?”
“You don’t have to worry about that.” Gecko frowned at him. He could hear laughter from the streets below. The rain was pelting on the window and it sounded like tiny bony fingers scraping to get in. Maybe it was the ghosts of those he had hurt in the past, letting him know that they were there, watching. They were there waiting for him to suffer as they had before they had died screaming.
“What do you mean?” His accomplice stopped counting. His eyes darted from the money to the drugs as if he couldn’t make up his mind which to touch first.
“You get half the cash. That was the original deal, and it stays that way.” Gecko lit a cigarette and puffed on it. He watched his accomplice closely. His eyes had a glaze to them when he became excited. Gecko had seen it many times before. It was a look mad men had. Evil men had it too but he knew that evil men were not necessarily mad.
“Yes, I know it was the deal originally, but we didn’t know about the cocaine then. If it weren’t for me, we wouldn’t have known about the drugs at all. I deserve half at least.” His partner eyed him angrily. “We agreed to split the money, but five kilos of cocaine is worth more than I can earn in years. It seems fair to split everything down the middle.”
“The drugs are going into the rubbish.” Gecko inhaled smoke and tried to keep calm.
“I risked everything to get that information,” his accomplice was talking at a million miles an hour, “it was my handiwork that gleaned the information about the drugs and the poker game.”
“I saw your handiwork, as you call it,” Gecko looked out of the window again. “You’ve lost the plot, Patrick.”
Patrick wanted the drugs. They were worth enough money to melt away again and reinvent himself somewhere else for a while.
“You’ve lost the plot!” Patrick mimicked. Gecko was boring him with his suicidal crusade. All he wanted was some fun, his own special kind of fun. At first, he had thought Gecko was like him, but he wasn’t. “I thought we were partners in this?”
“No. I offered you half of any cash we recovered, nothing more. The drugs are not in the deal.” Gecko had stored some previously captured narcotics in a lockup, but it had been broken into the week before. He had his suspicions as to where the drugs had gone. Things were coming to a head. “I am doing this to take the shit off the streets and put the scumbags out of business. What is the point in letting you re-circulate them?”
“There will always be drug dealers to kill as long as people want to get high. Fuck them, let them have it.” His partner shook his head. He couldn’t comprehend why Gecko wouldn’t want the revenue from the drugs. It would be compensation for his loved ones. Gecko had lost people dear to him. The money could take the sting out of that. “Look what happened to the stuff you left in your lockup. You left them lying around and someone nicked them.”
“I think you took the drugs from the lockup.” Gecko stared him in the eye, looked for a reaction. “I think you broke in and stole them.”
“Fuck you!”
“Who else would know they were there?”
“Anyone could have broken into it,” his partner retorted. His eyes widened as he manufactured an answer. “It was probably a couple of kids looking for tools to rob.”
The Gecko stood up and looked out of the window. “I have seen men lying a million times. Some men lie to protect others and some men lie to protect themselves, either way, I can spot them a mile away.”
His skill had been making liars tell the truth and identifying it when it came, and he had been the best there was at the time. Sometimes their faces came to him in the night. Especially the ones that had told the truth; no matter how much pain they had suffered, they had stuck to the same story. They were the ones he felt guilt about, not the liars. They could rot in hell, but the innocent ones haunted him. Of course, it was difficult to tell at first. Most liars were convincing until the pain became too much, then they broke, and everyone had a breaking point. Gecko hadn’t been responsible for who the government took to interrogate. He had been responsible for extracting the truth from them. Many times, they had taken the wrong people. Too many times; and they were the ghosts that haunted him, them and the voices of his family.
The streets below the hotel window were crammed with drunken revellers staggering from one bar to the next, and the base lines of a dozen tunes mingled into one never ending beat. Three teenage girls ran across the cobbled street, looking for cover from the pounding rain. They huddled beneath one coat as they ran. One of them caught her heel in the cobblestones and she tumbled, grazing her knees as she fell. Gecko could hear her cursing and her friends screeching with laughter as they took shelter in a doorway. They giggled, pointing towards the fire and the commotion at the top of the street.
They were three hundred yards from Connections nightclub, overlooking Concert Square. In recent years, the big brand bars and hotels had moved into that quarter of the city and transformed it from a maze of dirty backstreets to a booming social hub. Smoke still billowed above the roofline of the buildings as the firefighters tried desperately to quell the flames. Something inside Gecko yearned to go back in time and live his youth again. Maybe life would be different if he had chosen another path. The truth was he couldn’t go back. No one could.
“Take your half of the money now and go. We need to stick to the plan. I’ll contact you when I’m ready to move again.” Gecko sighed. He inhaled smoke from the cigarette again and watched it curl against the glass as he blew it out. His partner was a liar. He had told him he was ex-army but over time Gecko had realised it was a lie. There were too many inconsistencies in his stories. Gecko had spent the majority of his working life in the armed forces, and he knew that his partner had not, despite his tales.
“Look, I don’t expect a full cut, but it’s only fair to give me some of it. I have friends who can shift this stuff with no problems and no questions asked. They don’t sell to school kids, they sell it to suits.” Patrick was pushing his luck. He had stolen a stash of taxed drugs from their lockup. Gecko had been stupid leaving them there to rot, in his opinion. His crusade against organised crime was a folly. He would wind up dead in the boot of a car. Drugs were currency, and Patrick wanted his share.
“I offered you half the cash, full stop. The drugs are nonnegotiable,” Gecko said.
“Yes, but that was before we found out about this cocaine, come on!” his partner pleaded. “Let me take this and we can bu
rn everything else we find!”
“There will be more work, plenty of it. Don’t be greedy,” Gecko lied. The time had come to sever the partnership. They wouldn’t be working together again.
“We worked well together. We’re a good team,” Patrick said.
“The thing is we’re not a team, are we?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you took the drugs from the lockup and you’ve been entertaining yourself again, haven’t you?” Gecko accused him. “You’re putting the whole plan in jeopardy.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” His partner looked guilty.
Gecko stubbed out the cigarette and walked to the wardrobe. The hotel lodge room still smelled of new paint and polish. He took out a carrier bag and dropped it on the bed. There was a vacant look in his eyes as he tipped the contents onto the quilt. Gecko wasn’t squeamish but his partner had gone too far. He looked at his associate and waited for his reaction.
“What is that?” The man’s eyes were flickering with recognition. His brain was working overtime trying to find an answer. A lie that could cover up what he had done. “I haven’t seen that before.”
“That tells me you’re a liar. Take your half of the money and leave now. I have things to do.” Gecko emptied the contents of the haversack onto the bed. He picked up a canvas roll and untied the cord, which bound it before spreading it out on the bed. There was an assortment of medical cutting equipment sheathed in the roll. The steel handles glinted in the artificial light. Congealed blood stained the cutting edges. “These are yours, I think. I found them at a unit on Jamaica Street.”
