by David Jester
“Shit!” he rolled over, checked his phone, checked his watch and then sprang out of bed. His mother would get her wish after all, but not because he was going to join them on their regular trip to the counselor. He had tired of that bitch and her nagging, bullshit theories on why he didn’t listen to authority. He was getting up because he had some loot to collect.
He dressed in a hurry, grinning like a kid at Christmas as he pictured returning to the spoils in the woods. His mother flashed him a smile when he went downstairs, he saw the flicker of delight in her eyes when she saw him awake and dressed and thought, just for a second, that he was obeying her. That flicker died a quick and painful death when he grimaced at her and headed out of the door without saying a word.
3
Darren grinned when he saw Eddie heading towards him; he squinted through the glaring sunshine, waited until his friend was just a few feet away and then asked, “D’you get ride from mommy and daddy?”
“Fuck you.”
“You look sexy when you’re angry.”
Eddie sighed.
Daren continued, “I think it’s the ginger hair that does it, it sets off your eyes and—”
“Fuck off!”
“Ah, did I upset you?” Darren put on a puppy-dog face and softened his voice. “I’m sowwy. Do you want me to kiss it better?”
“Wanker.”
“Now, now children.”
Eddie turned his snarling expression away from Darren when he heard Malcolm’s voice. Malcolm was the unofficial leader of the three, the most respected one, the one the other two turned to when times were tough or things got complicated. They had all been friends since they were young. They went to the same nursery school and progressed through the same elementary school, middle school, and high school. Eddie’s parents had wanted him to go to a private school when he turned thirteen, but he had convinced them otherwise. He didn’t want to leave his friends behind, nor did he want to mix with blazer-wearing, purse carrying assholes as he told his mother and father.
“What’re you two fighting about?” Malcolm asked.
“Daz is being a dick again.”
Darren made a grumbling sound and waved his hand in a camp manner, “Ah, don’t get your caviar in a twist.”
“What the fuck? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Darren mimicked.
“Grow up,” Malcolm cut in, bringing a smile of satisfaction to Eddie’s face. “So, you been to the stash yet?”
The others shook their heads and looked around suspiciously. The park was usually empty, but it was a hot day and the locals were out in full force, clad in T-shirts and shorts, soaking up as much sun as they could.
“Heard anything about . . .” Malcolm asked, trailing off as a boisterous family waddled a few feet behind them.
“It was on the news last night,” Darren said.
“We’re famous,” Eddie bragged.
Malcolm nodded and absently stared at a middle-aged man struggling with a deck chair. He wore a pair of shorts and a T-shirt several sizes too small for his bulky frame; flab and coarse black hair poked out from all orifices of the tight ensemble. Malcolm couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see much beyond his bulky frame as he struggled to open the chair, but he imagined a grimacing red face, rife with frustrated beads of sweat and a mouth filled with grumbled obscenities. A chunky woman with fat thighs and an all-over yellow bathing suit rested on a chair alongside him, eyeing him curiously through a pair of large sunglasses. An army of kids ran around the pair of sunbathers, chasing each other, playing football and throwing tennis balls about. A dog mingled in with them, chasing the ball before getting bored and chasing the kids.
“Whole fucking town is out today,” Malcolm muttered.
Eddie nodded, following his friend’s eyes. “Should we leave it ’till they all piss off?”
Malcolm studied his friends and turned his attention back to the commotion around them. He watched as the fat man finally figured out how to work his deck chair, only to break the small wooden frame when he plonked his bulbous backside onto it. Malcolm could see his face now and it was even redder than he’d imagined. Beside him, the woman was trying to suppress a laugh, but failing miserably.
“No,” he said, shaking his head, seeing that no one was paying any attention to them, that no one gave a shit what anyone else was doing. They were a small group of idle teenagers so they would be watched by suspicious and curious eyes, but no one would pay attention to where they went and no one would ask any questions if they disappeared into the woods. They’d assume they were up to no good, they always did, but they wouldn’t do anything about it.
“Let’s see what we’ve got, we can come back and pick it up later.”
They had taken what they could, emptying drawers and dressers indiscriminately. They took what they thought looked expensive, what was small enough to carry but heavy or fragile enough to be worth something. They hadn’t had much time to check the goods in the house and didn’t have much light to do it by.
When they pored through the goods, with Darren keeping watch, they discovered that they had a collection of trash. Worthless junk, trinkets bought in overpriced gift shops in Paris, Rome, and an assortment of seaside destinations over the UK. They had snow globes, fancy key rings, lighters, and a mass of costume jewelry that would turn your skin green.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” Malcolm snapped, angrily tossing a small pewter globe into the undergrowth. “This is fucking worthless.”
Eddie looked at his friend, returned to the loot and dug around some more. “This might—” he began, holding up what appeared to be a silver brooch.
“Trash,” Malcolm cut in, snapping the object out of his friend’s hand and bending it in half. “Fucking pewter. It’s all trash.” He dug around, took a handful of it and dropped it back in the bag. “I thought you said this guy was loaded.”
“I did, he is,” Eddie said, getting flustered, his eyes wide as they desperately scoured the bags. “I mean, I thought he was.”
Malcolm shook his head, put a hand to his forehead and sat back. He had been through the other bags himself and hadn’t found anything like what he had been expecting. He had hoped for expensive jewelry; watches, necklaces, earrings. He had hoped for a few antiques or a collection of gadgets.
“Nothing good there?” Darren shouted, trying to sneak a look in the bag while keeping an eye on the mass of people he could see through a gap in the trees.
“There’s the cash we pocketed last night,” Malcolm said. “Ninety and change.”
“Nothing in that bag?” Darren asked, nodding to the one checked by Malcolm.
“A half decent watch, some DVDs, an old iPod, an older iPad.” He shrugged. “Probably get another hundred for the lot. The rest is all trash.”
“Two hundred.” Darren said with an approving nod. “Not bad for a night’s work.”
Eddie seemed to brighten up. “I’m happy with that,” he declared.
Malcolm looked at his friend’s grin but struggled to reciprocate. Eddie’s family were well off, they bought him things that Malcolm could only dream of owning, they spent hundreds on his birthday and at Christmas. He was only happy with the money because he didn’t need more, he didn’t really need any; Malcolm needed a lot more.
“It’s cool, Mal,” Darren said, scooting over to the stash. “That’s like seventy each, not too shabby.”
He nodded and watched his two friends as they checked the condition of the gadgets. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess so.”
4
“Put that back, now.”
“And what the fuck are you gonna do about it if I don’t?”
Eddie faced off against the shop assistant, thrusting out his chin and getting as close to the frumpy little man as he could. He could sense the fear in his eyes, he knew that despite his intimidating posture he was as petrified of delinquent teens as everyone else and they didn’t get more delin
quent than Eddie.
Eddie tossed the stolen bottle of wine from one hand to the other. It was a cheap mixer and tasted more like fermented nail polish than the Cherry Blossom the label professed, but it was alcoholic and would do the job as far as Eddie was concerned. He had picked it because it was the strongest thing on the shelves; they kept all the good stuff behind the counter where he couldn’t reach.
“Put it back and I won’t call the police,” the shop assistant said, remaining on the safe side of the counter—as far away from the angry red-headed teenager as he could get without running out of the door.
Eddie laughed and shook his head. Malcolm had already walked out of the shop, taking his stolen wares with him and bolting down the road and into the nearby park, but Eddie was in a confrontational mood and he wasn’t willing to back down. The shop was full of afternoon shoppers and most of them had stopped what they were doing to witness the spectacle. The large open doors that looked out onto the street were also filling with curious pedestrians who heard the commotion.
“Call the fucking pigs,” Eddie said with sneer, his voice gravelly. “See if I give a fuck.” He spat on the floor and grinned at the shop assistant.
He had been arrested several times in the last month alone. The police knew him and were always looking for excuses to put him in the cell for a night, but he knew they would let him go before long, probably with nothing more than a slap on the wrists. He was too young and they were too incompetent.
The shop assistant picked up his phone, his hand shaking. He was trying to play it cool in front of the two female staff that loitered behind him—looking lost and apprehensive—and in front of his many customers—a couple of which had surreptitiously pulled out smartphones and were filming the commotion—but he was terrified and it showed.
Eddie unscrewed the bottle cap and took a swig, knocking back half of the contents before dropping the bottle on the floor. It shattered at his feet, provoking a few gasps from his expectant audience. The assistant held the phone away from his ear and stared in disbelief at the juvenile delinquent.
“You can keep it,” Eddie said with a satisfying belch and a smirk. “I’m outta here.”
He walked casually out of the shop, picked up his pace when he was out of sight, and eventually kicked into a sprint.
“He’s a fucking lunatic,” Darren said between gasps of air, his hands on his thighs, his body bent double.
“Tell me about it,” Malcolm agreed.
They had entered the shop together, had kept watch while each of them filled their pockets with small and potent bottles of booze. They had done it many times and had gotten away with it each time. The shop was big but near derelict. The cameras were duds, placed there as deterrents only, and the staff didn’t give a shit. Now the cameras had been replaced, the staff had been warned to be on the lookout and the three teenage criminals had been spotted.
Darren and Malcolm did the sensible thing; they ran and offloaded their goods in the nearest trashcan. They didn’t want to be arrested, didn’t want to spend the night in a cell for the sake of a few bottles of booze. They needed to keep their profiles down, to limit their exposure to the police. They had only been burglarizing for a few months, but they had robbed a dozen houses in that time. If the police started sniffing around and found out, they would be locked up for a long time.
“He’s got fucking issues,” Darren said, straightening up, maintaining a pained expression.
Malcolm merely shrugged; he had been thinking the same thing. Eddie had always been the quiet one, the normal one, the one with a stable family and home life, even if he did manipulate that family, but recently something had clicked inside his mind and he had changed. He had become reckless and dangerous.
Malcolm and Darren liked to keep a low profile, they liked to involve themselves as little as they could with the people they stole from, it helped them to separate themselves from their crimes, to avoid sympathizing with their victims, but Eddie seemed to enjoy messing up the lives of others, he seemed to thrive on the infamy and the destruction that his crimes created.
Darren wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and swallowed the dryness out of his mouth. “One of these days he’s gonna lose his shit completely and—”
He stopped when Eddie, smiling and laughing to himself, came to an abrupt halt in front of them.
Darren didn’t need to finish his sentence. Malcolm knew what he was going to say because he had been thinking along the same lines. One of these days he’s gonna lose his shit completely and hurt someone. It seemed inevitable; if not, then he would certainly hurt himself. Malcolm just prayed that he’d be around to stop it.
5
Eddie seemed to have a limitless supply of weed. It was one of the main reasons that Darren and Malcolm stayed by his side despite his growing instability. That and the fact that they had always been by his side. They had been friends for a long time and it would take a lot—a lot more than impending insanity—to break them apart.
When the threat of arrest had died down, and the three had settled on a bench that was shaded by overhanging dense foliage in a secluded area of woodland, Eddie pulled out a couple of joints, lit one, and handed the other to Malcolm.
“What’s next then?” he asked, taking a sharp breath and grimacing as the dense smoke hit his lungs.
Malcolm turned to his friend, watched his face turn a shade of red as he held in the smoke, before blowing it out in one long stream, the color fading from his face as the gray smoke drifted into the wind. “I don’t know,” he said with a casual shrug. He took a long drag from his own joint, held the smoke inside his lungs, and passed it to Darren.
“Another house?” Darren quizzed, staring at his friends’ faces and slipping the joint between his dried lips.
Malcolm shook his head. “No more,” he said, leaning back. “Not enough money. We need to aim higher.”
“Bigger houses?” Darren offered.
Malcolm frowned at the suggestion.
Darren shrugged. “Worth a shot,” he ventured. “They have money, they have phones, laptops, jewelry. None of this plastic trinket shit. Real worthwhile stuff.”
“And worthwhile security protecting it,” Malcolm reminded him. “The others have been easy. Old houses, shitty locks. No alarms.”
“Ah, but they all have these crappy patio doors nowadays. My mate says he knows a way you can pull them outta their treads and slip the door straight off.”
“And then what?” Malcolm quizzed. “We can’t remove a fucking door without making a noise, and what if their alarm or security light is on? You don’t think it’ll detect us standing in the garden carrying a fucking door?”
Darren paused to mull it over, the joint hanging loosely between his lips. “Good point,” he said with a lethargic nod.
“I have an idea,” Eddie piped up, passing his joint to Malcolm who looked at his friend wearily, remembering that his last idea consisted of robbing the local drug lord, a man known to have an arsenal of illegal weapons and a conscience that didn’t object to using them. “My uncle says there’s this place outta town where the rich and famous go to get pampered and fucked up. Like one of them rehab centers you’re always hearing about in the news.”
“Is this the same uncle that said he was abducted by little green men in Adidas tracksuits?” Darren wondered.
Eddie looked coy. “He ain’t insane.”
“I beg to differ.”
“He’s just a little messed up, alright?”
Darren shrugged, suggesting he didn’t care either way.
“So,” Eddie continued with a furtive glance towards his friend. “It’s out in the middle of nowhere. A big fuck-off building, like an old manor house or some shit. Smack bang in some bum-fuck backwater with fuck-all around for miles but trees, rivers, and all that natural bullshit.”
“Natural. Bullshit?” Darren repeated slowly.
Eddie nodded vigorously, missing the mocking tone in his friend’s parrot
ed voice.
“So what?” Malcolm wondered, drawing deeply on the joint and watching the ember flare madly. “You think we should turn this place over?”
Eddie nodded again, his wide eyes flicking between his two friends and the joint in Malcolm’s hand. “I don’t see why not. Think about it. No one knows about this place; I’ve certainly never heard of it—”
“Well,” Darren said loudly. “If you’ve never heard of it then it must—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie snapped, sensing another joke at his expense.
Darren grumbled and fell silent.
“It’s in the middle of nowhere,” Eddie said. “They’re keeping it secret for a reason, probably because they don’t want the paparazzi snapping their privileged guests. If no one knows about it, they won’t bother much with security and if it’s full of rich and famous drunks and druggies, we could make a killing in there and they’d be none the wiser.”
A silence fell over the three as they contemplated Eddie’s words.
“What do you think?” Eddie asked eventually, his smile tearing his face into two happy slices.
Malcolm nodded, slowly took a long toke from the joint and then passed it back to Eddie. “Okay,” he said, blowing a stream of smoke into his friend’s face. “We’ll check it out.”
6
The bastards in the building across the street kept Malcolm awake again, he felt like he was losing his mind. He didn’t sleep much and struggled to hold back his anger as he listened to them banging, shouting, laughing, and blasting music. Just when he thought he was drifting off to sleep, just when he thought his nightmare was over, a spark of anger would ignite at the back of his mind—how dare they? Have they no courtesy, no sense? Do they think they own the entire street? —and he was wide awake again.
He had nowhere important to go in the morning, he planned to pay a visit to the clinic, the “rehab center for the loaded” as Eddie phrased it, but there was no rush. Yet, when the music finally stopped, when the day broke and silence descended, he couldn’t bring himself to go to sleep.
