Chris Simms - Killing the Beasts

*

The phone began to blast out tinny music. Sly paused, the carapace of a live cricket held between one finger and thumb. At the bottom of the vivarium the tarantula's eight eyes fixed on the waving legs of the insect above and its own legs shuffled slightly in readiness for the coming meal.

When Sly saw whose name was glowing on the display screen, he dropped the cricket to its death, slid the hood back over the vivarium and picked up the phone.

'Hey Dan, where are yous?' Manchester accent almost pushing the words through his nose.

'Outside the building, man. You ready?'

He looked round the interior of his brand new Urban Living flat, eyes settling on the ornately carved wooden box sitting on the arm of the reclining chair that was positioned directly in front of the widescreen TV. 'Fancy coming in for a smoke or a toot before we get started?'

'Nah, man, it'll be light in a few more hours. Let's get going.'

Sly sighed and looked at his watch. 'OK.' Crouching down, he watched with pride as the spider crept stealthily towards the chirruping cricket, bunched legs rising and lowering as if controlled by a puppeteer's strings. Grinning, he stood up and put on a Helly Hansen jacket, then positioned a Burberry baseball cap over his ginger hair. After grabbing his little kit off the peg in the hall, he opened up the industrial-style metal door and stepped out onto the decking that bordered the feng shui courtyard shared by the flats in the renovated mill.

He glanced up at the sound of footsteps. Making their way towards him were his immediate neighbours. On seeing him, their conversation had instantly dried up.

He looked the woman up and down, sucked his teeth and raised a forefinger. 'Now I don't want you two coming back from your clubbing and rousing the rest of us with your boom boom music.' He smiled, knowing the reverse was usually the case. Avoiding eye contact, the couple huddled at their front door while the husband tried to get the key in the lock.

Laughing quietly to himself, Sly jumped down on to the freshly raked white gravel making up the Zen part of the courtyard and strode across its middle, his trainers crunching out a trail of footprints behind him. He could feel the couple's eyes burning into his back and he imagined how pissed off they must be — over a hundred grand for a one-bedroom city-centre flat and they end up with a gangster like him for a neighbour. Fuck 'em.

Beyond the front gate of the building, Dan's Ford idled on the street outside. Sly pressed the unlock button on the side panel and the gate slid slowly back into the wall. Stepping through, he crossed the pavement and leaned down to the driver's window.

'Dan, my man,' he said, letting a touch of Jamaican patois creep into his accent.

The black face smiled up at him and they pressed their knuckles together for an instant. 'Sly. Ready to roll?'

He nodded in reply, walked round the vehicle and slid into the front passenger seat.

'I thought we'd take a little drive out Wilmslow and Alderley Edge way,' Dan said. 'Our friends are still looking for BMW A5s, preferably black. Plenty of folks out there need them for getting over those nasty bumps in the Marks and Spencer's car park at Handforth Dean.'

Sly laughed, 'Yeah — or maybe we should find a footballer's house. Half those wankers playing at Old Trafford turn up in them on match days.'

The car pulled away.

'They still after Audi TTs?' Sly asked.

'Always.'

'Let's go via Didsbury, then. I want to check on that house from a couple of weeks ago — I've got a longer garden cane to play around with this time.'

Jon Spicer's radio finally came to life. 'Unit one here, we have a scrote alert. Blue Ford Mondeo turning into School Lane, two male occupants, passenger wearing a baseball cap.'

Jon was sitting in the passenger seat of an unmarked Golf VR6. He'd been scanning the deserted Didsbury Street while listening for any sort of contact on the police radio for almost four hours.

Parked at strategic positions in the area were three other unmarked cars, each one waiting to catch a glimpse of the gang taking high-performance vehicles in the south Manchester area. Jon looked up. They were parked at the intersection of Atwood Road and Catterick Road, six streets away from School Lane.

The voice on the radio continued, 'Unit three, if he continues along School Lane you should see him on your right any second.'

'Unit three here; I'm looking,' Jon replied, leaning forward in his seat, eyes fixed on the stretch of road leading down to School Lane. Twenty seconds passed and no car crossed the intersection. 'Nothing has shown, Boss,' he announced.

'OK, units two and four, anything?'

Both cars answered negative.

'Unit three, have a little scout around. There's not many side roads he could have turned down.'

Next to him, Sergeant James Turner of the Tactical Vehicle Crime Unit took the last sip from a can of Tango, crumpled it and dropped it into the small box on the floor behind the driver's seat that served as their makeshift bin. He started up the engine and turned right on to Catterick Road, then on to School Lane itself.

He cruised to the end of Ladybrooke Road and was slowly turning around when unit one came over the radio. 'We have a member of the public reporting a prowler on Moorfield Road. Some guy fiddling at the letterbox of number sixteen.'

Jon flicked on the interior light to look down at his blown-up page of the A to Z. 'That's the next street,' he said, thinking the address somehow rang a bell. Turner accelerated back up to School Lane and turned right. As they were about to enter the junction for Moorfield Road, a dark blue Ford crossed the road in front of them and Jon caught a glimpse of the driver. 'The Ford has just crossed in front of us, going into Parrs Wood Road. One occupant only.' He craned his head to the left. 'Registration Alpha 478 … I've lost the rest. Shall we go after him?'

'Negative,' answered unit one. 'We'll intercept him. Get to number sixteen and see what's happening.'

They had got halfway along the street, trying in vain to spot a number on any of the dark houses, when a car reversed sharply out of a driveway ahead. It quickly swung around, headlights sweeping across the front of Jon's vehicle, making his pupils contract so quickly his eyeballs hurt.

'Is it him?' Turner said.

By now they were level with the car. Jon looked to his right, saw the silhouette of the driver, a baseball cap on his head. He realized it was an Audi TT, and everything suddenly clicked. They were at Tom Benwell's house. 'Yeah, it's him! Turn around!'

Turner yanked the car sharply across the road and executed the fastest three-point turn Jon had ever experienced. As he was thrown back and forth against the seat belt, Jon said, 'Unit three here; we're following an Audi TT. It's turning left, left, left on to School Lane, repeat School Lane.'

Keeping in second gear, Turner floored the Golf and it accelerated up to forty in seconds. He shot out of the junction with School Lane, skidding slightly as the car veered to the left. Thirty metres in front the Audi suddenly bolted forward like a spooked animal.

The radio blared, 'Unit four here; we're at the junction of School Lane and Wilmslow Road. I'm parking sideways across the street.'

'Unit three here,' said Jon. 'He knows we're after him.'

A couple of seconds later unit four responded. 'I can see his headlights approaching! Come to Daddy you little bastard.'

The Audi showed no signs of slowing down. It raced past La Tasca's then, at the last second, cut up a tiny alleyway, joining Wilmslow Road metres away from unit two.

'Shit!' came the shout from the side-parked vehicle.

Turner mirrored the Audi's manoeuvre, bouncing out on to the main road. 'He's turned right, right, right on to Wilmslow Road, repeat Wilmslow Road,' announced Jon.