Nick Oldham: Big City Jacks

Keith Snell was on the run.

In the grand scheme of things, the 25K in wads of cocaine-tainted notes stuffed untidily into the cheap blue sports bag by the side of the bed was insignificant. But it was enough for someone to want him dead. It did not take a mastermind to work that one out. He had been given the chance, pretended to heed the warning, made all the right conciliatory noises, then blown it when faced with the cash. He could not bear to let go of it because he was greedy, poor and wanted it for himself.

As he lay there in the dank guest-house bedroom, he was sweating profusely, even though he was on top of the wire-framed bed, legs splayed, dressed only in grubby, once-white Y-fronts. The transom window was slightly open, allowing a chilly early morning breeze to waft through the curtains over his skin, but it did not help cool him down.

He laid the ice-cold barrel of the sawn-off shotgun across his chest. This made him shiver, but not from cold — from fear.

It was a side-by-side double-barrelled 12-bore, loaded, safety off. He kept his forefinger away from the triggers knowing they were extra-sensitive. He’d done the work on the trigger spring himself and did not want any accidents. He had taken the gun on the last two armed robberies he’d pulled, neither of which had gone to plan. From one he’d had to leg it empty-handed — bad planning — and from the other he’d got just short of four hundred quid (bad planning again: his information had been there was four grand for the taking) and had almost blown his foot off into the bargain.

He had not been a good armed robber, nor a particularly competent thief, not really having the necessary psychological make-up for either. That was why he hung up the shotgun and went into drugs. The robbery and thieving only paid for his habit anyway. His short-sighted strategy had been to offer his services to a dealer — which, he reckoned, would be a nice, easy way to keep close to the scene, get paid for being a gofer, and feed his addiction without putting himself in constant danger of being arrested seven days a week for being such a useless crim.

What he had not bargained for was his own greed.

He had started to come into regular contact with lots of cash and drugs.

At first he fought his inner demons, but it was a losing battle. In truth he should never have allowed himself to look into the packages he was entrusted to deliver. But he had.

It was the last one that had been his downfall.

Twenty-five thousand pounds. More money than he had ever seen or handled in his life. An amount that could change his life, he believed. Mere pocket money to the parasites he was working for, but to him it was a lottery win. The difference between living hand to mouth and the good life.

What he should have done with the package then was deliver it. Easy. If only he had not looked. If only he had not unzipped the bag, stuck his hand in like it was a tombola and drawn out a handful of cash prizes. But he had done, and then he was hooked by the sight, feel and rustle of bundles of notes. And instead of putting them back in and forgetting what he had seen, and going on to his destination, he had landed back at his flat — almost in a trance — and counted it. When his girlfriend came in, he recounted it in front of her.

Twenty-five thousand pounds. Exactly. Maybe drugs debts, maybe purchase money, he didn’t have a clue. All he knew was that it was untraceable and it was in his possession.

Grace was his girlfriend’s name. He loved her and she was his world. She was thin and bony, with self-inflicted tattoos on her knuckles and suicide scars on her wrists. She was as much of an addict as him. They shot up together regularly, sharing the warmth and tranquillity of a heroin trip between themselves. Yes, he loved Grace. She was his soul mate and normally he went along with her.

Not this time.

‘Yeah, luvverly,’ she said worriedly in her rasping, smoke-roughened voice, clearly unimpressed by the sight of the cash. Even though she was an addict and a thief — a very slick shoplifter — she could see the glaring error of her boyfriend’s intentions. ‘And now you’ve counted it, go and take it, every last note of it, to who it belongs to.’

‘What?’ he said in disbelief.

‘You cannot even think about keeping it, Keith. No way. You know that, don’t you?’

He stared blankly at her while she expertly did a roll-up and lit the thin stick of tobacco. She flicked her flaky hair off her forehead.

‘Yeah, yeah, guess you’re right.’ He sighed wistfully.

‘Keith,’ she said firmly, not taken in by his response, ‘you don’t take that money where it belongs, they’ll kill you.’ She was scarily matter of fact. ‘Or worse,’ she added.

He re-zipped the sports bag with a heavy heart, thinking, ‘One hundred quid, a ton, that’s all I’ll end up with.’ He said nothing more to Grace and left the flat as though he had heeded her eminently sensible instructions.

Back on the street, his face turned into an angry snarl at the thought of the unfairness of it all.

The money, he decided, was now his.

Two days later, they found him and grabbed him. Obviously the word was out and everyone was looking for him. Fortunately he had stashed the cash safe and sound round at a mate’s house.

When he came in front of them, they were remarkably reasonable about things. They did not attempt to break anything of his, such as his legs or head. Instead they cocked a listening and sympathetic ear to Keith’s tale of woe and weakness and gave him the chance to go and retrieve the money, although they did warn him in no uncertain terms of the consequences of not having it all back to them within eight hours.

Foolishly, Keith perceived this as a failing on their part.

When they let him go in one piece he could not believe his luck. He had no intention of returning the money. Empty threats, he thought. They have no bottle this lot, he thought. All bark, no bite.

It was the condition in which he discovered Grace ten hours later that made him change his mind and plans.

She was in the council flat, lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of spreading blood. Her left forearm was twisted out at an obscene angle, the splintered and jagged end of a broken bone jutting out through the skin. She had been hammered remorselessly with baseball bats or iron sticks and when she had gone down, succumbed to the blows, they had kicked her and stomped on her, making a terrible mess of her frail body. She was conscious when Keith found her, blood-filled eyes fluttering but vacant. She rallied briefly and was able to whisper Keith’s name and look sadly at him before closing her eyes and exhaling as though it was her final breath.

As much as Keith adored her in his own way, he wasn’t going to hang around. It looked as though her attackers had only just gone, and could be back at any time. Keith was intelligent enough to make the connection to himself and he had no intention of again coming face to face with the people he had ripped off. He knew that he would not be so lucky as to walk away again. He had to run. . and he had the money to do it with.

After collecting a hidden stash of heroin, he left the flat and sneaked nervously down shadow-laden stairwells, crept along needle-littered balconies and emerged unscathed on to the streets below.

Keith had never been so utterly terrified in his life before. He had gone a mile on foot before stopping at a piss-filled phone box and dialling treble nine for an ambulance for Grace. He refused the kind request to leave his name and contact number. At the end of the call, he hung up with a heavy feeling in the gut: he doubted that even the best paramedic in the world would be of much use to Grace now. At least he had tried, which was the main thing. He knew she would understand, wherever she was. He wiped a tear away and turned his mind to more pressing matters.