Peter Robinson - Bad Boy

“I take it you’ve got their addresses?”

Annie gave her them. “As for Jaff, I’m afraid I don’t have anything except the address right now. And I don’t think there’s much point in going there again. His first name’s Jaffar, by the way. And the name next to his bell says ‘J. McCready.’ We’ll need to know a lot more than that.”

“I can always use my natural charm.”

Annie smiled. “Yeah, there’s that.” Annie wagged her finger at Winsome. “But absolutely no drop-kicking.”

“It wasn’t a dropkick!”

“I DON’T understand,” said Tracy, holding up the gun by its long barrel. “I thought Erin had taken your gun.”

“Put that away.” Jaff took the gun from her and put it back in the hold-all. “She did,” he said, sitting down at the breakfast table and placing the sheet of paper facedown beside him. “This is a different one. Another one. I got it from Vic. Those eggs will be like rubber if you don’t get a move on. I like my eggs runny.”

As if she were in a trance, Tracy served up the bacon and eggs and poured two mugs of coffee. “But why do you need another gun?” she asked.

“Ta. Dunno. Protection. I just feel safer that way.”

Tracy regarded him through narrowed eyes. She had felt scared at first, seeing him standing there in the doorway, knowing how unpredictable he was becoming, but somehow now he seemed just like a little boy, naked from the waist up, tucking into his bacon and eggs-because clearly no matter what Tracy felt, it wasn’t going to stop him from eating his breakfast, or from doing exactly what he wanted. Tracy wasn’t hungry. Her stomach was too full of butterflies, so she just munched on a slice of dry toast and sipped black coffee. She had expected an explosion of rage when he caught her going through his hold-all, maybe even Jaff hitting her or something, but nothing had happened except this. Definitely an anticlimax.

“Have you ever used it?” she asked.

“Of course. Not this one, but one like it. You have to get the feel of it.”

“To shoot someone?”

“Don’t be silly. Just out in a field, like, tin cans. Target practice.”

“I don’t like guns.”

“You don’t have to. Nobody in their right mind does, but sometimes they’re useful.”

“For what?”

“I told you. Protection.”

“From whom?”

“It’s better you don’t know.”

“The person that stuff belongs to?” Tracy gestured toward the hold-all. “The heroin or coke or whatever it is? Did you steal it?”

“It’s coke,” said Jaff. He paused with a forkful of bacon and egg halfway to his mouth, the yolk dripping, wiggled his eyebrows and looked her in the eye. “Wanna try some?”

Tracy couldn’t help but laugh. “Not right now, thank you very much. I’m serious, Jaff.” She had tried coke a few times, first at university to stay awake during her exams, then later at clubs and bars. She liked it well enough, and it usually made her randy, but it soon wore off and left her feeling shitty for hours. She certainly didn’t want to feel randy again right now, and she was feeling shitty enough already.

“Look, I told you before,” Jaff went on. “You’ve no idea what’s going on. You’ve-”

“Do you think I’m stupid, Jaff? Is that what you really think? The only reason I don’t know what’s going on is that you won’t tell me. I’ve asked you. But you won’t. If we’re going to keep on being in this together I need to know more. You’d be surprised. Perhaps I can help. Just how deep are you into all this?”

“All what?”

“You know what I’m talking about. The drugs. The money. The guns. What are you? Some kind of wannabe gangster? A gun-running coke dealer? Like you just walked out of a Guy Ritchie movie or something? A rock n’rolla? Is that it?”

“I don’t-”

“Because I’m not stupid, Jaff. Maybe all I know is that I’m on the run from the police in my dad’s house with a lad I hardly know, who just happens to have a few kilos of cocaine, several thousand quid and a loaded gun-I assume it is loaded?-in his hold-all. It certainly sounds like a movie to me.”

Jaff smiled at her. It was supposed to be his charming aren’t-I-a-naughty-little-boy-but-you-can’t-help-but-love-me-anyway-can-you? smile, but it didn’t work this time. “I suppose you think I owe you an explanation?”

“Well, yeah. That would do for a start.”

“Look, I didn’t ask you to come with me, did I? It wasn’t my-”

“Don’t give me that load of bollocks, Jaff. You know damn well that if it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t be sitting here at my dad’s breakfast table, eating bloody bacon and eggs.”

“You’re beginning to sound a bit like a fishwife, you know,” Jaff said. “Why don’t you just shut it, chill out and go with the flow?”

Tracy snorted and gave him as disgusted a look as she could dredge up, then she took a deep breath. There was one thing she had to be grateful for. Jaff had been so concerned about her finding the money, the coke and the gun that the mobile seemed to have completely slipped his mind when he checked the hold-all. “You’re right,” she said. “So how do you suggest I go about doing it? Chilling? And, I mean, what exactly is the flow? What should I do to go with it?”

“Nothing, babe. That’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to do anything.”

“Because I’d just like to know what our plans are, for a start, that’s all.”

“Our plans?”

“Well, not so long ago you were going to make a few phone calls, get things organized, then we were going to hook up with some mate of yours in London who does dodgy passports and disappear over the Channel, right? Or did I get that bit wrong, too?”

“No. That’s still the general idea.”

“Then I hope you weren’t planning on carrying that hold-all with you.”

“Give me a break! I’m going to get rid of all that stuff in London. Except the money, of course.”

“Including the gun?”

“Including the gun. That’s why this takes time to organize, why we’re still here. Do you think I’d be crazy enough to try and carry a gun and four kilos of coke across the border?”

“I don’t know, Jaff. I really don’t know just how crazy you are. Right now I think maybe I don’t know you.”

“Just trust me, that’s all.” Jaff reached out his hand but Tracy didn’t take it.

“You keep on saying that,” she said, “but you don’t give me much reason to trust you, holding things back from me.”

Jaff waved his fork in the air. “It was for your own good.”

“What was? I don’t see how.”

“Let’s not fight, babe,” Jaff said, polishing off the rest of his breakfast. He tapped the sheet of paper beside him with the tip of his fork. “Besides, I was about to say something to you before I was so rudely interrupted.”

Suddenly Tracy felt more nervous than angry. She fingered her necklace. “Oh? What was that?”

“This here piece of paper. I found it in a desk drawer in the front room. It-”

“You shouldn’t go rummaging through people’s drawers. It’s not-”

Jaff slammed his knife and fork down so hard he broke the plate and the cutlery clattered to the floor. “Will you just fucking shut up with your what’s right and what’s not right bullshit!”

Jaff yelled so loudly and his eyes turned so cold and hard that Tracy felt herself on the verge of crying again. She was sure that her lips were quivering, and she struggled to hold back the tears. She wasn’t going to let him see her cry, even if he could sense her fear. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.

“Is it clear now?” Jaff went on. “Are we on the same page?”

Tracy nodded, chewing the edge of her thumb.