Peter May - Runaway

Silent tears brimmed on her lower lids, before spilling over to run down her cheeks. ‘Please, Mo. Get me out of here.’ Though for some reason, it was me she looked at.

But it was Jeff who took the initiative. Not the brightest, but always practical. ‘Are there any tools in the flat?’

She wiped her cheeks dry with her palms as she stood up. ‘Andy keeps stuff in a box under the sink.’

We followed her through to the kitchen.

In the cardboard box there was a stout screwdriver, a set of spanners wrapped in cloth, a claw hammer, a rusted file with a pointed end, a bicycle pump and some corroded tins of chrome cleaner. Jeff grabbed the box and carried it back through to the bedroom.

Maurie turned to Rachel. ‘Get packed, Raitch. Minimum that you need. You got a bag?’

She nodded. ‘Andy’s got an old sports bag in the back room.’

‘Then pack now.’

The imperative in Maurie’s voice infused us all with a sense of urgency. None of us wanted to be here when Andy got back. I hurried through to help Jeff try to break open the trunk.

‘We’ll never bust this padlock,’ he said. ‘Best we can hope for is to break the clasp.’

His instrument of choice was the file. It was about twelve inches long and solid iron. He insinuated it between the clasp and the body of the trunk and braced his legs against the trunk itself to try to lever it free. The side of the trunk buckled with the force of it, but the clasp remained firmly attached.

I sat on the trunk and added my heel and the strength of one leg, to try to gain more leverage. The scream of metal under stress filled the room, and there was some movement of the rivets that attached the clasp to the trunk. Enough for me to be able to force the head of the screwdriver between the two and hammer it down. The panel welded to the clasp buckled, and with two of us now exerting leverage at different points, the whole thing bent outwards, protesting all the time, until finally it gave. Jeff fell backwards and the padlock dropped to the floor.

I threw back the lid of the trunk. Me and Jeff, and Dave and Luke, all crowded round to look inside. If we had expected it to be crammed full of heroin we were disappointed. It was almost empty, except for a single, clear plastic bag sealed with sticky tape and filled with a white powdered substance. It was about the size of a two-pound bag of sugar. The bottom of the trunk was littered with small resealable plastic sachets, all empty. There was a small set of scales, a spectacles case that opened to reveal several unused syringes, and a black cloth bag with a string threaded through the open end of it, gathered and tied in a bow. I untied it and pulled the bag open to lift out two wads of banknotes. Fives, tens and twenties.

‘Jees!’ Dave’s voice came in a breath that seemed to fill the room. ‘Must be a couple of hundred quid in there if there’s a penny.’

I weighed them in my hand. It was certainly a lot of money.

‘We can’t take that,’ Luke said suddenly, and we all looked at him.

‘Why not?’ Jeff said.

‘Because it’s stealing.’

I stood up. ‘Luke, this isn’t honestly earned money. The guy sells drugs. He trades in people’s misery. It’s not theft, it’s liberation.’

But Luke shook his head. ‘It’s still stealing.’

I felt frustration well up inside me. I needed to provide him with a logic for taking it. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Andy and Rachel are a couple, right? They share their lives. So, by rights half of this should be hers.’ I threw one of the bundles back into the trunk. ‘We’ll only take her half.’

‘Hey!’ Jeff protested.

But I never took my eyes off Luke. ‘It’s more than enough to get us to London, Jeff. What do you say, Luke?’

I could see the internal struggle going on behind his eyes. Whatever else those years of being dragged around the doors had done, they had instilled in him an unshakeable sense of morality, of right and wrong.

He nodded and said quietly, ‘Okay.’

Maurie and Rachel appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a black leather jacket now, and he was carrying her holdall.

‘We ready to go?’

‘We are.’ I thrust the notes at Dave. ‘Better stash this in your money belt.’

Luke leaned into the trunk and lifted out the plastic bag of white powder. ‘Not leaving him with this, though.’ And he pushed past the rest of us to get to the toilet, where he burst open the bag and emptied its contents down the pan.

Rachel’s voice was hushed and filled with fear. ‘Oh my God, he’ll kill us. He really will. He’ll kill us.’

Luke flushed the toilet.

We were all in the hall when the front door opened. A thickset youth wearing ox-blood Doc Martens and black drainpipe jeans lifted his head to look at us in astonishment. He had a chequered shirt beneath a navy-blue donkey jacket, like coalmen wore, with leather patches across the shoulders and on the elbows. He sported an American army-style crew cut, and had a scar that ran from the corner of one eye, through top and bottom lip, to his chin. His eyes were a dangerous blue, one of them substantially paler than the other, and he was as surprised to see us as we were to see him.

There was a moment of tense stand-off as we all assessed the situation.

His eyes found Rachel’s. ‘What the fuck’s going on, Raitch?’

Incongruously, I was aware that he didn’t have a northern accent. It was a London twang, like you heard on Steptoe and Son . But he didn’t wait for an answer. His right hand went around behind him, to pull a long-bladed knife from beneath his jacket. He held it out to one side, away from his body, tense and ready to fight.

The rest of us were frozen by fear. There might have been five of us, but he was the one with the knife. And whoever came up against him first was going to feel the cold, deadly penetration of its blade.

‘Put the fuckin’ chib away, pal,’ Dave said in his broadest Glasgow accent. ‘And you might just come oot o’ this alive.’

I flicked a quick glance in his direction. I knew Dave to be the gentle giant that he was, and I had never heard him speak this way before. He was trading on his home city’s unenviable reputation for gang warfare and violence, and the attendant sense of menace inherent in the Glasgow accent. It had its effect.

Doc Martens let a little of his tension go, and he took half a step back. ‘So what’s happening?’

Rachel’s voice was trembling. ‘Just some of Andy’s friends down from Glasgow, Johnno. No need for aggro.’

I saw his eyes pass quickly over each of us in turn, making a rapid appraisal, before his gaze turned towards the bedroom door, and I knew he must have seen the open trunk. It was pure instinct that made me reach for Rachel’s holdall and take it from Maurie. If one of us didn’t take the initiative, then Johnno would, and he was still the one with the knife.

‘Brought him some good stuff,’ I said, and Johnno’s eyes dropped for a moment to the bag.

I swung it at his head as hard as I could, surprised by the weight of it, swivelling on the ball of my foot and very nearly losing my balance. The bag connected full-on with the side of Johnno’s head and smacked it hard against the wall. I saw blood burst from his mouth and his eyes tip back in his head. His knife slipped from his fingers as he dropped to his knees and fell forward.

‘Bloody hell!’ I looked at Rachel. ‘What have you got in here?’

Frightened eyes darted from the bag to meet mine. She shrugged. ‘Nothing, really. Shoes mostly.’

‘Shoes?’ Maurie glared at her. ‘That’s the minimum that you need ?’

‘Let’s get the hell ootie this bloody place!’ Dave stepped over Johnno’s groaning and semi-conscious body curled up on the floor.