Storymania - It Wasn't The Bullet by Iain Young

It Wasn't The Bullet (15)
Iain Young

“I thought you said someone would be meeting me?”
“I lied.” There was a burst of raucous laughter from Samantha’s side of the bar. Roger spun his head round and Charlie placed a hand on his shoulder. “Concentrate on me Roger. You’re playing with my band at the moment. What happened at the bank?”
“I did everything that you said. The geezer didn’t bat a fucking eyelid.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a brown legal sized envelope that had been crudely folded in half. Charlie swept the pub hurriedly to see if anyone was making a move. Half the men were still ogling Samantha and the others were busy in their own little worlds. He took the paper out of Rogers’ sweaty hand and pushed it roughly into the inside pocket of his own jacket. “Listen Charlie when he told me how much money was in the account I told him I didn’t want fifteen percent, it was too much by fucking by half. I took five. Mind you I had to ask the fucker for a calculator to work it out. I think he figured I was none to fucking sharp. Bugger’s probably still wondering what I was doing with the password to all that fucking mullah.” Charlie didn’t say anything he was waiting for Roger to finish. He liked him but he had what he wanted and now he had to leave but didn’t want to just say ‘thanks, now fuck off’. “Where did you get six hundred and seventy thousand pounds Charlie?”
"They say I shot a man named Gray” Rogers’ face crumpled up with an uncomprehending look. He started to say something and just settled for,
“ Who the fuck is this Gray geezer? That didn’t say nothing about that in the paper.”
“Don’t worry about it, Roger. I told you to take fifteen percent I’ll send you the balance when I have time. Thanks for everything, you really came through for me. I have to go. Good luck and keep your business going. Stop spending money on parking tickets.” With that Charlie got up and walked out of the bar. In the glass reflection he saw Samantha start to gather up her hand bag. He had another glance around the concourse and saw nobody in the least threatening, at least not to him, he began the short walk to where they had left the car. Samantha caught up to him as he was nearing Ralph’s car, she smiled and put her arm through his.
“Everything go alright? I saw him give you something.” It was Charlie’s turn to smile. Good girl, she was becoming aware of the world within a world.
“Yes, it appears so. I’m hungry, we should find somewhere to eat and I’ll try and explain my plan to get us out of the country.” They arrived at the car and Charlie motioned for Samantha to drive. As they pulled out of the centre of town Charlie reached into his pocket and removed the envelope from his pocket. As he did so, a smaller white envelope fell out of the fold. He was a bit startled.
One of the envelopes had the bank stamps on it and he assumed it was all the relevant details from the money transactions. He shrugged and opened the bank’s one first. As he read finished reading the text he whistled,
“Fuck Samantha, we’re rich!” He told her the crux of the letter, and she slowed the car a bit as she realised how much cash was on hand to the both of them. By the time the explanations and ‘wows’ were over and done with they had reached the motorway. Charlie was feeling the pangs of hunger begin to become more intense and asked Samantha to pull over at the first service station and hopefully they would be able to find something to eat that would not be too toxic.
Once again he made Samantha drive round the parking area of the squalid roadhouse looking for evidence of surveillance. He saw none and they parked the car close to one of the entrances. After an interminable wait in the queue for the self service slop they found a table and did their level best to pretend that it was actual food. Samantha asked if he would like another cup of tea, which Charlie said he did. As Samantha was making her way to the counter he lit a cigarette and opened the other envelope.
It contained a hand written letter. Charlie immediately recognised Terry’s spidery script. He began to read, a slight tremble ran through his hands.
‘Well me old mate, I must be dead. You’ve been my best friend for years and I just wanted to tell you. I told that bank geezer to give you my money if he was notified of my death. I hope your reading this otherwise I will have to kill the cunt myself. Ha-ha. Enjoy the money, we earned it together. If you weren’t there when I got killed and you don’t know who did it, be real careful of the people close to us. I’ve had those weird feelings for the past couple of months. Like I told many times, don’t ignore them mate. I just wanted to be sure I still have your back, even from here.
                                                                                   Your friend Terry.’

Without warning the floodgates of repressed memory burst. He had no time to react; the pictures were there in front of him.

The relationship between the four of them had become tense. Terry had opined several times that they should find a couple of their own business partners instead of relying on Justin. It so happened that they had been introduced to a pair of Columbian brothers at a party, one thing led to another and negotiations had begun. Terry, for all his charms, had the unerring ability to irritate some people. It had not happened with the Latins as of yet but it wasn’t far away from happening. A meeting had been set up to finalise the last details of the first consignment that they were going to receive. The Columbians were just making inroads into the European market and this was an unmissable chance to get in on the ground floor.
They were preparing to leave for Birmingham when Charlie felt it necessary to voice his concerns about the almost certain personality clash between Terry and the South Americans. After some heated conversation Terry relented and told him to ‘fuck off and close the deal’. He then punched Charlie playfully in the arm leaving a bruise that was still black and yellow two days later. Charlie left Terry’s flat flexing his right hand to get back some feeling in it; he remembered having a big smile on his face as he walked to his car.
The plan was to take the train from Euston to the Midlands, and rent a car at New Street station. Charlie drove his car home, and called for a mini-cab to take him to Kings Cross where he could walk to Euston and affect his due diligence in spotting any tails. This was the type of meeting that would attract a lot of interest from the drug squad. The taxi crawled into Central London and Charlie had the weirdest sense that he was being followed. There was no rational reasoning behind it, just a nervous impression that someone was watching. Terry’s ingrained regimen of checks and balances forbade him to ignore this, “If it feels dodgy, it probably fuckin’ is.” When the car pulled into Euston, Charlie walked unhurriedly to the main concourse, the hair on his neck at attention.
He was early for his train and had time to double back and forth attempting to lure the people following him, real or imagined, to unintentionally reveal themselves. Twenty minutes passed and he still had not satisfied himself that he was clean. He made a snap decision and strode over to the bank of ticket counters and purchased a one-way ticket to Cardiff. As he left the queue, he scanned the milling passengers searching for signs of impatience, this proved futile as it seemed everyone in line was irritated in some way. He checked one of the many station clocks and calculated the time it would take him to board the Cardiff train just as it was about to leave.
Once aboard, he sat in one of the empty seats and picked up a discarded newspaper and waited. The train wound its way out of the metropolis and Charlie waited for the first stop. He tried to relax himself, just a guy off to Cardiff. The train began to slow and he readied for a fast exit. Out on the platform he swung his overnight bag causally as he made his way to the front on front end of the platform. As the locomotive gradually powered up to break the inertia of its carriages, Charlie whipped open a door and reboarded the train. He then, without appearing hurried, walked the length of the carriages scanning the sparse passengers. At the last car he still had not seen what he wanted to see. His mind was not at ease, he stowed his bag and sat down again to read the rest of his found paper.
The station bar in Cardiff was crowded and smoky, Charlie added to the haze and ordered a draught beer. He sipped at it while watching his fellow drinkers carefully. The time of the next train to Birmingham was sixty-two minutes away according to the departures board. He let fifty minutes pass and when he was halfway through his third beer he left his cigarettes by the glass and headed in the direction of the lavatories. Then, with a swift glance behind him, trotted straight to the Cardiff Central tickets sales. He bought a billet to Birmingham and sprinted across to the platform where the train was ready to depart. He made it and felt a surge of relief as it picked up speed on its journey north. The remainder of his trip passed uneventfully, and the intangibles of the past hours dissipated.
His room in the B and B was uncluttered and comfortable. He lay on the bed thinking he should call Terry but sleep overtook him and he was swept into a deep dreamless slumber. He awake with a start to the incessant beeping of his pager. It was Terry’s number displayed on the screen, but the bedside clock told him he had enough time for a quick shower before his meeting. Once again he put off calling his partner, telling himself that Terry was just probably doing his mother hen thing and checking to see if he had all his chicks in a row. Before leaving for the rendezvous he turned his pager off to avoid a sudden interruption in what could be a critical point in the negotiations.
The meeting went extremely well, and in a few short weeks the T and C Import and Export Company would be trading for large amounts of money. After once more performing the endless checks to make sure he wasn’t being tailed, Charlie decided a celebratory drink was in order and wound up in New Streets station bar. He was in such a good mood, he spent most of the wait chatting up a student on her way to Nottingham University. It was only at about the halfway point on his journey south he remembered that his pager was turned off. When he energised the machine, it beeped at him with Terry’s number. He swore out loud so vehemently several passengers turned to look at him with fear in their eyes. He could get out at the next station and call or wait another hour and speak to him from Euston. He decided on the latter, another of Terry’s maxims floated inside his, “When yer start thinking just of yer fuckin self, we’re all fucked”. For the first time in years he had broken one of Terry’s rules. He had been so excited in having closed the deal on his own, he had forgotten their protocols and he had let his own ego come first. He swore again, much to the consternation of the young mother and child opposite him.
He had called from a payphone in Euston and then outside while he waited at the taxi rank. There was no reply and strangely the brand new answering machine had not picked up. This unnerved Charlie and he urged the cab driver to hurry to his flat. He telephoned again and still received no answer. He had Terry’s house-keys and ignoring the safety checks sped round to his friends flat. Once there, he did take his time checking the parked cars and minimal foot traffic for anything that looked abnormal or out of place. He saw nothing and headed to the front pathway leading to the white painted townhouse. He already had the key in his hand and there was no delay as he opened the door into the common hallway.
He could hear the muffled sound of fairly loud music sliding down from the second floor. Terry’s floor. He went to the bottom of the steps and tried to make out if there were any other extraneous sounds mixed in with the sonic background. He could distinguish very little and so he climbed the carpeted stairs determinedly, his ears ready to detect any change of level. It took him less than a minute to arrive a Terry’s front door. He could make out the music now, Elton and his tiny dancer. The door and surround appeared undamaged but it was tightly shut. He had the key in his hand, took a deep calming breath as he fed the instrument into the lock and turned. The tumblers gave way and he pushed very gently, enough to unseat the bolt from the striker. If Terry was home, when he opened the door it should move no more than an inch because of the New York lock that Terry had installed months ago. Charlie pushed a little harder but the door offered no resistance. Carefully holding the handle of the door so it wouldn’t swing open, he deftly unholstered his gun with his right hand, and then with a violent shove, threw himself through the doorway and rolled to his left where he knew the back of the sofa was. There were no shouts, no gunshots, just Elton.
He got to his knees slowly, deathly afraid of what he was going to find. He had glimpsed broken furniture and a man sitting in a chair in the centre of the living room. He got up and saw his friend of so long, beaten and bloody. Terry had been hogtied naked to the wooden kitchen chair and pulverised. There was no mistaking the pall of death that blanketed the entire area. He made himself react. Closed the door and secured the dead bolt. Looking down he realised he still held his gun and replaced that into its place of rest.
He sat down on Terry’s favourite bean-bag chair and studied his ex-partner. The blood had congealed and dried in some places on the carpet. His lower torso was turning black where the blood had settled. Terry had been dead for several hours. He could not have been the one paging Charlie. Only three other people, not counting the staff at Bleeping Beepers, knew his number. He got up and stood in front of his broken friend. He leant forward and tenderly kissed the top of his friend’s head. Tears filled his eyes, and before left the flat for the final time, he switched off the Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder. He saw that there was hardly any tape left on the spool and it had been set to four time speed. Sixteen hours of continuous music. Even in his emotionally paralytic state he did the calculations. Terry was dead before he left Birmingham.
He didn’t recall how he returned to his own place; he remembered emptying all his little hidey holes of all the drugs he had accumulated. The next thing in his consciousness was waking up in hospital.
Samantha had returned with the teas, and began to speak, Charlie motioned with his hand that she should be quiet and went back to tracing the final events of that fateful evening. Samantha looked a trifle miffed, but said nothing and noisily picked up the newspaper she had been reading.
“Oh shit”, he said aloud. Samantha’s head snapped up from the paper and asked him what the matter was. For a moment he was speechless, caught between two thoughts and finishing neither. He snapped his angered back under control as he felt an unnerving sixth sense that they must get out of the service station and out of England as fast as possible.
“We’ve got to go.”, Charlie said abruptly. “Let’s get to Southampton airport, and we can talk on the way. I think we’re only about twenty minutes away.” Samantha appeared a little worried and she fiddled with a strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail.
“Is everything alright?” He looked up at her and said,
“I was just remembering a few things. Let’s go.” They made their way out of the cafeteria and into the car park. By now Charlie’s world had become one of extreme alertness, he could concentrate on nothing but the other dimension that exists inside the straightforward business of living day to day. As they walked he clutched Samantha’s hand, not for comfort but for deception. He told her to walk slowly and aimlessly like she didn’t have a care in her pretty little head and to keep up a never-ending torrent of innocuous babble so Charlie could study the activity around them. He was aware of all. The sharp twist of nerves as he spotted a man leaning against his car reading a newspaper, until he was dismissed as his two children came up to greet him, the business suited woman talking with someone that didn’t fit and suddenly pulling away as she caught sight of Charlie and Samantha. He dismissed her when her car pulled into the out road to the motorway. All these things were running in his head at the same time, and for the first time since the hospital he felt back in the game. They made it to Ralph’s car and climbed in with Samantha once again in the driver’s side. Charlie told her to take the long way around the lines of parked cars and then stop at the small kiosk by the petrol pumps. He moved the rear view mirror slightly so he could see behind him without having to move his head too much and alternated between that and the side mirror to monitor the activity around him. He asked Samantha to pick up speed and fake going for the exit, then suddenly break and head for the little shop. She did as he had asked perfectly. He saw no other car swerve or brake to keep up with them. He got out of the car and went into the kiosk, using the glass that encompassed the little shop he made sure for the final time that nothing untoward was happening around him. Satisfied that there was no one observing them, he returned to the car clutching the cigarettes he had purchased for the two of them.
The motorway was busy, and the lorries and cars crowded the narrow lanes, forcing Samantha to return the rear view mirror back to her focus. Charlie was still reeling from the impact that his recollections had had upon him. Fight or flight instincts began to jam his mind, paranoia’s stealthy tendrils reaching out to cloud his judgement, he with an extreme effort he forced these unwanted attentions back into the dank cave where they existed. He spoke once more,
“Samantha, will you ever so carefully speed up and slow down. Try not to keep your speed constant, change lanes as much as you can without breaking any rules of the road. Keep an eye on any car that is tracking your changes.”
“What’s going on Charlie? I trust you but you have to explain why we’ve suddenly entered Len Deighton land.” Charlie instinctively resisted and then realised there was no point in not explaining at least the bare bones of what was happening.
“I was remembering what happened before I got shot. Sometimes it takes time to see it properly I guess. I’m pretty sure that I know who murdered Terry, and they in turn, almost certainly know that I’m still alive. They don’t want that to last for long. The scary thing is they will know all the places and people I know. Well, almost all. We just have to very vigilant and take these next few days very seriously. You might say life and death.” He paused to read a road sign, but Samantha was ahead of him,
“The exit for the airport’s coming up.”
“Go past it and drive in from the other side of Southampton.” Charlie said brusquely, fighting to keep the tears out of his voice as once more the image of Terry’s battered body invaded his thoughts. He watched the fields of green go past, the cars and scenery blended into a plasticine vision. He all of a sudden felt weary, the burden of guilt and sadness pushing down on his blackened soul. Perhaps he should just take the money and run. He didn’t know Samantha, and she certainly did not know him. They were thrust together in a moment of pure opportunity. He needed her emotional presence to counter his feelings of insecurity. It was easier for him to do this with another person than to deal with it on his own. To her, he felt, it was a new sensation, almost glamorous. Her life stuck in some kind of mundane ritual and then a real live bad man enters from stage right and act two begins. He was positive that she had no concept of the reality that was about to intrude upon their world. Just as suddenly as these thoughts floated into his head, another batch of ideals tumbled into the foreground. He turned to face her and saw the woman he had always imagined would be sitting next to him. He pinched the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger and banished all the irrelevant information from his mind. Charlie sniffed and cleared his throat.
“I’ll explain all of this to you when we get off the mainland. Once we get ourselves out of this mess and I can relax a bit, I’ll do what you asked and spend a long evening telling you exactly who I am and then you can decide from there what you want to do.” Samantha glanced over at him and spoke softly,
“Charlie, I have never been so certain in my life. I know that you’ll shock me and I know that some of the things you will tell me will make me question just what I’m doing. But I cannot imagine being anywhere else except here.” In time with the last sentence she took her hand off the gear lever and brushed Charlie’s cheek with her fingertips. “Tell me the plan for getting away”
“We are going to try and get to Alderney, and from there we will try and hitch a ride on a pleasure boat to Cherbourg. We don’t need passports and there are no customs from here to Alderney. From there it is only a two hour boat ride to France and I’m sure we can bribe someone to drop us off on some beach.”
Samantha piloted the car along the roads leading to the small airport. When it came into view Charlie asked her to pull over. They sat in a crude lay-by at the side of the approach road, Charlie waited for the cars behind them to pass and watched the occupants carefully to see if they had more than a fleeting interest in their presence. It seemed nobody could care less; he was somewhat relieved.
“This is how I think we should play this scene. We have to act like a couple who has just decided to take a spur of the moment trip to the Channel Islands. We don’t know where we’re going and for appearances sake it would be helpful if we got the travel agent to suggest we go to Alderney. It is very small and quiet. So we must maintain the pretence, because the police there have very little to do and anything that arouses the suspicions of the locals will be reported. They had a rather large smuggling problem there a couple of years back. A nosy neighbour who saw a man wearing a £1000 hand-made suit reported it as suspicious to the police. Turned into one of the largest busts in UK history. The people on Alderney don’t wear hand-made suits. We should be fine, just keep an eye out for any police you see at the airport. If they are looking for us here they will be carrying a sheet of paper with our photographs on them. This is a small airport, so it will be inexperienced policemen stationed here and they will be checking the photo’s constantly trying to be the hero.” He smiled and said, “This is going to fun, let’s go.”
                                 As they made their way across the small concourse toward a bank of shops, Charlie was feeling more and more confident that there were no interested parties pursuing them. As they came closer to the shops Charlie saw they had a choice of two travel agencies. He put his around Samantha’s shoulders and kissed her neck, he whispered ‘pick one’. She steered them toward the window that had a banner in the window advertising ‘The Channel Islands; The Place To Be’.
They were ushered in by an over-friendly salesman, and inserted into two uncomfortable green plastic chairs. Samantha was born to play act, she gushed and enthused to the man ‘that price was no issue’ and they had just decided to ‘get away from it all’ but they must get to the Chanel islands, Alderney would be ‘simply marvellous’ because ‘her parents had taken her there when she was a child’ and she ‘simply had to show it to fiancée’. Mr. Rogers, ‘but please call me Ted’, ummed and aahed, explaining at this time of year ‘the whole world wants to go to Alderney’ and ‘Jersey is an idyllic place to spend a weekend with a loved one’. It was Charlie’s turn to lead the attack, he politely asked if Ted was on commission and ‘would cash be an acceptable method of payment’, because he didn’t have time to buy the necessary travellers checks and had ‘no problem paying for a premium service’ just as long as his ‘little sweetie pie was happy’. Ted sensing an influx of cash reached for one of the telephones on his desk, and from his side of the conversation appeared to be pulling in a few favours. When he eventually concluded his call, he smiled a sharks smile and said ‘well there happens to be two seats on the five forty-five flight to Alderney and the was a cancellation at the Queens Head bed and breakfast, would they be interested in that,’, both Charlie and Samantha braced themselves for the ‘but’ that was so surely coming, ‘but there will be a small surcharge for the speedy processing of such a request.’
Ted became Mr Rogers and struggled to be the man in charge, both customers sensed that he had no idea how much to rip them off for. Charlie suggested that £200 would seem a fair amount for all the trouble Ted ‘had gone to make their weekend a happy one.’ It took the agent a couple of seconds to bring himself back under control, and as greedy people are wont to do, he tried to push it one step further, ‘Well Mr Jenkins, that would indeed cover the cost of my time, however there are, shall we say, other parties that have also spent their valuable time to secure the bookings for you little jaunt. I was more thinking in the region of £300.’ Charlie was just about to leap over the desk and pound the fuck out of Mr. Rogers when he felt a hand grip his thigh and Samantha compounded the message by digging her nails in, he heard her say, ‘Well thank you Mr Rogers that will be fine, if you give my fiancée the bill we will settle immediately.’
“Fucking bastard, you should have let me scare the shit out of him”, hissed Charlie, as they exited the shop clutching the tickets for the first part of their escape.
“Charlie, I thought we were, at the very least, trying to remain inconspicuous. I think that tearing that greasy man limb from limb might have aroused a little bit of attention.” She had stopped walking, looked him in the eyes and tilted her head to one side. Charlie’s ire dissipated with every flicker of her eyelashes; eventually he had to surrender and smiled his defeat. He looked up at the bank of televisions displaying departure and arrival times and calculated they had a couple of hours to kill before they needed to board. He looked at the banks of blue hued chairs, arranged and tethered conveniently around the nine departure gates. His eyes wandered further til he saw the neon facia of yet another transport bar. Charlie was getting sick to death of transport bars and cafes. No man should have to endure this many in such a short time frame.
“Well darlin’, fancy having a drink while we wait?” He inclined his head and stole a kiss, she put her arm through his and they made their way to the airport bar. The place was not very crowded and they found a seat by a window that overlooked the runways. They watched the small yellow painted passenger planes land and take off. Unconsciously they never broached the impending adventure before them and spent the time making small talk like two new lovers would, the clock hands moved until their reverie was broken by the announcement of that the 1745 flight to Alderney was ready to board.
There were no moving walkways or escalators to take them to the aircraft, they simply walked through the departure lounge and got on an ancient bus that deposited them at steps to the aeroplane. The old airliner was a turbo-prop, with three rows of seats. The middle row doubling as the aisle for the window seats, as the passengers embarked the cabin crew instructed the persons sitting in the middle row to pull on the strap provided and reveal their seat. Charlie had never liked flying at the best of times, and seeing this configuration it did nothing to ease his nervousness of air travel. He mentioned this to Samantha as they were strapping themselves in, she simply told him to hold her hand tight and everything would be fine. Although having reservations of this solution, it was the only one available to him and he took her up on it.
                                                         Chapter Nine

Go to part: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30