Den of Snakes

by Damian Vargas

  As they pulled up outside the house, Eddie let out a whistle. ‘Bloody hell. This is all yours?’ His brother smiled as he opened the door.

  ‘I told you, I’m doing alright. C’mon, I need a fucking drink’.

  Charlie led his younger brother into the house. Eddie paused to take it all in. It was as impressive on the inside as it was outside - the entrance hall was spacious and well-lit, the ceiling was lined with cherry-red timber beams, and the floors were lined with grey and white marble tiles. Dark, wooden stairs clad in a cream carpet led upwards.

  ‘The kitchen’s that way,’ said Charlie pointing towards an open door. ‘There’s a drinks cabinet at the far end. Fix us up a scotch. There’s ice in the freezer. I’ll be back in a sec. And check out the garden’. He turned and started up the stairs.

  Eddie stepped into the kitchen which appeared to have been freshly installed; the smell of paint and tile grout still hung in the air. The kitchen work surfaces were fashioned from black granite, the units underneath it were a glossy black with brushed aluminium handles. He located the drinks cabinet and the freezer, made two drinks and then walked to the back of the house.

  French windows opened up onto an expansive white-tiled patio and a sizeable swimming pool. Eddie guessed that it was about sixty feet long. A semi-transparent blue inflatable lilo floated on the still, dark blue water. A fat ginger cat lay in the shade under a portable barbecue. Such was the feline’s lack of movement, Eddie wondered if maybe it was dead.

  He placed the drinks down on a table underneath a sunshade and sat down on a white sun lounger. The vista beyond the garden was of a series of rolling green hills speckled with hundreds of villas of assorted shapes and sizes, that continued down until they met the sprawl of Marbella, below. The vast milky-blue expanse of the Mediterranean sparkled beyond.

  ‘Quite some view, innit?’ said Charlie as he stepped out onto the sun-drenched patio. He had changed into a pair of cream shorts and a black, short-sleeved shirt. A flesh-coloured plaster was covering the bridge of his nose.

  ‘How’s your face?’ said Eddie.

  ‘Ah, it’s nuffin. Hungry?’ He placed a porcelain mixing bowl full of potato crisps down in front of Eddie, picked up his glass and then slumped down onto the sun lounger next to him.

  ‘So, are you going to tell me what it is you do down here?’

  Charlie leaned forward as if mindful that others might be listening. ‘Well, there’s the bar. A few solid investments here and there - restaurants, a timeshare business and a car dealership. Oh, and a part-ownership in a men’s clothing store over in Banús.’

  ‘Investments?’ said Eddie. ‘And where’d the money come from to make these investments?’

  ‘Here’s the thing,’ said Charlie before taking a large glug of the drink. ‘Do you remember that big robbery on the Barclays depot in Chiswick a few years back?’

  ‘Yeah, it was in the news when I was on my second tour in Northern Ireland. 1977, right?’

  ‘1978. February the 12th. They said it was fifteen million pounds, but it was only about half that, really’.

  ‘What are you telling me, Charlie?’

  ‘You wanted to know what I did, bruv. Now you know. I ran a crew. We robbed banks. Now I live here’.

  Eddie shook his head in disbelief. ‘That Barclays job was you? Fuck,’ he said. ‘I mean, I knew you weren’t no angel, not since you got sent to the Borstal when you was sixteen. But a bank robber?’

  Charlie shrugged. ‘It’s in the past now. I don’t do that no more. I don’t need to. Not after that job. I’ve invested the money down here. Diversification and all that’.

  Eddie reached forward and picked up his brother’s packet of cigarettes, took one out of the pack and lit it. He took a deep intake, held it for a few seconds, shut his eyes and then let the smoke exit out through his nose.

  ‘I thought you gave up the smokes?’ said Charlie.

  ‘I did,’ said Eddie. He opened his eyes again and looked back at his brother. ‘The last time I saw you, you were selling life insurance door to door. Now you’re a gangster. So what? Are you hiding out down here then?’

  ‘Thing is, there ain’t no extradition treaty between Britain and the Spanish anymore,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s why there’re loads of us Brits down here. One of the Great Train Robbers lives just down the coast. I forget his name. Two of the guys what did the Brink’s-Mat job too. And the crew what did that Security Express depot. They’re knocking about here somewhere. Fuengirola, I think. Or maybe Benalmadena. Freddie Foreman, you’ve heard of him, right?’ Eddie nodded. ‘He’s got a place a few miles away. I bumped into him in the supermarket a few months back. Looks like a bleeding’ gorilla, but nice fella it turns out’. He took another swig of his whiskey.

  ‘And the British police can’t come after you?’ Charlie shook his head. ‘That’s mental’.

  ‘I know,’ said Charlie. ‘But as they say, “never look a gift horse in the mouth”, right? As long as we don’t put a foot wrong down here, then we’re all as safe as houses. The Spanish love us spending our money here. They don’t care where it came from. It’s good for the economy. We have to grease a few palms here and there to keep people sweet. Local politicians. The police. A few local families. But that’s alright’.

  Eddie stood up and shook his head. He gazed at the enormous mountain to their left. A group of vultures were spiralling up into the sky above them. ‘And you’re not doing anything dodgy no more? Nuffin at all?’

  ‘Nah, I’m retired’.

  ‘Why the gun then?’ said Eddie.

  ‘Just a precaution. It’s like the wild west down here. Lots of stuff going on. I’m sticking clear of all that business, don’t you worry. But you’ve got to keep up appearances, don’t you? You can’t let anyone think you’ve gone soft.’

  ‘It don’t sound all that safe to me. Not if you have to carry a shooter around in your car’. Charlie waved away the question.

  ‘It’s all good here,’ he said. Trust me. We’ve just got to keep our noses clean and look after a few locals, that’s all. Now enough of this. I need to make a few calls now, but listen. I’m having a bit of a gathering here tonight. You look like shit, so why don’t you have a kip then gets yourself cleaned up. I’ll sort you out some clothes’. They both stood up and Charlie gave his sibling a bear hug. ‘I know I’ve not been the best brother to you, Ed. Not since I left. But if you stick around for a bit, maybe I can make it up to you. Think about it, yeah?’

  ‘I will,’ said Eddie. ‘Now, where can I get me head down? I’m dead on my feet’.

  Chapter Four

  Flashbacks

  A flare lit up the dark, cloudless South Atlantic sky. Eddie Lawson stopped for a moment, mesmerised by the sparkling artificial star as it drifted back to earth down to the cold, wet hellhole he and his fellow Paras found themselves occupying.

  A volley of yellow and red tracer fire emerged from a rocky outcrop a few hundred yards away in front of them. It tore into the column ahead of Eddie. The two dozen men were clad in numerous layers of jungle-patterned clothing to fend off the biting cold. They jettisoned their equipment and flung themselves to the floor, desperate to seek cover behind the irregular mounds of rocks and clumps of thick peaty earth.

  Eddie saw the flashes of gunfire far off in the distance. A second later, bullets thudded into the ground around him and his comrades. They sizzled as they embedded themselves deep into the damp soil, causing slight puffs of steam to emerge from the holes they had made. A man screamed somewhere close by. It sounded like Jimmy Booth, the man-mountain from Nottingham. Eddie couldn’t be sure, but he wondered if that was Big Jim that was now wailing like a tortured child. He wanted to roll over towards the source of the crying to help his comrade, but that wasn’t what they had trained him to do. Eddie’s job was to fight, to kill the enemy - the injured would have to wait until the shooting was over before they could expect to receive attention.

  He heard the barked command
s of Colonel Hawkwood a short distance in front somewhere. Men around him were rising and propelling themselves forward. A chorus of sharp explosions of mortar rounds erupted amongst the black shapes from where the machine gun fire had originated. The hail of bullets slowed and became less accurate. His NCO stood up a few yards away bellowing orders.

  ‘Get up. Move your ‘effin backsides. Now’. Eddie forced himself up out of the wet gorse, freed himself from his eighty pound backpack, grabbed his self-loading rifle, and started moving as fast as he could. The horizon blazed with intermittent flashes; the Royal Artillery’s hundred-and-fifty millimetre howitzers opened up a mile or so behind them, spitting out their high explosive shells towards the enemy positions. Several hundred Argentinian conscripts would now be burrowing themselves deep into their water-logged trenches.

  Not all of them.

  A bullet zipped past Eddie’s ear and he stumbled, regained his balance and pushed onwards once more. Men were unleashing their battle cries; a screaming variety of accents from all across the British Isles. Men, who had previously had very little in common, were now melded by training, comradeship and a shared sense of urgency. They ran, a demanding task in the soggy, uneven ground. Eddie could see movement amongst the small outcrop fifty yards away. Tracers zipped towards the British soldiers once again. A man to his left cried, spun around and crumpled to the floor. Another para ahead of him shrieked as a bullet tore through his ankle, throwing the unfortunate man to the ground. Eddie’s lungs were on fire. His heart was pounding. His mouth was dry and his thighs screamed at the exertion, but he kept pressing forward. Stride after stride, each a few feet closer to the hidden enemy up in those black rocks. Each a few seconds nearer to their objective.

  And the world turned white.

  The blinding flash was followed by a searing pain in his cranium. He dropped his rifle and fell to his knees. He lifted a hand to the source of his discomfort. There was a perfect hole the size of a penny drilled between his temple out of which came blood, as dark as old motor oil poured from the sump of a car engine, black as the night sky. Bright, white smoke enveloped him. He shut his eyes. The sound of his fellow paras and the surrounding battle faded away as swiftly as it had come. He could hear nothing but his own breathing, and the rattles and clinks from his uniform and equipment, as he swayed from side to side.

  The pain diminished a little, and he opened his eyes. His hands were stained black, but the dark liquid from within his forehead was already dusty and cracked as if it had dried in the sun. He was on his knees, surrounded by swirling smoke illuminated as if by a bank of stadium floodlights somewhere beyond. There were bodies everywhere; big hardy paratroopers fanned out around him. They looked at peace, as if asleep.

  Maybe they were?

  He spotted what appeared to be his NCO walking towards him, a dark shape illuminated by the white backdrop behind him. ‘Sergeant Burrows. It’s me. Eddie. What happened?’ he said, bewildered. The soldier’s silhouette continued to approach, details becoming more apparent with each stride. ‘Sergeant Burrows? Are you okay?’ The man took a few more steps before collapsing into a heap close by. Eddie could see that the back of the man’s head was missing, yet his NCO was still talking somehow, seemingly oblivious to the lethal damage his skull had sustained.

  ‘You are not a man. You are not a father. She needed you. They both needed you’. Eddie stood up and edged towards the man.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Eddie yelled. ‘Who needs me?’

  ‘You left them. When they needed you the most’. Eddie tried to step clear of his NCO but struggled for traction in the heavy mud. He couldn’t move. The man crawled forward and grabbed Eddie’s legs. Eddie struck the injured soldier with the butt of his rifle, yanked his legs free and stumbled away. Behind him, the man started screaming. Eddie looked forward again. He glimpsed a little blonde-haired girl in a white nightgown. She was holding a bright orange teddy bear and glanced in his direction but disappeared into the swirling smoke. He ran after her, calling her name.

  ‘Mary. I’m here. I’m here, baby. Where are you?’ but from where she had gone into the fog, there emerged several soldiers wearing Argentinian uniforms. They looked to be but mere teenagers, not men of a regular fighting age. Their battledress was oversized and shredded trouser bottoms reaching down to the soles of their muddy black boots. They were straining to hold their heavy rifles.

  He heard the girl again. She was shouting, ‘Daddy, daddy, why did you leave?’ He tried to back away, but his NCO was again gripping onto one of his boots. He fell over. The boy soldiers approached with weapons at the ready. Eddie raised his rifle and pointed it at the closest of the enemy combatants. He lined up the iron sights on the boy’s centre mass and squeezed the trigger.

  The sound of a glass smashing on the white-tiled floor next to him wrenched Eddie out of his tortured slumber. He woke up panting, his tee shirt soaked in sweat.

  Just a dream, Ed. Just another bloody dream.

  Eddie lay still for a few minutes, waiting for his heart rate to return to normal. The bedsheets were drenched with his sweat. He took a deep breath, flung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He picked up a shoe and used it to push the pieces of broken glass into a waste bin, then meandered off into the en-suite bathroom. He filled another glass with water, downing it in a few seconds but scrunched his face up as the water entered his mouth. It had an unpleasant metallic taste to it; his brother might live in a semi-palatial villa, but he still had to drink the same sub-par water as the Costa del Sol’s package holidaymakers and its other, less-monied residents.

  He stared into the mirror and at the weary human that looked back at him, its torso covered in an assortment of scars. There was a flat, smooth pink streak where an Argentinian bullet had grazed his left shoulder. A pair of stab wounds to his right pectoral, acquired during a drunken brawl in a Newcastle tavern - the mouthy sod who had wielded that blade had spent the next three months in hospital with a fractured skull. He also had a smattering of small scars across his stomach and arms. It had taken nearly a full day for the army surgeons to remove all the pieces of shrapnel from his torso and limbs after getting too close to that pipe bomb in Armagh. Eddie still could not decide whether his collection of wounds were all mementoes of good fortune or bad.

  ‘Pull yourself together, soldier,’ his former NCO’s voice barked in his ear.

  Will I ever escape that bastard? Eddie wondered. The man was shot in the head during the battle for Mount Tumbledown, yet his commanding voice still accompanied Eddie wherever he found himself, a full three years after the war.

  He returned into the bedroom, and stepped out onto the balcony. It overlooked the impressive garden and pool area. People were milling around, drinks and smokes in hand, some in smart casual attire, others in swimming costumes on sun loungers or at the poolside.

  Several expensive-looking cars lined up in the driveway. His brother’s silver Porsche, a couple of Mercs, and a dark green Jaguar XJS among them. Charlie and his friends sure have a few bob between them, he thought.

  His attention was caught by the bellowing wails of a high-performance engine coming from the main gate to his right. He leaned out over the balcony and saw a red Ferrari Boxer pulling up, sending driveway gravel in every direction. His brother greeted the driver as he struggled to clamber out of the low sports car. The man was tall, well-built, and looked to be in his forties. An attractive and much younger woman accompanied him. She had short black hair, in a style not unlike one of the girls in the Human League. She wore a white, low cut top and tight pink jeans. He gazed at her, captivated by her pale, slender body as she walked down the path and under his balcony. It had been months since he had been with a woman. His pulse increased, and his groin tightened.

  ‘Eddie,’ his brother shouted from below. ‘Get yourself cleaned up. Ther’s people here that I want you to meet’. The woman in the white top caught Eddie’s stare before he had time to avert it. Embarrassed, he lifted the glass
of water to his mouth to feign ambivalence. Only the glass was empty. The woman sniggered.

  You idiot.

  ‘Gimme ten minutes, bruv,’ he replied and retreated into the bedroom. He shaved, took a shower, wrapped a white towel around his waist, and stepped into the bedroom’s walk-in cupboard. There must have been a dozen jackets, twenty pairs of trousers and twice that many shirts. These were his brother’s cast-offs.

  ‘I’ve put on a bit of weight in the last few years,’ Charlie had told him earlier. ‘Seemed a waste to chuck ’em, though. Good job I didn’t, right? Now you’re here’. That Charlie was overweight had been plain to see the moment Eddie had encountered his sibling back at the bar.

  ‘Flippin’ heck,’ Eddie had thought, but not voiced. No surprise who ate all the Spanish pies.

  He picked out a pair of pale cream slacks and a dark blue, short-sleeved polo shirt. He looked at the label. It was a Ralph Lauren. ‘Makes a change from Debenhams,’ he thought. He opened another cupboard. It harboured dozens of shoes. He wanted something lightweight and spotted a pair of light blue canvas Sperry Top-Siders. That would do. He carried the clothes back into the bedroom and hurried to get dressed, curious to see who that woman was.

  Chapter Five

  A Not So Small Gathering

  There were about thirty people outside by the time Eddie made his appearance, some well-attired in suits, others in casual shorts and shirts. Most of the men were in their forties or fifties, and well-tanned. He could only hear British accents, but presumed everyone present lived on the Costa now. There was an abundance of shaven heads, scars, tattoos and boxer’s noses. Even those men with fuller heads of hair still carried themselves with that “I’m somebody” air about them. Almost all the men were accompanied by women, most of whom were significantly younger and prettier than their male partners.