Den of Snakes

by Damian Vargas

  ‘Will your other guests be arriving soon, Mr Smith?’ he asked Charlie, who had given his name as Barry Smith.

  ‘Nah, the rest decided not to come,’ Charlie answered while stuffing a wad of banknotes into the man’s shirt pocket. ‘That’s for the room hire. Be a good chap and make sure nobody comes up here until we’re done’.

  The publican appeared to be about to question the scenario in which he found himself until he saw Mike glaring at him. He checked himself and nodded. ‘Absolutely, Mr…Smith. I’ll let the bar staff know they’re not needed’.

  ‘Good man,’ said Charlie and turned his back on the man.

  ‘Not waiting for Ken?’ said Roger, once the publican was out of earshot.

  ‘He ain’t coming. Nor is he coming to England’. A round of contemplative faces greeted him. ‘He’s in no fit state,’ said Charlie. ‘And we all know it’. The others nodded except for Mike.

  ‘Bit harsh, ain’t it, bruv?’ said Eddie.

  ‘He’d be a liability. Even without a broken face,’ said Charlie. ‘Truth be told, he’s past it. He froze on the last job. Only I saw it, and I covered for him out of loyalty. I put the rest of the lads at risk. I was soppy. He’s our mate, but he’s in no shape to do this. It’s like I said the other night, you can’t be soft in this line of work’.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ said Bill.

  ‘And we’ll all do right by him when we get back,’ said Roger. ‘He gets a cut’. Bill and Mike seemed somewhat less amenable to that suggestion but said nothing.

  Charlie cleared his throat. ‘We can still do this without you, bruv,’ said Charlie. ‘No shame in pulling out now. Emotions were running high a few days ago. If you change your -’.

  ‘I said I was in. I ain’t changed my mind,’ said Eddie.

  Charlie grinned. ‘Didn’t think you would’. He lit up a cigarette. ‘Right, let’s go over the plan one more time. Mike, your turn’.

  Mike rolled his eyes. ‘Do I have to?’ Charlie back slapped him on his shoulder. ‘Yes, you bloody well do. And we will keep goin’ through it until I decide otherwise, you lazy bastard’. Mike groaned but sat forward and addressed the rest of the crew.

  ‘Alright. We’re making our way up to…’.

  ‘Vigo,’ muttered Bill.

  ‘Yeah, Vigo. I knew that. Anyway, we’re making our way up in two cars. You and your brother in one, me and the boys here in the other’.

  ‘What route are we taking?’ said Charlie.

  ‘We head to Algeciras, then make our way north up the A-whatever it is to Jerez’.

  ‘It’s the A381,’ said Roger.

  ‘It’s the only fuckin’ main road,’ Mike snarled. ‘What does it matter what it’s called?’ He made to pick up his pint glass, but Charlie stopped him.

  ‘Concentrate. Who’s driving the first leg?’

  ‘Bill is’.

  ‘Good, what then?’ said Charlie. Mike sighed. ‘C’mon, Mikey. I need to know you know this’.

  ‘Jeez, okay. Then we go to Seville, on the A four…eighty, I think’.

  ‘The A480, that’s right’.

  ‘Then up to Mérida, where we change drivers’.

  ‘And who’s the next driver?’ said Charlie.

  Mike looked uncertain. ‘I am,’ he said.

  ‘Good guess. What next?’

  ‘A straight run all the way to Famara’. Roger laughed out loud. ‘What you laughin’ at you wanker?’

  ‘Famara? Where the fuck’s Famara?’ said Bill, sniggering.

  ‘Zamora,’ said Charlie in an impatient tone.

  ‘Whatever, I’ll recognise it when I see it on the soddin’ road sign, won’t I?’ said Mike.

  ‘I dunno, will yer? Rog and I better stay awake, or we’ll end up in friggin’ France with you drivin’, you dyslexic prick,’ said Bill who then threw a screwed up beermat at the increasingly vexed Mike.

  ‘Leave it out,’ Mike retorted.

  Charlie smacked his palms down on the table. ‘This ain’t poxy playtime, you retards. This weren’t my fuckin’ idea, remember. You want to do this, you convince me I can trust you to do your jobs, or I walk. So will Eddie,’ he snarled.

  ‘Sorry, Charlie,’ said Bill. Charlie scowled at Mike.

  ‘Alright, you’ve made it as far Zamora, by some fuckin’ miracle. Then what?’

  ‘Erm, Roger takes over the driving. We head north for a bit, for about twenty miles or so, then we veer off to the west to…erm...Oooren...Ourenser. Oorensey. Fuck it, I can never remember this one’.

  ‘Ourense,’ said Eddie. ‘On the Rio Miño. Old Roman town’.

  ‘Ooh, hark who’s been studying. I reckon you was teacher’s pet in school,’ said Bill.

  ‘Hardly,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Ourense, right,’ said Charlie. ‘Where after that, Mikey?’

  Mike thought for a few seconds, then smiled. ‘Vigo. On the coast where we get on the boat’.

  ‘Finally, we got there. Thank fuck,’ said Charlie. He switched his attention to Bill. ‘What’s the total distance?’

  ‘Erm, about six hundred miles’.

  ‘Bang on. We leave at six o’clock in the morning. What’s the estimated time of arrival in Vigo, Roger?’

  ‘Allowing for pit stops, about nine o’clock in the evening’.

  ‘Correct. Now, remember. This geezer’s planning to leave the port by midnight at the latest. Drive with care, don’t be stupid, but make sure you get there on time. He’s got a lockup for the cars. Understood?’ They all nodded.

  ‘And you’re confident the car you’ve got is in good nick, Rog?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a Ford Granada on French plates. It’s the two-point-eight V6. She’s only a couple of years old, and I had her serviced. She’s right fuckin’ luvly. It’s gonna break my heart to get it crushed when we get back,’ said Roger, shaking his head.

  ‘You can buy flipping ten of them if this job goes to plan,’ said Bill.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Roger. ‘Still a bleedin’ shame though’.

  ‘And you’ve all got your stuff packed?’ said Charlie. ‘Anyone need a shooter?’

  ‘Nah, we sorted it all out this morning,’ said Bill. ‘In fact, we had to make Mikey take half an armoury out of his bag’. Roger chuckled. ‘He had five shotguns, Charlie. Five’. Charlie gave Mike a disapproving look.

  ‘I wasn’t gonna take em all on the job. Just wanted the choice on the day, like. I get all superstitious, don’t I?’ said Mike.

  ‘Alright, alright. Sounds like we’re ready. Any questions?’ Charlie gave each of the crew members a prolonged stare. They all shook their heads. ‘Okay, then there’s just one thing left’. He reached down to a sports holdall at his feet and unzipped it. He pulled out what was clearly a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘A tradition, that’s what,’ said Mike. Charlie opened the paper bag and pulled out a dusty, half-empty bottle of Ouzo. He placed it on the table, while Bill arranged five small glasses in a line.

  ‘This goes back to the first proper job that the five of us did together as a crew. Seventy-four, weren’t it, gents?’

  ‘Yep, January the sixth,’ said Roger.

  ‘How the fuck do you remember that?’ said Charlie.

  ‘It was me mum’s birthday. We all had a slice of her cake before we set out to the bank. You remember’.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bill, chuckling. ‘I was pukin’ my guts up I was so soddin’ nervous’.

  ‘She was a good old girl, your mum,’ said Charlie as he poured a generous measure in each glass, then pushed one towards each of his colleagues. He waited until they had each taken one, then picked up the last and held it up before him. ‘To family and absent colleagues,’ he said. They all downed their drinks. Bill coughed and spluttered. Each of them was struggling to suppress a look of disgust.

  ‘I fuckin’ hate that stuff,’ said Bill.

  ‘Yup, I really wish I’d pinched a decent bottl
e of brandy from the offy that day,’ said Charlie. Right, I’ll see you girls at the rendezvous site tomorrow morning. He shook Mike’s hand, then Bill’s and then Roger’s, then turned to his brother, stood in front of him and placed his hands on Eddie’s shoulders. Their eyes locked. ‘No going back now, bruv. You’re one of us. You’re a fuckin’ gangster now’.

  The meeting ended, and the crew dispersed to make their last preparations for their lengthy journey up to the northwest of Spain the following day. Charlie drove back to his bar in Marbella with Eddie as a passenger. He pulled the Porsche up into his private parking spot.

  ‘What are we doing now?’ asked Eddie.

  Charlie gave him a wry smile. ‘I wanna show you something’. The brothers walked through the front entrance, and as they passed the bar, Charlie whistled to attract the bar manager’s attention. ‘I’ll be downstairs with my brother. Don’t let anyone come down’.

  The bar manager nodded.

  Eddie followed Charlie down into the cellar and to the door that led to the room through which they had escaped from the unwanted attention of the TV crew several days earlier. Charlie fumbled in his pocket for a bunch of keys, then inserted one into the door lock. Eddie could hear the metal door’s interior workings moving. Charlie pulled out the key and pushed the heavy door open, then flicked on the light. ‘C’mon,’ he said, beckoning to his brother. Eddie stepped into the chilly room.

  Charlie locked the door behind them, then walked over to the solid wooden bench that occupied the centre of the room. ‘Here, give us a hand with this,’ he said and leaned down towards a large, battered steel chest that sat under the bench. Eddie moved over, grabbed the handle on the left of the metal box. ‘Careful. It’s heavy’. They both puffed out their cheeks as they lifted the box out and up onto the surface of the bench. Charlie then opened it, to reveal a top shelf of spanners, sockets and other assorted automotive tools. He lifted the top tray of tools and placed them at the side of the box. The contents in the main compartment were covered by an old, oil-covered tee shirt. Charlie looked at his younger sibling, a dark excitement in his eyes. ‘Open it,’ he said. Eddie picked the rag up and peered inside. An assortment of firearms confronted him. There were two Browning 9mm High Powers, a Colt 1911, a Webley revolver, an old Spanish Civil war era Astra and a few more pistols he did not recognise. There were also two submachine guns; a German MP40 and a British Mark 1 Sten. The weapons all looked worn.

  Eddie whistled. ‘Quite the collection of antiques. Did you ever think about opening a museum?’

  ‘They might be a little old, but they’re all in good nick,’ answered Charlie as he picked up the Sten and handed it to his brother. Eddie pulled back the bolt and examined the breach. It was immaculate. He tried the action a few times; it seemed in perfect working order.

  ‘Do you service these yourself?’

  ‘Nah, we’ve got a geezer over in Fuengirola who comes over and looks after them. Ex-world war two vet. He was in the Marines. Landed on Gold Beach on D-Day. Full of stories he is. Drinks like a fuckin’ fish too’. He gestured toward the box. ‘So, which one do you want, bruv’.

  ‘If it gets to the point of having to use one of these, then we’ve already failed,’ he said. He placed the Sten gun back into the toolbox. ‘I ain’t shootin’ anyone’.

  ‘I figured you might say that,’ said Charlie. He pulled open one of the desk draws and pulled out another gun. It was the silver-plated German Luger that Charlie had used to scare the young men at the Marbella Beach club earlier in the week. He handed it to Eddie. ‘Take this. You can’t hurt nobody with it but stick it in someone’s face, they won’t argue with you’. Eddie took the pistol and examined it. The weapon was in perfect condition and he noticed the barrel had been inscribed in German with, “Nicht entgehet dem Tode, wer der Geburt nicht entgangen ist”.

  ‘It says something like “If you’ve been born, you can’t escape death”,’ said Charlie. ‘I got it off a Spanish kid who’d broken into this big, old villa over in Benalmádena a couple of years ago. The owner was some old kraut who had loads of old war mementoes. I reckon he was an old NAZI. There was quite a few of them here after the war. Anyway, the kid couldn’t sell this flippin’ thing on account that it’s been deactivated. I gave him a tenner for it’.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Eddie, still studying the silver weapon.

  ‘It’s yours. I prefer shooters what put holes in stuff,’ said Charlie, chuckling. ‘Now, there’s something else I want to show you’. He walked toward a corroded, old electrical panel that was embedded in the brick wall. The panel was about four feet tall and three feet wide. It looked unused for several decades. Charlie blew a layer of dust off it, then yanked out one of the archaic-looking ceramic fuses to reveal a keyhole behind the freshly exposed space. Charlie took out his key ring once again, selected a curious-looking key which he inserted into the lock, then turned it. ‘This, Bruv, is where I keep all my secrets’. He pulled on one side of the panel which opened to reveal a series of metal shelves. They were packed with Betamax video cassettes, boxed audiotapes, ‘black & red’ notepads, piles of paper, and several thick photograph albums. The bottom shelf was occupied by a robust-looking metal travel case. Charlie held up a key.

  ‘I got you a copy made,’ he said. Eddie stared at the key.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. Charlie put the key into his brother’s hand.

  ‘Keep that on you at all times. If anything happens to me…if I get arrested or whatever. You come here and get all of this’.

  ‘What’s in it?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘A shit ton of leverage. You could probably bring down a government or two with this’.

  Eddie examined the case, which had two wheeled-combination locks, each with four digits. ‘Two-four-zero-four, and one-two-zero-six,’ said Charlie. ‘Our birthdays’.

  ‘And what am I supposed to do with it?’ said Eddie.

  ‘You take it to my lawyer, Guillem Montcada. I’ll give you his address and phone number. He’ll know what to do with it’. Charlie placed the case back on its shelf, then closed the panel door. ‘This is important, Ed. I told you, I ain’t going back in the slammer. The information in that case is my protection. It’s our protection. You understand?’ Eddie nodded. ‘And don’t tell nobody. Not a fuckin’ soul’. He turned and walked over to a wooden cupboard. ‘Right, help me with this,’ he said, opening the door to reveal shelves packed full of equipment. ‘Tools, torches, gloves, rope, everything we need. C’mon. There’s a duffel bag on the floor over there. Pack it in that. Then we will go get the car we’re taking up to Vigo’.

  The brothers filled the bag with tools and equipment, made their way upstairs, then went outside and down to Charlie’s Porsche. As they put the bag into the car’s boot, Eddie peered down the street towards the beachfront. He saw a man sitting in a light blue Renault looking straight back at him.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said. Charlie glanced at him from behind the car’s elevated rear hatch.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s that bleedin’ copper,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Metcalf?’ said Charlie.

  ‘Yeah. Shit. He must be on to us. What are we going to do?’

  Charlie grinned. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got this covered. Get in.’ They got into the car. Charlie started it up and blipped the throttle. ‘We’re gonna’ drive nice and slow, like. Pretend we didn’t see him, alright?’ Eddie nodded.

  ‘You know he will follow us, right?’

  ‘Like I said, I got this,’ said Charlie. They drove up the street for a hundred yards, made a right turn onto the main road and headed east. After a couple of miles, they pulled onto the A7 and headed towards Málaga. Charlie glanced at his gold Rolex and smiled. ‘I reckon my motor needs a bit of a clean, don’t you bruv?’ he said. He indicated right and pulled onto a slip road towards a service station.

  ‘Ain’t we got other priorities right now?’ said Eddie. Charlie winked at him as he drove to
wards the rear of the cafe building towards an automatic car wash. The enormous machine had three separate lanes, the middle of which was blocked off with two orange traffic cones. He pulled the car to a stop in front of the cones and pressed the horn. A man in jeans and a red tee-shirt stepped out of a Portakabin next to the car wash, gave Charlie a wave, ran over and picked up the cones.

  Eddie peeked into the passenger’s side mirror. The Renault was pulling to a halt thirty feet away, and he saw Metcalf peering at them from behind the steering wheel.

  ‘Undo your seat belt,’ said Charlie. ‘Once we’re inside, get out, grab the bag and run to the front. We’ve got about fifteen seconds until the machine starts. Got it?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Eddie. The man in the red tee shirt gave them a thumb’s up sign, walked up to the car wash control panel and pushed a green button. Eddie heard the machine’s inner workings whirring into life and a red light started flashing above the entrance.

  ‘Right, we’re on,’ said Charlie. He lifted the handbrake and manoeuvred the big car into the interior of the car wash. A curtain of water appeared in front of them before moving back over the roof and towards the car’s rear. ‘Now. Get the bag. Go’. They leapt out of the vehicle. Charlie lifted the rear hatch and Eddie heaved the heavy sports bag out. ‘To the front, quickly,’ said Charlie. The machine’s operator was getting into the driver’s seat. ‘Good man, Miguel. I’ll sort you out later’.

  ‘Key’s in the ignition, Charlie,’ the man responded. The brothers rushed to the front of the car wash.

  ‘This way,’ Charlie shouted. A gold-coloured Vauxhall Victor sat hidden from view behind the Portakabin. ‘That’s our ride. Get in the back and duck down’. Charlie jumped into the driver’s seat and waited for his brother to get in, before slowly pulling away; the Porsche still obscured by the two large cleaning rollers that were making their way down the front windscreen and bonnet.