Paint It Black

by Mark Timlin

  ‘What for?’

  ‘So we could get in some target practice. I’m all out of beer cans.’

  ‘Shame,’ I said. ‘I could do with a lager.’

  ‘Later. Come here.’ He led me a little deeper into the wood and another clearing. Targets had been set up. The usual soldier with a tin helmet over a menacing look, a rifle and bayonet, and some advertising gimmicks featuring life-size cardboard cut-outs of grinning men and women holding their latest products, plus what I took to be the spare wheel of the Peugeot hanging from a branch of a tree by a tow rope.

  ‘Pick your target,’ he said.

  I propped the Winchester next to a tree trunk and brought the H & K up into a firing position. About fifteen metres away was the representation of a pretty young model in a swimsuit holding a beach ball with the sponsor’s name printed on it in red. I cocked the submachine gun and let off a burst. It was just noisy enough to frighten birds from the trees, but I doubt that anyone outside the trees would have heard a thing. The bullets chopped the model to shreds, and for a moment, in that freezing forest as the sun pushed its orangey face up over the treetops, I knew what it was going to be like to face my wife’s murderers.

  It was going to be good.

  ‘Fine,’ said Toby. ‘Keep going.’

  I reloaded the MP5K and emptied the magazine at more targets, and Toby got into the act too with his Scorpion. The clearing was full of smoke and the targets were all destroyed before we both started blasting at the spare wheel, shredding the rubber and sending it dancing on the end of its rope.

  When we were out of ammo, he said, ‘Let’s go and let off the really spectacular pyrotechnic display. Come on, and bring your shotgun. It’ll do you good. Get some of the kinks out of your system.’

  I let the H & K drop on its sling, picked up the Winchester and followed him back to the Peugeot. We stood, well out of the line of each other’s fire, and he said, ‘When you’re ready.’

  The shotgun was ready to go and I aimed at the windscreen and pulled the trigger. The glass imploded and metal was torn from the bonnet. I pumped the action and fired again at the passenger door, and Toby joined in. The Peugeot rocked on its springs as we pumped and fired, pumped and fired, and the sound of the shots was deafening. We blew out the tyres and the windows, sent the wing mirrors flying, shredded the seats inside, smashed the front and rear lights off the motor, and when we’d exhausted our cartridges we dropped our shotguns, both drew our semi-automatics from the holsters attached to the belts around our waists and kept shooting. Which one of us hit the petrol tank, Christ knows, but when I’d almost emptied the clip, it blew with a roar which almost lifted the vehicle off the ground, a gout of flame and a burst of thick black smoke. We both stopped firing and watched the car burn.

  ‘They’ll think we’re burning stubble,’ said Toby. ‘Let’s go and have some lunch. Then when it gets dark we can go and obbo the target.’

  We ate at a different place. Toby didn’t want to draw attention to us anywhere as regulars in the area. Very wise, I thought, although I wouldn’t’ve minded trying the crayfish tails in brandy sauce. Instead we opted for a restaurant on the road to Norwich. I had peppered steak. It was OK.

  We dawdled over coffee and brandy, then headed back to the cottage. The guns had all been stashed away again and we checked them. All present and correct. We spent the evening cleaning them and watching TV. At eight Toby made a scratch meal from what was in the fridge, then at ten p.m. we left for our recce.

  The drive to Schofield’s house took less than thirty minutes. We went back on to the A143, then cut off on to B-roads and across flat marshland, until Toby swung the motor off the highway and into the pitch blackness under some trees. The weather had been kind to us. Unlike the previous evening, a low cloud cover obliterated the moon and stars and there was a hint of rain in the air.

  He cut the engine and light. ‘It’s just down the road,’ he said. ‘A couple of minutes’ drive away is all.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘We’re going to have to breach the main gate. What I’ve got in mind will happen so quickly that we’ll be in before anyone has any idea what’s happening.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that now. Trust me. The hard part will begin when we’ve got inside. We’re going to have to get through the guards before we can reach Schofield and Tyson. And like I said, there’ll be at least ten of them, probably more.’

  ‘Good odds.’

  He ignored my remark. ‘The telephone wires will be cut, but there’s going to be plenty of mobile phones inside. So someone’s bound to raise the alarm pretty sharpish. And we’re going to make a hell of a racket, which’ll bring the local cops.’

  ‘What do we do about that?’

  ‘Get in and out fast. Find Schofield and Tyson. Kill them, take the ring and get out in the confusion.’

  ‘Good plan.’

  ‘Flexibility. That’s the key word, Nick. Flexibility, boldness and speed. Keep those three in mind and we’ll both be a lot richer on New Year’s Day.’

  I really didn’t give a shit about the money. ‘Why don’t we just wait until they open the doors for Schofield and steam in then?’

  ‘I wish it were that simple. But he’s coming in by chopper.’

  I looked at him in the darkness and he sensed my look. ‘Yeah, a drag, I know. But the guy’s total paranoid. That’s how he’s stayed free for so long. He’ll come in just before midnight. When the chopper dust’s in, that’s our signal to go.’

  ‘Terrific,’ I said. ‘We could’ve used those howitzers after all. Can we go and look at the place now?’

  ‘Sure.’ And he started the engine again.

  He backed on to the road, switched on the lights and headed across the marshes again. Suddenly from out of the blackness in front I could see a glimmer of light. Toby slowed the Laredo and Schofield’s house came into sight.

  It was surrounded by high walls, topped with electrified wire, and dotted with high-beam security lights. The main gate was built from thick slabs of wood studded with iron bolts and hung between two stone gatehouses, their walls blank except for narrow slits in the stonework, and I could imagine the havoc that automatic weapons poked through them could wreak on anyone foolish enough to come knocking without an invitation. All in all, the place looked to be about as tough to breach as the Tower of London.

  A fucking doddle, I thought.

  ‘How about a back way?’ I asked.

  ‘No. It’s the front or nothing.’

  ‘Terrific.’

  ‘That’s all we can see tonight,’ said Toby. ‘They’ll be filming us now,’ as he allowed the Laredo to drift down the road, then took a left off at the T-junction in front of the gate, gave the motor some gas and headed back into the night.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘How the fuck do we take that place?’

  I saw him grin in the glow of the dashboard. ‘Easy.’

  After that weekend, things went pretty quiet. Toby called me up every few days, but he didn’t talk about anything important on the phone and I didn’t see him. Like I said, I hadn’t known him very well before, but he seemed like a different bloke from the one who’d saved my life. Harder, colder. But then perhaps I was harder and colder too. Circumstances alter personalities.

  Christmas consisted of a warmed over pizza, a bottle of JD, half a dozen joints and James Bond on the box. It was one of the most miserable I’d ever spent. I got a few cards, but didn’t send any back. I sent money to Judith to buy herself a present, and she called on Christmas afternoon after Top of the Pops, and we talked for half an hour or so. She didn’t mention Paula, and nor did I. She thanked me for my cheque and said that she and her mother were going to the sales to spend it. After we’d finished, Laura came on and said hello. She told me everything was fine. I wish I could’ve said the same.

  The day after Boxing Day, Toby phoned me. ‘How are you fixed?’ he asked.

  ‘Easy,’ I repli
ed.

  ‘Good. It’s starting. I need you tonight.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Not on an open line. I’ll collect you about nine.’

  ‘Suits me,’ I said, and we broke the connection.

  I was ready and waiting when he arrived and met him at the door. This time he was driving an anonymous-looking Ford and we got in. ‘We’ve got to make a meet,’ he said.

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘You’ll see.’ And he started the car, put it into gear and took off.

  ‘I don’t like surprises,’ I said.

  He grinned nastily. ‘You’ll like this one.’

  From his manner I wasn’t so sure.

  We drove right across London in a westerly direction, past Shepherd’s Bush and into the boonies of Acton. Toby spun round some side streets, up the back of a block of flats and shops and stopped on a corner. ‘We’re here,’ he said.

  ‘Everybody’s got to be somewhere.’

  He shook his head and got out of the car. I got out too. We walked back down the service road until we came to a ramp leading downwards. We took it and found ourselves in front of half a dozen lock-up garages. He led me towards the end one on our right and a figure materialised out of the gloom next to it. He was short and wiry, dressed in a windbreaker and old jeans. He nodded at Toby, ignored me and said, ‘Round here.’ I thought I noticed a slight Irish inflection in his accent. I was beginning to have serious doubts about what was going on.

  We followed the bloke down the gap formed by the wall of the garage and the wall of the building, and he rapped on a plain wooden, unpainted door and it was opened quickly.

  I don’t know what I expected, but inside, it was just a garage, heated by an electric fire to take off the chill and pretty well filled with an old Transit van with scabby, dark blue paintwork that stood in the light of an overhead fluorescent fixture. The door had been opened by another geezer, taller than the first, but just as scruffy.

  ‘Is this it?’ said Toby, nodding at the truck. Once again there had been no introductions.

  The second geezer nodded back.

  I was beginning to wonder what was going on and not particularly enjoying the vibrations.

  ‘Let’s have a look then.’ Toby again.

  The second geezer squeezed between us and the flanks of the motor and went and opened the back doors. I followed Toby round for a squint. Inside were several heavy-looking wooden boxes, with nasty water stains on the sides of them. Toby opened one. It was shadowy inside the back of the truck, but I’d recognise dynamite anywhere. It looked sweaty and unsafe and stank of chemicals.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ I said. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  The second geezer looked at me and said, ‘Scared?’

  ‘I’ll say I’m fucking scared,’ I said.

  ‘Fucking English,’ he said. Definitely Irish.

  ‘These are old friends of mine from across the water,’ said Toby. ‘We met when I was over there, in the service of Queen and Country.’

  ‘And MI6,’ said the second geezer. ‘Don’t forget them.’

  MI6. I fucking knew it.

  Nice mates, I thought, but didn’t vocalise the thought. These fuckers were probably armed and one more notch on their gun butts wasn’t going to worry them.

  ‘This is your master plan?’ I said to Toby.

  ‘Our way in,’ he said.

  ‘Terrific.’ If it hadn’t been for the thought of Dawn, I would’ve walked right then.

  ‘Can you think of a better one?’

  I couldn’t, and didn’t reply, just stood seething, the sweat of fear bubbling through my clothes.

  ‘Not a falling out I hope,’ said the first geezer. ‘Just be cool, Toby. Let your mate drive.’

  Toby looked at me. ‘He is.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  Toby ignored me. ‘Got the keys?’ he said to the geezer.

  ‘Got the cash?’

  Toby put his hand inside his pocket and took out a wad of notes. The second geezer took them and ran a count. Once satisfied, he took two keys on a ring out of his pocket and tossed them to me. ‘Have fun,’ he said. ‘Mind the bumps in the road.’

  I looked at Toby. ‘You’re not fucking serious?’ I said. ‘That stuff’s lethal.’

  ‘Just what we need.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do with it?’

  ‘Park it somewhere for a couple of days.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Buckingham Palace would be good,’ said the first geezer. ‘Give the royals a welcome back after their Christmas holidays.’

  ‘You realise it could go off?’ I said.

  ‘That’s why we wanna get rid of it,’ said the second geezer. ‘It’s a bit past its sell-by date and it got a bit damp where we were keeping it.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, man,’ I said to Toby. ‘That stuff’s suicide.’

  ‘The best I could do under the circumstances.’

  ‘Well do you want it or not?’ said the first geezer.

  ‘No, Toby,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not stayin’ here,’ said the second geezer.

  ‘Just till Saturday,’ said Toby.

  ‘There’s people live upstairs,’ I said. ‘If it blows it’ll bring the whole block down.’

  ‘Too bad,’ said Toby. ‘What’s a few more civilians more or less?’

  Harder. Colder. I told you. I was beginning to sincerely dislike Toby Gillis.

  ‘Not on my conscience,’ I said.

  The two Irishmen looked at each other and grinned. I was beginning to sincerely dislike them too.

  ‘Where then?’ said Toby.

  I racked my brains. ‘I’ll drive it up to the farm,’ I said. ‘At least only a few squirrels’ll cop for it if it goes off there.’

  ‘I knew you’d think of something, Nick.’

  ‘Not a long drive, I hope,’ said the first geezer with another grin at his mate.

  ‘Bollocks,’ was all I said.

  I was furious with Toby, but I opened the truck and started it. And when the second geezer opened the main door of the garage, I reversed out, swung round into a tight two-point turn and drove the Transit up the ramp and into the service road.

  I waited for Toby to follow me on foot, and when he caught up I jumped out of the truck and said, ‘Are you fucking crazy?’

  ‘We need it,’ he said.

  ‘There’s got to be at least a hundred pounds of that shit in there. It’s old, Toby. Old, damaged and unstable.’

  ‘But cheap and available,’ he said. ‘And they threw in a radio detonator and transmitter.’

  ‘We don’t even know if it’ll work.’

  ‘It’ll work OK. Just ask those people in Oxford Street.’

  Things were going from bad to worse. ‘And these guys are who I think they are?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘FIRE. Right? The cell that’s been blowing the shit out of this town for the last month or so?’

  Toby shrugged. ‘What if they are? What do you care? Don’t think about it, Nick. You shouldn’t think so much. It’ll get you into trouble.’

  ‘Not so much trouble as being found in possession of the stuff in this truck.’

  Toby shrugged again.

  ‘And now I’ve got to drive it to Norfolk.’

  ‘You don’t have to drive it anywhere. Park it outside your house if you want.’

  ‘Terrific, Toby. Got the keys to the cottage?’

  He handed me a set.

  ‘Come up tomorrow and collect me,’ I said. ‘If there’s anything left to collect. I’m not hitchhiking to Norwich to catch a train in the morning.’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘I had to make the journey there anyway. And Nick.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I shouldn’t smoke if I were you.’ And he walked past me to his car.

  That had to be one of the worst drives of my life. Every pothole and raised drain-cover was a nightmare. By the time I’d crossed London the s
weat had soaked through my clothes. I didn’t know exactly how volatile the kit in the back was, and I wouldn’t, until I was vaporised in the middle of a thirty-foot crater in the Commercial Road. And the bloody truck was a bitch. The sodding thing kept stalling and all I needed was a helpful copper asking me if he could lend a hand.

  But at last I got out of town and on to the A12 heading through Essex. I was dying for a cigarette and a piss, but I didn’t dare stop until I was away from civilisation. Finally I pulled off the A143 into a side road and moved well away from the truck before I lit up. I was shaking like a cat in heat and could hardly fire up my Silk Cut. Jesus, I thought. What the fuck am I doing here?

  Eventually I dragged myself back to the Transit for the remainder of the journey and got to the cottage about one.

  I parked the truck up close to where Toby and I had destroyed the Peugeot, and there I left it before heading towards the cottage. I put on the kettle and found tea, sugar and powdered milk, plus a fresh packet of cream crackers, some butter that smelt all right and a piece of cheese with just a few green flecks on it in the fridge. From that I made my supper and it tasted as good as anything I’d ever eaten.

  I went upstairs to the room I’d had last time and crawled between the freezing sheets, and was asleep in about five seconds flat.

  The next morning I breakfasted on more of the same and lit a fire in the living room to warm the place up a little. Toby arrived around noon, when I was sure he wasn’t going to bother. Believe me, by then I was pissed off to the max.

  ‘Thanks for dropping by,’ I said when he got out of his car.

  ‘I had things to do. And the phone here’s not working.’

  ‘I know. I tried it,’ I said, as drily as possible.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m here now, and I take it the explosives are OK?’

  ‘You’d’ve heard about it on the news if they weren’t,’ I said. ‘Now. Isn’t it about time you told me what’s going on? I’m not some kind of mushroom punter who you keep in the dark and feed shit.’

  He looked at me as if I was exactly that, and his look gave me the shivers up my back. I had the strangest feeling that, if I wasn’t necessary to the plan, Toby would have no compunction about killing me there and then and burying me under the Norfolk mud. ‘Lock up,’ he said brusquely. ‘And we’ll get out of here. I reckon you could do with a drink. I’ll tell you on the way.’