Here Be Dragons: A Short Story

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘Keep Beenie informed of your shifts at Catford. Don’t make any plans you can’t change at a moment’s notice.’

  ‘Till when? Putting my life on hold for a month for ten grand feels like nice work. Six months is a different story.’

  ‘You can book your flight to Benidorm in September. That do you?’

  Progress, already. They have a time frame. Joesbury starts to nod his agreement, just as the grumbling roar of south London traffic is interrupted by a new note: the harsh sound of a siren, regular and increasing in volume, close by, getting closer. Joesbury can see blue lights bouncing off broken window panes in the buildings opposite and he turns, a second later than the others, to see the police car drive in through the archway.

  ‘What the fuck?’ someone mutters.

  There are two occupants in the police car. Both male, Joesbury thinks, white, young. The car stops and that alone tells him they are way out of their depth. They’ve driven themselves into a bottleneck and positioned the car so that they can’t even reverse straight back.

  The passenger door opens and a short-cropped head of brown hair appears. The driver is speaking into the radio.

  Joesbury knows the officer who’s just left the car. Not well, thank God – he doesn’t see instant recognition on the lad’s face, but any second now. He worked out of Catford for two weeks after Joesbury transferred there, before being moved himself. Townsend is his name, Nick or Nigel or something.

  ‘We can’t be taken in, boys, not with what we’ve got in the boot,’ Rich says.

  ‘Can you all step away from the vehicle?’ Townsend sounds more sure of himself than he should. He has yet to experience a situation going rapidly and directly to hell.

  Nobody moves. Joesbury can hear Beenie breathing heavily. He is too young and inexperienced to deal with something like this.

  ‘Waste ’em.’ Rich is speaking softly, even Joesbury at his side can barely hear him, and for a split second his words don’t register. But then Assaf moves aside his jacket and there is what looks like a Glock pistol strapped to his side. Haddad draws a similar looking gun and holds it with both hands, like a character in an old episode of The Sweeney. Beenie, too, has brought out his gun and is holding it with a shaking hand, not two feet from Joesbury.

  Beenie is in the best position, has the cleanest shot. Rich is looking expectantly at him, but the kid looks terrified, will lose it any second now.

  Handguns are notoriously inaccurate at distances. Most people who carry them have them for show, to intimidate. When they do use them it’s at point-blank range because, except in the hand of a marksman, they are simply incapable of firing with any sort of accuracy. If Beenie pulls the trigger now he could either miss Townsend completely or blow his brains out. Most people who wield handguns have no idea how to use them properly and from the way Beenie’s whole arm is shaking, it is obvious that he is no exception.

  Townsend is floundering, stuck between the options of brazening it out or running the five yards back to the car.

  ‘Don’t,’ Joesbury says. ‘They can’t possibly get back-up here for another ten minutes, not with the traffic we drove through. Beenie can give me his gun. I’ll hold them off while you lot scarper.’

  Rich nods his head slowly up and then down again and Joesbury feels some of the tension leaving him. Then Townsend signs his own death warrant.

  ‘Sarge?’ His eyes are crinkled in the poor light but are fixed on Joesbury. He’s recognized him. This isn’t a problem for Joesbury, Townsend is simply confirming his cover, but he can’t be allowed to go back and report having seen a uniformed sergeant in company with a gang of villains.

  ‘Do it,’ says Rich, so Joesbury does it.

  He reaches out, grabs the Beretta from Beenie, who is too surprised to resist, aims, and pulls the trigger. Unlike most people who wield handguns, Joesbury is an excellent marksman. Townsend is sent teetering back by the force of the blow and on the fourth step, he falls. Blood is spreading over the right side of his chest like a rapidly blooming flower. Joesbury strides across, stands over him for a second with the gun pointing directly at his head, then as the police car shoots backwards, he takes out both front tyres with two clean shots.

  ‘Get out of here. Now!’ He calls this to the men he has left standing, but he walks on towards the police car, taking out the windscreen with his fourth shot. The reversing car hits something and stops. Joesbury runs the last few paces to the car as the BMW pulls alongside.

  The patrol car driver is pressed up against the door. Joesbury can see his heaving shoulders, his thinning hair and his white hands clutching at his head.

  ‘Keep your head down, you moron.’ He lifts the gun. Two shots left and he fires them both into the passenger seat. ‘Count to fifty before you move or I promise you, you’re a dead man.’ He stands upright. In the passenger seat of the BMW, Rich is watching. Joesbury wipes his hand across his face, as though wiping away blood.

  ‘Go.’ He gestures towards the archway. ‘Get out of here.’

  He doesn’t hear what Rich says in response, but the car accelerates forward. He catches a glimpse of Beenie staring at him through the rear mirror as the car disappears.

  Suddenly, Joesbury is drenched in sweat. He is so warm, so wet that for a second he thinks he too is bleeding. He takes deep breaths, tells himself to hold it together. Townsend’s eyes are closed now, and the crimson pool around him is growing bigger.

  Somewhere, not too far away, another siren is getting louder. Joesbury starts to run.

  2

  ‘IT’S ME.’

  ‘Jesus, Mark, what the fuck went down? Less than an hour on the job and the frigging—’

  DCI Pete Philips, Joesbury’s boss at Scotland Yard, has many qualities. The ability to keep a calm head in a crisis is not one of them.

  Joesbury cups his hand around the phone to keep out the background noise. This is not a conversation to have at volume. ‘How is he?’

  ‘In fucking theatre is how he is.’ Philips, who is known to the team as PP, but only behind his back, sounds as though it is he who has just sprinted several miles through the back streets of south London. ‘Which is where he’s been for over an hour now.’

  ‘Good. If he’s been in theatre that long he’s not dying of blood loss. He may lose some movement in his right arm, but that’s a whole lot better than being dead.’

  ‘They recognized you, you daft prick. There’ll be a warrant out for your arrest before midnight unless I—’

  ‘Even better. Listen to me now, Guv, I don’t have much time. I need you to find out what uniform were doing at that warehouse tonight. Of all the derelict shit-holes on the south bank, why turn up at that one?’

  ‘Call-out, apparently. Some sort of disturbance.’

  ‘Yeah, and I’m Princess Margaret. A nice, unremarkable car driving slowly down a non-residential road in that neighbourhood and someone reports a disturbance. Seriously?’

  There is a heavy sigh, and Joesbury pictures his boss running his hands through his thinning hair. ‘Set-up?’

  Of course it had been a frigging stitch-up. He’d known that the second the blue lights appeared. ‘Find out where the call came from. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was all part of the interview process.’

  Down the line comes the sound of a subdued moan. ‘You could be right. Listen, you’ve got to come in until we know where we stand. I’m calling Beenie in too. The kid’s in pieces. We can regroup. Sort this out.’

  ‘No.’ Joesbury braces himself for a fight. ‘I’m staying on the job. I’ll talk to Beenie, make sure he’s OK.’

  ‘You will be arrested. And when you are, it will take the combined efforts of the Met’s highest and MI5 to prevent you being charged with attempted murder.’

  ‘They’ve got to find me first. Listen, Pete, whatever’s going down has to be big. They wouldn’t risk killing a copper if it weren’t. They needed to be absolutely sure of me. Been
ie, too. When I become London’s Most Wanted they’ll assume I have nowhere else to turn. I can find out what they’re planning.’

  There is a sound like a strangled scream, as though someone has sneaked up on his boss and taken him in a choke-hold. Joesbury waits it out. He’s heard it before. It is a good few seconds before Philips speaks again and only then through gritted teeth.

  ‘Did we get anything before the entire op went tits up?’

  ‘Something on the river in the next six weeks. They were asking about Westminster, the Tower, the Barrier.’

  He can hear the rapid, heavy footsteps of a stressed man pacing.

  ‘Mark, if we go with this, the number of people who’ll know the truth will be counted on my balls. Your family, your mates, they’ll all believe you’ve gone. It’s a lot to put them through.’

  For a second Joesbury sees the small, pale face of his son and hardens his heart. Huck Joesbury is tougher than his dad. ‘I know that. I’ve got to go. Find out how that daft kid’s doing and who made that phone call.’

  ‘Where the hell are you? We haven’t been able to trace your phone.’

  Joesbury looks around. During England’s industrial revolution, the tributaries of the tidal Thames urbanized, morphing into steel and concrete channels, with towering warehouses and commercial wharves fighting for space along the banks. Deptford Creek, the name given to the last half-mile of the River Ravensbourne before it meets the Thames at Deptford, is a vast mud-filled tunnel at low tide.

  Now, though, the tide is high. Now, Deptford Creek is filled with rushing, swirling, dark water.

  ‘One of the few places I feel safe. Talk to you later, Boss.’

  When Joesbury and his brother, Adam, were boys in south London, their grandfather, a sergeant in the Marine Unit, often took them out on police boats. (In those days, the rules were expected to be broken.) One of Joesbury Senior’s young constables was a man called Ray Bradbury, who remained with the unit all his working life.

  Bradbury, retired now but unable to leave the river behind, lives on a boat in Deptford Creek with his wife, Eileen. Moored up next to it is the vintage yellow sailing yacht in which Lacey lives.

  Joesbury drags his eyes away from the yellow boat – time enough for that – and faces the thin, sun-tanned, deeply wrinkled man.

  ‘I was on a job tonight,’ he says. ‘Things escalated.’

  ‘Want to tell me about it?’ Ray has never wasted words, isn’t about to start now.

  Joesbury shakes his head. ‘You’ll know soon enough.’

  ‘That bad, huh?’

  ‘Not as bad as it’s going to sound.’

  Ray registers that with a sharp breath on his cigarette. ‘Anything I can do?’

  ‘Don’t mention you’ve seen me. Don’t notice if your boat gets borrowed occasionally over the next couple of days.’

  Ray nods at a large, black-hulled boat. ‘The Westcotts are away up north for three weeks. Use theirs. Need a bed for the night?’

  Joesbury can’t resist another sideways glance at the yellow yacht. ‘Thanks, mate, I think I’m sorted.’

  Ray’s face creases further, increasing his similarity to all things simian, and Joesbury wonders if decades of loyalty might be shifting, on the basis of a few weeks’ acquaintance with a pretty woman. Well, he’d make the same call himself.

  ‘She’s had a tricky day.’ The fag has burned low now, and Ray is sucking on it like a starving infant.

  ‘Yeah.’ A routine part of every day now for Joesbury is checking the Marine Unit daily reports. He already knows that early that morning, Lacey and Ray found the floating body of a young woman out on the river. ‘It’s going to happen though, in that job,’ he says. ‘She knew that.’

  When Lacey, a promising young detective, had announced her decision to leave CID and go back into uniform, just about everyone she knew had tried to persuade her against such a career-limiting move. Not Joesbury. All he wanted was to keep her safe and the Marine Unit might just do that when he couldn’t be around.

  In his pocket, his phone starts buzzing. The boss again. He smiles apologetically at Ray. ‘Sorry, mate, I need to take this.’

  Ray gets up and stretches. ‘Take care of yourself, son. You know where I am.’

  Ray’s boots clang on the metal steps as he climbs below. He and Eileen sleep in a cabin at the bow, some fifty feet away. Joesbury hunkers down in the stern so that his voice won’t carry. ‘Talk to me, Guv.’

  ‘The kid’s going to be fine, you lucky bastard. Equally good news for you is that he remembers that Rich character giving the order to shoot. And the other idiot will testify you saved his neck. We’re moving them both up north to recuperate. And it looks as though you were right about the gang themselves calling the police. The call came from a mobile, very close to that strip club where you met them, a matter of minutes after you left.’

  Joesbury lets go the breath he’s been holding. ‘So where do I stand?’

  ‘Christ knows. It’s a frigging difficult one, to be honest. We can’t formally announce Townsend’s death, or it’ll make the papers, people will be expecting a funeral with full service honours. We can’t put out a formal warrant for your arrest, or it will blow your cover out of the water, not to mention Beenie’s. Sergeant Mick Jackson will have to go AWOL. All we can do is say nothing officially, tip the wink in a few places that you’re a wanted man without actually processing the paperwork and hope the rumour mill does its job. It’ll buy us days, Mark, weeks at the most, and all the time the risk to you will be growing.’

  ‘Noted.’

  ‘And another thing, this’ll almost certainly be the end of your career with us. When it all comes out, you can wave goodbye to anonymity.’

  He has expected this, knows it is for the best, and yet, in spite of everything, Joesbury feels a pang at realizing the job he’s excelled at for so long is coming to an end. ‘Well, that’ll make my mum happy. I’ll be in touch soon. Thanks, Guv’nor.’

  As silence – or as close to silence as this part of London ever experiences – creeps around the marina, Joesbury sits as still as the old industrial buildings around him. The railway above his head has long since stopped running, the nearby roads have fallen quiet. The tide is high and the waves splash gently against the creek walls and the moored boats. He watches the moon move behind a cloud and the darkness deepening.

  In the distance, just before the water curves out of sight, he sees the hulk of a long-abandoned dredger moored by a gravel yard. It is a massive ship, a ghost of London’s industrial past. As far as he knows, no one has been near it in years.

  The yellow yacht, to which his eyes have been continually returning since Ray said goodnight, rocks a little more vigorously than the waves could be accountable for and Joesbury hunkers down further in the stern cockpit. She’s awake.

  The washboard on the yellow yacht is pulled up. He sees her pale, slender hands and wrists, then her head. She jumps out and stands in the cockpit, her body stiff with tension. He’s tempted to think she looks scared, but Lacey Flint doesn’t scare easily. She is one of the most reckless people he knows. And there was a time, not so long ago, when she scared the shit out of him. Sometimes, he wonders if she still does.

  Barefoot, she walks to the rear of her boat and shines a torch into the water. He is about to speak, but something – curiosity, just the pleasure of watching her – keeps him quiet. She is dressed in soft cotton jogging shorts and a matching vest. He has never seen so much of her body before, although God knows he’s imagined it many times. Her hair is loose and seems longer than when he last saw it unconfined. In the moonlight it looks dark, but the last time he saw her, the sun had bleached fair streaks in its usual light brown. Her long, slim limbs gleam paler than the moonlight as she moves again, tiptoeing gracefully along the side deck of her boat. When Lacey stands close to him, he is always surprised by how tiny she is, and yet her body is so perfectly proportionated that at a distance she appears tall.

&nbs
p; She passes within two feet of him, shining the torch down into the narrow gap between the boats. He can hear the soft pad of her footsteps, imagines he can smell the orangey sweetness of her perfume, and he opens his mouth to speak, but she moves on to the bow.

  Unable to resist, he gets up silently and, on Ray’s sturdy boat, steps to the side rail without any movement registering. Lacey’s yacht is a much flimsier vessel and lower in the water, but Joesbury has been around boats for as long as he can remember. He waits until she moves, crouching down at the bow, and he steps from one to the other. Once in the cockpit, it is a couple of steps and a forward swing and he is in the cabin.

  Instantly, the heat of the summer night seems to flee, leaving him in a softly lit, faintly scented and, above all, cool interior. The entire cabin, from floor to ceiling, is panelled in mahogany, and green glass lamps glow gently on the walls. The seats are padded leather. The galley is neat and the chart table has been fashioned to look like an antique desk. There is even a bookcase filled with hardback books.

  She’s had a guest this evening. There are two mugs in the sink and a packet of sugar on the table. The thought of her sharing this space with anyone other than him gives him an unreasonable stab of jealousy.

  Some months ago, she had asked his opinion about buying the boat. He told her that it was overpriced, that she’d never get her money back, that she’d have no security of tenure and could be made to leave the makeshift marina at any time, that it would be one of the most inconvenient places in London to live, but that the boat itself was as fine an example of a 1950s sailing yacht as he’d ever seen, that it was beautifully constructed and, from what he could judge, perfectly sound.

  She’d gone ahead and bought it. Now, for the first time, he fully understands why.

  She is coming back. He hears her jump lightly down into the cockpit. Grinning, he sits down on the leather sofa as her bare feet appear on the steps. He sees the look of shocked wonder on her face, and thinks there is nothing he can’t deal with, as long as she is in his life.