by Ezekiel King
“Yes, good, you lot keep that. Thanks, guys,” I said as I shook their hands firmly.
“We are going to go back to Birmingham now, Cyrus. The car has got false number plates on it, so we want to get back and park it up. Get us some more jobs though, Cyrus; you have seen how we work now,” Yax said.
Chapter 19
I had become the most feared man in my city overnight. I was also known and feared throughout the whole of England. My connections in the drug world, combined with my violent reputation had made my name spread throughout the country, like wildfire. The West Midlands was my playground. I had now turned 25 years old and felt more of a man than ever before.
I had given Chris one of the two guns I brought from Yax to store at a safe location near to his house in case anybody tried to harm him or my bank balance again. I had also paid for a builder to put a secret compartment into the wall in my bathroom at my flat. This is where I stored the other handgun I had brought from Yax. If the police ever found it, I would tell them I didn’t know the compartment existed. I had it all figured out. Also, I had been out in our local town to do some shopping with Emma, and I had saw people’s faces when they saw me. There were mixtures of feelings displayed on people’s faces as they’d notice me, or their friends would tap them on the shoulder and say, “Do you know that is? That’s Big CY.” People’s faces that would spot me as I walked through the town would be filled with fear or respect or admiration or an unsurety. Even people I have known for years had started to treat me differently, everybody seemed to be humble in my presence. The older kids that used to doss outside my parent’s house at the time I started selling drugs were now almost 30 years old. I had seen a few of them in town on a Saturday afternoon. “Yes, guys, long time no see,” I had said happily.
“You okay, Cyrus?” they had replied with forced smiles on their faces. Almost seven years of selling drugs had made me an expert at reading people’s body languages. I would have to be able to read people without them uttering a word, or how would I know when somebody is lying or trying to pull a fast one or hiding something from me?
So, when the people that were once my superiors in my childhood replied to my happy greeting with ‘you okay, Cyrus?’ I read into that like it was an open book. It wasn’t that they weren’t happy to see me; it was that they were scared of me. Just my presence alone had them ‘walking on egg shells’.
“Yes, I’m good, lads. How are you lot?” I replied to their sheepish question. It saddened me to see people I had known my whole life to be scared of me and not able to treat me normally.
“Cyrus, we have got to go because we have someone waiting for us,” they had replied as they made a quick but polite getaway.
It did upset me. The average person that knew my reputation was scared of me. I accepted it though; it had to be that way to ensure the smooth running of my business.
Girls loved the fact that people feared me. I had never imagined in my wildest dreams it could be so easy to ‘net new skirt’. Girls practically threw themselves at me. I would walk into the club in the city centre, and wherever I went, the doormen would shake my hands. “Are you all right, big fella?” or “You all right, Big CY?” They had said as they extended their hand to shake hands with me. Why these giant doormen called me ‘Big fella’, I would never understand.
I would walk into the club wearing either Italian or French designers with my big diamond watch on, and I would feel hundreds of eyes gravitate towards me, like I was glowing. It got to a stage that I got sick of guys coming up to me to say ‘hello’ and shake hands. I would just give them a fist pump and say, “You all right, lad?” or “Give me a minute. I’m busy if you don’t mind”.
They would always reply, “Sorry, mate, I just wanted to say hello.” I didn’t go to a nightclub to shake hands with a bunch of guys I don’t know. I knew that these people only wanted to talk to me so that they could be seen to be friends with the local gangster or impress a girl by proving that they know me. I would go to a club more often than not after a long day. I would tell Emma I was busy working or out-of-town working. I would walk around the club and meticulously find an extremely sexy girl that tickled my fancy. I would then go to the bar and order a bottle of champagne if I had located a target. I would tap the nearest idiot who had been claiming to know me on the shoulder.
“Oi mate, do me a favour, please,” I would say as the shocked nine-to-five worker would turn to look at me, as if to say ‘what could this guy possibly want from me?’
They would almost certainly reply, “Yes, CY, what’s up?” As they would try to stay composed, with no idea what I wanted, “Go over there and tell that girl with the brown hair to come over here; tell her I need to tell her something.” I would say with an expressionless face.
I would pour the girl in question a glass of champagne and wait. Nine times out of ten, I would wake up in a hotel suite to see the very same handpicked girl asleep on the pillow next to me. It was almost too easy—a few well-polished chat-up lines, or a bit of good humour, combined with my reputation and expensive clothes and jewellery had women eating out of the palm of my hand. My favourite approach was to engage them in gentle conversation before saying, “I need to drop some money to my mate around the corner.” I would talk to the girl in question for 15 minutes or so to make sure that they were comfortable in my company before I would say, “I’ve had four glasses of champagne, and my mate keeps bugging me to drop some money off to him. Would you mind coming for a drive with me; it will only take ten minutes to go there and come back.” If a girl sits in my passenger seat, I am less likely to get pulled over, and I’d lose my license. “You’d be doing me a big favour,” then I’d give them the ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ facial expression.
As soon as we would walk outside, and the girl would see I had an Italian supercar; it was practically a done deal.
I would usually go to the McBride’s house to get some weed, then ask the girl if they want to go somewhere a bit better than where we had left. This would of course be my hotel suite, swiftly followed by room service and a dip in the Jacuzzi.
Life was good, social life and business life was good. Chris was doing his job properly; and since that palaver with Morris almost three and a half years ago, I had not heard much on the matter. Morris’ cousin had got my number and called me saying, “I know that had something to do with you, Cyrus,” almost in tears.
“Piss off you, Wally,” had been my reply before putting the phone down. I had always said I would make an example out of the first person that crosses the line. Morris chose to be that person—nobody had forced him.
It was a Saturday night when I pulled outside the nightclub in the city centre in a top of the range German supercar that Bob and I had bought. We had decided to invest further into our prestige car rental company ‘CB Prestige’ by buying 12 top-of-the-range motors. I liked the car I had chosen to drive. It was white, with red leather interior and had big glossed alloy wheels. Even people that had no interest in cars would look at this piece of machinery in admiration. I had told Emma I was taking a new business associate out for dinner, but I had actually done that hours before. I planned to pop into the busy High Street bar to have two drinks and find some light entertainment in the form of a sexy girl to spend the night with. It was all about the chase for me; it excited me to know that the girl I’d chosen would have no idea my every move was premeditated. She would think I just wanted to have a friendly chat, but the reality was that I had already planned where she would be spending the night. Intellectual manipulation! At its finest.
I didn’t use somebody to call the girl I wanted tonight. She had looked at me two or three times as I stood talking to the guy behind the bar while he neglected people waiting to be served. She had observed my presence and the way people treated me, practically like I owned the bar. I used a ‘come here’ gesture with my hand as she looked at me with a friendly smile. She joined me at the bar, and I gave her the old ‘I feel stupid here on
my own. My mate was supposed to meet me here, but he’s had to work late’, followed by convincing her to have a drink with me so I don’t look like a loner. Two hours later, I slid the key card for my hotel suite through the sensor to open the door. “After you, gorgeous,” I said as the girl walked into the room ahead of me. The room I had for the night had a large bathroom on the left as soon as you enter the room. The bathroom had a whirlpool Jacuzzi tub in it. When I had purchased the room before going to the bar, I had sat and made a few business calls. While making my business calls, I waited for room service to bring a bottle of rosé inside a bucket of ice. After paying for the bottle of wine, I left it on the table in the room and went to find tonight’s conquest. “Pour us a glass of wine each while I finish filling up the Jacuzzi,” I said after kissing the girl passionately and putting my car keys and phone on the table.
The two of us got into the Jacuzzi and sipped our wine in the lowly lit bathroom. It was always the perfect end to a long day; soaking in the tub being massaged by the powerful jets propelling water into my back. I enjoyed listening to a beautiful girl ramble on about stuff I had no interest in. It was stimulating for me to indulge in senseless conversation with a girl that I’d taken to my room. It relaxed me not to talk about business or personal problems. I decided to drink some more wine before having sex. ‘Click’, the sound was unmissable to my acute sense of hearing. I had heard a key card activate the lock in my hotel suites door! I was always aware of my surroundings, even in the most relaxing of situations. My brain was still moving at the speed of light as I heard the ‘click’. I had instantly thought, who the fuck is that? And I haven’t ordered any room service. Before I could even put my glass down, the door burst open.
“Police, armed police, police, armed police,” the voices screamed as the officers ran into the hotel suite. I looked to the doorway in shock as four armed police officers in full tactical clothing ran into the bathroom and switched on the light. They had marksman hats on, like miniature black baseball hats with a black and white chequered pattern on them with the word ‘police’ on the front. All four police officers in my view had sub-machine guns pointed at me as I sat in the Jacuzzi.
“Don’t move, or we will shoot,” the closest officer had said.
I believed him. I just sat, staring at them in shock. I didn’t even look at the girl opposite me in the Jacuzzi.
“I want you to stand up slowly. And step out of the tub, slowly; any sudden moves, we will shoot, do you understand!” the same officer shouted at me angrily. I knew he meant it. He was standing perfectly still with one foot in front of the other, like he was practicing at the shooting range.
I stood up slowly. “Any sudden moves, I will shoot!” the officer shouted again. I was completely naked, still holding my glass of wine. “Drop the glass of wine, do not put it down; drop it! Do you understand!” the officer shouted angrily. The situation had sobered me up instantly. It was almost surreal, like a bad dream. I dropped the glass without even looking where it had landed. “Now step out of the tub one foot at a time, and lay face down on the floor!” the firearms officer instructed me aggressively. I was under no illusion that this man was ready to fire without a seconds’ thought. His finger was on the trigger, and his gun was definitely loaded.
I felt the pores on my forehead open as I started to sweat as adrenaline started to course through my veins. I wasn’t scared, but I was definitely concerned for my welfare. I hadn’t even realised that I was holding both my hands in the air in surrender. I stepped out of the tub one foot at a time as instructed.
I began to kneel before lying down on the bathroom floor. As I did so, I was bombarded with officers pinning me to the ground. “Put your hands behind your back,” the officers shouted as they zip-tied my hands securely behind my back.
“Are you expecting anybody else here?” one of the police officers asked.
“No,” I replied feeling deflated.
“Cyrus Johnson, I am arresting you for conspiracy to murder David Morris. The time is now 1:40 a.m.,” the armed officer said as he took me by the arm. “Could you find his clothes?” the same officer asked. How the fuck are they arresting me for this now? The voice in my head screamed as I put my jeans on one leg at a time, with my arms still bound behind my back.
“We are going to take these plastic cuffs off now, Cyrus, to put metal handcuffs on you. If you move or resist, we will use deadly force, do you understand?” one of the armed officers shouted.
“Yes, I am cooperating,” I answered as they performed the swap of arm restraints. Now out of the bathroom and back in the hotel suites’ main room, I watched as what looked like 30 officers searched the room, leaving no cubic centimetre untouched. My T-shirt and jumper were thrown over my head. Pushing my head down to waist height in front of me, while two officers either side held my arms up with one hand, and the back of my neck down with the other hand to stop me lifting my head, I was marched out of the room and then out of the hotel. Having been taken outside, I could now see the scale of the police’s operation mounted against me.
Police vehicles filled the hotel’s car park with cars, vans and jeeps. There must have been 30 vehicles, all with silent, flashing blue lights. They had kept their sirens off to avoid alerting me to their arrival. I was put in the back of a police car with three police officers inside. We were being followed by several police cars as we left the hotel. How are you going to prove this? It happened over three years ago, I thought as we drove. Worry really started to settle in when I realised the police were not taking me to our local police station; instead, we were leaving town via the motorway.
We arrived at Boyd House Police Station, Birmingham city centre, 20 minutes later. On the way there, the driver had broken almost every traffic law known to man—speeding, driving through red lights the lot. Just because you are a police officer, you can break the law, I thought to myself as I watched the driver doing as he pleased. The big electric blue gate to enter the police station opened as we drove in, followed by three other police cars. The officers that had transported me asked me if I understood why I had been arrested, but I didn’t answer. I just remain silent.
“If you get arrested, don’t say a word. Just ask for Mr G from GQZ solicitors, he will sort it out,” Bob had said after making me repeat what I had been told back to him. As I walked into the custody suite to confirm my name, the ‘desk sergeant’ read me my rights and confirmed the reason for my arrest.
“You are being charged with conspiracy to murder David Morris, with the following people. He then said Bob’s real name, Yax’s real name, Luke’s name and the big black guy’s real name. I couldn’t believe it.”Do you wish to make any comment to this allegation?" the sergeant asked.
“Yes, could you get me Mr G from GQZ solicitors, please,” I said as calmly as I could, considering my current circumstance.
“Yes, that shouldn’t be a problem; your mate (Bob’s real name) asked for the same guy,” the sergeant said informing me Bob was already in the same police station. “Could you put Mr Johnson in cell number five, please,” the sergeant said to one of the officers. No fucking way… I have to beat this and get the fuck out of here, I thought as I followed the officer to my cell.
Sitting on that thin blue plastic mattress, if you can even call it a mattress, gave me a lot of time to think, but the stress of what had just happened made thinking impossible. I didn’t know what evidence the police had to arrest me. Why had they arrested Bob? Most importantly, what was going to happen now?
The End…
Book two is fast-paced from page one as Cyrus is 26. It is the conclusion of Johnson’s journey.
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