Waging War To Shake The Cold

by Wild Wolf Publishing

  “Right, I’m off out,” she said. “There’s a casserole in the oven and there’s oven chips if you reckon that’s not enough. It will be ready in an hour so I’m sure your mate can manage to feed you tonight.”

  Kats looked her over. She’d changed from the sloppy jeans and T-shirt she’d been wearing for the drive to a short black skirt and blouse, and she was looking pretty hot. It’s not the kind of thing he would ask Pete but he had to wonder if losing his legs had caused any problems in other departments. Carole had the look of a woman on the edge of regret and Pete was too self-absorbed, or maybe just too smashed, to notice.

  “We’ll be fine babes – you have a great time and we’ll see you when you get back. Kissy kissy…” Pete smiled at her receding back. They heard the door close, and shortly after, the car start in the driveway.

  “Dunno what I’d do without her yer know,” he said mistily.

  “Hungry?” asked Kats. “‘Cos am bloody Hank Marvin. You got any bread while we wait for that stew?” And with that he headed off to the kitchen to forage.

  “Who the fook is Hank Marvin?” said Pete to his receding back and immediately got a bout of the giggles.

  Chapter 8

  They ate with full plates balanced on their laps, drinks in one hand and forks shovelling the food down as only the inebriated can. Afterward they drank, smoked, and reminisced, cutting across each other’s stories and laughing uproariously at shared memories.

  “Remember when…. daft old guy didn’t see it coming… his nuts just swelled up like balloons… fucking officers… he was so pissed off he fell out the APC… smoke grenade went off in his pack… worst rations I’ve ever had and that stupid git ate everything in sight… never had the shits like it in my life… geezer just ran the opposite way with tracers bouncing all around him… now she was a real babe wasn’t she…”

  “So Kats,” Pete had finally gotten to it. “What the bloody hell are you into now then? And please, no bullshit mate. This is Pete you’re talking to o’rite?”

  “Well, ye know how it goes when you get demobbed. What choices do ye have? I can drive trucks, I can handle myself in tight spots, I can get in and out of places without being seen, I can disappear when I need to, I can even kill people. How many options do we have mate?”

  “Yeah yeah yeah mate, we’ve all heard those sob stories before,” he was slurring. “But not everyone ends up doing what you’re doing, do dey now? I mean, there are proper jobs out there you know?”

  “Whit the fuck urr ye tryin’ tae say then Pete?” challenged Kats, the combination of alcohol and anger making his hard Glaswegian accent come through even stronger. “Spit it oot.”

  Pete looked warily at him, fingering the glass of vodka on the table by his chair and didn’t push it. Instead he shrugged and started to build another joint.

  Kats swirled his drink while Pete lit up, the sweet acrid smell drifting over them both. He knew he wouldn’t be offered a toke, Pete knew him better than that, so he waited while his friend inhaled a few to take the last of the sting out of the situation and killed time by scanning the furniture and decorations in silence: second hand three-piece suite; old and tatty wallpaper; flaking paint on the window frames.

  The cabinet by the door held a variety of memorabilia from Pete’s service days. Some campaign ribbons in their boxes, an old dagger, his dog-tags mounted on a piece of cardboard and, Kats noted with a smile, he had the CRAP award in there.

  “I didn’t know you had that man?” he said.

  “Wor? Oh, that,” said Pete. “It’s about the only thing that meant anything from the whole shitty war Kats. I won it so many times that Nugget made me another one to take with me when they sent me off after the accident.”

  They both laughed, the last of the argument gone like dew on summer grass.

  “Happy days eh?” Pete nodded silently.

  “Look man, I don’t like this any more than you do, but I did try. I got a job after three months, in a big retail warehouse stacking pallets and shit. Really boring but it paid the bills, ye know? Anyway, the chargehand was a bit of a wanker and he clearly had a thing against ex forces guys. Always picking and needling, ye know how some guys are on civvy street, think they’re harder or better than you or some shit. Anyway, one day he tells me that the toilets were blocked and he needed me to clean them. I looked at him and said ‘No way mate!’ And he says, ‘Thought you military boys were used tae shovelling shit’. I tried to walk away, and he yells after me, ‘Heh, arsehole, I didnae dismiss ye did I?’ So I turned, walked back and climbed right up into his face, like you do, and eyeballed him. By now, though, he had an audience, so he says, ‘If you don’t clean out that bog you’ll be out of here in five minutes… mate.’ So I said, ‘Make me… if you’re man enough… mate,’ and waited. Of course when he threw his punch he’d have been as well hanging out a sign. I just grabbed his hand, flipped him over my back onto the deck, opened his hand up and broke his middle finger, just like basic training says you should,” Kats finished with a grin and flourish of his hand.

  Pete bellowed with laughter, “That’s gonna look fookin’ brilliant on your CV mate!”

  Kats just smiled. “Yeah… well… he was right about one thing; I was out of there in five minutes.” He sipped his drink ruefully. “I half-expected the tosser to press charges but nothing happened, so I ‘spose his pride was more damaged than his hand. So Petey boy, there’s me without work, without money, without references, and I gets to thinking ‘Where’s my share of the good times? Why did I risk my life for an ungrateful bastard like him? Who’s gonna look out for me if I don’t look out for myself?’ and so I makes that call, ye know what I’m talking about don’t you?”

  Pete knew. Almost every ex-soldier knew how to make a connection with gangland.

  Gangsters like to cuddle up to soldiers, mainly because they are the main source of their weapons when they are in the forces and the main source of their muscle when they leave.

  It wasn’t too hard to make contact if you wanted to, especially if, like Kats, you grew up in the kind of housing scheme where the main career options for young adult males were selling drugs, petty crime, or the Army. Very often it was a combination of all three.

  “A buddy from the old days, Boots, got me in with a local team and I did some work for them,” continued Kats, giving Pete the quick version. “Nothing too heavy or violent like, just robbery on the fly. Easy stuff. But they were taking too big a share and I wanted a bit more for myself to cover the risk. You know how it goes; you take a small piece at the outset and then you get more as you produce more. I was a good earner; all my lifts were clean, easy to sell, untraceable and no-one got hurt. So it was the right time to step up my share of the earnings. Trouble was, the boss sent the wrong guy to do the negotiations and they got a little out of hand. It all ended badly as you saw: that poor old bint getting whacked like that.” He paused for a sip of his drink and thought about what he’d learned of the woman from her journal.

  “What a sad old lady she was, but then if being a saddo was a good reason to die suddenly half the bloody country would be topped overnight. Isn’t life strange man? Ye get up, ye get in your car, ye head for wherever it is you’re going and then for some reason you have a minor problem, the kind that on any other day would just make you late for work or whatever, but this day, for no particular reason that anyone can explain, ye find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time and – bang – you’re gone. When I saw her lying there in the muck I thought ‘Christ – that could have been my gran’… except that Isa canny drive of course…”

  Pete laughed out loud at the absurd turn Kats monologue had taken and Kats had to join in. It wasn’t with disrespect to the woman’s death; it was to cope with having to live with the knowledge of it.

  “But I know what you mean mate,” Pete said as their mirth subsided. “Look at me, one day I’m playing five-a-side with you and the rest of the lads and the fookin’ next I’m medi-vac
’d out to…” he waived his hand around the room, “This. It’s the same for any soldier, you know that. You never know what is gonna happen when you wake up every morning, especially out there. Just because you’re a non-combatant doesn’t mean that bad things can’t happen to you out of the blue mate. There are no guarantees Kats, life is shit, end of.”

  “Amen to that Pete.” He poured another shot for them both, the previous tension dissipated in the common bond of the hard done by ex soldier.

  “So what was the problem with the guy you were negotiating with?” asked Pete.

  “Ach he’s a tit. He’s the main guy’s son and he’s no’ a patch on his faither. I reckon I could have dealt with the faither but when this wee prick showed up I knew it would be trouble. The funny thing is though; what they wanted from me was the problem rather than what I wanted from them.”

  “How d’ye mean like?”

  “Well, they seemed to be offering me a fifty-fifty split which was pretty tidy like, but to get that they wanted me to get more involved in their ‘family business’ as they called it. Tell ye the truth, what I already know about their family business makes me sure I don’t want to know any more about it. Everybody round our way knows these guys, they control the drugs and the women and if anything is nicked or done over on our estate then they’re behind it. I was lucky when I was growing up as the faither was just startin’ his career when I was running with The Young Team, before I went in the army like, ‘cos I hear that most of the young guys aren’t given much of a choice but to be involved with them in some way nowadays. So I wasn’t too keen to get deeper in with them now, but that was only one bit of it, the other bit was even harder to deliver.”

  “What was the other bit then?”

  “They were looking for contacts from me.”

  “Contacts?”

  “Aye, that’s what they said. Contacts from ‘over there’ that would help them with what they called their ‘import business’.”

  “Import business? Well now yer know den mate, dat’s drugs is what dat is.”

  “Well I didnae think it was cuddly toys Pete, geeza fuckin’ brek. You know as well as me that some guys out there know how to get their hands on stuff and also know how to get it back here. That’s not a road I want to travel Pete, you know me better.”

  “Yer mate, I know, you’ve told me often enough how you feel about this stuff,” he waved his lit joint vaguely in the air. “So what are you going to do?”

  “I dunno man. I cannae go back up there until I get a handle on what the fallout from that crash will be, and I need tae put out some feelers to the big boss man to see how pissed off he is with me. Mibbe I can make it right, mibbe no. I just need some time tae get ma head round it, that’s all. The problem is Isa, she’s no’ doin’ so well Pete. I’d bugger off out of the country if it wasn’t for her.”

  Pete was quiet for a little while. Then he said, “Man… I owe you for pulling me out of that Warrior that night. You can stay here forever if you want.”

  “Thanks,” was all Kats could say. It was all that was needed. They looked at each other, measuring themselves and then smiled simultaneously.

  “Right! Let’s get legless!” yelled Pete. “No… wait… I’m already halfway there!” He roared at his own black humour, ending in a coughing spasm.

  Eventually, after the vodka was finished and a case of beer breached, Pete slumped forward and began snoring softly. Kats thought about trying to get him to his bed, and just as he was about to have a go, he heard the wheezing squeak of a cab outside. The door opened and in came Carole. She was a little unsteady on her feet and when she saw Kats she did a quick double take, clearly having forgotten why and how he came to be there.

  “I forgor-about you,” she confirmed with a slight slur. Then she noticed Pete. “Shit. Every bloody night he’s like this these days.”

  “I thought you had the car?” said Kats.

  “I did have but I left it in town and got a cab back. Felt like I needed a drink meself tonight, God knows I’ve bloody earned it.”

  “I was just gonna put him to bed,” said Kats.

  “No. I can do it. I’m used to it. It’s all I ever seem to do these days is run after him.”

  “Come back for a drink after you do it then,” said Kats, perhaps a little too hopefully.

  “Hah! What’s with you ex-army guys? You another one of Pete’s mates sniffin’ round ‘cos his old lady might be in need of a service then? They’ve all been here yer know. It gets so bloody boring and it’s so bloody predictable. As if I’d be desperate enough to shag any of you losers ‘cos Pete is…” she trailed off and Kats could see a tear in her eye. She brushed at it fiercely, “Some kinda mates you’ve all turned out to be.”

  With that, she wheeled the prone Pete away through the door and into their bedroom, leaving Kats on his own.

  Well well, so now I know.

  He turned on the TV. The late news had just started and his recent crash was headline number one. The police had DJ and his buddies in custody because of the gun and the death of the old woman, obviously, so that would be something else to reckon with Big Davie about too. Mind you, he did have a legitimate argument: if DJ hadn’t used the gun then this wouldn’t have happened.

  Uh-huh…like the Big Man will be interested in that particular line of reasoning.

  He flicked the TV off after making sure there was no identikit image of him or anything: the police were conducting enquiries but they had nothing much to go on apart from some tracks through a corn-field and some prints and stuff from the cab. No-one in Big Davie’s outfit had talked either, but he knew that was only because they wanted to take care of business themselves.

  He lay back on the sofa, his bed for the night, and chewed over recent events. On balance he thought that if he was caught by the police it would be a safer and healthier bet, but with the death of that woman it would now run at least to a manslaughter charge. It was a shit situation for sure.

  Absently he flicked through the pages of the book he’d taken from the dead woman.

  I suppose I’d better get shot of this as well.

  Then something caught his eye. At the back were several pages, neatly lined like an accounting ledger. Each page was laid out in columns. The first was a couple of letters, looked like initials; then a date; then an amount; then the name of something, looked like a company or business of some kind; then a letter, either “D” or “W”. Scanning down he could make out patterns of initials and he figured out that D looked like a deposit whilst W was a withdrawal. From what?

  He read and re-read it several times, but nothing obvious was jumping out. Flicking through it a final time he came across what looked like a summary sheet. There was a big number at the bottom of it prefixed by a £ sign.

  “Well I’ll be dipped in shit…” he whistled to the lounge wall.

  Chapter 9

  “It wisane ma fault dad, honest!” DJ was frightened of his father when he was in a rage. Everyone was frightened of his father when he was in a rage.

  Not that it was easy to tell when the Big Man had lost it, unless you knew him well that is. Sometimes all that showed was a slightly heightened colour in his cheeks, or a glazing of the eyes – the thousand yard stare – or perhaps a curl of the left side of his upper lip. Small things, yet of great import to those in the know.

  “So, it wasn’t your fault that you got pissed before you went there. It wasn’t your fault that one of your half-wits had a shooter with him. It wasn’t your fault that ye couldnae even talk tae the man withoot tryin’ to be sumthin’ that yer no’ and ye’ll never be!”

  He was smacking DJ in the forehead with his knuckles harder and harder as he spoke until he crescendoed with a resounding slap across his son’s face. The guard in the corner chuckled quietly and turned away covering his mouth as Big Davie spun around to glare at him.

  “Whit the fuck are you smirkin’ at?”

  DJ saw his chance. “Look dad, I know I
didnae do whit ye said but he was pure askin’ for it man, ye know that. He was far too gallus, he widnae listen tae whit we were offerin’ him. You’ve said it yersel plenty a times, he’s a loner and loner’s are trouble. I thought I was doin’ you a favour by puttin’ him in his place… ye’ve always told me they need to be put in their place from time tae time or they just take the piss…” he trailed off as Big Davie stared him down.

  “Ye might have done me a favour right enough, if you’d been man enough to pull it off that is. But instead you’ve now given me a fuckin’ monumental headache. Have you any idea how many favours I’m havin’ tae use up just to get to speak to you in this room? Favours I’ve earned over the years and favours I was savin’ for a real emergency? Not one created by a stupid wee wank like you who couldnae follow the simplest of instructions. When I git you out of here, if I git you out of here, boy, you’d better git yersel straightened out or I’ll be doin’ it for ye. Clear?”

  DJ nodded, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

  The Big Man glared at his only son half in disgust, half in pity, and wondered how he’d ended up with one so short-sighted and stupid. He must take it from his mother, that’s all there was to it.

  He’d tried to show him how to handle people, kept him close when he did his deals, taught him the ropes of the business, but no, DJ just wanted to showboat and play the wee hard man.

  “You’re aye too ready with yer fists or a blade or a bottle son. I don’t need any more foot soldiers, Boots runs that side of the business and he’s got it covered. Whit I need is someone I can rely on tae speak for me when I’m no’ there. The number of scrapes I’ve baled you out of already; and now this. Fuckin’ guns, in broad daylight, on a fuckin’ motorway...whit the fuck possessed ye?”

  No answer. He sighed.

  “DJ, son, sometimes all I need is for ye tae do exactly whit I tell ye. I thought I’d made myself clear about whit I wanted. All as I asked ye tae do was tae carry a message, a simple message, tae him. Make him a straightforward offer. That was it.”