Pot Luck

by Nick Fisher

  Adrian walks to the back of the boat where the rope still attached to the rest of the shank of crab pots is tied around the sternpost. He picks up the scallop knife from the edge of the worktable and, with one swift sawing motion, slices through the rope. It sinks out of sight beneath the surface. The stuck shank of pots will have to stay stuck. Adrian isn’t hanging around. He bangs his way into the wheelhouse and slams Kitty in gear, ramming the throttle forward. Matty caught off balance as he sucks hard on the joint he’d rolled with the black hash. Tim stumbles against Adrian, who bounces him away with a hard shoulder barge.

  “We don’t want to be here,” says Adrian.

  “The pots?” asks Matty holding his breath, lungs full.

  “I cut them.”

  “No fucking way,” says Matty in a cloud of smoke. Then smiles. “Don’t want to leave any evidence. Smart thinking.”

  “Get the packaging bundled up before it gets blown over,” Adrian says to Tim. Tim points at the joint.

  “I haven’t had a toke on–”

  “Do. It.” Adrian’s eyes full of hate.

  Tim slouches out the door. Shooting a look at Adrian and starts gathering up packaging as it whirls around the deck.

  Matty exhales a huge lungful of smoke and sighs.

  “Well. Is it?” asks Adrian.

  “Fucking amazing,” says Matty.

  He holds the joint in front of Adrian’s face. “You got to, man.”

  Adrian looks at it. Smouldering, smoking, dropping little nuggets of burning hash crumbs onto the deck beneath his captain’s chair. He looks. A hesitation, a moment of mounting weakness. And then.

  “I don’t need to get fucked up and paranoid. Believe me, I’m paranoid enough already.”

  “Why you paranoid?”

  “Why you think?”

  “Should be creaming your pants, bruv. This. Just. Happened.” Matty grinning now. “To us. Not anyone else. To us. We just hauled up a pot-full of black hash. What the fuck!”

  Adrian not sharing his brother’s ecstasy. His face serious. Matty oblivious. Matty holding bars of black up to the light, studying them like they were antique works of art.

  “We smoke some,” he says. “Well, I smoke some, anyway. Sell the rest, and then we are pig-rich and pretty. We can stop doing this shit-arse job day after day.”

  “You not worried whose dope it is?”

  “Couldn’t give a toss. ‘Fact, that’s a lie,” says Matty. “Cause, it’s our dope now.”

  “Don’t worry someone’s looking for it?” says Adrian. “Maybe someone’s been out in the Hurds already, searching for a green buoy and all they seen is our buoy. A Kitty K buoy.”

  “Maybe no one’s looked yet.”

  “Ours the only buoy for miles.”

  “If they was looking. They’d be out here. Looking.” Matty indicates the horizon now.

  “The only pot buoys showing anywhere in the whole Hurds is ours.”

  “So what? We’re talking about drug smugglers,” says Matty. “Not crabbers. Look at the fucking knot they tied.” His thumb crooked out towards the deck where the shiny green buff and rope is still lying. “They don’t know one buff from another. And definitely don’t know ours.”

  “No?”

  “Wasn’t even marked. The ‘K’ was long washed off. Only we know that was our buff.”

  “Except no other boat from anywhere has any pots in the area.”

  “So?”

  “So anyone asking around would know Kitty K’s about the only crew stupid enough to work these grounds.”

  “Anyone asking who?” says Matty. “Who’s this doing this asking? And who’re they asking? Fucking Drug Smuggling Information Bureau?”

  “You don’t think whoever dropped that is going to come looking for it?”

  “Too bad.”

  Tim walks up to the wheelhouse door, his arms straining to hug a huge ball of plastic packaging. “Want me to chuck this over the side?”

  “Yes,” says Matty.

  “No!” shouts Adrian. Tim freezes, a step towards the gunwale. Matty looks at Adrian.

  “Got your fingerprints all over it. You really want it just floating around out here?” he says to Matty.

  Matty blinks a beat and turns to Tim. “No,” he says. “Ball it up. Stash it under the hatch. Forward, below the wheelhouse.

  Tim looks pissed off. A moment ago he thought he was just going to lob it over the side. Now he’s got a whole lot of faffing and sorting to do. He looks at Matty, knitting his brows, pouting.

  “Sort it out, and I’ll skin one up for you,” Matty says, seeing the disappointment in Tim’s puppy dog face. Tim grins. Happy again.

  “This is going to curl your fucking toes!”

  Adrian steers the boat in as fast and as clean a line directly away from the grounds. Engine roaring in his haste. While Matty skins up another joint.

  “What about him?” asks Adrian flatly.

  “What about him?”

  “You’re not worried whose dope it is. I suppose you’re not worried a 15-year-old boy knows exactly where we got it.”

  “Tim’s cool. Leave him to me.”

  “He’s 15. He’s got a mouth on him like a rabbit.”

  Matty prickly now. “Like I said. Tim’s cool.”

  Outside they hear the sound of the fore hatch slamming shut. Tim appears in the doorway holding up the digital fish scales. The ones they used for weighing cod and bags of cuttlefish in the days when they’re long lining and setting cuttle traps. Which is practically never, on account of the cod quota and the big slump in the cuttle price, since the Euro started to eat itself.

  Tim holding up the digital scales, grinning like he just discovered a gold seam running through the heart of the Kitty K.

  “Good thinking, Batman,” says Matty, as he hands Tim the joint and takes the scales.

  As Tim sparks up his own fake Zippo lighter, Matty jabs the hook of the digital fish balance through a section around the neck of the thick grey plastic bag that still has duct tape stuck to it. The duct tape stopping the hook tearing through the plastic. The T-shaped handle at the top of the balance is designed to be lifted with two hands. And it takes two hands for Matty to lift it off the wheelhouse floor.

  He lifts it in front of his face, arms vibrating from the strain of holding it steady. Adrian moving out his seat to stand behind Matty and read the LCD screen. The numbers fluctuating between 21 and 22 kilos. Matty sucks his teeth.

  “Fuck,” whispers Adrian.

  “You said it,” says Matty.

  “What’s it worth?” asks Tim. “What’s the street value?”

  “Street value?” says Matty.

  “When we sell it?”

  Matty now catching Adrian’s eye, a quick cautious beat.

  “How much does Afghani black make an ounce?” Adrian asks Matty.

  “Can’t say. No one ever got black. Always all skunk. Or brown hash. Moroccan. Lebanese. Shitty stuff.”

  “What d’you reckon?”

  “Hundred quid an ounce?” Matty guesses. “More maybe. People love this shit. Ounce lasts forever. Not like weed.”

  “So what? Hundred and fifty?”

  “Easy. No prob,” says Matty. “People bite your arm off.”

  As if on cue, Tim coughs up a lung of smoke and wobbles. Reaching his hand out to steady himself against the back of Adrian’s chair. Colour draining from Tim’s face, as his eyes droop.

  “See what I’m saying? One toke and he’s fucked.” Tim reaches out a wobbly hand to pass the joint to Matty. Like he can’t take another hit. Hand wobbling, eyes rolling up behind his eyelids. Matty watching him. “See what I’m saying. This shit is fucked!”

  Tim slumps in the corner of the wheelhouse, collapsing into a pile of waterproofs. Stupid stoned grin on his face, skin the colour of a turbot’s belly.

  Matty is doing the math. “Kilo is a thousand grams. Twenty-eight grams is an ounce.”

  “How many ounces in a k
ilo?” asks Adrian.

  “Don’t know. Never had a kilo hash before. Or skunk,” says Matty.

  “Twenty-eights into a thousand?” asks Adrian.

  “Come on, man. You was teacher’s pet. Not me.”

  Adrian flips over a page of his black book of pot shank shoots and picks up the small stubby red biro with ‘Betfred’ embossed around the chewed lid. He scribbles out the sum. His own brain rusty from years of neglect. He scribbles his answer out twice. And swears to himself. Matty holding out his mobile phone to Adrian.

  “It’s got a calculator.” Adrian doesn’t take it.

  “Just over 32 ounces in a kilo,” he says. “Twenty-one kilos. That’s… 672 ounces. Thereabouts. At 350 a pop? One-hundred-and-one-thousand pounds, total. Give or take.”

  “We. Are. Minted,” says Matty. Teeth clenched.

  “Fucking A,” says Tim weakly, his eyes still shut.

  “Someone loses over a hundred-thousand quid’s worth of top quality hash, and you still don’t think they’ll come looking?”

  “Adie, man. Don’t spoil the moment,” says Matty. “Don’t piss all over the bonfire. Think positive.”

  “Bollocks. I just–”

  “No. You bollocks,” says Matty sharply. “This a once in a lifetime event, big brother. Never going to happen again. Single best thing that’s ever going to happen to us. And you’re going to piss and whine it away? All worried up about someone who doesn’t fucking exist.”

  “They do exist.”

  “No they fucking don’t. Do you know them? Do you know their name? What fucking country they even come from? Come on!”

  “I know no one walks away from a stash like that, without hunting for it,” says Adrian. “Seriously hunting.”

  “There’s a hundred-thousand fucking miles of sea out here. Let them hunt all they want.”

  “There’s all this sea out here. But whoever dropped it, dropped it near, in sight of, a pot buoy. Our pot buoy. No one else’s pot buoy out here, ‘cos no one else is ever dumb enough to fish the Hurds.”

  “So what?” says Matty. “You keep saying ‘our buoy’. I don’t think they even seen our marker buoy. They prob’ly dropped at night. Pinged it as a waypoint. Texted the lat-long co-ordinates to the boys picking it up. Some numpties with a little 50 horse fucking day-fisher thing. They punched in the numbers, bounced the waves for 20 miles and come up empty-handed. End of story.”

  “They come all the way out here and they didn’t notice our pot buoy?” Adrian asks. “Only thing on the surface of the sea for miles around?”

  “Maybe they haven’t even been out to pick up yet,” says Matty, thinking aloud. “Maybe we beat them to it.”

  “If it was dropped last night, they’d be out to get it soon as it was light,” says Adrian. “Even if they come from Bournemouth, or even Cherbourg, they’d be here by now”.

  “Maybe they’re waiting for a weather window.”

  “You got a hundred grand sunk in a pot on the bottom of the Channel. Would you wait for a weather window? Would you fuck,” says Adrian. “That kind of money, you’d head out in a force nine in a fucking rowboat, to make sure you got here first.”

  “Maybe they had mechanicals. Maybe they couldn’t find it. We only found it ‘cos it snagged on our gear.”

  “But they’d be looking. They’d be out here, circling round, searching the shit out of the area. D’you see them?” says Adrian.

  “So they came yesterday. Found fuck all and went back home to shout at the geezers were supposed to make the drop,” explains Matty. “Now they think they been stiffed.”

  Seemed to Adrian he was the only one taking the trouble to look around. Check round 360, just to make sure wasn’t some wide boy speedboat, or a Customs’ patrol boat, bearing down on them.

  “Like I said, I don’t care, who’s it is. It’s mine now,” says Matty.

  “Yours?”

  “Ours.”

  Adrian checks the screen on the plotter. Just over two miles from the location where they found the pot. Jesus, why is the Kitty so slow! He wanted to put at least five miles between them and the mark. Five miles. Just get a bit more inshore. Bit more in range of Weymouth. Back to where some of the other potters are working. Back around where the whelkers are working the mud grounds and the dredgers are dragging for scallops. Let other boats see them. Kind of give the impression they’d been around the inshore grounds all day. If no one’s seen them all day, they’ll assume the Kitty K was out fishing the Hurds. But if other boats see them a couple of times through the afternoon, it’ll give the impression they’d been working the near grounds today.

  Unlike Matty, Adrian did care. Did care whose drugs they’d just hauled. And really did care if those people were ever likely to find out who it was hauled them. Was one thing having a couple of pissed off bad boys out looking for Matty. Matty could melt. Matty could run away. Matty could get out of Weymouth at any given moment, if he had the money. No one would give a shit. For Adrian, with Helen and Jack and Josh to look out for, skipping town would be complicated. Explaining to Helen why they were skipping town. That was a whole other thing entirely.

  On the horizon, to the north, Adrian can see the shape of two boats. They’re moving from the east, heading north. From their profile he can tell one is a dredger. Can see the big square gantry sitting like an arch over the deck at midships, where the steel basket dredges are hauled up before being emptied onto the deck.

  From under the control panel fuse board, he takes a small pair of greasy, fish-slime-smeared binoculars out a filthy carry case. They are Tasco, a good make, so he’s been told by Pete the Carpet. Pete being a bit of a twitcher at weekends. Adrian had bought them off Chris who’d found them left on his charter boat, Tiger Lily, by a punter who used them when they’d been fishing a competition. Used them to spy on competitors on other charter boats, see what end-tackle they were fishing. Said it gave him ‘the edge’.

  One of the lenses was fucked. Something inside wiggled around when he lifted them and one side wouldn’t focus properly. It focuses well enough for Adrian to make out the other boat on the horizon was a crabber, a Cygnus, with a rear mounted pot cage. It was the Nicola B. Adrian thought about radioing the skipper, Lyall, under some pretext. Ask his advice on something. Ask if he’s heard the latest Met shipping forecast maybe. Just something, just so he’d register in Lyall’s head, that the Kitty had been around in the vicinity of the near grounds. In case they needed an alibi. Alibi? What the fuck? Now he’s slipping into the world of CSI Miami. Jesus. Why was he so paranoid? Should he be paranoid? Should he just do like Matty says and thank God and start thinking about how he was going to spend his share?

  He glances over at Tim who’s still slumped against the oilskins, eyes shut, a snail-trail of drool leaking out one corner of his mouth. Then he looks across at Matty. Matty with an unlit half-smoked joint in his mouth and his phone in his right hand. In his left hand, Matty holding up one of the unopened slabs of black hash. Gold camel stamp and Arabic squiggle label facing upwards. Holding it at arm’s length, against the backdrop of the metal sink drainer, littered with the king size Rizlas and Dorchester Menthols. Now pointing the phone’s built-in camera.

  “The fuck you doing?” says Adrian.

  “Documenting the moment, bro. Moment our lives changed un-fucking-recognisably.” The phone camera snapping as it flashes its tiny flash. Adrian’s jaw drops. Can’t believe his eyes.

  “You mad, or stupid, or taking the piss, or what?”

  “Relax. It’s only a photo,” says Matty.

  “Exactly. It’s a photo!”says Adrian.

  “Could be fake. No one can prove nothing from a photo. This could be cardboard.” He waves the hash block.

  “You’re messing with me, right?” Adrian not believing his ears either. Was his brother really this stupid?

  “You look on Facebook,” argues Matty. “You see all kinds of shit. Yardie gangbangers posing with AK47s and nine-mil Glocks and shit
. You think them are real guns? Huh? No one believes nothing they see in photos no more. Here…” Matty holds the slab of dope up to Adrian’s chest.

  “I’ll do one of you. Mr Big Time Drug Smuggler.”

  Adrian snatches the slab from Matty’s hand and stands to face him. “You really thinking of posting photos of this on Facebook?”

  “Course I’m fucking not,” says Matty. “I’m only messing with you.” But Adrian could feel sweat gathering at the base of his neck and a shiver chilling down his spine. His safety. Helen’s safety. The safety of his two sweet, innocent snot-picking boys now rested partly in the hands of his brain-fried little brother. Matty was right what he said about their lives having just changed – in so many ways. Adrian backing his face out of Matty’s face and sitting back down, now pointing the Kitty towards the other two boats, the throb of her engines keeping rhythm with the throb of blood in his temples.

  After another two miles steaming, Adrian sees a few more Weymouth boats, and they see him. He radioes Lyall, first on Channel 16, the official Coastguard-monitored channel, then on Channel 72. And tells him the impellor on Kitty’s water pump is cracking up and asks Lyall if he’s carrying a spare impellor. Lyall isn’t. Or if he is, he isn’t about to give it to Adrian and Matty. Lyall hates Matty. Has done for years because Matty sold him a 10-horse Honda outboard, what was nicked. And when Lyall found out it was nicked, he asked Matty for his money back, in exchange for the motor back. Lyall didn’t want to own a stolen engine. Even if it was cheap. Lyall being a very straight sort of guy.

  Matty told him not to be a pussy and refused point blank to reimburse Lyall. Matty hadn’t stolen the motor. But he knew it was stolen when he sold it to Lyall. In the end Lyall dropped the motor in the sea off Portland Bill, a couple of miles out, on purpose. Just couldn’t live with it. Couldn’t even bring himself to try and sell it on eBay. Not his thing. So Lyall chucked away 210 quid. Just spunked away on account of Matty, who of course told everyone what a pussy Lyall was to do such a stupid thing. Lyall was happier losing the money than living with something on the back of his boat that by rights wasn’t his. Just the way Lyall’s mind works. Not Matty’s.