Pot Luck

by Nick Fisher

  Matty not happy. Matty didn’t like the idea of tipping the pot into the water without any rope or buoy to mark it. But, he could see sense in what Adrian was saying; if they rounded the bend and saw a bunch of blue flashing lights parked up at Kitty K’s empty berth, they’d be caught with their thumbs stuck well and truly up their arses.

  Adrian wasn’t prepared to argue. No debate. Wasn’t taking the Kitty in the harbour with the pot on deck. They stash it beside the pier, or else he’s turning the Kitty round and taking her back out to sea.

  Matty hating to admit it, but Adrian’s plan had merit. Even if they berthed the Kitty and there was no Old Bill waiting, they’d still have to get the pot off the boat. Whether they carried it to the truck or brought the truck to the berth, there’d still be way too much messing around with a pot-load of hash, in the centre of town, in the middle of the night

  So, when the Kitty K glides in neutral into the thick inky shadow of the pier, Matty counts the railings along from the seaward end giving himself as clear a marker as he can, before slipping the pot off the gunwale into the dark water.

  Matty counting exactly 11 stanchions from the end and then pushing the pot off, the plastic waterproof liner behind the mesh catching a last glint of weak light, before disappearing into the black.

  Rich had stolen enough stuff from boats in the marina over the years to know exactly where the CCTV cameras are located and, more to the point, which ones are real. Didn’t matter too much tonight, because he’s still wearing his hoodie and he can just about hide his entire face inside it. Still, he doesn’t want to tempt fate. Rich has been caught out by CCTV camera footage twice before.

  Once, breaking into an old people’s home just outside Bridport. He’d thought the drug cabinet would be a really piss-easy nut to crack. And old people do have some very nice prescriptions. Between the 40 or so inmates he’d reckoned there’d be a whole mess of pharmaceuticals to pop, swap and sell. “Bound to be some Rich pickings,” he’d joked to Carole, this being one of his favourite word plays. Personally, he thought it was really clever, and was kind of bummed out that no one he ever said it to laughed more than a weak chuckle. Maybe was the way he said it.

  Anyway two things he hadn’t reckoned on in regard to the old folks’ home, one was the state-of-the-art sophistication of their CCTV system, and the other was the vigilance of the night sister. He never even found the drug cabinet, let alone got a look inside to see the quality and variety of the old people’s scripts.

  The second CCTV disaster was a classic. Not only did it originally feature on Crimewatch, but it also crops up regularly on Britain’s Dumbest Criminals. Which anyone might think would be an embarrassment amongst prison inmates, on account of it being televised proof of what a crap criminal Rich can be. But, in fact, the opposite was true. When his 20-second-long CCTV clip was broadcast as he was doing 18 months in Guy’s Marsh, a huge cheer went up in the rec room. Was so cool. Inmates slapping him on the back telling him he’s a ‘star’, for the next two weeks or so.

  It was a classic CCTV gaff. Mainly because it was so dumb. Rich and two black guys he’d met when he was doing a short stretch in Dorchester, had driven to Sidmouth to rob a Spar store, that turned out to be closed, for a refit. So they decided on the spur of the moment to go and rob the Tesco Express in the centre of town, instead.

  Rich went in, to buy a tube of Pringles and to case the set up, first off. Rich did the casing, on account of he was white. Sidmouth doesn’t see a lot of brothers, so the two sitting in the knocked-off Nissan Micra parked outside are going to stick out like hammer-thumped thumbs.

  Once he’d scoped the store and bought his Pringles, Rich gave the boys the thumbs-up, and the three of them slipped on their army surplus ski mask balaclavas, after a quick discussion about who was to do what when they went in, like which check-out cashier and which till each one of them was to intimidate and empty. The discussion taking place on the pavement two doors down, right outside the HSBC, a couple of yards from the ATM cash machine.

  And to be fair, it wasn’t the slickest game plan discussion. One of the black guys, Jai-Man, was as thick as a skip-load of thick shit. Rich had to keep repeating the same thing over and over again, about which cashier Jai-Man was to rob. He couldn’t get his thick head around whether it was the second one from the entrance door or the second one from the far end. In the end Rich had said to him really slowly and really loudly: “Just rob any fucking cashier what’s not being robbed by me or him. Get it? Don’t rob any the ones we’re robbing. Right?”

  At the time Rich was as nervous as fuck and adrenalin was pumping through his veins which had the effect of making his voice sound really high and squeaky. They had the ski masks on their heads, but not pulled down over their faces while they had their little pre-raid confab. Then once he’d finished their squeaky pep talk, they all pulled down their masks, Rich checking what his looked like in the reflection from the HSBC window. Before leading the way into Tesco Express.

  What none of them clocked at the time, because Rich was too wound up and the brothers were too dim, is that the HSBC cashpoint had a CCTV camera pointing straight out at the street recording everything that happened within a five-yard radius of the money dispensing machine 24 hours a day.

  The whole thing, from Jai-Man and the other one stepping out of the boosted motor to the three of them striding into Tesco Express with their ski gear in place, was perfectly recorded in a wide-shot complete with sound. When the series producer of Britain’s Dumbest Criminals first saw it, he nearly wet his pants.

  So now, Rich has learned to be wary of CCTV, which is why he chose to cross the bridge and climb down onto the nearest pontoon of the marina on the far side, away from the centre of town. He knows when you’re stealing from boats in the main marina, the far side near the fire station is the best place to start.

  The boats on the side furthest from the town centre are the smaller ones, the cheaper ones with the least impressive moorings. If you got a big boat that cost a lot of money, you want it moored in a place where everyone can see your big boat and admire it and envy you. And of course, you want it to be in the place with the best security, the brightest lights, and CCTV cameras that are actually plugged in.

  If on the other hand, your boat was small and cheap and not much to behold, you’d probably be happy over the far side in the gloomy shadow of the fire station, where the lights are dim, the CCTV non-existent and the mooring rents so much cheaper.

  Rich didn’t want to rob from a big boat on the east wall, not just because of the added security risk, which considering his current parole status was apt and pertinent, but because what he wanted to rob wasn’t something a big fancy boat would have. What he needed was something he’d be most likely to find on a small, cheap crappy boat, tied up against the harbour wall. What Rich wanted was an anchor. Not a big fuck-off ten kilo Brent anchor attached to several metres of eight-mill chain. No, Rich wanted to find a thin wire grapple from a dinghy, or one of those folding anchors you get, like on rubber tenders, with a length of thin rope attached to it. Something light enough to carry, small enough to hide up his hoodie, and nimble enough to chuck off the pier, without causing too much of a splash.

  In the front of a tatty fibreglass rowboat with an ancient Seagull outboard strapped to the transom, Rich saw a rusty grapple with a coil of sodden seagull shit-splattered rope, and his heart skipped a beat.

  When the Kitty K cruised towards her berth, engine off, all lights out, creeping towards the harbour wall in the thick silent blackness with only the glow of street lights to guide her, Matty really wanted to have a go at Adrian. The whole dock was totally fucking deserted. Not a policeman, coastguard, harbour master or any other fucker in sight, whatsoever. Matty could seriously have kicked off and had a right good go at Adrian for being such an over-cautious pussy, who just took an even bigger risk, by dumping their precious cargo, unmarked, over the side, by the pier stanchions.

  Matty could have rub
bed Adrian’s nose in it, but the truth is Matty was feeling a bit spooked now too. He looked at the smashed police tamper-proof seal lying on the deck and saw the tatters of blue ‘Police – Do Not Cross’ tape fluttering between the bollards on the top of the harbour steps, and he too now wanted to put as much distance between himself and the Kitty K as was humanly possible. If they were tying up and now carrying the pot off up onto the road that runs along the side of the harbour, in the glare of the street lights, they’d be feeling pretty fucking exposed. Truth is, he was glad not to be humping a heavy dripping pot full of someone else’s hash across town at this very moment.

  The Kitty’s buffs had hardly touched the wall before Matty and Adrian were scrambling up the metal ladders, hooking the mooring ropes around the bollards still strewn with broken blue sticky ‘Do Not Cross’ tape, and legging it across the street into the shadows.

  Adrian sprinting along the dark side of the lane leading towards The Loop car park and Matty trying to catch up with him. Matty wanting to beg a lift back to his flat. Adrian with no intention of taking Matty anywhere. Quicker he got home, quicker he got under the covers, and started pretending he’d been there all night, the more rock solid his alibi would be. If he didn’t want to be jammed squarely in the frame for busting the seals on the Kitty K and ripping her mooring ropes out taped restraints, then he needed to be back in bed with his wife before she discovered he wasn’t in bed with her.

  The one thing he could not rely on Helen to do, for him or anyone else, was to tell a lie.

  Robbie liked to do coke with Elsa, mostly because Elsa liked to do coke. Left to his own devices he’d probably never go and score a gram, just for his own consumption. And definitely he’d never go and score a whole eight-ball. An eight-ball of coke, on his Jack Jones, would last Robbie a whole year. But with Elsa around, they’d get through an eight-ball in a week, no problem. Elsa bumping twice as much as him. And then some.

  When she was on one, she was crazy for it and wouldn’t go to sleep for three nights in a row. She’d just do line after line, and then do mad shit, like dance or cook. She’d even do housework at three in the morning; cleaning the flat so it shone in every corner like a new pin. Then after three or maybe even four nights, she’d be begging Robbie to go and score some smack, or some pills; some downers to help her climb down off her eyeball-cracking high.

  Robbie, now he was a totally different kind of coke user. Could take it or leave it. He’d reach a 36-hour limit, and have to sleep it off. A good night cap; couple of stiff whiskies, maybe even a sleeper, a Mogadon, Tramadol, Xanax, temazepam or two, from the old bathroom cabinet, and he was gone. Sparko. He’d sleep 14 hours straight. Get up. Piss for England. Drink a couple of pints of water. Go back to bed for another ten-stretch, and when he woke up second time around, he’d be golden.

  Sure he’d need to eat a full English breakfast big enough to feed a rugby team; but once that grease and egg had soaked into his blood stream, he’d be 100 percent again and good to go. And afterwards, Robbie would not be inclined to touch the Charlie again for a couple of months, or more. Even if he still had a gram or two left kicking around the flat, he’d just wrap it up, stick it in the little drawer in the bedside cabinet thing and forget all about it, until the time felt right again, which could be ages.

  Elsa wasn’t like him. She could not have coke in the house without snorting it. She would have to finish every last crumb and lick every wrap paper clean, until her binge was finally over. Even then, she’d be debating scoring just one more gram, or maybe two, just to ‘tail off’ her buzz. Elsa did not have brakes. She had no natural ability to either stop or say no. If she was on one, she was full on. Pedal to the metal. Burning her candle at every end imaginable. Torching the fucker until it melted in a big pool of liquid wax.

  So it came as a big surprise to Robbie to realise he was physically addicted to cocaine. And that the reason he couldn’t sleep and was sweating so much his bed was wringing wet, like he’d pissed it, was because his body was reacting to the fact that its hitherto constant supply of cocaine had suddenly and emphatically stopped. Robbie had suddenly stopped using coke hundreds of times before, and felt nothing. Never missed a step, got on with life and work and everything – bish-bosh – like nothing was different. Which in his mind it wasn’t. One day he was doing a few lines. Next day, he wasn’t. That’s the way he liked it to be. You use drugs. You never let the drugs use you.

  Elsa was a whole different story. He knew pretty quickly she was an addict. She could not say no. And could not stop herself even if she wanted to. Which she didn’t. In fairness, Elsa was addicted to just about anything: coke, money, sex, shopping, gambling, shopping, coke, eating, lying, shopping, coke.

  Thing was, it didn’t make her a bad person. Quite the opposite. It made her a fine person. Full of life. Full of passions. Crazy. Funny. Lively. Excitable. She made Robbie’s life a mess. She spent all his money and made him neglect his business and got him smashed out of his can far too often than was good for his health. But she made him feel happier and more alive than any other person in his entire life made him feel.

  He would do anything for Elsa. He didn’t care what it would cost him. He really didn’t. He would become a martyr to her cause and he’d die a happy man, just to have been able to spend the time with her that he’d spent already. Even if there was no more fun to be shared with Elsa, he wouldn’t care, because in his eyes and in his heart, the times they’d shared together had been the best times of his life.

  Beside the bed, on the bedside cabinet that they’d bought together in Southampton Ikea, was a framed photo of Robbie and Elsa in the basket of a hot air balloon. It wasn’t a real hot air balloon. Not one of those ones that floats all over the countryside until it crash-lands in some farmer’s field somewhere. This is just the hot air balloon at the Jubilee Gardens in the centre of Bournemouth, which is attached to the ground by wires. During the summer it’s winched up to nearly a hundred feet every 20 minutes or so, and tourists and visitors and families pay to go up and look out over Bournemouth town one way, or out to sea and across to the Isle of Wight, the other.

  Just after they were winched back down to the ground, Elsa had asked the lady who was selling tickets to take a photo of her and Robbie. She has her arm around his neck and she’s pressing her cheek against his and grinning, a big open-mouthed grin for the camera. Her eyes wide, her face full of happiness.

  Elsa got the picture printed and put it in a picture frame that she’d bought in Ikea without Robbie knowing. She’d bought it, with her own money. Then she’d put the frame by his side of the bed with a red rose Sellotaped to it, for Valentine’s Day last year. They don’t have Valentine’s Day in Poland, she told Robbie, and she’d always wanted to celebrate it, back from when she was a little girl and first heard about it.

  Robbie cried when she gave it to him. Big blubbing sobs and tears, and she cradled his head in her arms. She laughed at his tears, kindly, not cruel. And told him he was “the sweetest man” she had ever known. Said it was like his heart was made of “mash mallow”. It was one moment of his life that he’ll never forget.

  And now as he lies in the bed, sweating, accepting that he’s gone and got himself all messed up and strung out on coke, he starts to weep all over again, as he looks at the photo propped on his chest. He now so wishes he’d saved the rose too. But when it wilted and went mouldy he’d thrown it away.

  Robbie was just wiping away the tears from his cheeks with the cuff of his sweat-stinking bathrobe, when he heard the noise downstairs, in the showroom.

  The unmistakable noise of a classic 1969 Chevrolet 350 engine with factory-fitted side exhaust ports and an all aluminium cylinder block, cranking over.

  Adrian wakes Helen just after 4.30 am and tells her he’s just got a call from Dougie, the skip on Nicola B. Dougie having some trouble getting her fired up, and needing a hand.

  “All right, darling,” Helen says brightly, but keeping her eyes firmly shut
. Her bright voice a total contrast to the unmoving expression on her face. Now, Adrian has his alibi.

  “Said he might be short of a deckhand, too,” Adrian tells her. “If he is, I might crew for him. Be cash in hand.”

  “O-K,” she said tunefully, her face still, like a burial mask. Adrian adding the bit about crewing, just in case things turn out to be complicated and he needs an excuse not to come home all day.

  He’d agreed to pick up Matty on his way into Weymouth and they’d planned to then drive the long way around town, along the Esplanade and into the Theatre Pavilion car park, down by the pier. They could park the truck along the side of the theatre and walk across to the short pier, without having to pass any of the crab boats or netters, who’d be starting to steam out, around 5.30.

  Even if it took them a while to hook out their stashed pot, no one would see them up there on the pier. The crab boats would be passing way below and most of their windscreens would still be misted, and most of the skippers and crew would be half asleep. They could dredge for the pot with a small anchor and if necessary, drag it out after the crab boats had all gone to sea.

  Once they’ve hooked out the pot, then they’ll run it back to Matty’s, where he’ll remove the kilo he’s agreed to sell to the Sikh guy in Bristol. Matty insisting the kilo was only a ‘test purchase’; the Sikh guy needing to check the ‘quality and logistics’ were smooth. Matty already talking like he’s some kind of big businessman. If they are smooth, then he said he’d go ahead and put in a ‘proper’ order. “Says maybe he’ll buy the whole lot,” says Matty. “His fucking watch alone must be worth five grand!” Matty totally impressed by the guy in the green turban.

  What Matty didn’t know yet is that Adrian is going to drive away with the other 21 kilos of hash in his truck, after they’d removed the kilo for the Bristol Sikh. And then he isn’t even going to tell Matty where it’s going to be stashed.