by Robert White
Her natural drawl was never hidden when we were alone. Only once in public did her accent become mid-Surrey and businesslike. She slid her long fingers down the centre of my spine and displayed perfect white teeth.
“I got a surprise for you, sweetie.”
I was definitely all ears. I always liked Tanya’s surprises. Small round Yoji Yamamoto glasses appeared from a Chloe clutch bag. She slipped them on and virtually purred.
“We goin’ in style tonight, man. I got new wheels. I’m driving.”
She strode away and I followed. I watched the shimmer of her muscular legs in the half-light. With the movement, I caught a glimpse of a slip under her red dress. She was wearing something underneath. It aroused my curiosity.
Later, when we were alone, I knew I would find out exactly what it was. Patience always was a virtue.
Within a minute we were out of the underground garage and in the cool evening Manchester air. The late sunshine had turned the city crimson. It was my favourite time of day.
Jaguars have the nickname ‘The Big Cat’. Recent publicity involving Spice girl types and Manchester United footballers have raised the profile of Jaguar’s newer models.
They make good motors, for sure, but the new models just couldn’t hold a candle to what was in front of me. Pure unadulterated world class.
The 1962 Series 1 E-Type drop-head sports car in British Racing Green paint gleamed in the fading sun. Top down, black leather interior with cream trim by Connolly, what more could a guy want? I slid into the passenger seat and smelled the Wilton and walnut mixed with summer evening air. Everything was original, even the valve radio. Perfect. As Tanya slipped in next to me and fired her up, I was no longer sure if I was in Salford or heaven.
That sound. Nothing sounds like a Jag.
The drive to Solo’s, my favourite restaurant in the city, was a sheer pleasure. Who needs drugs? This was better than coke, speed or ‘E’.
We parked. Tanya didn’t even bother to lock the Jag. She’d left the top down too. No chance of rain. No chance of anyone stealing it either.
Tanya and her two brothers ran all the coke and grass into Moss Side. If you don’t already know the area, let me advise you. Don’t get caught there after dark. In the late nineties, Manchester got the nickname ‘Gunchester’, simply due to the level of gun crime in Moss Side. Tanya Richards and her family played no small part in that problem.
No one with any sense at all steals anything from the Yardies. The Jag would be there when we came out.
Solo’s had a reputation for fine European cuisine. Situated off Deansgate Lock, it was nestled between Manchester’s trendiest bars. Fortunately it was avoided by the local paparazzi, and therefore Manchester’s soap stars. A double blessing, if you asked me.
I approved of the service and the fact it was small and personal. They knew me and what I liked. The tables were sufficiently far apart as to observe privacy. Bach filtered through the air.
Each place setting was exquisite and boasted nineteenth-century silverware in a cardinal pattern, the makers mark stamped in the spoon bowl. Cream linen napkins with a damask rose to one corner lay to the left of each diner. Riedel crystal wine glasses completed the classic setting.
Tanya was a vegetarian, so the chef cooked a special entrée and main course for her. She was finishing her pumpkin with red curry as she spoke.
“I have a problem.” She wiped her full lips with the linen napkin, “I need you to sort it for me, baby. I can’t do it myself; a black girl would stand out too much and cause major drama.”
I listened intently. This story sounded profitable and if I was to do as Spiros had suggested earlier, and relocate, I was going to need all the money I could get. She continued, “Our boys sent a courier to the other side of the tracks to collect some very special produce. Not a great deal, five grand’s worth, a sample. We never received the gear.” Her accent slipped and her tone turned menacing. “The bombaclat steal our cash too. Our boy was found yesterday by the law, with his head caved in. He was my cousin.” She reached across the table and took my hand. It actually felt good. “Stephen, this has got to be put right.”
I felt myself nodding slowly. You see, what Tanya meant by ‘the other side of the tracks’, was Salford. Not the part where I lived, but the estates where those ancient gangs began their brutal trade. If Moss Side was the black ghetto of Manchester, then Salford was the white. Being black, her chances of recovering her brother’s investment and revenging the untimely demise of her cousin, quietly and without fuss, would be near impossible.
Tanya and I were in the same business. The collection and delivery business; she hadn’t trained in the military, but I could vouch from experience, she was a very fine operator. We had met several years earlier when we were providing security for two high-flying dealers of different skin colours. Hers was buying, mine selling. When the deal was done they celebrated, we talked and the rest was history as they say. Anyone who has underestimated Tanya due to her sex is probably dead.
Don’t get me wrong. We were far from lovers. Like I said, I had been unable to hold down any kind of relationship for a long time. I was married once and that was enough for me. This was fun sex and money. We had the same taste. Neither of us asked questions, it wouldn’t have been professional, and for some reason my head had allowed this one woman to become close. The mind is a strange thing, eh? No, I wasn’t in love but it was probably as near as I could ever get. Knowing Tanya, it wouldn’t do wonders for your life span if you messed with her head. Maybe that was the reason I allowed her to get physically close to me. Maybe I’d just got addicted to danger and dangerous women.
Her eyes took on a cold look as she spoke, “You know if my brothers had their way it would be a bloodbath. They want revenge for our cousin.” She softened for a second and stroked my face with a red talon that matched her dress perfectly.
“You know me, I’m into subtlety, baby.”
Her expression changed again. “The shit that is responsible thinks he is protected in his little pork chop kingdom. I want you to show him he isn’t and that he can’t fuck with us.”
She picked up a brandy balloon and warmed the liquid with her large hand.
“But I want it so just his boys know we have taken action, not the whole fuckin’ world.”
A drop of the Rémy dangled from her lip. She recovered it with her tongue, which looked unusually pink against her beautiful coffee skin.
The mixture of her beauty and dangerous persona made her incredibly attractive to me. I felt a stirring sensation in my groin.
Still business came first. “It’ll cost you fifteen, plus half of what I recover,” I said without any emotion.
She took on a look that I knew only too well.
“Do it for ten and I’ll let you drive the E-Type to my place.”
It was time to go.
I’m not going to tell you the bedroom antics. What I will tell you is, I drove the car and I got my fifteen plus.
Oh, the slip, remember I mentioned the slip under her dress? It was a deep burgundy crochet and lace by Janet Reger. If you wanted one for your wife they’re two hundred and twenty-five quid.
Worth every penny.
Hereford 1996
Jimmy Two Times and Butch had collected me on their second pass at the DLB. Neither asked what I’d seen and I didn’t mention it. We drove in silence for over two hours and headed straight for the airfield, boarded the already waiting Hercules, and were back in ‘H’ in time for breakfast and debrief. I’d figured the guy in the suit must have been DEA rather than CIA. The other man was Major Charles Williamson. He ran the whole army ground operation in East Belfast. He had the reputation of getting the job done, but not always by the book. I’d met him on several occasions and didn’t care for him. Why he needed to collect the bag personally was beyond me. I put it from my mind. When you are part of any operation, it isn’t always necessary to see the big picture. I was also delicate enough not to mention
any of it in my briefing notes.
I took the debriefing, Des was still over the water and not present. He was probably digging himself another hole in the freezing Irish countryside, whilst Butch, Jimmy and I drank tea and ate bacon sarnies. Once the Head Shed were happy that the operation had gone off as planned, I took a walk to the office and dropped in a leave request to start with immediate effect.
There was nothing left for me to do other than get home to Cathy and catch up on some much needed kip.
As I pulled into the drive Cathy was in the garden digging out borders. She loved gardening and as we hadn’t been in the house long, she was keen to make her mark on it. We had decided to buy, rather than rent. It was an old house and was in need of some major decorative work but was basically sound and within twenty-five minutes’ drive of the camp. The old lady who had been the previous owner had let the garden grow wild and the paintwork peel. Cathy and I looked forward to turning it into a family home to be proud of.
She wore faded jeans and Wellingtons with a thick Aran knit sweater to keep out the chill of the February wind. As she saw the car, she pushed the spade into the damp earth and left it upright. She strode over, and by the time I got the car door open, she was standing in front of me smiling and beautiful.
Cathy was twenty-four, petite framed, and just over five foot three. She had long raven-coloured hair that was as unruly as her persona and I loved her more than life itself.
“Took your time, didn’t you?” She had her hands on her hips and a broad smile on her face. Her usually pale complexion was flushed pink from the mix of her exertions in the garden and the cold wind.
I never mentioned work, but she had obviously checked with ‘H’ that the Herc had landed three hours earlier.
“Well, you have my undivided attention for the next two weeks, I’ve got some leave.”
Cathy let out a little shriek of delight and gripped me around the neck. She looked up into my face; her eyes were like the darkest chocolate. One disobedient strand of hair blew across her face in the breeze and she tried to blow it away with her mouth and failed miserably. I assisted and tucked it behind her ear.
“Kiss me,” she said.
I did and we both walked inside. The garden could wait a while.
We spent the whole day and the following night in bed. We made love to exhaustion, ate pizza and drank wine.
The following morning I left her to go to the local DIY store and buy paint. It was the last time I saw her alive.
Manchester 2006
The job for Tanya and the boys was proving far from easy. I’d spent three days sitting on and around the plot; a three-bedroom maisonette built in the 1970s, smack in the heart of shit land. Jimmy the skydiver’s flat was a palace compared to this gaff. The makers of Shameless would have run a mile.
It took me the first two days to ID the target. I was beginning to think he’d done a runner.
I’d bought a 1987 Golf GTi for the job. It stood me at five hundred quid from a local auction. I paid cash and gave false details. It was disposable at that money. I cleaned it and only ever went near it wearing surgical gloves. Flesh-coloured were the best, they didn’t attract any attention. At first glance they were invisible.
The reason this job was difficult was Tanya’s specific instruction. She insisted the guy knew why he was getting the good news, but she wanted it done quiet. It had to look like an accident but his mates had to know why he was being taxed and who was collecting. It was all about face and reputation.
This was a dress down job and fed my obsessive compulsive disorder to excess. The car was fine, one of many hot hatches floating around the estate and I had a soft spot for V-dubs as they reminded me of my youth.
I looked younger than my forty-five years, but not young enough to wear baggy fuckin’ pants and a hoodie from poxy Top Man.
Still, I looked and felt like a reject from Oasis. I bought cheap jeans that were once black but I boil-washed them with a little bleach to give them that, ‘I’ve had these for too long,’ look. A dark blue V-neck sweater from Famous Army Stores with a hole in the elbow covered a plain white T-shirt. The only decent things I had were the latest K Swiss trainers. I could get away with those. Every little shit on the estate seemed to have expensive runners.
I must say though, if I had to wear the Polaroid shades for any longer than the four days I’d allowed for the job, I was sure I’d go blind.
I decided to blag my way into the plot on the pretext of a small buy. There were enough customers using the place. One more wouldn’t be unusual. I watched maybe twenty or so sad fucks knock on the door each day. Tanya had given me a brief and I knew the target by name and several of his associates. With that knowledge and a wave of a wad, I had a good chance of getting in the gaff and sorting out the boy.
The target was Alfie Summers. He was just twenty-two. He would not see twenty-three. Remember the Shogun brigade I told you about? This boy was typical. A big daft lad from the heart of Salford with his father in Strangeways for blagging and his mother shoplifting more razor blades than Wilkinson Sword could produce, he hadn’t much to lose. He thought he was on the up and up. The best thing that ever happened to him was selling his first bag of grass. Drugs were his escape route. Not frightened to get his hands dirty in the process, he’d done eighteen months in a young offenders’ institution for tying a seventy-two-year-old women to her wheelchair while he robbed her of her pension and her TV. Once out, he thought he was a bad lad and went from minor deals in grass to moving five grand’s worth of charlie around town each and every night. He was making five hundred quid a day and all the coke he could shake a stick at. He, like all dealers, eventually got greedy.
You see this whole job was about a designer drug. Alfie boy had stumbled upon a line of gear, probably an E/amphet mix. He and his cronies had put it on the street and it had been selling like the proverbial hot cakes.
Alfie was making a fortune. By his standards he was king of the hill. He’d even given himself the nickname, The Lieutenant.
Tanya’s crew had been told by their runners and muscle that a new product was available on the street and wanted part of the action, so they set up a buy. If the gear was as good as they were told, then they had the capability to obtain the chemical formula and manufacture it themselves. They sent their youngest cousin Vivien, a seventeen-year-old kid with no form, to do the business so Alfie wouldn’t suss it was Yardie cash. Worst case scenario for Tanya’s crew was that they moved the pills and made a profit.
Problem was, Alfie thought he was fuckin’ Al Pacino. He’d convinced himself he was big time. Now anyone with an ounce of sense knows, before you go taking five grand of anyone’s cash and smashing their runner’s brains out with a house brick, you find out who you’re going to upset. It’s a dangerous game and Alfie was probably using too much of his own product to know better.
From what I’d seen, there hadn’t been a delivery to the house in three days. That would be my cue. Then all this shit would be worth it and I would be on an earner.
In the late afternoon of day four I followed matey boy to his local. It was typical of the area, all spit, sawdust, Prada and Burberry. I sat on a filthy stool, just as I had the day before, and listened to Alfie’s inane macho conversation. He was describing his third teenage conquest of the week and I was just about to burst when the dick-spring announced to half the boozer that his new batch of super kick-ass whiz was on its way. It was happy days. I’d started to spend my fifteen before I left the boozer.
I’d been forced to ditch the motor for the final night’s observations as it was starting to get attention from the local TWOC boys. I was reduced to lying in the mud on a piece of waste ground where I could see the front door of Alfie’s pad undetected. I wasn’t my idea of fun, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t done it all before.
I lay in constant drizzle, obscured by two overgrown bushes of doubtful origin, his whole place was in darkness and my spirits started to sag.
&n
bsp; I started to think about Susan. Joel’s wife, if you could believe that. There was something about her that made me itch. She played the gangster’s moll all too well for my liking.
I checked my watch, half one in the morning.
Finally two very nervous-looking faces arrived on plot with a holdall. At last there was some action and lights appeared on in the house. The boys knocked on the front door and dropped the holdall in the doorway, and our Alfie took it from them. No cash was exchanged, which was a shame, I might have considered rolling the delivery boys too. The two faces fucked off quick sharp into the pissing rain.
So it was time for the dodgy bit. The reason I can make five grand a day.
From what I’d seen the past days, I reckoned Alfie, plus two maybe three others were on the plot. Alfie was a big lad and could be a handful. The others I’d seen enter earlier would be no worry. The only problem could be if people were coming and going out the back door unseen and I ended up with six meat-heads to contend with. I could only watch the front.
I strolled up to the door as cool as you like. My only extra was a black woollen hat that turned nicely into a balaclava.
Knock, knock.
I heard activity. Someone looked through the front door spy-hole.
“What d’ya want, mate?”
It was a stoned voice.
I’d heard Alfie call the tabs ‘green bombers’, so I used the same term. I told the kid I wanted twenty tabs. A hundred quid deal. I showed the cash at the spy and hey presto, he opened the door first time. Not noted for their educational qualifications, speed freaks.
The small hallway stank of fags, sweaty feet and hash, no carpet, and two pairs of foul trainers, kicked off and left to fester, were a less than fragrant greeting. The door opener told me to close it behind me and turned his back. He was a kid, seventeen maybe; scrawny with a glue sniffer’s mouth. I pulled down the mask, grabbed the kid by the hair and punched a .45 Magnum handgun into the back of his head. I had the youth’s undivided attention.