The Desert Run

by Gregg Dunnett

  “I’m going to need you to take them off the roof, please. We need to check them over.”

  “Sure.” Shit.

  Ben came back to help. My hands were shaking as I reached up to unstrap the boards, I could feel the customs officer watching me. He must have seen I was nervous.

  I could see the drugs dog running around another car in the bay opposite us, being worked by another team of customs officers. There were about ten customs officers in total, working in groups to get through the queue of cars quickly, but I could only see the one dog. A final, desperate hope hit me. Maybe they didn’t use the dog on every car? Maybe we’d still slip through the net?

  We got the boards unstrapped and unlocked the cable, and with Ben at the front and me at the back, we lifted the first one off the van and onto the concrete floor. Without needing to look at each other, we both made an effort to make it look lighter than it was. Then we took the second board and put that on the floor too, trying to put both close to the wall, away from the car.

  “And the other ones, please, sir?” the customs guy asked, pointing the stubby aerial of his radio at the two final boards still resting on the roof. Ben and I walked back round the van to unstrap these as well. Then, as we lifted the third board off the car, something went wrong.

  It was Ben’s fault. There was a curb separating the pavement from the bay where the van was stopped, and he didn’t step up to get over it. He stumbled and dropped the board onto the concrete. Because of the weight, it fell pretty hard, and I could see what happened at once. A crack opened up where it hit the floor. Maybe there was a cavity underneath that I didn’t fill properly, and the epoxy coating caved in, or maybe Ben just dropped it bloody hard. Either way, our final line of defence, the physical barrier stopping any smell from reaching that dog, had just failed. Ben stared at the crack, then at me, and I could see how shocked he was, like he couldn’t believe what had just happened. But there was nothing we could do, we had to go back and get the fourth and final board, and as I did that, I could see the dog and its handler had finished the car they were doing, and were standing there waiting for where to go next.

  We lifted the last board off the van, and like before, Ben and I somehow communicated the need to use this board to cover the crack in the other one. We put it on top, and the officer used his radio again to indicate we needed to step back away from them.

  For a moment, we were all watching the dog handler. It seemed he could either come and check us out, in which case we were finished, or he could go to another car. It did seem like the dog was only being used to check one car in three. I held my breath. Come on, give us a fucking break.

  But then our guy called out to the dog handler, beckoning him over to us, and the sliver of hope slipped away. I wanted to close my eyes. I didn’t want to watch.

  Even though I wanted to kick it to death, I had to admit it was a cute-looking dog. Brown and white, and that silly little tail whipping around. I watched as the handler spoke with our officer, the dog twirling round his legs as they spoke. They were too far away to make out what they were saying, but there seemed to be some sort of issue. They weren’t using the dog to search the van like I’d seen them do with the cars.

  Around us the other officers were still working in the other bays too, and right then it just happened that every bay was ready for the dog to come and check the cars over, but there was only one dog. I dared to watch our officer’s face and it looked like this was what they were talking about. I saw him shrug his shoulders, still holding onto his radio, like they were complaining about how they were supposed to do their job if they weren’t given the resources. Still they stood there, a few metres away from the open door of the van, not searching. Then our officer pointed to the paddleboards and I half heard him tell the dog handler to just do them. The van sat there, I could almost see the drug fumes escaping through the open door, but it seemed they’d decided they didn’t have time to search everything, and they’d let it pass. I couldn’t believe it. On such a random decision they were letting an easy bust slip through their fingers.

  Or were they? The little dog pulled at the lead as the handler pointed at the pile of paddleboards. This wasn’t over.

  The handler walked the dog up and down the length of the boards, and I watched in the way you watch a car accident. You don’t want to, but you can’t take your eyes off it. The dog put its little paws lightly on top of the pile, then jumped up and padded around, sniffing and wagging its tail. And then it came to the crack. Ben’s crack. My heart stopped. But the dog didn’t pick anything up. Its nose just kept on roaming past the crack, and by then the handler seemed to have lost all interest too. He gave a jerk of the lead, and the dog jumped off the pile of boards, and looked around for something else to sniff. The handler said something to our customs guy, who shrugged again, and we watched as the handler led the dog off to check another car.

  “Thank you very much, sir,” our customs guy said to me. “If you could load your surfboards back up now.”

  We didn’t need telling a second time. I nearly ran back to the van to shut the doors. I didn’t want any more of the smell to leak out. Then we loaded the boards back up. It was like we were moving through treacle, and the whole process of balancing all the boards back on the rack, and strapping them all down properly took forever. All the while, the customs officer was waiting next to us, but now he was just impatient to get rid of us, and we were both so desperate to get away our fingers were fumbling with the strap buckles. But finally, we were ready.

  “Can we go?” Ben asked the customs officer.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I thought he’d changed his mind. But it was just that he was already waving the next car into his bay. He barely registered Ben’s question, just glanced at him. He didn’t smile.

  “Yes, sir. Have a nice onward journey, sir.”

  29

  You knew right? About Ben and Julia getting together? It was obvious wasn’t it? I mean, everyone seemed to know already. Anna, our mates, even those we didn’t know that well. It was like I was the last to know. Apart from Andy I suppose, but who gives a shit about him?

  Everyone seemed to know about me and Julia too, or at least how I felt about her. Maybe that’s why no one let me into Ben’s little secret. That’s what made me feel such a fool, made my face burn with shame. Everyone knew but no one said anything.

  “Motherfucker!!!”

  Ben was screaming—literally screaming out loud—for most of the short journey back to the flat. I could hardly drive in a straight line for all the punching the air, all the high fives, all the yelling and swearing he was doing.

  Plus, I was in shock. Glassy-eyed and empty. Exhausted by the whole thing.

  “You did it, Jake. You’re a fucking genius. They had a fucking dog right on us, and it didn’t suspect a fucking thing. You’re a legend.” He leaned over and tried to hug me, right around the steering wheel.

  “Fuck off, I’m trying to drive.”

  We got back to the flat. I don’t know how, but we got there. There wasn’t anywhere to park, but I put the van up on the pavement outside the front door with the hazard lights on, while we took the boards off the roof and carried them up the stairs. I just wanted to get them inside, where no one could see them. Where we could just forget about what was inside them for a few hours.

  And when I came back after moving the van, Julia was there, and Ben was telling her what had happened with the sniffer dog, and by the way she was draping herself over him, I knew at once he’d told her I knew about them. She looked... different somehow; maybe it was because she couldn’t quite meet my eye. Maybe she just didn’t want to. Maybe she was just too full of whatever she was feeling for Ben. I don’t know. It hurt too much to think about it.

  They both went out and got a takeout for the three of us, to celebrate getting the dope back home, but I didn’t feel like eating so I disappeared off to bed. I wanted a different homecoming and the only place I could h
ave that was alone in my bed.

  I didn’t feel any better the next morning. I didn’t want to see Ben, I really didn’t want to see Julia, and I didn’t want to think about what they’d been doing all night. But I swallowed it. All the hurt and the pain and the feeling of betrayal, I swallowed it up and did everything I could to not let it show. What else could I do?

  But I drew the line at seeing those bloody boards. Ben wanted me to start opening them up right away, but he saw the look on my face and didn’t push it. Instead, I took a long walk alone along the seafront, I just wanted to let everything that had happened over the last couple of weeks wash over me.

  I didn’t notice at first but it was a beautiful day, bright and warm and not a breath of wind so that the sea hung still as glass reflecting the pale blue sky. I walked for miles, the sun shone and the seafront was busy. Old ladies hobbled past me, walking their little dogs. Mothers pushed prams, dudes swerved past on their skateboards. A pair of council seafront officers walked past in their silly blue uniforms, looking a little bit like customs officers. It was strange, I could walk past all these people even after what we’d done and none of them seemed interested. None of them knew my secret. I felt invisible.

  And slowly, gradually, I stopped thinking only about how much I hurt over Julia, and began to realise how much I’d just changed my life. For the better. All these people around me, they all had their own money worries, their own debts, but now suddenly, at a stroke, I’d wiped mine away. I found myself walking a little taller, holding my head up just a tiny bit. I wouldn’t say I was smiling exactly, the thought of Julia, or just a half-pretty girl walking by would still have me wincing and feeling the flush of red at my cheeks, but as compensation goes, going from drowning in debt to suddenly free has a certain power. I was miles from the flat, and now suddenly I wanted to get back there, to open up the boards and finish the job.

  That afternoon, I knocked on Ben’s door and saw what a mess he was making, trying to pull the dope from a jagged hole in one of the boards. Julia was in there too. She’d never looked lovelier, it was like she was doing it on purpose. She was lying back on his bed, watching him work and wearing a tiny pair of dark blue shorts that showed off her smooth tanned legs like they were on display in some exhibition. Seeing her like that almost broke my newfound determination, but I tore my eyes off her and told Ben I’d take over. He yielded at once, and went and sat next to Julia, putting his arm around her, but she shrugged him off.

  “If you’re just going to watch Jake work, the least you can do is get him a beer,” she told him.

  “He hasn’t done anything all day, he’s been on the beach.” Ben protested, like I’d been slacking off and he tried again to slip his arm round her waist.

  “Come on. And get one for me while you’re about it.” She pushed him away again and this time he did what she said, pretending it was a big effort. So for a few moments it was just her and me in the room.

  I hadn’t been expecting that, and the sudden silence between us was awkward. I started poking around in the mess Ben had made and hoped we could last until Ben came back. Then she called out to me.

  “Jake,”

  “Yeah?” I stopped and glanced at her before looking away again. She had a smile on her lips, a small, sad smile.

  “I wanted to say I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. About me and Ben, I mean.”

  I wasn’t ready to have this talk. I couldn’t find any words. I didn’t even let myself look at her.

  “You understand don’t you? Until I broke up with Andy I couldn’t let anyone know.”

  Dumbly I nodded.

  “We can still be friends though can’t we? I mean you’re Ben’s best friend, he really likes you. I hope we can be friends as well.”

  “Yeah,” I croaked. “So do I.” We lapsed into silence.

  “And,” she paused, and then took a big breath. “And maybe it’s best if we don’t tell him what kind of happened between us?”

  At this I did look at her. In surprise. She was embarrassed by it as well. I don’t know why but somehow that helped. It really helped. I looked at her, at the way her body was curled up on the bed, those legs now folded underneath her. I felt a spasm of pain, a mixture of desire and regret that I couldn’t have her. I nodded again.

  “Sure.”

  Ben came crashing back into the room, three open bottles of beer in his hands.

  “Jake,” he said. “I found out why the dog didn’t smell anything through the board that cracked,” I hardly heard what he was saying, I was still watching her, smiling now as she took a beer from Ben’s hand.

  “There was still a really thin layer of whatever stuff you put in there blocking it off. So it was still sealed. Lucky huh?”

  Julia raised the bottle to her lips and tipped her head back, exposing her long neck. I watched the muscles move as she drank. Ben said something else and I didn’t hear. Julia pressed the cold bottle to her face and caught my eye. Ben said something else.

  “Jake!”

  I dragged my eyes off Julia for the last time and listened to what Ben was saying.

  “What?” I said.

  “The way you fixed up the boards. Even though it cracked it didn’t go the whole way through,” he said.

  I blinked a couple of times to flush Julia’s image off my retinas.

  “Give me that beer will you,” I said, and got to work.

  PART II

  30

  I think Ben would have happily spent the next week hanging out with Julia and the big pile of dope in his room, but he’d already set in train the plan for what happened next. So a couple of days later we packed the dope up again, this time in some sports bags that were on special offer from Sports Direct, and we carried it back down to the van.

  I didn’t know too much about it before Morocco, and since Ben had been inseparable from Julia since we got back, there hadn’t been much opportunity to ask, but I knew the basics. Danny, Ben’s dealer, had a contact named Paul, who was going to come with us in the van and introduce us to his contact, a man called Jimmy, who was going to buy all the dope in one big deal. Only then would we finally be finished.

  This Jimmy character, Ben assured me, was totally expecting us. He had the money ready, and he was going to sell the dope to his network of dealers, who were mostly people like Danny, as in they dealt predominantly with the student scene—this was what Ben had told me before we left, back when I hadn’t been listening because all I could focus on was buying the stuff and getting it through customs. And now I didn’t really care about what happened to it all. I just wanted it over with. The dope gone, and my debt with it. But anyway, that was the plan, just it didn’t last long after we actually met Paul.

  “The fuck is this?” were his first words to me, on the street outside Danny’s flat. He was tall and slim, maybe ten years older than us, and he was pretty sure of himself. At first, I didn’t think he wanted an answer, but from the way he kept staring at me, I realised he did.

  “It’s a van. A camper van,” I said, and then when I worried it might sound like I was taking the piss, telling him something more obvious, so I tried to soften what I’d said. “It’s alright. It goes. It’s better than it looks.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what it is. I’m not driving to Scotland in a fucking caravan. We’ll take my car.”

  Scotland? I looked over at Ben, but he looked away.

  In fairness to Ben he had told me the idea was to sell the dope a long way away from Brighton, the idea was to minimise the chance we’d ever hear about it again, which worked for me, but Scotland? That was miles away.

  “What’s your car?” Ben asked.

  “Over there,” Paul answered. He pointed to a dark metallic-blue BMW with blacked-out windows. Just imagine what car a flash drug dealer might drive, and you’ve pretty much got it. Ben looked kind of impressed, though.

  “Alright,” he said.

  “Hang on, mate,” I interrupted, then lowered my voice so on
ly Ben could hear me. “What are you doing? I thought we agreed to take the van?”

  Ben shrugged. “The van’s pretty slow. We’ll get up there quicker,” he sounded shifty and I stared at him.

  “Well how are we going to get back?”

  Ben hesitated at this, but clearly Paul had been able to hear after all because he lowered himself down and leaned on the van’s window so he was level with Ben and me. “With a hundred grand, you can afford a train ticket. And like I say, I ain’t driving to Scotland in a caravan.”

  “Alright,” Ben said again, and he opened the door.

  “Alright. Let’s go,” Paul said. “You tell me this heap of shit moves? Well shift it and we’ll load up.” They went off together and I thought about refusing, but after a minute I fired up the van’s engine, and moved it as close to the BMW as I could, and then jumped out to move the sports bags across. But while I was doing that, Paul stopped me.

  “Wait up, boys. I need to check it.” From somewhere he’d pulled out what looked like a handheld radio, like a walkie-talkie, and he waved it over each bag. He unzipped one of the bags and thrust this thing inside, then did the same with the next bag.

  I watched him for a while before asking. “What’s that?”

  Paul didn’t seem to hear me, so I asked again, louder.

  “What’s that thing?”

  I’d been getting more and more nervous the whole day about meeting this guy. It had made me irritable.

  “GPS sniffer,” Paul answered. “Looks for devices emitting radio signals. Tracking devices, listening devices, that kind of shit. You don’t get anywhere near Jimmy without this.”

  I didn’t want to look impressed, but I was. I mean, he might have been bullshitting us, but it looked real enough, and he did it pretty diligently. I also got the idea that whatever vehicle we’d turned up in wouldn’t have been good enough. It wasn’t about our van, it was about going in a car he knew was clean. For all his brashness, I got a very strong sense Paul knew his shit. And the dope seemed to pass his test. His machine didn’t go beep once.