The bag is my way out.
It takes me ten minutes to pack.
When I’m finished, I reach for my mobile to check bus times on the internet. Then I put it away. You can be tracked online. If I surf the ALSA bus company’s website I’ll give away how I got out of town.
I can feel the panic in my chest. My heart running away with itself. My head buzzing. The need to move is driving everything else. What am I doing? A thief. Me?
I’m dragging the money bag and my case across the room when there’s a knock on the apartment door.
I mothball breathing.
Another knock.
‘Mr Denny, are you in?’
It’s Cara Donaldson, the owner of the flat.
‘Mr Denny,’ she shouts through the door. ‘I saw you come in. I was parked outside.’
I slide both bags into the bedroom.
I open the door. ‘Hi.’
‘Can I come in.’ It’s not a question. It’s a warning.
I block her entrance. ‘What for?’
The rebuke registers on her face. Cara is an ex-pat with a dozen properties spread across the Jávea area. She wears her hair short, her shorts short and her top short. She’s also short with her temper. ‘Because it’s my house,’ is her justification.
‘I’m about to take a nap.’ A weak excuse to exclude her.
She pushes in. ‘I only need a minute. You’re leaving the day after tomorrow. A lot of my cleaners are down sick. Flu. I want to see how much work is needed in case I have to do it myself.’
Normally I’d rile at the intrusion but all I can think about is the money. She opens the bedroom door and spots the bags. ‘Are you leaving early?’
‘No. I just like to be packed and ready to go,’ I explain.
She spends a little too long looking at the bags before moving on. ‘I’ll have a quick look round,’ she says, still eyeing my bags, ‘and then I’ll be gone.’
I notice that the zip on the money bag is open. Just a touch. Enough. In my haste, I forgot to close it. Notes can be seen. I’m sure Cara must have spotted them. As she checks out the living room I zip the bag closed.
Cara dives into – and then emerges from – the bathroom with an, ‘OK. Looks fine.’
She’s not looking at me as she talks. The money bag the object of her attention.
She gives it one more look, turns and leaves. No thank-you or goodbye. She just leaves.
I shut the door behind her.
If she saw the cash she’ll put two and two together. News of the theft must be out by now.
I decide to give her ten minutes to get clear – then I’m out of here.
I pull the bags to the door and slide down the wall to wait.
It occurs to me that I could still hand the cash back. Hope there’s a reward up for grabs. I stroke the bag and think about my childhood bedroom, and the thought of returning the cash fades.
Footsteps echo up the stairwell.
They stop.
Silence.
I can hear breathing on the other side of the door.
My heart hits overdrive.
I stand up, money bag nestled on my hip, and work my eye to the peephole.
The two men in black are standing outside. Blondie on the left, Dreadlock on the right.
There’s a knock. I ignore it. Another knock. I stand back.
The wood around the lock splinters with a bang. The door ricochets off the bottom of the wall. Peeling paint showers from the ceiling. The two men dive into my world. No words. No demands. Blondie spots the bag. He grabs it.
Grabs my money.
I have the handle wrapped around my elbow. I pull back. Blondie throws a punch. It misses. I roll under him with the money bag in tow. Hitting the floor, I kick out, catching Dreadlock on the shin. He screams. Blondie tries to jump on me, but the hall is so small he can’t get past his accomplice.
I’m up and moving a fraction of a second ahead of them. Throwing myself at the door. Months without exercise overcome by the sheer volume of adrenaline coursing through my veins. My shoulder bounces off the door frame, as I misjudge the exit. The bruise will be the size of a melon.
I hit the stairs, clear twelve steps in two leaps and fly out of the main entrance, bolting onto the road, unable to put the brakes on.
A car’s horn blasts in my ear. Tyres scream and my hand pushes down on the car’s bonnet as it stops.
Behind me Blondie and Dreadlock spew from the building.
I swing away from the swearing driver, run down the hill that my apartment sits on and dive into an alley. A man is smoking next to an open door. I can hear and smell cooking from the kitchen inside. When cash was less tight I ate in the restaurant the kitchen serves.
The man takes one last drag and flicks the cigarette butt onto the ground. He disappears inside, but the door doesn’t fully close. I slide my fingers around its edge and prise it open a body’s width. Inside it’s dark. I slip in, pulling the door closed behind me. The latch is broken. It wants to swing free. I hold it shut. Seconds later I hear running feet. Door in one hand, bag in the other, I wait.
Nothing happens.
An eternity passes as I stand there.
Then the door to the kitchen opens.
The smoking man looks puzzled. ‘¿Qué estás haciendo?’
I don’t need Spanish to know he’s asking what I’m doing here. I shrug, trying to buy a few more seconds.
‘¿Por favor, vete?’ he says.
I don’t move.
‘Deja o llamaré a la policía.’
I recognise ‘policia’. I raise one hand. ‘Lo siento.’ I’m sorry.
I push out through the door. At the far end of the alley the two men in black are standing. It’s as well for me that they have remained a pair – that they didn’t choose to cover both ends of the alley. They see me and I’m back to running.
Cutting back up the hill I enter the old town. A warren of small streets. I start a mystery tour designed to lose Blondie and Dreadlock.
Twice they spot me, twice I manage to lose them.
After twenty minutes of hide-and-seek I jog out of town, into the surrounding orange groves. Sweat is flowing down me in streams. I’m more fluid than solid.
For the next two hours I wander through the countryside. A couple of times I see them, and I’m forced to double back – but they don’t spot me.
The sun drops behind Montgó, the mountain casting a shadow over its domain.
The mosquitoes begin to feast on me.
My clothes are back at the flat. Returning seems out of the question. Cara might have returned by now and found the flat abandoned. Maybe raised the alarm?
I pat my pocket. At least I have my passport. I swing the money bag onto my shoulder, listening to the night. A house sits across the road from me. A few lights indicate someone’s home. Bats zip around, chowing down on the insects. I can see the light from the Arenal. People will be relaxing, chatting, drinking, having fun. I think of the fun I could have with the cash in the bag.
I aim for the lights and, as I exit the dark of the country, sliding onto a road bordered with concrete high rises, I consider my options, while keeping an eye out for the men in black.
I could fly home. Hole up somewhere until my flight is due, or, better still, buy an earlier flight. It’s not as if I’m broke.
‘Sir, is this your bag?’
Hard to explain two hundred grand to a security guard at the airport. Even harder the day of a bank robbery. Impossible if I’m a wanted man. Cara knows who I am. She saw the cash.
Mail the money home?
Possible.
‘What value is your package?’
How often do UPS or FedEx fuck up?
Train?
I’ve always fancied a long rail journey.
Lots of CCTV on trains and at stations, though.
I reach the main road that slices through the back of the Arenal. The bars and restaurants are busy. I’m about to cross when I
catch sight of Blondie. I recoil.
I retrace my steps and work my way along the back roads.
OK, so going home might present some issues. My name’s known here. Cara has all my home details. Europol has long arms. Blondie and Dreadlock might come after me. But staying here is a worse idea.
I could look to buy a bar in some distant part of Spain. How much would one cost? Fifty thousand? Nice and quiet. Pass a few years. Maybe a lot more years.
The idea has deep-down and dirty merit.
‘Son, where are you? When are you coming home? What are you doing with yourself?’
Two hundred K is not life-changing.
I need to go home first. To think.
The taxi rank sits near the beach. It takes me half an hour to walk what should take five minutes. My head is on a spring, flying side to side, looking for my pursuers. My neck is sore by the time I arrive at the rank. A police car cruises into view. I step into the shadows of a doorway until it passes.
Four taxis sit in a row, green lights above each indicating they’re for hire.
I jump into the back of the first one.
‘Denia,’ I say.
It’s the next town up the coast. Far enough away to give me time to think but close enough to get back if I need to.
The driver nods. I slide down the seat. Keeping my head low.
The driver is listening to Total FM, a local English station, not the usual Spanish. Spandau Ballet are singing about gold.
The driver’s mobile rings. He hits the hands-free. ‘Hi Jenny.’
‘When are you finishing tonight?’
‘I’m off to Denia then I’m calling it quits. See you back home in an hour or so.’
‘Great. Love you.’
‘Love you too.’ He hangs up.
As we start to climb the hill out of Jávea I have a thought. Back home.
I tap the driver’s chair. ‘Where are you from?’
He turns the radio down. ‘Manchester, but I’ve been out here for twenty years.’
‘Do you get back to Manchester often?’
He half turns to look at me. He’s a little older than I am. Bald, well tanned, I can see a stomach that has enough fat to touch the bottom of the steering wheel. ‘Not as much as I’d like to,’ he says. ‘It’s not cheap. I’ve got family back home but I haven’t been back for a while.’
‘You’re the first English taxi driver I’ve met out here.’
He laughs. ‘There’s a few. We need to earn a crust somehow. Things are tough.’
I let my thought run around my head a little more. Back home.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask.
‘Colin.’
‘Look, Colin. Tell me this. How much would it cost for you to drive me to the UK?’
He laughs again. ‘A lot.’
‘What’s a lot?’
He thinks about this. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Yip.’
‘Eh. I’d say two thousand euros.’
‘OK.’
‘Really?’ Surprise is hard in the word.
‘Half up front,’ I offer.
‘No way.’
‘Yes way. I’m serious.’
‘When?’
‘Tonight.’
He pulls the car to the side of the road. He leans round, sizing me up. ‘Are you really serious.’
I am. It’s costly but it’ll get me home. ‘So, your answer?’
‘Why take a taxi?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Two thousand euros…’ he repeats.
‘Half up front,’ I remind him.
His eyes screw up, the green glow of the dashboard giving him an evil look. ‘Two thousand euros?’
I nod.
He taps the handbrake. Thinking.
I wait.
He switches the radio off. ‘Heard that there was some nonsense in the old town today.’
I say nothing.
‘Bank robbery,’ he says.
I keep shtum.
‘Lot of money. So I hear. Would you know anything about it?’
I pull myself closer using the headrest. ‘How much?’
He must know I’m a bucket load of trouble but he leans round once more and says, ‘Fifteen thousand.’
Inside I gasp.
He jumps in before I can reply. ‘That includes getting back to the UK without bothering the border guards.’
I pretend to give it some thought. But I know that this isn’t the time for negotiation. This is a time for decision-making. If he’s willing to dodge customs and overlook where the cash came from then he’s not new to this. I reply, ‘OK.’
He adds, ‘And I have one condition.’
My heart sinks. ‘Which is?’
‘I need to ask my wife.’
Relief. ‘Right.’
‘And if she’s OK with it, she comes.’
I can’t help but laugh. ‘Sure. Just as long as you’re quick about it.’
He turns round.
He rubs his temple.
He looks at me one last time.
He rubs the expanse of his gut.
He drops a breath.
He reaches for the phone.
My one thought as he dials: Where the hell is this all going?
No Way Back
J.M. Hewitt
Sweat blinded the boy and adrenaline pulsed through him. He looked down at his thin shirt, sure he could see the material moving, flapping slightly. It wasn’t the warm breeze; it was the beating of his heart.
Balling his slight hand into a fist he thumped once on his chest.
Be still, now, he instructed. Be a man.
When his breathing had slowed he looked back up, squinting lazily at the horizon. He perched with a large, flat rock at his back, the mistytopped mountains of the Appalachian chain making him appear even smaller than he was.
He glanced behind him, allowed a small smile to twitch at his lips. So he’d had to travel 3,703 miles away from his father to prove that he was his son. That he could be his son. That he could be just as good as his father’s other son. His father didn’t know that he’d come here, nor did his mother. And that showed cunning, street-smarts, ingenuity and integrity.
It wasn’t a training camp, either. The weapons handed out here were not filled with blanks, or paint or harmless laser tags. This was as real as it gets.
And he hadn’t gone to the obvious places that he’d come across in his research, like Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia. No, he had done his groundwork thoroughly, and travelling to a country that wasn’t on a major security watch showed subtlety, stealth and savvy. Doing it on his own showed strength of character and skill.
Kiki was eleven years old but his father often told him – when he deemed it necessary to speak to him – that he looked like he was eight. His father didn’t make it sound like a compliment, not like when his father told his mother she looked no older than thirty. Kiki thought like a grown-up, but had the body of a child. Desperately he wanted to be a man.
His father never looked at him, never saw his potential or his worth. Kiki wrote stories, fanciful tales that he was so very proud of. His mother cooed over them, stroked Kiki’s jet-black hair and told him that his stories were wonderful, that he was wonderful. He used to shrug his mother off, head to his father and show him these works of fiction, but eventually stopped when it became obvious that flights of fancy were not what his father wanted from him. His father would shrug him off, the same way Kiki did his mother. A chain of whimsical love, spurned.
Kiki had become accustomed to sitting in the shadows, moving ghost-like around the home. From the dark corners he would watch his father interact with his brother. His brother was older, stronger, more handsome, more athletic. His brother was everything that his father wanted. In time it clicked: Dad wanted a different kind of son, not one who sat with a book in his hands, but one with a football, a rugby ball or a weapon. Kiki wasn’t cut out for sports, so this fight was his best chance to prove h
imself to the men, his fellow soldiers here, who moved stealthily in the shadow of Mount Mitchell. Finally, he might be called a soldier too. But more importantly, he might be called a son.
A shiver went through Kiki’s body as he stroked the rocket launcher with his small hand. He didn’t know how the soldiers here had got their hands on it; they claimed it was a leftover weapon from the last war – their entire arsenal was made up of remnants from past battles. Kiki thought, though, that they were bought on the black market. He didn’t fall for those tall tales, which in his mind showed foresight, intelligence and knowledge. As he had perused the weaponry he knew that they expected him to claim a small handgun, or maybe one of the Walther hunting knives. But Kiki had spotted the rocket launcher and immediately claimed it.
It was called a Quassam 4 and it was as big as he was. He knew he couldn’t carry it on his shoulder like some of the bigger boys could, but it came with a wheeled A-frame, and it was determination more than physical strength that got it out of the crudely constructed warehouse to Kiki’s base at the bottom of Mount Mitchell.
And now it was for real. Team-talk and training were done. It was time to bring out the big guns.
Kiki giggled, covering his mouth with a small brown hand at the thought.
All there was to do now was wait.
Before long a deep rumbling came from somewhere over the horizon. Kiki pushed himself up off the flat rock and got into position behind the Quassam 4. Knees flexed, eye to the optical sight, he wiped his wet palm down his shirt before placing his forefinger lightly on the trigger.
The Spitfire approached and he loosened his grip; it wasn’t an enemy plane, but one of his own. He paused, watched the big metal bird with a half-smile. He thought about waving, but chastised himself immediately. Boys waved at planes; men and soldiers and sons didn’t. So he just watched, still in position, still waiting for the enemy. And then – clatter-clatter! The plane pirouetted suddenly, down the other side of Mount Mitchell in a cloud of smoke, rust red.
Kiki heard himself shriek, aware that it sounded high-pitched and girlie; it was too late to change it to a roar. Kiki pushed the gun with all his might, toppling it to the ground.
Confusion jostled with self-flagellation. Wouldn’t his father love this? The silly boy shot down their own plane. But I didn’t fire! Did I? Kiki got down on his hands and knees and checked; the safety catch was still on, the ammunition still visible in the loading chamber.
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