Bad II the Bone (3 page)

Running her fingers along her tight braids, sweat trickling down her brows, Patra had ten minutes to make the drop.
   And it would be done by any means necessary.
   It was about then she saw the motorcycle cop surveying the traffic situation.
   Nothing had changed since her last profanity-riddled thought and Patra began to feel the uncomfortable emotion of panic as the seconds slipped away and failure loomed.
   Boxed in on all sides, she didn’t even have the luxury to snake her way through the gaps in the vehicles.
Trapped like a son-of-a-bitch.
   She looked over to the cop who was in conversation on his radio.
   This was bullshit. She had to do something now.
Huffing, she swung her long legs off the saddle and proceeded to lower the Suzuki to the tarmac, with cars in front, behind and to the side of her. The driver of a BT van popped his head through the window totally bemused at what she was doing.
   “Oi, what the f…? You can’t leave it there.” He screamed looking like he was about to burst a blood vessel.  

Patra gave him the finger and reached for the package.

Then came that familiar tingle around her temples and an imperceptible lurch that made her stomach protest as if God the celestial DJ had stopped the track that was the earth’s rotation and rewound it ever so slightly. This was her gift at work, the ability she had to be at the right place, at the right time to benefit from a fortuitous event especially when she was threatened. It was a kind of luck factor that she had no control over but when it did appear it altered shit to Patra’s advantage.

And this was one of those times.

Miraculously the vehicles in the left lane started to move at a steady pace.

She smiled.
   There was still a slim window of opportunity.

Patra flew back on the Ninja’s saddle making it squeal as she fed it through the tightest of gaps. Wiggling her leather clad ass from left to right, shifting it’s centre of gravity with every twist, she deftly
maneuvered herself away from another lane going nowhere and instead lurched onto the side walk.
   Pedestrians stared open mouthed while Patra revved the motorbike threateningly and sped up the sidewalk parting the gawping tourists like farmyard chickens. Traffic lights loomed so she bumped back onto the main road and broke right, weaving her way through the stationary vehicles who might as well be sitting with their engines removed.
   A sudden speakered wail and the unmistakable blue flash.
   Five-O, they can get a piece of my ass later. She thought as another bottleneck hurtled towards her.
   This time she didn’t test the impossible.
    Speeding up a cloistered lane, Patra grabbed the brakes, skidding the Ninja to a stop and unceremoniously flung the motorbike on its side. Reaching over she undid the latch from her carrier unit, snatched the package and started sprinting down Needle Street.
   The sirens grew louder behind her and the strobing blue lights bounced off the glass walls and shiny metal but she kept ahead of any implied threat the familiar sound was supposed to instill in her.
   Patra’s mind was at the finish line.
   She was shedding weight in mid flight.
   Her gloves went first, savagely shaken off her hands, then her bulky jacket spiraled above her head and next her lipstick red helmet was tossed behind her, bouncing off the urine soaked walls and spinning to a stand.
Looking up she saw the neon lighted sign in the distance.
   
Razzmatazz Records.
   Fifty metres in four minutes.
   Piece of cake.

   
She sprinted forward.

Docklands, East London

Thursday, July 4th

23.45

Toppa yawned and arched his back, farting as his urine found the perfect trajectory into the toilet bowl. He wanted to applaud himself but he had one hand on his dick and the other propping himself up against the wall so instead he let out a sigh of contentment and that’s when the scream messed up his reverie. A stream of piss splattered the wall and splashed on his hand as he jerked to attention.
   “Rass!”
   A scream, like nothing he had heard in a very long time and not one he would have ever expected from the present company. In his line work you become a connoisseur of screams. After hearing so many as he meted out ghetto retribution on orders from the boss you begin to appreciate their depth and meaning. It was an unmistakable sound of hopelessness and terror that sent chills of pleasure and uncertainty down his spine. This was not the sounds you would imagine to hear from the representatives of two of London’s most notorious crime fraternities playing their monthly poker game.
    Toppa had resisted any collaboration with these English
bwoys
but the monthly friendlies had fostered an understanding between the rivals who came to appreciate the need for a mutually beneficial arrangement in carving up London drug turfs. It wasn’t something the Chinese or the Turks understood but the big boss Deacon was a forward thinking Yard man and the fruits of his smarts were paying off, well until now.
   An attack, what else could it be? Toppa thought.
   The hard men he sat around a poker table with once a month, would take a bullet or a knife, and accept their fate no screaming like a pussy, no beseeching to the higher powers like a bitch.
   These nerve shredding screams were not characteristic of the thugs he knew and that paradox chilled him to the core.

No, this was something else. This was something bad.

Instinctively he clenched his ass, balls tingling, he cut his piss short and reached for the weapon in his shoulder holster. He pushed the toilet door open with the tip of his weapon and looked out. The coast clear he buckled up and moved out into the hallway. The home of the East End mob enforcer was lavish but familiar to him as this was the second time the crew had been invited here. But Toppa had not reached the ripe old age of thirty five in this business without his innate sense of survival. As he hurried along the sweeping balcony he opened every door and peered in on his way downstairs, his ears peeled.
   A cold claustrophobic silence met him as he descended, quickly spreading its gnarly fingers in the confines of this huge space. The air hung frigidly expectant of something’s arrival, something dark and unwelcome. He shuddered and every candlelit story of the undead and ghosts from his past in Jamaica came back to torment him.
   Toppa descended the stairs, his breath raspy and hoarse, the bones of his thoracic reverberated from his trip hammer heart and his mouth desert dry.

Cool nuh
, he chided himself.
Just cool, star!
But the silence threatened him and with it some dread expectation, he could not put his finger on.
   He flinched. More gunshots.
   The 9mm rounds echoed off the walls and so did the blood curdling screams and the sounds of a frantic struggle – a desperate struggle for survival. The lights dimmed almost immediately after the screams, appliances humming with a power surge and then there was darkness.
   “
Bomboclaat!”
Toppa spat, his breath plumes of cold condensation, his forehead slick with cold sweat and his legs suddenly hesitant. Almost breathless with anticipation, he felt his way to the last step on the staircase, every instinct telling him to flee. Toppa just couldn’t. He had to know, even when every nerve was compelling him otherwise, almost as if he was digging his heels in but being overridden by synapses hell bent on preserving his life. He held his weapon high, gripping it hard to prevent his hand from shaking and shuffled towards the drawing room, the horror of what was unfolding behind those mahogany doors sufficient motivation to allow himself another step. In a few seconds he knew that motivation would not be enough. A primal curiosity had taken hold of him, hell bent on proving the existence of our darkest fears. His rational mind wanted to turn tail and head back to South explaining his failure to Deacon’s glaring inquisition.

Who deh fuck was he kidding?
      Not after hearing what he had heard. These were sounds of grown men slamming into walls, crashing into furniture, guns going off, the guttural screams of hardened thugs unused to fear and its consequences. And then there were the screeches, savage animalistic, high pitched mewls, that itched his inner ear, that only a force of will stopped him from scratching the irritation.

He tried to cover his ears when the smell assaulted him next.
   It was seeping through the cracks, under the flues, a stink of excrement and gut wrenching rawness of an abattoir. Toppa was frantic but controlled and was unable to tell whether the heat issuing from behind the doors was real or imagined. He smelled the blood too before he saw it, seeping from under the doors, literally pints of gooey scarlet and chunks of body tissue adding its bouquet to the foul stench already here. One by one the screams stopped and Toppa stood still, cemented to the floor boards. He stared at the sturdy lacquered double doors that he had walked through earlier as he headed upstairs to use the toilet. He wondered why no one had rushed through it as a means of escape. Why the manic twisting of the handle from inside? And why the bone shattering slamming of their own bodies against it had not flung it open? A stream of questions rifled through his mind with no accompanying answers that made sense to him. He simply watched like a befuddled spectator as his own hand reached for the door handle.
  
Wha yuh a duh bwoy?
    The cold now – whether in his mind or in reality – was seeping through his skin, gnawing into his bones and freezing his marrow as he reached out. He was shivering uncontrollably, as his willpower fought with an unexplained urge to commit suicide because, instinctively, he knew if he opened that door he would be dead.
   The shrieks broke the spell. Not human and not any animal he was familiar with. A hellish screech spat from a multitude of triumphant hungry mouths making his ears prickle and burn. Toppa found himself on his ass scrambling backwards ineffectually emptying the clip of his Walther PPK into the door. A wave of depraved derision lifted up into the high ceilings of the house in an ear splitting bay from things redefining the impossible and answering his premature gun ejaculation with venom.
   Toppa knew he had become their new focus of attention and he could hear the frenzied scrambling at the door, the scraping, the scratching, the ripping, the splintering of the old wood. The door shaking to its hinges, savagely being gnawed away by whatever nightmares were on the other side.
   He had to get away was all the gangster could think as he stumbled through the confines of the darkened mansion, toppling furniture, slamming into walls, tripping down steps. Confusion condemned him to this maze that would turn out to be his mausoleum. He was at a door he could not open, his chest heaving and his heart threatening to explode out of his chest, his own screams muffled by the internal panic thumping in his head. The
shotta
were trapped and the things were coming up behind him pushing the darkness his way like stale air being forced through a tunnel and gibbering, screeching, mewing their way ever closer to him. Their sounds resonated with every nerve ending in his body. His senses heightened, Toppa could smell them, a wave of fetid stench and an overpowering mix of bile, shit and sulphur.

His own pounding and screaming felt disembodied as if he was watching himself a million fruitless miles away. Trapped he turned slowly and even in the complete dar
kness Toppa saw them, silent almost admiring him. Their eyes were smoldering red like liquid magma pools holding a malevolent intelligence, the gaping maws of their mouth set with rows upon glistening rows of jagged sharp teeth luminescent in the darkness.

“
Mi ready, feh yuh
,” he croaked chambering a round in his Browning auto. He made the sign of the cross with the barrel of the weapon, his lower lip trembling. “
All a yuh…,”
his voice was hesitant but getting louder, more defiant.
“...all a yuh, can guh suck yuh mumma!
”

His finger wrapped around the trigger as a dark snarling tsunami engulfed him, drowning out the gunshots and his screams.

Westbourne Park
, West London

Thursday, July 4
th

00.05

“Goddamit!” Deacon swore.

When he
could not contact his soldiers at the poker game by Walters’ in Mitcham, he knew instinctively that Darkman had come calling. Calmly he handed the mobile to Minty, a look of inevitability tightening his features and tried to relax.
   
Not suh easy.
    The crime boss stood naked in a marble tub, gesturing to the voodoo priest to continue pouring the foul smelling concoction of herbs, bush and exotic minerals over his head. He imagined marked out symbols with a chicken foot drawing unseen forces to him. The light skinned man performing the incantation was bare footed and dressed in white slacks, necktie, with a garland of pungent roots slung around his neck and a white shirt - miraculously kept in pristine condition although blood, plant extracts and other things he dared not think of were liberally being used in this protection spell. The Voudon whispered in a stream of rhythmic phrases, his tongue twanging like a stringed instrument. Deacon understood the words to be Haitian patios but spoken with such power, the words knitted together to form a tapestry not understood but felt.
    The liquid was warm as it was poured over his head and he breathed through his mouth, declining to inhale the repugnant odor. It took a moment for a tingling sensation to begin spreading all over his body like a cloak of invincibility just taking effect or was his mind trying to conjure the effect to cement a reality that was preposterous to most but was as real as the marble tub he was standing in to him?
    The things he had seen growing up in St Catherine, Jamaica. On the islands you learned to appreciate how gossamer thin were the boundaries between the worlds.
   Yes this was real.
   Deacon made sure every inch of him was tainted with the vile liquid, remembering the classical story of how Achilles was defeated because his mother had tried to make him invincible by dipping him in the River Styx not realizing the ankles she held him by were never kissed by the river of the underworld and turned out to be his only weakness.
   He wasn’t just allowing high school stories to inform his decisions; Deacon was flowing with his instinct. He wiped liquid from his eyes and smeared it from his lips with the back of his hand, watching the shaman stand silently swaying ever so slightly mumbling with his arms at his side. The chicken foot had fallen out of his hand to the ground. Taking that as a sign the spell had been cast, Deacon stepped out of the marble basin and looked around the darkened room, his eyes becoming accustomed to the wave of flickering candles. Content that he was in the here and now, he chuckled to himself.
    His life had increasingly become a part of a world where the impossible was made possible and from time to time he had to make sure his feet were firmly set in the correct portion of that divide. Minty stepped out of the shadows with a full length towel draped over his arm and that concerned look that was now a resident expression since his boss became one of the main players in the London underworld.
   Minty and Deacon had grown up together in the mean streets of South London. Deacon was a natural hustler with a violent streak only Minty seemed to be able to channel with wise words and street sense. So, together the boss from Grants Pen, Jamaica and Minty - born in Red Hills, Kingston but left for London in his teens - climbed the rungs to gangster infamy. One of South London’s most violent gang wars had been orchestrated by these two men and ended on their say so. Small crews were obliterated, larger gangs got with the programme or they too ceased to exist and the established crime families brokered deals or dismantled themselves. Deacon swiftly established territory, distribution centers, drug routes and the brutal elimination of the ineffective bosses standing in the way of progress.
   In five days it was all over and an iron fisted peace established.
   They became known as artists in the mechanics of threat and menace, keeping their manor in check. This was what they knew and what had made them successful and what they had to deal with every hype-filled day of running their organization.
   Everything changed when one of Deacon’s lieutenants was found nailed to an inverted cross of pine wood, eviscerated and left leaning against the wall of his wine bar in Seven Sisters. Casualties of war were expected but this was some Old Testament shit and it sent tremors through him. With every twisted murder of his soldiers his belief about what was possible was spat on, trampled and burned.
   As the murders became more brazen and the messages less cryptic, he knew who he was up against. If it was anybody else Deacon would have the full force of his
dawgs
on them but much to his chagrin this was no ordinary man, no ordinary situation.
   Darkman was perpetrating this fuckery from prison.
    Deacon had funded a robbery that later he realised targeted a Jamaican Obeah man who had supposedly fleeced a small fortune from believers in his powers. A treasure trove of money, gold, precious stones and artifacts he was shipping back to Yard. Deacon saw it as his duty to relieve this dutty Sanfi man of his bounty, for all the false promises and deceit he perpetrated and then punish the pussies who wanted to believe there was something more to their dull existences.
   Darkman was a St Thomas bwoy whose influence had held Jamaica’s poor in thrall but here in the UK he depended on parlour tricks and menace.
   Easy money, right?
   Every general throughout history has made a decision they regretted - Hannibal, Alexander the Great - and now Deacon. Underestimating your enemy is something Sun Tzu would have chastised him for. Underestimating someone like Darkman was unforgivable. Deacon found out the hard way that he was dealing with a power, the real deal, a force of nature that could not be exaggerated in any Anancy story told around a camp fire. He was a one man army able to marshal dark forces that could murder or punish the ill prepared.
   How do you think Deacon stayed ahead of the non-believers? His success was mainly down to utilizing every advantage he possessed including the unconventional - namely his belief that there was much more to our existence than what we can perceive with our five senses.
   A fact that was saving his skin now.
   Deacon finished drying himself and slipped into a terry gown and slippers offered to him by Minty.
   “Is he alright?” Minty asked nodding over to the Voudun who was now on his knees with his forehead on the ground and his arms slung beside him, knuckles down.
   “Don’t worry ‘bout him, roots. I head hunted dis bwoy personally from Haiti. A top shottas in the notorious Ton-Ton Macoutes link wi up. He swears by his powers. Anyway if me dead because of anyting he should have done or didn’t do, you know deh programme star.”
   Minty touched the weapon strapped to his upper body in a Versace patterned leather holster.
   “Brackam!” Deacon patterned a gun with his fingers, firing at the still genuflected witchdoctor. “As long as me and dis place is shielded everyting is everyting. Business as usual.” He paused, his eyes losing their lustre and his mouth folding into a grimace.
   “Any answer from Toppa’s phone?”
   “Nothing.” Minty’s voice became almost inaudible.