Brigands M. C. (32 page)

Lauren’s gun was almost ready to fire, but Anna charged forward recklessly. Lauren threw her Panzer into reverse, but instead of the electric motor churning inside, she got a whimper.

The two tanks crashed face on. The left track of Anna’s T34 reared up on to the Panzer. The front track hit the turret hard, before the vehicle tipped sideways and rolled off. As the T34 landed upside down on its turret, Lauren frantically jiggled her controller.

‘It’s dead,’ she said, as she demonstrated the fact to Joe.

‘Flat battery,’ Joe explained.

‘Is there a spare?’ Lauren asked, and Joe shook his head.

‘Victory!’ Dante said, grinning at Anna.

Lauren tutted. ‘How can it be a victory if your tank is upside down?’

‘And you’re eighty-five per cent damaged,’ Joe added. ‘We kicked your arse.’

‘It’s a war of attrition,’ Dante grinned. ‘We conserved energy and ammunition.’

‘The only reason your battery lasted longer is that you couldn’t use the controller,’ Joe said.

‘Well they’re
your
dad’s tanks,’ Anna replied. ‘You’ve driven them before.’

Lauren peeled her sweaty top away from her back and grabbed her trainers out of the grass. ‘I’m going inside,’ she said. ‘I’m gasping for a drink.’

Joe carried the dead Panzer, while Dante flipped the T34 back on to its tracks and drove it through the open doors of the conservatory. Lauren followed it and found Joe’s brother Martin in a leather armchair reading
The Times
.

‘Why is all that booze piled up in the hallway?’ Martin asked, when Joe came in. ‘Planning a little soirŽe, are we?’

‘You’ll be at the crêperie,’ Joe smiled. ‘So you and your bum-boy friends aren’t invited.’

Lauren had grown to like Joe, but she hated it when he trumpeted his dad’s homophobic views and she flicked his ear. ‘Don’t be such a shit,’ she said.

‘It’s OK, Lauren,’ Martin said airily. ‘Bigotry is a sign of a small mind, and they don’t come much smaller than Joe’s.’

Dante grinned. ‘If you think his mind’s small, you should see his dick in the changing rooms.’

‘Trust you to be looking, you bender,’ Joe snapped back.

Martin stood up and eyed Joe seriously. ‘If this house gets trashed, Dad’ll kill you.’

‘No he won’t,’ Joe grinned. ‘I’m his golden boy. If he hears that I threw a wild party he’ll slap me on the back and tell me I’m a
chip off the old block
.’

Martin sighed. ‘The depressing thing is you’re probably right about Dad, but if the house gets messed up Mum
will
smack you into next week.’

‘I can handle Mum,’ Joe smirked. ‘Her bark is worse than her bite. And besides, it’s all people I know from school. If someone pukes or something I’ll get Lauren to put on her Marigolds and scrub up.’

Dante laughed. ‘Yeah, girls love cleaning. It’s genetic.’

Lauren gave Joe the finger. ‘With the sexism and the homophobia I can see one little boy getting smacked into next week
before
his mommy comes home,’ she grinned.

*

James lay on a narrow bed in the back of a small Volkswagen camper van. His skin glistened with sweat, he was out of breath and his clothes were strewn over the tiny kitchen cabinets running along the opposite wall. The Spanish girl snuggled naked beside him.

James was grinning from ear to ear. ‘That was
bloody
incredible!’

The girl poked out her tongue and licked a bead of sweat off his chest. ‘It’s not every day you get rescued by a big horny boy. What happened down here?’ she asked, poking just below his nipple. ‘Did some crazy girl try to bite it off ?’

‘Nah,’ James grinned. ‘I got bitten by a snake, about a year back.’

‘You lead an interesting life,’ she smiled.

‘I suppose I do,’ James agreed as he nuzzled the back of the girl’s neck. ‘You know, this is kind of embarrassing but I didn’t actually catch your name.’

‘That’s because I didn’t tell you,’ the girl said, pushing James’ head away and sitting up with her bum balanced precariously on the edge of the bed. ‘Did you see where my socks went?’

James laughed. ‘So aren’t you going to tell me?’

‘No,’ the girl said, as she picked up the watch lying on the draining board. ‘And now I have to go to work.’

James was disappointed. ‘How long for? Can we meet up afterwards?’

‘This was fun,’ she smiled, as she hooked on a black bra and gave James a kiss. ‘But it was what it was.’

James wasn’t sure exactly what it had been, but he didn’t want to sound stupid so he changed the subject. ‘So what do you work at?’

‘My father and uncle have a van. We make paella.’

‘Ahh,’ James said. ‘So you travel all around?’

‘In summer,’ the girl nodded. ‘All the big festivals. V2, Reading, Glastonbury, Donnington, Notting Hill Carnival, and in Europe too. In the winter we go back to my mother and brothers in Spain.’

‘Life on the road,’ James said wistfully. ‘Sounds cool.’

‘Pass my jeans,’ the girl said as she looked at her watch. ‘You need to start getting dressed too.’

James reluctantly sat up and reached into the cab where he’d thrown the girl’s jeans. As he picked them up, he noticed a dark red triangle sticking out from the pocket.

‘A-ha,’ James said happily, as he swiped the passport from the pocket and opened the back page. ‘Reina Cardinas,’ he said in a thick Spanish accent. ‘Even your name is sexy.’

But Reina lunged frantically. ‘Nosy pig,’ she spat. ‘Give to me.’

‘You were cute.’ James smiled at Reina’s passport picture, in which she was about twelve. ‘Nice pigtails.’

Reina scowled as she snatched the jeans and the passport back. ‘Creep!’ she said, hooking James’ Ramones T-shirt with her big toe and flicking it up into his lap. ‘My things are private and you need to leave. My dad will be here soon.’

‘How come you’re out here on the road?’ James asked, as he pulled the Ramones tee over his head. ‘Shouldn’t you be at college or something?’

He’d hoped Reina would open up, but her tone remained bitter. ‘After the third school expelled me, my dad said he’d take me on the road where he can keep an eye on me.’

‘He’s doing a great job,’ James grinned as he slid his trainers on, but Reina didn’t smile back and before he knew it he was striding between the tightly parked vans, heading back towards Outlaw Hill.

The sun was starting to drop as Chloe parked the Range Rover in a side street a couple of hundred metres from the seafront at Kingswear. She walked down a steeply sloped lane and knocked on the back of a van marked with the name of a sanitation company.

The door swung open and she hopped inside, joining McEwen, Neil Gauche and an array of screens and monitoring equipment.

‘Your majesty,’ McEwen said sarcastically. ‘To what do we owe the honour?’

Chloe smiled. ‘James is in Cambridgeshire, Lauren and Dante are partying at the Führer’s house and there’s nothing on telly, so I thought I’d come along and see if you boys needed a hand.’

‘Cool,’ Neil said.

‘So what’s the state of play?’ Chloe asked.

McEwen answered. ‘Johnny Riggs arrived and went aboard the
Brixton Riots
about an hour after I fitted the cameras and microphones on the boat. A fuel tanker came by, then he spent some time cleaning up on deck. Paul Woodhead, plus Julian and Nigel arrived just after six. We picked up Nigel asking how long it would take. Riggs said he hoped to be back ashore before nine and all finished by eleven at the latest.’

‘What about the equipment?’

‘See for yourself,’ McEwen said, as he pointed to an LCD screen showing a clear video feed from the rear deck of the boat. ‘We’ve also got cameras set up on the dock, and Neil went out and put recording devices and trackers on Riggs’ car and the van Woodhead arrived in.’

‘Van,’ Chloe smiled. ‘So they’ll load up into that.’

‘I’d guess,’ McEwen said. ‘The coastguard are going to track the boat on radar, just in case it tries to drop the cargo somewhere else. My biggest worry is that none of our equipment is designed for use at sea.’

Chloe nodded. ‘The memory chips will store the video from the deck even if the signal drops out though.’

‘Yeah,’ McEwen said. ‘But what about the weather? Sea, salt spray and all that.’

‘At least the sea’s calm,’ Neil noted, as he dragged a chair across the van’s floor towards the monitors. ‘We’re gonna be here for a few hours, Chloe. You might as well sit down.’

*

By quarter to eight there were about twenty kids in the Führer’s house, mostly Year Nines but a couple who were a year or so either side. The teenagers were past the age for sleepovers and birthday parties, but not yet comfortable with the concept of an evening party with no parents, unlimited booze and a chance of getting your hands on members of the opposite sex.

The result was awkward, with boys drinking cans of lager around a pool table and dart board in the back lounge, while a slightly smaller number of girls colonised the kitchen, mixing cocktail recipes from a book belonging to Joe’s mum, or sprawled over the chairs in the adjoining conservatory gossiping about their lives and in particular the lies they’d told their parents in order to come to an unsupervised party.

Dante was slightly drunk after two beers, and he bumped into Anna at the top of the first-floor stairs as he came out of the toilet.

‘This is dull,’ Anna complained, as she went up on tiptoes and gave Dante a kiss. ‘Everyone down there is brainless.’

Anna’s breath smelled boozy, but Dante didn’t complain as she pushed him against the wall and slid her hand down the back of his shorts while they snogged. A couple of girls giggled and said, ‘Oooh Anna!’ as they walked by and went into the bathroom together.

‘Lesbians,’ Dante sniggered.

Anna took his hand and gave him a tug. ‘Let’s find somewhere private,’ she said.

‘You’re braver when you’re tipsy,’ Dante smiled, as they walked down a corridor covered with a dated turquoise carpet.

The first room they opened was Martin’s. The large space was similar to Joe’s room, but with fewer gadgets and a big map of the world on the wall with pins marking all the places where he planned to travel.

They skipped Joe’s room, then laughed when they opened his parents’ bedroom door and saw Marlene’s giant underwear and the Führer’s baggy Y-fronts lying on the floor.

‘Old people’s bodies are so horrible!’ Anna winced. ‘I want to die young and beautiful.’

A loud cheer came up from the lads playing pool downstairs. As it subsided the two girls came out of the bathroom and Dante and Anna dived through the double doors at the end of the corridor to make sure that they weren’t spotted.

‘Wow,’ Anna said, as she stared along the narrow room towards a bay window draped with heavy velvet curtains. The land dropped away sharply where the house ended and there was a view over orange sky and an expanse of fields and countryside.

The room was the Führer’s study and it reminded Dante of the German officer’s headquarters in a hundred World War Two TV dramas. A painting of Hitler hung over the fireplace, and a shop dummy wore a full Gestapo uniform.

‘Joe’s dad isn’t quite right in the head,’ Anna noted, as she looked around. ‘He’s got guns as well.’

Dante saw the pair of shotguns. He knew that the Führer held a shotgun licence, and the firearms cabinet was fitted with toughened glass and a heavy lock as the law required. Below the case were open shelves containing a selection of crossbows ranging from an expensive handmade bow with an optical sight to a selection of cheap-but-powerful crossbow pistols.

‘No psycho’s home should be without one,’ Dante grinned, picking up a menacing looking crossbow and pointing it at Anna.

‘Don’t,’ she protested, and shielded her face.

‘There’s no bolt loaded,’ Dante smirked, as he put it back on the rack. ‘Silly girl.’

Anna put one hand on her hip and adopted a soppy look. ‘I’m not silly,’ she said.

Her body language said
snog me
and Dante obliged. Anna ended up on a leather armchair in Dante’s lap, joined at the lips with their hands roaming. But Dante froze when he noticed a picture on the wall above a filing cabinet.

The Führer had dozens of Brigands pictures around the house, including a few of Dante’s dad, Scotty. But this one was different, because Dante’s whole family was there. Everything but a few baby photos had been lost when the Führer burned out Dante’s house and now he recognised faces he hadn’t seen for nearly five years.

Dante recalled the day it was taken outside the old clubhouse. It was the Brigands summer barbecue. Scotty stood proudly alongside the man who would kill him a year later, with the Brigands all around him. Wives stood at the edge of the framed picture, while the kids knelt or stood in front of their fathers.

Holly was a few months old, a bald head buried in her mother’s arms. Dante stood beside Joe, best friends. Dante’s older brother Jordan puffed out his cheeks to ruin the picture and his sister Lizzie squatted on one knee with the expression she always had when she didn’t want to be somewhere.