One Night (17 page)

Joel ran to the fence and threw himself through the tear in it. The ends of the wire tore at his jacket as he pushed himself through it and dug into the palms of his hands. He emerged on the other side feeling like something had changed, liked he'd been reborn. He was outside Adventure Island again. What had happened to him in there? What had she done to him?

He felt that devastating feeling of loss, the same one that had hit him when Bob told the doctor his cut was an accident or when Danny pulled the gun on him. It was so familiar, like a
favourite item of clothing pushed to the back of the drawer and then found again. It fit him so well he was amazed he'd thought that he'd managed to escape it. That sense of betrayal, that feeling that no-one could want him, no-one could love him. Not Eve, not Danny, not Bob and Jackie, not Mark. Not his mother. Not his father.

His head was spinning. Had she done it? Had she led them to him? It had seemed so real the time with her. Her words, her touch, the way she made him feel inside. Had he been that wrong about her?

He tried to think back, put the pieces together.

When had he been away from her? When he'd broken into the operator's booth for the Carousel. Had she tipped them off then? A quick text message from the phone in her handbag? Hadn't she used that same phone in the pub just before she'd suggested which restaurant they should go to? And when they'd left the restaurant they'd been attacked. Was that it then? The whole time they'd been eating together, when they'd been riding the Carousel, she'd been waiting for the men to come and...
What? Get him? Rescue her?

He thought further back. She'd made all the moves hadn't she? She'd approached him. She'd grabbed his cock under the table. She'd seduced him, pulled him into her world just like Danny had.

All of the pieces fit except one, the way she'd looked at him. He'd felt that connection deep inside him, was it real? Or was he so broken inside that his heart couldn't tell truth from reality?

The night air was cold in his lungs, on his face. He felt like it was waking him up. He ran. He needed to find somewhere he could hide and be safe. Somewhere he could think.

The bag was the key, he realised. If they went to the bag he'd know that she had betrayed him.

He heard the fence rattle behind him and turned to see the man with the bat squeezing through it. He thought about running but if he did that he'd just have to carry on doing it. Better to face this guy and then not have a tail.

He turned and ran back towards the fence, the guy was still struggling through the hole. The others, and Eve, were nowhere in sight. It seemed like a cheap shot but Joel took it anyway, running to the man and punching him hard in the face while his arms were still restrained by edges of the tear in the chain-link. The man’s nose smeared across his face and Joel followed up the blow with two more, making sure the guy was good and dazed before grabbing by the collar of his jacket and pulling him through the fence. The bat fell to the ground and Joel grabbed it up, advancing on the guy laying prone on his back in the dirt. Joel sat astride him, holding the bat with his hands two feet apart. He pushed the wooden shaft on the man’s throat, applying just enough just enough pressure that the guy would know he could apply a lot more.

“Who are you?” said Joel. “And who is she to you?”

The man’s eyes weren’t focussing properly but Joel thought he had heard the question.

“Who’s Harry?” he said.

Despite the punches he’d taken to the face and the baseball bat pushing down on his Adam’s apple the guy laughed. “Harry’s the man who’s going to be the end of you.”
“Who’s the girl?”

“She really got to you huh? Bad luck, mate.”

Joel could feel the anger and pain building inside him again, they’d disappeared for a minute as the adrenalin had taken over. He let go of the bat and punched the prone man in the face again.

“Who is she?”

“She’s Harry’s blood, that’s who she is.”

Joel brought his elbow down on the man’s forehead, knocking him unconscious,
his head lolling to the side. There was still no sign of the others when Joel looked around himself so he went through the man’s pockets, finding his mobile phone. He could hear shouting from within the park now, the two men calling for their mate. Then there were more voices, more men sent to join the hunt for him. He took the phone and ran through the darkness, up and away from the park. There was a pedestrian walkway a few hundred feet from it, raised up with a good view across it and the beach. He checked behind him as he ran. There was no-one there, no-one following him. Was that because Eve had shown them where the bag was already or for some other reason?

He ran up the ramp to the walkway, ducked down behind the waist high wall at the top,
then rose up a little and peered cautiously over the top. He could see the guy he’d knocked out, still lying there where he’d fallen. Joel couldn’t help hoping the guy was found soon, it was too cold a night to be on the ground for long. 

He ducked back down again and looked at the mobile in his hand. It was an old Motorola flip phone, the kind that had been popular five or six years previously. Joel flipped it open and clicked into the address book. He found the entry for Harry straight away. No surname, just the one word. He dialled it.

The phone at the other end was picked up straight away, a deep gruff voice answered. A voice that sounded like it was built on two packs a day.

“Did you get him?”

“Yeah I got him, took the bat of him and shoved it up his arse.”

“Oh, it’s you,” said Harry. “I’m glad you called, I’ve been wanting to speak to you.”

“Then talk.”

There was a pause. He could almost hear Harry thinking.

“I’m sorry,” that gravelly voice said at last.

Joel didn’t respond, wasn’t going to rise to it.

“I shouldn’t have used Eve like that, wasn’t fair on either of you. She’s not a bad girl, just likes the boys you know. And pleasing her Uncle Harry of course.”

“Fuck you,” said Joel, he felt sick, like someone had punched him in the stomach hard enough force the contents back up his throat “And fuck her too.”

Harry laughed. “Did you? I bet you did. Quite a way with the boys like I say. Winds them round her little finger. Years of practice though, early starter our Eve. Her Dad, my brother, God rest his soul, would turn in his grave if he knew the things she’d done. The things she does.”

Joel was quiet again, he didn’t want to believe this man but every word was like knife in him, like that blade in Mark’s hand slicing into his flesh again.

“Truth hurts does it? Like I say, I’m sorry. All’s fair in love and war though. And trust me, this is war, you fucking cunt.”

Harry hung up his phone and slipped it into his jacket pocket. This wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped. When that same phone had rung that lunchtime telling him to be on the lookout for someone with a lot of money that didn’t belong to them it had sounded like a win win situation. A golden opportunity for Harry to raise his profile with the big boys in London if he found the guy. And if he didn’t who was to say they’d even come to Southend in the first place. At that point nobody had a bloody clue where he was, they just knew where he wasn’t. Not at the meeting point where the money should have been handed over. And not, apparently, amidst the pile of bodies at the house the money had come from. The job sounded like a fucking disaster, a burglary that should have been simple enough given the people involved turned into something from a Sam Peckinpah movie. There was even a kid messed up in it somewhere, so Harry had heard. And at the end of it one of the players had walked out of it with half a million fucking quid and then vanished.  

So the call had come in, one of many being made no doubt to sympathetic parties up and down the country. The request was simple, find Joel Matheson and get the money back. And if Matheson should happen to fall down a flight of stairs or under the wheels of a train or encounter some other unfortunate accident along the way then so much the better.

Harry had put out some feelers, asked people who owed him favours to keep an eye out and lo and behold Matheson had turned up. Landed right in Harry’s lap like a gift from the gods, putting a smile on his face and spring in his step and a song in his heart and all that crap. 

And then things had started going wrong. Six men he’d sent, in two vehicles, and still the guy had got away. Outsmarted and outfought the whole useless bunch of them.

Then, when by a bloody miracle, they’d found him again, Matheson had evaded them once more, slipping away into the night like the Scarlet fucking Pimpernel. To be fair the finding part hadn’t been a miracle. It has been good thinking on Harry’s part. He knew how much his niece liked that bloody park, even knew that she visited it each year on the anniversary of his brother’s death. It seemed to Harry as good a place as any to hide so he’d sent some of his foot soldiers to check it out. Foot soldiers who’d proved themselves to be no use as anything but cannon fodder. He bet bloody Monty never had this trouble.

The information he’d been given when he’d got that first call suggested it should have been easy. Harry knew Matheson by reputation. A lock
man with a lot of experience and a real talent for what he did. One of the best on the scene, was what he’d heard. As far as Harry was concerned safe cracking was a useful skill but it was hard to have much respect for a man who made his living tinkering like that, always looking at the detail rather worrying about the bigger picture. Harry was all about the long view, the grand strategy. There were people who led and people you did. He was a leader.

His brother had been like the safecracker, always fiddling away in his bloody shed rather than going out and working like a man. That was why he’d never amounted to anything. Why in the end he’d had to come begging to Harry, and look how that had turned out. Maybe that was why Eve had opened her legs for him, this Londoner, some messed up Freudian daddy complex. She was a mystery to him. She’d always had been a wilful girl, even more so after her dad passed away. Harry had tried to step in, do his duty as a brother, it was the least he could do. Eve had never liked him though, not before and not after. She’d never listened to him or respected him and that didn’t change when her dad was gone. That might be more of problem now than ever.

The whole situation with her and the lock man wasn’t ideal and Harry worried that some might use it against him. If it got out that his own flesh and blood had helped Matheson he’d be a laughing stock at best. At worst he’d have some very nasty people to answer to. That was why he needed to keep a lid on it and that was why Eve was still at the park, with a few of his guys there keeping her out of sight. It was also why when he did catch up with Matheson he was going to make sure the lock man never had the opportunity to speak to anyone about it. The sea off Southend Pier held a lot of secrets and it was plenty deep enough to hold another. 

It was such bad bloody luck that the two of them had met, worse that she’d decided to go runabout with him. It seemed to Harry that the same gods who’d brought Matheson into his patch so he could benefit from the kudos of catching him had decided that they weren’t going to make it all plain sailing for him. Still, Harry had managed to turn it to his advantage, in some ways at least. That was his talent. Shaping what life gave him to fit it his plans.

If the thing between the two of them was just about fucking, like it always seemed to be with youngsters nowadays, then at least he’d got the girl away from him. If there was more to it than that then maybe she could be of some use in catching the little shit. For now the main thing was finding the money.

The men who’d found him at the amusement park said he hadn’t had the bag with him so it must be stowed away somewhere. But he’d had it the last time they’d seen him so Harry’s niece must know where. It was all about psychological warfare now, mind games. Harry didn’t read much but when he did he read books about military history and theory. He’d never wanted to be a soldier, heaven forbid he’d put himself in a position where other people got to tell him what to do, but he liked the way some of those old generals had thought. His favourite quote was from
Sun Tzu, the great Chinese military philosopher. “All war is deception,” old Sun had said way back in God knew bloody when. Harry lived by that maxim.

Yes he’d used violence in his career, still did when he needed to, but a fist in the face was nothing compared to the devastation you could wreak with a few well chosen lies.

That was why he’d said what he had to Matheson, why he’d told his men to give him the impression that Eve had led them to him. To split them up emotionally as well as physically. To drive a wedge between them and turn them against each other.

There might turn out to be no point to it but it just might help him get what he wanted from Eve. Besides, it was always fun fucking with people’s heads. 

Harry climbed into his Jag and put it in gear. It was time for him to go and speak to his niece.

Eve was sitting in the cafe again. The same one she and Joel had talked in earlier that night, the one they had returned to after riding the Carousel. She could see the table they’d made love on, could remember how it had felt, not just the physical side of it but the emotion too. That edgy mix of excitement and joy, that feeling that with him she could do anything. It felt like a long time ago.

There were five men in there with her, one of them the one who had chased after Joel. The bloody mess of his nose and the purple lump on his forehead told her everything she needed to know. He’d escaped, made it out of the park and back into the town somewhere. He was safe for now, but the money, that was something else. She didn’t think they’d found it yet, because if they had why were they still here, but they must know it was nearby, either in the park or the town.

They hadn’t finessed their way into cafe like Joel had, they’d kicked the door in, one of the stamping a booted foot on the lock and splintering the wood around it. Brute force was the way they did things. She knew her uncle Harry liked to pretend he was above that kind of thing but in truth that’s what everything he had was built on. Violence and other people’s fear.

Once they got into the cafe the men had searched it with the same aggression that they’d used on the doors. Ripping open the cupboards in the kitchen and pulling out the contents, kicking over the bins outside, flipping tables and chairs. Of course they’d found nothing because there was nothing to be found.

Now they were waiting for Harry to arrive. The one with the broken nose was sitting at one of the other tables with his head in his hands. The others were all either leaning against the walls or pacing. Eve knew what her uncle’s temper was like, knew that the men were nervy because they knew too. And because they knew that they'd failed him. He'd be here soon, he wouldn't have been far away, not that anywhere was far away in Southend.

She wasn't frightened for herself, she'd known Harry her whole life, put up with his anger and his
attempts at manipulation. Even as a child he had done it to her, tried to get her to do what he wanted with a mix of threats and emotional blackmail.

She remembered when she was about six Harry coming to her. It had been at a family barbecue and he’d cornered her in the garden where she was playing away from the rest of the group. He had pulled a chocolate bar out of her pocket, holding it up in front of her face.

“This is your favourite, isn’t it, Eve? I’ve seen you eat the before.”

She’d nodded, eyes fixed on the bright red wrapper.

“Do you want it?”

She’d nodded again. She didn’t know how to act around Uncle Harry, he was really nice to her sometimes but completely cold at others. She knew that he and her dad rowed a lot, she’d seen them yelling at each other a couple of times after they’d both been drinking beer.

“I need you to do me a favour. It’s a secret though, only you can do it. What do you think?”

He had giv
en the chocolate bar a little wiggle.

“Okay,”

The chocolate had melted from the summer sun and Harry’s body heat. It stuck to the inside of the wrapper as she peeled it off, coming away from the wafer and leaving that bare. She ate it all greedily though, licking the last of it off the packet.

“Was that good?” Harry had asked her, he didn’t bother to wait for a response, just launched into telling her what he wanted her to do. “Because you owe me now, Eve.”

What he wanted was for her to steal something from her dad’s work. She went there with him sometimes during the long summer holidays, sat in the site office and did her colouring while dad worked. By the time he was called to site the houses were built, he just went along to do the woodwork and kitchens. Eve loved it, loved seeing the finished houses as empty shells one day and then go back on another to see all the work Dad had done to transform the hollow brick structure into something that felt more like a home.

It was something from the site office that Harry wanted. “I just need to see it,” he had said. “Not keep it or anything but if I turn up there myself your dad will wonder why.”

Eve knew it was wrong but it almost felt like fun, waiting until the office was empty and then finding the piece of paper Uncle Harry wanted. She felt a bit like a spy in one of the movies dad liked.

She never
did find out why Harry needed it and didn’t really care. It was just grown up stuff. He had given her another chocolate bar when she gave him the paper. This one wasn’t melted.

That was the first time Harry had asked her to do a little favour for him, there weren’t many more but there were some. All of them started with Harry pulling out a bar of chocolate. As she got older she started to
feel more nervous about the things he was asking her to do. They weren’t really bad, but her mum and dad definitely wouldn’t have liked them and the idea that she was doing something that might upset them made her unhappy.

So one day when he’d walked up to her she’d just shook her head and walked away. Harry’s hand had shot out and grabbed her arm.

“Don’t you walk away from me, Eve. You do and I’ll tell your mum and dad about all the little favours you’ve been doing for me. All the bad things you’ve done.”

The tension was rising in the cafe as they waited for Harry. One of the men came over to her, sat at the table across from her. She could see that he was desperate to please Harry, under the sway of that same mix of threat and reward that had lured her in as a kid.

She had stood up to him that day. Pulled away from him and run back to her mum and dad. She didn’t know if he ever had told them anything but he never asked her to do him a favour again. 

“Where is it?” the man said. “The money.”

Eve shrugged, “I have no idea.”

“I think you do, I think you know exactly where it is.” He leaned forward, she could smell his sweat and his fear and the stale odour of the cheap cigarettes he smoked.

“You’re wrong.”

The man was about to speak again when one of the others moved away from the wall he had been leaning against and stepped towards the door.

Eve looked at it and saw why, saw the stocky shape through the glass.

Harry pushed the door open and stepped into the cafe. “Eve,” he said. “Eve, sweetheart we really need to talk.”