Consequence
CONSEQUENCE
ELI YANCE
Copyright © Eli Yance, 2013
A COMPULSION BOOKS PUBLICATION
CompulsionBooks.com
1
Darren Morris sat still in the parked silver Ford Mondeo, his body comforted by the plush leather interior, his eyes fixed firmly through the windscreen. The winter afternoon had chilled the skies an eerie grey; the clouds swamped the fading sun and spread a silvery glow over the grey cobbled pier.
His hardened eyes, sliced with a web of deep wrinkles and coated with an unforgiving patch of blackness, wandered from the empty area ahead of him and glanced over the metal railings, into the black silky sea.
“What a fucking mess,” he uttered, his voice growling out the words with a deep layer of disgust.
James Roach sat behind the steering wheel, a firm look of determination on his face and an unfaltering straightness in his spine. He turned to fire an apathetic glance out of the passenger window before regarding his partner unsurely. “The pier? I think it looks okay,” he replied.
“The sea you fucking idiot,” Morris snapped.
“Yes…” Roach agreed, turning back to concentrate on the world beyond the steering wheel, his indifference intact. “Beats living in the city though, I wouldn’t mind moving out to a place like this someday.”
Morris shrugged and fixed his eyes on the concrete pier, waves splashed the grey ground, spilling frothy flecks onto the surface.
The sound of a car engine rumbled through the salty air. A blue Porsche rolled into view several metres ahead of them. The driver, unseen through tinted windows, pulled the car to a stop a mere twenty metres from the edge of the pier.
The men in the Mondeo glared at the vehicle.
“Fucking flash bastard,” Morris muttered through clenched teeth.
They watched as a man in his mid-twenties clambered out of the car. His face was drawn and pale, his attitude confident. He rested against the bonnet of the sports car and stared at the distant waves.
He wore an expensive leather jacket which had been unzipped to expose a wealth of silver medallions and chains around his neck. His baggy jeans, hanging loosely from his pencil-thin frame, had been scribbled with threads of graffiti. The slack denim material was covered with hip-hop lyrics and declarations, including a stitched picture of three rappers.
Silently the two men exited their vehicle—parked out of sight under the shade of a dilapidated warehouse—and carefully closed the doors. They both embraced the cold sea air, digging their hands into their pockets as they strode towards the Porsche.
The youngster didn’t see them as they approached.
“Nice view isn’t it Dean?” Morris asked.
The comment startled him and he slipped off the bonnet, immediately shooting a glance at the two men.
“You scared the fucking shit out of me,” he muttered through heavy breaths.
“How’s tricks?” Roach wanted to know.
The younger man smiled and directed their attention towards his car. “It’s all good,” he declared smugly.
A bitter hatred tweaked Morris’s lips as he surveyed the car and the youngster’s expression. “OK. That’s enough small talk for one day,” he said blankly. “You got the cash?”
The younger man nodded. He walked to the passenger side of the car and removed a briefcase. Walking back around the front of the vehicle he paused in front of Morris.
“It’s all here,” he tapped the case. “You got the gear?” he asked unsurely, noticing that the two men carried nothing.
Morris grabbed the case, gently nudged the youngster out of the way and rested it on top of the car. He opened it to reveal a mass of used notes, carefully tied together in elastic bands. He picked up one of the piles and flicked through.
“It’s all there, twenty grand, you got the dope?” Dean repeated.
“Nice down here is it Harris?” Morris asked placidly.
“Yeah…plenty of fucking junkies, keeps me in whores and champagne,” he laughed. The gesture wasn’t returned.
“Been through our neck of the woods recently?” Morris enquired.
Dean Harris hesitated for a moment, his eyes moved from Morris to Roach.
“No. The last time I went up there was to meet up with Sanders…w--w--why d’you ask?”
Morris slammed the lid of the case and glared down at Dean, “Word is you’re peddling your shit on Sanders’ turf.”
“What? No, I wouldn’t,” Harris pleaded.
“You deal your shit
here
and only
here,
” Morris began.
“I am--” he pleaded, but his words were cut short.
“The boss gives you a good deal. He set you up, he gave you all of this,” he gestured to the youngster’s expensive chains and flash car. “He started you in this game.”
“I know…I’m grateful—”
“He picked you off the streets, gave you the dope and took a cut from your earnings. You made a lot of money Dean.”
“Yes, and I’ve—”
Morris continued, “Freebase, straight from the factories, you can cut it as much as you want and sell it for whatever you fucking want, as long as you keep out of the city. He gives you a good deal. You make a tidy sum. You have it easy, any trouble you come to us and we sort it. How long you been working this area Dean?”
“Two, maybe two and a half years,” Dean said unsurely, his voice cracking.
“Pure, uncut cocaine and heroin,” Morris continued, his mind already set on a speech, “and the entire fucking southeast coast to peddle it to, yet you insisted on coming to London, selling Sanderson’s shit to Sanderson’s clients right under his nose.”
“I swear… I didn’t,” the youngster’s words were becoming increasingly anxious.
Morris shot out an arm and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. He threw him over the car as Roach, unmoving and silent until that point, looked around to see if anyone was watching.
“He’s losing customers; business is slipping, want to hazard a guess why that is?”
“I don’t know, please—”
“He’s losing customers because you’re selling them
your
fucking shit, which also just so happens to be
his
.”
“Look, I’m sorry, I just—” Dean gagged.
“You know the score, you cut and sell and you stay away from the city, but you got greedy didn’t you?”
“I didn’t think it would do any harm.”
“You see Dean…now we have a dilemma. The boss was willing to let you go, maybe with a few more broken bones than usual.”
A sickening moan escaped the youngster’s lips.
“But it seems that not only are you selling his gear on his patch, but you also turned over one of his boys.”
“I swear I didn’t know he worked for Sanders.” Dean panicked.
“Every fucking dealer in the city works for Sanders, you idiot!”
Morris looked calmly across at the briefcase. “Get up,” he released his grip on Dean’s jacket and allowed him to stand.
Dean brushed his jacket down and, with tears of fear welling in his eyes, began to spit out an apology, “Look…”
“Save it,” Morris said. “Come with us, Sanders wants a word.”
Roach had already stalked around the back of the car, making sure to grab the briefcase as he did so. He shoved the youngster forward. Harris stumbled in shock, his quivering legs struggling to hold firm on the wet ground. He looked back at the two men and then continued walking.
“Our car is parked near the warehouse,” Roach assured the youngster, who kept a worried eye over his shoulder.
As he walked into the shadows behind the warehouse and spotted the Mondeo, a wave of relief washed over his panicked face. He turned to speak to the two men, a contented smile closing over his features.
He barely had time to blink before Morris’s right fist crashed into his face, breaking his nose and dribbling a fountain of red from the appendage.
He stumbled backwards, but his moves were matched by James Roach. The older man grabbed him by the arm and yanked the limb with deadly accuracy, pulling it free of its socket.
Harris opened his mouth to yelp as the pain soared with burning white heat through his body. Morris threw another punch, catching him just as he opened his mouth. The impact caused his head to jolt so hard his neck nearly snapped. Two of his teeth shattered and spilled a carnage of blood into his mouth. One chipped ferociously, sending enamel shrapnel through his upper lip.
He gurgled blood, his screams halted by the crimson fluid curdling in his throat. Roach, still with a firm grip on the wounded arm, ushered him over to the railings. The blood curdles increased as his eyes glimpsed the water below.
He tried to struggle out of Roach’s firm grip, but to no avail. The older man grabbed his head and, in one strong and deadly movement, forced it down onto the iron railing.
Both men recognised the sickening sound as Harris’s skull cracked with terminal force. His lifeless body slumped against the railings, a mass of blood spilling from a split in his head.
Roach watched with indifference as the blood gushed from the lifeless form in his hands.
“I’ll drive back,” Morris said, walking to the driver’s side of the Mondeo, his eyes fixed on a small cut across his right knuckle.
Roach nodded. Then, grabbing hold of Dean Harris’s legs he propelled him over the railings and released his grip. He watched, his face devoid of emotion, as the broken body of the bloodied dealer crashed into the rocky waves and disappeared.
2
Michael Richards rapped his bony hand against the solid double-glazed glass. The impact reverberated through his knuckles. He recoiled, grasping his hand tightly to his chest.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Johnny Phillips looked across at his friend with little sympathy, his hard edged brow arched into a distasteful stare.
“I knackered my knuckles,” Michael Richards replied, his high pitched voice chirping the sounds of a Cockney dialect.
Phillips rolled his eyes and turned away from his friend. He peered through the smeared glass in the solid wooden door. He could see only smudges and distorted outlines of various furniture: a carpeted floor, heavy shaded walls and what looked to be a staircase further down a long hallway.
“How’d you manage to do that?” he asked, his eyes still scanning the door.
“Boxing,” came the hesitant reply from his friend.
Phillips turned; his eyebrows raised, “Boxing?”
“Yeah, what’s so surprising about that?” Richards spat as he examined his hand.
“You’re built like a fucking anorexic jockey,” Phillips joked, noting his friend’s weak appearance despite his large protruding gut. “You couldn’t punch your way out of a wet paper bag.”
“I’m learning, okay!”
“If you say so.”
Phillips turned his attention back to the door. He raised his hand and knocked three times, his knuckles slamming hard on the wood below the glass.
“So when did you take it up?” he added when the thuds of his fists had faded.
“About a week ago.”
“A week? And you’ve cracked your fucking knuckles already? How the hell did you manage that?”
“They aint fucking cracked okay? They’re just a bit tender.”
Phillips rolled his eyes. Through the glass he could see a large smudge emerging, as it grew nearer and larger he heard the metallic sound of a key clicking against a lock.
“Look sharp Cinderella,” he mumbled.
The door swung open and both men were greeted by a middle aged woman dressed in a loose fitting robe. Her short blonde hair had been ruffled; locks of dirty gold sprayed over her face. Her eyes were sunken and her lips were dry and cracked.
She looked at the two young men through hazy, sleepy eyes, concentrating her gaze on Johnny Phillips -- the heavier built and more intimidating of the two.
“Can I help you?” she asked, allowing a yawn to escape her lips.
Phillips smiled directly into her eyes. Then, brushing particles of dust from his long suede jacket, he spoke in a formal tone.
“Mrs J. Robinson?” he asked.
“Yes,” a look of confusion crossed the woman’s face.
He pulled a leather wallet from his inside pocket and held it in front of her. The wallet unfolded before her eyes to reveal a silver badge next to an ID card.
“Detective Inspector Grainger,” he quoted with practised professionalism. “This is my partner,” he paused as Richards half-heartedly flashed his badge to the woman, as well as a look of distaste to his friend.
“We are here about a stolen car,” he added.
The woman’s face brightened up, “Stolen? What are you talking about? I…I didn’t steal any car…I’ve--” Her hesitant remarks were cut short by Michael Richards.
“We know you didn’t steal anything Mrs Robinson,” he assured her, a professional tone overlapping his accent. “
Unfortunately,
” he stressed, “we believe one may have been stolen from
you
.”
“What? What do you mean?” she asked frantically, her voice breaking.
Phillips pulled a notebook from his pocket and began leafing through. He stopped on an empty page and pretended to read.
“Do you own a
red
Jaguar E-Type, License number JO5 SON?” his eyes peered up from the notebook into her worried hazel gaze.
“Yes. Yes. Why? What is it? What’s wrong?” she demanded to know.
“I’m afraid your car was used in a smash and grab at four this morning.”
“What!” she blurted, both shocked and surprised by the comment.
She stuck her head through the door and glanced past the two men, her eyes scanning an empty gravelled driveway where her car used to be.
“Oh my god, how did this happen?”
“It would be a lot easier if we could talk about this inside Mrs Robinson,” Richards interjected.
“Sure,” she said unsurely. She opened the door further, gesturing with a distant and disconsolate stare for them to enter.
The men needed no second invitations, they brushed straight passed her and then waited for her to close the door and point them to the living room.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Phillips said, his eyes appreciating the vast amount of crystal ornaments and porcelain dolls that decorated a marbled fireplace.
“Thanks,” she replied with little enthusiasm.
He reached into his pocket and felt a small device touch his fingertips. He kept his eyes on the woman as he worked his fingers around the solid object, waiting for the right moment.
