Trust (17 page)

Why couldn’t she just fuck off, as he’d intended?

Fuck safely off to somewhere far away where she had at least a chance of being safe?

The second text from Lee warned that he was going to have to deal with her sooner rather than later. She was bringing his kid brother home from Malik’s clinic.

Jess bringing me back from Maliks. Don’t fk it up with this 1 bro. She’s a good un.

She was getting in too deep.

Working her way into his life just when things were hotting up. Getting inside his head when he needed it clear.

He couldn’t be having this.

She should have gone.

§

Later, when he’d stood in the street and told her he loved her, and still she wanted more.

He’d never told a girl he loved her before. Not and
meant
it.

Now, leaning back into the corner of the sofa, its leather upholstery sticking to his hot skin, she nestled in his arms and asked him to trust her with the truth.

She didn’t need to know, and yet he felt that same compunction to share with her. To reassure her. And yes, to impress her.

“We’re going to hit them hard,” he said. “Where it hurts. The bastards are strutting it right now. We’ve allowed them to think they’ve humiliated us, but only behind closed doors. Enough to make them over-confident. We’re going to hit them in public.”

She looked up at him. “How do you mean? Is it going to hurt them? Really hurt them?”

He nodded, then explained, “Putin’s mob have always been careful to stay below the radar. Their public profile is almost non-existent. We’re going to put their failure on public display.”

“But... how?”

Before, when she’d questioned him like this, it had put Dean on the defensive, suspicious of every query. Now, he kissed her, a gentle contact, a hand to the side of her jaw to tip her face towards him.

Then he shook his head.

“Can’t tell you, darling. I really can’t.” He saw that stubborn flash of challenge in her eyes and smiled. “This time you really are going to have to trust me, Jess. You know you were asking if I’ve ever dreamed of just getting out of all this? Yeah? Well I’m not stupid. I know when the time’s up, and this town’s just not the same any more. We can’t carry on like we always have.”

“You have to know when to walk.”

“Exactly! This heist... it’s a big one. It’s going to set us up for life.”

She wasn’t convinced, he could tell, but she was just going to have to be.

“What can I do?”

He tipped her head again, pressed his lips against hers. “More of that,” he murmured. “Then afterwards... when this is all done and dusted. Be ready for me. Give me a chance. Can you do that?”

None of this was planned, and that alone went against Dean Bailey’s nature.

She was about to speak, stopped herself. He knew that went against
her
nature, too, and that if there was ever any kind of future in this then she wasn’t going to be one to sit in the background, to be looked after, to be anything less than a full partner.

That was one of the things he liked about her. A lot.

But she’d come to this one late. Hell, she’d come in at the last minute. He’d already told her too much.

“Listen, darling,” he said. “I know how it must feel, but there’s nothing you can do at this stage. Just let me finish what I’ve started, then we can take it from there.”

“Are you going to be safe?”

He grinned. “’Course I am.”

“And you’re not just fobbing me off?”

He shook his head.

“Listen,” he said now. “Me and my brothers, we have our roles, you know what I mean? Lee’s fast and hard – he’s the action man, the enforcer. Owen’s the smooth operator, always got his finger on the pulse, always knows what’s happening and putting the moves together. Me? I’m in between, the man in the middle: I make things happen, I cover all the bases. Which means Owen has done his bit now, he’s set everything up. When all this goes down he’ll be in the background keeping an eye on things. I’ll give Owen a call if you like? If you want to know what’s going on, stick with Owen – he’s your man. You want me to make that call?”

She nodded straight away. Then paused, met his look again, and said, “When? When’s it all going to kick off?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

She didn’t blink, didn’t hesitate, just nodded briefly. Then said, “Yes, I think you should make that call. I want to be the first to know when everything’s gone through and you’re at least
safe
.”

“Consider it done.”

“And one more thing.”

“Hmm?”

“That thing you said before. I’d been thinking something very similar.”

“Hmm? What thing?”

“I think I do, too. I think I’m falling in love with you, Dean Bailey. Think I might already have fallen. And I’m scared I’m going to lose you when I’ve only just found you.”

§

Boxers fall into two camps before a big fight.

There are the ones who shut themselves away in training. No wives or girlfriends. No sex. They don’t want the distraction. They believe that pent-up sexual energy gives them an edge and that releasing that energy could sap the strength.

And there are the ones who keep their loved ones around them when they’re building up to the fight. They don’t believe in any of that sexual energy nonsense. They think that shutting off that side of your life is more of a disruption, and the acts of loving and being loved – physical and emotional – give you something to fight
for
.

Dean Bailey had never had cause to give any of this much thought until now, when he sat in the front of a stolen Transit van, waiting to pull out into the traffic from an abandoned warehouse site near Tilbury docks.

Had Jess given him something more to fight for, or was she just another distraction? Had last night drained his strength, or given him more edge?

He had plenty of reason to give the Russians a slap. He didn’t need to be fighting her fight, too, even though it gave the whole thing an extra dimension of
rightness
.

He took a deep breath and puffed it out, just as he used to do in that moment before the bell.

He needed to do this thing.

He needed to focus.

He glanced at Lee in the passenger seat and grinned. “We ready for this, bro’?”

Lee nodded, and slapped a hand on the dashboard. His eyes were bulging, his jaw tight. He was psyched up for the fight.

“Okay, boys?”

A chorus of agreement came from the back: Ronnie and three of his crew.

Dean edged out into the slow lane and picked up speed, heading into the city.

Mounted on the dashboard, close to where Lee had slapped his hand, was an iPhone displaying a map of this part of London. On the map, a red dot pulsed. “That’s them,” said Dean now. One of Ronnie’s boys had put a tracer on the Russians’ van. That had made Dean laugh, when they’d come up with the details of this job: even for something like this, there’s an app for it.

“We’re sure they’re doing the pick-up round?” asked Lee. He was always more of a one for pre-fight nerves than Dean, despite his confident appearance.

Dean nodded, pulling up at a red light. “All as planned,” he said. “Owen confirmed the itinerary when I saw him yesterday. Then Louie called it in ten minutes ago. Putin’s boys are on the move, sticking to their planned route.”

It was a regular thing – only the timings and route varied. A tour of the turf controlled by Putin’s mob. The estate gangs, the city-center rackets, the drugs and prostitution rings. “Think of it like those armored vans that move money from banks,” Owen had told them. “Only with this lot it’s a Transit van and the guards are tooled up and speak Russian.”

Outrageous
was the word Owen had used when he described the amount of money the Russians were moving around the city these days. Outrageous, and today’s was the biggest run they’d done.

Take this out and the Russians would be hit badly – Putin, in particular, when he had to account for the loss to his bosses.

Take the van out in public, when the hold-up would be all over the news with stories of Russian Mafia gangs screwing up and getting hit in full view in London, and it’d be rubbing their noses in it.

“You ready for this, bro’?” Dean said. “You look a right knob.”

He still couldn’t get over the sight of Lee sitting there in a police uniform, and he knew he looked just as ridiculous in his.

He flashed an indicator and swerved to the fast lane as the light changed, cutting up the car behind and knowing the driver wouldn’t dare respond.

Driving a police van, you could get away with just about anything.

That night I saw a different side of him. The side that had only come through in glimpses before: sensitive, caring, considerate. The real Dean, the one that was usually concealed behind that hard, cool exterior.

We stayed for ages on that leather sofa, wrapped in each other. He was still part-clothed but I was naked, a fleecy throw pulled over us both.

It was so chilled like that.

I’d never known that comfort in another’s presence. The ease; the way we talked, skipping from deep to teasing to shared memories – as he opened up, he admitted to more of the memories I knew from my childhood visits, although he still insisted he didn’t remember me, I must just have been one of the annoying small kids who got under everyone’s feet.

Lee looked in at one point, nodded, and smiled at our easy tangled embrace and the scattering of discarded clothes. He mentioned a call from their cousin Ronnie and that everything was okay, then left us alone.

We moved to a bedroom and made love again. Slow and tender, exploring as if for the first time.

He played me like a virtuoso, like an artist. Explored me with mouth and tongue, fingers and the hard heel of a hand; a press of a thigh, a perfect understanding of when to push just a fraction harder, when to maintain a steady, flickering rhythm, and when to pause and hold – those moments when eye contact was all it took to push me to that peak.

It became a night that was almost delirium, a fever dream of slumbering and stirring, of moving from passivity to passion in a seamless transition.

It was only after he’d gone the next morning that I saw things in a different light: not so much a new exploring as a last chance, an attempt to treat me like I’d never been treated before and maybe, if things didn’t go according to plan, would never be treated again.

A night that felt like a first, but could so easily be our last.

§

“The Bluebell Club,” he told me, as he took one last drink from his espresso cup – doll’s house crockery in those strong fighter’s hands. “It’s a gym. Couple of streets from Canning Town Tube station. Here...” He scribbled down an address on a notepad and pushed it across the table to me.

“You saying I need to get into shape?” I gave him that look, one eyebrow raised, and he laughed.

“Never,” he said. “I could barely keep up with you last night, darling.” He paused, and it wasn’t hard to guess what was replaying in his mind just then.

I couldn’t help smiling. God, I was like a schoolgirl just then! A soppy schoolgirl with a soppy schoolgirl crush and a soppy schoolgirl grin plastered all over my face.

And it felt so good!

“The Bluebell’s a boxing club. One of ours. Owen’s going to be there today while the transaction’s taking place.”

Transaction
. Did they really use that language, or was he trying to be delicate for my sake?

“I reckon he’s got some kind of mid-life crisis going on. He’s never been a gym bunny, but he’s started going again. Working out. Sparring. Feeling his age, I reckon.”

I laughed. There was real affection there. As an only child I’d never had the kind of relationship the Bailey Boys had. Maybe that was why I harked back to those golden London memories as I did: a fragment of a lost childhood I’d never really known. More and more, I was coming to understand that this trip to the East End was not so much about my grandparents as about me.

“You sure it’s okay for me to be there?” I asked. “I don’t want to get under everyone’s feet.” He got the reference straight away – that was how he’d described the gangs of younger children at those family gatherings.

He laughed, shaking his head.

“On the contrary,” he said. “Owen said he was looking forward to it. Wants to get to know you. He always could read me like a book.”

That in itself said a lot. Owen could tell I mattered to Dean. Wanted to get to know me, maybe to vet me. Looking out for his kid brothers, just as he always had.

“He says you’re welcome there. Says he’ll let you know as soon as there’s any news.”

I looked down. Didn’t like the sound of that word.
News
.

It was a word that implied things could go in any of a number of ways, not necessarily good.

When I looked up again, Dean was in the doorway, one hand on the frame.

“I’m not going to kiss you goodbye,” he said. “I’m saving that kind of thing for when I get back.”

And then, with a brief nod of the head, he stepped back, turned, and a second later was gone from view.

§

The Bluebell was in one of the narrow streets to the north of the ExCel center. Just as Dean had described, there was a 1960s concrete block of shops – a newsagent, a couple of takeaways, an electrical shop, a betting shop – with a snooker hall above. I pulled up into a space, and spotted the entrance to the gym straight away: a door between two shops that Dean had told me led to the gym at the back of this row.

I pushed through into an alleyway that smelled of something bad, then a heavy wooden door that opened into a foyer. A square-headed man sat at a reception desk looking at something on a screen. He glanced up, seemed about to glance away, then checked himself and stared.

“I’ve come to see Owen Bailey,” I told him, determined not to be intimidated by the shaven head, the tatts, the slabs of muscle. I’d dealt with far worse, and I’d learned not to look weak, even when I felt vulnerable.

The guy shrugged, nodded towards a door, and returned to his screen.

I passed through, and my senses were assaulted by an environment that was not anywhere close to my natural setting. Rock music boomed through bad speakers, men’s voices shouted and grunted rhythmically, and the air was heavy with the smell of sweat and that vaguely musty smell from the passageway outside.