The Baby And The Brandy (Ben Bracken 1) Read online

  ‘Jack, thank you for everything you have done for me. I won’t forget it. If there’s anything I can do in return...’

  ‘No, we are square,’ Jack replies, and starts walking backwards to the door. ‘4509’ he adds, before turning and heading out of the bar, the wind whistling through the door and up to the booth, chilling me as I watch Jack exit, heading back to whatever has him so fiercely in its grip. Poor lad. I hope it works out for him.

  I look at the card on the table, and get up myself. It is time to go shopping. I need supplies for this new mission, and there’s still a couple of hours before the high-street stores close.

  *

  I think I have all the immediate essentials, so I lay them out on the bed in my hotel room. It was easy to get a cheap last minute deal on a room at the Premier Inn - I just walked up with a bunch of shopping bags and asked what they had. I checked in as Jack Brooker, the name on the bank card, which is what I’ll have to do until I can set up a fake bank account somewhere with a fake identity to back it up. But it will do for now. The room is clean, and quite spacious. The bed is a double, something else I’m really looking forward to. Plus the wifi is free.

  On one side of the bed sits a 13inch Macbook Pro, a Samsung Galaxy smartphone (loaded with a pay-as-you-go sim), a Swiss Army knife, some basic clothes from Primark (combat jeans, a solitary flannel shirt, three dark t-shirts and the least ridiculous underwear I could find), a pair of hardwearing dark brown Timberland boots, a toilet bag pre-stuffed with toiletries, a waterproof backpack to stuff it all in, a pair of Steiner Nighthunter low light binoculars, a compass and the finishing touch: an Italian BMT footlong Subway with chipotle sauce.

  I stretch out on the empty half of the bed, ready to wolf down the sub. I am salivating at the prospect, and I flick the TV to provide a backdrop to my feast. I think back to Jack, and what troubles may have befallen him. Maybe the fact that I had to save him from those two oafs that night suggests he has a habit of getting himself into trouble, and maybe, true to form, he has gone and done it again.

  I grab the sub, and the smartphone. I bought it pretty much ready to go, so I enter the passcode I have assigned it for security and load up the pre-installed Twitter app. I type in those very specific login details, and the planet’s most poorly populated Twitter account comes to life, with only two names. My own and my one follower. As a handle, I had picked something so generic as to wash into ignominy, and enforced the same on Jack. I select direct message, and type.

  @MUFC4Ever1995 to @MUFCFan2654

  21.46 on Thursday 27th October

  07893 629087 - if you

  ever need anything.

  I grab that sub. I am going to savor every morsel, and let the flavor’s reanimate my dulled tastebuds. Then, I’m going to pack, and ready for bed. I’m off first thing in the morning - back to the Big Smoke, back to settle old scores and correct the mistakes I’ve made. Back on the hunt for the one that got away - the smug, wily, powerful, old bastard, Terry ‘The Turn-Up’ Masters. The man who got me locked up, blew out my knee, stuck me in a knife fight with his son, and set his attack dogs on me. The man I can’t wait to sort out once and for all - the first mission of my new era of clean up.

  4

  That was the best night’s sleep of my whole life. I was initially worried after a fitful first fifteen minutes that I would struggle to drop off, but as soon as I did, I was sucked into a bottomless, floaty vacuum. Breakfast isn’t bad either - a full English with all the trimmings, thrown in with the price of the room. I had sauntered down to the hotel restaurant just like A. N. Other guest, a touch of purpose in my stride to suggest I am very much supposed to be there. Just another guy who wants to get shit done on a Saturday. And whichever way you look at it, there is a lot of truth in that statement.

  The coffee feels a little lackluster, but that might be because I was utterly spoiled with Trev and Freya’s brew over on Church Street last night. I sip and swill, and glance around the restaurant. The clock over the cereal table reads 7.37am. The room is mostly empty, a couple of early risers peppered about at the window tables. Blokes, with their own backstories, just like me. They go through the motions of their breakfasts with a dull precision suggesting an oft repeated routine, the grey sky outside complementing their supposed monotony to perfection.

  I have a faint memory in my head, wedged somewhere airily between when I fell asleep and breakfast this morning. Not so much a memory, but a faint whisper that I did something. This concerns me a bit, as I’ve seen myself do some fairly ill-judged things, but I feel so refreshed that I know I did nothing. It was my mind that was active. A dream. The subconscious dragging you on a journey from which you can’t resist or alter. I can’t remember what I dreamt of, the fabric of the dream too frayed at this point, so I’ll just leave it there. I don’t really want to know, in any event. I wouldn’t trust my subconscious to construct anything too cheery. It can get a bit dark in there.

  As I watch the two other diners, while trying hopelessly to scoop a segment of grapefruit onto my spoon, I notice that they are utterly addicted to their smartphones. Absolutely, unashamedly slaves to them. I doubt that they have even looked up once, their whole lives organized electronically, different facets of their personalities arranged in a host of social media accounts. I remember too, that I know have a smartphone also. And I remember my Twitter appeal to Jack Brooker. I take out my own device, and activate it. If you can’t beat them, and all that...

  The first thing that hits me when the screen comes to life, is a missed call from a mobile number. I know straight away that that can only be Jack - he’s the only person on the planet who has this number. There’s a little funny looping symbol in the top left of the interface, which I haven’t seen before. It looks like a cassette tape... and the penny drops. Answer-phone. It takes me a couple of minutes to work it out, such is my unfamiliarity with finicky little technology things, and I manage to access the recorded message.

  I hold the phone to my ear and listen. The recording opens with an automated female voice, contextless pre-recorded words strung together to impart meaning.

  ‘Message left today at 4.53am’

  Then follows a full 5 seconds of silence, although it definitely isn’t silence. There is a hiss, and as my ears search the condensed, recorded soundscape, I begin to hear breathing. Ragged breathing. Then a deeper rumble, a popping Dopplered hiss - a car passing. Then another. A voice speaks. It is Jack.

  ‘I’ve called you. Because I don’t know what else to do, nor who to trust. I thought I could do this on my own, but I can’t.’

  Silence again. I put down my spoon and reach instinctively in my jeans pocket for a pen. I grab my napkin, and jot the time of the message down.

  ‘It’s my dad. When I saw you last night, he had been missing for 2 days. I’ve been going mad trying to find him. I’ve tried every way I know, but I got nowhere.’

  That explains his state last night - he presumably hasn’t slept since he found out his father was missing.

  ‘And about an hour ago, the police found him. Shot dead, in a disused warehouse out on the edge of land owned by Manchester Airport, beyond the runways.’

  Jack’s voice is cracking, emotion beginning to pour from the widening fissure. I note down that Jack found out about his father’s passing at approximately 3.30-4.00am.

  ‘Someone shot him. My dad. You seem to know how to handle yourself - please help me find who did this. I don’t trust the police, they are fucking wasters, it took them long enough to find him, and they can’t tell me a bloody thing’.

  Jack’s request comes as most unexpected. My brain is already spinning. I’d like to help the lad, but getting involved in a messy situation in the city who’s primary prison I have just wandered out of? Not what I had in mind. Plus, I’ve got my own agenda, my own fish to fry.

  ‘Please. Call me.’

  The line goes dead, and robot lady comes back on, asking whether I want to delete the message or save it. I
delete it, and pocket my hasty notes.

  I drink coffee and try to make order of things in my head. Jack’s father goes missing but turns up dead - shot - in a warehouse in Manchester airport. That sounds extremely suspect to begin with. The only people with consistent and likely firearm access in the UK are farmers, the police and organized crime. I can’t picture an angry pig farmer losing his shit and heading to Manchester airport to clip someone. Nor can I especially imagine a police officer doing the same thing, although stranger things have happened. And that leaves the last one. Organized crime.

  I was heading down south to tackle organized crime in any case. But the whole point was that it was away from here, with a very specific target. The Turn Up. I most definitely don’t want to get involved in something up here yet. But I feel a nagging. That familiar tug of duty. In the services, I’d always feel it. I carry it everywhere with me now. I am bound by it.

  I feel protective of Manchester, after my hazy youthful days studying at Manchester University. I found myself in this city. And if there are bad things going on in Manchester’s streets, I would rather that they were stamped out. And I have to ask, if I’m not going to do it who is?

  No, I’m getting muddled. I’m letting my heart rule my head. But... I feel for Jack. And he did do a very good thing for me, in safeguarding my money - far more than me straightening out two drunkards just so he could get home safely.

  My problem, has always been this inflated sense of duty, not to mention by brittle and carefully arranged moral compass. My idea of good and bad is very black and white with great streaks of grey smeared straight across the borders between the two - the zone in which I usually take matters into my own hands. I feel I owe Jack some assistance, even if it is outside of my self-imposed remit.

  I get up, and walk out of the restaurant into the main reception. And despite my better judgement, I find myself asking the receptionist if I can stay an extra night. My train to London leaves at the exact same time tomorrow. Let’s give Jack 24 hours and see what I can turn up.

  *

  I take the stairs two at a time, eager to get started. I take the key card from my jeans pocket, and open up my room.

  My room is dark. I’m pretty sure I’d left the curtains open, but it may be an error on the housekeeper’s part. I head straight across to the window to open the drapes, but something makes me pause. It feels like I have a frayed edge of my instinct caught in a jagged nervous point by the door, and with every step it is unravelling, tugging tighter and tighter. I stand still, and listen.

  I feel as if a series of tiny disturbances, that only my subconscious can decipher, alerts me to the nasty notion that I am not alone. On reflection, when this has happened in the past, I have marveled at my own honed senses, as my sensory neural system processes the changes in the environment from what I remember the last time I was in the room. My skin sensing the tiniest increase in temperature, as another person’s body heat shares the four walls. My ears detecting the slightest audio signature, given away by a hint of hushed breath. The capillaries in my lungs acknowledging that there is fractionally less oxygen than previously, due to someone else filling the hotel room with concealed exhalations of carbon dioxide.

  All adding up, and sending a subconscious message to my cerebral cortex, that I am far from alone. The years of training paying off, rendering me a highly perceptive sensory panel, able to take what is around me and process it with little effort.

  But what it can’t tell me, is the intention of the visitor. Nope, I’m on my own with that one. But the visitor doesn’t know I have any inkling of his or her presence, so if I carry on as normal, I might be afforded a couple more moments to locate them. So I whistle a little, and drop the change in my pocket noisily onto the dresser, while my eyes scan the room, and I take off the jacket. The bed appears untouched. It’s a solid bedstead, so nobody could be secreted underneath. The bathroom may be a decent port of call - but it’s the curtains I’m interested in. They cover the entirety of the window, right down to the floor, easily enough to conceal a person. There is no bulge, but as my eyes sweep the floor, I see the giveaway. A hint of shadow in the far right hand bottom corner, where a person leaning against the window is blocking the less-than-blazing midday sunlight from reaching the floor, like the rest of the curtain hem. I reach for the TV remote, and flick it on. A bit of sound is necessary to mask my next move, both from my unwanted visitor and any curious ears in the neighboring rooms. As soon as the TV crackles to life, I run for the window.

  Feeling my footsteps, the visitor flinches and moves forward, creating an outline in the purple curtain. The outline of someone about six feet tall, built solidly, with a strange protuberance midway up his body, pointing out into the room. As I run, the protuberance spits fire in a hushed harsh flick, no more, creating a hole in the curtain right at the tip of the point. A silenced pistol, which the visitor is clearly not afraid to use.

  I let my training do the rest, filling in with my brain whenever my body asks it for an instruction. On this occasion it doesn’t, and I have dealt with the assailant before I even know I have. I duck low, then rise as I meet the bulging figure, firing my right arm up to my opponent’s upper torso. When my arm meets what feels like shoulder, I grip wholeheartedly and yank forward, while twisting my body to the left and bending over, ripping my target to the floor in a basic but effective judo throw.

  The curtain rips from it’s rail, raining sunlight and little white curtain runners down on us both, as my opponent’s head hits the floor. I reach for his legs, mindful of where the gun might be in this tumbling mass of fabric and angry human, and manage to grab both ankles. He starts to buck, as he recovers slightly from the head impact, but I kick low and hard into the curtain, laces forward. I hit something meaty, and waste no time in interlocking his legs in an upside-down cross-legged yoga pose. Fluidly, I insert my right hand between the two crossed calves, grabbing the lower of the two and pulling upwards with a yank. A sharp scream let’s me know I’ve got it - a modified Indian death lock, as the weight of the hanging body exerts immense pressure on the crude coat-hanger shape I have made out of his legs. I lift higher, to intensify the scream, as the strain against the bones intensifies, like an extremely vicious volume button. As I lift, suspending the visitor in space, still swaddled in curtain, I kick again, just to get the message home - I’m in charge now.

  ‘Put the gun down or I lift again,’ I say. I lift slightly to show him just how nasty it could get, and the man cries out. ‘I lift higher, and your tibias snap just below the knees. Then your ligaments, well... They’ll strip from your bones as they struggle to hold your fucking legs together’.

  ‘Shit! OK!’ the man screams, the gun flopping out and thudding on the carpet.

  ‘You tell me true answers. For every second I think you are not, I lift. The higher I get, the closer your legs get to snapping.’

  I lower his head to the floor, and allow some of the weight to rest, while keeping the strain. It must hurt like hell. It’s a rum little move I picked up outside of the traditional training avenues, and it never fails. I remember being put in it in south east asia - it is unforgettable, as your legs ache against each other vying for purchase, pulling the joints apart into a horrible position of wrenching, crackling, ripping pain. When the hold is in place, gravity does the rest, and it ain’t pretty.

  The man breathes heavily, as the strain is lifted momentarily. I’d like to get a look at him, see if it’s anybody I would recognize, but I don’t want him to see me just yet.

  ‘Is there anyone else here?’, I ask sternly. ‘Outside or in.’

  ‘One man in the car park,’ splutters the jumble of fabric.

  ‘You’ve come here to take me out, correct?’

  The man is silent for a second, so I lift him up a touch to remind him the urgency of my question. It has an immediate effect.

  ‘Yes... Yes... But I’m only following instruction. I don’t know you. Fuck...’ the man wails.


  ‘Because, of course, that makes all the difference doesn’t it.’ I say lifting higher again. I feel the joints straining against each other.

  ‘No, no, of course, Jesus...’

  ‘You’re a fucking dogs-body, aren’t you?’

  ‘What?! I don’t... Shit...’

  ‘Who sent you here, dogs-body? If it’s orders you are following, who issued them?’

  He inhales and exhales raggedly, spluttering and gasping as the blood floods his inverted cranium. His vision should be blurred by now, and his senses completely disorientated. He doesn’t answer, so I drag him higher.

  He screams. I lift further, bringing my left arm in to help. I nearly have him entirely off the ground now, and he will surely be in real pain. He really doesn’t want to give me the name of his employer. I change tack.

  ‘What’s my name?’ I hiss.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My name... What is it?’

  I lift higher again, his head now completely off the floor, eliciting a groggy yelp.

  ‘Fuck you, I’m not gonna give you the satisfaction...’

  ‘I don’t want you just to say my name, I want you to tell me what it is!’

  I’m getting tired myself, and yank higher one last time, hunkering lower and hoisting with my shoulders. I can’t see the man’s face, but it must be contorted with agony.

  ‘What is my name?!’ I bellow.

  ‘Jack Brooker!’ he screams, and with that I feel the clunk of the knee joint components dislodging from their housings, the ligaments and tendons finally giving way. As that happens, there follows a slight drop downwards as the weight of the hanging body drags the joints apart, bringing the tibias into play - which snap loudly, unable to take the strain. The man screams long and loud, a howl that echoes through the small hotel room. It is a grisly moment which brings me no pleasure at all.