All Due Respect Issue 2 by Owen Laukkanen Read Free Book Online Page B

but didn’t move. Ricky felt like giving him a slap. Instead he slipped his hand back in the bag and produced another £10 note. The boy smiled, went to take it but Ricky was too quick and snatched it away.
    “Do I look soft? You get this when you come back.”
    The boy narrowed his eyes, wondered if Ricky was legit. Finally satisfied, he ran out of view. A few seconds later he came back and shook his head. Ricky’s heart leapt. A chance. Cash bag stuffed under his jacket, gun weighing him down like an anchor, he crawled out of the undergrowth and went to slip away. The kid tugged on his jacket. Ricky looked down.
    “This what you want?” He waved the £10 note at the kid then bent low so he was right in the boy’s face. “Well tough fucking luck,” he said and pushed past to walk the path as if he had been visiting friends.
    Checking left and right he crossed the road. A patrol car flashed past at the end of the street just as the kid begin to wail. Running into the front drive of the house opposite he ducked down behind the bins. One more garden, one more road, and then the park. And even if Capo wasn’t there he could lose himself in a tangle of back streets the police could never hope to lock down. A screech of tyres checked his dreams. He turned. Spinning blue lights filled his vision. A patrol car slid to a halt in the gutter. It was the older cop and the young Turk. Ricky had just time to see the side door open and his bullet-shaped head appear before he ran and leapt the wooden fence.
    Dropping into the front, he heard the guy shout and stumble. But Ricky had no time to gloat. In his haste to clear the fence, he landed on his bad ankle. Pain shot up his calf. He yelped but kept moving, hobbled through the gate, and dodged the cars on the road. Ricky ran for the park. Behind, banging his fist on the fence in frustration and shouting at him to ‘Stop’ and that he was ‘a cunt’, was the red-faced cop. Like that was going to work. Ricky turned his head just in time to see him drop out of sight. There would be a minute, vital seconds while he joined his buddy in the car and made the turn out of the estate.
    Ricky kept to the edge of the park. He was hurting, but if he could make it across this open space, he was almost home. And every second, he put distance between himself and the chase. Exhausted, he walked the last few metres. Three stone steps by the old Belvedere pub led onto Blackburn Street. He calmed himself. The sound of pursuit had faded. Sirens still wailed in the distance and no doubt the pack of patrol cars were circling the estate like wolves scenting blood. But here was an oasis of calm. It wouldn’t last. The cop with the shaven head had seen where he was going and soon a flood of vehicles would follow.
    But now Ricky had options. This was home, a warren of interlocking streets where a rat could go to ground and never be found. He set off, felt his leg begin to stiffen as he turned onto Griton Street but didn’t care. Capo’s car sat at the kerb only a hundred metres away.
    He had done it: held up the bookie’s, made off with the cash, and gotten away with it. Tricia was right—he was the man.
    Ricky had taken no more than two steps when he froze. Something inside him, the feral sense of the thief perhaps, made him stop and listen. He cocked his head. In the distance he could hear a screech of tyres and a driver gunning the engine as he raced through the gears. And then it came.
    The driver rounded the corner too fast and hit the brakes hard—so hard the squad car dipped, fishtailing side to side, squealing on the tarmac. It slid to a stop sideways, blocking the road behind him. He turned to run and saw a cop dart from the side-street in front of him. It was the bullet-headed Turk, the twat who had dogged him from the very start. He was panting, breathing heavy, but there was a gleam in his eye and a grin on his face.
    Trapped.
    Ricky groaned, clutched his head and squeezed. No way, no