Sorrow Bound by David Mark Read Free Book Online Page A

drivers rarely pick up real fares. They just attend the addresses they are given and hand over the packages that Downey has carefully weighed out for them. Their customers are all approved and trusted. It’s a slick operation with a huge turnover. Downey doesn’t have to worry about how to get the gear into the country. His job is to get it from Point B to Point C, where it will be cut, packaged, and passed on to other people in the chain. Downey’s drivers know what they are involved in. They get paid handsomely for it. It’s a system that works, and that makes Adam Downey feel blissfully fucking untouchable.
    He sips his whisky again. Grimaces.
    It’s hot here, in this small, bare office, and Downey wants to go and sit out the front with the lads. They’re a good crowd and seem to respect him. But he believes that being aloof adds to his image, and Downey loves image. He watches himself in the mirror, and plays with the grenade.
    Downey had nicked the grenade when he was picking up a wholesale delivery. Among the crates of white powder were half a dozen handguns and a leather holdall full of grenades and plastic explosives. Impulsively, Downey had wanted one.He knew the guns would be missed were he to help himself, but the grenades seemed deliciously inviting. They didn’t look the way he had seen them in war films. The one he holds in his palm is black and square: no bigger than his mobile phone. It has a pin through the top and Russian lettering down its side. He likes to hold it. Likes to play with the pin. Dares himself to throw the grenade in the air and catch it again before it can detonate.
    Downey hears the front door of the taxi office bang. There is a muttering from beyond the door to his office, then it is pushed open by a tall dark man in a football shirt and camouflage trousers.
    ‘We knock in this country, Hakan,’ says Downey, over the lip of his glass. ‘Remember? We flush toilets too? None of that folding up the bog-roll and putting it in the bin. We’re not keen on shit samosas.’
    Hakan doesn’t seem to understand. His English is good but he seems too flustered to pay attention.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ asks Downey.
    Hakan closes the door behind him then leans against it. He’s quite a good-looking guy, though he is hairy enough to blunt a lawnmower.
    ‘I fuck up.’
    Downey spreads his hands. He’s not worried. There’s nothing he can’t handle.
    ‘Police,’ says Hakan. ‘I think they follow me. I not know what do. I park. Put parcel in coat. Take coat seamstress. Seamstress has coat.’
    Downey sits forward in his chair. He spits his whisky back in the glass.
    ‘Again, Hakan. In fucking English.’
    Downey sinks lower in his seat as the driver tells him what happened. He’d been delivering a wallet-sized package of white powder to the address that had been phoned through just an hour ago. He’d been driving normally, doing as he was told. Then he saw the flashing lights in his mirror. Panicked. Started seeing a conspiracy. Every parked car was suddenly a plain-clothes officer. Every van was a surveillance unit.
    ‘I have coat with me. I see shop, yes? Southcoates Lane. I have idea. Put package in coat. Take coat in shop. Ask for them to fix zip. She nice lady. We talk. I go back when all quiet, yes. I do right, yes?’
    Downey chews on his lip.
    ‘You gave the parcel away, Hakan. You gave it to a stranger. What if she looks in the fucking pocket?’
    Hakan waves his hands.
    ‘She say she busy. I say “No rush.” I go back for it in a week, perhaps. Tell her I not need work done at all …’
    Downey throws his glass at the wall. It shatters in a rain of jagged crystal.
    ‘Ticket,’ he says, furious.
    ‘Ticket?’
    ‘The fucking ticket, you Turkish prick,’ says Downey. ‘The ticket for the alterations shop. I’ll go for it. Christ, if she finds it. If we lose that parcel …’
    Downey doesn’t finish the sentence. Everything he has could be yanked away from him