Or perhaps he’d just smoked three joints before he’d gone to sleep last night and briefly forgotten how much it had hurt to walk away from Mickey.
It still hurt. Benito rubbed his chest, coughing. “I’m fine. I just woke up. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologise, mate. Just be okay.”
“Why?”
Mickey sighed. “Because you deserve to be. Isn’t that enough?”
No. “Why are you even on the phone to me right now?”
Silence. Then something unseen—and unheard—seemed to shift the air. Wherever Mickey was, he tapped on a keyboard, and when he spoke again, his deep voice was flat. “I spoke to the council. They’ve accepted an offer of three hundred a month on the arrears if the first payment on the account is made within twenty-four hours. A full rent payment is due at the end of the month, but DOSHA is going to sponsor it.”
“Sponsor it? What does that mean?”
“They’ll front it.”
“Like, a loan?”
“No. They’ll pay it as a one-off hardship benefit while your mum waits for her Universal Credit claim to go through. I helped your sister do the forms on her iPad this morning.”
Another cough built in Benito’s chest. He swallowed it down. “You saw Gianna?”
“I thought she’d be at school when I stopped by, but it’s half term, right?”
Right. It was the only reason Benito was still in bed and not loitering by the bus stop with breakfast. “Was she okay?”
“Seemed to be. I didn’t see your mum.”
“You won’t. She’s agoraphobic, remember?”
“Is that her official diagnosis?”
“What do you think?” Benito snapped. “She hasn’t left the flat in months. How the fuck is she going to get diagnosed with anything?”
“It would help her case if something like this happens again,” Mickey said. “She could even get extra money if she can prove her condition is limiting her life.”
“Yeah, well. She’s not going to walk to the doctor’s surgery anytime soon, so I guess that’s a fucking pipe dream. Are we done here?”
“Unless there’s anything else you need from me?”
“Like what?” Frustration rippled through Benito, driving him up from the bed and to the window, his free hand jammed in his hair. “Fuck. That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah, Benito, I do. But it has to be this way. You know that. Just make the payments on your mum’s account and stick to them, okay? And with clean money, man. Right now, it’s all you can do.”
Mickey ended the call without waiting for a response, and the quiet click rattled Benito’s brain. He lay back on the bed, then changed his mind and sat up again. Hunger clawed at his belly. Dazed, he rose and sloped to the kitchen to dump oats in a bowl with milk. He nuked it in the microwave.
While he waited for his porridge to cook, he stood at the window, gazing out at the city he despised almost as much as London. The skyline was different, but the vibe was the same. Brutal. Grim. And for Benito, desperate. At least, it was getting that way.
I don’t want to do it.
The thought was sudden and sharp-edged, and it took him a moment to pinpoint the context. Mickey’s call had thrown him off kilter. He’d almost forgotten the one that had come before.
Ipswich. Benito pulled out his phone and studied the maps again. He highlighted the route he’d take if it were up to him, then the most obvious, then focused on the two that were left. One took the mule back country through roads similar to where Benito had hit it before. The other was a healthy mixture of urban and rural. It’s this one. Benito knew it like he knew grass was green, and not just because the route passed two branches of KFC.
Benito wrote out the route, then deleted the searches and texts from the burner phone. The microwave had finished ten minutes ago. Benito retrieved his lukewarm breakfast and ate mechanically while his brain ran riot with plans for Friday’s raid.
Location, vehicle, weapon.
Location, vehicle, weapon.
Location, vehicle, weapon.
He finished his breakfast and tapped his fingers on the countertop. Five days seemed a long time to wait, and his body thrummed with anticipation, wanting it over with.
The timings came through on the burner phone. He committed them to memory, then erased the message and regretted it instantly, as the moment it was gone, distraction set in like rot, sowing the self-doubt he’d spent his entire adult life fighting.
His painstaking plans jumbled and blurred. Benito shook his head to clear it, but in place of clarity came the plea he’d gone to sleep with a few short hours ago. Leave it alone. More than a warning, it was a clarion call from his soul, and the voice in his heart was loud.
But not loud enough.
I have to do this.
Benito was a patient man. It was what made him dangerous on the street, and sitting in another fake-named cash-bought car in a dark, disused farm entrance. So far, three ridiculous decoy vehicles had passed him, blacked-out windows, lowered suspensions, and spoilers like supermarket trolleys. They were trying to draw him out. Trouble was, they’d chosen cars Benito was familiar with as bait. Cars he’d noted and remembered five fucking years ago when Asa’s thick-as-shit cousin had bought them and spent his days burning around the tower blocks scouting for weed and pussy.
People are fucking stupid.
Or maybe they didn’t have memories as long as Benito’s. After six hours in the unheated Corsa, he couldn’t decide who was winning.
I’m fucking hungry.
Same shit, different day.
Another vehicle passed the dead-end lane. Benito sat up and peered over the steering wheel. It was a beat-up van playing rave music. Not even Asa’s current muling crew would’ve been dumb-fuck enough to move product in that. Unless it was an audacious double bluff, in which case, he was inclined to let them have it, just for the fucking balls of it.
The van’s tail lights faded. Benito finished his second Red Bull and crushed the can in the palm of his hand.
He tucked it into his jacket pocket and tugged the zip closed. A lorry rumbled past and then a couple more boy racers in Subarus. A heartbeat later, a nondescript people carrier slid by, quiet and five below the speed limit.
Instinct nipped at Benito’s gut. He started the Corsa’s engine and waited for the silver Zafira to disappear around the bend. Then he flicked the lights on half beam and eased out of his hiding place.
The Zafira hadn’t got far, as if it had been waiting for him to follow. Tense, Benito pulled his black woollen hat lower and hung back, keeping a sharp eye out for other vehicles as he tracked the people carrier down the narrow country road, twisting and turning along a nonsensical route that made the hair at the nape of his neck stand on end.
Leave it alone. The instinct held more gravity now than ever, but Benito drove on, following the Zafira cross country for twenty miles in the wrong direction. Despite the strain in the air, the drive was uneventful enough for his mind to drift. His crowded mind. Even when he’d spent his days controlling the micro-kingdom he was now stalking through the back roads of nowheresville, he couldn’t remember a time when he’d had more to think about. Rosetta. Gianna. Debts that weren’t his own and yet still weighed so heavily on him he could barely breathe.