Street Soldier (13 page)

Sean raised his can the rest of the way, drained it. He wasn’t so sure, but there was nothing he could do. Walking out right now wasn’t an option. He’d never live it down, and he probably wouldn’t make it to the door anyway. Best just to sit it out and wait.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Copper’s arrival was announced with cheers. He’d always been popular but it had obviously gone up some since they’d last hung out together.

The crowd parted and the big man himself walked over. The look on his face was all bulldog. No warmth, just an animal snarl.

‘Seany.’

‘Copper.’

For a moment they stared each other out. Sean didn’t
know whether to get ready to defend himself, or to just cut to the chase and get in with a pre-emptive strike.

Then, amazingly, Copper’s snarl vanished and a grin appeared. ‘Come here then, you bastard!’

Sean was helpless as Copper wrapped his massive arms around him and lifted him off the ground. ‘Good to see you too,’ he said, squeezing the words out of squashed lungs.

Copper dropped Sean back onto his feet and ruffled his hair. ‘That fuck awful haircut says you’re still in the army.’

Sean nodded. ‘That a problem?’

‘Only if you want it to be.’ Copper took a can from Matt’s offering hand.

Ah
, thought Sean. He heard the edge to Copper’s voice. Despite the outward show of everything’s-all-right-now, it wasn’t.

‘So, what you been up to?’ Sean asked, deliberately changing the subject.

‘Did my time, got released, come back home,’ Copper said. ‘Life’s good, ain’t that right, Matt?’

Matt reached over, bumped fists with him.

‘So, what brings you back now?’ Copper asked.

‘Misses us, I reckon,’ Matt said.

‘Something like that.’ Sean attempted a smile.

‘Not sure I believe that,’ Copper said. ‘Eighteen
months is a long time to miss a guy without, you know, doing something the fuck about it.’

‘It’s Mum,’ Sean said. ‘She needs someone to keep an eye on her.’ He looked from Copper to Matt, then back to Copper again. He finished his beer.

‘You want us to watch out for her, is that it?’ Copper asked.

‘Yeah,’ Sean said. ‘Look, I know it’s asking a slot . . . I mean, a lot . . .’ Oh, shit – great time to be pissed. If he’d known he would be tangling with Copper, he’d have stuck to the soft stuff. ‘But she already had some twat beat her up, and he was armed too.’ He took a breath and ran on with the sentence in his head, before he lost the power of speech altogether. ‘I’d just rest easier knowing you had your eye on her. ‘Cos, face it, Copper’ – he saw no harm in a little flattery, and anyway, it was true – ‘they know you’re on her case, no one’s going to mess with her.’

Copper stared at Sean over his beer can, sinking great gulps until it was finished. Then he crushed it and chucked it into a corner of the room. ‘So you think you’re still one of us?’ he asked. ‘Even with all that soldiering shite?’

‘I’m still
me
, Copper,’ Sean said. ‘You know that.’

Copper was silent, his eyes never leaving Sean. Then he said, ‘Remains to be seen, don’t it?’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Means it’s a long time since you brought anything into the Guyz. And I’ve got a short memory.’

Their eyes locked together, neither of them giving an inch.

Matt broke the deadlock. ‘Fr’instance, Sean, from what you were telling me, there’s now a surplus gun on the estate . . . Where did that get to? Seems to me the Guyz could use something like that.’

Sean slowly turned his head to glower at his old mate. ‘I dealt with it.’

One thing he was absolutely sure of was that the Guyz did not need a gun. God knew what they would do with it. A year ago he would have handed it over without question. Now he had a professional’s pride when it came to weaponry, and he knew what guns could do in the hands of amateurs. He had wiped it for prints – he presumed his were still on file, and it would be a
really
bad idea for former car thief Private Harker’s prints to turn up on a hooky gun – and then chucked it into the recycling. Let the council work out where it came from, if they ever found it.

Copper came up real close to Sean. ‘Army turned you soft?’

Sean made to push past. Copper didn’t budge.

‘Soft, and a chicken too? Well, fuck me, Seany, what’s happened to you?’

Sean pushed again, and this time Copper let him past.

Matt called after him. ‘Come on Sean, mate. Copper’s only joshing with you . . . Aren’t you, Copper? Right?’

Sean caught the look in Copper’s eyes. ‘I don’t need to prove myself, Copper. All I’m asking is a favour!’

‘And all I’m asking is a little proof. It isn’t much, Seany, you know that. But keeping an eye on your mum – that’s work. It takes time that we could be using for something more profitable. It
costs
, Seany. So if you can show you’re still a part of the family – if you keep on paying your dues and don’t just want to sponge off us – then I guarantee your mum will be safe. My word.’

Sean was out of the flat, down the short flight of stairs and outside before he either had the chance to respond, or punched someone.

Fuck this!
He had to
prove
himself to fucking Copper?

After everything he had achieved in the last year, Sean felt no need to prove himself to anyone ever again. He knew who and what he was. And Copper just shat all over that and counted it for nothing.

What did Copper know, anyway? Nothing, that’s what.

He shouldn’t have bothered. Should have just taken his mum and got her out of there, put her up in a flat away from the estate, let her start again, like he had.

His phone rang. He snatched it from his pocket,
expecting to see Matt’s number come up. But it wasn’t Matt.

‘Mum?’ Sean heard crying down the line. ‘Mum! What’s happened? What’s wrong?’

The sobbing continued for a while longer until at last words came: ‘Sean, I got worried – you went out and you didn’t come back . . . Suppose Ricky comes back? He will, Sean—’

‘He won’t, Mum,’ he said automatically. ‘I’m talking to some guys about it.’

More sobbing. ‘I miss you, love, and I get so scared when I’m on my own . . . Didn’t used to be like this, not when you were around . . .’

Sean closed his eyes and groaned.
Not you too, Mum!

That was what it came down to. As a kid he had thought the Guyz were family. They looked out for each other because that was what families did. But no, apparently he had got it wrong. The Guyz looked out for the people it was useful to look out for.

He had to make himself useful again.

‘I’m going to sort it out, OK, Mum? I’m going to sort it out right now. I promise. Just hang tight. Can you do that for me?’

‘Yes, love, of course I can.’

‘Good,’ said Sean. He jabbed at the off key and the line went dead.

He knew exactly what he had to do. It had nothing to do with proving himself to Copper. It had everything to do with family. His own, and the gang.

He walked for twenty minutes to get safely away from the estate. The old rule about not shitting in your own bed still applied. Then he quickly took a left off the high street, dropping down into a small side road. It was lined with parked cars. Staying alert for passers-by, he walked along, testing doors. It had never ceased to amaze him how many people left their cars unlocked. All it took was a moment of forgetfulness – and, yep, just as Sean had expected, an open door. It was a Ford Orion, an old model but in good condition. That meant two things: easy to wire and easy to flog.

He slipped into the driver’s seat and his fingers felt expertly in the dark for the ridges of the plastic cover beneath the steering wheel. He pulled the panel free and chucked it onto the passenger seat. Next his fingertips worked over the clusters of wiring until he had the bundle that was the battery, ignition and starter wire. He pulled it free and delved into his pocket for his penknife, then stripped an inch of insulation off the battery wires and twisted them together.

Now the car had power, and if all he wanted to do was listen to the radio, he was sorted.

Instead he went on to join the ignition wire to the
battery wire. The dashboard panel came alight. Last of all he wrapped his fingers in his hanky for insulation and stripped half an inch of insulation off the starter wire. A spark flew when the metal blade touched the live wire and Sean hissed through his teeth as it stung him through the cloth. But now the wire was bare. He touched it to the connected battery wires and the Orion choked into life. He quickly revved the engine, but it was in good condition. It only needed that fleeting touch to get it going. After that, the engine ran itself.

‘Still got it,’ he murmured as he eased the vehicle out into the street. ‘Even when I’m pissed.’

He didn’t speed off. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself: he was taking without consent
and
way over the limit. At the back of his mind was the knowledge of just how much trouble he would be in if he got caught. With the police, with the army. But he didn’t need treacherous little voices whispering good sense to him, so he told it to shut the fuck up as he made a call with his phone on hands-free.

‘Matt? Yeah, it’s Sean. Put Copper on. I’ve got something for him. Call it a down payment for services.’

Chapter 13

‘You really want to watch us strip?’ asked Bright.

A ripple of laughter ran down the rank. The platoon stood at ease at the end of the firing range, feet apart and hands behind their backs, while Sergeant Adams paced to and fro in front of them.

‘Correct. Today isn’t just about sending a few thousand rounds down the range, it’s about me making sure you lot know what you’re doing from the moment you pick up a weapon, right through to when you hand it back in. No one is firing off a round till you’ve all stripped and rebuilt your weapon. And that goes for every single one you use today, from your SA80 to the GPMG and your side arm. Or, if you prefer, we can spend the day doing PT. I really don’t mind.’ He got out his watch. ‘So, platoon. Take up your weapons and . . . begin.’

At that, the platoon dropped to the ground to sit cross-legged or on their knees, and everyone got on with pulling apart the SA80 in their laps.

Undo the clips on the stock and remove the firing mechanism. Remove spring, cocking handle and bolt.
Click, click, snap, click
. Unlatch the handguard over the barrel, remove the gas adjuster . . .

There was a soothing rhythm to the lightly oiled, precision-engineered pieces of metal sliding together exactly as designed. Not too much force, not too little, and the gun responded in your hands like a trained pet. It didn’t take long for Sean to have his weapon in pieces and laid out on the cloth in front of him. Muzzle, flash eliminator, trigger, trigger housing . . .

He was grateful to be focusing on something he could do with ease. It was Tuesday and his weekend was long behind him, though not long enough.

Sorting his mum out, a scrap with a loan shark, and twoccing a car were all things that hadn’t been on his to-do list. Yet done them he had, and somehow got away with it all. Copper had come through for him too, shifting the car within hours. Minus his commission, he had handed Sean a good roll of notes. Five hundred quid – most of which Sean had then had to hand straight back. Protection money for his own mum.

No, he kept reminding himself, not protection money, just his dues. Sean had made a contribution to the Guyz so that it would still be worth their while to keep an eye on her. That was OK? Wasn’t it?

But. He couldn’t keep popping up to town and supplying Copper with a car whenever funds were low. And he had to keep the Guyz settled, somehow. His idea of getting his mum off the estate had evaporated in the cold, sober light of day, the moment he checked his bank balance.

He had met guys who weren’t paid much more than him but had thirty or forty grand put away. A couple of tours in Afghanistan, with nothing to spend your dosh on, would do that for you. But he had yet to earn a full year’s salary off the army, and while his income was way higher than his expenditure on Single Living Accommodation, his balance would take one look at a London rent and vanish.

If the soppy cow was going to be looked after full time, he needed a more steady way of paying his dues. And his regular salary was never going to be enough.

Adams checked the platoon’s work, and announced himself satisfied. They moved onto the range proper and stood on the firing line. Sean clamped the ear defenders to his head, though not yet fully over his ears so that he could hear the sergeant’s orders. In front of him, stretching out from approximately fifty metres to a maximum range of three hundred metres, were a number of Figure 11 targets attached to plywood boards – man-sized images showing a helmeted soldier charging
towards you with a bayonet fixed. The end of the range was marked by a huge, steep bank of soil covered in patches of grass and weeds.

‘Best part of the job, this!’ It was Heaton, standing alongside him.

Sean nodded in agreement, with a big grin. Legally firing off guns was the next best thing to driving a fast car.

And what had Heaton said in the car?
Could always use a little help
. . . That sounded a lot like an offer. How serious had it been? He gave the corporal a sideways glance and wondered if now was the moment to bring it up.

But then the order came through from Sergeant Adams to prepare to fire.

Sean was in standing position, his weight already forward on his left foot, ready to fire. He pulled his weapon up and into the shoulder, staring down through the ACOG, which drew the targets in close and clear.

‘Single shots, in your own time,’ Adams said. ‘Have it, then!’

Sean squeezed the trigger. The crack of the round was followed by the thump of it slamming home down range. He fired off single shots, lowering his weapon between each one to adjust his aim and stop his arms fatiguing, breathing, staying calm. He knew why they
were on single shots rather than the usual three-round bursts – this was all about nailing their accuracy and marksmanship. And fully automatic was, as every soldier knew, a last resort. If you were down to that, odds were that things had really gone to shit.