Blood Road

by Caspar Walsh

Genres: General Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

When Nick Geneva does over Vince Cracknell's place with his best mate Warren, he instantly realizes they've pissed off the wrong guy. And accidentally killing his dog wasn't a good move, either. But the money they steal is Nick's ticket to a new life. With Warren in custody, and Vince, the police, and his ex-wife on his heels, Nick hits the road north, taking his difficult, confused, but fiercely loyal sons with him.

Release date: January 21, 2011

Publisher: Headline Book Publishing

Print pages: 221

Sample

Vincent Cracknel parks his Mercedes in the lay-by just outside the village of Westfield. He switches off the engine and looks
out into the black of the two a.m. winter night. Sleet curls in front of the windshield. He takes out his mobile phone, lays
it on the dash, lights a cigarette and waits.


Tiredness is heavy in his bones.

I’m too old for this.

He looks around. No cars pass. Across the field to his left he sees the light from the bungalow a half a mile or so away.
He could drive there. The walk will do him good. Fresh air for his diseased lungs.


The mobile trills out a polyphonic ‘Waterloo Sunset’. He puts it on loudspeaker, keeping it as far away from his ear as possible.
‘Milton. How are you, sunshine?’


‘Cold. There’s no fucking kettle here … and no cups.’

‘I’ve got a flask of coffee. He with you?’

‘He’s colder than I am.’

‘Be with you in about twenty minutes. I’ll walk the last half-mile.’

‘You’re insane, mate. It’s fucking five below.’

‘My legs are stiff … from the drive. Be good to get some air in the old lungs.’

Vincent hangs up, stubs the cigarette and gets out of the car.


He takes a small holdall from the boot, clicks it gently shut and heads for the gate leading into the field.

Milton opens the door as Vincent walks into the drive. They head into the bungalow in silence.

The man sitting in the far corner of the living room looks up as Vincent walks in.

‘Evening, sunshine.’ Vincent pulls over a chair and straddles it. ‘Won’t say it’s good to see you.’ He looks around. ‘Bit
fucking Spartan in here. Could do with a woman’s touch.’


Vincent takes out the flask and two cups; pours one for himself, one for Milton. Milton gets himself a chair.

The two men sit opposite the twenty-something man and look at him in silence as they drink.

After the second cup, Vincent stands. The man pulls back a little.

‘How many times have I asked you?’ Vincent looks expectantly at him.

No reply.

He continues, ‘How many times have I asked you to keep things sustainable? And how many fucking times have we had this conversation?
You know you can only take so much from your patch. That’s the first thing I taught you.’ Vincent looks across to Milton who
continues to sip his coffee. ‘Know where the word ambition comes from?’


Milton shakes his head, uninterested.

‘From the word “ambit”. The distance over which something extends, like a boundary. In the Middle Ages, each year, a chief
would have to walk the boundary of his kingdom, the ambit. See, if it was too big, if he was unable to walk it, he’d become
too ambitious, unable to protect his people, defend his kingdom.’ Vincent looks down at the steam rising from his cup and continues
to talk. ‘I gave you Peckham. Asked you to walk your patch every once in a while, get you out of that stupid fucking car of
yours, keep your feet on the ground. You did well. But you rolled out the cliché and got greedy. I was thinking our chat last
summer had sorted all this out. But then I hear you’ve been stretching the boundaries again … getting a little too … ambitious.’ Vincent walks up behind the silent man and tightens the bound cotton scarf holding the tennis ball in his mouth.
The man moves a little. Vincent rests one finger on his head. He stops moving.


‘So you’ve been making more money than has been checked in and seeing as you tried to convince Milton nothing was amiss we
are forced out here in the middle of a freezing fucking cold night in Surrey to try and find out just where you’ve put it
all. You know how I hate looking for money that’s owed, money that’s mine, and you know I hate unnecessary violence. This
is what we do for a living. Why would you want to fuck around with that? Risk tipping the balance of a good system, something
that benefits all of us? Why would you do that to me, ey, why? After all my generosity.’


Sweat trickles down the bound man’s forehead into his eye. He blinks it out, keeping his focus on Vincent.

‘So where is it?’ Vincent asks, calmly.

The man shakes his head.

‘One more time. You tell me where you put it and we’ll forget all this. You’ll be taken off the street for a few months, pack
you off to sunny Spain for some reflection and we’ll have you back working Peckham by spring.’


He looks at Vincent blankly. The almost imperceptible cocky shrug is all Vincent needs. He stands, walks over to the window,
opens it, leans out and looks up. The stars are sharp and bright. He draws in a lungful of the cold air. It hurts. He looks
up at the low-hanging eaves and gutter and reaches his arm out, snapping off an icicle. He leans back in and walks over, opening
the palm of his hand, showing the man the ice: five inches long, irregular in shape, tapering to a sharp point. The cold of
it in his hand is refreshing. Small drops of water fall, darkening the concrete floor. Gently rolling it between the warmth
of index finger and thumb, Vincent sharpens the point further.


‘Check the rope will you,’ he tells Milton, who follows the order without question, checking the man’s bound arms, body and
legs.


Vincent rests the sharpened point of ice on the man’s face, running its tip down the side of his temple and around his left
eyebrow. He turns it, continually honing its tip on the heat of the man’s skin. The man closes his eyes, squashing icy, saline
tears between lashes.


‘Open your eyes, sunshine.’ He squeezes them shut. ‘Eyes.’ Vincent brings the icicle to the corner of the man’s tightly shut
eye. He pushes the tip gently into the upper orbital ridge.


‘No sudden movements, ey. You could have someone’s eye out with this.’

Milton snorts a laugh and runs his hands through his hair.

The man’s legs begin to shake.

Vincent continues, ‘I read in a book once that ice is a perfect weapon.’ He pauses for effect. ‘All you have to do after you’ve
inflicted your damage is let the evidence melt. Nice and tidy, ey.’ Milton walks over, grips the man’s head and pulls his
eyelid back. Vincent takes hold of the back of his head and gently drives the sharpened length of ice just beneath the bone
of his eye socket and over the top of his eyeball. The man bucks his body as much as the rope will allow. His wails are muffled behind the tennis ball. He tries pointlessly to move his head. The rope
holds fast. His eyelid is now held open by the ice spike. It continues to slide into the gap between bone socket and eye.
It reaches its destination at the back of his optic nerve and continues through. Vincent watches him closely, listening to
the deadened, prolonged scream, then twists it slowly. He snaps the spike in two. A long moan like the howl of a distant dog
tries to make it out of the man’s muzzled mouth. Virtually no sound is heard, certainly nothing beyond the walls of the Spartan
room. Streaming tears turn pink then dark red.


‘Kind of beautiful,’ Vincent remarks.

Milton lets go his hold and sits back down. Thick drops of blood fall silently on to the man’s bound, quaking hands.

Vincent coughs a small round of his own cancerous blood into his handkerchief. He watches intently as his protégé drifts into
unconsciousness and the last moments of his life.


Nick Geneva closes the door with forced gentleness. He wants Emily to know he’s the grown-up. It took all he had not to slam
it off its hinges and scream at her like a kid. Leaning back against the flaking paint of the door frame, he closes his eyes,
enjoying the warmth of the old house.


He’d stood on the freezing cold doorstep for less than a minute taking his two sons from their pissed-off, monosyllabic mother.
This is what he’s ended up with: weekends and parts of the holidays. It’s left him feeling bitter, drunk and victimised. She
looked him in the eye like she always did these days and accused him of being stoned again, unfit to look after her kids.
But she handed them over anyway.


Nick’s love for Emily faded years before they split. Like most of their friends their age, they’d ground the bones of their
relationship to dust for the sake of the kids. They dragged out their partnership in grim determination until being together
was more damaging than separation. The pain of being alone for Nick was far easier to bear than the daily drama of living
with Emily. He takes an in-breath trying to calm the rush of anger inside him.


‘Why are you always nasty to Mum?’ Zeb leans against the wall heater trying to mimic Nick’s pissed-off pose.

‘Not all the time, only when she pisses me off.’ Nick heads into the kitchen, Zeb follows and continues to question him.


‘Never used to be horrible, not when I was smaller, you used to cuddle and stuff.’

Nick looks at him and smiles. ‘You’re still small. Everything’s changed. You know that.’

Nick looks out the window through the bare, street-lit trees. Right now he’d do anything to get out of London. He knows his
time is fast running out. The police have been trying to nick him for the last ten years. If he ran now it would have to be
alone. So he’s staying. Jake and Zeb are the only reason he remains and risks being busted in his own front room day in, day
out. He’s tired of running. Tired of watching over his shoulder. He’s got no one to blame but himself, he knows that.


‘Where’s Jake?’ he asks Zeb.

He isn’t really interested in where Jake is. Zeb stands close to Nick looking up at him with a mixture of curiosity and anger.
He pauses for effect.


‘Said he didn’t want to fight with you cos you’re stoned. Went upstairs to toss himself off.’

‘Why does everybody think I’m stoned?’

‘Cos you are,’ Zeb replies flatly.

Nick always hopes it will go unnoticed. It never does. He brings his hand to his desiccated mouth and massages his jaw. He
smiles to himself and crouches down in front of Zeb, resting his hands on his thin shoulders. He kisses him on the forehead.


‘I’m sorry, kid.’

‘What for?’ Zeb looks confused.

‘Fucking it up.’

‘It’s not your fault. Still got a mum and a dad and now I got two bedrooms, double toys.’ Zeb blows his fringe out of his eyes. ‘Just stop being nasty to her.’


Nick puts his arms round him and hugs him. He breathes in his son’s scent. He hates that Emily baths them so much. Zeb smells
better when he’s been running around in the woods.


‘Dinner.’ Nick releases Zeb and stands up.

‘What is it?’ Zeb asks excitedly.

‘Spag bol. That’ll get your brother out of his shit stinking room.’

Zeb runs up to the stove, lifts the lid on the pan and draws in the smell.

The kitchen walls, much like the rest of the house, are covered in Persian and Afghan rugs. Candles flicker on most surfaces.
An ancient, enamelled Coca-Cola advert with Santa Claus standing by a grandfather clock is nailed to the wall by the door.
Zeb and Jake use it for airgun practice. Santa’s grinning face is ripped up and pock-marked. Striking photographs of the Highlands
and lochs of Scotland line the far wall. The large kitchen table is the most used space in the house.


Nick starts to roll a joint. He licks the papers nonchalantly, looking at the photo of the whitewashed cottage by a loch resting
beneath the sprawling mountain landscape. He never tires of the image. If he had the courage he would go there tomorrow. He
turns to watch Zeb stir the pasta.


‘Did Mum pick up your inhaler refills?’

‘They’re in my school bag.’

‘She gets some things right.’

Zeb picks up a strand of spaghetti from the boiling water and hurls it at the wall. It slides down the back of the cooker.
He shrugs and carries on stirring. Nick takes his shoes off and puts his feet up on the table. He lights the joint then starts to massage his foot. ‘Where you wanna go for half term then?’


Zeb tuts at the stupidity of the question. ‘Disneyland, doughnut.’ He takes a block of cheese out of the fridge.

Nick tokes on the joint. ‘Anywhere a little less expensive?’

‘Not bloody Center Parcs.’

‘You swear too much, kid.’ Nick flicks his ash neatly into the ashtray.

‘I just do what you do innit. Chillax.’ Zeb puts the cheese on the table and sits down in front of Nick, instantly bored.
He rests his chin in his upturned palms.


‘Why not Center Parcs?’ Nick asks, knowing the answer.

‘Bogus, seen pictures. Pikeys from school go there. I ain’t going where stinking Pikey bastards go.’

‘What about Scotland?’

‘You always say that. You promised Disneyland.’ Zeb starts eating the cheese.

Nick looks at the blackened end of the joint and relights it.

‘There’ll be snow on the mountains.’ Nick knows it won’t happen. Emily wouldn’t let it.

‘Can we watch The Simpsons after?’ Zeb gets up, forks a single piece of spaghetti out of the boiling water and slings it at the wall. It sticks.


Nick relights the joint. ‘Get Jake, I’ll lay the table.’

Zeb runs up the stairs followed by repeated banging on Jake’s bedroom door.

Zeb shouts through it. ‘Stop tossing off, you wanker!’

Nick hears a muffled ‘fuck off’ from the other side of Jake’s door.

The large Georgian house is lit at the front by a wide-reaching green light illuminating the ornate pond. In the centre stands
a laughing stone boy pissing frozen water. The pond is a tomb of ice. Three of the windows of the house are lit with no movement
inside.


The Belgravia street is quiet, no cars passing. Those parked are covered in snow. The snow has thinned to sleet, leaving a
grey slush on pavements and kerbs. Nick and Warren Sykes sit in Nick’s beat-up Rover. They look straight ahead, smoking, silent,
dressed casual, black sweatshirts under Gore-Tex jackets, balaclavas in pockets. They wait a further fifteen minutes. The
last person to walk past was an old man, drunk, lurching, dog dragging him along the icy pavement.


Nick and Warren get out of the car. They head round the back of the building in silence. Warren goes first, as always. His
heavy body and skill with his hands are essential in the first stages.


Nick finds the wires leading to the alarm and cuts them. The patio doors to the garden and windows are screened with shutters
from the inside. Warren takes out a cheap jar of honey and smears the window with half of it. He drops the jar and takes out
a roll of newspaper sticking it to the honeyed glass. He begins to push, letting his upper body weight do the rest of the
work. The glass snaps in a quiet, wide arc, big enough to get his arm through. He lifts the sash window up and forces the shutters
forward, busting the flat steel bar fastened on the other side. They listen for a response, alarms, dogs. Silence. Warren
steps in first.


It’s obvious to Nick the owner of this oversized house has a lot of money and little taste. The sitting room is a kitsch mix
of Habitat plastic, overpriced antiques and too many English oil paintings of sportsmen, their horses and dogs. Nick sees
through the facade. He knows the house is owned by a working-class thief made good. No genuine culture in sight, just money.
The show of wealth alone is enough to piss him off into wanting to strip Vincent Cracknel of everything he’s earned, stolen
or borrowed. If only to bring him back to earth. Vincent’s name and address were given to Nick in exchange for half an ounce
of well-cut coke. The junkie in need of the powder had suffered more violence than was called for at the hands of Cracknel.
He was happy to hand him and his house over for a few grams.


Nick and Warren remain silent in their work.

Nick puts the torch in his mouth, heads out into the hall and up the main stairs. Warren heads for the downstairs rooms.

Nick walks into what must be the main bedroom. He smells perfume and the stale stench of sex. He walks over to the bedside
table and lifts up a silver gilt framed picture of a half-naked girl in the arms of an aging man with an over-the-top tan.
From the description, Nick knows this is Vincent. The woman, clearly a teenager, smiles excitedly from the prow of a black
speedboat.


Nick chucks the frame on the bed.

The décor and photo sum up the man being robbed, cementing Nick’s commitment to rip him off for everything of value he can
haul out. He moves calmly, systematically through the drawers and cupboards, enjoying the slow surge of adrenalin. He uses
his breath to keep calm and focused; something Warren taught him when they were kids. He listens to Warren opening and closing
doors and cupboards downstairs. He’s reassured by his presence on the job.


Nick loves and hates this work in equal measure. Too far gone in this career to get anything legal, pay taxes, put something
aside for a pension, he chose this line of work soon after he arrived back from Scotland with Emily in the autumn of 1993.
Two years before Jake arrived, nine before Zeb. He curses her again for dragging them back to London away from the croft in
the highlands of Wester Ross. Curses her for not taking his childhood pipe dream to be a writer seriously enough. She never
stopped hassling him to get a proper job. When he got one she hassled him when the proper job didn’t bring in enough money
to live on. So he went back to crime, this kind, turning houses over to make a better living. After a few years driving cars
for a psychotic armed robber, Nick grew into wanting something calmer, more befitting his age. For all its drawbacks, his
paranoia, the daily fear of arrest, he loves the peace of this work. Anything for a quiet life. Always more welcome than being
around people, save Warren and the kids.


He continues to move through the room and comes to a painting of country landscape with three hunting dogs and a squire walking
thoughtfully along a river. He pushes the bottom right corner with his finger. He finds what he is looking for. He wonders
why they always choose wall safes covered by cheap replica paintings. He lifts it off the wall. He’s presented with a three
by two empty hole in the wall, no safe; a job half done.


The last place he heads for is the walk-in wardrobe. He slides the doors back to find a rail of expensive suits. He drops to his knees and starts to remove the neatly stacked high-shined
shoes from the floor, chucking them into a pile in the middle of the bedroom. He taps the carpet with his torch listening
for the change in sound. He finds one and puts the torch back in his mouth, looking for the seam. After a few seconds he finds
it and lifts up the carpet. The safe in the floor is bigger than usual but it is still going to be easy to remove. He needs
Warren’s tools. He backs out into the bedroom on his hands and knees.


What stops him is a sound he knows shouldn’t be in the room. Every other noise has its place: clock, boiler, the wind outside.
His mind and memory search for what the new sound could be. He tells himself to relax but knows something is wrong. His heart
rate increases, the adrenalin now less comforting. He finally figures it out. The sound behind him is breathing. Warren is
still searching downstairs, he can hear him. In the fraction of a second it takes to edge two feet further out of the wardrobe
he realises what kind of breathing: a panting, waiting dog. Rapid, panicking questions. How big? Why the fuck didn’t it bark
when they bust in? He inches round, torch in mouth. He comes eye level with the unblinking Staffordshire pit bull five feet
in front of him, mouth open, teeth glistening ragged and grey in the man-made light.


Nick has been bitten by five dogs in the last ten years. Two of these were more of a nip leaving nothing but a bruise. The
hypedup mongrels chased him out of the houses with relative ease. The other three, all pedigree breeds, Rottweiler, Dobermann
and wolfhound weren’t so straightforward. One sunk his teeth so deep into Nick’s thigh he had to stick his finger up its arse
to force it to let go. The other two attacked Nick’s hand and left arm respectively. Warren threw the one out of a closed
dining-room window. Nick nearly went with it. Nick stabbed the other in the eye with his pen torch.


Nick loves dogs. Killing the wolfhound brought his thieving to a stop for over a month; until the rent was due.

The aging pit bull lets out a low gurgle and coughs something up on to the carpet. It looks down at it for a moment, confused,
then looks back up at Nick. It takes a step forward trying to force a convincing growl.


‘You’re an old fucker, aren’t you?’ Nick backs steadily into the wardrobe. ‘No sudden moves ey, don’t want any trouble. Just
gonna take your old man’s safe and that’ll be it.’


Surprisingly, the dog stops in his tracks, apparently calmed by Nick’s words. Nick holds his breath. Then the animal lunges
at his face, sinking its smaller, sharper front teeth into his nose and cheek. Nick jerks back automatically, tearing flesh
and skin. It rips into three jagged pink flaps. Warm blood runs down his cheek and neck. His arms flail around above him searching
for the clothes above his head. He tries to pull himself up. Then the chaos of falling suits, snapping jaws, teeth and blood.
Nick prays for intervention.


His plea is met by a high-pitched yelp, followed by the sound of dry retching. Nick stumbles forward catching the first glimpse
of Warren outside the wardrobe. He can see Warren’s hands clasped firmly round the stricken dog’s bollocks. It continues to
dry heave, shoulders jerking, eyes wide until it finally throws up into the scattered pile of penny loafers.


‘Where the fuck did he come from?’ Warren shouts at Nick then at the dog. The dog doesn’t respond. It stares down shocked
at its last meal.


‘Let go of it, Warr, fucking thing looks like it’s gonna have a heart attack.’

‘I’ll give it a fucking heart attack. Chuck the cunt out the window.’


Nick stands up and steadies himself. Warren looks down at the dog and squeezes a . . .