With A Vengeance

Chapter 1

1 Eleven years ago

The night was still. The four men held their breath. The loudest sound was the the pulse of blood in their own ears.

The back of the Transit van was dark but for the beam emanating from Footloose’s torch. The other three watched as Footloose’s hand signalled the countdown: five fingers, then four, three, two, one. With a nod, he turned and pushed open the rear doors of the van, the other three men following close behind.

Within seconds, they were inside the industrial unit. Their inside man had done his job and would be paid handsomely.

That was always the trickiest part of jobs like this — until it got to this moment, you never quite knew whether your man on the inside was stringing you along or not. They’d all heard of huge plans that had gone wrong because their contact had gone to the law or, worse, arranged to double-cross them. But this was all going perfectly to plan.

Once they were inside, Headache got to work on the on-duty security guard, pinning him to the ground before he’d managed to grab hold of his radio and sound the alarm.

The guard was a tough cookie. Much bigger than they’d been led to believe, but it only took Headache a few seconds to live up to his name, delivering a skull-splitting headbutt to the man’s face, knocking him unconscious. With the guard now a little easier to manipulate, Headache and Bruno frisked him down, removing his tools and equipment, before gagging him and handcuffing him to the copper pipework.

‘Oi, Footloose. We’ve got a problem here!’ Peter yelled from inside the office. They only ever used their nicknames when on a job. They couldn’t risk blowing their real identities, and they never knew who was listening.

‘What do you mean “problem”?’ Footloose replied, seemingly unruffled. Despite the calm tone of his voice, Headache and Bruno knew when Footloose was upset. Their years of knowing him and working with him meant they would realise a couple of seconds before most people. That still wouldn’t give them enough time to get out of his way, though.

Footloose walked through to the office and looked down at Peter, who was crouched down by the safe.

‘It’s not the model he told us it was,’ Peter said. ‘I’m not tooled up for this one.’

Footloose looked him in the eye and spoke calmly. ‘What do you mean you’re not tooled up?’

‘I mean, this needs extra gear. I can’t get into this with the tools I’ve brought. I’m going to need—’

Peter’s sentence was cut short by Footloose lifting him up by the front of his overalls and pinning him to the wall. He could hear the fabric ripping and tearing as it struggled to hold his weight, his feet dangling a good few inches off the ground.

‘You’re a bloody safe breaker,’ Footloose yelled, spittle flying through the mere millimetres that separated their faces. He pulled Peter away from the wall and slammed him back against it with each word. ‘You. Break. Safes. Get it?’

Before Peter could reply, Footloose’s attention was taken by the distant sound of sirens.

‘Footloose! There’s sirens!’ Bruno called from outside the office.

‘I can hear that,’ came the reply, as he threw Peter to the ground. ‘Now what the f**k’s going on?’

He could see immediately that none of the others had any clue.

‘They’re getting closer. They’re coming here!’ Bruno said.

Footloose knew he had to make his decision quickly.

‘We need to split. Headache, back out the way we came. You too, you useless prick,’ he said through gritted teeth, picking Peter up and shoving him over towards Headache. ‘Bruno, with me. We’ll take the fire escape.’

The men nodded and made to do as they were told, before Footloose gave them one last instruction.

‘And remember. If there’s even the slightest possibility that anyone’s following you to the safe house — even the tiniest fraction of a chance — you abandon. Alright?’

The men nodded again, and Footloose gestured for them to get moving.

It took three shoulder-barges for Bruno to shake the back door free of its hinges, before he and Footloose clambered up the metal stairs, jumped the low wall and ran off into the woods behind the industrial estate.

Towards the front of the unit, Peter and Headache were ready to break for the exit. As they rounded the corner and started to run towards the van, their attention was taken by a voice shouting from the darkness. Peter carried straight on to the van, but Headache stopped and turned towards the voice.

A man jogged out of the shadows, clearly almost out of breath, his policeman’s uniform reflecting under the streetlights.

‘Get on the floor,’ the policeman said, struggling to talk between breaths. ‘Get down. Hands behind your head.’

‘Yeah, as if,’ Headache replied, turning to join Peter back at the van before the rest of the cops arrived. He could see this guy had no weapons, no truncheon, nothing. Just a beat cop who’d heard the call go out over the radio and been unlucky enough to get here first.

‘Wait,’ the policeman called out. ‘I know you. Don’t I?’

‘Headache! Get in the van!’

Headache looked at the policeman for a moment. ‘No. Sorry. You’re mistaken.’

‘Yeah I do. You’re—’

‘Headache! Now!’

‘Yeah. Last September. The Moulson Arms. I know who you are.’

‘Headache! I’m going if you don’t get in the van right now!’

Headache’s jaw started to tense as he stretched out his hand, then quickly dipped it into his inside jacket pocket, pulled out the Makarov pistol and raised it in front of him, the barrel pointed directly at the policeman’s head.

‘Jesus Christ, Headache! No!’ Peter yelled, by now revving the van’s engine and beeping the horn to get his attention.

Headache swallowed, narrowed his eyes, and pulled the trigger.