a Toyota people carrier parked in the darkness amidst police vans and cars. Maureen was in the driver’s seat, Bruce in the middle row and Michael was in the back wearing a disposable overall like James’.
‘Looks like I was the only one smart enough not to get nicked,’ Bruce giggled, as James sat beside him.
James turned around to ask Michael if he was OK.
‘Cops treated me like dirt, but I’ll live.’
‘Michael says the fighting around the warehouse was mental,’ Bruce grinned, as Maureen drove the big Toyota out of the parking space.
‘What happened about Major Dee?’ James asked.
‘Not a thing,’ Chole said. ‘As far as we can tell he pegged it as soon as he saw the Runts coming. The police followed the car he was in and pulled him over, but they got nothing. Not even a Stanley knife or a spliff in the glove box.’
‘That’s a bit crap,’ James tutted. ‘What about the surveillance? Weren’t some of Dee’s lieutenants seen in the warehouse setting up the drug deal?’
Bruce shook his head. ‘You mean the talcum powder deal.’
‘What?’ James gasped.
Chloe nodded, as the Toyota turned a sharp corner. ‘After a good deal of fighting the cops did manage to surround the warehouse,’ she explained. ‘The explosion destroyed a lot of evidence, but the car boot was down when it went off and the bags of drugs were protected from the blast. Only problem was, they’d already been switched.’
‘Do you think Sasha robbed them?’ James asked.
‘We’re pretty certain that Simeon Bentine was behind it, either with or without the Mad Dogs,’ Chloe said. ‘The cops went to Simeon’s office and he’s vanished into thin air.’
James tried to figure all of this out in his head. ‘So we got Sasha. Savvas is in the hospital and Bruce got the van before it was burned out, which should give us enough evidence to nail Riggsy and the rest of the Mad Dogs.’
‘That’s about right,’ Chloe said.
‘No sign of the Kruger brothers or any of the money yet though,’ Bruce noted. ‘Wheels and the others who got away won’t be showing their faces any time soon.’
‘But they’re all either locked up or on the run,’ James said. ‘Which isn’t a bad result.’
‘But it’s a long way shy of our original plan to get all of the senior Mad Dogs and Slasher Boys in one little warehouse and surround them with cops,’ Michael said.
‘It’s a shame,’ Chloe yawned. ‘We didn’t touch Major Dee and we can’t press drugs charges against anyone because there weren’t any drugs.’
Maureen shook her head. ‘And in that sort of chaos it’s going to be hard to prove which weapon belonged to who. They’ll all claim to have picked up someone else’s weapon to use in self defence because their life was in danger and nobody will testify. The lawyers will have their work cut out getting convictions.’
‘And the gang war rolls on,’ Bruce said dramatically. ‘Only the Slasher Boys are the real psychos and without the Mad Dogs keeping them in check there’s going to be absolute carnage.’
‘The Runts have got a lot of manpower though,’ Michael said. ‘If someone took charge, they’d be a match for the Slasher Boys.’
‘They’re bound to get more organised,’ Bruce said. ‘There must be one Runt with a few brain cells.’
James stared out the window at the passing streetlamps and sounded annoyed. ‘So basically we just spent two months trying to stop a gang war, but all we’ve done is made it worse.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Chloe said, feeling like it was her duty to cheer up the three tired agents. ‘We gathered a lot of intelligence, all of which the anti-gang taskforce will use in their ongoing battle. Just because we’re going back to campus before everyone is in prison doesn’t mean that the mission is a failure.’
‘It’s still crap though,’ Bruce said. ‘We came so close.’
‘Oooh, burgers,’ James said, as they whizzed past a couple of fast-food joints. ‘Can we stop? Apart from that chocolate, I haven’t eaten since breakfast.’
‘I hate that greasy shit,’ Michael complained. ‘It turns my guts.’
‘Right now I’m so hungry I’d settle for a dead rat on a stick,’ James said.
Maureen looked across at her boss. ‘There’s a roundabout up ahead, Chloe. I can turn back if anyone wants something to eat.’
‘No,’ Chloe said definitively. ‘Wait until we’re out of Luton. I want to get as far out of this godforsaken hole as I can.’
‘And never come back,’ Bruce added.
48. SIN
It was eleven o’clock when James arrived back on