a catering-sized coffee can and strolling outside towards the men’s changing block. Owen wore his jeans down low, with his boxers showing, but it was a younger man’s look and it didn’t seem right.
Gabrielle followed Owen and Michael into the tiled men’s changing room. The floor was covered with chunks of dry mud stamped out with the shape of football studs, and she could see past the clothes hooks and benches into a toilet cubicle with damp tissue across the floor and diarrhoea sprayed up the seat.
‘Do you need me in here?’ she said, gagging on the combo of old sweat and blocked toilet.
‘Wait outside,’ Owen snorted, as he grinned at Michael. ‘It’s not really suited to the delicate nostrils of females in here.’
As Owen stepped on to a metal changing bench and reached up to grab a kilo of cocaine from behind a ceiling tile, Gabrielle backed into the crisp March air. She tried to wipe the foul smell from memory as she buried her fists in the front pockets of her hoodie and studied the cold breath curling in front of her face.
The playing fields were deserted, except for a dude thirty metres away, sitting on a concrete bench behind a set of goalposts. He was a little older than Gabrielle, maybe seventeen: Adidas tracksuit, with a bike flat on the pavement in front of him and a mobile phone touching a cheek covered in zits. She wouldn’t have given him a second glance, but for his shocked expression when he realised she was looking his way.
He snapped his phone shut, sprang off the bench and wobbled all over the place as he began pedalling away.
‘All set,’ Michael said, zipping the bag of white powder into a Fila pack. He handed it over to Gabrielle as Owen locked up the changing room.
‘Do you recognise that guy on the bike?’ she asked, but the rider had disappeared into the glare of the low sun.
‘Nice doing business, Owen,’ Michael said, waving as the giant Jamaican and his trailing boot laces headed back towards his hut. ‘Maybe I’ll catch you in the Green Pepper.’
‘Not tonight,’ Owen smiled, looking back over his shoulder as he headed for his lock-up. ‘My girl Erica goes to college. I got three babies to look after.’
‘Sounds a blast,’ Michael said, as he and Gabrielle started walking towards the gates.
‘I think we’re being followed,’ Gabrielle whispered.
But Michael wasn’t convinced. ‘Are you sure? I mean, you’re pretty paranoid. Remember that time we came out of the bowling alley on campus and …’
Gabrielle practically growled. Just one time she’d thought some guy was following them back to campus and ever since Michael had accused her of being paranoid about everything.
‘It’s not like that,’ she snapped. ‘That spotty dude can’t have been expecting me to come out of the changing room straight away. You should have seen the look on his mug; and he climbed on that bike like he had a hot spud up his rear end.’
Michael glanced around. ‘Well, we can’t do much except keep our wits and we’re doing that anyway.’
‘I know,’ Gabrielle nodded, as she swung the pack over her back. ‘But I thought this was dodgy and now I really think this is dodgy.’
‘Who could he be?’ Michael asked.
Gabrielle shrugged. ‘He had that whole chavvy thing going on; he looked like a Runt.’
Michael shook his head. The Runts were a youth gang who all came out of a couple of estates on the opposite side of town. They dealt drugs, stole cars and burgled houses, but they were mostly just tearaways. Even the leaders were barely out of their teens.
‘Too sophisticated,’ Michael said. ‘You’re suggesting that Runts are gonna send some dude into the Green Pepper to set up a sale, then keep tabs on all of Major Dee’s couriers so that they can find where he keeps his stash …’
‘OK, you’re right,’ Gabrielle said irritably. ‘It’s way too sophisticated for the Runts. But I’m telling you it’s not me being paranoid; that dude flipped out when he saw me.’
‘Could be a cop,’ Michael said.
Gabrielle shrugged. ‘Too young to be on the drugs squad, but I suppose it could be an informant.’
‘Or some other gang … I mean, Major Dee’s double-crossed everyone from the Russian mafia to his own uncle. Do you think we should call Chloe again?’
‘What’s the point?’ Gabrielle asked. ‘She’s a mission controller, not a miracle worker. I know what she’ll say: we can go ahead and deliver the drugs or pull