into Keith Moore’s organisation three years earlier. The mission had resulted in Kelvin getting a three-year prison sentence, but fortunately he had no clue that James was responsible.
‘Blast from the past!’ Kelvin said affectionately when he saw James. ‘You’ve got big! I hear you’ve been up north.’
Kelvin was scarily muscular, but he looked pretty lame in navy slacks and a short-sleeve shirt with a Royal Mail logo over the breast pocket.
‘You’re working for the Post Office now?’ James asked.
‘One day only,’ Kelvin grinned, as he pointed towards a large amazon.co.uk parcel resting against the wall. ‘Special delivery.’
37. POST
It was 7:40 a.m. when Kelvin approached the hard front, with the Amazon parcel under his arm and a mail bag slung over his back. Savvas and Wheels crouched in a stairwell less than ten metres away, with silenced handguns in holsters under their jackets. James and Bruce were behind them, leather gloves over their hands and black balaclavas ready to pull over their faces before they moved in. Sasha was in the next block watching through the surveillance cameras. As the boss of the Mad Dogs, he left most of the dirty work to his younger deputies.
Salty beads streaked down Kelvin’s forehead as he stood at the reinforced door. He could hear a couple speaking inside as he jammed his thumb on the doorbell for a second time.
‘Parcel,’ Kelvin shouted. ‘I know you’re there but I ain’t got all day.’
A couple of bolts slid off and the door opened a few centimetres, still secured by a heavy chain. The instant it moved, Savvas and his three companions jumped out of the stairwell and began moving along the balcony towards the flat.
The woman behind the door was in a state, with a duvet wrapped around her shoulders and a yellow muck weeping from an infected eyeball.
‘Hey,’ the woman yawned, as Kelvin passed a clipboard and Biro through the doorway. Then she screamed back down the hallway: ‘More of your poxy books, Tyler. How come it’s not your arse I see moving out of bed?’
As the woman scrawled her name in a white box, Kelvin slipped a 60,000-volt cattle prod out of his back pocket and jammed it into her belly. She flew away from the door, convulsing as she collapsed backwards into a rack of coats hanging on the wall.
Outside, Wheels pulled down his balaclava and ran forwards holding a giant pair of bolt croppers. Kelvin pushed his trainer against the door to make the chain tight and Wheels cut it.
Kelvin didn’t have body armour or a gun and the woman had seen his face, so he backed off and let the other four take care of business. A woman shouted as Savvas and Wheels charged into the living-room waving their guns. As planned, James raced on down the hallway and burst into the main bedroom, while Bruce pinned the woman to the hallway floor, locking her arms behind her back with disposable cuffs and forcing a rubber gag into her mouth.
A smell hit James as the bedroom door came open: a mixture of urine and old sweat that made him glad he hadn’t eaten breakfast. After weeks of surveillance, James was certain that they’d seen everyone come and go enough times to know exactly who was inside, but he was staggered to find a small boy staring out from between the wall and a chest of drawers. He looked about five, but he had a dummy in his mouth and clearly hadn’t seen bathwater in weeks.
James was so appalled by the sad little figure that he lost concentration, allowing the man in the bed to reach under the mattress and grab a knife. But James ripped the Glock out of its holster and held it in the air.
‘Put that down before I blow your head off,’ James said strictly.
He looked back when he heard a row breaking out in the hallway directly behind him. One of the dealers had tried making a sprint out of the second bedroom, but he’d clattered into Bruce, who’d taken him down with a palm thrust hard into his solar plexus.
‘Get everyone tied and bring ’em in here,’ Savvas shouted from the living-room. ‘Then we’ll search for the gear.’
‘Put this in your mouth and pull the strap behind your head,’ James ordered, as he grabbed a rubber gag out of his pocket and threw it on to the bed.
The man did what he was told.
‘Now your wrists,’ James said, putting the gun to the man’s head as