It was a scorching late July day. Alex Wakefield had been planning on spending it at the beach ogling all the tourist chicks in their skimpy little bikinis. Maybe getting lucky in the evening. They were all dirty cows, especially when they were drunk.
Then the call from Teddy Demme had come in.
"Something's come up, lads. I'm going to need you for the next twenty-four hours."
Lads was Alex Wakefield and Jimmy Garton. They'd been mates since school. Or rather, since they'd both been kicked out of school. Currently they rented a flat on Greene Street. It was a shithole, but it was only temporary. Alex and Jimmy were lads on the make, and that was down to knowing people like Teddy Demme.
Jimmy wasn't happy about the call.
"Aw fuck, I was supposed to be meeting Gemma this afternoon."
"You'll have to put it off," Alex said.
"She goes back home tomorrow."
"Tough."
"Two weeks I've been working on her. Two weeks I've been trying to get in her knickers."
Didn't matter. If Teddy Demme put in a call, you dropped everything and did what you were told.
Jimmy was still grumbling about it while they waited for Teddy to come and pick them up.
"She would have put out for sure. That's two weeks down the shitter."
Alex didn't really see the appeal. Gemma had a nice ass, but the rest was nothing to write home about. Nasty snobbish attitude as well, like most of the bitches that came over from the well-to-do suburbs. Thought they were better than everyone else.
Not that those girls were that much better. They wouldn't be holidaying in Spackton-on-Sea if they were. Gemma's father was probably a small-town lawyer. Thought he was a big shit with his own law practise, while all the real big shots in the big city thought he was just as much a hick as his daughter thought Alex was.
Alex didn't think Gemma would put out. She'd just turned eighteen and was one of those former 'good girls' relishing the effect her looks and body had on all the boys. It was all a game to her. She'd prick-tease Jimmy all evening, then make up some excuse right at the end.
It wouldn't work. Jimmy had a contingency plan for girls like Gemma, a little special something to slip in her drink. Alex knew his mate. Jimmy was gonna smash those doors in tonight one way or another.
Or would have, if Teddy Demme hadn't put in the call.
Lucky for Little Miss Pricktease.
Probably lucky for Jimmy as well.
Alex kept telling him it was harder and harder to pull that shit nowadays with the feminazis running everything. Sooner or later he'd get caught, and then it'd be a lifetime of him getting his doors smashed in by big black cock in prison. Too much of a risk in Alex's eyes. If you were that desperate for minge there was always The Pink Orchid on Queen Street.
Alex had visited on occasion, when watching all the dirty cows walk up and down the promenade in their itsy-bitsy bikinis had built up too much to be relieved by a furious early-evening wank.
He'd always hated himself afterwards.
But what could you do? He had big jug ears and his aunt said he had a face that looked like it had been whacked by a shovel. She wasn't wrong.
That wouldn't hold him back forever. Look at Teddy Demme. The bloke looked like the Thing and the Elephant Man had had a baby, and he probably had tons of minge throwing themselves at his feet. That was because he had power, and power was everything.
Which was why, when someone like Teddy Demme called, you fucking dropped everything. Because that was how you got to work up the ranks until, one day, you were the one making the phone calls.
Jimmy bitched, but he knew it too. Gemma was just another trampy tourist tart. Plenty more where she came from.
Teddy showed up in a big Beemer at just after quarter past three.
"Get in the back, lads," he said.
Alex opened the back door and he and Jimmy slid along the wide back seat. The interior of the Beemer smelt of leather polish and stale cigarettes. Teddy hadn't switched the aircon on, so it was almost unbearably stifling in the July heat.
Teddy was a craggy presence behind the wheel. His hair was snowy-white and patchy. He was the oldest of old firm. He'd been doing this shit since before Alex had been a little sperm swimming in his daddy's testicles. Despite his advancing years he still had that aura of old-school hardness, the kind that said he was still capable of beating your ass with a knuckleduster if you even thought about giving him shit.
Usually.
He seemed less composed today. Jittery even.
"What's the job, guv?" Alex asked.
"We'll do whatever you need," Jimmy said. "If you need someone whacked, just give us the shooters and... pow!"
Jimmy made a gun with his hand and mimed shooting through the windscreen.
Teddy's craggy face cracked in a scowl.
"There ain't gonna be any shooting," he said.
Alex thought he heard him mutter "wouldn't do any good anyway" under his breath.
"I need you to babysit something for the next twenty-four hours. Nothing major. Should be a piece of cake. I'll tell you more when we get there."
Teddy took them out along Aquamarine Parade, the main high street that ran parallel to the promenade. Given the day was a scorcher, the tourists were out in force, and being tourists, kept walking out into the street with no care for the traffic trying to get through. Teddy mostly kept ice-cool until a particularly stupid family stopped in the middle of the road to gawp at something out to sea. Teddy hammered on the horn. The father, a jerk in a tank top who was in no way as muscular as he believed himself to be, thought about starting something. Then he saw Teddy glowering at him from the driver's seat and thought better of it.
Smarter than he looks, Alex thought.
Once they left the main promenade the roads were largely unimpeded and the Beemer was able to glide smoothly up the road to Windrush Heights. Windrush Heights was the posh part of Spackton-on-Sea. All the posh wankers lived there. Or rather, owned houses there. People didn't live in Windrush Heights. These were second homes for rich wankers to visit when they fancied a break from the city.
Windrush Heights overlooked Spackton-on-Sea and the rest of the bay. Exactly how the posh wankers wanted it. Teddy drove the Beemer right up to the biggest and fanciest house of them all—a two-storey villa situated on the highest point of the estate.
"Fuck me, it's the swankiest pile in wankerville," Jimmy said.
Alex got out and shielded his eyes from the bright sunshine. Seagulls whirled overhead. It was a fancy house, and so white it hurt the eyes to look at in the sunlight. Just around the left side of the building Alex saw the edge of a swimming pool. To the right side of the house the road terminated at a cliff edge. A set of rock steps led down to the beach below. The beach was currently carpeted in semi-naked tourists.
Prime spot for a party house, Alex thought.
"This is Mr Herbert's summer house," Teddy said. "I trust you know who Mr Herbert is."
Alex nodded.
Everyone in the firm knew who Mr Herbert was. He
was
the firm. Mr Herbert was the guv'nor's guv'nor. He was to Teddy what Teddy was to Alex and Jimmy.
