Early in the morning, Max and Star left the bedsit five minutes apart, Max as a tramp with Vlad and Goodnight; Star in her jeans and hoody. Star kept watch from a shadowy doorway, reporting on her phone to Max through his hands-free earphone.
He shuffled up to the drug dealer’s car and fitted the tracker phone. He also set up a permanent video feed from another phone disguised as a brick on top of a wall. It faced the dealer’s base and worked well.
Max was confident the dealer’s routine would soon be established and members of the gang would be easily recognized.
Max then planned how he could bug the dealer’s base. A brief reconnaissance showed the best way in was from the adjacent mid-terraced building. The windows were boarded up, and the front door had both a mortise dead lock and the Yale type latch. Someone had driven nails through the doorstop to prevent a knife blade or similar tool being used to force the latch back to break in.
Next day, Star bought two different dead locks so Max could practice picking them. It amazed him how vulnerable the locks were.
Before he went out that evening, Max checked the video feed. No one appeared to be in the dealer’s building, so now was the time to break in.
Dressed as a tramp and carrying his weapons, Max approached the building. To gain entry, he forced a long masonry nail through the softwood doorstop to create a hole, bypassing the security nails. After pulling it out, he pushed a straight piece of thin wire coat hanger through the new hole to force back the latch. Next, he picked the old deadbolt lock; it took just half a minute.
Max entered the gloomy derelict building, feeling his way gingerly to avoid stumbling or crashing into anything that would make a noise. Using his finger over the pencil thin torch beam to control the light, he picked his way through, and up the stairs to find the loft hatch. A loft ladder was already down, so up he went and carefully examined the party wall between buildings. The brickwork was old and crumbling. He quickly made a large hole and crawled through.
Confident that no one was in the dealer’s building, Max lowered himself through their loft hatch into the room below. All the dividing partitions had been demolished, and the whole space was open to the stairs.
Apart from a large table and four chairs, there was no other furniture in the room. The lower floor still had all the rooms intact: living room, toilet, and a kitchen with a back door where everyone came and went. The front door was never used. There was another table and four chairs in the living room, nothing else.
Bugging the building was impossible; they had no phone line and no computer. It appeared they only used the building to count money and split and repackage the drugs. Frustrated, Max left the way he came.
For the remainder of the evening, he worked on the day’s data. Looking up from time to time, he watched the video feed of the dealers’ entrance. It was late evening when their car unexpectedly swung into view and four men got out. Two men held a third firmly; it was Alf, the man Max had robbed. He was not walking steadily; it looked like he had been beaten up.
“We’re in trouble Star! That drug dealer Alf, the guy I robbed, has been captured by the gang and is being beaten up for the money I took from him. The damned idiot didn’t leave, like I told him to. I must try and save him if I can.”
He quickly put on his trainers, jeans and hoody, wrapping a scarf around the lower part of his face. The less anyone saw of him the better. For protection, he slipped Goodnight into a pocket and Vlad under his belt.
Star looked apprehensive. She thought contact with the dealers would probably jeopardize all their plans and be a terrible risk to Max. She said nothing, but prayed he would be all right.
With no one else about on this bitterly cold, dark night, he hurried along, hoody up, head down. He quickly reached the drug gang’s lair, wondering if he was in time to save Alf from more pain.
Silently, he entered the adjacent building and made his way through the loft space over the dealers’ room.
One of the dealers was shouting at their prisoner, threatening to cut off all his toes and fingers if he did not tell them where the money was. Alf protested of course, but they had caught him on the run, which proved his guilt in their minds. The dealers had a tip from their police informant who had spotted Alf on the CCTV system. The fool never left the area, but had shacked up with his girlfriend, thinking he would be safe.
There was no way Max could open the loft hatch, drop down and take on however many people were in the room. He needed to wait and pick his moment. The hatch was at the head of the stairs, over what would have been the landing. He slowly and silently lifted the cover and peered into the room.
Alf was tied to a chair near the center of the room and one thickset thug with his back to Max was punching Alf to soften him up. Suddenly the goon turned. Fortunately, it was so unexpected that Max had no time to react, so the angry dealer did not see the slightly raised hatch. Had Max moved or lowered it, he would have been noticed in the dealer’s peripheral vision.
The thug ran downstairs calling for a plaster, as Alf’s teeth had cut open his knuckles. Max seized the opportunity to drop down to the floor, a flimsy plan forming in his mind as he landed on a creaky board. Max held a finger up to his lips, warning Alf to be silent.
A wiry character ran up to check the cause of the creaking sound. The top of the flight turned ninety degrees and faced directly into the room. Alongside it was an old airing cupboard, so the dealer ran past Max, who pressed his back to the doors.
The dealer only saw Alf sitting upright with a startled expression. Then he was out like a light as Goodnight smashed into the nape of his neck. Max caught the falling man and an instant later, the other two dealers ran upstairs.
Max held the wiry man upright, grasping his clothes and hair at the back, holding him in plain view at the top of the stairs, as though leaning against the cupboard. The two men had reached the top quarter turn when Max threw the wiry man down on top of them, following through with whacks about their heads with Goodnight. He ran over and undid Alf’s ropes to release him.
“Alf, don’t make a noise, or look at me or it will be the last thing you ever do!” warned Max, as Vlad entered the prisoner’s field of view. “Go down the stairs, out the back door and keep running. If they catch you again, I will kill you myself.”
Alf stumbled over the bodies on the stairs, unlocked the back door and ran out into the night. Max followed as the three men started to recover. He closed the back door and locked it from the outside, pocketing the key. Two jabs from Vlad punctured tires, preventing them using the vehicle to scour the streets for their escaped prisoner. At least Max’s identity was still unknown by the dealers, although Alf could probably identify him.
Still lurking in the shadows, Max saw the three men come out, having unlocked the back door with a spare key. Seeing the deflated tires, they cursed and swore. Now they would raise every soul in the criminal underworld to find Alf and his rescuer.
Star hugged Max as he entered their bedsit and weeping with relief, made a fresh pot of tea. She had been watching the video feed, but that told her very little, so she quizzed him about what had happened. Thank god their plans were still safe. Now seemed a good time to raise the question that was deeply troubling her.
“Max, I’m getting worried. You have your new identity, but I have nothing. What are you going to do if we don’t find one for me?”
“I am concerned about that too. We can’t risk using your real identity in case you are on a watch list as a missing person, at least from your asylum. We won’t find any tramp or crusty that looks like you, I’m sure of that. We need to look at recent deaths and hope we find someone suitable.”
Star felt his tone was distinctly lacking in conviction. She said no more and decided to take matters into her own hands.