A Boy Who Came In from the Cold Ch. 14

"2 grams," he said with a nod of his head. "This is what Toumbe promised you, non?"

Rayne shrugged slightly.

"Near enough," he murmured, green eyes lifting slowly from the scale to meet that dark, expressionless stare. There was a sheen of sweat across Armand's brow and his hair was a few strands out of place, otherwise he seemed unruffled by what he had just done to the boy. "Surely I've earned a bit of a bonus though?"

"Bonus?" Armand repeated impassively.

"Another gram?" Rayne suggested lightly, with his most winning smile. He tucked his thumbs into the loose waistband of his jeans, letting them ride down to his skinny hips so that both men could appreciate the flash of smooth, golden flesh. "Surely it's worth it for making you both cum like that?" He cast a glance at Pasqual who was watching him flirt with an appreciative smile.

Armand's eyebrows twitched upward speculatively.

"You have money for us?" he asked.

"Yeah." Rayne did not move though.

"Eight hundred francs," Armand said with a slow smile.

"Your friend told me seven fifty," Rayne countered, feeling his pulse quicken again.

"He was not authorised to deal with you. We deal, James Wright, and we say eight hundred francs for 3 grams. You get your bonus."

"And I pay fifty francs more for it!" Rayne protested.

Pasqual straightened purposefully, folding his arms across that burly chest. His smile vanished and Rayne's eyes narrowed warily. Arguing with drug dealers was not conducive to good health, he knew that much without the warning.

"Easy Tiger!" he soothed, forcing a smile he did not feel. "We've had a good time, yeah? We've all had some fun, no need to get shirty!"

Armand murmured something in French to his companion and Pasqual unfolded his arms, though his stance remained defensive.

"You want to take us both again for your fifty francs?" the Frenchman asked him, a little mockingly.

"You wish!" Rayne laughed hoarsely, shaking his head.

"Very well," Armand shook a little more from the spoon into the small plastic bag on the scales. When he straightened again the red, digital readout stood at 3.01. "You get extra," he said with ironic smile. "You have my eight hundred francs now?"

Rayne licked his lips. It was getting hard to breathe and he just wanted to take the junk and get out but common sense prevailed.

"That could be anything," he pointed out, more bravely than he felt.

"You are trying my patience, little English boy," Armand warned.

"You expect me to flog my arse then give you eighty quid for something that could be fuckin' Homepride?" Rayne countered, resting both hands squarely on the table and leaning towards him. "You're 'avin' a laugh, mate!"

He could tell that Armand was at the limits of his tolerance but after a moment the tall Frenchman sighed and pushed the open package a few inches across the table towards him.

"You taste then... a 'small' taste," he quickly added in a warning tone.

Rayne put the tip of his little finger into his mouth, then dipped it lightly into the block, observing the way it crumbled softly and stirring it so that the grainy powder clung to his wet finger. He watched how it clumped and dropped as he lifted his hand, then put his finger back into his mouth, running the tip around his gums, which he had seen other people do although he had no earthly idea what it was supposed to tell him. After a few moments he experienced a curious numbing sensation not unlike the initial effects of an injection of anaesthetic at the dentist's. His nostrils tingled alarmingly and he sneezed several times before the effect subsided. It left his mouth feeling pleasantly numb.

"Jesus Christ!" he whispered at last.

Armand shook his head wearily.

"'Now' you have some money for me?" he enquired in a lofty tone, tying off the bag from the scales and holding it out like a bribe.

Rayne heaved a sigh, then rummaged deep in his jeans pocket for the folded bills Aldo had given him earlier. To his horror they were not there. He felt his heart plummet down through his ribs into his gut as he groped in the other pocket desperately, to no avail. The cash had gone! They were gonna kill him now, for sure! Frantically he wracked his brain trying to remember. The money had been in his pockets when he got here, he was certain. Eighteen hundred francs did not simply evaporate!

He bent and looked under the table in case it had fallen out while he was undressing. When he straightened disconsolately, Pasqual was fanning out a wad of crumpled notes in his hands, a smug smile on his darkly handsome face. Armand laughed quietly.

"You are looking for this?"

"Give that back!" Rayne yelped at him furiously. "That's... that's everything I've got! You can take your cut, just give me back what's mine."

Pasqual made a cursory head count of the notes and murmured something to his boss.

"Eighteen hundred, imagine that!" Armand shook his head seriously. "Where did you get this, James?"

"I 'earned' it," Rayne growled at him. "Now give it back!"

"You have a work permit to earn money here?" Armand asked him more briskly.

"What the fuck do you care?" the young man snapped back at him. "Just give me the fuckin' stuff and I'll fuck off and keep quiet, okay?"

His heart was racing so fast now that he thought it was going to kick a hole in his chest. This was not going well. He did not like the feel of this set-up one little bit.

'Ah, why the hell does this shit always happen to me?' he thought furiously. 'Bastards!'

"You want this?" Armand dropped the baggie in front of him and Rayne snatched it up, dignity be damned! He was going to walk away from this with 'something' to his name, at least.

"What about my money?" he asked again, and this time he could not keep the tremor out of his voice. Yes, he was scared. He was scared enough and loose enough to crap himself and they both knew it. His stomach churned violently and all he could think about was getting out here alive. Armand reached into his jacket again and Rayne began to step back from the table. This was it. They were going to shoot him.

"The money you 'gave' us in exchange for heroin?" Armand asked calmly.

"You know damned well!" Rayne shook his head, keeping the table between himself and them, though it would not do him much good if they started pumping bullets into him. "I've paid you, now stop fucking me around, Armand."

Pasqual folded the money carefully and pocketed it, reaching for his sweater and pulling it over his head casually. Armand pulled his wallet from his inside breast pocket and flipped it open, flashing the badge inside at his startled customer.

"That is Detective Inspector Picot, to you," he said calmly. "You are under arrest, James Wright."

"Shit!" Rayne felt his knees buckle. He gripped the corner of the table as Armand came for him and then everything seemed to move in slow motion. He was conscious of Pasqual still squirming into his tight, woollen roll neck and the open parcel of heroin that still lay on the table between them, not so tightly packed now that they had taken from it.

Survival instinct kicked in and although his senses screamed a protest at the terrible thing he was about to do, Rayne followed his impulses. While Pasqual was blinded by his jersey, Rayne grabbed for the loose edge of the plastic wrapping and swung it around hard, tumbling away from the table as the block of opiate exploded in a dense cloud that seemed to wrap itself around Armand. Rayne hurled the remainder at them both and ran for his life while they were still coughing and spluttering behind him. He did not look back to see how much it had delayed them.

As he hit the front door he panicked for a moment, struggling with the Yale and the deadlock. Someone came clattering down the hall after him as the latches clicked and he ducked out into the street, slamming the door behind him. Rayne counted as he ran. It would take less than three seconds to open the door. On the count of three he swung left into an alley beside the block of houses, praying that it would not be a blind. If his pursuer had a gun he was well and truly fucked.

Again!

The rubbish-strewn ginnel opened into a courtyard with no egress, but there was a door open at the back of a building in the block opposite. Rayne bolted through it into a steamy kitchen. A tired-looking young woman and two small, grubby children stared up at him in astonishment, almost as startled to see him as he was to see them. He forced a grin and touched one finger to his lips then fled down a linoleum-floored corridor that stank of grease and decay.

At the far end there was a door open onto the street. Two teenage youths lounged there in jeans and open shirts, sharing a cigarette. He burst out between them before they could do more than yell at him and made a sharp right turn, shouting back; "Sorry mate!" as he tried to get his bearings without slowing down.

Whilst he was at school he had never been much of an athlete but he could certainly sprint and that was what he did now, painfully conscious of the fact that he was unfit and close to puking his guts up. If he let himself be driven by escalating panic, they were going to catch him. They knew the streets around here and he did not have a clue where he was.

Rayne took the next right into another alley and threw himself into a deep alcove in front of a fire door, covered in graffiti. A glance up and down in either direction showed him that the passage ran straight through to the next street. It sloped gradually downward from his hiding place, which meant, possibly, that it led back towards the river. He flopped back into the alcove and dropped to a crouch, fighting for breath but his pulse only quickened as hurried footfalls echoed up from the mouth of the alleyway. He heard them stop and huddled smaller, physically incapable of getting up and running right away. Slowly the steps drew closer, then stopped, just as he thought his heart was going to do the same thing. When they began again they were receding, moving away from him. It was a few moments before he reminded himself to breathe. Maybe, he hoped desperately, if he just stayed here they would finally give up and go back to the office to file a report or something.

Rayne wrapped his arms around his knees and rested his chin on them. If he could get down to the river, then he might be able to slip back over the bridge and lose them in the old town. He just had to sit tight for a while and wait for them to get bored. The longer he waited, the further they would think that he had gone. He held on until his pulse rate had slowed to something resembling normal and he could breathe without it hurting too much. Then, before his legs began to cramp up, he pushed himself to his feet and moved out of the doorway, keeping to the shadows and picking his way steadily down the alley. The street at the far end, he realised with a start, was the one he had initially fled from, just a few blocks further down. Rayne peered out warily, glancing up and down. When nothing moved, he took a deep breath and made a dash for the far side of the road, skittering into another ginnel, darker and narrower than the last one. It was barely wide enough to walk down with his arms outstretched and in places he had to squeeze around the enormous refuse bins that served the entire neighbourhood. He slipped from bin to bin, his hi-tops making barely any sound on the filthy cobbles, checking over his shoulder with paranoid frequency.

In the back of his mind he was conscious too of the time. He had promised to meet Aldo in an hour and surely that time was up by now. If Aldo came looking for him it might accidentally make matters worse. Rayne had alarming visions of the Italian innocently describing his 'missing' friend to a helpful gendarme and getting his sleek arse hauled in for questioning. If that happened then he might as well just disappear. His name would be shit back at the Cap!

He quickened his pace again, dashing from alley to alley, unceasingly alert, until he reached a busy street that was choked with people and traffic. No point being cagey here, that would just look suspicious. He stepped out of the shadows and walked rapidly through the crowds back towards a busy junction with a large roundabout. Through the trees he could make out the gleam of sunlight on water and his heart leapt. He must be near to the river.

A footbridge ran across a narrow channel of water to his left and beyond it was the higher, wider span of the main road bridge. He had found it!

Rayne exulted privately until he reached the roundabout and spotted the police car parked on the bridge. The uniformed officer was talking casually on his radio, leaning on the bonnet, looking up towards the station. At once Rayne turned, ducking out of sight of the car, and hurried over the footbridge, finding himself in a park, with precious little cover. His trainers crunched on the gravel as he broke into a trot again, desperate to get out of sight. Just his luck that they were thinking a step ahead of him. Unfortunately, as he soon discovered once he was a safe distance from the bridge, he was still on the wrong side of the Herault. The footbridge only spanned a narrower canal running parallel to the river.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" he huffed, shaking his head and wishing that he dared to stop and roll himself a joint. Then he remembered that he had smoked both the plain roll-ups at the station and swore quietly again. Patting his shirt pocket he found the half joint he had saved at Phil's the other day and his pulse quickened, but he kept on walking.

"Not yet," he told himself seriously. "Not yet, stupid! You need a clear head! Once you've worked out how to get back to Aldo, you can chill out. Not until! You're gonna look a proper tit if you drop your guard and get caught now!"

Two young women wandering past with buggies cast suspicious glances at him and gave him quite a wide berth as they passed by, glancing back at him from time to time to make sure he had not followed them. Rayne figured that he probably looked a bit disreputable by now. His hair and clothing were sticking to him, heavy with sweat and he was muttering to himself like a lunatic. They must have thought he was crazy or something.

He walked until he reached an ornate drinking fountain in the middle of a water garden filled with little rills and ponds, populated by ducks and geese of all shapes and shades. Children played around the ponds or fed the ducks from little paper bags of stale bread. Rayne put the joint in the pocket of his jeans and stripped out of his shirt and tee shirt, rinsing the latter and using it to wash his sticky body. He splashed his face and ran wet hands through his hair, then tied the shirtsleeves around his waist and slung the wet tee over one shoulder, ignoring the sceptical glances he got from genteel walkers and duck-fatteners alike.

Invigorated by his cat-bath he investigated ways to get across the river. The nearest bridge carried the railway line back into Agde Station and was a good quarter mile away. He had used the London railway bridges as short cuts back home but you had to be careful. Out here he had no idea which lines were live and which were safe to cross and from the electric pylons on the bridge there was probably at least one live track. He shook his head, deciding that he had probably tempted fate a bit too much already for one day.

Before the bridge was a man-made weir across the river and this seemed a more tempting prospect. Fishermen dotted the length of it, manning their rods and nets and there were a number of young men just chilling and smoking out there. A little walk along the walls that banked the Herault led him to a gap at the farthest end of the park where he could slither down the bank to the edges of the river. He attracted some curious stares from the men in their tee shirts and long waders, checking their lines along the concrete lip of the weir as he passed them with his black jeans rolled up to mid-thigh, tee shirt wrapped around his head like a turban and his hi-tops hanging by their knotted laces around his neck. The water was bloody cold but by midway he was getting used to the chill and it was certainly cooling him down. So much so that by the time he reached the far side of the broad, slow moving Herault, his brain was working again and he had formulated a plan.

END OF PART FOURTEEN