Who he recognised to be Amanda got out of the front of the van, unlocked the main shutter of the unit and rolled it up. Matthew got out of his own car and quietly closed the door. Sticking to the shadows, he raced across the car park and crouched behind a large container.
The van disappeared inside. Amanda followed and pulled the shutter back down. Matthew ran to the rear of the unit to peer through one of the windows. He watched the firefighters get out of the van and stomp around, arguing and looking pissed off. He’d tracked the van here by watching the CCTV footage of it leaving the fire station. He guessed they’d taken Faith back to the station in the fire engine and then transferred her to the van, which had driven back here before setting out again for their meeting with the rest of the Chambers family. Caleb had already called to let him know that they were all safe but it had been a close run thing and both Faith and Vance were in hospital suffering from smoke inhalation. He’d tried to track the van when it had left this unit, hoping he’d be able to warn the Chambers in advance where they were taking Faith but he’d lost them when they’d driven down a road not covered by any CCTV.
While they were gone, he’d managed to pick the lock on the back door, snuck inside and planted a listening device. He stuffed the earpiece in his ear to listen.
“I can’t believe that went so fucking wrong,” raged Amanda. “We had the lot of them at our mercy and we still didn’t manage to kill a single one of them. We found no bodies in the warehouse. At least all the evidence got burned up. That’s the only good thing that came out of this catastrophe.”
“The others must have got Faith and Vance out,” said Ben, dragging his hands down his weary face.
“What if they take it out on our families?” said Rick.
“They won’t,” replied Ben. “That was an idle threat. It would bring the police’s attention to what’s been going on and they’ll want to keep it quiet.”
“Maybe they were right and we are out of our league?” said a miserable Eddie. “Everything we’ve tried has failed.”
“The raid on the vault didn’t fail,” snapped Amanda. “That went really fucking well.”
“And look what happened,” he exclaimed. “They took the drugs back and then they were burnt up in the fire.”
Amanda rolled her eyes. “The drugs weren’t in the coffin you idiot. The top was lined with a few genuine bricks. The rest were fake to make us think it was full of cocaine.”
“Oh,” he replied, looking puzzled.
“I say we go and torch all their fucking houses,” yelled Amanda, kicking one of the van’s tyres.
“Like they’ll be there after we attacked them in the flats,” said Rick. “They’ll be hiding out somewhere we don’t know about.”
“Then we check every single hotel and B&B in town.”
“Have you any idea how many there are in Blackpool?” exclaimed Eddie. “It would take forever.”
“And they could have a safehouse we don’t know about,” said Rick. “In fact, people like that probably do.”
“We’ve no hostages and no drugs,” said Amanda. “In fact we’ve fuck all to show for all our trouble. So what do we do now?”
“Maybe we should bow out gracefully?” said Eddie a little nervously.
Amanda’s eyes narrowed, thick black eyebrows beetling in the centre of her forehead. “What did you say?”
“I don’t think they want to kill us because they know we’ll be missed. If we just let it go they might leave us alone and everything can go back to normal.”
“Is that what you want, normal? Struggling for money despite doing a very dangerous job? Rescuing idiots who fall asleep with a fag in their hand, hoping you make it through the working day. Is that what you want the rest of your life to be?”
“Not really but if we carry on like this then the rest of my life won’t be very long.”
Her lip curled. “You’re a fucking coward.”
“Eddie has a point,” said Rick. “We’re out of our depth. We thought this would be easy but that family are a lot smarter than we gave them credit for.”
“After what we did to Dillon do you think we can back out now?” spat Amanda.
“You mean what you did to Dillon because you lost your temper.”
“He was going to grass to Faith Chambers. I had no choice.”
“You didn’t need to kill him,” he exclaimed. “You’ve got really unstable lately Amanda. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on in your head but I bet it’s like a tornado in there.”
She drew her gun and aimed it at him. “What the fuck did you say?”
“You see what I mean,” he cried. “You’re losing it.”
“Shut up all of you,” yelled Ben, his voice echoing through the barren room. “Arguing amongst ourselves isn’t going to help. Amanda, put the gun away.”
She obeyed, glowering at Rick.
“We need to think calmly and rationally about what we’re going to do,” continued Ben. “We all still need the money, that hasn’t changed and have you forgotten that our contact is getting very restless? We promised them a lot of drugs and so far we haven’t delivered, apart from the sample we gave them. If we continue to delay then it won’t be very healthy for any of us and they’re a lot worse than the Chambers family.”
“Oh yeah,” mumbled Eddie. “I forgot about them.”
“I thought so. They might forgive us for not coming up with the goods if we give them enough money to compensate. The Chambers family
