Breakers Read online

  Breakers

  Doug Johnstone

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Breakers

  For Tricia, Aidan and Amber

  1

  Tyler stared at his little sister as she watched television, the light from the screen flickering across her face. Some cartoon about a boy who discovers a magic ring and turns into a superhero girl, so there was some cool gender stuff in it. Bean chewed the edge of her lip then smiled, and he saw the space at the front where her baby tooth had come out. He’d scrambled together two quid from the tooth fairy once he found out from her what the going rate was in the playground. He was surprised she still believed in that, given everything else that was going on.

  ‘Right, Bean, time for bed,’ he said.

  She shook her head, still looking at the television.

  He reached for the remote and the screen died, just soft light from the corner lamp remaining.

  ‘It’s way past bedtime,’ he said. ‘And I need to go out soon.’

  Bean turned round. ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘In bed.’

  ‘Is she drunk?’

  Tyler sighed. ‘She’s tired.’

  ‘She’s drunk.’

  Let her think Angela was drunk, the truth was worse.

  Bean played with Panda’s ear. Tyler had lifted the toy from a house in Merchiston on a job years ago. He’d felt bad for a moment, but the kid had a hundred soft toys lined up on her bed, and Bean had nothing. He wondered if the other girl cried when she realised Panda was gone.

  ‘Can we go on the roof?’ Bean said.

  ‘No, come on.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘It’s school tomorrow.’

  She gave him a look, chin down, eyes up, like a Manga character. ‘Pleeeeease.’

  Tyler looked at his watch. What difference did it make in the scheme of things? He looked around the tiny living room, two ragged sofas, scratchy carpet tiles, bar heater in the corner. The only expensive thing was the Sony LCD widescreen he’d taken from a mansion in Cluny Gardens that backed onto Blackford Pond. They wouldn’t normally bother with televisions, they were a pain to carry, but he wanted it for Bean.

  ‘Just for a minute,’ he said.

  She smiled and hugged him.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said, ‘I have to go out. Barry’s coming round.’

  Bean frowned and Tyler regretted mentioning their half-brother. He held out his hand and she took it, her hand clammy in his as he led her down the hall.

  He lifted the keys from the wooden crate that served as a table at the front door. He picked up the hook-and-stick that he’d improvised from a curtain rail, and a blanket bundled on the floor. Bean was in her jammies and onesie and it would be cool up top, any breath of wind turning into a gale this high up. It swept down from Liberton Brae, over the hospital and the flat expanse behind Craigmillar Castle, and with most of the other tower blocks knocked down, theirs took the brunt of it.

  He put the door on the snib and headed along the corridor, away from the lift and the other flat, where Barry and Kelly lived. Barry had intimidated a Syrian family into leaving months ago, and now the Wallaces had the floor to themselves like a downmarket penthouse apartment.

  Tyler used the hook to open the hatch in the roof and pull down the aluminium ladder. He climbed up with the blanket over his shoulder and the keys in his hand and undid the padlock on the steel door at the top. This was a service-access door, but he’d jimmied the original lock and replaced it with his own years ago, and the maintenance guys never came up here.

  He looked down at Bean. ‘Up you come, but use both hands.’

  She placed Panda on the floor and climbed the ladder. He helped her at the top then pushed the heavy door open and felt the cold air on his face. He switched on the torch on his phone and they walked across the scabby tarred roof to the western edge where there were two folded garden chairs. He unfolded one and sat, and Bean clambered into his lap as he spread the blanket over them both. He switched the torch off and the darkness swallowed them.

  They were fifteen floors up at the top of Greendykes House. Across from them was the identical Wauchope House – they were the only two tower blocks left in the area. They were surrounded by waste ground and a huge building site where Barratt were creating Greenacres, hundreds of apartments and homes. That’s what it said on the large sign with the happy, smiling family on it. For now it was just diggers and rubble surrounded by razor wire and patrolled by private security. Presumably in case someone felt like stealing a digger, some cables or piping. Tyler thought about the logistics of lifting something so large, but he was used to smaller items.

  He thought about what it would be like, having hundreds of new neighbours once Greenacres was built. Couldn’t be any worse than the shithole it was before, burnt-out houses and tumbledown shops, drug dens and gang hangouts. The streets used for racing hot-wired cars and boosted scramblers.

  Past the floodlit, fenced-off area was more scrubland, thick grass and broken concrete until you got to the futuristic spread of the hospital at Little France. Grassy tussocks and clumps of hedge spread uphill to Craigmillar Castle, the ragged turrets just poking through the trees at the top of the slope. Both Tyler and Bean’s schools were hiding beyond the trees, fenced off and watched by CCTV.

  The space between here and there was a big fly-tipping site, a tangle of rubber tubing, soggy mattresses, a couple of car doors, a shattered windscreen, piles of bin bags full of Christ knows what, some broken fencing once used to keep someone out of somewhere. He could see it all in the security spotlight overspill from the building site. He glanced at Wauchope House, the twin of the tower block they were on. He never understood why they didn’t tear down these last two dinosaurs with the rest of the place. Hadn’t just carpet bombed the whole of Niddrie, Craigmillar and Greendykes and be done with it. Beyond Wauchope was a spread of new homes, cheap and thrown together, but still better than what they replaced. At the back of Greendykes House was Hunter Park then more developments, all of Edinburgh’s brown-belt land being reclaimed for commuting professionals.

  ‘Tell me again,’ Bean said, snuggling into him. A strand of her dark ponytail had come loose. He’d given her a bath earlier and she smelled of strawberry shampoo.

  ‘It was a dark and stormy night,’ he said, putting on a dramatic voice.

  Bean giggled as he tickled her ribs.

  ‘A fateful night,’ he said, ‘when the world’s greatest superhero, Bean Girl, was born, a force for good battling the dark, evil powers of Niddrieville.’

  ‘Go on,’ Bean said.

  ‘Angela was just a normal woman from a normal family, when she was visited by space aliens who told her she was to have a beautiful baby daughter with special powers, a girl who could fly, smash tall buildings and leap over m
ountains, who could shoot lasers from her eyeballs.’

  Bean stared at the hospital in the distance and widened her eyes, made cute little laser-fire noises, tchew-tchew, tchew-tchew.

  Tyler kept talking, making up stuff whenever it came to him, giving Bean Girl immense powers, making her triumph over evil. The truth about her birth was less impressive. Angela’s waters had broken when she was off her head on heroin and vodka. Barry and Kelly weren’t around and weren’t answering their phones, so ten-year-old Tyler had to try to sober Angela up before heading to the hospital, so they wouldn’t take the baby away when it came. He called an ambulance but they’d had a spate of attacks in the area and refused to come. There was no money for a taxi so they walked across the fields, slow in the dark, and presented themselves at the maternity ward with no paperwork. Two hours later Bethany was born, four and a half pounds and six weeks early, no doubt from the booze and drugs. Tyler was the first person to hold her, his mum out for the count. Both he and Bean were small for their ages, something they shared, a bond stronger than anything either of them had with Angela.

  He felt Bean sagging on his lap, her arms becoming heavy as she tired. He stared at the hospital where she was born, it was like a glowing spaceship in the night.

  He heard footsteps on the ladder behind them, then the clatter of the steel door as it swung open.

  ‘Thought I’d find you girls here.’

  Barry strode over and was silhouetted against the security lights below on the building site. Tyler couldn’t see his face, just the muscle-bound shape of him, the hardman stance, fists clenched. He was a source of darkness, a lack of light.

  ‘She should be in bed,’ he said.

  ‘Like you care.’

  Barry took a step forward and Tyler felt Bean flinch in his arms.

  Barry stared at her for a moment then turned to Tyler.

  ‘Come on, bitch,’ he said. ‘We’ve got work to do.’

  2

  It took just ten minutes behind the wheel to get from the most deprived scheme in Edinburgh to millionaires’ homes. From Niddrie they cruised through Craigmillar on the main road, past Peffermill and the biscuit factory, the smell of burnt oats coming to Tyler in the back of the car. Round Cameron Toll and they were into the affluent Southside. He wondered if people around here even knew that Niddrie and Greendykes existed. Edinburgh was so small that everyone was cheek by jowl, investment bankers round the corner from families like the Wallaces. Most of these people were ignorant of the fact they were being stalked and targeted. This was their hunting ground, from Mayfield through Newington and Marchmont, down to The Grange, Morningside and Merchiston. Every once in a while they would explore a little further, into the New Town and Stockbridge. It kept the heat off if they’d had a close shave. Sometimes it made sense to leave the Southside fields fallow for a while, give homeowners time to relax and lower their guards again.

  They turned up Mayfield Road, left into Relugas, then into the smaller streets. They stayed off the main thoroughfares and stuck to residential areas, less passing traffic and more chance of going unnoticed.

  Barry was driving, Forth One playing a stream of charmless pop on the radio. Tyler’s half-sister Kelly was chopping out coke lines on the car’s manual, pulled out of the glove compartment and placed on her knees. They were in Barry’s metallic-grey Skoda Octavia, boosted a year ago from outside a place in Sciennes when they found the keys in a bowl next to the front door of the house. It’d been fitted with new plates by Barry’s mate Wee Sam at his garage. An Octavia was perfect, a nothing kind of vehicle, not flashy or tacky, and every second car on the road these days was grey.

  Tyler watched Kelly. She was twenty but looked older, tall and broad, peroxide hair. Wide nose, wide hips, wide shoulders, everything about her was wide. Her bright hair wouldn’t make any difference for the job, they always had their hoods up in case of CCTV. Like Tyler and Barry, she was wearing a nondescript hoodie and joggers, Primark’s finest, no logos or patterns.

  They were in Lauder Road now. Some colossal houses here but the road was wide and exposed. Barry slowed the car but not too much, he didn’t want to be conspicuous. There were 20 mph limits all over the city now which helped them, allowed them to go slow and check the area without seeming suspicious.

  Kelly bumped a large line of coke then passed it to Barry, holding the rolled-up note for him so he didn’t have to take his hands off the wheel. He kept his eyes on the road and snorted, shook his head and flexed his jaw.

  Kelly reached over and placed her finger under his nose, wiped up some grains there. She held the finger out to Barry, who leaned forward, sucked it and grinned.

  Tyler looked out of the window, checking for houses with no alarms and lights off like he’d been taught. Preferably detached in case the neighbours heard something, but it was amazing how seldom that happened. People don’t like to get involved in someone else’s business, especially if that business could get them hurt.

  ‘Some fucking gaffs, these,’ Barry said, jittery now from the buzz. They never offered Tyler any, mostly because they wanted it for themselves, but also because they knew his stance. He’d seen what drugs did to their mum.

  Barry turned right into the narrower, winding Dalrymple Crescent. Quite a few candidates here. It wasn’t a school holiday, that was their busiest time, when homes were empty for weeks. But rich people had social lives, they’d be out at dinner or a party, the theatre or cinema. It didn’t take long, this thing, in and out in minutes.

  Tyler hated that he knew all this. He didn’t want to be here but he had no choice. Barry and Kelly needed someone small to squeeze into top-hung fanlight windows if the doors were deadbolted. He could fit and he couldn’t say no. Barry was already making noises about bringing Bean along instead and Tyler couldn’t allow that.

  Barry came to the end of the road and turned right into Findhorn Place, then down to the bottom and right again. They went round the block, Kelly doing another line, then Barry too. Back in Dalrymple Crescent. Barry had spotted a place. Tyler had too, he just hadn’t mentioned it. When they passed the second time, he took it in more fully. Semi-detached, but no lights on in either house, low horizontal fence at the front. No alarm box, security lighting or cameras, a handful of mature trees in the front providing cover and suggesting a decent shed full of garden tools.

  It was perfect.

  They went round the block one more time, Tyler feeling a trill in his stomach, a flutter in his chest. He thought of Bean, tucked up in bed back at the flat, snuggling into Panda, bedside light on. He thought of his mum crashed out in her bedroom and hoped Bean didn’t wake with a bad dream, like she’d been doing recently.

  They drove past 13 Dalrymple Crescent one last time.

  ‘That one,’ Barry said, then pulled in thirty yards along the road.

  3

  The trick was confidence. You can get away with anything if you act like you know what you’re doing. That’s how the elite did it, the politicians, army officers, Oxbridge guys running banks and companies, just act as if you’re entitled to the world and people go along with it. Tyler had heard about a scam two guys from school ran on a slice of waste ground between tenements off King Stables Road. They stole hi-vis jackets and charged a fiver a go for parking. Ran it every day for weeks over the summer, right in the centre of Edinburgh, and made thousands. Never got caught.

  Barry and Kelly were buzzing up ahead. Tyler rolled his neck and tried to stay loose behind them. Barry went straight up to the front door and rang the doorbell. They were already pretty sure no one was home, but just in case. One time they’d done this, got no answer, then gone round the back. Saw a middle-aged couple hard at it, fucking each other’s brains out on the kitchen floor.

  Barry didn’t look through any of the front windows, too suspicious. Instead he led the way round the side of the house, down the dark passageway, past recycling boxes and into the back garden. Tried the back door, locked. The windows likewise. A quick
look under plant pots and bins for a spare key. Nothing.

  They turned their attention to the garden, walked towards the shed at the bottom. Barry twitched as he went, Kelly wiping her nose on her sleeve. Tyler looked around. Neat lawn, cherry-blossom and crab-apple trees along the left-hand wall, sheltering them from the neighbours’ upstairs windows. Perfect. On the other side were some rose beds in front of a six-foot stone wall with shards of broken glass cemented along the top. What use was that if you could just walk round from the front? People didn’t think about security.

  The shed had a small padlock on it but the wood was old. Barry lifted his boot and kicked it, and the metal plate peeled away from the plank beneath. One more kick and it was splintered, the door sagging open to meet them.

  Barry put on leather gloves and went into the shed, then signalled for Tyler to close the door behind him. Tyler put on his own gloves and saw the light from Barry’s torch slip through the cracks between the wooden panels. A minute later Barry came out carrying a pair of secateurs with long telescopic handles. Everyone had these for pruning trees, perfect for jimmying a back door.

  Barry pushed past Kelly to the back of the house. Wedged the secateurs’ blade between door and jamb at the level of the lock. He heaved it forwards and back, bending and tearing the uPVC around the lock, making a gap. He kept going a few times, the door creaking with each exertion.

  Tyler heard something and looked around. He put a hand on Barry’s arm. Barry flinched and almost punched him. Tyler tugged at his earlobe and all three of them listened. The sound of a car far away, wind rustling in the cherry blossoms. Then a hiss.

  Tyler turned to face the sound. A black cat high on the wall between this garden and next door, staring down at them. It had four white paws like it had stepped in paint, and they glowed in the gloom. Weren’t black cats meant to be lucky? Tyler put his hand out and made a beckoning sound between his tongue and teeth, but Kelly took a step towards it and lunged, making it leap down into the other garden.