W hen they had been collecting tips from the caravans, it had been easy to sneak small items out in a cleaning cart or an apron. The Joey Pockets was different. It was big, it was obvious and they couldn’t be seen with it on the Putten’s Holiday Park site.
In silent agreement, Bradley and Jodie walked towards town. Both Jodie’s dad and Bradley’s parents lived in the residential streets to the far side of town. A half hour walk, no more.
“I feel stupid,” said Jodie as they passed the Suncastle pub.
Bradley looked back over his shoulder. What did he expect? To see Weenie angrily following them?
“Take it out,” he said.
With a heavy grunt, Jodie produced the spongy toy from under her top. Joey Pockets’ cartoon face sprang back into shape.
“Ugh, I smell of old man’s caravan,” she said and turned it round. “Weed, piss and BO. How big a stash do you reckon it is?”
She turned it round again.
“Here,” he said and pointed at the zipper pocket. She was right. It did smell of Weenie’s caravan. Bradley felt an odd pang of guilt, not at stealing from Weenie but at the thought that their smoking sessions, passing the spliff back and forth, would be forever tainted by his knowledge of this action.
Jodie opened the zipper.
“It’s big,” she said and tugged a corner of the package into view. It was thick, sort of rectangular and wrapped in several layers of plastic wrap and parcel tape.
“Shit. It’s a brick,” said Jodie.
“An actual brick?” said Bradley.
“Coke. Heroin. Weed. I don’t know,” she said and raised the corner of the package to her face to sniff it.
Bradley had no idea if Jodie could identify drugs by smell.
“You sure it’s drugs?” he said. His voice dried up on the last syllable. Ahead of them on the pavement, at the junction opposite the pier, a police officer stood with a PCSO. The policeman had a black Labrador police dog on a lead next to him.
Bradley wasn’t usually afraid of the police, especially not of PCSOs. Jodie usually gave them evils and took the piss out of them if she was in the mood. Her uncle had served time and the Sheridan family stance was that cops were scum. Normally, Bradley wouldn’t care about the police, but now they were walking towards the police with a rectangular block which was probably some sort of narcotic substance, was almost certainly illegal, and was currently shoved in the pouch of a stolen kangaroo.
He simultaneously swore under his breath and hustled Jodie onto the road to cross to the beach side.
“What the fuck you doing?” said Jodie, who hadn’t seen.
There was a little island halfway across the road. Bradley, holding Jodie’s arm, stopped them there and waited for a gap in the traffic.
“Fuck are you touching me for?” she said.
“Cops,” he hissed.
“What?”
“The fuzz.”
He turned to look at the police on the corner. Jodie looked too. The PCSO, turning casually, was looking their way. Bradley saw him. The PCSO saw Bradley seeing him. Even at that distance their eyes met.
“Shit,” said Bradley and swiftly escorted Jodie to the other side.
“Do not look back,” Jodie hissed to him. They communicated now only in hissed whispers, their bodies moving with the jerky self-consciousness of people aware they were being watched.
On this side of the road there was a KFC drive-thru, a Premier Inn and a car park before the pier. Together, they moved across the paved area towards the KFC.
“We’re just a couple going out for fried chicken,” Bradley said quietly to himself.
“Shut up,” said Jodie.
He glanced over his shoulder. The cop with the dog and the PCSO were crossing the road to the pier. They were strolling casually in that cocky unhurried manner cops had, but both of them were now looking in their direction.
“Seen us,” Bradley hissed.
“I told you not to look.”
The KFC drive-thru was small and had glass windows almost all the way round. Nowhere to hide. They shifted direction and angled towards the Premier Inn and the pub restaurant built into its ground floor. They hurried without trying to look like they were hurrying and, for a few seconds, there was relief when the cops were hidden from sight by the angle of the building.
“What do we do?” asked Bradley.
“We’ve done nothing wrong,” said Jodie.
“You’ve got a kilo of stolen drugs, Jodie.”
They walked side by side into the pub, through the bar and into the corridor of the hotel beyond.
“We leave,” she said. “Casual-like. We’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Excuse me, can I have a word?”
Down the corridor in the open foyer of the hotel stood the police officer with his dog. He had his hand on his vest lapel, maybe on his radio.
“Fuck,” said Jodie, and ran, pushing away from Bradley as she sprinted back in the direction of the pub. By the bar she bounced off the PCSO, knocking him to the floor with an accidental elbow to the face.
Bradley looked at the cop. The dog planted its feet square, a coiled spring ready to fly.
Bradley took off down through the corridor.
“Stop!” the copper shouted, pointlessly.
It was a long corridor but Bradley could see a fire exit at the far end. He ran, listening for the sound of furry death on legs coming up behind him. A woman yelped then yelled as he barged past her. He hit the fire exit, missing the release bar and sending a jolt of pain through his shoulder. He gasped, worked the bar and stumbled out to the back and the car park.
Jodie was already ahead of him, weaving her way through the car park, Joey Pockets in one hand. Bradley ducked between a white transit and a parked car and squatted down.
Beside a kiosk selling ice-creams and sweets, there was a set of stairs leading up into the side of the pier amusements. Jodie ran for the stairs. She was a clever woman. In the pier, there were two floors of video games, prize machines, mini-rides and cafes. Noise and people and lights and at least half a dozen exits Bradley could think of.
“Stop!” the cop yelled again from somewhere.
The police dog was off its lead now and running across the car park. It was running straight for Jodie. From his hiding spot, Bradley saw her turn and scream at it – not a scream of fear but that scream of indignant rage she did so well. She grabbed a polythene bag of candyfloss from a little girl by the kiosk, and as the dog bounded at her, she whacked the bag across its head. The bag split and pink candyfloss puffed out like a cloud. Hardly a deadly blow, but it seemed to have surprised the dog long enough for Jodie to race to the stairs and up to the pier entrance.
The cop and the PCSO were both running to the foot of the stairs now, approaching from opposite sides of the hotel building. Both were past Bradley, neither looking back. Bradley itched to move but forced himself to stay still. His guts churned with excited fear. He needed a piss, too.
The cop, taking up his dog’s lead again, ran up the steps. The dog had a sugary pink mane around its face and back and was trying to lick itself as it ran. The PCSO looked, spoke into his radio and moved back down the car park towards the pavement.
Bradley shrank back and tried to make himself small. The PCSO didn’t glance Bradley’s way once. He circled to the main entrance and vanished from sight.
Bradley had to tell himself to move. A glance at the horrible gritty stones in the broken tarmac filled him with sufficient disgust to propel him away. He stood and walked swiftly back round the rear of the hotel building and across the back of the KFC lot. There was a park area and playground between the backs of the buildings and the beach and he headed towards that.
He heard a distant shout, and instinctively looked back. Over on the boardwalk of the pier, there was a moving flash of police hi-vis. A figure picked up a folding deckchair defensively and then the cop collided with them and both were lost behind a stall.
Bradley kept his head down and kept walking.