the top of the multi-storey car park, and Pickle and Karen were exchanging stories about their past. Pickle decided to confess something that he seemed deeply ashamed of.
According to a story Pickle told her, nearly ten years ago, he and a colleague had to visit a drug supplier at a dock who owed them thousands in drugs. They had paid for the delivery and one of Pickle's men put the merchandise in the back of the van and drove away. Once the merchandise arrived back at Pickle's place and was checked, they realised that half of the product—heroin—was missing. The van driver was beaten for not checking what he had picked up. Then Pickle himself, and a colleague, decided to drive back to the port themselves to meet up with the Dutch supplier. He was bungled into the van, and Pickle and his colleague tied the Dutchman up and drove him to an abandoned warehouse.
Pickle had informed the supplier that since he had fucked them, he was going to return the favour. The Dutchman was tied up and raped in the back of the van, then his legs were stabbed and he was driven back to the port and thrown out. They soon switched suppliers. That was the first and last time Pickle had punished someone by rape, and when the story was told to Karen, she didn't seem too shocked.
Still on the bed, the two were trying to sleep while wrestling with the horror pictures of the last week that was invading their psyche, which was keeping them awake. "So what do we do tomorrow?" Karen threw the question at Pickle, as if he was in charge of the pair of them. She knew he wasn't asleep, so decided to dilute the silence that devoured the room.
"Dunno," Pickle sighed. "See if we can survive another day, I suppose."
"Same old same old then," Karen began to chuckle.
Although Karen's remark was greeted with a blanket of quiet, she could almost hear Pickle's mind working. He was about to say something, she knew it; she could hear his intake of breath. "I'm sick o' hiding...I'm sick o' fighting." Pickle said with a deflated tone.
"It's called survival."
"Yeah? Well I'm tired of it. But I promised I wouldn't feel sorry for myself anymore, so I'll just need to get on with it."
"Trouble with you," Karen gently mocked, "is that you've had it easy in that prison. With your free accommodation, free gym, free medicine, free—"
"It weren't that easy."
Karen could sense that his mood was slightly up due to her mocking tone and decided to continue. "Out in the real world, it was always about survival. Paying bills, wondering if the cuts were gonna affect your job."
"Yer still had to survive in prison as well."
Karen half-laughed. "Bullshit! I bet you were top dog in there. I bet you had bitches on tap, queues of men lining up to give you a blow job."
Pickle began to chortle and half-nudged Karen in the side with his elbow from her ribbing.
He said, "Yer can be a right bitch sometimes, yer know that?"
"At least you're laughing again."
"Right, I'm going to sleep now. Don't disturb me unless one of those deadheads gets in."
"Didn't you barricade the doors?"
"Yip, we should be okay anyway. This street is pretty quiet."
A few minutes of quiet hovered over the pair and they were almost in the land of dream world, but their senses were given an adrenaline shot once they heard a slamming noise. Karen got out of the bed and went to the window. She could see two men who had broken into the Range Rover, sitting in the front of the family's vehicle, and a nervous looking woman holding a two-year-old infant, waiting for the car to start. It looked like to Karen that they were trying to hotwire the thing. Karen allowed it to happen; so long as the prison van was okay, she wasn't caring. The people looked desperate and she thought that the car might as well be put to some good use. She looked out onto the front garden where the van was backed up, in case they needed to escape via a bedroom window, and sighed. She knew they'd be screwed if that ever was stolen.
She
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