Criminally Insane by Conrad Jones Page A

the club. Leon and his minders were struggling to stand up. They had taken the brunt of the blast when the grenade exploded. It was lucky for them the gunmen had used a concussion grenade, not a fragmentation grenade. It was designed to incapacitate people, not kill them with shrapnel. Gus and Jinx ran to Leon and his colleagues. They dragged them up and bundled them towards the nightclub. Gus stopped near the poker table and grabbed a bottle of scotch from a drinks trolley. He took a huge gulp and then hurled the bottle toward the fire. It shattered and the flames roared as the liquid ignited.
    “Let’s go!” Gus shouted. “Make sure everyone loses their guns quickly when we get outside. There will be police everywhere in a minute.”
    “Who do you think pulled this off?” Jinx asked as they stumbled through the smoky nightclub.
    “I don’t know.” Gus looked sideways at Jinx, suspicion in his eyes. “I can have a good guess, though.”
    “It has to be an inside job, right?”
    “There’s no doubt about it.”
    As they made their way through the club, bouncers were herding the stragglers towards the fire exits. A young woman in a tight leather dress was so drunk that she couldn’t walk unassisted;the bouncers carried her between two of them. Her condition was nothing to do with the blast. Vodka was to blame. The disco lights were still spinning and red lasers pierced the smoke. Half-empty glasses littered the tables and several handbags lay abandoned by their owners. The music was blasting as they crashed through the front doors of the club and Leon stumbled onto the pavement. He landed with a thump face down on the rain soaked pavement. His nose was bleeding and his face looked puffy and swollen as Jinx and the others picked him up.
    “Who did this, Jinx?” Leon scowled. He wiped blood from his nose with the back of his hand.
    “You’re the drug dealer, you tell me,” Jinx snapped. He was angry beyond words.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Leon spat blood on the floor.
    “I don’t know yet,” Jinx replied. “But we’ll find out, Leon. We will find out for sure, believe me.”
    “Make sure no one is carrying!” Gus shouted to the crowd of heavies that surrounding them. Several men ran toward the car park opposite to hide their weapons. Sirens approached; two police cars screeched to a halt and the first fire fighters were on the scene within minutes. They dismounted from the tenders and began to clear the crowds while their colleagues began feeding hosepipes into the club. One of Gus’ men approached. He looked like a bigger version of Gus, but his goatee was black and he had fewer lines around his eyes.
    “There was nothing around the back, Gus.”
    “Any sign of a vehicle?”
    “Nothing, and the back door is locked from the inside.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “There are no keyholes, Gus, just a steel plate. It’s shut tight.”
    “Where’s Jessie?” Jinx asked.
    “He’s in that ambulance,” the minder said.
    Gus and Jinx ran to the ambulance where two paramedics were trying to stop the bleeding while a uniformed officer asked the Welshman questions.
    “How did you get these injuries?” the constable asked. The police officer was in his early twenties at most. He had spiked his dark hair and there were tattoos on his forearms. He looked out of his depth in the mayhem that surrounded him.
    “Fuck off,” Jessie replied, shaking as the paramedics tried to stem the flow of blood, but it wasn’t the pain that was affecting him. The theft of his employers’ drugs had stunned him. They would come to him first for answers and he didn’t have any. The last thing he needed now was a snotty nosed copper straight out of college asking him stupid questions.
    “There were reports of gunshots,” the young officer carried on unperturbed. “Can you tell me what happened?”
    “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Sherlock, but my ears have been damaged,” Jessie pointed to the