‘Every day,’ Marek replies. I decide not to question it.
Marek lifts the seat of the scooter up to reveal a storage compartment no bigger than my rucksack. Inside is a map of Bratislava. He takes a few moments to mark out where we are, and where I need to go. It seems pretty simple to me. At the end of the passageway I need to turn left, and then right onto the main road. The street I want is about a mile down on the left-hand side.
‘What do I say when I get there?’ I ask.
‘Say? Say nothing. They are expecting you,’ he replies.
‘Right. Fair enough. And what about clothing? I can’t just ride this thing in jeans and a T-shirt.’
He laughs. That deep, guttural belly laugh again. ‘You have helmet! This is fine. Scooter go maybe forty, forty-five kilometres per hour. You will hurt more if you fall when you walk!’ He seems to find his joke far more hilarious than I do. I’ve not ridden anything with two wheels since I was about eighteen years old. I look more closely at the scooter, trying to work out where the accelerator and brake are, and how to indicate. I hear a door closing behind me, and I turn to find out Marek’s closed the fire door and gone back into the bar.
Cautiously, I climb onto the scooter, put the key into the ignition and turn it. The engine purrs and comes to life.
It feels good.
46
When they say you never forget how to ride a bike, it seems that extends to mopeds. It helps that the roads aren’t too busy and the scooter’s really easy to handle. I feel a little unsafe with only a T-shirt and jeans – despite the helmet – but it’s far too hot for full leathers, and I’d feel a bit of a tit wearing them on a moped that can barely hit thirty miles an hour.
The address I was given appears to be a cafe. There’s no number on the building, but counting down from a couple of doors up it seems to be the right place. I pull over to the side of the road, cut the engine and take off my helmet. I have a quick look at the map to see where I’ve got to go from here and I memorise the route.
Inside the cafe, it seems to be a popular place for locals to grab a bite to eat. There’s what I can only assume is a Slovakian soap opera on the TV, the sound louder than you’d expect. I’m not sure whether it’s so loud to accommodate the fact that the general clientele in here are probably hard of hearing, or whether it’s to ward off anyone who isn’t a local. It could be either; I certainly don’t feel particularly comfortable in here.
There’s a man of about forty stood behind the counter, preparing a cup of coffee. He turns to look at me as I approach him.
‘Courier?’ I say, holding up my helmet as if that will explain everything in international sign language. He nods and curls his finger to beckon me to follow him.
He takes me through a door into a back room, which looks to be some sort of storage area for food. There are cardboard boxes everywhere. The man moves one box aside and fishes a large padded envelope from behind it. He hands it to me. It weighs a good couple of kilos and has nothing written on the front of it at all. It’s a good job I checked the delivery location before I left. ‘For Mario,’ he says, just standing there.
I take that as my cue to leave, and go to move towards the door back into the cafe before I feel a hand on my shoulder, stopping me. I turn to face him and he gestures with his head to the fire door behind him. ‘This door,’ he says.
I nod and do as he says.
The door takes me out into an alleyway that runs down the side of the cafe. I look around, but the only people about are simply going about their daily business. I head back towards the street, open the under-seat storage compartment on the moped and tuck the padded envelope inside, before putting on my helmet and pulling away as quickly as I can. I’m not sure what that was all about, but I know I didn’t particularly like it.
I’m worried now about what’s in the padded envelope. It weighs a fair bit, but it could be anything. Drugs? A gun? Worse? I’m not sure what could possibly be worse than either of those, but I don’t want to think about it, either. I tell myself I’ll drop it off at its destination, go back to the bar, thank Marek very much for thinking of me and politely decline any future work.
The journey to the delivery point seems to take an age. I’m desperately willing the moped to go above jogging pace, but it’s not having any of it. I just want to get it done and over with, before I get any deeper into whatever the fuck this is all about. I’m in enough shit as it is without getting involved in drug dealing or gun running.
When I finally arrive at my destination, it looks as if it’s a barber’s shop. Either these businesses are just fronts for whatever’s in these packages, or there’s a very hungry Slovakian barber ordering lots of secret bacon sandwiches from the local cafe. I know what my money’s on.
Every part of me – every fibre of my being – wants to flee. I want to run, get as far away from here as possible. If I don’t deliver the package, I can’t be held liable. I could just leave the moped here with the keys in, and hope someone takes it. And then what? Go back to Marek and tell him I lost it? No. I have no choice but to go through with this now.
I walk up to the door of the barber’s shop and am pleased to see that there are two customers sat in chairs. That doesn’t mean the shop’s not a front, but it does mean I feel a little safer with members of the public around.
One of the barbers seems to know exactly what I’m there for, and he beckons me over to a desk at the back of the shop. He takes the parcel from me and places it inside a drawer, before patting me on the back and indicating that I should go. As if it’s the most normal thing in the world. To them, perhaps it is, but this world is completely alien to me.
I leave the shop – by the front door this time – and don’t even stop to look over my shoulder. Then I’m back on the moped and heading back for Marek’s bar as fast as I can, which isn’t very fast at all.
47
When I get back to the bar, I park the moped in the alleyway and go inside to find Marek. He’s sat at the bar, as he usually is, waiting for some customers who probably don’t exist.
‘Ah, Bradley! How was first job?’ he says, giving me that big beaming smile once again.
‘Well, I did it,’ I say, taking off my helmet and putting it down on the bar. ‘But I want to know what this is all about. Picking up a parcel from a cafe and delivering it to a barber’s shop?’
Marek waves a hand at me. ‘Is just business. Do not worry.’