Den of Snakes

by Damian Vargas

‘Eddie,’ Kenny called from below. ‘Fucking hurry up’.

  Eddie could hear police sirens in the distance and climbed down as fast as he dared. ‘They shot him,’ he said to Kenny as he reached the floor.

  ‘Course they did’. Kenny’s reply was emotionless. Matter of fact, even.

  ‘Do you even give a shit?’ said Eddie.

  Kenny looked at him, offering no response, then jogged away towards an alleyway, without waiting to see if Eddie was following.

  Eddie glanced back up the pipes down which he had just climbed, an escape that Mike had found for him but not taken himself. Eddie had started the day intending to kill the man. Mike, it had instead turned out, had saved his and Kenny’s life. Eddie still did not know who was behind the deaths of his brother, Roger and Bill. Nor did he know what Pickering was planning, but as he started after Kenny, he promised himself that he would find out and that he would make them pay.

  Eddie and Kenny watched from behind a wall as the East Enders drove away, before then hurrying to the Lancia. Eddie handed the keys to Kenny.

  ‘Drop me off near Charlie’s bar’.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to check on something,’ said Eddie. ‘You find Judy and Carol. Tell them to pack a bag and get out of Marbella today’.

  ‘They ain’t gonna like that,’ said Kenny.

  ‘Fuck what they like,’ Eddie barked. ‘Whoever did this is cleaning up. They’re in danger too’.

  ‘And then what?’ asked Kenny.

  Eddie looked at his watch. It was approaching two o’clock in the afternoon. ‘Gimme your phone number. I’ll call you when I have something’. He found a biro in the car’s glove box, ripped off the lid from his cigarette packet and scribbled Kenny’s phone number on it, then inserted it into his wallet.

  He pointed at a bus stop just ahead of them. ‘Let me out here’. Kenny pulled the car over and Eddie got out. ‘Hang on,’ he said, then went to the rear of the car and opened the rear hatchback. He picked up a tire iron, a hammer and a torch and placed them into a sports bag before closing the hatch and returning to the driver’s side.

  ‘I’ll call you this evening’.

  ‘Be careful, kid,’ said Kenny.

  ‘You too’.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sex, Lies & Videotapes

  Eddie made his way through the backstreets that led down to the beachfront and to the blackened ruins of his brother’s bar.

  Little survived of the upper structure except the concrete columns, several twisted metal beams and some masonry walls. The local council had erected sections of temporary, interlocking steel sheet fencing, and black and yellow tape marked, “Policía. No entrar” surrounded the entire area.

  After surveilling the scene for several minutes and certain there were no police present, Eddie crossed the road, taking care to hide his face with his hand. He slipped between a gap in the fencing and darted up the remains of the stairs that lead into the bar’s former entrance.

  The concrete beams and columns remained in place, albeit blackened, but the ceiling was no more; its charred remains and shattered glass littering the floor. Taking care to avoid the dangers underfoot, Eddie made his way towards the cellar entrance, thankful that he was wearing combat boots and not some pair of flimsy trainers.

  The aluminium door to the beer cellar was now a molten mass on the concrete floor, and the concrete staircase and brick wall beyond was pitch black. He pulled the torch out of the bag, switched it on and directed it down into the abyss below. The air was damp and thick with the fumes of combusted materials.

  He edged down, checking the integrity of the stairs with each step until he reached the bottom, at which point he stepped into a shallow pool of water. It was several inches deep and seeped into his boots. He made his way along the corridor, pushing between the warped remains of a dozen beer barrels and other detritus. The atmosphere was dank and acrid. Eddie shielded his mouth and nose with a handkerchief while attempting to avoid tripping over the unseen obstacles under the water.

  Eddie reached the steel door that once prevented entry to Charlie’s secret room. It was ajar. He pointed the torch at the wall above the door and examined the seared brickwork and plaster. He had been around enough fire-damaged buildings to read the pattern of scorch marks and realised that the room was the source of the inferno. The realisation came as no surprise.

  He tried to yank the door open, but it was wedged firm, so he thrust the crowbar into the gap and tugged with all his might. The door gave way with a groan, and he pulled it open wide enough to slip inside. He directed the beam around the room and saw little remaining of the workbenches and lockers. There was, however, a potent smell of gasoline.

  He swung the light towards the old electrical cabinet behind which Charlie’s safe was hidden. The panel door was wide open, as was the safe inside, which was empty. Whoever started the fire must have known what was inside, and they had burned the building to cover their tracks. Eddie examined the steel door. It was blackened and somewhat warped, but the lock mechanism was intact.

  With nothing more to learn, Eddie made his way back along the dank passageway, up the stairs and out of the ravaged building. He strode up the hill away from the bar, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind him, and racking his brain for answers.

  How could anyone have defeated that steel door and its hefty, seven-lever mortice lock? It would have been almost impossible to pick.

  And then it dawned on him.

  He stopped in his tracks, and an icy shiver ran down his neck.

  He knew how they had done it, and he knew who. Now he had to find out why.

  Eddie flagged down a taxi and told the driver to take him to Charlie’s villa, but as the car drew close, he spotted two police cars parked outside. ‘Keep going,’ he shouted.

  The villa gate was wide open, and he could see two more police cars and an ambulance on the drive. At least a dozen police officers were milling around the gardens.

  Fuck.

  ‘Where you want to go, hombre?’ the Spanish driver said.

  ‘Banús. Take me down to the port’.

  The driver pulled a u-turn and headed back the way he had just driven, with Eddie sinking low in his seat as they passed the villa again. He told the driver to stop close to the apartment block where Mike had lived with Veronica, paid the man and got out.

  He had walked scarcely thirty yards before spotting another police car. It sat straddling the edge of a pedestrian crossing, its two occupants scrutinising passersby. Eddie slipped into a bar and sat down at a table with a view out onto the road and the apartment block above it. He sat there for over three hours pretending to read a newspaper before darkness arrived and, he guessed, having worked his way through a dozen drinks.

  The first police officers got relieved by two colleagues at eight o’clock, but the replacement officers were no less vigilant. Eddie would find no entry with them present. He looked up at to the upper floor to the apartment where Veronica lived. He could see lights on inside. Someone was home, but who? He had to get up there somehow to find out. The apartment building was an independent structure, but the neighbouring building stood less than two feet apart and was of a similar height. If he could get up to the roof level of that building, perhaps he could jump across to Veronica’s apartment block and climb down onto her balcony?

  Eddie paid the waitress - who had eyed him with suspicion over an hour earlier - smiling at her and leaving a generous tip, then left the bar and crossed over the road.

  The building that neighboured with Veronica’s comprised several apartments on each of its five floors. They all shared a common staircase and elevator with uninhibited access from the ground level hallway. After ensuring that he was not being watched, Eddie ascended the stairs, making his way to the very top where he encountered a grey door that barred his access to the roof outside. He removed the crowbar from the sports bag, and thrust into the doorjamb, splintering the wood and forcing the door open
in an instant.

  He stepped out onto the roof. It was dusk now, and the sounds of music and revelry from the bars and restaurants below masked his footsteps on the gravelled roof surface. As Eddie approached the edge of the structure, it became apparent that it was a little closer to Veronica’s building than he had thought, but was about ten feet higher. He composed himself, took a few steps back, then ran forward and propelled himself across the gap before landing with the skills gained from having completed several dozen parachute jumps.

  He made his way to the side of the building, below which was the balcony to Veronica’s apartment, and listened for voices. After hearing nothing, he climbed over and lowered himself down. His efforts to remain stealthy were foiled, however, when he knocked over a porcelain plant pot which smashed onto the floor. The apartment had French windows. There was nowhere to hide.

  Another light came on from inside, and Veronica emerged from the kitchen. She was holding a carving knife. Her surprise at seeing someone standing on her balcony evaporated as she recognised Eddie. She placed the blade down onto a table and approached the glass door. She stood looking at him for a few seconds as if trying to gain some composure, then turned the key in the door and pulled it open.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t the Black Magic man,’ she scoffed. ‘The police are looking for you’. She reached out to touch him as he entered, but he brushed her away.

  ‘Are you alone?’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes, just me and Mr Smirnoff, she replied. He walked to the apartment door and checked the lock. Veronica strolled towards one of two white sofas and lay down, bringing her legs up and tucking them underneath her. She beckoned at him to sit down.

  ‘I’m sorry about Mike,’ Eddie said. Her eyes fell to the floor.

  ‘Were you there?’

  Eddie nodded. ‘He saved my life’.

  He noticed a flicker of a smile as she reached for her cigarettes, but it dissolved as quickly as it had appeared. ‘Did you hear about Debbie?’

  ‘The barmaid Charlie was knocking about with?’

  She glanced at him. ‘They found her floating in Charlie’s pool this morning with her wrists cut. The police are saying it was self-inflicted. Weren’t no fucking suicide though, was it?’

  Eddie’s heart sank. How many more people are going to suffer? ‘Maybe she was at the villa when someone broke in?’ he said.

  ‘Or maybe she knew too much?’ Veronica swallowed. ‘I’m scared, Eddie. What’s happening? Who’s doing this?’

  ‘I don’t know, but whoever it was also got to Soparla before we did. They killed his girlfriend too’.

  Veronica wiped tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. She remained quiet for a while, staring at a point on the floor, lost in thought. After what seemed like an age, she whispered, ‘They’re after Charlie’s secrets’.

  ‘They are,’ Eddie replied. ‘And they’re killing anyone connected to them, or to Charlie. It’s like whoever is doing this is cleaning up, removing all traces of him and his time here’. He moved across and sat on the coffee table close to her, reached out and held her hand. ‘If you know anything, Veronica. Anything -’.

  ‘Why would you think I know anything?’ she snapped.

  ‘I went to Charlie’s bar today,’ he said. He saw a reaction in her eyes. It was only brief, but it was a reaction for sure. ‘I went inside. Downstairs’.

  He was scrutinising her now. Her eyes broke away from his stare and she reached for her glass and caressed it.

  ‘Charlie had a room down there,’ he continued. ‘It was a workshop, of sorts. It’s also where he hid all the files, pictures, audio and video recordings that he and Lucian collected’.

  Veronica lifted the glass to her lips, but she was still avoiding any eye contact.

  ‘But I think maybe you knew that already,’ he said.

  She downed the contents of the glass and stood up. For a moment, their eyes locked, but then she walked over to the French windows and gazed outside. ‘Nothing surprises me anymore, Eddie. People come here to party. All they see is the sun, beaches and bars. The all-night parties, and the flash cars and villas’.

  She placed a hand on the glass and pressed her forehead against it to look down onto the street.

  ‘But when you’ve been here long enough, it sucks you in. It changes you’. She looked back to face him. ‘I fell out of love with Mike a long time ago. He treated me like shit at times, but it wasn’t always like that. He used to be a charmer. He used to be…kind’.

  She swivelled around, her back to the glass, and her eyes fell on the kitchen knife that she had placed there when Eddie first arrived.

  ‘Too many years hiding out down here,’ she said. ‘The parties, the booze, the hangers-on and the drugs…the things it makes you do. It changed him. It changed Charlie. It changed us all’.

  Eddie stood up and strolled towards her, placing himself between her and the knife. ‘I thought it was Mike that ratted on us and got Charlie and the others killed,’ he said. ‘I was going to kill him. Truth is, I nearly did. But I was wrong about him. He told me to look out for you’.

  ‘He really said that?’

  ‘Those were his last words to me’.

  ‘Why didn’t you save him?’ Veronica said, her voice laden with accusation.

  ‘I couldn’t reach him, and I’d lost my gun. But I can help you’. He reached for her hand, but she moved away, back to the drinks cabinet.

  ‘I’m too late for saving, Eddie,’ she said as she poured a large measure of vodka into two glasses, opened the small fridge nearby and placed two cubes of ice into each.

  ‘Do you have somewhere you can go?’ he asked. ‘Back in England, I mean’.

  She paused for a moment, thinking. ‘My aunt,’ she replied. ‘She has a house in Surrey. I could stay with her for a bit, I guess’.

  ‘No other family?’ Eddie said.

  She shook her head. ‘Mum died when I was seventeen. She was an alcoholic. I never had a dad,’ she took a swig from the vodka and moved back to the sofa, placing a glass down for Eddie. ‘I’m the product of a dirty, one-night stand she had in Southend with some mod lad. She was sixteen when she had me’.

  ‘That’s rough’.

  ‘Would you come back to England with me?’ she asked.

  Despite his deep suspicion that she knew more than she was letting on, he yearned to say yes. She was as alluring as the day he had first set eyes on her. Part-kitten but also part-wolf, he reminded himself. ‘I have to find out who killed Charlie and the others,’ he replied.

  She looked away, tears in her eyes. ‘If you keep digging, you will find things you don’t like’.

  Eddie shrugged. ‘You might be right’. He looked at his watch. ‘I should go,’ he said, rising to his feet. He started towards the door.

  ‘Wait,’ Veronica said, her voice pregnant with guilt. I need to tell you something’.

  ‘I think I know already,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t, Eddie. You really don’t’.

  ‘Charlie’s secret little den. I think you -’.

  What she said next hit him like a cricket bat in the gut. ‘That mercenary job in Angola,’ she said. ‘They didn’t call it off’.

  He gawped at her, replaying what he had just heard. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It was me that called you,’ she said. Tears were running down her face now.

  ‘I don’t…I don’t understand’.

  She answered him, but this time in a Scottish accent. ‘The colonel…the colonel said to inform you…that the mission you signed up for is no longer going ahead’.

  Stunned, he tried to answer, but words were failing him.

  ‘I told you I was good at accents,’ she said, returning to her own voice.

  ‘Why…why would you do that?’ he said, struggling to quell the black anger boiling up inside him.

  ‘It was Charlie,’ she said. ‘He made me. He didn’t want you to leave. He wanted to keep you here’.

&n
bsp; Eddie stormed towards her, grabbed her arms and thrust her up against the wall, sending a framed photo of her and Mike to the floor. ‘How could he make you?’

  ‘It’s the truth, Eddie. I had no choice’.

  ‘Lies. More fucking lies. You just wanted to keep me here. Your new toy to play fucking mind games on. Do you know what you’ve done? All this shit. Everything that happened? Everything I’m caught up in now. You did that’. He was shaking her.

  She cried out loud, trying to break free. ‘He had a tape. In that case’.

  ‘What tape?’

  She broke free of his grip and fell back onto the sofa.

  ‘What tape?’ he demanded again.

  She was sobbing uncontrollably. ‘I wanted to go back to England. To be an actress again. I told him one evening. Your brother…I told him about two years ago. Before I knew what he was like. I told him I was leaving Mike and going back to England. He said he wouldn’t allow it. He said he would destroy my chances of ever acting again’.

  ‘How could he do that?’

  ‘He had the Romanian look into my past when I first got together with Mikey. He had a tape of me, from before I got my first acting roles’.

  ‘What…fucking…tape?’ he snarled.

  She reached for her cigarettes, but Eddie smacked them away. He stood glaring at her, his heart thumping hard inside his ribcage.

  She stood up. ‘I was young, desperate. I needed money. Mum was already in treatment centres. We’d lost the house’.

  ‘What fucking tape?’

  She took a deep breath, composed herself, stood up and then shuffled over to a large wooden closet. She opened the door to reveal a dented, metal box - Charlie’s case packed full of his illicit secrets.

  ‘I saw the keys. At the club. When you and Mike were fighting. I picked them up, and I kept them. I’d seen them before, Eddie - when Charlie first showed me the tape. When I saw them, I knew he had given them to you. He told you the combinations too, didn’t he?’

  Eddie was stunned. ‘How did you -’.

  ‘The combinations. What are they?’ she said.