by L. J. Hutton
“Let’s get outta here! Please! I don’t wanna be here with ...with that!” and he’d pointed a shaky finger across to where the tattered corpses of the girls lay.
Tufty had been only too glad to leave too, but he’d had to stop twice in fairly quick succession for Sanay to be sick. After that, he’d turned off up a quiet road near to Knighton, and they’d shared the contents of his hip flask to calm both of their nerves while they waited for Vijay to get well ahead of them.
“I weren’t expectin’ that,” Sanay had confided to Tufty as they sat there. “You gotta believe me, man, I never thought he’d do that.” Then as the silence of the countryside settled around them, “Man it’s creepy out here. Why is it so quiet? Where is everyone?”
“It’s the countryside, you spanner!” Tufty had replied in disbelief. “There ain’t nobody out here. But that’s why you can hear stuff for miles. That’s why I wuz so worried somebody would hear bloody Vijay from miles away!”
Somehow they’d got away with that one. Nobody seemed to have reported hearing gunfire, and in the following weeks, again there were no reports of bodies having been found. For his part, Tufty only felt relief at not having been dragged further into the Estonian’s dark world, but he noticed that much of the bounce had gone out of Sanay. From then on, he wasn’t half so keen to be ingratiating himself into whatever Vijay was doing, and if Vijay misinterpreted it as Sanay showing him new respect, as befitted a rising star like himself, then neither Sanay nor Tufty was going to set him straight. But on several occasions, Tufty caught Sanay looking at him with an almost pleading look in his eyes that seemed to say, ‘For God’s sake don’t leave me alone with him’.
When the next three girls had been brought in to the gang’s ‘headquarters’ by two of the Estonian’s henchmen, Tufty had been the one who’d had to go out and throw up, already guessing what was going to happen. The difference this time was that Vijay wanted to try ‘somefin’ new’ that he’d seen on a porn film with the girls, and whatever it was, Tufty and Sanay had had to go and carry the two he’d chosen out of the room he’d used, the girls being catatonic in their distress. The other girl’s distress at seeing them, though, had made it a harrowing experience for Tufty, and the only blessing was that Vijay insisted the Tufty and Sanay be the ones to do the disposing.
“I’m not shootin’ or stabbin’ ‘em!” Tufty had stated categorically, as Sanay had finished helping him get the girls into the Hilux. “If they’ve got to go, then it’ll be with a drugs overdose. It’s not good any way you look at it, but at least they’ll go to sleep and never wake up. Not like those poor cows we took out there last time,” and Sanay had readily agreed, going and getting some smack and the needles to give it with.
That had been the previous time he’d been out here, but it had only been when he’d pulled up and seen how sheepish Sanay looked that made him look a bit harder.
“Fuck!” he’d gulped. “Where did those four come from?”
Four tattered bodies lay thrown in a heap over by one of the bigger boulders that had been left in the quarry.
“Vijay made me bring ‘em,” Sanay confessed. “It’s alright, Tufty, they was dead already.”
“Alright? Alright? You stupid fuck! It’s not alright. It’s not even close to alright! How many do you think we can dump here before somebody notices? I only found this place expecting to use it once. I’m bloody amazed that we’ve got away with it this far! It can’t keep happening, Sanay, it can’t!”
“And are you the one who’s gonna tell Vijay that?” Sanay had snapped defiantly.
“Yes, I am! But you need to, too! Jeez, Sanay! It don’t have to be me what gets caught for all of us to end up inside, y’know! You get caught with all these bodies, they’m going’ to send you down for ever and a day, too!”
Sanay had sniffed, trying to look hard and cool, but Tufty could see that he was ticking like a time bomb inside. Yet when the emotional outburst came, it was him Sanay threw accusations at, ending with, “An’ if you’m stupid enough to cross Vijay now, when him got so much power, you’m a fuckin’ fool!”
Tufty now shook his head at the memory. They’d given the girls the smack, and as soon as the needles had been drained, Sanay had driven off in his own car, leaving Tufty to make sure that the girls never woke up. Not that there was a damned thing that Tufty could have done for them, but for the first time he could remember, Tufty had got down on his knees in the dirt and tried to remember the Lord’s Prayer, which he’d last recited in the primary school. It was the only prayer he knew, and he was ashamed that it would have to do, but hopefully it was better than nothing. And that had been the time when he’d begun to have the nasty feeling that he was being watched.
But it had been after that that he’d also started seeing the warning signs with Vijay. The covert looks, the strange requests to go and fetch something while Vijay discussed something with whichever messenger it was that had come from the Estonian. All bits of nothing on their own, but all of which told Tufty that it was time to start watching his back. And now here he was on another one of these bloody errands to the quarry.
“Fuck’s sake, Sanay,” he muttered, as the headlights appeared behind him on a straight stretch. “Can’t you bugger off somewhere and just leave me to it?”
If he could just shake off his bloody watcher, he’d be gone, pointing the big car down toward South Wales and keeping going. Quite what he’d do with the girls was another matter. He’d probably have to drop them off at a homeless centre in somewhere like Cardiff or Swansea. But then he’d head off into the far west for a week or so, sell the Hilux, and then maybe ask to work his passage on one of the container ships heading out of Fishguard on the west coast of Wales. At least he’d bought the Hilux with money he’d honestly saved up, so he could sell it without any loans getting flagged up on it. Yes, that would get him away from here, and it wasn’t like he had much to regret leaving behind.
Yet when he pulled in at the quarry, to his horror, it wasn’t Sanay who got out of Sanay’s Toyota but Vijay.
“Weren’t expectin’ me, was yer, bruv,” Vijay said nastily, and God help him, he had that bloody gun with him again, and this time it was waving in Tufty’s direction. “Now get them bitches outta der car!”
I’m not getting out of here alive, Tufty thought. This is it, I’ve had it. I can’t outrun a bullet. My only chance is to try and catch him off balance.
He went to the rear door of the cab on the driver’s side, the one facing Vijay. He’d have to get this girl and the middle one out this way where Vijay could watch. But if he seemed to not be putting up a fight, then he might – just might – be able to take Vijay by surprise with the third one.
“Come on, bab’,” he said softly to the first girl, who was barely conscious enough to hear him, but he didn’t want to spook her. The poor cow was as good as dead already, and there was nothing he could do to save her, but that didn’t mean she had to go to her grave scared shitless by him. She almost fell into his arms, and he had to half carry her over to the boulder Vijay was gesturing him towards with the gun.
No sooner had he propped her against the rock and stepped away, than Vijay fired. God alone knew where he’d been to do it, but Vijay had had some practice with that thing, because this time it was a controlled short burst, and it was all on target. That really scared Tufty. He’d been hoping that Vijay’s aim was as haphazard and random as the last time, but this changed things. His only hope was to get in close, close enough to grab the bloody thing. But that chance wasn’t going to come with the next girl.
Instead, he struggled with getting her out of the middle seat, but used that to then seem to stumble with her, as though her visibly wobbly legs had somehow tripped him. It took him closer to Vijay. Close enough that by the light of the Toyota’s headlights, he could see Vijay more clearly. Yes! His eyes were glassy! That meant that he was drugged up. Maybe not a lot, given that he’d managed to drive down these twisting roads without wrap
ping the car around a tree, but enough for his reflexes to be slower.
Yet Tufty recovered his balance, got his arms under the girl’s, and asked calmly, “Where do you want this one?”
“Over there,” Vijay snapped, gesturing to the left of the first girl.
This time the burst was a bit more ragged, and Tufty wondered whether the smack, or whatever Vijay had taken, was wearing off just enough to make him a bit shaky by now.
He went around the back of the Hilux to get the third girl, then made much of struggling to get her out and stood up.
“What you playin’ at?” Vijay demanded irritably.
“I ain’t playin’ at anythin’,” Tufty protested. “She more off her head than the other two. I’m tryin’ to get her to where I can pick her up, but she keeps foldin’ up on me.”
“Oh fer fuck’s sake!” Vijay exploded, and Tufty heard the crunching of his footsteps on the rough surface as he moved to come around the back of the pickup.
Dropping the girl onto the ground, Tufty grasped the iron bar he always kept on the floor in the back of his cab. You never knew when you might need to have something to hand, and an old-fashioned tyre iron was not an obvious offensive weapon. It was now, though. Being much fitter than Vijay, when Tufty sprang at him it was with a speed Vijay wasn’t expecting, and the tyre iron smashed into his outstretched arm, sending the gun skittering away into the darkness.
With the fight now evened up, Tufty was in a stronger position, and he got in several hard punches before Vijay managed to get one on him back. The rough ground did neither of them any favours, though, and within seconds they were both down on the ground. Yet even here, Tufty’s extra weight was in his favour, and he ended up on top, jabbing two hard punches into Vijay’s face which left him lying still.
Rising panting to his feet, the first thing Tufty thought of was that bloody gun. He knew which way he’d thrown it, and grabbing the torch from his cab, it didn’t take him long to find it. Well that was one toy Vijay wasn’t going home with, and he ejected the magazine, hurling as far in one direction as he could, and then sending the empty gun far up and out into the bushes nearer the quarry entrance.
Yet Tufty wasn’t a killer, and that was his undoing. He’d just gone to pick the surviving girl up when he felt an excruciating pain lancing through his back. Vijay had had a knife! Why hadn’t he thought to search the evil little shit? Instead it was Vijay snarling into his ear,
“My turn, now!” and he laughed manically. “I’ve promised Sanay your precious truck, y’know. How you goin’ to feel, dyin’ an’ knowin’ your pride ‘n’ joy is bein’ driven by ma’ bitch now?”
As he staggered away from Vijay, feeling the knife’s blade still deep inside him, Tufty summoned one last act of defiance. He always pocketed his keys. It was automatic with him, and now his hand closed around them. With one last yell of pain and fury, Tufty drew back his arm and hurled the keys out into the darkness.
“Waaa?” shrieked Vijay. “What you done? You fuckin’ retard! You gone an’ spoiled it! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
Pitching forwards to lie on the cold hard ground, all Tufty could do was watch as his life blood ran away. Watch as in his fury and spite, Vijay brutally dragged the remaining girl out to the others, and then strangled her with his bare hands. Tufty was just about conscious when Vijay got back into Sanay’s Toyota and drove away, and although he managed to feebly work his mobile phone out of his pocket, his fingers may have drifted over the emergency numbers, but there was no strength left in them to punch them in. And so although he weakly gasped, “Help me, please help me,” there was nobody to hear him.
Nobody that was, but the watchers. They had seen what had happened, they had seen him trying to fight back. But they couldn’t help. It wasn’t anywhere near a new or full moon tonight, and without that, they were powerless to enter the quarry or to act.
Vijay
June
THE AUDI TT RAN LIKE a dream. Behind its wheel, Vijay felt like the king of the road, and while there was something to be said for putting the pedal to the metal and doing a ton along the motorway, all the fun had been taken out of that by the sudden rise in speed cameras, and in particular the average speed ones. The normal type of camera there was a kind of sport in fooling, bombing along and then slamming the brakes on just as you spotted the bloody things, cruising at seventy for a few hundred yards and then flooring the accelerator again. But when they started being really sneaky and measuring the time it took to get between one camera and another, and working out that even if you were within the law when you went past, that you must have been breaking it in between, that was when all the fun went out of it for Vijay.
That had been when he’d started cruising around the rural roads where there weren’t any cameras for the most part. It was so much more fun flinging the sporty Audi around tight bends at speed than in a straight line anyway, and he’d laughed himself silly on the times when he’d forced some yokel into the hedges to get away from him. Silly old fuckers! Even the young ones. Life was for living, that was his motto, and anyone who couldn’t keep up deserved to be dead.
Like that fucking idiot Tufty, for instance. Now why had he had to go and ruin a good thing, eh? Just as Vijay had started to get a really sweet deal going with the Estonian, Tufty had threatened to ruin it all. That was just spiteful in Vijay’s eyes, and Tufty had deserved what he’d got, had had it coming to him.
“I mean, what am I to do now, man?” he asked his reflection in the rear-view mirror, even as he made a mental note to go and see his stylist again to get his hair sorted. A man in his position had to keep on top of things like appearances. “Why’d he have to go and turn on me like that? It weren’t natural. Weren’t right! Not after what I dun for him. He owed me, owed me big time. I could’a had any number o’ bruvers workin’ for me, doin’ what he dun. And how does he pay me back, eh? Betrays me!
“Where’s me gun? D’ain’t he know what that cost me? How hard it is to get another? Man! That boy hurt me, he dun me wrong.” And Vijay thought self-pityingly of the searching he was going to have to do over the rough ground of the quarry to find that gun.
Part of him wanted to just send Sanay out there with the new man, ‘Tank’, he’d been pressured to bring in to replace Tufty. Let them get ripped to shreds by the brambles and thorns. But then he wasn’t any too sure of this new man, either. He’d come from the Estonian, Indrek Pahapill, who was his and Sanay’s aunt’s man, and that connection between Sanay’s mum and Pahapill’s woman was something that was starting to bother Vijay, not least because those two of the five sisters had always been closer to one another than to his mum. It effectively put Sanay on the same level as him, or even above him, in terms of who could slip a quiet word in Pahapill’s ear, and that wasn’t right in his world, not at all. He was the top dog. He, and only he, should be reporting back to Pahapill.
It had been one thing to use Pahapill’s man ‘Tank’ occasionally, but now he was around all of the time, and that made it too easy for him to be Pahapill’s spy. And just where did Sanay’s loyalties lie? There’d been a while, when Tufty had still been around, when Vijay had thought that Sanay was adopting the right kind of deference to him – though he never thought of it in quite those articulate terms. ‘Respect’ was the word he clung to and understood, even if his version included a hefty dollop of fear mixed in with it.
Yet since Tufty had gone, and Vijay had returned from the quarry without the Hilux for Sanay, something had subtly changed. Vijay stuck too many substances into his body these days to be able to analyse what or why, but his animal instincts hadn’t missed it altogether. And having all of the loyalty of a snake himself, he was eternally suspicious of his men, presuming that they would be acting as deviously as he would have done in their place. So that meant that he was already assuming that Sanay was selling him down the river, having covert meetings with their ‘uncle’ and telling him everything Vijay was doing, while putting it all into the worst
possible light.
Had Sanay even gone back out to the quarry, Vijay wondered, now that he was heading that way himself? Was he going to get there and find the Hilux gone and the gun with it? Because if that gun had gone, somebody had one hell of a big hold over him, since the bullets would be match-able to the bodies of the dead whores. And what did Sanay think of Tufty’s disappearance? He’d been very wary of Vijay for a week or so after that, and yet had never asked where Tufty was. So did that mean that he knew that Tufty was face down in the dirt with the rest of them? Was Sanay wondering whether it was his turn next? Or was he thinking that he would be moving up the ladder soon, taking over from Vijay once he’d proved what a cock-up Vijay was making of things? Had Sanay already begun negotiations with Pahapill to take his place?
The more Vijay had thought about it, the more worried he’d become, and that was why he was now heading down to the quarry at night. On the quiet roads, he was sure he’d soon pick up the headlights of anyone following him, whereas during the day, as long as someone stayed fairly well back, there was little chance of him identifying them until it was too late. He had to see whether the site looked like it had been disturbed since the last time he’d been there. If it hadn’t, then he felt he could be reasonably sure that Sanay was just being twitchy, but if it had, then there were some big decisions to be made, not least of which was whether Sanay should be joining Tufty in the quarry, and then they would just have to find another site if asked to get rid of more bodies. However the trouble with that was that Vijay couldn’t read a map like Tufty could. And he could hardly Google, ‘where to hide a body in Wales’!
Vijay smacked the steering wheel with his hand in frustration. Fuck Tufty! Why had he gone and messed things up like this? It was a thought which seemed to be coming to Vijay several times a day in the last few weeks. A good lieutenant should have simply followed orders, and you’d have thought with his military training that Tufty would have done that. So it wasn’t Vijay’s fault that he’d gone rogue, was it? No, his subconscious soothed him, not your fault, not at all, but then in Vijay’s warped version of the world, nothing ever was. Someone, even if it was an anonymous ‘someone’, must always have had it in for him if something went amiss. Because the more he relied on different drugs to bolster his fractured ego, the less he could comprehend the consequences of his own actions.