Blind Impact (The Gabriel Wolfe Thrillers Book 2)

by Andy Maslen

  *

  That evening, Gabriel was manning his post outside the club at eight. It was still light, and he didn’t have much to do beyond standing at the door and barring the way to any obviously pissed customers. The street was crowded with a noisy bunch of under-dressed women and their leery boyfriends, plus single-sex groups holding bottles of beer by the necks or swigging from bottles of clear spirits. He’d read how the Baltic capitals had marketed themselves enthusiastically as destinations for stag and hen weekends, but he wondered if the city fathers had realised what they were letting themselves in for.

  A group of eight or ten English twenty-somethings came swaying down the street, singing Madonna’s Like a Virgin loudly and in about five different keys. Clearly, they’d ignored the warning in the tourist guide, or used it as a recommendation. The women seemed to be competing for two different prizes: “highest heels” and “skimpiest dress”. One girl in particular was having trouble in the latter category. Her stretchy scarlet dress was so short in the hem that she kept twitching it down to cover her knickers, only to risk falling out of the top, whereupon she repeated the movement in reverse. Her eyes, bright in clouds of panda-ish make-up, darted from side to side, and her brow had three or four furrows grooved into her matte skin. Not as happy as her singing suggested. The boys were swaggering. Cheap suits in pale grey, burgundy and powder blue, with narrow trousers and sleeves tight around their biceps.

  They stumbled to a stop outside Jonny Rocketz, bunching around Gabriel as he folded his arms and stepped towards the leading girl. She was wearing a neon pink mini-skirt, stockings and suspenders, and a white vest to which an “L”-plate was pinned. A bride’s veil rigged out of toilet paper trailed down her back to the ground.

  A sudden inspiration flooded his mind. “Sorry ladies and gentlemen, club’s full. You’ll have to find somewhere else to do your celebrating.”

  “Fuckin’ ’ell,” the girl shrieked, turning to her posse of mates. “He’s English.”

  She turned back to him and pouted, turning her sticky lips into a caricature of a movie-star’s kissy face. “Come on, darling, don’t be like that. We all just joined up for a bit of a laugh.”

  A couple of the boys she was with shouldered their way to the front and bookended her. One spoke.

  “Yeah, mate, like, don’t be a dick. We only want to have a little fun.”

  Gabriel paused, as if considering the merits of this entreaty, then shrugged.

  “OK,” he said. “But no trouble, all right? Or I’ll come in there and sort you all out.”

  “Fine, whatever,” the bride-to-be said, tossing her teased and ringleted locks. “Come on, we’re in.”

  Gabriel stood aside as they crowded into the bar through the narrow door. Then waited.

  Sure enough, after five minutes or so, a scream cut through the booming music. Then the sound he’d been waiting for: glass smashing. He counted to ten – slowly – then pushed through the door.

  The English boys were engaged in a sloppy brawl with a bunch of locals. Who knew what had sparked it – a jogged elbow, a misjudged glance at a girl’s chest or pair of long, fake-tanned legs. Who cared? The women had joined in too, though they kept to strict, gender-based contests, pulling hair, gouging long painted nails at equally colourful faces, and kicking with their towering platform shoes. He marched into the centre of the mêlée, grabbed the largest English boy by the scruff of his neck and threw him against a wall. One down. Then he whirled round, ducking to avoid a chair thrown by the guy’s girlfriend, and straight-armed the second-biggest boy with the heel of his hand. The blow caught him on the nose, which spurted blood like a showerhead. Two down. All around him, the screaming and swearing continued, overlaid by the insistent pulse of the music.

  A third guy, jacket off, displaying muscular arms, pulled Gabriel round by his shoulder then stepped back a pace and brought his hands up, left in a fist, right in a stiff blade.

  “I’m going to fucking do you. I’m a cage fighter.”

  “No. What you are,” Gabriel said, “is a pedigree cunt.”

  Teeth bared, the man leaned back, lifting his right foot in a Thai kickboxing move. Gabriel closed in fast, kicked the guy’s left ankle, hard, and kneed him in the face as he fell sideways. His head bounced on the floor and he was still. Three down.

  A glaring face loomed into his own, and its owner’s hands closed on the lapels of Gabriel’s dinner jacket.

  “You fucker!” the boy screamed into his face. “You should be fucking protecting us, not beating us up.” Then he reared back for a head butt. The move was too obvious and too well telegraphed to trouble Gabriel. As the guy exposed his throat, Gabriel simply stabbed his four straightened fingers into the soft flesh under the Adam’s apple. With a hollow choking sound, the boy doubled over, falling to his hands and knees. Gabriel delivered a kick to his stomach, hard enough to keep him down but not to cause any damage to the internal organs.

  “That’s enough! Stand still!” he shouted, just as the music died, mid-track. Everyone stopped, rooted to the spot as his bark of command. He pointed at the remaining members of the joint stag-and-hen party who were clutching each other, make-up smeared by fists or tears, suits torn or spattered with blood from busted noses or cut cheeks. “You lot. Out!” He pointed to the door. Nobody moved. “Now!” he bellowed. “Before I get seriously pissed off.”

  A couple of the English boys looked as though they still had some fight left in them and they were exchanging killer glares with some of the local men. As they grudgingly made their way to the door, supporting their walking wounded, Silvi appeared from her office and pushed her way through the crowd. She planted herself, legs akimbo, arms crossed over her breasts, in front of the girl with the “L”-plate on her own chest and jabbed her finger at it.

  “Yes, you are a learner. You’re still learning to behave like a civilised human being. So you can leave my club now and take your disgusting friends with you. Tallinn doesn’t need people like you. Estonia doesn’t need people like you. Get out. Kao välja!”

  Silvi turned on her heel, but as she stepped away, the woman grabbed her hair and pulled down hard. Silvi’s head jerked back, and she had to sink to her knees to lessen the pain. The woman kneed her in the back, but as she was winding up to stamp on Silvi with her viciously thin heel, Gabriel marched over and seized the woman’s wrists, spun her to face him and delivered a ringing slap to her left cheek that drew gasps from those people close enough to witness it. She stared at him open-mouthed, and a couple of the now recovered English boys looked like they were weighing up their chances if they re-engaged him. He wagged his finger in her face and then pointed to the door.

  “You heard the lady. Kao välja!” he said.

  They understood his meaning clearly enough, even if they didn’t know any Estonian, and this time they did get out, a couple of the stragglers shouting threats over their shoulders as they pushed their way through the still-crowded bar and out of sight through the door. The trouble over – for now – the regular punters resumed their enthusiastic drinking and dancing.

  Gabriel followed Silvi to her office, putting his hand onto her shoulder to slow her down.

  “You all right?” he said, genuinely concerned.

  “I’m fine. Those English bitches are worse than the men. You should see the mess they leave in the toilets. Animals. Thanks for what you did back there, Terry. You’re a good man. Get Astrid to pour you a drink. On the house. Tell her I sent you. I’ll put someone else on the door.”

  Then she was gone, fleeing the scene of the fracas towards the security of her office. He walked over to the bar and signalled to the raven-haired girl pouring drinks. She finished the round then came over.

  “You speak English?” he said.

  “Of course! We all do, pretty much a condition of working down here. Some slick moves you got, Terry. Thirsty?”

  “Yeah. Silvi said . . .”

  “On the house? Sure. What do you want?”


  “A beer, but not that fucking awful stuff I had last time, what was it called? Saku Rock? Yeah, that was it.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get you something better.”

  She came back a few minutes later with a tall, waisted glass of dark beer crowned by a thick, creamy head.

  He took a long swig of the beer. It was good – deep, earthy flavours and a lemony aftertaste. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and put the glass down on the zinc.

  “That’s better,” he said, grinning. “Always like to wet my whistle after a little scrap. Listen, what time do you get off tonight?”

  “Same as you. Three. Why?” She was looking straight at him, green, almond-shaped eyes twinkling in the lights reflecting off the shiny metal bar top.

  “Thought you might want to grab breakfast.”

  She put her head on one side and touched the tips of her fingers to the little notch between her collarbones. Then she nodded. “Sure. Why not? There’s a good place up the street where we sometimes go.”

  The rest of the night passed quickly. No further trouble, but plenty of people to check over, sometimes for weapons if they looked dodgy, and either let in or turn away, politely, with suggestions for other establishments that would be more than happy to cater to their needs.

  After the last customers had left, staggering home or onwards to another club, Gabriel went inside to change into his own clothes. When he came out of the walk-in cupboard that doubled as a staff changing room, Astrid was waiting for him. She was skinny, no more than five-two, brought up to five-six on a pair of platform-soled biker boots, the shins ornamented with shiny metal plates. White, over-the-knee socks came to mid-thigh, revealing a strip of fishnet tights that disappeared beneath a black velvet skirt. On top she wore a black T-shirt, ripped artfully just below her small breasts. The words printed across it, in a typeface resembling blood spatters, read, Gone To Hell. A dinged-up, black leather biker jacket completed the look.

  He pointed at the slogan across her chest. “Beats I Heart Tallinn. I suppose.”

  “Not heard of them, then?”

  “Heard of who?”

  “Gone To Hell, numbskull. They’re a band. My brother plays bass for them. They’re awesome.”

  “OK, that’s pretty cool. Come on, let’s get something to eat, and you can tell me all about your brother’s band. And anything else you think I should know about you.”

  As the cold air hit them on the street outside, Astrid leaned into him. “Put your arm round me, I’m cold.”

  He did as she asked, and they walked, hip to hip, up the street towards a crossroads.

  “Here we are,” she said, as they reached the traffic lights on the corner. The glowing windows of the cafe were steamed up on the inside, but he could see that the place was at least half full.

  They went in, and Gabriel inhaled deeply. Coffee, really good coffee, warm bread, pastries, and eggs and sausages frying somewhere towards the back. They ordered cappuccinos, sausage sandwiches, and a couple of Danish pastries thick with icing and dried fruit, then found a table and sat opposite each other, surrounded by a mixture of night-shift workers, clubbers and a couple of uniformed police officers, a man and a woman, wedged in at a corner table.

  After their sandwiches arrived, they ate in companionable silence until the thickly cut bread and smoky, garlicky sausages were all gone. Gabriel swallowed the bite of Danish he was chewing, took a sip of the hot coffee, then tried a direct question.

  “You ever get any English around here who aren’t pissed up and looking for a fight?”

  “Sometimes, yes. But mostly it’s people like them,” she said, nodding in the direction of Jonny Rocketz.

  “How about other countries? Germans, Dutch?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What about Chechens?”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “Chechens? I don’t think so. Why?”

  “A couple of friends of mine – women friends – are travelling round here. They set off a month or so ago. They emailed and said they’d met up with some Chechens. It seemed really unlikely, you know? Given their reputation. So I’m just trying to find them. Make sure everything’s tickety-boo.”

  She snorted, then started coughing as coffee tried to force its way out of her nose. “Ticket-what?” she said, before blowing her nose with a paper napkin she plucked from a red and chrome dispenser on the table.

  “Tickety-boo. You know, it means everything’s all right. Kosher. A1. Tip-top. Jesus, don’t have a fit.”

  Astrid was laughing loudly, and people at nearby tables were turning to look, smiling as they caught her mood. She cleared her throat noisily and wiped her eyes with another paper napkin.

  “You English and your expressions. You kill me. You’ll have to tell Joonas when you meet him. He could put them into a song.”

  “He’s your brother, yeah? The bass player?”

  “That’s right. They’re playing all this weekend at a great little rock club, Darkness. They’ve got, what do you call it, a residency. Why don’t you come on Sunday? The bar’s closed, so we both have a day off.”

  “That would be great. I could do with some company. Gets a bit lonely travelling around on your own.”

  “Great!” she bestowed a wide smile on him. “Do you want to come to mine a little before on Sunday night? Say seven-thirty? I’ll make you something good and filling. Proper Estonian food. You’re probably living on pizza and McDonald’s, yes?”

  She wasn’t far from the truth. “Sounds good to me.”

  “So, then. Drink up and you can walk me home. Then I want to find out if you fuck as well as you fight.”

  Gabriel thought of Annie. How would she feel about his having a new friend with benefits? Somehow, he imagined she’d not be best pleased. But she didn’t have to know.

  “Come on then,” he said, getting to his feet and pulling her up to join him. “Let’s see if we can find out, shall we?”

  Chapter 32

  Earlier that evening, at the scrapyard in Tartu, Sarah sat opposite Kasym at the table in the cabin that served as kitchen and living accommodation for the Chechens and their hostages. Chloe had retreated to her music in their bedroom, and the other three Chechens had gone out for a meal. A half-empty bottle of wine stood between them.

  “Tell me, Kasym. Do you have children?” Sarah asked.

  Kasym drained his glass and set it down on the table. He rubbed his face from eyes to chin with his palm. Then he began speaking in a quiet voice.

  “My wife and I were childhood sweethearts. Our families owned neighbouring farms. Nothing big, just smallholdings with a few goats, maybe a pig or a cow from time to time, ducks, chickens, rabbits sometimes. Anja and I would play together all the time. Before school, after chores, any time we could get away. There was a stream running through our families’ land, and in the summer, when it warmed up, we used to go swimming there at the weekends. We used to sit on a little stone bridge to dry off and one day, when I was seven and she was six, I asked her to marry me. Not then, of course. But we agreed that we would be married as soon as she was sixteen. Our parents were delighted with the idea. We were both only children, and they could see the two farms merging and becoming a much more substantial enterprise.

  “Little Zora came along after one year. We doted on her.”

  Kasym looked at the ceiling. He could still picture Zora as she was then. Her mother’s dark skin and his blue eyes.

  “When she was sixteen, she told us she didn’t want to work on the farm any more. That she wanted to go to university. Nobody in our family had ever gone to university before, but we were pleased. We encouraged her to study hard and we began to think of how we could support her financially. This was May 1999.

  “This was a bad year in Chechnya’s history. The Russians decided that independence – freedom – was not something for the Chechen people. They sent in troops. Some little more than boys, no older than my Zora. One Tuesday morning, I was working on a
broken harrow in the fields at the back of our house when I heard a sound that chilled me to the bone. It was my wife and daughter screaming together.”

  Sarah put her wineglass down, frowning with concentration. “Why were they screaming? An accident?”

  “No. Not an accident. I dropped my tools and ran back towards the house. Their screaming was pitiful – they were crying, ‘No, no’ over and over again. I came round the corner of the house to see the worst sight of my entire life, before or since. There were six Russian soldiers standing with rifles in a group, smoking and laughing. In the centre of the circle, two more, with their trousers round their ankles, were raping my wife and daughter.”

  Sarah’s hand flew to her mouth. “What did you do,” she asked through her fingers.

  “I yelled at them to stop and they just laughed harder. Two of the bastards grabbed me by the arms and held me between them, forced me to watch. They took turns with them and when they were all finished, they shot them, simple as that.”

  Kasym paused and drained his glass. He looked away from Sarah while he wiped his eyes.

  “You don’t have to go on, you know,” she said, “if it’s too painful.”

  He shook his head.

  “One of these men spat at me and called us Chechen pigs. Said we were animals, not humans, and I should be grateful Mother Russia was rounding us all up again. After they left, I had two choices. I could give in, collapse, and shoot myself, or I could become a real man. I chose to be a man. I buried my Anja and Zora. Then I fetched my hunting rifle and began to track the Russia soldiers. They were an advance party, with no support. I found them inside two days with the help of our neighbours. They had murdered another family – hadn’t even moved the bodies – and were sitting round a fire in their yard, roasting a goat and drinking plum brandy.”

  Kasym’s voice took on a rougher, harder edge. He picked up the cook’s knife he’d used and began turning it in the light.