by Andy Maslen
“You remember what I said to you last time we saw each other?” she asked now, though her tone made it seem more of a threat than a question.
11
Trouble and Strife
Stella felt calm. It wasn’t hard. In the previous week, she had fought off and, though she didn’t know it, mortally wounded a sexual predator named Peter Moxey. She had avoided being killed by a police markswoman, also acting on Collier’s orders, at Leonard Ramage’s gothic pile up in Scotland. And she had sent Ramage’s bodyguards scuttling for cover after shooting one in the thigh. Not to mention dealing with the evil judge himself.
As Marilyn Wilks moved close enough that Stella could see the individual wrinkles on her crêpey cleavage, Stella answered.
“You said I’d get what was coming to me for fitting up Ronnie.”
“Yes, I bloody did,” Marilyn Wilks said now, jabbing a long, manicured fingernail painfully into Stella’s right breast. “You and that bent DCI of yours, what was his name, Collier? You fitted Ronnie up. Oh, and by the way, you do not get to call him that.”
“He told me to, Marilyn,” Stella said. She stood her ground and briefly considered a push or a fingernail thrust of her own before dismissing it as unnecessarily provocative.
Marilyn turned to her husband, eyes blazing.
“What the fuck’s going on, Ronnie?”
It was clear to Stella that whatever the papers had printed about Ronnie “The Razor” Wilks and his power base in the East End of London, he wasn’t the boss within the marriage. But then, before she’d married Ronnie, Marilyn Wilks had been Marilyn McTiernan, eldest daughter of Freddie McTiernan. A tough girl from a tough dynasty and more than capable of keeping a genial thug like Ronnie in line.
Wilks held his hands wide.
“Please, darlin’. Don’t get involved. I just got to go with Stel—DI Cole to check something out.”
If he’d thought this would placate the irate Marilyn, he’d miscalculated. Gravely. Her eyes hardened.
“Go where?”
Obviously realising he’d walked into a trap, Wilks tried to reverse out of it.
“It don’t matter where. It won’t take long, then I’ll be back, won’t I?”
Stella was beginning to enjoy the sight of the ex-armed robber on the back foot in front of his formidable life partner. She stood with her arms folded. She could wait a little longer. Marilyn turned to her next.
“You and your guvnor fitted Ronnie up. Now you’re standing here in my pub—” She turned to her husband. “Yes, Ronnie, my pub—” Back to Stella again. “And I want to know, number one, what the fuck you’re doing here, number two, where you’re taking my husband and number three, why I shouldn’t make a call to a nice bloke I know down here and have you dropped off the side of his yacht, piece by fucking piece, in the middle of the fucking Med?” Her voice had risen to a shriek by the end of her list, and her not inconsiderable chest was heaving.
Stella motioned to the table. “Can we sit, please?”
Grudgingly, Marilyn Wilks sat and motioned for her husband to do the same.
Stella sat, too. She began to speak, in a low murmur inaudible beyond the three of them, counting off her answers on her fingers.
“One, I’m here because I want to ask your husband – or maybe you, now I think about it – for help killing Detective Chief Superintendent Adam Collier. Two, I’m taking Ronnie here to my hotel room to show him a Glock I stole from Paddington Green nick. I used it to shoot a High Court judge dead. Three, you want revenge on the police. So do I.”
Marilyn stared at Stella. A frank, appraising look that said, if you’re fucking with me I will know and it will go badly for you.
Stella stared back, breathing evenly. If the Wilkses wouldn’t help her, she was sure she could find some other retired villains living it large on the Costa who would. Maybe her calmness conveyed itself to Marilyn Wilks.
“I’m coming, too. Show me the gun. And explain. Everything.”
Stella’s hotel room was a decent size for a woman travelling alone, but it was a squeeze for the three of them. Marilyn and Ronnie sat on the bed and Stella pulled the hard chair out from under the dressing table and turned it to face them.
She pulled her bag out from under the bed and reached under the rolled and folded clothes. Her hand closed round the butt of the Glock and she pulled it out to show the disbelieving Marilyn.
“It’s empty,” she said, as she offered it up for inspection.
Marilyn shook her head and snorted derisively.
“What? You think I’m going to put my dabs all over it so you can take it back to London and use it against me? I wasn’t born yesterday.”
Stella shrugged, twisting in her chair to place the Glock on the lace square covering the top of the dressing table. “I don’t care. But ask yourself, how does a non-firearms officer get hold of a Glock and ammunition, and how does she get it out of the UK and all the way down here?”
“She’s got a point,” Wilks said, turning to his wife. “And she said Collier’s bent. He’s in some kind of vigilante group. We were right all along.”
“Suppose I believe you,” Marilyn said. “What do you want from us?”
“I’m going back to the UK. But I don’t know how much Collier and his friends are prepared to risk to get me. They could keep it secret or go official. There’d be risks if they arrested me, but they’re fucking crazy so who knows? I want some help getting back in under the radar. And out again. And I want some help disguising my identity.”
“What, plastic surgery?” Marilyn touched her face as she said this, though it looked like an unconscious gesture to Stella.
“Not to my face. I’ve got other ideas for that. No, I want my fingerprints burnt off.”
Ronnie and Marilyn looked at each other. Stella could tell they were communicating in that way married couples do, sharing a glance that was so freighted with meaning it would sink if it were a boat.
Ronnie turned to Stella.
“Acid don’t work. You know that, right? They just grow back.”
“I thought maybe technology had moved on. You know, in your world. I mean, nobody uses button phones anymore, do they?”
“Yiannis Terzi. Ever heard of him?” Marilyn asked.
“Should I have?”
“He’s a surgeon. Well, he was. Best boob jobs on the Costa del Sol. Half the women in Marbella have got tits our little Yiannis gave them. He was struck off a few years back for nicking drugs. He found a nice new little niche for himself. He can permanently remove your fingerprints.”
“And it works?”
“Oh, it works all right. And that other stuff’s child’s play. We’ve got a boat, and contacts back in England.”
“So you’ll help me then? You’ll put me in touch with this surgeon and help me get Collier?”
Instead of answering, Marilyn leaned in close to Ronnie, turning her head away from Stella so she was looking over his shoulder. She whispered something. Ronnie closed his eyes as he listened. Then he nodded and opened his eyes.
“You do something for us first, and we’ll think about helping you,” Ronnie said.
12
Frenzy by Nature
Tamit Ferenczy’s handsome face and athletic physique gave him the look of a Premiership footballer. He was five foot eleven and a trim twelve stone six pounds, most of which was muscle. His dark complexion threw his olive-green eyes into sharp relief. But it was his mouth that drew the attention. Full, curved like an archer’s bow, and framed by semicircular lines that were almost dimples. He was thirty-five, had come to the UK as a child, and had made his living in the drug trade since he was thirteen, when he had earned his keep delivering five-quid bags of cannabis to the smokers in his council estate in north London.
Now he ran an operation that covered around ten square miles of London, centred on Shoreditch, to the north of the City of London’s gleaming glass-and-steel towers. There were competitors, of course. Most notably
the McTiernans further to the east, in their Stratford base. But they were dinosaurs, and he was planning their extinction. His family connections in Albania managed his supply chain all the way from Pakistan to his house in Richmond-Upon-Thames, where he lived in opulence among semi-retired rock stars, celebrity neurosurgeons, and the type of wealthy author whose name featured in gold-blocked foil above their latest book title.
Tamit Ferenczy was a businessman. A gang boss. And, unfortunately for those who crossed him, a man capable of the most extraordinary acts of violence. His willingness to personally shed the blood of his enemies had earned him the nickname peshkaqen in his mother tongue. The shark.
Today, he had a disciplinary matter to deal with. Ferenczy liked the feel of business jargon in his mouth. It made him swell with pride. His grandparents, peasants all, would have been so impressed. He conducted this type of meeting in premises he owned on the edge of Epping Forest in Essex. The single-storey building had once been a thriving independent petrol station and garage, but as the big oil companies and the out-of-town motoring franchises ate into its owner’s profits, he had sold up, gratefully, to Ferenczy and retired to the south coast.
The rear of the building was the old workshop, with space for four or five cars, a hydraulic lift and old wooden workbenches pushed up against the rear wall. Ferenczy had maintained the equipment, which included air wrenches, welding rigs and chain pulleys. They were still in regular use, though not for the purposes their manufacturers had envisaged.
He stood at one of the workbenches now, sharpening a deep-bellied, Wüsthof cook’s knife with a professional’s ease, stroking its seven-inch blade at a precise twenty-degree angle along a foot-long butcher’s steel, which he held in his left hand. Behind him, tied to a chair by his wrists and ankles, was an overweight man in his midtwenties, light brown skin looking sallow under the neon lights slung from chains. The prisoner’s name was Jonathan Bakshi. He had once been a promising accountancy student. That was before his part-time job dealing weed to his fellow students at London South Bank University had taken him deeper and deeper into the embrace of the criminal organisation that supplied his gear. As a mid-level dealer, he’d been guaranteed his own territory in West London and protection from rival gangs. Bakshi’s downfall had been the same as that of many other aspiring kingpins: greed. He’d started skimming. Underreporting his sales one week. Lying about being robbed of his stash the next. Cutting it more than he was supposed to the week after that. He’d also broken the golden rule: “Don’t get high on your own supply.”
He was not high now. The word to describe his current state of mind would have to be low. Summoned to a meeting with the big boss, he’d been led to believe he was in line for a promotion. “Area manager” was the term the lead heavy had used as he and his equally muscular colleague had settled Bakshi into the back of a snow-white BMW 7-series with blacked-out windows.
Ferenczy gave the knife a final flourish that set the tip of the blade whistling against the surface of the steel. He set the heavy sharpening tool down on the scarred surface of the workbench and placed the knife next to it. He removed the jacket of his suit, a beautifully cut two-piece from Armani in a soft jade green. Reaching under the bench, he pulled out a long leather apron in a startling shade of orange. He slipped his head through a loop of black tape and tied the matching straps around his waist. Next, he pulled on a pair of long, black rubber gauntlets.
Looking down and straightening a fold in the thick cowhide apron, he nodded to himself. Sorted. He picked up the knife and crossed the fifteen feet of oil-stained concrete to the chair imprisoning the latest dealer to imagine he could put one over on peshkaqen.
The two heavies stood one each side of Bakshi, just out of his eyeline. Ferenczy motioned them to step back.
“Don’t want to get blood on your suits,” he said.
Bakshi chose this moment to speak.
“Please, Tamit. Don’t hurt me. I’ll pay everything back. I’ll get it from my parents. I can say I’m short for rent this month. They’ll transfer the cash. No problem, bruv, yeah?”
Ferenczy enjoyed watching the wide-eyed boy tremble in his bonds. It gave him a feeling of connectedness to the past. Knowing he could rule his kingdom like a man was supposed to.
Absolute power.
Absolute control.
Absolute fear.
Like how his ancestors used to conduct themselves.
He nodded to the man standing to Bakshi’s right. The heavy moved in front of Bakshi, pulled out his phone and held it up, tapping the screen, starting the video camera. Ferenczy smiled down at Bakshi.
“You think I’m worried about the money, Jonathan? Ten grand? I make that on a slow morning. Watch.”
He pulled out his wallet and extracted a sheaf of rose-pink fifty-pound notes. Next, he reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a gold-plated Zippo lighter. He thumbed the knurled wheel and held the flickering yellow flame under a corner of the notes. Before Bakshi’s widening eyes, he turned the fifties this way and that, until they were burning merrily. Then he dropped them in Bakshi’s lap. Bakshi jerked backwards.
“Sorry, Jonathan,” he said. “My bad. Zoran, beat out the flames.”
The man to Bakshi’s left leaned forward and administered five huge punches to Bakshi’s thighs, drawing a scream from Bakshi and crushing the burning banknotes into charred scraps that drifted to the floor.
Over Bakshi’s agonised moaning, Ferenczy resumed his carefully prepared speech.
“It’s not the money. It’s the respect. I gave you an opportunity, Jonathan. I gave you a territory, protection, a guaranteed supply chain. No shortage of customers. You could have become rich. But you cheated on me. You were greedy. Greed is a sin, you know that. And so is dishonouring those who look after you. We must honour our parents. We must honour our protectors. In my culture, honour and respect are what we live by. My grandfather killed an entire family in their home. Do you know why? Because of the man of that family. His great-great-great grandfather dishonoured my grandfather’s great-great-great grandmother. It’s a question of respect. You can pay back the money. But you cannot pay back the respect you stole from me. Now, people will look at me and say, ‘There goes Tamit Ferenczy. He is weaker than a woman. His dealers cheat and steal from him.’ And I cannot allow that to happen.”
Bakshi was crying now. His whole body was shaking.
“Please. Don’t kill me. I don’t want to die.”
“Oh, Jonathan,” Ferenczy said, almost tenderly. “We are all going to die. The question for you is how? Are you going to die like a man or like a snivelling coward? You clearly have no respect for me, but at least show you have some respect for yourself. Tell me to go fuck myself. Stick your chest out. Say it.”
Bakshi blinked. His trembling lips parted with an audible click. Ferenczy watched him trying to form words, struggling with his terror.
“I can’t,” Bakshi whispered.
“You can.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Please, Tamit.”
“SAY IT!” Ferenczy roared, lunging forward and thrusting his face into Bakshi’s.
“Go fuck yourself!” Bakshi screamed, then his bladder let go and Ferenczy stepped back as the urine pooled beneath the chair.
“Good boy,” he said.
Then he cut Bakshi’s left ear off with a single slice of the razor-sharp knife.
The right followed a few seconds later.
Over Bakshi’s screams, Ferenczy removed the tip of his nose.
Then his lips. Top first, then bottom.
The former drug dealer’s face was sheeting blood. The stumps where his ears had been were pouring more down onto his shoulders. His head dropped forward onto his chest. He had fainted.
“Pause it,” Ferenczy said.
In the sudden silence, the ringing of his own phone was loud. He glanced at the screen and smiled.
“Mr Collier. We’re round the
back. The door’s open.” He turned back to the man with the phone, holding his hand out. “Gun.”
The man reached under his left armpit and pulled out a black pistol. Ferenczy took it from him.
The scrape of the door at the rear of the workshop made all three Albanians turn round. Walking towards them was Detective Chief Superintendent Adam Collier. His suit was more conservatively cut than Ferenczy’s Armani, and a dark grey. His tie was knotted precisely at his throat, navy with tiny white polka dots.
As Collier approached the trio and their unconscious, mutilated prisoner, he glanced down at the pool of liquids beneath the chair and wrinkled his nose. He shook hands with Ferenczy.
“More disloyalty, Tamit? You should review your HR strategy.”
Ferenczy shrugged, affecting nonchalance. On the inside though, he was furious. Collier’s casual disrespect had banked up the fire of anger that Bakshi had ignited. He stored away the slight for a future date.
“Why don’t you help, Adam?” he said. “We’re filming a new recruitment ad. For the slogan, I’m thinking, ‘Loyalty cuts both ways.’ We’ve filmed most of it. We just need the final shot. If you don’t mind.”
He handed the pistol to Collier.
Collier turned and looked down at Bakshi. He stuck the squared-off muzzle under the boy’s chin and lifted it so his head flopped backwards on his neck. Then he turned to Ferenczy.
“Did he cut himself shaving?”
That took Ferenczy aback. He’d always thought of the cop as more of a planner than a man prepared to get his hands dirty. Maybe he’d been wrong about Collier. He shrugged.
“What can I say? The youth of today have no respect for blades.”
Collier smiled before turning back, racking the pistol’s slide, and jamming the muzzle against the top of Bakshi’s head.
He spoke over his shoulder.
“You probably think I’m some kind of kid-glove copper, don’t you, Tamit? All dress uniforms and budget meetings.”