by Andy Maslen
Then he pulled the trigger.
The report of the pistol as the 9mm round exploded from the barrel was deafening in the hard-walled confines of the workshop.
Bakshi’s head flew apart.
Unlike Ferenczy and his two heavies, who had moved well out of range, Collier had not been expecting the blowback from the shot. His front was liberally spattered with blood and brain tissue, and his face bore a fine speckling of scarlet freckles.
“Shit!” was all he said.
“You want to clean up the streets, Adam. Maybe you need to start with yourself, eh?” Ferenczy said, stifling a laugh and thinking the man’s obvious discomfort was payback for the earlier insult.
Collier strode over to the workbench where Ferenczy had left his steel. He grabbed a rag and began dabbing and wiping at the mess on his clothes. He turned and shook his head. He was smiling.
“One up to you, Tamit. Now can we find somewhere to talk?”
13
Business
The previous owner of the garage had created a corner office for himself with drywall partitioning. A single window gave onto the workshop, allowing him, presumably, to keep an eye on his staff. Ferenczy and Collier were sitting there now, occupying simple chrome-legged armchairs upholstered in greyish-blue cloth, shiny in places where the nap had worn away. The white-painted walls were covered with faded promotional posters for engine parts, lubricants and car security systems. Behind the desk, a curling 1989 Castrol calendar hung from a drawing pin. It was open at December, and showed a busty young woman in a skimpy Father Christmas outfit, leaning across the bonnet of a bright red Ferrari.
One of the heavies delivered two mugs of steaming coffee and then left, quietly closing the door behind him.
“Thank you for your help out there, Adam,” Ferenczy said, eyeing the detective over the rim of his coffee mug and then blowing across its surface. “You are right. Disloyalty is always a problem in my business. But then, maybe you have problems of your own? You said as much when you called me.”
Collier nodded, sipping his coffee, then putting the mug down on the low table that stood between them.
“One of my officers is out of control. You know about Pro Patria Mori?” Ferenczy nodded. “She tortured and killed our leader last week. Now I’m in charge, and I need her taken care of. We’ve tried twice, but the people I assigned to the task, well, what shall we say, they disappointed me.”
“You underestimated your enemy. And now you want me to fight your battle for you? I am not some five-grand contract killer, you know. I run a business empire. I have two hundred employees.” He raised his voice, feigning anger, though he was flattered by Collier’s approach. They had done business together in the past, but that was small beer, working together to kill a few low-level dealers from competing crews.
“I know. And that’s why I want you. I was careless before. You could say stupid. I relied on people without the strategic brain this job requires.”
Ferenczy nodded, sipping his coffee. Making Collier wait.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Adam. Strategy is hard. Not everybody can master the intricacies. As Napoleon said, ‘In war, the general alone can judge of certain arrangements. It depends on him alone to conquer difficulties by his own superior talents and resolution.’ Dealing with a single woman is no problem. But tell me, why should I?”
“The McTiernans.”
“What about them?”
“I’ll shut them down. You can move in on their territory. A hostile takeover.”
“You’d do that?”
“No heat on your crews. They’ll be left alone. I’ll direct all our resources at the McTiernans. Start picking up their dealers, their soldiers, put the heat on Freddie himself. Then you make your move while they’re busy trying to figure out what just happened to them.”
Ferenczy finished his coffee, scowling at the taste.
“All this for one crazy cop with a grudge? Oh, wait. I see. She has a grudge against you, doesn’t she? You’re frightened she’s coming after you next. You did something to her with this judge, and now she wants vengeance. I understand this concept. It is in my blood. You killed someone in her family? Her father? Her mother?”
“Her husband. And child. It was Leonard’s idea – the judge she killed. But I need to stop her. There’s nothing I can say to persuade her. She thinks I was involved.”
Ferenczy said nothing. He was thinking. Upside? With the McTiernans neutralised, he could double the size of his operation. Downside? Minimal. They’d direct their return fire at the police, not at him. And killing a woman? These English were too soft. No wonder they had been invaded so many times.
“Deal,” he said, offering his hand. “Where is she?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know. She might have left the country.”
Ferenczy snorted. “The world’s a big place. Do you think I have cousins in every country I can call and say ‘keep a look out for this English bitch,’ hey?”
“No. But as long as she’s out of the country, she can’t do anything, can she? So if you hear of her coming in through a port or an airport, or through one of the unofficial routes, you know, then you can move.”
“Fine. And as it happens, I have a big family. They live here, there, all around. I’ll put the word out. You got a picture?”
Collier pulled an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. It caught on his lapel, which left a smear of blood across the cream paper. He handed it to Ferenczy.
“When you do her, get rid of the body, OK? I don’t want her showing up in the Thames or on top of a rubbish fire somewhere. You do it properly. And while we’re talking about cleanups,” he gestured at his bloodied jacket, “is there any water in this place?”
Two hours later, wearing one of the fresh shirts he kept hanging from the rear grab-handle of his Audi, his jacket folded inside out in the boot, Collier strode into Paddington Green Police Station. He was smiling. Walking through the CID office of the Specialist Crime and Operations Division’s Homicide and Major Crime Command, he diverted from the path that would take him into his office and walked up to the desk occupied by Detective Sergeant Frankie O’Meara. She was on the phone but not speaking, the receiver clamped under her chin. He leaned over her.
“Frankie, a word please. My office.”
He walked away, listening to DS O’Meara hurriedly ending her phone call.
Frankie paused for a second, straightened her white blouse over her chest, knocked and entered. Frankie had once snogged Collier, or “The Model” as his subordinates called him, for his dress sense and dark good looks. It was at an after-work party and they’d both been drunk. Ever since, she’d had to fight the blush that rose from her collar every time she was in his presence. She didn’t fancy him, or not when sober. It was more the professional embarrassment. Plus, Stella had always loved taking the piss out of her every chance she got. Oh, shit, boss, where are you? What happened up in Scotland?
Collier was sitting behind his desk, signing papers. He looked up at her and smiled, motioning for her to sit down.
“How are things, Frankie?”
“Sir?”
“Oh, no need for formalities. Call me Adam, OK? I just wanted to catch up. Trying to be less distant as a manager.” He leant forwards and adopted a stagey sort of whisper. “It came up in my last performance review. One of my target areas for development, as the HR bunnies call it.”
Frankie was trying to compute Collier’s change of style. Normally he had only two modes of communicating with his junior officers. He was either cold and distant, or wheeling out the prosecco and the scotch if they closed a case, full of matey goodwill that was as cheap as the fizzy wine. For a man normally so immaculate, he looked almost casual. No suit jacket. In fact, it wasn’t even hanging on the pine coat-tree behind him by the huge pot plants. And he must have shaved less carefully this morning. There were two spots of blood on the underside of his nose. She went for noncommittal.
“Everything’s fine, S—Adam. But I did want to ask you about Stella. Where is she? Has she been in touch with you?”
Collier frowned. To Frankie it looked off, stagey.
“I’m afraid Stella overdid it. I wanted her in the Exhibits Room for a few months so she could ease her way back in to active duty. But you know what she’s like. Always wanting to be chasing villains. She got an idea into her head about some sort of conspiracy and went charging off round the countryside. All totally unauthorised and, well, I’m afraid she had a breakdown of sorts. A relapse, I suppose you’d call it. I had a call from her doctor. He couldn’t give me details, obviously, but the long and the short of it is, she’s back on extended sick leave. I’m doing everything I can for her, but she’s a hard one to help.”
Frankie stayed silent. That wasn’t how Stella had seemed to her the last time they’d spoken. She recalled her words. Stella had said she’d found the bastard who’d killed Richard and Lola in the hit and run. Frankie had asked her the obvious question. She could still hear Stella’s reply. No. I’m not going to do anything stupid. Just some intelligence gathering before I go to The Model about it and get a warrant. But there’d been no warrant. Stella hadn’t returned from her trip. That was almost a week ago.
“Frankie?”
She started. Looked up. Collier was watching her. His head tilted to one side like a hawk watching a mouse.
“Oh, sorry, sir. Adam, I mean.” Now the blush did start. She felt its heat on her throat. “Miles away.”
“Look. I wanted to let you know because you’re her DS and I know you two are close. But don’t worry. And it’s best if you give her some space, OK? Her mental state is very fragile.”
Frankie nodded.
“OK. Space. Yes.”
That appeared to conclude the meeting. Collier bent to his paperwork and Frankie turned to leave.
“Oh, one more thing, Frankie?”
She turned round. There was that look again. Dark eyes hooded, mouth a straight line.
“Yes, sir?”
“If Stella contacts you, please let me know. We’re all worried about her, and I need to know where she is. That’s she’s safe, yes?”
Back at her desk, she dialled Stella’s number. Again. Got voicemail. Again. Left a message. Again. What was that, probably ten by now, maybe more? She stood up, hitched her black polyester trousers over her hips and pulled her jacket on. Then she called across to one of the other detectives, Detective Sergeant Jacob Tanner.
“Hey, Jake, I need to chase something up. I’ll be an hour.”
“OK. Get me a Mars Bar on the way back, will you?”
“Fuck off! Get one yourself from the canteen.”
Frankie took her own car from the parking garage underneath the station. As she started the engine and pushed the gear lever into first, she muttered under her breath.
“Please be there, Stella.”
She’d been calling round to Stella’s house in West Hampstead in northwest London every day for the past week. Sometimes on her way in to work, sometimes on the way home. Sometimes diverting from official business to check midday. Stella was definitely not at home.
Twenty minutes later, she pulled into a space three doors down from Stella’s house in Ulysses Road. The terraced Victorian houses had been built to a design that nineteenth-century builders had adopted across London, from Ealing in the west to Bow in the east, from Islington in the north to Clapham in the south. At the front door, she leaned on the bell for fifteen seconds, knowing nobody would answer it. She pressed her face up against the window to the right of the front door, but the room was dark and looked unlived in.
“She’s not been there for a few days, dear.”
Frankie stepped back from the door and looked to her right.
Standing outside her own front door, a short, birdlike woman with snowy white hair and searching eyes of the palest blue was smiling from behind the fence covered in honeysuckle that separated the two narrow front paths.
“Do you know when she left?” Frankie asked.
The woman shrugged her narrow shoulders.
“A few days ago, I think. I normally see Stella leaving for work on that motorbike of hers, early like, but I’m up with the lark myself. But I’ve not seen her these last few days. Or heard her come to that. You can’t miss the sound of it.”
As she said these last words she jerked her chin at a spot behind Frankie. Frankie turned to look. Between the bay window of the front room and the hedge facing the street was a ten-foot-by-six-foot patch of concrete. Balanced on its centre stand and fat rear tyre was a big black motorcycle.
Which meant Stella must have hired or borrowed a car for her pursuit of the man she’d told Frankie she’d identified as Richard and Lola’s killer.
“Thanks,” she said. She handed one of her cards to the neighbour, who seemed the friendly, rather than the nosy, type. “If you see her, would you call me, please?”
14
Amazonian Predators
Running criminals’ errands had never been part of Stella’s career plan, either before or after she joined the Metropolitan Police. But that was then. She wanted help getting to Collier and his friends and if this was the price, so be it. Her hotel room had begun to feel claustrophobic with her, Ronnie and Marilyn squeezed in between the bed and the furniture. So as Ronnie had given himself the night off, they’d agreed to rendezvous at the Wilks’s home that evening at 8.00 p.m. to discuss the details of their arrangement.
It was seven now, and she’d showered and brushed out her hair before fixing it into her usual pony tail. Having seen Marilyn’s look, she felt she could cheerfully slap on the entire contents of her makeup bag and not even come close to matching the other woman’s face. So it was a dab of lipstick, a flick of mascara and a mist of Black Orchid by Tom Ford. You never knew, Ronnie might find it more pleasant doing business with a woman who smelled nice.
After seeing them out hours earlier, she’d walked back into the centre of town to buy a few cosmetics. She’d also found a boutique that would sell her some clothes without her needing to take out a mortgage. To the clearly fake enthusiasm of the tall, skinny shop assistant, she’d left with a white linen trouser suit and a couple of shirts in pale blue and navy chambray. Two doors down, she’d picked out a pair of rope-soled espadrilles with a wedge heel that raised her height to five foot six. She put the trouser suit and the pale-blue shirt on now, plus her new shoes, and checked herself out in the mirror. She nodded her approval. Very Marbella. She felt relaxed, too. No way would Collier or the others have tracked her here. For a split second she thought, I could just stay. I’ve got the life insurance money. I could sell my house. Then reality bumped its way back into her consciousness. Reality and Other Stella.
“Don’t even think about it, babe. We get what we need, then we go back and do them. All.”
She nodded a second time.
The last time she’d loaded the Glock, she’d worn nitrile gloves like the ones the CSIs used. No fingerprints on the brass ejected from the pistol as she’d shot Ramage through both arms and, finally, the centre of his forehead. The heat would do a good job of destroying any latents, but she didn’t want to leave so much as a partial.
This time, she didn’t have her do-it-yourself crime-scene kit. So she improvised, pulling the flimsy, transparent shower cap from its little cardboard box on the bathroom counter and pushing her hand into it. In went seventeen rounds, heavy for their size, the resistance from the spring in the magazine slightly stronger as each new round went down to join its fellows. She wasn’t planning on using the gun, but meeting armed robbers and their clearly brass-balled wives was out of her comfort zone, and she knew she’d feel happier with a bit more in the way of weaponry than a roll of pound coins. With the final round seated, she slotted the magazine back into the grip – snick – and racked the slide. It joined her purse, and other odds and sods in the new handbag she’d bought – white with diamond-pattern
stitching, gold chain – to match her new outfit.
The street outside was already thronging with people. Not so much animal print in evidence, more white, black and navy, the odd splash of turquoise or coral. Plenty of linen, plenty of silk. Men in beautifully cut blazers or suits and gold snaffle bit Gucci loafers slapping against the pavement. Wives, girlfriends or escorts linking arms with their squires and clacking along beside them on towering heels.
Stella didn’t feel like she fitted with the Puerto Banús crowd, who she imagined as equal parts retired villains, Russian oligarchs and the sort of anonymous but clearly obscenely wealthy businessmen who probably ran hedge funds or software companies. But she didn’t stick out, either. Her all-white suit was like a cloak of invisibility, and she moved easily between the couples and groups as they crowed to each other about this deal or that boat.
She’d deliberately left the hotel early, and she took an indirect route to Casa Wilks, detouring down to the marina. The day had been hotter than average according to the weather site she’d checked earlier, around twenty-seven Celsius. The breeze coming off the water was pleasant on her skin, taking some of the heat out of it. She suspected she’d burnt at the lake the day before. She took in the boats, each one larger than its neighbour, shark-nosed wood-and-fibreglass floating monuments to their owners’ wealth and egos.
All around her the young, the carefree and the beautiful were engaging in their mating rituals. The girls were throwing back manes of sun-bleached hair, displaying toned arms and rounded breasts. The boys were laughing louder than they needed to, pecs and biceps defined under tight, white shirts. The air was thick with the smell of expensive perfume, aftershave and, floating on top of these heady, sexy bass notes, the ethereal top note of alcohol. Suddenly, Stella very badly wanted a drink. A good drink. Not a bottle of Pinot Grigio to herself or a jug of Sangria, swirling with ice cubes and fruit salad. Something delicious. Something sophisticated. Something expensive.