by Andy Maslen
She slipped on her shoes, opened the front door and stepped out into New Square. A black cab was just dropping off a fare across the road so she waved at the driver. He waited for her and a few seconds later was driving her away.
“Not too shabby,” was Other Stella’s verdict when Stella was sitting in her hotel room, removing all traces of Jessica Schubert.
“Just Ragib and Collier to go, then I’m done,” Stella said, wiping her face free of makeup with a cotton-wool pad dipped in water.
“Not quite. What about all the other members? The people who support them. I bet that prissy little cunt in occie health is one of them. What’s her name? Linda Heath?”
Stella shook her head.
“No. It’s the original six who murdered Richard and Lola. Once they’re done, I don’t care anymore. I’ll turn everything I have over to Gordon Wade. He can mop them up.”
“No!” Other Stella strode across the room and slapped Stella hard across the face, raising a pink weal on her right cheek. “Nobody escapes my vengeance. Nobody, do you hear me?” Then she slapped Stella again, even harder, on the other cheek.
Stella couldn’t speak. The pain had shocked her into silence and this … this Other … had a dangerous look. Stella had seen it before, in the eyes of drugged-up crazies with knives and no inhibitions. In the eyes of psychopaths who saw other human beings as nothing more than objects. In the eyes of paedophiles who had no problem inflicting their depraved fantasies on the most innocent of all. And now she saw it on her own face.
Then Other Stella smiled.
“Sorry, Stel. But you mustn’t go soft on me. I can’t let you do that.”
62
Freddie’s Gaff
Before leaving Marbella, Stella had asked Marilyn Wilks née McTiernan for a favour.
“I want you to introduce me to your dad,” she said.
“What?” the older woman said, her eyes wide. “You think I’m going to hold a fucking tea party or something and invite you along?”
“No,” Stella said patiently, recognising that this was Marilyn’s way of sparring for advantage. “I want you to give me his phone number. Or,” she added quickly, “give him mine. I want to speak to him.”
“Why?”
“Simple. Collier’s sent a homicidal Albanian after me called Tamit Ferenczy and there’s a very good chance he’s the same man who wants to take over your dad’s turf. So if we can work together to bring him down, it’s a win-win, isn’t it?” For good measure, she added, “You said that’s what you wanted, didn’t you?”
Marilyn Wilks sipped her champagne before answering. Finally, she spoke.
“I’ll text him. Tonight. If he wants to speak to you, I’ll fix up a meeting.”
Clearly Freddie McTiernan had wanted to speak to Stella, because that same night her phone had buzzed on her bedside table with a text from Marilyn. It was short, just a number. But it was packed with promise.
Stella had moved hotels again. The new place was a budget brand, a Premier Inn or a Holiday Inn express, she couldn’t remember. Didn’t care. Half the time she wasn’t sure who she was, let alone the identity of the American corporation whose bed she was sleeping in. Jennifer Stadden made the hotel bookings, Stella Cole planned the moves, but increasingly, Other Stella was calling the shots. Literally.
Lying back on the bed, she tapped the number Marilyn had sent her.
While she listened to the distant ringing, breathing evenly and waiting for Old Man McTiernan to pick up, she looked through the window at a cloudless sky and wondered, not for the first time, whether it was all worth it. Lola was gone. Richard was gone. And increasingly it felt as if she, herself, was gone, replaced by a psychopath bent on revenge at all costs.
Other Stella rose from her chair, stalked across the room and pressed a sharp-pointed finger nail hard into the space just below Stella’s collar bone, so hard it drew a bead of blood.
“Yes, it’s worth it. You do what I say, or I might decide to dispense with you altogether. These little fits of guilt you keep getting are a pain in the fucking arse. Now talk to McTiernan. He’s answering.”
“Hello.” The voice was gruff, male and East End. Something else, too. Confident, powerful, dangerous. All in two commonplace syllables. Impressive.
“Freddie McTiernan?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Marilyn’s friend. She told you I’d be calling?” A pause. “I’m calling.”
“Right. You want to see me?”
“Yes.”
“Got a pen.”
“I’ve got a good memory.”
A grunt that could have been appreciation, disparagement or suspicion.
“Fine. Five Beeches,” he continued to reel off the rest of his address in Ingatestone, a village in Essex to the east of London. “Come and see me tomorrow. Two o’clock. In the afternoon, before you come up with some fucking wisecrack.”
Then he ended the call.
He’d been smart. Hadn’t asked any questions. Hadn’t volunteered anything beyond the bare bones she’d need for the meeting. Anyone listening in would have had nothing to build on.
For the meeting with Freddie McTiernan, Stella chose the other wig she’d bought from Roxana. This one was an auburn bob, and she pulled a few strands forward on each side to hide as much of her face as possible. A pair of cheap, large-lensed sunglasses she’d picked up on her last visit to London completed the look.
She took the 13:18 train from London’s Liverpool Street station to Ingatestone the following day. She was climbing into a minicab that smelled overpoweringly of coconut oil half an hour later.
“Best address in Ingatestone,” the minicab driver had informed her as he’d made the left turn onto Mill Green Road. “You got everyone down here. Premiership footballers, hospital consultants, City types. Look at the motors. Class.”
Stella wasn’t interested in cars, but she dutifully turned her head just in time to catch a flash of something low-slung and scarlet lurking behind a privet hedge.
They pulled over to the curb a minute later. Stella paid the driver and slammed the Skoda’s door behind her, grateful to be released from its cloying interior.
From the road, nothing of the house itself was visible. All was hidden behind a high, dense hedge of conifers. To the right of the hedge as she looked at it was a wide, wooden gate. No slats to reveal anything beyond its solid teak, just tightly jointed planks that appeared to have been recently oiled, to judge from the smell.
The intercom box was mounted on the left-hand gatepost, a square-section column of hardwood that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an old-time baronial castle. She pressed the button and held it down for three seconds before releasing it. Just a tiny signal that she was just as confident as Freddie McTiernan.
The voice that burst from the grille was the one she’d heard on the phone the previous day.
“Yes?”
“It’s Stella Cole.”
The latch clacked open and the gate silently swung away from her. As soon as the gap was wide enough, she slid through and walked up the long gravel drive towards the house. The huge front lawn was mown in immaculate stripes that shimmered silver and dark-green in the sunlight slanting through the upper branches of the five beech trees lining the drive.
Five Beeches was an imposing mock-Tudor detached house. Twice as big as the Wilkses’ place, and with a couple of extra storeys. The black-and-white, beamed exterior was punctuated by climbing roses in bright red and white; huge swags of pale-purple wisteria hung over the porch shading the front door. Parked to the side of the house was a car even Stella had no trouble identifying: a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow in pale gold. She peered inside through the driver’s side window, placing a hand against the drop glass to shade her eyes.
“Nice,” she whispered, taking in the opulent interior of wood, leather and chrome. “Old school.”
Then she straightened and turned, heading for the front door and her meeting with one of
the East End’s most-feared gangsters since the reign of the Krays.
She thumbed the bell push, a fake antique number in distressed black metal, and heard the chimes of Big Ben faintly through the slab of banded and studded oak. And she waited. Maybe Freddie McTiernan was a slow walker. Or had a long way to come from whichever room he’d been in. Her guess? He was just making a point. Or, rather, part of the same point he’d been making since their initial phone conversation. That he was the guvnor. And that position came with a healthy dollop of respect from anyone with whom he came into contact.
She inhaled and let the breath out in a huff to settle her nerves. Then the door swung inwards to reveal the master of Five Beeches, not to mention half of the drugs trade in East London.
63
A Bit of Mutual Backscratching
Old Father Time clearly owed Freddie a lot of money. Either that or Freddie had put the frighteners on him. How else to explain the seventy-year-old crime lord’s youthful good looks? Thick silver hair, parted on the left; not too many wrinkles, and those mainly at the corners of the eyes, which were the purple-grey of thunder clouds. He looked fit and muscular inside the pinstripe suit, which he wore over a white shirt, open at the neck. The smile looked genuine and natural enough: no Botox for Freddie.
“Well, well, well, not often I have the plod paying house calls. Come in, DI Cole.”
She stepped over the threshold.
“No titles necessary, Mr McTiernan. Stella’s fine. You might have gathered from Marilyn that I’m working in something of a grey area at the moment.”
He barked out a short laugh.
“Grey? Blacker’n a fucking funeral director is what I heard. You topped a High Court judge, and now you’re a one-woman death squad is the way Marilyn told it.” He led her into a large, modern kitchen furnished in cream and sky-blue. “Anyway, let’s get a drink or something first, then we can talk in the garden. What’s your poison?”
“Just a glass of tap water for me, thanks.”
“Tap water?” He looked as if she’d asked him to piss in a glass for her. “Fuck off! You come all the way over ’ere on some clandestine—” He caught the amusement that flashed across her face. “Yes, Stella, some of us do read books. As I was saying, you come down ’ere on some secret mission to my house, then you should accept my hospitality.”
Stella smiled, despite herself. She held her hands up in mock surrender.
“OK, how about a glass of wine?”
“That’s better. Red or white? I’ve got a very nice Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge.”
She nodded.
“Perfect.”
He poured two generous glasses and then jerked his chin towards a door that led out onto another immaculate lawn, this one three times the size of the expanse of grass at the front of the house.
“Through there.”
Once they were seated at a glass-topped table on a stone patio overlooking the garden, he raised his wine glass. She clinked hers against it.
“Cheers. And thanks for agreeing to meet me.”
“Cheers. It’s for Marilyn, so don’t get any ideas about turning me into one of your snitches.”
She sipped the wine. Freddie was right. It was lovely. Her nose filled with the mixed aromas of new-mown grass and gooseberries.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. As I said, I’m not exactly legal myself these days.”
“So why don’t you fill me in, and then we can talk about what you want from me and what you think you can give me in return.”
“It’s a long story,” Stella said, with a sigh.
“Good. I like stories. Plus I ain’t got much on my plate these days since I started delegating a bit more, and I’m not complaining about a bit of female company, even if it is the filth. No offence.”
“None taken.”
Stella looked up briefly, at the cloudless sky, then back at Freddie. But not before she glimpsed Other Stella standing in the middle of the lawn, pointing an imaginary pistol at her. She began telling Freddie about Pro Patria Mori and how they’d murdered her family, and everything that had happened since.
He remained silent throughout her tale, nodding occasionally, frowning, or pursing his lips. But he was a good listener, and she watched him watching her, much as a good detective might watch a suspect, determining when they were telling the truth and when they were lying, or omitting facts that might put them in a bad light.
In her case, she left nothing out. When she finished, she realised her glass was empty. Freddie looked her straight in the eye for a couple of seconds.
“I’m going to get the wine, and then we’re going to have a serious talk.”
He returned with the bottle in a transparent, double-walled plastic cooler and refilled their glasses. He spoke again.
“You and me, we never crossed paths professionally, did we?”
“Nope. Although I think you know I was on the team that put Ronnie away.”
“Yes, I do know that. But you were just Collier’s bagman on that one. Still had the label in your M&S detective’s suit. I don’t hold a grudge against you for that. But if you know anything about me, you know that no civilians were ever hurt by my guys. We looked after our own, too. We didn’t tolerate nonces, or rapists, muggers who went after old ladies, any of those scum. And we played by a certain set of rules. You got caught, you didn’t grass, and if you got sent down, you did your time. You didn’t go after cops or judges, neither, as long as they were straight. So these cunts – ’scuse my French – who did your old man and your little girl in the name of their corrupt fucking ideology have crossed a big fucking line.”
Seemingly worn out by his speech during which his face had become suffused with blood and turned a deep red, Freddie drained his wineglass and passed a hand over his forehead.
“I know Collier’s conspiring with Ferenczy to push you out of your territory,” Stella said, watching the way Freddie’s chest was rising and falling inside his tailoring.
“Yeah, and with those fuckers it’s always shoot first, negotiate afterwards. What you might call a hostile takeover bid.”
“I want Ferenczy dead. So do you. If you know where I can find him, I can do the rest.”
“Yeah, and after what you just told me I can fucking believe it.”
“Do you know, then?”
Freddie nodded, and a small smile stole across that handsome, full-lipped mouth.
“He owns a club. In Shoreditch. Very up-and-coming area now all the hipsters have moved in. It’s called Tirana, whatever the fuck that means.”
“Tirana’s the capital of Albania. I guess it makes him feel less homesick.”
“Huh. You live and learn. Although not if you’re Tamit fucking Ferenczy, according to you.”
“There’s no ‘according’ about it. He sent a hitman after me. The same man who killed a friend of mine’s godparents. She’s a journalist who was working with Richard to expose Collier and his little gang. Now I’m going to repay the favour. With interest.”
“You know what he looks like?”
“Yes. I’ve seen a photo, on a phone I took off his hitman.”
“Yeah? Well, you might want a better one. I’ve got a couple you can take with you when you leave.”
“OK, that would be good.”
Freddie rubbed his chin, frowning.
“Those Albanians are all tooled up, you know. AK-forty-fucking-sevens, nines, the lot. You need anything to help even up the odds?”
Stella thought about her growing collection of semi-automatic pistols, in Spain and England. Then back to her showdown with the police markswoman at Craigmackhan, Judge Ramage’s gothic pile in Scotland. The shotgun she’d pressed against the underside of the staircase to blow the cop’s foot off. When she’d gone shopping for her long guns in Pitlochry, she’d weighed up two different shotguns. One that she could have sawn down; one with a twelve-shot mag-tube under the barrel that she couldn’t. She’d gone for capacity over concealability that t
ime, and the gamble had paid off. Now she was envisioning a different sort of confrontation. She spoke.
“I don’t suppose you have such a thing as a sawn-off shotgun, do you?” She might have been asking him where the downstairs cloakroom was, such was the tone of innocent enquiry in her voice.
“Fuck me, you don’t mess about, do you? You really do play dirty. A lupara?”
“A what?”
He grinned.
“Few years back, I spent a bit of time in Italy. What you might call a business trip. The people I was talking to down there liked to use a sawn-off. Only they called it a lupara.” He assumed a theatrical Italian accent for this last word and Stella snorted.
“So, do you have a lupara or not?”
“No. But I tell you what I do have: a nice old Savage Arms twelve-gauge. If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, we can do it now.”
Stella shrugged.
“I’m at your service, Mr McTiernan.”
64
Metal/Wood Work
Freddie stood and led her to an outbuilding at the side of the house. It was brick-built with a slate roof. The door was secured with an electronic combination lock and he shielded the keypad with his body as he punched in the code. He beckoned her to follow him and flicked a wall-mounted light switch. Three neon tubes plinked and flickered into life, bathing the interior in a cold, blue-white light. One whole side of the room was taken up with a pale wooden workbench with tools mounted on peg board above. Beneath the workbench were a couple of red-painted tool cabinets. The room also housed a chest freezer, which emitted a quiet hum, a white refrigerator, and, mounted on a wall, an olive-green, steel cabinet, with a chromed lock on each of its double doors. It was roughly four feet wide by five tall, and a foot deep.
Freddie pointed at the cabinet.
“Nice and secure, just like the law says it should be.”