Marwick's Reckoning - Gareth Spark

by Near To The Knuckle

  'Because you saw a chance,' Marwick said. 'Why have half when you can have it all? Why not use this to bully some land out of Sean, set up a cathouse, add another, what do they call it? Revenue stream? While you're at it, why not get rid of Sean all together? Bleed him dry and then shut him down.'

  'That's how you see it?'

  Marwick nodded. 'No bullshit this time, I'm laying the cards out for you. We've been looking round, see. Someone's tried to do for me, twice, the closer I got.'

  Cezar smiled. 'Marwick, you have weaved this so well you've caught yourself up in it. There is no conspiracy. Sean gave me the land because I can get him the girls, nothing sinister.'

  'Tell me how it is then?' The smoke stung Marwick's eyes and he rubbed them with the palms of his hands. For the first time, he began to question the case he and Louise had brewed up. He was starting to think they were wrong.

  'Charlie, and I'm sorry for your loss young miss, had the idea. It was never Sean's, or mine. Charlie knew a group down in Marbella; the Policia Nacional busted them, all except one. This man has all this cocaine and no way to shift it. All the time he has this shit, he is a target. This man, as far as I understand it, was an old friend of Charlie's from London. He calls him up; Charlie comes to me, I agree to buy half. 475,000 Euros I gave him, which I had to borrow myself from a cousin of mine.'

  'Go on.'

  'Sean also gives Charlie half of a million.' Cezar continued affably, 'we are thinking to ourselves that we can make a profit with this. The Casa d'Esclaus was already on the table, as you say. It was not a kind of compensation, it never was. When the cocaine vanished, Sean paid me back the money I lost. You do not miss what you have never had. Maybe I threaten him a little, but remember I borrowed this money. Charlie is killed but not by us. We have problems enough without seeking another, why would we?'

  Louise sat beside Marwick. Her face had paled and her eyes were wide with confusion. 'But,' she said, 'that can't be right.'

  'That is all I can tell you,' Cezar said. 'I do not know who was behind it, but remember that Roy Quinn, the only person you know for a fact was involved in this, was English.'

  'What are you saying?' Marwick asked.

  'Radu, my brother.' He sighed and stubbed out the cigar. He thought for a long time, glanced around the room, leaned forward and said, 'I love him very much, but he is crazy, a little too crazy for this life. I watch over him all I can, but he is reckless. I asked him to bring Roy Quinn to see me, with you as well, Marwick, so we could question him together. I thought it only fair for you, his compatriot, to be there, so that Sean could see I was being fair also. Instead, what does he do, my brother? He kills him; he takes you there to scare you, nothing more. They were friends, as you say, and he felt betrayed when he found out.' He snorted. 'Our father was the same way; he didn't think. He was careless. He died in prison and I, who had such plans for my life, had to look after my brother and now look where we are.' He stood. 'That is all I know, and I have been honest with you all the way. A year ago, Radu, myself, our friends, we came here because we had trouble back home. We had a very good business, moving certain things for a Turkish group through the Balkans, but Radu lost his head. We came here to, what's the phrase, lie low?'

  Marwick was no longer listening. He felt sick. He heard Louise's voice and it seemed to come from very far away. 'All I want, what I care about, is finding the men who killed my father,' she said.

  'And I cannot help, I'm sorry,' Cezar said. 'To be frank, I thought Sean stole the cocaine.' He shook his head.

  ***

  They drove back into Sant Carles in silence. The roads were busy and the heat was immense on the side of the car. 'That can't be it,' Louise said finally.

  'He was telling us the truth,' Marwick said.

  'How can you be so sure?'

  'Louise, I know.'

  'So what do we have now?'

  'A fucking mess,' Marwick said. 'The Firm's gonna find out Sean's robbed their money, come down here and do for all of us. The coke's gone and the only idea we had of who done it just went up in smoke.'

  'No,' she said, 'we do have some things.'

  'Like?'

  'The fact someone's tried to kill you, and the fact Al set it up. Now he's vanished off the face of the earth. Why? Because we're close to something, there's something we haven't seen, something we have or have been close to.'

  'If you can figure it out,' Marwick said, 'I'd love to know.'

  'We have Roy Quinn on the boat, we have the Scottish bloke with the ink, and we have Salvador Rus in the middle with the address in Barcelona. Maybe it wasn't about the codes to Sean's house?'

  'Then what?'

  'Al knew Salvador, they were old friends. You went up there with him and Mr. Rus spins you a tale, just enough to implicate the Stelescus, what was it you said? Look to your own? Something like that?'

  'Something like that.'

  'Maybe he was digging at Al, the way he phrased it.'

  'But Al didn't know nothing about the coke,' Marwick said. 'He weren't even in Spain then, he was home, seeing his kid.'

  'You know that for a fact.'

  'I do, yeah. He rang me once from over there; a few days before the boat come in.'

  Louise sighed. 'But if you had a million plus Euros worth of cocaine to sell, and you wanted to shift it quietly, then who would you see?'

  'You'd go underground.'

  'To somebody like Salvador.'

  They were close to the Placa Espanya now. 'It's not coming together.'

  'Could it have been Sean?'

  He stopped the car and looked over at her. 'I'm going to go buy some smokes,' he said quietly.

  'Think about it, Marwick.'

  'I don't need to,' he said, 'that's ridiculous. Sean's in the hole with London for more money than I can even dream of. Why would he go deeper?'

  'You know my Dad was going to go to the Firm, don't you?' Louise took hold of Marwick's hand and stared hard into his eyes. 'He rang me the week before he died. He wanted me to come down here because he had something he needed to tell me, something he couldn't say over the phone. It was something to do with Sean.'

  'You don't know what you're saying.'

  'I'm saying you think about it, that's all. What would Sean do if he were in a corner; you know what he's like, Marwick. Think about back in London, what he had you do.'

  'Louise…'

  'If he knew Dad was going to put the finger on him, wouldn't it be better for him to disappear? And why not kill two birds with one stone? Steal the Stelescu's half of the coke and sell it on through a middleman, Salvador Rus, then take care of everyone in the fucking way, until it's just him and the money. You said yourself, he has plans.'

  'You've gone too far this time.'

  'And you? He thought you'd drop it, but then I turn up. He knows how you feel about me and that I won't let it go while there's a breath in my body. Therefore, the tattooed man tries getting rid of us in Raval. They must have thought their boat had come in; it was a trap. That address in Salvador's flat was a plant.'

  'But why?'

  She mimicked Sean's voice and said, 'Oh, sorry lads, it was Marwick stole your money, but I put him down. He killed Charlie too while he was at it.' She shook her head. 'How could I not have seen it?'

  'When you and I were in the apartment in Raval,' he said, 'you found something on a piece of paper. I saw you tear it off and put it away, something you didn't want to share. What was it?'

  Louise closed her eyes. 'You saw.'

  'I saw.'

  'And why have you not asked until now?'

  He shrugged. 'I suppose I was waiting to see if you'd tell me yourself.'

  'It was an address,' she said, 'in Gerona.'

  Marwick nodded and said, 'What address?'

  '24 Carrer Segadors.'

  'I know that address,' Marwick said quietly. 'You should have told me.'

  'I..' Louise stammered, '..I...didn't know how far I could trust you with everything
.'

  'What's that supposed to mean?'

  'You were on the boat too, Marwick. You were left alive, I don't know.'

  'So you thought I might have had something to do with it?'

  'I don't know what I thought,' she said. 'My father's just died, and I hadn't seen you for years. I don't know.'

  'I thought you knew me' Marwick said quietly. His chin sank down onto his chest. 'More than anyone else in the world; how could you think I'd have something to do with this? Charlie was like my father. He did everything for me.'

  'So what are we going to do?' She asked.

  Marwick reached for his wallet and removed a business card. It bore the colours of the Mossos d'Esquadra and the name Insp. Carles Domenech. 'I know a guy,' he said. 'I'm going to ring him, even though it goes against everything I've ever known, because I've had enough of killing. I'm going to tell him about the Casa d'Esclaus, and Sean and Charlie, and I'm going to tell him when we're very, very far away.'

  Louise said. 'I can't have that.'

  'You're going to have to,' Marwick replied.

  'You're a coward,' she said. 'If I have to do it, then I'll do it on my own.'

  Marwick stepped out of the car and into the cool of the street and walked away, stumbling over the loose stones like a drunken man.

  Louise shouted after him, but he could not hear what she said. His eyes stung as he stepped out into the light. It felt as though a vacancy had opened up in the earth beneath him and he was falling, falling. A young couple passed him, their laughter seemed directed at him, he turned and watched them round the corner, and then he stared up into the empty sky. 24 Carrer Segadors was an address he knew very well.

  It was the house where Sean's wife was staying.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  4.25 AM. The sky had turned the colour of an old coin and the lights of Pineda, neon blues, reds and yellows, started to drain down from the sky and back into the twisted streets of the town. Marwick parked the car at the foot of the hill leading up to Sean's villa. The wide streets of Vilafranca were dead; he stepped out, and the cold hit the skin of his face like a wet towel on a winter morning. He shivered. He knew Louise would head here eventually. She'd sent him a text an hour before that just said, Come to Sean's. He expected the worst.

  Marwick had brought the page of alarm codes retrieved from Salvador Rus, but the alarm wasn't set. The door was unlocked. Marwick pushed it open.

  He looked into the kitchen. 'I don't like that,' he said to himself. Pools of window–shaped light fell across the work surface from outside, glittering against the unused steel knives in their wooden block and the row of pans suspended above the sink.

  Then he heard the voice, steady and loud, issue from the vacancy behind him. 'Stay right there.'

  Marwick froze and then he heard the sound of a revolver's hammer clicking in the darkness behind him. The skin covering his skull crawled with a thousand prickles of electricity. 'Hands on your head,' the voice said, and Marwick raised his hands slowly, knotting the fingers, then lay them across the back of his head. There was an accent to the man's voice and he knew then who it was. 'Radu,' he said.

  He felt the nose of the revolver jab into his spine. 'Where is he?' Radu asked.

  He jabbed again with the gun and Marwick, taking the hint, moved forward into the kitchen. He could smell the other man's cologne and, below it, the bass notes of old blood. 'Turn on the fucking lights,' Radu yelled and the long room filled with a harsh white glare. Two men entered from the living room; each wore cheap sportswear and tinny gold jewellery. He recognised one; Timofey.

  'Where's Sean?' Marwick asked.

  'I don't know,' Radu said. 'Not here, I guess. We had a deal, him and me. Now I have to kill the bastard.' He sniffed.

  Marwick thought fast, his stomach curled up and twisting like a snake with a broken back, 'There are things going on here you don't know about.'

  'I'm going to fucking kill him,' Radu said, 'for what he did to us; my brother told me everything you said. It was Sean. Tell me where he is now and I'll forget you had a part in this.'

  'Not going to happen.'

  Radu shrugged his shoulders. 'Maybe she will tell me, huh? Maybe after a few days in the Casa d'Esclaus, she will tell me all about it. What do you say?' He turned back to Marwick. 'I have your friend, Louise, all tied up somewhere. So play along, like a nice dog.'

  Marwick smiled. Then, quick as a snapping dog, he struck Radu Stelescu on the temple with his elbow. The latter fell against the wall and the revolver clattered to the ground. Marwick kicked it away as the first of the Romanians, a solid, square–bodied man, rushed towards him. The man's arm was reaching back into the waistband of his pants. Marwick snatched an empty pot from the work surface beside him and brought it up and then down onto the man's skull stunning him, forcing him backwards and shattering the glass. Then Marwick drove his fist into the man's face, breaking his nose with a gristly crunch, like snapping twigs, knocking him to the ground. Timofey was on Marwick now, his long, sallow face contorted by a mixture of anger and fear. He held a thin blade in his hand. Marwick stepped back, his arms stretched out before as though he was testing the space. Timofey lunged with the knife, aiming for Marwick's throat, once, twice, but the latter avoided the blows with a grace of movement almost, that was instinctive. He was aware of Radu lifting himself up slowly to his right.

  Timofey rushed at him now. Marwick sidestepped the charge, caught the man's wrist and locked it, twisting it until the knife fell. The Romanian brought his knee up and rammed it into Marwick's stomach, winding him and knocking him off balance. Timofey shoved him to the floor and grabbed for the knife again, but Marwick saw it coming, with a final burst of strength, swiped the man's legs with his own, and knocked him to the ground. He fell on top of Marwick and the men rolled on the floor, limbs flailing, knocking over chairs, smashing into the walls until, after what seemed an age, Marwick was on top with the Romanian's skull gripped tightly in his hands. He smashed Timofey's head against the ceramic tiles of the floor repeatedly, grunting with the effort as he summoned dwindling reserves of strength. The skull didn't break until the fifth or sixth strike. Marwick felt it go and suddenly the room was still. A pool of very thick blood ran out over the floor towards the hallway, glistening in the light. Marwick panted and pushed himself against the wall. Spasms of cold pain shot through his muscles. His hands, bloodied thickly, trembled. He looked around, bringing himself back into the room, counting down from five. Radu was gone. The unconscious Romanian emitted a rattling snore, laid backwards on the tiles, his feet in the blood. Marwick stood slowly and turned off the light.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The wide and dry country surrounding the Casa d'Esclaus was dark beneath the dim sky. Marwick moved forward through the brush. His boots sank into the powdery yellow dust as he crawled up onto a bluff covered by a series of stunted oaks. He shielded the glasses with the palm of his hand and looked over at the building. The lights studded around the concrete box of the club were harsh against the dawn. They know I am coming, Marwick thought, that's the design of it, take her and bring us in. He lowered the binoculars..

  Marwick walked the hundred yards to the door with a drunken, weaving gait that betrayed his nerves. His throat was cement dry and the tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth like a hungry leech. A cool, arid breeze whispered down from the purple mountains and played through his hair as he stumbled forward. The neon signs, flashing above the forecourt, now had a hellish quality and he felt a rush of heat as he raised a fist and banged at the door. He swallowed. There was a scramble of feet on the far side and then it opened, slowly, creaking on new hinges as thought it was a thousand years old. A girl peered around it. Her pale, bruised face emerged from the marine darkness. 'They say are you alone?' She asked, speaking slowly with a rich accent, eyes cast down at his shoes.

  'I'm alone.'

  'Then come in.'

  He entered slowly and saw Louise immediately. Her long hair was
wet, as though she had just stepped from a shower and she was bound to a kitchen chair. She was breathing fast. 'Marwick?' She said.

  'I'm here.' His eyes became accustomed to the darkness and he made out Radu Stelescu, his face bruised and swollen. He held a shotgun. The other man, dressed in leather, his shaven head gleaming in the blue light coming from behind the bar, had a pistol trained on Marwick's temple.

  Radu stamped over and shoved aside the girl who had answered the door, and then he raised the shotgun and slammed its stock into Marwick. The latter yelled and crumpled to the floor. He sputtered and fought for breath. 'Hang on,' he said, 'just hang on.'

  'You think,' Radu began, his voice muffled by the dental trauma he had suffered, 'you think you're out of reach?' He jabbed the double barrels of the shotgun in Marwick's face, hard. The metal was cold. 'You fucking English, well I'll tell you something you might not know: everyone can be got at, everyone. You're going to steal off us?' He leaned down and his face was so close to Marwick's now that he felt the spittle fly into his face as the Romanian snarled the words. 'You come here, a dog for your woman, like I knew you would. You have killed both of you.'

  Marwick said, 'we can sort this.'

  Radu pulled the hammers on the weapon; they clicked back with a heavy mechanical strength. 'I was going to draw this out,' he said, 'have a little fun, make you fucking suffer.' He sniffed through his broken nose and winked at his friend at the bar, who had relaxed enough now to pour himself a drink. He saw it would be over soon. 'But I think I just kill you now.' He raised the shotgun and aimed both barrels at Marwick's head. 'See you in hell.'

  'Wait!' Marwick yelled, holding a hand in front of his face as though it could deflect lead. The universe slowed the drip of vodka from a bottle; the sour perfume of sweat and fear; the light flickering across Radu's dark pupils like hellfire as he grinned and sighted down the barrel.

  The shot was massive when it came, a break of summer thunder against the peace of dawn, tearing through the cavernous space of the club, deafening and final. Radu turned towards the bar and then fell to the floor. His lower jaw had disintegrated when the hollow point 9mm round exited. It was a good shot, a one in a thousand shot, Marwick thought, as the police officer stepped out of the hallway leading from the kitchen. Marwick looked up at him, his eyes very white against the thick blood spattered across his face. The cop trained the weapon on the man at the bar who stood bottle in one hand and glass in the other. 'Don't,' the cop said. 'My friends are outside.'