The Missing Husband

by Alex Coombs

  * * *

  ‘I’ll make it if I can,’ said Hanlon. ‘How were you going to find me anyway, to tell me?’

  * * *

  ‘Slough’s not far away, dear. Auntie Iris knows where to find anyone, doesn’t she?’

  It seems like everyone knows my business, thought Hanlon. First Oksana, now Iris Campion, and there’s me not even on Facebook.

  15

  Curtis repeated his journey of a week ago with Dimitri. There were, however, major differences this time around.

  The most obvious was that it was daylight. The huge industrial area was busy now. It was the largest privately owned trading estate in the country, maybe in the whole EU, and by day it showed. It was spacious and the roads wide, so it didn’t feel unpleasantly over-crowded or polluted, just quietly humming with activity, in contrast to the blank, shuttered, necropolis look it had at night. Another crucial difference was that Curtis wasn’t carrying anything incriminating in the back of his van, just three empty oil drums, similar to the one that occupied the leased warehouse. There were also six bags of ballast and three of cement.

  Curtis was feeling resentful, again at Dimitri’s treatment of him. He glanced at the empty place in the van where his huge companion, sitting next to him, had radiated sour dislike. OK, buying used barrels and cement from a local builders’ merchant might not be the hardest job in the world, but he’d done it efficiently and, best of all, anonymously. Dimitri couldn’t have managed that. Not with his build, accent, looks and tattoos. And he’d done it perfectly. And it was he who had found this warehouse.

  Did anyone say thank you? No, they bloody well didn’t.

  * * *

  Curtis had never worked with anyone who really detested him before and he found Dimitri’s hostility hurtful. If he’d written a CV about his criminal past he’d have had about four employers and, on the whole, he’d got on well with both them and the people he had worked with. And you get close to people if you break the law together. Not so with the Russians. He still, however, clung to the illusion that Arkady Belanov liked him, that he was really an OK guy, that it was Dimitri who was the problem.

  He couldn’t stand much more. Like most workers, he needed the validation of feeling valued. He needed banter, he needed appreciation for the hard work he put in and he didn’t need Dimitri’s constant intimidation. He had come to hate him as well as to fear him. He felt he could have put up with either one, but not the two together.

  The problem was, now he had his job with the Russians he couldn’t leave.

  Curtis was beginning to formulate a plan of escape that involved getting nicked for some as-yet-to-be-decided offence. Something that would get him sent down for maybe a year so he’d be out in six months. GBH maybe, or possession with intent to deal. Long enough to get him away from the Russians, not serious enough to annoy them, something that could happen to anyone. Then he’d be behind bars and out of their reach, and for long enough to show them he wouldn’t grass them up. And he’d be replaced, and still alive.

  He pulled into the small car park with its reserved section for the Russians’ warehouse. Warehouse was a slight misnomer. It was essentially two large workshops with a reception area in the middle, two very large rooms and a smaller space inbetween. The design was basically box-like, the only windows set under the roof about six metres off the ground. You couldn’t look in

  * * *

  from the outside, not without a cherry picker or a very long ladder.

  The entrance to the warehouse was a double door, secured by three locks. Two of them were Yale and mortice, which Belanov had ordered upgraded from the originals. They were intricate and expensive, designed to ward off any stray burglar. A steel strip ran down the join of the doors to make crowbarring them open impossible. They also had hinge bolts set into the door and a steel kicking strap reinforcing the inside. It would have been easier to smash your way in through the walls than break those doors down.

  The third lock was a magnetic one operated by a swipecard. It was an impressive display. Nobody was coming through these doors that shouldn’t be. It was impregnable.

  Curtis backed the van up so the doors were level with the lip of the loading bay near the entrance, unlocked the doors, swung them open and unloaded his cargo.

  He started bringing it inside. The huge room with the one oil drum in it, containing the headless body of Jordan Anderson, was cold and shrouded in gloom. North-facing windows did little to dispel the permanent, crepuscular twilight. Curtis eyed the oil drum, squat and menacing, with almost fear. The place was like some strange art installation, unsettling. He placed the first of the three new drums by the old one, and shuttled backwards and forwards until the job was done.

  Three oil drums. Three new repositories, metal reliquaries awaiting their contents.

  He wondered who they were for.

  He looked up, startled from his thoughts by the noise of an engine outside. Then footsteps, the noise of a door being slammed and Dimitri appeared. Curtis’s heart sank. But big as Dimitri was, the warehouse dominated everything. The

  * * *

  huge, cavernous room was shadowy and dark, with a smell of damp and cement. The oil drum that contained the body

  Curtis had forgotten his first name, he just knew it was one of the Andersons – exerted a kind of magnetic attraction on his attention. He had been unable to get it out of his head for the past week.

  Now he was standing in front of it, waiting for instruction, as Dimitri sauntered towards him.

  The unlikeliest of things reminded him of Anderson’s fate. He’d been in a supermarket and seen a jar of stem ginger in syrup. The sight of the ginger lying there in the thick, viscous solution reminded him of the body folded into its foetal position in the drum, covered in concrete.

  Anything in a can brought his mind back to this place.

  To the right of the filled drum stood the three others, patiently awaiting whoever the Russians would choose to fill them with.

  Not whatever, thought Curtis, whoever.

  Curtis breathed deeply. He was morbidly fascinated to see if he would be able to smell anything of the dead man, but all he was aware of scentwise was the lingering hint of oil from the four drums, the neutral damp smell of the empty warehouse and the cement from the half-dozen bags that stood awaiting use by the empty oil drums. There was also a spade resting on some tough polythene bags of ballast and a heavy, stained piece of tarpaulin that would be used for mixing the concrete on when the time came. It was these items that Dimitri was checking.

  ‘Everything OK, Dimitri?’ asked Curtis, his tone light and jocular, as if he hoped it would rub off on the Russian.

  Dimitri scowled at him. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, his biceps massive.

  * * *

  ‘Zasranets,’ he growled at Curtis. Curtis rightly assumed this meant something uncomplimentary.

  He looked again at the oil drums and the bags of cement. The objects themselves were insignificantly small in the huge, echoing room, but they were imbued with a compelling sinister presence. Their aura filled the vast, crepuscular space.

  Dimitri ignored him and fiddled with his phone, as if killing time. Curtis stood there and patiently waited to be told what to do.

  For some reason he thought of Chantal. The previous night she’d been very withdrawn and drinking really heavily to no discernible effect. It wasn’t like Chantal, he reflected, to go on the lash. She liked a drink but she rarely overdid it. He wondered if something had upset her.

  He’d had sex with her while she’d stared over his shoulder at the ceiling, her body politely going through the motions, the palms of her hands mechanically running up and down his back, her mind obviously elsewhere. Occasionally she’d winced and bitten her lip as if she’d been in pain, even though he was a surprisingly gentle lover and fairly speedy.

  As he rolled off her he could see a row of bruises on the skin of both shoulders. The marks were red. Curtis knew quite a bit about b
ruises. He had experienced more than a few in his life. These were fresh; soon they would turn blue. Bruises, like traffic lights, have a colour sequence. He guessed it was one of Chantal’s customers. He didn’t like her being on the game but they still needed the money, although now he was earning big time from the Russians she could maybe stop doing it soon. Already she’d cut down dramatically on the number of her clients.

  ‘Who did that?’ he said, rubbing a finger along the bruises. They looked like a massage gone wrong. Chantal sat upright

  * * *

  and turned away from him, ostensibly to light a cigarette but so he wouldn’t see the fear that she felt must surely be visible on her face.

  As she turned away, she saw again in her memory the brutal face of Dimitri and revisited the rank smell of his body masked with cheap aftershave. She could still hear his amused laugh as her body had flinched in pain beneath his fingers. He had enjoyed hurting her. She had been too frightened to scream; she had whimpered like a hurt animal.

  ‘Bliyad,’ he had said contemptuously when he had finished with her, thrusting her away and poking her with the tip of his foot. She guessed, correctly, it meant bitch.

  ‘It’s not important, babes, doesn’t matter,’ she had whispered to Curtis.

  Now, back in the warehouse, Curtis looked at Dimitri. More specifically at his hands. Like everything else about the Russian, they were very big. Curtis’s memory compared the finger spread of the man in front of him to the size and spacing of the marks on Chantal’s shoulders.

  He’d been at Arkady’s the day before; Dimitri hadn’t been there. He’d been relieved. His long-term plan was to make himself indispensable to Arkady so Dimitri would be supplanted. Maybe sent back to Russia. Hopefully retired. Retired in a permanent way, the way Arkady seemed to like to do things. ‘Where’s Dimitri?’ he’d asked. Arkady had been wearing enormous black slacks with an elasticated waist and matching satin shirt, the nipples atop his man boobs pushing through the fabric like bullets. The satin shirt was shiny and its fabric had crackled slightly when he’d moved. His sparse sandy hair

  had been carefully combed over his pink scalp.

  He had smiled and said, ‘Visiting nice lady. Her lucky day, yah! She will say thank you.’

  * * *

  Curtis had smiled politely back.

  ‘All ladies like Dimitri.’ And Arkady had laughed. Curtis had laughed too, dutifully.

  Now he looked hard at Dimitri. Curtis wasn’t smiling now. If Dimitri had hurt Chantal, he was going to hurt Dimitri. Easier said than done. He had often thought about it; now the time had come. Defeat wasn’t an option. Backing down wasn’t an option.

  Dimitri had crossed the line by his actions. Curtis was frightened of Dimitri but that wasn’t going to hold him back. It was like a fight in prison that would decide where you stood. Either you drew a line in the sand and went down fighting or you revealed yourself as a pushover to be forever exploited and abused.

  Curtis breathed in deeply. He calculated the odds, not for the first time. Dimitri, six feet three to his five feet six. Eighteen stone to his eleven. If he’d planned ahead he’d have armed himself, a knife probably. Curtis was a hard little bastard and most of his fights had been against bigger opponents than himself. He usually used a baseball bat or a softball bat; he was unsure of the difference, if any. He had a nasty feeling that if he hit Dimitri with a baseball bat it might have little effect, like hitting a tree trunk. A knife, though, that’d be better.

  He had nothing, but there was the spade by the cement bags, on top of the ballast just a couple of steps away, and Curtis could move very quickly indeed. Swung so the blade hit the Russian sideways, it would do a lot of damage. Aim for his face, thought Curtis. Jealous rage flared up inside him. It felt good; he felt strong for the first time in months. Now Dimitri would suffer, not just for Chantal, but for all the put-downs, all the insults, all the glares he’d given Curtis. No one hurts

  * * *

  my woman, he thought. No one except me. Then he thought suspiciously, What else did he do with her? He took a step nearer the spade. It would feel good in his hand.

  ‘Zhopa,’ said Dimitri conversationally, staring at him contemptuously. Asshole. Curtis didn’t know the word in Russian but he did know Dimitri and correctly guessed that it wasn’t a term of endearment.

  His eyes met Dimitri’s,

  ‘Where were you yesterday?’ he demanded.

  ‘Your girl very nice,’ said Dimitri with a sneer. ‘Maybe too thin, though, but nice siski, nice tits.’

  The last word was like the starting gun in a race that both competitors were awaiting, keyed up for action, feet ready in the starting blocks. As an enraged Curtis moved to grab the handle of the spade, Dimitri came forward far faster than Curtis could ever have dreamed possible.

  Dimitri’s huge hands grabbed Curtis’s shoulders, left and right and simultaneously his foot scythed out and kicked away Curtis’s legs. He fell to his knees in front of the enormous Russian as if he was praying.

  Dimitri spent on average two hours a day working out in the gym and one of his own personal favourite exercises was to use a grip trainer. In bodybuilding terms a ‘grip king’ can exert a three-hundred-pound grip, Dimitri could manage two fifty. To put that into context, an averagely strong man might do between seventy and eighty. Three times the norm, and now, with the adrenaline thundering through his body like a river in spate, fuelled with his own abnormal aggression, maybe four times normal strength – four times normal ability.

  He had also learned, while doing two years in Solikamsk High Security Prison in Perm province in the Urals, how to really hurt people scientifically. He’d shared a cell with Yuri, an

  * * *

  old-style crook classed by the authorities as an osobo opasnyi retsidivist, a particularly dangerous recidivist. Yuri had shown him where some nerve points were readily accessible to fingertip pressure. Yuri had learned the hard way; the KGB had shown him personally. He’d grinned gummily, wetly, at Dimitri while he showed him. The KGB had amused themselves with Yuri’s teeth as well, only the back molars were left. They had been harder to get to.

  Now Dimitri’s iron fingers dug expertly deep with bonecrushing pressure into the nerve endings in Curtis’s shoulder and upper back, as Yuri had taught him, just as he had with Chantal but with ten times the force. The nociceptors, the pain-transmitting neurons in Curtis’s shoulders, exploded into sheets of agony and he screamed out loud, head thrown back, mouth wide open in his pain.

  ‘You like it, like your bliyad bitch did?’ hissed Dimitri. Curtis was howling with agony now as he kneeled like a supplicant in front of the grinning Russian. He couldn’t stop himself. If only Arkady could be here, thought Dimitri regretfully, he would love this. Arkady appreciated the artistry as much as the floor show of sadism and Dimitri enjoyed a discerning, approving audience.

  More pressure. Dimitri switched to a question that was bugging him. Did Curtis know about the policeman; had he sold them out?

  ‘Who was policeman, who is this Enver Demirel? Who is Demirel, otvechai! Answer me.’

  Through his tears, through the pain, through the swearing and the pleas and the begging, Curtis made it clear he didn’t know who or what Enver was.

  ‘Answer me, zasranets, arsehole,’ hissed Dimitri. ‘Answer me! Davai vikladivai.’

  * * *

  It was obvious from Curtis’s contorted face that he had nothing more of use to contribute. If he had known anything of use he’d have said, to make the pain stop. Dimitri let him go and Curtis collapsed on his side on the cold, screeded, concrete floor of the warehouse.

  Dimitri looked down at him pitilessly. Curtis lay on his side. He was crying now. His chest was heaving like a wounded animal’s. Dimitri took one step to the left, to the first of the three empty oil drums Curtis had brought here earlier that day. He dug his nails under the lid and lifted. It came off easily.

  Curtis had wondered earlier who the drums were for. Well,
now he knew the answer to at least one of the questions.

  Dimitri looked down again at Curtis. Myasnikov’s words came back to him.

  ‘Terminate Curtis’s contract… close any loose ends.’

  He bent over Curtis, who looked fearfully up at him. There was nothing he could do. He knew what was going to happen but he had no more fight left in him; he hoped it would be quick. Closing his eyes, compliant and submissive, he made no attempt to resist as Dimitri’s hands circled his neck and then tightened.

  It didn’t take long.

  Half an hour later, Dimitri patiently washed the grey cement residue off the metal head of the spade in the trough-like sink on one of the walls of the warehouse. He looked across the expanse of floor, the concrete shaded here and there by darker geometric patches where machinery belonging to the former occupants had been removed.

  The art installation had been rearranged.

  Before, there had been one barrel to the left, three to the right. Now there were two and two. Two full, two empty. Temporarily.

  16

  ‘Phone him and tell him you have information on me,’ said Dimitri to Chantal. He was wearing one of his inevitable tracksuits and several heavy gold chains. She could see the onion domes of the cathedral he had tattooed on his chest clearly, looming over the scalloped top of his low-cut vest.

  It was Wednesday morning and Chantal hadn’t seen Curtis since the morning of the day before. He hadn’t responded to any of her texts or voicemail.

  It wasn’t unusual for Curtis to disappear for a couple of days, but Chantal had his drugs stashed in one of her kitchen cupboards in an airtight container so no moisture would get to the thirty grams of coke he had given her to look after. He had also left a couple of grand in twenties and tens in a Ziploc bag, hidden in a packet of frozen veg in the tiny freezer compartment of her fridge. It was unthinkable that he would go so long without either the Charlie or the cash.