by Robert White
“How many guys are in the house, son?”
He whispered and I could feel him shake.
“Just me an’ Alfie, an’ Alfie’s mate, boss.”
I was feeling lucky, this was gonna be just fine.
As I walked into the room, Alfie and Alfie’s mate were counting tabs on a coffee table. A perfect little pair they were too.
Alfie was there stripped to the waist showing off some big Celtic tattoo, no shoes or socks, just trackies and a big open gob. His mate looked about the same age. He had the compulsory Burberry baseball cap, an absurdly large gold chain around his neck and the worst case of acne I had ever seen.
Once over the initial shock of my entrance, Alfie wanted to be brave and show his minions what he was made of, but when he saw the Magnum he thought better of it. He was still gobbing it though; his kind couldn’t help it.
“You’re a fuckin’ dead man!” he screamed every ten seconds or so. That and, “Do you know who I am?”
I handed Alfie a bunch of cable ties and, after some gentle persuasion he set about fastening his bezzie mates to two dining chairs whilst telling me how many different ways he was going to kill me. I seated Alfie on a third chair but didn’t tie him. I couldn’t have marks on his wrists.
Alfie was mouthing off even more about what he was going to do to me. Mainly it involved shooting me in the mouth. The other two were gaining in bottle and made the odd remark.
I felt the need to reassert my authority, pushed the revolver into my left hand and kept it pointed at Alfie. I then removed a knuckleduster from my pocket.
It’s an old fashioned item, the knuckleduster, not popular with modern thuggery. I’d had it made for me on holiday in Hong Kong. I thought it an item of beauty.
I punched 17 and Stupid repeatedly and heavily to the head. Each blow with the duster caused severe damage. Alfie was silenced and his mate was sick over his Rockports.
The kid’s face looked like a burst sausage. He lolled forward, bleeding badly and unconscious. Only the ties kept him in his seat. I had made my point. Even Alfie was looking worried.
I hit Alfie’s mate just once. All fifteen stone of me connected with the bridge of his nose. It exploded and I got blood on my sweater. He was screaming and little sick bubbles had formed at the corners of his mouth. I checked that there was no blood on my K Swiss trainers. I liked them and thought to wear them again.
“You owe the Richards brothers from the Moss five grand,” I said. Then I noticed the merest speck of claret on one shoe. I inwardly cursed as I realised I would have to burn them with my other clothes.
Alfie had lost the bravery contest. He blubbered about not having the cash. He’d spent it on gear. He could get it by the end of the week.
“I want it now.”
I did a quick search of the room with a little verbal help from Alfie and found nearly three grand in cash. I reckoned that there were two-thousand-plus tabs, which fitted neatly into a plastic freezer bag I’d brought with me.
I lifted Alfie’s mate’s face upward. I looked at his terrified eyes and spoke deliberately.
“I’m going to let you, and your young friend here, go now. Don’t come back.”
The hand-made duster went in one pocket and I removed a beautiful butterfly knife from my breast. It was a fantastic item with a solid silver casing. I cut them both free. 17 and Stupid fell to the floor. Alfie’s mate picked him up. “Sorry, boss, we won’t come back, he spluttered,” and they staggered toward the front door, shitting themselves.
As they fell toward the front door, I ushered Alfie out of the back door. The three K in cash and ten grand’s worth of tabs sat nicely in my pockets. I rolled up my balaclava and started the Golf with Alfie looking very worried in the passenger seat. After all, he wasn’t going to ID me.
Manchester’s Saddleworth Moor is infamous. The murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley buried their child victims there.
The Golf drove quite well for an old shed and I’d enjoyed throwing it around a bit on the country stretches, the Magnum in the door pocket mainly there as a deterrent should my prisoner decide to do something silly. Finally Alfie and I parked in a quiet little spot I’d selected five days ago. I then took my time forcing five of his own green bomber tabs into him. Within twenty minutes his command of the Queen’s best was unimpressive.
Alfie was of the opinion, in his tiny brainless head, that he’d been due a kicking and that was that. His big brave face kept up for a while but once we got to tab three, I think he got the message and the pleading started. After the pleading, came the tears.
So there I was again, the point of no return, a mercenary with no war to fight, no uniform to wear and no cause, only victims, designer clothes and piles of cash. This is what I’d become and some days I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror.
Fuck it.
I shook myself out of my brief malaise, fished two more tabs out of my pocket and stuffed them into Alfie’s mouth. OD level was close. The last one, I just popped in his gob like a sweet. The Magnum was redundant. I manoeuvred him onto the back seat. He muttered quiet gibberish. At least the tears had stopped. I nearly spoiled the whole plan at one point by shooting him in the face, he was blubbering that much.
I stepped out into the cool air and stretched my back. Alfie was incapable of any movement. I lifted the tailgate of the Golf and removed a canvas sack which contained everything I would need to conclude the grisly business. I rigged a hose I’d bought from B&Q to the Golf’s exhaust using some gaffer tape, and pushed the business end through an inch of open window. By the time I strolled the ten minutes to my van Alfie Summers was dead.
Now I could point out that Alfie was the type who gets young children hooked on drugs. Moreover, of course, he did beat Tanya’s seventeen-year-old cousin to death with a house-brick. Did that excuse my line of work? Did it validate my actions? All I can say to you is I’d lost many hours of sleep over the last ten years, but I wouldn’t lose any for Alfie or his kind.
No one would shed a tear for me either.
I pushed the van hard, all the way to my lock-up on Oldham Street. Once I’d parked it in a bay, I lit the gas burner on the internal furnace which heated the unit and destroyed anything incriminating in the process. I pushed all the clothing I had on, including the trainers I liked and latex gloves, into the flames. I dressed in a pair of Levis and a Lacoste polo shirt, dropped the cash and pills into my small safe, locked up and hailed a cab back to my flat. Twenty minutes later I sat on my designer sofa and surfed through meaningless TV channels.
Not for the first time I felt a pang of loneliness.
Around one a.m. I gave up and went to bed. Sleep brought the usual mix of nightmares. Alfie Summers didn’t figure.
I’m an early riser. I usually wake at seven-thirty a.m. and have breakfast at eight. Once I have consumed my grapefruit, forty grams of bran cereal, low fat milk and two cups of black coffee, Brazilian fresh ground, not instant rubbish, I am ready to start my day.
I took the lift in my apartment block to the gym which was my first task at ten .am. I ran ten kilometers on the treadmill to warm up. Then weights, chest and triceps alternated with back and biceps exercises. Twenty minutes of abdominal work and two thousand meters on the rower to finish. A shower, shit and a shave (not necessarily in that order) and the day was mine.
The bad dreams of the previous night behind me, I read the daily papers in peace. Apparently there were two unfortunate souls, who due to drug abuse had taken their own lives, the first by throwing himself from a sixteenth floor balcony, the second, by a mixture of carbon-monoxide poisoning and a drug overdose.
A picture of Jimmy’s body covered with a tarpaulin and a shot of the GTi, with the hose still attached, sat at the top of the articles. The headline, DRUGS PUSH PUSHERS TO SUICIDE, slapped you in the face. I wonder who’d thought that little gem up?
Of course, every two-bit grass in Salford would be telling the law how these two deaths were really un
derworld hits. The Jacks, in turn, would be telling their snouts to stop using so much bugle.
The people that mattered knew the truth.
Tanya had already been on the phone. My fee had been deposited by code number direct to an account in the Isle of Man. I’d move it later. She laughed at the suggestion that she should sell me the Jag.
She’d come around.
Now don’t go thinking that I went around knocking off people every week. This had just been a busy, and I might add, very profitable time. By the time I’d collected what was in my lock-up, I’d have banked thirty-five thousand pounds in just under six days. Not bad work.
With that in mind, it had been some time since I had a break. You know, even people in my job needed a holiday.
I flicked through the usual holiday web pages on my laptop, unable to decide where to go, but knowing I wanted to go somewhere, recharge my batteries and feel some sun on my back.
I gave up and clicked on the British Airways site. Within a couple of minutes I had booked a first class ticket to Barcelona, leaving in four hours.
I needed to pack.
I didn’t go overboard on expensive luggage. Spend a grand on cases and every airport thief this side of Ringway, will be nicking your best Hawaiian number. Therefore, basic serviceable Samsonite was the order of the day. The contents, however, were a different matter. I was going through my lightweights and casuals, Diesel and Ralph Lauren’s Polo Sport collection mainly. Although I did select a little formal stuff, just in case, so I packed a classic black dinner suit by Hugo Boss, a Versace dress shirt and a pair of formal black shoes by John Lobb. Barcelona had some fine dining establishments, and one may have called for formal dress. I wasn’t one to break a dress code.
I held three separate passports at the time, courtesy of Mr Makris. Other documentation; driving licences, birth certificates, National Insurance numbers, all matched and were genuine.
None related to my true identity.
For my little trip I had decided to stay Stephen Colletti.
Going on holiday made me feel normal, just to engage in ordinary pursuits, playing a little tennis or golf, eating out and lying by a pool, where no one knew me, made me feel human. I’d also decided to take a closer look at some property, as Spiros’s idea of relocation was starting to look much more likely.
I had booked my ticket to Spain using a Platinum American Express card as Mr. Colletti’s credit was very good.
I only ever travelled first class. I’d been bumped around in enough Hercs and Hueys in my time and jumped out of too many to count. Now the thought of being squeezed together with a motley assortment of beer-swilling louts and screaming kids, was enough to drive a man to murder.
In first, you do get to sit in a nice comfortable seat, eat with real cutlery and enjoy a reasonable wine with your meal. Small things, but when, like me, you find flying so very tedious, every little helps.
I closed the last case and stuffed some emergency cash into my carry-on bag. I was unsure of my return date, so I’d emptied my fridge and cancelled the papers. Normal things, done by normal people.
When I was in such a happy frame of mind, it would be a very brave, or a very stupid man to spoil my day. My phone bleeped and I eyed the number on the display suspiciously. It was Joel Davies.
“Yes?” I had no time for pleasantries.
Neither, it would seem had Davies.
“Get yourself over here now.”
“I’m busy. I’m on my way to Barcelona, now, this minute. It will have to wait. You can hang around to get the Porsche back for a few days surely?”
“This can’t wait and it’s got fuck all to do with that little German number.”
“What are we talking?”
“A week’s work, maybe two. A big payday, Colletti; sort this for me and you can retire to fuckin’ Barcelona.”
Now the one thing Davies never joked about was money. I wanted to go on holiday, but, I was intrigued. There was only one thing for it, I would just have to put my plans on hold for a day or two and go to see what the psycho wanted.
I reluctantly cancelled Mr. Colletti’s flight and started to unpack. Even if Davies’s call to arms meant travel, the Spanish wardrobe was bound to be inappropriate.
I was off within half an hour. The Range Rover was a delight to drive in the Manchester traffic. It was a beast of a motor, but so light and responsive. The high seating position gave great visibility. My mechanic had tweaked the engine whilst I was sorting out Alfred the unlucky. He’d fitted a non-standard exhaust system too. It gave the car a little more edge and made it sound delicious. I felt like the king of the road.
The sprawling city gave way to leafy suburban Cheadle. I pulled the four-by-four up to the gates of Joel Davies’s walled estate. Some has-been gorilla checked my face and I was waved through. I crawled the final five hundred yards to the front of the main house, the Rover burbling away and raising my spirits.
I dropped down onto the pale pink gravel path and I was met at the door by Susan Davies. She eyed me suspiciously, I thought. It appeared she’d had a long night.
“Morning, Susan,” I smiled.
She smiled weakly. “Mr Colletti.”
Despite her obvious troubles, she was absolutely stunning. Her hair was gelled, which had changed the auburn to a deep red. It was scraped back behind her ears, revealing the most exquisite sapphire droplet rings. Even their sparkle struggled to meet the blue in her eyes.
She wore no make-up that I could detect, probably some mascara. I smelled the faintest trace of perfume as she turned. She cleared her throat of a trace of nervousness.
“This way please, Stephen.”
She wore D & G jeans and her hips swayed from side to side in front of me as she walked. She sported a ribbed T-shirt advertising FCUK. Once again, she considered a bra unnecessary.
I couldn’t lose the tingling sense that something just wasn’t right about the lady who seemed to make a career out of simply hanging around and looking good.
As far as I could detect, Susan had been with Joel for two years or so. It was a whirlwind romance so to speak. I didn’t know how they had met but I did know that they had married within three months of meeting. She was all too perfect for a short hairy guy who sold drugs for a living. I made a mental note to find out more about Susan. I also convinced myself that it was purely for business reasons.
Susan walked me through to a study. It was a room in the cavernous house I had never had cause to visit. A monstrous desk, befitting the ego of Joel Davies, was centre stage. A computer monitor made the whole structure tall enough to hide Joel’s black curly head from view. Susan left without a sound. I found myself in the greenest room I had ever seen.
I mean green too. Everything was fucking green. The leather Chesterfields, the desk tops, the flock wallpaper and every single book in the massive floor-to-ceiling cases. This man had a serious taste problem.
Joel pulled himself from the monitor. He was deathly pale. It wasn’t illness. It was anger. I had only ever seen this mood once before and that had resulted in the untimely demise of Joel’s larcenist brothers.
He signalled me to sit and rooted in his desk drawer. After some cursing he bawled for Susan to bring him a cigar. Within seconds Susan appeared carrying a box of Cuban panatellas. Davies was brusque and businesslike as he selected a cigar from the open de-humidifier box and nipped off the end with a silver cutter. He waved her away with a flick of the wrist and Susan left immediately.
I didn’t give a shit if they were the best cigars in the world, they still stank. They made him stink and worse still, made my Versace blazer stink.
I was busy trying to recall if I’d worn the jacket before, when Joel spun around the computer monitor. The image on the screen was encrypted. State of the art encryption was about to be made available to the masses. The CIA, FBI and MI5 were horrified. They thought that criminals would misuse the system. MI5 and 6 had been misusing it for years. I knew.
; Joel bragged that he’d had access to the program for over a year. He hit a sixteen-character code and the screen turned from gibberish to text and pictures. I memorised the first eight numbers in his sequence. I also made a note to get the next eight as soon as possible.
A very nice picture of an oceangoing cruiser, ‘The Landmark,’ had pride of place on the screen. Joel talked as he worked the keyboard.
“I bought this baby from St Tropez, via the Net. It set me back two hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds.”
I recalled his heated mobile phone conversation on my previous visit was about a boat purchase. He took a long pull on the dreadful cigar and filled the area with smoke.
He pointed at the screen.
“Here are the details of the buy completed six days ago. This here,” he tapped, “is the previous owner’s details.”
Joel scrolled through. “The cruiser was delivered from the south of France to Amsterdam under its own steam by a crew, provided by the previous owner. This part of the deal is straight up. The guy has been paid his money and neither he, nor his crew are aware of any other reasons for the purchase. You understand?”
I nodded and tried not to hold my nose.
Joel flicked ash into a large cut glass tray.
“Once in Holland, the cruiser was loaded with one hundred kilograms of pure, uncut cocaine;” he pointed the horrible cigar in my direction and I resisted shoving it back into his mouth hot end first. He continued, not noticing my distaste. “The street value is ten million pounds, Colletti.”
Joel then scrolled through more pictures and biographies.
Three men and one woman, all Dutch, were shown. It could have been a police file. Maybe even MI5.
I had to hand it to Joel, he was organised.
Joel spoke in short clipped tones, interrupted by shorter pulls on the cigar. He was really pissed off.
“Susan brokered the coke deal in Amsterdam six weeks ago. These four guys are the runners. We have no pictures of her main contact.”