Skewered
And Other London Cruelties.
Benedict J Jones
PRAISE FOR SKEWERED
And Other London Cruelties
Great sense of place, as Jones takes us to London haunts probably not figuring on a typical Capital tourist's itinerary. Seedy Soho massage parlours, tired pubs and cafes, underground car parks, trips on the tube, dodgy city traders and drug dealers, money lenders and debt collectors. Fantastic collection from a talented author.
Col’s Criminal Library
Skewered: And Other London Cruelties is tightly written with strong, realistic characters and a great sense of place.
Classic Brit Grit crime fiction.
.Paul D Brazill – author of Guns Of Brixton, Too Many Crooks,
A Case Of Noir, and Kill Me Quick!
There are some really nasty scenes in the book.
Gingernuts of Horror
Other books featuring Charlie Bars by Benedict J Jones
Published by Crime Wave Press:
PENNIES FOR CHARON – A Charlie Bars Thriller
THE DEVIL’S BREW – A Charlie Bars Thriller
Skewered and Other London Cruelties.
Copyright © 2014 Benedict J Jones
Crime Wave Press
Flat D, 11th Fl. Liberty Mansion
26E Jordan Road
Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong
http://www.crimewavepress.com
Protected by copyright under the terms of the
International Copyright Union: All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopy, recording,
or any information storage and retrieval system,
without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 978 988 16557 3 8
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters,
and other elements of the story are either the
product of the author’s imagination
or else are used only fictitiously.
Any resemblance to real characters,
alive or dead, or to real incidents
is entirely coincidental.
Cover photograph: Hans Kemp
For Ava
Contents
Skewered
Real Estate
Hungry is the Dark
Habeas Corpus
Borrowed Time
With a Smile
Dirty Pictures
Like Clockwork
Red Christmas
The Listening
The Tick Tick Man
Skewered
One
Let’s get one thing straight from the off – I don’t hate kebabs, in fact I’m quite partial to a decent chicken shish. I just hated working at my uncle’s kebab shop. I’d been out of prison for more than a year and for the first few months I really thought I could make a go of it. I really thought the pictures I’d started painting in prison would give me a new way. But I got nowhere, not really – one little showing at a tiny gallery on Union Street. So I was stuck with JSA money and was two weeks away from having to sleep on my Mum’s sofa. This city eats money like a crack whore with a one-er a day monkey on her back and in the end it had come down to either taking the twenty eight pounds a week and drinking it away, going back to the street like what got me sent down in the first place or working for my uncle in the sweat hole he owned on Lower Road.
It had started to hurt every time my Mum, pushing seventy now, looked at me, so I went to work in the kebab shop. I don’t really get on with my Uncle Kris; maybe it’s the time I’ve spent inside or what I did to get there, maybe it’s because I’m the son of his no-good dead brother or it might be that I’m not Greek enough for him.
My dad was a Greek Cypriot who came over in seventy-four and met my mum, pure London-Irish, like the rugby team, in seventy-nine. I popped out a year later and seven years after that my dad was dead. Nothing spectacular, he was coming out of some slag’s flat off the Old Kent Road, drunk of course, when he got knocked down by a night bus and dragged a hundred yards – just one of those shitty little things that happen in life. And that was the start of me – Charles Constantinou, Charlie Bars.
So there I was, feeling like I was getting a free tan off the doner spit and stuffing five portions of chicken and chips into a bag for a guy with his hood up and attitude coming off him in waves. He’d been in a few times in the last week but never said anything beyond what he wanted to eat.
“Cheers, mate.” I said as I handed over the food, not even a grunt in response.
I looked over at old Tony but he just shrugged. It looked like no one was willing to give me even more than the briefest of words that day. I’ve known Tony most of my life but he’s never said more than a dozen words to me in one go either so it really wasn’t any surprise. Turning back to the counter I found myself looking into a face I recognised; receding black hair, a drinker’s nose and cheeks that were flushed red like warning lights – Mazza Toshak. He was old school, ex-army and drank with the coppers as well as with the City boys, and in the back street pubs with the likes of me. He worked as a private investigator, followed husbands for wives, served court notices and looked through more key holes than an overactive peeping Tom.
Mazza pulled his tie loose and smiled; out of all the kebab shops in London how comes you’d walked into mine?
“You alright, Charlie? It’s been a while.”
I nodded. I hadn’t seen Mazza since well before I got sent down the last time on the ABH beef. He looked just about the same, maybe a little unhealthier but that was about it, he was still built like a West End doorman even if he was looking a bit worn around the edges.
“What’ll it be?” I asked and he grinned at me.
“Large doner with the works, chips and some of them chicken wings as well. And use the proper chilli sauce, Charlie – the good stuff.”
I got to work on his order and all the time I was moving around behind the counter I could feel his eyes on me. When I put his food up on the counter he laid down a tenner and waved away the change. Now it was my turn to watch him. Had he just come in for food? As he sat eating at one of the greasy, plastic topped, tables my mind was working its way through the possibilities; I’ve never been married so there wasn’t a jealous spouse checking up on me, I didn’t have insurance to have put a bogus claim in on and as far as I knew I’d done nothing to warrant a court summons and if I had it’d be served by the boys in blue at five in morning.
Mazza looked up from the remnants of his food and licked his fingers before giving me a shit-eating grin.
“It’s funny, some people won’t eat one of these,” he gestured at the empty kebab box that lay in front of him “’til they’ve had a few pints. Me, as soon as I finish one I want a drink!”
I nod.
“You got time for a swift pint, Charlie?”
His eyes had taken on a sly caste and that was when I knew he did have something on his mind and it was no simple coincidence that he’d walked into this kebab shop. And that was also when I knew I’d hear him out. I’d had enough of standing over a hot grill, the crap money and the looks my uncle gave me whenever he bothered to come into the kebab shop. At that point I’d probably have taken any work that Mazza offered me. So I told old Tony I was going out for a bit. He rolled his eyes heavenward and then waved me out. I pulled a leather bomber jacket over my kitchen whites and headed across the road to the Surrey Dock’s Tavern with Mazza.
Mazza took his time. He ordered me a pint of Stella and a double Bushmills for himself and then proceeded to feed his change into the fruity. I let him take his sweet time and took a bite out of my lager – it f
elt good to be away from the grill and the drink barely touched the sides. As I finished the pint I looked around for another, he grinned and ordered me one and a pint of London Pride for himself and we headed into a corner booth.
“I’ve got a bit of work I wanted to put your way.”
I nodded for him to continue and took a sip from my fresh pint.
“It’s a bit delicate, Charlie, but I remember you. You were different from the crowd you ran with a few years back.”
I shook my head, I was thinking about a kid left with his hands broken and me being in the car that drove away from it.
“I wasn’t so different.”
It was Mazza’s turn to shake his head.
“Yeah you were. You weren’t the same as the rest of that shower, you had smarts and you weren’t involved in the really dirty shit. I’m not as young as I was, mate. A job’s come up and I need a leg man. It’s nothing illegal, just a bit grey.”
I forgot about sips and took a gulp out of my pint. Grey, I knew what that meant – dirt work. Dirt work, the kind of stuff I’d been offered by every lowlife I’d known since I got out. I’d even done a job for a man I used to know when I was working on my stuff before the gallery show. It hadn’t been anything illegal either but it hadn’t made me like myself much and I was pretty sure a man was dead thanks to my looking into something. I was about to turn Mazza down straight when I caught a whiff of the grease and the fatty meat that seemed to be ingrained in the creases of my clothes and skin.
I sighed and tried to remember the last time I had thought about getting myself out of the kebab shop and I came up short. I thought about the money I had got for that last job and how I’d like to see a few more Queen’s heads. So I sighed and nodded at Mazza to continue.
“There’s a woman I’ve done some work for in the past, well I’ve done work for her company – she’s in insurance up in the City. One of the big firms, offices near Fenchurch street. Anyway, she’s got troubles...”
He looked around and once he saw that no-one was listening he continued.
“Her dad’s been snatched, grabbed when he came out of his office. He’s some Asian tycoon, property development and all that...”
I cut in.
“And he hasn’t got any of his own people?”
Mazza took a drink before he spoke.
“No, he’s a straight arrow type, likes to have everything above board. He hasn’t got any people – none that can help in a shit-storm like this anyway. The family have the money but my client doesn’t trust her step mother, thinks she might not have the old man’s best interests at heart if you get what I mean.”
I nod. Wicked step mothers, same stories the world over throughout time.
“And where do I come in?”
I put my drink down half finished, in business mode now that I could smell an escape from doners, chips and chicken wings.
“Like I said, Charlie, I’m not as young as I was and I can see a lot of leg work in this job. I can watch the mother and parlay with the kidnappers but dashing about delivering a ransom? Nah, that’s for lads like you – someone with smarts and without...”
He patted his stomach.
“And what’s my end?”
“Two large sound alright?”
I used to make more than that in a week before the last stretch inside, I earned more than that doing that little bit of leg work for a drug dealer months before. But what do you say when someone offers you nearly two months wages for a little bit of dirt work?
“When do we start?”
Two
Stanton stood in the bathroom, beneath a bulb that threw out dirty light through grubby glass, staring at himself in the cracked mirror on the wall above the sink. He kept his beanie pulled low, not because he was cold but because if he took it off it was obvious that his hair hadn’t been braided in over a month. He threw his coat into the corner and pulled his sweatshirt over his head. He lit a cigarette and studied his reflection running his fingers over the history that lay in the contours of his flesh; the burn his mother gave him before she left, the scar his dad gave him when he got drunk that one time in particular, the marks the pastor left on him when he threatened to tell and more recent battle scars from the YOI he had been in and the circles he had moved in since.
The dirty light tinged Stanton’s skin a pale yellow. Voices from the past echoed in his ears; voices telling him he was scum, he was nothing, he was an animal, that he would never amount to anything. He took a long drag on the cigarette and his lip curled into a sneer. What did they know? They were gone and he was still standing, he’d show them all, show them he was big time, show them that he was something.
He pulled his sweatshirt back on and stuck his head through the doorway into the front room of the flat; Mook and Eamon sat on the sofa playing on the X-box. Elissa sat, knees pulled up, in the corner. She looked up at Stanton, he smiled and nodded at her and then moved back into the hall. He wondered for a moment what the little slag had been doing with them other two while he was out but he pushed the thoughts from his mind. Elissa was loyal, he knew that – fear bred loyalty in Stanton’s mind and he had made sure that the girl feared him. He picked up his bag from the hall and then stood for a moment before the door of the second bedroom feeling the hardness of the uncarpeted floor through his trainers. He felt at one with the cold concrete. Then he unlocked the padlock on the catch that held the door tight.
The man sat on the floor on a saggy mattress, his head covered by a sack-like hood, a chain running from his neck to a rung that had been drilled into the wall. The man’s dress shirt and suit trousers were filthy with dust and grime, his shoes and socks were missing and he remained motionless as Stanton entered the room and padded around him. The only sound in the room was the hooded man’s ragged breathing and the soft step of Stanton’s footfalls. Stanton stopped behind the man and dropped down onto his haunches.
“You’re mine.”
The man shuddered, Stanton rose and moved back to the door and closed it over. The click of a plug sliding into a socket made the man’s head jerk towards the sound. Stanton walked back over to him and planted the toe of his trainer in the man’s kidney with a hard punt.
“Now, I’m going to ask you some things and I’m pretty sure you’ll try to lie to me so let’s get ourselves sorted from the off.”
Stanton stripped off his sweatshirt and hat and lit another cigarette. He stood in silence behind the man until he had smoked the cigarette down to its filter then he dropped it onto the carpet and crushed it beneath the sole of his trainer. The man’s shirt ripped easily down the back under Stanton’s hands and revealed the naked flesh beneath. Stanton stepped back and picked up the iron that he had plugged in a few minutes earlier. He looked at the smooth brown skin of the man’s back for a moment and then pressed the edge of the iron down between the shoulder blades. A muffled cry came from within the hood as the man tried to arch his back away from the pain. The sound it made was like a piece of bacon being pressed down into a frying pan with a fork. The smell of cooked flesh rose up from where the iron had been applied. To Stanton it smelled a little like over-cooked barbeque, smoky. Stanton stepped back and looked down at the curved burn mark in the man’s flesh. He pressed down the flat of the iron, for a second or two, before pulling it away – it had left its imprint in the skin that it had touched. The man lay on his side on the mattress, the noises coming from inside the hood were like those of a tortured beast. Stanton stood over the man with his head cocked to one side listening, intrigued. It was almost hypnotic to hear such noises from another human being. Stanton pulled the hood up from the man’s mouth so that it only covered the upper portion of his head. The man’s mouth was bound shut with duct tape and mucus ran down from his nose. In one movement Stanton tore the tape from the man’s mouth and pulled the hood off of the man’s head. A little pale vomit spilled from the man’s mouth onto the dirty mattress. Stanton threw the hood to the floor.
“You want
a cigarette?”
The man shook his head in response so Stanton just sparked one for himself.
“Now, I think we know where we are with each other so I’m going to ask you a few questions and if I think you’re lying the iron goes back on – understand?”
The man nodded weakly, his forehead a complex spider’s web of pain induced wrinkles. Stanton took three bank cards from his pocket and laid them on the floor in front of the man.
“I want the pin numbers for these. If the numbers are wrong you get burned again.”
The man nodded and pointed at each card in turn as he recited the four digit pin numbers for them. Stanton wrote the number for each on the card itself with a black marker pen, he nodded and put the pen and the cards back into his pocket. The man looked up at Stanton.
“You’ve spoken to my family?”
A nod from Stanton in response, “And everything is okay with the money?”
“Everything is sorted, the money’ll be ready in three days. You behave and you’ll be out of here as soon as I get paid. You sure you don’t want a cigarette?”
Again the man shook his head. Stanton shrugged his shoulders and taped a new gag into place before pulling the hood back over the man’s head.
Three
I thought about the job Toshak wanted me for as I washed the smell of the kebab shop off my body and hair in a shower that gave off steam like a broken heating pipe. It sounded easy enough, easy but dangerous. But then I wouldn’t have been picking up two large if it was going to be a piece of piss. Mazza had said he’d be round for me at seven and it was getting on for half six when I got dressed. He wanted me to meet his client before we went to see the step-mother. I dressed quickly; a black v-neck jumper and a grey suit I hadn’t worn since the last court appearance. The buzzer sounded at ten to seven and I looked around the shitty little studio flat in the shitty council block I had sub-let since I started working for Uncle Kris. As cheap and shit as it was I was still two weeks behind with the rent. And after that final look around I headed downstairs thinking about how I might be starting to pull myself out of this hole. I jumped into the passenger seat of Mazza’s Nissan Prius, one of those hybrid cars, and we glided away into the south London night.
Skewered Page 1