Once a Pilgrim

by James Deegan

  He punched the stereo.

  ‘Mr Abramovich’ had left a CD in place, and paused on a specific track.

  Adele.

  Skyfall.

  Carr shook his head and grinned.

  ‘You cheeky bastard,’ he said, to himself.

  The Russian was a good man to know.

  83.

  GJERGJ LEKA HAD been in a bar in Coventry when his mobile rang.

  Number withheld, but he took it anyway.

  The only people calling him were people who wanted to do business, after all.

  ‘Po?’ he said, finger in his ear to block out the noise of the music. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Freckles,’ said a voice. ‘You sold something to my friend Mickey Delahunty, and he sent a man to collect it, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gjergj, his eye wandering left and following a young woman in a tight white dress. ‘And?’

  ‘The man he sent, it didn’t work out well for him,’ said Freckles.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It didn’t work out well at all.’

  Leka shrugged.

  He got the Irishman’s drift, but what business was it of his? This kind of thing went with the territory, after all.

  ‘So?’ he said.

  ‘You need to be careful in case someone comes knocking on your door.’

  ‘Someone, who?’ said Leka, a note of derision in his voice. ‘Police?’

  ‘If you’re lucky,’ said Freckles.

  ‘Ha!’ said Leka. ‘They already been. Asking questions. I did not say nothing to them. They find nothing. Don’t worry, my friend.’

  ‘When did they…’

  But the girl in the white dress was back, and smiling at Gjergj Leka, and he killed the call there and then.

  He was not a man to panic – not many Kosovan pimp-cum-gangsters are – and he wasn’t very interested in what the stupid Irish had to say.

  He was a hundred per cent confident that the Glock that he had passed on to Callaghan could not be traced back to him.

  Its serial number had been ground off, and all original packaging destroyed.

  It had never been fired before.

  He had never handled it, nor the ammunition, without latex gloves.

  The kind of people he dealt with, they would never tell the soft English police where they got hold of the things he sold them, and this particular one was dead anyway.

  He held no stock at home: to all intents and purposes, he was just another hard-working Eastern European tradesman, who kept himself to himself, and had never got so much as a parking ticket.

  So… pah.

  Not my problemo.

  Unfortunately, while Gjergj was a cruel and fearless man, he lacked imagination.

  Specifically, he lacked the imagination to consider whether anyone other than the police might also come looking to talk to him.

  That was why he was in bed, drunk and watching the TV, when John Carr let himself into the back of the terraced house in Coventry.

  Carr had memorised the address when shown it by Kevin Murphy, and had been watching the house for several hours. It was always better to deal with one Kosovan than two, so he’d been happy to see Gjergj’s girlfriend leave the house carrying an overnight bag, and happier still when she got in a taxi and left.

  Off to earn her keep on the streets of the capital, by the looks of her.

  The Yale lock had been easy to pick – Carr had been trained in the art during his time in Northern Ireland, and had covertly entered many houses and offices in his time – and now he stood in the kitchen, holding his breath and listening, allowing his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark.

  Black clad, balaclava, thin leather gloves.

  Like the old days.

  Upstairs he could hear the muffled sounds of a television show, and regular guffaws from the Kosovan. The sink was piled high with unwashed dishes. The crusts from a takeaway pizza sat in a greasy open box on top of the fridge. There were empty bottles – Peja beer, vodka, cheap cider – littering the work surfaces.

  Let’s hope he’s pissed. Makes life easier.

  After five minutes, Carr slid into the living room.

  A small black cat sat on the sofa and looked at him with mild interest.

  Again, he waited and listened.

  Nothing but the sounds of the TV and a laughing man.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he paused again and reached around to his back, taking the extendable, hardened steel police baton from its pouch under his jacket.

  He weighed it in his hands and slid it out carefully to its full length of eighteen inches, pulling on both ends to ensure that it was locked out.

  Slowly, slowly, he started moving up the stairs, baton in his right hand, each step steady and controlled.

  Enjoying the anticipation before the action, just as he had a hundred times – a thousand times – before, during his military service.

  Been a long time, John.

  At the top there were three doors.

  Two – to the bathroom and the spare bedroom – were open, and the rooms themselves were clearly empty.

  The third was shut.

  He could hear the TV clearly now – some sort of reality show.

  He took the door handle in his left hand and held the extendable ASP tightly in his right.

  Then he opened the door quickly – and met Gjergj Leka coming the other way, on his way to the bog, one hand down his gaudy purple trackie bottoms.

  No plan survives contact with the enemy, but at least Carr had a plan.

  Whereas Leka was momentarily confused.

  He stopped, his eyes wide and his mouth gaping.

  Carr didn’t hesitate, jabbing forwards with his left hand, fingers straight at Leka’s throat, intending to incapacitate him.

  But the Kosovan was no stranger to street-fighting, and had quickly recovered his wits.

  He immediately dropped his chin, rendering the jab ineffective, and grabbed Carr’s shoulders and pulled him close, trying to squeeze his arms shut and simultaneously to close down the distance between them to take the baton out of the equation.

  He was ten years younger than Carr, and fit and strong, but Carr had three stones on his side, and a lifetime of combat from the backstreets of Niddrie to every war zone from Kosovo to Kabul.

  He reacted on instinct.

  Instead of trying to get free, he dropped the ASP and pushed forwards into Leka’s body, using the momentum that he had created against him, and driving him across the room into the back wall with all his weight.

  As he stumbled backwards, the Kosovan got one hand up around Carr’s face, searching for his eyes.

  Instead, he found his mouth.

  Carr bit down as hard as he could, feeling the bones of the fingers crunch, and at the same time he put his right hand between Leka’s legs and grabbed his balls.

  He squeezed and pulled as hard as he could through the flimsy material of the tracksuit, maintaining the pressure, pulling viciously, ragging like a bull terrier on a rabbit.

  Leka squealed and Carr immediately released his bite, knowing that the only thing that his opponent was worried about now was trying to free himself from the vice-like grip on his testicles.

  As the Kosovan scrabbled for his wrists with his one good hand, Carr drew his head back and smashed it straight into the bridge of his nose.

  That effectively put Leka’s lights out, but as he slid down the wall Carr drove his right fist into the side of the semi-conscious man’s head for good measure, swivelling his hips and putting every ounce of his shoulder into the blow.

  Knocking him out cold.

  The whole encounter had taken no more than eight or ten seconds, and – bar Leka’s squealing – had been conducted in near silence.

  Carr stood back, breathing heavily, and looked down.

  Leka was groaning against the skirting board, eyes flickering, blood trickling from his nose and mouth.

  84.

  CARR GAGGED AND BOUND
the Kosovan, turned the TV down and waited for him to wake up.

  It didn’t take long, and when he finally started to come round, Carr ripped off the tape.

  The guy was still bollocksed – he didn’t even yelp when the tape came off.

  Carr got right up close to him, stared into his vacant eyes, and growled, ‘I’ve come about that fucking gun you sold Dessie Callaghan.’

  An innocent man wouldn’t have known what the living fuck he was talking about, and it would have shown.

  But Gjergj Leka was not an innocent man, and his reply – and his suddenly widened eyes – were all Carr needed.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ said Leka, confused but just about together. ‘Please! I give him…’

  That was as far as he got.

  He struggled, but Carr knelt across his chest and regagged him, and then dragged him downstairs, feet first, his head hitting every step with a hollow thunk.

  There was a CCTV camera on the outside of the property, and it took Carr a matter of moments to trace its wiring to a small monitor in the kitchen. The monitor was linked to a hard-drive. He uncoupled it from the monitor and stuck it into his waistband.

  Next, he made a quick but thorough search of the rest of the property until he was satisfied that there were no additional recording devices.

  He looked at the semi-conscious Kosovan. Twelve stone? Thirteen, maybe? Nothing Carr couldn’t manage. He pulled his balaclava up into a beanie, bent down and hoisted the groaning man onto his shoulder, and opened the front door. He poked his head out, ascertained that the dark, drizzly street was empty, and carried Gjergj to his car, where he opened the boot, dropped him inside, and slammed it shut.

  Then he walked back to the house and went back up into the bedroom. He wanted it to look as though the target had left under his own steam; from the general state of him and the place, he didn’t look the kind of guy to square his bed away before going out, so Carr left the covers where they were, picked up an iPhone from the bedside table, turned the TV off and went downstairs three steps at a time.

  Pausing only to take a bunch of the keys which was hanging on a hook next to the front door, he left the house, closing the door behind him, and walked back to the Audi.

  As he slid into the driver’s seat, he looked at his watch.

  The whole operation, from entering the house until now, had taken just over nine minutes.

  He started the engine and drove south.

  A minute or so later, the banging started.

  Carr grinned to himself.

  On the edge of the city, in a darkened street, he pulled over.

  Got out.

  Looked around.

  No-one in sight.

  He put a pin into the Kosovan’s iPhone, removed the SIM card, and put it in his jacket pocket.

  Dropped the phone to the floor and stamped on it, until it was completely destroyed.

  Kicked the remnants into a drain.

  Did precisely the same with the CCTV hard drive.

  Got back in the car, turned round, and drove north.

  Twenty miles into the journey, he wound down his window and flicked the SIM card out onto the road.

  85.

  TWO HOURS LATER, Carr crossed the Welsh border at Pontrilas, and entered the Brecon Beacons.

  Almost immediately, he turned right towards Longtown.

  Fifteen minutes later, a few miles along the winding, narrow road, and just back across the English border into Herefordshire, he took another right – this time, into a long private road. He drove on for a quarter of a mile, until he came to a pair of stone gateposts. He drove through them onto a sweeping, semi-circular gravel driveway, and halted at the steps to what could only be described as a small stately home – three stories high, and built from grey stone in the neo-classical Georgian style.

  Its original owner had doubtless held balls and shoots for the local gentry there, in days of yore.

  If there were any gentry left in these parts they were unlikely to mix with the current proprietor.

  The year-old Land Rover Defender and the light behind the curtains in one of the downstairs rooms told him what he wanted to know.

  He got out of the car and crunched across the gravel to the front door.

  Three quiet knocks, and the door was opened by a man-mountain with a shaved head and a Bad Manners T-shirt.

  ‘John,’ said the Mountain. ‘Good to see you, man.’

  ‘Alright, Geordie,’ said Carr, shaking the outstretched, shovel-like hand of Dave ‘Geordie’ Skelton, who pulled him close and gave him a bear hug.

  ‘I’ve got that wee houseguest for you that I mentioned. Where’s the best place to put him?’

  ‘I’ve made his bed up in the stables over there,’ said Geordie, nodding his head towards a low, brick building. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

  Together, the two men walked back to the Audi. Carr put on his balaclava and handed a second to Skelton – the Kosovan might have glimpsed his face as he was dumped in the car, but there was something disproportionately intimidating about masked men – and opened the boot.

  He used the light from his phone to illuminate the interior.

  Gjergj Leka stared back at him, his eyes wild and furious.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Geordie. ‘It looks like you’ve pissed yourself, mate.’ Leka wasn’t the biggest lump, and the big ex-SQMS reached in and dragged him out in one easy motion. ‘Welcome to my humble abode. Let’s get your head down for the night.’

  Between them, they dragged the Kosovan into one of the stables.

  In the centre of the uneven stone floor was a wooden pallet.

  They dropped him onto the pallet and Carr held him down as Geordie lashed his legs to it, straight out in front of him, with plastic ties. Then they sat him up and pushed the pallet back towards the wall – though not too close. If he leaned back, he could touch it with his head, but that would put strain on his neck and shoulders. A classic stress position, and the start of the breaking-down process.

  They stood back and looked at him. His eyes were wide and darting everywhere; clearly he was having a hard time working out how he’d got from his nice warm bed in Coventry to this place, wherever the hell it was.

  Carr sat on his haunches and stared at Gjergj for a moment, and then he reached up and ripped the duct tape off his face, for the second time that evening.

  This time, the Kosovan yelped, as stubble and the skin off his lips came away.

  He started babbling in his native language, so Carr slapped him once across the face, hard.

  He shut up and looked at Carr, his face a mixture of defiance and fear.

  ‘Know who I am?’ said Carr, eventually.

  The Kosovan shook his head. ‘Who gives a fuck?’ he said.

  Carr said nothing, but short-arm punched him in the centre of his grid.

  Blood started flowing from his nose immediately.

  The initiative regained, he started again. ‘Know who I am?’

  His eyes watering, Gjergj shook his head.

  Some of the defiance gone.

  ‘I’m supposed to be dead,’ said Carr. ‘The guy who was supposed tae kill me was going to do it with one of your guns. It didn’t work out for him.’

  The Kosovan shook his head. ‘No.’

  Carr nodded his, slowly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘All I want to know is who sent him to you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you talking...’

  Carr punched Leka in the face, harder this time, and felt his nose collapse

  The Kosovan screeched, blood splashing onto his chest. ‘You fucking motherfuck!’ he shouted. ‘I will fucking kill you and your family, I swear it!’

  Carr laughed. ‘Not you as well,’ he said. ‘Listen, pal, word of advice. Dinnae make promises you can’t keep. As things stand, you’re looking at a shallow grave in the woods somewhere. You might be able to talk yourself out of it, but I promise you one thing – you will not see tomorrow unle
ss you tell me what I want to know.’ He tweaked the man’s bloodied nose, making him yelp. ‘So you think about that for a wee while. I’m hank marvin, so I’m going to go inside, and my mate here’s gonnae get me something to eat. Then I’ll come back and you and me are going to have a proper chat.’

  ‘I don’t know what you talking,’ said the Kosovan, again.

  Carr sighed. ‘Let’s get a few things straight. I know you gave him the pistol. I know it was a Glock 17, brand new. I know what he paid you. He told me all this before he died. The one thing I don’t know is who sent him. Whoever sent him put him in touch with you. So you’re going to tell me who that was. And you are going to tell me. So you just stew on that for a bit.’

  Geordie Skelton produced a hessian sack. Carr pulled it down over Leka’s head and taped it tightly in place, checking that his hands and feet were securely bound. It takes a tough man to remain calm when his sight has gone and his breathing is restricted, and Geordie made it worse by turning to the iPhone attached to a pair of large Bose speakers on the floor of the stable.

  The metallic thump of bass filled the air, loud enough to hurt Carr’s ears.

  ‘I hope you like this techno shite,’ he shouted into Leka’s ear, from an inch or two away. ‘Personally, I don’t.’

  He patted the Kosovan’s head and followed Skelton out of the stable, turning off the light off and leaving Gjergj to his own thoughts and demons.

  ‘Still limping, you soft bastard,’ said Carr, rolling his balaclava back up as they walked back across the yard.

  ‘Fuck off,’ said Skelton. ‘If you’d shot that fucker on that job in Baghdad a bit quicker…’

  Carr grinned. ‘I was giving you a chance first,’ he said, ‘but you were too slow.’

  They went into the house and down a long, red-flagged corridor to the kitchen.

  ‘Grab a pew,’ said Skelton, gesturing towards a large sofa next to a cream Aga. ‘Drink?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Carr. He sat down on the sofa and watched Skelton rummage through a cupboard and take out a bottle of Scotch.

  When he poured it, as ever, it was about three trebles in one glass.

  ‘Christ,’ said Carr. He took a sip. ‘That’s not bad,’ he said, appreciatively.