by Julie Thomas
A third man walked towards Vinnie and stopped in front of him. He was about Vinnie’s age, immaculately dressed and yet he looked uncomfortable in his clothes. The trace of expensive cologne made Vinnie’s nose twitch. This one was definitely higher up the chain of command.
‘Vinnie Whitney-Ross,’ the man said.
A hundred smart responses rushed through Vinnie’s brain, but his throat felt very tight, so he just nodded.
‘Do you know why you’re here?’
Vinnie nodded again. ‘The packing crate,’ he whispered.
‘The packing crate.’
The man walked around him and said nothing more. Vinnie’s patience gave out.
‘If you think I –’
The man flicked the back of his hand across Vinnie’s cheek. It stung briefly.
‘When it’s your turn, I’ll ask a question.’
Vinnie nodded slightly.
‘Handbags and shoes and three bricks of cocaine. That crate belongs to us. How did it get in your lockup?’
At last, a chance to explain.
‘Because … someone called and asked me to hold it for him. He offered me twenty-five per cent of the contents. He said shoes and handbags, and he said a week, maximum.’
‘When?’
‘Three nights ago. I was in the pub when he called me. I was with Monty Joe.’
The man frowned and stared hard at Vinnie. ‘Monty Joe on the fence?’
Vinnie nodded. ‘Everyone knows Mont – he’ll vouch for me. What I do. A market trader, nothing more.’
‘This “someone”, does he have a name?’ the man asked, and Vinnie could hear the disbelief in his voice.
Now the tricky bit. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
The frown turned into a glare. ‘Don’t play fucking games with me!’
‘I’m not! He’s called The Finn. Everyone calls him The Finn. Always have. He was introduced to me as The Finn. I asked him his real name once and … it’s The Finn.’
The man pulled a gun from his under-shoulder holster and put the muzzle against Vinnie’s knee. For a split second Vinnie thought his days on two legs were over, before he could protest his innocence.
Suddenly he caught movement in the shadows.
‘Stop! Don’t shoot.’ It was a cultured accent, a public school accent.
The other man stepped away. Marcus Lane walked into the light and straight up to the chair. Vinnie reeled back in shock. Marcus! My God, he was so tall.
‘Vinnie.’ Marcus offered his hand. Vinnie took it and stood up. Marcus was wearing a heavy coat, and Vinnie felt the other man’s body warmth as he was embraced in a bear hug. He knew Marcus would sense he was trembling. He didn’t know what to say.
‘Marcus.’
‘Long time, old friend. What are you doing in a hell-hole like this?’
Vinnie didn’t know whether to feel relieved or terrified. Emotions surged through him, and he ran his hand through his curls. ‘They think I stole some drugs, cocaine bricks in a packing case. I don’t do drugs, Marcus. I hustle low-end stuff on a market stall.’
Marcus smiled down at him. ‘Of course you don’t. It’s a misunderstanding.’
Marcus turned to the interrogator, who was watching with obvious fascination. ‘Tom, have our men return Mr Whitney-Ross to his lockup and tidy up whatever mess they made.’
Vinnie shook his head emphatically. ‘That’s not necess–’
‘Oh, yes, it is. If anything’s broken, you show them and they will pay for it.’ Marcus extended his hand again. ‘It’s good to see you. I’m so sorry our paths crossed under such circumstances. How is your mother?’
Something made Vinnie want to shiver. ‘She’s fine. Thank you for turning up when you did.’
Marcus gave him a small nod as he turned away.
The sight of his long body lit a light bulb in Vinnie’s brain and he grabbed the opportunity. ‘Marcus?’ he said, his voice steadier.
Marcus swung around. ‘Yes?’
Vinnie drew his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out two £50 notes. ‘I owe you this.’
Marcus came back to him, and it was obvious by the frown that he didn’t remember. ‘For what?’
Vinnie held out the notes. ‘A packet of stolen cigarette cards.’
A large grin split the other man’s face, and he took the money. ‘Thank you!’
‘Don’t take no shit from nobody.’
A look passed between them and the years melted away.
‘No shit.’ Marcus said softly and turned away again. As he passed Tom, he stopped.
‘The man you want – The Finn – is Simon Fish. Find him and ask him why he stole from us, and you don’t have to be polite.’
‘Yes, boss.’
Marcus tapped Tom’s shoulder with his finger. ‘And be very glad that you didn’t harm my friend, because that would have made me angry.’
CHAPTER NINE
MILLIE
‘I want you to turn over every club, every brothel and every jazz joint – anywhere she might be. Search them all. Do you understand?’
The room full of men nodded.
‘Don’t come back until you find her and find out who took her.’
One by one they filed out. Marcus punched his fist into his palm to stop the rising tide of fury that threatened to engulf him. It had all been going so well. While the newer gangs had continued to expand and spread their tentacles into Lane territory, Marcus had been very careful with his responses. Reprisal was a dangerous business, and more than one hot-headed boss had ended up in jail for murdering his rivals. Marcus preferred sabotage, fire-bombing and guerrilla warfare.
But now everything had changed. Someone had taken his Millie. She was twenty and the apple of her parents’ eye. For a while it had looked as though she might be happy to marry Tom; however, Norman had found the handsome son of a prominent businessman who would inherit his father’s gambling empire, and Millie had accepted his proposal.
Two nights ago she had gone to a nightclub with friends and hadn’t come home. Within twenty-four hours, every street thug in London knew that Marcus Lane was on the rampage.
Norman let all his contacts in the Met and at Westminster know that he required their help, and the word quickly filtered down to the police snouts who lived on the streets. Countless doors were broken down and guns pointed in faces, but there was no sign of Millie anywhere.
Eventually Marcus, Tom and Norman sat around the dining table in the Richmond house and studied the reports that had come back.
‘She’s not in London. If she was, someone would’ve coughed something by now,’ Tom said.
Marcus winced. The strain was taking its toll, and both he and his father were exhausted. ‘So where do you think she is?’ he asked.
Tom shrugged. ‘Maybe a London gang took her and sold her on – Manchester, Birmingham, Dublin, Liverpool. Or maybe someone bought in a contractor and told him to hold her out of Lon–’
‘So, why haven’t we heard from them yet?’ Norman asked.
‘Don’t know, boss.’
Marcus looked at Norman. ‘What do we do now?’ he asked.
His father frowned and considered the report in his hand. He sighed. ‘We offer money, through every channel we know. Tom, put the word out. The kind of money that opens mouths. One million pounds to the person who brings me proof that they know where she is and who took her.’
Four weeks later, the Manchester police staged a raid on the house of a known member of the Cheetham Hill Gang as part of a drugs bust. The Noonan brothers formed the core of the gang, and for several years they had ruled the narcotics market in central Manchester.
Five young men were playing cards at a table in the lounge. As two policemen burst through the door and another two came smashing through the windows, all five gangsters drew their weapons and were shot as they rose to their feet.
There was a moment of eerie silence, and then the kitchen door flew open and a man and a woman ran out,
each brandishing a pistol and coming straight at a policeman.
‘Drop your weapons now!’ the policemen ordered in unison.
They kept coming, the woman screaming, ‘Die, pig!’
The policemen opened fire, and the man and woman were killed instantly.
Marcus stared down at the young blonde lying on a mortuary table, a sheet drawn up to her chin. She looked like a china doll, white, perfect, still and dead. The sour taste of rage and grief rose in his throat.
He swallowed hard. ‘Yes’, he said quietly, ‘that’s my sister, Millicent Lane.’
‘Do you have any idea what she was doing in that house, sir? In Manchester?’
Marcus turned towards the questioner. The chubby face was vaguely familiar and Marcus wracked his memory banks. Of course, it was the smarmy cop who’d interviewed him after the raids on the other gangs. He’d been promoted to detective sergeant Ron Matthews. Not so young and eager anymore, and definitely not a rooky.
‘Obviously not, Detective. But I can tell you one thing: someone is going to pay. Dearly.’
‘Do you think he has something to say?’ Tom pointed to the naked man tied to a chair. He had a gag around his mouth and a large knife imbedded in each muscular thigh. He was shaking his head from side to side and trying to say something.
‘Not sure,’ Marcus replied as he caressed the man’s cheek with a third knife. ‘I hate Manchester. The sooner we get out of this dump, the better.’
Tom smiled and pressed down on one of the knives. The man’s scream was impeded by the gag, but his body writhed. ‘Hates the rain, my friend, and it’s rained since we got here. He’s angry enough without adding bad weather.’
The man’s eyes flicked from one tormentor to the other.
‘Do you have something to say, scum? Where should the next one go?’ Marcus asked.
The man’s speech was indecipherable, but the straining of every fibre of his body was not. Marcus raised the knife above the exposed genitals, and then at the last moment whipped the gag off.
‘Don’t! No more! I’ll tell you. Please! No fucking more.’
Marcus stepped back.
‘One chance. Go.’
The blood was running down between the man’s legs and pooling on the ground.
‘We took her. From outside some dive in London. But she weren’t by herself, like. The man … the one who died … he came with her.’
Marcus bent down and studied the face. It was contorted with agony. ‘Hakan Turan?’ he asked.
The man nodded vigorously. ‘The Elmas brothers … he’s, like, their cousin. They hired us ’cause they couldn’t hide her in London.’
Marcus sighed and stood up. ‘But why would they?’
Tom shook his head. ‘What use was she without a ransom demand?’ he asked.
Marcus swung round to face him. ‘It makes no sense …’
The man in the chair gave a short humourless laugh, as though he couldn’t help but be amused. ‘Oh, that’s, like, priceless. You don’t fucking know.’
In one gesture Marcus turned back and had the knife at the man’s exposed throat. ‘Know what?’ he demanded.
‘Kill me and you’ll never fucking find out.’
The blade pressed harder.
‘I won’t kill you, but I will cut out your tongue. There are some things worse than death. You have thirty seconds.’
‘All right!’
Marcus pulled the knife away.
‘We didn’t take her against her will. She was, like, dead happy to come. She was in love … with that Turkish idiot, Turan.’
Marcus and Tom glanced at each other.
‘That’s a lie!’
Even as the response escaped, Marcus knew Tom believed it. He started to pace, his mind was whirling.
‘She wouldn’t. I’d have known. She’d have told me.’
‘Would she, though? What would the boss have said? Not like she just dropped money at the casino. He’d have done his nut at her.’
Marcus shook his head. ‘There has to be another reason.’
‘At least we know who to blame.’
Marcus strode back across the room. The man’s head had dropped onto his chest and the colour was draining from his face. He was losing a lot of blood.
‘Two things are going to happen. You’re going to die unless we call an ambulance, and I’m going to fire-bomb every property your gang owns, unless …’ His voice trailed off.
The head raised enough for the man to look at him. A last attempt at hatred burned in the eyes. ‘Unless what?’
‘Give me a name. Someone who knows something I can use against the Elmas.’
The man nodded.
Detective Matthews was called back to his desk to take a phone call. It had been a long day and he was on his way home, but experience told him it was better not to miss phone calls.
‘Detective Matthews, it’s time for someone to pay for the death of Millie Lane.’
Matthews checked his watch, grabbed a pen and scribbled on his desk pad. The male voice wasn’t polished enough to be Marcus Lane.
‘Who is this?’ he asked. Experience also told him he wasn’t going to know.
‘The Elmas Gang will rob a Securicor van in Reigate tomorrow. They’ll have shotguns and they’ll be wearing masks, Winston Churchill masks. If you want to arrest Boran and Murat for armed robbery, I suggest you be there.’
‘When –’
The phone clicked and Matthews heard the dial tone. He wrote down the details. It wasn’t Marcus or Norman Lane, but the information had clearly come from their organisation.
Boran Elmas, who was driving the getaway van, was shot by police but lived. His companion in the van was killed.
Murat gave up without a fight. Jailed for armed robbery, the gang’s ability to function was temporarily disabled. However, there were other brothers in the family, and they stepped up. Marcus was satisfied with the outcome and felt ready to initiate stage two of his plan.
Norman’s contacts had identified each member of the police anti-drug squad who had entered the Cheetham Hill house the night Millie died. Throughout the 1990s a series of drug raids in Manchester and London went bad, and those four officers died. On two occasions Marcus was there to pull the trigger himself; the other two he hired out to hit men. Each time he made sure that there was enough collateral damage to hide the true target. Only one man joined the dots nearly a decade later, and became convinced that the Lanes were behind it. But no matter how hard he tried, Detective Chief Inspector Ron Matthews couldn’t prove that Marcus Lane was a killer.
CHAPTER TEN
ROMANCE
Two days before Vinnie’s twenty-sixth birthday he decided to do something spontaneous and take a holiday. It was time to get away, far, far away, and cool his heels somewhere exotic. The brush with Marcus and his operation had left him badly shaken. The Finn never came back to claim his packing case, and the fake Prada, Gucci and Chanel handbags and shoes were too good an opportunity to miss. They were brilliantly made, and he sold them for £90 each.
At the same time he was offered two dozen bottles of fine wine in exchange for a bathroom lot of Italian marble tiles literally off the back of a truck. The wine proved to be a superb drinking experience, so, on the spur of the moment, with a full glass in hand, he decided on a crash course in wine appreciation.
That same day he flew to Paris and hired a car. He drove slowly through France to Italy, stopping at vineyards and châteaux, sampling at wine shops and cellar doors, and questioning anyone who spoke enough English. When he posed as a rep for an importing business, he found the owners were more than happy to talk and ply him with samples.
After three weeks on the road, he arrived in Tuscany and found a local pensione. The delightful hosts recommended an isolated family restaurant in the hills behind the villa, so he drove up there and ordered an evening meal. The view over vineyards and olive groves was rustic and peaceful, a long way from the sterile concrete of the city
. He settled back and surveyed the scene as he sipped his Prosecco and nibbled on a plate of antipasto. There was something about wine, food, the setting sun …
‘Swap you half this tart for what’s left of your pasta.’
The accent was American. He turned to his left to observe them, two women in their early to mid-twenties. One was blonde; the other, taller, a brunette.
After he finished his antipasto, he got up and walked over to them. ‘Excuse me for interrupting, but, as the only other English-speaking person here, I thought I would introduce myself. I’m Vinnie Whitney-Ross.’
The brunette looked up and smiled. ‘You’re excused. I’m Anna, Anna Adams, and this is Belinda Miles.’ Her accent was English.
The blonde gave him a small smile.
‘Are you here on holiday?’ he asked.
Anna nodded. ‘We’ve rented a villa down the road for a few days. We’ve just finished a cookery course in Rome. Would you like to join us?’
He saw the slight irritation cross Belinda’s face, but his interest was elsewhere so he chose to ignore it. ‘I’d love to. Will you criticise the food I’ve chosen?’
She laughed. ‘Only the dessert. I’m a chocolatier and Belinda’s a pastry chef’.’
He waved to the waiter then fetched his chair. The man brought him new cutlery and his half-bottle of Prosecco.
‘Dessert is probably the hardest course to match. I’m on a wine trip, and food matching has been a fascinating part of the journey,’ he said.
Belinda waved a forkful of pasta in his direction. ‘Depends on the dessert,’ she said.
‘White chocolate crème brûlée with raspberries – love brûlée, chocoholic. You do know that chocolate absorbs alcohol in the bloodstream?’
Belinda looked at him as if he were an idiot. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Every chocoholic in the world knows it for a fact. And chocolate biscuits leak calories if you break them. Two of the world’s most necessary food groups – wine and chocolate.’
Anna shot him a stunning smile, and he felt his stomach give a slight heave, as though a trough full of butterflies had suddenly been released.