by Julie Thomas
The size of the basement wine cellar spoke of a serious collector. Three brick walls were covered by double-depth, floor-to-ceiling wine racking. Two walls were full, and the third was about half full from the bottom up. A central light threw out a dim glow. Columns of dust danced in the light and then settled on a new bottle. A carved wooden podium, supporting an open ledger, stood in one corner.
As Vinnie’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could see the bottles, lying in rows, waiting, always waiting. The temperature was constant, just under 13 degrees Celsius, and the air felt dry on his skin. He could smell that heady aroma, the mixture of ageing cork and the residue of hundreds of bottles opened in this room. It was a combination of what he called ‘wine memories’ – chocolate, tobacco, cut grass, citrus, leather, plum, spice, tropical fruit, ginger – a hundred scents melded into one. It also smelt of money, the smell a cellar has when the owner will spend £30,000 on one bottle. He got to handle them, and sometimes, when Lady Luck smiled, he got to taste them.
One by one he lifted the bottles out of the case and slid them into gaps in the rack. After each addition he went to the ledger and wrote in it with a fountain pen. When he had racked all eleven bottles he rested for a long moment, his hand on the nearest corner.
He glanced at his watch, then started to move around the room, turning bottles in their racks, kneeling down and pulling a bottle from a rack near the floor and putting it into a gap higher up the wall. He handled the bottles with reverence, and with some he wiped dust off them and read the labels. It was a magnificent collection.
A muffled noise broke the contented silence. Vinnie hesitated, bottle in hand, listened, and then resumed checking. It was time he wasn’t there, time to turn from wine-merchant Vinnie to husband Vinnie and meet Anna at their local pub. It was quiz night and his general knowledge –
Indistinct voices from upstairs crashed into his reverie again. He straightened up, walked over to the heavy door and pulled it open. The sounds were much clearer now, and he could hear that the tone was distinctly aggressive. Kelt shouted something that sounded like ‘Get out of my house!’
Stay down here and wait until it was over, or go and investigate? Maybe David needed his help, and he wasn’t one to walk away from a friend in need.
Vinnie started to climb the twisting, brick-lined stairwell. The steps were slate and he made sure his shoes didn’t click on them. His hand brushed against the cold wall as he moved upwards, closer to the noise. As he reached the top step he could see bright yellow light shining from under the door. He paused, his hand resting on the knob. There was a sudden crashing sound, glass breaking, but it wasn’t in the kitchen, it was at least one room away. He twisted the knob slowly, very gently pushed the door open and stepped into the kitchen. It was minimalist, well lit and empty.
‘Where the fuck is it, scumbag?’
The accent was American, and the angry voice came from the next room. Vinnie bent down, untied his laces and slipped out of his shoes. He moved noiselessly across the slate floor to a serving hatch built into the far wall.
‘Where the fuck is what?’
It was Kelt’s voice, a mix of frustration, fear and fury. Vinnie squeezed himself into the right-angled corner of the two kitchen benches and moved a metal knife block slightly to hide his shadow and create a clear view into the dining room.
The drawers of the ornately carved sideboard were pulled out, and folded linen, cutlery and small boxes lay scattered over the polished wooden floor. A shattered mirror covered the scene in shards that twinkled like snow in the light from the overhead chandelier.
Kelt sat in an upright chair with his back to the long table. He had a raised red welt across one cheek and a rapidly swelling eye socket. The two intruders were side-on to Vinnie, and he could see only one man’s profile. The taller of the two men, mid-thirties with a shaven head, leaned forward and poked Kelt in the chest, hard.
‘You got sixty seconds and then I’m texting. Boss won’t be best pleased.’
Kelt threw his hands up in a gesture of despair. ‘For the last time, I don’t bloody know what you’re talking abo–’
The leader slapped Kelt hard across the face with the back of his gloved hand, and Kelt’s head jerked back. Blood spurted from his mouth.
‘Tell the boss.’ He took a cell phone from his pocket and sent a text message. The smaller man licked his lips, and his hand flickered towards Kelt in anticipation.
‘We taking him in, then?’ he asked. He was the American.
The fear on Kelt’s face was obvious, and Vinnie instinctively pulled back into the shadows, which obscured some of his view. What the hell should he do? Go back downstairs and call the police? Would he get cell coverage in the basement? Probably not. If he tried for the hall and made any noise, he would be rumbled and they wouldn’t want a witness. He felt genuinely afraid for Kelt, but his desire to stay alive was stronger.
‘Look, I told you –’ Kelt’s desperate plea was cut off by the loud beep of the leader’s phone.
‘He’s here. Go and let him in. Now!’
Kelt moaned. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus Christ!’
As the second man left the room, his associate bent over and punched Kelt in the stomach.
‘Say your prayers, you lying bastard,’ he sneered.
Kelt grunted in pain. ‘Ahhh … I swear. I have no idea what –’
The door swung open and the second man returned. All heads in the room swivelled to watch the man who followed him. Vinnie could see a black cashmere coat open over a dark suit, black leather gloves and highly polished black shoes. Mob boss. As the man picked his way through the debris on the floor to stand directly in front of Kelt, Vinnie could tell that it was a very tall, very erect body, with slicked-back black hair. Somehow, even from the back, he looked more like a stick insect than any man Vinnie had ever seen.
‘He’s not fucking singing, boss.’
The boss stood very still and scrutinised Kelt closely. ‘Good evening, Mr Kelt. I’m truly sorry we have had to intrude on your peace and quiet. I believe you have something important. Something I need to see.’
The voice was as smooth as melted honey and the accent was clipped, but polished by the public school system. About four words in, the realisation hit Vinnie in the stomach with the force of a kick and pushed him back against the bench. Bile rose in his throat until he could taste it, and for a second he thought his bowels were going to open. It was Marcus! This monster was Marcus Lane.
Kelt swallowed and ran his hand over his ashen, bruised and swollen face. Then he raised his other hand towards his interrogator. ‘You seem to think I keep some kind of record –’
‘I know you do. So where do you keep it?’
‘If I did … do … have a record, do you really think I would bring it home? Risk my wife?’
Marcus didn’t move or speak.
Kelt bowed his head. Vinnie could see that he was trembling.
‘It’s … in a … in a secret drawer in my office desk.’
Marcus nodded slowly. ‘The bad news for you is that I believe you. Our arrangement is over.’
He turned to the leader and snapped his gloved fingers. ‘Kill him.’
He started to walk towards the door. Kelt half rose, his arms following Marcus’s retreating body.
‘No! I haven’t –’
The leader pushed him down onto the chair, pulled a Walther PPK from his holster and fired at the centre of Kelt’s forehead. The gun made a hollow clicking sound.
‘Shit!’
Marcus turned around at the door.
Kelt pleaded, half-rising again. ‘Listen to me! It’s not incriminating –’
The leader tried again, but the trigger was stuck and he fumbled with it. ‘Sorry, boss! It’s fucking jammed.’
Marcus strode back across the room, taking a Glock from his coat pocket. ‘Do I have to do everything?’ he asked. He shot Kelt in the head and the man slumped to the floor, taking the chair with him.
/> Then Marcus swung around to face his muscle. ‘It’s so hard to get decent assassins. I’ve told you before: I don’t tolerate swearing and I prefer a Glock.’
He fired two bullets into the heart of the leader at point-blank range. The man fell to his knees, an expression of stunned surprise frozen on his face, and then keeled over.
Marcus shook his head, turned to the remaining man and clicked his fingers again. ‘Clean the house, no trace. And I was never here.’
He pocketed the gun and stalked out.
Vinnie stared at the body of David Kelt and the legs of the other man, framed by the hatch in front of him, his hand clamped tightly over his mouth and his brain reeling. What the fuck was that? Marcus? Was that actually Marcus, after all these years? It had to be a nightmare – any moment now he would wake up in a cold sweat and get up for a glass of water. By the time he got back to his warm, comfy bed, he wouldn’t even remember the scene.
As the front door slammed, he jerked into motion. Nightmare or not, if he was found here, he was dead. He crossed the room on the balls of his feet, moving swiftly for a big man, carefully picked up his shoes and went through the door to the stairwell, closing it silently behind him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PÉTRUS
The wine cellar was in total darkness. Vinnie sat against the brickwork in the far corner, his knees drawn up to his chest, a bottle of wine, gripped by the neck, resting on them. He concentrated on breathing deeply in through his nose and out through his mouth, to try to still his racing heart.
Marcus was a cold-blooded murderer. His childhood friend was able to end the lives of two men without, apparently, a second thought, and he was the boss of a gang of very frightening men. The idea made Vinnie feel nauseous.
More importantly, he was now trapped in the cellar. What was the chance that the remaining thug would come down here? Almost nil. He didn’t look like a wine connoisseur, but one could never tell these days – some of his best clients were the most unlikely-looking wine drinkers. He forced his terrified mind to focus in the present and concentrate on staying alive. He was in no doubt that the man wouldn’t leave witnesses. How long had it been since the attack? Twenty minutes, an hour, two, three? He couldn’t see his watch, and his mind had lost all track of time.
Suddenly the thud of heavy footsteps on the stairwell echoed around the room; they seemed twice as loud as normal in the darkness.
‘Oh Christ,’ Vinnie muttered.
The door opened and the dim glow from the stairway silhouetted the second man’s bulk in the doorframe. Vinnie shrank back against the wall and held his breath. He could hear a strange roaring in his ears, and the neck of the bottle moved in his slippery grasp.
The man switched on the soft central light, walked into the room and surveyed each wall in turn. ‘Well, I’ll be damned. What’ve we got here?’
He pulled a couple of bottles halfway out, read the labels and slid them back in. The third bottle he pulled all the way out. ‘Oh, come to Papa!’
He put the bottle on the ground and pulled out another. ‘Oh yeah!’
He grabbed the discarded cardboard box and started filling it with bottles. Vinnie watched from the shadows as the man roamed the racks and chose his loot. On two occasions he came within inches of the corner and Vinnie sucked in his breath. Surely he would hear the pounding heart?
Finally the man gave the room another sweeping glance and stood at the door, his hand on the light switch. Vinnie breathed as slowly as he could. His tight shoulders slumped with relief, touching the rack and causing a couple of the bottles to rattle deep inside their slots. The man stared hard in his direction and put the box down.
‘Hey, who’s there?’
He started to walk towards the sound. Vinnie moved to a squat, tensed his muscles and prepared for the next step. Timing was crucial. When the thug was three steps away, Vinnie smashed the bottle hard against the rack and it broke in half. Cold liquid gushed over his hand and streamed onto the floor, his nostrils were filled with the pungent smell of red wine.
Vinnie propelled himself forward and upward, the jagged bottle held by the neck out in front of his body. His momentum carried him with extra force, and the weapon caught the unsuspecting man in the upper stomach. Vinnie drove it in as hard as he could, up under the ribcage, and gave it a vicious twist. It stuck fast, almost entirely embedded in the man’s torso.
‘Ahhh … What the –?’ The man grabbed frantically at the neck with two hands, but couldn’t move it. ‘Get it out!’
A sudden rush of fluid spurted in a stream through the neck of the bottle. Even in the dim light Vinnie could see that it was blood. The sight sickened him and he swallowed against the nausea.
The man stumbled sideways, his fingers still clawing at the bottle, and blood ran out of his mouth. Then he fell backwards, his head hit the floor with a dull thud and his eyes stared blankly up at Vinnie.
‘Oh, fucking hell! Why did you come down here? You greedy bloody little moron.’ A wave of adrenaline and revulsion flowed through him, and he seized the rack to steady himself. The rows of bottles swirled as he shook his head to try to clear it. It didn’t work. He took three steps and vomited violently into the corner of the room.
When the reaction passed, he knelt down and put two fingers on the man’s neck, feeling for a pulse. None. The thug was dead, as surely as Vinnie would have been if his self-defence hadn’t worked.
He felt a strange mixture of horror, numbness, adrenaline, anger at the man for making him do such a thing, but the immediate fear had passed and his mind was clear. As he stood, he noticed the bottom half of the bottle lying on the ground and picked it up. The label was cream and there was grey engraving, a red word, the jagged crack right across the red seal –
‘Pétrus? Oh, Christ! I would have to pick the most expensive wine in the whole fucking world.’
He stared down at the corpse and shook his head. ‘Killed by a bottle of Pétrus. You dumb lucky bastard. I could have bought half a house with the price of that bottle!’
With one hand he pulled the other half from the body, and then he turned back to the ledger.
‘Now think, Vinnie. Come on man, think! Just the very best. Rack Two.’
He went to the rack and starting pulling bottles out to make a collection in the centre of the room.
David Kelt’s dining room was in darkness, but moonlight flooded in through the bay window. The chandelier over the table flicked on. Vinnie stood in the doorway, a tea towel wrapped around one hand. The blood spray was gone, the chairs were pulled up under the table, the drawers had been pushed back into the sideboard and the boxes and glass had gone from the spotless wooden floor.
He gave a low whistle. ‘That’s some cleaning job.’
He moved rapidly to the sideboard, put his wrapped hand down the back, found a spot and pushed. A carved gargoyle on the front corner popped out and swung open. Vinnie used his covered hand to pull out a black leather notebook. He flicked through the pages then pocketed it, shut the compartment, turned out the light and left.
The water streaming from the showerhead was hot, and steam enveloped Vinnie as he scrubbed his body with a long-handled brush. Was it a nightmare? It still felt like a nightmare. If he got out of the shower and called David, would the man answer? He knew what happened when you tangled with the Lanes; his mother had lectured him about corrupt businessmen, about gambling away their money – you ended up putting a bullet in your head. And he still remembered that warehouse, that moment when he would have had his kneecap shattered by a bullet if it hadn’t been for Marcus.
He was scrubbing too hard and his skin tingled with the pressure. Tonight felt dangerously like times past, times forgotten. He felt a need to wash it all away, to cleanse himself again.
Half an hour later Vinnie sat in his lounge and stared out the window at the moon, a glass of scotch in one hand and the notebook in the other. Merlot sprawled across the carpet in front of the empty fireplace and
chewed on a battered slipper.
The notebook was full of lists of names, including the Lanes, with amounts of money, Swiss and Cayman Island bank account details and dates beside them, some in red ink and some in black. He recognised some of the other names, too – politicians, entertainers, lawyers and sportsmen. It was what Marcus had come looking for, and it was why David had died. What was David doing? Laundering, blackmailing?
So what was his next course of action? Logic said talk to Anna, go to the police, explain what happened before the body was discovered and his fingerprints … of course his fingerprints were everywhere in the cellar, from when he had racked all the bottles. He wasn’t the slightest bit concerned about them arresting him for murder: if he hadn’t done what he did, the man would have killed him.
More importantly, did he identify Marcus? Did he owe his childhood friend anything? What was that intervention in the warehouse worth? He would be a cripple now if it hadn’t been for Marcus. If he described the killer as bald, short and fat, there was no one to contradict him, but then David’s real killer would never be caught. And if he did describe him accurately, did he tell them about their childhood? Would Norman Lane come after him? Was Norman still alive? His car boot was full of the best of David Kelt’s wine – literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of pounds worth. What did that make him? A thief or a man desperate to fund his escape?
So many questions battled to be heard inside a brain that flipped from icy calm to desperate panic and back again. He drained the scotch and let the notebook slip from his grasp. A long-suppressed Vinnie, almost like another man entirely, was rising from his past to take over and formulate a plan.
Vinnie and Anna’s bedroom was as cluttered as the rest of the house. Books and magazines filled a bookcase; more were piled on top of the wardrobe and stacked on bedside tables. A TV flickered in one corner, the drama muted.
Anna sat on the bed and held her husband’s hand. He was sitting up in bed and gazing steadily at her while she was staring blankly at the wall.