The Dead

by Howard Linskey

  ‘So, you’re a terrorist, plain and simple?’

  He slammed his hand on the table, hard.

  ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘I am one side in a war and I must win that war to survive. I am not a terrorist, I am a freedom fighter. I am the agent runner and the men I am recruiting and training are all patriots. My Joes are willing to return to Russia to risk their lives fighting injustice and corruption. It is the only way, we have tried everything else.’

  ‘But it’s ridiculous,’ I said, ‘what can one man with a bomb achieve? You can’t bring down a government like that.’

  ‘With one man, no, you cannot,’ he agreed, ‘but with a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand? When the government cannot prevent wave after wave of sabotage and civilian unrest coordinated by my people then it loses all of its authority.’

  ‘You are going to try to send ten thousand trained men into Russia along my supply line, without anyone noticing? It’s madness.’

  ‘Not at first, of course,’ he seemed calmer now, more reasonable, ‘your route will be for the first men, the vanguard of a new revolution. What they will achieve can change history, believe me, I know.’

  ‘When the first man is ready, I will summon you to me; this could be anywhere in the world but not Britain, never here. I will not jeopardise my good relationship with your government. When you meet the first Joe, you will receive a two million dollar fee and leave with him for Amsterdam. Then you will send him down the line.’

  ‘You need to find another route,’ I said firmly, ‘I can’t help you.’

  ‘We have examined many possibilities while devising this strategy,’ he informed me, ‘yours was the best by far. We will use your route and there is nothing further to discuss. You have some time to think it through, so you can evaluate what it means to say no to a man like me. There will be no place for you to go where I cannot find you.’

  ‘You don’t fuck about, do you?’

  ‘Are you familiar with the concept of Krysha?’ I shook my head. ‘In English the word means roof. In Russia it means protection. The person who provides Krysha enables a man to do business because of their powerful connections, but they expect something in return when they ask for it. You are under my Krysha. If you have a problem with your business, I can remove it. Think about that.’

  ‘And if I think it through and still refuse?’ I challenged.

  There is an old saying in Georgia, Mr Blake. ‘If you forgive the fox for stealing your chickens, he will take your sheep,’ he told me, ‘so I do not forgive. I never forgive.’

  29

  ‘What do you think ?’ asked Palmer, when we were driving out of the main gate.

  ‘I think he’s crazy, out of his fucking mind.’ I was angry now. ‘He’s a Bond villain, sitting in a hollowed-out volcano, stroking a white cat and plotting to blow up the world. He’s barking,’ I forced myself to calm down, ‘but he doesn’t know it and there’s nobody around him who’s brave enough to explain to him that he’s gone crazy. He reckons he’s at war with a country and, worse than that, he thinks he can actually win.’

  ‘He’s got billions,’ said Palmer, ‘with that kind of money he can cause a whole heap of trouble.’

  ‘Maybe, but that’s all he’ll ever be able to do. Napoleon and his armies couldn’t bring down Russia. Neither could Hitler and his Panzer divisions. Vasnetsov’s got no chance and sooner or later they will get him.’

  ‘They’ve been trying to get him for years and not managed it,’ Palmer reminded me.

  He was right about that, which left me in an impossible position; trapped between the entire Russian state and a madman.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

  Not for the first time lately, I found myself stuck for an answer, ‘call Amrein,’ I said, ‘tell him to get this crazy Russian off my back.’

  When I walked into Susan Fitch’s office she was already reading the file she’d asked an intern to prepare for her so she could be up to speed for our meeting. It contained the ‘high spots’ of Golden Boots’ career so far and, as I sat down opposite her, she raised her eyebrows.

  ‘1999,’ she said to me, instead of a greeting, ‘and he has his first brush with the law, while still a teenager in London, getting into a fight in a nightclub and, allegedly, smashing a glass into a man’s face.’ She read further, ‘the charges are dropped, when the man who was glassed changes his story and fails to be completely sure who actually did the glassing,’ and she looked up at me. ‘He was paid off, wasn’t he?’

  ‘By the famous old London club Golden Boots played for at the time, so I heard. They didn’t want their expensive asset diminished by a spell in prison.’ She went back to reading the file, ‘2001 and he’s on the move in the first of a series of transfers.’

  ‘All of them for multi millions.’

  ‘And in the same year a girl slaps him in the face in another nightclub, reason unknown, and he responds by punching her in the face, breaking her nose. Once again the case does not reach court, witnesses are unclear and the girl withdraws her complaint.’

  ‘That cost him forty-five grand,’ I said, ‘just to pay off the girl.’

  ‘Forty-five grand?’ she frowned, ‘that’s a lot for a nose.’

  ‘It was a week’s wages for him, at the time. That was before he really made it big. He was on probation back then and she was an aspiring model.’

  ‘Obviously,’ said Susan Fitch, ‘do footballers ever mix with anyone who isn’t?’

  She fell silent for a time as she read further, then concluded with a shake of her head, ‘so there’s nothing to worry about here,’ she said dryly, ‘apart from the alleged racist assault on an Asian cab driver; the numerous domestic violence allegations, including two police cautions for assaults on separate girlfriends, both of whom refused to press charges: half a dozen acts of violence on and off the pitch: convictions for assault and affray with their suspended prison sentences: rehab for drink, rehab for drugs, rehab for sexual addiction: the online porn video of him having full sexual intercourse with an unidentified but widely deemed to be underage girl…’ She shook her head and sounded gloriously old-fashioned when she said, ‘He’s an absolute bloody charmer, isn’t he?’

  ‘I can’t deny that,’ I admitted. ‘He’s vermin, in fact, but he’s not the only one, is he? Not all footballers are rotten to the core,’ I reminded her, ‘just most of them, including at least half of the current England team, if even one-tenth of their reported antics are to be believed. However I’m pretty sure Golden Boots didn’t kill this girl,’ Susan Fitch was watching me intently. I was choosing my words carefully, ‘and we have done a little business together.’

  ‘Business of a sensitive nature that he might feel compelled to reveal should he feel unduly threatened by the court proceedings?’

  ‘Indeed.’ I shrugged, ‘I’m keeping my distance. I just said we’d help him find a lawyer, that’s all, so he doesn’t feel any ill-will towards us.’

  There was a long pause before she concluded, ‘Then we must find him a very good barrister. It’s a pity Julian Aimes is busy right now.’

  The next morning Fallon arrived on an early train from Edinburgh. We met him at the station and, over a fry-up in the platform cafe, he gave us the latest status on his war with the Serbs. ‘It’s like a goalless fucking draw,’ Fallon told us, ‘they beat up a couple of our lads, we kick the shit out of one of theirs, but we’re not getting anywhere.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because we can’t get near the main men,’ he explained, ‘not without blowing up their headquarters and starting the kind of war you don’t want.’

  ‘My profile is high enough as it is right now without you planting a bomb in a house full of Serbs who are protected by police top brass.’

  ‘So what do we do then?’

  ‘We make a deal,’ and I had to hold up a hand to stop him from going off on one. ‘Hear me out. I’m not talking about splitting the turf or the take. I’m sa
ying we give them a one-off payment to get them to leave. They can go back to Belgrade with their money and let us get on with it.’

  ‘You’re fucking joking me!’ I had never seen Fallon so furious. A couple of people glanced over at us, but soon looked away again.

  ‘I’ll cover it with my cut, not yours.’

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ he was incredulous. ‘They come over here and take the pish and you are going to just pay them off? Well you can talk to them then, because I fucking won’t!’

  ‘Let me talk to them,’ said Palmer.

  Palmer was fearless. I’ve seen him walk right up to buildings full of psychopathic cut-throats without any outward sign of nervousness. I don’t know how he does that. He is obviously wired very differently from me. I do feel fear and would never put myself in jeopardy the way he does.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, glad of his intervention.

  I’d had a long day shovelling a seemingly endless amount of shite. As well as the meeting with Fallon and the briefing with Susan Fitch, some issues came up involving Henry Baxter’s impending trial and some short-notice transferring of money from place to place was also required so I could pay my suppliers without a major drama. It was late, I was tired and I had a series of meetings in York the next day. All I wanted was to go to bed.

  I returned home to find the kitchen in darkness, but Sarah was sitting there, all alone at the table, with only the light from the moon outside to illuminate her. In the half-light I could make out the half full bottle of wine in front of her and the half empty glass standing next to it.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked her.

  ‘You know,’ she was slurring, ‘you know what’s the matter. I want you to talk to me.’

  ‘About what?’ We both knew I was stalling.

  ‘About dad. I want you to talk to me about dad. I want to know what happened to him.’ Sarah was speaking slowly and deliberately, as if she was worried she might mess up her sentences. It was only then I realised there was a second empty wine bottle on the kitchen counter.

  ‘And I don’t want to talk about it. Not now,’ I told her, ‘I was there, remember.’

  ‘Of course I remember!’

  ‘Then you should know why I don’t want to relive it. Do I ask you what happened with that Russian guy?’

  ‘You did ask,’ she reminded me, ‘and I told you. He tried to rape me and I killed him.’

  When I’d returned to collect Sarah from her old man’s house after I’d killed Bobby, I’d gone into her bedroom to find her sitting on the floor in shock. She was staring at the dead body of a Russian goon who she’d stabbed in the neck with her father’s lock knife.

  ‘He was my dad. I have a right to know.’

  ‘And I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.’

  I turned to walk away and she called out, ‘That’s what he said you would say.’

  I stopped and turned back to face her then, watching as she reached for the wine bottle and topped her glass right up to the brim.

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  At first she ignored me. Instead she reached for the wine and took a huge gulp, then turned to face me with the bravery of a drunk, ‘The policeman.’

  ‘What policeman?’ I demanded.

  ‘The one who came to see me,’ she said, ‘the detective.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘A policeman came to talk to you and you didn’t tell me? Why the fuck did you not tell me?’

  ‘You were away,’ she said, which we both knew was a bullshit reason, ‘and he didn’t come to talk about you. He came to talk to me about my dad.’

  ‘Even so, Sarah, you should have told me. Who was he and what did he want?’

  ‘His name was Carlton,’ she told me, ‘DI Carlton. And he wanted to warn me.’

  ‘Warn you? About what?’

  ‘About you,’ she told me, then she repeated it slowly and deliberately, ‘he wanted… to warn me… about you. He reckoned you had something to do with dad’s disappearance.’

  ‘That’s bollocks and you know it.’

  ‘I do know it,’ then she corrected herself, ‘I did know it but since you came back from your last trip you haven’t been able to look me in the eye and you won’t tell me what happened. That has got me thinking; it has got me worrying.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Something he said before he left.’

  ‘Which was?’

  Sarah deliberately avoided my eye when she uttered the words that changed everything between us.

  ‘Ask yourself this question, Miss Mahoney, who stood to gain the most from your father’s death? Who stood to gain?’

  It took what seemed like an age for me to find the words to reply. I kept looking at her, trying to work out if she was completely off her face and rambling or if she actually believed I’d killed her father just so I could take over his firm.

  ‘And what did you say to that?’ I hissed the words at her.

  ‘I told him to fuck off,’ she said, finally looking me in the eye, ‘and he did, but he made it clear he was after you,’ she took another swig of wine, ‘and then a funny thing happened.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I was trying to contain my anger with the woman I loved, ‘What funny thing? Go on Sarah, you’ve got something to say to me, so finish it.’

  ‘A few days after, I picked up the newspaper and he was in it,’ she said, ‘because someone had murdered his daughter.’ Then she took another sip of wine before remarking, ‘I wonder who stood to gain from that.’

  I drove back into the city and took a room at our hotel but went straight to the bar and got the barman to pour me a large one. He kept them coming. All I could think about was Sarah and what she had said to me. Where the hell could we possibly go from there?

  This wasn’t the first time I’d walked out on her, but I knew that it might be the last. And it wasn’t just Sarah who was occupying my thoughts. I couldn’t bear the idea of losing my little Emma. Every time the notion went through my mind I drank a little more.

  It was midday by the time I got my act together, called Peter Kinane and left the hotel. He picked me up and we headed south. I was glad when he didn’t comment on my appearance. I knew I must have looked like shit. I could really have done without this trip to York but the meeting with the architect had already been postponed once.

  At least it gave me an excuse not to go home. I didn’t want to face Sarah in this state. I didn’t want to think about Sarah at all in fact.

  30

  That afternoon Palmer parked a car two streets from the Serbs’ makeshift headquarters in Edinburgh. They’d set themselves up in a crumbling old house in Pilton; not the best part of the city, but it was a good way to avoid casual police scrutiny. Palmer walked slowly up the road, hands deep in his pockets, not looking directly at the building he was checking out. Instead he used his peripheral vision to take in the number and make of cars parked in the street and whether any men stood back from the Serbian brothers’ house, watching.

  The main security was provided by two burly bodyguards; one on the gate and one on the front door. Palmer had to assume they were both armed. He was patted down three times before they let him near the brothers; both men at the front of the house searching him in turn, in case one of them missed anything. Next he was ushered up a staircase and a new man was waiting for him at the top. This guy was huge and Palmer guessed he was one of the brothers’ main enforcers. He wore a black leather jacket and, when he raised his hands to indicate to Palmer he should do the same, for the inevitable pat-down, his gun was clearly visible in a shoulder holster that hung low and loose inside his jacket.

  The room had a reinforced steel-plated door, which would have taken a long time to break down, giving anyone behind it ample time to ready themselves or call for help. When the man had finished searching Palmer he called through the door in Serbian. He must have indicated his satisfaction because a moment later there was a buzz from inside the locked door and
it came free automatically, opening slightly. The big man ushered Palmer through it.

  Palmer placed his hand on the door, opened it completely and stepped into the large room that served as the brothers’ headquarters. There were three men waiting for him and, from the resemblance, Palmer took them to be the Stevic brothers. No one else had been admitted to the inner sanctum so it appeared they kept the big decisions within the family. The brothers even dressed alike, in jeans and T-shirts and were sporting the same heavy gold chains around their necks like a badge of office.

  Palmer noticed a machine gun propped up against a wall, within easy reach, and two shotguns. Two of the brothers had handguns in shoulder holsters they didn’t even bother to cover with jackets. These guys were beyond blatant, but they were protected, so maybe they thought they could leave shotguns and machine guns lying around without worrying about a raid.

  ‘Skorpion vz61,’ was the first thing Palmer said to them.

  ‘What?’ asked the brother who looked like the oldest. Palmer took this to be Dusan.

  ‘Haven’t seen too many Skorpions,’ added Palmer indicating the machine gun, ‘not lately. Czech-made but there’s not been a new one in thirty years. Where’d you get it?’

  ‘Took it from the dead hand of a Muslim bastard in Kosovo,’ said Dusan proudly, ‘he didn’t need it any more. It still works,’ he assured Palmer.

  ‘I’ll bet it does, they were built to last. Eight hundred and fifty rounds a minute.’

  The brother who appeared to be the youngest reacted angrily, ‘You are not here to talk about guns.’

  ‘No,’ confirmed Palmer, ‘I’m here to talk about you leaving Edinburgh,’ he said it quietly, ‘and the terms we will agree with you for your return to Belgrade.’