by David Carter
‘They’re here,’ he whispered.
Arthur sat up in his seat as if ordered by a judge. No light came from the oncoming vehicle. They were running blind. The noise of the engine gradually increased. A moment later a Range Rover schmoozed into the car park, creeping dead slow, no lights showing, windows blacked out, like an alien craft.
‘They’re here,’ repeated Arthur.
‘Don’t forget, you take lefty.’
‘Gotcha,’ said Arthur.
The Range Rover circled the car park for a second time like a rutting stag. It looked as if it might leave the way it came, but it swung round again, backed up, and stopped broadside on, twenty yards away.
The passenger window slid down and in the sparse moonlight they saw the ugly features of Ma Wilkins, perched in the front passenger seat. One of her boys was beyond her at the wheel. He glared across his mother towards them. They could see his eyes, glinting like a wild animal’s.
‘Vimy Ridge?’ she shouted.
‘Yeah!’
‘Are you getting out?’
They couldn’t see into the back seat where they suspected the other boy lay. He could be armed, an automatic weapon trained on them, ready to unload at Ma’s signal.
‘Where’s the other lad?’ shouted Vimy.
‘At home!’
‘She’s lying,’ said Arthur. ‘Lying bitch!’
Vimy agreed. ‘Open the rear windows!’
The glass buzzed down until they could see right through the back seat windows. Still they imagined the missing son was lying low, below the level of the slipped glass, like a spitting snake in the undergrowth, squinting through the night sight of an automatic weapon.
‘Open the door!’
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ screamed Ma, as she jumped out, stamped her feet, and opened the back door. She wafted her hand in the vehicle like a magician demonstrating the box was empty, and performed a curious little bow.
‘See, I told ya. He’s at home!’
‘In the tail perhaps?’ suggested Arthur.
‘Maybe, but if he is, he won’t be getting out of there so fast. Come on.’
Vimy and Arthur slid out of the 4x4; leaving the doors wide open, better for a quick getaway. They moved towards Ma Wilkins, their hands clutching the Smith & Wesson’s, nestling in their pockets.
‘It’ll be easier,’ whispered Arthur. ‘Just the two of them.’
‘No,’ said Vimy. ‘It won’t. There’s no point. The other boy will know it’s us. He’ll be after us forever. He could even go to the police. It’s all three, or none at all. It can’t be tonight.’
‘You mean you’ve changed your mind?’ whispered Arthur through gritted teeth.
‘Thinking on the move, Arth. A trader weighs up risks before entering a contract. It can’t be tonight. Deal’s off.’
Arthur seemed real disappointed.
They closed to within five yards of Ma Wilkins with the brighter of her two sons at her side.
‘Where’s Ricky?’ asked Vimy.
‘Mind your own business!’ snapped Ronnie, his hand buried in his baggy blouson.
‘Where’s the gear?’ asked his mother. ‘The Columbian?’
‘There is no gear,’ said Vimy.
Short puzzled silence.
‘Then what the hell are we doing here at this time of night?’
‘I came here to kill you,’ said Vimy, the words spraying out with his vapouring breath. ‘I still might.’
Ronnie’s hand tensed in his jacket. ‘You’re talking bollocks.’
‘It’s called justice, for trying to kill me.’
Ma stared into Vimy’s face. She saw in the sparse moonlight that lit his eyes he knew she had organised the failed hit. There was a moment’s uneasy silence as they stood staring at one another like nervous gunfighters, Arthur looking strangely hard, as he glared unblinking into Ronnie’s eyes. In reality he was thinking in another place I could happily roger you, though he resisted speaking or giggling, either action could have proved fatal.
‘It was nothing personal,’ pleaded Ma Wilkins, her hands out of her coat, beseechingly, like a rabbi’s.
‘Nothing personal?’ shrieked Vimy.
‘I was offered a lot of dough. A million quid. It seemed too good to miss.’
‘By Merignac?’
She half smiled. ‘You’re well informed. My congrats.’
‘Did I not look after you? Did I not supply you with good gear? Did I not honour our agreement to the letter? Did I not help make your family wealthy beyond your wildest dreams?’
‘Yes, of course you did. As I said, it was nothing personal, just business.’
‘I’ll tell you what is business, Ma Wilkins, if anything should ever happen to me, or any of my managers, or my family, any strange little accidents, any unexplained disappearances, I have lodged a document with my solicitor. It’s a contract that will be released to the right people at the right time. A two million pound bounty on the head of you and your three vile children. Make no mistake, you would be hunted down. Understand?’
Ma Wilkins grimaced and nodded.
‘I know people,’ Vimy continued. ‘Relentless people who enjoy inflicting pain. They would not be denied, neither would it be quick. There’s a garbage incinerator in Birkenhead, a thousand degrees inside. Strapped to a stretcher, fed gently in, inch-by-inch, fully conscious. You’d be last in, Ma. Hanging around as a witness to the screaming. The boys first, then the girl. A sparky end. Not nice. Make myself clear?’
Ma nodded.
Ronnie glared back and said, ‘Don’t threaten us, shithead! Don’t worry about a thing, Ma. I can handle these goons!’
‘Call him off, Ma, if you want to see your family again.’
Ma bobbed her head.
‘And Jeb Lomax?’ asked Vimy. ‘What about the butt-hole known as Jeb Lomax?’
‘Forget about Lomax,’ she spat out. ‘I’ll pay him off. I wish I’d never met the prick!’
It was Vimy’s turn to nod.
Not for the first time they had reached an accommodation.
She stood still for a few seconds and turned away.
‘Come on,’ she snapped. ‘Get in the car!’
Arthur nodded the lad on his way, beckoning him towards the vehicle, pursing his lips as he did so. Ronnie edged away from the fight. He wasn’t used to backing down. He jumped in the car and slammed the door. Didn’t look at his mother as she climbed in the other side, oddly arthritically, thought Vimy. It was as if in those ten minutes she had grown old. The son started the motor, flicked on the lights, and jolted the car away.
Vimy gave them ten minutes before firing up the diesel-guzzling beast.
On the way back through Chester Arthur said, ‘Do you really know people, relentless people who would hunt them down?’
‘I do.’
‘People who enjoy inflicting pain?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to meet them,’ grinned Arthur.
In the darkness Vimy smiled but didn’t answer. They didn’t say much all the way home. He dropped Arthur at Gayton, declined the invitation of cold champagne, and pointed the car eastwards towards the Mersey tunnel and Liverpool beyond, heading for the Albert Dock apartments, and the warmth and comfort of Diane Shearston’s bed, and amazing brain, and body.
VIMY OPENED HIS EYES and breathed deeply. He stared up at the pastel green ceiling and tried to move his arms, but could not. He ached all over, a dull persistent ache that preyed on his mind. Where had the time gone? His throat was dry and his heart was breaking.
‘Nurse, I need a drink,’ he called.
Footsteps came quickly.
They always do when you pay top dollar.
Chapter Fifty-Six
MICHAEL RIDGE’S TRIAL for the murder of Nicoliades Emperikos began at the Crown Court in Canning Place, Liverpool, on a bright cold Tuesday morning, a rare opportunity to show off expensive overcoats and silk ties.
Midge exercised his right
to be tried in his home country. Rumours circulated money changed hands to bring the trial to the UK. Greece, in her cash-strapped plight preferred the money, so the wise-guys said. Midge’s legal team licked their lips and joined the battle full of optimism.
After much debate the Ridge family settled on Gabriel Grahame as the best man to defend their precious Midge. Gabriel stood barely five feet four inches in his socks, looked eighteen, though he was twenty-eight, still a novice in legal speak. In poor light he could be mistaken for a schoolboy, but his appearance counted for nothing. It was his record that attracted attention. He’d successfully defended the Wallasey Slasher; a knife murderer named Clive Lambrill, who everyone assumed was guilty. Gabriel proved otherwise with a flourish, and was successfully defending far more often than not.
He’d even slipped Willie Stevens off the hook. Willie ran a string of high-class brothels across the north of England, and everyone knew he was as guilty as sin, and assumed he would be convicted. Somehow Gabriel Grahame, the brilliant GG to his acquitted clients and admirers, the wunderkind of the north-west legal circuit, had gained another acquittal with the aid; it was widely alleged, of a threatened jury.
Midge and his mother interviewed five potential barristers before settling on Gabriel. Fact was, Laura wasn’t so sure. She didn’t like the boy, for that was how she saw him, too juvenile for her taste.
‘You need someone with authority,’ she insisted, ‘someone with a shock of grey hair and a wise smile,’ but Midge was adamant. He was sure they’d picked the right man for he’d bought into the myth of the wunderkind.
‘It’s not his size that matters, Mother,’ he’d say, ‘it’s his brain.’
Gabriel’s brain was widely rumoured to be larger than average, as it wobbled away inside his angular skull.
THE LIVERPOOL CROWN Court gained a reputation for acquitting everything that moved. It was put down to the local rebellious people, and carefully selected juries.
Things had deteriorated to such an extent, letters were being written. The local newspaper vehemently supported the police and the legal establishment from being denied obvious convictions. Villains were too often walking free. The rule of law in Liverpool was becoming a laughing-stock and it could not continue in the same vein. Everyone knew it, and there was a groundswell of opinion urging conviction rates be increased. The best way to do that was by moving trials to more conservative towns, as far away as possible.
That idea worried Gabriel Grahame, and it worried the Ridge family too, and they were right to be concerned, for they were in danger of being swept up in a backlash.
The week before the trial began, Vimy was released from hospital on strict condition he did not attend court, and mercifully for the Ridge clan, the judge ruled the case would be decided in Liverpool. On the first day of proceedings Vimy sat at home accompanied by an expensive private nurse, a plain girl who rarely spoke, but patted him a great deal and mumbled, ‘Well done, you’re doing great,’ and that seemed to exhaust her conversation.
He sat motionless before the television anxiously awaiting news, as she hovered in the background, uncertain that he should be tuned in at all. He looked ill, his voice was a mess, and his movement was seriously restricted.
On the second day, a few minutes before the judge arrived, a man in a dark green coat and matching wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his face, entered the public gallery. The nurse couldn’t locate her charge and was beginning to panic. The man in the hat claimed the final seat, and no one paid much attention, except Midge. Vimy winked at his son. Midge smiled back, and the family picked up the signals. After day two there was no stopping him, and he attended with the family every day.
‘If you have to come,’ Laura scolded, ‘you might as well come with us and be done with it!’
THE PROSECUTING BARRISTER’S name was Theo Fulford and he couldn’t have been more different to Gabriel Grahame if you had picked two men off the street you thought were least alike. He came out of an ancient family firm from Somerset, a dynasty who’d been involved with the law for centuries.
His great, great, great, grandfather was reputed to have been a hanging judge, a rumour Theo Fulford did nothing to dispel. He was sixty-four, medium build, with steel grey hair, parted just off centre, swept sternly back over the crown of his head, and onwards, flooding down over the collar of his handmade white shirt. His eyes were grey, his lips thin, his voice clipped, and his skin bright pink, as if he had sat up the entire night scrubbing himself. Midge thought he resembled a boiled lobster about to wet itself.
Laura liked the look of him. He was, in her eyes, how a barrister should appear. He was seen as solidly reliable, and as such, was expected to land a result. He was in Liverpool with the sole intent of sending Michael Ridge down, and like Gabriel, was ultra confident of success.
The wunderkind had jousted with Theo Fulford across the benches just the once and had emerged triumphant. In the Ridge camp that was seen as another good omen.
‘We’ll win,’ said Laura confidently. ‘The boy’s innocent.’
If only things were that simple, thought a worried Vimy.
The prosecution case was largely circumstantial until their last witness was called. Theo Fulford rose slowly to his feet, scratched his thin nose, and half smiling at the Judge, announced in a clear voice that resonated through the court, ‘As my final witness I would like to call Sergeant Christos Sharistes of the Hellenic Police Service.’
‘What!’ shouted Gabriel, leaping from his seat like a sprinter.
There was a hubbub in the courtroom as neighbours in the public gallery turned to one another.
Well that’s a surprise!
Who’s this guy?
The defence weren’t expecting that!
Hmm, that’s put the cat among the pigeons.
Now we’ll see what the stripling’s made of!
THE JUDGE’S NAME WAS Westray Walcott QC, on his last legal legs at seventy, and though his body was frail, his mind was sharp as an unsheathed syringe. In the hundreds of cases he presided over, he had seen and heard practically everything there was to witness, and remembered almost every detail.
‘My goodness,’ he said, before summoning Counsel to the bench.
‘Who is this witness, Mr Fulford? Why have I not been informed of this man? This is most irregular.’
Gabriel wouldn’t wait for his opponent to answer.
‘We have not been told of this witness, Judge. He should not be allowed to testify. The prosecution have neglected their responsibilities by not advising us of their intention to call this man.’
‘I will decide who will, and who will not testify in my court, Mr Grahame. As for you, Mr Fulford, what have you to say for yourself?’
‘I apologise, your honour, but this man arrived in the country barely an hour ago. We had no prior knowledge he would be allowed to leave his post to attend court. I apologise again for not advising you, your honour, but it was a matter beyond my control.’
‘I am not convinced it was a matter beyond your control, Mr Fulford.’
Theo looked up pleadingly.
Gabriel couldn’t hide the beginnings of a smile.
It didn’t last long.
‘I am going to allow the witness to be heard, at least initially. But I am most unhappy about it, and may at any time call a halt to his testimony if circumstances dictate.’
‘Thank you, your honour,’ said Fulford, as he bowed and backed away.
‘But your honour...’ pleaded Gabriel.
‘I have made my decision, Mr Grahame. Please proceed, Mr Fulford.’
The Clerk of the Court took the nodded signal and leapt into action, handing Christos a bible.
‘Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?’
‘I do-ooo,’ Christos’s fruity voice echoed across the room.
Someone high up at the back tittered.
‘Are you Sergeant Christos Sharistes of the Hellenic Police Ser
vice?’
‘I certainly am.’
‘Are you the senior police officer on the island of Carsos in the Greek islands known as the Cyclades?’
Christos thought about that for a moment. He didn’t believe there was anything to be gained by revealing that he was the only policeman on the island, and was determined to enjoy his moment in the limelight of an English court.
‘I am indeed sir, yes. The senior policeman.’
‘Did you witness an English couple arrive on Carsos the day before Nicoliades Emperikos was murdered?’
‘I did.’
‘Have you ever seen them again?’
‘I have not. They left the island in something of a hurry the following day.’
‘Did you know their names?’
‘I believed their names to be Brian and Brenda Nichols. I spoke to them on the quayside, they paid me their harbour dues.’
‘You stood close to them?’
‘I did. Closer than I am to you now.’
‘Do you see the man you knew as Brian Nichols in this court today?’
Christos glared at Midge.
His was a face he would never forget.
Christos nodded and pointed.
‘It is him. The man in the dock.’
‘You are certain?’
‘Hundred percent.’
‘Do you see the woman who accompanied him to Carsos in this court?’
The Greek theatrically gazed about the courtroom. There were a lot of people there, and many of them were women, young and good-looking. It took quite a while. He wondered if it was a trick question. He took his time and examined every face in turn, but he could not see anyone who resembled the girl in the cute little skirt.
‘I do not.’
Theo nodded, as if to reassure his witness he had produced the right answer.
Christos smiled at Theo and the Judge in turn.
‘Why did you consider that Brian Nichols was involved in Mr Emperikos’s death?’
‘Because the girl, Brenda Nichols, made eyes at Nicoliades. I have eight witnesses who have sworn to this. She made an arrangement to meet him the following day. That is on the record. Nicoliades was seen leaving the bar with the girl. I believe she lured him back to his house, to his death. As far as we could ascertain they were the last people to see Nicoliades alive.’