by Alex Howard
He looked again at the oil drums and the bags of cement. The objects themselves were insignificantly small in the huge, echoing room, but they were imbued with a compelling sinister presence. Their aura filled the vast, crepuscular space.
Dimitri ignored him and fiddled with his phone, as if killing time. Curtis stood there and patiently waited to be told what to do.
For some reason he thought of Chantal. The previous night she’d been very withdrawn and drinking really heavily to no discernible effect. It wasn’t like Chantal, he reflected, to go on the lash. She liked a drink but she rarely overdid it. He wondered if something had upset her.
He’d had sex with her while she’d stared over his shoulder at the ceiling, her body politely going through the motions, the palms of her hands mechanically running up and down his back, her mind obviously elsewhere. Occasionally she’d winced and bitten her lip as if she’d been in pain, even though he was a surprisingly gentle lover and fairly speedy.
As he rolled off her he could see a row of bruises on the skin of both shoulders. The marks were red. Curtis knew quite a bit about bruises. He had experienced more than a few in his life. These were fresh; soon they would turn blue. Bruises, like traffic lights, have a colour sequence. He guessed it was one of Chantal’s customers. He didn’t like her being on the game but they still needed the money, although now he was earning big time from the Russians she could maybe stop doing it soon. Already she’d cut down dramatically on the number of her clients.
‘Who did that?’ he said, rubbing a finger along the bruises. They looked like a massage gone wrong. Chantal sat upright and turned away from him, ostensibly to light a cigarette but so he wouldn’t see the fear that she felt must surely be visible on her face.
As she turned away, she saw again in her memory the brutal face of Dimitri and revisited the rank smell of his body masked with cheap aftershave. She could still hear his amused laugh as her body had flinched in pain beneath his fingers. He had enjoyed hurting her. She had been too frightened to scream; she had whimpered like a hurt animal.
‘Bliyad,’ he had said contemptuously when he had finished with her, thrusting her away and poking her with the tip of his foot. She guessed, correctly, it meant bitch.
‘It’s not important, babes, doesn’t matter,’ she had whispered to Curtis.
Now, back in the warehouse, Curtis looked at Dimitri. More specifically at his hands. Like everything else about the Russian, they were very big. Curtis’s memory compared the finger spread of the man in front of him to the size and spacing of the marks on Chantal’s shoulders.
He’d been at Arkady’s the day before; Dimitri hadn’t been there. He’d been relieved. His long-term plan was to make himself indispensable to Arkady so Dimitri would be supplanted. Maybe sent back to Russia. Hopefully retired. Retired in a permanent way, the way Arkady seemed to like to do things.
‘Where’s Dimitri?’ he’d asked. Arkady had been wearing enormous black slacks with an elasticated waist and matching satin shirt, the nipples atop his man boobs pushing through the fabric like bullets. The satin shirt was shiny and its fabric had crackled slightly when he’d moved. His sparse sandy hair had been carefully combed over his pink scalp.
He had smiled and said, ‘Visiting nice lady. Her lucky day, yah! She will say thank you.’
Curtis had smiled politely back.
‘All ladies like Dimitri.’ And Arkady had laughed. Curtis had laughed too, dutifully.
Now he looked hard at Dimitri. Curtis wasn’t smiling now. If Dimitri had hurt Chantal, he was going to hurt Dimitri. Easier said than done. He had often thought about it; now the time had come. Defeat wasn’t an option. Backing down wasn’t an option.
Dimitri had crossed the line by his actions. Curtis was frightened of Dimitri but that wasn’t going to hold him back. It was like a fight in prison that would decide where you stood. Either you drew a line in the sand and went down fighting or you revealed yourself as a pushover to be forever exploited and abused.
Curtis breathed in deeply. He calculated the odds, not for the first time. Dimitri, six feet three to his five feet six. Eighteen stone to his eleven. If he’d planned ahead he’d have armed himself, a knife probably. Curtis was a hard little bastard and most of his fights had been against bigger opponents than himself. He usually used a baseball bat or a softball bat; he was unsure of the difference, if any. He had a nasty feeling that if he hit Dimitri with a baseball bat it might have little effect, like hitting a tree trunk. A knife, though, that’d be better.
He had nothing, but there was the spade by the cement bags, on top of the ballast just a couple of steps away, and Curtis could move very quickly indeed. Swung so the blade hit the Russian sideways, it would do a lot of damage. Aim for his face, thought Curtis. Jealous rage flared up inside him. It felt good; he felt strong for the first time in months. Now Dimitri would suffer, not just for Chantal, but for all the put-downs, all the insults, all the glares he’d given Curtis. No one hurts my woman, he thought. No one except me. Then he thought suspiciously, What else did he do with her? He took a step nearer the spade. It would feel good in his hand.
‘Zhopa,’ said Dimitri conversationally, staring at him contemptuously. Asshole. Curtis didn’t know the word in Russian but he did know Dimitri and correctly guessed that it wasn’t a term of endearment.
His eyes met Dimitri’s,
‘Where were you yesterday?’ he demanded.
‘Your girl very nice,’ said Dimitri with a sneer. ‘Maybe too thin, though, but nice siski, nice tits.’
The last word was like the starting gun in a race that both competitors were awaiting, keyed up for action, feet ready in the starting blocks. As an enraged Curtis moved to grab the handle of the spade, Dimitri came forward far faster than Curtis could ever have dreamed possible.
Dimitri’s huge hands grabbed Curtis’s shoulders, left and right and simultaneously his foot scythed out and kicked away Curtis’s legs. He fell to his knees in front of the enormous Russian as if he was praying.
Dimitri spent on average two hours a day working out in the gym and one of his own personal favourite exercises was to use a grip trainer. In bodybuilding terms a ‘grip king’ can exert a three-hundred-pound grip, Dimitri could manage two fifty. To put that into context, an averagely strong man might do between seventy and eighty. Three times the norm, and now, with the adrenaline thundering through his body like a river in spate, fuelled with his own abnormal aggression, maybe four times normal strength – four times normal ability.
He had also learned, while doing two years in Solikamsk High Security Prison in Perm province in the Urals, how to really hurt people scientifically. He’d shared a cell with Yuri, an old-style crook classed by the authorities as an osobo opasnyi retsidivist, a particularly dangerous recidivist. Yuri had shown him where some nerve points were readily accessible to fingertip pressure. Yuri had learned the hard way; the KGB had shown him personally. He’d grinned gummily, wetly, at Dimitri while he showed him. The KGB had amused themselves with Yuri’s teeth as well, only the back molars were left. They had been harder to get to.
Now Dimitri’s iron fingers dug expertly deep with bone-crushing pressure into the nerve endings in Curtis’s shoulder and upper back, as Yuri had taught him, just as he had with Chantal but with ten times the force. The nociceptors, the pain-transmitting neurons in Curtis’s shoulders, exploded into sheets of agony and he screamed out loud, head thrown back, mouth wide open in his pain.
‘You like it, like your bliyad bitch did?’ hissed Dimitri. Curtis was howling with agony now as he kneeled like a supplicant in front of the grinning Russian. He couldn’t stop himself. If only Arkady could be here, thought Dimitri regretfully, he would love this. Arkady appreciated the artistry as much as the floor show of sadism and Dimitri enjoyed a discerning, approving audience.
More pressure. Dimitri switched to a question that was bugging him. Did Curtis know about the policeman; had he sold them out?
‘Wh
o was policeman, who is this Enver Demirel? Who is Demirel, otvechai! Answer me.’
Through his tears, through the pain, through the swearing and the pleas and the begging, Curtis made it clear he didn’t know who or what Enver was.
‘Answer me, zasranets, arsehole,’ hissed Dimitri. ‘Answer me! Davai vikladivai.’
It was obvious from Curtis’s contorted face that he had nothing more of use to contribute. If he had known anything of use he’d have said, to make the pain stop. Dimitri let him go and Curtis collapsed on his side on the cold, screeded, concrete floor of the warehouse.
Dimitri looked down at him pitilessly. Curtis lay on his side. He was crying now. His chest was heaving like a wounded animal’s. Dimitri took one step to the left, to the first of the three empty oil drums Curtis had brought here earlier that day.
He dug his nails under the lid and lifted. It came off easily. Curtis had wondered earlier who the drums were for. Well, now he knew the answer to at least one of the questions.
Dimitri looked down again at Curtis. Myasnikov’s words came back to him.
‘Terminate Curtis’s contract. . . close any loose ends.’
He bent over Curtis, who looked fearfully up at him. There was nothing he could do. He knew what was going to happen but he had no more fight left in him; he hoped it would be quick. Closing his eyes, compliant and submissive, he made no attempt to resist as Dimitri’s hands circled his neck and then tightened.
It didn’t take long.
Half an hour later, Dimitri patiently washed the grey cement residue off the metal head of the spade in the trough-like sink on one of the walls of the warehouse. He looked across the expanse of floor, the concrete shaded here and there by darker geometric patches where machinery belonging to the former occupants had been removed.
The art installation had been rearranged.
Before, there had been one barrel to the left, three to the right. Now there were two and two. Two full, two empty. Temporarily.
16
‘Phone him and tell him you have information on me,’ said Dimitri to Chantal. He was wearing one of his inevitable tracksuits and several heavy gold chains. She could see the onion domes of the cathedral he had tattooed on his chest clearly, looming over the scalloped top of his low-cut vest.
It was Wednesday morning and Chantal hadn’t seen Curtis since the morning of the day before. He hadn’t responded to any of her texts or voicemail.
It wasn’t unusual for Curtis to disappear for a couple of days, but Chantal had his drugs stashed in one of her kitchen cupboards in an airtight container so no moisture would get to the thirty grams of coke he had given her to look after. He had also left a couple of grand in twenties and tens in a ziploc bag, hidden in a packet of frozen veg in the tiny freezer compartment of her fridge. It was unthinkable that he would go so long without either the Charlie or the cash.
She was very worried, but couldn’t think of anything to do. There was nothing she could do.
Family. Her mother was a foul-mouthed drunk living in Woodstock; Chantal wasn’t going there unless she had to. She was worse than useless. Chantal had been taken into care when she was young and even she felt that had probably been the right decision.
Friends. She didn’t really have any, just Curtis and the phone numbers of a couple of ex-boyfriends, both violent, both untrustworthy. All she could do was text him and add increasingly desperate emojis. Now she was down to just sending emojis. The bright primary colours cheered her up a little.
Maybe he was with another woman. He’d have phoned with some pathetic excuse, a cold voice inside her head said.
Maybe he’d just got off his face with some friends, a stag do he hadn’t told her about. He doesn’t have any, he’s Billy No Mates, the voice said.
Now here was Dimitri. He stroked her hair proprietorially and she flinched. He took his tracksuit top off and she could see even more of the sinister tattoos that covered his body. I’ll tell Curtis, she imagined telling him. The inner voice laughed, coldly unimpressed. What’s he going to do against Dimitri? Him and whose army?
Perhaps, she wondered, if the policeman came round he would be able to deal with Dimitri; he’d certainly looked sizeable. But then her gaze took in the huge, muscled bulk of Dimitri, his horribly animal presence. The big policeman had looked kind and, although he had been bear-like in build, it was a cuddly kind of impression. She had found herself considering Enver Demirel in her professional capacity. Men like him were her favourite clients; he’d have been polite, gentle, no trouble at all. She had even quite fancied him. That comforting, muscular weight on top of her. Not like Dimitri.
His hand was still in her hair; now his fingers tightened and clenched and he pulled at it viciously. She gasped in pain.
‘Call him now, bliyad, get him over here.’
She nodded and took the business card with his number out of the cutlery drawer where she’d put it for safe keeping.
She typed the number into her mobile, heard Enver’s voice on the other end, a questioning tone when he answered as he didn’t recognize her number.
He sounded pleased to hear from her. Yes, he’d be round in about an hour and a half’s time. She hung up and looked at Dimitri.
‘He’ll be round in about an hour,’ she said.
He started taking off his shoes. ‘I heard hour and half. We have plenty of time.’
The other shoe followed. He was wearing white ankle socks. The right one had a hole in and she could see the nail of his big toe. It was quite long and grubby. Like the rest of him it looked strong, like a broad claw. It made her feel sick.
‘Curtis might be back soon,’ she said desperately.
Dimitri tugged off his sock and looked at her. ‘He won’t.’
The amused look in his eyes said it all. There was no hint of, I don’t care if he comes; no hint of, So what, or, Call him and tell him you’re busy. It was just callous good humour. She doubted if he would even care that she had noticed. It was then that she knew Curtis was dead.
Enver had lied about the time it would take to get to Chantal’s flat. He was in Oxford when his phone rang, sitting in a café eating doughnuts. They weren’t American-style donuts. They were jam, the real deal as far as Enver was concerned. Thick, sugar-encrusted, plumply seductive. He had meant to have just one but he told himself that, technically, he was on holiday and, as such, deserved a treat. He would walk them off later.
He had no idea how many calories were in a doughnut or indeed how long it would take on foot to negate their effects. The truth was, he didn’t care. He was in a nice café, drinking good espresso and eating these hard-to-find excellent doughnuts. Besides, he thought righteously, the café was independent, not part of a chain, so he was also benefitting the local economy. In fact, the more he spent, the better.
The proprietress eyed him in a friendly way from behind the counter. She liked a man who enjoyed his food. Enver was on his fourth doughnut, his eyes gleaming, his strong white teeth occasionally visible beneath his heavy black moustache, now dusted with caster sugar as he chewed. She noticed that his powerful fingers were free of a wedding band. The look in his eyes, unalloyed greed and good nature, reminded her of her Labrador when she fed it. Enver looked like the kind of man who would be as nice as her dog, and, she felt, he could do with a woman to advise him on clothes; that T-shirt did not go with that jacket.
He was surprised that Chantal had called him. She had looked so scared when he’d been in her tiny flat.
He stared at his phone and drummed his fingers gently on the table in front of him. He had a vague sense of disquiet but he shrugged it off. What could she possibly do to him? Equally Sam Curtis posed little or no threat. Enver’s increased body mass, allied to his powerfully muscled physique, while of no use in a boxing ring, was ideally suited to successful brawling. He would have flattened Curtis like a steamroller.
He toyed with the idea of phoning Huss but decided against it. He thought of his approaching eve
ning with Melinda Huss with excitement. He was going to invite her to stay the night, provided all went well, and he could see no reason why it shouldn’t.
He’d checked that the film, A Room with a View, was on and that it was what it purported to be, not some porno version or a remake. He’d had another look at the menu, even eaten a solitary, exploratory lunch and made friends with two waitresses and the manager. His family name, or rather the restaurants associated with the Demirels, was reasonably well known in this part of London, plus of course he knew quite a few names that he dropped to good effect – catering is a tight-knit community.
Enver was a formidably good planner. Entertainment was sorted; dinner was sorted; his flat was nearly there. He was halfway through Operation Springclean in his flat. It was always clean and tidy; now it gleamed. All he had left were the insides of the windows to clean and the skirting boards, in case Huss got down on hands and knees to run an exploratory finger along them.
He pushed the chair back and smiled politely at the woman behind the counter as he left. What a nice man, she thought as she cleared away after him and pocketed her tip.
Enver walked to a nearby taxi rank and gave Chantal’s address in Cowley to the driver. He’d had enough of negotiating the one-way streets of the town and the endless, problematic bicycle chaos the last time he had driven here with Huss.
As if he had conjured her up by thinking of her he felt his phone vibrate and there was a text message from her, asking about the coming evening. The mannered Oxford streets passed by outside the windows of the cab as he laboriously typed in the time of the train he’d expect her on at Paddington and where exactly at the station they should meet.
Enver was leaving nothing to chance. He thought of Huss’s attractive curved body; he thought of her blonde hair. He thought of her clever, competent hands and the look of studious concentration on her face as she adjusted some tricky component on the exposed gears of a car. He thought of the scent of her body, wholesome and attractive, like rising bread. He thought of her lovely breasts and underwear as revealed by the half-undone boilersuit. He thought of her even white teeth. Melinda Huss, he thought wonderingly, I think I’m in love with you.