‘You know something?’
‘I know plenty.’
‘Heh, you mess with me, Tooth . . . My difficulty, I think more of the past than the future. I am comfortable in the past, but the future confuses me.’
‘I tell you, Crab. You talk shit.’
‘My past is good. I am a success, respected. I have a big house, men duck their heads to me. I have around me what could be called ‘‘the best police force that money can buy’’, you like that. That’s good, yes? As you have, Tooth . . . To get there, some men lost their lives, others have a worse limp than me . . . But, what happens next is a concern to me. What’s round the corner.’
They were on the patio. The wind had shifted, coming now more from the south, and the rugs over their knees were already layered with the fine sand that blew in from the Sahara deserts. Tooth’s man had brought coffee for them, and biscuits.
‘It is big shit that you talk, Crab – did you sleep poorly?’
‘A bad sleep, and a bad dream.’
‘Do I have to hear why? You playing at a penitent in a confessional?’
‘No. The dream is personal. I . . .’
There was shipping on the horizon, heavy enough to ride the storm, and other craft that went in and out of the docks, but precious few fishing boats. He understood the fear that the French gangster, his friend, created. Could see why the Arab had bloody near drowned rather than face him and cough up a story of failure. A hard man, a hard face, and the tinted glasses masked nothing. Himself, he had, mildly put, lost the appetite for it since the dream.
‘You have cold feet, Crab. My old friend of many years, a gang boss thought to be fearless, ruthless, and now old and frightened. It is hard to understand you – what was the dream?’
‘Personal, mine alone.’
‘What was the fucking dream, Crab?’
‘I shouldn’t have spoken, forget it.’
‘I dream sometimes, my old friend, of the first time I killed a man and the first time I had a girl. I tell you, they are not bad dreams. Killed many and screwed many, and none is a nightmare. Spit it, Crab.’
‘About what happens . . .’
‘A riddle,’ he mimicked. ‘You say ‘‘what happens’’. It’s monkey talk. It means?’
‘My problem. I started it. Knew what I was doing, and called you, and you did the graft, put it in place.’
‘Good to hear from a valued friend. Of course I helped. You asked and I answered. Tell me – ‘‘what happens’’ – in plain talk.’
‘They don’t have weapons like that, not where it’s going. Not where a flood of them are ending up. It is mayhem, it’s death, pain. An automatic rifle takes killing to a different level. Way up. It is something bad, what the dream said.’
Almost a sneer, like their mutual love affair was failing. ‘You should take a pill, Crab, and then sleep without a dream.’
‘It was just a dream – sorry, Tooth, rude of me – only a dream. First time I killed a guy and first girl I shagged . . . The guy was a dealer, didn’t want to clear a debt. He screamed, God, like – I’m told – pigs in an abattoir, a hell of a noise, so much blood. He went into concrete, foundations of new houses. The girl was good, both of us fourteen. I reckon she liked my pants, City – Manchester City pants – better than what was inside them, she said, cheeky little bitch. I’ve not had many that were better, and she was the first.’
‘You all right now? Don’t like a friend to be unsure, an old friend.’
‘I’m good now, thanks.’
‘Don’t want an old friend going weak.’ Not spoken like a threat, gently said.
‘Have to keep telling myself ‘‘I just do business’’, keep saying it. Can we talk about something else, Tooth?’
‘Like the second killing or the third, like the second girl or the fourth, fifth, sixth . . .?’
Two hands met, veined and calloused, the stains of sun damage blotching the skin, but each strong, fearsome. And they were laughing. Tooth told him when they would leave to do the bit of ‘business’. Crab wanted the exchange done, the transfer completed, himself out of this fucking place. Should never have come, knew it, and kept on laughing because that was expected of him. Two old friends, raddled with age, each clutching the other’s hand, and laughing because that might kill his dream. And home by that evening and back where he was safe.
August 2017
The mother of Nico Efthyvoulu had given him the money to buy it. She had gone into her widow’s bedroom after he had told her of his chance to purchase a small stake in a new bar that would open near the train station. Tourists visiting Athens, going to the ruins, walking among the Acropolis stones, would never be close, but he had told his mother that there would be good local trade. She had gone to her tin, kept under the bed, long emptied of sweet-tasting biscuits, and returned to him, in the kitchen, with the bank notes. He had smiled, told her it would be a fine investment, promised the money would be returned when profit showed. It was a month short of a year since Nico had been released from the young offenders’ institution. His mother was anxious to the point of desperation, that the boy, 21 years old and with gelled hair and smart clothing from the charity stall at the end of their street, should have a legitimate focus in his life.
Hot, almost to stifling point, and near to midday, and the sun scorching the streets, he wore a long coat that was suitable for when the snow came. He watched the bank and steeled himself. He needed the length of the coat to conceal the weapon he had purchased from a man in the quarter of the city behind the harbour . . . and the bastard had tried to screw him. The agreement was for 425 American dollars, cash. He had already lost out on the exchange rate, and then the bastard had insisted that the cost of the rifle would now be $500. What had been promised, what they had shaken hands on – $425 in a wad of old and untraceable notes – was left on the table. Gone from the table was the AK-47 and the loaded magazines that went with the sale . . . Much of that money would be needed for the new dentures required by the bastard, and perhaps some would go to the costs of rewiring his broken chin. Nico had never been gentle, not as a child and not now as an adult, when crossed.
The bank was quiet and had few customers at that time of day. It was a good neighbourhood, and most of the residents would have survived, not with anything to spare, the collapse of the economy. They would have done their banking when the place opened, when it was cool, and they took out their toy dogs. He sweated because of the thickness of the coat.
All that Nico Efthyvoulu had been able to buy was an old weapon. He had been assured, before rearranging the bastard’s face that it might have been manufactured years before, proven by the serial number – many numbers but finishing with 16751 – but its reliability was guaranteed. He had gone into the high wilderness north of the E75 ring road, on a foul day when few walkers would have ventured out, had found a discarded can, had fired two shots it. The first had missed but the stone face behind it had shattered. The second had pitched the can over. A good hit, and two were enough to satisfy him. The mess of scratches and gouges on the wood stock were confusing because he did not know the cause of them, or the reason they were there. Until this morning he had kept the weapon in a bedroom cupboard, at the back, the door locked.
He straightened. Some kids, ten years or so younger than himself, were playing football in the centre of the square. He passed them. At the entrance to the bank, he paused, then cranked the lever that controlled the shot selection, went to ‘single’, took a deep breath and felt the weakness in his knees and the shake in his hands, and hoped his voice could muster authority. He pulled up the knotted dark handkerchief around his neck until it covered the lower half of his face. The doors swung open in front of him.
The kids abandoned the football and watched, waited, eyes popping, mouths gaping.
Inside, in the cool, there was only one other customer, in earnest discussion with a cashier on the far side of a high screen, older with thin grey hair, and a suit but no tie. A g
irl was counting money at an open till beside her colleague. He tried to shout, sound commanding, and the counter girl looked at him, seemed bewildered, like he was part of a game show on the TV, Saturday night. But, she hit the alarm button, might have been below her counter, might have been a button on the floor. It shocked him, and his reaction was to fire at her. About as dumb as he could get, and there was as yet no cash offered him, stacked notes on the counter and bound in wads with elastic bands. The bell screamed in his ears. He had not hit her because the glass deflected the bullet up over her shoulder and into the wall behind. It should, perhaps, have been newly made glass that was proof against even a high velocity round, but the cut-backs around all sectors of Greece’s wrecked economy dictated the glass was sub-standard, there for show and image. He yelled at her again, but had picked out a feisty one. Behind the glass with the spider’s web of lines and distortions, she bawled back at him. He fired again, again, each time releasing the trigger and then squeezing another time on it. He had not looked sideways until he made out the other customer’s yell for him to chuck it down. Had he heard that . . .?
And turned, and looked into the face. The lower part of the face was almost hidden by the service pistol the man held, arms extended, eyes above the V and the needle sights. It registered. The man yelled his identification, a police officer. Both fired. The pistol was aimed and the rifle was at the hip and loosely pointed in the direction of the idiot, the fool who had had no call to intervene. Nico Efthyvoulu could have wept that it was his luck, his crass fortune, to try to rob a small-time bank, and find himself standing beside a cop. The stock, scarred and marked and ugly, cannoned back and into his hip and spun him, and the fierce, searing pain hit him in the back. He heard the girl behind the counter scream, shrill and hysterical, and heard the impact as the pistol clattered from a loose hand and hit the floor. The man who’d held it sagged at the knees and the first of his blood was falling on the pistol. Fucked up, all fucked up, and the pain ran in rivers down his back.
He turned, staggered, towards the door. As if for a valued customer, the door automatically opened and the warmth of the street buffeted his face. He lurched through, doubted he would get any further. It had killed him, the rifle had destroyed him, and he had lied to his mother to pay for it. He lurched to the bottom step and the kids were in a line on the far side of the street. The pain had lessened in his back and now there was numbness, and weakness. He would not get down the street, would not reach his home in the little wretched Citroen, all he could afford . . . the rifle slipped from his hand. Nothing left for him . . . He saw the kids. They came across the street. In the distance was a siren, faint but coming clearer. He thought the kids came to help him. Wrong again.
The boldest of them scooped up the rifle. They ran. They whooped in excitement, then scampered as if for their lives. They went round the corner, and his eyes misted. If he had had the strength, before the weapon had fallen from his grip on the steps, he would have taken it by the barrel, two hands beyond the curved magazine, and swung it high above his head and smashed it down on the imitation marble steps at the bank’s entrance. Would have battered it until the fucking thing broke . . . but Nico Efthyvoulu did not have the strength, saw little, and heard only vaguely, and there was blood in his mouth.
Hamid had lectured his brother. Where to be and when.
He had used his girl’s hair-drier to get some of the moisture off the packet. A lousy night was behind him, little sleep, nightmares of drowning, trying to read the big man’s remarks, repeated endlessly, and wondering whether he had secured an alliance . . . The package seemed insignificant for the trouble taken, but not for him to query. Funny thing, and not yet settled . . . plenty of talk about what he might do in the following months, what might be put in his path, and the influence that Tooth’s reputation carried, and good contracts . . . Not agreed was what his payment would be, and when the big bucks would begin to roll his way. Had not drawn the lines before, joined up the flag points. Had trusted. No figures to chew on. All about the future, what might happen. Options? Could hardly write it all down, then threaten to reveal all to the guys in L’Évêché because the chance was high that Tooth owned half of them, would be told, would send some boys out either to cut him up with half of a Kalashnikov magazine or – worse – put him in a car, do a barbecue on him. Did not know an option. A fast thought: easy to run a small-time distribution and sales business out of a stairwell at the bottom floor of Block K, difficult to run with a man such as Tooth, but too late to be thinking it now. Another thing to consider, Tooth had never touched the package, did not open it, examine it . . . and the fisherman might have been a nephew or might have been in obligation. Hamid thought he was out on a branch, his weight starting to bend it, make it whine and creak. He used tape to fasten the package against his chest and underneath his heavy leather jacket, and he’d wear his biker’s helmet with the dark visor.
It would take a long time for him to forget the feeling of agony in his lungs as the air disappeared and the pressure grew, while he had scrabbled to get a grip on the package – and he had not been paid, was on a promise. And his brother had brought a girl, a small-bit courier, to the apartment where he lived with their sister, and said he had talked to her about the history and power, and effectiveness of the AK-47 weapon, the Klash, and been talked about . . . What a fucking fool, would need some discipline and some sorting . . . Much on Hamid’s mind as he came out of the project on his Ducati 821 Monster, and took the Boulevard Henri Barnier down towards the main drag that led to the city centre . . . and why they were doing the business in the open, not in the recesses of a café he did not know, no bastard had told him.
He might ask about money, might just, when he was there, had Tooth close to him. Might . . . Felt the package hard against his chest.
Pegs said, ‘We’re not going to get close again.’
Gough said, ‘Little chummy is like a shadow nailed to them.’
‘Have to go on what we have.’
‘Anything else and we show out – we’ll seem like the unwanted bloody relative who keeps pressing for invitations.’
‘I’ll do it.’
They had exhausted the tourist bit. No way was there justification in again approaching the ‘love bird’ pair who had and started to come down the hill of La Canobiere, and Pegs had spotted the flash on the Tango’s wrist, gold on pale tinted skin, when the pair had come out of the jeweller’s door. ‘Gone native, definite, and humped her all night’, Pegs had said. ‘The loose cannon, difficult and dangerous to rein in, and the little guy is the tail to verify they are clean. Can’t go near him,’ Gough had said. She had her mobile out, and he was back studying the map, and the couple were 150 yards behind, but coming on briskly. She dialled the number given her and punched out the text, sent it. It was about back-up, what their regulations listed as a duty of care. She shrugged, done.
Gough said, ‘Then best that we go find ringside seats.’
The Major’s phone fidgeted.
Never one to give deference to authority, Samson reached across, took the phone, checked the message. His boss was on his feet at a lectern at the front of the briefing room, using a stick to highlight the proposed route the Paris visitor might take, and where there were interfaces of potential danger . . . He had, himself, been on duty on the morning that a police chief in the city had done a reconnoitre around the roads and locations that the Prime Minister of France, then Manuel Valls – February 2015 – would travel on in the afternoon. Included in the itinerary was the La Castellane project, where he’d visit a centre for ill-educated potential juvenile offenders, on to which money had cascaded. As the police chief’s cavalcade had approached the housing estate, a minimum of six Kalashnikov rifles had opened fire . . . the message sent, ‘Don’t fuck with us’ or ‘Strangers not welcome’. Done with a directness . . . they had gone in at midday with overwhelming force, and in the afternoon the Prime Minister had been rushed from one handshake session to anothe
r. Then the circus in the afternoon had pulled out, and the place had sunk back to its obscurity, and to its usual trading. It was a lesson, and one learned . . . He was in full flow.
The marksman stood. His chair scraped. He held up a single finger. There was a growled ripple of annoyance that a uniformed man of low rank in the GIPN should interrupt an important meeting. The single finger told his superior, the Major, that he should wrap up in one minute. He did.
Samson said, ‘The English have bleated for help.’
The Major said, ‘Then they shall have it, perhaps with a lullaby sung by a nanny.’
He was told where the meeting place would be.
In the car, powering away to the armoury where his gear was, Samson remarked, ‘Open air, wide spaces, well chosen ground. Many approach routes and many exits by vehicle or on foot. Easy visibility and the chance to identify a reaction force. A location I respect, might have chosen it.’
The Major said, ‘And I cannot call up a bus load of your colleagues and hope for a degree of covert observation. But, I had exhausted even my own interest, so you have my gratitude for your intervention.’
They headed for the armoury. Not to have gone there would have been dereliction. Without a rifle, Samson was the same as the great strong man of the Bible after his head of hair had been cropped, or after the famed executioner had lost the support of his tricoteuse. Small arms were of no importance to him. They went fast but could not use the siren to clear their way, only the flashing lights.
‘What do you feel, Major?’
‘I feel for those English. It has seemed too simple, without crisis. I think they may not have recognised where they are . . . they will learn.’
Battle Sight Zero Page 35