The Damage (David Blake 2)

by Howard Linskey

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ admitted Blake, ‘that was a clever gimmick but I think the fact that they were the first to supply bucketloads of hard core porn for free, was their actual USP, don’t you?’

  Peter didn’t know what a USP was so he just nodded, ‘Perhaps, but I still think it’s the name. It’s all in the name,’ he said grandly, holding a hand up and sweeping it across an imaginary billboard in front of him.

  Blake sighed and said, ‘Peter, you have sixty seconds to get to the point. I have a flight to catch.’

  ‘Right, yes, of course, no problem,’ and Peter reached into the large, black document case he’d brought with him and fished out the A3-sized bit of card he’d had mocked up for the occasion, with what little remained of the cash from the sale of his house. He took off the cloth cover that obscured the art work and handed it to Blake reverentially. On it was a graphic artist’s rendition of the website Peter was going to create using David Blake’s money. Here was the idea that was going to put Peter right back where he belonged; at the very top of the pile.

  Blake looked at the mock-up. He took his time and he peered at it intently. Peter held his breath. First Blake seemed to frown and Peter’s heart sank but then his face broke into a smile and it felt as if a great burden had been lifted from Peter’s shoulders. Thank God, he thought, the man with the money likes my idea. Everything was going to be alright after all. Peter’s troubles were over. He was so happy he could have leaned over and kissed Blake but, just then, something odd happened; Blake’s smile turned into a broad grin and then, horribly, unbelievably, it morphed into a chuckle. Blake looked at Peter and laughed, he looked back at the art work and laughed some more, then he started to really let rip. Blake showed the art work to Palmer and he laughed too, then they all leaned over, took a good look at it and joined in, all of them, everyone in Blake’s pathetic, arse-licking, little crew of tough guys started to laugh at Peter and his brilliant idea. What the fuck was wrong with these people?

  Blake finally stopped laughing and said, ‘Thanks Peter, it’s been an absolute pleasure, no, it really has. Funniest thing I’ve seen in ages but I’ve got to go now. Like I said, I’ve a flight to catch. See you around eh?’

  And with that Blake rose to his feet and was gone, the posse of bodyguards melting from the room after him, all of them still chuckling. Peter looked down at the art work that had caused so much hilarity and genuinely struggled to understand how such an intelligent man as Blake, a successful man, a so-called entrepreneur, could fail to see the sheer goldmine potential behind a porn site called ‘SitOnMyFacebook’.

  Peter Dean went home and crawled; first into bed, then into a deep depression. He avoided meals, dressing and washing and failed to return calls from the very few acquaintances he had left. Bills and junk mail began to pile up on the mat. He contemplated suicide on a number of occasions and in increasingly imaginative and impactful ways.

  Two weeks later, Peter finally emerged to take the phone call that would change his life forever. There would be money, a voice on the line explained, a lot of money and Peter would gain powerful new friends into the bargain. It seemed Peter Dean’s dreams would be realised after all and it was all so simple.

  All he had to do was kill David Blake.

  2

  .......................

  I have to be lucky all the time. They only have to get lucky once. That’s the thought that’s always with me these days, the one that gnaws away at my brain in the small hours until I finally give up on sleep and climb out of bed, leaving Sarah breathing softly behind me.

  I woke early as usual, my rest fitful, interrupted by dreams so vivid they covered me in a sweat that pooled on my chest and chilled my body, despite the heat. There seemed no point in lying there reliving nightmares, so I put them from my mind and climbed quietly out of bed, being especially careful not to wake Sarah, because she needs her sleep more than most. I thought I’d woken her when she stirred and muttered ‘Davey’ but she rolled over immediately, still fast asleep, just calling out my name in her own dreams, as if I was the only one she knew who could save her from them.

  I padded quietly down to the kitchen and made coffee, reminding myself, as I do every morning, that I really am a very lucky man in so many ways. I have my health, I have money, more than I could ever spend, and I have Sarah Mahoney.

  And there’s our place in Hua Hin. Not many people get to make their coffee in a kitchen the size of most people’s flats. The sun was just coming up, turning the sky a grey-blue colour that you only ever see at the beginning of the morning. The scene outside my window looked like a watercolour. Soon the sun would be high in the sky and before long the heat would begin to cook the ground we walked on. Sarah likes it like that. She can sit out in the sun for hours in one of her bikinis that are little more than three tiny triangles tied together with string, her arms and legs covered in oil, her whole body turning a rich golden brown as she slowly bakes under the Thai sun, but I’m not too keen. I can’t sit outside for long before I get restless. I’m not comfortable out there basting like a turkey and I can’t relax with the bodyguards standing around us. Our ex-Gurkhas keep a discreet enough distance and it’s not as if they lech at Sarah – though I could hardly blame them if they did, she is a stunner after all – but I like a bit of privacy, and that’s one of the things I’ve had to sacrifice since I became the boss, so I prefer to swim in our indoor pool.

  I spend a lot of time in the house while Sarah suns herself outside. I have a room set up with a bank of computers that help me keep a track on all of our legitimate investments. I am careful not to leave anything un-coded or incriminating on them that relates to the other side of our business though, the side that makes the real money. Most of our legitimate stuff is there for show; the restaurants, clubs and bars, the spa and fitness centre, even the two taxi companies we recently purchased and the bureau de change. They aren’t really businesses in their own right. They tick over okay and they make a bit of profit between them but they are only really there to serve one purpose; to do our laundry. They make us look respectable and we can plough the money that keeps on rolling in from everything else we are involved in through them and wash it all till it’s clean. My biggest headache is trying to find new ways to put the bent money through the system without anyone noticing it. Anybody who is involved in my world will tell you the same thing; the more money you earn, the bigger the problem, because you have to be able to explain every penny to the authorities if they come knocking on your door. It’s a problem as old as my profession. Just look at Al Capone. If he’d bothered to pay some taxes they’d never have got him.

  The proceeds that flow in from the drug deals, the escorts and massage parlours, the protection we offer to local businesses and smaller firms who operate on our patch, along with the occasional armed robbery, all has to be cleaned and laundered. Having too much money isn’t easy. You might think this is a good problem to have but you’d be wrong. One mistake from me and I’ll be staring at four grey prison walls for the rest of my life. I live with that stress constantly.

  That’s why I am about to make a change to the Gallowgate Leisure Group. Soon we will go global. We are about to become Gallowgate Offshore – then we really will have a licence to print money. But not yet, not until I can sort out a few issues closer to home; like the new luxury hotel we are building on the Quayside and the club we are about to open, which will be the largest nightspot in the north of England. More importantly, I have to sort out the heroin drought. My biggest wholesaler of coke and H has just left the market-place, suddenly and permanently. He thought it would be a good idea to import more than a tonne of cocaine into the UK in a single transaction, cutting the risks he endured with multiple trips from his base in Amsterdam. The stash was huge, and around ninety per cent pure, so it could be cut to make seven times the amount before it reached any users, which made that particular cargo worth more than two hundred and fifty million pounds on the street. It wasn’t all for us,
of course, but we were going to take a sizeable amount and, as he had been supplying us with most of our heroin and cocaine for the best part of two years now, his arrest was a disaster for him and for us.

  A shipment that size doesn’t just get stuffed into a cupboard, it was built into a hidden compartment behind the galley, but someone tipped someone else off and SOCA got on its trail. The Serious Organised Crime Agency used to be regarded as a bit of a joke in my world, but not any more. They’ve sharpened up their act. They impounded the yacht and dismantled it bit by bit until they found what they were looking for. It took SOCA three days to locate the drugs but eventually they were able to parade a haul on the TV news bulletins that amounted to around twenty per cent of the entire UK market and our wholesaler was facing a nailed-on life sentence. I wasn’t concerned about him talking, he was old school and knew the risks, but I was worried about a product drought on the horizon. If the drugs dry up my money dries up too – and there are a lot of people on my books who have to be paid on time.

  That’s why the Turk and I are about to go into business together. Barely a month before, I was sitting in a little family restaurant in Istanbul, putting the finishing touches to the biggest deal of my life. It was the usual set-up. He and I shared a table while our bodyguards stood back and eyed each other suspiciously. I had brought Kinane and Palmer with me. No other customers were allowed in the place and the owner had made himself scarce. I’d forgotten what a smoke-filled room was like, all of the Turk’s guys smoked and it hung around us like a veil. The room was oppressively warm, no air con and I could feel damp patches of sweat under my arms. I was hoping to get out of that room quickly.

  The Turk was, in point of fact, actually a Kurd. Because he was based in Istanbul, Remzi al Karayilan had become known as ‘The Turk’ and the name had stuck. He didn’t seem to care, but then he was doing pretty well by it so why should he? He was thriving because he had found a way to bridge two worlds; he knew people in Europe who wanted pure heroin and he had the contacts in the east to get it.

  It takes guys like the Turk an eternity to come to the point. First you have to break bread with them, talk family, all that bollocks. He was a portly bloke who wore the fat round his belly like a badge of prosperity but you could tell he was a strong and powerful man underneath it. I’d had him checked out and I knew he had killed men with his bare hands. Now I was sitting opposite him, I could see how he’d managed to climb to the top of the heap in this city. He had the look of a man you definitely wouldn’t want to cross.

  The Turk shovelled a couple of dates into his mouth and chewed them noisily. Before he’d finished them he asked me, ‘You have a wife, Mister Blake?’ I shook my head. The guy looked at me like I was a freak, but I wasn’t going to mention Sarah. I didn’t want him to know about her.

  There were small plates laid out on the table, each with a different dish, Turkish meze; white cheese, hot peppers, dolma, kofte, squid and figs. I ate some to be polite before he finally got down to business.

  ‘I’m curious to know,’ he asked me, ‘what you think you can give to me, apart from your money?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Not now, maybe before when I did not have enough, but not now. I don’t want to be a rich man who dies in prison,’ he explained.

  ‘You know what I can bring. You wouldn’t have sat down with me if you didn’t. I can guarantee safe passage of your product from the Balkans to Amsterdam and beyond, right into the eastern ports of the UK. From there it goes straight to the estates and high rises of my city. I have a network of dealers working for me who can dispose of a dozen kilos at a time, with no interference from the police. That’s what I bring to this deal. Now convince me you are worth my investment.’

  ‘Me? I bring nothing Mister Blake,’ and he eyed me contemptuously, ‘just friends where you could not even step, without your throat it is cut,’ his accent might have been strong, and he jumbled his words, but his message was clear. ‘The Afghan tribes who grow the poppy trust me and the border officials in Iran live in my pocket. How many men do you own in those countries, Mister Blake?’ I was getting a bit bored of his faux-formality but he made a fair point. Most of the heroin used in Britain comes from Turkey these days, so his Afghan connections were critical to us.

  ‘And the Americans?’

  ‘Don’t give a fuck,’ he assured me, ‘as long as I am not Taliban, as long as I don’t talk about the prophet, they don’t worry what I do. All they care about is extremists. Years of Americans in Afghanistan and what has this achieved? Now the country produces ninety per cent of the world’s heroin,’ he shrugged, ‘the Americans tolerate this. They tolerate any one who is not Taliban. The only alternatives are the tribal warlords who make most of their money from the poppy.’

  ‘Most of the product comes out through Pakistan. Why don’t you use that route?’ I asked.

  The question seemed to irritate him and he shrugged dismissively. ‘A country more corrupt than mine, even than yours,’ he told me with mock wonderment.

  ‘You’re saying Iran isn’t corrupt?’

  ‘I find it useful to work with governments that want to saturate western cities with heroin. Iran wishes for everyone in the west to become an addict. They won’t stop me helping them to achieve that. So long as I pay big money to the right people, my shipments will always go through Iran.’

  ‘Then on into eastern Turkey,’ I told him, ‘via the province of Agri where the product is collected by your men at Gurbulak and loaded onto oil tankers, before they smuggle it into the Balkans.’

  He did not disguise his anger at my knowledge. ‘What are you,’ he slammed his hand down hard on the table, ‘a policeman?’

  ‘If I was, you would be in big trouble. I’m just a businessman who does his homework before he enters into a deal.’

  ‘It is not a good idea for you to know so much about my business,’ he said, wagging a finger at me, ‘maybe I don’t like that.’ Abruptly he drained his drink and stood up. ‘One million Euros in advance English, to show good faith, then we talk about your first consignment.’ He stood up. It was the signal that our brief meeting was over. He and his men left without a word. There was no handshake.

  The Turk is convinced his process is impregnable. I hope so because I am about to trust him with a great deal of my money. Even for an organisation our size, one million Euros is a lot of loose change.

  I can’t worry about that now though because today is the day that Pratin calls. I always pay Pratin on time, and the numbers are substantial. He comes down from Bangkok every month, regular as clockwork, and leaves carrying a nice big briefcase packed with currency – and none of your Thai Bahts either, this is strictly ‘US Dollar American’ as he calls it. Since Sarah and I relocated to Thailand I have got to know Pratin pretty well. He is Roi Tamruat Ek, which means he is a Captain in the Royal Thai Police, but his influence extends far further than his rank. Pratin knows people who matter. He is just another insurance policy I suppose, one more Drop that has to be paid, just like the monthly sum we still pay to Amrein, our high-level fixer back in the UK. Obviously I also have to shell out a considerable amount to my Gurkha bodyguards who patrol our compound night and day, making sure nobody can get in. They aren’t cheap either, but that’s one number on our balance-sheet that I never question because they are keeping me alive. That’s what it’s all about these days; insurance, protection, safety. I pay people to guard me, keep me out of jail, and tell me what my enemies are doing to get at me. It all costs big bucks, some of it in ‘US Dollar American’. I suppose you could call it the cost of living.

  This is the bit no one tells you about when you are on the up. Before I started running Newcastle, I assumed my predecessor Bobby Mahoney was absolutely minted. I’d seen the figures; the amount of money coming in was vast and much of it was undeclared income. I knew what he paid out to employees of the firm and how much we spent on the Drop. There should have been plenty left over to live the high
life but I’m telling you, lately, the cost of business has gone up and up. The more our empire has expanded in the little over two years since Bobby died, the more I have to pay out to avoid being killed or stuck inside a prison in the UK or Thailand for life, so I am always thinking. Am I paying the right guy the right amount? Should I be paying his boss or some other guy I’m not even aware of? If I fuck up it’s all over for everyone.

  I try not to think about that as I surf the main news channels while I drink my coffee; Sky, BBC, CNN, though I don’t bother with Fox obviously. I can’t relax until I’ve surfed them all. Only then, when I am sure that the planet is still rotating safely on its axis, do I feel like I can properly start my day.

  I was just about to change the channel when another news item claimed my attention. The trial of Leon Cassidy, aka the Sandyhills Sniper, was about to begin. The Sky News reporter told us earnestly that ‘Cassidy will stand trial on five counts of murder, including the killing of Detective Chief Inspector Robert McGregor.’ I was back in Newcastle when the sniper started picking off his victims and it had been a massive news story at the time. ‘Police are not looking for anyone else in connection with the killing,’ the reporter told us, in a poorly-concealed code that was designed to make everybody think ‘they’ve got the bastard.’ So much for innocent until proven guilty, I thought, but they did find the rifle in his flat, so it looked like Cassidy was going down.

  I turned off the TV, then changed and went for a swim in the indoor pool. That alerted the stone calm figure of Jagrit to my presence, but he wasn’t the sort to overreact to my sudden arrival. He didn’t even flinch. I could see him standing there through the huge windows that overlooked our grounds. With his olive-skinned face and dark, watchful eyes he looked like he’d been carved out of jade. Jagrit is one of my Gurkhas chosen, like his comrades, because of their innate loyalty and legendary hardness. They were the perfect guys to look after me; honest, decent, honourable men but vicious bastards who could creep up on you and slice your throat open without you hearing a thing. Nobody could get into our compound with them watching out for me. These elite fighting men were probably the only reason Sarah and I got any sleep at all these days.