by Chris Ryan
‘You know I’m what?’
She stared wretchedly at him. ‘I know you move in a pretty weird world.’
‘None of it means anything, Lauren. Forget about it. Live your life. Move on.’
‘You’re a real one-man no-go area, aren’t you?’ she said angrily. ‘No wonder you’re stuck up there by yourself in that sad little flat.’
‘I was going to suggest we went out for a bite to eat.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ she told him curtly, and closed the door.
For the most part, Slater was indifferent to the clients that he guarded. He performed his job efficiently and asked no questions about the source of their wealth. Wealth, in fact, was the only thing that Minerva’s clients had in common, and Slater was aware that for much of the time his presence was purely cosmetic. In the world of fifteen-minute junk celebrity there was considerable cachet in the suggestion that you were under physical threat.
Howard Berendt was different. Howard Berendt employed Minerva bodyguards because he genuinely believed his life to be under threat, and because he could no longer trust the slags – the underworld gorillas – that he would normally have relied on. Berendt was an Essex property dealer who had diversified into lap-dancing clubs. His ambition was carrying him westward, and the leery sweep of his empire now extended almost to the Tottenham Court Road. Berendt’s rise, however, had irritated a lot of people. He had trodden on corns. He had angered people whose anger had been known to manifest itself in acts of extreme violence.
Duckworth was well aware of Berendt’s low popularity quotient in the criminal underworld, and charged for his bodyguards accordingly. For a week on the job with Berendt an operative could hope to take home the best part of £2000.
To Slater, this sounded like excellent money. His landlord had decided to sell the property in Mafeking Terrace, and had offered Slater first refusal on the top-floor flat. It galled Slater to know that he himself was responsible for the flat’s ‘pristine condition’, as it was described in the agent’s details – but he had decided nevertheless to try and raise the deposit. He accepted a week’s work guarding Howard Berendt without hesitation.
The first few days were intense. Berendt, a squat, powerful-looking figure with the boiled skin and discoloured eyes of the heavy spirits-drinker, travelled from business location to business location in a mid-seventies Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud – a vehicle he described as a ‘classic fuck-off motor’ – distributed tips with vulgar lavishness wherever he went, and generally and forcefully announced his presence. Anyone wanting to whack him, thought Slater, just had to follow the cigar wrappers.
In fact, to his surprise, and for all the man’s loudness, Slater found that he did not dislike the Essex entrepreneur. There was a red-blooded vigour about him that had long departed most of the clients of Minerva Close Protection. He told a good joke too.
In the days before running to fat and falling prey to habitual sweating, Berendt had been a paratrooper. He was impressed by Slater – he’d once thought of trying Regimental selection himself – and although he did not know quite as much about the subject as he thought he did, he lost no opportunity to discuss esoteric weaponry with the ex-SAS soldier. The day’s work often ended in a pub with Berendt and his cronies, and on these occasions Slater took care never to drink anything stronger than bitter lemon. Berendt’s girlfriend Kat, formerly a dancer with the Royal Ballet and now a star performer at one of his lap-dancing clubs, often turned up to join them before taking a cab on to work.
On the final evening of the contract, Slater detected a strange atmosphere among the group gathered in the Porcupine, one of Berendt’s haunts in Old Street. It was eight thirty, Kat had departed half an hour earlier, and there was an air of anticipation, of nervousness, and of stifled amusement.
Slater felt the uncomfortable sensation of being the only person present not in on the joke. He would have liked to be able to leave, to get back home and go out for a drink or three, but his contract stipulated that he remain until eleven o’clock every evening. There were two and a half hours to go.
‘Why don’t we drive back to the flat and get some take-away?’ Berendt suggested, and there was more back-slapping, more sniggers. ‘Got a treat for you, mate,’ he said to Slater. ‘Oh yes indeedy!’
Berendt lived in a large, well-fortified flat off the Edgware Road. Half of the group drove there in Berendt’s Rolls-Royce, the others followed in the cherry-red Jaguar owned by Berendt’s accountant, Ossie Oswald. In the flat, whose heavy modern furniture and bar was covered in more beige calf-skin than can ever have been assembled outside an abattoir, the group made itself at home. They were an unattractive-looking bunch with the same drinkers’ faces and run-to-seed bodies as Berendt himself. Between the six of them, Slater calculated, they were probably wearing the best part of a pound of gold jewellery.
Declining all offers of drinks, Slater positioned himself by the front door. Judging by the increasingly hysterical mood in Berendt’s lounge he was in for a bumpy ride. He suddenly felt very hungry; he hoped all the talk of a take-away meant that a decent curry was on its way.
‘Ossie, take a couple of the boys and sort us out,’ announced Berendt cheerfully. ‘Don, give us a fucking bevvy, mate. Some of that single malt. And give one to Neil, too. Can’t ignore the poor bloody infantry.’
To buy himself fifteen minutes of peace, Slater accepted the drink. Borrowing an entrance key, he made a quick tour of the approaches to the flat, made himself think like a possible assassin. If he was going to whack someone like Berendt, he thought, this wouldn’t be a bad time to do it. Lots of noise, lots of laughs, people coming and going. He’d just rock up to the front door – maybe get a woman to press the bell and wave at the security camera – burst in with a silenced weapon, find Berendt, waste him, and get back on his bike and vanish into the traffic. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be precisely the way he’d do it but it was a possible scenario.
Re-entering the flat, he eyed the Islay malt in its crystal tumbler. He hadn’t meant to touch it – had meant to pour it down the crapper, in fact – but he couldn’t resist a quick slug. For a moment he stood there, tasting the smoky complexity of the malt, feeling the strong clean alcohol course through his veins.
‘Liquid fucking gold, isn’t it?’ smiled Berendt. ‘I got a half-dozen cases in before Christmas.’
‘It’s very good,’ agreed Slater. He frowned. ‘Mr Berendt, you’ll remember what I told you about not opening the door to anyone you don’t know. Well, that includes women who claim they have messages for you. It’s just a thought, but there have been a couple of cases this year of entry to premises being gained by women who then let heavies in after them.’
‘A sort of “Trojan whores” scenario,’ said Berendt, and laughed uproariously. ‘That’s not bad, is it? Trojan whores? I must tell the lads.’ He swung heavily away. From the lounge came laughter, then an amplified grunting and the wet slap of flesh. Someone had found the porn collection.
Ossie Oswald’s face swum into view on the entryphone monitor. Although he had departed with one man, a casino manager named Ray Gedge, there now appeared to be five of them.
‘Mr Berendt, I think you’ve got visitors,’ said Slater, sticking his head into the lounge where, on the TV screen, a tattooed woman was being vigorously penetrated by several men in Wolverhampton Wanderers football shirts. ‘Would you just OK them before we let them up?’
‘Relax, Neil,’ said Berendt, glancing at the entryphone monitor. ‘It’s just Ossie with the take-aways. Including yours.’
He re-admitted Gedge and Oswald. Following them were three girls. Their clothes were threadbare, their faces and limbs were marbled with the cold – all three were wearing miniskirts – and they smelt of the streets.
Oh, bloody hell, thought Slater. No. Please, no!
They were children. Average age what? Fifteen?
The girls, visibly nervous, were led through into the lounge, where they looked furtively around them. A small chee
r and a whistle went up as they entered. A large whisky and a fifty-pound note was handed to each of them. I can’t be part of this, thought Slater. I just bloody well can’t.
‘So take your pick, Neil,’ said Berendt. ‘Go on, son. You can do anything you want. No one here’s going to tell.’
There was laughter. The assembled faces looked up at him, flushed, wreathed in smiles, boozily conspiratorial. The three girls huddled in silence.
Ray Gedge stood up. ‘Go on, mate. Which is it to be?’ One by one he wrenched the girls’ tops up. They shrank from him but remained there with their breasts exposed, not yet fully afraid. Smackheads, thought Slater.
‘I don’t want any part of this,’ he told Berendt. ‘These are kids.’
‘Choose one,’ said Berendt patiently. ‘And take her to the first bedroom on the right.’ He eyed the girls. ‘You can do anything you want,’ he whispered. ‘And I mean anything. No one’s going to come looking for this lot.’
Slater shook his head. ‘I can’t guard you from a locked bedroom.’
Berendt rolled his eyes. ‘Neil, I want you to stand down, OK? Full pay, obviously, but you’re relieved of all duties for half an hour. How’s that?’
Slater decided to pretend to go along with the game. He’d lock himself in the room with one of the girls for half an hour and they’d sit the whole thing out together. To object to a client’s behaviour, or even to imply disapproval of a client’s behaviour, was to kiss goodbye to a career in bodyguarding. Berendt was a high-paying client, Slater told himself, and saving underage runaways from a life of prostitution was hardly part of his brief. Still, he could give one of the girls a break.
Taking the smallest and most pinched-looking by the hand, he led her to the bedroom Berendt had indicated. Ragged laughter followed him as he closed the door. ‘Fill yer boots, son!’ he heard Berendt shout after him.
‘What d’yer want, mate, a gob or a fuck?’ the girl asked, mechanically reaching for his belt-buckle. She had a Liverpool accent and a dark bruise on her left cheekbone.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked her.
‘Bethany.’
He didn’t bother to ask her age. A quick scan of the room showed him what he’d half-guessed would be there: the framed mirror attached to the wall. If you knew what you were looking for – a particular kind of glassy opacity – one-way mirrors were easy to spot. Most customs halls used them, as did the police in custody suites adapted for identity parades.
Slater gave no sign of having recognised the one-way mirror but mentally he shook his head in disbelief. How stupid did Berendt think he was? The idea, obviously, was that they give him a couple of minutes with Bethany and then move into the next-door bedroom for the show. Maybe even video the whole performance.
Basically, he guessed, it was a machismo thing. A get-out-your-dick exercise. In terms of toughness and military expertise Berendt felt that Slater had the edge on him, and the fact that Slater was Berendt’s employee didn’t change that fact. To see Slater – or better, film him – having sex with an underage prostitute would go a long way in Berendt’s mind to redressing that imbalance.
Slater felt a slow fuse of anger begin to burn.
‘Pull your top down, Bethany,’ he said quietly, moving the girl’s hands away from his groin. ‘I want you and your friends out of here.’
She stared at him. Suspicion clouded the thin features. ‘Are you’s going to fuck us or what?’
‘Listen to me, Bethany—’
‘Gi’us another twenty, you can go up me arse.’
There was a short but definite scream from the lounge. Bethany frowned, as if she dimly recognised the sound. Slowly she pulled her cheap spandex top down.
‘Listen!’ Slater told her, furious with himself for allowing the situation to develop this far. ‘There’s something I’ve got to look after. I want you to wait here, OK?’
There was another scream, followed by the sound of a hard slap.
Bethany nodded, but looked as if she was having trouble understanding his words. ‘You’ll say you fucked us, yeah? So they don’t ask for the money back, like?’
‘Don’t worry about the money,’ said Slater urgently. ‘Just wait here, OK?’
She looked at him blankly and nodded.
There were six men in the lounge. One of the girls, naked, was bent over a heavy glass-topped table. From behind her Ray Gedge pounded into her, his trousers round his ankles. At intervals he wrenched her head up by the hair and slapped the side of her face. Her nose and her mouth were bleeding, and she was crying. Two other men, appreciative spectators of this scenario, stood at her side.
The other girl, also naked, was bent over Ossie Oswald’s lap. Her hair was pulled taut between his fingers. As Slater walked into the room Berendt’s partner Don Parry was unzipping his trousers behind her.
From the room’s deepest armchair, a seven-inch Macanudo cigar clamped between his lips, Howard Berendt surveyed the revels.
Without saying a word Slater sauntered across the room, collected a heavy onyx table-lighter from a display-case, walked over to Ray Gedge, hefted the lighter briefly in his right hand, and swung it full force into the hinge of the casino-manager’s jaw.
A look of stupefaction crossed Gedge’s face as he sank to his knees. Amazed, he watched as several bloody teeth fell from his mouth to the white carpet. Attempting to articulate his broken jaw a moment later, he fainted.
Leaving Gedge where he was, Slater crossed the room to Berendt, took the smoking cigar from his unresisting fingers, and approached Ossie Oswald.
Eyes widening in terror, Oswald pulled his rapidly deflating penis from the teenager’s mouth, disentangled his fat fingers from her hair, and made desperate moves to fasten his trousers. In no apparent hurry, Slater kicked Oswald’s knees from under him, and as the grovelling accountant attempted to right himself, ground the glowing coal of the cigar into the hairy junction of his buttocks.
Scrabbling at his anus, Oswald screamed and writhed. Don Parry, mutely shaking his head, raised both hands above his head in terrified surrender. Howard Berendt sat frozen in his armchair.
‘Get dressed!’
The girls both appeared to be in shock.
‘Get dressed!’ Slater repeated, and slowly they began to gather their clothes from the carpet.
‘Does Kat stay here?’ Slater asked Berendt.
Berendt nodded.
‘Go and get some clothes,’ Slater ordered. ‘I want jackets, trousers and sweaters – the best she’s got. As for the rest of you rapists and conspirators-to-rape, I want cash on the table. We’re going to have a collection for these children. Anyone disagree?’
He looked around the room. Gedge was still unconscious on the carpet. Oswald, tears running down his cheeks, was agonisedly pulling on his underpants. Don Parry was undergoing an attack of the shakes. No one disagreed.
Slater took a wallet and a handful of cash from each of the six men. One – an enthusiastic spectator of Gedge’s sadism – hesitated for a moment before handing over his money.
‘Give it to me,’ said Slater quietly, weighing the heavy table lighter in his hand. ‘Or I’ll break your fucking jaw too.’
The man nodded.
In the end there was over £600 on the table. When the weeping, bloody-nosed girl had dressed herself, Slater dispatched Don Parry to clean her up in the bathroom and called Bethany to come out from the bedroom. The third girl, eyeing Oswald with loathing, took a swig of malt whisky, gargled, and spat the result on to the carpet.
When Berendt returned with an armful of Kat’s clothing, Slater allotted each girl £200, a cashmere sweater, a pair of leather trousers, and a coat.
‘Range Rover car keys, please,’ he demanded. Terrified, Oswald produced them from a pocket.
‘This isn’t a good idea, Slater,’ said Berendt levelly, the first vestiges of colour returning to his sallow cheeks. ‘You’ll never work in London again, I can promise you that. And what the fuck you hope t
o accomplish for these little scrubbers is totally beyond me. The clothes and the money will go straight back to some smack-dealing nigger and that’ll be the end of it.’
‘You know what I’d really like, Howard?’
‘I expect you’re going to tell me.’
‘I’d really like to know what you’re going to tell Kat.’
Easing the Range Rover into third gear, Slater turned into the Edgware Road. The girls – who must have seen a thing or two in their young lives, Slater reflected – were beginning to find their voices.
‘This is class fuckin’ gear,’ said Maxine, the oldest of the three, running her hands down the front of her new thousand-pound shearling coat. Bethany, for her part, was counting and recounting her wad of cash. Chanelle was still dabbing at her bleeding cheek.
‘You’re sure?’ said Bethany to Slater. ‘You don’t even want us to gob yer off?’
‘The fuckin’ mouth on her,’ said Maxine.
They drove on. They had been picked up, Bethany had told Slater, at King’s Cross station.
‘I suppose you’re gonna tell us the deal’s off with the money and the clothes if we don’t go back to our parents and that,’ said Maxine.
‘There’s no deal,’ said Slater. ‘What do you want to do?’
The girls looked at each other.
‘I’ve got a mobile,’ said Slater. ‘Anyone want to ring home?’
There was a long silence.
‘Give us it,’ said Bethany.
‘Don’t be so fuckin’ simple!’ shouted Maxine. ‘You know who’s going to be waiting for you, soon as we get to King’s Cross? Lennie.’
‘Lennie’s your pimp?’ asked Slater.
‘He’s my boyfriend,’ said Maxine.
‘Lennie needn’t be a problem,’ said Slater quietly. ‘I could have a word with Lennie.’
‘He’d fuckin’ kill yer.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘This is bollocks,’ Maxine muttered. ‘Stop the car. Stop the car!’
Slater braked. They were outside Madame Tussaud’s in the Marylebone Road. Maxine threw open the Range Rover door and grabbed Chanelle’s coat. ‘Come on, Sha, leave yer face alone and get the fuck out. He’s a fuckin’ nutcase, this one.’