The Bootneck

by Quentin Black

  20

  Jamie Rangel drove banging his hand on the steering wheel. Yesterday, he’d observed Bruce McQuillan’s kidnap through a temporary surveillance camera he’d set up in the warehouse overlooking the street. The Peruvian felt an invading army of fear and despair march through him. That traitorous bastard had a hand in it, and that was bad news. Bruce had told Jamie he divulged more information to Nick than anyone else.

  Jamie had made his escape driving through an exit that hadn’t yet been up-dated on any schematics held with the local council. He would never know if this had saved his life or not.

  He had to drive somewhere safe and begin to monitor the electronic ‘chatter’ to ascertain Bruce’s location. What was he going to do if he discovered it? Either MI5 or MI6 had been compromised, perhaps both. Who could he trust now? The police, if they were to use their Armed Response Unit, would have to alert MI5.

  Jamie had only ever trusted Bruce McQuillan. Now he’d been taken, and Jamie felt like a stalked gazelle. He had to do something, and at that moment in time, the only thing he could do was try to acquire Bruce’s location. Of that, he was confident in his abilities.

  A strange twist of fate led him to have the most unlikely of aces up his sleeve. The Russian Bratva didn’t know he’d been following them for weeks. He’d intercepted a coded email from a French arms dealer to a contract killer.

  He wasn’t sure he believed in a higher power, but this had the feeling of fate around it.

  Ever since he’d got involved in this murky world of espionage and crime, Bruce McQuillan seemed the only man to be impervious to having his principles shaken. Jamie had to find him and pray for a miracle, whatever form it came in.

  “I’ll need to contact him via payphone,” Nick continued. He’d been watched over throughout the night.

  “You think I am going to trust you to do that?”

  “What else are you going to do?”

  “Why the change of heart? Because he was kidnapped rather than killed?”

  Nick took a breath. “It’s like you say—why did they take him away instead of inducing a heart attack or running him over? Maybe it’s a ruse. Maybe they don’t have the leverage they say they have. I am a patriot. Don’t you think it’s haunted me, having to give up Bruce McQuillan to the wolves? The man should have the title Lord High Protector like Cromwell. But he was getting in the way of change, change for the better, or at least, so I was told.”

  “Who the fuck is Cromwell?” asked Louis.

  “He was a bloke who raised an army and defeated the King’s forces back in something like the 1600’s,” answered Connor.

  “Lord High Protector? Did he get a chuck up for defeating the king?” Louis laughed. “Thought that was the one dem jocks all cream over…the Braveheart one.”

  “William Wallace, he was the other one,” Connor smiled. “I’ll spin you the full dit before bed tonight. Can you get me a car?”

  “Safe, brother. I am in this now, and I am in this all the way.”

  “You’ve done more than enough. I can’t be getting you further involved in this, Royal.”

  “I am not asking you, I am telling you. If you think you’re duking it out with Russian mobsters all to save the UK without me, then you’re crazy, ya get me?”

  “Yeah, on second thought, maybe I could use you to pose as a Russian to get in with them?”

  They both laughed. Nick looked on with an alarmed look on his face.

  Bruce last slept thirty-six hours ago, and his mind felt sluggish. He’d gone nights without sleep many times. He knew willpower could only overcome the need for sleep to a point. Once past that, slumber overcame a person, especially when you were in an inactive physical state as he was now. Unless you were being kept awake with white noise like he was being. He tried to focus. Why had Nick betrayed him? For money, probably. Or was he ordered to? If so, who by? He discounted Stanton. The man had always gone to bat for him, and Bruce couldn’t see the motive. It must have been Miles Parker; the MI6 Chief must have waited all this time to get even.

  In walked the smartly dressed Makar. He took the seat in front of the haggard looking Bruce and gave him an almost avuncular sigh.

  “Mr McQuillan, I see you’re holding up to this initial ‘softening’ phase.”

  Bruce said nothing.

  “Without wishing to be a James Bond cliché, what you are doing—this resisting—isn’t only futile, it is damaging to your cause.”

  The Russian paused to sip the water from the plastic cup he’d brought in; Bruce hadn’t had water for over twenty-four hours.

  He continued. “Our British allies, or I should say ally as one man was the catalyst…well, he has been spinning a tale that your security computer systems have been penetrated. A tale of how Ravil Yelchin was a secret partner in the manufacture of the overhaul of computer systems, that he already has enough information because of this to bring the establishment to its knees. He whispered in the right ears, and now backs will be braced, eyes averted, and cheeks turned while we systematically take out all the organised crime gangs who resist change and control those who embrace it,” Makar sipped at his water again, “however, the sad truth is all of this is based on lies. Depressing isn’t it? All it took was £75 million for this individual. In return, he courted several influential men in your government for a few years. They told them the sensitive information had come from the computer systems hacked by Russian Bratva and surveillance.” Makar swirled the water in the cup, “This is the institution you want to protect? Brought to its knees by money?”

  He watched Bruce, looking for any sign of weakness at these words. All he saw was a stony impassivity. Makar fleetingly wished that Bruce had been born a Russian.

  “We are the solution Mr McQuillan. If we could have trusted you, we would have used you, but I know men like you will never compromise. You will always seek to attack what you see as crime and injustice. However, there’s no escape because there’s no-one who knows you’re still alive, no-one willing to help anyway. It’s just substituting British, Jamaican, Turkish and Chinese Gangsters for Russian ones. Why continue to resist?”

  Bruce’s rasping voice cracked the silence, and Makar felt a sliver of triumph.

  “There’s no crime organisation that isn’t a cancer. You may think that your Russian mafia is different, or at least your Bratva is. Maybe at this moment, it is built on a sense of honour. But it never lasts. Frustrations flare, egos clash, grey areas appear, plotting begins, and weak links become evident. Every organisation ends up like that. You already know that. Maybe you and your boss can contain that or maybe you can’t, but what happens when you’re gone?” said Bruce, as he looked Makar in the eye. “You see, I don’t mind many moving parts. I don’t mind many gangs competing over the same pie. It makes them easier to take out or control. They prevent one another from getting too large. You will have left something that’s impossible to take down—a monopoly. This time in Britain’s history will go down forever as the time where Russian gangsters staked their claim to these islands and never let it go. So you see my friend, I will hold out to the bitter end.”

  The two men stared at one another.

  “I admire you Mr McQuillan. Enough to make you one concession. Would you like to know who the inside man was?”

  “Of course—it’ll make it easier to kill him.”

  Makar smiled and told him.

  Carl Wright travelled back to London via the Eurostar. His destination was Ashford International in Kent. Usually, he enjoyed the 180-mph trip but not today.

  What he hated was someone having control over him, particularly against his will. He’d got used to it during his military career and at times even welcomed it. He enjoyed the structure and discipline, just turn up on time, dress appropriately, and do the job that you’re assigned to do. However, that was a voluntary choice, unlike now. Now he was being threatened and manipulated. At first, he almost respected Pierre Gaultier for how he entrapped him. Carl carried out
the mission calculating that doing it was less aggravation than not. And that included taking into account Bruce McQuillan’s reputation. Now, he could see that Pierre viewed him as a commodity to wield until his usefulness had drained. He’d to get that monkey off his back. If it weren’t for the threat of the Russian Bratva, the American would have just targeted Pierre himself and have done with it. He’d to figure out a way out of this now, or he was dead. Until then, he would have to just go along with the programme.

  Jamie’s heart began to race as he checked the sub-compartment on his computer. He kept encrypted voicemails in there. He was in an apartment he owned near Chelmsford, a quiet place where no one bothered him. He’d a few places dotted in and around Greater London— ‘never set patterns’ was what Bruce told him. Only one person had this email address, and that had been Bruce McQuillan, as far as he was aware. The two scenarios were the Scot had either escaped or the Russians had extracted the information from him. Neither seemed likely.

  Bruce would have surely told him if he’d told anyone else. Jamie thought it would have taken longer for the Russian’s to prise it from him. He opened the email with biting nerves and played the recording. The voice was loud and clear.

  “Hello, I am sure you are aware of what’s happened to a mutual friend of ours. I was trying to make contact to probe your interest in helping me extract him. I will be on the corner of Firth Street near the bank, next to the payphone at eighteen hundred if you wish to help me. I understand you have no reason to trust me.”

  Jamie listened to the message three times before exhaling, sitting back and rubbing his temples. Although he didn’t recognise the voice, he could tell that it belonged to someone from the north of England. It wasn’t the traitor’s voice though. His mistrust had kept him alive and meeting a stranger like this was something he would never have done in ordinary circumstances.

  Jamie wasn’t a field agent. He was into computers and affording a pleasant lifestyle. The challenging work, learning technical nuances, keeping up with the latest trends, picking out the relevant information from the cyber world, was his Ying. The lifestyle, the excellent restaurants, holidays in hot countries, nice cars, good clothes, was his Yang. There wouldn’t be computers or first-class waiter service in a Russian mafia interrogation room. The practical side of his mind began to work and was leant towards him meeting with this unknown voice.

  What would Bruce do? If he couldn’t get Bruce back, he would have to deal with all sorts: wealthy Arabs, Russian oligarchs, billionaire drugs cartels, unscrupulous corporate enterprises to name a few. What was now an extreme vigilance in his counter surveillance would manifest into an intense paranoia. There was another reason he knew he wanted to help Bruce—he liked and respected him. And he saved him from prison. The more he found out about him, the more he was aware Bruce McQuillan’s primary purpose was to protect the innocent or indifferent from the bad or evil. Sometimes the line got blurred, or mistakes happened, but the man’s intentions were pure. One of the ways Jamie knew that was because millions of pounds had passed from Bruce’s hands into operational accounts. In the years that followed, the accounts were solely debited to fund operations against the enemies of the UK citizens. They’d been emptied on more than one occasion to do so. These were off-the-books accounts that only Bruce had access to and known only to them both. Jamie, for a selfish reason, knew that he couldn’t turn his back on him. He’d never make peace with himself, and that’s why he was going to make the meet.

  Connor had insisted to Louis on going alone.

  “You’re not going there on your own bruv,” Louis had said.

  “Nah, I have to. I don’t want to spook him…no pun intended.”

  “Listen, jokes aside…you can’t go alone. There might be a team waiting, Gee.”

  “If there’s a team then they will be enough to take both of us out anyway. It needs to be just me. Besides, we both go, that’s all our eggs smashed in one basket.”

  Now, he stood next to a telephone box as the sky turned to dark blue and the raindrops clattered around him. He felt a nervous energy growing in him as the seconds ticked towards 18:00. The feeling wasn’t dissimilar to a teenage boy waiting for a girl to show to their first date.

  Now 18:06, he told himself he’d hold on for no more than ten past.

  Throughout the drive over, he reflected as to why he was even here. Surely the threat of prosecution for Hardcastle’s murder would vanish with Bruce. He could just fall off the reservation. Maybe he would just be left alone. Deep down he knew why he was here. He’d seen more destruction to society by wicked men than any other person he knew. He’d seen men and women with potential in one area or another get fucked long-term by drugs or alcohol abuse. They passed it on to their children who passed it to theirs. He’d seen the feral animals disguised as humans who would rob, rape and beat the young, old, infirm and weak.

  He’d also seen greed on a monumental scale—greed of the wealthy and powerful, greedy for more, no matter who they hurt, what damage they caused or who they’d to remove.

  He knew he was risking his life for two equally compelling reasons. One was Bruce McQuillan himself, whereas that misguided knobber Nick had spoken about the Scot as a blind idealist, Connor was convinced he was a highly intelligent man with a steadfast moral resolve—not unlike his own father.

  The other reason was Connor had seen first-hand how power corrupted anyone who didn’t have the strongest of moral codes. He’d been around enough criminals and enough of a criminal himself, to know. He was worldly wise enough to know if the Russian mafia-controlled London, they would never stop.

  Connor’s heart jumped a little as the phone vibrated. This was it now, no turning back. He didn’t need religion to know what he was doing was right. He didn’t need anyone’s opinion to help his decision to fight evil until his last breath. Criminal greed was evil—it didn’t stop for anything or anyone.

  He answered the call.

  “He’s making a mistake you know,” said Nick.

  “Ya know, I didn’t see this conversation ‘appenin’,” replied Louis. They were sat facing one another with Louis in the seat Connor had used.

  “This agreement has already gone through. If I am reading this right, your mate thinks he’s going to rescue Bruce from the Russian Bratva’s deadliest brigade?”

  Louis laughed. “Connor is crazy, that’s why I love him. Well, that’s one of the reasons.”

  “You’ll love him ‘til the point he gets you killed and probably after being tortured.”

  “You think I am helping this white boy because I am sure he’s going to succeed? Let me tell you something. I have been through a lot with him. Eight months of basic training. We did a six-month tour of Afghanistan while we were still sprogs. He’s the least jack man I know. He would cut off his arm if you needed one. You wouldn’t understand.” Louis leaned back, pulled out a can of cola, cracked it open and took a swig when the hiss died.

  “I’ll tell ya a ‘ickle story. When we came back from Afghanistan, we had six weeks leave, and Connor and I decided to rob these drug dealers from Wolverhampton. It was proper ‘Behind Enemy Lines’, ‘White Men Can’t Jump’ shit with burners an’ balaclavas, as ya say. It was just ‘im and me too. £120k between us. Mine went on a brand-new BMW, clothes, jewellery and a holiday to New York. All sorts, man. You know where his cut went?”

  Nick shrugged.

  “£25k got split between his local boxing club, the Salvation Army, a youth project, and an elderly person volunteer group, all anonymously. The only reason I know is that we shared the same money launderer for that job. He knew me better than Connor,” there was a pause as Louis edged closer to Nick and lowered his voice, “so if you ever question my loyalty to my Gee again, I’ll take one of ya fuckin’ eyes out, ya get meh?”

  Nick blinked repeatedly, defeated.

  “Listen to me very carefully. You will let go any sense of self-preservation and answer my questions fast and truthfully becaus
e believe me, this goes against every professional instinct I have,” said the voice on the other end of the phone.

  Connor took a breath as he realised he was going to have to give up the very thing his recent training had taught him to preserve: his anonymity.

  “OK.”

  “What is your full name and the last four digits of your bank account number?”

  “What the fuck is this…a Nigerian cold calling scam?”

  “Just answer it.”

  “Connor Andrew Reed, 8998.”

  “What’s the name of our mutual friend?”

  “Bruce McQuillan.”

  “And why do you want to help him out of his current predicament?”

  “Let’s just say I am a Clint Eastwood fan. I still believe in bad guys, good guys and the rest in-between.”

  A short pause.

  “Head north and take the third turning onto Albion Road.”

  Connor almost shouted, “Wait.”

  “What?” said the voice sounding startled.

  “It’s cloudy. Which way is north?”

  Another pause.

  “To your left.”

  Stanton clicked his phone off.

  He began to pace his office, something he’d never done before. Now he could not reach either Bruce McQuillan or Nick Flint. He calmed himself—you haven’t got to this point by panicking.

  He grimaced and made another call.

  Connor walked, scanning the area as he did so. The rain pattered around him, and the car tyres cut through the sheen of wet. London even smelled differently from his native Leeds. Connor fought the urge to make the mental connection between danger and this city. Perhaps he shouldn’t fight it.

  He rounded the corner into Albion Road, and after thirty metres a white van with ‘Shore and Son’ emblazoned on it pulled up beside him. The passenger door opened to reveal an almost pretty Latin man.

  “Get in.”

  Connor got in only to feel a prod in his side. He knew without looking down it was a gun as a hand clamped onto his shoulder.