“Do not tell me what I know. Tell me what I do not know.”
“Forgive me, főnök, but …”
He squatted to collect the broken pieces. Another of the men, the one with no name who wore square glasses, assisted him.
“…but?” Viktor demanded.
Torok straightened, leaving the other man to continue the clean-up.
“If you like, főnök, I will contact the British police and tell them there is a body. I will do it anonymously.”
Viktor reached for another tumbler, but only one of the six remained. When had he broken so many? He left it intact rather than have to drink his night-time pálinka direct from the bottle.
“Do not be stupid. That would raise suspicions and ruin my plans. No. If not before, the body will be found in the morning when the administration staff arrive for work. We must be patient.”
Viktor ran his fingers through his hair, raking the long strands back from his forehead and away from his eyes. So many women complimented him on his thick, wavy hair. Although now greying in parts, he was proud of his mane. At sixty-eight, he had the strength and energy of a man half his age. And the women, whores and fillies alike, still trembled under his potency. He was not known as the Giant of Győr without good reason.
“You have tried telephoning the Prentiss home?”
“Yes, főnök, but there is no answer. And all the portable phones have been powered down. It is a mystery.”
“Contact Cousin Ido. Instruct him to send people to investigate.”
Torok lowered his head, but kept his eyes fixed on Viktor and the remaining tumbler. The miserable creep showed a laudable sense of self-preservation. Perhaps he was not so stupid after all.
“Yes, főnök. But Hull is a long way from Derby. It will take Ido’s men more than two hours to—”
The ornate telephone on Viktor’s desk jangled, cutting off Torok mid-sentence. All eyes in the room turned to the device that rarely spoke. Viktor signalled for Torok to answer. He never responded to telephones himself. What other use did servants have?
Torok rushed to the desk, nearly tripping over the rug in the process, and plucked the handset from its cradle. He turned his back towards Viktor. In deference rather than insolence, Viktor assumed.
“Helló? … Helló? Ki van ott? … Yes, I speak English.”
The man chosen by Lajos fell silent while he listened. A few seconds later, his shoulders sagged. He spun to face Viktor, eyes staring wide, his dark face many shades paler than before.
“It is for you, főnök,” he croaked, holding out the phone. One hand covered the trumpet mouthpiece, both hands shook.
“Take a message, idióta.”
“No, főnök, the Englishman insists on speaking to you.”
“Insists?” Viktor bellowed. “He insists? Tell him to go fu—wait, an Englishman, did you say?”
“Yes, főnök,” Torok said, his voice stronger, but still quaking. “And the man says he has Lajos!”
Viktor snatched the telephone from the quivering minion and pressed it to his ear. It was warm and damp from sweat and the shiny oil Torok insisted on plastering all over his hair. Viktor wiped the earpiece on his sleeve and held it slightly away from his head.
“Who this?” he demanded in excellent English.
Viktor prided himself on his fluent mastery of the English tongue.
“Is that Viktor Pataki, the so-called ‘Giant of Győr’?” The English accent always made them appear aloof and superior, but the way the man used his honorary title stank of sarcasm.
Viktor bristled.
“It is. Who the fuck you are?”
“Are you the father of Vadik and Lajos Pataki?”
Viktor ground his teeth. Hot anger flared in his belly, threatening to boil into a rage. Who was this soft-spoken man who risked death in such a way?
“Yes. Answer question, dolt! What you know of my sons? What you want?”
“I know a great deal about your sons. They happen to be ignorant, murdering savages. Rather like their father, I imagine. As for what I want. Well, I want to deliver a message.”
What is this? A joke?
“You have message?”
To speak to the Giant of Győr in such a way, the Englishman had to be insane. A madman. An őrült.
“Well, I have good news and bad news. Which would you prefer first?”
“What!”
In an instant, his boiling rage cooled, turning his blood to ice. The Englishman was taunting him. Viktor had to keep control. Concentration was needed or he would miss something important. He signalled for Torok to pick up the extension. His old telephone did not have a loudspeaker facility.
“No preference?” the Englishman said, almost conversationally.
The man was clearly a lunatic. For two filler, Viktor would have slammed the telephone down on him but, inside madness, there often hid some grains of sanity. Perhaps the Englishman did have news of his sons.
“Okay,” the English lunatic, the őrült, continued, “I’ll start with the good news. Lajos survived the operation.”
Operation?
Viktor stood taller, stretching his commanding frame.
“Survived operation? What operation? What you tell me?”
“Not too fluent in the old English, eh Viktor? Okay, I’ll speak slowly, and try to be crystal clear. Unfortunately, Lajos was shot a couple of times. One bullet shattered his elbow. The other ruined his ankle. We had to operate or he would have died.”
“Doctor? You are doctor?”
“No, Viktor. Not a doctor. I’m a killer.”
A killer?
Viktor was talking to an őrült.
“In fact, I killed the snivelling ingrate Vadik. That happens to be the bad news, by the way—”
“Vadik? Vadik dead?”
Viktor slumped onto the top of his solidly built desk. It stood up well to the weight of his muscular frame.
Vomit.
He wanted to vomit, but could not show weakness in front of the men. As vultures, they would circle the carcass of anyone they saw as weak and failing, and they would try to rip the power from him. Viktor stiffened his back and expanded his massive chest.
“Yes, Viktor. Vadik is dead. Deceased. No longer breathing. And I’m the one who snuffed out his life. In fact, I snapped his scrawny neck like a dry twig. Are you listening to me now, Giant of Győr?” Őrült shouted the final sentence. Anger and insult clear in his words.
On the other side of the desk, Torok allowed his jaw to drop. He shook his head in disbelief.
“You kill my son? You kill Vadik?”
“Yes. I did. And I enjoyed it, too. The bastard deserved it.”
“No! It is lie!”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No. Vadik not dead. Vadik is lion. He not dead!”
“Check your printer Viktor, old man.”
“What? What you say!”
“You heard. I’ll call you back in two minutes.”
The telephone line died. Őrült had hung the phone up on him. How dare he!
Torok replaced the handset and stood. “May I leave the room, főnök?”
“What? What did you say?”
“I need to leave the room, főnök. To check the printer in the office.”
Viktor waved him off.
“Of course. Go, go!”
The insect hurried from the room and returned a few moments later, looking even more pale than before, as if that were possible. In his trembling hand, he held a sheet of paper. He approached Viktor, but kept a safe distance and stretched out his arm.
Viktor snatched the still-damp photograph from the trembling hand and stared at it in horror. He howled in anguish. In the picture, Vadik and Wilfred hung side-by-side in a destroyed car. Wilfred was clearly dead—no one could survive with so much of his head missing. Vadik, though, appeared intact, without a scratch. He might even have survived the crash unscathed, but his head hung from his shoulders at a strange
angle. Unnatural. His neck was broken. Vadik, his elder son, stared at the camera lens through dead eyes.
Vadik was dead. Of that, there was no doubt. Dead at the hands of an English őrült.
The telephone on his desk jangled again. This time, Viktor snatched it from its cradle and roared in Hungarian. He ranted, and he called on the Old Gods to bring down their wrath … The line clicked into silence. Őrült had hung up on him again.
Again!
Viktor slammed the handset into its cradle and stood over it, his hands balled into fists. He fumed. The men around him remained still and silent. They knew what was good for them.
The heavy clock on the mantlepiece ticked away the minutes.
Three minutes passed and stretched into four.
Still, Viktor waited. He fumed.
Őrült would ring back. If he did not want something from Viktor, he would not have called in the first place. Next time, Viktor would listen. Only by listening would he learn enough to …
The telephone burst into life. Slowly, under great control, Viktor opened his fingers and picked up the handset.
“Englishman?” he asked, his voice little more than a whisper.
“Yep, it’s me. Are you calm enough to listen?”
“You kill Vadik?”
“I most certainly did, Viktor old man. Told you I was a killer. And you know what?” Őrült paused, clearly waiting for a response.
Viktor finally obliged him with a, “What?”
“Before I snapped his neck, your bastard son cried like a little girl. He begged for his life. Offered me two million euros to spare him. He said you, Viktor, would pay me in cash. Pitiful it was. Pitiful. Such a coward. And you know what else?”
Viktor filled the next pause more quickly.
“What else?”
“I enjoyed ending his life, but I would have preferred taking more time over it. At least the body’s recognisable. More or less in one piece. Fingerprints clear as day. No doubt the UK police will contact you in due course. They’ll want to know where to ship your son’s rotting corpse. But, as I said, it’s not all bad news. Lajos is still alive. Minus an arm and with a broken leg, but alive.”
Viktor jumped to his feet. It had taken all his strength not to scream at the Englishman, but he could take no more.
“What you want, Englishman?” he roared. “Money? You want money?”
“Tut, tut, Viktor. What part of ‘shut up and listen’ didn’t you understand?” Őrült asked, quiet and calm once more.
“You want money?” Viktor repeated.
“Maybe. I haven’t decided yet. Let me think about it.”
“If Lajos die, you die! I hunt you down and castrate—”
“Okay, I can understand you’re upset. No father should outlive his children, but one more word, and I’ll end this call and reconsider my plans.”
“Fuck you, Englishman. I castrate you and make you eat own testicles!”
“Okay, I’ve had enough of your macho posturing. I’ll call back in a few days, when you’ve had time to calm down a little. You never know, I might even let you talk to Lajos—assuming he’s still alive. So long Viktor, ‘Giant of Győr’.”
The line clicked and, once again, the dialling tone burred into his ear, along with the pounding of his own blood.
Viktor stood. The room shook to his roars. The whole house trembled to his anger. He turned to face Peder Torok, who stood across the desk from him, the extension receiver still in his hand.
“Do not just stand there, you snivelling piece of shit. Do something!”
“I-I … What do you want me to do, főnök?” he asked, finally dropping the handset to the great desk.
Szar!
A good question. What could the moron do? What could anyone do?
“Can you trace that call?”
Torok blinked. Shook his head. “I-I don’t know how, főnök. That sort of thing was Wilfred’s responsibility.”
“So? Go get the geek. Tell him to—”
His eyes fell to the photograph on the desk and reminded him of another death. The death of the geek.
Szar!
Again, Viktor roared, and again he threw a tumbler to smash against the wall. What did it matter if it was the last one. With Vadik gone and Lajos held by an English őrült what did it matter if he drank from the bottle?
He turned to the other men in the room. Andris and Balint had been with him since the beginning. Strong and reliable, they now had grey hair from age and experience, but were not blessed with brains and had no initiative. They would follow, but never lead, which is why they had survived so long as his employees. Viktor could turn to them for their strength of arms, but not for their advice.
The five others stood and stared at him with their fingers stuck up their useless assholes. They were newcomers, brought into the family firm by Vadik or Lajos, or both. Viktor did not even know all their names. Could they be trusted?
No. He could trust no one whose names he did not know.
“Andris, Balint, stay. And you, Torok. Everyone else, go. Go!”
He waved them towards the door. They looked from one to the other and then turned towards Torok. None made a move to leave.
“Why are you looking at him? I said go!”
He tore the Makarov 9mm from its holster under his arm and jerked back the slide. Bulgarian-built from an original Russian design, with an eight round magazine, the Makarov never left his side, and had never let him down. Viktor slept with it under his pillow. He aimed at the one in the middle, the tallest one with the shaved head.
“Fuck off!” Viktor yelled. “All of you!”
Finally, they understood the message and raced from the room. He turned the gun on Torok. His finger reached for the trigger.
“Why the fuck did they look to you?”
Torok’s eyes bulged even wider. His arms shot up, hands waving in front of his face as though they could appease Viktor or stop a bullet.
“I don’t know, főnök! Please.”
“Why did they look to you!” he repeated, screaming. “Are you plotting against me?”
“No, főnök. Oh God no! I would never—”
“Now that Vadik is dead and Lajos gone, do you dare to make a move on the Giant of Győr?”
Viktor lifted the Makarov higher, lining up the sights with Torok’s sweating, crinkled forehead. He added more pressure to the trigger.
“Please, főnök. Please, no!”
Sweat poured from Torok’s face. His raised hands shook and his chin twitched. He dropped to his knees on the carpet. Much longer and the young traitor would soil himself.
Viktor held his pose for a count of five, then lowered the Makarov and laughed. He laughed long and hard, and angry.
“You nearly pissed your pants!”
Torok swallowed. He lowered his hands and hung his head in shame.
“Főnök, I would never act against you. Please believe—”
Viktor aimed, pulled the trigger. The Makarov spewed fire. The bullet smashed through the top of Torok’s head and exploded out the back. He slumped, lifeless to the floor. Blood and brains soaked into the rug.
No matter. The room was long overdue redecoration.
Viktor turned to his trusted men.
“Never could stand that snivelling coward.” He sniffed and turned his back to the corpse. “Balint, go outside and tell those men what happened here. Remind them who is in command. Any more hesitation will see more death.”
Balint dipped his huge head and hurried from the room like the good soldier he was. He closed the door quietly as he left.
“Andris, get someone to take away the rubbish. Remove the rug and replace it with one from another room.”
Andris reached for the desk telephone.
“No, use your portable,” Viktor barked. “The English lunatic, Őrült, will call back.”
“You think so, főnök?”
“Of course he will. Why would else he contact me? It was not j
ust to gloat. He keeps Lajos alive to trade him for money.”
“Assuming Lajos is still alive, főnök,” Andris said, head lowered and speaking with his usual humility.
“Lajos lives,” Viktor murmured, punching his chest with the side of his fist. “He lives. I feel it here.”
“Yes, főnök. Forgive me,” Andris said and dug into his pocket for a portable phone.
He turned away to make the call, speaking quickly and quietly. Moments later, Balint knocked before entering and closing the door again.
Under the protection of two trusted men, maybe his only remaining trusted men, Viktor relaxed a little. He made safe the Makarov and returned it to its holster.
“Do the men understand who is in charge here?” he asked.
The huge Balint, who stood half a metre taller than Viktor, fixed him with his good eye. He had lost the use of the left in a hunting accident when they were still young men, but it did not seem to affect his aim with a rifle. As for his accuracy with a pistol? Well, Viktor had that covered, as Andris usually hit anything he aimed at if it did not stand more than twenty metres away.
“Yes, főnök. They understand. There will be no more hesitation.”
“Good, good.”
“And now, főnök? What do we do?” Andris asked, always the more talkative of the two.
“Now, Andris, we wait. And while we wait, we toast the life of Vadik. He may not have been the most gifted of men, but he was my son, and he will be missed.”
“And avenged?” Balint asked.
Viktor nodded. “And avenged. Most definitely, he will be avenged.”
Viktor wandered to the small table beside the empty fireplace, picked up the bottle of pálinka, and unscrewed the top. Before he could raise the bottle to his lips, two quiet raps on the door stopped him.
“Come!” he bellowed.
Three of the men he dismissed earlier, entered. The tall one with a shaved head brought a black tarpaulin, the others carried a rug furled up into a sausage.
While they scraped up the mess that used to be Peder Torok, Viktor raised the bottle of pálinka, called, “To Vadik!” and drank deep. The fiery liquid scorched his throat on the way down. He handed the bottle to Andris who took a pull and passed it to Balint who did the same. Neither man wiped the neck of the bottle first, as was their way. A good way. It showed all three men were brothers.
On the Hunt Page 21