Vicious Circle

by Wilbur Smith

  Nursing his shattered wrist, the man backed away from her but she followed him remorselessly, slashing the blade of the flick knife back and forth only inches from his face.

  ‘Down!’ she ordered him. ‘Get down on your knees, you dirty-mouth son of a Satan, before I cut out your stinking balls and make you eat them.’

  ‘Wait!’ he whimpered. ‘I’m doing it. I’ll do anything you say.’ He dropped to his knees, nursing his damaged wrist, setting himself up perfectly for her next kick. It caught him under his chin and he went over backwards and lay choking and bubbling blood from his half-severed tongue that he had bitten.

  Paddy came up beside Nastiya and looked down at the writhing figure in the wheat.

  ‘Jesus and Maria, woman! You haven’t left much for me, have you?’

  *

  On the lower side of the road Hector was closing the gap on the man he was pursuing. He seemed much younger than Hector, but Hector was faster and fitter.

  Hector wanted to avoid a hand-to-hand with somebody who would almost certainly be carrying a knife. When he was only a dozen paces behind his quarry, he swung the shillelagh back over his shoulder, and then whipped it forward again. Hector had spent his childhood in Africa and his small indigenous companions had all been experts with throwing sticks. Even the youngest of them could bring down a flying spurfowl at twenty paces. They had taught Hector well. The shillelagh cartwheeled into the back of the man’s legs and he went down in a heap with a cry of surprise.

  Hector snatched up the shillelagh on the run and as he came up behind his fallen victim he made a quick calculation. If he broke the man’s leg that would certainly anchor him, but he would have to carry him back up the hill to where he had parked the car. On the other hand, a broken arm would anchor him almost as effectively, but he would still be able to hobble back to the Range Rover, especially if Hector gave him a little encouragement with the blunt end of the club. He stood over the man, who instinctively lifted both hands to shield his face. Hector hit him on the point of the elbow with a full swing of the shillelagh, and the man screamed as his elbow joint shattered.

  Hector seized the wrist of his injured arm and twisted it. The man howled again and Hector levered him to his feet.

  ‘Christ, man, you’re hurting me,’ he blubbered.

  ‘You mustn’t say that,’ Hector told him. ‘You’re breaking my heart.’ He twisted the injured arm up between the man’s shoulder blades and frog-marched him back up the hill. When he reached the Range Rover he saw Nastiya and Paddy coming down the hill to join him. Paddy was carrying their captive over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.

  When he reached the fence he dumped his burden over the wire and called to Hector, ‘Have you had a good sniff of your nice young friend?’

  ‘I certainly have,’ Hector replied. ‘Mine smells of garlic. How about your beauty?’

  ‘Reeks of the stuff.’ Paddy looked stern.

  ‘What else smells like garlic? Please remind me,’ Hector asked.

  ‘Could it be burning white phosphorus from an incendiary grenade?’ Paddy asked.

  Hector snapped his fingers. ‘That’s it!’ He gave the man’s broken arm a firm twist. ‘Now, we haven’t been burning down any houses recently, have we?’ His victim squealed shrilly. ‘I’ll take that as an affirmative,’ Hector said, and bundled him through the open rear door of the vehicle.

  Paddy jumped over the fence and dragged the second man out of the ditch by his heels, picked him up bodily and threw him into the back of the Rover on top of his mate, and then Hector slammed the door and locked it from the outside.

  ‘Nazzy, please keep your new knife handy just in case one of these lovely lads gets a bit obstreperous,’ Hector warned her as they all climbed aboard. Before he started the engine Hector called Paul Stowe.

  ‘Okay, Paul. You can call it a day and come home. We have picked up both of the runners.’

  He started the Rover and drove sedately back to the Brandon Hall Estate. When he crossed the bridge over the River Test and entered the main gates of the estate he did not drive directly to the Hall, but turned left and took the dirt road down to the Old Barn. This renovated building was used as a luncheon venue on shooting days. It was almost half a mile from the Hall, concealed from it by trees. Hector parked on the side of the building furthest from the main road. Nobody would be able to see or hear what was happening inside.

  While Nastiya went ahead to unlock the front door and switch on the lights in the barn, Hector and Paddy dragged the two captives out of the back of the vehicle and followed her into the commodious building.

  ‘Keep an eye on our hostages, Paddy,’ Hector said, even though he could see there was no fight left in either of them. He went to the row of cupboards on the rear wall of the barn and came back with a large reel of yellow electrical cable and a pair of wire cutters. One at a time he trussed the two captives into a pair of straight-backed chairs at the dining table, leaving only their injured arms free. It was a neat and expert job. They were pinioned helplessly.

  ‘Okay, put your free arms on the table in front of you,’ he ordered. When they hesitated, Hector reached across the table and grabbed one of them by the wrist. He twisted it sharply. The man screamed and his face in the hood of his jacket went chalky white. Sweat burst out on his chin and forehead.

  ‘Do it!’ Hector insisted.

  ‘Okay! Okay! Just take it easy, man.’ The fellow mumbled around his lacerated tongue which had swollen to fill his mouth. Gingerly he stretched out his arm towards Nastiya, who was leaning across the table towards him. She slipped a loop of the yellow cable around his swollen wrist and tugged it tight.

  ‘Shit, man!’ he whined. ‘Do you want to kill me?’

  ‘A few things you need to know, comrade,’ she told him. ‘Firstly, I still don’t like your dirty speaking. Secondly, I am not a man. Thirdly, yes, I would like very much to enjoy killing you. Please give me an excuse to do that.’

  The second captive had watched what had happened to his companion and he cooperated with alacrity, offering his injured arm to Paddy across the table without a quibble. Paddy slipped a loop of the cable over his wrist.

  Hector stood behind the two prisoners and yanked the hoods down over their shoulders, leaving both their heads bare. Then he walked to the other side of the table and stood between Paddy and Nastiya. For a while he studied the two captives in front of him.

  They were both in their twenties or early thirties; both white. He had expected them to be the same colour as the men who had killed Hazel.

  Colour meant nothing, Hector reminded himself. Some of the worst swine he knew were white; and some of the best men were black.

  He studied the man that Nastiya had caught. He was thickset; dark unruly hair; flat Slavic features; yellow pustules and bright acne scars on his chin and cheeks. He was sweating heavily with pain. He could not take his eyes off Nastiya, who was holding him on the end of the cable. She stared back at him coldly.

  The second man was lanky in build and sallow in complexion. His sandy-coloured hair was already thinning. His eyes were a pale gingery brown and his teeth were twisted and discoloured. Hector could smell his breath from across the table.

  ‘Very well, gentlemen. Now please pay attention. My name is Hector Cross. I am the person who you tried to burn to death. My daughter is Catherine. She is still an infant. You also tried to kill her. Thus, I am not very well disposed towards either of you.’ He gave them a few seconds to digest that, and then he continued, ‘Like it or not, you are going to answer some questions. If you answer them truthfully you get ten Brownie points. If you tell me a porky pie you get your sore arm twisted.’ He smiled at the one with acne scars. ‘Do you know what a porky pie is, lover boy?’

  ‘A lie,’ the man mumbled. A little trickle of blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. He licked at it. His tongue was deeply gouged by his own teeth, swollen and turning blue.

  ‘That’s correct. Now, shall we play the ga
me?’ He did not wait for a reply. He took the ends of the yellow cables from Paddy and Nastiya and held one in each hand.

  ‘First question is for you.’ He looked at the one with bad teeth. ‘Do you know that your breath stinks?’

  ‘It doesn’t stink.’

  ‘Wrong answer,’ Hector told him and yanked his cable. The broken bones in his elbow clicked like dice, and he screamed. He struggled wildly to break out of his bonds. At last he subsided, panting and sobbing.

  Hector repeated the question quietly. ‘Let’s get it clear, does it stink or not?’

  ‘Yes! Yes! It stinks.’

  ‘Excellent. So I’m going to call you Spots, which is short for Leopard Breath.’ He turned to the other one. ‘Do you know that you have pimples?’

  ‘Yah. Okay. I got a few pimples.’

  ‘Beaucoup rather than just a few. Anyway that’s your new name. So tell me, Pimples. Where did you get the incendiary grenades?’

  His dark eyes shifted. Hector raised his left hand holding the tag end of the cable.

  ‘Quickly,’ he warned.

  ‘The nigger gave them to me.’

  ‘Very interesting reply, even though it offends my political conscience.’ Hector smiled, and it was more menacing than any scowl. ‘Shall we rather refer to your grenade supplier as the Worthy African Gentleman, or WAG for short?’

  ‘Whatever.’ Pimples shrugged, and then winced at the pain the movement afforded him.

  ‘What was his name, this WAG?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Careful!’ Hector said, and showed him his end of the cable.

  ‘I swear on my mother’s grave. I don’t know his name. I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘Someone I worked for one time before gave him my name.’

  ‘What kind of work did you do before? Was it wet work?’

  ‘Yeah, we snuffed an old guy who owed some money and didn’t pay. Kind of an example for others.’

  ‘What was the old guy’s name and where did you do him?’

  ‘His name was Charley Bean, I think, but I don’t remember the address; somewhere in Croydon.’ He twisted his head around to look across at his companion. ‘Where was it, Bonzo?’

  ‘Sixteen Pulson Street,’ Spots muttered.

  ‘The two of you are doing just fine.’ Hector applauded their performance. ‘What did you use to dish Charley Bean? Knife, was it?’

  ‘Nah. Golf club.’

  ‘Where did you find a golf club?’

  ‘In a bag hanging behind his bedroom door.’

  ‘Wedge or five iron? How many strokes?’ Hector asked. Pimples looked blank.

  ‘Never mind. I was just having a little fun with you,’ Hector consoled him. ‘Who gave you the contract on Charley Bean and put the WAG onto you?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’ Hector gave the yellow cable a firm tug, and Pimples howled and burst out in a fresh sweat.

  ‘Think!’ Hector encouraged him.

  ‘Bookmaker named Aaron Herbstein,’ he sobbed. ‘He runs a book on the dogs at Romford and Sunderland stadiums.’

  ‘Thank you, Pimples. How did Herbstein the bookie set up a rendezvous with you and your WAG?’

  ‘A runday what?’ Pimples looked bewildered.

  ‘A meeting. Where and how did you meet?’

  ‘We waited outside the tube station on Brixton Road at nine o’clock last Sunday morning and he came past in a car and picked us up.’

  ‘What car?’

  ‘A black Ford.’

  ‘Did you get the registration number?’

  ‘Didn’t bother.’

  ‘Why?’ Hector asked and Pimples shrugged.

  ‘It was nicked, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it was. So you got in the back of this Ford and you looked at the driver. Tell me what you saw.’

  ‘I saw a black guy in a funny mask,’ Pimples said.

  ‘A Richard Nixon mask?’

  ‘Nah, it was a Dolly Parton mask.’

  ‘How did you know he was black?’

  ‘I was looking at the back of his neck. It was black, wasn’t it?’

  ‘What else did you notice about him?’

  ‘Well, he was a Muzzie.’

  ‘A Muzzie? What’s that?’

  ‘A Muslim. A Hadji.’

  ‘You could tell that by looking at the back of his neck?’

  ‘Nah, he had a Maalik tattoo.’

  ‘What is a Maalik?’

  ‘An Angel. A Muzzie Angel. They are a gang that call themselves Maaliks because they think they are the warriors of Allah, or some shit like that. They tattoo the sign on themselves and they think it makes them some kind of big deal. But they’re just a gang of street soldiers trying to make a little bread like the rest of us. Usually we fight them for territory. But this time we were doing business. This Maalik guy offered five K for us to torch a big old house in the sticks.’

  ‘My house,’ Hector said.

  ‘Sorry, guv. If I had only known I would have told him to stuff his five K really deep.’ Pimples hurried on. ‘I knew he was subcontracting to us. That’s what these shit-face Maaliks do. Someone offers them ten K for a job so they offer us the same job for five. They are shit, I tell you.’

  ‘So you agreed to take on the job?’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t,’ Pimples muttered ruefully. ‘I didn’t know about you and your daughter. But, after all, five K is still money. It buys a few tokes. This Maalik told me the house belonged to an old guy who couldn’t fight back for pussy.’

  ‘And, baby, look at you now.’ Hector gave the yellow cable a double jerk. Pimples wailed, his voice broke and he began to blubber.

  ‘Please stop. I am telling you everything. Please don’t do that again.’ Tears ran down his cheeks, weaving their way slowly between the pustules. He had no free hand to wipe them away and they dripped onto the front of his hoodie.

  ‘No, you haven’t told me everything yet, Pimples. Tell me more about this Maalik tattoo. Describe it to me.’

  ‘It was on the back of his left hand, about the size of a ten-pence coin. It looks like a worm crawling out of a lump of shit; all sort of twisted up. I think it’s some sort of Muzzie writing. Not all of them are allowed to wear it, only the top tomatoes in each chapter.’

  ‘What colour is the tattoo?’

  ‘Different colours for each chapter.’

  ‘Your man. The one who gave you five K. What colour was his mark?’

  ‘He’s American, isn’t he?’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘For starters he talked with a Yankee accent. For seconds his tattoo is red. Bonzo and me checked on it before we took the contract. Red means the California chapter.’

  ‘What’s he doing over this side of the Atlantic?’

  ‘Dunno! Must be one of their Capo de Capos, like Robert de Niro in the flicks, or something.’

  ‘You don’t know his name?’ Hector insisted, and Pimples shook his head vehemently.

  ‘No! That’s all I know.’

  ‘Where is the five thousand pounds they gave you for the job?’

  ‘Not here, I ain’t got it here.’

  ‘I asked you where it is, not where it isn’t.’

  ‘Gave it to my girlfriend to keep for me.’

  ‘You’ve got a girlfriend? I can hardly applaud her taste in men. Anyway, this is her lucky day. She’s got five grand and she never has to look at your revolting face again. Why? Because if we don’t kill you, the boys in blue are going to lock you away for twenty or thirty years, maybe more. You know? Arson and multiple murders, innit,’ he said, imitating the man’s accent. ‘You gentlemen are in between a rock and a very hard place.’ They stared at him in dull resignation.

  Hector turned to Nastiya. ‘They haven’t got much more to tell us that we need to hear. What do you think we should do with them, Nazzy my dear? As if I couldn’t guess.’

  ‘I think to kill them.
Let me do the one with the pimples. He said some very bad things to me. I am still very, very cross.’

  ‘That should be a lot of fun to watch.’ Hector turned to Paddy. ‘What’s your vote?’

  ‘We haven’t got time to waste on this dungheap. Let’s do what Nazzy suggests and get on with it.’ Hector pretended to ponder the position. Both the captives watched his face anxiously. At last, Hector sighed.

  ‘It is definitely a most attractive proposition. But it would leave us with a lot of cleaning up. A brace of human carcasses is not easy to dispose of. I think we should be charitable and give them a little time to think it all over and repent their sins, something like twenty or thirty years enjoying the hospitality of Her Majesty. That should do the trick.’ He took out his phone and dialled 999. Two cars despatched from Winchester police headquarters arrived at the Hall within forty minutes.

  The police officers were very polite and deferential towards Hector. They were well aware of his standing in the community, and of Hazel’s murder. They tried to smooth the whole arrest process, so as not to exacerbate the burden of his bereavement. Nonetheless, it was a long night. Firstly, Hector insisted on staying on at Brandon Hall until all his employees had been accounted for. It was after midnight before the firemen found the fourth and last corpse amongst the ashes.

  It was Reynolds, the butler, who had been trapped by the flames in his own pantry. In the final moments before the smoke overwhelmed him he had covered his head with a fire blanket from the emergency kit. His face was only superficially scorched and still recognizable, but from the neck down he was a blackened and wizened stump of charcoal.

  After the firemen zipped his corpse into a green body bag, Hector turned away and went to the Range Rover. They followed the police cars to Winchester to make their sworn statements.

  The two prisoners were cautioned, charged and locked in the holding cells. Then Hector, Paddy, Nastiya and Paul Stowe were taken to separate interview rooms to make their statements.

  This was a tedious chore, but they had rehearsed their version of events and it all went smoothly. Hector was even able to place on the record what the perpetrators had confessed to concerning the previous contract killing of a certain Charles Bean at 16 Pulson Street. The detective sergeant who was interviewing Hector excused himself and went back to the computer in his own office. He returned after only ten minutes or so. As he took the seat facing Hector again his expression was grim.