A Rush of Blood

by David Mark

  ‘I didn’t think you were,’ said Lottie. ‘It’s obviously been taken down after you went to the house.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ asked Mum.

  ‘Post-mortem I did last year on an eastern European. Body found on that little patch of mud and sand at Wapping. Never got an ID on him but his tattoos and blood sample suggested an Albanian background. No fingertips and no face. Oh, sorry Hilda …’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Meda?’ I asked, and the blood was rushing in my ears as I imagined in perfect detail the scene she had just described.

  ‘The officer from the NCA said the victim could have been linked to a gang that was targeting immigrants. Burglaries. Shakedowns. Targeting people unlikely to make a fuss.’

  ‘And Meda?’ asked Mum, trying to get Lottie to explain her thinking.

  ‘I read an article about it, I think. It rang a bell for some reason. Maybe it’s just the word “cutters”. That’s what was used on the fingers, you see. Little bolt cutters.’

  I shivered, tearing up, and Mum put her hand on my forearm. ‘That’ll do, Lottie. Hilda, she didn’t mean that something like that was happening to Meda! Lottie, tell her what you meant …’

  ‘No, no, not that. It’s just … look, I’ll find it.’

  I sat with my hands in the pockets of my hoodie, staring at the surface of the bar. All I could see now was some terrible blond-haired man in sunglasses snipping off my friend’s fingers like they were the stems of beautiful roses. Each time the metal touched metal I imagined the soft, sad splat of a snipped finger hitting a stone floor.

  ‘Here,’ said Lottie, and she sounded rather rueful, as if she realized she had said far too many things in front of a child. ‘I’ll read it to you. Was in the Independent ages ago. Just a big feature about life in the cosmopolitan East End. Where is it? See! It’s all up here, you know,’ she said, tapping her temple. ‘Listen … big increase in numbers of kidnappings in migrant communities … Eastern European gangs targeting people who won’t call police … here, right … Last year, a group of Lithuanian men seized a young Lithuanian after overhearing his accent in the pub. They beat him senseless and then scrolled down the numbers in his mobile phone, calling friends and relatives to demand £200. Police rescued the critically injured victim, who spent weeks on a life support machine but eventually recovered … Molly, that’s what the cop told me about the faceless body – that he might have been involved in this trade and been punished for it. This is how they process the bodies in the Russian Mafia. No face. No fingerprints. Said something about how they’d messed with the wrong people this time.’

  I felt Mum’s grip tighten on my forearm. She didn’t seem to know what to do.

  ‘Maybe we’re getting carried away …’

  We jumped as the phone behind the bar rang. A short jangling trill burst from the antique unit, a splendid assemblage of twisted copper pipes and a sepia-coloured typewriter case. Mum loved talking on it. Made her feel like a duchess in a big house.

  ‘Jolly Bonnet,’ she said, and her voice sounded like it had been stretched too tight.

  I can see the change in her face as I write this. I can recollect it perfectly. Mum, half-turned, looking pretty and pale and chewing on her lip the way she did when she was thinking. She sort of froze. Just stood there, totally motionless, with a twisted half grin upon her face.

  She never told me precisely what was said to her. She just hung up and slowly turned to face me, pirouetting slowly like a music box.

  ‘We have to go,’ she said, quietly. ‘Hilda, be a good girl and get your coat. Julien, I think we should close early …’

  The door opened before she could say any more.

  The warning had come too late.

  The bad men were here.

  MOLLY

  Three men. Two young heavies and an older, plumper figure. Eastern European. The young men could be twins. Low-cut vests beneath tracksuit tops and leather jackets; colourful trainers and hair brushed forward into precise fringes. The older man has a haggard look, as if life has been unyielding in its assaults. There is a droopiness to his form, as if he is puddling into his belly. He looks like a teddy bear propped up on a child’s bed, though nobody would want to cuddle him goodnight. He has a pestilence about him; a suggestion that beneath his loud woollen jumper and stonewashed jeans his skin may be flaking off like the scales of a rotting fish.

  ‘Hello,’ says Molly, a little shrill. ‘Awful night, isn’t it? Welcome to the Jolly Bonnet. Would you like to hang your coats up? Fire’s on in the back room if you want to warm yourselves through …’

  The trio are standing in the doorway, looking at their surroundings in some confusion. They look as though they have taken a wrong turn and opened a door into another world. Their eyes linger on the tasteful pen-and-ink nudes before resting on the medical paraphernalia in the display case. There is a burst of quiet conversation between the two men. One mimes the use of a syringe and the other nods.

  Molly flicks a glance at her daughter. The child’s eyes are wide. Wordlessly, Lottie moves closer towards her.

  ‘Shithole,’ says the first man. It is said like a pronouncement, as though an incontrovertible judgement has been passed.

  ‘Look like fucking brothel,’ says the other.

  ‘So you must be hooker, yes?’

  Molly has run plenty of rough pubs. She has never been afraid to tell a customer that they will not be getting any more drinks this evening or to boot out some drunken stockbroker for grabbing one of her girls and saying something offensive. She is rarely afraid. But the voice had sounded so absolute. The warning on the phone had been clear. ‘They mean to do you harm. I will be as quick as I can but get out. Now.’ She had recognized the voice. Had no reason to doubt the validity of his words. Just had no time to respond.

  ‘Drink, is it?’ asks Molly, loudly. ‘We’ve got some nice guest ales …’

  ‘You’re the boss, yes?’ asks one of the younger men. His face is expressionless, his voice neutral.

  ‘I’m the manageress,’ replies Molly. She moves forward, subtly putting herself in front of Julien. On the other side of the bar, Lottie puts a hand on Hilda’s shoulder.

  ‘Molly, yes?’

  Molly mimes looking for a name badge. She shrugs. ‘Who wants to know?’

  The man stares at her, hard. Then he nods, making up his mind. ‘I do, whore.’

  Molly cannot avoid her reaction. She has an expressive face. Disgust and ecstasy habitually make her pretty countenance twist into comic overreactions. Shock manifests itself as a wide-mouthed, cartoonish mask of amazement. She pulls such a face now, as if truly aghast at the stranger’s brazenness.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ she says, and her accent is that of a duchess who has just been called a knobhead by a serving maid. ‘Were you directing that comment at me?’

  ‘And this must be the little girl,’ says the man, turning his attention to Hilda. ‘Hilda, is it? That’s an old lady’s name. You’re not an old lady. Maybe you never will be.’

  ‘Don’t talk to my daughter,’ says Molly, cold, and she makes for the hatch at the end of the bar. ‘I’ve had a right pisser of a day and I haven’t got time for a bunch of fannies coming in here and fart-arsing around like you own the place …’

  ‘You like Facebook, yes?’ asks the man, ignoring Molly. He has cocked his head and is staring hard at Hilda. ‘You like to look at people’s lives, yes? Poke around? What is the word I hear? Is it “snoop”? Yes, that is it. Snoop, yes. You like to snoop around and make trouble? Learn secrets? Take risks?’

  ‘I never,’ says Hilda, shaking her head. She suddenly looks very young. ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘You cause trouble. Cause danger.’

  Molly lifts the hatch and steps into the bar. She can smell the sweet reek of alcohol coming off all three.

  ‘Oi. Knobhead. I don’t know what you want but it’s time to leave …’

  ‘Leave?’ Now it is the older man who speak
s. He has teeth missing in his top row. ‘You going to throw us out, bitch? You and this faggot in his braces? This little girl and her tattooed friend with her big tits? Or this old witch in her red coat?’

  ‘’Ere, you can fack off right now,’ says Connie, her voice dropping by two octaves. ‘Coming in ’ere like you own the facking place, saying things to a nice young girl. I’d fack off before you get yourself hurt, you cant.’

  All three men laugh, but there is no joy in the sound.

  ‘It’s good advice,’ says Lottie. ‘And thanks for the compliment about the tits. I’ll happily repay you with some kindly observations about your tiny but perfectly formed dick, if you like.’

  ‘What you say, bitch?’

  ‘You like that word, don’t you. Do you know any more?’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘You don’t talk to her like that. Get out or I will throw you out.’

  Julien has barely cleared the serving hatch when the leading man pushes past Molly and grabs him by his tattooed throat and braces. He head-butts him hard in the face. Julien staggers and the man kicks his legs out. He sprawls on to the floor, knocking over a table, and the other young man steps forward and kicks him so hard in the face that his head snaps back as if his neck were a knee.

  ‘Stop it! Leave it!’

  Molly reacts on instinct, launching herself at the man who is attacking her barman. She slams a hard punch into the cheekbone of the nearest man. He swears as he stumbles back, hand to his face, mouth opening in shock, and then Molly feels hands around her waist and she is being flung, hard, into the side of the bar. The wind goes out of her as a fist slams into her guts and she hears the screeching of a wounded animal as she thrashes back and forth, kicking out and punching as strong, stinking hands push her face into the spilled beer and stained grain of the bar top and she hears glass smash and stools topple and the desperate cries of her daughter …

  The pressure on her neck relaxes and she pushes herself up from the bar, roaring, yelling, grabbing out for a weapon of any kind, ready to stab and punch and stamp …

  She stops as she sees the man called Karol. Where the hell had he appeared from? He has one of the younger men against the wall. The other is slumped against the far partition, bleeding from the nose and blinking, over and over, as if sending a message in Morse. The older man, who had been holding Molly hard against the bar, is closing his hand around the back of a chair, raising it high, preparing to bring it down on Karol’s back. Karol spots him at the last moment and kicks his attacker squarely between the legs. The chair falls from his hands and smacks the older man on the crown of his head before clattering on to the floor. Karol grabs him by the back of the head and slams him, face first, into the glass panel of the door. The old, frosted glass cracks straight down the middle and the old man topples backwards. Karol knees him in the side of the head then turns back to the man he had pinned to the wall. He picks him up again, hand around his throat. He puts one thumb on the edge of the man’s left eye and whispers to him. Molly cannot hear what is said but the man squirms and squeals and nods, frantic with fear.

  Karol pauses a moment and then drops the man. He pushes him towards the door and then barks an order in his own language. Meekly, the man hands over a roll of cash from his coat pocket. He drops it on one of the unbroken tables and then hauls up the older man. Across the room, the bleeding youngster manages to get to his feet. They stagger out, all mutterings and curses and the drip-drip-drip of blood. Karol continues to stare at the double doors for a full thirty seconds after they have gone. Then he turns to face Molly.

  ‘A vodka, I think,’ he says. ‘Make it a double.’

  An hour later, Molly, Hilda and Lottie are sat in the snug at the back of the bar. Julien had come to moments after his attackers left and decided that, on balance, he would rather go home than go to hospital. His left eye was horribly swollen and his lip was split down the middle but he declared that the bottle of absinthe he had been saving for a special occasion would work fine as a painkiller. Molly had got Connie a taxi and gave in to a smile when the old girl told her she was a ‘facking head case’. They had then tidied the bar in silence. Save for a few smashed glasses and one stool with a broken leg there was not much damage. Even so, Karol had insisted that Molly take the roll of money he had demanded from the young man, and she had surprised herself by doing so without protest.

  She pours herself a shot of Bathtub Gin from the bottle in front of her. Her face is burning and there is a tenderness to her lower ribs. Hilda has her own chair pulled up close. She keeps touching her. Asking if she is OK. Asking whether her hand hurt from punching the man. Lottie is staring at Karol, chin in palm, eyes wide and admiring.

  ‘Are we sitting comfortably?’ asks Molly, and she sounds as snappy as she feels. She feels agitated. Ill-used. She has done nothing but take her daughter to dance class and follow up on a worry about a child’s welfare and for her troubles she has been insulted, assaulted and embarrassed. She has been glaring at Karol ever since his arrival. Wanted to smash him in the face for his arrogance as he sat at the bar with his legs apart, drinking her vodka and playing with his phone, glancing up every now and again to watch the women clean and tidy the bar around him; a little half-smile on his face every time he caught her eye.

  ‘You seem angry,’ says Karol, mildly. ‘You probably make profit tonight.’

  ‘Angry?’ demands Molly, banging her glass down on the table. ‘Oh, I wonder why.’

  ‘You being sarcastic, I think.’

  ‘Yes, I’m being bloody sarcastic. My face is killing. My stomach hurts. My daughter just watched a friend getting kicked half to death …’

  ‘He fine. Bruise look good on him. Same colour as tattoos.’

  ‘You’re not taking this seriously.’

  ‘I called you. I warned you. Ran red lights to get here. Probably got ticket.’

  ‘But we haven’t done anything wrong!’

  Karol rubs his forehead. He reaches into his pocket for cigarettes and then stops himself. ‘It’s banned, yes? No smoking in pubs. And soon, no drinking, talking or laughing.’

  ‘Please,’ says Hilda, quietly. ‘Just tell me about Meda. Is she OK? Were those the men who have her?’

  Karol considers Hilda. He looks at her for an uncomfortably long time. In the half light of the snug, with its flickering candles and honey-coloured lights, he looks to Molly like a man out of time. She suddenly sees a different man; an intense and brooding battlefield poet, warming his cold skin beside a flickering fire in a draughty tavern. Dressed as a Victorian brothel keeper in her sumptuous East End pub, she feels well placed to judge.

  ‘Meda is not fine, no,’ says Karol, at last. ‘I tell you what I know because I think you understand that this is important, yes? And I appreciate that you haven’t mentioned the police.’

  ‘Just tell us about Meda,’ says Molly, chewing her lip.

  ‘She has been gone three days,’ says Karol, sitting back in his chair. ‘Her mother sent her out for milk and something to put in her sandwiches for school. It was dark but the shop was only three streets away and she had been many times before. She did not come home.’

  Hilda looks up at her mother. Her eyes brim with tears.

  ‘You’ve called the police,’ asks Lottie.

  Karol shakes his head. ‘They called me.’

  ‘And you are?’ asks Molly, unimpressed.

  ‘I fix problems.’

  ‘Could you just be a bit less of a big fat cryptic dick-face and tell us who you are and what’s going on?’ snaps Molly. ‘It’s a bloody school night.’

  ‘Mum!’ says Hilda, shocked. ‘He just saved you!’

  ‘No he didn’t,’ says Molly, indignant. ‘I don’t need saving.’

  ‘I do,’ says Lottie, staring at the side of Karol’s face. ‘I need somebody to save my brains out.’

  ‘My name is Karol,’ he says, shrugging. ‘That not important. I used to be a soldier and now I am a specialist.
I help people with problems. Problems they run into in other countries.’

  ‘Like what?’ asks Hilda.

  ‘When you are a foreigner, when you are far from home, it can be hard to know who to trust. It is not always a good idea to go to the police when things go bad. Sometimes they like to forget about the crime you are reporting and instead start poking about in your own life. Your own background. Your own papers. People do not want that. They want to work and be happy and be left alone. But bad people take advantage of that.’

  ‘We read about that,’ says Lottie, excitedly. ‘Your friend Feodor. The name rang a bell …’

  Karol considers her for long enough to make her ask what he is looking at. Molly can see him piecing things together.

  ‘People get taken,’ he says, at length. ‘Bad people take other people and ask for money from their families. If that money is paid, they are released unharmed. If it is not, they do not come home.’

  ‘And somebody has Meda?’ asks Hilda.

  ‘We think so,’ says Karol.

  ‘Have they been in touch?’ asks Molly, quietly.

  ‘Not yet,’ says Karol. ‘But there have been things like this before. Children snatched and parents made to pay. They will get in touch. The family will pay.’

  ‘But what if it’s not?’ asks Molly, sitting up and knocking the table so hard that the gin bottle teeters. ‘It could be any random nutter! She’s a little girl and she’s not come home and the parents have called in some mercenary from home rather than call the police! This is mental! No, Karol, I’m sorry, you have to get the police involved. She’s a missing child.’

  Karol pats the air, urging her to calm down.

  ‘We know what we are doing,’ he says. ‘Meda’s uncle is a rich man. An important man. Somebody has either been very brave or very stupid but either way, they will want money. That money will be paid. And Meda will come home. The others have been well treated. She will be sitting in a bedroom playing a computer game and eating fried chicken right now, I promise.’

  ‘So who were those men?’ asks Hilda. ‘Why did you let them go? Do they have Meda?’