‘And guys like Gurney and Johnson?’
‘Okay, look, I’ll be the first to admit they’re a bit rough around the edges, but you’d want them at your back.’
‘I’ll have to beg to differ, mate.’
‘They’re my men, Shelley. They were doing their job. In the case of Johnson he didn’t do his best, and we’ve had to have a word about that, a little refresher, you might say, regarding unnecessary confrontation. In Gurney’s case, he simply wound you up, and while I can understand you might not like him as a result, he wasn’t at fault. He was simply proceeding as per his orders.’
Not that he’d show it, but Shelley was impressed with Bennett’s loyalty to his men. It would have been easy to sell them out and win brownie points with Shelley, especially as this was so obviously Operation Schmooze. But he hadn’t.
‘Sounds like you got a tight little unit there,’ said Shelley. ‘All the more reason why you don’t want me hanging around like a fart in a trance.’
Bennett shook his head. ‘Look, here’s the thing. You knew Emma. I didn’t. But from everything I’ve heard about her, she was a great kid who didn’t deserve what happened to her. Neither did her parents because they’re good people, too. Susie wants you on board with us. That’s why I’m here. Man on a mission. It was Susie who asked me to come. Message: please join us.’ Shelley sighed and Bennett held up his hand. ‘Just consulting if you want. Same fee as me – and I can tell you it’s a good fee.’
‘I’ve already given her my answer,’ said Shelley. ‘I’m not getting involved in any revenge deal. End of.’
‘If Susie was here she’d tell you that it’s not about revenge, retaliation, payback, whatever – you can pick your synonym. She’d say that it’s about making sure these people don’t do to any more girls what they did to Emma.’
‘Who? What people?’
‘Well, for a start, the cam channel operator, where girls are forced to work to pay off their drug debts. There’s a word for that, Shelley: slavery.’
Shelley felt his jaw clench. ‘You know who they are?’
Bennett nodded. ‘Name’s Foxy Kittenz, would you believe. With a Z. And we know where they’re based.’
‘Where are they based?’
‘Ah, well, that I can’t tell you just yet. Are you in or out?’
Shelley cast a sideways glance at Lucy. Her face was unreadable. ‘I need time to think it over.’
‘Then I’ll leave you to it.’ Bennett went to stand. ‘In the meantime, I’ve got something else for you. Susie would like you to call her after you’ve watched it.’
‘Watched what?’
Bennett reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew a small USB stick that he placed carefully on the coffee table.
CHAPTER 20
AS THEY CLEARED away the coffee cups neither Shelley nor Lucy mentioned the USB stick, which remained on the table where Bennett had left it. They needed to visit Sainsbury’s anyway – those food cupboards weren’t going to fill themselves.
‘What is it about the Circuit?’ she asked him. ‘What do you have against it?’
He sighed. ‘Haven’t we been over this?’
‘But Shelley, it’s what we do. It’s what we are.’
‘Is it?’
She stood with the empty cafetière in her hand, looking solemn all of a sudden. ‘Yes. Like it or not, yes. That’s the path we chose.’
‘And we can’t try a new path, a little bit off the beaten track?’
‘You know what I think it is?’ she said. ‘It’s that moral compass of yours. When you were in the army you could tell yourself that you were on the side of the angels, but the job of a security company isn’t to do good in the world, it’s to make money, and that’s what you can’t take, isn’t it? You want to be noble, Shelley. You want to be doing right.’
‘Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘No, of course not, and that’s exactly what I’ll tell myself when I’m starving to death: thank God for my husband’s sense of personal integrity.’
They washed up the cups in silence and then, just before they left, Shelley moved the USB stick to the mantelpiece, placing it beside the photo of Lucy and Frankie.
Later, with the trip over, the shopping bought and packed away, Lucy broached the subject they’d been avoiding. ‘Well? And before you say “well, what?”, you know exactly what I mean, so don’t say it.’
He scratched his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You’ll have seen worse.’
‘That’s not really the point.’
‘Sure,’ she conceded. ‘Okay, then, how about you take yourself upstairs, go have a shower or something? I’ll report back.’
He retired to the bedroom, where he closed the door and sat on the bed, waiting.
When Lucy called he returned downstairs to find her closing the laptop lid, eyes wet with tears that she brushed away.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘She was tough,’ said Lucy, nodding in admiration. ‘Brave.’
‘Is it brave, killing yourself?’
She shook her head, not wanting to go there. ‘Where did he get it from? The film. Can anybody see that?’
‘Online, I guess. There’s some fairly shady shit out there.’
Hanging in the air between them was the knowledge that Cookie had been the guy in their patrol who took care of all the tech stuff.
‘There’s something else,’ said Lucy.
‘What?’
‘She said something, just as she pulled the trigger.’
‘What did she say?’ said Shelley.
A short time later he rang Susie.
‘Thank you for seeing Mr Bennett,’ she said. ‘He tells me you were most welcoming.’
‘He seems all right.’ Shelley heard the begrudging note in his own voice.
‘Did you watch it?’ she asked him.
‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘Did you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Nor did Guy.’
‘Emma’s last words before she pulled the trigger …’ he began, and then stopped.
‘Yes. Mr Bennett told me that she said something,’ said Susie. ‘He couldn’t quite make it out, because …’
Because of the gun barrel in her mouth.
‘I know what she said, Susie. I could make it out. She said, “Be lucky.”’
‘I see,’ said Susie.
‘You remember …’
‘Yes, I remember.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Listen, Susie, if I’m on board nobody dies, nobody gets hurt. We’re after justice, not revenge.’
‘Maybe justice is revenge,’ she said softly.
‘Maybe.’
There was a pause before she asked, ‘Well?’
PART TWO
CHAPTER 21
‘WHAT IS THIS place?’ the man with the cropped hair demanded to know.
Sergei looked around at the cars parked either side of them, at the sign that said ‘MOT & Service Centre’, and at the open roller doors of the garage through which they could see cars on ramps and men in overalls, and said, ‘This place? This is a tanning salon.’
‘Very funny,’ growled his passenger. ‘You people do have a sense of humour after all, then.’
Sergei decided to ignore the ‘you people’. After all, simply by coming here his passenger was placing his head into the lion’s mouth. So if he wanted to kid himself that he held the upper hand, then let him. Saying otherwise would be like telling a kid there’s no tooth fairy.
They made their way to the entrance, a frosted-glass door that needed a bit of persuasion to open, and then stepped into the front office. Sergei was a regular visitor, of course, and usually there’d be a young woman called Sofia there to greet him, a receptionist who booked in cars, took payment and behaved as though the garage really was a garage.
Which it was. Partly. But given that the owner was Dmitry – not the registered owner, but the owner all the same – it was also concerned with
another sort of business. Dmitry business. Company business. Whatever that might be.
Except today Sofia was absent. Everything else was normal – the smell of dirty carpet tiles, ancient cigarette smoke, instant coffee and a cluster of cardboard Christmas tree air-fresheners that dangled from her terminal – but in her place sat the Skinsman, his hands interlocked across his chest, head cocked to one side, watching a television mounted on the opposite wall.
It was a strange sight, enough to prompt a derisive snort from Sergei’s companion that coincided with a sudden lull in the TV volume. In response, Grandfather’s eyes slid from the screen to the visitor. For a moment they gleamed with malice and Sergei didn’t like to think what the old man was imagining. Instead he simply greeted Grandfather with a respectful nod and then hustled his guest – oblivious to the malevolence of the old man’s gaze – through the reception area without introducing him, escaping through a second door to an administrative area and more offices.
‘Wait here,’ he told his visitor, and a moment later he was inside one of the offices, taking a seat opposite Dmitry, who sat at a desk.
In contrast to Dmitry’s home set-up, the office was sparse, desk bare but for an open laptop and two smartphones. Dmitry wore a Harley Davidson T-shirt, one that best displayed his tattooed and muscly upper arms, the way he liked, and his spectacles dangled at his chest.
‘Have you been keeping an eye on the Internet, Sergei?’ he asked glumly.
Sergei thought he knew what was coming, but even so. ‘It’s a big thing to keep an eye on, Dmitry.’
‘Yes, but if you were hoping to see footage of a stupid hooker blowing her brains out, where might you look?’
Sergei shook his head. ‘I honestly don’t know, Dmitry. I’ve never been tempted to look before.’
‘The dark web, have you heard of that?’ sighed Dmitry.
‘I don’t think I have, boss.’
‘That’s where you go for the bad stuff, my friend. Cocaine by post, child porn and bitches blowing their brains out. Instead of “dot com” they use “dot onion”, did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t know that, Dmitry.’
‘In the onion is where I found it. I’ve watched the bitch’s brains go all over our studio,’ he waved his hands around, ‘over and over again. Well done for managing to clean it up, by the way, you did a good job. But it doesn’t change the fact that this film is in … the public domain.’ He chewed over the words. ‘It is possible, is it not, that somebody might see it and put two and two together? A nosy policeman. Somebody who knows the girl or who saw her picture in the papers?’
Sergei made non-committal noises, sensing that whatever the decision, Dmitry had already made it.
‘There is no doubt about it,’ continued Dmitry, ‘we must be cautious as always, and cautious in this case means closing the studio.’
‘I see,’ said Sergei. ‘Alexander will be unhappy.’
‘Alexander is in Grozny and need not know immediately. Besides, he’ll be even more unhappy if the operation is crawling with cops. No, my mind is made up, and you know me, Sergei: when my mind is made up then that is what we must do.’
Sergei understood Dmitry’s reasoning. Admitting failure was bad. But if it was discovered that they were neglecting to admit their failure, maybe even caught trying to cover up that failure, then that was really bad, no matter how you tried to justify it.
‘Can I leave that to you? Can I leave that to you and my beloved wife?’ said Dmitry, savouring the satire of the words ‘beloved wife’ as though they were a sip of fine wine.
‘You can, Dmitry,’ replied Sergei.
‘Good, good. Now, this other matter. This informant. Have you brought him?’
‘He’s outside now, boss, looking forward to making your acquaintance.’
Gold glinted as Dmitry smiled. ‘Then by all means bring him in. Let the squealer start squealing.’ He snapped his laptop shut, stood, and then came around from behind the desk. ‘Perhaps this Emma Drake did us a favour, eh, Sergei?’
Maybe, thought Sergei as he got up to go to the office door.
‘Oh, Sergei,’ said Dmitry from behind him. ‘Your wallet.’
Sergei turned to see Dmitry lifting his wallet from the seat where it had slipped out of his back pocket. As Dmitry picked it up it flipped open and he saw inside, his brow clouding briefly before his smile returned and he handed it back.
‘Thank you,’ said Sergei. He pocketed the wallet and then turned, opened the office door and beckoned his visitor inside. ‘This is my boss, his name is Dmitry,’ he said.
‘Please, sit,’ said Dmitry, indicating a chair. ‘Sergei has told me much about you. You used to be in the Parachute Regiment, is that right?’
‘That’s right,’ said the new arrival. He took a seat and sat with his knees together and his shoulders square.
‘Good, good.’ Dmitry gave him an askance look, just for comic effect. ‘Are you sure that our operation has no interest in you? Perhaps it is you that we should be taking as a prize, and not this other man, yes?’
The new arrival sneered. ‘Nah, I don’t think so. As far as I know my lot never had any argument with the Russian Mafia.’
Dmitry’s smile froze. His eyes flicked to Sergei, who cleared his throat. ‘The Chechen Mafia,’ corrected Sergei.
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ said the guest. ‘The SAS, on the other hand …’
Dmitry threw up his hands and made a disgusted spitting noise. ‘Ah, the SAS, they think they’re the Avengers, Bourne and Bond all in one. They’re like Tom Cruise going round the world and doing good, all at our expense. And you can give us an SAS man, can you? So that we may exact a little payback?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Corporal Johnson, ex-Parachute Regiment. ‘Too fucking right I can.’
CHAPTER 22
JASON HAD QUITE enjoyed his job. No, in fact, he’d really enjoyed his job. Apart from the antisocial hours it pretty much ticked all the boxes. Those boxes being, one, he got to smoke a lot of weed, and two, he got to see loads of naked girls (and not just naked, but ‘doing stuff’).
Also great was the fact that the girls mostly looked upon him as a kind of ‘big brother’ figure, which meant they were always dead nice to him and there was never anything sexual to make things awkward.
Jason and another guy, Dan, split the duties between them. Dan was a bit more full-on with the girls; he’d had a couple of relationships, well, if you could call them relationships, but Jason had never gone that way. Never exchanged so much as a kiss with one of them. The whole ‘big brother’ thing was important to Jason. He prided himself on it. He liked to think that the girls relaxed more around him as a result. And because of that he got to see even more ‘stuff’. Win–win.
These weren’t unattractive girls either. Most ‘normal’ cam girls just filmed the shit on their laptops, in between baby feeds and arguments with their other half.
This operation was different. For a start, his Russian bosses called it a ‘studio’ – studio! ha! – and secondly they claimed to offer superior quality. Not just picture and sound quality, either, but the most beautiful and willing girls – beautiful, willing girls who would do practically anything the punters asked, providing the price was right.
And Jason, being a man of small or, to be perfectly honest, zero ambition, could quite happily have kept that particular job for the next, oh, until-he-retired number of years. He was as happy as a clam in that job.
And then it all came crashing down around his ears, when poor old Faye blew her brains out, live on camera.
He’d been first on the scene, and he knew that the brief glimpse he’d had of the room – splattered with blood, gobs of brain matter and weirdly bright skull fragments sliding down the walls – would stay with him for ever.
Thank God for Sergei, insisting that he concentrate on reassuring the other girls that things were fine while the clean-up operation took place.
And then there was Karen. She h
ad a gammy arm, but even so, you wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating toast. She seemed to quite like Jason as well. She often spent time with him in the office during her visits, just chewing the fat. They shared an unlikely passion for Downton Abbey.
It helped that she wasn’t Russian herself, of course; she had an English accent. But as far as Jason could tell – you weren’t exactly encouraged to ask questions – she was married to one of the Russians, a guy higher up the tree than Sergei. It also helped that the girls never warmed to her, nor she to them. That suited Jason down to the ground.
But Karen had taken a particular interest in Faye from the start. ‘What’s her name? Jace?’ she’d asked on one of her visits. Jason had to admit that he was quite fond of the way Karen called him ‘Jace’.
‘It’s a new girl. Well, been here a couple of weeks. Gorgeous, ain’t she?’
Karen was staring at the screen, staring intently at Faye, who was currently between punters, fixing her make-up, primping the bed, oblivious to the fact that she was being scrutinised.
‘How did she get here?’
‘One of the other girls brought her in. Precious, I think it was.’
‘Is she using?’
Jason had nodded yes to that one. Girls tended to arrive at Foxy Kittenz after a journey whose stops along the way included abusive parents, violent partners and drug addiction. All three, if they were really unlucky. Every single one of those girls was living proof that good looks and a firm young body weren’t necessarily a passport to getting ahead in this world. Fortune’s smile and parents who weren’t fuck-ups, those things were important, too.
‘Faye,’ Karen had said, repeating the word like a mantra. ‘I bet that ain’t her real name, though, is it?’
Jason had shrugged. All the girls used assumed names. More fool them if they didn’t.
‘And I bet you could find out her real name for me, couldn’t you?’ Fingers with red-painted nails found their way to his leg.
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