by Peter Boland
The men immediately obeyed, standing up and walking out.
Wellington’s henchmen escorted Tannaz back to the table where she sat beside Savage. Simon Wellington got up and joined them. His eyes bright and full of life, there was something familiar about them but Savage couldn’t quite figure out what.
Almost as if reading his mind, Wellington said, “Have we met before?”
“No, I think I would have remembered,” Savage replied.
Wellington smiled to himself. This seemed to amuse him. His henchmen encircled the table, watching over Savage and Tannaz.
“Is there something I can get you?” asked Wellington.
“Do they do Novichok sandwiches?” asked Savage.
“Why, do you feel like taking your own life?”
“No, I thought I’d force feed it to you.”
Wellington chuckled. “I seriously doubt that’s going to happen. Look around you. Now why are you trying to steal my phone, Miss Darvish?”
“I found it on the floor. Finders keepers. It’s mine now. Hand it back.”
“So feisty in the face of overwhelming odds. I like that.”
“Yes, you like a good bet don’t you, Wellington,” Savage added.
“I do. I do indeed. Actually it’s the reason I joined this particular club. Have you heard the story about the two gentlemen who put wagers on everything? Even down to two raindrops racing down a window, betting on which one would reach the windowsill first?”
“I have heard that story,” Savage replied.
“It happened right here. In this very room. Amazing, eh?”
“Why did you kill my friend Dave Mosely?” asked Savage.
Wellington arched his eyebrows. “I did no such thing. That man wanted to die and would have found a way if I hadn’t helped him.”
“So you did kill him.”
“No. He needed money to buy Nembutal. I merely gave him the extra money he needed. Well, my men did, I’d actually never met him.”
“In return for what?” asked Savage.
“He wanted to die up a tree out of sight, away from the public. I merely did a trade. I gave him the extra money he needed for his death drug but I got to choose which tree he used. He agreed, and the rest is history.” Wellington casually waved his hand, as if it were nothing.
“You had the tree chopped down, why?”
Wellington folded his arms. “That’s where our little show and tell must end I’m afraid. I’m not one of those Bond villains about to reveal his secret plans to you.”
“You’ve just told me you helped a man take his life. I believe assisted suicide is still illegal in this country.”
“It is, but who’s going to believe you? It’s your word against mine. Plus, I have lots of lovely dirt on you both.”
“Like what?” asked Savage.
“I have a video of you killing a man in a fighting cage.”
“A fight that you organised, and I didn’t kill him, Bluetooth over there did that.”
Wellington smiled. “We won’t show that part of the tape. Edit it out.”
“I was wearing a mask, no one would know it was me.”
“You have some very distinctive war scars on your back, almost as distinctive as a fingerprint, and we film everything in HD, doesn’t miss a thing. They’ll match up nicely when we send the footage to the police. Plus, we’ll tip them off to where the body is hidden, it’ll be covered in your blood and DNA. So you see, you have to do as I say. And you Miss Darvish, Savage’s head of tech support, aren’t blameless either. You’ve been hacking into my accounts and my business systems.” Wellington made tutting sounds. “And you’ve just tried to steal my phone. Why is that, Miss Darvish?”
Tannaz threw him a vicious look. “You know why. Your little gambling ring is on a decentralised network, no one can get into it and see what you’re up to.”
“And that’s the way it’s staying,” said Wellington. “None of this evidence is relevant anymore. You thought you were going to just swan in here and take my phone without there being consequences. You’re so naïve.”
Savage cursed himself for putting his trust in Ben Wellington. He was the only one who knew they were onto his father. “Who tipped you off about us coming here?” he asked. “Was it your son, Ben?”
“Nobody tipped me off. Certainly not Ben. The boy’s soft like his mother. A wet blanket. Not much good for anything. Sure, I use him for a few things, try and toughen him up; my men have to keep an eye on him, though, make sure he does what he’s told. But to answer your question, the only person who tipped me off was you, Mr Savage.”
“Me? I find that a bit difficult to believe.”
Wellington sat back in his winged chair. “No, it’s not difficult to believe. I take an interest in anyone who takes an interest in me, no matter how trivial. You called my office on your cell phone, laying down the law about getting Dave Mosely’s things back.”
“I never said who I was.”
“Oh, Tannaz,” said Wellington. “How do you put up with him? Mobile phones are so easy to trace. I found out who you were, checked your background. Very impressive, I must say. Then I made it my business to keep an eye on you. When your name flagged up as being on our system, well, I knew you were up to something. Why would anyone hack into our system so they could get a room in Tivoli Gardens of all places? And why the hell did you use your own name? So sloppy. Anyway, so I’ve been keeping tabs on you, playing with you a like a mouse in a trap.”
Savage felt his stomach lurch. All this time they thought they’d been under Wellington’s radar when he’d been following their every move. No matter. Just because an enemy knew what you were up to, didn’t mean you couldn’t snatch victory from them. He’d done it before, and he could do it again.
“Yes,” said Savage, confidently. “I heard you like playing games with people.”
“Oh yes, I do. And the people who live in my properties are such good sports, so willing. That’s the thing about desperate people, they’ll do anything to keep a roof over their heads. And about ninety-nine percent of them are addicted to something. Drink, drugs, food. You dangle those carrots in front of them and they dance a merry dance for you. The other thing about them is they make terrible witnesses. Nobody believes them. They can complain, and no one listens, they can accuse you of not fixing their window and no one listens, hell, they could accuse you of murder and no one listens. They are perfect. It’s like having a great big toy basket, and I’ve got hundreds, no thousands of toys to play with. There are so many of them. And they just keep appearing, like second-hand copies of Fifty Shades of Grey in a charity shop. And if someone does, on the rare occasion, take them seriously, I make them disappear. No one comes looking for them. Well, apart from you two.”
“Is that why you killed Dave’s son Luke, because he spoke to us?” asked Tannaz.
“Like I said, this is not James Bond. I’m not going to confess then leave you to die in some bizarre shark tank so you can escape. But there are consequences for what you’ve just tried. I’m afraid this is the end of the road for you…”
Bluetooth stood at Savage’s right shoulder and slipped out a handgun fitted with a silencer from his inside jacket pocket, holding it by his side. It really didn’t matter that Wellington had dirt on them. They were to be executed, bumped off in the library. It sounded like the start of a farcical 1920s’ murder-mystery. Wellington certainly had a flair for the theatrical.
“What’s going on at Dead Maids? Why are you hanging people there?” asked Savage.
“You’d love to know, wouldn’t you?” Wellington grinned. “It’s eating you alive that you can’t figure it out. And I’m not going to tell you because I know how much you want to know. I will let you in on one little secret. A secret that will shock the pants off you.”
“I don’t shock easily.”
“Oh, I think this will do it.” Wellington took some bent pebble glasses from his jacket pocket and fitted them around his face. From another pocket he pulled an old blue fisherman’s hat and slipped it on his head. “Now imagine me with a bushy beard.” Wellington dropped his native Irish accent, and put on a rural Hampshire one. “Fancy a whisky and that? It’s me, your old pal, Archie.”
Chapter 48
Savage studied the man in front of him, his brain filling in the gaps. Recognition dawned on him, sucking the energy from him. His head felt light and the room spun round.
Wellington was Archie. And had been with him all along. Every minute and second he’d spent at Tivoli Gardens he’d been watched by Wellington dressed up as a little character he’d invented called Archie.
Wellington clapped his hands and stomped his feet with glee, then removed his little disguise. “I got you. I got you good, didn’t I. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? I’ve been right across the hall from you all this time, and you never knew it.”
“Why the hell did you do that?” Tannaz asked. “Just to keep an eye on him?”
“Sort of, all that keep your enemies close stuff. That wasn’t the main reason. For a bet. A bet to myself. See, I always wanted to be an actor. Desperate, I was. Never got a part in my life, never got so much as a call back. I knew I was good. You know when you feel it deep down. Never got the chance to prove it, until now. So I had this little bet with myself when I saw Savage’s name pop up on our system and found out who you were. If I could fool an ex-SAS man, it’d confirm what I knew all along. That I’m a great actor.
“I knew you were going to move in four weeks later. Got my room ready, made it look like I’d been there for years. Savage just assumed I’d been there as long as everybody else. Never thought to ask, did you?”
Savage snapped out of his daze. “That means you were never there when Dave Mosely was there?” he said. “How come you knew so much about him?”
“Wasn’t difficult, I just asked Truck and Vlad what he was like. Shy, awkward, kept himself to himself. Embellished the rest—that’s acting, darling.” Wellington gave a cheesy smile and made jazz hands.
“But you gave him money for the Nembutal,” said Tannaz.
“Not in person, you fool. I just supplied the cash. Did all that through Truck and Vlad. Kept out of the loop, so if anything did come back on me it just looks like a case of a couple of dodgy employees dealing drugs with two potheads in Tivoli Gardens. Nothing to do with me.”
Wellington’s smug grin grew larger, almost splitting his face, like a Cheshire cat in a wind tunnel. “Never thought to suspect anyone around you. Did you like my little story about Archie’s daughter, drowning in a scalding hot bath? The crocodile tears down my face, crying at the loss of an imaginary daughter. And the fresh Elastoplasts on my head.” Wellington pointed to his forehead. “Made you think I’d been falling over drunk, added to the authenticity—I was particularly proud of that one.”
“Ah, so that wasn’t from running around in the forest at night, blindfolded,” said Savage.
The smug grin dropped from Wellington’s face. “How did you know about that?”
“We followed you into the forest one night,” said Tannaz. “Saw your little Intacto re-enactment.”
“Well, I’m impressed,” said Wellington, his vile grin reappearing. “That, I didn’t know about. You both followed me. Well, done. The pair of you.”
There was nothing for Savage or Tannaz to be happy about. It was a small consolation. A bit like England scoring a goal against Brazil with one minute left, and Brazil seven goals up.
Wellington turned to Bluetooth. “Why didn’t I know about these two following us into the forest?”
Bluetooth shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry, Mr Wellington. I slipped up.”
“Yes you did,” Wellington replied. For a moment he looked vulnerable, just a second and it was gone. Savage made a mental note of it. This guy liked being in control, liked to know the outcome of everything, and when he didn’t it made him insecure.
“So all those nights you kept disappearing for days on end,” said Savage. “That was to oversee your betting games.”
“Occasionally,” replied Wellington. “Mostly to go home and sleep in a nice bed. I could only take so much of Tivoli Gardens. How do you stand it? It’s like living in a hovel in the seventeen hundreds. Animals live better than that.”
“But it’s your place,” said, Tannaz. “You make people live like that. How does that make you feel?”
“Rich. It makes me feel very rich. And that’s the problem, see. Being rich can get a bit boring. I mean, I have seven supercars—but I can only drive one at a time. I can have anything I want, which makes life a little dull. I can control everything, apart from chance. Of course, betting on the usual stuff is boring too. I like to get creative, as you know, turns out there are quite a few people just like me across the world. That’s why I created my network.”
“We found your little basement torture chamber, by the way,” said Savage. “The old B&B in Sutton Road.”
“Ah, yes. First property I ever bought. That was where it all started. Both my property empire and later on, my betting network. I can see you’re dying to know what went on in there. Well, seeing as you’re not going to be walking out of here alive, I’ll tell you about that particular scenario.”
“We saw the marks on the floor,” said Savage. “A cage was set into the floor, wasn’t it? One of the ones from Nortoft & Sons. And a CCTV camera on the wall.”
“Yes and yes. A very simple betting game. Put a man in a cage, gave him water but no food. We bet on how many days he would last. Surprisingly, it was a lot longer than we thought; twenty-nine days. My network loved it, couldn’t get enough, and I kind of got addicted to creating more and more outlandish scenarios to bet on.”
Tannaz winced with sickness. “Don’t you feel remorse for exploiting and killing these desperate people?”
“They aren’t people,” Wellington replied. “They’re vermin, animals. Watch, this was the next scenario I created in the basement.”
Wellington held up his phone and played them a noisy video of CCTV footage.
“I call this one The Hunger Games. Starved seven men for a week.”
On the phone’s screen, a line of sorry-looking bare-chested men stood with numbers marker-penned on their naked torsos, swaying unsteadily. They salivated while a huge fry up was brought in, piles of eggs, bacon, sausages and toast. The plate was locked in the small, ornate, heavy-duty cage set into the floor. The key was hung high up a wall on a hook. The door was closed and locked. Next second the men started fighting. Slaughtering each other to get the key, men ripping each other to shreds; biting, gouging, kicking, doing anything to have the food. The final frame showed the last man standing taking the key in his blood-soaked hands while bodies were left strewn everywhere. Hands shaking with hunger, he was barely able to open the lock. The footage ended with the man shoving the food in his mouth like a dog.
“We placed bets on who would get the key,” said Wellington. “You see, they could’ve been civilised, shared out the food equally, like human beings. Instead they turned on each other, like animals.”
“You starved them for a week,” Savaged remarked. “What did you expect?”
“I didn’t win by the way,” Wellington said, disappointed. “The guy I bet on got taken out within the first few seconds, lost ten grand on that one. You see, Mr Savage, this just comes down to good old-fashioned betting—with a more interesting, creative twist, but good old-fashioned betting, just the same. I’m just carrying on the tradition of putting on wagers, just like the members of this club hundreds of years ago. Now, it really is time for me to say goodbye and for you two to disappear.”
Bluetooth pulled back the slide on his gun, pointed it at the side of Savage’s head. “There
’s a dead idiot at the end of this gun,” Bluetooth said.
Savage swivelled around in his seat to look at him. “Oh yeah, which end are we talking about?” He turned back to Wellington. “You’re going to kill us in a gentlemen’s club?”
“That’s the good thing about paying a fortune in membership fees to an age-old club where many a scandal has taken place—they’re very good at keeping secrets. Covering things up. If these walls could talk.”
“Is that why there’s red carpet everywhere, so the blood doesn’t show up?”
“I’ll just pay for a new one, after you’re gone.”
Savage leant forward, casually lifted the gleaming stainless-steel teapot on the tray in front of him and poured the steaming hot beverage into one of the cups. “Oh, well. Better make the most of this tea, then.”
Wellington laughed. “Typical Englishman. Tell him he’s about to be executed and he pours himself a cup of tea.”
Savage lifted the cup to his lips then suddenly flung it at Bluetooth’s hand, the one that held the gun. The scalding hot liquid forced him to drop the weapon immediately. Before Savage had a chance to grab it, Bluetooth kicked away the gun. Instead, Savage snatched up the metal teapot and swung it in Bluetooth’s face. The hot metal made a dull clang as it connected with his cheekbone, putting him on the floor. The henchman nearest came between Savage and the gun, blocking his way. Holding the pot in his fist like a knuckleduster, Savage punched him in the face, once then twice. He went down on his back.
Tannaz followed Savage’s lead and threw her black coffee at the man nearest her. He was wise to the move and ducked. Didn’t matter. It served as a distraction, giving Tannaz enough time to snatch up the tongs from the sugar bowl and stab him in the hand. Then she elbowed him in the face, smashing his nose.
The fourth man grabbed her around the neck. Before he could fully tighten his arms, Tannaz opened her jaws and bit down hard on the guy’s forearm. The guy still held on so, Tannaz, still gripping the sugar tongs, gouged him repeatedly in the thigh, until he let go.
