The Takers

by Robert Enright

  Couldn’t.

  He pulled open the front door and greeted Singh with a warm grin.

  ‘DI Singh. Twice in two days. I am lucky.’

  ‘Pearce.’ She offered her hand, which Pearce took. She gave the shake a little extra. It was an old habit.

  ‘Can I get you a drink? Coffee? Tea?’ He gestured to the window. ‘It’s freezing out there.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’ She pulled her hood back, allowing her black hair to fall around her shoulders. ‘So, this is the place huh?’

  Pearce smiled as she looked around the modest room, the wooden floors freshly mopped. Pearce could remember when they were covered in a pool of Andy Devereux’s blood.

  Yesterday evening’s session had been a movie night, with him screening Iron Man for the young locals who frequented. Sunday afternoon, he opened the doors from four until eight, offering sandwiches and warm drinks to those who didn’t get anything at home. It surprised him how many of the attendees weren’t from the council estates or poverty-stricken homes.

  Just teenagers and young adults who needed somewhere to go.

  Someone to care.

  On the far wall, the Theo Walker Memorial plaque was displayed proudly, with nearly a hundred messages pinned to a board beneath. Pearce found himself reading them most days, moved by the amount of people who had clung to Theo for hope. For guidance.

  Theo had cared about them all. As a former medic, the man had dedicated his life after the army to helping kids from his local community, renovating the Youth Centre and offering some semblance of a safe place to the youth that dominated the gang heavy borough.

  Theo died just as he had lived.

  As a hero.

  Theo had given his life to save two people who had been wronged by the very organisation that Pearce worked for, and he had taken it as a personal mission to continue Theo’s good work. The people who came through those doors had a strong, black role model before and Pearce was determined to continue that idea.

  It was as much for him as it was for them. He watched as Singh approached the wall, her eyes taking in some of the warm memories the locals had for Theo.

  ‘He was a good man,’ Pearce said, walking slowly behind her, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans.

  ‘I heard he gave his life to save Amy Devereux,’ Singh spoke, not turning. ‘That was very noble.’

  ‘Like I said, he was a good man.’ Pearce shrugged. ‘Good men sometimes do crazy things.’

  Singh turned at the not-so-subtle reference.

  ‘I know we sort of got off on the wrong foot yesterday. I wanted to apologise—’ Singh began, but Pearce held up a hand.

  ‘Please. If I took any umbrage to a colleague giving me both barrels, I wouldn’t be very good at my job.’ He extended his hand again. ‘Truce?’

  ‘Truce.’ She took it, this time without the extra power.

  ‘So what brings you here?’ Pearce said, turning back towards the kitchen which sat just off the main hall. A table was pressed against the far wall near the door, a stack of paper plates and a few bags of groceries on top. Pearce’s leather jacket was slung over the chair, a small puddle of rain water beneath it.

  ‘Last night, there was an incident,’ Singh said, then saw Pearce’s expression. ‘You saw the news, I take it?’

  ‘I did,’ Pearce said with a sigh. ‘However, I was fully informed by your boss.’

  ‘Assistant Commissioner Ashton?’

  ‘Mark Harris,’ Pearce said, with a cheeky grin.

  ‘That man is not my boss,’ Singh snapped. ‘I’m sorry to hear you’ve spoken to him. His assistant has been trying to contact me all day.’

  ‘Burrows? He’s an odd man, isn’t he?’

  ‘Too right.’ Singh chuckled. ‘Although I’d rather deal with his creepy librarian shtick, than having Harris stare at my tits and pretend he’s interested in police work.’

  Pearce couldn’t help but laugh and realised he was warming to Singh. He was sure that her abruptness would rub a lot of superiors up the wrong way, especially the male officers. But she was tenacious, and it was a characteristic he appreciated.

  It was one he possessed himself.

  ‘Well he called me into his office this morning and demanded I help his task force.’

  ‘And?’ Singh asked, her piercing eyes locking onto his.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Will you help? That’s actually why I came here.’

  Pearce stopped just before entering the kitchen and sighed. He turned back to Singh with a resigned look on his face.

  ‘I’m nothing more than a fancy administrator these days. I sit in a cupboard, rifling through paperwork and working dead end cases. The Met don’t need or want me as a detective anymore. That’s been made perfectly clear.’

  ‘I do,’ Singh said, smiling. ‘I know that you don’t think Sam Pope is as dangerous as we do, but he is still breaking the law. He is still making a mockery of what our badge stands for. We will catch him that much I can promise. But if you help us, then maybe you can help him too.’

  Pearce ran a hand through his grey stubble and took a moment. As much as he believed that Sam Pope was a good person walking a bad but necessary path, there would likely be a time when the net got too tight. When it did, he would need at least one ally on the other side.

  One person who cared.

  Pearce looked up at Singh, catching her hopeful glance and smiling his warm, pearly white smile.

  ‘Okay. I’m in.’

  ‘Fantastic.’ Singh’s face cracked in a gorgeous smile that could grace any magazine. ‘You know what, I will have that tea after all.’

  ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Just dip you finger in it,’ Singh joked, getting another chuckle from Pearce. As he wandered into the kitchen, Singh could understand why he was so revered at one point of his career. The man was as charming as he was authoritative and Singh felt a kinship with a man who wanted nothing more than to see the law used for good. It saddened her that she believed he had aided Sam Pope, but she knew that as a Detective Inspector, you were always swimming upstream.

  Having an ally, especially one as experienced as Pearce to offer a branch was like gold dust.

  As he returned with two mugs of piping hot tea, Singh sat down and allowed the natural conversation to flow, hoping that any insight he could offer, would be useful.

  She had to catch Sam Pope.

  She knew it.

  Pearce knew it.

  She hated the idea of putting him in an uncomfortable position, but she would test his loyalty to see which direction it pointed in.

  Pope or the badge.

  As the rain drummed against the window like impatient fingers, they began to chat.

  Just under nine miles away, the same relentless rain had cleared the streets of Neasden. The roads that framed the estate like a moat were usually alive with activity, with large numbers of youths congregating in their gangs, grime music playing and a sense of menace hanging around them like a bad smell. On average, there was at least one stabbing a week within the square mile around the large estate, with unfortunate people being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or a casualty in a rivalry over being born in a different postcode.

  It was all becoming senseless to Sean Wiseman.

  As he walked with his head down, the rain slapping the back of his neck, he relived the last few evenings in his mind.

  The attack on his car near Holborn.

  The gun pressed against his head before Sam Pope put a bullet through his hand.

  Weeping in the corner as people he had grown up with were shot dead through the window of their High Rise penthouse.

  The lifeless eyes of Elmore.

  The whole lifestyle had begun to feel worthless, a pathetic reason to live like gangsters to rally against a system that was built to keep them down. Wiseman agreed with some of the racist barriers his friend spouted about, but he never went as far as to kill to break them down. Wheneve
r he questioned the methods, or the criminal activity, he was just dismissed as a half breed.

  Elmore used to point to his white mother as a sign of Wiseman’s weakness. Wiseman knew he was weak, but it wasn’t because of his mother’s ethnicity.

  He just wasn’t a criminal.

  He was good with data and money and was able to build a system for his childhood friend who wanted to live like Tony Montana.

  Everything about the lifestyle had sickened him then. Now, it terrified him.

  The guns. The drugs. The killings.

  Looking around at the drenched estate, he saw the desperation of the area. The usual hot spots were vacant, but once the rain relented, they would soon be filled by young gang members, all treading the same path as Elmore.

  All willing to kill to get there.

  All likely to die trying.

  Wiseman held his injured hand in his other, gently massaging the palm of it. He needed to change the bandages, which were now red with blood. His back ached from the bullet which had sent him sprawling as it lodged itself in the lining of the bulletproof vest Pope had given him.

  A thick, purple bruise was already reaching up his spine like an errant vine.

  They had carted him to an ambulance and taken him to hospital. They had treated him for shock, but once the nurses had finished, a couple of police officers read him the riot act in a desperate attempt at intimidation. They leaned heavily on his links to Riggs and told him that he would be needed for more questioning.

  They hadn’t even offered him a lift home.

  Home.

  He looked up at the building that included his modest, but expensively decked out flat and made a decision to move away. To find something better to do with his life.

  Sean Wiseman was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a criminal.

  Not anymore.

  Thanking his lucky stars that there were no gang members polluting the stair well, he made his way up the heavily graffitied steps, ignoring the stale smell of piss. As he approached the fifth floor, he began to think of how much money he had saved, how much more he could get, and how quickly he could move out of the gang infested mile that had tried its best to drag him under.

  As he stepped out onto the walkway that wrapped around the building to his flat, he was accosted by two figures who stepped in front of him.

  Rain hit his panic-stricken face.

  Standing in front of him was the terrified man from the High Rise, his coat zipped up to the top and a nervous look on his face.

  The man next to him made Wiseman wish he had just walked into two rival gang members. He felt his entire body stiffen with fear. The pain in his hand echoed through his body.

  The other man was Sam Pope.

  Chapter Twelve

  The gold-plated handle of the boning knife was weighty as Andrei Kovalenko gently tossed it, allowing the heavy grip to slap against his palm. Sure, it was extravagant, but a man who ran the London side of a multi-million-pound operation was allowed certain privileges.

  It was certainly more aesthetically pleasing than the rusty knife he had used to murder his father back in Donetsk over twenty years ago. Igor Kovalenko had been a brute of a man, working as a bouncer for their uncle, Sergei, at his nightclub, The Red Room. When he was home, he flittered between drunk and high, assaulting their mother to the point that she left.

  Andrei had heard she’d gone on the game somewhere in Kiev.

  He couldn’t have cared less.

  Not when that anger was directed at him and his siblings. Their father would mercilessly beat them due to his own inadequacies, and as the oldest, Andrei took the brunt of it. He had been acquainted with his father’s leather belt on an almost daily basis, especially when he stood up for his brother, Oleg. Despite his hulking size, Oleg suffered with mental disabilities, something their father would not accept.

  It was when his sister, Dana, began to flourish into a beautiful young woman, and he noticed his father’s leering glances, that he decided to take action. That fateful night, as the derelict street they lived on twinkled under the stars, a thin layer of snow frosting the entire street, he murdered their father.

  Igor Kovalenko had entered his daughter’s room with the sole intent to rape her. Andrei had entered behind him with the largest knife he could find and slit the man’s throat without a moment’s hesitation.

  He had then called his uncle, who swiftly arrived to his three kin sat in the snow, their bloodstained clothes contrasting with the snowfall.

  He told them it would be okay.

  Uncle Sergei would look after them.

  The man had been good on his word, and soon, his nightclubs evolved to something beyond the law, where any drug or woman was available for the right price. The police took their cut and looked the other way. Andrei manned the doors for a while, just like his father, but Andrei soon saw the business opportunity every time he saw a group of beautiful English girls, all of them strapped up with backpacks and innocent hopes of a magical journey of self-discovery through Europe.

  When Andrei turned twenty-five, Sergei sent him and his siblings to England, to set up a similar club and experiment with a new clientele and a new type of merchandise.

  Seventeen years later, as he held the gold-plated knife, Andrei knew that he had exceeded even his own expectations. They had given up the night club game a long time ago. Now they were the ones in charge of what came in and out of the city, previously supplying Frank Jackson with the materials he needed to run his High Rise.

  The business was lucrative.

  It paid for the fancy knife and the Versace suit he was about to ruin.

  It paid for the phenomenal penthouse suite in Kensington, with its five bedrooms and exquisite views of the city.

  It had turned him and his siblings into some of the richest and most feared people walking the city.

  But it hadn’t changed him.

  As he limply held the knife in his hand, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His early forties had seen his hair begin to thin, the blonde waves cut shorter and into a neat side parting. His skin, freshly shaved, was now wrinkled around the edges, his pale blue eyes as cold and as lifeless as the severed head of his father.

  It hadn’t changed him.

  He knew it. His siblings, watching with quiet respect knew it.

  Malcolm Peterson knew it. With his hands tied behind his back and his mouth taped shut, he tried in vain to beg for mercy. Oleg stood quietly, his six-foot, five inch frame of pure muscle looming over him like a tidal wave of fury. He had already roughed up Peterson, the pathetic sales exec who had decided he would treat one of their girls to some rough stuff.

  When she’d returned from her night’s work with a split lip and a black eye, Oleg had kicked down the door to Peterson’s marital home, pulled him from his bed in the middle of the night and dragged him to the car, the man’s wife screaming in terror and begging for help.

  Peterson was beyond help now.

  The puddle of urine around his knees was a sign that he knew what the outcome was.

  The large, plastic sheet that covered the floor was a hell of a giveaway.

  Andrei squatted down in front of the man, shaking his head with pity. It took a weak man to pay for sex.

  A weaker man to pay to hit a woman.

  But Andrei knew that most men didn’t go through what he had.

  What Oleg had.

  What Dana had.

  Men were weak. And weakness was where the profit was.

  With a deep sigh, he locked his icy stare onto the quivering man before him. The man noticed the skull tattoo on Andrei’s neck, before looking away with fear.

  ‘Mr Peterson,’ Andrei begun, his Ukrainian accent thick with menace. ‘You made a very big mistake.’

  Andrei raised his eyebrows to Oleg, who stomped forward, reached out with his mighty, war weathered hand and gripped Peterson’s hair and yanked it back. Forcing him backwards, his throat shot invitingly forward and And
rei plunged the boning knife directly into the Adam’s apple. An immediate burst of blood shot forward, the deep red creeping from the man’s throat like a ghostly shadow. Peterson fell forward, the blade lodged in his trachea and he wheezed pathetically, flopping onto his front. As the life drained from him and began to pool around his twitching body, Andrei motioned for Oleg to begin the clean-up.

  Silently, his dim-witted brother went to work. As big and as powerful as he was, Andrei knew that Oleg’s greatest strength was his loyalty. He had shown it during his seven years serving the Ukrainian Special Forces. A brutal and efficient killer, Oleg had been captured and tortured, the left side of his face brutally burnt with a blow torch.

  He had not said a word.

  While Andrei knew that any adversary looked at Oleg’s face with fear, he himself looked at it with pride. His family were tough and they were loyal. And as he watched his brother begin to clean up the blood-soaked mess, he felt that pride stronger than ever.

  On the far side of the room, Dana, dressed elegantly in a black, figure hugging dress, stared malevolently as the final gasps of life escaped Peterson’s body. Ever since that glorious night where he had beheaded their father, Dana had developed a penchant for violence despite never perpetrating it herself.

  She was a voyeur.

  She was his little sister and he loved her dearly.

  ‘Brother,’ she spoke in Ukrainian, her English too broken for a full conversation. ‘It seems Elmore Riggs’ operation was just hit.’

  ‘Hit?’ Andrei raised an eyebrow, a few drops of blood splattered across his face like a mask. ‘Cops?’

  ‘No. They believe it’s the vigilante?’

  ‘The Watchdog?’ Andrei chuckled. ‘Pope?’

  ‘Yes. Riggs is dead. Two others.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about a useless black fuck being killed.’ Andrei turned to his brother. ‘Oleg, go and find out from Riggs’s lap dog what the hell happened.’

  Oleg looked at Andrei, his good eye vacantly looking for an explanation that never came. Dana walked towards him, a gentle smile across her striking face. Her painted lips twisted upwards.