A Numbers Game (Mal & Jackie Book 1)

by RJ Dark

‘A good place in general,’ I said, aimless, space filling words. ‘I like the birdsong.’

  He shrugged, pointing at the earbuds in his ears.

  ‘Wouldn’t know.’ He stopped walking and did some stretches. I kept walking, hoping he would get the message and leave me to my solitude. He didn’t, just jogged up behind me and then walked backward so he could see my face. ‘My da says you’re doing some work for him.’

  ‘Not that I’m aware.’

  ‘Well, for Mick then.’

  ‘I’d better not say,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ he grinned, ‘best not to if you want to keep your knees intact, eh?’ He mimed shooting me with a gun. ‘Anyway, Mick’s been arrested.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah, turns out the van we had in our shop might have been used to knock Larry Stanbeck off his bike.’ He stopped stretching and caught up with me, once more walking alongside.

  ‘His own son?’

  ‘Proper gangster, eh?’ He grinned. ‘That’s why I’m not at the yard – all hell’s breaking loose down there while Da tries to keep everything under control. I thought it best to get away.’

  ‘I saw you arguing with your dad about wanting to join the family firm.’ He almost stumbled, his foot catching on a root in the path, and when he righted himself, he grinned foolishly at me, and I saw that gawky first-year kid I’d known at school. He’d always grinned too much.

  ‘Da just wants everything to stay as it always has been and me out the way. Says the Edge is no place to raise a kid.’

  ‘I suppose it isn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Thought you might be interested that Mick is going down.’

  ‘You don’t sound sad about that – he’s been keeping your family afloat for years.’

  ‘Afloat, but not free,’ he said. ‘You always owe him, he’s just like my da.’ Then he nodded at me, slotted the earphones into his ears and ran on.

  I wondered why Callum had come back from the farm his dad had sent him to. Maybe it was purely rebellion. It didn’t sound like he liked the Stanbecks and the idea he could do any form of business around here without being mixed up with them was almost as unlikely as the idea Mick Stanbeck would go to prison because he owned the van that had killed his son. But I understood the need to be yourself. That led me to thoughts of Janine Stanbeck and her son, about to be crushed by a mountain of debt run up by her late husband, and the real difference to her life that the lottery ticket would make.

  I would find it. I didn’t know how, but I would. And I would find some way of getting it past Mick Stanbeck and Russian Frank that didn’t involve me being permanently maimed.

  There was always a way.

  I should apologise to Jackie too.

  I wandered back toward my shop, wondering how Russian Frank had found out about the lottery ticket. I didn’t really believe that people in Mick Stanbeck’s outfit had leaked the information – it was the sort of information Mick was unlikely to share. But Larry Stanbeck could have told him, or someone else in the office? I wasn’t sure that made sense either. The ticket was a way out for him as much as anyone else, and he must have known who Russian Frank was, and that a man like that wasn’t above taking easy money, like a lottery ticket, from someone.

  But how did Mick know about it?

  It was clear he didn’t get on with Janine, and his son wasn’t talking to him either.

  Mr Patel at the shop? He had never struck me as the type to gossip; it was often difficult to get him to say more than two polite words, so that made no sense, and he hated criminals – Jackie excepted.

  It felt like I’d missed something, or that something was missing. It was hard to tell which.

  I unlocked the shop door to hear Beryl clattering about in the back. She brought out tea and put it in front of me.

  ‘You’re out of coffee,’ she said.. Then she tapped the calendar on my desk and left. I had a client in half an hour; that I was here was more luck than planning.

  I passed the half hour by watching shapes passing the window and trying to work out who they were. Some I knew. Cat Maudy in her new fur coat – I recognised her distinctive shuffle. The silhouettes of the group of lads who had taken to hanging out outside the Spice ‘N’ Saucy, though they would probably move on when someone came and had a quiet word with them, if they knew what was good for them anyway. Old Pete, who was a perennial fixture at the bookies. Night was falling and the shapes occasionally passing the window became starker, etched out in yellow sodium light.

  My client turned up: Barry. I’d been seeing Barry for about two years, and I didn’t need Beryl to help me with him. We chatted now, more than anything else; Barry was lonely and his wife, Pam, had died of cancer ten years ago. We didn’t really try to speak to Pam anymore, we just tended to talk about his garden and his grandchildren and sometimes he would reminisce about his time with Pam. Today was no different. He brought a small bottle of whisky with him and knew enough not to offer me any. He poured out the liquid and swirled it round the glass, telling me about a camping trip he took with Pam to Wales where it did nothing but rain and their tent had flooded. It sounded miserable; he said it was at the time, but they laughed about it later; we laughed about it now. When his hour was up, he took out his money and I gave him half back, just like I always did. He’d never stopped offering the full amount.

  When he left the shop, I started locking up, then remembered I had no coffee left, and as Mr Patel would still be open – even if I would pay double what the same coffee cost anywhere else – I would go and get some.

  A siren wailed as a police car reacted to an emergency, blue light washing over me as I unlocked the door. I opened the door to find a man stood on the other side: small, a pencil-thin moustache like the bad guy out of a black-and-white film, crumbling teeth and waxy skin.

  He grinned at me and when I opened my mouth to ask him how I could help, he punched me in the stomach so hard it felt like his fist came out of my back.

  I doubled over and he placed a black bag over my head and through the pain and my desperate gasping for breath, I heard a car screech to a stop. Then I was pulled, stumbling across the lay-by, bundled into the back of the car and told to lie down and stay still, which I did.

  Not that I had much choice.

  16

  Panic, first of all. Panic in the darkness, fast breaths. Suffocating. I didn’t want to suffocate. The bag smelled of onions, and it conspired with the panic and ache in my stomach muscles to rob me of my breath. When I finally managed to get my breathing under control, I concentrated on taking long, slow breaths, in and out, in and out, to calm myself down.

  When I stopped panicking about suffocation, I started worrying about being murdered.

  People didn’t kidnap you and put a bag over your head if they simply wanted a friendly chat. My hands had been bound behind my back with cable ties. It hurt. Bad men did things like this when they were serious and didn’t want you knowing who they were – or getting a chance to run away. My breathing started to speed up again. I felt like a shot of whisky would somehow help me out.

  Whisky doesn’t help, twat. Beryl’s voice, always in my head.

  Breathing helps.

  I concentrated on the breathing, on bringing the fear under control. My breath was loud in the hood, and the sound of my heart even louder. I started thinking of reasons to be cheerful. They hadn’t put me in the boot. That was a good thing. The man who took me didn’t appear to have a gun, always a plus. The car was swaying and juddering like an old boat, felt like a suburban street with speed bumps. So we weren’t on a motorway and leaving the city, heading for the moors where my body would never be found. I’ll take that.

  With each breath my heart slowed a little.

  But only a little. I listened, the hiss of my hair against the material of the bag. The stink of onions made my eyes water.

  ‘Left here,’

  ‘Next right.’

  Accented voices. European, not sure where from
. Two men. My body sliding over car seats as the vehicle turned. My head being pushed painfully against the door, tied hands stopping me bracing against anything.

  What if my neck broke?

  Maybe that would just save me from a lot of pain.

  I didn’t want to die.

  The car stopped. I listened. Faint road noise, not near though – we weren’t parked by the side of a road. I heard a car go past, this one sounded like it was nearer, sounded like it was behind me. I wondered if we had parked in the drive of a house, somewhere off a main road. Car doors opened and shut, but not the one I was in. Another door opened, hands grabbed my feet and before I could shout or kick out, I was pulled from the car, smashing the back of my head against the bottom of the car’s door frame.

  ‘Ow, bastards!’

  ‘Shut up.’

  A kick to the ribs that knocked all the air from me. Then I was pulled to my feet. A hand took me by the elbow, another grabbed my elbow on the other side and forced me upright, making the muscles in my diaphragm scream. Or maybe it was me.

  They walked me forward.

  A set of three steps that the men didn’t warn me about nearly sent me sprawling onto my face, but my captors were kind enough to keep me upright, although my new-found not-very-friendly friends thought it was ever so funny. I heard them put a key in a lock; one of them swore and then the door in front of me opened and cool air flooded out. Wherever they were taking me to be murdered, clearly had air con.

  ‘Boys, what is this?’

  I knew that voice.

  ‘I said bring him, not truss him like turkey.’

  The bag was pulled off my head, and I found myself in a small office in some sort of Portakabin, nicely set out too. At the desk in front of me – a cheap IKEA thing – was Russian Frank.

  ‘Malachite Jones!’ he said, and he made it sound like we were old friends who had met unexpectedly on an all-inclusive Mediterranean holiday. He gave a nod to the man behind me who cut the cable ties around my wrists. ‘I am sorry for the way you are brought here – I wanted a chat with you, me and my friend, Harry,’ he added, nodding toward the huge man behind him. ‘You remember Harry?’

  ‘The stationer,’ I said. I wasn’t really that pleased to see Harry. Or Frank.

  ‘You do remember Harry!’ he said, with a wide grin. ‘You should sit down, Malachite Jones.’

  ‘I’d rather stand. Get my circulation going – I don’t think there’s any blood left in my hands.’

  ‘I was not offering you a choice.’ He pointed, unsmilingly, at the chair in front of his desk. I sat, put my hands flat on the desk. Frank grinned once more and put his feet up on the desk. Harry, looming over us on one side of the desk, turned and opened a metal filing cabinet, taking out a ream of white paper. He started putting out sheets of white paper on the desk.

  A bad feeling settled in my stomach.

  ‘I must say, Malachite Jones, I was not comfortable with you turning up at my place of work – that was not something I asked you to do. I asked you to find my lottery ticket.’

  ‘I’m not sure it is …’

  He leant forward, the smile on his face falling away, his voice lowering itself to a threatening growl. ‘I am not asking you to make judgement, you know? I am not asking you to make decision. I am telling you the ticket is mine and also that you are to concentrate on finding it, not looking into Larry Stanbeck. He bought it in a shop for me, do you understand?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good. Now, an hour ago, something very upsetting happened to me.’

  Harry the stationer took out his paper guillotine and placed it on the desk, lifting up the heavy blade so it was ready to cut. The bad feeling in my stomach got markedly worse and it took all I had not to take my hands off the desk.

  ‘Someone firebombed one of my takeaways, Malachite Jones. Now, I do not like this. And things like this very rarely happen to me, so I got to wondering who was likely to do such a thing.’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Shhh,’ he said, lifting his fingers to his lips. Then he gave Harry a nod and the huge man stood to the side of the desk, looming over us.

  I looked at his set-up: white paper, guillotine. This was definitely not good.

  ‘Most people, Malachite Jones, they know I am a very dangerous man, they wouldn’t do something like that. They are not so foolish. Then I remembered you have a friend, Jackie, yes?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I think he is a very foolish man.’

  ‘Jackie did not burn down your shop,’ I said.

  ‘Oh? You know this? You know who did then?’

  ‘Well, someone stabbed one of Mick Stanbeck’s boys, there’s a train of logic there.’ Frank stared at me, raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I happen to know that Mick Stanbeck is currently in jail.’

  ‘You think that would stop him?’

  Frank stared at me, then nodded and shrugged in what I took to be an affirmative manner.

  ‘You could be right, Malachite Jones,’ he said. ‘But Mick Stanbeck was the other reason I wished to see you.’ He leaned back in the chair. ‘See, I had another thought. You do not really know me, but you do know Mick Stanbeck.’ A smile. He picked up a pen and looked at it. ‘And it occurred to me that you may, foolishly, be more scared of Mick Stanbeck than you are of me. So, I thought, how could I kill two fowl with one rock, eh?’

  ‘This is going to hurt, isn’t it?’ I said.

  Frank nodded.

  ‘Sadly, yes. Harry will cut off the little finger of your left hand. I think this will teach you to be afraid of me.’

  ‘I am, totally honestly, already really afraid of you.’

  Frank gave me the sort of smile a kindly uncle gives you when your dad is screaming at you for something stupid you did.

  ‘I know that.’ He leant forward and patted my left hand with his hand. ‘I know. But we forget things so quickly, as a species, Malachite. This will leave you with a permanent reminder of who it is you should be afraid of.’

  He grabbed my wrist and held it down on the desk. Harry grabbed my right hand. I bunched it into a fist. He levered out my little finger and pulled my hand toward the guillotine.

  I’d always thought, in a position like this, I would scream and shout. But it all happened in silence, more like a battle of wills than a physical battle. No matter how much I stiffened my muscles and tried to become a rock, unmovable, I was outmatched by the two Russians and it only took seconds for Harry to have my finger placed over the cutting groove of the paper guillotine.

  ‘Please don’t do this, Frank.’

  ‘It will be quick,’ he said. ‘And it will also tell your friend, Jackie, if he is burning down my shops, not to. He is the sort of man who needs a real lesson, something he can touch, I think, yes?’ he put a match box lined with cotton wool on the desk.

  Harry nodded. I closed my eyes and heard Frank whisper. ‘Open your eyes, Malachite.’

  I did. He was staring at me, eyes like chips of ice.

  ‘Back in the old country, Malachite,’ he said softly, ‘my mother would take me to see a vorozheyka, a fortune teller. She told me I would be an important man, and she was right, you know this. But before this vorozheyka ever tried to talk to the spirits’ – he grinned at me and opened a drawer in the desk, reached in – ‘she would take a pin.’ He held up a sewing kit in front of me and opened it, taking out a needle. ‘Then, she would plunge the pin into the flesh of her arm – she said the pain helped her contact the spirits.’ He smiled and looked across at Harry, my hand, and his guillotine. ‘I think, cutting off a finger, that will be traumatic, unhelpful maybe. But only a little pain? This may help you, eh?’

  Before I could answer in the negative, he took the needle and placed it on my wrist.

  My mouth went dry.

  Frank nodded at me, then he slowly pushed the needle down into my wrist between the small bones. I didn’t scream. I gritted my teeth and breathed short, sharp breaths. I breathed and the need
le went in further, the pain intensifying and burning through me. I turned my breathing into words.

  ‘Bastardbastardbastardbastard.’

  ‘Can you hear them, Malachite?’ whispered Frank, something desperate there. ‘Can you hear the spirits talking? Are they telling you where my lottery ticket is?’ He was staring at me so intently that I was sure, at that moment, I was never going to make it out of here. He believed. Frank, the Russian gangster, genuinely thought I could talk to dead people, and he thought pain was a gateway to the spirit world.

  We were interrupted by a song. I knew that song. It was the opening bars of the song ‘Going To Town’ by The Afghan Whigs from the album Black Love.

  Frank stared at me.

  ‘What is that?’ The needle stopped digging.

  ‘My ringtone.’

  ‘Probably best you do not answer it right now, eh? You are busy.’

  I nodded, unsure what to say. The song continued playing.

  ‘You hear anything from the spirits?’

  I shook my head.

  Frank let go of the needle and leaned back. He looked disappointed. ‘I think,’ said Frank, ‘that whoever called you has ruined the mood, eh? Any spirits, they have fled?’

  I nodded.

  He shrugged. ‘We should do your finger now then, get it over with.’ He placed the sewing kit on the desk but never let go of my hand. ‘We can always come back to the needles. See, this way, you get a lasting lesson in doing as I ask, and we explore the metaphysical possibilities of pain another day, eh?’

  ‘I don’t think pain helps.’

  ‘Maybe we both learn something tonight then, Malachite Jones?’ He reached out and yanked the needle from my wrist in one quick gesture. That made me scream.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Frank let out a sigh and looked from me to Harry.

  ‘I am sorry about this, Malachite,’ he said. ‘I had left strict instructions with Peter to guard the door and for us to be undisturbed. But Peter is not a clever man.’ He raised his voice. ‘What is it, Peter?’ he shouted. ‘We are busy in here, so this must be very important for you to bother me, yes?’