by Simon Jenner
“Explain yourself,” he said.
Savannah tugged her arm, trying to get free, but his grip was too tight.
“You’re hurting me,” she said, looking around, hoping that someone else might notice her plight. She thought about screaming, but her need to see the matter through outweighed her distress - but only just.
“Explain yourself,” he repeated with added spittle which travelled the short distance onto her face.
“Okay, okay. I screwed up. What can I say?”
“I want details.”
“The first one at the Dorchester, short and skinny, over from Italy for business...”
“Ricardo,” Christos elaborated. “Go on, what happened?”
Savannah felt her face flush. It was bad enough she had to go through last night, let alone tell this foul-breathed bully about it.
“He didn’t have any condoms, and I wasn’t having sex without protection.”
“You didn’t take condoms with you?”
“I’m new to this,” she said, trying again to pull away. “Get off me, will you?”
Christos didn’t budge an inch. “Carry on, darlin’.”
She wanted to cry, but she would not let this bastard have the satisfaction. She clenched her teeth together, dug deep for resolve and hissed back at Christos hoping her breath stank as bad as his. “He wanted to do it without, but I said no, so I agreed to get him off by hand as long as he put a sock on it.”
Christos laughed in her face, long and loud. It was a laugh that contained genuine humour, and for a few seconds Savannah believed she had defused the situation. “He looked so miserable while I was doing it I didn’t think I could accept the fee,” she added.
Christos stopped laughing, his face settling into contemplation. “He’s Italian. They always look miserable when they have sex. They think it makes them look macho. They should wear black like me and smile when they fuck, those miserable bastards.” He pulled her closer so that his nose pushed hard into her cheekbone. “So he offered to pay you?”
“Y...y...yes, but I only took fifty for my time.” Don’t cry Savannah, she told herself. You’ll never do this again or have to talk to a piece of filth like this again. You can wait tables or clean floors, but you’ll never have to be treated like this ever again. Get it over with, and get on with your life.
This had all been a huge mistake. What filthy, sordid and violent world had she entered? What had she been thinking? She didn’t know if he suspected that she was about to scream or break down, but he released her and she sat back as far as the seat would allow. He shook his head when she wiped off his saliva from her face with her bare arm.
“Okay, so that’s one,” he said, a little less tension in his voice. “What happened with the other you picked up in the sports bar, the yuppie?”
“He said that it was his friend’s idea and that he had no money.”
Christos chewed on a thumbnail a while before responding. “You gave him the talk?”
“Yes, that I was just the talent and he had to pay or you’d break his legs.” She could still smell the saliva on her face. She shuddered.
“What’s his name?”
As she spoke the name, she braced herself for the backlash. “John ... Smith, he said it was.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he roared. “Do I look like I won’t break your legs right here, right now?”
He didn’t. He looked like a snorting bull about to charge, like he knew no other way to deal with the situation that confronted him. Savannah bit down on the soft inside of both lips and concentrated on the pain. She felt a trickle of blood inside her mouth and the taste of metal. If she ran, Amy would tell Christos where to find her. She had a few words for Amy of her own, if she made it out on unbroken legs.
A uniformed waitress in her mid-twenties with long blonde hair and blue eyes walked up to their booth and stopped. She was pretty but not so pretty that she’d turn heads, and the way she savagely chewed gum did nothing to enhance her looks. She appeared most unimpressed with their behaviour.
“My boss says to be quiet or leave,” she said in an East European accent, making ‘leave’ sound more like ‘leaf’.
Christos gave the waitress a menacing stare, all slit eyes and snarling teeth. “Mind your business.”
“It is ... how do you say ... your funeral?” replied the waitress, seeming even more unimpressed, if that were at all possible.
Christos stared at the woman in disbelief, his mouth agape and his eyes wider than Savannah had seen before. She noticed the fine edge of a contact lens in one eye as he turned and looked up to face the waitress. She wondered how he managed to get them into those tiny openings.
“We’ll be done in two minutes,” Christos said, almost politely and entirely devoid of his Cockney accent.
“Good.” The waitress turned and walked away.
Christos exhaled. “Did you see that? That bird’s Russian, part of the Russian mob over here in London. You mess with their bitches and they’ll cut off your dick and ram it down your throat. You either suffocate or bleed to death. Either way your last taste before you die is your own blood and piss.”
A joke about his penis size not being sufficient to block his airway popped into Savannah’s head, but she thought better of sharing it with him. Although the thought of him dying that way did bump her resolve back up a notch. “Are we done now?” she asked.
Christos leaned over once again, and she backed up so much she almost stood up.
“Don’t worry darling, I’m not going to make a scene in front of the Russians.”
She slid back down into the seat. “So what now?”
He glanced around him before lowering his voice to a whisper. “Our business will be over when you pay me my grand. If I don’t have it in two days, I’ll sell you to the Arabs who will fuck your tight little arsehole until you can shit melons without wincing. Are we clear?”
Savannah’s lips trembled and, unable to speak, she meekly nodded her head. Christos got up and left.
The East European waitress returned to the booth, a concerned expression on her face, no sign of the chewing gum.
Savannah was glad of the company. The young woman had unnerved Christos, and that gave Savannah a sense of security.
The waitress sat down exactly where Christos the Greek had been. She placed her hand on top of Savannah’s. “You work as whore for this man ... no?”
Savannah said nothing. Her stomach sank.
“I can get you better rates. We meet later ... yes?”
Savannah jumped up and ran out of the Pizza Hut, sending her herbal tea cup crashing to the floor. She needed to find John Smith - like now.
5: Saturday 24th September, 13:15
Outside the Kensington apartment building, the cold breeze had dropped and a few gaps had appeared in the cloud cover, giving the day a brighter feel. However, as John Smith could attest, there was still a definite chill in the air.
He sensed that all was not as it should be.
Perhaps his initial reaction at being found at a murder scene had rose-tinted his perception of the two men who escorted him outside. In retrospect, they had been very keen to remove him from the scene of the crime. He was glad he hadn’t divulged his name or carried any identification.
“Aren’t you supposed to read me my rights?” he asked, hands cuffed behind him, an officer on each side guiding him along the crowded street at a steady pace.
“We’ll take care of the paperwork back at the station,” said the taller of the two, on his right side, in a thick American accent. Since when did the Metropolitan police force take on Yanks? He shoved John hard in the back with the palm of his hand.
The message carried with the shove was clear: shut up and walk. But John didn’t feel compliant today. A part of him hurt. The pain was geographically obscure, deep in a place where pain carried emotions as well as physical symptoms. There was a monster ball of grief inside him which swelled and yearned for releas
e. But now was not the time for self-pity. He pushed away the thoughts that fed the ball and swallowed the pain back down.
He regarded the two men in turn, from head to toe. The long, thick, navy blue coats covered everything from their shoulders to their knees. Beneath the knees, both men wore black suit trousers and black shoes. Stooping to look more closely, John realised that the spotless shine came from boots, not shoes, and tell-tale stitching indicated steel toe caps. Were they standard issue for the police? The man on his left was the eldest, and John placed him in his late forties, a good ten years ahead of his partner, who he reckoned was a year or two older than himself.
Both men had short mid-brown hair. Neither man wore a discernible expression, but the taller man had a look about him, a glint in the eye perhaps, which exuded job satisfaction. He also had a Bluetooth device in one ear, which he occasionally pressed as if he was straining to hear something. If these guys were CID, John was next in line for the throne. Thoughts for his own safety suddenly occupied his mind.
“Nice clothes,” he said to no one in particular, looking forward again, smiling warmly at those who had the nerve to look him in the eye. Pedestrians parted like the Red Sea, nervous that he was a threat to their safety. “How come you didn’t park nearer? Surely, they give you a special permit to park anywhere when on the job?” John asked.
“Shut up and walk,” the shorter one said, without a discernible accent, tonally similar to Mark but without the exaggerated drawl that belonged to those with a privileged lineage. John felt an elbow in his back. That hurt. Elbows from the left, hands from the right, he noted. MI5, CIA, Mafia perhaps? No, not stylish enough for the mob. There was something almost military about their behaviour. He needed to push a few more buttons.
John turned to the captor on his right. “Your partner’s not very tall, is he? Have they relaxed the height requirements for entry?”
Another elbow thudded into his back, sending John stumbling forward.
“I’m not sure you can do that,” he complained, as they quickly caught up to him. John looked down to his left, where the shorter man’s head bobbed along a good five inches below his own. “You’ve got some serious shoulders on you. Did they allow you to add your shoulder width to your height for entry purposes?”
Another dig in the back from the left but this one was sharper and harder, and it remained pushed roughly into his spine just above the waistband of his jeans. A gun! Instinctively, he froze, almost bringing them to a standstill.
Fear for his life mixed with the grief lodged in his gut created a moment of purest clarity. His life had been a failure. No, that wasn’t it - he had been a failure. His life was flashing before his eyes as the moment before death demanded, but there was nothing to show him. Other than his desire not to be dead, what was there to live for? At the precise moment he closed his eyes expecting a bullet to sever his spinal column, he felt the concealed, folded paper free itself from the waistband of his boxer shorts, and the thoughts of imminent death disappeared. His father had always said that he had no sense of priority.
“Keep moving, kid,” the tall man whispered in his ear. John guessed the man was from New York or somewhere close. “Head for the tube station.” The word tube was pronounced like ‘toob’.
John looked ahead and saw the entrance to ‘High Street Kensington’ approaching on their right, just past a lingerie shop. Would they kill him in such a busy place? Surely not? He shuffled along in an effort to slow the downward progress of the loose paper which had escaped the shorts completely and now tickled his right thigh about four inches above the knee. If they were escorting him to his death then he reasoned that his last sight would be the underneath of a speeding tube train. He had to run before they reached a platform.
Still sandwiched by the two men of unknown employment, they reached the entrance whose sign canopied out in an arch above the pavement, beneath a large double-faced clock. Like a mini mall, there were shops inside, perfectly situated for maximum exposure to possible purchasers. The long, pillared corridor, which led to the ticket machines and stalls, was swarming with activity as a mixture of shoppers and travellers fought for the space to move. Once they were deep amongst the throng, John would scream and run, panic would ensue, and he could escape in the belly of the bolting crowd.
“Go on, kid,” said the American. “Keep walking.”
“I’m thirty-two,” John snapped. He wouldn’t face death being talked down to.
A few shuffles later, about twelve feet into the station, the paper brushed past his ankle. He stopped. It was out of his jeans. It was now or never.
“Guns! They’ve got guns!” he bellowed, dropping to his knees. He saw the note on the ground. He needed to retrieve it before the stampede began. His hands were useless to him. There was nothing else for him to do. Without thought of hygiene, he leaned over, pressing his open mouth to the smooth tiled floor and closed his lips around the folded paper. Then, using his prone position like a sprinter, he pushed off from the ground to enhance his acceleration and took off. His purchase was good, and had it not been for the knee of a particularly large lady connecting directly with his chin, he might have given himself a head start. He collapsed face down on the cold floor, like a floored fighter. He had lost.
“Are you all right?” asked the large lady.
John lifted his head from the floor and waggled his jaw from side to side. He felt a click from his handcuffs as they fell away behind him. He turned, expecting to see one of the two men with keys in their hand, but they were nowhere. He pushed himself up, grabbing the fallen handcuffs as he rose. He was still giddy from the blow that had stopped him in his tracks so shook his head like a dog shook off water, hoping to clear his thoughts.
He looked deep into the crowd in all directions for unusually rapid movement or a tall man with short hair. Nothing. What he did see made some sense of his sudden freedom. Two armed policemen stood near a pillar about thirty feet from the entrance. They were part of the build-up to the London Olympics, John recalled - on full display to the general public and would-be kidnappers. He should be grateful. Without their obvious presence, he could well have been the latest addition to the growing number of tube suicides. They were also the reason that his firearm alert went completely ignored. The crowd had assumed that he meant the armed police.
“Are you all right?” repeated the lady of around fifty years of age, hands full of carrier bags. She wore baggy black tracksuit trousers, trainers and a huge purple overcoat. Her hair was expensively coiffured, perhaps for a later engagement. The bags in her hands were from every designer shop imaginable. Obviously she didn’t dress to shop. “You’ve got something caught in your mouth,” she added.
John removed the note along with some hair and dirt from the floor, placing it safely in the pocket of his jeans. The woman was clearly expecting something more as she made no move to carry on about her business.
“I’m fine, thanks. Sorry about bumping into you,” he said, assuming the lack of an apology was the cause for her delay.
“Think nothing of it young man.” She smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Those for your girlfriend?”
“I’m sorry?”
Her eyebrows rose. “The handcuffs. You got someone in mind for those?”
He’d forgotten about the handcuffs. He tucked them into his hoodie pocket. He needed to be alone to look at Mark’s note and to plan his next move. What he didn’t need was an old, fat lady with a handcuff fetish coming on to him. Before he could answer, she continued in a voice that trembled excitedly.
“Anyone who’ll lick a tube station floor and carries handcuffs about town is someone I want to know.”
Jesus. What did he say to that? “They’re for my ... my boyfriend,” he tried.
“I can work with that,” she said, after way too little consideration.
A small group of onlookers, lured in by the initial collision, had by now realised that this vaguely interesting encounter was developing into
something a little steamier. One girl, late teens in a pink anorak, was lifting her iPhone above heads in their direction. Tomorrow, he might well be on YouTube.
John, certain that nothing he said would aid his cause, stepped to his left and entered a fast moving stream of bodies bound for the trains.
“I’m here most Saturdays around this time,” the woman called after him, but John was on his way home.
*
Wilson turned to his partner after both men had watched John Smith disappear into the crowd. He was still churning inside from Johnson’s refusal to listen to his troubled thoughts. Sure there was protocol, but he had taken a bullet in the chest for the ungrateful bastard and surely that had to be worth five minutes off the record. Now he’d allowed Bradshaw’s murderer to flee, remotely releasing his keyless handcuffs into the bargain.
“Why did you let him go?”
“Because we know where he lives, and that’s where we’ll catch up with him.”
“We do?”
“Yeah, he needs to believe he shook us off or he won’t lead us anywhere.”
The tall agent was starting to piss Wilson off. “Are you going to let me in on your little secret?”
Johnson pulled out the Bluetooth device from his ear. “I sent his picture to HQ, and they have confirmed his identity as John Smith. He’s a friend of Bradshaw’s, but they cleared him nine years ago when Bradshaw first started working for us.”
“An alias?”
“Not according to HQ. Until we prove otherwise, we have to assume that he’s the killer or in league with the killer.” Johnson ran his hand through his short hair. “But we’ve got a bigger problem.”
“What?”
“The latest prototype of Bradshaw’s invention is missing from the lab.”
Wilson’s breath caught in his throat, and he felt his world begin to crumble. They should have been there, and all of this could have been cleaned up quickly and easily. Now things were a mess, and it was his fault. Johnson had been right. He shouldn’t have come back so soon. Or maybe it was Johnson’s punishment for not listening. “Well Smith didn’t have it. It’s too big to conceal. Maybe it’s still in Bradshaw’s apartment?”
