H When hell is the favourable option

by David Jaundrell

  ‘’It would seem’ said the Ambassador ‘that the world has a need for violence, not just Colombia’

  Senor Reyes let out a long sigh ‘Sadly that is true, so true’.

  ‘How is Benshima?’ enquired the Ambassador gently.

  Senor Reyes shook his head and his face creased with an inner anguish. ‘Very poorly. Very poorly indeed. The bastardothat shot her did a good job but she is alive and with the Holy Mothers help she will live and be strong again’

  ‘I am pleased Jose. I have not seen Benshima for many years but I remember her as a child and she was special even then’

  Senor Reyes smiled. Special. What a wonderful way to sum up a human being. Special…..

  The Ambassador gave Jose a cigar and pulled his chair closer to his old friend. ‘In what way can we help you……?’

  H Chapter 36

  The Cabal

  The men leaned on the wall and looked over the ocean from what was soon to be the roof terrace on their three hundred room hotel. The structure was completely finished, the electrics done and the furnishers were scurrying around like worker ants.

  They were all pleased. They had come a long way….from petty theft, prostitution with a few girls, to extortion, large groups of girls, selling women and children across continents and now ……..this. A hotel that would be worth millions that had cost them relatively very little.

  The men were ecstatic as their long term plans unfolded before them and soon they would have a completely legitimate source of funds plus an appreciating long term capital asset.

  In a short time they would be up and ready for the start of the tourist season. Representatives of several European travel agents and visited and they had struck a deal with three of them for a third of the rooms each which would be paid for up front subject to an inspection prior to the official opening. As soon as they had the deposits on the rooms they would start building again on another beach front plot of land they had persuaded someone to sell. Or at least the screams and pleading of his wife had persuaded him to sell……….

  On top of that they would also have legitimate businesses through which to launder their illegal money and ways of offering ‘favours’ to the local, or indeed any, bureaucracy.

  Amazingly they had the sense to hire a top hotel manager to arrange for everything to be ready when the hotel was ready. He was arranging the supplies of food, linen, etc and already training local staff to wait on tables and clean rooms.

  The manager had been a touch dubious about joining this lotas they were hardly sophisticated but he found in them an innate sense of how to make money and had shown very early on that they were more than capable of sorting out business issues. Indeed in a peculiar way it was easier to talk to these villains than some of the arseholes that ran the large hotel chains. Some of them could hardly make a decision without eight committees first whereas these boys worked out what they wanted and if you could give it to them they left you to it.

  Amazingly they didn't interfere and he found the pace of construction and fitting was miles quicker than usual although he wasn't quite sure why?

  Another benefit was that they paid well. They gave him a salary commensurate with the industry norm and another twenty five per cent in cash. Another added bonus for a married man away from home was the plentiful supply of women. Any shape, any colour, any age. This was a different world……… but one he could quite happily belong in.

  And their expedition into England was movingtowards the end game. The owner of the clubs was dead and his woman pretty close which was a shame as both would have been better. One of them said ‘If you're going to send a message, don't stop writing before you've finished the sentence’.

  They had laughed at that.

  ‘Sentence’. Sentence……death sentence. Writing someone a death sentence. Very good………

  However as businessmen they would ask for a discount from their intermediary as they had requested that both die if they were together.

  They would wait a few days until after the funeral then they had arranged for a compatriot to visit and explain the situation. It would be obvious that resistance was futile as the extermination of the owner had shown and so they would soon be the new owners of several clubs at no cost although the arrangements for the kill had been expensive.

  Never mind; speculate to accumulate!

  .………They drank wine, toasting themselves and their success then went down in the lift to the basement and the large black 4 x 4s to go to a farmhouse to fuck and hurt several little girls they had bought for a pittance from a village in Africa.

  H Chapter 37

  The Consultant

  Michael Payne sat in the garden of his large mews home sipping martinis with his wife.

  ‘I couldn't believe it’ he said repeating himself ‘this bloody dago gnome has the effrontery to equate me with a gardener. A fucking gardener!’

  ‘Calm down darling…..I am sure he was upset. His daughter is very ill and no doubt he didn't realise what he said’

  ‘A fucking gardener……’

  ‘Your language darling……..’

  His mobile phone rang and he took it off the table. ‘Payne’

  In his grand, yet appropriately austere office Sir Anthony Gibbs-White waited a moment until he no longer saw the back of the ashen faced lawyer who was closing the door behind him.

  ‘Michael’ he said into the phone ‘Anthony Gibbs-White here…………good, yes, ………how are you?……… Michael there appears to have been a misunderstanding between you and Senor Reyes. I'm sure it's nothing so perhaps you could explain’

  Gibbs-White had been a superb barrister and he felt the sincere ‘you can tell me…’ coming back.

  Payne was still fuming at the slight ‘It was disgraceful. He treated me as though I was some kind of underling! He compared me to a fucking gardener! A fucking gardener!’

  ‘In what way did he do that Michael?’

  Payne thought for a second. ‘He said the only difference between his gardener and myself was the rate of pay. The rate of fucking pay! I am a senior fucking consultant for Christ's sake!’

  He had worked himself up into a minor frenzy again. Gibbs-White sighed inwardly and wondered how some of these so called consultants ever made a penny with their total lack of social skills. Oh dear….

  ‘And what did he do to start this off Michael?’

  ‘He said thank you Mr Payne’

  ‘Thank you Mr Payne…..?

  ‘Yes….’

  ‘That's it?’

  There was a pause

  ‘………….Yes’

  ‘So you took umbrage at a man who thanked you for your help?’

  Another pause. ‘Yes, but that's not what he meant….’

  ‘What did he mean?’

  ‘He meant….er…..fuck off!’

  ‘Or perhaps he meant thank you?’ suggested Gibbs-White

  ‘I'm sure he didn't’

  ‘Although that's what he said….. Perhaps I can précis this then Michael. We send you one of our most important and long standing clients. He is distraught as his daughter and her partner have been shot and both are critical. He thanks you for your help and you insult him……’

  ‘Well, it's not….’

  ‘Have I summed that up reasonably?’

  ‘Well, sort of but…..’

  But me no butsthought Gibbs-White but me no buts.He had had enough. ‘Michael, I think you do a lot of work for us as an expert witness and obviously for any of our partners that need your medical expertise’

  ‘Yes indeed, much appreciated’

  ‘I think it's about…. what….four, five hundred thousand a year?’

  ‘Perhaps a touch more…’

  ‘Well that stops today Michael. We no longer have need of your services….’

  Payne was lost……..totally lost. His mind screamed in every direction to get information to help him understand. You disagree with some little fucker and you lose
half a million a year? Eh? He must have misheard…..he must have.

  ‘Anthony, I don't understand. What has my little spat with some little man got to do with anything?’

  Gibbs-White gave up. What a pompous prick!

  ‘I think that it may help you considerably if you work that out for yourself. Anyhow must go Michael. I will send the letter cancelling our contract by return. Goodbye’

  Payne sat there….stunned. He didn't move. It was a though a bomb had landed on his house and everything was gone.

  He saw the profit and loss quite clearly in his head.

  Half a million plus gone.

  Work from Freshfields gone.

  Referrals gone

  Contacts gone.

  Prestige gone

  Reputation gone

  His elegant wife looked up from her Homes and Gardens magazine. ‘There's a lovely cruise in here darling; around the Caribbean. Should I book……..?.

  H Chapter 38

  Toby explains

  Senor Reyes met Toby and Brian in the Savoy Grill for lunch to discuss the situation. They knew very little about this soft spoken little man as H had told them very little, but anyone who arrived in his own Gulfstream and had two minders sitting at the next table had to be taken seriously.

  They told him about the death of Big Tony, the other attempt on the doorman and then the ‘coincidence’ of H's shooting and so they assumed that it was either a revenge killing for something H had done, but they had no idea what, or it was the start of a takeover but they had no idea why or by whom.

  Certainly they were in a ‘funny’ business but they had spoken to contacts and could not work out who would have done it. It was certainly nobody local.

  Whilst H could be quite ruthless he was not seen as a target and the business was not really big enough for most people.

  They were just clubs and a security business.

  They were not involved in crime, didn't do counterfeiting, or drugs, or girls so what was the point? You could hardly muscle in and take over a multi million pound racketwhen one didn't exist.

  They just couldn't see it……who the hell would want a few clubs and would want them badly enough to kill for it?

  H Chapter 39

  H lies quite still 2

  Behind his eyelids, in a dark world that had no exit and no entry, H wondered about……nothing in particular

  There was frenzied activity but no apparent outcome…

  Tiny specks of light flashed continually across his eyes but he took no notice.

  They were just the end product of the repair team that was rushing hither and thither trying to make sense of what had happened…….

  H Chapter 40

  Poor H

  Hathaway heard of the death of H and was sorry. In the business they were in you never knew who you had upset, perhaps even someone you had never met, or even knew about. Nowadays it was a funny world.

  Someone with power or money rings someone who rings someone and a few days later you are dead.

  It was that simple.

  There was no way to hide from a threat you didn't know existed. How do you escape the invisible wind? How do you push it away? It couldn't be done. Once the button had been pushed all was left was the trigger to be pulled….literally.

  Nowadays, he knew, the bullet was almost passé as technology had opened up unforeseen doors for the modern killer. Whether it be the state that dropped an anonymous guided missile from fifty thousand feet or the use of tiny amounts of nuclear waste added to products to kill over time. Hathaway knew of one government that had changed a phone in someone's house and every time they used it the x-ray emissions fried a little more of their brain until they became senile at thirty five. There was also the World Wide Web whose tentacles stretched everywhere, far beyond what the laymen thought and in many instances far beyond what the so called experts thought.

  Hathaway was philosophical about the deliverance of death as he saw it differently than the layman whose only knowledge of death and what delivered death was what they saw on the TV news.

  What was a weapon?

  The layman says a gun, or tank, a knife….. The deliverer of death says ………anything! All you had to do was see it a as weapon. It was merely a philosophical and intellectual about turn. Or put another way if a pencil is used to stab you in the heart is it still a pencil? To the state department empowered to kill enemies or to the hired killer it therefore followed that everything could be used to further ones aims. You merely had to see its potential as a weapon rather than what it was…….

  Hathaway's mind had wandered. All these thoughts of killing and destruction were not good for a man. He should think of better things.

  Soon the wedding. He was looking forward to that. The family, a wedding, gaiety, happiness, a new start in life; with luck he and the wife may even be civil to each other and if she got completely pissed he may even get a fuck…off his own fucking wife! The wife that cost him a load of money every month in Gucci, Dior, Dolce e Gabbana etcetera. Hathaway felt his ire rising by the second and willed himself to calm down. It didn't matter really. He either put up with it; the spending, the lack of sex which wasn't really a lack, it was non existent as she lived in Spain and he anywhere else; or he divorced her or had her killed.

  It wasn't worth the effort.

  Divorce would be a bit too …….financially exposing what with all the lawyers snooping around; and killing could be a bit ……..obvious. Just a touch of motive there your honour. What was ten thou a month for a few goodies if it kept the status quo? And any way his luck may change and she may just get run over by a fucking London bus! In Spain!

  It was a shame about H. They had made a couple of quid together over the years and he would miss him.

  What did H say Benny had called him?

  An intelligent thug….that was it. An intelligent thug.

  And I suppose that was what he was.

  Was……..

  Hathaway let out a deep breath.

  Was.

  How descriptive. How final….

  Please God, thought Hathaway, that the description, the finality, eluded him until a ripe old age. Say about ninety and he had a massive heart attack just as he was coming in some sweet young things mouth.

  He smiled to himself at the thought.

  H Chapter 41

  Back to Colombia

  Senor Reyes made arrangements for Benshima to be transferred to the London Clinic and paid for two rooms; one for his wife to use to be by Benny's side. He then arranged with Toby that one of H's men should be outside H's room at all times. There were no shortage of volunteers……. H was their boss and they disliked intensely what had happened. What they wanted more than anything was to get back at someone for it. Someone. Anyone!

  Senor Reyes was torn. In England he lacked the organisation and mechanisms by which he functioned efficiently and although his English was good it was tiring to talk in a foreign language continually. On the other hand his daughter was here and she needed him. He thought for a moment and knew that was not so. It was what a father said in such circumstances but she did not need him now. She needed to know she could count on him but that was another matter. What to do?

  ‘I have to go back’ he said to his wife.

  She nodded her understanding. He rang the pilot of the Gulfstream and the waiting car of Secure Security took him to the airport.

  After a few minutes in the air he rang several people so that they could meet him on his arrival………..

  ………….They gathered around a large board room tablemade of highly polished Colombian Sajo hardwood. It seated twenty but there was only Senor Reyes and three others. They talked generally for a while about the situation so that they understood it. In Colombia they could protect their own but what could they do if Benshima lived in England. And with a crook?

  They could not protect her in England from accidents or the force of nature or indeed from snipers but they could, and wou
ld, make their displeasure known.

  ‘Do we know who is behind it?’ one asked.

  Senor Reyes half nodded, indicating a degree of uncertainty ‘Possibly, but until something else develops we cannot be sure. I think Senor James operation will receive a caller in a few days and that will tell us much…’

  H Chapter 42

  The Cabal

  On the roof terrace a council of war had been called. Contrary to what they had been led to believe the owner of the night clubs was not dead although their source assured them that he would die or be crippled for the rest of his life. Likewise his woman would live and should make a full recovery.

  What to do now?

  How did that affect the message?

  Did it make them bungling hit men or merely show they were quite happy to leave someone as a vegetable to get what they wanted?

  Did it change the situation?

  It was generally agreed that the outcome was not as it should have been and two good kills would have been preferable. That showed power and authority. You could not argue with death. But it was what it was and they now had to press home their advantage. They decided to continue as planned and an envoy living in Britain would go and explain the situation to the owner's manager. If he declined to cooperate then he would also be killed. Their only other problem, as they saw it, and one that they had not paid enough attention to in their plans, was the possibility that a local firm would go in and do the same thing. Hopefully the killing, or attempted killing of the owner, would tell everyone that this was serious and to keep out.

  Whilst the leader of the group remained totally committed to the plan there were one or two, those that looked beyond the now, that saw the possibility of massive problems ahead. They had gone into this assuming the same strategy that worked in their locale would work in England – several thousand miles away.