Mavros took in a pair of busty transsexuals on a corner, their legs sheathed in fishnet stockings and their painted lips in come-hither pouts. ‘Everybody has to pay the rent.’
‘The bender,’ the driver said under his breath. ‘He likes them.’
Not particularly, Mavros thought, but I bet you do.
The air took on a salty tang as they swung past the racetrack to meet the shoreline. Mavros had been wondering if they would stop there. Even though the races had finished for the day, there would be plenty of illicit action going on in the neighbourhood. But the Mercedes sped on. The lights of the coast road illuminated the rippled surface of the bay. Only a swimmer with a death wish would immerse himself here despite the improvements in sewage disposal, but the southern suburbs generally had a healthier environment than most of the city. Apart from that, Mavros couldn’t see the point of living down here. Niki didn’t agree. She’d inherited a flat nearby from her foster-parents. The streets were as clogged and the apartment blocks as cheerless as anywhere else.
Then again, this area was handy for nightlife. The coast road was dotted with clubs and discos flashing garish neon signs. The ones whose owners weren’t able to pay protection money were dark and deserted. There were huge posters of mediocre, overpaid singers on the hoardings. They passed a sign proclaiming they were in Alimos. The area was known for its yacht marina and its clubs.
Mavros made the connection. The Silver Lady with its oversize mannequin had appeared ahead. It was where shots had been fired at the crime boss Rea Chioti. He felt a stir of disquiet. Was Katia’s boyfriend involved with that family?
‘He’s pulling in,’ the driver said, decelerating.
‘Do the same, but keep your distance.’ Mavros sank down in the back seat, his eyes on the Mercedes. It had stopped on the pavement outside the club’s parking area, hazard lights flashing. Sifis didn’t get out. He was making a call on his mobile.
‘Who’s the guy in the cab?’ the driver asked.
‘Someone I know,’ Mavros answered vaguely.
The swarthy man at the wheel grunted. ‘I think he might be in trouble.’
Mavros watched as two men in dark suits, one heavily built, stepped over the chain that marked the nightclub’s perimeter. They both looked around, then the larger one went to the offside rear door. The other got in the back from the kerbside. Sifis looked to be the filling in a pretty unhealthy sandwich.
‘We’re off,’ the driver said, engaging first gear.
The two cars went about five kilometres down the coast road, before the Mercedes suddenly swung to the left and ran a light that was changing to red.
‘Shit!’ Mavros exclaimed.
‘Don’t worry,’ the driver said, inclining his head in the direction the other taxi had gone.
A refuse lorry was blocking the road, the Mercedes’s brake lights on. By the time the traffic lights changed, Mavros’s cab was only fifty metres behind. They were heading up a road that led through apartment blocks built into the mountainside, but soon the houses began to thin out. At the end of the last developed area, the Mercedes stopped.
‘Kill your lights,’ Mavros said, as his driver pulled in.
The three men got out of the lead taxi and stood on the roadside as the vehicle turned and went back down towards the main road.
‘What now?’ the driver asked in a low voice. ‘I don’t like the look of this.’
‘Neither do I.’ Mavros started to run through his options. Calling the police was a non-starter. They wouldn’t come out here without a good reason. Sifis was probably just collecting a stash, but Mavros didn’t like the way the heavies were crowding him. They were holding on to his arms.
‘Will you wait?’ he asked the driver.
‘Only if you pay me what’s on the meter now plus that tip you promised. After that, I’ll see how it grabs me.’
Mavros didn’t have much choice. He handed over the cash. ‘There’s more where that came from if you’re still here when I come back.’
‘If you come back,’ the driver said with a hollow laugh. ‘All right, what have I got to lose? The meter’s running.’
Mavros opened the door and got out, closing it behind him soundlessly. Sifis and the other men had walked into the darkness. There were no houses beyond, only the steepening flank of the mountain. Mavros felt his heart pound in his chest. This looked like a very bad idea, but he couldn’t just leave Katia’s boyfriend to whatever was in store for him. He got off the road, feeling rough stones and dried mud beneath his boots. He could hear voices ahead of him. At first they were low, but they soon grew louder. Then a light shone out, the flame of a cigarette lighter.
‘—fuckin’ arsehole? You owe us five thousand and you want a line of credit? What do you think we are, a fuckin’ bank?’
‘No, no,’ Mavros heard Sifis gabble. ‘But I’ve got some good new customers. They want more than I usually shift. Please—’
‘Let me sort him, Yanni,’ the second man said, his voice coarse. ‘I’ve got my dusters and I’ve got my knife.’
‘Not to mention your Glock, Pano,’ said the first man.
There was a squeal from Sifis. ‘No, please, I’ll get the money, I’ll—’
‘It’s too late for that, you piece of shit. We’re going to—’
Mavros swallowed hard. He had to act. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘What’s going on up there?’
The light was extinguished immediately. Mavros changed position, hoping he didn’t walk into them.
‘Fuckin’ shit,’ he heard the man called Yannis say. ‘We better leave the bastard. Next time, Sifi. And the interest’s twenty points a day. You got that? Twenty per cent. Come on, Pano.’
‘I can take this guy,’ said the other man. ‘He won’t be tooled up like us.’
‘The boss said to keep a low profile. Come on.’
Mavros listened as heavy footsteps moved past him towards the road.
‘You’re lucky fuckers,’ Yannis said. ‘Both of you.’
Mavros waited till the footsteps had faded away. He heard a car engine start up and saw headlights swing round the hillside.
‘Sifi,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It’s Alex. Are you all right?’
There was silence, then the young man’s voice came from some way off. ‘Alex? What the fuck are you doing here?’
Mavros went towards him. ‘I’ll explain that to you, my friend. And then you can explain who those arseholes were.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Sifis said nervously, as he lit a cigarette.
‘Oh, shit is right. But at least you’re still alive.’
Mavros was wondering what the musclemen would have done to Katia’s trembling boyfriend if he hadn’t intervened. And to him, if they’d caught him.
Damis got up from the bed in the suite that had been arranged for him in the luxury hotel. He stared down at the traffic on the avenue below. The lights formed a shimmering carpet that was never still. When he’d taken the call from Lakis the Boss in the early-morning, he hadn’t imagined that things would change so much. He lowered the volume of the widescreen TV and tried to put his thoughts in order.
Lakis had been short with him, told him to get dressed and wait for a car at the bouncers’ flat. ‘It seems you made a good impression on Mrs Chioti,’ he said with undisguised irritation. ‘You and your two dumb friends.’
It turned out that Yannis the Driver and Peasant Panos had been taken off security duties and given responsibility for a list of dope dealers. Damis reckoned that was asking for trouble—the pair couldn’t organise an orgy in a knocking-shop. Not that he cared. Their promotion was nothing compared with his.
‘I want you to move in here immediately,’ Rea Chioti said to him when he was ushered into her suite. The guys on the door hadn’t deigned to speak to him as they ran their hands over him and took away his automatic. ‘And I want you to take orders only from me. Do you understand?’
Damis looked into the head of the family’s ash-grey eyes, f
eeling the force of them for the first time. She was suffering from shock the night he’d saved her from the assassin’s bullets, even though she carried herself well afterwards, and then her eyes didn’t make such an impression on him. Now, standing in front of her on the thick-pile carpet, he glimpsed the strength of will that had driven her to the top of the tree.
‘As you’ll find out, I have certain other operatives who deal only with me,’ La Chioti said, looking up at him from where she sat in a plush armchair. She was wearing a business suit that must have cost a bagful of Euros. Her legs, in sheer black stockings, were crossed above the knee. Damis was disturbed to realise that part of the power she wielded was sexual. Jesus, he thought. Am I out of my mind?
‘What kind of work is it that you want me to do?’ he asked, struggling to keep his voice level.
She kept her eyes on him. ‘You seem to have a fair amount of initiative. I think you’re wasted as a bouncer. As you saw outside, I have plenty of enforcers. What I need is someone I can trust.’ She glanced down at her perfectly manicured nails, the red varnish glowing in the artificial light. ‘Young man, I was betrayed the other night.’ She pointed to an antique desk. ‘Over there is a list of the people who knew I was going to the Silver Lady. I’ll ensure that everyone in the upper echelons of the family business knows you’re empowered to ask questions.’ She gave him a cold smile. ‘However, you’re not empowered to punish the guilty person. You’ll report your findings to me and discuss this with no one else. Understood?’
‘Understood, Mrs Chioti.’
‘There’s a mobile telephone number on a separate sheet on the desk. Memorise it and destroy the paper in front of me.’
He complied, thankful that he’d always had a good memory for figures.
‘My assistants are preparing a dossier that will make your task easier,’ the head of the family said. She stood up to end the meeting. ‘They’ll also provide you with certain benefits in addition to you suite here—a car, funds.’ She looked into his eyes again. ‘Don’t disappoint me. This could be the beginning of a significant career for you.’
In his bedroom Damis turned away from the window, trying to banish his employer from his mind. She frightened him, she attracted him, she held his life in the palm of her hand. Why did she think that a simple bouncer like him could find her betrayer? He had the feeling he was being used as a pawn in a game he couldn’t fathom, but there was no way he could pull out now. Not that he wanted to. He was in place, he’d got the break he’d been working for since he started at the Silver lady.
Damis clenched his fists, feeling the nails dig into the palms of his hands. This was his big chance. He owed it to Martha, lost Martha with her empty eyes and ravaged face, not to screw it up.
CHAPTER SIX
MAVROS AND SIFIS came off the slope and into the streetlights. There was no sign of the two hard men, or of Mavros’s taxi. He swore under his breath. Taxi drivers were the scum of the earth. Then, as they crossed the first junction, he heard a beep. The Honda with the damaged wing flashed its lights and drew up.
The driver hung his head out of the window. ‘You thought I’d left you in the shit, didn’t you?’ he said, with an uneven grin.
Mavros took Sifis’s arm and led him to the backdoor. He was impressed by the driver’s nerve. ‘I’m glad you did. Those two guys from the nightclub, did you see where they went?’
‘They were picked up by a big Audi. There looked to be a fair amount of shouting going on.’ He glanced round. ‘Back to where we came from?’
Mavros wondered if he’d been spotted. He looked at Sifis. He was shivering, his brow drenched in sweat. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I will be when I get home.’
‘Is that a good idea? Do they know where you live?’
Sifis shrugged. ‘I don’t care. I’ve got some gear left.’
Mavros caught the driver’s eyes in the mirror. ‘You’re not listening, are you?’
‘What?’ the unshaven man shouted. ‘Can’t hear a word.’
Mavros smiled and turned back to Sifis. ‘You owe me, my friend. Start talking.’
The young man wrapped his arms round his chest. ‘Talk?’ he said listlessly. ‘What about?’
They were about to turn on to the coast road.
‘Do you want us to drop you off at the Silver Lady?’ Mavros asked, nudging him. ‘It’s on our way.’
‘No,’ Sifis said with a gasp. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Cut inland,’ Mavros instructed the driver. ‘Who’s your contact?’
‘I don’t…’ Sifis stopped himself. ‘Look, we don’t usually meet. I pick up the stuff in bars and clubs. This was to be a special deal. I owe them and I was trying to make up the shortfall.’
‘You’ve only got one customer now. Yourself.’
‘No, no, I’m still supplying some…’
Mavros grabbed his arm. ‘Stop pissing me about. Do you know where Katia is?’
There was a sob. ‘Of course I fucking don’t! I miss her…I love her.’
‘All right,’ Mavros said, relaxing his grip. ‘Is there any chance those scumbags from the Silver Lady could have seen you with her?’
Sifis raised his shoulders. ‘I suppose it could have got back to them that I had a good-looking girlfriend.’ His eyes widened. ‘You mean, they might have grabbed her?’ He thought about it. ‘They sometimes do things like that to keep people sharp. But they’d have told me.’
Mavros nodded. Sifis was probably right. On the other hand, bottom-feeding musclemen like Yannis and Panos wouldn’t necessarily know if Katia had been seized on the street and forced to be a dancer or worse.
‘No, they can’t have,’ Sifis was saying, his head in his hands. ‘Katia, Katia…’
The taxi turned north towards the city centre.
Mavros looked out of the window as the driver shot a glance at the corner where the men-women had been standing earlier. They weren’t there now. He wondered if they were pimped by some shithead who answered to the Chiotis family. It wouldn’t have surprised him. He thought about what he’d discovered. Katia’s boyfriend was linked to the biggest crime organisation in the city and its enforcers had their claws into him. But he hadn’t established a direct link to the missing girl.
It couldn’t really be classed as a night to remember.
The Son’s sleep was dreamless. He woke to the sounds of the cleaner in the corridor outside his hotel room, and the shouts of the market traders below. The Father would have been up and about for hours. The old man always wandered around the city first thing in the morning when they were down on jobs. He liked the bustle of the narrow streets in the market area. He came back with plastic bags full of olives better than those available in the north and the camomile that he’d been told to drink for his stomach. And he took the opportunity to visit the fishing gear stores to buy more hooks. He needed plenty after last night. But the Father also went back to his old haunts—the Son had followed him once. The street where the torture cells used to be, that was his favourite.
Swinging his legs off the bed, the Son started to do his exercises. He counted out the number of stomach crunches as he’d been taut to do in the army, fifty, a hundred, two hundred, feeling the burn in his muscles. He kept himself in good condition, which was more than could be said for the Father. The old man had been short of breath during the job last night, wiping the sweat from his brow all the time. Not that it mattered. The subject hadn’t held back. Information had gushed from him like a waterfall. That didn’t save him from the probes and the hooks. The Father never believed what people said unless they were in pain. The old bastard, he thought, as he rolled on to his back and started a set of sit-ups. Why was he so suspicious? It was obvious that the guy had been telling the truth from the beginning.
He’d hung on, though. He had a lot of stamina for an out-of-condition office worker. Three hours they’d worked on him and at the end he was still conscious. A lot of that was down to the Fath
er’s skill, of course. He knew exactly how much pain to inflict.
The body would have been discovered by now. The Father hadn’t been impressed when the bald man told them that, once again, he’d been ordered to dump it in a public location. The point was to pay the Russians back for the family’s man who’d been found in the construction site—to pay them back and to send a message that the family was a lot more vicious than them.
The Son got up and drank down a bottle of water. He wasn’t really interested in the game their employer was playing. As long as there was work, he was happy. It sounded like there was going to be more for them to do, but there had been no calls yet. La Chioti was keeping her distance. Pulling on a tracksuit, he made sure that all his equipment was hidden and went out of the room.
‘You don’t need to bother,’ he said to the cleaner, a blonde who probably came from the former Eastern Block. ‘I’m very tidy.’ The woman looked at him like he was from another planet. He was tempted to make something of it, but told himself to calm down. He’d never got on with women. It was as if they sniffed out that he was different from other men. Even the whores he’d used when he was in the army, women who’d been with the worst bastards, used to avoid his eyes. That only made it more enjoyable.
Out on the street, the Son swerved round a gypsy woman with a small child in tow. Both of them were filthy, the woman’s voluminous skirt reaching to her ankles and her bare feet scabby. The child reached out a hand to him. He showed it his teeth. The Father had some lunatic ideas, but he was sound on this—there were too many sub-humans in the country. One thing they’d got right in Yugoslavia was ethnic cleansing.
He tugged his baseball cap lower over his eyes. He wasn’t worried about being recognised as no one in the city knew who he was, but he liked to fade into the background, to be anonymous. It was hard to do that back home. People knew the Father. Not that they had any inkling about his past. That had been carefully erased after the dictatorship. And the Father had changed his appearance, grown a moustache to hide the prominent upper lip that the people he’d worked on in the cells might have remembered.
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