‘Further in,’ Piet said.
In the dingy light rigged from the lofty, vaulted drip-dripping ceiling, she spied the truth of this subterfuge. Gabi, sitting on a chair with a stiletto knife in her hand, painted bright red with blood that was not her own, staring intently at a man, bound to another chair, some two feet away: well-dressed and bleeding from his hands into a puddle on the concrete, filthy ground. A fat rat, sipping at this nutritious pool. The man jerked his head upwards to examine the newcomers with one roving eye. He focused on her ex-lover first, recognition clear in his somehow-familiar face.
‘Danny? What the hell has he done to you?’ A cut-crystal accent George had heard before.
‘I know, man.’ Danny clutching at his knee, whimpering, putting George in mind of an overgrown boy who had hurt himself in the playground, playing football on unforgiving tarmac. ‘He shot me in the fucking knee! Nutcase bastard. I was only doing him a frigging favour.’
‘Get this asshole tied up,’ Piet told Gabi. ‘And put some duct tape over his mouth. He talks too much.’
Hanging back in the shadows, relieved that she was apparently not being treated as a captive – not yet, in any case – George studied the scene. A figure slumped in the corner, with a bag on its head. No, a woman. Wearing a skirt and Doctor Marten boots. But the man with the bleeding hands and one eye … gripped by an intense feeling of déjà vu she took a step forwards, heart pinging like a bagatelle ball gone mad against the inside of her ribcage.
That one exorcet orb switched from Danny, locking onto her. The line of his nose had changed subtly. His face was scarred and bloodied. But it was his grin that gave him away. Slight discolouration on his incisor where a hole had been filled but had since stained with coffee.
George swallowed hard as the clues lined up to conjure a coherent chain of events. A man she had last seen two years ago in an industrial unit near Laren in the Netherlands. A man who had had a diamond stud embedded in his tooth. Whose eye she had damaged irreparably with a makeshift knuckle-duster fashioned from her keys. The driver of a Bentley. The partner of the Butcher. The Duke.
‘You!’ she said, backing away.
‘You!’ he said, shuffling forwards. His mouth arcing downwards, his bull neck straining. A shark of a man, poised to snap her up, as though she was nothing more than chum in the water.
‘You know each other?’ Gabi asked, forcing Danny to sit on the ground.
‘This little whore owes me an eye. It’s because of her I had to change my appearance. She’s the only one outside my circle of trust who could ID me as anything other than Lord Bloom, Chairman of Bloom Group.’
He spat at George, missing her by a good metre or so, but George cringed at the gesture of ill intent.
‘I knew you’d be a loose end. I should have killed you when I had the chance,’ he said. ‘Cheap black bitch.’
‘Fuck you!’ George said. She approached Bloom, remembering the feel of his hands squeezing around her neck. She felt the grip of indignation, more current and pressing than his fingers had been on her windpipe. ‘You’ll have to try pretty fucking hard to kill me, you piece of trafficking shit. Last things living after the fucking apocalypse will be cockroaches and me.’ She poked herself in the chest for emphasis, head tracking from side to side as she channelled pure Letitia the Dragon. ‘And my name’s McKenzie, you one-eyed pig’s arsehole. Not black bitch.’ She spoke slowly, annunciating every syllable. ‘Dr Georgina Avenger-of-the-innocent McKenzie. Bad cook. Good fuck and eater of fine crisps!’ She balled her fist and punched him in the mouth so hard and so suddenly that his head flicked sharply to the side, making an unpleasant clicking sound.
‘Ow!’ she said, shaking her throbbing, sullied knuckles. ‘Ew.’ She wiped the mess of Bloom’s blood and saliva onto the fur trim of Danny’s parka, ignoring Danny’s muffled protests. ‘Ugh. Is that real fur, you moron? Who the fuck wears real fur anymore? You’re such a ponce.’
Bloom breathed heavily through his nostrils. His mouth was livid red where his lips had split. His face twisted into an expression of pain, fear and suspicion as he appraised George. ‘There’s something wrong with you,’ he said. ‘You’re not right in the head.’ He scrutinised Gabi and Piet, then the mysterious slumped figure in the corner. ‘None of you are.’
‘Says the self-confessed king of a criminal empire that trades on abducted children?’ Gabi said, standing next to George.
‘So, is this the Son of the Eagle’s boss?’ George asked, folding her arms, stroking her chin thoughtfully. She was aware she was in the company of a serial killer and that, though she understood Piet’s motives – though the architect and father of two was still inside him, buried beneath the filth of the streets, the heartbreak and the infection – it might not take much for him to turn on her. She would have to tread carefully.
‘You know Gordon Bloom?’ Piet asked, waving the gun at her, non-committally. ‘Is that why you were lurking outside?’
George related the story of how she had, in fact, been trailing Danny in a pre-emptive bid to become the hunter instead of the hunted, and told the tale of Professor Dobkin’s untimely demise at the hand of a hired fixer. She turned back to Bloom. ‘You think this bastard just runs a big old paedophile ring? That’s only half of what he’s into!’ She turned to Piet. ‘If you’re on a vigilante killing spree, this is your man.’ She jerked her thumb in Bloom’s direction. ‘This is the pinnacle of the shit heap. Drugs. Sex slaves. Slave labour. Organs. You name it. If this bastard can get his hands on it and sell it at a profit, he will. And now I know his true identity. I’ve seen him on the telly. He doesn’t even need the sodding money. Greedy twat.’
‘Kill him!’ Gabi said. ‘He won’t tell us where the kids are. So just end this. Kill this other idiot, too.’ She pointed at Danny whose body heaved with silent sobs.
‘I can fix it so you get away with this, guys,’ George told the destitute couple, playing her trump card. ‘I know people in the secret service who have been after these evil bastards for years. I can convince Van den Bergen to let his Jack Frost case turn cold.’
Piet was sizing her up, lips pursed, as though he were trying to work out if she were bluffing. He glanced over at Gabi, who jerked her head once in consent, then he turned back to George and nodded. He gripped Bloom by the shoulder, put the barrel of the gun against him temple, safety clicked off.
‘Wait!’ Bloom shouted. ‘Wait! I can help you find your children.’
‘How?’ Piet asked.
‘Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? If anyone can find two toddlers who have been snatched by perverts, it’s going to be my people.’ He looked pointedly at George. ‘She’s not going to bloody well track them down after all this time, is she? She’s not even police. In fact, what are you, exactly?’
George sucked her teeth at Bloom. ‘Your worst nightmare. That’s what I am.’
‘An empty promise that you’ll find Josh and Lucy if I let you go?’ Piet said, pressing the gun harder into the side of Bloom’s head. ‘Not good enough,’
‘I’ve told you about my connection to Hasselblad.’
‘Hasselblad?’ George said, puzzled.
‘I’ll give up the bloody lot,’ Bloom said, blinking too much. It was hard to tell if it was sincerity or trepidation. ‘The corrupt politicians. The celebrities. Every last name in my network. But don’t kill me.’
Coughing frenzy. The crackle of infected mucus deep in his lungs. Piet began to sweat, but still he held the gun in place. ‘I need a gesture. A mark of your commitment.’
Bloom nodded. Hope in his disingenuous face. ‘I’ll let you, your wife, even this stupid black cow go.’
‘More,’ Gabi said.
‘Give me back my gun. I’ll show you.’
‘No.’
‘I promise, I won’t harm you. Just untie my hands and give it me. Just for a second. Let me show you. You can still put a bullet in me if I try anything funny.’
Piet rummaged inside h
is coat, then produced the handgun he had taken from Bloom by the Tate. Gabi cut loose the billionaire’s bonds. Everyone was poised to end this monster. George knew instinctively what was about to happen but was unable to prevent it, lest she jeopardise her own life and the life of the still-breathing figure slumped in the corner with the potato sack on her head.
Bloom grabbed his handgun and shot Danny between his beautiful brown eyes.
‘There,’ he said, placing the spent weapon in his own breast pocket, then holding his bloody hands in the air. ‘Was that a big enough gesture?’
CHAPTER 46
South East London, Aunty Sharon’s house, later
‘Pack your shit up,’ George said to Letitia, flinging a suitcase on the bed. Aunty Sharon crowded in behind her on the landing. ‘We’ve got to get the hell out of here.’
‘What do you mean, we?’ Aunty Sharon asked, elbowing her elder sister out of the way.
George took her underwear out of the small chest of drawers that she shared with Tinesha, and flung the items into her battered case. She resisted the urge to fold them in a certain way and make the shapes fit together like a jigsaw. No time for that. ‘All of us. Me, you, Tin, Patrice, Letitia. The lot. We’re not safe.’ She conjured a picture in her mind’s eye of Danny and felt a bittersweet pang in her chest. Poor, poor Danny. A twat of a man she had once loved, despite her best intentions. Dead on the floor of a condemned railway arch. No more big plans. No more swagger. No more spreading the love around the ladies. Not yet thirty and a life snuffed out with one bullet.
‘Where the fuck we supposed to go, exactly?’ Letitia asked, barging beyond the threshold to sit on the end of George’s bed, marking her territory, though it wasn’t hers to mark. ‘I got that consultant’s appointment next week.’
‘Not now, you haven’t.’ George wedged her make-up bag into the corner, along with four different pots of hair product. ‘You can see someone in Amsterdam. Paul will swing it for you.’
‘Fucking Amsterdam?’ Two sisters in union, like a conflagration of outraged gospel singers with Tourette’s.
George nodded. ‘Danny’s dead. You heard of the Duke?’
Both shook their heads. Aunty Sharon started to fold George’s T-shirts neatly then finally processed her niece’s revelation. ‘Danny Spencer’s dead?’
‘We’re all in danger. This man – the Duke – it’s a long story. But we have to be on a flight this evening. It’s all booked. It’s all paid for. Just don’t ask questions.’
Letitia levered herself off the bed with a grunt and flung two pairs of George’s jeans absently into the case, which George removed and folded properly, seam to seam. ‘I ain’t going to Amsterdam,’ she said, arms folded, lips puckered as though she were planning to kiss this spontaneous bullshit from her estranged daughter goodbye. Typical Letitia. I say black. You say white. Mary, Mary, pathologically contrary. Annoying cow. ‘I’m dying, or did you forget?’
Wrapping her trainers in a supermarket plastic bag so that they wouldn’t touch her clean clothes, George tutted. ‘You’ll be dead soon enough if you don’t get on this flight. Did you miss what I said? Danny. Is. Dead. There’s a crime lord coming for us, and he’s not after Aunty Sharon’s recipe for salt fish and ackee.’
Aunty Sharon scrutinised George’s face, then clasped her niece to her bosom and kissed her hair. ‘If you say it’s a matter of life or death—’
‘I do.’
‘Well, that’s good enough for me.’ An anxious tear escaped the corner of her eye, which she wiped away with a trembling hand. ‘I thought we was living here on borrowed time. I always knew you were caught up in some bad stuff. It came with the territory and I weren’t even bothered, cos I wanted to give you a roof with family.’
George returned the warm embrace from her aunt.
‘Yous is making me feel sick,’ Letitia said. She stood abruptly, then barged her way back out of the room with hands still folded beneath her armpits. ‘Happy family cobblers, like I ain’t even in the room. Don’t you worry about your old mum, Ella.’ She jerked her chin towards Sharon. ‘And don’t you worry about your ailing sister, neither, you fucking cuckoo-in-the-nest Judas bastard. I can stay and hold the fort, seeing as I’m evidently the only Williams-May with bollocks swinging between my legs.’ She patted the crotch of her pyjamas with a manicured hand. Flame red nails today said Letitia the Dragon was on fire.
‘Oi!’ George shouted after her. ‘This is not some fucking council estate game of throwing stones. This isn’t some kid from the Pepys Estate threatening to put our windows in.’ She ran after her mother, dragging her back from the top of the stairs by the sleeve of her dressing gown. She locked eyes with her and saw the stubborn defiance there, almost as if she were holding a mirror to her own soul. ‘We are dealing with serious criminals, Letitia. Hitmen, people traffickers with money to burn. They’ll just bypass your loud fucking mouth with a shotgun. Do you want that to happen? Cos they’re coming. They’re coming now!’
Get out of the house a.s.a.p. Even if your family won’t come, you must. Don’t lose the Deenens, whatever you do. X
Running a finger affectionately across the words of his text, George swallowed down frightened tears. She wished Van den Bergen were with her, to herd this extraordinary rag-bag of family and Amsterdam’s most wanted onto the next flight to Schiphol.
‘You phone the taxi?’ she asked Tinesha.
‘Yeah,’ Tinesha nodded, peering nervously through the window of their tiny shared bedroom, still wearing her uniform from work.
‘Anything?’
‘Nah. All quiet. You sure we’ve gotta go? Only I had a date for tomorrow night.’ Tinesha toyed with her hair, looking crestfallen.
‘Yep. Sorry. You can go on your date when this arsehole is behind bars.’
George remembered how Gordon Bloom – his gun back in his hand – had worn the grin of a triumphant cannibal as he had regarded that broken backstreet gangster’s lifeless form, savouring the kill of one of his own as though Danny’s strength and vitality were now his.
‘I’ll make some enquiries,’ he had told Piet. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
An exchange of email addresses. The sense of a truce forged between men of the world. But Bloom had focused on George with that one functioning cold, blue eye.
‘My deal is with him, not you,’ he had said, pointing his gun at her head, miming pulling the trigger with blood-slick fingers. Click. ‘You still owe me an eye. Maybe I’ll take it from you. Maybe I’ll take it from someone you love.’
Now, George’s heart was pounding as she zipped up her case in Tinesha’s bedroom, shoving her passport into her handbag with fumbling fingers. There’s time. Stop panicking. The taxi will be here in a minute.
But there wasn’t time.
A quick visual check of the street revealed a sleek, black 7 Series BMW gliding slowly down towards the house. Dark-tinted windows, the wintry afternoon sun’s reflection on the windscreen revealed nothing of the driver or any passengers inside.
A lump in her throat. The words stuck.
‘Go. Out the back. Quickly!’
Tinesha, wide-eyed and uncomprehending.
‘Now!’
In the cramped kitchen, the windows were steamed with the breath of her mother, examining her nails whilst intermittently sneering at Gabi Deenen; Aunty Sharon, who was bundling a half-eaten fruitcake into a sheet of tin foil; her cousin, Patrice, gaming on his phone as though their lives weren’t on the line; Gabi, haphazardly scrubbing Bloom’s blood from beneath her fingernails at the kitchen sink, so that she might pass muster at the airport, wearing George’s second-best jeans and Tinesha’s interview blouse. Piet Deenen looked almost presentable in the coat and suit Patrice had worn to Derek’s funeral. He was still shaking and visibly sweating, though he had downed every analgesic Letitia had thrown at him. Only Sophie Bartek was absent, back on the train to Cambridge by now – discovered still alive and well beneath the potato sack that she had consen
ted to wear, agreeing to play dead as a warning to Bloom in return for her freedom. She was clearly delighted that she had mined a rich seam of new research material, thanks to the Roma of Kent and Jack Frost’s night-time gallivanting, though forever now holding a grudge against George for roping her into this dangerous world of vigilante killers, missing children and violent criminals. Mixed blessings from the unholy Dr McKenzie.
George had more to worry about than offending Sophie’s sensibilities. Death had just pulled up to the kerb outside.
‘Out the back!’ George yelled.
As she bundled her reluctant mother through the kitchen door, through the front door’s safety glass George caught sight of a large figure, dressed in dark clothes. Broad in the shoulders. A white man. Knocking insistently. No taxi firm in South East London ever sent a white man, driving a brand-new 7 Series to do an airport run. Especially not one wearing black gloves.
‘I ain’t packed my heels,’ Letitia said in too loud a voice. ‘I gotta go and get my heels.’
Knocking again at the front. The hammering of a meaty fist. How long before it occurred to the driver to check this back alley, now clogged with brightly coloured suitcases, being dragged along on half-bust wheels by their hapless owners?
‘Shut your face, Letitia,’ George hissed, pulling the back door shut, as the unwanted visitor started to ram his shoulder rhythmically against the front door. ‘Heels are bad for your arteries. Fucking move it!’
Hastily, George redialled the taxi company, told them to wait in the next street. But their getaway MPV, with its beaded driver’s seat cover and its shabby, cigarette-burned interior and its almost-bald tyres was stuck in traffic in Lewisham, love. He’ll be there in ten. Sorry, darling. You know them roadworks is a nightmare, innit?
The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows Page 27
