by Conrad Jones
“It’s freezing out there.” A second voice called chirpily.
“Pissing down again.” The first voice added.
The two men stepped into the computer shop and rubbed their hands together. They were both black and heavily built. Jackson was in his forties and had his hair braided to his scalp. Dean was younger and had shaved his hair off to the skin. He carried a sports bag in his right hand and his left hand was in his pocket, next to his Luger.
“I don’t need a weather report, Dean. Have you got the cash?” Leon growled. He was usually pleased to see them but rarely showed it. Talking down to them had become habit, his way of remaining in control.
“Take a chill pill, Leon.” Dean looked hurt and offended. “The money is in the bag.” He tossed the sports bag to his boss and Leon caught it awkwardly with his right hand.
“How much is in here?” Leon unzipped it with his left hand and poked around inside. There were bundles of fifties tied up with elastic bands.
“Just over a hundred big ones.” Jackson whistled to emphasise the amount.
“Good. What about the gun?” Leon grunted and walked into the storeroom.
“It’s in the bag.” Dean pointed to the sports bag. “What are you going to do with that thing anyway? It should be at the bottom of the Mersey, Leon. It’s dirty.”
“I’m not going to do anything with it, Dean.” Leon grinned. “You are.”
Dean looked at Jackson and shook his head. He didn’t like the tone of Leon’s voice. There was definitely trouble heading their way. Dean rubbed his shaven scalp and waited for the punch line. He was Leon’s enforcer and Jackson was his partner. Together they collected Leon’s monies, protecting his interests with their own lives. Leon paid well and it was easier than working. Not that he could get a job. Dean had hated school and could barely read and write. He had left high school at fifteen and signed on the social at sixteen. A decade of petty crime had followed before Leon had taken him onboard as muscle. Dean was a tough man with a reputation as a fighter and it hadn’t been long before he had moved up the ranks. He was loyal and trustworthy and Leon had recognised those strengths in him. Leon had dragged Dean into the business faster than he had been able to think and when Leon had given him his first hit, he had realised just how deep in he was. His wife and kids were his life and they wanted for nothing, but he dreaded the possibility that one day they may find out what he did to earn his money. Worse still, one of Leon’s enemies may hurt them to get to him. His wife was a practicing Christian with deep beliefs. She took their children to Sunday school every week and if she ever found out what Dean did for a living, it was going to kill her. Dean wanted out, but it wasn’t a job where he could give a month’s notice. He had squirreled thousands of pounds away and planned to disappear with his family, far away from Leon and the people who would come looking for him. The right time hadn’t come yet, though. The last thing he wanted was more blood on his hands before he ran.
“What’s happening, Leon?” Jackson stuffed a stick of gum into his mouth and chewed it with his mouth wide open.
“Jinx, that’s what’s happening.” Leon scowled. “I want the man wasted.”
“What?” Dean frowned and shook his head. “Jinx is okay, Leon. We go back a long way.”
Dean was from the same area of the city as Jinx. They had never been friends, but they knew of each other and there was a level of respect between them. Jinx was a popular character with many friends. He had given Dean’s sister the deposit for a flat when her ex-boyfriend had put her in the hospital before burning all her clothes in the front garden. Jinx had found out about her plight and found her somewhere to live the same day. He had chucked her a thousand pounds to buy a new wardrobe and the basic furniture she needed. Jinx did that kind of thing. He helped people out and was popular. If he were harmed, there would be plenty of dangerous people looking for revenge. Dean didn’t want any part of messing with Jinx. Although he didn’t really know him, Dean liked the man.
“I want him dead, Dean, and then this gun goes into the boot of Bodger’s car. We kill two birds with one stone. Jinx is dead and that arsehole Bodger is in clink. We move in and take over their business interests.” Barry Hodge had rented a lockup from Leon two months earlier. He used it as the base to operate an internet fraud, worth tens of thousands selling pirated computer games. When the fraud squad had investigated, they had searched the entire building and discovered the massage parlour above it. The vice squad had been down on Leon like a ton of bricks. Bodger had known it would cause Leon hassle but he didn’t really care. Leon wanted to show Bodger the consequences of disrespecting him were dire. If he could take Jinx out in the process, then it was happy days.
“Brilliant, Leon. You might as well broadcast it on the television that we killed him. If we move in it’ll be obvious who was responsible,” Dean ranted. “We don’t want Jinx’s friends on our case.”
“Dean is right, Leon. We don’t want to mess with him,” Jackson added. “They are dangerous people.”
“What the fucking hell are we?” Leon shouted. “The boy scouts?”
“It’s madness, Leon. It will start a war we can’t win. Everyone will turn on us.” Dean felt a knot of tension in his guts. He needed to be away from this business before Leon got them all killed. They had soldiers they could call on, but they were mercenaries, loyal to the highest bidder. Leon hadn’t endeared himself to anyone over the years. If he started a war, they would be on their own.
“No one will know it was us, you clown.” Leon puffed up his chest and his fat chin wobbled. “We take Jinx out of the game and then plant the weapon on Bodger. Then we spread rumours around that he was responsible for robbing the poker game and that’s why Bodger shot him.”
“Bodger is an internet scammer, Leon. No one will believe he shot Jinx!” Dean shouted back.
“They will when we tell the Turks that they were in it together and they stole their cocaine,” Leon grinned. “We’ll tell them that Jinx set up the heist and then stitched Bodger up by keeping all the cash for himself.”
“Now I know you’ve lost the plot, Leon.” Dean rubbed his head again in frustration. “If you get the Turks involved there’ll be a bloodbath.”
“Good. We can watch it from the sidelines and mop up what’s left when they’ve finished.” Leon took out the gun from the sports bag. A Hessian cloth covered it. They had used the weapon the month before when a crystal meth dealer and his partner had failed to pay their debt to Leon. They had taken them to a remote part of Delamere Forest, where they had forced the dealer to dig his own grave before burying him alive while his partner watched helplessly. Then they had made him dig a second grave while he begged for his life and promised to pay the debt immediately. They had agreed to let him live if he paid up, but he had tried to make a run for it and Jackson had shot him in the back as he ran through the trees. The injured dealer had made it to the road before he died and Leon’s men hadn’t been able to find him in the dark. The police had recovered a bullet and the ballistics were on file, which made the weapon dirty. If they killed Jinx, it could link them to two murders.
“This is madness, Leon.” Dean felt crushed by the pressure. Leon was behaving erratically lately. He had been paranoid before the nightclub robbery, but now he was on edge all the time. His cocaine habit was becoming ridiculous and it was beginning to warp his mind. Jinx was becoming the focus of his aggression. He wasn’t thinking of the backlash his murder would cause. “You are forgetting another thing, Leon.”
“What’s that?” Leon took a silver box from his pocket and flipped the lid. It was designed to hold rolling tobacco but he had filled it with cocaine. He dug his fat thumbnail into the powder and snorted it. His eyelids flickered as the powder dissolved into his bloodstream. “What am I missing?”
“Who did rob the poker game?” Dean’s eyebrows lifted his forehead creasing. Speculation was rife on the streets. The city’s underworld was in uproar about the heist. Accusations w
ere flying about and several suspected culprits had been beaten to a pulp as the gangsters looked for retribution. So far, no one had confessed. Word was out that two men were sitting on five kilos of cocaine and eventually, they would try to offload it. Every dealer in the city was waiting for an approach. “If we finger Jinx for the heist and then the real robbers are found, we could be in deep shit, Leon.”
“They’re in the wind, Deano, gone.” Leon licked the remaining powder from his thumb as he spoke. “There is twenty grand in it for you, plus a cut of whatever we take over when the dust settles.” Leon knew everyone had a price. Jackson would shoot his mother for twenty grand but Dean was different. “Twenty grand, Deano, you could a lot with that.”
Jackson whistled again. He patted Dean on the shoulder and laughed. He liked Jinx and the way he helped the community he lived in, but he didn’t like him enough to warrant missing that kind of payday. Jackson was approaching his fifties faster than he wanted to and that kind of money would secure his future. If Leon gave them a cut of any other business he picked up then he could live with killing Jinx, but the look on Dean’s face told him that his colleague wasn’t so sure. Dean was going soft lately, talking about his family. He had big plans for their future; plans that didn’t involve shooting rival gangsters or burying people alive in the forest. If Dean didn’t want in on the deal, he would do it himself.
“Come on, Deano.” He slapped him on the back again. “Twenty grand, you don’t like Jinx that much, do you?”
“It’s what comes afterwards that worries me. Killing Jinx won’t be the end of it, Jackson. You won’t live long enough to spend the money, you fool, none of us will.”
“I’ll take my chances for that kind of money.”
“People will think Bodger did it, or the Turks. They’ll believe whatever rumours we put out there,” Leon grinned. “We have a meth shipment arriving tomorrow night at the docks. We’ll put our business in order and then we’ll take out Jinx. The money for the meth is all here. Pick it up tomorrow before you get the drugs.”
Dean agreed with a grunt. Jackson smiled and thought about his bonus. The drug pickup was not complicated. They had the security guards on the docks in their pocket. Dean could concentrate on that for now and worry about the Jinx problem later. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he knew that he didn’t want to be around when all hell broke loose. Leon placed the bag of money into a safe at the back of the storeroom and the door clunked as it closed. The storeroom smelled musty and damp. Apart from the safe, it was empty. There were no computers or keyboards for sale here, just the women upstairs. The men secured the metal grills over the door and padlocked them into place. As they left the Crazy Computer shop, the Gecko watched them from a parked car across the road in a side street. He had listened to their conversation via a scanner and picked up some very interesting information. They were planning to make a hit on the moneylender Jinx Cotton. That was a problem, because Gecko wanted Jinx around. His enquiries had taught him that Jinx didn’t like the drug dealers in the city any more than he did. He could be useful for taking out Leon`s network of brothels and drug dealers. Gecko needed the safe combination to steal Leon’s money, but now he knew when it would be open, and he knew where they were collecting a large shipment of meth. Tomorrow would be a busy day.
Chapter Nine
Hotel Clean
Maria was checking rooms on the third floor. Time was ticking away and the team of cleaners that she supervised were the worst she had ever worked with. The majority of them couldn’t speak English, especially when she was reprimanding them. Their level of understanding dropped dramatically sometimes when it suited them.
“Yasser, have you finished your block yet?” She shouted down the corridor. A bedroom door slammed and then there was silence. “Yes Maria, of course I have finished my block, would you like me to help the others finish theirs?” She answered herself as no one else was there.
The corridors were dark. Too dark to see properly on a gloomy day when the daylight coming into the hotel was limited. The owners had built the hotel inside a converted cotton warehouse and the walls were exposed red bricks. Huge iron girders supported the floors above. The public areas had stripped wooden floors. The architects had kept the vaulted ceilings as a feature. It added character to the building, but the lighting was poor. “Shannon!” She shouted down the next corridor. “Shannon!”
“What?” A bedroom door opened and the voice made Maria jump with fright. “Do you have to shout?” Shannon laughed.
“It’s the only way to be heard in this bloody place,” Maria smiled. Shannon was a great help. She was quick and her standards were good. Checking her rooms took nothing more than a cursory glance.
“How are we doing for time?” Shannon asked. The hotel would want the rooms handed back to them ready for new guests.
“We are nowhere near done.” Maria wiped her brow. Her back felt clammy and sweaty. “I feel like I’m coming down with something,” she moaned.
“I’ll help you check the rooms.” Shannon felt her forehead. “You do feel hot though, Maria.”
“I feel like shit,” Maria tutted. “Menopause, I hope. At least I’ll have an excuse to be a grumpy bitch.”
They both laughed. “I’ll take the floors above, you check this one and we can meet on the first, okay?” Shannon suggested.
“Thank you,” Maria clasped her hands together. “Now where is that lazy bastard, Yasser?” She shouted, “Yasser!”
“In here, Maria,” his voice came from further down the corridor. The fire doors muffled the sound. “Man in here is fucking sleeping, lazy prick head.” Yasser held a cloth in one hand and a spray bottle in the other. “I’ve been knocking all the morning!”
“Keep your voice down,” Maria hissed. She suppressed a laugh. “The word is dickhead, Yasser.”
“Me know, dickhead,” Yasser frowned. His English was coming on slowly.
“Which room?” She asked.
“This one.” Yasser pointed to the door rather than try to say the number. Numbers were still hard. “Lazy prick head,” he muttered as he opened the door to the room opposite to check if he had cleaned it. He had.
Maria checked her watch. It was way after checkout time. She knocked loudly on the door. “Housekeeping!” She shouted as a warning. There was no sound from inside the room.
“Open the door!” Yasser was annoyed. “Lazy dickhead!” He smiled as he pronounced the words correctly.
“You have to knock, Yasser,” she said, knocking again. “I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve disturbed shagging or masturbating over the years.”
“I’ll knock.” Yasser tried. “Housekeeping!”
“One time, I walked into a room to find the occupant handcuffed and gagged.” She raised her eyebrows and laughed at the memory.
“Oh, lady was playing the game?” Yasser asked with a straight face.
“It’s on the game, Yasser. On the game,” she explained. “Anyway, someone had left the poor bloke face down on the bed dressed in stockings and a leather miniskirt. The fire brigade had to cut him free.”
“Him, it was a man?” Yasser looked confused.
“Yes, you get all sorts in this job.” She had some stories to tell. “Housekeeping!” She shouted as she opened the door. She stepped inside and froze when she saw the blood on the carpet. The smell of rotting flesh hit her like a hammer.
Chapter Ten
MIT
Alec listened to Chief Carlton, trying to make sense of the previous twenty-four hours. “It’s an impossible task to put the jigsaw together when the jigsaw keeps on growing.”
“We cannot be certain if we have all the pieces, let alone begin putting them together.” Will leaned back in his chair and chewed his nails as he listened to the uniformed officer.
“Nothing makes sense.” Alec added.
Early that morning, there had been an unexpected incident in the city centre, which seemed to be connected to Ale
c’s investigation.
“What time was the hand found?” Alec reached for his pen. It was a silver Parker that his wife had bought for his birthday and looking at it reminded him that he hadn’t been home for two days. Every time he called her, the conversation was terse and she ended the call in a huff. It was easier not to call for now.
“A chamber maid used her pass key to open the room at eleven thirty this morning. The guests are supposed to checkout before eleven so they knocked on the door and then used the pass key when they got no reply,” the chief explained. “She found the hand and called in when she realised it wasn’t a prank. She is in a bit of a state, poor woman. Our first officers arrived at eleven forty-five. Graham Libby thinks it belongs to your victim at Jamaica Street.”
“What do you think?” Alec frowned.
“It isn’t every day that a severed human hand is found in a hotel room.”
“I am confused as to why it was left behind by the killers.” Will chewed his nails. “The murder was weird enough before, but this adds to the strangeness of the case.”
“There is something missing,” Alec frowned.
“It’s connected to your murder investigation. There’s no doubt in my mind, although it is odd.” The chief loosened his tunic at the collar.
“They made no effort to hide it?” Alec frowned again.
“No. It was lying on the bed in clear view.”
“Did they leave anything else behind?” Alec was curious to see if they had planned to return to the room before the maid discovered the hand.
“Nothing, except some blood spatter on the carpet,” the chief replied. “The room was booked under a false name and paid for in advance, with cash. Forensics are collecting evidence and dusting the place for prints now but they think that the blood is fresh.”
“What has Graham Libby said about it?” Will asked. The forensic investigator would be in possession of the hand already.
“Closer inspection revealed the severed hand is in a decomposed state, matching the timescale of your victim. It cannot be a coincidence.”
