Nine Lives

by Tom Barber

  Twenty miles across London, a series of jars and bottles stood on a brick wall in the middle of an empty park. They were stacked in a line, like a makeshift shooting gallery.

  Suddenly, one of the bottles exploded.

  A gunshot echoed around the field. There was a loud thock and a kick of brick-dust as a bullet thudded into a wall behind the line-up of glass targets. Across the park, a flock of birds on the grass reacted to the noise of the gunshot, flapping their wings frantically, lifting off from the ground and flying away from the perceived danger. Twenty yards from the row of glass vessels, a thirteen year old boy held the pistol that fired the bullet. His brown eyes were wide with shock and excitement, having just experienced the sheer power and accuracy of a real handgun for the first time. He stood motionless, savouring the moment. Then his dark features broke into a broad smile, he lowered the stolen pistol turning it to one side and examining it in his hands.

  It was a nine-millimetre Beretta 92, the famous Italian pistol. Holding both a fifteen-round magazine and a reputation as one of the most accurate handguns on the planet, the weapon was a firm favourite for law enforcement and military forces around the world, particularly in the United States. It was also just a bit too big for a thirteen year old’s grip. After all, the pistol was designed to be held by a soldier in combat or by a policeman on the street, not by a thirteen year old boy in his local park.

  Behind the young man, two of his friends were watching, wide-eyed and clearly impressed. Turning, the teenager carefully passed the pistol over to one of them, who stepped forward and took it in his hands. Raising the weapon, he aimed at an empty Coca-Cola bottle on the far right of the targets, lining up the fore-sight on the centre of the empty glass. He suddenly remembered something he’d seen in a war movie about snipers, and started taking deep breaths as he tried to slow his breathing. It seemed to work. The fore-sight stopped dancing around and settled on the Coke bottle, straight and still.

  But he was too tense, anticipating the weapon’s response when it fired. He snatched at the trigger. The weapon boomed, pushing him back from the recoil. Another plume of dust puffed from the wall behind the glass targets. The bottle remained intact. He’d missed. His friends laughed. Frustrated, the boy fired twice more in quick succession. Boomboom. The second shot hit the bottle, scoring a hit and restoring some pride. The glass vessel shattered and disintegrated into a thousand fragments, sprinkling to the ground like fairy dust. Keeping the gun pointed at the wall, the boy turned to his friend, wide-eyed and excited.

  ‘Where the hell did you get this?’ he asked.

  ‘My brother,’ the kid replied.

  ‘Saqib? What’s he doing with a handgun?’

  The dark-haired boy didn’t reply. He didn’t want to think about it.

  His older brother wasn’t the kind of guy to carry around something like this. Only just turned twenty-three, Saqib had been as straight as an arrow growing up, never in trouble and never causing any. But then the riots of last summer had happened and the boy had watched his brother change. On the second night of the anarchy, their father had been killed, stamped to death on the street by a violent group who’d separated from the mob. The man hadn’t been causing any problems or done anything to provoke them, he’d just been trying to get past quietly as he made his way home from work. The group knocked him to the ground and kicked his skull in, causing deep cerebral fractures and a resulting brain haemorrhage. He’d died on the street before anyone could even get him to a hospital.

  Despite his age, the teenage boy had come to terms with his father’s passing. True, he felt angry and bitter at what had happened, how unjust and unfair it all was. Not a day went past that he didn’t wish that he’d been there, that he could have tried to do something to stop the gang beating him. But despite his age, he already knew that the past would always stay that way. For all his grief there was nothing he could do to change what had happened. His father had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And any lasting feelings of rage he might have felt at the cruelty of it all were finally swept away with concern for his mother, who had suddenly found herself a widow. Needless to say, she had taken the unexpected death of her husband hard.

  And the same could be said for his brother, Saqib.

  Since that fateful night last August, Saqib had become a different man. It was almost as if the incident had planted a seed of hate inside him, and day by day that seed was growing, sprouting weeds that twisted and wrapped their tendrils through all his veins and arteries. His younger brother watched as he drifted away from all his old friends. He started drinking, and doing hard drugs. He often wouldn’t come home at night, and his mother would stay up till the dawn, worried sick that she was going to lose another member of her family.

  And he was spending a lot of time with a new group. There was one of them in particular whom the boy didn’t like, a guy who called himself Dominick. He’d appeared on the scene, seemingly out of nowhere, and was frequently in Saqib’s company as of late. The youngster wouldn’t admit it, but there was something about the stranger that terrified him. He had a look in his eye that wasn’t normal, a gleam that contradicted all the smart suits and polished shoes that he wore. To the boy, it seemed as though he was keeping something hidden, on the verge of having a meltdown at any moment.

  One word came to mind, a word the teenager had picked up from his English class at school.

  Psychotic.

  Anyhow, Saqib had called his brother last night, asking him to bring round a takeaway for him and his friends. For some reason, he claimed none of them could leave the house, so the kid had to go and get it for them. That was all bullshit. They were just being lazy. Nevertheless, the boy had reluctantly headed out and picked up a couple of pizzas, taking them over to an address Saqib gave him over the phone. On the way, he found himself praying that Dominick wouldn’t be there.

  He’d been in luck. There were only three people inside the address, his brother and two guys whose names he didn’t know. Whoever owned the house had given up cleaning and maintenance a long time ago. The place was a complete dump. It was dirty and dank, and there was some strange thumping noise coming from the bathroom upstairs. Saqib had grabbed the pizzas without thanks or payment, and told him to get the hell out. Pissed off and feeling used, the boy had walked through the hallway to the door, alone. As he turned the handle, he’d suddenly spotted a handgun resting on a table by the entrance. Like a kid in a sweet shop, he couldn’t resist. Fuelled by his feelings of being treated unfairly, the boy had grabbed the weapon, tucking it into the folds of his coat and leaving the house without a word. Thank you guys, he’d thought as he rushed off down the street, the pistol hidden inside his jacket. He couldn’t wait to show his friends.

  A gunshot brought him back to the present, as the second boy fired at the glass targets again. He checked his watch. 8:55 am. He had to be at work in the shop for his Mum before 9:30 am, which meant he also had to take the gun back, something he was dreading. But much as he didn’t want to, he didn’t have a choice. She’d kick him out of the house if he walked into the shop carrying that thing.

  ‘Bad news. I need to go,’ he told his friends.

  He turned to the third boy, who was yet to fire the weapon.

  ‘Want to try before I leave? I need to take it with me.’

  The third teenager nodded eagerly. Taking the weapon from the second boy, he aimed at an empty jar, closing one eye like he’d seen Clint Eastwood do in all his movies.

  He pulled the trigger.

  The jar exploded.

  Four thousand miles away the fat man from the yacht was about to break the habit of a lifetime, for the second time that day.

  People called him Henry, but that wasn’t his real name. He’d adopted it at the age of thirteen, after watching the gangster movie Goodfellas. To this day, he could still remember the first time he saw the film and the tremendous effect it’d had on him. As an impressionable young boy looking for an identity, it h
ad changed his life. He’d started wearing the suits and tracksuits the actor Ray Liotta wore in the movie. His voice suddenly developed a New York twang. And he started calling himself Henry, after the lead guy in the movie, Henry Hill.

  A number of older boys around him had seen this as opportunity for humour. With a short attention span, Henry the boy had never sat through to the end of the movie so he hadn’t discovered that the character Henry Hill ended up being a rat for the FBI. They had made cheap jokes, mocking him, deriding his stupidity. In those days, Henry knew he was too young to retaliate. Some of his tormentors were nineteen or twenty, far bigger and stronger than him. So he’d waited until he was a bit older, never forgetting who had ridiculed and teased him. And when he was sixteen and given a job as a halcone for the Riyadh cartel, he’d asked his new friends for some help on a private matter. They’d gladly agreed.

  His favourite method of killing someone was lifted straight from the Mafia stories that came out of New York. He had the person held down and sedated. When they were unconscious, their feet were passed through the holes of a cinder block, the gaps then filled with quick drying cement, locking their ankles tight. It was time consuming, but Henry couldn’t help himself. He liked to be there when they woke up, watching. That first moment of innocence. Confusion. Vulnerability. Wondering where they were. He would wait until the moment they realised that their feet were lodged in over seventy pounds of cemented concrete.

  And by then, they were already being carried towards the water.

  He’d often wondered what went through someone’s mind as they went beneath the surface, dropping like a stone. Death was certain. They’d know they had less than a minute to live. Did they fight, or try to loosen their feet, wasting oxygen? Did they pray? Try to hold their breath? He smiled. If he could, he would watch every single one of them land on the seabed. He had seen it once, when he’d ordered an associate who’d betrayed him thrown into an aquarium. The guy had tried everything. Pulling his feet free. Scrabbling at the window, his eyes as wide as dinner plates, his screaming muffled through the water. Henry had been observing from behind the glass, an inch from the doomed guy’s face, grinning at him. I should have brought popcorn, he thought.

  He’d killed his first man when he was sixteen. The guy had been one of his chief tormentors as a boy, endlessly deriding the overweight thirteen year old’s new Mafia persona. Seven more of them had followed, one by one, their feet dried into concrete and thrown in the sea, screaming like scared little girls.

  No one made any jokes anymore. And the name had stuck.

  Twenty two years later, Henry had achieved his position as head of the cartel by being cautious. He had a rule not to attend deals personally, letting those beneath him do that instead. He didn’t fancy opening a car packed with millions of dollars worth of cocaine and suddenly find an entire police precinct descending on him out of nowhere. If his men got caught, they either went down without a word or shot their way out. They knew better than to talk to the police. If they did, everyone they had ever loved would be killed.

  His was a business built on two things. Respect and fear. But in recent weeks, he’d been getting restless. He could feel eyes upon him. He knew the DEA were sniffing about, like stray dogs looking for scraps of food. He’d received a tip off last night about a man who’d recently moved into a house near his compound, in the centre of Riyadh. He’d sent his two enforcers to investigate, and they’d struck gold. It was an American DEA agent. Inside the house, they’d found a shitload of surveillance equipment. Cameras, listening devices, bugs. The guy had somehow wire-tapped all the phones inside the main house, recording and photographing Henry’s every move. The drug lord had ordered him anaesthetised, then carried to his yacht.

  He smiled. Drowning the DEA agent earlier that morning had been welcome refreshment. For a brief moment, he felt his mood lift as he thought of that asshole right now at the bottom of the sea. But his presence confirmed Henry’s concern that the DEA were getting close. Way too close. Needing to get out of Riyadh and clear his head, Henry had set up a meeting in Juarez. The first time in a very long time that he’d be face-to-face for a deal. It was an opportunity to make some good money. Over four million US dollars, in exchange for 500 keyed bricks of the best cocaine outside of Columbia as he had put it. The powder was second rate at best, but they wouldn’t know that until Henry was back in the air. It had been sitting in his aircraft hangar for months. Now seemed as good a time as any to get rid of it.

  Right now, he was standing on the tarmac of his own private airfield. In front of him, the two meatheads unloaded the bricks of cocaine from a 4x4 Escalade, carrying it up a set of unfolded stairs and loading it onto Henry’s private jet. It was broad daylight, just past midday in Riyadh, and they were standing in the sunshine in the middle of the runway. But Henry didn’t give a damn if anyone was watching. The local police knew the consequences if they tried to make a move on him. Their own families would pay the price.

  He’d been standing here watching ten minutes ago when one of his men approached, informing him of the latest situation in London. The man’s name was Faris, Henry’s right-hand man, his lugarteniente as the Mexicans called it. He was efficient, reliable, a different level of intelligence from the two muscle-bound assholes loading the coke into the plane. He proved it by what he said next. He’d proposed an idea; Henry had thought about it for a moment, then agreed to it on the spot without hesitation. It was a good plan, full of initiative, and it turned out that Faris had been proactive and had already set everything up. An Albanian cartel based in Paris would meet them at a runway outside the city later that night. They’d agreed to an asking price of six million US dollars for the coke, which was two better than Juarez. And Faris had also contacted Dominick, Henry’s imbecilic excuse of a nephew. They would retrieve the boy tonight from the UK before the British police could get hold of him. Apparently, he was eager to see his uncle face-to-face and finally explain himself.

  Standing in the sunshine by the jet, Henry grinned. Not only would he finally get rid of this crappy batch of coke for one and half times the asking price, he would also have his idiot nephew brought before him, begging for his life. Business and pleasure, his two favourite things. Killing two birds with one stone. Literally, he thought with a smile. So right there and then, he’d broken a lifetime of routine for the second time that morning and cancelled his trip to Juarez, opting to go to Paris instead. He knew he’d be pissing off a lot of guys in Mexico. These weren’t appointments that you just missed, like the dentist or doctor. But Henry couldn’t resist the alternative. Drugs were his passion, his bread and butter. Only one other thing could surpass the feeling it gave him.

  Murder.

  Standing by the plane, he watched as his two enforcers loaded the last few bricks of cocaine into the jet. Once they’d stowed the powder, the two giants reappeared, plodding down the steps and standing on the runway looking at Henry, awaiting further instruction. Ignoring them, the drug lord grabbed the rail, clambering up the stairs himself. It took him ten seconds, after all, he was carrying over three hundred pounds of fatty bulk. But he made it inside and collapsed in a seat that had been specially widened to accommodate him in the cabin, sweating and breathing hard from the exertion. The two enforcers followed, taking their own seats. It was pleasantly cool, the air conditioning blasting out of the fans, cold, crisp and refreshing. Wiping sweat from his sunburnt scalp, Henry looked at the two giants sitting across the aisle as Faris secured the door.

  They were morons, both of them, more biceps than brain cells. But necessary muscle, considering the enemies Henry had. He’d been planning to get rid of them for a while. He liked to cycle his security, needing to keep them sharp and on their toes, eager to please. But he'd noticed recently that these two were getting way too comfortable. And like the shitty coke, today seemed a good as time as any to get rid of them. He decided there and then that neither of the two assholes would make it back from Paris. He glanced ov
er at Faris, who was finishing locking the hatch, his back turned. Truth be told, the man had proven to be a surprisingly worthy investment. Henry had taken him on just over a year ago after his predecessor had been shot and killed by a rival cartel. It had been a wise decision. Faris was good at his job, and the business’s profits had increased impressively with him on board.

  But he asked too many questions, and he was too intelligent for his own good. Henry knew there would come a day where Faris would challenge his position. It was inevitable. Like two animals in the wild, the old leader and the young buck, fighting for the right to head the pack. But he was ready for it. He’d waste the two meatheads in Paris, then save Faris as a treat for when they arrived back in Riyadh. He smiled to himself, feeling that tickle of excitement in his fat gut whenever murder was an imminent prospect.

  He heard a whining noise as the engine of the jet started to fully warm up. The plane edged forwards to its starting position on the end of the runway, the long tarmac path stretching out ahead of them. Faris walked into the cabin and took a seat opposite Henry. He noticed a broad smile on the drug lord’s face.

  ‘We’ll be in Paris in five hours,’ he said.

  Without a response, Henry ignored him and closed his eyes.

  Thinking of cement shoes.

  THREE

  It was somewhat ironic that Dominick Farha had chosen to rent an apartment in the Knightsbridge area of London. In modern times, Knightsbridge was renowned as being a pretty trendy and upmarket place to live, a great location, adjacent to the always beautiful Hyde Park and with Harrods, one of the world’s most well-known stores, right there on its doorstep.

  But what a lot of people didn’t know was its dark and somewhat sinister history. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the place was infamous as being a haunt for highwaymen and thieves, who lay in wait in the shadows to target those travelling westward out of London. In recent years, it had also seen its fair share of terrorism and crime. The Iranian Embassy siege of 1980 infamously took place in the area, when six armed gunmen took twenty six hostages in a stand-off that lasted for six days. Until the SAS showed up. It had also been the victim of an IRA car bomb, which was detonated in the neighbourhood in 1983 and a legendary bank heist around the same time, when thieves had made off with over sixty million pounds. One thing was for sure, the area was no stranger to terrorism and crime.