The Dead

by Howard Linskey

  The middle brother, Sreten, spoke then as if he too was determined to say his piece, ‘You don’t make terms with us. We make terms with you and the terms are nothing. That’s how much we will give you to leave the city to us. We are already driving your men out.’

  ‘And we’ve given some of your boys a battering too,’ countered Palmer, ‘there’s no end to the number we can put on the streets. Can you say the same?’

  Dusan Stevic had been listening calmly, but he intervened then. ‘I could summon a hundred men tomorrow and you should know they would arrive with no problems from your police.’

  ‘Having bent law in this country isn’t always enough. You can’t buy everyone. Believe me, it’s been tried. Even in your own home you failed to do that.’

  ‘What is it you are offering for us to leave this city? I ask out of mere curiosity.’

  ‘Half a million Euros,’ Palmer let the amount sink in, ‘plus whatever you’ve made here already. That’s a hefty profit for a few weeks in a foreign land.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘You set up somewhere else; Marseille, Hamburg, Riga?’ Palmer shrugged as if it was of no consequence to him.

  ‘And if we don’t leave?’

  ‘Then you will never leave.’

  The youngest brother, Marko, took exception to that and pulled his gun. Dusan barked something at him in Serbian and Marko’s face flushed, then he put the gun away reluctantly.

  ‘You come here to threaten us, it makes Marko angry. If it was his choice we would take you from here and cut you to pieces for that insult.’

  ‘Perhaps all three of you could do that,’ admitted Palmer, ‘but not all of you would live.’

  Dusan’s eyes widened in disbelief, ‘Fucking balls on this guy,’ and he laughed without amusement. ‘I’ll tell you what will happen. I will let you keep those balls and you leave here. Return to Blake, yes I know who your boss is, and tell him what I smell when I hear his offer; weakness and fear. If he thought he could make us leave he would try, but no, he wants to pay us and he offers what he thinks it is worth to him. If he can afford to pay this, it cannot be enough for us to go. Tell him the city is ours. Now leave, before I let Marko and Sreten do what they want to do.’

  I don’t usually travel alone. I normally take a bodyguard with me and I’ve grown used to that. It comes with the turf for men like me and the inconvenience factor is far outweighed by the flipside of being lifted or killed by a rival or wannabe gangster. Usually it’s Palmer, but if he isn’t with me I’ll use Joe, or one of his sons. That day it was Peter Kinane and I was comfortable enough with it. All of Joe’s sons know their shit. It’s part genetic and part training from their dad and Palmer.

  It was late when we finally called for coffee at a shabby Service Station on the way back from York. The place was virtually deserted at that hour. The newsagent was closed and shuttered and we were the last visitors to trouble the coffee bar, before the guy upended chairs onto the other tables, then fucked off home and left us to it. I couldn’t see anyone else around, apart from two old blokes in overalls, absent-mindedly swishing mops back and forth across a grey, tiled floor that shone for a few moments each night when no one was around, until it dried and settled back to its usual dull, scuffed appearance. A yellow plastic sign next to them reminded us that stepping on their handiwork was likely to prove dangerous; a cartoon of a man, his feet thrown high into the air, warned us to give them a wide berth. We drained the dregs of our coffee and walked to the main door but Peter was looking uncomfortable.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I could do with a slash.’

  ‘Well go then. I’m not stopping you.’

  ‘I know you want to get going like.’

  ‘You taking a wazz isn’t going to delay me that much, Peter, and it’s preferable to you fidgeting all the way back up the A1,’ I said, ‘I’ll see you at the car.’

  I walked out into a crisp night. The air was fresh and cold and there was no one around. Most people would be in bed by now. I looked over at the lorry park and there were maybe a dozen huge artics lined up with makeshift covers over their windscreens to blot out the light. The drivers would be getting their heads down for a few hours before waking early, then pegging it miles down empty motorways before most normal people had brushed their teeth. I was still looking at the lorries when I heard a heavily-accented voice close by me.

  ‘Come with me now,’ it told me, ‘or I will kill you here.’

  31

  I turned slowly around to face the man who had threatened me. He had a young face but his eyes were cold and showed a determination that made me take him seriously. That, and the gun in his hand.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said again and he motioned with the gun for me to follow him. It looked like one of those Russian-made Makarovs that had flooded the streets a while back because they were so cheap. I guessed this guy was about twenty, he was heavy set and wore a white sweatshirt under a black leather jacket. There was a thick gold chain around his neck, ‘Come now,’ he ordered, his accent of east European origin.

  I glanced back towards the Services, but there was no sign of Peter, or anyone else. The guy had chosen his moment perfectly. I wondered if our every move was being captured on CCTV somewhere, or if he had been thorough enough to check beforehand. Either way, it wasn’t going to help me if he was eventually convicted of my murder.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked, stalling for time and praying Peter would finish his piss before I was driven away.

  The young guy didn’t answer me. Instead he took a few swift steps towards me then smashed the end of the barrel hard into my guts, doubling me up and winding me in the process. The pain was intense and before I could recover from it, he was dragging me towards a car he’d parked just yards from ours. Predictably it was a big silver BMW with blacked-out windows. The doors had been left unlocked. He opened the driver’s door, then bundled me inside.

  ‘You drive,’ he told me. The keys were in the ignition and I briefly contemplated starting the car and gunning it away from there, possibly straight through the plate glass doors of the Services, to attract as much attention as possible, but he warned me, ‘Don’t start the car till I am inside or I shoot you here. If you try to run, also I shoot you.’

  You have to let your mind go as cold as possible when a man like that points a gun at you. You have to try to forget the fact that, if you make the wrong decision, if you make your move too early or leave it too late, then you are a dead man, because that will make you nervous and jumpy and the chances are you’ll fuck up and wind up dead. You have to try not to think about the people in your life; Emma and Sarah, even though it is natural to want to. You have to stay focused on every little detail. Right now, as I was buckling my seat belt, I was thinking that there was no way I could start the car and drive away without him shooting me. As he went round the back of the car to get in, I finally spotted Peter. He was emerging from the Services and looking down because he’d only just realised his flies weren’t done up. I watched him tug at them instead of looking for me and I took a calculated risk because I needed him.

  I opened the door and shouted, ‘Peter! Peter! I’m here!’

  That was as far as I got before I felt a searing pain in the side of my head from the pistol-whipping the young bastard gave me. He’d climbed into the passenger seat of the car, smacked me round the side of the head with his gun and leaned past me to tug the door of the BMW closed.

  ‘Start the car,’ he ordered, because we could both see Peter Kinane running towards us across the empty car park. He levelled the gun at me. ‘Drive!’ he shouted and I knew from his tone that he wouldn’t be asking again. I did what I was told, started the engine and drove away. Peter was still a few yards from our car and I could only pray he would give chase and somehow catch up with us. As the car picked up speed, the young Serb did up his seat belt, putting one idea I’d had, of crashing the
car into something at speed and hoping he came off worse, right out of my mind.

  ‘Faster,’ he ordered and I accelerated as I came down the slip road and out into the empty A-road. He kept urging me to go faster but I was stalling, glancing in the rear-view mirror until finally I saw him. Peter Kinane had taken our Mercedes out of the Services at a rate of knots and he was coming after us like both our lives depended on it.

  ‘You fucked up,’ I told the Serb, hoping to undermine the fragile confidence of youth with a bit of honest-to-goodness sledging, ‘should have done the tyres in our car first, a schoolboy would have known that. Now my guy is after you and he’s going to kill you.’

  ‘Shut up!’ he ordered, but I could tell I’d planted some uncertainty. He should have done our car. ‘Keep driving,’ he told me, then looked back behind us through the gap in the seats where he could see Peter swiftly gaining on us.

  ‘Go faster,’ he ordered and I stepped on the throttle.

  ‘Where do you think you are taking me?’

  ‘Edinburgh,’ and the word came out as a mangled eastern European version because he couldn’t pronounce the name of the city his bosses were trying to take over, ‘I am taking you to Dusan Stevic.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ I said, pressing the accelerator down further, ‘I won’t let you take me there to be sliced up by that fucking animal. No way.’

  ‘Then you will die now,’ he told me confidently.

  ‘So will you at this speed,’ I informed him, ‘that was your second mistake; letting me drive. You can blow my brains out now if you like but at ninety-five miles an hour I wouldn’t give much for your chances of walking away from the wreckage and, even if you did, my guy will be waiting for you. He’ll make you wish you hadn’t lived.’

  ‘Shut up and drive,’ he hissed, but I could tell he was seriously rattled now.

  ‘You should have had a partner,’ I informed him, ‘that’s how you are supposed to do this kind of thing. It’s a two-man job; one to drive and the other to hold the gun on the guy you are lifting. Not done this before, have you? I can tell. Shame it’s not the kind of work where you get to learn from your mistakes.’

  ‘You just drive,’ he said and all the while he was watching Peter’s progress as the Merc gained ground on our Beemer and was inching closer and closer.

  ‘Faster!’ he ordered and I did as I was told, edging the car up above a hundred miles an hour. I had to be a bit careful as the road has two lanes and the slow lane attracts late-night casual drivers and lorries.

  ‘I’ve just realised,’ I told the young Serb, ‘he doesn’t know you’re here does he? Dusan Stevic doesn’t know you’re doing this. He’s not going to agree to a one-man op with an inexperienced guy like you? So that’s means you’re doing this on your own, to make a name for yourself, but there’s an expression over here, son, “don’t walk before you can run”. I’m sure you understand its meaning.’

  I’d obviously got to him because I got another smack in the side of the head which knocked me off balance and I couldn’t see for a moment. The car lurched to the left, crossing into the slow lane before I could wrestle it back. I could barely see, but when my vision cleared, I heard the Serb swear and I became aware of something big and black up ahead – the arse-end of a huge lorry. The Serb swore again and I wrenched the wheel to the right. The front end of our car missed the lorry by millimetres. Somehow I managed to straighten the car and continue when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Peter in the Merc. He’d taken advantage of our near miss and managed to accelerate forward till he drew up alongside us in the slow lane. I could see him snarling and mouthing obscenities at the Serb, whose reaction was to wind down the window and produce the gun. Just as he was about to fire at Peter from point-blank range, my bodyguard braked and we shot past him, the bullet harmlessly hitting the bushes.

  Peter eased the car back until he was behind us, then moved right up close. The young Serb twisted in his seat and aimed his gun back at him through the rear window. I accelerated some more and jiggled the steering wheel just as he fired. He cursed in his native language as the back window disintegrated in a shower of glass, but the bullets missed their target. Peter was still behind us.

  The Serb was ranting now; at Peter, at me, at his inability to hit the target and I knew I wouldn’t get away with another manoeuvre like that last one. I was haring down the road at a hundred and ten miles an hour with Peter in mad pursuit, desperately trying to think of a way out of this and then I had a moment of clarity; a realisation that everything I’d said was true. This guy was a lone gun who was trying to make a reputation and he’d fucked it up. He couldn’t shoot me because he’d die seconds later. There was no way we were going to have a protracted car chase with a shoot-out on an A-road in England, no matter how quiet it was. The police would soon hear what was going on and they’d be after us, but I still couldn’t rely on a good outcome if that happened. All of a sudden I got angry. Who did this little fuck think he was to come after me on his own?

  I floored the car, taking it up to a hundred and twenty miles an hour. There were no other vehicles on this stretch of road. I waited until he fired again, sending a round into the Merc which forced Peter to slam the anchors on and pull back. The young Serb was turned around in his seat, holding his gun in both hands and levelling it again for what he must have dearly hoped would be the final shot, when I reached out with my left hand and pressed the red button by the side of his seat. He didn’t hear it over the din of the roaring engine, but he sensed something had changed and he turned to look at me as his seat belt loosened and slid away from him. I slammed on the brakes with all my force and the car juddered like it had suddenly hit a brick wall. The Serb didn’t even have time to let out a cry. Instead he was flung forwards, his back striking the dashboard with great force, but it wasn’t enough to break his forward momentum and he went straight through the windscreen, head first.

  Cars aren’t designed to make an emergency stop at a hundred and twenty miles an hour and this one was no exception. It went into a slide, then a spin and turned a whole three-sixty degrees, while I tried to ignore the searing pain across my chest from my seat belt, the whiplash I was already feeling in my neck and back and the shock of the driver’s airbag exploding in my face. All I could do was hold on tight like this was a fairground ride that would eventually stop. Then I crashed hard into the metal barrier of the central reservation.

  Peter dragged me out of the wreckage. The car had done its bit by crumpling in all of the right places and I was pulled free, feeling like every piece of me had been punched hard, but I was alive. It was the only thing that mattered; that and the fact that the young Serb was lying motionless in the middle of the road way back behind me, his body twisted unnaturally. I’m certain he was already dead when he bounced off the road but Peter’s car going over him at speed removed any lingering doubt.

  As Peter got me out of the car, he retained the presence of mind to wipe the steering wheel, gear stick, handbrake and door handles, to remove any of my prints. He carried me to the car and we drove out of there fast, before anyone could come along and link me to the tragic accident, which saw a poor young man somehow lose control of his vehicle, before crashing through his windscreen and drawing his final breath against the cold tarmac of the A-road.

  32

  When we got back I called Palmer and he told me there was no deal with the Stevic brothers. We were using pay-as-you-go mobiles so I took a risk and told him about the young Serb’s attempt to lift me and take me to Dusan. He heard me out and agreed it was probably an unsanctioned operation. ‘They don’t need to kill you,’ he said, ‘they’re bedding in, taking over the territory, inch by inch.’

  I was in a fair bit of pain from the crash, but pretty sure nothing was broken, and I could arrange to be seen by a friendly doctor in the morning. In the interim, I could dull the pain with booze. I crashed at our hotel again. The next morning I drove home, parked up and took my bruised a
nd battered body inside. Every step was an effort. Sarah and Joanne were sitting in the living room together while Emma played with her toys on the floor. I walked over, picked up my little girl and gave her a kiss. Sarah just looked at me, not mentioning my bruised face, waiting for me to say something.

  ‘Do you want to do this now?’ I asked her simply. Joanne looked down and Sarah got slowly to her feet.

  ‘Can you keep an eye on her?’ she asked her old friend.

  ‘Course,’ said Joanne, and she smiled over at Emma. ‘Come on chicken. Let’s go to Auntie Jo’s and we’ll bake some cakes.’

  I put Emma down and she took Joanne’s hand. They left without another word. I sat down opposite Sarah.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I asked her firmly, ‘you really want to know everything?’

  She seemed to hesitate for a moment then said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Some of it you know,’ I told her, ‘and some you don’t. Your dad controlled a lot of what went on in this city, some of it legal, but not all.’

  ‘I know he was no saint, Davey, but nor are you. I’m not that naïve.’

  Maybe it was her tone that irritated me, or perhaps I had been through too much lately to really spare her feelings, so I went on. ‘Protection money; security, by which I mean muscle on the doors of nightclubs; prostitution; drugs; armed robbery; money laundering – and he would hurt people, when it was required.’

  I could tell by the look on her face that she had known about this all along but it was still a shock to hear it finally confirmed by me. ‘Where do you think all of the money came from? Your father controlled a city, which made him a powerful man, but it also made him enemies. One day Alan Gladwell came down from Glasgow and tried to take it all away from him. Men died as a result and one of them was your father. I had to take the city back from Alan Gladwell. You don’t need to know the details of how that happened.’