The Hit

by Anna Smith

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Janey glanced up at her and then at the fire.

  ‘I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Guilty conscience,’ she said, deadpan.

  ‘What’s your excuse?’ Helen snapped back.

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘I heard you on the phone.’

  Janey moved her mouth to acknowledge that, but said nothing.

  ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘I was on the phone. I’m trying to get you out of here. Out of this shit you’re in.’

  ‘Ma.’ Helen felt a little panicky, ‘I hope you’ve not told anyone I’m here.’

  Janey looked up to her, scowling.

  ‘Do I look buttoned up the bloody back?’

  ‘No.’

  Helen sat down.

  ‘I’m working on something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get yourself a glass. I’ll tell you.’

  ‘I don’t want any drink. I’ll get some tea.’

  Helen went into the kitchen and switched the kettle on, then returned a few moments later with a mug of tea. She sat down, silent, as her mother looked at her, then back at the fire again.

  ‘I do some work for someone,’ Janey said.

  Helen waited, wondering if she should ask who. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Listen to me and listen good. Nobody here or anywhere else has a single clue what I do for a living. Okay? Plenty of people may have known years ago, but that’s all in the past. I’m too old for all that shit now. So now, I just do one thing. It makes me enough money to keep me going – and a bit more.’

  Helen was baffled. In this neck of the woods there was money-lending, but her mother wasn’t the type to be involved in that, she’d always hated the parasites who held poor people to ransom. She wondered if she was running an escort agency – she certainly had some experience to put on her CV.

  ‘What do you mean, Ma? Tell me. I’m intrigued.’

  ‘Okay. If I tell you and anyone outside of these four walls ever finds out, then it will be you who’s grassed. And the people I deal with won’t let you escape. Are you understanding me?’

  ‘Christ. Aye. What’s going on?’

  ‘Okay. Every month, sometimes more often, sometimes less, I travel abroad. To Amsterdam, usually. And I deliver money. Cash. A lot of it.’

  Alarm bells were going off in Helen’s mind.

  ‘Money? To who?’

  ‘Use your loaf. Who do you think?’

  ‘You’re a drug dealer? A mule?’

  ‘No. A mule brings the drugs into the country. I just go with the money. Nobody pays any attention to a middle-aged woman going through Security. Except that I’m often carrying up to anything from thirty to eighty grand.’

  Helen looked at her in disbelief.

  ‘Christ. How do you get it through?’

  ‘It’s easy done. In my small bag. It goes through the X-ray machine but never gets opened. It’s a bit risky. But I’ve been doing it in Amsterdam, Malaga and Istanbul for the past five years. Nobody’s cracked a light.’

  ‘Christ almighty. An international smuggler. I’m more than impressed.’

  ‘Not a smuggler. A smuggler brings drugs. I’m only taking money over to business people. What they do with it is their business.’

  ‘Yeah, like you don’t know it’s drugs.’

  ‘Of course I know, but I don’t ask questions. I never have.’

  ‘What if it’s heroin? You’ve seen all the shit around here from that. How could you?’

  Janey flashed an angry glare at Helen. ‘Don’t you attempt to fucking lecture me. So far in my travels, I haven’t arranged for a hitman or popped someone in my flat. I’m no killer.’

  Helen shrugged. ‘So what’s this got to do with me?’

  ‘Because I’m going next week. And you’re coming with me. We’ll travel together. To Amsterdam. Then you can disappear. We might even take a holiday together.’

  ‘Christ. I’m scared to put my nose out the door.’

  ‘Have you got any money. Cash?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘About twenty grand on me. But I’ve got money in various accounts.’

  ‘Fiddled from your man, who you thought had been bumped off.’

  Helen said nothing. She didn’t have to.

  ‘Well. You need to get out of the country and start somewhere else. A new life, a new identity.’

  ‘Christ, Ma. You’re talking like the Mafia. When I left here you were bringing men in here for money, and now you’re some international wheeler and dealer telling me I’ll need a new identity. Is this the fucking movies?’

  ‘No. It’s actually happening. You called me, remember. You’re the one who shot someone. It’s you who’s in the shit. I can only try to get you out of it.’

  Helen sighed. ‘Do you think it will work?’

  ‘What do you think I’ve been doing all night?’

  Helen nodded, impressed, and sipped her tea. Things had certainly changed a lot since she left.

  ‘How come you didn’t move out of here? With all your money, how come you didn’t move to a nicer area?’

  ‘Because they’re all full of wankers up to their arse in debt, or crooks. I’d rather be here among my own, including the crooks. This is where I come from. And it’s where you come from. You’ll never get away from that, and don’t you forget it.’

  Helen didn’t answer, but she could see now that, despite how far she thought she’d come, she’d never really left.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Helen sat in the kitchen sipping from a mug of coffee, her head groggy, eyes stinging from lack of sleep. She hadn’t heard her mother go out, but the house was silent and she wasn’t in her bedroom when she’d popped her head round the door. Maybe she’d gone to see whoever she was talking to on the phone last night. Just as she clicked on the remote control, bringing the television mounted on the wall to life, she heard the key in the front door. She automatically flinched, still traumatised and flashing back to the moment when Alan had walked into her flat. She stood up.

  ‘That you, Ma?’

  ‘No, it’s the Holy Ghost.’

  Helen knew she wasn’t expected to answer. She sat back down as the kitchen door was pushed open and her mother came in with a plastic carrier bag, her face flushed and her eyes blazing. She pulled out a copy of the Post newspaper from the bag and slapped it on the table.

  ‘So this is how your man made his money?’

  Confused, Helen looked at her, and then her eyes scanned the newspaper’s front page. It was Alan’s picture she noticed first, and then one of her. Then the headline. MISSING ACCOUNTANT IN ROMANIAN BABIES-FOR-SALE RACKET. Below, a smaller strap headline across the top of the story: MYSTERY DEEPENS OVER SCOTS MONEY MAN AND HIS WIFE – ALREADY AT THE CENTRE OF A SHOOTING IN THEIR HOME.

  ‘What the fuck . . .?’ Helen picked up the paper and sat down, her legs shaky. She began to read, her mouth dropping open.

  Missing accountant Alan Lewis was the director of a UK charity linked to the sale of Romanian orphans, the Post can today reveal. The charity – Hands Across Europe – has links to gangsters who sell children to buyers from all over the world, and who want to bypass the red tape involved in legitimate Romanian adoption. We can also reveal newborn babies are snatched from mothers in hospital maternity wards, after the heartbroken mum has been told their child died at birth. The Post has travelled across Romania investigating the scandal, and today we can name and shame the men behind this racket. We have now passed our dossier to police in Bucharest and the UK. Our revelations come just weeks after Lewis’s wife Helen vanished after a notorious Glasgow gangster was found dead from gunshot wounds in her plush city flat. Police are hunting for her, and insiders have told us that they cannot rule out that she may have been part of the babies-for-sale scandal.

  Helen looked up at her mother. ‘In the name of Christ! What the hell is this all about?’
She put her hands up pleadingly. ‘Honestly, Ma, I don’t know what the fuck this is. It’s the first I’ve heard of it.’ She suddenly felt choked. ‘I’d never in a million years get involved in anything like this. And I’m sure Alan wouldn’t either.’

  ‘Read the story. It says his name is on the directors’ list of the charity and the wine business. And it’s the same name on the adoption agency. They have it in black and white.’

  Helen didn’t look further at the story – she was too dizzy with shock to take it in. She shook her head, trying to picture the various documents she had seen over the years as she snooped in his files. She knew Alan did the books for this charity, but that was all.

  ‘B-But . . . I can’t understand. I know he was in this wine-importing business. I’ve seen some documents over the years. And I remember seeing that he was director of a charity. But I’ve never looked closely at his correspondence with them.’ She ran her hand through her hair, frustrated. ‘Christ! Maybe I’ve got some in my case. But I can’t believe Alan would be involved in stuff like this. He just wouldn’t. I mean, I know he was dodgy, laundering money for gangsters. But selling babies? No way, Ma. No way.’

  Her mother took off her jacket, draped it over a chair and sat down at the table, flicking the pages of the newspaper. Helen could see the story ran across two pages: pictures of orphanages, of the charity office and of a baby being reunited with its mother.

  ‘This is just crazy, Ma. Alan would not be mixed up in this. I think he must have been in that charity as a tax saving thing, because he wasn’t the kind of man to be getting into charitable causes. He didn’t do anything with it. He probably doesn’t even know who runs it.’

  Janey grabbed her by the wrist. ‘You listen to me, Helen. Look me in the eye, and tell me the truth. Because so help me, I will do you in myself if I find out you’re lying . . . if you’re a part of this.’

  ‘Ma,’ Helen pleaded, ‘you’ve got to believe me. I don’t know anything about it. I bet Alan doesn’t either. Christ. What can I say? I promise you. I . . . I love weans. I’d never be bad to a wean, or sell it or any shit like that.’ To Helen’s surprise, tears sprang to her eyes. ‘You have to believe me.’

  They sat in silence, Helen staring at the pages of the Post as her mother sat, her face set hard, glowering at her daughter.

  ‘Well, you’re up to your arse in shit now, all right. So you’ll need to work out what you’re going to do about it.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do, Ma. I . . . I’m trapped. Everywhere I look, there’s no way out.’

  Her mother stood up and poured hot water over a teabag in a mug.

  ‘Well, you might have been in a lot less trouble if you’d just have asked your husband for a divorce instead of getting that dick Frankie Mallon to murder him – or not murder him, as it turned out.’ She paused and sighed. ‘You’ve got two choices, the way I see it. You need to get out of here, or you go to the police. Tell them everything.’

  ‘B-But they’ll lock me up. I can’t do that. I’m not involved in this babies thing. Nobody will ever know about Alan and what Frankie did to him out there in Romania. Frankie’s not here to tell about it, and who’s going to believe Alan even if he was to talk? He’s not going to talk now if this is all over the paper implicating him. He’ll stay missing.’

  ‘Maybe you should talk to the paper. That reporter whose name is on it. Clear your name – if you’re brave enough.’

  ‘But what’s the point?’

  ‘You’d have your say, then you could fuck off somewhere and never be heard tell of. That’s if these bastards who are looking for you don’t get you first.’

  Helen shook her head. ‘Ma, you’re not helping here. I need to do something.’

  ‘Aye. You do.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Rosie barely spoke all the way from their hotel to the airport. When she and Matt had climbed into the British embassy diplomatic car outside the Intercontinental, she sank back into the leather seat and let out a long sigh. She should have felt relieved, elated, full of the sense of freedom and achievement that she had done the right thing. She had reunited a baby stolen at birth with her real mother, and she and Matt had made a couple of groundbreaking splashes and spreads for the Post, exposing the inside story of the babies-for-sale racket. And she was being protected by the British embassy all the way onto the tarmac of Bucharest airport. Ordinarily, she’d have been punching the air with excitement and satisfaction at a job well done. But right now she was deflated, shattered, and she couldn’t get Adrian out of her mind. She sat back in the passenger seat and replayed the last frantic few hours.

  *

  Rosie’s anxious phone call to the ambassador’s assistant at the British embassy had put in motion a chain of events much more swifly than she’d expected. He’d been shocked and furious to find out what had happened once they’d left the British embassy, and that the Romanian police had played such a dirty role. He’d instructed her to remain where she was, asked to speak to the man of the house and got the address, and assured them assistance would be on its way promptly. Rosie was panicking in case somehow all of them ended up in police custody. She’d rushed outside the house when she heard the cars, as well as an ambulance, coming up the driveway.

  ‘Rosie.’ The ambassador’s assistant got out of the Mercedes to greet her. ‘What an unbelievable mess.’

  Another Mercedes car with blacked-out windows pulled up, and two well-dressed Romanians got out. Rosie knew nothing about the secret police or security organisations in the country, but the embassy man introduced them as from the interior ministry who would be taking over the case. Rosie explained to all of them what had happened, watching as the translator relayed it to the Romanians, whose worried faces showed they were aware that once again the country had been plunged into an orphans scandal splashed all over a British newspaper. Another car arrived, and two medics got out and went straight inside to see to Adrian and Ariana. A woman who was with them was introduced as a social worker to see to the mother and baby.

  The embassy man took her to one side for a moment.

  ‘So, this Adrian chap . . . He wasn’t with you in the embassy, was he?’

  ‘No. He was outside.’

  ‘Can I ask you who he is? Is he a journalist?’

  ‘No. He’s from Bosnia. I’ve known him for years. We work together on investigations from time to time in Glasgow and abroad. He lives in Sarajevo, and my editor is arranging for him to travel back home. His friend is on his way from Sarajevo to be with him.’

  He looked serious. ‘It’s just that, well, there’s a few loose ends here for the Romanians. They have two dead bodies outside the orphanage. Fair enough, they were gangsters –’ he lowered his voice conspiratorially – ‘and between you and me, completely off the record, the nation will be all the better without them. But the police will need to file some kind of report. I take it the Bosnian was the one who shot them?’

  ‘I didn’t see what happened, and that’s the truth,’ Rosie said. ‘We were all in the car with our heads down as these men began shooting, except Adrian. I didn’t see what happened after that, I only heard gunshots. But these men were shooting at him, and the car. They came there to kill us, and take the baby. And they came to kill the mother of the baby because she could have given evidence against them. If they’d got her, she’d have had the same fate as her husband. I’m sure his body will be found somewhere soon.’

  He nodded in slight agreement. ‘I do see your point, Rosie, but they will need some kind of statement from your Bosnian friend, and they will have to investigate.’

  ‘I hope they’re not going to charge him with anything. Whatever happened at the orphanage was self-defence. Everything I’ve described to you is because of these gangsters, and because of the corruption at the heart of the police force. I hope they’re not going to get all high-handed now.’

  His mouth twitched a little. He was a diplomat, and trained to find a compromise,
a way out, and perhaps Rosie’s tone was more aggressive than he liked.

  ‘I understand how you feel, Rosie, but—’

  ‘Can I tell you something?’ Rosie interrupted. ‘About the police, even before I came here this time? Years ago, after Ceauşescu, I was over here with a charity and there was some altercation and one of our party was stabbed by a gypsy. Stabbed in the back. The lights had gone out and the whole place was in chaos. But then the police arrived, and they captured the man who’d done it. I watched them as they dragged him out, and then I followed them to the police van. They dragged him into the back and six of them stamped on his head. There was blood everywhere. It was awful. I watched them kick this man to death, well, kick him until he wasn’t moving. Then when I spoke to the police chief on the ground a few minutes later, and told him what I’d seen, he told me to get back behind the police lines and that I had seen no such thing. They’d just killed a man. That’s how they do justice, so I won’t stand here and let them mess me around. I’m sorry. I really appreciate everything you are doing, please don’t get me wrong. I do. But these security guys have to understand that they have gangsters all over the police force.’

  He sighed, glancing at the officers.

  ‘I’m sure they know that already, Rosie. Okay, let’s see what we can do here. The thing is, we want to get you and Matt back to the UK pronto, and the authorities are here to make sure this woman is fine and looked after.’

  ‘That’s if they are genuine.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they are. The interior ministry has been left in no doubt that there is a daily newspaper about to launch an exposé and dig even deeper into this scandal, and how the Romanians are seen to deal with it is crucial to how they are viewed by the rest of Europe. So I don’t think you have to worry about the mother and her baby.’ He paused. ‘And if I may say so, I think you have done a fantastic job on that – above and beyond the call of duty.’