‘God, you’re a pain, Ed.’
‘And the punters? Scum of the earth are attracted down to the Costa del Crime, and they want their drugs. How do addicts pay for them? They have to steal. Watch out for knives and don’t be in dark streets. Be aware . . . There are some big beasts on the Costa now and they have bodyguards all round them. It’s a dangerous place and the big villains would seem to back me . . . It’s going downhill.’
‘Ed, you’re upsetting her.’
Posie sat very still beside him and held his hand in a vice grip. They were supposed to be on holiday and this man was pouring bilge water over it.
‘No, I’m not. I—’
Jonno chipped in: ‘Do me a favour, mate and shut up. Leave us alone. We’re on holiday and expecting to have a good time. Enjoy your misery on your own.’
‘No need to get heavy with me!’
‘Shut it and keep it shut.’ Jonno couldn’t remember the last time he had issued a threat that implied violence. He would have moved but the flight was full.
The woman snorted. ‘Best leave it, Ed.’
Jonno knew nobody who had been on the wrong side of the law. He had never been inside a gaol and had not even sat in the public gallery of a Crown Court. He reckoned that if he found himself near a criminal situation he’d get to the far side of the road fast, stay out of it.
On the patio at the Villa del Aguila, Pavel Ivanov sat with Rafael, his lawyer. They smoked and sipped fresh-pressed lemonade.
‘And the boat, where?’
‘I think a week out. I would assume your investment would be repaid within a further week – the monies will move fast – and the surcharge on the loan. We are considering where to advise a placement at greatest benefit to you.’
It was understood between them that the woman who worked on potential investment opportunities at the lawyer’s offices would not come here. Neither she nor her employer regarded that as a slight on Ivanov’s part; she was installed in a small, tastefully furnished studio home in the centre of the old town, where the Moors had been. No gossip could be carried back to the Motherland that a local mistress occupied the bed that Anna, his wife, would sleep in during her two visits each year to Marbella. There was much that the client and the lawyer agreed on.
‘And the possible complex in the hills?’
‘We consider most of the wrinkles now flattened out, and the town hall is more amenable. The current economic confusions make job opportunities more desirable. But we might wish for other sources of finance so that the load is spread wider.’
They had met within two weeks of Pavel Ivanov reaching the Costa. There had been a quiet dinner at a shadowed table in the poolside restaurant of the Marbella Club, and they had found a common tongue in English. An invitation from a Pole had brought them together. They had been introduced, a drink ordered, and the man from Gdansk – who had good links to Kaliningrad up the Baltic coast and with people in northern Russia – had slid away and left them. The much-feared street-fighter from St Petersburg, home of the most powerful Mafiya groups, and the elegant Spanish lawyer had made an instant impression on each other. An alliance had been formed. He had brought tens of millions of euros and dollars to the table, and extreme levels of wealth opportunity to the Spaniard; the Spaniard had made the introductions that enabled the incomer to buy the acquiescence of an official with influence in the city’s planning office, another in the mayoral chambers, and the co-operation of a middle-ranking detective from the Unidad de Drogas y Crimen Organizado, who worked from the National Police building near the A7 junction. And Rafael had made a simple but subtle demand of the Russian: the winding up of criminal enterprises and a journey along the road of legitimacy.
‘I have a man coming to meet with me.’
‘Welcome or unwelcome?’
‘In a former life I was the Tractor. In his present life, he is the Major. Before coming here, I never achieved the heights he has climbed to.’
‘What heights?’
‘The heights of his roof. You understand me? Of course you do. He is protected by the highest reaches of authority. He has a history from Afghanistan. He was State Security, now is a free operator but used by senior personalities. He can kill for the state, trade for the state, invest for the state. He can go his own way. He is not a man I tell to fuck off out of my life when he tries to come close. Those personalities wish to export hard currency, to invest and to wash very considerable sums of hard currency . . . What is the expression, about my life here, that we use?’
‘We say it is ‘‘under the radar’’. Quiet, not attracting attention, fulfilling social and fiscal obligations. Are there not creatures that change their skin?’
‘The chameleon is the lizard that alters colour for better camouflage. I do not call myself a lizard. Perhaps the radar had picked me up and they hear that the old Tractor has done well and legitimised his life. He has washed his hands and his money. Perhaps if they wished, or if I tell him to fuck off, he can disturb me.’
‘Can you live with it, the visit?’
‘Of course. Not a difficulty. Rafael, I tell you, I have become more cautious. I look at myself in a mirror and try to remember how I was. There were men who were brought to see me in St Petersburg – they might have been officials from the fuel or electricity-supply companies. When they were led into the room, they had pissed their trousers. I was not going to harm them, or their families. I only wanted co-operation. The sight of me made fear.’
‘It is different now, Pavel. You are a man of business. The sun shines on you.’
‘Hard to remember who I was – who they were.’
Alex sat in the shade behind them and Marko was to their right. He could hear the women in the house and the children played with plastic toys. He grimaced. ‘Maybe I will need a little of an old skin, or an old colour, on my back.’
‘I cannot yet be definite with advice, but I am considering suggesting the monies from the boat opportunities – an aberration of our general policy but too good to miss – go into the complex in the hills. They should be moved fast, and with a minimum of a tail to be chased.’
He stared out from his patio and felt tired. He had lost the strength to swat difficulties away. He saw a great mass of open sea and the rock jutting up that was the British colony of Gibraltar, and the pinkish shadow that was the north African mainland, which was where the Major would come from.
‘Pavel, you are disturbed. You should not be. Are you nervous of this man? However unwelcome, how can he affect you, this Major?’
He grinned, almost sheepishly. ‘You will meet him. Look at his hand. Ask him what happened to it.’
The Major was brought into the city of Constanta. An official in the harbourmaster’s office drove a Mercedes saloon; an escort vehicle filled with plainclothes policemen tracked them. They might have been on duty or rostered on a free day to look after a man of importance.
At the airport, his executive aircraft had taxied to a distant corner, out of sight of the passenger terminal and close to the cargo hangars. A Customs woman had been there: she had glanced at the passports, nodded and passed them back. Formal protocols had been observed, the cars had been ready and the men had thrown down their cigarettes beside the no-smoking signs, extinguishing them with the soles of their shoes. They headed for the port area designated Constanta South, and would skirt the historic centre of the city, the country’s second most prestigious, then arrive at the expanse of cranes and warehouses, and the containers park that gave the port its status as the fourth largest on the European continent. The additional attraction for the Major – over and above the discretion of officials, police, Customs and those who programmed the unloading of cargoes or the movement of containers – was the canal linking the Black Sea to the Danube via the Agigea Lock. It cut the distance between the sea port and the freshwater docks on the river by four hundred kilometres. And, vital to the movement of the goods the Major intended to bring through Constanta South, the long barges w
ould be loaded under the benevolent eye of the Romanian authorities. Then, with adequate paperwork, they would head upstream, through the sovereign territories of Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Germany. On the German stretch there was access to the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal and a link to the Dutch port of Rotterdam. He intended to make the route central to his operations with the goods brought from the Afghan poppy fields. He liked to see matters for himself.
With him were his colleagues.
Squashed into the escort car were the girl, without earrings but with a well-packed wallet, and the Gecko. The girl had been good and could go home. She would find another man happy to buy time with her. The Gecko had been asked how his toothache was and had said it was better. He was going to look around the city. He had been told at what time he would be picked up and where.
The Latvian policeman, at the Europol building in the Dutch city of The Hague, entertained the editor of a Swedish daily newspaper and took him down a corridor to the next meeting.
‘They are businessmen. Their minds are set on buying at advantage and selling at a greater an advantage. Money dominates them. It is how they mark the level of their success. It is not to do with intellect or physique, but how much money they have accumulated and washed. As any rising entrepreneur would, they hire the best lawyers and accountants, the cleverest IT kids. They buy security by owning a piece of the town hall, and enough of the local detective force to ensure they are left in the shadows. If they need a judge they will find one who can be bought. They follow markets: if the sex-trafficking trade is saturated, and brothels do not show the profit required from the investment, they will switch to illegal immigrants, maybe from China, or they will beef up the weapons supply. If the West European kids go off Moroccan skunk, the big man will push money at greenhouse cultivation in Holland. Above the search for ‘‘power’’ or ‘‘influence’’ is the requirement of making profit. In case this sounds a rather harmless world, I would emphasise that when profit is interrupted, extreme violence will be employed to right a wrong. Messages are sent to rivals by the use of violence. Without the willingness to resort to it, no criminal – big or small – can survive.’
They took a bus. They joined a crocodile of ex-pats, who climbed the steps. The bags were stowed under seats, and Ed, the one-time Ford dealer, had said, ‘Don’t get me wrong, didn’t want to upset you, but don’t wander round with your eyes closed or trouble will find you. I’m only trying to help . . . Have a nice time.’ The air-conditioning was on and the coach was cool but the sun beat on rocks, fields, dry stream beds and houses. They sat together, Posie by the window, and Jonno was looking out at the rows of squashed-together houses wedged on to each hill and down every valley. The sea shimmered and was indistinct, more than three miles from the road. He had expected they would travel along a coast road and see what made the Costa such an attraction and— The coach swerved and the man on the other side of the aisle spilled half into Jonno’s lap.
‘Nothing changes. Nothing different on the good old A7 highway. You’re ashen, my friend – first time here? The A7’s the most dangerous road in Europe. Mega death rates. Sorry and all that . . .’
The man was back in his seat. Posie clutched the bar on the back of the seat in front of her. Jonno was gazing at the developments that seemed to have no view but this road, the roofs of other complexes or modern factory blocks. Some were finished, many were shells with idle cranes towering over them. Jonno had read in the papers the stories about the Spanish economic miracle going down the plughole and that property was at the core of the crisis. There was an awful uniformity in the white and yellow walls of the developments.
The man said sunnily, ‘It’s what the place is all about and why the country’s broke. They overbuilt and sold at the top and now the poor devils who bought in are stuck. They can’t sell, and there’s tens of thousands in hock to the banks. Would you have wanted to invest in a property with nothing to look at bar this coach, and a thousand others like it? It’s a thirty-minute ride to the coast, and barely a beach worthy of the name when you get there. I come for the golf, which is still good, but the property scene’s wrecked. Why is there so much of it here, developments put down with no rhyme or reason? It’s no secret. Dirty money. The Costa del Sol’s the greatest source of money laundering yet invented by the criminal classes. Drugs money, counterfeit money, the money paid by illegal immigrants to get into Europe, prostitution money, it’s all gone into bricks and mortar. It’s why they all live here. Have a good time.’
Jonno’s new friend smiled and was gone, and they were in a bus station. In twenty minutes they’d be in Marbella. He asked Posie if she was fine.
‘Never been better.’
‘I fancy some serious drinking tonight, after a bath with my toes wrapped round the gold taps. Going to join me?’
He was rewarded – first a wan smile, then a giggle. He squeezed her hand tight.
He had a fair complexion, and in thirteen years on the Costa del Sol had never succeeded in tanning. It was beneath his dignity to go out with sun screen on his cheeks and ears. Below his shades there was a mosquito bite – the sun had burrowed at the wound and had made a bad place, messy, to the left side of his nose. He scratched because it itched and because of the tension, which mounted with every passing minute.
Tommy King had a good view of the man who sat at a table outside the bar under an awning. He had good reason to watch him because the killing of that man would set him back two thousand pounds – a thousand already paid and a thousand in used notes to come. For that sort of expense it was predictable that TK – as he liked to be called – would want to see that it went well. It was about territory. What else? Above his glasses he wore a baseball cap that shielded some of his face. He sipped a soft drink, using a tissue to mask his prints and the possibility of a DNA trace. He wiped hard at the hole where his lips touched. The man had his back to him and was on a mobile. He must have thought he was safe there. Likely the man – from the Liberties of Dublin – thought he had protection, and was too big for the likes of Tommy King to take offence. Two thousand pounds had bought a death ticket for the fat bastard from Ireland. It was a cheap contract but as much as Tommy King could afford. A top man – what Tommy King hoped he would be, one day – would have flown in a guy from Manchester or Liverpool, then shipped him out when it was done, but Tommy King’s resources meant that the killer had come down the coast from Benidorm on his motorcycle. He’d made the check call and the biker was on his way.
The bar where the Irishman was and the one where Tommy King waited weren’t frequented by tourists. They were inland at least a kilometre and used only by expatriates. The Irishman had treated him like dog-shit. Tommy King could only afford three night-time dealers on the beat just west of Marbella and short of Puerto Banus; they’d been roughed up, their pockets emptied. The little they carried had been stamped on, and their cash from early sales kicked into the gutter. That had been a week ago, three days before Tommy King had met the Irishman and tried to talk like an equal, give the man an opt-out by suggesting there’d been a ‘misunderstanding’.
‘No misunderstanding, kid. Feck off. The next time I see you you’ll be feekin’ uglier than you are now.’
Tommy King had shuffled away. Smart, that – he’d gone like a beaten kid and had made the call to the guy in Benidorm.
He listened for the motorbike.
Nothing for him to be despondent about. He wasn’t a moaner – and he had a pretty girlfriend who lived in, seventeen. She didn’t talk much because she only had a smattering of English – the rest was Bulgarian – but she was fond of him. He had an apartment that taxed him at the moment, but wouldn’t once the future had tied up in Cádiz. The future was the MV Santa Maria. He had no idea of her main cargo, or where she was registered, or what nationality her crew or captain were. What he did know was that there were two containers on board, with a waybill for hardwood furniture. There was a guy down
the road in Marbella, a lawyer, who had seen the main chance and raised the finance that was the future for Tommy King. It had come from people to whom it was chicken-feed, small change: his uncle had made the first contact. Tommy King’s uncle was Mikey and . . . Fuck Mikey and fuck the backer. When the boat came, the cargo was offloaded and the cash from the onward sale rolled in, TK would no longer be relying on three dealers to shift amphetamines on a plaza, and there’d be no fat Irish bastard pissing in his face.
He heard the bike.
What he always reckoned . . . In the dear old world of the Costa del Sol, where Mikey had been for thirty-five years and TK had lived for the last thirteen, and in Bermondsey, south-east London, which had been the family tribe’s home, you got what you paid for. If you paid twenty thousand, you’d get a limousine job, and if you paid two thousand, you’d get a guy from Benidorm whose bike needed a decoke. Even the Irishman heard the bike coming. He turned with a look of annoyance – maybe the sound of the thing, getting closer, made it harder for him to listen to his mobile.
When the MV Santa Maria came in, Tommy King’s cargo was sold on and the backer’s debt repaid, there would be big money, clean money, for him. He would no longer be fucking about protecting the territory where his dealers sold pills outside the two nightclubs. He would be a man of means, more of a made man than his uncle, Mikey Fanning, had ever been.
The guy should have done something about that bike, the noise it made. It came round the corner, leaving a thick trail of exhaust fumes.
The guy wore a helmet with a tinted visor. He came up behind the Irishman and stopped. The Irishman was starting to wave his arms and could hear fuck-all on his mobile. The guy showed him the gun. He’d pulled it out of his leather jacket.
The guy aimed.
A bit more than four years back Tommy King had seen a man stabbed to death. Of course he’d seen men who’d had a beating, and he’d seen others dead – shot and knifed – but the man who had died from stab wounds had reacted as soon as the light had flashed on the blade. He had lunged forward to grapple. ‘Flight or fight’, they said, in the books about special-forces people. Either run like fuck or stand and see it out. The Irishman did neither.
The Outsiders Page 7
