by Conrad Jones
“Yes, they’re mine. You’ve been following me, that’s sneaky.”
His accomplice reached over and grabbed the cutting tools off the bed. He rolled them up as if they were fragile and put them inside his coat lovingly. He looked embarrassed and it was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about the instruments. He quickly changed the subject. “Okay, half the money and one kilo?” His accomplice stuffed half the money into his sports bag and grabbed a kilo package of cocaine. “One kilo, that’s fair.”
“Fine, take this too. I think it belongs to you.” Gecko tossed a freezer bag over to his irritating accomplice, who caught it and smiled as he looked at the contents through the clear plastic. Then his expression changed into one of shock and horror.
“What is this, some kind of sick joke?”
The rotting hand inside had a gold sovereign on the index finger. The wrist bone was exposed and yellowed and the flesh was beginning to liquefy inside.
“Open it.”
“No way, why did you go there?” Patrick knew it was real but he didn’t want to admit it to himself. His hobby was his business and no one else’s. He enjoyed his games but he wasn’t comfortable with people knowing what he liked to do. His mind wasn’t too warped to realise society loathed monsters like him.
“I said open it.” Gecko pulled a Glock. It had a dull black suppressor attached to the barrel, making it look more lethal than normal.
“Okay, okay. I’ll open it. Keep all the cocaine, I don’t want it.” Patrick opened the zip seal and the stench hit him like a sledgehammer. He tossed the offending bag away onto the bed and the hand spilled out. “You’re sick. I can’t believe you kept that. Why did you bring that? You should not have followed me there. What the hell is this all about?”
“It’s about you crossing the line. It is about you shattering the boundaries every time I ask you to do something. It is about trust and greed. You have to push everything to the limit, don’t you? You have to go too far every time. There was no need to go that far.” Gecko pointed to the rotting hand.
He hit Patrick hard with the butt of the gun and his accomplice fell to his knees. Another heavy blow silenced him. Putting a bullet into his brain crossed Gecko’s mind but he refrained when he heard voices in the corridor outside. He needed time to think about what had happened. Leaving a corpse in a city centre hotel was not a bright idea, and there was no way he could dispose of the body before someone discovered it. His accomplice had been self-indulgent to say the least, leaving a trail of evidence for the police to follow when they eventually found the woman. He had thought about cleaning up the factory unit but there was nothing there, which could lead them to him, so he had left it. It was time to go on alone. He wished he had done things on his own from the start but it wasn’t something he could change. What was done was done, his past was his past, and he couldn’t alter it. He could shape the future though, and that was what he had to concentrate on. After a little rearranging of the hotel room, Gecko stepped onto the busy streets and blended into the crowd with the cash and the drugs safely tucked into his bag. He would deal with his accomplice later. Their partnership was over. There was one more task to complete, and then he would get rid of him for good.
Chapter Six
Connections Nightclub
When Jinx opened his eyes, there were bells ringing in his head. He was cold and wet and water was pouring from the ceiling. There was smoke everywhere and women were screaming in the nightclub. He saw his fellow poker-playing gangsters picking themselves up from the floor. There were flames flickering up from the cellar and the doorframe was well alight. The fire was taking a hold and spreading quickly. Strong hands grabbed him and pulled his substantial frame upward.
“Come on, Jinx. It’s time to get out of here.” The gravelly voice belonged to a monster called Gus. Gus Rickman was one of the top villains in the country and if anything happened in Liverpool then Gus knew about it before it happened. If he didn’t, there was trouble. Gus had been a competitive body builder in his younger days and although he had stopped competing, he was bigger than ever. He was shaven headed with a grey goatee beard and tattoos covering his arms. He was responsible for one of the biggest bullion robberies ever carried out, and the police didn’t even have him on their list of suspects. They had him linked to a few security van robberies a decade ago, but they never had enough evidence to charge him with anything. Jinx liked him because he was straight. There was no bullshit with Gus, what you see was what you got. Treat him with respect and he’d help you any way he could, but cross him at your peril.
“Get the fire extinguishers!” someone shouted.
“No!” Gus shouted over the noise. “Get everyone out of here and let it burn.”
Confused faces looked at Gus. The fire was growing but they could extinguish it if they acted quickly. Jinx read his mind. Gus was right. Five kilos of cocaine belonging to the Turkish mob were missing. A decent size fire could hide a multitude of sins, and they had promised Jessie they would cover him. Letting the back of the club burn would just about do it. The fire brigade would save the rest of the building, maybe.
“Move now!” Gus growled. People limped and carried others toward the main part of the club. Leon and his minders were struggling to stand up. They had taken the brunt of the blast when the grenade exploded. It was lucky for them the gunmen had used a concussion grenade, not a fragmentation grenade. It was designed to incapacitate people, not kill them with shrapnel. Gus and Jinx ran to Leon and his colleagues. They dragged them up and bundled them towards the nightclub. Gus stopped near the poker table and grabbed a bottle of scotch from a drinks trolley. He took a huge gulp and then hurled the bottle toward the fire. It shattered and the flames roared as the liquid ignited.
“Let’s go!” Gus shouted. “Make sure everyone loses their guns quickly when we get outside. There will be police everywhere in a minute.”
“Who do you think pulled this off?” Jinx asked as they stumbled through the smoky nightclub.
“I don’t know.” Gus looked sideways at Jinx, suspicion in his eyes. “I can have a good guess, though.”
“It has to be an inside job, right?”
“There’s no doubt about it.”
As they made their way through the club, bouncers were herding the stragglers towards the fire exits. A young woman in a tight leather dress was so drunk that she couldn’t walk unassisted; the bouncers carried her between two of them. Her condition was nothing to do with the blast. Vodka was to blame. The disco lights were still spinning and red lasers pierced the smoke. Half- empty glasses littered the tables and several handbags lay abandoned by their owners. The music was blasting as they crashed through the front doors of the club and Leon stumbled onto the pavement. He landed with a thump face down on the rain soaked pavement. His nose was bleeding and his face looked puffy and swollen as Jinx and the others picked him up.
“Who did this, Jinx?” Leon scowled. He wiped blood from his nose with the back of his hand.
“You’re the drug dealer, you tell me,” Jinx snapped. He was angry beyond words.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Leon spat blood on the floor.
“I don’t know yet,” Jinx replied. “But we’ll find out, Leon. We will find out for sure, believe me.”
“Make sure no one is carrying!” Gus shouted to the crowd of heavies that surrounding them. Several men ran toward the car park opposite to hide their weapons. Sirens approached; two police cars screeched to a halt and the first fire fighters were on the scene within minutes. They dismounted from the tenders and began to clear the crowds while their colleagues began feeding hosepipes into the club. One of Gus’ men approached. He looked like a bigger version of Gus, but his goatee was black and he had fewer lines around his eyes.
“There was nothing around the back, Gus.”
“Any sign of a vehicle?”
“Nothing and the back door is locked from the inside.”
“How do you know that?
”
“There are no keyholes, Gus, just a steel plate. It’s shut tight.”
“Where’s Jessie?” Jinx asked.
“He’s in that ambulance,” the minder said.
Gus and Jinx ran to the ambulance where two paramedics were trying to stop the bleeding while a uniformed officer asked the Welshman questions.
“How did you get these injuries?” the constable asked. The police officer was in his early twenties at most. He had spiked his dark hair and there were tattoos on his forearms. He looked out of his depth in the mayhem that surrounded him.
“Fuck off,” Jessie replied, shaking as the paramedics tried to stem the flow of blood, but it wasn’t the pain that was affecting him. The theft of his employers’ drugs had stunned him. They would come to him first for answers and he didn’t have any. The last thing he needed now was a snotty nosed copper straight out of college asking him stupid questions.
“There were reports of gunshots,” the young officer carried on unperturbed. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Sherlock, but my ears have been damaged,” Jessie pointed to the side of his head where the ambulance men were working.
“Damaged?” one of the paramedics said. “They’ve been cut off!”
“Shut up! Nobody asked you a question,” Jessie turned angrily on him. If the bleeding hadn’t been so severe he would have walked away, but he was losing a lot of blood.
“So how did you receive those injuries?” the officer tried again. He took a white notebook from his pocket and opened it in anticipation of recording Jessie’s replies.
“Write this in your notebook, Sherlock, fuck off!” Jessie’s face was purple and his hands were shaking.
“I don’t think he wants to make a statement, Officer,” Gus growled as he looked into the ambulance. Jessie laughed but his laugh changed to a wince when a paramedic pressed too hard. The young police officer looked on bemused.
“Jessie, is there any other way out of the cellar apart from the back door?” Gus asked.
“Why?” Jessie was confused.
“Just answer the question.”
“No, the door to the alleyway is the only exit.”
“Can it be opened from the outside?”
“No, it has a steel plate welded over it and it’s bolted from the inside. It hasn’t been opened for years. Why are you asking?”
“We need to take him to hospital right now”, one of the paramedics said as he grabbed the back doors and pulled them together, “he’s losing a lot of blood.”
“I’ll travel with him if you don’t mind,” the officer said unsurely.
“It’s up to you, mate, but we need to go now.”
“I don’t want him in here asking me stupid questions,” Jessie whined. “I’m not going to say anything, Sherlock, so why don’t you just fuck off?”
The ambulance men laughed. It was just another Saturday night in the city to them. The police officer decided he was getting nowhere and bailed out of the back. Jessie was shouting questions at Gus as the doors slammed closed and silenced him. The siren wailed and the blue lights flashed as the van drove away from the burning nightclub, slowly weaving through the crowd that had gathered.
“They must be in the cellar.” Gus turned to Jinx. Jinx was looking around and scanning the crowd. There were familiar faces everywhere. They all looked shocked.
“No way.” Jinx shook his head. “They were smart, Gus. There’s no way they left themselves trapped in the cellar with no escape route.”
“There’s only one way to find out, but the club is full of police.”
“I’m telling you they’re not down there, Gus. They’re long gone.”
“Well, how did they get out?”
“The same way they went in. Grab some of your men and let’s go and take a look ourselves.” Jinx walked toward the rear of the club. Gus didn’t like being told what to do, but he called his men together and looked for the remaining card players and their heavies. The emergency services had put Leon into an ambulance, which left David Lorimar and the remaining three poker players plus their minders. The police watched closely as they gathered and whispered to each other in a huddle. To a bystander, it looked like there were angry words being exchanged before the group moved away to the back of the club. As they slipped down the service alley at the rear, the rain began to bucket down. The alleyway was dark and lined with huge red wheelie bins that were overflowing with cardboard and waste from the retail outlets that bordered the nightclub. A single yellow streetlight poured out a dull glow, hardly penetrating the darkness.
“What are we supposed to be doing here, Gus?” Big Mick asked gruffly. Mick was one of the poker players, a grizzly bear of a man, thickset and bearded. He exported ninety percent of the stolen prestige cars taken from the North West. Most of them were destined for Eastern Europe, and the trade link gave him access to heroin smuggled from Afghanistan through Russia. He didn’t have time to chase around after a couple of chancers who had stolen his twenty grand stake money. It was nothing to him.
“The cellar door is locked from the inside, which means they are still in there,” Gus replied and pointed toward the back of the club.
“So what, Gus, I don’t care. I’ve got better things to do.” Mick wanted to be away from the scene before the police began sniffing around. “We’ll find out who did this before long, and we can deal with them then.”
“Mick, did you hear what he said?” Jinx came out of the shadows. “He said we peddle filth in his city, and he was going to take your produce and your money. Now it sounded to me like he means to do this again. If we don’t stick together and make this bastard disappear, then they could hit anyone of us at anytime.”
Mick stopped and thought about it for a second. “Fair enough, Jinx, what do you suggest?” Mick was shrewd and he shrugged his huge shoulders. “Shall we knock on the back door and ask for our money back?”
“It was an inside job, Mick. One of us set it up,” Gus said.
“Maybe one of you did, but I think you’re forgetting that whoever stole the money had an Uzi in his hand, and right now all I’m carrying is twenty Lamberts and my lighter. I’m as pissed off as you are, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“He’s right,” Jinx added. “I think we should start asking questions tomorrow, and we can rule Jessie out of the sting.”
There was a murmur of agreement amongst the men. There were also suspicious glances. Old rivalries simmered beneath the surface.
“What about you, Jinx?” Bodger spoke. His real name was Barry Hodge, but no one used it. He was a major fraudster and scammer. He manufactured software in the Far East that could capture credit card and bank account data and sold it all over the world. He had made over two million dollars selling the latest computer gaming consoles to American internet customers; of course the goods had never materialised. “Where are your boys tonight?”
Jinx had arrived on his own for the poker game. He always did. No one needed to ask why he didn’t have a minder; it was obvious. Unless someone was going to shoot him, he could look after himself, but the insinuation that he was involved was there.
“I don’t need my boys all the time, Bodger, but you do.”
One of Bodger’s men stepped forward. “Watch your mouth!”
“Or what, sweet cheeks?” Jinx didn’t move but his grin turned into a sneer. “Do you fancy a shot at the title?”
“Don’t mind if I do, it’s about time someone shut you up, you prick!”
Instinctively the men cleared a space between the antagonists. Tensions were running high after the robbery and the explosion.
“Knock him out, Billy,” Bodger goaded his man. Billy was an ex-boxer. Moreover, his nose said he wasn’t the best defensive fighter in the world; it was flattened to his face. He had been a handy man in his youth but never good enough to make a career in the ring. Billy came from a family of fighters and villains, and he resente
d the rise to power of some members of the black community. He had been a racist from an early age and didn’t care who knew it.
Billy Williams raised his hands to his chin in an orthodox boxing stance. He looked light on his feet for a big man. Jinx didn’t change his expression as the boxer circled him. Billy lunged forward with a hard left jab but he was slow at getting his arm back out of danger. Jinx grabbed the extended limb and twisted it violently to the left, forcing Billy down onto one knee. In one fluid movement, he hit the back of Billy’s elbow joint with his forearm. His entire weight was behind the strike and Billy’s arm snapped like a twig, bending in the completely wrong direction. Billy screamed and fell on his back in a puddle, blubbering like a girl. Bodger looked to his other minder, who looked scared and picked up his screaming colleague. He didn’t want to take Jinx on. The pouring rain was running down his face in rivulets.
“Anyone else?” Jinx looked around the crowd. There were no takers for now. Some fancied their chances one to one, but not in front of this particular crowd; losing here would damage their standing and Jinx was a formidable opponent.
“Evening, Gentlemen,” a voice from behind them stopped everyone. “Well, we have quite a gathering here.”
Looking around, the gangsters were faced with Chief Carlton. He was the head of the division’s uniformed police force and more than familiar with the rogues in the alleyway. There were eight uniformed police officers with him and more arriving every second. Big Mick decided it was time to go and moved away from the group.
“Not so fast, Michael,” Carlton said sternly. “We’ll need to speak to all of you before you go anywhere. What happened to him?” The police officer nodded toward Billy. He was whining in agony.
