The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Once his casts had immersed themselves in their characters, weeks of improvisation in rehearsal rooms would ensue, until the director edited what he considered to be the best bits into a script. After the production had opened, this text based on the actors’ lines would then be published in the form of a book, for which Charlie Fenton took all the royalties.

  The carefully leaked details of his rehearsal methods only added to the director’s mystique, and very few people realized that ordering actors around in this way was just part of Charlie Fenton’s ongoing power trip. The lengthy build-up to his productions was nothing to do with the quality of theatre that resulted; it was all about his ego. Also the total control he exercised over his companies proved to be a good way of getting pretty young actresses into bed. (He had a wife and family somewhere in the background, but spent little time with them.)

  Awestruck accounts of the director’s procedures, tantrums and bullying ensured that any actor in search of theatrical respectability was desperate to work with Charlie Fenton. And so it was with Kenny Mountford.

  They finally met after a first night of a National Theatre King Lear. The play wasn’t really Lesley-Jane Walden’s cup of tea, but it was a first night, after all. Any occasion when there was a chance of her being photographed and appearing in the tabloids suited her very well indeed (though she had been a little disappointed by the lack of paparazzi down at the South Bank). As soon as the final curtain was down Charlie Fenton was at the bar, surrounded by toadies, who hung on every word as he proceeded to list Shakespeare’s shortcomings as a dramatist. Kenny and Lesley-Jane had gone to the performance with one of their actor friends who had once spent six months picking tomatoes and learning Polish in order to take part in a Charlie Fenton production about migrant workers. And the friend effected the coveted introduction.

  The director, who sported a silly little goatee and grey ponytail, favoured Lesley-Jane with a coruscating smile. “I’ve seen some of your work,” he said. “It’s amazing how a really good actor can shine even amidst the dross of a soap opera.”

  She blushed and smiled prettily at this. Which wasn’t difficult for Lesley-Jane Walden. She was so pretty that she did everything prettily.

  Kenny Mountford felt encouraged. If Charlie Fenton had recognized his girlfriend’s quality in a soap opera, the director might look equally favourably at his work in a sitcom. But that illusion was not allowed to last for long. Looking superciliously at him over half-moon glasses, Charlie Fenton said, “Oh, yes, I know your name. Still paying the mortgage rather publicly on the telly, are you?”

  “Maybe,” Kenny replied, “but I am about to change direction.”

  “Towards what?”

  “More serious theatre work.”

  “Oh, yes?” the director sneered. “That’s what they all say.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  “Kenny, I don’t think you’d recognize ‘more serious theatre work’ if it jumped up and bit you on the bum. You have clearly been destined from birth for a life of well-paid mediocrity.”

  “I disagree. I’m genuinely committed to doing more serious work.”

  “Really?” The director scrutinized the actor with something approaching contempt. “I don’t think you could hack it.’

  “Try me.”

  Charlie Fenton was silent for a moment of appraisal. Then he said, “I bet you wouldn’t have the dedication to work with me.”

  “Are you offering me a job?”

  “If I were, I’m pretty confident you couldn’t do it.”

  “Again I say: try me.”

  Another long silence ensued. Then the director announced, “I’m starting work on a new project. About criminal gangs in London.”

  “What would it involve for the actors?”

  “Deep cover. Infiltrating the gangs.”

  Kenny was aware of the slight admonitory shake of Lesley-Jane’s head, but he ignored the signal. “I’m up for it,” he said.

  “I’ll phone you with further details,” the director announced in a magisterial manner that suggested the audience was at an end.

  “Shall I give you my mobile number?”

  “Landline. I don’t do mobiles.” Clearly another eccentricity, which was indulged like all Charlie Fenton’s eccentricities. He flashed another smile at Lesley-Jane, then looked hard at Kenny, his lips curled with scepticism. ‘If you can come back to me in three months as a member of a London gang, you’ve got a part in the show.”

  “You’re on,” said Kenny Mountford.

  ~ * ~

  Lesley-Jane wasn’t keen on the idea. If Kenny was going to go underground, he wouldn’t be able to squire her to all the premieres, launches and first nights her ego craved. Their relationship was fine while he too had a high-profile television face, but she didn’t want to end up with a boyfriend nobody recognized. She also knew that her own work situation was precarious. Young femmes fatales in soap operas had a short shelf life. One of the scriptwriters had already hinted that her character might have a fatal car crash in store. There was a race against time for her to announce that she was leaving the show before the public heard that she’d been pushed off it. And then she’d need another series to move on to, and there weren’t currently many signs of that being offered. At such a time she’d be more than usually dependent on the reflected fame of her partner. (She had always followed the old show business advice: if you can’t be famous yourself, then make sure you go to bed with someone who is.) The last thing she wanted at that moment was for Kenny to disappear off the social radar for some months while he immersed himself in gangland culture.

  But Lesley-Jane’s remonstrations were ignored. Her boyfriend’s mind was now focused on only one thing: proving his seriousness as an actor to Charlie Fenton.

  And to do that he had to infiltrate a London gang. Which actually turned out to be surprisingly easy. He didn’t have to hang around Shepherd’s Bush Green for long before he was approached by someone with a heavy Russian accent and asked if he wanted to buy drugs. After a couple of weeks of making regular purchases of heroin (which he didn’t use but stockpiled in his bathroom cabinet), he only had to default on payments twice to be hustled into a car with tinted windows, blindfolded and taken off to meet the organization’s frighteners.

  They didn’t have to hurt him to get their money. Kenny Mountford had the cash ready with him and handed it over as soon as his blindfold was removed. He found himself seated on a chair in a windowless cellar, loomed over by the two heavies who’d snatched him and facing a thin-faced man in an expensive suit. From their conversation in the car, he’d deduced that his abductors were called Vasili and Vladimir. They addressed the thin-faced man as Fyodor. All three spoke English with a heavy accent from somewhere in the former Soviet Union.

  “So if you had the money all the time, why didn’t you pay up?” asked the man in the suit, whose effortless authority identified him as the gang’s leader.

  “Maybe he enjoys being beaten to a pulp,” suggested the heavy Kenny was pretty sure was called Vasili.

  “Maybe,” said Kenny Mountford with a cool that he’d spent three years at drama school perfecting, “but that’s not actually the reason. I just thought this was a good way of getting to meet you, Fyodor.”

  “Do you know who I am?” the man asked, intrigued.

  “I only know your name, but it doesn’t take much intelligence to work out that you’re higher up this organization than the two goons who brought me here.”

  Kenny felt the men either side of him stiffen and was aware of their fists bunching, but he remembered his concentration exercises and didn’t flinch.

  Fyodor raised a hand to pacify his enforcers. “You are right. I control the organization.”

  “And am I allowed to know what it’s called?”

  He smiled a crooked smile. “The Semfiropol Boys. From where we started our operations. Do you know where Semfiropol is?” Kenny shook his head. “
It is in the Crimea. Southern Ukraine. Near to Yalta. I assume you have not been there?” Another shake of the head. “Well, we did what we could over there, but the pickings were small, and there were a lot of... entrenched interests. Turf wars, dangerous. In London our life is easier.”

  “And how many are there in the Semfiropol Boys?”

  “Twenty, maybe thirty, it depends. Sometimes people become untrustworthy and have to be eliminated.”

  Kenny was aware of a reaction from Vasili and Vladimir. Clearly elimination was the part of the job they enjoyed.

  “And do you just deal in drugs?”

  Fyodor spread his hands wide in an encompassing gesture. “Drugs... prostitution...protection rackets...loan sharking...The Semfiropol Boys are a multifunction organization.” Then came the question that Kenny knew couldn’t be delayed much longer. “But why do you want to know this? Curiosity?”

  “More than just curiosity.”

  “Good. If it was just curiosity, I think Vasili and Vladimir would have to eliminate you straight away.” The gang boss smiled a thin smile. “They may well have to eliminate you straight away, whatever the reason for your enquiries. You could be a cop, for all we know.”

  “I can assure you I am not a cop.”

  “But that’s exactly what you would say if you were a cop.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “Mr Mountford, I am not here to chop logic with you. I am a busy man.” He looked at his watch. “I have a meeting shortly with a senior civil servant in the Home Office. He is helping me with some visa applications for members of my extended family in Semfiropol. Now please will you tell me why you are here? And why I shouldn’t just hand you straight over to Vasili and Vladimir for elimination.”

  Kenny Mountford took a deep breath. There was no doubt that he had put himself in very real danger. But, as he had that daunting thought, he couldn’t help also feeling a warm glow. Charlie Fenton would be so impressed by the lengths he had gone to in his quest for authenticity.

  “I’m here because I want to join your gang.”

  “Join the Semfiropol Boys?” asked Fyodor in astonishment. Vasili and Vladimir let out deep threatening chuckles at the very idea.

  “Yes.”

  “But why should we let you join us? As I said, you could be a cop. You could be a journalist. You could be a spy from the Odessa Reds.” The reactions from Vasili and Vladimir left Kenny in no doubt as to what Fyodor was talking about. They might sound like a breed of chicken, but the Odessa Reds were clearly a rival gang.

  “How can I prove to you that I’m none of those things? What are the qualifications for most of the people who join your gang?”

  “Most of them have family connections with me in Semfiropol which go back many generations. At the very least, most of them are Ukrainian.”

  “I can sound Ukrainian,” said Kenny, demonstrating the point. (He had made quite a study of accents at drama school.)

  His impression didn’t go down well with Vasili and Vladimir. They clearly thought he was sending them up. Two giant hands slammed down on his shoulders, while two giant fists were once again bunched.

  But again a gesture from their boss froze them before the blows made contact.

  “Anyone who wants to join the Semfiropol Boys,” said Fyodor quietly, “has to pass certain tests.”

  “A lot of tests?” asked Kenny Mountford, maintaining his nonchalance with increasing difficulty.

  The gang boss nodded. “The big one’s at the end. Not many people get that far. But if you want to have a go at one of the starting tests...”

  Kenny nodded. Fyodor leaned forward and told him what the first test was.

  ~ * ~

  Like most actors, Kenny Mountford always felt a huge surge of excitement when he got a new part. However trivial the piece, hours would be spent poring over the script, making decisions about the character’s accent and body language. The part that Fyodor had given him prompted exactly the same adrenaline rush, though in this case he had no text to work from. Kenny started reading everything he could find about the Crimean region, and Semfiropol in particular. He also tracked down recordings of Ukrainians speaking English and trained himself to imitate them.

  The new direction his career was taking still failed to raise much enthusiasm in Lesley-Jane. From an early age her main aim in life had been to be the centre of attention, so she didn’t respond well to being totally ignored by the man she was living with. But Kenny was too preoccupied with his new role to notice her disquiet.

  The first test he had been given by Fyodor was relatively easy. All he had to do was to sell drugs in Shepherd’s Bush, just like the dealer who had served as his initial introduction to the Semfiropol Boys. Apart from the work he was doing on his accent, Kenny also spent a considerable time sourcing clothes for the role, and was satisfied that the hoodie, jeans and trainers he ended up with had achieved exactly the requisite degree of shabbiness. He found it a welcome relief to be selecting his own clothes for a part, rather than having to follow the whims of some queeny Costume Designer as he would in television.

  He needn’t have bothered, though. The kind of lowlife he was peddling the drugs to didn’t even notice what he looked like. The only thing they thought about was their next fix. But for Kenny Mountford as an artist - and a potential participant in a Charlie Fenton production - it was very important that he should get every minutest detail right.

  After his first successful foray as a drug dealer, he got home early evening to find a very impatient Lesley-Jane Walden, dressed up to the nines and in a foul temper. “Where the hell have you been?” she shrieked, almost before he’d come through the door. “You know we’re meant to be at this Tom Cruise premiere in half an hour.”

  “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, get changed into something respectable and I’ll call for a cab.”

  “I don’t want to get changed.” Kenny Mountford hadn’t really formalized the idea before, but he suddenly knew that he wasn’t going to change his clothes until Charlie Fenton agreed to give him the part in his next production. He was going to immerse himself in the role of a Semfiropol Boy until that wonderful moment. “And don’t try to change my mind,” he added in his best Ukrainian accent.

  “What the hell are you talking about - and why the hell are you using that stupid voice?” demanded Lesley-Jane. “If we don’t leave in the next five minutes, we’ll have missed all the paparazzi. And if you think I’m going to be seen at a Tom Cruise premiere with someone dressed like you are, Kenny, then you’ve got another think coming!” Her face was so contorted with fury that she no longer looked even mildly pretty.

  “Listen,” Kenny continued in his Ukrainian voice, “I’ve got more important things to do than to—”

  He was interrupted by the phone ringing. Lesley-Jane turned away from him in disgust. He picked up the receiver. A seductive “Hello” came from the other end of the line. The man’s voice was vaguely familiar, but Kenny could not immediately identify it.

  “Hello,” he replied, still Ukrainian.

  The tone changed from seduction to suspicion. “Who is this?”

  Then Kenny knew. “Charlie,” he enthused, reverting to his normal voice, “how good to hear you.”

  At the other end of the phone Charlie Fenton sounded slightly thrown. “Is that Kenny?”

  “Yes. What can I do for you?”

  The director still didn’t sound his usual confident self as he stuttered out a reply. “Oh, I just... I was... um...” Then, sounding more assured, he said, “I just wanted to check how you were getting on with your infiltration process.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to be in touch for three months.”

  “No, I, er, um... I changed my mind.”

  “Well, in answer to your question, Charlie, my infiltration is going very well. I’m already working for a gang.”

  “That’s good.”
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br />   “They’re Ukrainian,” he went on, reassuming the accent to illustrate his point. “And, actually, it’s good you’ve rung, because there’s something I wanted to ask you...”

  “What’s that?”

  “How deep do you think I should go into this character I’m playing?”

  “As deep as possible, Kenny.” With something of his old pomposity, the director went on: “My style of theatre involves the participants in total immersion in their characters.”

  “I’m glad you said that, because I’ve been wondering whether I should actually be living in my house while I’m doing this preparation work. A Ukrainian gangster wouldn’t live in a Notting Hill house like mine, would he?”

  “No, he certainly wouldn’t.”