by R. J. Dillon
Inside, a full house of heavy metal fans packed into a cavernous ground floor; a long bar running its full length, a small stage to the right. Skirting round the crowd they checked their route, bumped and barged as a band crashed through its repertoire. One way led to the toilets another door had PRIVATE STAFF ONLY emblazoned across it, and to Nick’s relief it was neither locked nor had anyone waiting on the other side. Danny led, straining upwards to see how the stairs turned, his neck twisted right. At the first floor landing they stopped, inserting ear defenders, double checking their kit, Nick drawing the Mossberg from its scabbard inside his jacket.
Moving forward with Danny in front, Nick covering their backs, they halted outside the only door showing a light underneath it and took up positions either side of its frame. Using his fingers to count down to three, Danny kicked the door in, took out a pin from a mini-bang stun grenade and rolled it in. Shielding their faces from the detonated charge, Nick and Danny waited a couple of seconds for the smoke to ease. Nick was first in, kicking over a card table, grabbing hold of Ricky Penda’s collar before flinging him across to Danny at the door. One of the poker players picked himself smartly up, but decided he wasn’t that brave as Nick levelled the Mossberg at his midriff before backing out. Taking hold of Ricky’s arm Danny ran him to a fire escape door, banged the bar open and pushed one dazed Ricky Penda out into the night. Clattering down the fire escape behind them, Nick picked up speed as he ran for the car. Opening up the BMW, Danny had to contend with Ricky’s kicking and flailing, which only stopped after Nick rammed him into the door.
‘You’re in serious trouble,’ Nick yelled in his face, snatching at his white shirt. ‘I hate liars.’ He shook him, ripping off a handful of buttons. ‘Thought you were big and smart,’ Nick shouted, slapping Ricky hard as Danny tipped the seat forward. Grabbing Ricky’s collar, Nick threw him head first into the back.
‘A misunderstanding,’ Ricky complained through gritted teeth, a trickle of blood running down his chin from his ruptured lip. He was close to throwing up, his guts heaving worse than when he’d drunk far too much champagne at the Derby.
‘No… It’s your big mistake.’ Nick slammed the seat on Ricky’s legs as he got in, making him flinch and howl again. Crunched up, his fierce eyes never moved from Nick as Danny put the BMW into gear and moved off. Jolted by the sudden acceleration of the car, Ricky fell back and cracked his head on the side pillar.
Danny selected a route by the river, keeping his speed average, taking no chances with a guest on-board.
‘Where we going?’ Ricky demanded, craning his neck as the street lights faded behind them.
At Lovell’s Wharf Danny kept the engine running as Nick jumped out, and with a pair of bolt cutters from the boot snapped the chain holding the gates together. Waving the BMW in, Nick jammed the gates closed, winding the severed chain back through. Parking close to a ruined double-storey office, all of its windows smashed, Danny turned off the engine and sat back.
Leaving the Mossberg with Danny, Nick got into the back. ‘Isn’t this cosy,’ he said, looking at Ricky. ‘Can’t see Galina anywhere, Ricky, this is where she came, working for Mr. Lovell, wasn’t it?’
‘I know my human rights,’ Ricky said, lamely, trying to shift away from Nick.
‘You’re not close to being human and don’t qualify,’ Nick advised him quite reasonably. ‘I think it’s going to be a long night,’ he said to Danny.
Trying a different defence Ricky tried menace. ‘I’m going to have my friends make a mess of you two jokers,’ he vowed.
Danny pointed the Mossberg at Ricky’s crotch. ‘Your friends are going to find it difficult to talk to you when you’re in two pieces,’ he politely informed him.
‘Where is she?’ Nick slapped the back of the seat. Ricky blinked and huddled tighter, one eye trying to lock onto a landmark, find a way home.
‘Who the hell are you, coz that ain’t no ordinary sawn-off?’
‘Your worst nightmare,’ said Danny.
Ricky actually laughed, foolishly thinking Danny was a comedian.
‘He doesn’t think we’re serious,’ Danny added.
Hardly seeming to move, Nick delivered a precise controlled punch to Ricky’s throat which sent him across the back seat. Gasping, Ricky scratched at his window trying to claw his way out, his other hand gripping his throat.
‘Now, you were about to tell me something, Ricky,’ Nick reminded him as Danny turned on the interior light so a soft radiance bridged the night. ‘From the top, don’t think about leaving anything out or sparing our blushes.’
Still clutching his throat Ricky offered a humble gruff, ‘that’s right, but it’s not what it appears, okay,’ he complained, almost in a whisper.
‘I’m waiting,’ said Nick.
Tinted by the interior light Ricky had shrunk to an old man. ‘I’ve had to work hard to get where I am,’ he confessed.
‘Don’t we all,’ said Nick. ‘Galina, where is she?’ Nick shook his head, raised his fist and Ricky held up his hands.
‘Okay, okay,’ he promised. ‘She came to work for me, I should have told you that, did some turns at the club.’
Dropping his fist Nick waited for Ricky to continue. ‘And?’ Nick swallowed his irritation.
Reluctant to complete his narrative it took Danny raising the Mossberg to persuade him to take up his story once more.
‘She walked in, straight out of the blue.’ And Ricky pointed to the sky even though it was night. ‘Did an audition and I gave her a job.’
‘So where is she?’
Looking between the Mossberg and Nick’s fists, Ricky Penda chose his answer carefully.
Ricky swallowed hard, but rather than being a convivial storyteller he went back on the defensive. ‘Gone,’ he said quietly, ‘she’s gone, okay.’
‘Waste him, he’s no use to us,’ Nick decided and Danny started to open the BMW’s door.
‘Okay…okay,’ Ricky pleaded, turning his attention to Nick who nodded for Danny to close the door. ‘She was class, okay, Galina was top drawer material, a good looker and a high earner but she had attitude, know what I mean.’
Nick and Danny both shook their heads inviting Ricky to explain.
‘Good with clients, give ‘em what they want, got a name for herself, and when some of the City boys started asking for her she thought she was a bleedin’ celebrity. Except she couldn’t satisfy her craving and I thought she’s going to self-destruct,’ explained Ricky with a show of false compassion.
‘She dead?’ Nick asked, his voice harsh, ‘that what you’re trying to say?’
‘No…no…,’ Ricky said desperately, ‘Galina now works in a different department of my operation,’ he said as though Nick and Danny were now his two best business associates.
Knowing that Ricky might be taking them on another wild ramble, Nick had heard enough. ‘This is your last, one and only chance to redeem yourself.’
‘I own a few properties, put the girls who give me problems in ‘em, bottom end of the market,’ offered Ricky.
‘Where?’ Nick yelled.
Glancing between Danny and Nick as though he needed to convince himself of his final options, Ricky nodded. ‘Okay, sure,’ he agreed and spoke fast, as though sitting an oral exam and he knew the answer off by heart. ‘Ashington Grove, Flat 3A.’
Snatching Ricky’s collar Nick hauled him forwards. ‘You mention a word of this,’ Nick said, ‘and we’re coming back to see you.’
‘Lips sealed, God’s my honour,’ promised Ricky seeming satisfied.
Pleased with himself he relaxed, another crisis comfortably dealt with by Ricky Penda and he was lost in his own world of admiration when Nick swung fast and laid him out cold.
Cautiously opening one eye then his other, Ricky Penda came slowly around, freezing; his head suffering a storm, worse than if he’d been knocking back Tequila. The pair of slags had dumped him in the old offices, well how bleedin’ decent because he was already plan
ning on meeting them again, Ricky and his boys delivering some proper payback. He didn’t care who they worked for… they’d have their own bleedin’ nightmare, and Ricky would enjoy making ‘em talk. As for the scroat who punched him, he’d get it first.
One thing Ricky knew, they weren’t interested in his wallet, snug in his jacket, or his watch still on his wrist, but they had taken his phone, the pair of slags. His logic, never his strongest attribute was quite hazy; which may have led Ricky to view his options of getting home as risking going out through the gates where the slags might be waiting, or taking a short cut along the river, coming up somewhere away from the wharf. Not fancying meeting the slags so soon, Ricky opted for a river front journey, scrambling out over smashed furniture strewn across the wrecked office floor. Standing on the concrete wharf where it butted the Thames, Ricky peered at the muddy flats, made up his mind and set off.
None of these relevant detail ever found its way into the River Police report, which concerned itself only on how its officers based at Wapping recovered Richard Harry Penda’s body from the mouth of Greenland Dock, where it had been carried by the flood tide, trapped in a vicious eddy.
Nine
Face to Face with Galina Myla
London, November
Ashington Grove was in Westcombe Park, a Victorian house converted into flats for tenants with no prospect of life ever getting better. Nick had seen squats with more care lavished on them, he decided buzzing Flat 3A’s intercom. Above it a strip of scruffy card declared the flat’s occupant to be ‘Pallion’. A male voice in a thick Newcastle accent responded, wanting to know who was calling.
‘For Galina,’ said Nick.
After a pause Pallion snapped that he’d have to come back in half an hour, Galina was busy. Holding his finger on the intercom, Nick set off a constant buzzing.
‘Piss off if you like your face the way it is.’
Nick, shaking his head pressed harder on the intercom, standing to one side of the door, Danny taking the other. Nick couldn’t retain the hate any longer; a corrosive slowly dripping onto his nerves, eroding his patience.
Emerging at trot a heavyset Geordie in his late twenties, a front door key on a string around his neck, his neat pale blue tracksuit complemented by immaculate white trainers. He introduced himself with a wild swing at Nick. Parrying the punch, Nick landed one rapid blow then another, kicking Pallion inside, leaving him on his knees. Twisting one of Pallion’s arms behind his back, Nick grabbed his short hair, smacking his face into the banister until he was out cold. Removing the key from around Pallion’s neck, Danny set the pace as they double timed upstairs.
At a plywood-faced door Danny worked the key slowly into the lock, Nick gripping the handle. With a nod, Danny carefully twisted the key in its barrel as Nick let them in. Stale, stinking, not cleaned for years, inside was a mess, a dump. Moving softly, they crossed to two panelled doors side by side. Leaning forward listening, Danny pointed to a door which Nick without prompting kicked open.
The bedroom was just as bad, a small girl’s dream gone sour. And there on a double bed, Galina Myla rising and falling as she straddled a fat client. Never missing a stroke she seemed surreally untroubled, as though having her door taken off its hinges was an everyday event. Only when Nick took hold of her arm, dragging her off the punter did she react, locking eyes with Nick as she slithered under a dirty sheet for protection.
‘I haven’t finished,’ protested the punter, struggling to sit up, groping for his pants. ‘I paid this bitch for half an hour.’
Danny used both hands locked together in a backhanded punch to the punter’s belly, doubling him up. Spilling him off the bed, he sent him crashing into a bedside cabinet. Scared, Galina began a scream that Nick reduced to a low keening wail by shouting at her in Russian to be quiet. Pushing and kicking, Danny herded her client to the door warning him that if he ever came back, Danny would surely make him hurt some more.
‘You have a choice, Galina Myla,’ Nick severely informed her in Russian, ‘to tell me the truth or face serious punishment.’
Red eyed and craving for a fix, she started yelling insults and oaths at Nick in Russian with the sheet yanked up at her neck. Taking hold of her wrists Nick shook her hard until Galina Myla was calm.
‘Someone gave you a phone as a present? Who gave you the phone?’ Nick continued in Russian.
Looking bemused, her eyes darting to the door expecting Ricky’s minder to reappear, Nick had to shout the question in his best official voice. Jumping, pulling the sheet tighter she shook and trembled.
‘My mother did, on a visit, but I can’t remember when. Is my mother in trouble?’ She began crying.
‘Your mother could be in very grave trouble Galina Myla,’ Nick said, ‘It all depends if you tell me the truth.’
‘I will do my best,’ she vowed.
‘Do you remember a neighbour from your Moscow block, Vasily Lubov?’ To which Galina nodded. ‘Did Lubov send anything with your mother for you to look after?’ Galina nodded again. ‘Tell me, Galina Myla, tell me all about it,’ insisted Nick.
And Galina in a slight hesitant and fumbling voice did as the stranger directed her. Her mother is so proud of her only daughter working in London that she visits whenever she can, the last time must have been in October. Only Galina doesn’t let her see her daughter this way; she makes an effort, dresses up, meets in the hotel where her mother stays. Her mother asked if she remembered Lubov from across the landing and Galina did.
Imagine, her mother told her; imagine the strangest thing my little Galina. As she was leaving for London her mother bumped into Lubov on the stairs. Lubov was excited, shaking, asking her if she could do him a big favour, take this present to London for him, he was meant to send it to his wife’s niece studying in London but he simply forgot. If she leaves it with her daughter Galina, he’ll make arrangements for it to be collected. He even has a phone her daughter can have; free, a gift for her assistance, and someone will call the daughter on the new phone to arrange for the collection.
But her mother was not sure if she should inconvenience Galina with unnecessary tasks. Galina has a very good job, a busy one, she explained, her daughter is responsible for the infants of a very wealthy man. Lubov said he understood, told her mother not to worry, he’d still keep a watch over her place while she’s away. ‘My mother felt bad, so she accepted the phone and present.’
‘Where is the present Galina?’
How many times she’d rehearsed her words Nick couldn’t tell, but she delivered them with plain conviction.
‘No one called immediately, no one came,’ she cried, ‘I thought no one wanted it, so I opened the gift, it was an iPod and I liked it, but not the music or the other things on it.’
‘What things, Galina Myla, what besides music was on it?’
‘Files, maybe, but I can’t be sure. I didn’t know if they were important so I copied them onto a laptop, put them into an old folder.’
‘And where is the laptop? What folder did you copy them to?’
‘It is my laptop, the file was for old nursery accounts from the house of Cheboksary.’
‘Where is the laptop?’
‘It is gone,’ she wept. ‘Someone rang on the phone asking about the present.’
‘Who rang?’
‘He spoke in Russian but I knew he was English,’ she admitted, crying. ‘He knew who I was, where I lived in Moscow and said he was a friend of Lubov and he was coming to collect the present. I was scared, I had opened the present so I had to pretend that the laptop was the present.’
‘And did he come and collect it?’
‘The next day, he made me meet him on a bridge, he was a tall man, had a ponytail, walked with a limp and he took my laptop.’
‘Did you look at these files?’ Nick wondered.
‘No, they did not interest me,’ she said and burst into tears again, ‘Will you send my mother to prison for what I have done? Were they important government
files?’ Galina sobbed.
‘Yes, Galina Myla, they were very important government files,’ Nick told her. ‘Where are the phone and iPod?’
‘I needed money, I have sold them.’
For a good few minutes Nick studied her, glanced round at the pit where she was forced to work and sleep. ‘Get dressed, Galina Myla, put on your best clothes, you are going home to your mother.’ And Nick didn’t care how Rossan arranged it; he’d pay for the flight himself if he had to, even for a stay in a Moscow clinic, because he was determined that someone would come out of this mess with a chance.
• • •
There were no other cars ahead and no headlights behind. What remained of the dawn retreated along the road in front of Nick, dragging the remainder of the night with it. A conifer plantation sat on either side of the road, high and dark, a tunnel that he never broke out of. Except for the firebreaks and the natural woodland left to rot, its branches torn flat in defeat. Every now and then he glimpsed a piece of the same lake, grey as slate with boats tethered until spring. Esthwaite Water he remembered. He had watched his mirror all the way from the motorway and nothing rolled onto the ferry after him but a haggard Land Rover with a trailer full of sheep. Yet he still drove with caution, feeling the car buck in the wind.
The road was narrow, single track, dropping out of sight as rapidly as it climbed. On distant peaks there was snow and it might have been Switzerland or Germany, only the fells were too English, too rugged, not awesome enough; just high slopes weeping scree and forest into the valley and lake below. Then there were the farms, tucked low with gritty names and twin power cables on creosote poles feeding them the modern world. He recalled a sign too. Only it was nothing more than a decrepit plank shedding its paint, and Nick saw it far too late. Reversing, he followed a flaking arrow up a rough track; it is where old agents come to die, he thought, and I am one of them.
