A Killing Place in the Sun

by Robert F Barker

  As the rest of the team trooped back to their basement quarters, for the most part heads down, lest they be singled out by their boss’s accusing glare - they all knew how he hated failure - Podruznig came forward to stand next to his second-in-command. As he spoke, his gaze stayed on the hills, as if his tormentor might yet choose to expose himself.

  'So what am I supposed to do now, Uri?' he growled. Lantzeff sensed the struggle for control taking place within him. 'Am I supposed to hide away inside my own house, while this PIZDA decides whether to put a bullet in me? Or my wife? My daughter even?'

  Lantzeff chose his words carefully. 'I will find him Valerik, I promise you. I will not rest until this man is dealt with. He will regret he ever thought to challenge you.'

  Podruznig turned to him, eyes still manic, face contorted. 'Then do it Uri. But this time make sure it is done in a way that sends out a message. I want anyone who thinks they can stand up to me to know that no one, but no one, opposes Valerik Podruznig.'

  Lantzeff nodded. 'Do not worry Valerik, they will.'

  The two men turned to head back to the house. But as they passed the X7 - still parked at the bottom of the steps - a loud 'CLANG' resonated around the compound and the car shook. They both whirled round to face the hills, now darkening in the evening gloom.

  Like a wounded animal defying a would-be predator, Podruznig let out a scream that, seconds later, would bring everyone running out again to see what new outrage had occurred.

  'BASTAAAAARRRRD.'

  CHAPTER 22

  For many women, Saturday morning is a time for dressing up and heading to the shops. And not just to shop. Meeting friends. Taking coffee. Gossiping. They are now all part of, ‘The Shopping Experience.’

  To this end, Pafos’s Kings Avenue Mall, on the big roundabout heading down towards the harbour area, is as glitzy, modern, and designer-label stuffed as any to be found in towns and cities all over Europe. Nevertheless, many Pafos women - at least those who prefer something more ‘traditional’ - have always preferred the Old Town and the narrow streets surrounding the bustling Market. Here, the fashion stores are complimented by quaint cafes, restaurants, and artisan shops and stalls that cater for all tastes - locals, ex-pats, and tourists alike. In recent years the area has been the focus of major redevelopment and modernisation, making it more popular than ever.

  Scorpios, next door to the Market and with a magnificent view out over Paphos Bay, provides a carefully-nurtured mix of them all. By this means, its wily owner, Andreas, an avuncular Cypriot whose slim frame recalls the National-Team sprinter he once was, ensures that whatever the season, day of week or weather, he does brisk business.

  This Saturday morning was no exception. By mid-morning, shoppers and tourists alike were ready for a break. Andreas, his two daughters and the young Polish waitress he’d recently taken on, were being run off their feet. Very much ‘hands-on’ when it comes to looking after his customers, Andreas’s shirt was already sweat-stained, a fact that some tourists find sufficiently off-putting to wrinkle their noses, but bothers the regulars not at all.

  As he weaved his way between the tightly-packed tables, Andreas held aloft the several breakfasts-with-chips he was taking to the bunch of Brits who had taken up residence on the shaded veranda. It was their third round of orders, but while it was good for business, they were starting to become annoyingly loud. Enough, at least, for Andreas to hope they would move on as soon as they’d eaten.

  Glancing at the two tables that occupied the prime spot in front of the sliding picture window through which a gentle breeze always blows, Andreas allowed himself an uncharacteristic frown. The group of men who had arrived with the well-dressed Russian woman, her friend and their children, were up to their usual tricks.

  Regular Saturday-morning customers, the party always presented Andreas with a quandary. Whilst the women spent freely enough and were no more trouble than any other customers - less so in many respects - their male chaperones, usually four in number as today, were invariably surly. Either that or they were so over-familiar with Andreas’s girls as to be offensive - which, in a place like Scorpios, takes some doing. But what annoyed Andreas the most, apart from the fact the men only ever drank one coffee and water apiece however long the women stayed, was the way that, as soon as they arrived, they enforced an invisible ‘cordon’ around whatever table the women and children settled at, muscling other customers aside or using their considerable statures to ‘encourage’ them to adjust their seating arrangements - sometimes several times - until the required, “safe-distance” was achieved.

  Andreas still wasn’t entirely certain who the good-looking, but to his mind overly-made-up, blond was. She and her young daughter were clearly the focus of the men’s attention. And though she did her best to pretend they weren’t there, it was obvious she was used to having minders around, never failing to consult with them whenever she wished to ‘powder her nose’ which, by Andreas’s reckoning, usually occurred at least three times during their stay.

  When they first started coming in, Andreas had wondered if she was some sort of media celebrity - a film or pop star, or the wife of some famous footballer. But when he realised she was Russian - and not one that his daughters recognised from the pages of the gossip magazines they read endlessly - he put things together. Cyprus was known for its sympathetic tax regime, especially where foreign money was concerned. And while quite a few ‘celebrities’ did indeed have homes around and about - large and luxurious ones - so did many ‘businessmen’. In particular, Andreas was aware that the new breed of Russians, especially those from the Black Sea areas, was attracted to the island in increasing numbers. Andreas had eventually concluded she must be married to one of them. Once he did so, he knew he had no choice but to put up with the disruption they brought. The last thing he wanted was to get on the wrong side of those sorts of people.

  'They want more coffee,' a voice chirped from the men’s table as Andreas passed on his way back to the kitchen. He nodded to show he’d heard but didn’t respond further. He hated such rudeness. At least the Brits were usually cheerful, and said, ‘please’.

  As he slipped behind the bar - the coffee-range was playing up again - he saw the way Melitza, his youngest, was staring daggers at the men and was surprised. Of them all, she was usually the most irrepressibly cheery.

  'Something wrong, Chicken?'

  She showed a scowling face. 'The one with the beard and that horrible knife tattoo on his cheek. He felt my bum when I walked past. He has done it before, the pig.'

  At once Andreas felt the familiar anger rising within him. It was made worse by the sure knowledge there was little he could do to stop such abuse, short of risking his restaurant being fire-bombed one night. And while his daughters were wise enough to understand why their father had no choice but to let a certain level of ‘mistreatment’ go - though there were limits and they knew he was no coward - it didn’t make matters any easier.

  'I am sorry,' Andreas said to his daughter. 'Stay away from them. I will serve them from now on.'

  'It is alright Papa, I am used to it. You look after our other customers. They’ve already seen off the German family that was at the table next to them.'

  Prompted by her insight, Andreas looked out over the bar, checking how his other patrons were reacting. He had seen the wary glances from some as the party of Russians settled themselves. But apart from the ginger-haired man with the weather-beaten face and sunglasses sitting in the corner on his own, most seemed to have now lost interest. The man had arrived some thirty minutes before. In that time he had ordered two Cyprus coffees - ‘plenty of sugar’ - while reading his paper and making calls on his mobile. Long experience had taught Andreas to always keep a discreet eye on those who do not fit the usual customer profile. He had noticed how the man’s gaze kept turning to the Russian women, as well as their minders.

  Andreas gave his daughter a reassuring smile, then leaned sideways and kissed her cheek. Seventeen
, and already she knew the realities of managing a business such as this. Just as well. With no brothers, the day would come when she and her sister would have to run things for themselves. As he began to shoot steam through to clear valves, he even managed a chuckle. 'Maybe you should put up that sign again.'

  Several Saturdays before, Melitza and her sister had waited until they’d seen the party approaching before putting a sign up in the bar they had prepared without Andreas’s knowledge. Written in Greek, it read, 'NO RUSSIANS'. Andreas didn’t notice until the group was about to walk in, and only just managed to snatch it down before they would have seen it - though he doubted any of them could read Greek. He hadn’t been amused, though they’d joked about it since. He continued. 'Only this time you’d better mention men with beards and tatt-.'

  Melitza’s warning hiss stopped him just in time and he looked up to see the woman approaching, the bearded man following.

  As was the routine, she stopped at the door to the stairs leading up to the toilets while the man went up to check. What did they think, Andreas mused, as the man clumped up the stairs? That kidnappers lurk in places such as this? As she waited, she flashed Andreas the smile that always reminded him of the sort he used to get from the hostesses when, during his days on the athletics team, a heavy day’s training was invariably followed by a crawl around Nicosia’s bars and over-priced nightclubs. Nevertheless he made a point of returning it. He didn’t have a problem with her. Just her minders.

  Her smile vanished as the man returned from his scouting mission and nodded to her, stepping aside so she could squeeze passed his ample frame.

  As he listened to her mounting the stairs, Andreas suddenly realised the man was glowering at him. He wasn’t sure whether it was because he had seen them exchange smiles - such a crime - or had caught Andreas’s reference to beards after all. Either way, Andreas made a point of returning the stare just long enough to convey the fact he wasn’t intimidated, before turning away to see to the coffees. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

  Marianna Podruznig closed the outer door to the ladies behind her. As she turned, a draught from somewhere blew through the coiffure she’d had done at no little cost, earlier that morning. It caused a lock of hair to stray across her cheek, prompting an irritated, 'Tch.' Her regular eight o’clock slot at Revolution, the popular salon in Messogi run by London-trained Raz, was now an essential pre-requisite to her Saturday morning shopping trips, just as it had been in Moscow, before she met Valerik. As back then, she still liked to look her best when out in public, though she was conscious that such bouts of freedom were increasingly rare these days. She turned to the mirror.

  But as she started to tease the wanderer back in place, another breeze blew - from above she now realised. Anxious in case Raz’s best efforts were about to be undone, she looked up. A skylight was wide open, the sun shining through. Like every day this time of year, it was stiflingly hot. In the half-hour since her previous visit, Andreas must have opened it to let some air in. Keen to finish before any more damage was done, she turned and put out a hand to push open the door to the single cubicle.

  It happened so fast, she couldn’t even follow the blur of action, let alone scream for help.

  As her fingers touched the door’s surface it flew back and a figure leaped at her from the cubicle’s depths. She was barely conscious of strong hands spinning her round, a hardened hand clamping over her mouth, an arm wrapping tightly round her waist, half lifting her so she had no purchase to lever against as she struggled, though she knew at once resisting would be useless.

  He was strong. Very strong.

  CHAPTER 23

  Marianna knew at once what was in store for her. In that instant the fears she had harboured for so long rose to the surface, painting a story that had only one ending. The feeling of regret was overwhelming. She would never see Sasha again. She had always known this day may come, eventually.

  In the few short weeks of courtship, such as it was, before she and Valerik married, Marianna had already begun to suspect that being wed to the suave Russian may not be the risk-free enterprise she imagined when he started wooing her with promises of a life of luxury, free from the anxieties that beset most ordinary married couples. By their three-month anniversary, those doubts had hardened to certainty, and Marianna was fully aware of the extent of the mistake she had made.

  Not only did Valerik’s protective attitude towards her change almost entirely in that surprisingly short time, out went any pretence at romance as well. The flowers, the gifts, the jewels. All he needed, she soon realised, was her presence in bed, or wherever else he decided she should open her legs for him when the other pleasures he craved were, for some reason, denied him. Worse even than that was the realisation that she was set to live the rest of her life - at least until such time as he tired of her and turned her in for someone younger - as a virtual prisoner.

  Strangely, given how she hated the brutish Siberian, Uri, and felt uncomfortable whenever he was around, it was he who first opened her eyes to the realities of her position. It was Uri who pointed out that by marrying Valerik, she had placed herself in jeopardy so great it would, in his words, ‘be a miracle’ if she survived to see her thirtieth birthday. She was then in her eighteenth year. And it was Uri who, that day soon after Sasha was born, when she had objected to his cloying attentions and those of his ape-like companions, who sat her down - pushed would be a better description - and spelt things out to her. Until then, she had been blind as to the the extent to which Valerik’s position of power was founded as much on fear, as on the rubles that flowed from the myriad enterprises he seemed to have hands in. Nor had she realised that the risks Valerik, and by extension she, now faced, were not just of the sort associated with the plush boardrooms and corporate headquarters she visited on those occasions Valerik wanted to display her to his ‘business’ colleagues. As Uri appeared to take delight in telling her as she cowered on the sofa that day, cradling baby-Sasha in her arms, the numbing fear growing, the far greater risk was from those who would come in the dead of night. Or whilst they were driving somewhere, eating out at some restaurant or attending some function where Valerik had decided it was more important he be seen at with his wife on his arm, rather than whichever ingénue was current flavour of the month.

  Bomb, bullet, knife. Kidnap, murder rape. Not just her, but Sasha as well. This was the reality Uri awakened her to that day. And it was Uri who made clear that never again would she leave the house without a posse of guards to accompany her wherever she went - even to the toilet. They would ensure that whatever she and Sasha did, she would never lead the life she had imagined would be hers when she agreed to wed the oh-so-charming suitor who set his sights on her all those years ago and wouldn’t give up until she forswore her mother’s sound advice and said, 'Yes.'

  And now it was happening. Just as Uri had said it would. Without warning, from nowhere. In the very place in fact she had come to look forward to as the once-a-week antidote to the unremitting bleakness of her marriage. A place where, taking coffee with her only real friend Ria, watching Sasha playing and giggling with Ria’s daughter, Anna, she had felt able - for only an hour or so each week admittedly but better than nothing - to experience something close to ‘normality’.

  All this flashed through Marianna’s brain as she waited for the blade she was sure would soon come. In the cubicle’s mirror, through glazed, panicked eyes, she could just make out the two of them, locked together like limpets, him standing behind her, hand over her face, squeezing, not too hard but enough to stifle any sound that might come from her throat, his other arm wrapped tight about her waist, restraining her. She couldn’t see any knife yet, nevertheless she was sure it was there, it had to be. She knew it could not be a kidnap. Strong though he clearly was, even he would not be able to lift her through the skylight, not without running the risk of her screaming her lungs out. And escaping with her down the stairs where they a
ll waited, was not an option.

  Which left only murder or, if he was quick, rape. Or both.

  Even as the awful realisation hit her, she was amazed by the way her mind was still able to work in the face of such horror. Never having been trained to react otherwise and coming from a simple background, Marianna had always assumed that if the worst ever happened and she found herself in such a position, she would panic to the point where she would simply stop functioning. She had imagined herself, crumbling into a whimpering mass of pathetic womanhood, begging to be spared, more especially, for her daughter to be spared. But Sasha was safe downstairs, watched over by men who, whilst they often frightened even her, Marianne knew would never allow anything to happen to their boss’s only daughter. Fear alone would see to that.

  It was this knowledge Marianna now realised - that her daughter was safe and not about to suffer the same fate as herself - that stalled her panicking. And not just that. As she waited for him to make his move, she realised that not only was she not scared by the thought of what this man would do to her. In some way she could not fully comprehend, she actually welcomed it. It would be painful of course, of that she was sure. But after all the years of abuse, humiliation and torture, mental as well as physical, of living life as a virtual prisoner, cut off from her family and friends, not able to bring up her daughter in the way her instincts told her was right - a material want for nothing is no substitute for the gift of two parents who love each other - death, even a painful one, would be a release of sorts. With that thought, Marianna stopped struggling, though she had barely been aware she was, and waited for the knife to do its work.

  'I said, do you understand me?'

  The voice sounded, soft and low in her ear, already strangely familiar. But how can that be? He was speaking English. Good English, without any accent she recognised. She didn’t know anyone who spoke like that. As the voice came again - 'Answer me. Do you understand?' - she suddenly realised that all the time she had been struggling, musing on what was about to happen and why, words had been sounding in her ear. Which was why, when the voice finally registered it sounded familiar. Soft, yet no less forceful, he had been urging her to calm down, to stop struggling. Telling her he was not going to hurt her, or her child. Had he said something about just wanting to talk, or was that just the imaginings of a hysterical soon-to-be victim? Yet she didn’t think she was hysterical.