Janine didn’t need to be told twice. She ran out of the flat fast.
Golding grabbed Lucas’s hair and dragged him out of his seat. It was a brave effort and he was gasping for air by the time he had finished. Lucas was kneeling on the floor now, his dressing gown wide open and his fleshy body in full view.
Golding kicked him a few times, hard body blows that sounded muffled against the mass of sagging skin.
‘
Who is the distributor?
’ he spat.
‘I am! I am doing it! That’s why the films are all in here. I have the masters. Now please - will you let me get up? Let me get up . . .’
Golding looked at Kate. ‘What do you think, ma’am?’
‘I think he is lying,’ Kate said coldly. ‘He is too fat and too stupid to do this alone. And, what’s more, the word is he never leaves this flat. So, I am asking you one more time, Browning. Who is the distributor?’
Golding pulled back his foot and Lucas realised that he was about to get even more badly beaten.
He put up his arms and cried out. ‘I can’t tell you! Please, they are too dangerous . . .’
Kate sighed heavily. ‘I really am getting fed up with you. Now you better tell me what I want to know.’
He looked at her imploringly; his mouth was bleeding profusely and his broken teeth were extremely painful. Kate slapped him hard across the face.
‘I want to know and I want to know now, or so help me God I will let my colleague go to town on you - and believe me when I say he is aching to take you out of the ball game.’
‘I AM HURTING!’
His voice was a loud scream and Kate laughed. ‘Only you can stop the hurt.’
Golding punched him hard, knocking him backwards so that he was half lying against his chair. Blood was pouring from the big man’s mouth and nose and he was groaning loudly. The extreme pain was making him faint.
As Golding prodded him gently with his foot, warning him of the beating to come, he screamed out: ‘It’s the Russians! I am working with the Russians! They have the edge with all this. They have the contacts and they have the technology.’
Kate stared at him in abject disbelief. ‘What Russians?’
He was crying now, snot and blood running down his face.
‘Boris Stravinski. He works out of Soho. I met him through Barker ages ago. When this opportunity came up I thought of him. He was up for it, the money is phenomenal.’
Kate’s head was reeling at what he was saying.
She put in another film. This time it was full of little children she didn’t know.
‘You have quite a network of children, Mr Browning. Tell me this: is Suzy Harrington involved with them as well?’ Her voice was dead-sounding now; she was on auto-pilot.
He nodded.
Golding looked at the screen and sighed.
Then the kicking really started.
Willy was in the middle of a field and he was sweating. Taking off his jacket, he placed it carefully on the grass verge and began digging again. He was over in East Hanningfield, Essex, in a field owned by one of his old mates - only the man didn’t know he was visiting.
After a few minutes more he uncovered an oilskin. Kneeling down, he dragged a heavy bundle from the hole. He cleared off the worst of the dirt and opened the oilskin. Inside was a small arsenal of weapons.
Willy removed a pump-action shotgun and cradled it gently in his hands. It was a favoured weapon, a Winchester - he had cut it down a few years previously. At short range it would take out three people at a time.
He wrapped up the other guns and replaced them in the ground. As he filled in their shallow grave he was humming to himself. Patrick needed help and he needed it soon. Boris had pissed them all off too much. Now Willy was going to do what Patrick would have done in his place.
He was going to take them all out in one fell swoop.
Willy carefully rewrapped the Winchester and walked back to his car. Placing his jacket on the passenger seat, he tidied himself up as best he could and made his way to Maureen’s house.
He was looking forward to his job. Seeing Patrick lying in the bed unable to move properly had set off something in his brain. Patrick couldn’t do the deed, but there was nothing to stop him doing it.
He had thought it through carefully, because if he got a capture, he was putting Maureen on the line. He would be looking at hard time - seriously hard time.
But Patrick would do the same for him. He knew that as well as he knew his own name. They were real mates. And real mates didn’t come along very often.
That Boris needed to be taken out once and for all. Willy Gabney had decided that he was the man to do just that.
This was personal, as well as business. He was sure Boris would understand the logic of that.
He was still humming as he drove along the A13 back to Maureen, Duane and the good life.
Chapter Thirty
Marcel Jackson was handsome in a skinny, sharp-faced way. He kept his Jamaican ancestry evident, his dreadlocks and ever-present joint making him feel like he was a Brutha. In fact, his accent was forced and he had had a respectable upbringing by religious and hard-working parents.
Marcel had gone to university, studied Economics and Sociology, come out and trained as an accountant, then had decided there was more money to be made without the hag of actually working. He had started dope dealing and soon gravitated to pimping. Nowadays he drove a top-of-the-range car, smoked only the best weed and had a very high sexual drive. All in all he was a natural-born pimp. His mother still thought he was an accountant.
Marcel wasn’t a great believer in work as such; he had no respect for the women he dealt with and liked to spend the money they brought in as and when he got his hands on it. Consequently he was weighed down with gold, even replacing some teeth with ones made of gold. He slept only infrequently after indulging in high-class pharmaceuticals.
He had sex as often as possible with as many different women as possible, and had fathered six children to his knowledge. He lived part-time with a white girl called Leona, who was a graduate and worked in advertising. They had a young son called Marcus and the kind of relationship most men dreamed of. She asked for nothing, neither his money nor his time. She too lived her own life. He supplied her with a bit of puff and a few Es for her weekend outings.
All in all, life was good.
As he tripped up the stairs to Lucas’s flat Marcel was humming. Relighting his joint, he strolled through the open door - then stood still in amazement as he entered the lounge and saw the battered body of Lucas on the floor, and a good-looking woman and a younger man going through his video collection.
Kate smiled a welcome. ‘And what can we do for you?’ Lucas moaned softly. Through the bloody pulp of his face, his eyes were beseeching Marcel to help him. But Marcel, being the type who covered his own arse and no one else’s, turned around and walked straight back out of the door.
As he started his car up, he was shaking his head in wonderment. Lucas had been an accident waiting to happen for years. Marcel had told him over and over the kids were wrong. Older girls already on the game were one thing, but even Marcel balked at the use of kids. It was a bone of contention between them.
In a way he was glad that Lucas had had his capture. Whoever those two people were they were serious about what they were doing. He wondered briefly if they were Old Bill. After all, a kicking like that for a known pimp wasn’t exactly unheard of from the police. He’d keep his eye out in case they decided on a repeat performance with him.
As he drove by the end of the road he saw a young girl sitting on a wall. Instinct told him she was ripe and might be willing. Stopping his Jaguar, he smiled at her.
She looked at him with spaced-out eyes and said nonchalantly, ‘Marcel?’
He nodded and she jumped into the car happily. Marcel drove away, thankful that his journey had not been fruitless after all.
The girl was chattering about Lucas, a beating and being frightened. Marcel listened with half an ear, wondering whether she was worth the hag.
A blow job and a joint later, he decided she was.
Boris and Sergei went into Girlie Girls at just after 2 a.m. It was still buzzing. The air was ripe with music, sweat and alcohol. It was Stag Night and the place was full of drunken men and their wallets.
Girls danced on tables, their bodies moving suggestively to the raucous music, their faces devoid of any real expression. It was late, they were knackered and they wanted to go home.
Boris watched the scene with interest. A pretty girl with large hips and surgically enhanced breasts was arguing with another girl who had apparently muscled in on her punters. The men, a crowd of City boys with loosened ties and red alcohol-laden faces, thought it was hilarious.
The second girl, a stacked blonde with a sequined G-string, was the real aggressor.
‘Fuck off! Ask them who they want dancing for them.’ She moved one hand down her body. ‘This is all mine, darling, which is more than you can say.’
The brunette brought back a meaty forearm, the punch landed a nano-second later and then the bouncers were between the women, trying their hardest to separate two semi-naked hellcats.
False nails and stilettos flew everywhere, the bouncers taking a hammering from the screaming girls. Eventually, they picked them up bodily and half dragged, half carried them off the small stage. Their sweaty bodies were practically impossible to keep a grip on and the girls kept escaping and running back, bent on killing each other.
Cocaine-induced paranoia was the real problem between them.
It was always the same at the end of the night. If one didn’t make as much money as she expected, or another girl seemed more popular, it caused fights. Tomorrow they would be bosom pals, or at worst respectful rivals.
Boris sighed. But this place was a useful front and once he had overhauled it and changed it to what he really wanted it would be a good earner. Plus, it laundered money for them. In fact, that was its primary function at the moment.
He followed the two bouncers through to the dressing area. The girls were on the floor still fighting, and even Boris understood the men’s reluctance to stop the fray. Other dancers milled around, shouting encouragement and laughing at their counterparts who were in a state of drug-crazed anger. The smell of sweat was overpowering, and he curled his lip at the sight of the women and girls avidly watching the fight.
They were like animals. They hunted in packs and felt safer in a crowd. But ultimately they were all out for number one.
The blonde girl had the edge. Now she was kneeling on the brunette and punching her face over and over. He nodded at Sergei who took the blonde by her hair and dragged her over to the exit. She was slung out naked into the cold night air.
One of the bouncers, a large black man called Curtis, was nursing a deep scratch on his face. The other man, also black, was laughing at the girls’ antics. But Sergei’s intervention and Boris’s presence made the onlookers nervous and they were gradually growing quieter.
Finally everyone fell silent as Boris said loudly, ‘Those two girls are out. They will have to find alternative employment. And if I ever see a scene like this again, you’ll all be sorry.’
He snapped his fingers at the bouncers. ‘You two, collect your pay and fuck off. I am not paying you to be entertained.’
The two men were shamefaced, the women subdued. It was how Boris affected people.
Back in the club, business had died down. They were gradually wrapping up for the night. He nodded for the main bar to close and walked over to get himself a drink. There were still a few drunken revellers about but Boris ignored them. Some girls were still working, dancing for the last few quid. Their body make-up was running and one girl clearly showed flea bites from her cats around her ankles. Boris curled his lips once more. He himself had never understood the male need to make a show of their masculinity in public. As he watched a young man on his knees trying to lick one of the girls’ buttocks he felt his stomach revolt.
Sergei joined him at the bar and they ordered Remy Martins. They sipped them and chatted as the club gradually cleared. By 2.45 there were only a few stragglers and the usual handful of girls waiting it out for the last couple of tenners. The cabfare girls, as they were known. They didn’t come into their own until the men were too drunk to be over-critical of their bodies.
It was as they watched a girl remove her G-string and scratch at her ample buttocks that Sergei noticed Willy Gabney enter the club. He put his hand on Boris’s arm to alert him. Distracted by a quarrel between two late revellers and the barman, he did not immediately notice. When Willy removed the Winchester from under his coat, Sergei felt his bowels loosen and pulled hard on Boris’s Armani jacket.
He finally looked at Willy but it was too late.
Even the late-night drinkers took on board the large ugly man with the pump-action shotgun.
Willy nodded pleasantly, then began blasting.
Boris’s face was a study in shocked incomprehension. His body moved as if to make a run for it as the impact of the first shot lifted him off his feet and he careered into Sergei, who was still standing rooted to the spot.
The second shot sprayed their upper bodies, taking away bone and skin, sending muscle and hair flying in all directions. Any resemblance the two men bore to human beings was gone.
The third shot was unnecessary, but guaranteed Willy Gabney peace and quiet until he had made his escape. The last few shots were what were known as the warning shots. They told people to keep away and not attempt to be a hero - and warned others in the business that this was serious, and any attempt at retribution would be met with the same.