Authors: Graham Hurley
‘Nice man. Juan. Totally ripped.’ She shot him a grin, and for a moment Suttle thought he was in for another hug, but she backed off when she caught the expression on his face.
‘You look different,’ she said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Round here …’ she touched the skin around her eyes ‘… and here.’ She patted her midriff.
‘You’re telling me I’m getting fat?’
‘Not fat. I dunno … more solid, more
sturdy
. Maybe it’s the married look. Am I right?’
Suttle grinned, but Trude wasn’t fooled for a moment.
‘It’s tough, right?’
‘What?’
‘Marriage. Babies. All that.’
‘I dunno, Trude. It’s certainly different.’
‘To what?’
‘To the way it was before.’
‘Better?’
‘Different.’
‘Does she cry a lot? Does she need lots of attention?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And how about the baby?’
Suttle shook his head and turned away. Trude, like Misty, could read body language like a book. In another life she’d have made a great detective.
‘You still want coffee? Or have I upset you?’ She touched him on the arm.
‘I’ll skip the coffee, thanks. What I’m really after is Paul.’
‘He’s out.’
‘I can see that, Trude. You know where he is?’
‘At work, as far as I know. Give him a ring.’
‘I’ve done that. He’s on divert.’
‘Maybe he’s busy. I’m seeing him later. You want me to give him a message?’
‘Yeah …’ Suttle glanced at his watch. ‘Tell him something’s come up with Grace. Tell him we need to talk.’
‘Grace?’
‘The baby.’
‘She’s OK?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘So how come Paul needs to know so much about Grace?’
‘Because he’s her godfather.’
‘Paul Winter? You’re serious?’
Suttle nodded. Trude held his gaze for a long moment then reached behind her and switched off the kettle.
‘You’d better let me get on with it then.’ She nodded towards the lounge. ‘I’ve got three more rooms after this.’
Winter was riding north through the city in the front of Bazza’s new Bentley. It was a grey Continental GT, most of which Mackenzie owed to the insurance settlement after Winter had written off the old one. Winter, without much success, had been trying to pin Bazza down on various money issues. The way Winter figured it, the latest addition to the
Pompey First
campaign team was going to cost Mackenzie at least 26K, and
if the guy came up with more stunts that took Bazza’s fancy that figure could easily double.
‘You’re right, mush. So here’s hoping, eh?’
They were en route to an outpost of Bazza’s empire called Pompey Reptiles, a converted terrace house that now did a thriving trade in snakes, baby alligators and Peruvian lizards. Given the state of his boss’s diary, the journey there and back was Winter’s only opportunity for a decent chat.
‘Tell me about the money, Baz. Just pretend I don’t know we’re broke.’
‘We’re not broke. We’ve got assets everywhere. Sell something.’
‘Like what?’
‘Fuck knows. Make a few calls. Have a nose around. I read in the
Telegraph
that Spain might be on the up again.’ He swerved to avoid a cyclist and nearly clipped a traffic island. ‘What about those apartments in Almería?’
‘They’re all mortgaged. And the
Telegraph
’s wrong, by the way. If we sold now we’d still be owing the bank. The market’s on its arse, Baz.’
‘France?’
‘All mortgaged.’
‘I don’t fucking believe you.’
‘You should, Baz. It was your decision.’
They glided to a halt at a set of traffic lights. Further up the road was one of the city’s biggest comprehensives. Once the traffic was moving again, Mackenzie gave the empty playground a derisive wave as they sped by.
‘Did Leo tell you about the other night?’
‘Where?’
‘There.’ He gestured back towards the school. ‘We did a spoiler on one of the Filth’s little road shows. Safer neighbourhoods, my arse. By the time we’d done those muppets over, there wasn’t a single punter in the hall who’d risk walking home by himself. Brilliant job, mush. Leo’s idea but me in the
driving seat. You know how many signatures we took on the door afterwards? Over a hundred. That’s where it matters, mush. That’s where you get them. Law and order. Never fails.’
Winter said nothing. Kinder’s latest strategy called for a series of what he termed informed interventions, posh code for gatecrashing other people’s meetings, scaring the public witless and converting volunteered names and addresses into complimentary membership cards. Over the last month alone, according to Kinder,
Pompey First
had harvested nearly six hundred new supporters. It was people like these, said Bazza, who would take him into Parliament.
‘This Skelley—’ He braked hard to avoid a young mum crossing the road. Two kids off the leash and another in the buggy.
‘What about him?’
‘He’s the go-to guy for money. He owes us. And more to the point, he fucking knows it.’
‘So what are you suggesting? A letter?’
‘Don’t take the piss, mush.’
‘What then?’
‘A visit. Tell him we’ll settle for a million. As long as it’s cash.’
‘A million is way over the top. He’s given us
£
350K already.’
‘That was a deposit. We need the rest. I’m serious, mush.’ He glanced across. ‘We have to get this thing sorted.’
By now they were in Copnor. Mackenzie took a left without bothering to signal, dismissing the guy behind with a derisive wave of his hand. Pompey Reptiles was first right at the end of the road.
‘You coming in? This guy’s a laugh, the only Vietnamese I ever met who can speak half-decent English.’
Winter eased his bulk out of the car and followed Mackenzie into the shop. The smell hit you at once, an overpowering mix of sawdust and reptile shit, thickened by the big wall heaters. Winter looked round. All his life, snakes had terrified him.
The shop, he guessed, had once been the front room of the property. Now it was stacked high with cages. Through the smudged glass, on closer inspection, Winter could make out an occasional stirring among the sand and wood shavings, but anyone expecting thick coils of python or rearing wide-screen king cobras would be sorely disappointed. Maybe snakes kipped at lunchtime, he thought. Very sensible.
A tiny shrunken figure emerged from the back of the shop. He appeared to be wearing pyjamas. Looking hard at the seamed yellow face, Winter would have been pushed to guess an age.
‘Sanouk? This is Paul, a mate of mine. I don’t think you ever met.’
Sanouk bowed. He had a tube of expanding foam in his hand. A huge bubble of yellow foam had dribbled from the nozzle and hardened in seconds. Winter shook his outstretched hand, sticky with the foam. Sanouk, he knew, was a refugee from one of the city’s many cannabis factories. Imported from his smallholding in the Mekong Delta, he’d been scooped up in a raid by one of the city’s drug squads. Smart defence work by his brief had put him back on the market, and the sight of his face in the
News
had caught Mackenzie’s fancy. Pneumonia had just carried off the last manager of Pompey Reptiles, and within a week Sanouk found himself in charge of the livestock.
‘Listen, my friend.’ Mackenzie had turned down the offer of tea. ‘We might have a problem …’
Kinder, it turned out, had identified Pompey Reptiles as an electoral own goal. Once the pressure was on, he’d explained, the name would doubtless be used against him, especially as the
Pompey First
candidate was so proud of his city roots. Bazza Mackenzie. The Pompey Reptile.
‘We change name?’ Sanouk was looking confused.
‘Afraid so, son.’
‘What we call us?’
‘Jungle Jim’s.’
‘Yungle Yim’s?’ For some reason Sanouk couldn’t manage Js.
‘That’s it, son. You need to sort someone out to do the business, get the paint out, change the name. And another thing. If anyone turns up asking about me, whether I own this place or not, just tell them no, OK?’
‘Sure.’ The frown had deepened. ‘So who own this place?’
‘I do.’
‘Sure.’
‘You understand?’
‘Sure.’
‘I can count on that?’
‘Sure.’ He bowed again, none the wiser, and then wiped his hand on his pyjama bottoms and showed them to the door.
Back in the Bentley, Winter inspected his hand, still sticky with the foam. Mackenzie wanted to talk about Skelley again, but Winter had a better idea.
‘Montenegro, Baz.’
‘What about it?’
‘That development in Bicici. The one next door to Budva.’
‘Kubla Khan, you mean? Nikki Kokh?’
‘That’s it.’ Winter nodded.
‘And?’
‘We’ve got 10 per cent, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Nikki priced it at fifteen mil, yes?’
‘Yeah. In euros.’
‘Which makes one and a half million. As long as he’s happy to buy us out.’
Mackenzie said nothing. Nikolai Kokh was a budding Russian entrepreneur, one of the younger sharks feeding on the remains of the old communist state. Bazza had first met him in a casino in Marbella. It turned out they had a great many shared passions. One was football, another was finding a decent return for laundered narco-cash. Since Montenegro
offered near-perfect facilities for the latter, Bazza had agreed to take a 10 per cent stake in a beachside development Nikki was planning. Kubla Khan would, he told Bazza, offer five-star hotel facilities, including a conference centre, a casino and an adjacent block of top-end apartments for clients who wanted to turn their holiday experience into real life.
According to Nikki, any serious investor would win twice over – once by buying into a profitable money machine with the capital protected by the booming Montenegran property market, and second time around because the casino operation offered limitless opportunities for money laundering. No matter where your money came from, Kubla Khan would wash it white as snow.
At the time, back from Marbella, Bazza had no doubts about the venture. He and Winter did a number of Internet searches, which all confirmed that Kubla Khan was a kosher project. The virtual tours looked sumptuous. The boasts about eco-friendly heating systems and world-class cuisine seemed real enough. And when Winter checked the claim about backing from the regional planning authorities, that too stacked up.
A couple of months later Mackenzie met Nikki Kokh again, this time in London. He’d flown in that morning from Moscow for a Chelsea home game. Bazza signed a memorandum of agreement, handed over a 5 per cent deposit on a 10 per cent stake, and agreed to wire the balance as soon as his solicitor was happy with the due diligence checks. The checks were complete by August 2008, at which point Bazza paid for the rest of the stake. A month later Lehman Brothers collapsed. Since when Bazza had heard virtually nothing.
Now he was having a serious think. Winter was happy to ride back to the hotel in silence, knowing that he’d finally got his boss’s attention. In ways Winter had never anticipated,
Pompey First
had become a crusade. Thanks to Leo Kinder, and now Makins, Pompey’s one-time cocaine king genuinely believed he could make it all the way to Westminster. If he ever
got there, he would doubtless end up as frustrated and overworked as every other MP, but that wasn’t the point. What mattered, just now, was the coming battle, and Bazza had absolutely no interest in anything but winning. That’s what made him get up in the morning. That’s what fuelled the endless late-night strategy sessions with Leo Kinder. The pair of them were determined to lay siege to the fucking Establishment wankers, and if the price of success was his stake in Nikki Kokh’s Montenegran venture, then so be it.
Only when they were on the seafront, approaching the Royal Trafalgar, did Bazza voice his decision.
‘Get out there, mush,’ he said. ‘See if Nikki wants to play.’
PORTSMOUTH: MONDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 2009
Suttle waited all afternoon for Winter to get in touch, checking his phone between meetings in case a message had been left. Parsons, he knew, had to be on the road by five for a conference at headquarters in Winchester. When there was still no word from Winter, Suttle walked the length of the Major Crime corridor and tapped on Parsons’ door.
‘Well?’ She looked up from her PC.
‘Nothing, I’m afraid, boss.’
‘
Nothing?
’
‘I can’t find him. He’s not responding. He’ll get in touch in the end but maybe not today.’
Visibly irritated, Parsons checked her watch and closed down her PC.
‘Bloody man,’ she muttered.
Suttle hesitated a moment, caught between agreement and something more personal.
‘We don’t own him, boss,’ he pointed out. ‘At least not yet.’
‘We don’t, Jimmy.’ She was reaching for her coat. ‘But we will.’
Winter was back at his flat in Blake House by half five. Hoping that Trude was still at work, he was disappointed to find her gone. He’d always got on with her, and in the week or so since she’d arrived back from the Canaries, she’d been one of the few
bright spots in what he sensed was the gathering darkness. She was funny. She made him laugh. And, if he’d ever let her close enough, she’d be amused by his current plight. That Winter should find himself wedged between the apprentice politician and a bunch of outraged Filth determined to head him off was all too predictable, but even Winter acknowledged that the fault was his own. He should have seen this coming. And he should have done something about it.
He circled the flat. For years and years he’d associated the smell of paint with spring. Back in the old days, before Joannie died, she’d always begin the climb out of winter with a brisk coat of emulsion and a trip to the laundrette with the lounge curtains. Once he’d even caught her marking up the calendar to remind her to break out the colour charts and inspect last year’s brushes. Nearly a decade later he could even remember the date, 8 March.
He paused beside the big picture window, staring out across the harbour. By late September, at this time of night, the light was already dying in the west. The big council flats on the Gosport waterfront were etched black against the paleness of the sky, the first pricks of light visible on the upper floors. Next week it would be October. Soon the clocks would go back. After which his fears about the darkness would be all too real.