Hit Me (The Bailey Boys #2) (12 page)

There was no solution. Two high-profile deaths or disappearances, and the suspicious minds of Markov and his crew would inevitably join them together and realize something fishy was going on.

I could take out Markov, of course, and that was always going to remain an option.

But for all my brave talk to Imelda, there was a big difference between faking a death and actually killing someone, and out here on the Costa, at least, I had managed to keep a clean record so far.

Killing someone was not something to rush into.

But I knew it might come to that, even so.

I wanted to call her. Wanted desperately to see her again. But I remembered the look in her eye that last morning when she had turned her face away from my kiss. The sense that things had moved on.

I knew the next time we spoke it would be business: a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, stating my price, talking logistics.

So I hadn’t called.

Instead I’d turned to Hristo Markov. Asked around, discreetly. Fearless couldn’t – or perhaps wouldn’t – tell me much, but I’d made a few other contacts in my time on the Costa. ‘Friends’ I’d made when I was being liberal with my share of the cash we’d brought from London; friends of those friends.

And now, when I found myself in that back room at Hermanos once again, standing with my hands behind my back while Markov tipped back in his chair, his pointed shoes up on the desk, I had a far better understanding of the man he was.

“You change your mind, huh? What is it? You blow some money in a poker game? Or up your nose?” He laughed at that. “You develop some other nasty habit you need to finance, yes?”

I shrugged, back to my man of few words guise. “I’ve got the taste for it again,” I said. “I’ve seen your boys in action. I think they could do with some help.” No point trying to skirt around what had happened at the New Duchess.

Markov laughed at that, tipping his head back and then shaking out that long hair. Then he fixed me with small, hard eyes and said, “And this has nothing to do with San Pedro.”

I met the look, seeing nothing in those eyes. “It has everything to do with it, Mr Markov. You don’t need to slap my brother down. He’s retired. He’s not looking for any action. But I am. I want back in. You’ve seen what I can do. I have a lot of experience. I can be useful. And yes, I’m hoping to trade that for a bit of security for my brother. I come to work for you, you lay off Dean, and we all win.”

He liked that. The ‘for’.

I come to work
for
you
.

“I watch you,” said Markov. “You even blink when I don’t want you to and I will destroy you, yes? But first I will destroy your brother, and I will destroy his Jess, and I will destroy everything else you care about. Yes?”

I nodded.

I’m not easily intimidated, but I knew enough not to underestimate him.

My hands are not clean. I’d be the first to admit that. I’ve done things that would put me away for life many times over. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of people who might want me dead, let alone how many of those actually had the means to do so. I’ve made choices few people would even consider.

But always, I understand what I am doing.

I know the value of a life.

Maybe Hristo Markov had made those same calculations, too, but simply come up with a different figure. Because to him, other people’s lives came cheap. And other people’s suffering came even cheaper.

Imelda was right to be scared of him. But in a perverse way, she was lucky, too. Lucky that he valued her more highly than most others. That he wanted her on his arm, his trophy. That he wouldn’t risk losing face by losing her.

Yes, she was in danger all the time she was with him, but if she crossed him she would be at far greater risk.

So now, as I stood and nodded and obediently averted my gaze, I knew I was looking at a man whose personal body count was in the dozens at least, and whose organization’s body count must be far higher. A man who had come out of Bulgaria a nobody and now struck fear into the hardest, most violent, hearts on the Costa.

As I say, I’m not easily intimidated, but also I’m a very good judge of risk. And right now I couldn’t help wondering what exactly I’d got myself into. How I had ended up here, only a few days after making that simple decision to cross the road to where Imelda waited and not just walk the other way.

So this is where spontaneous gets you...

§

He put me in with Stefan and Anton, which was nice of him.

Stefan was early twenties, a good six inches taller than me and either very cagey or just not very bright, but he was fine enough.

Anton was ten or fifteen years older. He had short dark hair, an old scar across his forehead and fresh stitches on the bridge of his nose and in his eyebrows, and eyes that were still blackened. He was the guy who’d been spraying bullets around in the New Duchess and whose face I’d smashed in with the edge of a metal tray. His wrist was in a cast, too, so he was hardly going to be useful in a skirmish, but then he was in charge – he was there for his brains rather than his looks, which was just as well.

So I was working with a green young dimwit and a hardened gangster whose every look made it clear he wanted me to die. Slowly.

And my first job was to break someone’s knees.

Nice.

The mark was a low-life dealer, not much more than a kid. A stupid kid who’d believed it when they said the money came easy out here on the Costa and didn’t have a clue he was so far out of his depth.

He’d been doing the rounds in one of Markov’s clubs for a couple of nights, slippery enough to dodge security for as long as it took to cut a few drug deals. The boy had no respect for territory. And certainly no idea whose territory he was disrespecting.

Back in London it would have been different – we would scare the shit out of someone like him before escalating – but, as everyone kept telling me, out here the rules were different. And as Anton would testify, I wasn’t shy of smashing a bone or two.

We waited for the kid out at the back of El Divino, by the fire exit where CCTV had shown he liked to slip away. We’d already had word through Anton’s ear-piece that the kid was in the club. The plan was that security would stand off for long enough for him to cut a couple of deals, then close in so he would decide to slip away.

And in the meantime, I got to stand with the two Bulgarians.

We were in an alleyway at the back of the building. A short way to the left the track joined one of the main roads through central Puerto Libre. The contrast between the darkness of the alleyway and the bright lights and noise of the thoroughfare was marked, drunken groups rolling past, girls on high heels and in tiny mini-skirts, guys in jeans, shorts and muscle shirts.

How many people understood? These kids, away for a week of sun, sex and booze, partying 24-7, were totally oblivious to the fact that everything was built on the backs of people like me, gangs like Markov’s; that just around the corner from their drunken stagger home a gang of heavies might be waiting to take out some stupid kid’s kneecaps.

Stefan and Anton were chain-smoking, and the night air was heavy with their fumes. Neither had offered me one, not that I’d have accepted. The two had barely even spoken to me, and only occasionally spoke to each other in their own language. It was safe to say we were yet to build up a rapport.

I’d thought at first this must be some kind of joke, amusing to Hristo Markov, pairing me up with Anton. On reflection I wasn’t so sure: Markov was a bastard, but nobody got to his position by making bad decisions just because they were amusing.

The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that this was a test for Anton as much as it was for me. There was probably nothing Anton would want more than to take the baseball bat I carried and apply it to
my
kneecaps. Only his discipline and loyalty to Markov prevented him.

That and the fact that his preferred hand was in a plaster cast.

Anton caught my eye and gave a slight nod. For a moment I thought he’d decided that now was the time for us to square up, then he said, “He’s coming.”

I glanced towards the fire exit just as the door swung open.

A young, skinny guy stepped out, his features almost luminously pale in the dark of the alley.

I slipped deeper into the shadows and moved around to the right.

The kid paused, fumbling for something in the pocket of his cargo pants. Cigarettes and a lighter – he clearly wasn’t in any kind of hurry.

You should be, kid. Oh, you should be.

Just as the lighter flared into life, Anton stepped out of the shadows. The kid looked up. Anton must have been an intimidating sight, but hardly threatening with his wrist in plaster.

The young dealer looked quickly left to right, seemed to decide Anton was alone, gave a visible shrug and turned as if to leave.

Then Stefan stepped into view, a slightly more intimidating sight at a good six inches taller and swinging a baseball bat from one hand.

Now the kid raised both hands, the unlit cigarette hanging briefly from his lips and then falling away to the ground.

My heart was pumping, my senses heightened.

It’s not that I enjoy the prospect of doing someone harm, but... there’s the sense of the perfectly executed trap, the altered state you get into when the action kicks in. The closest thing in my experience was MMA, when you’re in the cage and it’s only you and your opponent, and it’s not about hurting him, it’s about beating him, executing the perfect move, being the best.

Once you’ve tasted that buzz there’s no going back.

A mutter of words from Anton and the kid’s hands nudged higher.

“Whoa,” he said. “Let’s be cool, okay, man?”

I don’t know why I was surprised he was English, his accent from somewhere in the Midlands. Was that another thing that amused Markov, setting me on one of my own?

And all the time, the kid had shuffled sideways, careful to keep facing Stefan and Anton. He was young, but he wasn’t stupid, then: even as he delayed he was plotting his escape, making sure he was closest to the open end of the alleyway where he might be able to lose himself in the late-night crowds.

Only he hadn’t spotted me yet.

I chose that moment to step out of the shadows, but he had his back to me.

I scuffed a foot and his whole frame twitched.

He didn’t look back, though. Didn’t have to. He knew I was there, and by now he must know that the last guy to appear out of the shadows when the trap has been sprung is the one who’s really going to scare the shit out of you.

“You should be more careful, son,” I said, my voice softer than usual so he would have to strain. “You can’t go selling your shit just anywhere without protection, and as far as I can see you don’t have any protection.”

There’s a difference between being in the thick of a fight and doing something in cold blood, but in some ways it’s just the same.

In a fight you respond. You defend yourself and you’re always looking for the opening. You have a strategy and like a chess-player you’re usually several moves ahead in your brain.

In cold blood it’s the same. I knew exactly how this little sequence was going to pan out.

And right now I had a job to do.

Smash this fucker’s kneecaps and make sure word got around to all the other little toe-rags who thought they could move freely on Markov’s territory.

Nobody ever said I was one of the nice guys, and I would have done exactly that, except...

In my head I may well have been several moves ahead – the clinical execution of the assault, the rapid escape leaving him lying there screaming, the reporting back to Markov – but that night someone else was a move ahead of me.

Maybe it was that I’d been out of the game for too long, or that I was over-confident in an unfamiliar environment.

Whatever.

There was no room in that careful plan in my head for the dark SUV that pulled up at the end of the alleyway.

For the two guys in tracksuits and baseball caps who stepped out, the possibility that this spotty kid who’d gone even more pale as he finally turned to face me might not be operating alone, might not just be some kid out to earn a few euros to fund his holiday on the Costa.

For that brief pause when the kid’s look met mine, when the corners of his mouth curled up in a cocky sneer and he turned both hands with their backs to me, the middle fingers raised.

“Fuck you, dickhead,” he hissed, and then two gunshots – three – tore through the air and an impact on my upper arm spun me like a fucking ice-skater before I crumpled to the ground.

§

When I hit the ground I stayed down.

Did a quick run-through in my head. Only one impact, upper-left arm. A fair bit of pain but no grating of bones when I tested things by moving a little. Certainly no loss of feeling or response. A flesh wound, then; some muscle damage, some blood loss.

I’d taken worse.

I must have blacked out briefly, because now the kid was at the end of the alleyway, car doors slamming, a screech of wheels as the SUV jerked away.

Stefan and Anton stood nearby, still hiding back in the shadows where they’d retreated at the first sound of gunshots.

Was this a set-up, or were they just scared?

Don’t judge them: not scared, but sensible. Anton at least, I was sure was an ex-soldier: it would have been reflex for him to seek cover, assess the situation.

Even now I saw the glint of dark metal, a small pistol in his undamaged hand – although unless he was ambidextrous, he probably wouldn’t have been able to shoot well with it. But I’d heard at least three shots: it could easily have been return fire from Anton that had seen the attackers off.

They came to me. Hands on my shoulders, back, expertly checking for damage before turning me, raising me to a sitting position.

Only a few seconds could have passed.

Along the alleyway: a bunch of onlookers attracted by the disturbance, drunken eyes wide, hands pointing.

Anton barked something and waved his gun, and they backed away.