The Outsiders (9 page)

‘Leave it, Vera. Didn’t you hear them? They’re going to Marbella, first time. Don’t know one end of it from the other. I’m only being helpful.’

‘You’re miserable – and it’s nothing to do with you.’

‘It’s common good manners to share experience . . . What I’m saying to you both is that the Costa del Sol has changed in recent years. You want to be careful.’

The flight had been delayed and the rain had come on heavily. On take-off, the buffeting of the wind as they’d clawed for altitude had frightened Posie – Jonno too, but he’d hidden his nerves. She’d caught his hand in hers.

‘Costa del Crime, isn’t it? I’m not talking about the old gangsters who were there when there wasn’t extradition. No, it’s the hooligan yobs who’ve flooded the place. Not just British – Poles, Albanians, Serbs, Moroccans, Irish. Any language you want to hear, you’ll get it on the Costa, and all looking for a fast buck. Plus the place is going down the drain so they have to hustle harder. What do they do if they can’t find punters to buy hash, or the white stuff? Stands to reason, they—’

‘Ed, you wouldn’t know a drug-dealer if he bit your bum. Leave them alone.’ The woman wore a contented smile.

‘If they can’t sell hash or cocaine, they have to mug and thieve to make ends meet. Stay on the inside of the pavement and always have your handbag, love, on the inside of you. Leave your main cash and your passport in the hotel safe. Don’t even think of using credit cards.’

‘God, you’re a pain, Ed.’

‘And the punters? Scum of the earth are attracted down to the Costa del Crime, and they want their drugs. How do addicts pay for them? They have to steal. Watch out for knives and don’t be in dark streets. Be aware . . . There are some big beasts on the Costa now and they have bodyguards all round them. It’s a dangerous place and the big villains would seem to back me . . . It’s going downhill.’

‘Ed, you’re upsetting her.’

Posie sat very still beside him and held his hand in a vice grip. They were supposed to be on holiday and this man was pouring bilge water over it.

‘No, I’m not. I—’

Jonno chipped in: ‘Do me a favour, mate and shut up. Leave us alone. We’re on holiday and expecting to have a good time. Enjoy your misery on your own.’

‘No need to get heavy with me!’

‘Shut it and keep it shut.’ Jonno couldn’t remember the last time he had issued a threat that implied violence. He would have moved but the flight was full.

The woman snorted. ‘Best leave it, Ed.’

Jonno knew nobody who had been on the wrong side of the law. He had never been inside a gaol and had not even sat in the public gallery of a Crown Court. He reckoned that if he found himself near a criminal situation he’d get to the far side of the road fast, stay out of it.

On the patio at the Villa del Aguila, Pavel Ivanov sat with Rafael, his lawyer. They smoked and sipped fresh-pressed lemonade.

‘And the boat, where?’

‘I think a week out. I would assume your investment would be repaid within a further week – the monies will move fast – and the surcharge on the loan. We are considering where to advise a placement at greatest benefit to you.’

It was understood between them that the woman who worked on potential investment opportunities at the lawyer’s offices would not come here. Neither she nor her employer regarded that as a slight on Ivanov’s part; she was installed in a small, tastefully furnished studio home in the centre of the old town, where the Moors had been. No gossip could be carried back to the Motherland that a local mistress occupied the bed that Anna, his wife, would sleep in during her two visits each year to Marbella. There was much that the client and the lawyer agreed on.

‘And the possible complex in the hills?’

‘We consider most of the wrinkles now flattened out, and the town hall is more amenable. The current economic confusions make job opportunities more desirable. But we might wish for other sources of finance so that the load is spread wider.’

They had met within two weeks of Pavel Ivanov reaching the Costa. There had been a quiet dinner at a shadowed table in the poolside restaurant of the Marbella Club, and they had found a common tongue in English. An invitation from a Pole had brought them together. They had been introduced, a drink ordered, and the man from Gdansk – who had good links to Kaliningrad up the Baltic coast and with people in northern Russia – had slid away and left them. The much-feared street-fighter from St Petersburg, home of the most powerful Mafiya groups, and the elegant Spanish lawyer had made an instant impression on each other. An alliance had been formed. He had brought tens of millions of euros and dollars to the table, and extreme levels of wealth opportunity to the Spaniard; the Spaniard had made the introductions that enabled the incomer to buy the acquiescence of an official with influence in the city’s planning office, another in the mayoral chambers, and the co-operation of a middle-ranking detective from the Unidad de Drogas y Crimen Organizado, who worked from the National Police building near the A7 junction. And Rafael had made a simple but subtle demand of the Russian: the winding up of criminal enterprises and a journey along the road of legitimacy.

‘I have a man coming to meet with me.’

‘Welcome or unwelcome?’

‘In a former life I was the Tractor. In his present life, he is the Major. Before coming here, I never achieved the heights he has climbed to.’

‘What heights?’

‘The heights of his roof. You understand me? Of course you do. He is protected by the highest reaches of authority. He has a history from Afghanistan. He was State Security, now is a free operator but used by senior personalities. He can kill for the state, trade for the state, invest for the state. He can go his own way. He is not a man I tell to fuck off out of my life when he tries to come close. Those personalities wish to export hard currency, to invest and to wash very considerable sums of hard currency . . . What is the expression, about my life here, that we use?’

‘We say it is ‘‘under the radar’’. Quiet, not attracting attention, fulfilling social and fiscal obligations. Are there not creatures that change their skin?’

‘The chameleon is the lizard that alters colour for better camouflage. I do not call myself a lizard. Perhaps the radar had picked me up and they hear that the old Tractor has done well and legitimised his life. He has washed his hands and his money. Perhaps if they wished, or if I tell him to fuck off, he can disturb me.’

‘Can you live with it, the visit?’

‘Of course. Not a difficulty. Rafael, I tell you, I have become more cautious. I look at myself in a mirror and try to remember how I was. There were men who were brought to see me in St Petersburg – they might have been officials from the fuel or electricity-supply companies. When they were led into the room, they had pissed their trousers. I was not going to harm them, or their families. I only wanted co-operation. The sight of me made fear.’

‘It is different now, Pavel. You are a man of business. The sun shines on you.’

‘Hard to remember who I was – who they were.’

Alex sat in the shade behind them and Marko was to their right. He could hear the women in the house and the children played with plastic toys. He grimaced. ‘Maybe I will need a little of an old skin, or an old colour, on my back.’

‘I cannot yet be definite with advice, but I am considering suggesting the monies from the boat opportunities – an aberration of our general policy but too good to miss – go into the complex in the hills. They should be moved fast, and with a minimum of a tail to be chased.’

He stared out from his patio and felt tired. He had lost the strength to swat difficulties away. He saw a great mass of open sea and the rock jutting up that was the British colony of Gibraltar, and the pinkish shadow that was the north African mainland, which was where the Major would come from.

‘Pavel, you are disturbed. You should not be. Are you nervous of this man? However unwelcome, how can he affect you, this Major?’

He grinned, almost sheepishly. ‘You will meet him. Look at his hand. Ask him what happened to it.’

The Major was brought into the city of Constanta. An official in the harbourmaster’s office drove a Mercedes saloon; an escort vehicle filled with plainclothes policemen tracked them. They might have been on duty or rostered on a free day to look after a man of importance.

At the airport, his executive aircraft had taxied to a distant corner, out of sight of the passenger terminal and close to the cargo hangars. A Customs woman had been there: she had glanced at the passports, nodded and passed them back. Formal protocols had been observed, the cars had been ready and the men had thrown down their cigarettes beside the no-smoking signs, extinguishing them with the soles of their shoes. They headed for the port area designated Constanta South, and would skirt the historic centre of the city, the country’s second most prestigious, then arrive at the expanse of cranes and warehouses, and the containers park that gave the port its status as the fourth largest on the European continent. The additional attraction for the Major – over and above the discretion of officials, police, Customs and those who programmed the unloading of cargoes or the movement of containers – was the canal linking the Black Sea to the Danube via the Agigea Lock. It cut the distance between the sea port and the freshwater docks on the river by four hundred kilometres. And, vital to the movement of the goods the Major intended to bring through Constanta South, the long barges would be loaded under the benevolent eye of the Romanian authorities. Then, with adequate paperwork, they would head upstream, through the sovereign territories of Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Germany. On the German stretch there was access to the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal and a link to the Dutch port of Rotterdam. He intended to make the route central to his operations with the goods brought from the Afghan poppy fields. He liked to see matters for himself.

With him were his colleagues.

Squashed into the escort car were the girl, without earrings but with a well-packed wallet, and the Gecko. The girl had been good and could go home. She would find another man happy to buy time with her. The Gecko had been asked how his toothache was and had said it was better. He was going to look around the city. He had been told at what time he would be picked up and where.

The Latvian policeman, at the Europol building in the Dutch city of The Hague, entertained the editor of a Swedish daily newspaper and took him down a corridor to the next meeting.

‘They are businessmen. Their minds are set on buying at advantage and selling at a greater an advantage. Money dominates them. It is how they mark the level of their success. It is not to do with intellect or physique, but how much money they have accumulated and washed. As any rising entrepreneur would, they hire the best lawyers and accountants, the cleverest IT kids. They buy security by owning a piece of the town hall, and enough of the local detective force to ensure they are left in the shadows. If they need a judge they will find one who can be bought. They follow markets: if the sex-trafficking trade is saturated, and brothels do not show the profit required from the investment, they will switch to illegal immigrants, maybe from China, or they will beef up the weapons supply. If the West European kids go off Moroccan skunk, the big man will push money at greenhouse cultivation in Holland. Above the search for ‘‘power’’ or ‘‘influence’’ is the requirement of making
profit
. In case this sounds a rather harmless world, I would emphasise that when profit is interrupted, extreme violence will be employed to right a wrong. Messages are sent to rivals by the use of violence. Without the willingness to resort to it, no criminal – big or small – can survive.’

They took a bus. They joined a crocodile of ex-pats, who climbed the steps. The bags were stowed under seats, and Ed, the one-time Ford dealer, had said, ‘Don’t get me wrong, didn’t want to upset you, but don’t wander round with your eyes closed or trouble will find you. I’m only trying to help . . . Have a nice time.’ The air-conditioning was on and the coach was cool but the sun beat on rocks, fields, dry stream beds and houses. They sat together, Posie by the window, and Jonno was looking out at the rows of squashed-together houses wedged on to each hill and down every valley. The sea shimmered and was indistinct, more than three miles from the road. He had expected they would travel along a coast road and see what made the Costa such an attraction and— The coach swerved and the man on the other side of the aisle spilled half into Jonno’s lap.

‘Nothing changes. Nothing different on the good old A7 highway. You’re ashen, my friend – first time here? The A7’s the most dangerous road in Europe. Mega death rates. Sorry and all that . . .’

The man was back in his seat. Posie clutched the bar on the back of the seat in front of her. Jonno was gazing at the developments that seemed to have no view but this road, the roofs of other complexes or modern factory blocks. Some were finished, many were shells with idle cranes towering over them. Jonno had read in the papers the stories about the Spanish economic miracle going down the plughole and that property was at the core of the crisis. There was an awful uniformity in the white and yellow walls of the developments.

The man said sunnily, ‘It’s what the place is all about and why the country’s broke. They overbuilt and sold at the top and now the poor devils who bought in are stuck. They can’t sell, and there’s tens of thousands in hock to the banks. Would you have wanted to invest in a property with nothing to look at bar this coach, and a thousand others like it? It’s a thirty-minute ride to the coast, and barely a beach worthy of the name when you get there. I come for the golf, which is still good, but the property scene’s wrecked. Why is there so much of it here, developments put down with no rhyme or reason? It’s no secret.
Dirty
money. The Costa del Sol’s the greatest source of money laundering yet invented by the criminal classes. Drugs money, counterfeit money, the money paid by illegal immigrants to get into Europe, prostitution money, it’s all gone into bricks and mortar. It’s why they all live here. Have a good time.’