One Last Lesson (28 page)

Lester drove around the fountain
in the centre of the drive and slowly past the new Mercedes sports car belonging to Mrs Green, careful not to pepper the gleaming deep-blue paintwork with stone chips and only put his foot down when he was out through the gates and heading back to civilisation.

‘Did you sort
out that little problem at the Hope and Anchor, John?’ he asked.

‘Yep that little shit Alex Lake was helping himself to whatever he fancied from the till.’

‘Is that what it was?’

‘Bingo and me took him round the back of the pub and gave him the once over. No one will give him a bar job with
a face like that for a while and if they do, he won’t be able to tea-leaf from the tills with ten broken fingers.’

‘Maybe,’ Green said, ‘we should be like these Middle Eastern potentates...’

‘What’s that, something to scoff?’ Spike asked.

‘They’re rulers
Spike, like kings.’

‘Aw, right.’

‘As I was saying, maybe we should be more like them and cut off the fingers of thieves, you know one finger for nicking a couple of hundred, three if they nick more than ten grand.’

‘Christ that would make it hard to have a smoke or eat,’ Spike said.

‘Or wipe your arse.’ Lester said, and everybody laughed.

A few minutes later they left the twisting and dipping B-roads around Langley Manor, scenic in daylight but black as coal without street lights and no moon in a
dark and dismal night like tonight, and joined the A275 heading south.

‘Is the shipment still on
for Wednesday?’

‘Yep. We rendezvous with Boris’s yacht two miles off Beachy Head.’

Green laughed. ‘That not his real name is it? ‘Boris’? It makes him sound like a comic book character or a villain from a Bond movie.’

‘His real name is Vladislav, or something but everybody calls him Boris.’

‘Are we out going again on that fucking rust tub, The Daisy May?’

‘Afraid so, Len’s the only captain I can trust.’

‘I hope it’s a calmer night than last time as that bloody thing tossed us about like a fairground attraction and gave me a right dickey stomach. It’s not fitted with the things that keep it level. That old sea dog of a skipper only told me that after I paid him.’

‘Stabilisers,’ said a voice from the back.

‘What?’

‘Stabilis
ers, that’s what they’re called, ship’s stabilisers. It’s the two big fins that stick out from the bottom of the hull to stop the boat rolling around in the water.’

‘
Bloody hell, listen to Long John Silver at the back of the boat,’ Green said. ‘Is that what you’re doing on that phone, searching the web for stuff you can use in a pub quiz?’

They arrived in Brighton after a windy drive along
the seafront and turned into Chichester Place. Green couldn’t see the attraction of Kemptown with its narrow streets, twee eateries and authentic coffee shops. Many regarded it as the heart of art in the City as it was home to many artists, poets and actors but it included too many gays for Green’s liking and he resolved long ago, never to own any property there.

They turned off Eastern Road into Upper Sudeley Street and parked close to the pub where George Ru
dd drank, three evenings a week, The St George’s Inn. Green rarely ventured inside such places, as he was a well-known figure in the town and if he wasn’t being bothered by gays, attracted by his thin frame, keen sense of dress and bald head, it was chancers looking to make a quick buck or two by taking a ‘selfie’ and publishing it on the web.

‘I went in there once,’ Lester said.

‘Where?’

‘That place, the St George’s Inn.’

‘When?’

‘A few months back.’

‘Is it a nice pub? Even if it is, I still wouldn’t buy it, not in Kemptown.’

‘Its n
ot bad but I did get involved in a bit of aggro. See, there were two birds, one a blond with great tits and wearing a really short skirt and we just got talking. How was I to know her fella was just around the corner in another part of the bar playing pool? He comes back and gets all leery with me so we end up outside. We fight and his mate joins in and I get angry and bust their faces. But there was a happy ending.’

‘What is it
,  ` as I can’t see it?’

‘They didn’t have far to walk to A&E, it's only up the road.’

They all howled with laughter, so much so that Green almost failed to notice the shambling figure of George Rudd coming out the pub and walking right past them. He motioned to Spike to get out of the car, while Lester made a sharp U-turn and accelerated hard to catch up.

Spike
moved behind him and pulled out a small club from his jacket pocket and whacked Rudd over the head with it. In just a few seconds, the back door of the Mondeo opened, Rudd was bundled in, Spike jumped in the other door, and they took off. There was no panic, no squealing of tyres to alert some old biddy looking out of the window, everything was calm, the world kept turning and Kemptown returned to the serious business of watching telly, eating their take-away meals and downing another tin of beer.

The drive to Shoreham was uneventful and George Rudd,
lying on the floor at the back and making gurgling noises like a partially blocked drain, didn’t give them any trouble either. In a small industrial estate near Shoreham Airport, Dominic Green owned a warehouse that he used to store illicit booze, cigarettes and drugs, sourced from contacts on the Continent and brought over by Boris in his boat or John Lester in a private plane owned by one of his friends.

At
the back of the warehouse there was a small lab that they used for testing the purity of cocaine and diluting it with whatever harmless white substance that was available, although he drew the line at using any of Lester’s wife’s stuff as he didn’t know anyone who wanted to sniff coke or smoke dope that reeked of mandarins or aloe vera. This was an industrial part of town alongside car breakers, scrap yards and lumber merchants and it meant they weren’t overlooked and the area was quiet at night, so they could come and go as they pleased and make as much noise as they wanted.

Green filled the kettle and switched it on while Lester threw a rope over one of the rafters. When it was secure, Spike tied Rudd to the rope with his hands above his head. Pulling the
loose end, he gradually hauled him higher, like a stuffed puppet made to perform for his master as he jerked and flopped before finally standing upright. He stopped pulling when Rudd’s feet were barely touching the ground and secured the rope to a metal post.

If Green was in less of a hurry or didn’t care how much damage he caused, he would have put him in a chair and let Spike do what he was good at, but he wanted Rudd talking not
lying comatose on the floor.

He seemed to have made a full recovery after his short journey and was demanding to know why he was there, at least that
was what he thought he was saying as he was gently spinning and his arms were blocking the sound coming out from his mouth. That was another benefit of putting a suspect in such a position, it stopped them shouting and being abusive. He couldn’t stand that.

When the kettle boiled, Lester made
a mug of coffee for himself and Green. Spike wouldn’t touch the stuff as he was a dedicated bodybuilder and while he was happy chucking whey and Creatine powders down his gullet, dropping steroid pills like there was no tomorrow and smoking weed, he wouldn’t pollute his body with ‘artificial stimulants,’ as he haughtily called coffee and tea, the stupid toss-pot.

Lester picked
up a couple of chairs in his big mitts and moved them into the middle of the room. Green sat down and took a sip of coffee, milky with a little coffee kick but not enough to keep him awake at night. Good.

He put the mug down and looked
at his prisoner. ‘So Mr Rudd, how are you?’

‘I’m ‘fortable.’

‘I think he said he’s enjoying the view boss,’ Lester said, smiling.

‘Ha. George, if you give me honest answers to the questions that I’m going to ask you, we’ll all be home in time for
a cocoa and the late movie on Sky or in Spike’s case, the start of some good sex films on the nookie channels. So listen up and listen good. I’m a partner in a web site where beautiful young ladies display their wares and have sex with handsome guys with big cocks. Are you with me so far?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know it, it’s called academic-babes.com?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t lie to me Mr Rudd.’

‘I... don’t do porn.
I’m fifty-seven for God’s sake. A hard-on’s a cause for celebration.’

‘Ah, right. Shame really, you don’t know what you’re missing. Ok, now for the rest of my little story. Two of the young girls
that have appeared on the said web site, who also happened to be students at Lewes University, a place where you currently work as a lab assistant, were murdered. Did you hear about that?’

‘Of course I bloody did
, everybody’s been talking about it. Look, get me down from this bloody contraption, I can hardly breathe never mind talk.’

‘We will, Mr Rudd, all in good time. Now, I’m thinking you’re a man
that bore me ill-fortune on the steps of Lewes Crown Court and I’m thinking you’re still bearing that grudge.’

‘That’s all water under the bridge. I’m over it.’

‘I don’t believe you. I think you’re the bastard who’s being sending me these anonymous threatening letters.’

‘What threatening letters? Why would I do that? You’ve got more enemies than
Saddam Hussein.’

With a nod from Green, Spike
walked over and punched him in the stomach. Rudd coughed and spluttered, made twice as painful as he couldn’t double up and relax his muscles. While waiting for him to recover, Green made sure there was no dirt trapped beneath his fingernails as he hated that, while Lester went through to the kitchen to make another brew.

A few minutes later, he was handed a steaming mug, which he placed in on the floor to cool.

‘Now Mr Rudd let me explain how this evening will progress if you do not cooperate. My man here will next make a start on your face and while you may not win any prizes for good looks as your fizzer has seen better days, a curry will be harder to eat with no teeth and even then you probably won’t be able to smell it with a disfigured nose. If that doesn’t scare you, he also carries a small blade in his pocket and if I tell him to, he will use it to carve little bits from your body, bits I assure you, no man should do without. Now, do you understand how serious we are taking this, and the deep shit you could be in if you don’t cooperate?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t hear you.’

‘Yes,’ he said louder and through tears; tears of pain, tears of misery.

‘Now I ask you again, did you or did you not, murder these little girls?’

‘No. I’ve told you already. N
o, no, no!’

‘Let’s try some date
s. Louisa was murdered Monday 25
th
March. Where were you and what were you doing?’

‘On Monday, I go to The St George’s Inn, I always go there
, anybody will tell you that.’

‘Why do you go there? Don’t you know
Brighton has over three hundred and sixty pubs, one for nearly every day of the year and yet you always go to the same one? Why is that?’

‘I like it and I don’t have a car to go anywhere else.’

‘He doesn’t have a car John, can you believe it? Why not? Are you some two-bit cheapskate or one of these Green Party supporters that eats lentils for breakfast and wears vegetarian sandals, just like all those other tosser hippies in Kemptown?’

They all laughed.

‘No, I can’t drive.’

‘What d’ya mean you can’t drive. Everybody can drive, even my daughter who can’t iron or sew
a button on a shirt, can drive.’

‘I failed the eyesight test.’

‘What? Aw, for fucksake!’

Dominic
Green arrived home at one-thirty in the morning and if everyone in the house wasn’t fast asleep, he would have slammed the front door, the fridge door and any other door that he was forced to close quietly as he was still livid. Anger management was never his strong suit and woe betide anyone unlucky enough to be standing close by when he felt like this. He poured a glass of milk, which seemed to help the ulcer that roared back to life when he was tense and took a seat at the kitchen table.

He was so sure Rudd was
his man, he would have staked his life on it, Rudd’s that is, not his. Rudd blamed him for the death of his brother and with some justification, but his brother was an old soak who spent more time in the pub than doing his job and he would have killed himself eventually, if his boys hadn’t knocked over the paraffin heater and got there first.