The Dragon's Tale: A Jack Lauder Thriller (26 page)

    Diana put her hand to her mouth. "What....?" she said but she couldn't finish whatever she had intended to say.

     "Yeah," he said. "We found these two together, in that flat you went to. We were interested when you turned up there English. She had a gun. We thought he'd tortured her and she shot him. A lover's quarrel, eh? A drug addict's quarrel. Both of them were full of smack and vodka. We knew who she was. The only lead we had on him was the foreigner, at your hotel. He went out one evening and never showed up again."

     "That's not what happened," Jack said quietly, "someone else did this. No way did Gerry torture his girlfriend."

     "Oh, so you are Mr. Sherlock Holmes, are you English? You are the great detective?"

     "No, but I know what happened. And it wasn‘t that."

     The Police Chief sneered and led them both away but Diana lingered a moment over Gerry‘s corpse. Jack glanced back over his shoulder and the look on her face was … what? Triumphant? Then the icy cabinets slid into place. He had never liked the sound those drawers made. This was the final gaoler, the one you couldn't escape.

     The Police Chief's attitude had changed subtly. They stopped off at a cafe on the way back and he bought them each a cup of Turkish coffee. It was hot, thick and sweet. "I am sorry I shocked you," he said, "it was necessary to see your reaction. So you were telling me, Mr. English detective, how this happened?"

     Jack nodded, "Gerry fell in love with this girl. He was a lawyer, a good one, pretty well top of the tree in Hong Kong. For all the glitz towns don't come much tougher. Life can be very raw there.”

     The police chief smirked, “I think in the west you are used to having it easy, English.”

     Jack shrugged, he wasn’t arguing with this man. “My point is that he was used to doing deals. He did deals with big gamblers, big crooks, even the Government. He thought he could do a deal with the mob as well. He made the mistake of thinking they all played by the same rules and he might have been right if he had been on his own patch. It's not like him, that. He must have been out of his mind over this girl because he always covered his back. He may have thought that taking out a foreigner in a place like this would make too big a noise."

    “When a big tree falls in the forest,” the police chief responded, examining his nicotine-stained fingernails, “it makes a big crash.”

     “That’s what I mean.”

     “But only if there are ears there to hear it. Otherwise it passes without notice. I think someone has taken a lot of trouble to make it look as if these two got into a fight with each other, but it never made sense. We didn't even know for sure he was a foreigner. They went to a lot of trouble to remove all the evidence."

     "Didn't the neighbours hear anything?"

    "Did the forest have ears, English? In that building you keep your eyes and your ears and most of all your mouth shut."

    Jack bristled with disgust, “That’s just too easy to hide behind. You should arrest the man who lives down the corridor. The one you interrupted before he was going to deal with us too.”

     “It would get you nowhere. He works for Ilyich Chernenko. He carries out executions to order. Someone must have wanted your friend killed, otherwise why do it? The girls in this line of business don't have a long shelf life. The westerner checked into the hotel carrying a hundred and fifty thousand U.S. Someone was going to take him out. There is no evidence it was Chernenko or one of his men. It could have been anyone the girl knew.”

     Jack nodded. He knew, of course, that he was right; the suspicion was high but the evidence thin; it was just he was surprised to be told that is how it worked here too. But he had picked up on something else. “One hundred and fifty thousand? I had the idea it was more than that?”

     “Who from?”

     “Various people. I mean what I gave him would be about half of that.”

     The Police Chief's eyes glinted. It was as if he found that funny; or maybe it was more than that - he was calculating the odds, thinking that there might be more where that came from. Certainly he was adamant that no gangster would turn down that kind of profit for a whore. There were thousands of girls waiting to step into her shoes. Whichever way they turned it no one could make sense of it. There didn't seem to be any point in killing Gerry. It would just bring the heat on top. Maybe they did it because they were sadists, or maybe he tried to jump them. Either way, it wasn’t worth speculating. The police chief didn’t like the hassle of it happening on his patch but it wasn’t worth any more of his time; it was the end of the road: another drunken westerner who’d got out of his depth in a mean city. The world is full of stories like that. “Sorry,” he said and he looked at them out of dark brown eyes in a way which might have been described as beseeching if they hadn’t known precisely the menace which lay behind that look. With that the police contingent was gone.

     “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him,” Diana said.

     “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s a tough town this but they can’t all be bent surely!”

     She gave him a withering look, “Are you for real?”

     The police had not been gone long when the door of the cafe opened and Peter walked in. He wrung Jack’s hand in greeting. “Where have you been?” Diana asked accusingly.

     “Keeping my head down. I didn’t expect you to invite your official friends to the party.”

     “Fine state we’d have been in, if I hadn’t!”

     “Oh, I don’t know. I had people there. They were ready to move in.”

     “Oh yeah! Likely story! We were nearly goners there!”

     “Oh no?” Peter grinned affably. “It was a calculated risk maybe but they weren’t going to kill again there. Not two people like you. And not with all the shit on the fan from Jack’s friend. I am sorry, my dear, but you can’t put this one down as one of your nine lives.”

     Jack couldn’t help but grin covertly as Diana fumed at the put-down.

CHAPTER 5

     “Are you sure? Jack asked. “That sounds a bit like taking out a Mafia don to me. The repercussions could be enormous. I don‘t want to start any vendettas!” He was looking straight into Peter’s eyes across the table in his rustic kitchen and couldn’t see the slightest flinch there. Instead there was a look of intense concentration on his host’s face, the result at least in part of the chess pieces on the board in front of them on the table, which had been blitzed to near chaos by the lightning speed of both men‘s attacking play. It was perhaps partially to put Jack off that he thrown in that seemingly stray remark but the Englishman had the feeling that, like many things said in jest, Peter was deadly serious. In his own head he studied the odds of the proposition his host had just put to him. “It’s only money, my instinct tells me to let it go.”

     Peter looked at the two among his men who had stayed behind and then back at Jack. “A lot of people underestimate the value of money.”

    “I know it is easier to come by where I come from but I would really would feel bad, asking you guys to take that kind of risk for me.

    “Jack, we are not offering you all your money back. We are offering half. And it is not we who would be doing you a favour, but the other way round. In a country like this you get one chance if you’re lucky to put something in the bank, take care of your kids. None of my people would pass that up. We are capable, Jack.  We all served in Afghanistan, a few of the younger lads have just come back from Chechnya. Everyone here, everyone in this group has done military service in some of the toughest war arenas in the world. We are honest guys. We chose to go back to our honest and hard-working lives, even though we know that this is a land now where only crooks prosper. These guys are takers and they have grown fat and complacent because no one can stand up to them, or so they think. But we are ready, willing and able to stand up to them. We can take out these guys and get your money back. It is up to you if you will split it with us.”

     “Of course I don’t mind splitting it with you. I’ve lost it. Getting half back would be great. It’s the risk to you guys. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience. I think Di and I should just walk away from here, get married, have a quiet life.” He looked up at the ceiling as if realising that was wishful thinking.

     She looked across at him from her place on the settee, “Did I hear you right?”

     “You might have.”

     Peter grinned at them, “Maybe I help with a wedding present, then, eh?” He was unperturbed by Jack‘s concerns. “Everyone I’ve spoken of would take that risk ten times over. These bandits need a lesson, they've been getting away with stealing from the small folk too long. Here’s a chance for some of us to hit back. We're total unknowns here. That’s why I didn’t want the police to know who I was.”

     He looked at Diana who blushed. “What? You’ve been plotting it that long?” she said incredulously.

     “I thought of it as soon as Jack told me.”

     “He’s a chess player,” Jack cut in, “always planning the endgame. Like this. He started by forcing the Petrov which made him bring out the queen side knight. I thought he might try the queen side bishop.”

     “Pish! The Portuguese! It had to be the knight move. No other move poses a problem for black,” Peter answered.

     “Yes, but that d4 move opened it right up for a four knights move….”

     “No, that’s not right, the d4 was orthodox but your bishop to b4 is what sparked the exchanges. You should have taken the d4 pawn with the e5.”

     “Your king side knight would have taken it in return.”

     “That was the idea. So you could then bring your bishop to b4. You did it two moves early!”

     “Tough! If I hadn‘t your knight would have then taken mine at c6!”

     Peter was nodding. “You think ahead, Jack, you think ahead and you do the unorthodox! That is just my point…”

     “What on earth are you two talking about?” Diana was exasperated by the chess jargon.

     The two of them laughed and Peter picked up the theme. “Okay, here’s how I see it. They are there, e4 and we move, e5, they take a look at us with knight to f3 and so it goes until we kick ass with the bishop move, eh Jack? They won’t expect that bishop move and that is just before we disappear into oblivion?”

     “Hey, I’ve heard of life imitating art but it doesn’t translate that easy, my friend. Let’s say we take them by surprise, how do we disappear exactly? How do we guarantee no repercussions?”

     “Easy. We put it about that a gang from out of town did it, eh? The bishop of Moscow moving on to b4 just like you did there!” He pointed at the carnage of the chess board. He was right. That bishop to b4 had taken the game out of the orthodox Petrov defence into the speculative and adventurous, a hallmark of Jack’s game. Peter noticed his hesitation and pressed home the advantage. “And I don't know what twenty five thousand sterling would buy you back home but it would certainly set up a few families here for life."

    Jack stroked the stubble on his chin; Diana watched expectantly; Peter’s wife smiled cheerfully as she set down bowls of fish soup with black bread.  Peter’s heavily pregnant daughter followed her in. That was game over for now. Peter gave Jack a warning look as if to say be careful what you say in front of them and he acknowledged with the slightest shift of his eyebrows. Peter then reverted to his jovial self and pointed at his daughter with his spoon. "We're going to call it Jack if it's a boy."

     "What a cross to bear!" Diana exclaimed.

     Once dinner was finished, Jack resumed the game as if nothing had been said beforehand, but everyone stared at him until he could stand it no longer. He had to make a decision. “Okay, it’s a deal,” he said at last. Peter whooped in triumph and did high fives with his men; his wife and daughter looked overjoyed although Jack was pretty sure that, without Peter’s facility for the English language, they had no idea what had just been decided.

    That night their small group, which, except for Jack and Diana, was composed entirely of family, got into a battered old Lada four-wheel drive. A conventional saloon followed.  The number plates of both vehicles had been obscured. Diana and Jack, dressed like their four companions in dark clothes and balaclavas, set off in the off-roader for the apartment block where Gerry had met his end. Jack had begun to feel the thrill of the enterprise. He couldn't have been in better company. You could pit these tough, wiry fishermen against the SAS and they'd give a good account of themselves, particularly here in their own backyard. They were all ex-Red Army vets, and in their civilian lives they were used to the worst conditions the elements could throw at them,

     “You might not want to be here for this,” Peter told Jack. “It will get nasty.”

     “You’re joking. In a for a penny.”

     The Russian shrugged as if he didn’t get the idiom but he insisted Diana stay behind. He mollified her by designating her as driver in case they needed a quick getaway and then by giving her a gun. “Not nice people round here. Don’t ask questions.” He didn’t say, shoot first, but that seemed to be the implication.

     They crossed the concrete yard and crept stealthily up the stairs to the tenth floor, then down the corridor. Passing by the flat where Gerry had met his end they reached the gunman’s door further down. This time they were armed. Peter and Jack had sawn-offs but two of the others carried Kalashnikovs. Weapons were easy to get hold of in post-Soviet Russia. It was the kind of place where you didn’t check your weapons back in after completing National Service. “We’ve got a bit more ordnance than that, wait and see,” Peter said. It might have sounded ominous on another occasion but, to Jack, it was surprisingly comforting. 

     Peter leaned up against the gunman’s door. One of the men went to work with a screwdriver and soon the lock was loose in the door. Carefully he removed it. Peter felt down for the door handle. A grin broke out on his face and he said, "He's on the job." Like voyeurs they all took turns at the gap at the door, grinning from ear to ear at the sounds from within, like two pigs grunting with the heavy pounding of the bed for counterpoint. "Couldn't be better, we’ll be the last thing on his mind, eh?" The door behind the fly-screen was open. They filed in silently, the grunting noises growing louder. Peter led the way down the corridor. Four faces at different levels looked round the second door. It wasn't a pretty sight. A big blonde woman was astride the gunman. She had immense breasts; they bounced around like balloons; the nipples hung from them like tassels. From time to time the man beneath would grunt and reach up his shovel like hands to grip on to them. They both had their eyes tight shut; he was lean but she had the chins of a Toby jug. She thrust out her tongue and grunted loudly, securing a more comfortable billet. The man made deep sounds in the back of his throat as her buttocks lifted up and then plunged down on him with slapping and squeaking sounds. The knuckles on his hands gleamed white as he dug his fingers into her. He opened his mouth in passion and, with immaculate timing, Peter slotted the gun barrel in. The idiot sucked on it momentarily, thinking his wench had collapsed over him and stuck some part of her anatomy in his mouth and then he opened his eyes and the pupils dilated in fear. The woman was oblivious; there was no stopping her. Whilst he became a spectator at the feast she let everything rip until, all passion spent, she finally collapsed on top of him. He was buried under a mound of flesh, the shotgun still in his mouth. She realised almost immediately something was wrong, opened her eyes and screamed.

     Peter's nephew, Georgi, gave her a blow with the butt of his gun, knocking her out cold on top of her prostrate companion. That kept him neatly imprisoned. "So sorry to interrupt," Peter said.

     "What do you want?" the gunman squealed. He wasn’t half so brave now.

     "We want his money," Peter replied, motioning towards Jack. He translated loosely as he went for the latter’s benefit.

     "I haven't got it," he whimpered.

     Peter cocked the gun in his mouth. "Don't fuck with us," he said in universal American. The man's eyes opened wide in fear, "Where is it?"

     "I can't tell you that," he whined.

     "Well, to hell with you then!" Peter’s trigger finger tightened noticeably.

     "Aaah!" There was a strangled scream and the gunman pleaded, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

     "Turn this place over," Peter ordered his companions, "he’s lying his teeth out!" He turned to Jack.  “If any foreigner comes into the city carrying money it has to be declared, so his boss will know your friend was carrying big bucks. But he won't have told him the truth. Some of it will still be here, about twenty five per cent I'd say. We'll find it."

     His compatriots were experts at searching for chordy gear. They could have taught the Northumbria Crime Squad a few lessons. They crawled all over the flat and eventually found a stash in the ceiling void. "Not very bright," Peter remonstrated with the gunman. "How much is there boys?" He wasn't far away with his original guess. There was nearly thirty thousand dollars. "Half for you and half for us," he told Jack and gave him a solemn wink. He turned back to the gunman. "Where's the rest, ass'ole?"

     The latter shrugged, trying belatedly to be obstructive. Peter rammed the gun right down his throat, drawing blood as the barrel crunched through his front teeth. An anguished howl escaped from the man. Jack shuddered with the shock of the assault.  The woman on top began stirring and Peter's cousin kicked her off him. She flopped on the floor on her back, flesh everywhere. The gunman breathed a sigh of relief despite the pain in his mouth.  Not for long. Peter's cousin drew his knife, stepped forward and slashed off the top of the man's ear. He screamed in pain. Jack looked on, his mouth open in astonishment. What had he expected? He’d cried havoc and now the dogs were loose. Peter's cousin smiled at him, the sort of smile you'd expect from a long lost friend.

     “I hope you lot never come on my patch,” he muttered, “it’s bad enough having the kilts for neighbours!”

     Peter’s cousin didn‘t blink, "Hold out his hand!” Peter’s son-in-law did as he asked. The knife crunched down against the iron bedpost and took off the digit at the joint. Jack gagged as the gunman howled. He was about to say, forget it, the money isn’t worth this, but the gunman had had enough.