Cold Courage (29 page)

Vanags described how he had been transporting Daiga’s body in his car at night to dispose of it. Olafs Jansons was with him. Jansons had seen a building site at the side of the road. There was a
steamroller
.

‘Jansons suggested that flattening her beyond recognition would be the perfect punishment for a mouthy whore. We put Daiga on the road and I drove over her with the steamroller. Back and forth. At least ten times. It was hard shovelling all that shit off the road.’

Once the men had collected the remains of the body, Vanags had decided that they could use it to teach a lesson to his other whores.

‘To you, Elza, and the others. So we got the Volvo and put her in the back.’

Henriete used one hand to wipe her eyes and nose.

‘And Anita?’

Vanags was quiet for a few seconds before answering.

‘Doesn’t everyone already know? Anita escaped from Creed Lane with Loreta. We caught Loreta and killed her. Anita managed to hide. Then she made a mistake. She got in touch with her brother in Latvia. The brother told everyone that Anita was having problems in London. We found her, and I shot her to smithereens. With a machine gun.’

Vanags went silent.

‘How?’ Henriete asked. ‘Tell everything.’

They had a warehouse for storing imported goods, Vanags said. In the middle of the warehouse was a large concrete pit for getting underneath lorries in order to service them. They had taken Anita down there. They turned on all of the warehouse lights so she could see where she was and that she couldn’t get out. She had seen that Vanags had a machine gun. In the warehouse they had dozens of Soviet PKMs stored for sale.

‘I told Anita to try to escape. She just stood there. In the middle of the pit.’

Vanags had fired a burst in front of her. She jumped and started running. Vanags kept her moving by firing short bursts after her as she ran from wall to wall in the confined space.

‘She fell. And then I shot her to pieces. First from a distance and then up close. The head came off and the legs almost did too, at the ankles. It made such a fucking mess. And we made an example out of her, same as Daiga. But not in a Volvo. We put her in a Hyundai. We aren’t stupid like Anita. We don’t leave stupid clues.’

Lia, Paddy and Elza could not see Vanags as he spoke, but they did not need to. They could hear the mockery in his tone.

‘Why did you kill them?’ Henriete asked in English.

‘Why? What a stupid question,’ he replied, laughing.

‘Why did you kill them?’ Henriete screamed.

His answer was brief.

‘They didn’t obey. My whores obey me.’

Henriete shifted her stance, standing straight instead of leaning against the wall. She drew herself up, keeping her eyes glued on Kazis Vanags. She began speaking again, this time in Latvian.

‘
Bestija
!’ she said. ‘
Bestija
!’

Henriete spoke quickly, spitting words out of her mouth. Elza didn’t have time to interpret or say anything.

Henriete closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she fired three quick shots.

It happened so quickly that none of them could brace themselves for the sound. Lia, Paddy and Elza instinctively hit the floor.

The shots were like small explosions. They filled the house. The pressure reverberated through them all.

Complete silence fell. The force of the blasts had blocked their ears.

When they looked up, they saw Henriete still standing there, unmoved.

Paddy looked at Henriete until he could make eye contact. The rage of a moment before had disappeared without a trace.

‘OK?’ Paddy asked.

‘OK.’ Henriete said the word slowly and carefully.

Henriete tossed her pistol aside. Paddy stood up and entered the bedroom. Taking a handkerchief out of his pocket, he picked up the weapon and walked around the door.

He’s making sure Vanags is dead. Can a person survive gunshots from that close range?

A moment later Paddy came back into view. Lia saw the answer in his expression.

‘We have to leave now,’ Paddy said. ‘We can’t do anything here.’

Lia and Elza stepped into the bedroom. Elza went to Henriete and took her gently in her arms.

Lia stared at Kazimirs Vanags’ corpse on the other side of the room. Her first reaction was to look away, so much blood had
spattered
everywhere. But she ordered herself to see this thing.

Vanags was half sitting against the wall. Henriete had probably hit him with all three shots. The bullets had ripped holes through his chest. His head hung to one side, frozen against one shoulder.

‘The neighbours may have heard,’ Paddy said, and Lia
understood
. They had to leave.

She and Paddy quickly conferred. What should they do with Henriete?

‘She’s just murdered a man,’ Paddy said. ‘The first shots, when he attacked her with the knife, could be considered self-defence. But not those three. This is clearly murder.’

‘But she killed the man who killed her daughter. And he kept her and her granddaughter prisoner for months. He was the man who intended to force her granddaughter into prostitution,’ Lia said. ‘Let’s go back to Twineham Green to the others. We need time to consider what the right thing to do would be.’

‘I don’t know if extra time will help with that,’ Paddy said.
They concealed Henriete’s shoulder wound with a coat, and then Elza led her firmly but tenderly to the car. Paddy wavered over what to do with the weapon Henriete had used. Removing a murder weapon from a crime scene was a serious felony in itself. But the gun had Henriete’s fingerprints on it.

In the end he decided to keep it.

No curious neighbours were visible outside the house – apparently the shots had not been loud enough outside for anyone to raise the alarm.

Elza and Henriete sat in the back seat of the car, Henriete leaning against Elza as though all her strength had abandoned her.

Lia sat in the front. Paddy leaned over from the driver’s seat and placed something in the glove box. It was Henriete’s gun.

‘Do you know what she said?’ Elza asked.

Lia and Paddy understood what Elza meant. Henriete’s words to Vanags a moment before she shot him.

‘She said,
bestija
, beast. She said, “Now you go to hell. And when I follow you there, I will kill you again. I will always kill you again. I will kill you a thousand times.”’

Silence fell inside the car.

They were just about to leave when Paddy stopped.

‘Who knows how long it could take the police to find Vanags’ body. If no one heard the shots, the police have no reason to search that house.’

Lia understood the problem.

‘The police will be wasting time and resources looking for a man they’ll never find. And in the meantime, Vanags’ comrades can escape or cover their tracks.’

‘Vanags’ car has to be here somewhere,’ Paddy said. ‘We should take a look at it. We may be able to use it to get the police interested in the house.’

Lia and Paddy found the car quickly. It was only parked fifty metres away. They tried the doors, but of course they were locked.

‘Vanags must have the key,’ Paddy said. ‘We have to get it.’

Lia waited on the street while Paddy returned to the house. He did not linger at the unsavoury task any longer than necessary.
Within a minute he was back, and Lia did not ask anything.

Paddy opened the car, glancing through the interior quickly and then inspecting a bag that had been left on the floor.

Lia kept an eye out for passers-by. A moment later, Paddy emerged from the car holding something which Lia recognised as a sat-nav.

They could not take it with them, since the police would need it in their investigation. But Paddy wanted to download the information in its memory so they would know where Vanags had driven to. Paddy had a program on his computer which could copy the data.

He headed back to his car, and Lia stayed to watch Vanags’ car. The street was quiet, with no one in sight.

Lia saw Paddy turning on his laptop in the front seat of the car and explaining something to Elza.

A breeze picked up, and Lia started to feel cold. She opened the door of Vanags’ car to get in. Then she saw a figure in dark clothing quickly approaching Paddy’s car.

The bald man. Olafs Jansons.

A lot happened over the next twenty seconds. Lia tried to scream, but a paralyzing fear choked her voice.

Jansons was holding a pistol in his hand and pointing it straight at the windscreen of Paddy’s car. He was about twenty metres away, ready to shoot.

He means to execute them right here on the street.

Lia threw herself into the car and slammed the horn on the steering wheel. The warning was high-pitched and loud.

The sound made Paddy lift his eyes from the computer screen. At the same time, Olafs Jansons turned for a fleeting second to look back towards the sound. Paddy’s headlights flashed, and Lia
understood
that he had started the car. She saw that Paddy did not have time to turn around.

Jansons was approaching them on the pavement, but then suddenly changed course, loping into the middle of the road and continuing towards the car.

He’s trying to stop them from driving away.

Paddy’s car careered into motion. Jansons stopped reflexively, and then he shot. He fired two shots towards Paddy, who was driving directly at him.

Jansons dodged by spinning to the side. Lia saw the shots smash through the windscreen. She could not see Paddy, Elza or Henriete.

The car darted down the street, and when it corrected its
direction
, Lia understood that Paddy must still be in the driver’s seat. He had crouched down out of sight. Jansons shot at the car again, but then lowered his gun. He turned around, still in the middle of the road, looking for eyewitnesses.

Only when he started walking quickly towards Lia did she realise that she was still blasting the horn. She raised her hands, and the deafening wail stopped.

She had barely had time to even think of fleeing. Olafs Jansons was already standing a few metres away and raising his weapon towards her.

Paddy sat up carefully in the driver’s seat and slowed down. They had sped off down Sangley Road, leaving the bald gunman behind, but Paddy could not see the street properly. The gunshots had
thoroughly
shattered the windscreen.

He glanced into the back. Elza and Henriete were huddled out of sight on the floor.

‘Are you alright?’ he yelled.

Elza raised her head and looked at Henriete.

‘Yes,’ she said.

After rounding two corners, Paddy realised he could not go on.

He braked and then stopped the car completely at the kerb.

‘What now?’ Elza asked.

‘Lia.’

There was no feeling in Jansons’ eyes, Lia thought. The way he looked at her, she could have been inanimate.

Jansons pointed his weapon at her, but that was not what made Lia powerless. Instead, it was the tension in his bearing. He knew that something was going very wrong. Three people had just slipped out of his grasp, and he had no room to let Lia escape as well.

‘Door open,’ he said.

Lia pushed the front door, which had never clicked shut, the rest of the way open.

Jansons moved to the side of the car to get a better line of sight. Lia realised he was also holding his pistol behind the door so no one else could see it.

She considered whether she could kick or hit him in a way that would make him drop his gun. She abandoned the idea immediately.

They stared at each other for at least twenty seconds. Lia saw that Jansons was weighing his options. Then he nodded towards her feet.

‘Open the boot. The lever is under the seat.’

Lia felt under the seat until she found the lever, which she pulled. When she heard the boot lid pop open, she realised what was about to occur. Her chest clenched as if someone had sucked the air out of her.

Jansons did not need to say anything. He motioned once with his gun. Lia slowly climbed out of the front seat.

She felt Jansons press the barrel of the pistol into her back and butt her into motion. Lia stepped behind the car, the barrel in her back the whole time. Jansons shoved the boot the rest of the way open. Again he pressed Lia with the barrel of the pistol, and Lia knew what he wanted.

She tried to focus on breathing. It was getting so hard.

I have to climb in the boot, just like Daiga and Anita.

This is where I’m going to die.

Jansons prodded her again, more forcefully this time. It hurt. Lia leaned against the edge of the car. Her back was aching. Her hands were shaking.

Suddenly a blow came from above and she did not think anything any more.

Paddy evaluated the situation.

The car was still fit to be driven, and he could steer despite the broken windscreen. Elza and especially Henriete were in a state of shock, but neither of them had been hit. And the cut on Henriete’s shoulder was not bad. They were in no immediate danger.

But Lia was.

The bald gunman could already have killed her. But if he hadn’t, what would he do?

‘Do you know the man who shot at us?’ he asked Elza.

‘Yes. Very dangerous.’

Elza briefly described Jansons: the most hardened type of
criminal
.

Paddy had to make a decision.

‘Stay here in the car and keep quiet,’ he said, climbing out.

As he started walking back towards Sangley Road, he checked the pistol in his inner coat pocket. He took out his mobile and dialled Mari’s number. He needed reinforcements.

Lia lay in the luggage compartment of Vanags’ car trying to calm her breathing.

The pain in her head was so intense that it made her curl up in a ball.

She was not sure how much time had passed. She looked for her mobile in her coat pocket, but it had disappeared. Jansons must have taken it.

Carefully she tried the boot lid catch. It wouldn’t open. She remembered hearing the car’s automatic locks clicking shut. Of course he had locked the doors. There was no emergency release.