Vendetta (36 page)

Mac moved his head slightly back to see if he could catch Rio’s eye. Stupid, she isn’t going to realise it’s you with your helmet on. So he moved back as he started pulling the helmet off.

Saw who was in the back seat.

Not Rio.

Bolshoi.

So Phil had already picked him up. Suddenly another face came into view. Mac shook his head. No, he couldn’t be seeing straight. No way could that be Calum, sitting next to the Russian. But it was. And there was Phil, driving in the front, like it was the most ordinary day of his life.

eighty-four

Mac gave his head one quick shake. Maybe the cocktail of drugs in his system was messing with his mind again. No, they were still there. And now Bolshoi was laughing at something that Calum had said. Laughing. Bitch. He wasn’t allowed to laugh while Elena was dead. Mac’s already chilled blood ran colder as he wondered if all three of them had been involved in Elena’s death.

The Merc pulled away. Mac twisted the motorbike round. Cut the lights. Followed, keeping a distance between them. On the narrow roads and with traffic diverted because of the gun battle down by the river, they weren’t hard to keep up with. He kept tabs on them for a couple of miles before they turned into a smart four-storey terrace in Victoria Park, still in East London. He knew the house. It was owned by the government and occasionally used by The Research Unit as a safe house for people they were ‘looking after’. Why was Phil taking Bolshoi to a safe house?

Mac hung back and watched the three men exit the car. Go into the house. Less than a minute later, Mac stood outside, a dark figure wondering how to get in. He was way too tired to go all Spiderman up the side of the building. He felt in his pocket for his new best buddy – the flick knife. Opened it and, with great care, tucked it up his sleeve. It was a few steps down the garden path and then up the steps to the heavy wooden door with its jet knocker.

He banged twice against the door

No answer. No sounds. But was that a flicker of the downstairs curtain?

Bang. Bang.

No answer.

‘Open the bloody door,’ he yelled, kicking it with as much force as his leg muscles could handle.

The door opened. Calum, his Glock trained point-blank on Mac.

Before Mac could speak, Calum yelled, ‘It’s your psycho member of staff, Phil. Do you want me to shoot him?’

Mac bared his teeth and reared into Calum, making the nozzle of the gun press hard against his chest. ‘Go on, fucking kill me, because I tell you, if you don’t, I’m going to take you down.’

Calum’s face steamed up with an anger to match Mac’s. ‘Don’t think I wouldn’t.’ He pressed the barrel deeper into Mac’s flesh.

The men glared at each other. With one move, Mac flicked the knife up and out. Had the blade touching the skin of Calum’s neck, near that strange red, misshapen lipstick-style print, which – close up – now looked more like a burn.

‘Back off, both of you,’ Phil’s voice boomed behind them.

But they didn’t move. Neither could let go of the unfinished business between them.

‘Now,’ Phil insisted.

Calum was the first to move back. Mac swiftly turned to his superior and growled, ‘If you don’t tell me what’s going on . . .’

‘Calm down,’ Phil ordered, weariness punctuating his tone. ‘Come inside.’

Inside was a functional sitting room with basic furniture and heavy-duty curtains. But the only thing that Mac noticed was Bolshoi sitting in an armchair, smoking a cigar. Calum placed his gun on a side table and sat down. Mac eyed the gun but was distracted by Phil, who was obviously pissed at his presence.

‘I don’t care about this case,’ Mac started breathlessly, never taking his gaze off Bolshoi, but directing his words at Phil. ‘Don’t care why you’re hooked up to these other two like the three bent musketeers. All I want is the person who killed Elena. And I know one of you bastards isn’t telling me the truth.’

Phil looked at Bolshoi. ‘Do you know anything about this girl’s murder?’

Bolshoi blew pungent smoke across the room before simply saying, ‘No.’ He took another puff before adding, ‘Although I can take some educated guesses.’

Phil looked at Calum who sighed, ‘I don’t know why he thinks that I had anything to do with it. I don’t know who killed her. If I’m such a murdering bastard, why didn’t I shoot you for Reuben while I had the chance?’

‘Who knows why you do what you do? You’d do anything for anyone if the cash was right.’

‘But you weren’t paying me, were you? Has it crossed that messed up mind of yours that I was trying to save a friend?’

Friend? Who the hell did Calum think he was kidding? He only ever did stuff if it worked to his advantage. Before he left this house, Mac vowed, he’d find out not only what Calum had been up to, but every other sordid detail of what these three men were doing together as well.

Calum’s hand went to his back pocket, making Mac stiffen his body into a defensive pose. The other man pulled something out and handed it to Mac. His warrant card. Mac took it. If Calum was waiting for ‘thank you’ he was going to be waiting a hell of a long time.

Mac eyeballed the box of cigars sitting on the mantelpiece as he tucked his warrant card away. ‘Are the smokes going free?’

Delaney looked at the box. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

Mac got up and walked over to the mantelpiece. Picked up the box and opened it, but it fell out of his fingers and onto the floor. He bent down and began picking up the scattered Havanas. When he found one under the side table, he took it with one hand, grabbed Calum’s pistol with the other and swung round and pointed it at Bolshoi’s head. ‘I’ll shoot him, so help me. I need answers. You’ve got some and I want to hear them. Otherwise your friend is going to get his head blown off.’

Calum tutted and rolled his eyes. ‘It isn’t loaded, Mac. I took the ammo out because I knew you’d pull this stunt.’

Mac pressed the trigger. Click. Click. He threw it to the floor.

Bolshoi was still puffing on his cigar and seemed relaxed. ‘Delaney, why don’t you put the poor man out of his misery and tell him what’s been going on?’

Phil sighed. Spoke. ‘For the last three months, Mister Bolshoi’s been assisting Her Majesty’s Government.’

eighty-five

12:20 a.m.

Mac sat on the edge of the seat, the gun back on the table, still stunned by what Phil had revealed. His superior looked at him with something like sympathy.

‘I’m sorry, Mac, but we’re playing big boys’ games here and, with respect, you’re not a big boy. I might have found you a role in the final phase of the operation but you weren’t needed. Especially in view of your somewhat erratic behaviour over the past few days . . .’

‘I can still do my job.’

‘Not from Cambodia you can’t – that’s where you were going this morning, wasn’t it? Instead of which, you and your old friend Rio nearly messed up a highly sensitive operation.’

‘A dirty operation.’

‘It was all authorised.’

That was no surprise to Mac, he’d seen clearance from the Home Office on Phil’s files. But now he knew exactly what H.O. had been clearing. ‘So let me guess,’ Mac started, ‘your jet-setting, murdering comrade here did a deal with you to round up the London end of the operation so you could stop that gang war everyone’s been talking about. Am I getting warm? Although I can’t see what was in it for him, or why the fireworks started down on the docks.’

Bolshoi sat amused as he smoked his cigar. He gestured at Mac with the cigar and said to Phil. ‘He’s good, your employee. I like him.’

Phil didn’t get the joke. ‘Don’t worry about the managerial side of things. I’ve told you this is big boys’ games.’

The Russian seemed to be enjoying himself, and ignored Phil’s attempts to stop him explaining. ‘I needed the London end of my operation wound up, Mac. Normally I would have to pay top dollar to get it done professionally but, as Mr Delaney here offered to round them all up for nothing – well, that’s the kind of business I like.’ He sighed. ‘But in the end I had to kill most of them myself from the yacht. If you want a job done, you have to do it yourself, as usual. Your English police are no more efficient than in Germany or anywhere else.’

This was too much for Phil. ‘We would have rounded the whole gang up as arranged if the operation hadn’t been brought forward by Reuben Volk. Something that you, for some reason, forgot to advise us of.’

Bolshoi remained relaxed. ‘I sent you a message. It’s not my fault if your people don’t communicate with one another. If I had staff that incompetent, I’d shoot them.’

Mac interrupted their verbal ping-pong. ‘And what about him?’ He couldn’t bring himself to use Calum’s name. ‘Did the Home Office clear a deal with him as well?’

‘Stop it, Mac,’ Phil warned.

But now he was centre-stage, Mac was in no mood to give up the spotlight. ‘Let’s see, it would be money with our dirty ex-copper here, wouldn’t it? Tenners are his morals these days. Or did you agree to turn a blind eye to his law-breaking in return for his help? Yes, it would be that. No paper trail then.’ He stared at Calum with contempt. ‘And after all you’ve said about the police . . . and here you are working for them.’

Calum shoved his chin up, his green gaze defiant. ‘Perhaps, but I earned my side of the deal. I got tasered by Delaney after Reuben’s boy’s birthday party for my trouble.’

The three thieves were falling out. ‘That was an honest mistake. I thought you were Mac . . .’ But then Phil stopped, drew breath and raised his hands. ‘OK, that’s enough. I told you on the quayside to make yourself scarce, Mac, go home, say nothing and I’ll make sure there’s no comeback about your escapades today. If you don’t, you’ll be on your own . . .’

Mac said nothing. He wasn’t surprised that Phil had hired the services of Bolshoi and Calum in his effort to put Reuben’s gang out of business. Fuck, he didn’t want to admit it, but he knew it had been the right thing to do. Bolshoi and Calum would have carried on with their thing anyway, while now at least a violent gun outfit had been wound up and a war avoided. He’d done it himself often enough. Traded information for favours; defended the bad against the worse. There was no black and white in this world; it was all smoke and mirrors. It wouldn’t have surprised him to discover that everything he thought he knew so far was the exact opposite of the truth. Except for one thing. Elena was still dead. And he still didn’t know who’d killed her.

The hunt was still on.

‘Sure.’

‘Sure?’ Phil fixed him with a penetrating stare that only eased up when Mac’s expression remained the same. ‘Good. OK then. You head along.’

‘On one condition. One of you three jokers knows something about Elena’s murder. If you tell me what it is, I’ll be about my business.’

Calum shrugged his shoulders. Phil rolled his eyes in despair. Bolshoi remained impassive. Mac caught Bolshoi’s eye.

‘Oh please,’ the Russian said. ‘You don’t still think I had anything to do with Elena’s killing. You seem to have forgotten, your colleague Rio Wray was nearly killed this afternoon by an assailant at Katia’s home. Of course at the time I was on my yacht, as Mr Delaney here will be happy to confirm.’

‘He’s right,’ Phil quickly added. ‘Rio was attacked by a guy with a tattoo. Some Red Army thing. I spoke to her before they shipped her back to Mission Hill Hospital.’

Mac jumped in. ‘But Calum and I found texts on Elena’s phone from you saying you were going to kill her . . .’

‘I never sent her any texts,’ Bolshoi countered. ‘If I was trying to cover my tracks, it would be a stupid thing for me to leave incriminating messages on her phone.’

Mac knew he wasn’t making sense but he still had one more ace up his sleeve. ‘What I’m sure
Mister
Bolshoi hasn’t shared with you is that he has the same tattoo.’

Both Phil and Calum fixed their stunned gazes onto the Russian.

‘Come on,’ Bolshoi slammed in. ‘If I was the person at Katia’s house, would I have let you see the tattoo earlier?’

‘So who else has got one?’ Mac shouted.

‘Only three people I know of,’ Bolshoi offered. ‘Me, Elena and her father. They’re dead, I’m not, so whatever this Rio Wray saw, I’m sure it couldn’t have been that tattoo.’

‘Well, happily Rio is safely tucked back up in the hospital, where I’m sure she’ll soon be fully restored – her very dodgy memory included,’ Phil added.

But Mac wasn’t buying it. Rio was the best cop he knew, so no way would she get a detail like that wrong.

‘The only person left who might know is Elena’s sister, Katia—’ Mac urgently threw in.

But Phil had obviously had enough. ‘Mac,’ he interrupted sternly. ‘Piss. Off.’

Mac gave Bolshoi one last, see-you-in-hell look, then got up. Held his hand over his trouser pocket and left the room without a word. When he was outside, he walked slowly down the street. He had nothing. He knew about Katia but not nearly enough to find her. He’d already been to her home, but hadn’t had time to look over it properly. And now the police would have it under lockdown because of Detective Martin’s murder, so it was going to be too hard to get into. And he still didn’t know what, if any, connection she had to Elena’s murder. Behind him he heard a front door slam and hurried footsteps. He turned to find Bolshoi catching him up.