Capital Punishment (2 page)

‘How come we got no SatNav?’

‘Give it here.’ Dan ripped the book out of Skin’s hands. ‘You’re not even on the right fucking page.’

‘Once I’m east of Limehouse, I’m lost.’

Dan chucked the book into Skin’s lap, eased across the road, carried on for a few hundred yards and turned left.

‘Grange Road,’ said Skin, as if it was hardly a miracle. ‘I wasn’t that far off.’

‘What number?’

‘The one with the cab outside it.’

‘You didn’t bring the number with you, did you?’

‘Just look for the fucking cab.’

‘The cab’s going to be in the garage,’ said Dan. ‘That’s what Pike told us.’

‘Fuck. You fuck...’

Skin started rooting around in his pockets, came up with a piece of paper, gave the number. It was an end-of-terrace house. They reached the driveway. Dan reversed up to the garage door, turned off the lights.

‘Right,’ said Dan. ‘Let’s chill for a few minutes.’

‘Put this on,’ said Skin, throwing him a hood, chucking his West Ham cap in the glove compartment. ‘Make sure you get the eye and mouth holes facing the right way.’

‘Thanks for the instructions.’

‘And cop hold of that.’

Dan looked down at a handgun with the fattened barrel of a suppressor attached.

‘I thought we were just going to pick up the girl?’ said Dan.

‘You’re the one asked Pike to work with me,’ said Skin.

‘He didn’t say anything about
guns.’

‘This is what I do.’

‘What?’

‘Take care of things.’

‘We don’t need
guns
to pick up the girl. How am I going to hold a syringe
and
a gun?’

‘You’ll work it out,’ said Skin. ‘Take one of these ’n’ all.’

He handed Dan a ligature.

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘And put these on,’ said Skin, handing him a pair of latex gloves.

‘What’s this all about?’ said Dan, dangling the ligature.

‘If we get any trouble, the guns’ll shut them up, make them concentrate and, if we have to, you know, Pike said he didn’t want any noise or mess, so we use these.’

‘Them?’ said Dan. ‘I thought Pike said that we were going to meet the cabbie. He hands over the girl, I sedate her and we leave. Give him five grand down and the other five to come later.’

‘That’s what he said to
you,
said Skin, snapping on the gloves. ‘What he told
me
was that he hadn’t done business with the cabbie before and we should take precautions in case he’s got other ideas.’

‘Other ideas?’

‘Other friends who don’t want to give us the girl and want to hold out for more money. The cabbie is connected ... know what I mean?’

‘Shit,’ said Dan, seeing the whole thing reeling out of control.

‘Take it. Stop being a fucking fairy.’

Dan stuffed the ligature in his pocket, put the gun inside his jacket. They pulled on the hoods, got out the van and walked down the side of the garage to the back door.

Three men sat around a table: two plastic horror masks on elastic, a clogged ashtray, a thermos flask and two Styrofoam cups of crap coffee. The cabbie didn’t allow drinking on the job. Things always went wrong, especially with a pretty girl involved. He’d caught the younger one having a good look up her skirt and got the older one, who spoke a few words of English, to explain that he’d have none of that. He looked at them now in silence. They were illegals, these two. Tough, stocky little bastards from Fuckknowswhere-istan. They had round, shorn heads, all scarred and dented, probably from some mad horse game they played on the steppes or, more likely, prison violence. The younger one looked unconcussable—a word he’d invented for the numbskulls that found their way to his door.

‘Long time?’ said the one who spoke a little English, cracked plaster caked down the front of his sweatshirt.

The cabbie didn’t answer. Glanced at his watch and the curtained window. Yes, late.

The young one nudged his mate. The older one leaned forward, rubbed thumb and forefinger together in the cabbie’s face. The cabbie licked his lips with a white-coated tongue, which did not darken them. He held up his forefinger. The gesture dumbfounded them and they communicated in gobbledygook for a full minute. The cabbie sat back, certain now that ‘bollocks’, minus its vowels, was the same in their two wildly differing languages. He batted his hands down as if calming a couple of kettle drums.

‘They’ll be here in a tick and you’ll get what’s coming to you,’ he said, smiling, grey teeth all crossed at the bottom. ‘More moolah than you’ve seen since your sisters’ weddings.’

The words fell onto their nicked and dented heads like debris from a shattered piggy bank. They searched the fragments for valuables and found nothing. They talked at length. The cabbie looked from one to the other with a face of practiced cheer. He’d learned to love listening to foreigners over the past two decades in London, fascinated by how each race dug the words out. Arabs reaching down their throats as if they might gag on them. Indians bubbling away as if speaking Welsh underwater. Chinese fizzing, popping and wowing like indoor fireworks. These two sounded like goats farting in a field.

‘Money,’ said the older one, reaching out a hand, beckoning the cash forward.

A van pulled up outside. After some minutes, two doors opened and shut, footsteps down the side of the house. The cabbie got up, pulled the door to behind him, but it eased open, so that the backs of the two illegals were visible from the kitchen, where he unlocked the rear door.

‘All right?’ said Skin, face now hooded, with just eye and mouth holes.

‘Took your time,’ said the cabbie, taking in their white latex gloves.

‘Any trouble?’ asked Skin.

‘Who from?’

‘Who do you think?’ said Skin, looking down the corridor, seeing the illegals. ‘And who the fuck are
they?
’

‘The help for when you’re late.’

‘Pike didn’t say anything about ... help.’

‘I know he didn’t, but I couldn’t carry her on my own and she went nuts when she came round.’

‘Where is she?’ asked Skin.

‘In the back room.’

‘How
is she?’ asked Dan.

‘Haven’t looked for the last fifteen minutes,’ said the cabbie. ‘She was asleep.’

‘Did you use chloroform on her?’asked Dan.

‘I had to. She went nuts. Must be claustrophobic or something.’

Dan kept glancing up the corridor at the two illegals, who were talking.

‘I’m going to have to call Pike,’ said Skin.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Dan, under his breath.

Skin pulled Dan out with him, made the phone call, had a muttered conversation, Dan waiting, looking as if he wanted a piss. Skin hung up, drew a finger across his neck. Dan felt his guts shudder, mouthed: ‘Fuck’.

They eased out the silenced hand guns from inside their black coats, went back into the house, holding them down by their sides.

‘What the fuck is this?’ said the cabbie, seeing them immediately.

‘Wake the girl. Get her ready,’ said Skin, taking him by the arm, pushing him up the corridor.

‘Ready for what?’

‘To go. What do you think?’

‘What are you going to do with the guns?’ he asked.

‘You didn’t follow the fucking instructions,’ said Skin, red lips from within the black cloth hole. ‘Now we’ve got our orders. Wake the girl.’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ said the cabbie.

‘Just do it,’ said Skin, and pushed the cabbie towards the bedroom door.

The illegals turned and stood as Skin and Dan came in, to have their expectations suddenly reduced to a small black hole in a fat barrel, which kept coming until it was the eye’s whole universe. White latex hands collared them, hauled them away from their chairs. They kicked the illegals to their knees, denting the undulating lino floor, the fat barrels pressed hard into the fuzz of their shorn heads. The illegals looked up, eyes desperate, lips drawn bloodless across their teeth, breathing quick as they realised their true value in the system that had brought them to the black, glittering mouth of the insatiable metropolis. Skin and Dan pulled the ligatures from their pockets, slipped the guns back inside their coats and looped the cords over the shorn heads of the men kneeling before them, tightened them around their necks. The cabbie closed the bedroom door behind him.

Alyshia was still asleep. The noise from the next room woke her. The fear came alive in her as soon as she saw the cabbie. The whites of her eyes quivered at the edges as she looked at the door. The animal noise of a terrible struggle came through it. She started as something thudded against the other side. The cabbie held onto his head with both hands, looking at the ceiling.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked, her voice barely audible.

The cabbie didn’t answer. Through the grunting and gasping of effort came the noise of heels clawing against lino. Then a rigid, pent-up silence, followed by a collapse. The cabbie let his hands drop to his sides, shook his head. Alyshia, back against the wall, stared unblinking at the door. No sound.

‘All right,’ said the cabbie, who couldn’t wait any longer. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’

He opened the door. The room had filled with a shocking stink.

‘Not yet, you fucking moron,’ said Skin.

Alyshia saw the hooded men, looked down at the dead illegals’ swollen faces, their new horror masks. She vomited. The cabbie pulled her back into the room.

‘Get her cleaned up,’ said Skin. ‘Got anything we can roll these two up in?’

‘In the garage,’ said the cabbie. ‘There’s some plastic tarps.’

Dan left the room, staggered to the garage, dazed by what he’d just done. He came back with the tarpaulins. They rolled the illegals into them, secured them at both ends, coughing against the stink in the room. They took them into the garage. Dan went out the back and down the side of the house, checked the street. Empty. He tapped on the garage, opened the rear of the transit. They lifted the bodies into the back, closed the doors, went back for the girl.

The cabbie had opened the window in the room and the stink was leaving, but slowly, because of the thickness of the blinds.

‘Shouldn’t have done that ’n’ all,’ said Skin. ‘You’re not paying attention to the fucking instructions.’

‘Yes, well, I didn’t know that was on the cards, did I?’ said the cabbie. ‘You got my money?’

Skin handed him a fat envelope. They went into the bedroom. Alyshia’s skirt and blouse were on the floor, streaked with vomit and topped by a brown blur of tights. She looked up from the bed in bra and knickers, the fear streaming out of her.

‘You got the alarm code to her flat?’ asked Dan.

The cabbie shook his head, counting the money. Skin and Dan looked to Alyshia. She gave them the code. Skin made a call, gave the number, hung up.

‘Get us a plastic bag for her things,’ said Dan.

The cabbie went to the kitchen, came back with a bag, put Alyshia’s discarded clothes in it. Dan removed a small black box from his pocket, took out a capped syringe filled with a clear liquid. Alyshia pressed herself against the wall and whimpered as he flicked the air out of it, eased off the cap.

‘You done this before?’ asked the cabbie, looking over Dan’s shoulder.

‘First time,’ said Dan, rolling his eyes.

‘I’ll be quiet,’ said Alyshia. ‘Just don’t...’

‘This’ll keep you nice and relaxed,’ said Dan, and then to the cabbie, who was now looking at him intently: ‘You fancy a vodkatini ’n’ all?’

‘Who’s going to clean this shit up?’

‘There wouldn’t have been any shit to clear up,’ said Skin, hooded face up close to the cabbie’s, ‘if you’d done what you was fucking told.’

11.45 P.M., FRIDAY 9TH MARCH 2012

Hotel Olissipo, Parque das Nações, Lisbon

‘Business or pleasure?’ asked the receptionist from behind the black granite counter, unable to wrench herself away from Charles Boxer’s light green eyes, which she’d only ever seen before on gypsies. He looked foreign in his black leather jacket, faded jeans and black boots; not the usual business client.

A flicker of irritation as he relived being stood up at Heathrow airport. No pleasure and no business here for a freelance kidnap consultant, although he’d arranged to meet an old client later that evening.

‘Leisure,’ he said, smiling as he handed over his passport.

She filled in the form on screen, saw that he wasn’t far off his fortieth birthday.

‘You have a reservation for two people with breakfast included,’ she said.

‘Sorry, it’s just going to be me now,’ he said.

‘No problem,’ she said, smiling, and he liked her for that.

Some minutes later, Boxer was lying on one of the twin beds in his hotel room, staring at the ceiling, going over the phone call he’d had at the airport with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amy.

‘I’m not coming,’ she said. ‘Didn’t Mum tell you?’

‘What do you mean, you’re not coming? Jesus Christ, Amy. We’ve planned this since Christmas and
now
you back out,’ he said. ‘And no, Mercy didn’t tell me. I haven’t spoken to her since Wednesday.’

‘She was probably too busy getting ready for that course she’s on this weekend. She told me to call you.’

‘And you left it to the last minute.’

He could feel her shrugging at the other end of the line, knew her timing had been critical. He wasn’t about to go back into town and drag her out, kicking and screaming. This was the usual Amy
fait accompli.

‘So what’s this all about?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got to revise for my exams.’

‘At Karen’s house?’ he said, easing back on the sarcasm.

‘No, I’m just sleeping here. I’m working in my room at Mum’s. Call her. She’ll tell you. We had it all agreed before she left.’

‘But not with me,’ said Boxer. ‘And you know as well as I do that she’s out of mobile contact until the course is over.’

‘Oh yeah, right.’

‘And what am I going to do with your hundred and fifty quid ticket to Lisbon?’

Silence. Aggression started coming over the airwaves. It didn’t take much these days.