London Large: Blood on the Streets (2 page)

The two soldiers took charge
of the mortar and opened fire on the other enemy positions dug in along the
bend of the hill.

‘You’re right H, lions do eat
fucking hamsters’ said Ronnie as the soldiers of 2 Para descended on and
overran the remaining mortar positions. Ronnie stared into the distance, relief
flooding his body at the realisation he was still alive. The light of the sun
was peaking over the horizon.
Every dark night ends in light
, he
thought.

But some dark nights have a
sting in the tail. The breaking dawn alerted Ronnie to a small movement. Just
north of their position a rifle glistened in the emerging sunlight. Ronnie
looked on in horror as the situation clarified. Harry was in the direct line of
an impending sniper’s bullet.

No time. No time to warn. No
time to think. Ronnie threw himself into the path of his hero and the silent
bullet pierced his stomach.

Part 1

St. James’ Park. A
beautiful place for a violent death. Tara and Jemima turned right off the Mall
and strolled uneasily into the park, along the narrow footpaths and past the
elegant shrubs and flowers to arrive at the picturesque lake that dominates the
Queen’s Gardens.

It seemed so peaceful, a
tranquil oasis at the centre of one the world’s great global cities. Today,
however, something a little different would be on the menu. Today it would be
the setting for a spectacular and colourful pageant the likes of which it had
not seen in hundreds of years.

It was a crisp, cold autumn
morning as they arrived at a bench opposite Duck Island, in the centre of the
lake. The ducks sat huddled together in the middle of their private dwellings,
bored and motionless like tourists waiting for the final scene of a three hour
Shakespeare play.

Multitudes of international
visitors, wrapped warmly in their autumnal coats, were doing what tourists do.
Smart phones, tablets and digital cameras snapped and chirped away, recording
their slice of olde-worlde history, which would immediately become part of
their own personal histories on the cloud, or whatever was the latest term to
describe that nebulous mountain of information that people now shared their
lives through.

Tara had rung her sister
early, the desperation in her voice palpable as she asked for the meeting that
would turn out to be the last conversation they would ever have.

The sisters were rich, filthy
rich members of the British upper classes - proper posh totty. Tara was the
sassier and cleverer of the two, and the sense of superiority of the
expensively educated elite rested easily on her shoulders. Her marriage to a
wealthy city trader had driven a wedge between her and the rest of her family.
They didn’t mind the wealth. The problem was she had fallen in love with an
outsider, a self-made millionaire who lacked the blue blood of the aristocracy.
Put simply he was from wrong side of town - from south of the river.

‘Tara, how delightful. What’s
it been, two months?’ Jemima said when she recognised her sister’s voice on the
phone.

‘I need to talk to you.
Privately’, replied Tara.

‘My diary’s frightfully busy.
How about next...’

‘No. Now. Today. Let’s meet
in St James’s Park. Please. I need to see you.’

Tara had often played in St
James’s park as a child and always felt safe and secure in its pleasant,
manicured grounds. She now lived in one of the wealthy shires that encircled
the capital, and journeyed by train to the terminus at Charing Cross. She took
the walk past Trafalgar Square and down The Mall to Buckingham Palace, where
Jemima was waiting for her by the imposing metal gates that guarded that great
symbol of power and privilege.

‘So what’s the problem?’
asked Jemima, as they sat down on a bench. She was a sunny, glass-half-full
kind of girl who liked her sister and regretted how Tara’s marriage had driven
them apart. From the distraught tone of their earlier conversation she’d
clearly understood that her sister was into something way over her head - like
a baby seal cornered by a phalanx of club-wielding fisherman.

‘I’ve stumbled across
something awful. I barely know where to begin’, said Tara.

‘Well, just start at the
beginning and keep going.’

‘Oh, Jemima.’

Tears started to roll down
her face as she grasped her sister’s hand. ‘I have such a thing to tell you.’

The rows of silent ducks were
still passing their time in carefree oblivion, their stomachs stuffed to the
rafters with stale bread.

Two seconds to show time.

Elemes Aliyev was known
for his discreet working methods, at least among the very few people who knew
him at all. He moved unnoticed through the world, like a shadow gliding through
the air. He had followed Tara, unseen, from her lavishly decorated
eight-bedroom home, set in fifteen acres of beautiful garden in Royal Tunbridge
Wells.

He boarded the nine thirty
train and sat unobtrusively amongst the public. Glancing casually to his left
and right he checked out every passenger before nonchalantly picking up a
discarded copy of The Guardian. The morning rush hour was over so the train was
full of day trippers and exhausted and bored looking wage slaves running late
for work.

They hardly noticed him.
Discreet. Invisible. Unknown. Just what his employers wanted and had always
paid through the nose for.

But this was the man who was
about to turn the world upside down. By the end of the day he would be one of
the most famous dead people on the planet. Not quite Michael Jackson famous,
but not that far behind.

He watched a bead of sweat
run down his victim’s cheek, sensed her nervousness and relaxed into his paper.
What fun he would be having later.

He was in truth a clinical
executioner; he’d had plenty of opportunities to complete his mission on the
walk to the train station. But something had changed in him just lately.
Something profound, something big - a St. Paul-on the-road-to-Damascus kind of
change.

The deaths of the last few
people he had been paid to kill had all looked like accidents, with the
occasional suicide thrown in for good measure. But instead of just doing the
day job and collecting the readies he had stalked his victims, watching their
habits and foibles and thinking about who they were, what they were like,
wondering about the impact of his activities on their loved ones.

It wasn’t that he was any
less of a blood curdling, psychopathic pleasure killer, but that he had come to
get more of a kick out of his activities if he took his time.

But this wasn’t the only
change. After a lonely life at the margins he had started to crave recognition.
He had hung around in the shadows for so long. Why should his art be hidden
away in the back streets of Central Asia when he could display his skills in
plain view on the streets of London? This once shadowy hitman was no longer
immune to the all-pervading celebrity mania of his time: he wanted
recognition, of a kind.

When he saw Tara meet up with
her sister at the gates of Buckingham Palace his eyes sparkled with delight.
Now he had the flavour. Big time. Two for the price of one. Two beautiful
English ladies. Buckingham Palace. This was his moment. This was his time.

All ideas of subtlety, of
making the whole thing look like an innocent mishap as per instructions, had
vanished from his mind as he followed the sisters into the park. He circled the
other side of the lake, like a cat, oblivious to the world, before it pounces
and rips the bollocks off the pretty Robin at the end of your garden. He
prowled past Duck Island and reached the top of the lake.

Tara and Jemima sat down on a
bench.

He stalked past the top curve
of the lake. His head was in another place. He felt as alive as he had ever
felt.

Tara held her sister’s hand
and began to cry.

He was now closing in on
them, on the same side of the lake - the home straight. Still unnoticed,
he hid in plain sight, blending into the surroundings like a praying mantis.

Aliyev slid stealthily
past the throngs of tourists queuing at the overpriced burger stall. The whiff
of sizzling beef shot through his nostrils and his blood lust went into
overdrive. He strode purposefully towards his victims. In his mind’s eye only
two people now existed.

He heard Tara muttering
something about a big secret as he loomed large over them.

‘Hello Tara’ he said with a
friendly smile, ‘Do you want to let me into your little secret?’

Tara looked into his cold,
murderous eyes. A chill ran down her spine. Her flesh crawled. Her hair stood
on end. She was in no doubt of his intent. But surely not here, in the open, in
St James’ Park for God’s sake? Surely they wouldn’t be that stupid. Surely?

She was wrong.

The blade appeared as if from
nowhere. The polished steel glistened in the autumn sunlight as it entered the left
side of her skull and passed effortlessly through the temple bone and into the
cerebrum. Death was instantaneous. The knife sliced upward in a smooth circular
motion to split her skull in two, and the flaccid grey matter that holds all
our dreams and hopes, our very selves, spilled to the floor.

Aliyev had never been one to
waste time. When the moment was at hand efficiency and ruthlessness were his
watchwords. No messing about. But this time it had to be different. This time
he wanted to put on a show, as he yanked what remained of Tara’s head across
the back of the bench and slit her throat with the skill and precision of an
expert butcher. The knife went swiftly through her Adam’s apple as a crimson
tide gushed forth.

He glanced around to take in
the reactions of his audience. Tourists stared in disbelief, rooted to the
spot, unable to comprehend the horror they were witnessing. The ducks quacked
loudly and flapped their wings in excitement, as if they had just seen the
final scene of some magnificent drama. But this was only Act One. Now he really
had the flavour - he was gagging for it.

With terrible intent he moved
back twenty yards - which was roughly the range at which he had practised his
knife throwing skills thousands of times before, in his previous life in the
unregulated circuses of Central Asia. Jemima stared, paralysed by horror, as
the steel flew through the air at astonishing speed towards its ordained
destination.

The knife plunged into her
skull just above the eyes. Another bullseye.

Aliyev stood triumphantly
admiring his artwork. Two dead bodies oozing crimson lay entwined on a bench in
the Queen’s own park. What a day’s work. He turned to see the effect on his
public as a loud voice screamed from behind him.

‘Hands up! ... Hands up now.’

Jack Thornton and Mike
Richards were plain clothes members of the Queen’s protection unit who secretly
patrolled the area outside the Palace. A couple of battle hardened cops who had
seen plenty of action in their time. They’d been doing this job three years
without incident.

It was better than a desk
job: nice bit of fresh air, good money, no hassle. But not today. Today they
would have to bite on something that would not be so easy to chew.

‘Jesus Christ! Jesus fucking
Christ - what the fuck is happening you sick bastard?’, screamed Jack.

Aliyev looked round, unfazed,
at the sight of two plain clothes coppers pointing their pistols directly at
him, the broad smile still beaming, the eyes still sparkling with delight.

He had learned three golden
rules during his life of murdering for fun and profit: move fast, always strike
first, be ruthless.

Diving towards the lake, in a
single motion he twisted and retrieved his handgun from the inside pocket of
his jacket. The first shot of the day in St James’ Park smashed through Jack
Thornton’s skull; the policeman went down like a sack of spuds.

The second shot of the day
smashed through Aliyev’s rib cage. So did the third, fourth and fifth. The
sixth blew a hole in his skull. He was turned into a leaky sieve as holes
opened up all over him in rapid succession, ripping through his flesh,
shattering his bones, mashing up his internal organs. He was dead before he hit
the ground.

Mike Richards surveyed,
stunned and disbelieving, the four scattered bodies. The lush green grounds of
Her Majesty’s Gardens were turning red.

‘Fucking hell,’ he said.

The light pierced H’s
eyes. Like a corkscrew. Like the corkscrew he had in his hand when he’d slumped
onto his bed three or four hours earlier.

Detective Inspector Harry
Hawkins, known as ‘H’ to his dwindling number of friends and multitudes of
enemies alike, was stirring in his pit. His head didn’t hurt - it never really
hurt anymore, as such - but he was bone-tired and his mouth felt like the
inside of a Turkish wrestler’s jockstrap; he was not a happy bunny. More light
flooded the room. Someone had opened the curtains and let in another day.
Another day he didn’t need.

‘Fuck me, Liv, is that really
necessary?’

‘Your driver will be here in
twenty minutes. Breakfast on the table in ten. Liven yourself up, big man.’

H slouched towards the
bathroom for his morning routine. The long, sore two minutes relieving himself
at the porcelain bowl: check. The quick rinse of the jockstrap and sluice of
cold water across the face: check. The shock of seeing the shattered, lined,
reddened, eye-pouched mask in the mirror where his face used to be - were there
any traces at all left now of the handsome young warrior? - check. The
comb-over of the thinning, blasted, straw-like thatch: check.

H was on the move.

Sitting down at the table and
craning to kiss his Olivia he became aware, with something like joy, that it
must be a Monday morning. The heart-attack-on-a-plate announced it. He was only
allowed this once a week now: eggs, sausages, bacon, liver, fried tomatoes,
chips and beans, two thick buttered slices, piping hot tea with two sugars. As
breakfasts go, this was the absolute dog’s bollocks.