London Large: Blood on the Streets (6 page)

Many types of prostitutes
worked for Agapov’s organisation. Some plied their trade on the streets at
night, some were virtual slaves confined to quarters in grubby, dead end
hotels. The clientele of the main establishment required something a bit more
high class. These girls were independent, glamorous and educated. At around a
thousand quid a pop, he made sure they all knew their claret from their
Beaujolais.

Agapov gave the nod to one of
his henchmen, who felt the reassuring rush of heat pass through his body as he
downed his vodka and slammed the glass down on the marble table. He raised
himself from the plush leather sofa and walked across the room, brushing past
one of the many pricey exotic sculptures that adorned it.

‘Viktor, what time will
package arrive for tonight’s private party?’, asked Agapov.

Viktor checked his phone:
‘Package will arrive in 15 minutes, boss.’

Vladimir spent the next 15
minutes doing the rounds. He checked into the many bedrooms and private
function rooms connected to the corridors of the labyrinthine building. All
seemed calm and in good order. At the rear of the building, hidden from prying
eyes, were the two holding cells where he kept their most exotic contraband,
reserved for the extra-special clients.

Viktor reappeared and said,
‘Boss, package has arrived.’

Agapov made his way to the
back door that led out to the alleyway, which was just wide enough to allow for
a medium sized van.

A large, burly man pulled up
and jumped out of the front seat. The deep scars hacked out of his cheeks spoke
of a life lived on the edge. His deep set, sunken glass eye didn’t quite fit,
and his one good eye bulged out of its socket. His “don’t look at me, don’t fuck
with me” persona was living proof that humans are scarier than monsters.

Even Agapov was wary of him.
They nodded to each other in recognition and then the burly man opened the rear
doors of the van and signalled to its contents to get out.

‘Fresh merchandise’, he said,
as the two young boys clambered from the rear. The drugs they had been doped
with did nothing to hide the sadness and despair in their eyes.

Vladimir guessed they were
seven or eight years of age before he called them over. He checked out their
teeth and hair as if they were show ponies at a country fair.

He said ‘Pretty boys. Clients
will like. Has doctor checked them?’

‘Yes’, said the burly man,
‘mint condition.’

‘Perfect.’

Agapov nodded goodbye to the
burly man and led the two boys through to the padded rooms at the rear.

‘Inside.’

The boys followed
instructions as if in a dream, now no more than shadows on a cloudy day, pale
imitations of what they once were. A henchman locked the doors behind them.

Good business tonight.

Basim Dragusha pulled
out the drawer of his desk. He sat in a makeshift office in a caravan in the
centre of what was known as an official travellers’ site, smack bang in the
middle of Bermondsey. It seemed an inauspicious place to choose as headquarters
for the UK operation of the latest international gangster firm to arrive in
London, but it suited Dragusha just fine. It was the perfect base to do
business from. His men could come and go unnoticed, and none of the travellers
who shared the site - marginal and widely despised as they were - would dare
say a word to the authorities.

It wasn’t exactly Soho, but
that would come in time.

He took a bottle of rakia out
of the draw and handed it to his old friend Fatos.

‘Here’ he said, ’drink’.
Fatos Gazjet opened the bottle and took a long slug. He set the bottle down and
pressed the damp cloth he was holding firmly to his face. ‘Is only flesh wound.
Will heal’, he said.

Fatos had been tasked with
collecting a shipment of cocaine from Holland, arriving at the port of Harwich,
sixty-odd miles north east of London. In the process of what seemed like a
routine pick up he had lost three men. One was dead. The other two, as far as
he knew, were alive and probably not so well in the hands of the group of
lethal killers who had bushwhacked them.

‘What happened?’ asked
Dragusha.

Fatos took another slug and
kept the bottle in his right hand. His body was shaking and he was in need of
medical attention. He winced slightly as he pressed the wet dishcloth once more
onto the wound.

‘They already in wait for us.
We pick up package from boat as usual. As soon as we left boat Qendrim got
bullet through head. Six men surround us. They tossed Qendrim into sea and took
Shkodran and Shpend with them. Then cut my face. They give me message for you.’

‘What was message?’

‘They said “tell Dragusha get
fuck out of London, or everyone dies”. Simples.’

Dragusha stood unfazed and
implacable as he processed the news. He rubbed the sides of his thick black
moustache and contemplated the situation.

‘Shkodran and Shpend are good
men. Will say nothing of our plans. By now will probably be dead.’

Dragusha snatched the rakia
from Fatos and took a hit. He was angry and disappointed. Angry and
disappointed that Fatos had allowed himself to be followed and taken out so
easily. Angrier still that he had lost three good men. But he knew how to hold
his anger in check and when to use it to devastating effect. He didn’t care if
revenge was a dish served cold, warm or piping hot, just as long as it was
served as a generous portion. His vengeance, when it came, would be something
to behold; but now was a time for thinking.

His thoughts were interrupted
by a knock on the door. He opened it and surveyed the wider scene before paying
attention to the small man who had interrupted him.

The caravan site was shaped
like a triangle, surrounded by three major roads. A kind of nowhere place
passed by and ignored by the heavy and relentless London traffic that swarmed
around it day after day. It had been there now for almost twenty years. The
older inhabitants had remained insulated from the surrounding community in a
state of ever-present suspicion of the outside world. The outside world had
dubbed it ‘The Island’ and kept its distance, in a similar state of suspicion
of its inhabitants. Although some of the children now attended local schools
they never, ever brought outsiders back. This secrecy suited Dragusha right
down to the ground. A tailor-made community into which the police rarely
ventured, a tiny isolated hamlet at the heart of the city: zone 1, ten minutes
from the Tower of London.

A group of his enforcers
mingled with the travellers, standing in constant guard. He was safe here; it
would take a small army to get through to him.

His attention turned to the
visitor. A small man with thick milk bottle glasses and a black leather case
looked up at him. Dragusha beckoned the doctor in. The Doctor wasn’t a real
doctor with seven years training and a certificate. In fact he had hardly ever
seen the inside of a hospital. But they called him The Doctor anyway: he was
the closest thing they had to one.

The Doctor entered to attend
to his latest patient. He rinsed through a fresh cloth, cleaned Fatos’ face
wounds and took out a needle from inside his case. He went about his work
meticulously, sewing the wounds with considerable care and skill. Fatos didn’t
flinch as the stitches were pulled slowly through the tears in his flesh, and
the two sides of the open gash reacquainted themselves.

The Doctor enjoyed his work,
which was just as well, as lately he’d had plenty of it. ‘All done’, he said as
he tied and then cut the end of the thread with a pair of scissors. He handed
over a small mirror so Fatos could admire the handiwork. The scar on the left
side of his face started just under the eye, snaked its way down past his nose
and mouth, and came to a halt just by the edge of his jaw bone. He nodded to
The Doctor in appreciation of a job well done.

Dragusha handed The Doctor a
wedge of twenties, ushered him out of the caravan and returned to Fatos.

‘So they want us to get fuck
out of London. Who they think they are dealing with? I wonder what next move
will be?’

He didn’t have to wonder
for very long. The next move came on top straight away. Dragusha and Fatos
threw themselves to the floor of the caravan as the sound of automatic rifle
fire peppered everything on the site. The Russians had arrived, and they were
not here to party.

Bullets were flying
everywhere. It seemed to the populace of this most clandestine of camps like
they’d been dropped onto the set of a 1930s B movie, in which a carload of
gangsters pulls up and opens fire in a battle for control of the alcohol trade
in uptown Chicago. But this was no Hollywood production. This was for real;
this was modern London in the here and now and the battle was not for alcohol
but for control of drugs, prostitution and the modern slave trade.

Dragusha reached for the
handgun in his drawer and peeped over the window above his kitchen sink. As he
did so two packages were thrown into the site amidst all the mayhem. He watched
as his men dived for cover, fearing the imminent explosion that would blow
everything to smithereens. But, as the black van that had transported the
bringers of mayhem sped off, an explosion never came.

The calm that comes after the
storm enveloped the camp. The screaming stopped. For a moment all was still and
silent, as a collective holding of breath united the camp in silence, in
expectation of another round of gunfire. But the onslaught was over. The
Russians had come to send a message, not to finish the job.

Dragusha left his caravan and
looked around to assess the damage.

He picked up the first of the
packages. It was still warm and moist as he opened it to reveal the contents.
The lifeless eyes of Shpend had been left open and now peered out at him, the
crazed stare reflecting the awful moment of terror before death had come to
him.

He threw his glance to the other
package with a full understanding of its contents.

Both dead. My brothers.

A desolate mother emerged
from one of the shoddier caravans with the lifeless form of her young daughter
in her arms. Her weeping and wailing reverberated around the camp, the pain and
the torment they expressed drawing the crowd together. Dragusha, ever alive to
unfolding events, tossed down the heads and took his opportunity.

‘Look, look my brothers, my
sisters. We try to live our lives in peace. We just want to be left alone to
live our lives. We do nothing to harm anyone. And how we get repaid? They
attack us. They come to our home. They murder our sons and daughters. Where are
police to protect us? No police. Now we protect ourselves, in way of our
ancestors.’

As the crowd came together
and encircled the grieving mother with her child Dragusha acted quickly. He
returned to his caravan and gave his weapon to Fatos.

‘Leave site now. Take men and
all weapons with you. Police will be here in five minutes. I will call.’

Dragusha was a patient man,
always ready to play the long game. At heart he was a strategist who understood
the rules of urban warfare and the importance of propaganda - the
disintegration of Yugoslavia and the experience of Kosovo had taught him hard
lessons. His eyes remained on the bigger prize. He picked up the bottle of
rakia, took another slug and relaxed into the narrow sofa, there to reflect
calmly on the situation.

His enemies had raised the
bar. They were well entrenched in a number of locations across the capital and
their small army of gunmen and contacts in high places made them formidable
foes. But they had made a tactical error with the scary heads routine that he
could exploit both with the British media and the bosses back home, who would
be prepared for additional investment in search of the retribution they would
be duty bound to pursue. That was the easy part, but it would not get him to
where he wanted to be. He knew the Russians had more men, more guns, more of
everything. He knew, in the long run, he couldn’t defeat them, drive them out
of London and take the major prize.

But he wanted in. He wanted a
slice of the action that London offered, and everything that went with it. The
wealth, the power. He wanted to go large - London large. And that, for now at
least, meant plenty. He understood that superior force would only ever
negotiate when faced with a force it knew it could not defeat. His enemies, it
was clear to him, had become over-confident. Where all those around him saw
chaos and mayhem he saw an opportunity.

A wry smile took hold of his
face as he heard the sound of multiple sirens getting ever closer. It was a
sound he liked. It reassured him things were in motion, and that he was at the
centre of events, where he liked to be, where he needed to be. As hordes of
police cars encircled the camp and cordoned off the surrounding area he called
Fatos: ‘Contact all leaders for conference call tomorrow. We make plans. We
make them pay.’

‘Guv’, said Amisha as
the car moved on, back to New Scotland Yard for the debrief, ‘I feel that Chief
Inspector Stone is not going to be a very happy bunny. To say the least. Have
you thought about what you’re going to say to her?’

‘The truth, I suppose’, said
H.

‘And that is?’

‘I’ve lost my way, Ames. Even
before I saw who had been killed I was wobbling. It’s just…all got to me. I saw
Tara...and then this Jupiter fucker trying to wind me up. I’d just seen the
butchered remains of my best friend’s wife, and…’

‘That’s it, guv. We’ll just
say you were overwhelmed by grief. Even the famous ‘H’ is human after all. This
could even go in your favour.’

‘I doubt that, Ames. I doubt
that very much.’

The car pulled up; Amisha led
H into the lobby through a babbling swarm of journos and happy snappers. She
felt like a mother leading her wayward son to the headmaster’s office for a
major bollocking.