The Oktober Projekt (20 page)

‘You want some?’ Nick asked, and the thin figure held up his
hands in surrender. ‘You work here?’

‘I’m Ricky Penda,’ he said, as though the name should have
meant something to Nick. ‘I own this place.’

‘Well Ricky,’ said Nick grabbing him by his lapels, ‘I want to
talk,’ he proposed, propelling him along the corridor. ‘Your office should do
us fine.’

Leading Nick up another floor, Penda unlocked his door and Nick
pushed him roughly inside. ‘Take a seat,’ Nick advised him.

‘You are who?’ Penda asked walking past his desk to a trolley
stocked with whisky, vodka and white rum. ‘Drink?’

Without waiting for an answer, Ricky poured himself a healthy
whisky, splashed in a touch of chilled soda water he took from a mini fridge.

‘I’m interested in Galina Myla,’ said Nick.

In his neat black Savile Row suit, white collarless shirt and
hand-stitched loafers, Ricky Penda was considered a diamond by his friends, of
which he had many. Light and wafer thin there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him.
His flat iron face showed the deep roots of a sunbed tan, his hair forever
short by habit was crew cut, dyed black.

‘Sounds like a form of pox,’ Ricky said, enjoying his drink. He
waved for Nick to take a seat on the type of metal bench railway stations
provided, this one black matching the colour of the office. A converted
projection room done out in black and chrome it bore all the functionality a
visionary businessman would need; filing cabinets, oval desk and furniture all
coordinated to a theme. Two narrow projection windows gave Ricky a view right
into his main room, the former cinema’s auditorium.

‘I was told she works for you.’

‘Was you?’ said Ricky, refilling his glass, ‘was you indeed,
well my friend, you’ve been misinformed.’

A house phone buzzed on Ricky’s desk and he snatched it up. ‘I
bleeding know, he’s in my office,’ Ricky bawled down the line. ‘No… no Old
Bill… well get him to soddin’ casualty. No… no need to come up.’ Slamming the
phone down he surveyed Nick. ‘You’ve got guts, you have, coming in here like this.
Baz is one of my best boys, never seen him go down like that. Maybe you ought
to work for me? Only kidding,’ he added, one hand raised in mock fear, finally
taking a seat behind his desk. ‘My old man used to be an associate of the
Krays.’ Happy to have put Nick in the picture, Ricky sat proudly back and beat
his chest, a sign of contrition, confession or pride.

‘My dad was a commander of a submarine.’

‘Your sense of humour cripples me, it really does,’ he said,
his mouth hardening. ‘Now if you’ve had your fun, I suggest you leave before
you get into something that you can’t handle.’

‘I haven’t even started,’ said Nick and before Ricky knew it,
Nick was at his side, one hand tight on the back of Penda’s neck as he slammed
his face into the desk.

‘Nice one son,’ sniffed Ricky, staunching the blood with a
handkerchief, head pressed back into his leather chair. ‘Now you and me have
history,’ he promised and spat a mouthful of blood into a bin by his desk.

‘The only history I’m interested in is on Galina Myla?’

Ricky now proposed total submission, both arms raised above his
head and Nick backed away from the desk.

‘She may have worked for me,’ Ricky confided and seemed to mean
it. ‘I don’t know why you’re so interested.’ Nick gave him no lead and passed
him the bottle of whisky. ‘I need more than a name if you want me to help?’
Ricky said, pouring a double.

And while Nick thought this might have a ring of truth, he
ventured no encouragement.

Guarded, Ricky tried for a smile but it never quite came off.
‘I’m doing a public service with this place, helping punters let off steam in
private, no one minding what they’re up to as long as they don’t make too much
of a mess. Hours of dreams over in a minute, so why spoil it for the poor
wankers. That’s why I use the best girls.’

‘She’s Russian, enjoys clubs and parties, maybe got a taste for
dugs too?’

‘Drugs? I haven’t the foggiest what you’re on about, honest I
haven’t. Swear on my old mum’s grave, strike me blind and make me dumb.’ His
little head lolled to one side as he sluiced away the last of the blood into
his bin.

‘Her regular work was as a nanny and she came here looking for
a job. Am I right?’ Whether Nick was or wasn’t, Ricky didn’t intend saying.
‘She started to miss work and maybe used her body to pay off her debts. You
listening?’

Ricky wasn’t really sure, his body seemed to have frozen, only
his head could manage a weak nod. ‘Now this is where you help me,’ Nick
explained. ‘You tell me where I find Galina and you don’t test how long the
waiting times are at A&E.’ Ricky’s dry mouth managed a croak that Nick took
as a sign to continue. ‘Galina, where do I find her?’

‘Galina… Galina… I think I remember her now, got her details
somewhere,’ Ricky said, going for a filing cabinet then halfway there changed
his mind.

Almost at the door Ricky’s slight frame crumpled as Nick
charged him. Ricky’s small fist caught Nick a glancing blow to the chin,
jarring his teeth. Pinned up against the wall Ricky’s breath exploded like the
air out of a balloon.

‘The first sign of guilt is when you run,’ Nick explained to
him, relaxing his forearm easing the pressure on Ricky’s slender throat. ‘Where
is she?’

‘Sod off.’

‘I think we’d better sit down, Ricky,’ suggested Nick, kicking
Ricky’s legs out from under him.

‘You’re a real comedian, know that,’ decided Ricky, looking up
from his position on the floor.

‘Galina?’

‘Look she did work here, but I get a bit nervous about these
things because some of the girls aren’t always up front about paying their
taxes.’

‘So where is she now?’

‘Left hasn’t she, went to a place in Greenwich, Pelton Road,
place run by someone called Lovell, number 56,’ Ricky said, ‘she went to work
for him. He’s the one to ask.’

‘You’re telling me this from the goodness of your heart?’

‘Look,’ said Ricky, inching slowly back to his feet. ‘I’ve no
bleedin’ reason to lie,’ he proclaimed, his voice coarse. ‘Me and you got off
on the wrong foot, let’s put it down to a genuine misunderstanding.’

Holding out his hand Ricky waited for Nick to shake, but his
offer wasn’t accepted. ‘Misunderstanding,’ said Nick, he liked that.

‘Trust, that’s all we’ve got,’ said Ricky, in a philosophical
moment, replenishing his glass. ‘Call back another time, VIP tickets on the
house,’ he promised raising his glass in a toast. ‘Timing, that’s important
too.’

Nodding slowly, Nick closed the door on Ricky. Taking the same
route back through the club Nick waited for Baz’s friends to come and pay their
respects, but no one did. Ricky is concerned about something Nick decided,
that’s why he’s not having me beaten to a pulp. The world survives on threats
reasoned Nick on his way out. Threat, counter threat. Here comes the candle to
light you to bed, here comes the chopper to chop off your head. On one of the
giant screens a secretary was being ridden doggy style as she licked and sucked
her boss. A train rumbled by below shaking the screens, the bodies going at it
with the rhythm of pneumatic drill. Out on the street he made a call on his
phone and waited.

Danny Redman arrived ten minutes late, pulling up outside the
club in a white Peugeot. Nick climbed in and Danny drew away, neither of them
speaking for at least a mile.

‘Smells like a forest,’ said Nick, flicking the fresheners
dangling from the driver’s mirror.

‘It’s my sisters, the best thing I could hustle up at short
notice. You said nothing Service,’ Danny explained. ‘Where to?’

‘Greenwich, Pelton Road.’

Sitting quiet and still, Nick stared straight ahead from where
Danny had parked on Pelton Road. In front of them, double wooden gates marking
the entrance to a derelict ballast yard on Lovell’s Wharf; concrete stumps from
cranes dismantled for scrap poking over its boundary walls.

‘How are things at the Mad House?’

‘Awful, we’re all under suspicion. Stratton has been given
temporary command and Hawick’s holding her hand,’ Danny explained. ‘Only
essential operations are being sanctioned.’

‘We’re being isolated ready for the kill.’

On the drive back to the club Nick never uttered a word. I’m
just a touch angry that you let me down Ricky, he fumed. Trust and timing Ricky
had said, not appreciating the danger of his strategy; so let’s change the game
plan, Nick decided as Danny kept the Peugeot’s engine idling outside the club
as Nick provided a description of Ricky Penda.

‘Don’t lose sight of him,’ Nick said, getting out, waiting as
Danny moved off to find another spot to park.

From the long shadows filling a doorway opposite, Nick made two
999 calls from one of his second-hand
 
phones, then slammed it through a grate into a drain with his heel.
During the first call he reported a stabbing in the club, the second that shots
had been fired inside. Lighting a cigarette he started to walk. ‘Timing,
Ricky,’ he said under his breath, the best results always come from timing,
trust has nothing to do with it. Weary, considering the problems ahead, he
walked briskly past Danny, his head filled by the prospect of never securing
rest.

Eight

A Council of War

Wiltshire, November

From
this side of the drive Rossan could see the dark stone angles solid
against the pale night sky, stiff and confident in a testament to wealth. The
Rossan family home in decent grounds, a couple of staff cottages and stable
block where he’d played and escaped his father’s attention. A senior Private
Secretary to Churchill during the war, Rossan’s father had spent his days
steeped in clandestine operations, counting Stewart Menzies, the wartime Chief
of the Service as a close friend.
 

For a moment Rossan stood in jealous admiration of his father
having known exactly whose side he was on. His father assured that he was
fighting a noble cause, coming home to Wiltshire at weekends, back to his
pillared doorway with its added quaint porch for a warm welcome. Rossan could
even pick out a single course of stone marking his father’s renovations and the
addition of an extra wing to accommodate his expanding family. Away from the
house the gracious sweep of lawn ran to his right, where a single cedar rose
out from the middle of rhododendrons and holly like a candle in a Christmas
table display.

‘Good, God, Paul, I thought you’d got lost,’ his wife
called.
 

Rebecca, four years younger at forty-five still possessed the
deportment expected from a daughter of a hereditary peer, a viscount at that,
dressing not according to fashion or style, but what came first to hand.
Standing inside the dark porch she’d slipped the catch silently and stepped
out. From a pocket she took a box of matches and lit the wicks on the oil lamps
either side of the door. In this shallow yellow light her face had a resonant power,
the kind never accentuated by cosmetics. She saw him look at her left eye
slightly closed and puffy, the first darkening of a bruise shading her skin,
the result of a fall from Nero her thoroughbred hunter. ‘I’m sure they won’t
think that you beat me,’ she said as Rossan drew nearer.

‘Believe what they like,’ Rossan said, making one last check.
In the deep beds by the porch high arched bands of rosemary had died back, in
the air the sweet scent of burning logs swam gently on the chilly evening
breeze.

That was what she liked about her husband, an ego as tall as
Nelson’s Column, and he was just as thick skinned as the statue. From the
beginning of their courtship and into their marriage which had been stormy and
passionate in equal measure, Paul had believed and acted as if the Service was
still a club for the privileged and elite ruling classes. Anyone else he
regarded as automatically inferior, and their character flawed; which in recent
times, she had to agree, was perfectly true when misfits upped and left,
selling their tawdry stories.

A car started down the drive and they both stepped
instinctively back, their shadows temporarily trapped and defined by
headlights, two cutaway paper figures suspended.

‘Lovers looking for somewhere to shag,’ she said casually, and
Rebecca’s words had no coarseness; a matter of fact that didn’t shock.
Reversing, the car seemed to take the brightness of the evening with it,
leaving a velvet darkness behind. ‘Come on, we’d better change before they
start to arrive,’ she proposed, linking arms with her husband.

Of course C arrived late, his customary apology and bottle of
1985 Red Bordeaux from Château Rauzan Segla proffered to smooth over anything
burnt or ruined, though Rebecca still glared and fumed right through dinner. As
the wife of a senior officer, Rebecca graciously made small talk with the
others gathered around the dinner table; Roly Blackmore whom she thought a
touch common, Jane Stratton she decided was on the rise, Teddy Hawick a
sycophantic creep and Sir Martin Bailrigg holding court as if the house were
his own. Really, she wouldn’t have minded if Paul had invited them all, but it
had been the smarmy Hawick who graciously invited himself and his colleagues,
suggesting that Paul could host what he termed a ‘council of war.’ This after
coffee and a lengthy pause was the next item on the menu, so Rebecca effortless
excused herself and left them to it.

‘Give him an amnesty, allow him to come in under certain terms
and conditions,’ Blackmore magnanimously proposed playing his favourite role as
devil’s advocate.

‘Torr simply has to be found,’ Hawick chimed his favourite
mantra, his cheeks a little too red.

‘He’s a liability,’ Bailrigg announced over the rim of his
glass held high, rotating it slowly, its cut surface producing shell bursts of
diamond light flashing out an SOS appeal. ‘He’s running us ragged and making us
appear like damn fools. I have it, from a very respected source, that he’s even
been picking Hayles’s brain on the recruitment of Lubov. Not the behaviour of a
guilty man, I’d have thought. Mmm?’ Placing his glass gently down he turned to
Hawick. ‘Finding him pronto might save us a lot of work, might even get him off
the hook and save me another curtsy at Downing Street.’

‘We’re working on it,’ Hawick said, reddening even more. ‘Torr
might have been to Hayles to throw us a feint,’ he added, desperately.

Rossan seated back at the table after fetching the cigars,
thought he’d gone quite mad; having to listen as Nick’s character and
reputation were maliciously mauled, an outstanding officer who’d consistently
risked his life, his wife raped and murdered, was now being systematically
stabbed relentlessly in his back.

‘He’s never behaved in this way before,’ said Jane, ‘perhaps
for the moment we should give him the benefit of the doubt.’

‘Depends what terms and conditions Moscow offered him,’
Blackmore said freely, ‘doesn’t need a lot for a worm to turn,’ he added,
another knife twisted between Nick’s shoulders.

‘I thought you knew him better, Jane,’ Hawick mewed.

‘We’ve got his house under surveillance,’ disclosed Bailrigg,
‘and thanks to Jane, all his known hideaways,’ he smiled, toasting her.

Dear God thought Rossan, he’s been fawning over her the entire
evening, shooting Jane a questioning look as to why she’d dump Nick further
into the mire.

‘Funeral’s on Tuesday isn’t it,’ Blackmore said laconically.
‘We have plans for that do we?’

Whether he intended asking if the Service would be sending
formal representation, or had a different intention, Hawick found another
opportunity to assassinate Nick. ‘From what I hear they were about to part
company anyway, been a rocky relationship from the off. But if he does have the
nerve to show his face, I’ve arranged for a snatch team to be ready,’ he said,
quite the zealot.

Admiring Rossan’s original paintings of hunters and steeple
chasers Blackmore sat back, content for now with his brandy; studying which way
Bailrigg was constructing his allegiances, Jane apparently coming top of the
class. He would have to keep his eye on darling Jane he decided, she could be
quite a cat and a minx. This was no time to be caught cold he reasoned, unable
to connect all relevant strands of past and present together; a failure poor
Henry Wilcox paid dearly for in
Howards End
.

‘So, Roly,’ Hawick piped up, perhaps spotting Blackmore’s
leisurely study, ‘how should we proceed?’

As each head pivoted slowly round on him, Blackmore smiled.
‘Flush him out, spread his face across the front pages of the nationals, give
the media a story to carry and they’ll run him to ground.’

‘You mean smoke him out,’ Bailrigg pressed, sharing a glance
with Hawick and Jane, ‘Like dealing with a nasty pest, Mmm?’

Undecided just how to deal with Nick, they talked round the
whole issue again coming from a different angle until Rossan could bear it no
longer, and as a genial host suggested they sleep on it and pick up the threads
over breakfast. So with a final nightcap dispensed, his guests delivered safely
to their rooms, the fire checked, doors locked, Rossan finally retired at a
quarter past one only to find Rebecca propped up in bed still reading the
Marquis of Lorne’s biography of Palmerston.

‘Thought you would be weary of politics by now,’ he said,
rather ungraciously, getting undressed.

‘And I thought you would have managed to get that cabal to bed
much sooner,’ she retorted, slipping a page over. ‘Why you all can’t just let
Nick alone is beyond me,’ she said, removing her glasses which Rossan took to
be an omen for one of Rebecca’s polemical points of order. ‘The poor man is
probably working out which one of your guests is so determined to deliberately
wreck his career.’

Sitting on the corner of the bed he stared at his wife, one
Lobb Oxford full brogue on his knee its cedar shoetree half inserted, he
marvelled at how Rebecca did it, sometimes he thought she knew more of Service
intrigue than he did.
  

• • •

The Rope & Anchor was in Canning
Town, a derelict tavern that hadn’t served anything legally intoxicating or
mind altering for years. A haunt for junkies, most recently a squat, Nick
thought Danny was completely and utterly mad. Half the roof had been hacked
away, exposing charred trusses and purlins from a fire someone had built on the
first floor either maliciously or stupidly to keep warm. The tavern’s brickwork
on its upper floor had split and peeled in the fire; a mysterious fruit that
had flowered, the flock wallpaper in bedrooms and living quarters laid bare for
everyone to admire. All the ground floor windows and doors were boarded,
decorated with fly-posters of events and bands going back five years, curling
and ripped loose by the coarse marauding hands of Thames’ winds.
 

Making his way round the back Nick stepped over mounds of
rubble, a trail of broken bottles and dirty needles. Across the rear upper floors
Nick could see where the fire had begun in earnest; smeared in swathes down the
cracked windows the soot had a magical quality and its ugly streaks made
abstract shapes. A boarded door had been levered free and jammed slightly open
which Nick took as his invitation to step inside; giving grudgingly when he
applied pressure he forced enough space to squeeze through. He stood in an
uninviting thin corridor; smoke blackened doors for the LADIES and GENTS
hanging by one hinge. There were no lights and rainwater leaked out in a filthy
tidal rush. Pressing on he came to a games room with waterlogged carpets heaped
by the kitchen doors, the bar area ravaged, its plastic wood fascia melted and
congealed in an ugly knotted pile. Along the back wall under the spirit optics,
he traced the hungry fingers of the fire along wooden panelling; across a menu
board still holding its offerings done in yellow chalk.

Turning a corner Nick heard voices conversing in low murmurs in
the main saloon. Glass, scattered newspaper, packaging from ready-made meals
scrunched under his feet in an improvised early warning of his arrival.

‘Made it then,’ said Danny cheerfully as Nick appeared through
a corridor opening marked TOILETS THIS WAY.
                 

‘Make mine a double,’ said Nick.

In what had been the main saloon area the fire hadn’t taken
hold, a long curving bar randomly scorched as though someone had attempted to
ignite it with lighter fluid, which they probably had, was lit by five
flickering candles with Danny standing where a landlord ought to be. Behind
him, the nasty tendrils of smoke had only managed to spread their trail on one
wall and across the ceiling.

‘Planning on starting a war?’ a heavy accented voice asked from
the corner where the candlelight couldn’t quite penetrate.

‘That’s my business,’ said Nick turning. Sitting as comfortable
as if he was about to be served chicken in a basket, Nick recognised a Brother
Grimm. Greek or Cypriot, no one ever bothered to ask, he was one half of a pair
of twins with a surname that rhymed with Grimm, which over the years had become
their trading name as merchants who dealt in anything illegal that had the
capability to kill or inflict serious injury.

Laid out between the candles the Brother Grimm’s offerings, the
nearest matches to items on a shopping list Nick had provided Danny. Working
his way along Nick took his time, selecting a Mossberg 590 Compact 14” barrel
shotgun with scabbard, stun grenades, ammunition, disposable double cuffs and
other sundry pieces of equipment that he held up for the Brother Grimm to add
to his bill.

‘What’s the total?’ Nick asked.

‘Call it five grand,’ the Brother Grimm announced.

‘Extortion, that’s what I’d call that,’ said Danny.

Up and out of his corner; a heavy weight who’d take a day to
reach the centre of the ring, the Brother Grimm made his way slowly to the
bar.
 
‘I’m not buying am I,’ he
said, leaning a chunky forearm on the counter.

‘It’s all clean?’ Nick casually asked, checking the Mossberg
thoroughly, examining the chamber and magazine for signs of wear or damage.

‘You know me, I don’t do second-hand shit, everything’s top
notch,’ claimed the Brother Grimm, scattering a pile of take-away cartons
stacked in a tower on the bar. Floating through the air, motes of dust swirled
in the cracks of street light filtering through gaps in the plywood sheets over
the windows.

‘Traceable?’ Nick wanted to know.

‘Sure, like Lord Lucan.’

‘I’ll take it,’ decided Nick, knowing that he was paying at
least three times what everything cost, though it was hard to tell how much of
it had been stolen.

Coming round the bar, Danny started to bag up the equipment as
Nick counted out the cash into the Brother Grimm’s hand, his wrist and fingers
loaded with chunky gold bracelets and Sovereign rings.

‘Good doing business with you gents,’ the Brother Grimm,
announced heading for the corridor, stopping to shake a cigarette machine, its
cracked glass covered by a deep stain of soot.