The Oktober Projekt (25 page)

‘Did they arrange a meeting?’

‘They are swine, they deserve to rot in hell. I said enough,
now leave,’ he protested, going to a ledge and stretching for a flask with a
grunt. ‘You make me nervous staying here.’ He poured himself a stream of coffee
into a mug.

‘Lauvas betrayed Juris, he lured him to his death Andrejs.’

Blowing his coffee, Valgos gave a curt laugh.

‘Sure, me and my sister warned him not to go. We tell him, tell
Ingrid that you walking into trouble for sure. Go police, go to Service and
tell them Georgs Lauvas is a traitor. Juris laugh, say these people who were
meant to represent the law treat him like idiot. Justice is a word that they
spit from their lips. A worthless morsel they toss to dog. Juris have no faith
in your damn system,’ he said in an appeal to a dozen missing jurors.

‘Ingrid went with him, she went to the meeting with Juris?’
asked Nick, not knowing if this was a question too many.

Not seeming to care how many more questions Nick had lined up,
Valgos nodded. ‘He take her damn everywhere,’ said Valgos, crossing himself in
protection from the foolishness of his brother. ‘Damn whore hung round Juris
even more since he won money.’ He drank off the coffee and slew the dregs
across the floor. ‘He take her everywhere, show her good time, buying her
presents, car, even that damn place in Bayswater. I told him she no good, but
Juris don’t listen, he say to me he will provide enough for me to retire. I
tell him I work for a living, I earn my money and damn pride. He even damn well
took her to meet Georgs Lauvas, thought she would impress him. I told him, you
stupid twice over. He say, no risk, and I no see him again.’

The tension had all fizzled out and Valgos knew the omens; the
tremble in your arms, a weakness climbing through your legs as the past and
present merged. Screwing the cup on the flask he jerked his head in approving
nods.

‘Georgs Lauvas fooled us all, pretended he was one of us,
believed in freedom. He could have talked blossom out on the trees in the
middle of winter for all anyone cared so we trusted him. My first wife and sons
gone, phantoms.’ He held up his hands in pain, in acknowledgement.

‘Juris didn’t die in vain, I give you my word Andrejs.’

‘You want Andrejs’ trust too? Go, I’ve nothing left to give.
Don’t come again, I have nothing more to say. You stay away.’

‘I promise.’ As he turned to leave, Nick saw Andrejs’ eyes
flinch and thought you understand, you know too, we all have to visit the dead
once in a while before we can get on with living.

Eleven

Following Up a Lead

London, November

Downstream
from Greenwich between abandoned wharves, a
thriving car dismantlers yard jutted out into the Thames. From across a
potholed road Nick weary from a night without sleep, watched the skeleton of a
Ford clamped in the powerful hydraulic grabs of a crane lift from a stack of
gutted cars then swing towards a crusher. Ringed by a high razor wire topped
fence there were steel sheets welded to the yard’s gates. Someone had dribbled
CHEAP PARTS AND CAR SALVAGE across the rusting steel in yellow paint. In a
neater hand, an additional edict: ALL CALLERS MUST REPORT TO THE GENERAL
OFFICE.

The general office was a small Portakabin in an outer compound.
Flanked on either side by a dozen freight containers, grey daubs of primer ran
in rashes down their dented and scratched doors and panels, each container
labelled according to its salvaged contents, beginning with GEAR BOXES. A
full-length counter too high for anyone to lean on was unattended, a doorbell
screwed off-centre to its stained Formica surface. Nick pressed for attention,
a bell clanging out across the yard and river bringing a woman in her twenties,
her blonde hair coiled as tight as springs down to her shoulders. She looked
Nick over from behind her counter; surrounded by laminated parts catalogues,
boxed sets of spanners, car manuals, a computer, and cash register. All of them
liberally smeared in grease. A string of calendars of naked women ran behind
the counter and she didn’t mind any comparisons made.

‘Retail or trade?’ Her voice seesawed in estuary Essex. ‘If
you’re bringing a vehicle in, you’ll need your logbook,’ she continued as
though she’d been programmed.

‘I’m looking for a white van, came in to be scrapped, only I
think I left some tools inside,’ said Nick, pushing a scrap of paper bearing
the van’s original licence plate to her. ‘Company van, Borrowdale & Son,
Electrical Contractors.’ The details supplied by Rossan.

She sucked the tip of a biro not believing a word, kicked up a
smile that was anything but sweet and drifted to her computer. ‘I’ll check,’
she offered, hitting the keyboard as though it needed punishing. ‘Sorry, we’ve
no record of that vehicle,’ she said after a five second search.

To Nick’s right a door designated PRIVATE and STAFF ONLY.
‘Maybe I’d better look,’ he said, going for the door.

‘Hey, you can’t do that,’ she yelled as Nick stepped into an
inner compound, the noise from the crushing plant louder.

Ignoring stacks of cars Nick moved down narrow clinker tracks,
a heavy smell of stale oil in the air; picking out a section of the yard where
commercial vehicles were stripped and gutted. Winding up and down the tracks
Nick concentrated his search on recent arrivals that hadn’t been drained of fuel,
oil and other noxious substances. Nick worked his way through an assorted
collection of tippers, JCBs, trucks, forklifts, vans and other wrecks with
their window glass intact. And there tucked carefully beside a road sweeper, a
Hapag Lloyd freight container that no one had bothered to label.
 

Throwing back its handles, Nick swung one door open and waiting
for him inside, one white van complete with mud flares from its excursion to
Highgate Wood. Streaming through the door a low watery sun, and through its dim
light Nick could just make out the feint name of ‘Borrowdale & Son,
Electrical Contractors’. All the van’s doors were locked and Nick peered into
its cab. There was nothing left out in view, a van too clean and neat for any
decent tradesman to drive, except for those involved in murder. Stepping out of
the container a flash of movement came from Nick’s left as a baseball bat
smacked into his shoulder, doubling him completely over. A scalding pain filled
his left arm, its pumping boiling core on his collarbone. As he rolled to his
left, a length of pipe swung hard, and aimed to inflict maximum damage tore
into the clinker by his head. Up on his feet Nick had nowhere to go, his back
pressed into the container.

Facing him two scrap yard labourers blocked his exit; one with
sandy hair, his blue overalls tatty and holed at the knees, a baseball bat
gripped in his hands. The other swinging a length of pipe, his wavy hair pulled
off his forehead, his jeans nipped into the tops of brown steel-toed site
boots.

‘You in trouble,’ the sandy-haired labourer spat, his accent
Nick placed as East European. ‘What business you have?’

Unzipping his jacket Nick drew the Mossberg, blasting the
windscreen out of a truck behind them.

‘That answer your question,’ Nick shouted, aiming the shotgun
at the first labourer who threw down his baseball bat, hands flung up in
surrender. ‘You not hear me?’ demanded Nick of his friend, firing again, the
side window of a van exploding. Flinging his pipe, the second labourer raised
his hands.
 

‘Phones, I want your phones. Now,’ Nick demanded, taking aim
once again, and slowly each of them pitched their mobile phones at Nick’s feet.
‘Where do I find the boss?’ Nick asked.

‘He office over there,’ the sandy-haired labourer said,
pointing across the yard.

‘Inside,’ said Nick, herding them into the container, slamming
the locking bar closed, pulping both phones with two more shots.

Reloading, Nick threaded his way out through the commercial
wrecks in the direction he’d been pointed. Up ahead a Portakabin on its own, on
one corner a small mast used to carry phone lines where a blown out umbrella,
its spokes bent, was wrapped in the lines and buffeted by a hard breeze running
into the yard from the river. A light shone in the office, which Nick thought
would be rude to ignore and kicked the oil smeared cabin door open.

In a corner his back to the door the boss was hunched over,
feeding documents into a shredder.

Looking up startled, the boss cursed Nick in Russian then made
a fast lunge for a desk drawer. Nick aimed, fired, destroying a water cooler
alongside the desk stopping the boss in his tracks.

‘The white van in the Hapag Lloyd container, I’m interested in
it,’ said Nick in Russian, ‘and not to buy. I want the details of the last
person who used it, and any other vehicles you’ve supplied them. I also want
the keys to the van. Now.’
  

The boss had a face you’d see from miles away, a loner’s with a
truculent hardness set fast. A face made of bare essentials; sharp bones, no
wasted skin and thick hair sown with grey tough strands, malicious pleasure
locked deep in his dark eyes.

‘Hear that,’ smiled the boss as he waved his arm around his
office, ‘that is me not giving a shit about what you want.’ He had a Moscow
accent Nick decided, an arrogant slur to everything he said.

Nick didn’t even smile, simply pulled the trigger ripping away
a corner of the desk. ‘See that,’ Nick replied, ‘that’s me not giving a toss
whether you live or die.’ Pumping the Mossberg again, Nick aimed and waited.

‘I don’t know no goddamn names,’ the boss admitted. ‘It was all
arranged, I met with a representative,’ he added.

‘Where?’ Nick demanded.

‘Here, he came here and made terms.’

‘The keys for the van.’

‘Second drawer,’ the boss said, nodding to a filing cabinet.

‘So what are they driving now?’ Nick wanted to know after
retrieving the keys.

‘A BMW.’

‘You got the registration, description?’

Yes, the boss had them he confessed after Nick prodded him into
a corner with the Mossberg, forced him onto his knees, and told Nick where he
could find them without any further resistance. Ordering the boss to put his
hands behind his back, Nick fastened his wrists with double cuff disposable
restraints. Searching him, Nick removed his wallet and phone, backing slowly
out of the office. In the yard Nick called Rossan requesting a search team for
the van.

Rossan’s team had been exceptionally thorough in their
examination of the van, ordered not to overlook a thing. They’d unbolted the
van’s front seats removing them to reveal a void where an estate agent’s card
had slipped, an appointment for a viewing scrawled on its reverse. In Russian
it listed an address for a maisonette in Stratford which quite naturally Rossan
failed to report, passing on the location to Nick instead. Dried blood spots
painstakingly discovered in the rear were also on Rossan’s instructions,
dispatched for immediate and priority analysis. So too was the Suzuki off-road
bike found in the back of the van, its wheels still caked in what Rossan
correctly predicted would be Devon mud.
 

Now at a quarter to ten on a bitter night, Danny was in
Rossan’s words, giving the dog a sight of the rabbit as he drove Nick across
London. There was a high moon brilliant and full, running down damp buildings
their windows dappled by sleet. From the west drifts of dark angry cloud sped
along as if they had somewhere better to go, the traffic sparse and Danny took
a couple of junctions in Holborn and the City at red. In Bethnal Green a team
of emergency glaziers hammered up sheets of plywood at a grocers, while the
lights from other shops squinted through screens as the alarms peeled on like
church bells.

On Eastway they passed sodden football pitches on Hackney Marsh
glistening as if quicksilver. Nick saw floodlights on tapering stems sprouting
from Temple Mills rail depot, and with his window down for the air could hear
the grumbling of trains as they were shunted into formation.

As Nick selected another channel on the airband scanner, Danny
took a bridge far too fast and the exhaust ripped into the road. A sticky icy
breeze filled the air coating everything it brushed against with a cold film.
The area had no heart and its soul was resting for the night, girding strength
for another daytime attack of inner-city blight. An estate office was meshed-up
and boarded for a siege, its chipboard sheets fly-posted with offers of
self-help, pub gigs, the latest albums; everything but the promise of work.
Marshtide Road ran straight and long a black scar barely lit, its high blocks
and maisonettes butted together in architectural whimsy. The concrete towers
were stacked like rotting hulks at anchor. Maybe Lubov’s treasure is cursed
forever, Nick thought as they drove on, trying to find somewhere to park,
cursed like pirate gold. Danny pulled in at the mouth of a cul-de-sac and
suitably equipped they strode off.
 

The maisonette in Washford Place was in darkness. Across the
courtyard they picked their base, an empty garage minus its door, the floor
stained by urine. Perseverance on a cold London night, the waiting kept at bay
by the alchemy of the night; a clear icy sky crowned by a vivid healthy moon
and shimmering stars. Nick’s dogged determination rewarded after midnight when
a set of headlights came their way. Moving back into the depths of the garage
they waited for the car to pass.

‘Four up,’ Nick whispered, ‘two front, two rear.’

The BMW made a cautious tour, slowing, moving off fast before
returning to make a stop outside the maisonette. From the shadows Nick watched
as a woman wearing a ski hat and padded coat left the car, her attention on
both ends of the road as she hurried on into the temporary let. When the living
room light came on, three men in hooded jackets climbed from the BMW and
started heading over. As they neared their door one of the men stopped to take
a call on his phone, snapped it closed and suddenly alarmed glanced quickly
around. Dashing into the maisonette he slammed the door.

‘We’ve been made,’ said Nick, sprinting off, Danny on his
heels.

Running in a weaving line Nick and Danny’s backs thumped into
the brickwork either side of the door. Nick with his Mossberg, Danny gripping
his 9mm SIG, started to give a five-fingered count when the maisonette’s
windows and door blew out. A small tongue of orange flame shot into the night air
after the explosion and retreated, as though it had seen enough of the outside
world. The partial deafness in Nick’s right ear irritated him as much as the
sound wave of screams and car alarms reaching him, distorted and tinny. Picking
himself up as black smoke billowed out, Nick stumbled over glass, wood and
chunks of debris spat out by the power of the blast.

‘You okay?’ he yelled, hauling Danny roughly to his feet.

‘Fine…’ shouted Danny, his face cut and bleeding as he brushed
himself down.

Dust in his throat, a pain traversing his skull, Nick forced
his way inside as a clamour of sirens drew nearer. Pitch darkness and the acrid
smell of an explosion as Nick and Danny picked their way across a destroyed
living room. Leaning out of a blown out rear window, its net curtain wildly
flapping, Nick caught sight of a figure in the distance being hauled up a wall
into a rail freight depot. Smashing out the remnants of glass Nick climbed out,
picking up the pace as he ran.

With his Mossberg holstered
 
it took Nick three attempts to get a foothold before he
could scale the wall. Dropping down, drawing his shotgun Nick picked his way
over a rusted siding between old carriages their windows caved in. Under the
floodlights the yard worked into the night, a maintenance depot sat alongside a
section of track where trains slowly moved through nozzle sprays and rotating
brushes. Tube trains sat waiting for the morning rush on a wide section of
sidings next to cross-country and inter-city units and carriages. To Nick, the
busiest section seemed to be right under the spider legged lighting pylons,
where freight wagons were being shunted ready for collection.
 

Walking slowly Nick scanned above and below the freight wagons,
the Mossberg sweeping along his line of sight. From up ahead a shout echoed
back and Nick sprinted, going in the direction of a depot worker pointing
towards a siding. Cutting through wagons loaded with ballast Nick ducked as a
shot zipped into the gravel. Throwing himself down Nick rolled under the wagon,
crabbing along with his elbows and knees. To his right a figure jumped down
from between two containers, moving slowly along the trackbed. Nick waited
until the feet were level and fired. Rolling out Nick saw the figure dragging
himself away, one leg mangled and bloody. Nick pumped the Mossberg, firing a
warning shot. Looking over his shoulder the figure didn’t stop, dragging
himself over a set of points straight into the path of a freight train
gathering speed.