The Scioneer (8 page)

‘Have you been
sampling the goods Lek?’

‘This is
serious. They’re after me. Pechev’s thugs are after me. I’ve got to
hide out somewhere for the next…. ,’ he checked the living room
LED, ‘eight hours.’

Crystal
knew there and then that he wasn’t lying, but she was so overcome
with a cocktail of conflicting emotions, she didn’t know what to
tell him. Part of her wanted to kick him out on the street and have
nothing more to do with the guy, but part of her wanted him to
stay, no matter what that meant for their safety. She remembered
the phone call.

‘What have you
done?’ she almost whispered.

‘It’s...
complicated. No it isn’t. The simple truth is I’ve stolen something
from them,’ he whispered back, ‘I think I know too much, and it was
beginning to spook them. They were testing me. And I failed. And
your finger is bleeding.’

‘I know.
You’re nothing…. I mean,
it’s
nothing.’

‘Let me look at
it.’

‘No.’

‘Don’t be
silly, let me see.’

He gently held
her hand in his for a moment, then without a word, raised it to his
lips to kiss it better.

‘Don’t.
You don’t know where I’ve been.’ she said, half-joking, but when
she felt his breath against the palm of her hand, and his lips
brushing her wrist, something inside her became undone. She closed
her eyes and gave in.

‘What are you
doing Lek?’ she whispered softly in his ear.

‘What I should
have done months ago.’

He kissed
her then, and for a moment - all the money, all the drugs, Pechev
and his gangsters – none of it mattered. He kissed Crystal Purcell
as though his world might end in the next eight hours, and he
wanted to imprint that kiss forever on his memory. Crystal fought
back the tears pricking her eyes, and like a true professional,
began to play the part she knew so well. She smiled coquettishly
and stepping away from him, pulled her T-shirt over her
head.

The
lopsided grin fell away from Lek’s handsome face and his voice was
suddenly sombre.

‘Who did
that to you?’ There were three cigarette burns around her left
nipple. ‘That wasn’t an accident,’ he said definitively, before she
could lie.

‘Calabas,’ she sighed. ‘I gave him some lip yesterday, so
he tied me up for an hour and put his fags out on me.’

‘I
see,
’ Lek nodded and
picked the T-shirt up off the floor. ‘I think… I’ll have to… talk
to him,’ Lek said, sounding as though he were simply balancing out
a difficult equation in his head, rather than considering paying a
visit to a violent pimp. But still, there was something in his
tone, a certain resignation that left Crystal cold.

‘You
don’t need to do that,’ she said. ‘I can fight my own battles.
So
look, just stop a
minute for Ringo’s sake. Slow down. Let’s have a drink. Go and
sit.’ She shooed him away, pulled her shirt back on and wandered
into the kitchen.

Lek
flopped into a big leather beanbag and picked up a newspaper. A
prominent prosecutor had been found dead outside the New Old
Bail
ey, having overdosed
on Tiburon. It seemed he had undergone a particularly heated
morning of intense cross-examination. ‘Reports suggest that he was
seen ‘drowning in the air’’. Lek threw the paper on the coffee
table, disgusted with himself. He lay back and looked at the ivy
covering the ceiling. Instead of cutting it back when it started
creeping through the woodwork of her window-frames, Crystal had
cultivated it instead. He thought about his own place, further east
along the river, with its clinical white walls and sterile
stainless steel shelving units, adorned with a few ornaments and
photos he would never see again. This place felt like a home
though, and if things had been different, he would have asked to
stay.

Crystal
appeared with two glasses of Juniperus, set them on the coffee
table and was about to sit down when the doorbell rang again. Lek
sat bolt upright and Crystal
’s stomach lurched. The man on the phone. He was
here.

‘Are you
expecting
anyone?’

Crystal
opened her mouth to explain, but Lek saw the look in her eyes and
knew at once that she had betrayed him.

‘He said
he wouldn’t hurt you. They just want to bring you in,’ her voice
began to crack. ‘He said he would kill me if I didn’t help them,’
she was crying now, ‘He told me to keep you here,’ she sank into
the corner of the room and buried her face in her hands.

Six
floors up and no way out,
Lek considered looking for something that would pass as a
weapon, but a flash of inspiration hit him and he sat down again,
seconds before Delić kicked the front door in and lurched into the
room. He had already pulled a Meister out of its holster and
pointed it at Lek’s head, when he noticed Crystal crouching against
the wall.

‘Who the
fuck are you?’ he said, by way of an introduction.

‘I’m
the
woman you spoke to
on the phone,’ she answered between sobs.

‘I didn’t
speak to nobody, lady. I’m only here for this prick.’ Delić focused
his attention once again. ‘Lek, Lek, Lek....’ he said with a grin,
and shook his head in a gently admonishing manner. ‘How are you
Doctor? Wow… this is all a bit fucking dramatic for you, isn’t it?
Not your typical day, I’d guess, playing with your test-tubes,’ he
bent his head sharply to the right and Lek heard the vertebrae at
the base of his neck crack. ‘Now, the word is you’re carrying
100,000 cred of the big man’s money, that right?’

In spite
of the violence surrounding his work, Lek had never found himself
staring down the
barrel
of a gun. ‘Not quite Delić,’ he said, weighing his options. ‘That
is, I don’t have it with me. I’ve stashed it. Why? Is that all you
want? The money?’

Delić
snorted
derisively. ‘No. You’re worth a lot more to me than a hundred K.
Pechev is paying five times that to have you back in your
rat-cage.’

‘Is that
all?’ Lek asked, his eyes fixed on the gun. ‘Half a million? A
measly five hundred thou, when I could offer you the keys to the
whole city….’

‘Shut up
shithead. Just get up,’ Delić sounded almost bored as he pulled a
pair of mistress cuffs out of his raincoat.

Lek
slowly got to his feet. ‘All I’m saying is, I can give you more
than Pechev is offering...’

‘Right.
You can give me more than half a million cred. You couldn’t make
that much in a lifetime...’

‘Like I
said
Delić, the keys to
the city…’

‘Don’t tell him
anything!’ Crystal blurted out, and both men turned and looked at
her, each as surprised as the other.

‘And why
would you know anything about anything, sugar tits?’ said
Delić.

‘Whatever
you tell him Lek, you’re only getting yourself in deeper!’ she
cried.

‘No, no,
no. You’ve got me all wrong.’ Delić began, a smile playing on his
lips. He gestured for Lek to sit down again, and turned to Crystal.
‘It’s not like that at all. Not. At. All. I work for Mister Pechev,
see? So does your fella here. Only, unlike me, he seems to have
forgotten that fact. Temporarily, eh Lek? I’m here to help him
remember,’ Delić placed the gun on the table, put the cuffs back
into his pocket, and withdrew an old-fashioned clasp-knife. ‘But I
have to say, I
am
interested in
hearing whatever it is you have to tell me, Lekky…’ he said,
sitting down in the chair opposite and opening the
blade.

Lek had
to think fast. The words spilled out of his mouth before
his reasoning was fully
formed.

‘All I’m
saying is this: I can give you access to more than 500
grand.’

‘Keep talking,’
Delić said, his interest piqued.

‘OK, OK,’
Lek took a deep breath, feigning resignation, ‘let’s say,
hypothetically speaking of course, that there was…’ he shook his
head and bit his bottom lip as though the confession were being
dragged out of him, ‘…a book.’

‘A book?’ Delić
looked amused. He’s probably never read one in his life, thought
Lek.

‘Let’s
say that this book contained all the formulae, all the methodology,
the very recipes if you will, for producing all our best sellers –
Tiburon, Equinox, Gorillamine, Chillax, Torox,
Tigranol…’

‘Stop
there. No way, dickhead,’ Delić laughed, ‘You must think I fucking
came down with the last shower. Do I look like an idiot?
A fucking ‘recipe
book’?’

‘That’s what I
said.’

‘OK, wise
guy, hypodermically speaking or whatever, are you trying to tell me
you wrote all that shit down?’

‘Yes,
Delić I wrote all that shit down.’ Lek spoke the words like he had
a bad taste in his mouth. It was a stellar performance.

‘I’m
still not buying it,’ said Delić, but his body language said
otherwise. He leaned forward in his chair and waited for Lek to
continue.

‘Now, a
book like that would be worth millions, wouldn’t it?’

‘Maybe.
In the right hands, I suppose.
Maybe. Where is it anyway?’

‘Well, I
can’t tell you that.’

Delić
licked his lips and blinked slowly. He was thinking hard.
Eventually he said, ‘Yes you can,’ and he lightly ran the blade of
the clasp-knife across the newspaper without once taking his eyes
from Lek’s. He licked his thumb and when he touched the page with
it, the freshly cut strip of paper came away easily. ‘Yes you
will.’

‘If you
kill me, you’ll never find it,’ said Lek. The fear in his voice was
genuine now, even if his words were a lie.

‘That’s
true. But there’s always her,’
Delić replied nonchalantly, and he stood and walked over to
where Crystal crouched in the corner, her beautiful eyes now wild
with terror. She screamed Lek’s name as Delić bent over and touched
her face with the knife. ‘It would be such a shame to spoil these
looks….’

‘Lek!’
Crystal screamed again, trying not to move.

‘Alright!
Alright. Just… leave her alone, for Lennon’s sake.’

‘Where is the
book Lekky?’

‘It’s in
a thumbprinted Smarte Locker in Victoria International. Listen,
I’ll make you a deal…’

‘I’m
listening.’

‘I’ll
give you the book, and y
ou let us go.’

Delić
sucked his
teeth and shook his head. Lek could see that he was slipping off
the hook. ‘No. You know? Something just isn’t right here. I think
we’ll just go and see Mr P, and I’ll take my half a mill, thank you
very much.’

‘You can
have the cash too.’

‘The
hundred grand?
’

‘Yes,
it’s in the locker. C100,000 is a drop in the ocean compared to
what you could make with those formulae, but it’s
yours.’

‘OK, so
tell me this, Mr smart-arse lab-rat Doctor Gorski, what’s to stop
me killing you now, slicing your thumb off and taking it all for
myself - the recipe book
and
the
creds?’

Lek
hadn’t considered that, but he felt he wa
s on a roll and tried his luck.

‘Well,
for one,
Pechev won’t be too impressed if he ever finds out. And he would
find out. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be looking over my
shoulder for the rest of my life. John Lennon’s ashes, I’ve only
been doing it for a few hours and I’m already wrung out. But think,
Delić - you’re a smart man - if you’re going this make this happen,
you’re going to need somebody who understands extract conversion,
grafting, DNA sequencing, scion-production – I could be your man on
the outside. Quid pro quo. You know it makes sense.’

There
followed a long drawn-out silence which Delić eventually
shattered,
‘Stop fucking
crying bitch! I’m trying to think here!’ He looked again into Lek’s
eyes and was finally convinced. He saw a vision of himself playing
old-school arcade games in Pechev’s office, standing on the balcony
at night perhaps, smoking Castros and listening to the symphony of
gang violence from the streets. He leaned across the coffee table
and picked up a glass of Juniperus. He nodded warily, ‘OK, you’re
coming with me. You’ve got a deal. But if you try anything…’ and he
pointed at the Meister on the table…. ‘it’s you
and
her. Do you understand?’

‘I
understand,’ said Lek, picking up the second glass, ‘What should we
drink to?’

‘Do I look like
I give a fuck?’ said Delić.

‘To the future
then!’

‘Whatever, dickhead - the future,’ chorused Delić
half-heartedly, before raising the glass in a parody of salutation
and draining it in one mouthful.

Lek
watched as a ripple of confusion clouded his expression,
saw his jaw slacken and his
pupils dilate, and without a word, Delić slumped to the ground and
smashed his head against the tile-floor. He was out
cold.

There was
a few seconds’ silence before Lek explained, ‘I spiked the drinks
while you were crying in the corner. Pure sloth extract. Good for
insomnia. He should be dead to the world for a few hours.’ He threw
an empty gel-cap vial onto the coffee table. ‘And I should never
have trusted you.’