Dead Pretty (9 page)

‘You haven't forgotten shit,' Mark said. ‘Only now you pay men to do this stuff for you. You're just a lowlife ponce, a dago woman killer.'

Agani dabbed at his head again, and winced, yet a thin smile crossed his face.'

‘Tony said we'd have trouble with you.'

‘Look,' Agani said, ‘Mark, can I call you Mark, this is getting us nowhere. We can make a deal.'

Mark tried to keep a lid on this. Angelo was right, he
was
out of his depth here, and holding a gun on three international killers. He backed against the wall, and wanted to sink down it, but he kept the gun steady, and pointing at Agani's head. The nerve was letting him have it again, jerking him to its tune. Tap-tap, tap-tap, on the side of his head. His personal Morse code but it had few words. He allowed his eyes to flit to the window for a moment. The sky outside was a serene soft blue. It matched Agani's furnishings. Everything was toned down here, soft pastels, polished boards, and an oversized white leather suite
.
Lena would have approved. It looked like a woman lived here, though Agani's red, patterned dressing gown was effeminate enough.

‘A deal?' Mark said, trying to tone down his voice and sound like a man in control.

‘We are men of the world, you and I,' Agani said. ‘What happened to the girl was unfortunate, but we can't allow our own to steal from us. There was no need for it to go as far as it did, and I have said that, but some of our people have too much of the old ways in them. They are not civilised, like us. They thought she'd swallowed the gems and should have waited. But waiting is hard to do for Stellachi.'

Stellachi was a new name, but Mark did not react. He wanted to ask questions, but he knew Agani would just spin him a line, until he dropped his guard. He was seeing the horror again, the smell of that morning was still in his nostrils.

‘Mark,' Agani said softly, ‘stay with me now. Keep it together. I can set you up for life. Angelo tells me you are good, there's always room in the organisation for someone like you. You know this country.'

Mark shouted, at least he thought it was a shout, but he wasn't sure what came out of his mouth, but it turned into a kind of low-throated scream that shook Agani. His mask dropped for a moment. Mark's body knew what it was going to do, even if his brain didn't agree. He fought to control the gun in his hand, but it had a life of its own. It stayed cold in his grasp, fighting against his sweating hands, alive, and wanting action. Agani got up from his chair and waved a calming hand. Their eyes met for a long second as Mark pulled the trigger. The gun reared in his hand and the round took the top of Agani's head away. His skull detached at his hairline and what was inside sprayed itself on the wall behind him. Red and grey on white. Agani stayed upright for a few seconds, his body shaking out its life, like a decapitated chicken in an Albanian farmyard. He was dead before he hit the floor, and looked small and ridiculous, as he curled up in his gown on the hardwood floor. Ridiculous and very bloody. The big man wanted to get at Mark but Angelo restrained him. Maybe this saved their lives. The discharge of the gun had been thunderous but now the room was very quiet. A crazy calm in the aftermath of a killing. Mark too was still. For a few precious seconds he felt a tremendous peace, so tangible he thought he could wrap it around him, and let it take all this away. Bring Lena back. He wanted to close his eyes, which would be the end of him. Maybe he wanted that too, but not yet.

Angelo was shaking his head, but there was no panic in his voice.

‘Wrong move, my friend,' Angelo said. ‘What are you going to do now? Shoot all of us? What then?'

These men were not that shaken. The brain of their boss was a new wall decoration but, like Agani, they were not pleading wrecks. They'd dealt with death many times before, and had been close to their own before. Maybe so much so that their own mortality had become blurred, and fear muted. One of them might have cut up Lena, maybe the other holding her as she fought and writhed in agony, holding her until she passed out, until she died. They had chosen to kill because they were in a hurry. Simple as that. A matter of fact. A matter of business. Lena might have just as well been a plant, and they hadn't given a rat's toss about him or the police. They weren't worried at all.

Again Mark fought to keep the gun steady. He'd felt it jump in his hand once, and it wanted to again. How did it go? Guns were just tools, that it was people who killed? What bollocks. Guns killed. They controlled, seduced and conspired with anger, pain, the need for revenge. They tapped into weakness, rage, plain meanness, the inadequacies of challenged people. The inadequacies of strong people. The gun in his hand told him he should finish the job. Three not one. It made more sense. These two were the butchers, whoever Stellachi was. He'd killed the organ grinder, not the monkeys on the ground. Angelo was looking at him calmly, weighing up his own chances of survival.

‘You are wrong,' Angelo said.

‘What?'

‘You think we killed the girl. We didn't. Agani told you the truth. It was a man called Stellachi. A Romanian, from Bucharest. Agani used him for stuff like that. Tony drove him over to the flat and waited outside. I give you the name because it will do you no good. Whether you kill us now or not you will be dead yourself soon. Run, hide, keep fighting, it's no matter. It's just a matter of time. Agani was only big here, there are others much bigger and they will never let this go.'

‘Who the fuck do you think you are? You talk like you are supreme fucking beings, but you're just animals.'

Angelo shrugged.

‘We are different,' he continued, ‘we come from a different world, one where life is cheap. Very cheap. You can understand this. You also come from the outside. I know this, that's why you pulled the trigger. You had to, but what happened with the woman was business. It was nothing personal.'

‘Bullshit. You talk like some idiot in a film. I could phone the police right now. Get them up here. What have I got to lose?'

Angelo's third shrug almost got him a bullet.

‘But you won't. They can't help you, and you will be the only one in jail. You'll have a lifetime to think about your mistake. Lena doesn't exist any more. The only killing they can prove is the one on the floor here. Men like us don't need police.'

The big man said something to Angelo. They were more confident now that Mark would not fire again.

‘Agani is not worth being locked up for,' Angelo said, with sudden vehemence. ‘He slept with boys.'

He turned to the other and muttered a few words, and the big man smiled and answered. By Christ, Mark thought, these men have ice in their veins. Agani might as well be a piece of meat. Blood from his head was seeping into the floorboards, and slowly making its way towards the white rug that matched the leather suite. Like a dark red sea on the move.

‘Stellachi is in Amsterdam,' Angelo said, ‘most of us are there. It is a good base.'

‘Why should I believe any of this?'

‘Because this information will not help you.'

Amsterdam. One of the few places abroad Mark knew. No wonder Lena had gone there so often. Yes, these boys would be active there, burrowing like bugs in the red light shit, controlling drugs, the sprawl of suck-and-fuck clubs and the women who worked in them, encouraging the flow of money from the pockets of the curious, stupid and lonely to their own. Lords of a thousand scams.

‘Better to go down fighting, for men like us,' Angelo said softly. ‘Kill us now or try to kill us another time, it doesn't much matter, does it?'

‘What about the deal?'

Angelo laughed.

‘The deal? That was just words. Agani was talking to stay alive. He'd have killed you the first chance he got. Unless, of course …'

‘Unless what?'

‘Unless
you
had our goods. There were twelve, in a small black leather bag. The one Lena always used. Have you ever held stones like them? No, of course you haven't. Each one cut by a master. They seem to hold all the light of the world, and it sparkles just for you. People have always thought them worth dying for, but we know you don't have them, just as Stellachi knew Lena would never have hidden them in the flat. That would be as stupid as saying she'd lost them. No, his guess that they were inside her was a good one, but wrong. We underestimated Lena, like we underestimated you. We searched the flat afterwards, but you wouldn't know it, eh? We found nothing, but then we didn't expect to. Lena was foolish, not stupid. The diamonds are somewhere else.'

‘Why did you kill Tony?'

‘That you are here is the answer. I thought I'd got you also. That was my mistake. Who knows, maybe my future is the same as yours now. Our people will not like Agani dead.'

‘Where did you take Lena?'

Angelo sighed. ‘Does it matter, my friend? Does it really matter? You saw her, you know her fate. In my country we say the body is just a shell that the soul leaves. I envy her.'

Mark re-aimed the gun and Angelo closed his eyes momentarily.

‘One thing I will tell you, Stellachi would have put her out before he looked for our goods. Not because he has mercy, Stellachi has none, but it is professional, no? Easier. That man works alone, always, and he would not want her fighting him. Only fools and amateurs do things the hard way. Lena would not have known what was going to happen to her. I doubt if she knew he was in the flat before his hand was over her face. Only Stellachi got it wrong. She hadn't swallowed them. Believe me if you want, or not. If you have the diamonds, or can find them, maybe we can do a deal. It's not up to me.'

‘I still want to know what you've done with her,' Mark shouted, ‘and don't shit me. Your brains will join Agani's if you do. I swear it.'

‘In the sea,' Angelo said.

‘What?'

‘She's in the sea, or at the bottom of it. She swims with the fishes, no? Somewhere off Dungeness. It was how Agani wanted it. Stellachi left, and Agani sent us in. He always used us for stuff like that, cleaning up, fixing someone else's mess. But you got there first. Look, isn't this way better for everyone? If the police found a body you wouldn't be here now. You'd be in the frame, we could have easily done it like that, but it's not our way. As I said, the body is just a shell.'

Angelo was talking hard for his life as Mark fired again.
Men like us
,
Angelo said. But he wasn't like them, even in his bleakest moments Mark could never be like these ghouls. Not even now. Let them think he was though, it might give him an edge.

This time he jerked the gun up at the last fraction of a second and the round ploughed into the wall. Once more the sound was monstrous. It made the nerve leap, and increase its grip on his head, but this time he hadn't obeyed it. He was looking beyond Angelo at Lena, at her lustrous, healthy face, and he felt an echo of the way he'd felt each time she came back from a trip. Protective, glad she was back, glad she was
home,
that word he'd dared to begin to use. He wanted to kill Stellachi but these men should also die. Something sweeter than the bitter iron taste of fear was salivating on his tongue, a taste that meant retribution, and a sudden end to the pain, if only for minutes. His mouth was no longer dry, and the nerve told him to finish it.
Go on, pull the trigger, get this over.
But he'd had enough. Every sense Mark possessed had been through the shredder in the last three days and he managed to stay his hand. He was allowing these two to fight another day, to maybe kill him another day. So be it. He had to get out, get away and weigh everything up. Stay alive.

‘Lie on the floor,' Mark shouted, ‘gut down, hands stretched out. Do it.'

The big man had a lot of gut to stretch out but he still looked dangerous so Mark kicked him heavily in the head as he got down. It did not seem to affect him much but it kept him still. He'd put his mark on both of them now. He searched for weapons with his left hand, but only Angelo was carrying – a 9mm automatic Mark didn't recognise. It became a new addition to his arsenal.

Mark took a last look at the hell he'd created. Agani was in a foetus-like position, his dark eyes were almost black now, fixed on the sky beyond the window, but seeing nothing. He looked like he wanted to go back to the womb from which life had ripped him. Agani might have been born in the crumbling back streets of a town, or maybe out in the sticks, another unwanted mouth to feed, one of a family too poor to do anything other than survive. Now it had ended on the floor of a million-pound penthouse in another world. Every foul act the man had committed to get here had finally cost.

‘See you soon,' Angelo murmured, sure of his life.

Mark knelt by his head and Angelo was not so sure. Mark was breathing heavily now, his hay fever kicking in with the nerve, the bastards working in tandem.

‘Stellachi,' Mark said, ‘what does he look like?'

‘You'll find out soon enough.'

Mark pressed the gun against his neck like he had with Tony. Angelo nodded his head towards Agani's desk.

‘He's there, with Agani, in Rome. They share the same tastes.'

Carefully, Mark got up and went to the gold-framed photo. Agani was standing in St. Peter's Square with another man, amongst the pigeons and the families.

‘He has blond hair now,' Angelo muttered, ‘or at least he did have the other day. Stellachi does not stay the same for long.'

Mark fixed the man's face in his mind. It would be in there for ever. He was maybe six three, finely muscle-toned, no excess weight whatsoever, a lean, hard, face, tanned and high-cheekboned, with cropped hair. Stellachi had dead eyes. His eyes looked like Agani's did now. This man was another ghoul who was dead but didn't know it. The smile on the man's face was a lie and Mark felt he knew Stellachi already. Stellachi's eyes hated, he hated the world and the people in it, and would pay it back, for as long as he could, pay it back for being born. Mark had a small piece of this in himself, and thanked God it was one small piece.