London Large: Blood on the Streets (21 page)

Bang! The first of the
sentinels went down in the kitchen.

John said four. One down
three to go.

H kicked the living room door
in.

His actions had been so fast
that the two thugs guarding Agapov were still removing their guns from their
holsters. As he burst into the room H delivered a shot to the right knee of the
first, disabling him. The second guard needed two shots, one in each leg, to
slow him down.

Tough bastard. Only two
shots left now

He turned his attention to
Agapov, who stared in astonishment at the speed, accuracy and sheer balls of
Inspector Harry ‘H’ Hawkins.

‘Right sunshine, you’re
coming with me.’

H cut loose the drips that
were providing their slow burn sustenance, threw Agapov over his shoulder and
was back at the front door within seconds.

Yevgeny Kondrashin, the
guard who had clocked Confident John the previous evening, watched on amazed as
a lone nutter pulled up, attacked the safe house and came out with the booty in
less than a minute.

As he kneeled behind the boot
of Harry’s car, pistol in hand, he thought it was almost a shame he had to kill
such an impressive guy. He would have liked to have met him for a vodka or two,
learned about what made him tick.

Who is he? What fuck is he
on?

Kondrashin raised his pistol and
took aim as H, with his parcel secured on his shoulder, charged out of the
flat.

But the Russian really had no
idea just how extraordinary H was when he was in the zone. H knew these firms
always posted a sentry outside and had already clocked Kondrashin on the way
in. A tall no-nonsense type in a dark suit and tie and what was obviously a gun
holster crinkling an otherwise impeccably tailored suit.

Gotcha - I’ll deal with
you on the way out my son.

H would have bet his mortgage
the guard would take up position by the boot of his car. Good cover, clear
direct shot as soon as H exited the flat. Close enough not to miss, almost
guaranteed a kill on the first shot. In truth H had bet more than his mortgage
on it, much more. H had bet his life on it.

And every time in his life H
had made a wager this large he had backed himself with utter conviction. It was
the reason he was still alive.

As he charged out of the flat
he kept low and at an angle, ensuring Agapov covered nearly all of his body, if
viewed from the angle he expected his assailant to be seeing things from.

H had positioned his valuable
merchandise perfectly. The human shield was enough to make Kondrashin hesitate
for a split second, still confident his anonymity ensured the upper hand. This
moment’s hesitation was all H needed.

He who hesitates is lost.

H fired off one round with
pinpoint accuracy, putting a hole through the palm of Kondrashin’s hand. More
than enough to disable him and send his gun juddering backwards across the
street.

H made his way to the car.

The wounded Kondrashin piped
up: ‘Whoever you are, wherever you go hide, we find you. We hunt you down.
You dead man.’

‘Bollocks’ said H as he threw
Agapov into the back seat of the car. ‘You got it the wrong way round pal. Tell
your bosses they have absolutely no fucking idea whatsoever who they’re dealing
with. And tell them to look over their shoulders because I’ll be the one coming
for them.’

H jumped into the front seat
and sped off like lightening, driven by the hurricane of emotions raging within
him. It had taken him less than two minutes to bring Waterloo to a standstill,
but the storm hadn’t blown itself out yet, not by a long stretch.

Right fuckface, we’ll take
you somewhere nice and cosy and then you and me can have a little chat.

Confident John was
reclining on his battered old sofa. The smell of three days unwashed dinner
plates permeated the air, mingling with the aroma of the finest skunk his
variable income could buy. After the excitements of the previous day he needed
to block himself up and calm himself down.

He was in the middle of a
long draw, trying to relax after his earlier encounter with the big man. He was
racked by guilt for letting H take on a serious Russian firm single-handed, but
the level of bottle and violence needed for such a mission just wasn’t in him.
H knows that
, he kept repeating to himself, trying to assuage his deep
sense of shame at letting the big man go it alone.

God help him...what if?

His phone went; with a surge
of relief he saw that it was the same number H had called him on earlier. He
pressed ACCEPT.

‘H, you at Waterloo yet
mate?’

‘The merchandise is secured.
Need a favour.’

Fucking hell, how has he
managed that?

‘Anything H, anything at all
mate.’

‘You still any good at the
old taking-and-driving-away?’

‘Yeah, when do you need it?’

‘Fifteen minutes, I’ll meet
you in the car park behind your flats. Get something roomy: this Russian’s a
right lump.’

Twenty minutes later H was
bundling Agapov into the back of a spacious estate whilst barking orders.

‘I’m off. Make that other
motor disappear John, quick as you can; half the coppers in London will be looking
for it in ten minutes.’

‘Right you are H.’

H jumped into the newly
stolen car and unwound the window.

‘John, I’ve asked a lot of
you these past few days. Thanks mate, I owe you.’

John smiled, his earlier
sense of guilt fading from his mind.

‘No problem H, go and do what
you gotta do.’

H now kept to the speed limit
- nice and easy does it - as he cruised through the south east London streets. The
area around his lockup, one of a series of arches underneath the railway
station at Elephant and Castle, was relatively quiet. It had been in the family
since the days his grandfather had run a rag and bone business and, later, had
been used by his kid brother to store the kind of back-of-a-lorry stuff H
didn’t want or need to know about.

H pulled the car to a halt
inside the lockup, jumped out and sealed the metal doors tight with the heavy
bolts. He returned to the car, flipped the boot open, dragged out his load,
dropped him onto the floor and administered a well-aimed kick to the bollocks
for starters.

Agapov was still writhing in
agony as H placed his hands in the police issue handcuffs he always kept on
him, found an old chain, threaded it through his victim’s bound hands and
secured him to a metal post.

Right then soppy bollocks,
let’s to get down to business.

H considered the
Glasgow Smile, Waterboarding, skin flaying and various other forms of exotic
torture he had come across on his travels, but not for long; at the end of the
day he was old-school Bermondsey boy. He decided to just beat the fuck out of
his prisoner with his bare fists.

Agapov looked on, mute and
sullen, as H stripped to the waist. As far as he could tell it was a case of
out of the frying pan and into the raging inferno. He knew his masters would
either kill him or use him as a bargaining chip to make peace with the
Albanians, which amounted to more or less the same thing. He considered giving
up what he knew but he had never collaborated with the authorities before,
either in Russia or in the UK, and he wasn’t about to start helping the police
with their inquiries just yet. He was committed to his code.

Agapov knew his captor by
reputation. He knew he was a no-nonsense kind of guy, and expected the famous
‘H’ might rough him up a bit. But he was still a member of the UK Police Force
and policemen in the UK didn’t, as a general rule, go around torturing and
killing people.

But the events of the last
few weeks had put H through whirlwinds of pain and confusion and now, with
Amisha missing, he was losing his bearings. His inner savage, never that far
beneath the surface, was now gaining the upper hand.

The two adversaries eyed each
other; like prehistoric monkey men at the dawn of time staring across a
watering hole, neither of them was prepared to give an inch. No quarter would
be given, and none asked for.

H opened with a simple line
of questioning

‘Why did you have Tara
killed?’

‘Fuck you,’ came the reply,
followed by a mouthful of spit.

The beating began. After five
minutes of what was shaping up to be the most savage walloping H had ever
dished out, he stopped for a breather. The only constraint on H’s behaviour was
the fear overdoing it, of dishing out too much too soon. He didn’t want his
prisoner passing out, or having a heart attack, or being reduced to vegetable
status. But this was turning out to be easier said - or thought - than done:
Agapov was clearly capable of soaking up tremendous punishment.

H had broken the Russian’s
nose and jaw, and had bruised a good few ribs. But Agapov, whose face now no
longer looked like a face but like a death mask, was no Oswald Carruthers.

Fuck me, this is one hard
bastard.

The beating continued. It had
to. H’s face and body were covered in the dark red blood of his adversary. From
Agapov’s perspective he looked, through red-misted and almost-closed eyes,
crazed, demented, merciless. Exasperation was pouring out of H like a torrent
of shit from a ruptured sewage main as the blows rained down.

Another pause.

‘Listen, cunt, we don’t have
a lot of time. Either you start talking to me or I kill you here and now. Why
did you have Tara killed?’

Agapov laughed a laugh of
deep irony and arrogance. H had never heard a British villain make a sound like
it; he realized, for the first time, that he had no real understanding of who
these people were.

‘You know nothing. You stupid
fucking pig, you so fucking stupid. You more stupid than your stupid fucking
whore mother.’

H watched this response with
intense concentration. Not a trace of guilt about the murder, he surmised. But
this guy knew something…H knew when somebody knew something.

At last he’s started to
talk - the beating’s getting to him.

H lashed his fist hard across
Agapov’s face and continued with the questioning.

‘Why would your bosses kidnap
my partner?’

H saw the surprise register
through the puffed up eyes of the death mask.

He’s not aware of it, but
he knows something.

‘Why did you have Tara
killed?’

‘Why would I kill posh girl?
I like her. We have good time. She like big Russian sausage.’

A laconic smile spread across
Agapov’s bloated features. H couldn’t stand it. Seeing Tara cut to pieces in
the park, learning about the abuse she suffered as a child and then having her
memory defiled by a gangster talking about her fellatio skills tipped him over
the edge.

‘You cunt!’

H put his arms around
Agapov’s neck and leveraged his position for a clean break. His victim
understood what was coming; he realized now that H was prepared to go all the
way, and that he was not in control of himself.

Fuck, he ready to kill me.

He could take any amount of
beating, but he was not prepared to die. He signalled this with a nod. H
relaxed his grip.

‘You want to know why posh
lady killed? You want to know why your partner taken? Find phone. Find fucking
phone of posh lady.’

BOOM!

The words were like a mortar
shell exploding in H’s mind. H fell to his knees.

In the melee and mix ups and
fuck ups and killings of the last few weeks he’d somehow forgotten all about
it. Tara’s phone. Tara’s fucking phone.... had the answers to this mystery been
in his hands right from the beginning?

H went to the car and
retrieved the gun he’d done the business with in Waterloo. He’d kept a close
count of the shots fired.

One shot left.

Part 4

H had been broken down
into bits before: after the Falklands, after his marriage to Julie broke up, after
his dad died. But this was something new. His focus was fragmenting; he’d been
running on instinct and intuition for a long time now, but whenever he’d tried
to sit calmly and join up all the dots it was never long before he hit the
wall. And now this Russian had dumped and extra bucket of confusion onto his
throbbing, steaming head: ‘Find fucking phone of posh lady.’

The phone. Tara’s phone.
How on God’s earth did I manage to forget about that?

Squatting down low, holding
his head in his hands and rocking gently back and forth, H surveyed his
handiwork: Agapov would not be chasing the daughters of the British aristocracy
around hotel rooms again any time soon. For the second time in days Harry
Hawkins, the famous law and order avenger and protector of proper values,
wondered if he’d killed a man with his bare hands, in an uncontrollable fit of
rage. Of pure, animal rage.

Amisha had been right: he’d
obliterated the line with blood, and now he was well on the other side of it.
All bets were off. There was no going back until he’d seen what was on the
phone and dealt with the consequences. And if Carruthers, or Agapov, or both,
were dead…there was no going back at all.

Think. Think about the
phone. Where is it?

He thought hard...
Bermondsey. Him and Amisha in the pub with Confident John. The phone had been
left in the car; some little wanksock had driven away with it. That was it.
He’d have to start there, on the old plot. Again. It seemed to be dragging him
back. He pulled out a dumbphone and punched John’s number in.

‘John, it’s me.’

John picked up, half awake at
best; his speech was slurred, his voice shaky: ‘H! You alright? In one piece?
What about that Russian? I’ve been shitting myself. I…’