London Large: Blood on the Streets (24 page)

‘H,’ said Ronnie, ‘slow down.
She’s safe in one of my flats, where no one can touch her. I’ve taken care of
it. Let’s move on: tell me about the phone.’

H contained his rage. There
would be a reckoning for this violation. A terrible reckoning. But Ronnie was
right, he needed to stay focused.

‘I got hold of that Russian,
the one she was involved with. I put it on him. He didn’t have a lot to say but
he swore that it had something on it that would clarify the picture. It was
nicked from our car the other week. John’s tracked it down, says the Albanians
have got it.’

‘Where’s the Russian now?’,
asked Ronnie.

‘Having a little lie down.
Don’t worry about him. If we can get our hands on the phone we’ll have the full
picture. Then we can cut our cloth accordingly, if you’re in. This is not going
to be a walk in the park son. Whatever’s going on, we’re going to be dealing
with some proper bastards, and someone is going to get hurt. No way round
that.’

‘H, when have I not been in
when it’s come to the crunch? When we get to whoever killed Tara I’m going to
send them straight to hell with these bare hands. I will not be fucking about,
or seeking a warrant, or asking for your opinion. I can assure you of that. Are
you sure
you
can handle it?’

Sweet. Ronnie’s on it. His
run in with my would-be assassin has done him the power of good. This is music
to my fucking ears.

‘Give me two minutes son.
I’ll just get my strides on.’

Five minutes later they were
barrelling along, side by side, for the short walk to Silwood Road. It felt
good, just like the old days. But, as they turned a corner and approached
John’s block, H looked at Ronnie’s profile and began to think a little bit
harder about just what, exactly, he was about to unleash.

Confident John had
lived on his estate for donkey’s years. He’d watched quietly over the years as
everything changed, and his neighbours these days were Nigerians, Poles,
Algerians, Columbians and Iranians. He’d found it hard in the early days of the
noughties, when things really sped up. But he’d come to see, now, that they
were mostly decent people, raising their families and trying to do the right
thing. He’d learned to live and let live, and keep the peace.

Where he drew the line was
with the latest arrivals, the gangsters who had taken over on the caravan site.
These he did not need – they interfered with business. The business of ducking
and diving. They had their fingers in everything now, and John and his mates
were not amused.

And now I’m going to have
to hand fifty grand over to the bastards.

His musings were interrupted
by the doorbell. It was the dynamic duo, back on the plot.

John nodded to H, and said
‘Hello Ron. Fuck me, you look well. How you been?’

‘Terrific’, said Ron,
scanning the condition of the flat and deciding not to return the question.
John ushered them to their seats and poured three tumblers of scotch.

‘Bring us up to speed on the
phone, John’, said H.

‘Well, it took some finding,
I’ll tell you that. Like I said before, this mob don’t talk to outsiders, and
most of them don’t speak English anyway. I…’

‘Can we fast forward to the
crux of the matter please John?’, said Ronnie. ‘Have you seen this phone? Are
you sure it’s the right one?’

‘Yep. Well…I finally got into
negotiations with a character from the site. I get the impression he’s the
number two on the firm, after the one H just banged up. It was all a bit heavy.
He brought half a dozen evil looking lumps to the pub with him. He said he
wanted two hundred large for the phone. I laughed out loud - which I shouldn’t
have done - and he started hollering and hooting. He said something about “your
posh English lady and her fucking Russian” and “porno clips”, that sort of
thing. So he knew he had something, but he didn’t really know what to do with
it. But he mentioned your wife by name Ron…Well, this geezer is not in any
danger of winning University Challenge, to put it mildly, and to cut a long
story short in the end I got him down to fifty. He told me to ring him today to
confirm I’ve got the money. These people scare the shit out of me, boys, to be
honest.’

Ronnie poured three more
scotches, and he and H talked John down. He had never really been a man of
action. They walked him through setting up the meet, told him they would be
waiting across the road with the bag and that nothing would happen to him, and
that he should ask to see some confirmation it was the right phone before he
came and got the money from them.

After the deal was done and
John had finally emerged, white as a sheet, with the phone, Ronnie thanked him
and palmed him a wad of notes.

‘I don’t need that Ron, I…’

‘Don’t worry about it John.
That took a lot of bottle. I appreciate it. Treat yourself…and don’t insult me
by trying to give it back.’

‘Alright, got it. Thanks Ron.
What happens now? Shall we plot up somewhere and have a look at the phone
then?’

‘No mate, me and H are going
to shoot off and do that now. What you don’t know can’t hurt you. We’ve got a
lot to think about. We’ll give you a bell in a day or two. Before then see if
you can lay your hands on a few bits and pieces, will you mate? Couple of
assault rifles, grenades, smoke bombs, that sort of thing’, said Ronnie.

This was good enough for
John. More than good enough: ‘Alright boys, see you soon. Be lucky.’

H and Ronnie were three
minutes into their walk back to the Rotherhithe riverside when they heard
someone calling out to them. Wheeling around, they saw that it was John. He was
running furiously and waving something about. He arrived at speed, panting
hard.

‘Sorry H, I completely forgot
about this. Came this morning’, said John.

It was a thick A4 manila
envelope, addressed to ‘Harry Hawkins, c/o John Viney.’ Yesterday’s date,
postmarked Greenwich.

‘What the fuck’s this, H?’,
said Ronnie.

H steadied his breathing.
‘Not sure mate’, he said, ‘let’s get back to yours and have a look at it. See
you later John.’

Amisha. It’s from Amisha.

Now we’re getting
somewhere.

They stepped up the pace.
Back at Ronnie’s flat, they put the phone and envelope on the coffee table, got
the scotch on the go, sat down, and took deep breaths.

‘Read your letter H. I’ll
take the phone’, said Ronnie.

‘I thought we’d…’, H started.

Ronnie interrupted him: ‘H,
I’ve just spent fifty large on this fucking thing. From what we’ve been told
it’s got bad stuff about Tara on it, very bad stuff, and pointers towards
whichever cunt killed her. I want to look at it first. I’m going to the other
room with it. You read your letter.’

There was only one person in
the world who could get away with talking to Harry Hawkins like this. The big
man let it slide; he watched his blood brother leave the room, opened the
envelope, and trained his weary eyes on the cover note:

H, I don’t have much time. Just
about to leave my place. I think they’re coming for me. No time to summarise
everything. Read the email transcripts - they took a lot of effort to decrypt.

Nutshell version: You were
right. There’s a high level paedophile ring. It’s been going on for years. Very
well protected and their activities have been very skilfully organized and
concealed. Big names involved. And they’ve been getting help from Kuznetsov. I
strongly suspect that the Tara case and your suspicions about Sir Basil and his
chums may be connected somehow - the establishment types and the Russian are
connected.

I’ve triggered an alarm in the
Dark Web; they know now that someone knows. They’ve got real expertise on
board, so they’ll be able to find me. I’ll be in touch when I can. Get these bastards,
H. Bring them down.

Amisha.

H gulped a mouthful of
scotch, and began to leaf through the sheaf of documents. Email transcripts
mostly, a few financial statements, some of them in Russian. They’d been
super-encrypted and deeply buried in the parts of the web most people don’t
even know about, the hiding place of the terrorists, the paedophiles, the
freelance drug and arms dealers, and the other shining examples of humanity at
its worst. Amisha had hit the jackpot. But who, in this pile of filth, had most
to lose? Who had come for her?

H began to read. He figured
Amisha would have put them in descending order of importance for him, so he
started at the top and worked his way down. Messages from Lord Timothy Skyhill
to Sir Basil about upcoming ‘parties’. Sir Basil passes this on to Carruthers
and Blunt. Skyhill and Kuznetsov discuss locations, arrangements, security.
Skyhill peppers the Russian with technical questions and requests. Agapov gets
the odd mention. Links to folders containing movies and pictures. What looked
like movements of large sums of money in and out of Moscow bank accounts.
Carruthers, Blunt and Sir Basil gushing to one another in excited anticipation,
like schoolgirls looking forward to a pop concert… Again, Skyhill and Kuznetsov
discussing, planning, arranging things in measured tones, all business… These
two again, talking about a ‘wrinkle’; whose men shall we put on this, Skyhill asks,
yours or mine?

On it went, page after page.
It would all need to be gone through with a fine tooth comb - but that was for
later. For now H skimmed through the pile looking for references to Amisha, or
any other name or event he was familiar with. But there was nothing further
down other than unspecific discussions; and nobody other than Sir Basil Fortescue-Smythe,
Lord Peregrine Blunt, Oswald Carruthers QC and, clearly pulling the strings,
Lord Timothy Skyhill and Mr Kyril Kuznetsov.

Well, I was right. Bang
on. Horrible bunch of cunts.

I’m going to rip their
fucking bollocks off for them.

But who among them would have
the wherewithal and resources to kidnap a police officer? Sir Basil? Blunt?
Carruthers? Hardly; bullying small children would be the limit of their
capabilities. Skyhill? Highly unlikely.

H’s money was on the Russian.

‘Mate, I’ve got some
shit here you will not believe’, said H, walking into the bedroom. Ronnie was
sitting on the bed with Tara’s phone beside him. Tears were streaming silently
down his face. Otherwise, he was not moving. He seemed to be deep within
himself.

Fuck it! He’s in bits.
It’s like the pizza place all over again. Bollocks!

There’s no time for this
now.

‘Ron, snap out of it son.
Liven up. You need to see what Amisha’s come up with…What’s on the phone? Tell
me what’s on the phone.’

Ronnie gestured for him to
take it.

He’s blanking me. Not
good.

H rushed out and was back
thirty seconds later with two tumblers, each one half full of scotch. He put
one into Ronnie’s hand, and forced it up into his face. Ronnie gulped.

H saw that he’d have to take
it up half a dozen notches. He shouted ‘No, I don’t want the phone. I want you
to tell me. Sort your fucking self out and talk to me. You can have your
breakdown later, after we’ve done what we’ve got to do. What’s on the phone?
Ron! What’s on the phone?’

Ronnie turned his head -
slowly, slowly - and met the big man’s eye.

‘They we’re using her like a
whore, H. Like a filthy whore. They had her doing all sorts. Pictures, films,
the lot. Her and that Agapov, mostly.’

‘Sorry to hear that mate. We
knew about that already though. What else is on there?’, said H, easing more
scotch down Ronnie’s gullet.

‘There’s a film…it’s
horrible. Old Shitbreath and his mates, at it with young boys. It’s like a full
scale fucking orgy.’ He was coming out of himself now, getting angrier.

‘OK, good. We’ve got them’,
said H, ‘…but what the fuck is that doing on Tara’s phone?...What else?’

‘There’s something funny
about the calls she made, the last calls she made. Just after she uploaded that
clip she phoned… what’s his name?...that fat ponce from the House of
Lords?...Timothy Skyhill.’

The gears in H’s head were
beginning to grind in earnest: ‘Is he in the clip?’

‘Oh yes. Big time. He’s all
over it. He seems to be the daddy’, said Ronnie.

‘OK, what else…what else?’

‘The last call she made,
right after Skyhill, was to her sister Jemima. That’s the last thing on there.
It’s the last call she made before she died. Before they died. Here, take it.
Have a look…my head is fucking spinning. What does it all mean?’

H’s head was spinning
furiously as well, and beginning to form all the bits and pieces of
information, from Tara’s phone and Amisha’s package, and from the last few
weeks, into a pattern. His golden girl was right: this stuff was all somehow
connected: Tara’s death, the conspiracy of nonces, Amisha’s disappearance, the
blood flowing through the streets of London…it was all connected.

‘What it means, Ron, is that
we are going to have a word with this fucking “oligarch”. Get your coat on.’

Before setting off for
Knightsbridge they swung by the Walworth Road, to fortify themselves with
double portions of pie and mash. As they reviewed the situation over their
heaped plates Ronnie told H that Kuznetsov was known to him, and had been for
years.

‘Fucking hell, Ron, you could
of told me you know the geezer’, said H.

‘I didn’t know who you were
talking about - all your “oligarch” this and “honcho” that. I just know him
through business.’

‘What business?’

‘Oh, nothing major. A few
bits and pieces. Property, mostly’, said Ronnie.

‘You mean you help him and
his money-laundering mates sell London off to the highest bidders, while proper
Londoners…’