The Scioneer (16 page)

***

Lek had
insisted that they eat, realising when his stomach began to protest
in the beautox parlour that he hadn’t had anything since the
Mash-Up hash-brownie at ten o’ clock, before his meeting with the
main man. Was that really this morning? he asked himself. It seemed
like another world away, another age, when he was still a company
man, still a rat on the wheel for Pechev. He was starving and
Crystal admitted she was too, never having managed to get the
corned beef sandwich she had promised herself at lunchtime. She
stared at the cut on her thumb and smiled. They pulled over at Mr
Au’s – an all-you-can-take-away-and-eat
Vietnamese noodle bar on the Wandsworth Road and
filled four poly-boxes with cao lau egg-noodles and crispy dog. In
front of them, a Samoan gent had brought his own plastic-lined
thermo ‘bag-for-life’ and was lifting tureens of com tam rice and
bahn cuon rolls and pouring them straight in, while Mr Au himself
looked on disapprovingly and cursed his ill-thought out business
plan. Lek and Crystal paid and left, and cruised around the streets
before parking up next to The Fallen Googler Monument on the Long
Road corner of Clapham Common to dine in the romantic ambience of
the Proto’s overhead door-light.

Retro AM
was playing classic love songs from the turn of the
Millennium. Crystal plugged in
the in-car shisha and they smoked an easy two-apple hookah while
they ate their noodles, reminiscing about the times they had spent
on the Common in the spring, wondering if they would ever have the
chance again to stroll through the fields of daffodils without fear
for their lives. They looked forward to making plans for a new life
too. Lek spoke of visiting Krakow, ‘perhaps’, although he was sure
it was the first place on the mainland that Pechev would look for
him.

‘I’ve
always liked the sound of Prussia
,’ said Crystal, and Lek felt a frisson of desire
for her as her lips pouted around the place-name. ‘Yes, PRussia,’
she murmured again, with a wicked glint in her eye.

It
may
not have been the
best meal ever, but they savoured every morsel as though it were
their last, and there was an awkward silence when they both
realised simultaneously that perhaps it was.

‘Whatever
happens…’ Crystal began.

‘Don’t say
that.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t
say whatever it is you were about to say.’

‘You don’t know
what I was about to say.’

‘You’re
right. I don’t, but I didn’t like where it was going,’ said
Lek.

Crystal ignored
him and took his hand in hers. ‘Whatever happens, whether we get to
the station, make it to the mainland, whether we make it out alive
or not, I want you to know that I love you Lek Gorski. I do love
you.’

She
leaned over the gearstick to hold his face in her warm hands and
was about to kiss him, when the passenger window exploded behind
Lek’s head and showered them both in br
oken cubes of security glass….

Chapter
23

Vidmar
wasn’t able to focus on anything but the trail of phosphorescence
floating in the warm evening air. He forgot about
the Enzyme parked up on double
yellows near the beautox clinic and loped down the high streets of
the West End, moving almost against his will through the crowds of
late-night shoppers, diners and theatre-goers as though he were
being dragged along by an invisible force. The Thursday Night
Trafalgar Square Bird and Rodent Market was in full swing and
crowds of tourists were taking digisnaps of the caged canaries and
budgerigars, while thin Asianos picked out the best brown rats for
the stock pot. There had been a public hanging at the gates to
Downing Street – The Prime Ministers wanted to send a message to
Arabia that the UK would not bow to Persian terrorists, and the
mossy pavement was littered with half-eaten meat-sticks and empty
popcorn bags. Vidmar didn’t see any of this, lost as he was to the
scents he had gleaned from the Proto. ‘Gorski, Gorski, Gorski…’ he
mumbled to himself over and over again, as he covered the distance
between the city centre and Battersea Dogs’ Home at an easy trot,
hardly breaking a sweat, drool pouring from his open mouth. Here he
stopped, called to his caged cousins to have faith in mankind, and
sniffed the air again, before heading south to Clapham.

***

Zevon
hefted the
empty fire-extinguisher which he had used to break the car-window
once more and barrelled it into the shocked face of Lek Gorski,
simultaneously breaking his nose and knocking him unconscious.
Crystal screamed and frantically tried to start the Proto, fumbling
with the keys and the auto-steering lock. It was no use, for just
as she heard the motor kick into life, she saw the brute wheel his
arm high above his head as though he were bowling a cricket ball,
and bring the extinguisher crashing down on the bonnet. The biorg
died with an audible pop and the engine fought to turn over,
misfired and gave up the ghost. She screamed again when she saw the
gruesome face of Roma Bruce leering at her in the light of the
streetlamps, and she cowered beneath the dashboard. Roma calmly
opened the unlocked door, reached inside and grabbed a handful of
Crystal’s pink bob. She wrenched her upright with a vicious twist
of her wrist, and as Crystal tried to pull away, sighed softly in
her ear, ‘Make it easy for me, Barbie-doll. You can keep your tat
bling, keep your piece of shit car, you can even keep your
wannabe-chulo score there,’ she nodded towards Lek, ‘I just want
your money.’

Ronnie
had
jumped on to the
roof of the car and was smashing his fists into the steel, pounding
dents above Crystal’s head, while his twin brother went to work on
the back doors and the boot with a crowbar. Crystal sobbed, her
tears leaving tracks in the fresh face-paint. She tried to say
something but no words came out. Roma grabbed her chin and twisted
Crystal’s face towards her own. ‘I can’t understand a fucking thing
you’re saying,’ she remarked coolly.

‘Leave it
Roma,
look at this! We
got plenty,’ said Zevon, holding up the stack of hundred–cred bills
he had pulled from Lek’s pocket. ‘There’s got to be at least two
grand here,’ unable to disguise the pure joy in his
voice.

‘Such a
pretty face,’ said Roma, and gave Crystal a lick with her long
lupine tongue, before drawing back a fist and sucker-punching her
in the side of the head.

Dahlia
Ortega
watched as the woman’s body slumped against her boyfriend’s and
then she loped away with the rest of the gang across the
Common.

***

Cesar
stepped out of the Reincarn8 Gentlemen’s Club with one of the
barmaids
in tow. He
whispered something in her ear, slapped her backside and sent her
back inside. Then he turned and walked straight over to Domino on
the opposite side of the street.

‘What’s
up Cesar? You want some business? Empire State?’

‘No chico, I’m
cool. I was just wondering if you’ve seen Vidmar yet this
evening?’

‘No way. Don’t
expect to neither. The word’s already out. Vidmar is persona non
grata round these parts. Seems he upset the big man today. There’s
already a hundred K on his head.’

‘John
Lennon’s ashes
! The big
man just points a finger, and one of you guys pulls the
trigger...’

‘Not
me
, man. I only sell the
shit. What I would give for that kind of money though. I’d be out
of this mug’s game in a heartbeat.’

‘Good for
you. You’re a smart kid, Dom. Stay safe.’ And he patted Domino on
the shoulder with a massive hand and strode off into the
night.

***

In
his
thick fog of
unconsciousness, Lek dreamt of a better life. He was in Paris,
wandering through the cobbled back streets of Montmartre, holding
hands with Crystal. He wore a cream linen suit and a boater and
Crystal looked beautiful in a vintage red and white polka dot dress
and huge sunglasses. They were smoking Gauloise cigarettes and
laughing at the cherry blossom floating on the air. People were
smiling at them as they walked by. In a heady romantic haze,
Crystal suggested they stop at one of the cafes on the Seine and
take in the ambience. An accordionist who looked just like Vidmar,
even down to the ragged scar, drifted by their table and tipped his
beret.

‘C’est
Monsieur
Vidmar,’ said Crystal.

‘Je ne
savais pas que tu sais parler francais,’ murmured Lek.

‘Moi, non plus,’ laughed Crystal. At
the table opposite,
Delić
was reading love poetry from a small
black spiraled notebook. He pointed his pen directly at Lek’s face
and gave a wink.

The waiter arrived with their coffee and
croissants. Lek noticed as he lowered the tray that he was missing
a finger from his right hand. He tried to see the man’s face, but
he was silhouetted against the morning sun, and Lek had to keep
blinking to try and recognise him. ‘Ca sert a rien’, he told
himself with a shrug.

For no reason, Crystal suddenly slapped him
around the face.

‘C’est pour quoi ca?!’ Lek exclaimed, but she
only slapped him again and shouted something at him, holding her
tiny coffee cup up to his nose…..

Chapter
24

Vidmar
smelt the presence of Crystal’s c
ar long before he could see it, but when it
finally appeared in his line of vision on the corner of the Common,
it seemed bright enough to light up the night sky, shining like a
beacon in his bloodhound eyes. His senses came flooding back to him
and in that moment he knew exactly what he needed to do - find
Gorski; get the recipe book; don’t make the same mistakes as Delić.
He unclipped his Bertruzzi from its holster and stealthily
approached the Proto. When he was close enough to see that it was
battered and bleeding biorg fluid, he panicked, assuming that
somebody else had beaten him to the prize. Then he saw a woman in
the front seat. On second glance, he realised that it was
the
woman: Purcell, wearing a pink
wig and thank Ringo, she was slumped against a... younger, better
looking version of Gorski; but Gorski nonetheless. The relief was
palpable. He crept forward, circling around the other side of the
car, all the time trying to piece together what must have happened
to them. A crash? A gangland hit? Without thinking, he slipped the
pistol back into the holster, and it was in that split second that
he became suddenly aware of a huge presence standing next to him,
breathing heavily and yet making no sound. Vidmar spun around and
his face met the concrete fist of Cesar Pitres. The swinging
uppercut lifted him clean off the ground, and Vidmar was dead
before his body smashed into the back wheel arch of the
Proto.

***

In
a burnt-out Credibus shelter on
Trinity Road, Arid shivered in the warm evening air and wished he
hadn’t let himself slip into addiction. His mother would be
wondering where he was. Dinner would be waiting for him. He had an
essay to write. His scratched a spot on the back of his neck and
noticed for the first time the fine bristles of hyena-hair growing
above the collar of his vest. ‘Were they there this morning?’ He
pulled out his blade and touched the tip: what was he doing? He was
not a boy, and not yet a man, unsure of himself and trying to find
his way in the world. He only wanted to be part of the gang, to get
high and laugh at nothing and everything. One thing he did know -
he was no killer. As Arid came to his senses and stood up to leave,
Osaze stepped into the bus shelter, glowing with pride. A tall
sinewy man stood behind him. His dark skin was covered in a thin
golden fuzz, which obscured the perma-tatts on his chest and arms.
He wore golden earrings, eyebrow bars and a lip stud. Even the
oversized muscles of his jawbone had been pierced and when he
opened his mouth to speak, Arid saw that his sharp teeth were also
gold-plated.

‘So, you
have
come to do your
duty with your hyena brothers. Good. I like to meet all the new
recruits before a rumble. Osaze has faith in you. I have faith in
you. Tell me blood-brother, are you ready to fight?’

Arid
swallowed hard and
lied,
‘I am, Yakuba’.

***

Cesar
took a
moment to gather his thoughts. His heart was pounding: he had never
killed a man before, but he told himself that desperate times
called for desperate measures. He curled his hand around the lapels
of Vidmar’s scarred suit and lifted him off the ground as though he
weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. Cesar popped the boot and
slung the body inside. ‘Family and friends’, he said to himself,
under his breath, ‘Not many of the first lot left, I’d better look
after the others.’ He tore his eyes away from the pulped bloody
mess that had once been Vidmar’s face, closed the boot and stepped
around to the passenger window. Lek was still out cold, but the
sound of Vidmar smashing into the bodywork had woken Crystal, who
was staring around, wild-eyed. She screamed again when she saw
Cesar’s orange eyes watching her.

‘It’s ok,
it’s ok. I’m a friend,’ he said, and Crystal
realised who he was.

‘You’re
…you must
be Cesar? Lek’s told me a lot about you.’ And she offered a hand
over the top of Lek’s unconscious body.