Trust (18 page)

Close to me, a black guy with a heavily scarred face pounded a long punch-bag, grunting with each impact. Nearby, an Asian kid who could barely have been into his teens stabbed rapidly at a punch-ball suspended in front of him while two friends geed him on. In the ring, a pair of mismatched fighters circled each other, throwing punches that occasionally landed as a small man – presumably a coach – rattled off instructions from where he clung to the ropes on the outside of the ring.

I surveyed the hall, saw other men in a weights area, another doing pull-ups on a horizontal bar, another watching himself jab and swing in a mirror. At the far end I spotted an octagonal ring surrounded by high mesh fencing, like the one in which Lee Bailey had fought the Russian.

“Hey,” said a voice nearby. “Jess, yeah? Good to see you again. You found the place all right, then?”

I turned, and Owen was standing there, looking out of place in a neatly tailored three-piece suit.

He stepped in close to me, hands on my arms, a brief, brushing kiss to my cheek. He wore the same aftershave Dean did, and I wondered if that was just similar tastes or a case of one looking up to the other.

“Owen. Thank you. I...”

“Tough, isn’t it? Sitting on the sidelines. Like the other night, having to hang back when Lee climbed into that ring, knowing he was going to take a pasting. Not easy, I know. But sometimes that’s just what you got to do, know what I mean?”

He smiled then, another expression very similar to Dean’s. The three brothers, while they looked dissimilar in many ways, shared a lot of mannerisms and characteristics – that smile, the eyes, the turns of phrase, the way they walked.

“You want to come through to the lounge and make yourself comfortable? It’s going to feel like a long morning, believe me.”

He waved a hand towards a doorway that led to a room with comfortable chairs and drink and snack machines, all visible through big windows like a shop-front.

I followed Owen through.

“You’re the brains behind this, aren’t you? You planned it all.”

He shrugged, not turning to look back.

“You think they’re going to be safe?”

Now he did pause and glance back at me. Was that a flash of anger?

“They’re my brothers,” he said tightly.

The flash of anger made sense, but I’d had to ask. I wasn’t doubting his abilities as a planner. I needed reassurance. Desperately. Something to cling onto.

He smiled, perhaps understanding some of that.

“Coffee? Tea? Something stronger?”

I shook my head.

“What are they doing? Right now?”

He hesitated, then shrugged again. “At this moment?” He glanced at the fat Rolex on his wrist. “They’ll be heading west along Commercial Road, somewhere near Limehouse Basin. Heading towards Limehouse. You know the road? It’s a precision operation. Timing down to the second until the target’s in sight. There’s already a tail on the Russians’ van, and a tracking device, too.”

“Is it going to be violent?”

Owen shook his head.

“Clean and swift,” he said. “They won’t know what’s hit them, but when it does they’ll know they’re outnumbered. It’s a done deal already. There won’t be any violence unless it comes from the Russians, and they’re too smart for that.”

He went to the coffee machine and made two espressos, even though I’d declined.

“The money’s untraceable, and a heist like this in public is going to be humiliating for them. The local Russian mob will have so much to answer for to their superiors it’ll tear them apart.”

“That’s the plan, isn’t it, Owen?”

The voice came from the doorway behind me.

A voice I recognized. Immaculate English, with just a hint of something East European.

I turned, and the man Dean referred to as ‘Putin’ was standing there smiling. At his shoulder stood the tall crop-haired guy with the skull-like face who had smashed in Dean’s car window with the butt of his pistol.

“Ah,” Putin said now. “You’ve made my coffee, Owen. How considerate.”

The target was a white Transit van, crawling in the traffic two vehicles ahead of Dean’s police van.

It had completed the last of its pick-ups and was now heading back to the warehouse south of the river where the Russians processed the takings. In the back of that van was something like £10 million in untraceable currency.

Louie’s stolen Peugeot was right on the Transit’s bumper. All it needed now was for Dean to force his way into that gap
there
and he was able to pull up alongside Louie.

He glanced across, Louie nodded, Lee gave the thumbs up and slapped the dashboard again.

“Let’s do it,” said Dean.

They were moving at a crawling pace, easy for one of Ronnie’s crew to open the back, lean out and deploy the stinger, just as another of the boys did the same from the open hatchback of the Peugeot.

In a split-second, the stingers had expanded, diagonal steel strips concertinaing apart to form a zigzag line across the road, sharp spikes protruding from the upper surface.

Immediately, the two cars behind Dean’s vehicles hit the trap. Tires blew, and the cars skidded, one slewing into the central reservation and cannoning back into the path of an oncoming car, the other turning a full ninety degrees to lie across the traffic lane. It couldn’t have worked more smoothly, as the vehicles behind them collided in slow motion.

Horns blared and metal crunched as the traffic mounted up, forming an impenetrable barrier across the roadway.

Ahead of this barrier, Dean accelerated, pulling level with the white Transit.

He glanced across, met the look of the driver, recognizing him as the mauler with the peroxide-blond mohawk who had given Lee a beating in the cage only a few nights before. Maliakov.

Oh, this was going to be more fun than he’d expected!

For a moment he thought the driver must surely recognize either him or Lee, then the guy registered that it was a police van and his expression changed. Suddenly he averted his gaze, didn’t want to do anything to draw attention to himself.

The Russian eased off on the accelerator, as almost every driver does when the police are about. Dean pulled ahead, then with a sharp jerk of the wheel he cut across the Transit’s path, forcing it to screech to a halt, stopping only inches from impact with the police van.

That was when Dean glanced across at his brother, met his look, and said, “Like clockwork, eh, bro’?”

Lee grinned and nodded, but Dean hadn’t meant it like that.

Sure, everything had gone smoothly so far, and it wasn’t that he wished problems on himself, but had things gone just a little
too
smoothly?

Then, as rehearsed, the gang kicked into gear.

Ronnie and his crew piled out of the back of the police van, two of the boys drawing pistols, moving towards the carnage where the stingers had caused traffic to pile up. Already, drivers were out, shouting, making as if to advance, but when they saw the apparent police officers with guns drawn and hands waving them back, they froze, then scurried back among the crashed cars.

This was one of the risks of so public a heist. The whole point was visibility, so that there would be news coverage of the Russian’s humiliation, but that also risked collateral damage.

At one point Dean would have been blasé about such risks, but now... Jess had changed him. Softened him, perhaps.

You can’t go into a job like this worried about the risks to others.

He glanced ahead and, sure enough, the road was clear; the traffic in front of them had continued on its way, unhindered by the stingers or the two vans pulled up in the roadway.

The stage was set.

Dean clenched a fist at his side, tried to get that focus.

The fighter before the fight. The loud music. Climbing up into the ring. Ducking through the ropes or – fired up for the fight – swinging legs over the top and leaping into the ring.

“Let’s
do
this.”

He reached inside his jacket, found the familiar grip of his Glock 17, drew it and took aim.

Only now, the blond Russian at the wheel started to understand that this was no ordinary police roadblock. No police at all. He looked at Dean and narrowed his eyes, finally recognizing him. Glanced across at Lee, who stood legs spread, a sawn-off shotgun hanging casually from one hand.

It could go either way, at just this moment.

A slight movement, a hand out of sight, reaching for a gun.

A shoot-out in broad daylight.

Dean and his gang had come prepared for that, but it was the least likely option. The Russians didn’t like to be in full view. Even now, if there was a chance to avert such a thing they would do so, and as the seconds drew themselves out, the moment for making a stand was gone.

Maliakov, hands still on the wheel, slowly straightened his fingers until his open hands only touched the wheel at their base.

He nodded, eyes fixed on Dean, and raised his hands beside his head.

To his left, a dark-haired guy with heavy brows and a jutting jaw did likewise.

Lee went to the driver’s door, swung it open, gestured for his rival to get out.

At the other side, Ronnie opened the passenger door, reached in, and tugged the other guy out by one arm.

The two Russians came to stand before Dean.

Beaten, but there was something in the way the blond guy stood there. Something insolent. Arrogant.

The plan was simple: stop the traffic, get the Russians out of their van, abandon them here while Dean and his mob drove away, the road ahead cleared for them. Meanwhile, Owen would have primed a few journalists that this was no ordinary car-jacking – that some Russian gangsters had lost millions in broad daylight. CCTV footage gathered from around the scene would provide something to show on prime-time TV.

Simple.

Already, Lee had climbed into the driver’s seat of the Russian’s Transit van and was urging Dean on.

Ronnie had taken the driver’s seat of the police van, one of his crew beside him, the other two poised to climb in the back.

“What?” said Dean to Maliakov.

The Russian just smiled, and that was when Dean knew for sure that things weren’t going as smoothly as they appeared.

What happened next only took a few seconds, but everything drew itself out for Dean, the world gone ultra-slow-motion.

Dean stood, his Glock trained on the big Russian.

“Come on, Deano, what you waiting for?” bellowed Lee from the Russians’ Transit van.

Maliakov feinted with his left, then lunged at Dean, his shoulder landing full in the chest, sucking the air from Dean’s lungs.

He felt himself tipping, took a staggering step backwards, dropped a hand to the rough tarmac to catch himself.

Voices shouted, an engine roared – Ronnie or Lee impatient to make the getaway.

Dean clung to his Glock, swung it, felt the satisfying crunch of meat and bone beneath its butt, a grunt from his opponent.

It wasn’t enough, though.

He knew that could never be enough against a professional fighter like Maliakov.

Trying to buy time, he wrapped his free arm around the Russian, trying to constrain him, trying to get a second to swing again.

The Russian fighter drew his head back.

For a moment there was eye contact. Something in Maliakov’s look. That arrogance again.

Something was happening that Dean didn’t get.

Then with a free hand, the Russian reached for something at his belt... a gun...

He drew it, despite Dean’s enfolding arm, his strength relentless.

This was going to be it.

A last few seconds that drew themselves out forever as Dean watched the gun slowly rising and thought of Jess, of what they had briefly shared, and of all that they would never share.

Then Maliakov twisted slightly, the gun held low.

The gunshot was loud, so close. Dean felt the heat in his belly, and his ears rang loud and long.

He looked down, expecting to see his insides exposed, a sea of red.

But the gun had been pointing away from him.

His eyes followed the direction and he saw the other Russian lying in a pool of blood on the road, a red cavity in his chest and the life gone from his eyes.

Then Maliakov pulled himself away, gathered himself for a moment, then ran off, past the front of the Transit and onto the pavement and down an alleyway between two shops.

Dean stood. Couldn’t work out what had just occurred.

“Come on, Deano,” Lee yelled again. “Thirty seconds!”

That was the rule: get in, get done, get out... all inside thirty seconds. Time enough to do what you needed to do; too little time for people to react – look at them: all these onlookers, still in a state of indecisive shock. No time for anyone to play the hero, no time for any police who might be in the neighborhood to react.

Just in, and out.

Dean kicked into gear, ran around the front of the white Transit, inadvertently following Maliakov’s footsteps. But instead of stupidly giving chase, he swung up in to the passenger seat, slammed the door shut, slammed his fist on the dashboard just as Lee had done earlier and said, “Let’s go.”

The road ahead was clear, the trap with the stingers having held up all the traffic behind them. With a screeching of wheels, Lee raced away, the police van driven by Ronnie a short distance ahead of them.

They didn’t have long. That thirty seconds had run out and people would be reacting: onlookers approaching the dead Russian, others making calls, police rallying. The CCTV they’d relied on to provide footage for the journalists would be tracking their movements, so that when the real police got onto the job they’d be hot on the trail.

Already, Dean was tugging the uniform jacket free, bundling it into a black plastic sack ready for disposal. He still wore gloves to minimize forensic evidence, but these days that was a near-impossible task. There would always be stray hairs, DNA, microfibers...
something
.

Now, he turned to Lee, and said, “So what just happened back there, then?”

Lee was shaking his head already.

Maliakov... the big mohawked Russian mauler... he’d just shot his accomplice in broad daylight and then run off.