Trust (19 page)

Ahead, Ronnie swerved the police van onto a slip road. Lee followed and all of a sudden they were in traffic again. A short burst of flashing blue lights cleared the path, and Lee followed closely through the gaps.

Seconds later they were on a ramp dropping down to an underground car park beneath an office block.

Now, out of view of the public CCTV they had a bit of breathing space – the cameras down here had been disabled the previous night.

The two vans swerved around parked cars, took another down-ramp, came to an empty delivery bay and screeched to a halt.

Ronnie was out immediately, barrel chest pushed out, dancing up to Dean aggressively as if he was looking for a fight.

“What the fuck was all that about?” he yelled.

“All
what?
”

“You
shot
the fucker!”

Dean silenced his cousin with a raised hand, shaking his head. “I didn’t shoot anybody.”

“Sure looked like it from where I was standing.” Ronnie’s eyes were popping, but he had calmed visibly – Dean had an authority that would cow almost anyone.

Dean stepped closer, put hands on his cousin’s arms, and drew him into a brief hug.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said softly. “You got that?”

“Thirty seconds,” said Lee.

In the time it took for that brief confrontation, Lee had opened the back of the white Transit, and now he’d formed a chain with two of Ronnie’s boys, lifting heavy boxes out of the back and passing them over to the back of a much smaller Renault van.

Another of the boys was pouring petrol over the seats of the police van and the fumes were heady, almost overpowering in this underground space.

It took more than half a minute to complete the transfer, but not much.

Dean dashed round to the driver’s seat of the Renault and gunned the engine just as Lee threw himself into the passenger seat. In the rearview mirror he saw the first flames, a flicker, a flash, then a sudden mushrooming fireball as the two vans went up.

It was a close thing, even as they pulled away round the corner, flames racing out after them. Dean would have sworn they licked the side of the van and he could feel the blast of heat.

He hoped Ronnie and the boys were okay – they should have slipped away through the car park by now, either to leave on foot or in cars that had been left for their getaway.

Up the ramp, and it was as if nothing had happened on the lower level as they joined the short queue to leave the car park. In the short time it had taken them to reach the exit, Lee had changed out of his uniform and pulled on some overalls.

CCTV would pick them up as they emerged, but they were just one vehicle among many, and it would be some time before anyone had a chance to analyze the coverage and identify the Renault as a likely getaway vehicle. And by then the van would be another burnt-out shell on some waste industrial land near Rainham.

Lee was looking at him oddly now.

“What?” said Dean, as they pulled out into the traffic.

“Is it true what he said? You shot the guy?”

Dean shook his head. He was calm on the outside, but his mind was racing.

Remembering the way Maliakov had lunged at him, as if to fight, but then twisted and shot at the other man. To anyone without a perfect view, it might be hard to tell that it was the Russian who had taken the fatal shot; Dean was the one who had been waving a gun around in full view, and why would
Maliakov
kill his own accomplice?

Someone had been playing games with them.

“I think you’d better take a look in the back,” said Dean. “See what we’ve landed up with.”

Without hesitation, Lee scrambled over the seat and into the back where he and Ronnie’s crew had stashed the boxes from the Russians’ white Transit.

Seconds later, he swore loudly.

“What? What is it?” said Dean.

“Hang on... there’s more. Give me a mo’.”

“What is it, bro’?”

Lee leaned forward over the passenger seat, his face white and tense. “The
fuckers
,” he said.

“Lee?”

“Boxes full of old newspaper,” he said. “When we moved them... they were heavy enough to feel like they were full of money, you know what I mean?”

Dean nodded. He’d got there already. “And the rest?” The thing that had made Lee pause and say there was more?

“Drugs,” said Lee. “Coke and pills. At least that’s something. Must be worth a bit. I don’t know how much there is...”

“Oh, enough,” said Dean. “Murder and now drugs. That’s enough to put us away for life, I reckon.”

§

Driving one-handed, he flipped his iPhone out of a pocket, activated Siri and told it to call Owen.

The traffic was moving relatively clearly here, the route carefully selected because it didn’t tend to snarl up at this time of day. They were mostly able to do a good twenty-five in the fast lane, all the time putting distance between themselves and the ball of flames in the underground car park, and the dead Russian they’d left in the street.

Just then, the sound of distant sirens cut through the air. Dean checked the mirrors but there was no sign of pursuit.

The call was answered on the third ring: “Mr Bailey.”

That wasn’t Owen’s voice.

Dean looked at Lee.

“Putin?” he said. “What the–?”

“You know that’s not my name, Mr Bailey, but you may call me whatever you like, if it amuses you.”

The Russian! What was Putin doing answering Owen’s phone?

“By now you will have realized that things have not gone according to plan,” said the Russian. “Or according to
your
plan, at least. I think now that you would like to pay us a visit.”

“Oh yeah? And why would you think a thing like that?”

“Because we have your bitch, Mr Bailey.”

Jess.

They’d got Owen’s phone so that meant they probably had Owen. But they had Jess, too!

He stopped at a red light. Waited. Knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel.

Finally, through gritted teeth, he said, “Where?”

I actually shook my head briefly from side to side, as if I might shake some sense into it. Some understanding.

Putin?

What was he doing here, strolling in as if he owned the place, moving over to join Owen now and take the proffered cup of coffee.

And then it all began to fall into place.

Owen. Putin.

The dawning realization must have been written all over my face.

Owen shrugged, almost apologetically. As if betraying your two younger brothers was the kind of thing you did every day. An
Oops, sorry – my bad
kind of thing.

“It’s not what you think,” he said, breaking the long silence that had descended.

I raised an eyebrow, glaring at him, not trusting myself with actual words.

“Times change,” he continued. “This place just isn’t the same any more. We can’t go on like we always did.”

His words were an uncanny echo of how Dean had put it the night before. But where Dean had chosen to pull one last heist before getting out, his older brother had thrown his lot in with the opposition.

“So you sacrifice your own flesh and blood,” I said.

He sneered then, defiant. “Says you,” he snapped at her. “Jessica
Taylor
.”

It was in the way he said it. The emphasis on the ‘Taylor’.

Dean had told her it was the Russians who’d had her parents killed. Their first tentative move in going after the Baileys again: a hit on someone who’d once been close to them.

But if Owen was working with the Russians, then when had they first got together? What had the Russians offered him?

“You didn’t have to have my parents killed,” I said, keeping my voice level. “They didn’t give evidence against your father. They would never do something like that. And if they did they wouldn’t have stayed around so close to London for years afterward. They just wanted to get away from... all
this
.”

He didn’t believe her. He
couldn’t
now he was this committed.

He glanced beyond her, and she remembered Putin’s skull-faced henchman who had been standing in the doorway. “Lock her up, Vadim,” he said. “Get her out of my sight.”

§

I sat with my back to the metal mesh, hugging myself, my knees drawn up to my chest.

Vadim’s grip on my arms had hurt, but he had shown little indication that he cared. None of them had. For the first time I understood that I might not have long remaining. They would keep me here while I had some value, but after that...

I looked up: the fencing around the fight cage was close to twice my height. The gate through which I had been roughly pushed was not locked, but it was latched shut, and now Vadim stood just beyond, staring at me with dark eyes set deep in that long, threatening face.

I had no choice but to sit there, feeling sorry for myself, and getting increasingly anxious about what was happening to Dean.

§

What was now the Bluebell gym must once have been some kind of commercial unit, by the look of it. The area along from that glass-fronted lounge area, where Putin and Owen were still locked in intensive discussions, had once held loading bays, and now I was stirred out of my self-pity by a loud rumbling sound as one wide metal door slid upwards.

A white Transit van stood in a yard outside, its engine running. When the door had been raised high enough, the van reversed inside, and immediately the door started to drop again.

I peered around the gym. The place had emptied out when Putin arrived, and now the Russian emerged from the lounge, Owen at his heels.

They went across to the Transit, its back doors already open. Putin was nodding approvingly, a hand on Owen’s shoulder, and then they stepped back to make room for the van to be unloaded.

It didn’t take much to work out that this van was the target of Dean’s heist. Owen must have tipped them off so they could avoid his brother’s ambush.

If the van had arrived here untouched, what did that mean for Dean’s safety?

Putin’s men were lifting plastic crates out of the van now. Putin popped the lid off one, gestured at the contents, then reached in and produced a wad of notes and waved them at Owen. The two exchanged words, laughed.

I’d never seen so much money, as they lifted bundles of notes from the boxes and stacked them on a table, before counting them and loading them into sports bags on the ground nearby.

Dean had told her, of course; he’d said this was the Russians’ biggest movement of cash yet. But until you actually saw that much money...

They were interrupted by a phone call. Owen took his phone from a pocket and looked at the screen. After another brief exchange of words he handed it to Putin.

I looked away.

I felt sick.

I hated to think what might have become of Dean, and my only sliver of hope was that if I was still alive then I must still have some value to them and that might possibly mean that Dean was alive, too.

I hugged my knees to my chest even harder.

I couldn’t give up hope. Not yet.

Hadn’t I decided that I was done with giving in and running away from everything?

I needed to keep my wits about me. Needed to keep my spirit. My fight.

Just for it to be knocked out of me when I sensed someone nearby, looked up and saw Owen and Putin standing just outside my cage, looking in. Putin smiled, a look that would never belong on that cold face.

“You should be happy,” he said. “Your boyfriend is coming. You will see him soon.”

Then, after a pause which he clearly took great pleasure in drawing out, he added, “Briefly.”

§

“Why? Why would you do this to your own brother?”

I stood with my face up against the cage, my hands above me, gripping the mesh.

Owen had lingered as Putin turned away.

I tried to read the expression on the older Bailey brother’s face but couldn’t. Disdain? Disapproval? A trace of guilt? Nothing.

“Like I say,” he told me, “we have to move with the times. Dean isn’t prepared to do that. Merger with Primakov and his friends is the only option.”

Merger. The word implied something equal, but surely Owen must realize that could never be the case with the Russians. Even
I
could see that.

And then I think I understood the look in his eyes. He knew it. Knew he was selling out. Giving up. He was a defeated man who didn’t see any other choice.

“What about Dean and Lee, though?”

Owen shook his head, briefly. “They don’t fit into the modern world,” he said. “They’re safest off the street.”

Now Putin – the man Owen had referred to as Primakov – joined them again, smiling that unnatural smile.

“Behind bars,” the Russian said. “That’s what you mean, Owen, isn’t it? They are safest behind bars.”

Owen looked away, down at the ground.

Then his eyes skipped back upwards, met mine briefly, and he said again, “It’s for their own good.”

And maybe even a small part of him actually believed that.

“So what’s the plan? What’s the deal?”

Dean sat alone in the front of the Renault van, phone hands-free in his lap.

It was Putin who’d answered Owen’s phone again, confirming to Dean that they must have taken his brother captive along with Jess. That made sense: he’d left Jess in Owen’s care – if the Russians had taken her, then they’d have taken Owen, too.

Or worse. What if Owen had put up a fight? He always claimed he wasn’t hands-on, but he’d been a fighter in his day, just like Dean and Lee. He wasn’t one to go meekly. He was a Bailey Boy, through and through.

“The plan?” said Putin now. “The plan is a simple one, my friend. You’re going to incriminate yourself for a crime you did not commit, and then you are going to spend a very long time behind bars. If you are lucky, you might end up in the same prison as your father. We might even try to arrange that. We have contacts in all the right places, and we are not without compassion.”

“How do I know they’re safe? Jess and Owen. How do I know you haven’t done something to them already?”

There was a pause, and Dean could picture the brief flicker of a reptile smile on the man’s face.