Vengeance in black, p.18
Vengeance in Black, page 18
part #2 of Steve Black Series
‘Four bars’
‘Ok, see you shortly.’
James sat down for a cigarette and wondered what Jonny had been up to. He was a diamond that one and he didn’t earn his money working at McDonald’s. James kept his eyes peeled and his ears open. Nothing but a slight breeze.
Fifteen minutes later Jonny came rolling down the hill.
‘All done’, he said as James clambered in and they set off back to Torremolinos. As James got out of the vehicle to go home and change for the evening shift at Ronnie’s, Jonny slipped him two fifty Euro notes. ‘That’s not for your time. It’s for your discretion, thanks.’ James stood there stunned as the 4x4 squealed away.
Jonny dropped Salim’s weapons back into the cavity in the Mercedes’ boot, keeping the Glock and the AK47 for himself, and as he had a couple of hours to kill before he went to visit Salim, he headed back to the town house for a nap.
Visiting was until eight o’clock and Jonny arrived at five past. The senior nurse gave him a dirty look but Jonny ‘fuck the rules’ Alcott didn’t give a shit. Visiting was for the patients not for the convenience of the bloody staff. He’d slept longer than he intended and should have worn his Mr Grumpy tee shirt.
Salim was in none too good a mood either, he’d been bored out of his brains all day. He’d even thought about escaping but without a walking stick or maybe crutches he’d no chance. He was a bit happier when Jonny arrived and they chatted away for many minutes as normal. Jonny told him about the plan for the morning providing Salim got his get out of jail papers. Salim needed to phone him with whatever news he had.
Then he turned the subject to them and their families and their properties. ‘We need to sort some proper weapons, surveillance equipment and training for the girls and we have to do this now.’
‘You’ve got a bad feeling about this haven’t you?’
‘Yes, I have. They’re up to something I know it.’
‘Let’s talk some more when I get home tomorrow. There are people I know in Malaga who can sort most if not all of that’
‘Ok, see you tomorrow. Don’t forget to call me as soon as you know.’
It was nearly ten o’clock when he arrived at the Guadalpin in Marbella. Lucy was bored and wanted some man company for a change. To help out and against his better judgement he suggested just the two of them went out for an hour. They’d find a quiet bar between the back of the hotel and the beach. Lucy looked at Pilar who said fine.
Lucy offered her the SIG which she declined. She believed she would be safe.
They had a couple of drinks in a bar not far from the hotel and chatted away merrily, but Jonny was tense. Lucy could tell he was concerned about leaving the suite unguarded. It was perhaps forty minutes later that they re-entered the hotel via the staff entrance at the rear and a moment later they had exited the lift into their corridor.
The suite door was open, not wide, but definitely not locked. Jonny drew the Glock from his waistband and approached the door. There was no noise from inside, no crashing of furniture, no gunfire, no screams, only the faint sound of the TV. He peeked around the door and saw Pilar fast asleep on the sofa holding Fernando. He hurriedly searched the rest of the suite looking for Maria. She was not there.
Maria had gone walkabout. He knew she was confused but hadn’t realised it had gone this far. To leave the apartment unlocked and the door wide open meant she had flipped. She could be anywhere. Lucy rang reception to warn them and to be on the lookout and could they look at their security footage for the last half hour or so. Jonny raced back down the corridor past the lifts and stairs and right to the far end. Nothing. He then took the stairs and did the same for every other floor until he reached zero.
He checked at reception but they had not seen or heard anything. He went out of the staff exit at the rear and looked around the parked vans and cars and loading bays. Still nothing. He went back through the hotel and out of the main entrance and looked up and down the main road. Eventually he spotted a lone figure shuffling along the pavement a few hundred yards away going towards Marbella centre. He wasn’t sure it was Maria but it was worth a try and ran quickly towards the figure. As he got closer he knew it was her. When he got to within a few feet of her he stopped running and walked past her and said, ‘Hello Maria, have you come out for a walk?’
She looked at him with glazed eyes. He wasn’t sure she’d recognised him. He needed to be careful. She stared for a few moments and said ‘I can’t find Alvaro. He should have been home by now.’ She had flipped but Jonny hadn’t a clue what to do next. He made a quick call, ‘Main entrance, turn right, three hundred yards, she’s okay.’
Two or three minutes later Pilar appeared looking shocked. ‘Mama it’s Pilar, are you okay, we wondered where you’d gone.’
‘I can’t find Alvaro.’ Pilar knew then that her mother had suffered some form of breakdown.
‘It’s getting cold out here now, let’s go back inside and we’ll see what we can do.’ She took her mother by the arm and gently guided her back to the hotel and the suite.
Pilar was in bits when they returned. Her mother had disintegrated in front of her eyes she hadn’t seen it coming and felt guilty. There seemed little point in calling a doctor out now as they should be leaving in the morning to go back home but she did need some urgent treatment or counselling.
When Salim rang Jonny the next morning about ten, he said he’d had the all clear but it would be maybe one o’clock before he’d been given the pills and the dressings he needed to take with him. Jonny said see you later and told the girls. They’d already packed half the stuff and were ready to go thirty minutes later.
On the way back to the beach villa Jonny said he thought Lucy should stay there with Pilar so that she didn’t have to keep an eye on Fernando and her mother at the same time. Lucy was fine with that. He asked them to make a short list of things they needed immediately and he’d do that shopping before he went fetch Salim.
Chapter 23
Malaga, Spain, Summer 2013
Salim was all ready and waiting when Jonny entered the ward carrying a huge box of chocolates and an immense bouquet of flowers. ‘For me?’ shouted Salim across the ward as Jonny laughed and gave them to the head nurse as thanks for their help with their awkward patient. Due to a problem with some of Salim’s medication his escape was much later in the afternoon than they’d hoped. The traffic getting there was dire. One guy had even got out of his car to stretch his legs it was that bad on the other carriageway.
Jonny had swapped the 4x4 with the Mercedes earlier on, he thought it be more comfortable for Salim and probably easier to get in and out of. Salim was walking with only a stick for support and not doing too badly. Jonny mimicked his limp and was promptly sworn at for taking the piss.
Not long afterwards Jonny pulled the Mercedes into the drive at the beach villa and helped Salim into the house. Pilar took over and helped him to his favourite chair while Lucy came to Jonny and put her arm around him. While Pilar fussed over Salim, Lucy led Jonny out to the porch. She kissed him hard and then said ‘We’ve had the doctor out to Maria. He thinks she’s had a breakdown and wants to take her to the Sanatorium the other side of Malaga for a few days for a proper assessment. Pilar feels guilty and is not sure what’s best.’
‘She has to go there. I’ll talk to Salim later and he’ll persuade Pilar it’s the right thing to do. Are we going back home tonight?’
‘Sorry love, I told Pilar we’d stay overnight, what with Salim coming home and Maria a real worry she’s got her hands full and that’s if Fernando doesn’t start playing up.
‘Honestly it’s fine by me’, but Lucy knew Jonny never said honestly unless he was lying. Still it wouldn’t hurt for one night.
Salim had walked around the house unaided, gone to the bathroom, and walked around the garden. Yes, there was a pronounced limp but he was doing well. When the girls were fiddling about in the kitchen still giggling, Jonny suggested that he and Salim should spend an hour at Ronnie’s bar later on. Salim was fine with that, even though it was nice to be home he had been smothered since he walked in the door.
Pilar was not amused when Jonny said he was taking Salim to Ronnie’s bar for an hour. Lucy put a hand on her arm and said it’s okay, they know what they’re doing and Pilar relented. Lucy still had the SIG and was growing quite attached to it. She would know what to do if there was a problem. Jonny insisted that all the windows and doors were closed and locked and the curtains drawn before they left.
It was only ten o’clock and Ronnie’s bar was quiet so they sat inside vaguely listening to the music in the background.
‘What’s up mate?’
‘Sorry is it that obvious?’
‘Yes.’
‘Being in hospital for a few days has given me a lot of time to think. I now believe you are correct and there are other forces out there that have not finished with us yet.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘We must do as you suggested. I’ve have already made contact with the people I mentioned. I will get a call tomorrow giving me a time and place to meet. They know about my leg and so will try and arrange it closer to here. It may be tomorrow afternoon but no earlier.’
‘That’s great news. I think though that we have to work a little harder on the problem from our end. We have to try to track these people down before they find us.’
‘And how do you propose to do that?’
‘For starters I’m going back to Antequera in the morning. I’m going to talk to the barman at the place we left the car while we went to the restaurant. If anything is worth knowing he will know it. If nothing comes of it then okay, I was wrong, but I’d rather be wrong on this one than dead.’
‘You’ll need a car then?’
‘Yeh, can I borrow one of yours?’
‘Sure, take the Mercedes. Use it as your own.’
Jonny told him he’d enquired about the underground parking space and that he intended to buy a car if he got it. He also said he’d have to go back to London for a couple of days next week but he didn’t expect to be delayed coming back.
Salim said he had to go back to Madrid in the next couple of weeks to see Senor de Silva, but there was no real rush, he wanted his leg to be a lot better first but wanted to keep the pressure up on the Parador guy from Madrid.
They chatted about business and family matters for ages whilst getting a few beers down their necks. When Salim realised what time it was they’d been in the bar for over two hours.
Later that afternoon Ahmed called the others and said he wanted to go to Antequera but he would go on his own. He didn’t want to risk Abdullah and Charlie being recognised. What he meant was that he wasn’t certain they’d been as thorough as necessary under the circumstances. If he did find anything suspicious it would only add to his glory in the eyes of his masters. He changed into a light suit, left them at the villa and drove off in the car.
An hour later he parked the hire car at the top of the hill and walked down the street towards where the restaurant had been. He could smell the burnt wood as he approached it. People were working on the walls and roofs of the adjoining buildings probably trying to stop them collapsing. The fire had been massive and there was virtually nothing left of the original premises. There was no upstairs, no staircase. The back of house where the kitchen would have been was gone. He could see know how bad it was.
He walked back up the hill and then came down the service road to approach the building from the rear. It looked even worse from this view. He stepped into the yard and towards where the kitchen had been. Total devastation, the only items recognisable in any way were the shredded and twisted gas bottles. When they went up it was a wonder the explosion had not demolished the whole street.
He understood now. The Contact and his cook would have stood no chance. They shouldn’t have tried to contain the fire themselves and they certainly should not have stored full gas bottles in the kitchen. It was a tragedy waiting to happen. The contact should have known better.
While Ahmed walked sadly back to the car, he kept repeating to himself, ‘he should have known better’, and then it occurred to him that he would have known better for the Contact was a very intelligent man. He would have known better than to try to put out or contain a dangerous fire particularly when there were full gas bottles about. Ahmed was now not convinced that the Contact was in control of the situation. He’d not been happy with the explanation from the start and would ask around some more.
He strolled around for a while, thinking and looking and he happened on a bar. Normally he would not enter one as places serving alcohol were high up on his list of don’ts. But he was a little tired, thirsty and wanted to sit down for a few minutes.
He ordered a soft drink and sat down on a bar stool. He was dressed in a light suit which made him look vaguely professional. When he asked the barman about the fire the barman thought he might be an insurance investigator and spoke openly.
‘I never saw or heard anything as I live some distance away, but there have been many people in here who saw or heard a lot.’
‘What kind of things were they saying?’
‘Everyone was shocked about the gas bottles in the kitchen, but it is understandable in some ways as things like that had been stolen from around here before, late at night when it was very quiet.’
‘There must have been a tremendous explosion.’
‘Oh yes, everyone within a mile of here heard that. Not everybody heard the smaller explosions before that though.’
‘Sorry, I don’t know about these, what do you mean?’
‘Some say there were three or four small explosions before that. One guy says just like a car backfiring through its exhaust.’
That was a revelation. The noises didn’t come from a car, they were gunshots. Ahmed composed himself.
‘Did they get many customers at the restaurant?’
‘Not that many, I’m surprised he could stay open but strangely enough on the night before it happened he had many customers. There were seven American tourists in here, you know a family of them, I told them where it was and they thanked me afterwards and said it was excellent. Then there were two big men who came in here a while later. The one drove a big black Mercedes, very expensive. They said they were going there to eat.’
‘Where were they from?’ said Ahmed desperately trying to keep the Spanish Inquisition tone out of his voice.
‘I’m not too sure, the one was probably English, tall around his mid-twenties, the other was possibly Spanish or could have been Moroccan, same height, slightly older.’
‘They were tourists as well?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. I thought they might be police, not Spanish of course, or Security Forces. I’m pretty sure one of them carried a gun in his waistband.’
‘Thank you for your time. I’ll see you again no doubt’, and Ahmed left the bar leaving a twenty Euro note on the counter.
When he got back to the car he was in a rage. He would probably kill Abdullah and Charlie with his bare hands when he saw them. They were imbeciles. It had taken him no more than five minutes to uncover the truth. The Contact and his cook could have been assassinated and the fire started deliberately to hide the evidence. Yes, he’d been correct all along. He knew foul play was at the bottom of this.
His temper softened a little while he was driving back to the motel. As he came to the newer network of roads a little way from the new link road to the airport, the traffic slowed to a standstill. He was in the fast lane next to the concrete barrier between the carriageways. It was slow in that direction as well. May be there was an accident ahead and the cars coming the other way had slowed down to look.
It didn’t matter what the reason was because heading slowly towards him was a big, black 500 SL Mercedes with a big white guy driving it, fair hair, mid-twenties. It couldn’t be a coincidence. He couldn’t see the registration from where he sat so he got out of the hire car as if to stretch his legs and clocked it as it drove past. Within a few minutes he had made a call which should tell him where the owner lived. All he had to do was wait a while.
He was in a much better mood when he arrived at the villa. He would still remonstrate with them about the missed information, but at least he had realised that if they had done their job properly, the likelihood of him happening upon the Mercedes was so remote as to be not worth considering. Perhaps they’d even done him a favour. No, he would tell them off for being idiots and keep the glory for himself.
That afternoon they made their first visit to the tunnels and that evening he called Kasim Masri and explained what he had discovered. The two enforcers had another job to do.
A while later Jonny sat bolt upright in bed, his head and chest soaking with sweat. ‘What on earth is the matter? You were screaming ‘The man, the man’.’
‘I’m sorry, I must have had a nightmare’ and got out of bed to go to the toilet. Whilst he was in the bathroom he vividly remembered what had brought that bad dream to life. He had pictured the man who’d got out of his car on the motorway earlier. The one who’d got out of his car in a queue only a couple of hundred yards long that had only been there for a couple of minutes. The one who’d stretched his legs. The one who’d clocked the Mercedes number plate.
He sat on the toilet for a few minutes trying to compose himself. He wiped the sweat off his head and body with a towel and went back into the bedroom a few minutes later.
‘Are you okay now?
‘Yeh, sorry if I scared you. Probably down to all the stress of the last few days.’
He needed to have a serious talk to Salim first thing in the morning. The girls didn’t need to know anything yet, it might panic them.
