A fatal drug, p.30
A Fatal Drug, page 30
This giant of a man had appeared out of nowhere. He was black in every respect: black suit, black tie, black hair and black, or at least very dark, hands and face. How had nobody noticed someone this big as he’d entered the club?
Simon was still had some control: his mind was working overtime. He could either walk out of the club as the giant said or he could be plucked off his feet and carried out. He wondered if anyone in the crowd would notice if he was carried out. Of course they would: but would they actually see him? Was this a dream, a nightmare or reality? Nobody was looking his way, but then he couldn’t see through this mountain of a man anyway.
The Cat was always hot and sweaty but right now Simon was cold. It was an icy fear that brought back childhood memories. Not since his schooldays had he been properly afraid, and even then it wasn’t this bad. He remembered losing his grip in driving rain forty feet up a granite slab in the High Peak. Terror had gripped him as he slipped down the rock. What had got him through? What had made him grab the right handhold? Juvenile bravado, a belief that he was indestructible, the proximity of the schoolmates who had accompanied him on that daft adventure? He’d survived, but this was different. This fear was blood-chilling because he was staring into the unknown.
Simon shook his head. He had to think.
The man interrupted his thoughts with a smile and more words. This time his deep voice was also quietly insistent. “You will not come to harm. Please accompany me to the door. My employer wishes to speak with you.”
Simon emerged from his torpor. He knew he’d heard that voice, or one very like it, before. He looked around. Everywhere seemed distant and out of focus. Paul Ruthin was nowhere to be seen and the two bar staff were engrossed in attending to customers. It was the veiled forcefulness of the voice that terrified him. He believed the man when he said he would come to no harm. Not because he knew anything: he believed him because he wanted to. There was no alternative.
He decided he wouldn’t make a fuss. He was sober and in control of his actions. He would see where this was going. Somebody was bound to notice that he was leaving the building or at least that he was not in his seat.
The man took measured, soundless steps as the two crossed the dance floor. It was almost as if he was on castors. Simon tried to look confident by striding out but realised that his paces were just short and fast. They walked down the stairs to the lobby. Simon took each step quickly while the man seemed to glide down. His silky movement exuded strength and power. There was no way he was going to be argued with or distracted.
At the bottom of the stairs, a blast of cool air in the tiny lobby brought Simon to his senses again. Why hadn’t he raised the alarm or spoken to someone upstairs? He seemed to have missed his chance – no bouncer was on duty in the lobby. The doors to the street had been opened inwards, and through them he could see the open rear door of a car, a Rolls-Royce he guessed. An interior light illuminated the plush seats inside. The car was parked so that there was only a narrow gap between its open rear door and the club’s exterior wall. The man mountain who’d been in the club stood on the left to usher Simon into the vehicle. All escape routes to the street were blocked. He was either going into the car or back up to the club, and the long, muscle-bound arm of the man in black would instantly prevent that second option.
Simon got into the car, surrendering to the overpowering feeling of being propelled by someone else’s will. The door was closed and the man mountain disappeared. He looked around and sniffed. The last Rolls-Royce he had ridden in had smelt of sweet but expensive perfume: the smell, he had imagined, of a brothel. That car had carried two men to their deaths in the River Derwent; his friend Dave Green had escaped alive but soaked and severely shocked. This limousine was immaculate. Even the rich aroma of leather normally associated with such luxury cars was muted. This was posh personified, he thought.
Simon was confined in an enclosed space, albeit a very comfortable and roomy one, and his fear began to dissipate. He was alone in the expanse of rear seats, each connected by seamless leather but clearly marked as separate seats through indentations and wide whorls of stitching. He couldn’t believe he would come to harm in this opulence.
There was a rush of fresh air and the man mountain slid in beside him. As he settled, a mellifluous voice emanated from the front passenger seat. Simon could see nothing but again the voice was familiar.
“Very good of you to join us, Mr Jardine. I hope Joseph did not have to persuade you too much. Our guests normally understand immediately that I do not like to be refused.”
The Rolls glided slowly away. Simon could not shake off the feeling of detachment, as if he was not in Derby, not even in this world. He looked behind him and saw the sign ‘Jaguar Nights’ on the club disappear and inwardly cursed. Another late night writing up a review when he got back to the office. Bugger.
CHAPTER 60
Janie Caton had thrown herself headlong into her work at Parasol Gardens Hotel. Her trip to Fuengirola and rescue by her hero Charlie McGhee had been scary but thrilling, but the trip back had given her time to think. The job, and hopefully career, in Spain, was paramount: she was not going to get involved in anything that ruined her chances, and that included anything to help Simon Jardine. She’d come to Spain to work, to learn about a business that could be a career, and possibly stay and buy her own place, or at least manage somewhere. Drug dealing, exploding cars, being shot at and a madcap escape, all because Simon was chasing a story, was not what she wanted. She would leave the snooping to guys like him. He could be an ace reporter if he wanted to, but that was Derby and history, this was now and Spain.
It was the end of the tourist season and the hotel was new to Torremolinos, but the reputation of Jesus Martinez, the manager, along with comments on the business grapevine about the rooms, service and restaurant, was attracting businessmen from all over Europe and some from America. Business was booming in southern Spain: a lot of people were looking to profit from the area’s booming construction and tourism industries.
Janie was in her element. Sometimes the hotel was as busy as her dad’s Duffield pub on a Friday night, but there was none of the drunkenness they had to deal with back home. The local lads on the Costa del Sol flirted with her and the other girls behind the bar but it was harmless fun. There was no threat, just a few comments, most of them in broken English, which she found even more amusing. It was a bit like walking past a building site back home and hearing the wolf whistles. She could handle it.
This Friday, though, had been different. The local lads had been in a boisterous mood, spending freely, and a few had become tipsy. They’d made some lewd comments in Spanish, which Mr Martinez had heard and jumped on quickly and effectively. The group had eventually left to find somewhere cheaper and less formal than the hotel restaurant for supper. Janie continued to be amazed that the Spanish ate late in the day. Back home everybody had tea, or dinner if you were posh, and then went to the pub. These guys didn’t have a meal until after ten o’clock.
It was late when Janie noticed the two men in dark suits standing apart from the boisterous salesmen. They were all hotel residents and had all been decent gentlemen, once she and the others behind the bar had made it plain they were not available. She hadn’t been able to get a clear view of the two who stood apart but she knew they’d been watching her. She’d gone to the other side of the bar to collect glasses and have a closer look but they had turned their heads and she hadn’t seen their faces properly, just profiles. Something nagged at her. She knew she’d seen them before. They’d had very little to drink but she was uneasy about the way they looked: watching her, without staring. It made her uneasy.
As the bar emptied – there was no rigid closing time but it was generally accepted that after midnight, even at weekends, the staff would start to clear up – she noticed that the two men had vanished. She breathed a sigh of relief and started to clear up the last of the glasses and wash down the bar surfaces. In the few weeks that she had been at the hotel Janie had been unofficially and unanimously appointed senior bar tender, or team leader, by the other staff. There was no extra money but it was always good to impress Mr Martinez. The downside was that she stayed later than the others for a final check that the bar area was clean and ready for the next day.
Tonight was warm, although cloud intermittently covered the moon marginally reducing the light levels. There was a storm on the way; Janie could smell it; she could instinctively feel the change in air pressure and the wind was picking up. The scudding clouds obscured the moon and then, in a gap, a shaft of white light appeared. The atmosphere was close and there was a hint of dampness in the air – a sure precursor to the lashing rain that would soon follow, as it always seemed to this far south. The weather reminded Janie of those few long, hot days of a short English summer when the clammy heat of the day was dramatically broken by thunder and lightning as the sun went down.
She walked out on to the wide patio and sauntered over to the low, white-painted brick wall overlooking the sea. She breathed in the salty, warm air and felt relaxation flow through her body. The busy day was over and at last she had time to herself. The breakers were crashing far below, too far for any spray, even in the roughest of seas, to reach the top of the wall. The sky went dark and then, as the clouds passed, a shaft of moonlight lit up the patio.
Janie leaned over the wall and watched the white spray crash noisily on to the rocks. There was a sheer drop of some one hundred feet, and the jagged rocks licked upwards like black tongues in the sharp, flickering light of the moon.
She shuddered. If anybody fell over the wall they would certainly perish. Those sharp rocks would slash the life out of them even if the fall itself didn’t kill them. She took a step back. Perhaps the hotel should put a barrier on the wall to stop people climbing on it and falling. She took a mental note to mention it to Mr Martinez. She turned and took some four or five steps towards the centre of the wide patio where the parasols had already been lowered and where she could lean the remaining chairs against the tabletops so that the coming rain washed over them and away.
“Senorina. Do you have a minute?”
Janie looked around to see where the voice had come from. She peered into the gloom and saw the shape of two people. They were dressed in black, and she knew immediately that they were the two in the bar who had kept eyeing her. Their build was the same and they moved in the same slightly creepy way.
If this was going to be a come-on or a proposal for something silly she was prepared to deal with it in a not-so-pleasant way. She could handle playful stuff in the bar but this had the likelihood of being more aggressive, especially as she was alone. Out here, on her own, a stern word would have to do the trick but, if not, a well-aimed slap tended to get the message across effectively, she found in the past back in Derbyshire. The only problem was that she didn’t know the language well enough to be stern and forceful, and she certainly didn’t want either of them within slapping distance.
Her dad had shown her how to handle offensive blokes but he’d said that a slap was a last resort: better to talk them down than start being violent. But if it came to a slap, she would do it. If she lost the hotel two customers, she would just have to explain everything to the manager and take any telling off on the chin.
The two men continued to walk slowly towards her.
“I’m sorry. The bar is closed and I must tidy up. It’s late. You should not be here now. Please leave,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. She fought the uncomfortable feeling of growing fear and tried to sound forceful, but it wasn’t that effective to her own ears.
The men didn’t stop or alter their unswerving, almost blinkered, gaze.
They were now about ten paces away, walking some five feet apart and blocking her escape route back to the hotel. A cloud sped away from the moon and a shaft of light lit their faces in stark relief. She recognised them and shuddered; her memory flooding back just a few hours.
The men’s eyes were in dark recesses; their lips parted slightly to show gleaming teeth. But they weren’t smiling. They had a look of steely evil. Their arms hung loosely by their sides. It was a stance she’d seen on television when the villains were about to spring into deadly action. Janie was alone with two men who clearly meant to harm her. The sound of crashing waves in the background pierced her brain, and they both moved forward.
CHAPTER 61
Janie’s fear became palpable; she stood stock still, the gears in her mind whirring until she thought they would deafen her. The intense feeling of isolation grew as the two black-suited men moved slowly and inexorably towards her. As they walked, the moonlight brought their faces into clear view for the first time. For Janie it was confirmation. Not only had they been in the hotel bar earlier; they’d also been at Richard Hewson’s bar in Fuengirola, They were the ones who’d chased her down the alleyway; they’d had guns and they’d shot at her; they wanted to kill her.
She looked round. Surely there would be someone she could call on to help. Nobody. She was alone on this dimly lit patio. Where was bloody Charlie McGhee the hero when you wanted him? Tucked up in his bed dreaming of deeds of derring-do, no doubt.
Janie’s mouth twitched into a fleeting smile as she thought of Charlie. The men saw her and smiled back, but there was no pleasure in those faces. The smiles consisted of compressed and slightly upturned lips; the expressions didn’t reach their hard, focused, deeply-set eyes.
One of them flexed the muscles in his right arm; twisting it round and back with his fist clenched. The pair had slowed but still kept moving forward, their eyes flashing quickly from side to side. Janie took a step back and then another; it was an unconscious retreat. The sound of the surf hitting the rocks and rolling back down to the small sandy beach was getting louder and seemed to be drawing her closer, like a siren.
She stared ahead and worked out her options. She could put up a fight against one guy, but two, even if they were not strong fighters, was out of the question, and these two were sober, serious and committed. Their steps were firm and purposeful; there was none of the normal unsteadiness of the drunks who’d come on to her back home.
“You remember us, I see,” the one slightly further away said in heavily accented, slow and laboriously precise English, flashing his white teeth in a snarl. “You have been doing things you should not have been. You have upset some friends of mine. Now it has to end.”
The one in front turned his head and glanced at his partner. “Vamos a terminar esto. Usted sabe que ella tiene que morir.”
“Cállate! Estoy disfrutando de este,” the first man snapped back, and stared at Janie. “My friend, he says I should kill you now. He is not a nice man.”
Janie fought to gain some control. “I know what he said and you told him to shut up because you’re enjoying this. Well come on then.”
She wondered if this was the time to forget being a self-assured, confident woman. It was the last thing she felt. Right now the right thing was to revert to type and a loud and penetrating scream. She took a long, hard breath.
The Spaniards momentarily watched her. A scream would advertise their presence. They had to act. They weren’t there for histrionics; they were there for one simple, lethal reason and now was the time. The closest charged forwards, covering the short distance in fast, running, strides. In what seemed like minutes, but was probably a split second, memories of the fights she used to have with her brother Jim when they were growing up flashed through her mind; then her successes on the athletics field at Ecclesbourne School and, almost in the same vision, her dancing classes.
Janie relaxed her body, dropped her hands down by her sides and turned sideways, reducing the target area for the onrushing attacker. She took a short step back. The man was nearly upon her, his outstretched arms ready to push her over the wall.
Janie’s left leg straightened and stayed rock steady behind her and her right moved out slightly as she flexed her knee. It was almost like a flowing dance move. She lifted her right leg and brought it round at the height of the man’s chest. The pirouette on her left leg not only moved her body out of the way of his arms, but it also left no time or space for him to change direction.
The high, arcing sweep of her right leg flashed through the night air, and her foot crashed into the man’s back between and just under his shoulder blades. His forward propulsion accelerated and his arms flailed as they tried to grab hold of Janie. There was nothing he could do; he seemed to be flying forwards.
The man’s right knee hit the stone wall hard. He pivoted forward and his arms flew up. Janie, swinging round in a circle, kicked him with her right foot again, hard in the small of his back, exacerbating his forward momentum. His balance lost, he toppled over, his black-clad legs waving as they cleared the wall and he disappeared. There was no sound, not even a scream or yell, as he went. Any sound he could have made would have been lost to the waves crashing on the jagged rocks below.
Janie knew at once that this attacker would be dead, but the immediate danger remained. There was still the second man. Her strength was ebbing. The fight with the Spaniard had drained her, physically and mentally, and she was frightened. There was no way she would be able to tackle the other man in the same way.
There was a vivid flash of white light from out at sea and then almost instantly the beginning of a crack that turned into a loud rumble as thunder followed the lightning.
Janie spun round. She looked for the other man. She flexed her arms, straightened her palms and fingers and stared at the other man. He’d stopped and was standing still, staring at her. His eyes were wide and staring as he took in what had happened, and then a look of pure hatred spread across his face and his right hand went inside his jacket as he moved slowly forward.
