Dead Pretty (26 page)

From the window Hakim saw Stellachi, his elegant clothes marking him out as he glided down the street. Hakim always thought of him as gliding, so lightly did he move. The Romanian was a beautiful man. When Stellachi came for him, his mother said he would provide the kindness. With his white, shining clothes, standing so healthy and tall, he looked like someone sent by Allah. At first Stellachi was kind, if kindness could ever be provided in a cold way. Until Hakim was twelve, when it began. He was still here, one did not get away from a man like Stellachi. Hakim was eighteen years old and trembling with fear as he heard a foot on the stairs.

Mark thought it better to play groggy, though his head had cleared enough to know his life hung on a thread. These guys were on a higher level than Agani's crowd, he'd gone up a division. Adam and the other man dragged him to a car, he was pushed into the back, a gun on him at all times. He still had the towel, Adam pushed it against Mark's face.

‘Don't bleed on the seat,' Adam said, ‘Mr Stellachi doesn't like it.'

They were being open about names because they thought it didn't matter, in their eyes Mark was already dead. They were taking him back to the red lights, he felt the car's tyres crunch on the cobblestones. It would be jumping now that it was dark and all manner of creature out. They skirted a canal and Mark saw club lights reflected in the water, turning it into a dirty rainbow. The car stopped behind a canal-side house, in a narrow street that was poorly lit. He couldn't see much but felt the dig into his kidneys from the butt of the gun. It was a blow meant to weaken and it did. He was pulled out of the car and pushed through a doorway, down slimy steps, and into a cellar. The silent man was a strong bastard, strong enough to lift him off his feet and throw him into a corner of the room. He cracked a shoulder against a wall and crashed down.

‘You can stay here with your thoughts until Mr Stellachi comes for you,' Adam said, as he slammed shut the door.

All was black at first. Mark held out a hand and could not see it, then its outline appeared and slowly he made out the shape of the room. It was dank, close to water, but a faint line of light was coming from somewhere. He traced it with his eyes. There was a large wooden hatch in the wall above him, and the light was coming from a crack in this. Mark realised he was in an old warehouse, once fed by canal traffic. He smelt something too, Chinese food. Perhaps he was in Chinatown, it perched on the edge of Pornland. Sex usually led to other appetites.

Mark got up shakily. Feeling his side, and his head. The knife was gone, but they didn't have the notebook. Stellachi would be finding out about that now and it would be a problem for him. The notebook might be Mark's ace in the hole, a grubby, dog-marked ace, but all he had left to play. A boat went by outside, it felt just the other side of him and he could hear music and the laughter of people.

Mark felt his way around the room, looking for anything. Its walls were rough stone and the floor was uneven. He stumbled a few times. It must have been hundreds of years old, but it had not been used for a long time, at least not for the goods that used to be swung through the wooden doors above him. Other victims had been thrown in here before him, he was sure of that. This was a last resting place for the condemned. Mark did not want to imagine how Stellachi dealt with people, but he determined one thing. If his ace in the hole turned out to be a busted flush, somehow he'd get his hands on Stellachi and do some damage. He wanted to smash that face, it would be a good last thing to do. He looked again at the small crack in the cargo doors. A crack might mean a weakness.

Hakim held the torn out pages in front of him, and tried to hide behind them.

Stellachi took them, looking with disgust at the bloodstains. Hakim had changed his shirt and cleaned himself up. He'd vainly tried to wash off the blood from the sofa but had only succeeded in diluting the stains and making them bigger. As he'd rubbed and soaked, tears of dread dropped from his eyes. He'd learnt very quickly that everything must always be spotless in Stellachi's world, nothing out of place. Colours of depth and richness, the ones he'd grown up with, had no place here. His master liked pale, and white, almost no colour at all.

Whatever Hakim had been expecting did not happen. The pages
had
saved him. Stellachi sat at his desk and pored over them. He stretched his hands and clicked each finger joint as his thoughts ran hot. He cursed those cretins in London. This had been copied from a notebook Angelo must have had, and he'd let Richards take it from him. Stellachi hoped Angelo burnt alive for a long time in that car, and that he was burning now. He stretched and tried to calm himself, looking with interest at the slight tremor in his hands. He called to Hakim, who was trying to melt into the other side of the room.

‘Come here.'

Stellachi clicked his fingers at the floor and Hakim sat down at his feet. The Romanian ran his fingers through Hakim's short black hair and murmured a few things. At times like these, Hakim was not sure if he was talking to himself or not.

‘So, my little Arab boy, this Richards is troublesome. He's quite good-looking, in a rough sort of way, don't you think? What does he expect this book will gain him? His life?'

Stellachi took off his jacket and leaned back in his white polo neck. His complexion was so pale he almost merged with it. He pulled up a sleeve and ran a finger along a thin, blue scar, from wrist to elbow. Hakim knew he always did this when disturbed. It was the one imperfection on his body, the one time Stellachi had got careless, and had warded off a knife blow with his forearm.

‘So, what will we do with this man, eh? And all because of a woman. An Albanian at that.'

Stellachi's hand tightened in Hakim's hair, and tugged at it.

‘You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?'

Stellachi thought the value of the notebook would depend on three things. Where it was, if anyone had been charged with its safekeeping, and whether that person had been told to take it to the police if Richards disappeared. This man was smart, smart enough to have made such a plan, if he'd had the time. Maybe the original book would be back in his homeland, this Wales.

Richards had come to Amsterdam to kill him, nothing else, and he thought the notebook was his ticket back, what he'd use to deal with the organisation. Having it come into his possession was his good fortune. Angelo had been too stupid to keep much in his head, so he wrote it all down, names, numbers, transactions, and kept it with him. Even the most dim-witted police force would be able to piece it all together, in time. Stellachi would have taken the book from Angelo in London if he'd known of its existence. But then again, Richards was unpredictable, like him. He might have done nothing with the book. Stellachi would have to gamble, as he had done all his life. For a brief moment he identified with Mark, and wondered if he felt the same pain. His never went away, sometimes it was masked, almost quiet, other times it raged. Stellachi could still smell Lena as he came up behind her.
Guerlain
, quite a good scent, for a whore.

Stellachi's traced the line on his arm a few times, then started to twist Hakim's hair. The boy stiffened and willed himself not to cry out. It stopped quickly and Stellachi patted his head. Hakim felt like the pet he was.

‘No, this Richards is nothing, and I have him,' Stellachi muttered. ‘See to my bath. The right height, the right temperature.'

Hakim got up and walked away, but inside he was running.

Something scuttled over the other side of the wooden hatchway. A rat probably. Mark envied its freedom, its brief snatch of on-the-edge life.
Stellachi would either take a chance that no one else had the book and kill him quickly, or try to have a few games with him, head and body, until Mark cracked, and spilt his one bean.

It was getting cold in the room, but night sounds were increasing outside as the district business got into full swing. Sometimes a snatch of laughter, sometimes an angry voice, a pleading voice, as money for bodies changed hands constantly. For all he knew Stellachi's club might be very close; he could hear music, old stuff from the seventies being pumped out. It drifted across the water at various volumes. Maybe he had until morning, maybe not.

Mark started to check around the room, feeling each rough piece of stonework. I'm in another fucking film, he thought, the one where the hero looks for a way out, and always finds one. Maybe it was Hollywood after all, for his busted-nail hands found a loose stone. This part of the wall had been rebuilt, with a type of house brick he could recognise. Shoddy modern workmanship might be coming to his aid. Gripping its loose end, he was able to work the brick back and fore, but could not move it much further. Mark took off his belt and used the buckle to scour the blown mortar. The brick moved again. After half an hour it came away. In his now bloodied hands he had man's most primitive weapon. His first thought was to try to brain whoever came through the door the next time it opened, but all that would get him was a quick bullet.

Night-cruise boats were going past frequently now, floating gin palaces, each one noisier than the last. He looked up at the wooden cargo doors above him and sized up the brick in his hand. The doors were large, the brick small, but there was that small crack.

In the time it took a boat to pass the warehouse Mark was able to get six or seven blows in on the wooden doors above him. At full stretch he targeted the gap where the light was, using the brick as a miniature battering ram. It also battered his fingers every few strikes. At this rate he doubted he would be able to hold a gun, if one ever came into his grasp again. A few times his timing was out and the sound he was making was exposed. He tensed, waiting for someone to come but no one did.
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi
rang out from the other side of the canal, as the DJ racked up the old song allowing Mark to increase his pounding. He'd just about lost all feeling in his right hand when something cracked, and he saw more light. Mark reached up as far as he could, thanking God for his height and pushed with all the strength he had left. There was more cracking and the doors pushed apart. Not much more than a few feet, but it was enough. He had room to haul himself up and squeeze out, to find himself standing on a ledge above the canal. Another boat passed and a few girls spotted him. They waved their glasses and shouted encouragement to him in English.

‘Going for a swim?' one of them shouted.

I can't swim, Mark thought, but then I couldn't fly either.

He was out, with no passport and no money. He could find the British Embassy. Say he'd been robbed. He could tell them the whole crazy tale, make some bored clerk's day, but something inside wouldn't let him. It had never let him. A door marked trouble had always been open for him, and each time he'd crashed through it. As quickly as his torn hands would allow, Mark edged along the slippery brickwork of the canal wall, until he could drop down into an alleyway, startling a few cats. They slunk away from him with blazing eyes.

Stellachi lay in his bath. The water had to be warm, not hot. Hot was like coffee, it irritated, rubbed up his nerves. This was like bathing in that place in Sicily, floating, letting the current control him, and the sun absolve. Hakim fussing with the food on the beach, his thin body brown and taut. Away from everyone, especially the vile tourists. They'd go there again next spring, when this business would be finished. Maybe he'd buy a place.

Hakim brought in a tray. He poured out the tea slowly from the silver teapot, adding a small spoon of honey, letting it dissolve and merge with the mint leaves in the glass. Stellachi sat up in the bath as Hakim handed him the glass. Stellachi flicked up foam at him, playfully. This was when Hakim feared him most.

‘So, what do you think we must do with Richards, eh?'

Hakim knew he wasn't required to answer. Stellachi often had one-sided conversations with him, like the old women in the cafés did with their dogs. A phone rang. The blue one Stellachi only used for the big people. Hakim handed it to him.

‘All is well?' a voice asked.

‘Yes. Absolutely. I have him.'

‘Good. Make sure he disappears quickly. We want no repeat of London.'

‘I understand.'

Stellachi's mood changed. He slapped the phone back into Hakim's hands.

‘Get my robe.'

Stellachi sat by the window, deep in thought.

Below, the street was still busy. This was the cesspit he worked in. Stellachi could see some of the girls displayed in their glass houses. One of them always reminded him of his mother. The same hawkish features, the face lined too soon, trapped by her hopeless need, and the inability to satisfy it. He imagined a rifle in his hands, shooting at all that disgusted him. Seeing the harlots die with amazement on their faces, their windows turning red, shooting the pathetic voyeurs that thronged the street now, so that they too dropped like startled rabbits. Shooting those people who'd offered him money on the streets of Bucharest. The old men who took him to large houses full of stolen wealth. He'd killed one of them once, slitting his throat at the age of seventeen, watching the old fool's blood cascade over his fancy furniture, and feeling alive for the first time in his life. It
was
worth living after that. It was the start of it. The payback for being born.

‘Hakim, bring me the dark blue suit, white shirt and the new blue tie.'

Stellachi decided to kill this Richards, without any further delay. To hell with his stupid little notebook. How could the man think to threaten him with something like that? Richards was out of his depth, and he would die for it. Twenty years of experience, from that first slit throat, to the Albanian girl, told him to take a chance with the notebook. If he was wrong, so what? He'd worked for these jackals long enough, and he liked the edge a gamble like this brought on.
He
was not Agani. Stellachi felt his body tremble, and felt a little breathless. Hakim handed him the clothes and he dressed slowly, checking each movement in a mirror as tall as him.