Fair Game (13 page)

Crazy Boy straightened up. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were wide and staring and his upper lip was curled back into a savage snarl.

The second teenager was curled up on the floor, whimpering like an injured dog. The wound on his shoulder was pulsing with blood and his legs were shaking. Crazy Boy walked over and stood looking down at him. ‘Look at you!’ he shouted. ‘You have no honour, no self-respect, no balls.’ He bent down and lashed out with the cleaver, slicing the boy’s thigh. ‘I should castrate you, that’s what I should do.’ He cut the boy again, slicing a chunk out of his arm. ‘Not so brave now, are you? Brave enough to attack my boy and put him in hospital, but now look at you. A snivelling piece of shit.’ He growled and rained a flurry of blows down on the teenager’s head until it was a mass of bloody tissue and white bone fragments.

He stood up, panting for breath, blood dripping down the blade of the cleaver. Two Knives put away his phone. He was grinning but the four men in Puffa jackets were huddled together, clearly shocked at what they’d seen. Crazy Boy walked over to them and they scattered like startled sheep. He didn’t seem to notice as he walked by them to the sink, where he rinsed the blood off the cleaver, then used a cloth to wipe it clean of fingerprints. He dropped it on the draining board and tossed the cloth into the bin. ‘Cut them up into pieces and toss them into the river,’ he told the four men. ‘If anyone asks, you can say the dogs are dead but no one must know that I was here or where it happened. Just that they’re dead and they died in pain. Do you understand?’

The men nodded.

‘And afterwards you wash everything down with bleach. Everything.’

The men nodded again. The youngest was staring at the bloodstained bodies on the floor, his mouth wide open.

Crazy Boy nodded at Two Knives and they walked out of the back door. As they headed over to the Mercedes, Crazy Boy held his hand out for the phone. He leaned against the car as he watched the recording, chuckling as he saw the cleaver bite through the flesh and bone. ‘Nice,’ he said. He gave the phone back to Two Knives.

‘What do you want to do with it? Put it on YouTube?’

‘Delete it,’ said Crazy Boy.

Two Knives frowned. ‘Say what?’

‘You heard me, delete it.’

‘It’s a great vid, brother. Shows them for the cowards that they were.’

‘Spreading the word that the dogs are dead is one thing. That makes us stronger. But a video online gives the cops something to go on. They’ll start asking questions.’

‘Nobody in the diaspora will talk to the cops, you know that. And anyone who does, we can take care of.’ Two Knives made a gun with his right hand and pretended to fire it.

‘That’s as may be, but we’re not going to give the cops any evidence for free.’

Two Knives nodded. ‘You’re right, brother.’

‘Always,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘It was good, wasn’t it? Like being back in Somalia. Not giving a shit about what we do or who we do it to.’

‘I miss that, brother.’

‘I miss it, too,’ said Crazy Boy. He shivered. ‘Still, our life is better here, no question about that.’ He clapped Two Knives on the back. ‘OK, drive me home. I need to talk to my uncle.’

They climbed into the Mercedes and Two Knives drove back to the house. They played a 50 Cent CD at full volume, singing along to it as loud as they could all the way home.

As soon as he was back in the house, Crazy Boy went through to the sitting room where Levi’s and Sunny were watching a movie and chewing on khat leaves. ‘How’d it go?’ asked Levi’s as he stripped leaves off a twig.

Crazy Boy grabbed a handful of khat twigs. ‘Cut them to pieces, I did,’ he said. ‘They died like the dogs they were.’

Levi’s and Sunny nodded approvingly as Crazy Boy went to the study and sat down at his desk. He switched on his laptop and as soon as it had booted up he launched Skype and watched as it logged him in. He changed his login name every two or three days, and even though he was sure that Skype was secure he still used the same sort of code words and vague terms that he used whenever he spoke on the phone.

He saw that his uncle was online and clicked on his name to connect. He heard a ringing tone and after a few seconds his uncle’s grinning face appeared. Crazy Boy expanded the video to fill the whole screen as his own camera glowed red. ‘Uncle, how are you?’

‘Everything is good,’ his uncle said. ‘Roobie has been out at sea all week. He is driving his men hard.’

‘Sometimes men need to be driven,’ said Crazy Boy.

‘Roobie keeps talking about London,’ said his uncle. ‘He wants to follow you. He wants to talk to you about it, he said.’

‘We need him on the boats,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘If everyone leaves Somalia, who will bring in the money?’

‘I tell him that. But he says that as soon as he gets enough money he’s going to follow you and get a British passport. He talks about it all the time.’

‘Keep an eye on him,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘I know he is your son but ambition can be a dangerous thing.’

‘I will have words with him,’ said his uncle.

‘The magazines arrived safely?’ Magazines was code for money and Crazy Boy was referring to the funds he’d sent through the Arab.

‘We have them, and we will put them to good use. I have put in an order for equipment and the Yemeni says he can have it here next week.’

Equipment meant arms and ammunition. Both could be bought in Mogadishu but Crazy Boy preferred to deal with the Yemeni because his weapons were always top quality and his ammunition never jammed. Crazy Boy had plenty of rivals in Somalia and by ordering his weapons overseas there was less likelihood of other pirate gangs finding out what he was up to. Piracy was a dog-eat-dog business and Crazy Boy was determined to maintain his position as leader of the pack.

‘Uncle, we are to do things differently this time,’ he said. ‘I have a plan.’

‘Plans are good,’ said his uncle. ‘What do you want us to do?’

‘This is too important to talk about at a distance,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘I will come to talk to you in person. I will fly out tomorrow. Can you meet me at the airstrip?’

‘I’ll be there,’ said his uncle.

‘I’ll have your mobile number so keep it switched on in case there are any problems.’

‘I understand,’ said his uncle. ‘May God keep you safe, son of my brother.’

‘And you, brother of my father.’ Crazy Boy ended the call.

As soon as he got back to his flat, Shepherd made himself a mug of coffee and phoned Button. ‘Just checking in,’ he said. ‘I went out for drinks with the troops and heard a couple of things that might be worth looking at.’

‘I’m at home, let me just get to my computer,’ she said. ‘How’s it going generally?’

‘It’s as boring as hell,’ said Shepherd. ‘If I had to work in an office all day I think I’d top myself.’

‘Well, speaking as an office worker, I have to say there are plus points,’ she said.

‘I didn’t mean your job,’ he said. ‘I mean the sort of stuff they have to do. Eight hours a day filling in spreadsheets, answering the phone, photocopying and filing. I’m not surprised that they spend most of the time watching YouTube or fiddling with their Facebook pages.’

‘OK, I’m in my study,’ she said. ‘What have you got for me?’

‘First up, it might be worth taking a look at the office manager, Candice Malone,’ said Shepherd. ‘They call her Candy.’

‘We did look at her,’ said Button. ‘No money in her bank that can’t be explained. She’s buying her own flat but the deposit came from her parents.’

‘It might not be about money,’ he said. ‘It might be a love job.’

‘I’m intrigued, tell me more.’

‘She’s got a black boyfriend, that’s the gossip anyway. I don’t know where he’s from or what the story is, but she’s keeping the romance low-profile.’

‘So how come you’re aware of it?’

‘Office gossip,’ he said. ‘It came out over drinks.’

‘Do you think you can nail down specifics?’

‘Charlie, I can’t start asking the staff about their sex lives,’ he said. ‘You’d be better off having someone watching her flat. And please don’t ask me to do it.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Button. ‘We’ve got surveillance experts, I’ll get her looked at. But if you find yourself chatting to her at the water cooler . . .’

‘Sure, I’ll ask her if she’s got a thing for
Mandingo
, OK?’

‘I’m sensing your cynicism again, Spider. Any other possibilities?’

‘There’s a guy by the name of Tim Symes, mid-twenties, bit of a Jack the lad. Plays poker and says that he wins all the time.’

‘Lucky boy.’ He could hear her tapping on her computer keyboard. ‘Well, if he’s winning big bucks he’s not putting it into the bank.’

‘It might be worth seeing who he’s playing with,’ said Shepherd. ‘I might get myself invited to a game.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

‘I wanted you to know in advance because if I lose I’ll be looking to put the money through on expenses and I can hardly ask for a receipt at a poker game.’

Button laughed. ‘Just do your best,’ she said.

It had been a long flight and even though he had flown British Airways Business Class Crazy Boy was still tired when he arrived at Nairobi International Airport. There had been nothing he’d wanted to eat on the menu and he rarely watched movies that weren’t pornographic so he spent most of the flight drifting in and out of sleep. He had only hand luggage with him, a black Adidas holdall with a change of clothes, so after he had cleared immigration he walked straight through customs and then left the arrivals area and caught a minibus to the General Aviation terminal. There a twin-engined Cessna was waiting for him. The Kenyan pilot had flown Crazy Boy before and he shook his hand and took his bag from him. He was in his fifties, his hair greying at the temples and his gut showing the effects of a twenty-five-year career spent sitting in a pilot’s seat. His co-pilot was half his age, stick-thin with a prominent Adam’s apple. Both men wore short-sleeved white shirts with black and gold epaulettes and black trousers. ‘You are ready to leave now?’ asked the pilot, handing the holdall to the co-pilot.

‘Perhaps a visit to the bathroom first,’ said Crazy Boy.

The pilot nodded. ‘We’ll carry out the pre-flight checks,’ he said.

Crazy Boy headed for the men’s room. After he’d finished freshening up he took out his mobile and called Blue. ‘I am in Nairobi, I should be at the airfield in three hours.’

‘We will be waiting for you,’ said Blue.

‘Make sure the men are less trigger-happy than last time,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘They nearly shot me out of the air.’

Blue chuckled. ‘It was only AK-47 fire. If they had been serious they would have used a missile.’

‘Hey, to you it’s funny but when you’re coming in to land in a small plane and someone rakes you with bullets, it’s no laughing matter.’

‘He was high on khat and he was punished,’ said Blue. ‘It won’t happen again.’

‘It had better not,’ said Crazy Boy, and ended the call.

Nicholas Brett had no idea why he’d been knocked unconscious, then tied to a chair and gagged and had a hood pulled down over his head. He could hear two men in the room but when they talked it was in whispers so he couldn’t hear what they were saying. He could feel blood trickling down the side of his head, he had a splitting headache and he had lost the feeling in both hands.

He was sure that he wasn’t being robbed because his Tag watch was still on his wrist and the two men didn’t seem to be moving around his apartment. He wanted to ask them who they were and what they wanted but the gag made it impossible to do anything other than grunt.

The guy who’d hit him had been wearing the overalls of the local cable company. Brett had been watching HBO when the signal had gone and five minutes later there’d been a knock at the door and a technician was telling him that there had been a building-wide system failure and that he needed to reprogramme his box. As Brett had stepped to the side to let the man in something had slammed against the back of his head, and when he’d woken up he was tied to the chair and the hood was over his head.

Brett tried to move his feet but his ankles had been bound to the chair leg. It wasn’t a robbery, and if they were there to kill him then they wouldn’t have bothered tying him to the chair. If it had been the cops or the Feds then he’d have been handcuffed and taken away.

He lost all sense of time as he sat on the chair, and he had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, but he hadn’t eaten since midday and his stomach was grumbling so he thought it was probably late evening when he heard a knock on the door and then footsteps as one of the men went over and opened it. He heard a woman’s voice and then the click-clack of high heels walking across the wooden floor.

The hood was ripped off his head and he blinked as he tried to focus. He felt fingers tear away the duct tape from his mouth and he gasped in pain. There was a woman standing in front of him. Ginger-haired with a sprinkling of freckles across an upturned nose, long fair eyelashes, pale green eyes and skin so pale it looked as if it had never seen the sun. She was holding a photograph and she looked at it and then at his face. ‘It’s him,’ she said, and put the photograph away. She was wearing a dark raincoat and a scarlet scarf tied loosely around her neck.

The man in the cable TV overalls tossed the hood and duct tape on to a chair. Brett looked around. There was a second man sitting at the dining table by the window, holding a bottle of beer that he must have taken from the fridge. He raised it in salute as he stared impassively back at Brett. He was a big man, well over six feet tall and broad shouldered, wearing a military-style reefer jacket, the buttons open to reveal a barrel-shaped chest in a Gap T-shirt.

‘Who are you?’ Brett asked the man. ‘What do you want?’

‘Don’t talk to him, Nicholas, talk to me,’ said the woman.

She had an Irish accent, Brett realised. ‘What is it you want?’ he asked. ‘There’s no money here, no drugs, you’ve got the wrong apartment.’ He knew that wasn’t true, of course. She knew his name. She knew who he was. They were in the right apartment. The question was, what did they want?

The woman sat down and crossed her legs. Her skirt rode up her thighs and she made no move to cover them. She removed her scarf, folded it neatly and placed it on the sofa next to her, then unbuttoned her coat. ‘Matt Tanner,’ she said.