Hit Me (The Bailey Boys #2) (18 page)

I paused, then: “That kid,” I said. “Out front. The one who got out of the Lexus and shot at us.”

Markov’s eyes were on me. “Yes?” he said.

“I recognized him. He was the one from El Divino. The dealer. One of Jack McGill’s boys.”

Those small eyes narrowed now. “You sure, Englishman?”

I nodded. “Bastard set me up,” I said. “Got me shot. I’m not going to forget that ugly face in a hurry.”

And that was it. The whole thing over in a few seconds, gone from an ordinary business meet to this: guns fired, Imelda taken, and Hristo Markov slowly putting all the pieces together in his head.

All exactly according to plan.

§

We sat inside Nightingale’s. With whiskey and cocaine, white lines of the latter across the table.

I didn’t touch the Charlie – I’ve been there and emerged. Coke and speed. That little cocktail had regularly got me through eighteen hour shifts on security, back in the day. That and all the steroids I was taking to build up and maintain my physique had been a deadly combination. I’d felt invincible, when I wasn’t suffering ’roid paranoia and terrifying fits of rage. I was well clear of all that now.

But the whiskey... Hell, we all needed a fix of something just then.

Markov had already taken a call from the Colombians. They’d been nearby when they heard the gunshots and they’d bailed. Maybe the deal could be resurrected, maybe they’d go elsewhere. Another slap in the face for the Bulgarian.

“You think they plan it like this, yes?” said Markov. “McGill and his friends?”

“It was pretty damned slick.”

“They try to damage me. They want everyone to see this thing they do.”

Reputatsiya
.

Then he leaned towards me over the table, and said, “We should have killed the
cabrón
. You let him go, Englishman.”

“They’d have hit back anyway,” I said. “They’re clearly escalating. If we’d killed McGill they’d still have come after your organization.”

“But not Imelda, perhaps. This is personal, yes?”

Oh yes.

I shrugged, but said nothing. Markov was on the edge, and anything that might sound like contradiction in front of Georgi and Stefan might be all it took to tip him over.

Stefan wasn’t so smart, though. He said something in Bulgarian and Markov swung sharply, connecting with the back of his hand to the young guy’s jaw.

“Of course she not dead,” he said, his English fragmenting under stress. “You think that is better, huh?
Cabrón
.” He made as if to strike again and Stefan flinched back in his seat.

I gestured to the barman for more drinks, then took the bottle from him as he came to pour. “Might as well keep that,” I told him, and served out another round.

“You know them, Englishman, what they do now?”

“Jack McGill’s hardly going to be the brains behind the operation,” I said, picking my words carefully. “And I don’t know who else he’s mixed up with. You got any names? I can ask around. Maybe someone in the expat community knows something.”

“We will get names.”

“If they’d just wanted to take her,” I said, “kill her or whatever... they didn’t have to do it like this. So...
blatantly
. They were clearly trying to make some kind of statement, make a challenge.”

Markov was glowering at me. Now, he leaned forward again, and said, “You English, you have a saying to describe a thing you do. It is ‘stating the fucking obvious’. This is what you do, yes? And I don’t like it. You hear me, Englishman? I don’t like it at all when you do that.”

Lee had left her a voicemail: “Nightingale’s on Calle Málaga. You know it? Ten tonight. Check it out from outside. Pick your moment. Tell him he left a message for you to meet him there. Play the innocent. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to pan out, but you’ll be safe, you understand? But act scared when everything kicks off. Act
very
scared. And after that it’s down to you. Your plan, whatever that is.”

Your plan
.

She’d rehearsed it in her head for the past six months. The escape route. The various ways to cover her tracks. The documentation she would need, and which she had then started to bring together one item at a time, and always fearful that it might draw attention to her.

But the only way it might work was if she could be sure Hristo Markov would not come looking for her. For she knew he would pursue her to the ends of the Earth if she went against him.

Lee has said she would be safe, but she didn’t like not knowing the details.

Didn’t like putting her trust in another person. She could not recall the last time she had done that.

You’ll be safe, but act scared. What had he meant? How could she know how to react if she did not know what she was to react to?

She reminded herself she had commissioned him for this task. She had investigated him deeply enough to be sure he was a real player, a match for Hristo.

He knew what he was doing, and so she should trust him to get it right.

She should be able to put her fate in his hands.

But it went totally against her instincts.

§

She’d been to Nightingale’s before. With Hristo, when she’d played her part as gangster’s glamorous accessory, and without him when she’d just wanted to get away. It was a nice little place, away from the main drag and so a bit quieter, and they served a good selection of tapas.

She got there before Hristo, and waited in an alleyway across the street watching. Saw his car pull up and the four of them get out. Saw the other customers being hurried out of the door by Paco the barman. That was so Hristo! Just take over a place because he was so much more important than everybody else.

She took a deep breath and stepped out of the shadows. Smoothed her clothes down, took another big breath, and approached the bar.

Lee saw her, glanced immediately away, then looked again.

The kid he was with made to step across her path but Lee said something and he stepped back.

She passed inside and paused. Hristo was at a table towards the back, leaning over a white line with a rolled note up his nose.

Georgi spotted her first, said something, and Hristo jerked upright. Said, “Imelda? What are you doing here?”

She said what she had to, that he’d left her a message that said she should meet him. He looked confused, and she wondered what he was going to say, what she should say in response, as Lee hadn’t prepared her for any more than those opening lines.

Then, from the doorway, Lee called, “Boss? I think they’re here.”

That thing he did, calling Hristo ‘boss’ – Hristo must surely see through it, but his ego was great enough that he let him do it anyway.

A gunshot ripped through her thoughts. Somewhere out front... she craned to see, her first thought concern that Lee might have been in the line of fire.

Hristo and Georgi stood, sending their chairs clattering over backwards.

Hristo grabbed Imelda’s arm roughly and pushed her towards the bar. “Take cover,” he snapped. “Stay out of the way.”

She stumbled back against the bar, the wooden counter jarring against her spine. She rubbed at her arm where he’d grabbed her, and another shot rang out.

More noise – shouting from the front of the bar, the crash of a door at the back, then someone grabbed her wrists from behind and yanked her back.

The grip on her wrists was vise-like, the pain in her arms from being jerked back so sharp she feared something must break. She opened her mouth to cry out, then the words vanished when she saw the other guy, dressed in black and carrying some kind of assault rifle.

There was a door at the back of the bar, and her captor wrestled her through it, and when she was able to look back she saw Lee and Hristo watching her, Lee’s pistol averted, unable to get a clear shot.

Out back of the bar, one of the guys hoisted Imelda over his shoulder and they started to run.

A dark car waited at the end where a street cut across, the back door open.

She was bundled inside, sprawled back against another man, and the door slammed. Instantly, the engine growled and the wheels screeched as they jerked forward and away.

She straightened, twisted in the seat to move away from the guy, turned to peer at him.

“Ms Sanchez, I think?” he said, in Spanish with a strong English accent. “Pleased to meet you.”

She strained her back to lean away from him.

“No,” he went on, “please don’t struggle. We’re under instructions not to damage you, but believe me, sweetheart, I’m one small step away from blowing your fucking brains out. You got that?”

I got away from Markov as soon as I could, without drawing undue attention to myself. I told him I’d dig, ask around the expat community to see if anyone had heard anything.

I was fairly confident I still had his trust – as far as anyone in our business trusted anybody else, at least – but it worried me the way he just lumped us all together as ‘the English’ and assumed we were all connected and so I must know everyone. I couldn’t risk him taking the next step and assuming I knew too much, and was maybe involved with Jack the Knife’s gang in some way.

I hadn’t lied when I told him Jack must be responsible. It was true I’d recognized the kid out front of Nightingale’s, the one who’d led me into that trap when I’d been shot. But I hadn’t needed to see him to be sure: I’d known in any case that it was Jack’s boys.

I was the one who’d made the call.

Spelled it all out for him.

“Jack,” I’d said. “There’s a girl. Imelda Sanchez. She was with Markov for a time, but now he’s keeping her against her will. I need to get her out. If you and your crew spring her and let her get away safely we’re all square.”

Doing it this way would make it authentic and believable.

And Jack knew he owed me.

I’d beaten the shit out of him that day up at Markov’s
finca
in the hills, but if I hadn’t stepped in, we both knew that by now the rats and wild dogs would be picking over what was left of his bones in some remote mountain ravine.

He understood that I wasn’t the enemy – I never really had been, despite our occasional run-ins. No, his real enemy here was Hristo Markov: the guy whose territory Jack and his crew were trying to take over, the one who’d had him abducted and tortured to within an inch of his miserable life.

And he understood, more than anything, that if he did as I asked he’d not only be squaring off a debt of honor with me, but he’d also be hurting Markov big time.

Hurting his so-precious reputation by doing something so public to humiliate him, but also hurting him somewhere the Bulgarian tried to keep locked away, because in some perverse way he clearly had some kind of deep attachment to Imelda Sanchez.

I could understand that. Even though I was writing her out of my life, I knew I’d never love anyone the way I loved Imelda.

“You good with that, Jack?” I had asked.

Silence. Maybe he was still thinking all this through; or maybe by making me wait on his response he was just trying to give the impression he was in control, where in reality I was the one pulling all the strings, just as I always had been.

“I’m good, Bailey. I’m good with that.”

What I didn’t tell him was what would come after.

The
finca
, the fire, the opening up of World War fucking Three on the Costa.

§

I drove up to Benahavís in the early hours, careful to be sure I wasn’t being followed.

I tried not to think. I knew what I was doing. I knew my schedule. Didn’t need to think about anything beyond that.

Especially not about Imelda. Where she might be, what she might be doing.

I’d had a single message from Jack the Knife to say he’d done his part: they’d dropped her – he didn’t say where – and she was on her way. I didn’t need to know any more than that. I’d done it, shepherded her safely away from Hristo Markov, and permanently out of my life.

The track up to the
finca
was as bad as I recalled, and far more treacherous to negotiate in the darkness. I took it slow. I couldn’t risk getting my car stuck out here tonight.

Eventually the cluster of low buildings came into sight. The main dwelling looked ghostly in the beam of my headlights. Two wooden outbuildings stood to one side, and, just as I’d recalled, a stack of wood from another dismantled building stood against the opposite wall.

I pulled up, climbed out, went round to the rear of my Corolla.

Opened the back and she was there, the girl. She was wrapped in several layers of plastic sheeting, and I’d taken the trouble to line the back of the car with yet more plastic.

I looked down at her, illuminated by the light of my phone.

I tried to feel something for her, but didn’t do well.

I didn’t know who she was, but she hadn’t been hard to find. There’s always a body – a junkie, a loser, someone who won’t be missed even when they’re dead. And there’s always someone at a hospital morgue who’s open to blackmail or to one or two of those ‘bin Ladens’ to fund a habit or a vacation.

I leaned in, slid my hands under her dead weight and lifted her out.

On the dirt, I unwrapped her, then went round the car to get the bag. One of Imelda’s slit skirts, a fancy bra, a silk top. Jewelry.

I secured her ankles and wrists with cable ties, stuffed her mouth with the panties that matched that fancy bra and covered it with duct tape.

Stepped back and took a deep breath.

Still didn’t feel anything.

Even seeing her lying there in Imelda’s things... It was odd to see, but not much beyond that.

The girl would never pass for Imelda to anyone who gave a shit, but that wasn’t going to matter soon. It’d never pass a thorough forensic exam, but just as there are always people at a hospital open to bribes or blackmail, there are ways to deal with the forensics, too – or, at least, the people who carry out the tests or deal with the documentation. My old mate Fearless Lloyd was a fount of knowledge when it came to just who to bribe.

I picked her up, carried her into the shell of the
finca
and dumped her against a wall. Then I set about gathering wood from where it was stacked outside – bringing it in and piling it all around her.