Vendetta Read online

  Calum set a shot of Hennessey’s in front of Mac. They were back on opposite sides of the desk. Almost like they were back in the old days, in a pub, chit-chatting like the best buddies they’d once been.

  Seeing Mac’s wary look Calum said, ‘Forget I’m the cop who got booted out of The Met and think of me as Stevie’s godfather. I’ve got nothing personal against you. It’s the system I hate.’

  That jolted Mac. Calum had been the best godfather a man’s son could ask for – right up until the day Stevie was buried.

  If it was one cardinal rule not to get involved with people you were investigating, it was another not to talk about your work. To anyone. Never mind a man of Calum’s stripe. But Mac knew too many secrets; soaked in shock and with his head thumping, he was desperate to tell another human being. Someone. Anyone. Even a man like Calum. Perhaps especially a man like Calum. He would understand; he’d been there himself. Mac’s story oozed out like a wound’s poison and pus. He heard his own voice as if it belonged to someone else.

  ‘I’ve been under for nine months in Reuben’s crew. My brief was to find out who their major league supplier is. So I got myself introduced to Reuben as an independent armourer and we started doing business. Before I know it, I’m an honorary member of the gang.’

  ‘Is that how you met her?’ Calum took a gulp from his much larger cognac.

  ‘Elena was their communications person; you know, the usual, dealing with messages and information.’ Mac’s face pulled into a lopsided, sad smile. ‘That’s how we met one day about six months back. I had to give her some info.’ He shrugged. ‘And that’s how it started.’

  What he kept to himself was that he’d also considered her for the role of the person he could get information from. Part of his job was looking for that one person on the inside who could keep him bang up to date with the information he needed; that vulnerable person who realised that the life they’d chosen wasn’t the right way. And he’d found that person in Elena. Sweet Elena. So he’d cultivated her. Coaxed her. Eventually seduced her. But, before he even realised that it was happening, the tables had turned, until he’d broken rule number one – never, ever, get emotionally involved with a player in the game. But that human-to-human emotion had been locked down in him for such a long time that when she’d flooded him with it, it had gone straight to his soul. A soul he didn’t think he possessed any more. He’d got in so deep with her that he’d started wanting to keep her safe. Shield her from the squalid and violent world she’d got involved in, the squalid and violent world of tackling it. So he didn’t tell his superior he’d started screwing the enemy and didn’t tell Elena that he wasn’t the criminal she thought he was. Did he love her? He wasn’t sure. But that didn’t matter. What counted was the guilt. The guilt he felt about her death. And the only way to get rid of that guilt was to hunt down her killer.

  ‘I woke up a few hours ago in a hotel room with a bullet wound to my head and Elena shot dead, minus her face, in the bath.’ He pulled in a ragged breath. ‘I didn’t do it. It was a set-up.’

  Calum sent him a confused stare. ‘And you think AK Reuben is your guy?’

  ‘It must have been Reuben’s doing. There isn’t anyone else. Is there?’ He was almost begging for support.

  Calum went into the detective mode he’d never forgotten. ‘Of course it could be someone else. Say it was something to do with this Elena? Say it’s someone from your past because, let’s face it, you’ve put enough dirty faces behind bars. What if one of them is out now and managed to hunt you down? Shame you don’t know who’s running the investigation into the shooting, they might have been able to help you.’

  ‘I do know actually. I saw her turn up. It’s Rio Wray.’

  Calum almost shook with hatred but said nothing. The hatred was enough.

  Mac wasn’t surprised at Calum’s reaction. Once all three of them had been tight but, since Calum’s dramatic exit from the Force, their bonds had frayed and broken. But something deeper had gone on between the other two and Mac didn’t know what it was.

  Calum folded his arms in disgust. ‘Well, “Wray gun” won’t put herself out for you; she’ll be too busy polishing her commendations and making tea for her superiors to help an old friend.’

  Mac slammed the glass on the table, sending some amber liquid bouncing in the air. ‘I don’t need Rio’s help. I’ll sort this out myself, I know what I’m doing . . .’

  ‘Do you?’ the other man asked sternly. ‘You’re not a well man, and I’m not just talking about the head wound. If you were thinking straight, you wouldn’t have come here for a start. And as for that blackout you just had . . .’

  That made Mac mad as hell. ‘I did not . . .’

  But Calum wouldn’t let it go. ‘You looked like you did after Stevie died – fucked up. You couldn’t tell one day from the next and the only way you could get through the days was with a bellyful of meds from the quack. I’m not a shrink, but I know PTSD when I see it. You should be in hospital, not climbing up drainpipes.’

  ‘Leave Stevie out of this,’ Mac growled.

  Calum stared back. ‘I can’t, because the only reason I’m going to help you now is because of him.’

  Silence. Mac grabbed for the slice of towel and tied it back round his head. Flipped his hood back into place.

  ‘Why don’t you just got to this woman’s home . . .’ Calum continued, but Mac cut over him.

  ‘The way I hear it, Reuben doesn’t like any of his people associating out of business hours, so we always met in hotels. I never asked for her address and she never asked for mine.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you need to know where someone lives if all you’re doing is getting your leg over,’ Calum said. Mac sent him a deadly look, but it didn’t shut Calum up. ‘Well, I hope for your sake this has got zilch to do with Reuben. He’s a big player. They don’t call him AK for nothing. I hope they’re paying you danger money. The streets are whispering that he’s getting tooled up for some sort of gang war. A bloody one.’

  ‘That’s what people are saying. But I’ll know for sure about Reuben later. I’m going over to his kid’s birthday party . . .’

  Mac didn’t finish his plan because Calum broke in, horrified. ‘Are you nuts? If Reuben was behind this and you go over there, you’re dead before you get through the front door. And he’ll probably get his kid to fire the fatal shot – he’s that sort of guy. The very fact that you could consider doing that proves you’ve lost it.’

  Mac’s voice was weak. Almost lost. ‘Perhaps. I’ll take a gun. Maybe I’ll get my shot in first. And if he takes me out . . . well, it doesn’t matter anyway.’ Mac could hardly believe what he was saying. Calum was right. It was insane. But he’d made promises to Elena. He whispered, ‘But I need you to check her phone first.’

  Calum sounded like a father talking to a troubled son. ‘You’re not well. You’re not thinking straight. You’re not thinking at all . . .’ But realising Mac wasn’t going to move from his position, he huffed noisily and picked up Elena’s phone. Took a stray lead hanging from the back of his computer and plugged it into the back of the phone. He began tapping in commands on his keyboard. Mac noticed that, as Calum typed, his anger seemed to be draining away; he was watching the screen with growing interest. It was five minutes before Calum finally pulled the plug from the phone and spun it back across the desk.

  ‘No can do, this phone’s been wiped by someone who knows how to cover his tracks.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Calum pursed his lips together as his bitterness piled back in the room. ‘You could check with your friends in the police and ask them to check it for you if you don’t believe me. Oh – but you can’t do that, can you . . . ?’

  Mac thrust himself up. Picked up the phone. Pushed it into his pocket and turned at the same time.

  ‘You’re nuts, Mac,’ Calum sighed. ‘You go and get yourself shot at Reuben’s – and use the stairs this time please, there’s a good boy.’


  As Mac opened the door to leave, Calum called him back. ‘There are a couple of other things you don’t seem to have considered.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘This body in the bath – how do you know it was Elena?’

  Mac froze. ‘Of course it was Elena.’

  ‘The state you’re in, you wouldn’t recognise your own mother – face or no face.’

  ‘Don’t you think I want to believe that she’s still alive?’ Mac growled back. His palm shot into his pocket.

  ‘This is hers.’ He waved Elena’s bracelet at Calum, the bunny rabbit swinging in the painful motion of a lynching. ‘She never took it off. It was on the body. And she has a tattoo.’

  Calum looked back at him before sighing with sarcasm. ‘Bracelet and tattoo? Maybe . . . too bad you can’t get in touch with Rio. She’ll get an ID on the victim before too long. Of course, that’s not the only ID she’ll be getting. If your DNA is in the room, it won’t be too long before she knows you were at the scene of the killing. Your DNA is on the database, isn’t it? All undercover cops have their fingerprints logged. When she finds that out, you really will have a problem.’

  Mac massaged his temples.

  ‘Be honest Mac – how do you know it wasn’t you who shot her?’

  Mac’s fingers dropped from his head. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah – after all, you don’t remember anything, do you? Don’t tell me it hasn’t crossed your mind? Or what’s left of it . . .’

  The other man’s words planted the seeds of doubt back in his throbbing head. In pursuing Elena’s butcher, was he actually pursuing himself? Was it that, instead of not remembering the night before, he just didn’t want to remember? He’d seen it before in his career plenty of times. The murderer of a loved one who couldn’t accept what they had done and who then went into denial before finally that denial turned into insanity or suicide.

  But he had had no reason to kill her. He opened his mouth and told Calum the biggest reason he couldn’t have done it.

  ‘You’ll be telling me next that I shot myself in the head.’ He shook his head. ‘There was someone else in that hotel room. Whoever the fucker was took Elena’s face off and thought they’d left me for dead. But you know what, I’m standing tall and alive and I’m going to make it my business to find her killer. And when I find him, that’s when you can call me a murderer. In the meantime, don’t stand in my way if Reuben is that man.’

  Calum smiled at him and shrugged his shoulders.

  Mac left, still clutching a dead woman’s bracelet in his hand. The pain was back, see-sawing in his head, as he took his former friend’s advice and used the stairs. He knew he had to get his wound sorted before he did anything else. And maybe Calum was right; he had no evidence that Reuben was behind the shooting. None at all. All the more reason to go to his kid’s party. Even if Reuben hadn’t killed Elena, maybe he could find out from the big Russian what mysterious event happening tonight at eleven had driven Elena into a blind panic.

  How long did he have before his superiors came looking for him? They probably were already. How long before Rio discovered from the DNA match that he’d been in a hotel room with a murder victim? If he was lucky, the DNA match wouldn’t come in until tomorrow. Odds against him, and Rio would be on his trail before eleven tonight.

  He reached the downstairs door. Pushed it open. Dropped the bracelet back in his pocket. Stepped out into the street.

  ‘Mac?’

  He looked up to find Calum’s head poking out of the window. His former colleague didn’t look pissed any more, but Mac wouldn’t put it past him to chuck a bucket of cold water on him.

  ‘Still carry Lady L with you?’

  Lady L was Calum’s nickname for his Luger. Mac nodded, still suspicious.

  ‘You might find this handy,’ Calum said. ‘Catch.’

  He dropped a box down to Mac.

  Mac caught it. Looked inside. A half-filled box of ammo and an EDC – everyday carry handgun. Exactly what he needed for what he had to do.

  ‘I think I’m the one now who needs to get my head seen to,’ Calum called out.

  Mac didn’t answer. Didn’t tell him that he was on his way to see the ‘house doctor’.

  fourteen

  10 a.m.

  Mac was on the west side of London, a few streets down from Harley Street. He knew he was taking a risk here, going to see Reuben’s ‘house doctor’. But if he didn’t get some medical attention soon it might slow him down, get in the way of finding out who’d popped Elena. And nothing was going to do that. Besides, a doctor topping up his wage packet providing under-the-counter care for criminal clients might have other information as well.

  Mac found Harley Street. Stood on the opposite side of the road and studied the clinic he was after before carefully checking the cars that were parked up on the street. One caught his eye, a black Mercedes with windows tinted deep like the road to hell. It had a long, ridged, raised line just below the door handles that made the curve of the doors jut out like metal cheekbones. The driver’s window was down so he was able to see the two men inside, both up front, decked out in suits and shades. One of the men looked across at Mac. He tensed. Were they waiting for him?

  The driver of the Merc looked away. Leaned forward. Started the engine and then the car glided down the street and turned onto a main road. Mac didn’t bother to wait and see if the car returned. He crossed the street again and walked up to a flat-fronted Georgian building with black railings that matched the style of the balcony on the fourth floor. Sihaa Centre. To cover itself for injuries and illness, the arms gang had provided itself with ‘health cover’ that left no trace behind for the law to follow. A contract had been agreed with the discreet clinic in Harley Street to make sure that, in the event of ‘personal injuries’, they would be taken care of, no questions asked.

  Mac checked his watch.

  10.03.

  The place should be open but it looked locked up. He tried the handle of the main door. It opened. The reception area was all tanned floorboards, soft, lavender lighting and plump, cosy armchairs.

  Mac took himself off down the corridor that led to the consulting rooms. Behind a half-open door he heard movement. He pushed the door wide to find Doctor Mo Masri, alone, cleaning instruments.

  Startled, the doctor looked up and said, ‘I’m sorry, can I help . . . ?’

  The words died in his mouth as he recognised Mac. And Mac couldn’t blame him. The last time he’d seen Doctor Mo hadn’t been a feel-good moment. It had been in the summer when Mac had sustained a cracked rib after a particularly nasty incident at a lock-up down South London way. Word had reached a local gang that the illegal arms crew he’d infiltrated were on their patch and they’d tried to rip Reuben’s people off. Bad move – the lightweights had bitten off more than they could chew and smashed ribs had ended up as the least of their problems. Doctor Masri had been called to treat his wound, and when Mac had undressed for the doctor to examine him, a sawn-off shotgun had tumbled out of his jacket.

  The doctor now wore that same look of discomfort. He swallowed. Tried to plaster on a professional smile. ‘I’m sorry . . . this is a little irregular.’

  ‘Most of your business is a little irregular, doc.’ The other man’s cheek was tinged with red. ‘I’ve got a wound to the head . . .’

  The doctor’s discomfort increased as he forcefully interrupted, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to wait in reception while I run our usual checks . . .’

  But Mac wasn’t in the mood to wait. ‘I don’t want to be rude, but you’re a doctor and I’m a patient. You know who I work for and you’ve seen me before. Now make me all better again, doc.’

  Deeply unhappy, Masri indicated to Mac that he should get on the deep-green leather examination table. ‘Take a seat on the edge.’

  As soon as Mac was seated, the doctor took off the strip of towel, placed it in the medical waste bin and then began his examination.

&nb
sp; ‘You’re a very lucky man. I suspect that if the angle of the gun that was aimed at you had been a fraction different, the bullet might have fractured your skull. Or maybe you wouldn’t be sitting here now.’ He said the last as if he wanted that to be the case. ‘I’ll need to shave some of your hair, clean up the wound and then put in some stitches or staples . . .’

  ‘No staples,’ Mac interrupted. ‘I don’t want to look like the son of Frankenstein.’

  There were, of course, no questions about how Mac had been shot in the first place. Doctor Mo knew better than that. While the good doctor prepared to do his work, Mac hopped off the examination table and went back to the window. The black Merc was back. He said nothing as he resumed his seat. The doctor gave Mac some antibiotics and smiled at a job well done.

  ‘Well,’ the doctor started as he snapped his gloves off. ‘If that’s all . . . ?’

  ‘Can you check me over and find out if I was drugged last night?’ Mac interrupted.

  ‘Drugged?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve no recollection of what happened to me from yesterday evening until I woke up this morning with part of my head missing. I need you to check to see if someone slipped me a mickey.’

  The doctor looked back at him as if he was seeing that shotgun again. ‘The wound you’ve sustained might well have caused short-term amnesia. It’s quite normal. It’s also clear to me that you’re going through some type of shock. Whether that was caused by the bullet or by the circumstances in which you sustained it, I can’t say. If I were you, I’d just get back to . . . um . . . work. That’s the best cure for shock.’

  ‘Can you give me something for that, then? The “shock”?’

  The doctor shook his head, ‘If I’m going to test you for drugs or supply you with any sort of longer-term medication, I’m contractually obliged to seek authorisation from your employer.’ Mac knew what that meant. Reuben didn’t like his people using uppers and downers. ‘Drugs make you an easy target for the cops and our rivals,’ Reuben had told him.

  ‘If you’d like me to request that,’ the doctor carried on, ‘I will happily do so. But experience suggests that you might have to wait some time for me to get an answer . . .’