Adrian Magson - No Peace For The Wicked

She braked hard, the tyres losing traction in the dust of the track. Before she could hit reverse gear, the doors of the Lexus opened and out stepped the two men from the villa. The man in the cream suit walked almost casually along the track towards her, while his minder took the other side. Neither man seemed in a hurry.

The minder was carrying a handgun.

Palmer was stunned. Ahead of him was a line of stationary traffic, temporarily held up by a broken-down truck that was being pushed out of the way by a group of building workers. At the tail of the queue he recognised the dusty seat that had been following Riley, but there was no sign of her or the Lexus. They must have turned off down a side road somewhere. He did a noisy three-point turn and retraced his route. This wasn’t looking good.

Half a minute later he noticed a turning between two building sites. He took it…then stood on the brakes when he saw a man waiting on the track ahead of him. Riley’s car was in the background, her silhouette at the wheel.

Riley sat very still with her hands on the wheel, while the man in the cream suit stopped by the car. Through the open window she could hear a cement mixer grinding nearby.

“You wish to buy my nice car?” the man said dryly in lightly-accented English. “Is that why you are following me?” He smiled genially, although with no real humour, and studied his fingernails. “My colleague has an excellent memory for faces. He remembers you from among the trees outside the Villa Almedina. Is he correct?”

Riley nodded. There seemed to be no point in denying it; the man was too sure of his facts.

“A sad business. You were fortunate it was not you that the dog attacked.” He brushed a speck of something from his sleeve, then looked up as another vehicle approached. In her mirror, Riley saw Palmer’s car come to a stop in a cloud of dust. The man flicked a finger at his colleague, who signalled with his gun for Palmer to stay put. Then the first man turned back to Riley. “What is your interest in this matter?”

Riley wondered what to tell him, then decided on the truth. It was as good as anything else in the absence of a downright and believable lie. “I’m a reporter,” she told him. “I’m investigating the deaths of some criminals in England. I followed the trail to this place.”

“Ah. Another reporter.” The man nodded. “Always looking for information to buy… or sell. Why have you come to Spain?”

“Because the Grossmans are the people I’m after.” She looked at him and added very deliberately: “I’m not interested in anyone else.”

The man smiled. “I am pleased to hear it. The Grossmans. Such vulgar people. They kill so… casually.” He shook his head. “So stupid. What will you do when you have gathered your facts and written your story?”

“I’ll publish it and they’ll probably be arrested.”

“Of course. And what of their associates?” His eyes were disturbingly intense, and Riley realised that what she said next could very well alter the rest of her life. Palmer’s, too.

“Like I said, I’m not interested in anyone else. Just the Grossmans.”

The man seemed to consider that for a moment, before nodding. “In that case, go home, young lady. Publish your story. But, a warning.” His eyes became suddenly more bleak than she could have believed possible. “If you talk of me or my colleagues, Miss Riley Gavin, I will arrange for something very unpleasant to happen to your friend, Mr Frank Palmer.” He smiled coldly. “Not tomorrow, not the day after. Maybe not for a long time. But one day. Now ask yourself, do you think you could live with that?” He turned on his heel and walked back to the Lexus.

Riley was stunned. She watched the Lexus purr past and disappear out onto the main road, and found her hands were shaking on the steering wheel. She fought to calm herself. He knew their names. But how?

Back at the villa, Ray Grossman sat slumped in his wheelchair and glared impotently at his wife. They were in the single bedroom where he spent increasing amounts of his time, and Lottie was looking down at him with stone-faced implacability.

“You stupid, stupid bloody cow!” Ray gasped, his breathing tortured and noisy. A small trickle of saliva had escaped from his mouth and was glistening on his chin. He struggled to lift one hand to beat on the arm of the wheelchair, a frail and fumbled tattoo of frustration. “How can… do this? Can’t… never get away with it. Why don’t… just listen to me… fer Christ’s sake?”

His wife struggled to hide a look of contempt, but it came out as a coldly patronising smile. It was as ugly as Ray Grossman had ever seen in his life, and he felt unbearably sad at the way things had turned out.

“You’re upsetting yourself,” Lottie said matter-of-factly. She could have been commenting on the state of the garden or the weather outside. Another cause for sadness, Grossman thought; any trace of true compassion had long since disappeared.

“Upset? Of course… upset, f’God’s sake!” Grossman breathed agonisingly, the pain in his chest increasing and choking off his words. “Don’t see, do you? You… you’re way out your league. These Moroccans’ll eat you up… spit you out.” He collapsed back against the seat and groped for the plastic mask hanging by his side. As he sucked in oxygen the blood stopped pounding in his head, the pain receded and his chest settled to a slower, rhythmic pattern. He closed his eyes, his thin lids fluttering.

Lottie watched him, unmoving.

When his breathing was back to normal, she stared down at her fingernails and said: “You never did listen to me, did you, Ray? I was always ready to fix you up after you’d had problems, or listen to you going on about the other two skimming off the top. But you never gave me credit for any ideas, did you? You always thought I was a brainless little slapper like all the other little tarts. Well, things have changed. You agreed to us taking control of the clubs… and you knew people would get hurt in the process.”

Her husband snatched away the mask, his eyes furious pinpoints of light. “I never said to kill them! Bleeding Jesus, Lottie — you’ve gone over the top!”

“Do me a favour,” she muttered contemptuously. “You may have been happy to sit by while McKee and Cage clean us out, but I wasn’t.”

“But we could have bought ‘em out!” he insisted. “They wanted out, anyway. And the other two were long past it.” He took another pull at the mask. “Same with Jerry Bignell… he’d have backed off in the end. You didn’t have to set McManus on him. Where is McManus, anyway — he’s never here when I want him.”

Lottie walked towards the door, then turned to look at her husband, her face cold and unyielding. “McManus is in England,” she said coldly. “Doing what he should have done a long time ago.”

“What? Who said he should do anything?”

“I sent him there, the same way I send him other places.” She gave him a pitying smile. “News update, Ray: McManus doesn’t take orders from you anymore. He answers to me from now on. All right?”

She closed the door behind her, and Ray Grossman, who had never done time in his life, suddenly knew what it felt like to be a prisoner.

In the front room, Lottie found Gary holding the phone in his hand.

“McManus, Mrs G,” he said. “The Gavin woman’s not been around for two or three days. Same with Palmer — his office has been shut tight. It must have been her the local police picked up down the road.”

“Has he done the other thing?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Tell him to get back here fast. Where’s Mitcheson and the other two?”

“Outside checking the perimeter.”