Harm Page 16

  Paloma puts a question to Pilar, who says, ‘How many bullets in a magazine?’

  ‘These look like standard ones, so it should be thirty rounds.’

  I hear more gunfire from above and decide that we have to make our move. If I’m going to die today, it may as well be among a group of abused women rising up against their tormentors. I check the gelignite in the lock and the fuse, and tell Pilar to get the girls to crouch down behind the freezer and put their fingers in their ears, and to flatten herself against the wall beside the door.

  Once I see that everyone is in place and that Paloma has Tomas’s ears covered, I kneel down in front of the lock and check that the detonator is pressed firmly into the gelignite, then I bite into the fuse cord and tear it off six inches from the detonator. The matches are damp, but after a few attempts, I fire one up, light the fuse and press myself against the wall of the cell.

  The explosion is deafening. Bits of metal smack and ping against the walls and floor but the door swings open. I leave the cell with Pilar and the girls following behind me. The passageway is empty and pitch dark. We feel our way along it. Light bleeds around the edges of the door to the main hall, which is at the top of the stairs at the end of the passageway. We reach the door and I light a match and inspect the lock.

  One shot busts it open.

  The hallway is quiet and deserted. I motion to the girls to stay where they are and make my way to the windows which overlook one side of the building where Manuel was shot. There is nothing there to show that a massacre has occurred. The poolside furniture is neatly in place and the water in the pool is a clear blue colour.

  As I cross the hall to rejoin Pilar and the girls, I catch sight of the heel of a boot through a partly open door, adjacent to the one we entered by. I turn to the girls, put a finger to my lips and beckon them over. I indicate the boot and that we are going to take a look. The girls form a semicircle around me and we creep towards the door with guns raised. I ease it open very slowly to reveal that the boot is attached to a foot sticking out of a pyramid of bodies that almost touches the crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

  As we take in the sight of so much dead flesh, a door opens above us and a peal of laughter echoes around the hall. I hear footsteps on the gallery above. I lead the girls into the room of bodies and we conceal ourselves behind the fatigue-coloured pile. A group of laughing men whoop down the stairs and through the door to the basement that we have just come from. We can hear them jostling along the corridor and then falling silent as they reach the open door and go down to the cells.

  I move towards the door and into the hall. Pilar and the girls follow me. I close the door to the basement, turn to them and say, ‘Those men will see that we’re gone and come looking for us.’

  Pilar translates and I continue.

  ‘We need to be ready for them when they come through that door. You stand in line, pick one man and aim your gun at his head.’ María says something. I look at Pilar.

  ‘Like a firing squad,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  I turn to Pilar.

  ‘You tell the men that if they make a sound they are dead, then you tell them to lay their guns on the floor and we take them in there.’ I indicate the room we have just left. I point at Lucía and Adriana and and say, ‘You two, pick up their weapons and follow us in.’

  I hear footsteps on the stairs and motion the girls to stand in line a few feet from the door. I indicate to Paloma to take Tomas into the room of bodies and she does so. I move to the side of the door, raise my gun to my shoulder and the girls do the same. The door opens and three guards walk through it and freeze.

  One of them reaches for a holster. I kick him in the stomach and he falls forward onto the floor. Pilar issues her instructions. The men lay down their weapons and the girls herd them into the room of bodies. Lucía spits in a guard’s face. I take their handcuffs, cuff them together and make them sit on the floor.

  I take Pilar aside and say, ‘Find out where Guido is and what the set-up is now.’

  Pilar approaches the older of the men and asks him various questions. He overcomes his reluctance to answer her when Lucía shoves the barrel of her gun in his ear.

  After a short conversation, Pilar returns to me.

  ‘Guido is in the dining room. He sent them down to fetch us and take us to him. There are three other guards with him.’

  One of the guards says something. I turn and see Adriana swing her rifle butt at his head. He sinks to the floor unconscious. I look at Pilar.

  She says, ‘He called her a slut.’

  I say, ‘We need to get upstairs.’

  I take a bandana off a corpse in the pile and gag one of the guards. Pilar and Adriana do the same to the other two and we take belts from the bodies and bind their wrists and ankles. The girls follow me into the hall. I put a finger to my lips and we creep upstairs to the gallery. As we move along it, I hear voices coming from behind what I remember is the dining room door. I stop outside the door, group the girls around me and indicate that we are going in. We raise our guns and I boot the door open.

  Guido and three men are sitting at a table groaning with food and champagne bottles. Guido looks up from his plate and chunks of fish fall from his mouth. We walk towards them and they stand and raise their hands in surrender. I push Guido against a wall and shove my gun barrel under his chin.

  I press myself against him, look him in his good eye and say, ‘I want my passport and the keys to a car right now, or I blow your fucking head off!’

  He nods as much as he can with his head clamped between the wall and the gun barrel, and I release him and push him towards the door.

  ‘Stay here and look after our friends,’ I say to Pilar, as I leave.

  Guido leads me along the gallery to a door at the end. We enter an oak-panelled office with a large mahogany desk at one end with a throne-like swivel chair behind it and leather armchairs in front. The wall behind the desk is lined with wooden filing cabinets. I sit in an armchair while Guido opens various desk drawers, rifles through them, comes up empty and then opens a filing cabinet. Half way through the second drawer, he finds a bunch of four or five passports and throws them onto the desk as if he has completed his assignment. I stand and raise my gun.

  ‘Find it,’ I say.

  He looks through the passports and hands me one. It is mine. I tell him to put the others back. I pocket mine and say, ‘Car keys.’

  Guido leads me out of the room, along the gallery and down the stairs to the hall. We go through a door into a long corridor that leads to door at the back of the building. We pass a door to a large kitchen. I glimpse two or three figures huddled behind some boxes under a worktop. We emerge into a courtyard where various cars are parked. I point to a Ford station wagon that will accommodate myself and the girls and Guido takes me back inside and gives me one of several keys from a drawer in a small chest inside the door.

  I open the door, point at the car and say, ‘Start it up.’

  He crosses to the station wagon and gets in. It starts with a satisfying growl and relieves itself of a black cloud of exhaust gas. As I am taking the key from him, I hear a shot from upstairs. I push Guido into the passageway and urge him back to the hallway, up the stairs and into the dining room.

  One guard is lying on the floor with a bullet hole in his forehead. Another is sprawled unconscious in a corner, bleeding from the nose. The third one stands naked against the wall. His outstretched hands are skewered into the oak panelling with table forks. His head hangs forward, resting on the bone handle of the knife that sticks out of his neck. His penis dangles from his mouth, dripping blood onto the gold crucifix nestling among his chest hair.

  Pilar, Adriana and María sit together on a red velvet banquette against the wall next to Paloma, who is breastfeeding Tomas. They watch impassively as Lucía cuts into the crucified guard’s scrotum with a carving knife. She sees me and stops.

  Pilar says, ‘He m
ade her pregnant when she was twelve.’ I nod. ‘Then he killed her baby.’

  I look at Lucía and see the loathing and the lust in her face and I want to tell her something, but I don’t know what it is.

  Pilar says, ‘These other two used to …’

  ‘We don’t have time,’ I interrupt.

  I point to Guido.

  ‘I’m going to lock him up. Do what you have to do and meet me by the Ford station wagon in the yard at the back.’

  The amputee will bleed to death from the groin in about ten minutes and I don’t like to contemplate how they’ll finish off the other one. I stab Guido in the back with the gun barrel and we go downstairs to the cells. I shoot the lock off a wall cabinet in the corridor and take out a bunch of keys. I find the key to the torture chamber, unlock it and throw him into it. He whines and wrings his hands as I slam the door on him and lock it. Much as I’d like to turn his lights out, something tells me that killing one DEA agent is enough for one trip. I go to the cell we escaped from and open the freezer. I take six bundles of notes, one for each girl and one for me, and put them in an empty grenade box. I look ruefully at the gold for a moment and then select a snub nosed Colt Cobra, load it and slip it into my back pocket. I pick up the grenade box, head back along the passageway, throw the keys into the cupboard and climb the stairs.

  Guido’s cries for help recede as I reach the courtyard at the back of the building. Pilar and the girls are waiting by the car holding their guns. I realise I have no idea what to do with them once we get away from the house. I decide to think about that later. I tell Pilar to make them put the guns in the back of an old pick-up truck that stands in a corner of the yard and get into the car. They protest at losing their weapons, but Pilar insists and they reluctantly dump them in the truck. I put my AK in there as well and open the grenade box. I hand a sheaf of notes to Pilar and each of the girls. They stare in disbelief at however many thousand dollars they are holding for a moment and then beam at me and chatter excitedly.

  Pilar flicks a few notes, sees that all the bills are thousands and says, ‘This is amazing!’

  ‘You’ve earned it,’ I say.

  I unlock the car. Pilar sits beside me in front and the others squeeze into the back seat. I hear Tomas gurgle and sigh and look round to see him contentedly sucking at Paloma’s breast. I start the engine and drive out of the courtyard, round the side of the house and on to the gravel drive. We pass the pool and approach the main gate. Pilar gets out and opens the gates and we pass through onto the road.

  Pilar turns to me and says, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I need to get to Mexico City airport. What about you?’

  Pilar confers with the girls and says, ‘We will go to Mexico City as well.’

  ‘Is that where you’re all from?’ I ask.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you want to go back to your families?’

  ‘They are all dead.’

  I look at Pilar’s slender young frame on the seat next to me and wonder what will become of her in Mexico City.

  There is a whoop of joy and a chorus of excitement from the back seat.

  Pilar says, ‘Adriana has counted the money. Each has fifty thousand dollars!’

  18

  Georgie’s pulling at my arm and saying it’s time for school. I open my eyes and I’m looking at a pair of feet. I lift my head and see that I’m lying across the bottom of Lizzie’s bed. She’s asleep next to Maureen, and Claire’s curled up in the armchair by the fireplace. I look round for Sammy, then I remember he went home before I came back up last night.

  I get up, take Georgie downstairs and she goes to the privy while I make her a piece of bread and margarine. The milk’s gone sour, so I give her a glass of water. She gets her books from the bedroom and we set off to school. As we’re going along Golborne Road, I ask her if she’s all right, but she won’t speak. I ask her again but she says nothing.

  I stop and pull her round to face me, then I shake her. ‘You’ve got to talk to me, Georgie!’ I say.

  She looks at me and after a bit she says, ‘I want to be somewhere else.’

  Tears are welling up in her eyes. I put my arms round her and pull her to me. I say, ‘I know, Georgie, I know.’

  She’s really sobbing and crying now, so I pick her up and carry her back towards home. When we get to our street, she’s still crying but she says she wants to walk. I set her down and give her a handkerchief. She dries her eyes and says, ‘I want to go to school.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m going,’ she says, as she walks away from me.

  I catch her up and say, ‘I’ll take you.’

  ‘No.’

  She runs round the corner into Golborne. I follow behind her to make sure she’s all right. She crosses the roads carefully and when I see her catch up with a group of other kids from the school, I turn and walk back to our street.

  I come round the corner and see Sammy’s car parked outside ours. Sammy’s leaning on the railings, smoking. He sees me, flicks his fag into the gutter and walks towards me.

  ‘Dave’s out,’ he says.

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘He wants to see you.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s waiting for you at the yard.’

  ‘Claire and Maureen upstairs?’

  ‘They’re at yours. Lizzie’s got a visitor.’

  ‘Stay with them, all right?’

  ‘Do you want a lift?’

  ‘Stay with them.’

  Sammy nods. I wait until he’s gone inside and then I walk towards Westbourne Park Road.

  • • •

  At the scrap yard, I can see the back end of Dave’s Jaguar sticking out from behind a pile of wrecked motors. The dog’s lying beside the hut with its head on its paws. I rattle the gates and it goes into a barking frenzy and rears up on its back legs, pulling against its chain. The shed door opens and the bloke with the crew cut and beer belly comes out, yanks the dog’s chain and growls something at it. The dog lies down again and beer belly unlocks the gate and nods towards the Jag.

  I go over to the car and hear the Everly Brothers smoothing it up as I get there. Dave opens the passenger door and I slip into a warm pocket of polished wood and leather. Dave switches off the radio.

  ‘You owe me three hundred quid,’ I say.

  He takes an envelope out of his pocket and gives it to me. I flick through the notes inside and say, ‘Davis knew I was lying.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He said he had people to say we were there.’

  ‘Like hell he did.’

  ‘Is that it then?’

  ‘I got the governor of the Malibu and a couple of others to say we were there all night, so I reckon we’re all right.’

  ‘You did all that from the nick?’

  He gives me a snidey little smile, reaches across me, opens the door and says, ‘It’s finished. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. Now fuck off.’

  I slam the door shut, grab him by the collar and smack his head on the dashboard. I push him up against the door and say, ‘Don’t you fucking tell me what to do or I’ll get straight up that nick and put you in so much shit, you’ll drown in it.’

  I feel under his jacket and round his belt for a gun or a knife but he’s not carrying. I check the glove box and then I let him go.

  He holds the side of his head and says, ‘You’re a fucking piece of work, you are.’

  ‘Shut up and listen.’

  He looks at himself in the driving mirror, takes a black handkerchief from his top pocket and dabs at his face.

  I sit back and let him preen a bit then I say, ‘I want to see Bielsky.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Where do I find him?’

  ‘Not round here.’

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘There’s a Polish restaurant down Princes Gate. He’s always in there.’

  ‘Take me over there.’


  ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’

  ‘I’m the one who done a murder that you wanted the credit for but didn’t have the bottle to do yourself, because you’re a cowardly little pansy who’s trying to act the hard man. I’m also the only person without form that can give you an alibi for that murder, so if you’ve got any sense, you’ll do what I tell you.’

  He looks through the windscreen, breathes out slowly and sinks down in his seat. I look past him and see the dog raise his head as if he’s sniffing the air and then rest it on his paws again and close his eyes.

  Dave turns to me and says, ‘All right.’

  ‘When we see Bielsky, you tell him you want to buy a flat.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘For you and me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I need a new place and I don’t want him or anyone else to know I’ve got money, so I’m having you as a front.’

  It takes him a minute to grasp the idea but finally he says, ‘You’re not as stupid as you look.’

  ‘Wouldn’t do any harm for you to have a nice young girlfriend, eh?’ He manages a tight smile as he starts the engine.

  I say, ‘I want you to put a bit of work my way.’

  ‘Going to rob a bank now, are you?’

  He hoots the horn and swings the car round towards the road. The beer belly comes out of the shed and opens up for us.

  As the car pulls away I say, ‘When can you give me something?’

  ‘I’ll have to speak to my Dad.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing goes off without Dad’s say so.’

  ‘It stays between us.’

  ‘You don’t know what he’s like.’

  ‘Everyone knows what your dad’s like.’

  ‘Rina …’

  ‘Just fucking do it, or I’ll speak to your dad.’

  He turns to me, but I don’t look at him. We drive along Holland Park Avenue towards town, past the fine houses and the posh people walking along under the trees.

  I say, ‘What do you reckon to Sammy?’

  ‘He ain’t done much, but he seems all right.’

  ‘It’ll be me and him.’

  ‘You’ll need three.’