Meat

By Rosavy Babatchka

Sexuality and human decency are forfeit when the code of honour between ruthless criminal gangs is abused. East London becomes battleground for a merciless vendetta of bloodshed and rampant depravity; credibility of the capital’s police is put at peril. Det. Insp. Frankie Burns abandons all sexual inhibitions in pursuit of the offenders, and is irredeemably addicted to her new found power, over men and women.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M-Y Books
• Release date: Aug 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781906986636

Rosavy Babatchka

The author lives and works in the east End of London in the sex industry

Book preview

Chapter 1 ... A slip of a girl

A young girl languished in the centre of the room. Her body, stripped naked, was held spread-eagled on her back, baking in the heat of powerful, overhead lights. Plasticuffs fastened her wrists, thighs and ankles so securely to a gynaecological operating table they bit deep into those limbs, bruising and rending delicate flesh. The supple young body was the unwilling receiver of a meticulous appraisal of its vital organs. Her efforts at resistance and protest, as spunky and determined as the encumbrances would permit, offered no hindrance to the insensitive, explorative ministrations plied relentlessly by an inquisitor who offered no comment or hint of remorse.

The girl winced and squirmed. Her frantic attempts to protect her modesty and defend her dignity from the indecent invasion of the man’s gloved hands steadily weakened and faltered as her despair increased. She cringed and tried to shrink from each touch of the anaemic looking digits as they continued to pry, squeeze, pinch, prod and probe in their investigation.

His attitude was deliberate, his movements distinct and professional. He determined not to overlook attention to any millimetre of every orifice, cleft, fold and curve of the young girl’s unspoiled tissue.

The sound of her pained and very feminal whimpers and squeals clashed in an unnerving disharmony with the high-pitched whine from a refrigerating plant. The powerful machine was maintaining the sub-zero temperatures required in the regiment of stainless-steel cryogenic canisters filled with liquid nitrogen, ranked in emotionless voyeurism behind the panes of a glass compartment built against the tiled wall. Rumbles reverberated frequently through the arched structure, suggesting a route for heavy road or rail traffic close by. The girl’s melancholy song of anguish was accompanied by the bass line of this monotonous drone.

An expression of fearful revulsion was frozen on her face. Her brandy-ball eyes, compelled to stay open as if drawn by a magnet, dwelled on the gross sight of the white film of dried saliva congealed at each corner of the man’s thin lips, despite her great efforts to close them.

The man was Dr Minas Elliot, a middle-aged medic, a trained veterinary surgeon, for some time disgraced and banned from practicing the profession that had been his life choice and livelihood for many years. He shivered as his long fingers darted here, lingered there, on honey-hued skin goose-pimpled and sallow with fear. His shiver was not fuelled by lust or impatient anticipation for carnal knowledge of his nubile victim. No woman ever kindled those emotions in him. The female sex was never the subject nor ever served any erotic purpose in his dreams or his real-time fantasies, only as a focus of animosity, suspicion or jealous resentment.

Occasionally he sniffed the air exaggeratedly, as if seeking to satisfy an addiction to the sickly scent of human fear. He shivered again, ran his tongue along his thin lips as though checking them for particles of any airborne flavour of the girl’s fear. Doc Elliot showed no sign of making haste to end his victim’s humiliation. No part of her was sacred or safe within reach of his ferreting fingers or piercing gaze.

The sound of approaching footsteps on the granite floor increased the tempo of his shiver; brought a sudden eagerness and a visible new mood of excitement about him. It was a significant change, an uncontrollable response, a noticeable warming to the newcomer. He cocked his head and his ears all but twitched at the unmistakable rasp of sexually agitated breathing encroaching on his personal space.

At first the interference was more measured and subdued, behind him, but now it was unconstrained, right beside him.

The girl’s limbs locked involuntarily, her body taut, rigid with panic caused by the entrance of an obvious threat. She recognised the newcomer immediately. But she was bewildered and terrified by the change in his manner. The face that now leched down on her ignominy, with eyes that burned into her most intimate parts, was so different to that of the pleasant, smiling Adonis who charmed her yesterday.

That primal, psychosexual, essentially feminine instinct in her shouted, Wake up to the look of fired up lust that scorched her nipples, raked the lips of her vulva. She could not avoid the awful message in the violent, raw, bulging threat that quickly obsessed her vision. She shut her eyes again, tightly, determined to do her best to blank out the horror; the pain and degradation of the assault she knew was imminent.

She had fled in fear of the same predatory peril that stalked the lawless streets, drunk or drugged and lusting for young, impoverished or vulnerable prey in the tourist cities of her Ukraine homeland. Suddenly she wished for a chance to prolong the less detestable option of embarrassment and discomfiture inflicted on her by those rude, clawing fingers.

This new danger was Philip Field. He had watched the horrid scene with fervid interest.

Perceptibly the younger of the two men, he was much more likely to be described as a man among men than Doc Elliot would or could ever hope to be. His strapping, athletic presence radiated an aura often described as lupine. He was overpowering, an imposing figure in a strictly physical sense. Philip was nicknamed Vlad by adult film addicts and his studio colleagues in his legitimate business venture, due to the surreal genre of most of his movies; but for his leading ladies, much more so for the photogenic appeal of his large penis.

There was now a full complement of the room’s macabre trio of occupants, the only permitted witnesses to evil in the long since redundant Home Office property, formerly an underground tinned-food storage bunker. Now, suitably converted and equipped by the Doc and Philip, it was the covert base for their vile but extremely profitable, business. Its underground location had proved to be secure, a virtually undetectable venue for their murderous theft and trade in human organs.

The porn stud was annoyed and impatient. When a female was on the table he quickly got pissed off playing voyeur from behind the plate-glass office window. He’d watched and drooled. He reckoned Doc Elliot had messed about more than long enough with this young, fuckable little bitch’s wonderfully delectable pussy. All the while his libido had throbbed more out of control. It was now time to satisfy himself instead of watching the Doc fiddle with his puny digits. Watching the Doc was good for a bit of foreplay, but restraining a hard-on for too long was an absolute no-no. It was just a bit more than fucking aggravating knowing the old fairy got some warped pleasure out of winding him up with all this pre-op examination routine.

Old-fashioned common sense restrained Philip from physical intervention, reminded him he must tread warily with the Doc. It would be an easy option to give the disaffiliated medic a slap, dis him openly as a pathetic, frustrated old queen. But the reclusive misfit’s surgical skills were unsurpassed. He was an especially valuable asset to the Field family firm when the occasional occupational hazard befell a soldier that required expert medical attention unbeknown to the authorities. But it was also his questionable professional connections that were a very important element to the smooth running of Philip’s remunerative little sideline.

‘Just tell me she’s good an’ ready now for a bit of beaver-cleaver, Doc. Just so’s she’s not got any of them damned STDs or any of that nonsense. An’ fuck’s sake hurry up. I’m red hot an’ already pushed for time. Christ’s sake, look – look at me.’

He opened the jacket of his superbly cut suit and patted his groin in an unabashed display of his state of sexual readiness. The tight-fitting trousers could not hide the distended state of his renowned Impaler the reason for his nickname.

‘You don’t need me to spell it out, Doc. I gotta get rid of this stiffy in her, an’ quick – just give me a few minutes in this bitch before you get your knife into her. C’mon, look at her, Doc. Even you have to admit she’s made for it, that beautiful, tight little pussy just ready to get its lips round all of this. Christ – you can see I’ve got me one ronker here fit for breakin’ rocks!’

Minas Elliot stopped pawing the girl and looked at Philip. He avoided a powerful, almost overwhelming urge to beg for a feel of the voluminous bulge his partner had just so proudly flaunted. Instead he sighed, and struggled with the jealous resentment that welled in him because his hormones continually forced him to indulge the tormented, fruitless thoughts that tantalised him so.

Then he made a startling decision. No! Why should he stand by and watch the sex-mad, psychotic stud force such an enormous cockstand into what was really no more than another helpless condemned animal? Surely it was obvious even to the unprincipled, bollock-brained, amoral bastard that an affront of the kind he wanted to dish out was the last thing he wanted to stand and watch, anyway?

‘Philip, my dear boy, will you quit shaking my tree for once? Yes, she is just perfect – and the little bitch is a virgin to boot.’

The Doc turned from Philip, smug in the knowledge his information would further aggravate the porn stud. He smiled a self-satisfied little smile to himself, and then wrapped his hands in a towel and turned back again from the girl and locked eyes with the other man.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go and have a nice, cold shower, my boy. I have just had a wonderful idea, one that will bring in much more money for the harvest we can get from this little treasure chest. But I can’t let you tear her insides about like I know you will with that great, clumsy thing, given half a chance.’

‘Fuck’s sake, what are you on about now, Doc? We both know she’s a goner anyway. She’s not goin’ to be tellin’ anyone.’

Philip was finding it hard to restrain from slaking his inflamed urge. He found it even harder to restrain from wrapping his hands around the Doc’s throat. He pushed the Doc out of the way and bent down between the girl’s legs. His tongue rolled out of his mouth and applied a generous coat of saliva on his palm and fingers. He massaged this over the lips and into the folds of the girl’s downy, hair covered pudendum.

The girl wriggled violently, confused. Sobbing, whimpering and whining, she watched this new assailant struggle to free the twenty-five centimetres of rampant flesh from his trousers. She tried to scream.

‘There you are. Told you, Doc, she’s gaggin’ for it,’ Philip said, now flushed and slightly breathless. ‘I’ll just loosen her up with a little taste of the old Impaler’s magic,’ he said, massaging the inner lips of the girl’s vulva with the end of his penis. He smothered the delicate, virginal tissue inside her genitals with a profusion of the throbbing organ’s pre-ejaculation.

The Doc gave a parrot-like screech, clapped his hands loudly and pulled Philip away from the girl. ‘I know you have had your fun with some of the others, but you’re not into the bloody paedophile thing, yet, are you Philip? This is so not you, my dear boy. She’s no more than a school-kid – and think about DNA, my dear boy! God, I’ll have to thoroughly wash the poor little thing out now. As one engaged in activities of questionable legality, putting it mildly, you must not forget DNA in these days of forensic sophistry. I take it what’s left of her is going in the river, in the same way as the others?’

He stopped, wiped the girl’s vulva quickly and continued his admonition.

‘Though I honestly still don’t know why you have to be so damn indolent and inefficient about getting rid of the human debris. The Lord only knows, your family’s involved in enough of the construction work going on around here now for you to bury our empty carcasses in. If you have to tempt providence in your usually arrogant manner, we most definitely will have to burn or dissolve the tissue remains to remove signs of your seed. Your DNA will be indelible in the tissue damage you’d do to the youngster with that man-size member of yours. That’s apart from ruining any prospect of a tidy bonus from the little brainwave I’ve just had.’

The Doc relented to the demands of his more dominant X chromosomes and allowed his eyes to feast, momentarily but with undisguised admiration, on Philip’s generous share of manhood while the stud struggled, disappointedly, to get the still extraordinarily large piece of hard flesh back inside his trousers. He added, ‘A bit of nibbling by the eels while marinating in a drop of Thames water just doesn’t cover things up anything like sufficiently to fool forensic teams nowadays.’

Philip’s face was reddened slightly. He was never certain as to how to react to approbation, or to personal attention of any kind from the Doc. But he resisted a desire to take control of the argument with his pet surgeon. He let the lecture continue.

‘Nothing those police path-lab dick-heads like to find more than the remains of a bit of sexual gratification as evidence to…’

The Doc put a finger to one side of his head and tapped. ‘You might as well send them a signed, addressed postcard. Besides...’ He paused for effect, being of the opinion the old dramatic pause bit worked wonders when putting a case. ‘She’s our very own goose – one that is going to lay golden eggs for us. I’m going to empty her ovaries, dear boy. I’ve already made arrangements to provide one of our buyers with her eggs – those precious little, money spinning kiddie-winks to-be. This stupid world and his barren, baby crazy wife are going mad to tick that particular box nowadays. Oh, and that doesn’t take into account the demand from stem-cell experimentation laboratories, dear boy. And this little bitch has got to be brim-full of the little darlings. All fresh today, untouched, untainted and raring to be hatched, if you take my meaning!’ He tittered like a mischievous woman.

Philip was surprised, intrigued, his mouth was wide-open. He said nothing.

The girl had listened to the intonation and inflection of every word spoken, watched every hand gesture. Her understanding of the English language was limited, and her command of its vocabulary scant. But her intuition made up for any lack of the words she did not understand, now alert to a mortal threat, alert to a new, sinister use for her young body. She was fully aware the future of her very lifeline had been condemned to an unimaginable fate.

Her prolonged screams pierced the heavy, menacing silence, ricocheted off the tiled walls; her torment reverberated around the vault. She squirmed vigorously in a last, frantic effort to break her bonds. Then she squealed a frantic plea. ‘Tatyana want Dyadya Petruso. You – please, you not do thing for eggs of me, you speak Dyadya Petruso. Dyadya, he tell you – he gone make every thing you want for plenty money, okay!’

She looked meaningfully at the persisting bulge inside Philip’s trouser leg.

‘Fill up belly from big thing – is okay for Tatyana, I happy be good fuck-fuck for you very nice man, I learn come quick.’

Philip had just about had it up to the knot of his silk, day glow multi-coloured tie by this time. The screaming, squealing, pleading was typical female drama-queen shit as far as he was concerned. It aroused no sympathy. ‘Never mind the little bitch comin’ the old Dada Petruso bit – she wishes he was, an’ so do plenty other penniless little sluts like her! For Christ’s sake just shut her up an’ do what you do best, then, Doc, before I get it out again an’ knock her teeth out with what’s left of this stiffy. I’m gonna piss off now an’ see what comes up over in the old bluey factory, if you know what I mean.’ He winked at the Doc and tapped his groin.

The youngest of the Field brothers let the metal bound, soundproof fire door slam shut behind him on his way out.

Doc Elliot shook his head in the manner of someone resigned to the inevitable. A smile crossed his face as he thought of the crass stupidity of Philip Field, of his entire family. He might be son of a leading family of villains in the East End and blessed downstairs with admirable hardware for his trade, so to speak, but oh, he was so sadly lacking for data up top in the software department. To be in cahoots with a bunch of foreign killers whose language they don’t care to understand was sacrilege. Any tourist phrase book would have told Philip that Dyadya meant uncle. The next few days were sure to be very interesting. He stroked across the girl’s smooth, firm belly with one hand, in a soothing fashion, while he carefully cleaned her genitalia. He crossed the room to the surgical bench, pushed his fingers through the long hanks of his tousled, so obviously dyed hair, and carefully filled and primed a hypodermic syringe with an adequate measure of ketamine.

Tatyana turned her face away, arched and heaved, struggled violently. Sobs racked her body uncontrollably as she sucked in great gulps of air.

*

Freddy, a.k.a. Patch Field glanced at Terence, the second oldest of his three sons. Each of them held a generous sized glass of Armagnac. The atmosphere was tense between them. Terence stared vaguely into the amber liquid. Judging by the son’s reticent demeanour, it was an awkward question.

Freddy quickly tired of waiting for answers to his questions.

‘Well, Terry, I’m beginnin’ to get just a tiny little bit pissed with tryin’ to read your mind here. It’d help just a bit if you said some fuckin’ thing.’ The words came quietly, a definite pointer to the growing impatience of the crime lord.

Freddy’s empty hand, knotted and gnarled in evidence of countless bygone days of bare-knuckle fights, toyed with the flesh coloured leather patch, the source of his nickname. It covered the scarred testimony to where his left eye had once glinted.

Glass is for drinkin’ a fuckin’ good brandy out of, is the reply anyone got who asked why he wouldn’t wear a false eye. And another street fable had it he once paid off a recalcitrant henchman with the reference, Freddy Field don’t part with no good brass or bust his arse for fuck-all that don’t work for its keep. Local underworld folk-lore insisted the missing eye was still skewered on the point of the offending knife that ended up fence-stapled to the hand of the thug who wielded it. It was further claimed on the gangland rumour mill that the whole gruesome package was finally taken to make an early morning test of the viscosity of cement poured into the foundations of the Centrepoint building in central London.

Terry slung a nervous look at the study door. He couldn’t stop hoping he would soon hear the soft rap made by delicate knuckles. His mother would come swishing in, breezy as always, with a silver salver piled high with bacon or sausage sandwiches and piping hot, sweet, percolated coffee. No such bleeding luck though – the piece of hand-carved dark oak was stubbornly silent and it refused to budge.

‘Well?’ When uttered on its own, it was always the last word Freddy would say prior to resorting to physical means of enquiry. His patience was near exhausted. He was in no mood to allow Terry’s hesitation any more leeway. With a sigh sounding like it came from the soles of his size eleven handmade shoes, the local mafia don slowly put his brandy glass down. He gripped the arms of the resplendent high-backed chair that was his throne of office. A squeak of submission was forced from the plush leather as he braced his legs to rise.

Terry knew better than to let him get to his feet. The Old Man was a long way from being past underlining a point with painful emphasis. His heavy hands could still dish out a hefty bunch of knuckles, and he did not pull punches when he bothered to lift his fists.

‘I honestly don’t know where the girl is, Dad. You know it is hard to get Billy readin’ off the same page, but he’s certain she was in the head-count in the warehouse when the shipment was decanted. That’s a fact. By his reckonin’ she was young, but a fuckable little salt for all that, still a bit of a kid. I remember thinkin’ he made her sound like she might be the sort who would do well, look double tasty with her pins wrapped round a pole in one of the clubs, maybe even flashin’ her cute little mams across one of our casino tables some day.’

‘She ain’t gonna do so well nowhere right now, ’cos nobody seems to soddin’ well know where she’s got to. An’ I don’t like it when any part of my cargo gets lost. There’s too bleedin’ much of that happenin’ just lately. An’ it definitely is not on when it’s Petruso Knishovo who’s gnashin’ that mouthful of twenty-one carat bleedin’ gnashers of his in me ear!’

‘So what’s one little bit of belly rub to that mafiya fucking woolly-back, anyway? Has he brought her over here as some kind of futures investment – for a decent shag when that onion faced bitch Sveta can’t get her knees up past her ears or what?’

The brandy glass jumped precariously as Freddy brought a clinched fist down hard on the desk separating the two men.

‘Watch your tongue, my lad. You might make me begin to think you got yourself a mind fit to match the cesspit in the head of that pussy-hound brother of yours. Petruso might be a hairy-arsed, Russki mafiya, but he is an ally of this firm, he’s a top face around here now; an’ he has every right to be worried. An’ Sveta – she may be no beauty queen, but she’s his wife. The girl is family – blood family, that is. It’s his wife’s sister’s girl – an’ far as I’m concerned, that’s family with a capital fuckin’ eff!’

He paused to take another sip from his glass. Come to think of it, he thought, where is the shag-happy, randy sod of a son of mine now? He’s not at the studio. Pound to a pinch of shit he’s at it, hairy bleedin’ arse in the air, slappin’ his work shy bollocks into some silver-screen wannabe scrubber somewhere.

Terry waited for his father’s lead. He knew better than to risk an interruption.

‘You an’ Billy better bleedin’ well get it sorted, son, an’ find her double quick. I know your mum might have dropped a stitch or two knittin’ the great lummox, but he is your older brother, an’ we all know he does his best. So let’s have a result, sharpish, cos this I don’t like the feel of, not one fuckin’ little bit. Oh, an’ give your mum and me’s love to Jacqui.’

*

Detective Inspector Francesca Burns threw the file onto her desk.

‘Shit!’

She wrenched her spectacles off and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. Joyously single, ferociously ambitious, and recently promoted, she was not having the desired success on her first case as DI.

‘Shit is dead right, my dear.’

The interjection came from Detective Superintendent Thomas Cowper, who, on hearing the outburst as he passed his DI’s office, could not resist peering round the doorpost.

‘But you know, girl, all the cussing and cursing just don’t cut the mustard with them upstairs, Frankie. We are well and truly in it, my girl, up to our necks.’

The senior police officer patiently endured the obvious amusement shown by most people at hearing his name resembled that of the late, great comedian and he had long since learned to live with it. But the entertainment value to others was infinite, and his resistance to embarrassment was forever being tested. His day could be annoyingly peppered with a witless succession of counterfeit Charlie Drakes, Eric Morecambes and Dick Emerys among colleagues who, on first introduction, could barely disguise their amusement while shaking hands.

He continued, ‘The lab boys can’t tell us much more from that last mess of bones and bits we dragged out of the river.’ He removed his rimless spectacles, breathed hard on the lenses and polished them. ‘By the time the crayfish, eels and what-have-you had their fill, it’s hard to make out anything. Apart from the fact this one’s a male, and, true to form, he was ripped from crotch to gullet near enough, with not a vital organ in sight. Even this one’s eyes are gone.’

‘That’s eleven so far,’ DI Frankie Burns said, after a little shudder. ‘And they all appear to be East Europeans, according to DNA forensics. How the hell we going to keep this from the news media for much longer, boss? It’s obvious we’ve got to try and get a result with this and double quick.’

Frankie stretched her arms above her head and pushed her elbows back to ease the tension in her shoulders and neck, accentuating the fullness of her breasts beneath her blouse. She relaxed again and removed her spectacles to clean the lenses.

The Det Supt could not tear his gaze from her, mesmerised by her breasts as they trembled while she held the lenses to the light and rubbed. She lay naked in front of him, her cute nose buried in the pillow, her firm, peach of a bottom in the air, waiting for him to... He shook his head, turned his gaze away from the spellbinding mounds.

With the spectacles cleaned and perched back on her button nose, she continued. ‘I am certain Freddy Field and his scumbag outfit are in on this somewhere. We know that they’re teamed up with the Ukrainian outfit and running a bloody people trafficking ring together. Now it looks like we’re dealing with some kind of murder on demand racket to supply the organ transfer market. We’ve just got to go for bust now, boss. The Commander will have to get Serious Organised Crime Agency to give me some more feet on the street so I can find out just what’s going down. It would help if I could find out just where and how they’re getting these poor bastards in to begin with. It’s my guess these bodies are just unlucky sods that are being bumped off, gutted and dumped because they must either not be able to come up with enough readies, or haven’t got the skills they claimed. Then again, but less likely, perhaps they just draw the short straw because they’ve had a bit too much to say for themselves once they got here?’

Tommy Cowper fiddled with his unlit pipe. ‘OK girl, we’ll do what we can out there. But you let me worry about handling the news media. You really need to pin down exactly where this load of dead remains we got in our iceboxes is from, originally – maybe then we’ll learn who the poor bastards were and who is bringing them here. We will be able to repatriate the bodies, empty some cool-boxes before all hell breaks loose. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up with a bloody international incident on our hands. I’m too near to my retirement to end up getting smothered in this kind of crap.’

DI Burns was frustrated and annoyed. She neither wanted to nor tried to hide either emotion in the giveaway look she gave her boss. Every copper south of Watford Gap knew her priority as a newly promoted DI was to bring a speedy end to Freddy Field’s criminal stranglehold on London’s East End. Surely it was the only result she could fairly be expected to go for, come what may? So in Christ’s name, where did all this pissballing bullshit about identifying and shipping out the carved-up cadavers come from all of a sudden? And when, just when would he stop calling her girl and my dear? After all, she had arrived, she was now Detective Inspector, no longer the rookie he had guided through her career up to date. One day he would realise, as all her other colleagues did, that she was no longer a girl. Although he was the only male not to have tried it on with her, he certainly did not hide an undisguised fascination for her boobs and never missed an opportunity to gawk at them.

The Det Supt was wily enough to read all the signs. He had second-guessed all but the last of his DI’s concerns accurately.

‘Time’ll come to tie it all up and we can hang the Fields out to dry soon enough, Frankie. But unless you want to call a press briefing and explain just how far we ain’t got finding out who it is feeding the flaming fish in the Thames with these bodies, I suggest we get our fingers out, identify ’em and get rid, and bloody quick. And we’ve got to make sure we do it as diplomatically and humanely as possible, and double sharp . Right now we’re sitting on one mother of an almighty frigging mess!’

Frankie certainly didn’t have any argument with him on that point. The last thing on her things to do today list was to volunteer for a career nosedive. Disaster would be the unavoidable consequence of an attempt to invent false progress on the Thames bodies fiasco. A fabricated report would be smelled out by any in the pack of London investigative reporters in less than the time it took to select a phone number.

‘Leave it with me then, boss.’ Frankie took off the heavy rimmed spectacles and let them hang on the cord round her neck and picked up her desk phone. She pulled a cheeky face and made a brief wave to his back as he left.

Det Supt Cowper squeezed into his swivel chair. After a wistful glance, he turned the framed photo of his wife face down on the desktop and unlocked a side-draw. He rummaged for a mobile phone on which he entered a PIN and carefully selected a speed-dial number. His eyes closed as a woman’s voice answered. He spoke very quietly, used no names. ‘He’s not there, is he? Good! You know I can’t say much right now, it’s just that things have now gone way beyond my ability to control them. We must meet and have a talk, my dear friend, and this afternoon. You know where.’

He rang off and returned the mobile, locking the drawer.

*

‘What do you think – I know every fucking thing that goes on in this God forsaken stupid country, Vanko?’

The man’s voice was calm, measured but rang with an almost metallic resonance. The harsh accent was endemic and unmistakeably significant of his native tongue and eloquent betrayal of his Russo-Slavic origin. Petruso Knishovo glared from beneath heavy eyebrows at the two men stood by the door of his study. The mafiya godfather waved a fist that looked more like a knotted cudgel at them.

This man did not look like your average God fearing, East European immigrant farm worker. A Ukrainian, he had been reared in a family steeped in the corrupt privileges of a Soviet Socialist politburo lifestyle. His manner was entrenched with a class snobbery engendered by the idiosyncrasies of human nature more than any Socialist doctrine. Under no circumstances was he content to allow the pair of his muscle-bound, peasant henchmen to be privy to the ongoing telephone conversation.

They hurried from the room and out of their boss’s earshot. Both men were completely aware and respectfully fearful of the brutal, harmful potential that simmered within his powerful, squat frame. The crime tsar’s phlegmatic façade had lulled many into a sense of false security, to their ultimate cost.

He continued, in his mother tongue. ‘Just calm yourself down, Vanko. And please do not be going crazy and doing things we will all be sorry for. Let me sort it out with Patch Field. He will sort it with whichever son was there to see the cargo being offloaded from the ship. I know for a fact the timber is all off the ship now and at the wood mill, and nothing, nobody from yesterday’s cargo is still on board.’

Petruso put the phone down and stared across the room. His eyes focused beyond the walls, deep in thought. He spread the fingers of his free hand, gripped his jaw. He squeezed the whiskered, square, granite-like part of his face between fingers and thumb and rasped them on the short, grey stubble.

His head reeled. What the fuck goes on with his world all of a sudden? His wife’s