Scarlatti's Wheel

By Ben Davies

The Algarve. A time-honoured favourite of the humble British holiday-maker. But scratch the surface and you'll find a world the brochures don't tell you about - an outlaw's playground of death, greed and deception. A place of fragile alliances and unsettled scores. Of blurred lines, where sticking to your principles might just get you killed. This wild frontier will always need a ruler - it has never much mattered who. For here, the sun will always rise no matter how many fall. In the race to the bottom, who will come out on top?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483515717

Book preview

Robert

1

The centre-lines pulsed softly as the black Maserati cleaved through the velvet darkness. The car hugged each silken curve of the deserted highway, devouring all before it as it pushed on inexorably through the night. Its headlights cast the road in an anaemic wash as the chalky, phantom boughs of mountain ash swept overhead. The engine rasped excitedly as the driver moved through the gears, the dashboard dials dancing impishly with each squeeze of the throttle. Exiting yet another tight hairpin bend, the car skittered and snaked playfully as the rear wheels searched urgently for grip.

Inside the cool, calf-leather scented cabin was Rui Benech. As he reached the crest of a mile-long, uphill straight, the lights of Odeceixe slowly began to reveal themselves, flickering faintly on the blood-red horizon. The sight of the town heralded the imminent end to the journey. The last leg of Benech's drive down the Route 120 from Lisbon would be a short sprint down some narrow shuttered streets in the old fishermen's quarters just below San Sebastian Church which overlooked the bay. Benech loved to hear the amplified guttural notes of the powerful V8 as the grand tourer funneled along the narrow medieval streets, her tyres popping gently on the ancient cobbles.

Benech stirred from this daydream when suddenly and without warning, the car twitched and the steering wheel jarred. He wrestled with it in vain to regain control as it shuddered ferociously in his hands. The car meandered, as if incredulous at its awful predicament, like a big game animal felled by a poacher's bullet. The car slewed round, careering through the central barrier. Hitting the high curb caused it to flip violently into the air. With grotesque agility, the car pirouetted, then cartwheeled from end to end a few times, sliding on its roof along the tarmac and clean down a siding. The mangled wreck finally came to a rest at the bottom of a dried-up flood drain. It was over quickly to all but the helpless occupant.

The stricken vehicle rocked gently as its front wheels spun listlessly. In a moment, the roadside fell silent but for the sound of petrol and blood slowly dripping on the soft asphalt. The acrid aromas of burning oil and plastic hung heavy in the air. It was not long before the dead calm which had descended began to give way to the ripple of the dawn chorus and the lazy buzz of a few drowsy crickets.

The gunman got up from the warm grass where he had lain and put away his Dragunov sniper rifle. He padded around feverishly for his mobile phone and made the call. He almost hung up before the connection was made.

…Yes.

Yes.

The caller struggled to clear his throat.

…I've…done it.

The shooter had missed the driver but hitting the off-side front tyre had achieved the same end.

Trevor Cook waited for his next instructions, pacing manically up and down the road embankment.

Good. We're done. said the voice.

Is that…it? queried Cook, sounding a little suspicious.

You don't want anything more from me? followed up Cook, with a fearful curl on his lip.

No.

With this, the voice was gone. Cook removed the phone from his clammy ear and staggered with his torch to his rental car, parked down a nearby farm track. As he joined the main road, he narrowly avoided a collision with an oncoming car, having momentarily forgotten that over here, one drove on the right.

2

It was late morning before Cook returned to his hotel. A service trolley was parked outside his room and the door was open. Inside, a maid was making the bed. The cleaner's presence and the missing beach bag signaled that his wife had gone out. It did not take him long to find her - she was back at her favorite spot on the hotel's private beach. Cook had spotted her straight away - she was wearing the swimsuit he had seen lying on the bed the night before they left. The colour was okay, he had thought at the time, but the cut did seem a little young for her. Those suspicions were now confirmed.

Where the bloody hell have you been? demanded Michelle, removing her sunglasses and hauling herself up. She intended to have a good look at her husband.

Cook had been away the best part of twenty-four hours. He had just returned from a safe-house in Lisbon where he had been instructed to deposit the rifle. When he wiped the prints, Cook had noticed that the identifying cartouche on the receiver had been carefully filed off. He had wondered how many kills could be attributed to this formidable weapon.

Hire car broke down on the way to the petrol station. Slept in it last night and had to wait for it to open again this morning.

Cook was standing with his feet apart, slightly slouching as he spoke.

Well, make yourself useful and get us something to eat - I'm starving, whined Michelle, squinting at Cook in the harsh mid-morning light.

Why don't you get them your bloody self? snapped Cook.

You've been lying there all morning, I shouldn't wonder.

Michelle smarted at her husband's uncharacteristic testiness.

Alright! What's up with you? she asked, attempting to regain the upper hand.

Cook paused, as if he were going to say something, before thinking better of it. He could not be bothered to contrive any more lies; they would doubtless attract further interrogation.

Nothing - oh, bugger this, I'm going inside - it's too hot out here.

With this, Michelle stuck her earphones back in and returned to the lurid pink paperback she had bought at the departure gate. Their fifteen year-old daughter, Claire, lay face down and motionless on her beach towel, as usual, paying no attention.

Cook trudged back over the thick sand, muttering to himself distractedly. He had thought that once it was done, that would be it. Back to his old life. Looking around him, his surroundings began to take on a diabolical sheen. The lapping of the waves on the shore suddenly became deafening white noise. The sight of the sunbathers, swimmers, the kids playing in the sand - everything both alive and inanimate, seemed to stare back at him with cold, detached mockery.

Cook opened the door and entered his hotel room. The cleaner had long since gone. His eyes took some time to adjust to the darkness of the sparsely furnished interior. He kicked off his flip-flops, flung the room keys onto the tile-topped living room coffee table, and, sighing heavily, slumped into one of the small wicker back chairs.

.............

A brace of police cars pincered the accident site just outside Baiona. It was just before dawn when the first of the patrol cars arrived. A tall, generator-run spotlight lit up the twisted metal, casting every inch of the sorry scene in a merciless, halogen glow. The dying driver was cut free from the wreck and taken away to the city infirmary forty kilometres away. The Brasilian had suffered massive head injuries. Efforts to resuscitate him were in vain - he died from an intra-cerebral haematoma, alone in a busy A and E corridor as he waited for theatre.

.............

Cook had spent most of his time during his holiday in Albufeira in a quiet, shady corner of the terrace by the outdoor bar, reading his daily paper. A coachload of people flying in from Luton a couple of days before, however, had marred the final days of his stay. During the day, the kids ran, bombed and splashed about the poolside, the adults paying no attention to their marauding offspring. In the evenings, the boys would commune around a threadbare pool table, bashing broken cues, shouting and swearing, and generally making nuisances of themselves. The girls, meanwhile, sat nonplussed at the other end, haughtily surveying the area to find some poor holidaymaker to remark about. This was a depressingly familiar experience on the cheap holidays which Cook would endure every year with his wife and teenage daughter.

Tonight, however, the usual contempt he felt when sharing the facilities with this crowd had, somehow, melted into an inexplicable, begrudging affection. They were a welcome distraction to what he had borne witness to earlier that day. Cook even, to his wife's mild surprise, sat through the whole of a Friday night theme show in the outdoor entertainment area by the swimming pool.

Trying to forget about the day's events by knocking back a few drinks had proven a bad idea, though. The six pints of free lager he put away in the space of an hour only seemed to darken his mood. Cook now wanted nothing more than to return home.

I'm turning in. See you up there.

There was no response from Michelle and Claire, who were, at that moment, chattering excitedly about by the good-looking cabaret singer on the entertainment stage, belting out yet another golden oldie at the top of his lungs.

Cook was alone in his melancholy. He wanted to forget the whole horrible episode. His predicament seemed completely unreal. Having nobody to share his experience with, he had wondered a couple of times that day whether it had actually ever even happened. But it had, and this day would live with him forever - there was no escape from the horror. Whether it was guilt, shame or simple shock, Cook just could not divine.

But why was he worried? It was over. He had no choice. People depended on him - he was doing it for them. His business, his family. He was completely justified anyway - the bloke was bad news. And these foreign police would never do anything about it - that's what happened to you if you got caught up in peddling drugs. It seemed, however, that no amount of Cook's reasoning with himself could quell the overwhelming feelings of dread and despair.

To his hirer, Cook's first job had proven his mettle. Roy Finch, could not afford a new Brasilian prospector muscling in on his patch, and he needed him out of the way. The Brasilian had been undercutting Finch over the last year, buying from his suppliers above the market rate, but cutting the gear to make it go further. Eugene Dryden, Finch's right-hand man, had watched new dealers move in to the waterfront and even into Finch's clubs. The dealers knew the difference in the quality, yet they were selling to holidaymakers and junkies who were not so picky. Huge sums of money were being lost day after day, week after week, as the cheap, poor quality gear flooded the resorts. Someone was going to have to do something about it.

Rui Benech was a relatively new arrival, having, according to Dryden, entered the country three years ago on a work permit. This once small-time dealer was trying to make it big here as a pusher. The timing of the Brasilian's exploits could not have been worse, coming, as it did, when Finch's clubs were being subjected to regular police raids that were now threatening to become more than just a nuisance. Benech had disturbed the delicate ecosystem of the resort, and had upset a lot of people, many of whom were close friends of Finch. The Brasilian had been everyone's favourite subject of late at Finch's country club, the Benamor, near Tavira. Finch was confident there would be no comebacks to the contract he took out on him.

.............

Some years before, Finch had fallen out with a man by the name of Terry Swift in a property deal. Finch had asked him to come in on a drug importation opportunity. Swift had bought in, trading in one of his housing developments, Boa Vista, for a stake. It was yet to be finished but that did not put Finch off - he knew that the land it stood on, alone, was worth over a million Euros, perhaps even two.

The deal went ahead but Finch cut him out. Revenge had been swift. Swift knew a lot about Finch, and he exploited this knowledge fully to help the police mount a successful Class A drugs prosecution case against him. Finch pleaded not guilty, but the jury, presented with overwhelming evidence against him, took very little time to come to a different view and deliver their verdict.

After seeing out half of his six year sentence, Finch had determined to start a clean slate, and decided that he and Swift were now even and was prepared to let sleeping dogs lie. Swift, however, had other ideas, and two years after his release, had used his right-hand man, José Vicentina, still then a detective, to extort a substantial amount of money from him. Finch, to this day, considered this matter strictly unfinished business.

Finch had reluctantly but correctly concluded that this renewed attention from Terry Swift was down to his making money at a time Swift's property and construction firms were not, owing to the recent near-total collapse of the property market. Swift had used José's ex-police colleagues to raid Finch's clubs in an effort to get them shut down. Somehow, wherefore Finch knew not, Swift had worked out that Finch was on the up because of his new South American suppliers. And he was pretty much right. Swift also knew the clubs were where Finch was making his money from the sales. Finch was encouraged by the success of the Brasilian's hit. Now Terry Swift would have to be put out of action, once and for all, if Finch was not going to be ruined.

Dryden had tipped off their inside-man when Cook had bought a wrap of coke from one of the Brasilian's dealer associates on the resort's main street while his young family were finishing their desserts on the terrace of a nearby restaurant. Minutes later, Cook was splayed up against a wall next to a bar-room toilet by two uniformed police officers. Cook was told he could either pay an on-the-spot fine or be charged.

I haven't got the money here. I could take some out if you let me get my bank card from my hotel room, offered Cook appeasingly.

With this, one of the officers glanced over at Dryden. The officers were, in fact, officially off-duty, but moonlighting for Dryden. They had been supplied by Detective Sergeant Lemos, an ally of Finch. Lemos had been pulling a few strings over the last few months in order to throw the narcotics investigation into Finch's club operations off course.

Dryden instantly knew from Cook's reaction he was a man who would pay if he had the money. Dryden had astutely surmised, correctly as it turned out, that Cook was likely to be someone with money worries, and more likely than not, a family from whom he had to keep a good deal of secrets.

Can I have a word, officers? asked Dryden.

One of the officers went over to Dryden. Both went through