Chapter Thirty Eight
I watched her go. Again. Watched her walk away from me. And this time I could have stopped it, could have said something to make her come back. But I didn’t. I just let her go. Gradually her frame disappeared from my view, the navy suit that pulled across her arse, the navy jacket that pinched in at her waist. Everything I’d missed so desperately, yet denied myself of the next chance I got.
I didn’t know why. Why I just couldn’t say what she needed to hear. Maybe it was the fear she’d leave again, that I couldn’t feel like this again. That it was easier not to let her back into my life, because she could walk out again at any time. Fuck. I’d wanted her back, my brain and my cock thinking of no one else but her, for all those weeks. But right then, I just couldn’t tell her. The words clammed up. Fuck.
The truck rumbled noisily, pedestrians staring at me, unable to see me through the tinted glass, but I could see them. Watching, most looking at the noisy truck with contempt, with sneers. I might as well be out there in the street in my leathers and my cut. And maybe that’s why I couldn’t bring myself to stop her from walking away from me. Knowing we weren’t the same breed. Nudging the recovery truck into gear, I rumbled away from the curb, winding through the myriad of one-way streets till I was moving southeast through the city, back to the abandoned industrial estate and the three fuckers who were waiting for me.
They were kneeling when I got back. Their wrists bound behind their backs with the same blue rope they’d tied Heidi with.
“You rang Dave?” I asked the men who stood around them.
“Aye. Depending how much of a clean-up we need, he’s got a couple of fresh graves in Leverett’s graveyard,” Magnet answered, his voice muffled behind the helmet.
“Good. Leverett ain’t gonna say no. Not after we got him off those fraud charges. He’s in our debt for the rest of his life now.”
“Can we get on with this, then?” one twin whinged. “Feel like I’m fucking suffocating in this thing.”
“Quit whinging like a bitch,” I warned, stepping forward and inspecting the men on their knees. “Who are you?” I asked, watching them all stare up at me, expressionless, accepting, but not scared, not obviously.
Professionals. Possibly. Although professionals would have done a better job, and I thanked all the fucked-up Gods out there that this lot were shit. Otherwise, Heidi would have been long dead.
“Fine. Who employed you?” Nothing. Still silence. “Look, fellas. I want to know who hired you. Tell me that I’ll cut you loose and you’re free to go. Don’t tell me and I’ll make you eat your own eyes.”
One of them faltered, just a little. A tiny flicker of fear across his face. But then it was gone, and he breathed.
“Fuck it. Demon. Give them a demonstration.”
Demon nodded, stepping forward and slamming his fist into the man kneeling before us on the right-hand side. He yelled, his nose exploding, falling backwards onto his back. Demon pulled him to his feet, giving him just enough time to sway left and right before another fist slammed into his face, and then again, and again, the man squealing like a pig at a slaughterhouse. And then when the man crumpled to the floor, the wailing stopped, his body not quite limp. Demon jumped on top of him. The men in the helmets didn’t falter, only the twins shifting slightly, their first real taste of Demon the monster. At our feet, the man convulsed, a hideous scream ripping from his body, and then a gurgling noise. And then quiet.
I glanced down at the mess, the man’s face barely recognisable. A hole where his eye had once been.
“Now,” I started again, my voice a growl in the warehouse’s silence. “Who hired you?”
The man kneeling on the left hiccupped and gasped. The one in the middle stared at me with disgust and fear. As it should be.
“My boss,” lefty choked out on shaky words.
“And who is that?”
“Mike Mason.”
“Uh, huh? And who the fuck is that?”
“The Masons? You haven’t heard of the Masons?”
“Nee fucking idea who they are.”
“Group east end gangsters. This is our patch.”
“The fuck it’s not.” Demon stepped forward, his forearms tense and the men on the floor at our feet stuttered, shuffling backwards on their knees.
I held my hand out, not letting him get closer. He’d done his job. The fuckers in front of us were petrified.
“What has that got to do with Heidi Fischer?”
“Her brother. The drugs.”
“Gordon?”
The man on the floor shook his head.
“No. Mark.”
“The younger one.”
“Aye.” The man glanced around the warehouse. “He’s been helping us move drugs about using the coffins. No one’s going to stop and search for drugs amongst the dead bodies. Only there’s not really any dead bodies. Just one or two. Just in case the cops do take a look. The coffins underneath are empty.”
“Apart from the drugs.”
He nodded. I glanced at the men in helmets and Demon, whose face was splashed with blood.
“Go back to Mike Mason and tell him his beef with Heidi is over. We’ll sort Mark out. You even sniff around Heidi again. It’ll be your bowels I shove down your throat, not just your eyes.”
“Why?” he whispered.
“Why what?”
“Why let us off like that? Why not tell the police?”
“Because now you owe us.”
“And who are you?”
“We’re the Northern Kings.”
I didn’t think the man’s face could go any paler, but I was wrong.
*****
The Walker funeral home was locked up for the night, but I sat in the truck in my carpark, anyway. I knew what I was looking for, what I was waiting for, the cameras still linking to my phone. I should have deleted the feeds, left the funeral home to it. But for days I’d watched them, wondering if she ever came back. And as the weeks passed, and she didn’t return, I stopped watching.
The little brunette, Poppy, arrived first. The car used to pull around the back, some effort to conceal their meet-ups. Now, she was as brazen as brass, pulling up in the parking lot right at the front.
“Poppy Mason,” Demon’s voice rumbled low beside me. “You’ve fucked that one, aye?”
I nodded. “We needed more freezer space than Dave would have been comfortable with. She had keys. Didn’t have any clue she was connected to some wannabe east end gangsters, like.”
“Was she worth it?”
“Wasn’t memorable. Didn’t go back for seconds.”
“How we doing this, Fury?”
“I’m not up for hurting the girl.”
“We’ll not hurt either of them. Just frighten them. No bat shit crazy stunts, Demon.”
“You wanted a demonstration back in the warehouse. A demonstration they got.”
“Aye. I didn’t really mean for you to gouge his eye out and stuff it down his throat. A quick kill would have done.”
Demon shrugged, the splashes of blood still on his white t-shirt. “Got the job done quick, Fury. Bout time some of the other fuckers in this club earned their Dirty Deeds honours.”
“They will soon enough. The Hand will make sure of that.”
Another car pulled up now. A black Mercedes, as polished as our bikes and worth probably four times as much.
“Here comes the fucker now.” I watched the man push through the doors that Poppy had left open for him just a few moments earlier. “Let’s get on with this.”
The truck doors clunked heavily in the night, and we stalked forward, our feet crunching on the scattered stones of the carpark. Mark had parked his car under the streetlight, keeping the expensive mass of metal and leather visible.
Demon whistled. “Fucking nice piece of kit this. Wonder whether daddy’s inheritance pays for this or Mark’s drugs business?”
“Fuck knows.”
We pushed inside the main doors, the glass and metal yielding easily, left insecure.
“Your cameras tell you where that fucker is?” Demon asked, not bothering to whisper.
We weren’t worried about announcing our presence. There was little this fucker could or would do. But I scrolled the app on my phone, grinning when I found them.
“They’re just round this corner here,” I answered, striding forwards, Demon following.
The corner arrived, and I reached out for the light switch that I knew would be just on the wall as we rounded it. The old yellow light flickered, catching the couple in golden strobe, slowing their hurried movements as the girl pushed up off her knees and Mark fumbled, tucking himself back in his pants. I grinned.
“Don’t stop just for us.” The light stopped flickering, the dying tube above my head shuddering one more time before it complied and lit the entire corridor.
“Who the fuck are you?” Mark grumbled, adjusting himself.
“Oh, you know who I am. And she knows who I am, too.” The young brunette shuffled, subconsciously wiping the corners of her mouth. “You know I’m the Vice President of the Northern Kings. And she knows that too. Don’t you sweetheart? Does she still scream like a fucking banshee when you make her come?”
Mark glared at me.
“No?” I kept going. “Looks like she’s been faking it then, mate. Got her eyes on that nice shiny Merc out there, hasn’t she? She’s always liked black, shiny machines. Is that drugs money paying for that nice car or was it daddy’s?” I crossed my arms over my chest.
Mark’s eyes moved over me. Fear and anger. He didn’t look like her, even half related, there was little resemblance. Gordon and Tommy looked nothing like her, either. His head turned to Demon, to the blood spatter all over his t-shirt and the swelling starting across his knuckles where he’d hurt his fists on a man’s face. Mark’s eyes widened, the Adam’s apple of his throat bobbing, then bobbing again as he tried to swallow the bile of panic.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice barely audible now.
“Your operation here,” I spun my finger in a circle in the air. “It stops now.”
“I…I…”
“He can’t stop, Fury,” the little brunette interrupted. “He’s in too deep now.”
“Didn’t look that way to me just a moment ago.”
“The Masons won’t allow it to stop.”
I stepped closer, towering over the pair of them. Mark wasn’t short, but I made him look like a dwarf. The pair of them looked up into my eyes, not quite breathing.
“The Masons belong to us now, pet,” I said to the girl. “You run along and ask your daddy that. Which one is he, cos it ain’t Mike, is it? Even he would have come after me for fucking his daughter.” She bit her lip, tears filling her eyes now. “No. I didn’t think so. It’s Mark we wanna talk to, pet. So, off you fuck. I’m pretty sure Ms Fischer will hand you your notice tomorrow, so don’t bother coming back.”
She chewed on her lip, suddenly looking vulnerable. Then she pushed past us, the tempo of her footsteps growing till they stopped altogether. Somewhere out in the night, tyres screeched. And now we were alone, with the man who had threatened to kill my woman.
“Look…I…” He gasped, retreating a step, his hands coming up to cover his face. “Please, just wait a moment…” The bones in my knuckles cracked, and he staggered backwards.
“Now we’ve got that out of the way. This is what’s going to happen.” The man swayed, looking like he was going to pass out. The second punch had landed harder than I had meant it to. “You’re going to step away from this drugs game, and you’re going to tell your contact in the Masons they work for us now.”
“I can’t. They’ll come after me…”
“Like they went after Heidi?”
He swallowed, his face growing paler by the second.
“They will write off your debt. I’ll make sure of that. And then you can get yourself a regular job. Do some graft for a change. If I see you anywhere near Heidi, you won’t live to see another day.”