CHAPTER 21. SATURDAY AUGUST 15, 12:00.
Saturday was a great day. He got up late. Showered, read a paper. No coke – Valeriya was correct - she thought it wasn't right to take cocaine when there was a kid around. Well, only one little line. Just to give him a bit of a lift.
The skies blue and a gentle breeze off the Black Sea taking the stickiness off the hot day. Caramarin took Valeriya and little Vladimir over to Arkadia Beach. Caramarin had eventually prised out of her that she'd called her son Vladimir as she was a big fan of the Russian President Putin. She wanted the boy to be as tough and successful as him. This was before she'd met Caramarin.
Valeriya looked great in her white one piece swimsuit, drew lots of covert glances from all the men passing by. He was proud they were looking – as long as they weren't too obvious about it. They played on the golden sandy beach, Caramarin building sand castles and paddling with Vladimir and they had a late lunch in a new Spanish restaurant by the beach front. Not one that Maiorescu was protecting; Caramarin did not want the chef gobbing in his food. Spent some kopecks in the amusement arcades. Eventually, carried an exhausted Vladimir home. Watched some TV with Valeriya and shared a couple of beers with her.
Sometimes, Caramarin could understand the attraction of being a working man with an ordinary job and being able to spend time with your family without having to look over your shoulder all the time. But he knew it wouldn't really do for him. He couldn't face the idea of working in an office all day, or in a hot kitchen or out on a building site. He'd never tried it but no, not for him.
Maybe the fresh air and relaxing day had worn him out more than he thought. His cell was ringing and he couldn't place the ring tone noise at first. He blearily dragged himself up from the couch, knocked the cell off the side table, and pawed the floor with his hand searching for it. It rang and rang. Valeriya stood in her bedroom doorway, clutching her robe to her throat. He found the cell, pressed the green button.
"Caramarin," he announced.
"What the fuck took you so long?" Oh, shit, it was Litovchenko, the man they called Placid, and not in a calm mood. Caramarin started to explain but Placid cut him off.
"Get your shagged out arse over to Maiorescu's villa now. It's urgent so get your cock out of whichever whore you're screwing with and get over here." In the background, Caramarin could hear Maiorescu saying something. He heard Placid put a hand over his mouthpiece, but he still heard him say, "Yeah, told the cunt it was urgent."
Back to Caramarin, Placid said, "It's fuckin' urgent so bloody hurry up." then Placid broke the connection.
Caramarin looked at his cell with distress. This was important. Whatever it was, an industrial sized quantity of manure had just hit the air-con. Placid was no charmer at the best of times but even he sounded more wound-up and angrier than usual. He glanced up at Valeriya.
"I'm sorry. Some thing’s come up. I've got to go out for a bit." She knew better than to ask questions, just watched as he pulled on his camo jacket, jeans and boots. She passed him his keys and pecked him on the cheek.
"Take care, love." She went back to her room, not wanting him to see her eyes watering.
Caramarin hurried to his Opel Combo, fired it up and drove as quickly as he dared risk it up to Yuzhne. His mind turned over the possibilities. What could have gone wrong? Because they weren't inviting him over for the pleasure of his company. He was sure it wasn't him. Despite working for people like Maiorescu and Litovchenko, he'd always played it fairly straight.
Never skimmed off the money, always done as he was told, hadn't snitched to the Militsia, kept his coke habit under control. Sort of. No, he couldn't think that he'd done anything wrong. So he was in a calmer frame of mind as he swung up the drive of Maiorescu's villa. The electric gates swung open as he drove up.
His headlights picked out Litovchenko standing by the door of the triple-wide garage. He was waving him over. Pulled up, killed the lights.
"What's up?"
"You'll see. Come in." Litovchenko swung up the garage door and into the interior, lit by the hard, unforgiving light of several fluorescent tubes. Pulled the door down behind him, shutting in Caramarin to whatever awaited him. No escape. At first, all he saw was a couple of high-end cars. Maiorescu's favoured Mercedes, A BMW X5 4x4 SUV that Maiorerscu had treated himself to recently. Couldn't see Natalya's new blue BMW M5 saloon she so loved.
Maiorescu himself got out of the back of the BMW X5 SUV. He looked rumpled and exhausted. As he came up, Caramarin could see the guy's red eyes and a sprinkle of Bolivian best around his nostrils.
"What's up?" Caramarin said again.
"Good of you to come."
"Like the cunt had much choice," Placid put in.
Caramarin realised that Placid was dangerously close to the edge. Didn't retaliate. Let's find out what had caused this situation to come about.
Litovchenko took him to the far end of the garage. Maiorescu followed, sniffing and wiping his nose. Under an old tarpaulin was a hump. A human sized hump. Placid prodded it with his toe.
"There you are, cunt. You found her, now you deal with it."
Not wanting to, but drawn down as if by an irresistible force, Caramarin knelt and drew back the tarpaulin. Under it was a body – the body of the Kurdish girl. She was naked and he could see she had been savagely beaten, maybe even tortured. Her oval face was blackened, her tongue out, her eyes bulging in her last horror. He could see hand marks on her throat and under her chin. Looking down he could see her small breasts had been badly bitten. Bite marks on her arms, too. Blood stained her torso but he could see where she had been whipped and gouged. Cruel lacerations lay under the red mask of blood. Blood covered her thighs and genitals. He thought he could see cigarette burns down there, too.
"Oh, sweet Jesus." he murmured.
He knelt there, next to her poor mutilated body trying to compose himself. He'd seen as bad before but not for a long time. He'd been in Bosnia during the war and the Serbs; yes and his Bosnian friends too, had not shirked at atrocities. Yeah, he'd done some bad shit there himself. But this felt different, somehow.
Maybe he was older now; maybe because he was with Valeriya but he felt like he'd betrayed the girl. He'd handed the poor girl over to Litovchenko and Maiorescu knowing what both men were like. And then she'd just slipped from his mind. Living the life of the underworld. He'd just forgotten about her. Simple as that.
But he hadn't thought that they were capable of this, though. If anything, he supposed he thought that they might have moved her onto one of Maiorescu's mates who controlled street begging and the gangs of shop lifters or pick pockets who roamed the streets. But he'd not given her a second thought. Glad that Litovchenko had taken her off his hands.
But he had no idea that this was going to happen. None at all. Carefully, he covered her from their eyes. He stood, his knees popping and pulled himself together. Took deep breaths. Trying to round up his thoughts.
He faced the two men. He couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't result in a fight. One he would probably lose.
Maiorescu wiped his nose on his sleeve. Lit up another smoke and blew smoke to the ceiling. "Got a bit out of hand. She wouldn't do as she was told. Tried to get away."
Litovchenko looked at Caramarin, daring him to challenge this.
"Okay, let's sort it." said Maiorescu, his leadership taking over.
"Just one thing," said Caramarin. "Who else knows?"
"No-one. No-one knows she's here. The only people who're gonna miss her are her goat-shagging family in Kurdyland."
"Well, what I mean is, where's Natalya. Where's your house keeper?"
"Visiting her mother and I gave Olga, the house keeper, the evening off. She won't be back until early afternoon tomorrow, after church."
"Look, let's just fuckin' get on with it," said Litovchenko. "Make with the blow to give us a boost and then we'll sort it."
They all had a few lines. This time Caramarin thought he didn't want it but felt he had no choice. And it might give him the energy to get through this nightmare. Yet when the crystal, velvet sparkle lit up his nose and into his brain, he felt more powerful. More in control. Better. He sniffed deeply, rubbed his nose and grabbed the chemical energy to do what he needed to.
"My boat's not far from here," said Maiorerscu. "As I said to Litovchenko before you come, we'll take it out to sea and I'll see you all right, capisce?"
Not wanting either of the others to touch the body, he picked up the tarpaulin and carried the girl out to his Opel Combo and gently laid the body inside. The others got in the Mercedes and he followed the Merc down to a small jetty. Moored to it was the motor yacht's dinghy.
He laid the body in the bottom and Maiorescu steered to his motor yacht further out. In the silence, the dinghy's two-stroke diesel sounded loud. He thought it must have woken up everyone for kilometres all around Yuzhne. But apart from a barking dog, nothing stirred.
Maiorescu's motor yacht was in deeper water a few hundred metres out. The gang boss tied up the dinghy to the motor yacht's buoy. It was a struggle to get the body's dead weight up onto the deck but Caramarin managed. He didn't want either of the other two to touch her. But he felt the Bolivian best gave him the extra energy he needed. It was little enough he could do for her now.
Maiorescu went up onto the flying bridge, the well-tuned powerful engines turned over then the motor yacht surged forward. He set a course south-south-east for much deeper water.
"Turn the lights on," called up Caramarin. "Let's look like we're going night fishing or something, okay?" The steering lights came on. Also, his boss connected his MP3 player and cheesy Eighties pop blared over the water. Totally wrong.
One of the poor girl's legs had slipped from out of the tarpaulin. He covered it up. Went down to the galley but saw Litovchenko there helping himself to the vodka. At the moment, there were two men's company he couldn't take. Placid was most definitely one of them. Helped himself to some water from the fridge and went back up to the sun deck.
As they passed Odessa in the star light the glare from the port and city gradually fell behind. He saw the line of the now dark Stairs leading up to the city. Took longer than he expected for the brilliant tower of the Hotel Odessa on the marine terminal to fade away.
Then all that was left was the creamy white wake slicing through the dark waters of the Black Sea in a dead straight line. Maiorescu took the yacht up to about twenty kilometres an hour. The powerful engines sped the boat through the night. Caramarin found a deck chair and closed his eyes.
Suddenly, the motor yacht was flooded with harsh, white light drowning out the stars and the few lights from the shore. A powerful searchlight nailed them in its glare. Caramarin's hand went to shade his eyes. A voice, distorted by the loudspeaker commanded the boat to pull over. Behind him, he heard Litovchenko run up the stairs from the galley.
Glancing at him, Caramarin was horrified that Litovchenko was carrying an AK-74 assault rifle; one with a folding stock similar to what he had been trained on back when he was a Para in Romania.
"Oh sweet Jesus," Caramarin murmured to himself. The situation was rapidly becoming a disaster. Placid plus stress, plus coke, plus vodka, plus Kalash was not good.
The extreme opposite of good. Very bad in fact.