Caramarin knew he couldn't go back to his bed and breakfast. No way would his miserable old landlady let him in. Not this late at night and not in the state he was in. And he didn't think any other hotel or guest house would accept a strange beaten up man this time of night either.
Fuck it, she could only say no. Caramarin could barely see straight as he gave the driver the address of Narcisa's place in Crumpsall. He slumped on the back seat and held his head in his hands. The street was double parked all the way along so the cabbie pulled up down the road and Caramarin fetched out the nylon holdall and cardboard tube.
Even the short walk from the end of the street to Narcisa's took it out of him. He leaned on walls and railings for support. His right eye had completely closed over now. He still felt nauseous and unwell, only the rain helping to clear his head. Even a little girl could take him now in a one-on-one.
Eventually, his head pounding in agony, he climbed up the short flight of stairs to the girls' front door and pressed the bell. As if from a long way away, he could just hear the bell jangling in the hall. Caramarin pressed it again, longer this time.
A light appeared upstairs. A minute later the door opened on its chain. A puffy faced girl, freshly woken, peered through the crack. Her hair stuck up in corkscrews and spirals all over her head.
Caramarin felt close to collapse now. "Narcisa? Narcisa?" he croaked. The young woman turned away from the door and shouted up the stairs. He leaned against the jamb, head down, gasping for breath, absolutely beaten. The young woman shut the door on him, shutting him off from sanctuary inside.
Then the front door opened again and Narcisa stood in the light, clutching a leopard print gown to her throat. She also had a bed head. She recoiled in horror when she saw the state of his face. After his experiences back in Odessa, Caramarin was getting used to that reaction from women.
Narcisa looked at the other girls, spoke in English, asking permission of them, and then took Caramarin by the hand and led him inside to their lounge. The other girls followed, faces wakening up with the excitement. Caramarin heard them speaking rapidly with excitement until Narcisa laid him down on an overstuffed brown couch.
One girl, a pretty young woman in a white towelling robe, whisked away bras and knickers that were drying over the radiators. Caramarin studiously took no notice of her actions. But even in his misery Caramarin noticed she had a heart shaped face framed by short golden-brown hair. Under the scent of perfume and air freshener, he caught a whiff of the heavy smell of marijuana.
Narcisa said something to the other girls in English. Then she knelt by Caramarin.
"What happened?" she asked. Anxiety making her voice shriller than normal.
"I got in a fight," he said. That bit was true anyway. "There was several of them." That bit was also sort of true.
"You should go to the hospital. Call the police," Narcisa said.
"No," said Caramarin. He didn't want the authorities sticking their noses in. "No, I don't want to do that."
Like a lot of Romanians, Narcisa also distrusted the authorities. She understood his position. "I think you should but I understand," she agreed.
"Ewelina, Ewelina," Narcisa called out, her shouts making Caramarin's head ache even more. He groaned and forced down his nausea.
The pretty woman with the heart shaped face stepped into the room, closely followed by two more girls. Spiral head was running a brush through her hair in a vain attempt to make herself more presentable.
Narcisa and Ewelina spoke for a while in English. The other two girls nodding, making occasional comments, looking down on Caramarin slumped on their couch. Caramarin felt lousy. Especially as he couldn't understand a single word. He lay back and felt the room spin around. Ewelina said something and one of the girls hurried to the kitchen before returning with a bowl and leaving it on the floor by his head.
"Ewelina works as a health care assistant at the Manchester Royal Infirmary. But she used to be a full nurse back home in Warsaw. She's got some codeine tablets you can take for the pain." Narcisa handed two small white tablets over with a small glass of water.
"Don't say anything – she's not supposed to take them from the Hospital, okay? She could lose her job." Narcisa said. Caramarin nodded, slowly.
"She'll take a look at you if you want," Narcisa added.
Caramarin nodded again and lay back. Narcisa pushed the other two girls out the room for a little privacy and shut the door on them. She then helped Ewelina take off Caramarin’s jacket, shirt and jeans. The two women winced when they saw his battered body. Then Ewelina ran her hands over him, feeling his bones, flexing his limbs. After that she shone a little torch in his eyes, making him follow her finger with his eyes; had Narcisa ask him questions.
"Ewelina says you'll live. Nothing broken and she doesn't think you're concussed but you need to take it easy for a few days," Narcisa told him at last. That was good to know.
Caramarin thought. "Please can I stay here for the night? There's nowhere I can go," hating the needy sound in his voice.
Narcisa glanced at Ewelina, who nodded assent. The best gesture Caramarin had seen for a long time. "Of course. As long as you're quiet in the morning as Marta's on nights all this week."
"Thanks." Caramarin smiled through the pain.
The girls tiptoed out of the lounge leaving him under a blanket marked with the logo of the Manchester Royal Infirmary. Caramarin doubted that the hospital's laundry department knew it was missing. A few minutes later, Caramarin was asleep.
* * *
The light filtering through the curtains woke him. The house was silent; the clock’s ticking the only sound. Eleven thirty. He stretched, winced with pain as his body recalled last night's beating. Narcisa or Ewelina had left him another couple of Tramadol tablets. He dry swallowed them, and then dragged himself upright. He shuffled upstairs. Gentle snores were coming from one of the bedrooms. Must be Marta, he thought. On nights.
He could tell the bathroom was used by girls. All the shelves were filled with toiletries and the toilet was spotless with no suspicious stains down the pan. It didn't even smell like an open sewer and the water was a deep chemical blue. Lifting the seat, he pissed like a horse.
Suddenly, Caramarin remembered the holdall and tube. Forgetting to lower the seat again, he hurried downstairs, clutching onto the handrail. A glance inside the lounge showed the holdall was untouched. He next slid the canvas from out of its tube and unrolled it. The blue Picasso, the 'Vielle Triste Pute Avec Vase' looked back at him.
Even unfinished, it was beautiful. The photo Ozgan had given him didn't do the oil justice. He stared at it for a minute, captivated by the expression on the world-weary old whore's face. Caramarin had no idea what the Picasso was worth but it must be by far the most valuable object he'd ever held in his hands.
The painting held his eye – looking not at the beauty of it, not at the artistry – but what it represented. A way out of all this. An easy fortune lying there before him. After all, what did he owe this Timur Ozgan? Nothing. Less than nothing in fact. It wasn't like Ozgan was his gang boss or anything. The capo had only sent Caramarin to Britain because he had a reputation amongst the Odessa underworld as being a man who could get the job done. And, like Ozgan said, he was expendable if it had all gone belly-up.
Caramarin cursed to himself as he looked at the oil. On the one hand Timur Ozgan was one of the most feared gang bosses back in Odessa. By reputation a man even worse than Caramarin's old boss, Eugen Maiorescu. Caramarin shuddered as he remembered the butchered body of a woman in a warehouse. That had been Ozgan's handiwork.
About to roll the canvas back up, Caramarin took another look. There was a signature on the bottom. Picasso's signature from 1901. Even Caramarin knew Picasso oils sell for millions of euros. Tens of millions in some cases. Okay, he reasoned to himself, he wouldn't be able to sell it for millions. No way. But even one million, maybe? Or at least several hundred thousand? That should be possible. That would be enough to set himself up for the time being. Buy something remote in an out of the way corner of Romania or Ukraine, somewhere even Ozgan wouldn't find him? That should be possible. He could send for Valeriya and her son, get them out of Odessa to safety and there would be no way Ozgan's mob could track them down.
And then they could all have a good life together. Hell, he wasn't that old – maybe even start a family of his own with his little fire-brand. A smile came to his lips.
He sat on the couch still holding the painting. Timur Ozgan was no man to mess with. You don't rise to the top of Odessa's underworld by playing Mr. Nice-Guy. Ozgan's fury would be terrible and Caramarin would have to make sure Valeriya was safely out of the way. But an opportunity like this only comes along a few times in any one life.
And what had he got to show for his life so far? Not a lot. That was the answer. Not a lot. No big villa overlooking the Black Sea, no luxury condo in an upmarket part of town. No flash car parked by a marina while he relaxed on a motor-yacht, a magnum of champagne cooling in an ice-bucket next to him; no Rolex, no designer clothes, no VIP entry to the nightclubs hanging out with the celebs eager for a bit of 'gangster-chic' in their lives. It had been too many years since he'd had any of that.
But what he was holding could change all that. Transform his – and Valeriya's, he added – lives. Turn them into what they should be, like changing from lead to gold. Once, too many years ago, he'd had that lifestyle. Back when he was running that knock-off booze scam from out of Constanta. Before his life had crashed and burned around him. Caramarin licked his lips. Yeah, they'd been the good times and anything was better than struggling along hand-to-mouth like he'd done for months now.
Caramarin made his decision. He may be looking for trouble, but fuck it, you only live once. The least he could do was get the painting valued. See if the 'Vielle Triste Pute Avec Vase' would bring him enough to change his fortune. Rolling it back into its tube he shoved the painting far back underneath the couch, out of sight. But not out of mind.
Standing up, Caramarin found his washed clothes hanging in the kitchen. They were still damp from the machine but he pulled them on anyway, wincing with pain as he did so. In this climate, damp clothes seemed to be the norm. Caramarin helped himself to toast and drank milk straight from the bottle, then he was ready to roll.
Of course, the girl’s front door was locked and he had no front door key. However, searching the kitchen, he spotted the back door key hanging up on its hook. Letting himself out into the mossy back yard Caramarin then pushed their bin over to the back wall. Quietly, as he didn't want to wake snoring Marta or any neighbours.
Caramarin threw the holdall over, and then scrambled up over the brick wall and dropped into the alley between the two rows of terraced houses. He grunted with pain. His body felt like he'd been trampled by a herd of elephants or rhinos. No, make that both elephants and rhinos at the same time. With a few hippos thrown in for good measure.
Turning out of the alley and onto the street, he set off in as brisk a walk as he could manage. The few passers-by glanced at his face then looked away. No-one in their right mind would want to get involved with someone looking like he did.
Caramarin broke into a slow jog as he saw a bus approach a stop. He recognised the word 'Manchester' on the front so he jumped on board. It must be going in the right direction, he thought. The journey took half an hour. Thirty minutes of jerking, jolting misery. When he reached Manchester city centre, he searched for another Western Union office as he didn't want to use Narcisa's pawn brokers. There were way too many questions he didn't want her asking at this time.
In the Western Union office, he dug about five thousand euros out of the holdall. No way would Timur Ozgan know how much Hasanov had spent before Caramarin had recovered his money. At worst it would be Hasanov's word against his.
Caramarin paid the handling fee and had them wire the money to Valeriya, his sort of girlfriend, back home in Odessa. With a young son, she could do with the money. She’d make far better use of it than Timur Ozgan anyway. Caramarin texted Valeriya the transaction number so she could collect at her end.
Leaving the office, Caramarin bought a change of clothes and a few bottles of Finlandia vodka. As his old gang boss in Odessa, a man called Eugen Maiorescu, used to say Finlandia’s the best vodka in the world. It's made from pure glacier water. For a moment, Caramarin wondered what had happened to Maiorescu since that final shoot-out on the Potemkin Steps. Once the two men had been friends but had finished as bitter enemies, both determined to kill the other. As he thought, Caramarin walked round the city centre getting his bearings before getting tired and catching the bus back to Crumpsall.
Looking around like any tourist, Caramarin felt a moment's dislocation as he walked past an impressive Gothic style building that looked just like the British Houses of Parliament in London. It even had a clock tower like Big Ben. However, it turned out the building was Manchester's Town Hall. Caramarin figured Manchester must've been an important city once to have deserved a building like this but now the city looked run-down and crumbling away in this never ending rain.