CHAPTER 52
Ritchie had decided that casual indifference was the best image to present to the new arrivals. He leaned back on the sofa, legs crossed with one Converse trainer vibrating like a safety valve for his nerves as he listened to the voices outside – Olga’s, a Russian man, an English voice and a barking dog.
Should he stand up? No. He should sit there and appear to be enjoying the vodka. He poured some into the gap between the sofa’s cushions, sat on it to cover the wetness and listened. They were arguing. He heard Olga say “Shuh shuh.” The dog barked and Olga said, “Za mo chee,” which Ritchie knew meant shut up. He’d heard her say it a lot in Bangkok.
Then came the English voice. “Bloody hell. Why now? Why here? For fuck’s sake.”
“Shuh, shuh. Za mo chee.”
The door opened but Ritchie stayed where he was, vodka glass in hand, smiling. Olga was first, then a stout grey-haired, man in a grey suit and glasses and holding a walking stick. Maxim Novak was older than Ritchie had imagined and was hobbling slightly. Behind him was a man who Ritchie immediately knew was Peter Lester – another one straight off a plane from Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur. He looked hot, sweaty, dishevelled and shell-shocked. He blinked and his eyes seemed unable to focus. Ritchie gave him the benefit of the doubt. It might have been jet lag. Behind all of them was a hairy, white dog dragging a loose lead – Maximillian.
Olga went to the dog. “Poshel von", she said. "Piss off. Get out,” and the dog turned, barked once and went out. Olga closed the door and took charge.
“Ah Micky, this is goh spo dzin Novak. Mister Novak. And this is Mister Peter Lester.”
Ritchie stood up and went towards them grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Pleased to meet you sir, I heard so much.”
He grabbed Novak’s podgy hand, tried to shake it but it didn’t move more than an inch. Then he checked the eyes, wasn’t sure if he was being looked at, and moved to Lester. “Hi, I’m Micky. Micky Parker. Nice place, mate. Yours?”
Lester grunted and tried looking at him but failed. Both men, it seemed, needed an optician.
“Sit, sit,” Olga said. “More vodka Micky? You like huh?”
Novak joined Ritchie on the far end of the sofa. Lester almost fell into the arm chair opposite looking as if the whole world was on his back. Ritchie’s vodka was toped up. Novak got his in a fresh glass. Lester declined. “C - coffee?”
“How I know? It’s your house.” Olga said.
Lester wiped his sweating forehead with his hand and then waved it in the air. “Never mind.”
Olga stayed standing looking at all three of them in turn.
“So,” Novak said from the far end of the sofa. He dropped his walking stick on the floor at his feet, removed his glasses and wiped them with a white handkerchief he produced from his trouser pocket. Ritchie checked his eyes again – one of them was half open and whitish looking, the other was looking directly at him. “So, you wanna join ze team, huh?”
Olga jumped in. “He had good meetings with Dimi, Yuri and Ho. Good contacts. We all agree but you here so must meet for good relations.”
“Dah, dah. Vee speak on phone in Bangkok, huh?” he peered at Ritchie with his one eye.
“Yeh. At the Peacock but I didn’t see you.”
“Ha-ha.” Novak laughed heartily with his nose half inside his glass as if the comment had amused him. He then swallowed most of the vodka with one mouthful. “From Zagreb,” he added. “What you say? HQ?”
“Ah,” Ritchie said. “Enzo, huh?”
The comment had just come to him but was it a mistake to mention Enzo? Ritchie wasn’t sure but he knew he had to be very, very careful. Wait to be asked questions and only offer safe information had been Mark’s advice.
He found himself staring at Novak over the top of his vodka glass as if savouring the vapours. The Russian was wearing a green tie and the knot was coming undone. This was the man on Colin’s CCTV footage earlier but not the one in photos taken by Mark, Jeffrey or Sannan. He looked older, too. as if he’d been around a while like the grandfather Ritchie had watched in an old video with Marlon Brando – probably clever and political, too, otherwise he wouldn’t have survived. Looking at his eye and his limp, though, he might well have been in a few scrapes.
Olga flopped into the other arm chair, pulled her skirt down and looked at Ritchie to make sure he’d noticed.
“So, you know zat man Enzo eh?” Novak asked and Ritchie saw him glance at Lester with his good eye. Lester was lying back with his eyes closed as if he had the worst of hangovers.
“Nah, nah, we’ve never met,” Ritchie answered honestly. “Just heard I’d be doing business with him.”
Novak transferred his good eye to Ritchie, quite obviously checking him out, thinking, judging. Olga was smiling.
“Yah, maybe,” Novak said after too long a pause. “You made big money, young man?”
“Some.”
“Do what?”
“This ‘n that.”
“How?”
“Dodgin’ and divin’. Running around. Got some good friends.”
“Who?”
“Anyone that’ll buy or sell on.”
Novak gave a faint nod. “Where?”
“London, Manchester.”
“Why?”
It was a strange question. Did the man have a philosophical side? Did there have to be a reason to make money? It was time to show some respect.
“Gotta live, sir. Gotta make a life. I don’t want to live and die a loser.”
There was another short delay. Novak held out his empty vodka glass. Olga stood, topped it up and returned to her chair. Lester still had his eyes closed and was giving out intermittent deep moans as if in pain.
“Got any parents?”
That was a shock.
Ritchie hadn’t expected that. Had he been checked out? It wouldn’t have surprised him but surely Olga would have known already and she still seemed to trust hm. Too much in fact. Olga had never asked many personal things and had believed his joke about being the son of a single mother from Tottenham who’d brought him up on state benefits. Fact was it had been a proper family: mum a teacher, him at school with nightly homework and his father something senior in the police who now did something even more senior and so secret he didn’t want to talk about it. Christ.
“Just my mum,” Ritchie replied.
“She black like you?”
“Nearly,” Ritchie said honestly. “My dad was black.”
“She work? Somewhere?”
“Tesco checkout,” Ritchie said because it was the first thing that came into his head. He hadn’t prepared for this.
“Where?”
Jesus Christ. What was this? “Tottenham,” Ritchie said because he’d seen a Tesco branch there.
Novak paused and looked right through Ritchie as if he’d just switched on an invisible polygraph machine, a lie detector, wired directly to Ritchie’s brain. Then he snapped his fingers at Olga. Olga didn’t smile this time but got up, went outside and shut the door.
Had Ritchie passed or failed? Perhaps he’d passed because Novak changed the subject and presumably didn’t want Olga to listen in. “You know this man?” he said pointing his vodka glass and one finger towards Peter Lester.
Lester opened his eyes but seemed unable to focus. His head wobbled as if it was attached to his body by a rubber band instead of a proper neck with bones.
“No,” Ritchie said which was not true either.
They’d never met but Ritchie knew almost as much about Lester as Mark Dobson and Colin Asher did. He’d also listened to the tape recording of Lester talking to Enzo in a hotel room in Johor Bahru. Lester was worried. Lester was panicking. Lester was in the middle of a messy divorce. Lester felt he was being squeezed out along with Enzo by the man he was being forced to sit and listen to in his own house in Wallingford. Lester was stressed out, depressed and, according to Colin Asher who’d looked inside the computer that was sat somewhere in this very house, Lester was taking tranquilisers and other things in unhealthy amounts.
Lester suddenly leaned forward, poured himself a full glass of vodka with a shaky hand and downed it quicker even than an alcoholic Russian.
Novak watched him, casually, unconcerned. “This man,” he said pointing his glass at Lester again, “Has been our main UK importer, but we are changing our arrangements. That means there are - what shall, I say? – vacancies and career opportunities for others.”
He was not looking at Ritchie but at Lester. Lester was being told, to his face and in front of a complete stranger, that he was being pushed out. Ritchie was watching the play-out of what he’d heard on that recording in Johor where Enzo had only made Lester’s worries worse by confirming that trust was breaking down and that Enzo himself was worried.
Novak mumbled on, “There comes a time when a big business must close factories, change agents and find new people to manage its operations. Sometimes…” he paused staring with his one good eye at Lester, “Sometimes, we lose trust in old friends.”
Lester tried looking at Novak but seemed to give up and, instead, closed his eyes completely. Then, with his eyes still only half open, he leaned unsteadily over to top up his drink, his hand visibly trembling and his empty glass rattling against the half empty vodka bottle.
Ritchie watched. In politer circles he would, perhaps, have crept from the room, excusing himself with a sudden desire to visit the toilet to avoid witnessing a growing private argument. But this, it seemed, was deliberate. Ritchie was expected to watch. He was being taught a lesson. If he was to join the party then there were conditions, standards and codes of conduct to be adhered to that even Eddie would have been proud of.
And then, as if by coincidence, Novak pointed at Lester and said, “Who the fuck is Professor Higgins?”
Lester jumped and looked at Novak with wide, intoxicated eyes. He was unshaven, greasy-looking and was wearing a crumpled open-necked shirt beneath a shabby, creased suit jacket. Novak’s voice grew louder although he hadn’t moved a muscle. “I said who the fuck is Professor Edward Higgins?”
Lester opened his mouth. “Tech…tech…technical adviser at V…Vital,” he murmured, sucking back a dribble of something that ran from his mouth.
“So why did he visit PJ Beauty Supplies with a woman that looked like the boss of Vital Cosmetics, the company you are supposed to be running?”
Lester stared back and shrugged with a look on his face that suggested he no longer cared. To Ritchie the shrug made him look pathetic and Novak clearly agreed because he shook his head and turned to Ritchie for the first time in several minutes. “You see?” he said. “You see why a big company must clear out its poor management from time to time?”
Ritchie nodded his head because to do anything else seemed very unwise.
Novak turned back to Lester. “And Ho’s been arrested,” he said.
Lester looked up as if he didn’t know but he took another mouthful of neat vodka.
“And the police found things in the warehouse that should not have been there,” Novak paused. “And an Italian who was supposed to be dead visited the Malacca factory. Why do you and Enzo not follow instructions to deal with problems? Tell me. How do people I told you to deal with come back to life and cause more problems?”
Ritchie felt a shudder. Had Pascale been a target after his father? Was Isobel a target? Was Eddie? He sniffed nervously but found himself smiling when Novak looked at him. “You see how it is?” the Russian said with his good eye looking at Ritchie and the dead one aimed at Lester. “This man is finished. He is – how you say - dead wood.”
Lester took another slobbering mouthful of vodka, looked up and squinted as if unsure who Novak was talking to. Then a phone sounded, a ring tone not too dissimilar from the one on Ritchie’s phone: synthesised drumming and a loud, tortured screech. Lester fumbled in his jacket pocket and came out with a phone that he only just managed to put against his ear.
“Yeth,” he mumbled, then staggered up holding the back of his chair for support with the same hand that held the glass of vodka. Not unexpectedly, the vodka drained into the seat as Novak and Ritchie watched.
“What?” Lester said as vodka continued to drip onto the chair. Then the glass itself fell. “When?”
Lester circled the chair cautiously as if it was the only one left in a game of musical chairs and then toppled back into it after one full circle. The glass fell onto the wooden floor and rolled in a semi-circle between Lester’s feet. “Christ!” he muttered. “I can…not,” He mumbled. “I’m too busy and…”
In different circumstances the scene might have made good comedy but Ritchie couldn’t laugh.
Whatever it was he was trying to say he didn’t finish because the phone fell into the chair. Ritchie saw it disappear behind the cushion but Lester didn’t bother to chase it. He lay back looking at the ceiling with glazed eyes. Ritchie almost felt sorry for him but Novak obviously didn’t. He edged forward on the sofa, grabbed his stick, hooked Lester’s outstretched leg with the crook of the handle and pulled. Lester slid clumsily to the floor like a dead sheep. He rolled and tried to stand up but only managed to get as far as standing on his hands and knees.
“Another problem?” Novak asked.
Lester was now on one knee but he turned to face Novak. Whether it was a nod or a shake was anyone’s guess. “Custom,” he said. “Egg-size. Search warrant.”
“Where?” Novak asked.
Ritchie was still working on the meaning of egg-size until light then dawned. Customs and excise. Something was happening that was adding to Lester’s problems.
Lester pointed a finger roughly towards the door and Novak jumped perhaps thinking they were outside the house.
“Here? Wally ford?” Novak said
Lester nodded. “I go.” He staggered to the door but Olga opened it before he got there. Had she been listening outside?
There was a shout from Novak. “Wait,” he said. “What is this? Police?”
Ritchie’s mind was racing. This felt like one hell of a coincidence. Today of all days for a Customs & Excise raid? He decided to join in and downplay it. “Maybe it’s just a VAT inspection,” he said knowing full well that, if Lester’s brain was functioning properly, he’d have rejected the suggestion as highly improbable. “Nothing to worry about,” Ritchie continued. “I had a VAT inspection once. My warehouse in Catford. They just turned up, No warning. Half an hour and they went away.”
Novak seemed to relax. “You know about zis thing?”
“Sure,” Ritchie said trying to sound confident. “Stay cool.”
Lester had been leaning on the door with Olga standing behind him. He shook his head as if he knew this was no coincidence. He pushed clumsily past Olga and staggered through the hallway. Olga came inside, closed the door and sat down.
“Is he driving?” Ritchie asked trying to make light of it. “Will he find his way?”
Novak shrugged and waved his hand as if no longer interested. “Fuck him,” he growled. “He’s finished. Let’s talk business.”
Olga settled herself in the sofa and smiled across at Ritchie.