Killing for the Company

As he turned away from the bar, Chet could see he was unsteady on his feet. His face looked like it had been carved out of rock, with an immense flat nose — well reddened from booze — hooded eyes and deep frown lines on his forehead. He scowled at nobody in particular and walked uncertainly towards the street door. Chet pressed the button on the transmitter in his pocket. ‘Eyes on Target 1,’ he murmured. ‘He’s leaving now.’

‘Roger that,’ came Sean’s voice in his ear.

Chet and Luke waited until their man was outside before scraping back their chairs and moving towards the exit. Chet could sense the tout watching them over his shoulder, but he gave no sign of recognition. That was for the kid’s safety.

They stepped out into the cold night air. It had been dark for no more than half an hour, but already it must have been two below. Chet gave himself a moment to take everything in. The street was lined with Communist-era concrete buildings — ‘Makes Peckham look like Belgrave fucking Square,’ Luke had noted when they first arrived — and while the falling snow softened everything a little, Priskovo was still as bleak as the bar they’d just walked out of. The road itself wasn’t busy. A half-empty blue and white bus trundled past, then a couple of vans with tarpaulin over the back. A few locals hurried past on the pavement, huddled against the snow and concentrating on nothing other than getting home. Certainly they paid no attention to Chet or Luke.

Ivanovic’s man had turned left out of the bar. He’d gone about twenty metres and was weaving his drunken way towards a white Ford Transit with a dent in the back. Sean and Marty had crossed the road and returned to the Skoda — just two more faceless figures in the snow — and were opening the doors to climb back in. Chet and Luke had another Skoda, but theirs was brown. They got in and Chet switched on the engine. The wipers cleared the snow from the windscreen to reveal Ivanovic’s man getting into the Transit. Seconds later he moved off. Chet followed, and in his rear-view mirror could see the white Skoda pull out as well.

The Transit drove quickly, swerving slightly as it went. Luke shook his head. ‘Dumber than a box of rocks…’

Chet didn’t answer. The snow was hurtling against the windscreen and the road was treacherous. He kept his eye firmly on the target and drove on.

17.51 hrs.

The thin young man whose black rucksack was now lying at the foot of his bar stool was called Anton. He had been cold when he walked into the bar. Now the blood in his veins was running hot. The heat of excitement. It had gone well. He had earned his 50,000 dinars. Now all he wanted to do was get out of this horrible place and back to his small apartment, where his girlfriend was waiting for him. He would buy her flowers. And if he bought her flowers, perhaps she would give him something in return.

The slivovitz made his eyes water and his throat burn. But he supposed he’d better finish it. He caught the barman’s eyes and nodded — a friendly gesture that wasn’t returned. Anton shrugged, then watched as the guy wiped the bar with a frayed, grey rag and picked up the bottle that Ivanovic’s man had left.

A confused look crossed the barman’s face. He held up the bottle, and Anton immediately saw what was puzzling him. The bottle was full.

The heat in Anton’s veins turned to ice. He dismounted from the bar stool, grabbed his rucksack, then ran to the door and out into the street.

They were waiting for him there.

Two men, each twice as broad as Anton, and twice as strong. They grabbed him, one man to each of his thin arms.

‘ Pogmati! ’ he yelled in Serbian. ‘Help me!’

But none of the passers-by was going to do that.

The two men pulled Anton along the pavement for about thirty metres, then turned into an alleyway. It was dark here, and the snow was drifting against the wall on one side. The tips of Anton’s feet left two lines in the powder as the men dragged him along the alley and out into a courtyard surrounded by the high walls of deserted buildings. Breeze-blocks were piled in one corner and an old cement mixer stood nearby, but it was clear from the virgin snow that nobody had been here recently.

Again Anton shouted for help. But there was no one to hear, and his voice just echoed off the walls.

The first blow was not the hardest, but it was the one that shocked him most: a sudden and brutal knee to the groin that bent him double with pain. From that moment on, Anton was unable to distinguish between the two men. One of them struck him on the side of his head with a wooden cosh. As Anton collapsed to the ground, the other man started kicking him in the stomach and the face. Thirty seconds later blood was oozing from his nose and spewing from his mouth. His teeth were smeared crimson and he was vaguely aware of the way the blood first stained, then melted the snow around him.