Two men stepped into the shop. The first, his powerful build apparent even in his loosely cut, colourful Versace jacket, was a big man, but smaller than his companion. He stood at least six feet three and seemed to fill the room with his black-clad presence. Both newcomers had broad, brutal faces, and both seemed to exude menace. Ignoring the other customer, who sat with his back to them at his table, they moved towards their waiting host.
‘Good to see you again, Mr Malenko.’ Rarity greeted the Russian like a cousin, back from a long journey.
‘Good to see my dollars again,’ the man growled in return, in a harsh, hoarse voice.
‘Not at all,’ said the manager, inanely.
‘Whatever. Let’s do business.’ Malenko beckoned to his companion who stepped forward and laid a big, soft nylon bag on the counter. ‘There’s four million dollars. You want your lady come count it, as usual?’
Rarity nodded, vigorously. ‘I’ll just go and get her.’
He turned and stepped through the door behind him.
As soon as he had left, the two men began to converse. They spoke in low voices, in Russian, but from their attitude anyone listening would have known that they were doing no more than passing the time.
They snapped back to attention, though, when the door behind the counter opened once more. A burly, moustached figure stepped into the room with another tall man behind him, and stepped around the counter.
‘Mr Malenko, I am Detective Superintendent Dan Pringle, Central Division CID, and this is Detective Sergeant Steele. We have a warrant for your arrest in relation to alleged offences in Germany. I must ask you and your associate to . . .’
The Russian moved with remarkable speed for such a big man. He kicked Pringle hard on the shin, then butted him as he reacted to the pain. ‘I don’t think so,’ he snarled, as the Superintendent slumped to the floor.
The gun appeared in the giant’s hand as if from nowhere, pointing at the centre of the detective sergeant’s chest. Somehow, the silencer made the ugly weapon look even more menacing. The minder looked at Malenko, who said something in Russian, and nodded.
The only Russian word which Bob Skinner knew was ‘Niet’. Instinctively he barked it out, as he rose from his table, abandoning the amethyst jewellery, and hurled himself at the two gangsters.
The pistol swung away from the ashen-faced Steele and round towards him, but the detective was quicker than the bulky gunman. He seized his right wrist in his left hand and swung it up, towards the ceiling, at the same time slamming all his weight into him and bearing him backwards towards the wall. Thrown off balance the Russian was unable to gather his strength, or do anything to ward off Skinner’s attack.
He was wide open as the heel of the DCC’s right hand flashed upwards, to hit the tip of his nose, breaking it, and driving bone and gristle upwards. He screamed as strong fingers gouged his eyes, blinding him. He sobbed as a knee smashed into his crotch, crushing his testicles and sending waves of pain, indescribable in any language, shooting through his body.
Skinner was aware of the sound of scuffling behind him as he tore the pistol from the collapsing mountain’s loosened grip, but all his attention was on the gunman. His face was contorted in a snarl as he whipped the barrel and silencer of the gun across his face: three blows, backhand, forehand, backhand once more.
‘You were going to shoot him, were you, you bastard,’ he hissed. The man was on the floor, crumpled against the wall, as the detective laid the weapon against the side of his head and pulled the trigger. He squealed in terror at the suppressed noise of the shot in his ear, and at the crushing sound of the bullet burying itself in the panelled wall behind him.
Slipping the pistol butt-first into his pocket, Skinner pulled him up with his left hand and punched him, once, very hard, with his right fist, in the middle of the forehead. The Russian’s eyes glazed as he sagged, unconscious.
In the moment that the DCC stood and turned, Malenko, with his back to him, managed to break free of the young Sergeant Steele’s judo hold, and hit him with a head-butt, in the same way that he had incapacitated Pringle. He had barely straightened up before the cold metal of the silencer ground into the back of his head, just above the hairline.
‘I hope your English is really good, friend, and you understand what I’m going to tell you,’ said Skinner. ‘If you make one move, I’m going to blow your fucking brains all over that wall.’ The Russian froze.
‘Search him, Dan,’ the DCC ordered Pringle, as the Superintendent clambered off the floor, his face covered in blood.
He nodded. ‘In a minute, sir.’ With great deliberation, he hit Malenko as hard as he could, a tremendous blow to the pit of the stomach. The air hissed out of the gangster’s lungs in a loud groan, as he doubled over.
‘I never saw that, Dan,’ said Skinner.
‘Naw,’ Pringle retorted. ‘And I never saw what you did to that other fucker either!’
He took a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and secured Malenko’s arms behind his back, then frisked him, roughly, while Skinner helped the young sergeant to his feet. ‘You okay, Stevie?’
‘I’ll live, sir.’ As he spoke, the image of the gun pointing at his heart rushed back into his mind, and he went chalk-white once more, save for the livid red mark on his cheekbone where the Russian’s forehead had connected.
‘Yes, son, you will. With a commendation on your record, at that. If you hadn’t restrained him, I’d have had trouble handling Malenko as well as that monster there.’
Steele looked at the heap on the floor. ‘Ex-monster, I’d say, Boss.’ The giant was still out cold.
‘Malenko’s unarmed, sir,’ Pringle called out.
‘Thank Christ for that. As soon as I get back to Fettes, I’ll be on to Her Majesty’s Customs. Some bugger’s going to have to explain to me how a Russian can bring a firearm through any port in this country. If I had thought for one minute that they’d have been armed . . .’
Pringle shook his head. ‘It never occurred to me either, sir.’
He turned to Malenko. ‘Where did you arrive in Britain?’ he asked. The Russian shook his head and spat on the floor at the Superintendent’s feet. The burly man, still bleeding from a cut above his right eye, balled his fists, but Skinner spun the prisoner around and unbuttoned his jacket. He reached into a pocket and found a passport.
He flicked his way through the pages, until he found what he was looking for. ‘Paris,’ he muttered to Pringle. ‘This was stamped in Paris yesterday. Let me take a guess, Ivan. You flew to Charles de Gaulle, then caught the Eurostar to London.’
The gangster glowered at him.
‘What did you do with the gun?’ he asked. ‘Wrapped in tin-foil was it, to beat the X-ray machine, and hidden in a container in your man’s suitcase?’ He shrugged his shoulders, and smiled. ‘Yes, I guess that was probably how you did it. It’s academic now. The fact is, you probably did us a favour. If he hadn’t been carrying, and you two had come along quietly, I’d have had nothing on him. I’d have had to let him go.
‘That’s not a problem now. He’ll go before a Scottish judge, charged with attempted murder. Christ, he’ll probably get longer than you.’
He turned to Sergeant Steele. ‘Stevie, get on the radio and tell the uniformed team to come and pick these people up.’ As he spoke, there was a moan from the man on the floor. Skinner looked down to see him beginning to stir, beginning to push himself to his feet.
Quite casually, the detective kicked him on the side of the head. ‘Just stay quiet now,’ he said, conversationally. The minder’s eyes rolled as he slumped against the wall once more.
36
‘You never told me you were going to pick up Malenko,’ said Andy Martin.
Skinner smiled across the table in the senior officers’ dining room. ‘I had an hour free, so I thought I’d go along and lend a hand.’
‘You might have told Pringle, though. He said to me that he had trouble keeping his face straight when he came out of the back shop to arrest the Russians and saw you sitting there, looking for all the world like a punter in for a present for the wife.’
‘I was. Sarah’s got a birthday coming up soon.’
