The antique clock on the sideboard read a quarter to one in the morning. He’d lost all track of time as he’d sat there writing. For the last five straight hours his pen hadn’t stopped scratching, ripping the paper sometimes, the words pouring out of him so urgently that pages of it were illegible, even to him. He was breathless with hate.
Penrose suddenly realised what day it was. December 25th. He ground his teeth together at the thought of all those idiots celebrating the birth of some bearded twit two thousand years ago who’d done nothing but create a lot of harm and confusion.
Thump. Thump. The banging on the door wouldn’t stop.
‘ What!? ’ Penrose stormed over to the door in his bare feet, his open dressing gown billowing behind him as he walked. He slid back the six bolts that secured it, turned the deadlock and opened the door a crack.
Staring in through the gap was the sombre-looking face of Steve Cutter. Behind him stood his remaining men, Terry Grinnall in that leather coat he never seemed to take off, Dave Mills, Suggs, Doyle and Prosser.
‘Ugh, it’s you.’ Penrose said. ‘What do you want, at this time of night?’
Cutter shoved the door open without a word, making Penrose stagger back a step as it swung wide. Entering the room, he could see that Penrose was wearing only a pair of underpants under his monogrammed gown, which was getting grimy and wrinkled, russety spots of dried blood flecked across the gold PL on the breast. His torso looked thin and wasted, as if he hadn’t been bothering to eat.
The office smelled of body odour and gun oil. Cutter spotted Penrose’s gleaming Coonan. 357 lying on the desk, next to the teetering pile of pages covered in furious scrawls. More loose pages lay haphazardly over the floor, along with several pens, heavily chewed, some of them snapped in half.
‘How dare you barge into my office?’ Penrose yelled. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy working on my book?’
‘Came to tell you we’re quitting,’ Cutter said. Just looking around him at the state of the study was confirmation that the job had fallen apart. The team members who weren’t dead or missing as a result of the whole fiasco had nothing to do but kick their heels in the villa’s annexe quarters. The booze supply had dried up. The whores had stopped coming. So had any decent cooked meals. They didn’t much fancy the local restaurants, and the nearest McDonalds was in fucking Naples.
Worst of all, they hadn’t been paid for the last ten days. The six men had spent that evening grumbling their discontentment around the table in the rec room, and decided enough was enough.
Penrose’s rage dwindled rapidly away. ‘But you can’t leave. I need my Praetorian Guard around me,’ he said in a small voice.
‘Listen to this prick,’ Grinnall sneered.
‘Tough shit,’ Cutter said. ‘We’re done, and we want paying off.’
‘But-’
‘We had a fucking deal with you, Lucas. Don’t piss me off, all right?’
Penrose stared at him with a trembling jaw. ‘Fine,’ he said in an injured tone. ‘If that’s the way you want it. Come with me, and I will recompense you.’
Cutter followed as Penrose led the way through from the office to the adjoining bedroom. The air was stale and foul, and discarded clothing littered the floor around the rumpled king-size bed. But what drew Cutter’s notice more than anything was the long, wide streak of dried blood leading from the middle of the floor towards the balcony that overlooked the cliff’s edge. It looked, and smelled, as if something dead had been dragged across the bedroom and dumped over the side of the balcony. He said nothing, but his expression darkened a little more.
‘In here,’ Penrose said curtly, sliding open a mirrored panel to reveal the vast walk-in wardrobe behind it, its own little room all decked out in antique oak. He swept through the racks of finery that he’d ordered from top Italian designers, barely any of it ever worn. The back of the wardrobe was filled with shelving units where Penrose stored his many pairs of brand-new shoes; more compartments overhead were filled with boxes and bags. Lower down was a column of drawers for keeping jewellery and sundry items.
Cutter stood by impatiently as Penrose wrenched open one drawer, rummaged around inside, slammed it shut, tore open another. ‘Here we are,’ he said, taking out a glittering gold watch and holding it out to Cutter. ‘Take it. It’s a Rolex. Isn’t it beautiful? Here, look, I have half a dozen more. All brand new. Hand them out among the men.’
Cutter grimaced and slapped the watch aside. ‘I’m not talking about a bunch of sodding trinkets. Talking about money, pal. Twelve hundred a day per man. Six of us, that comes to more than seventy grand for the last fucking ten days we haven’t been paid. Not to mention the boys who never came back from Cornwall, or Gant’s team. You got widows and families out there to take care of. Say three-fifty, and we’ll call it quits, all right?’
‘But I don’t have three hundred and fifty thousand,’ Penrose protested. ‘I’ve been trying over and over to access the online banking system, and it won’t let me in. The Trimble assets have been frozen.’ That last part was perfectly true. There was no more money, no more jet. No more backing from his sponsors, who’d now turned against their star protege. He knew it was all over — yet his mind felt strangely detached from the situation, as if these things were all just a dream.
His words had been heard by the rest of the men, who’d filtered into the bedroom after Cutter and were standing around looking extremely displeased.
‘I don’t give a fucking monkey’s ringpiece about your Trimble!’ Cutter shouted at Penrose. In his anger he slammed a fist against the wooden partition of the walk-in wardrobe. It was solidly built, but the blow made the whole structure judder. Not enough to cause any damage.
But enough to shake loose a slip of purplish-coloured paper that drifted down in a spiral like an autumn leaf from an overhead compartment and landed at Cutter’s feet.
‘Hello, what’s this, then?’ Cutter said, scooping it quickly off the floor.
‘It’s nothing,’ Penrose said, suddenly more alert.
‘Doesn’t look like nothing to me,’ Cutter said, holding it up for his men to see. ‘Looks a bit like a five- hundred-euro note, doesn’t it, boys?’ He peered up at the overhead compartment and spotted the black garbage bag that had been hastily stuffed into it, ripping the plastic to reveal the bunches of banknotes nestling inside.
‘You sneaky little bugger,’ Cutter said.
‘You leave that alone. It’s mine!’ Penrose tried to stand in his way, but Cutter shoved him easily aside, reached up for the bag and hauled it down. It landed with a thump. ‘About forty grand,’ he said, inspecting the contents.
‘All right,’ Penrose said testily. ‘You can have it. It’s yours.’
‘Too right it’s ours,’ Cutter said. He handed the bag to Grinnall, who stuck it under his arm. ‘Now where’s the rest of it?’
‘Rest of what?’ Penrose said, flushing.
‘Don’t you even fucking think about lying to me,’ Cutter growled. ‘You’ve got a lot more than this stashed around the place. I’ve fucking seen it.’
The others nodded. Cutter had already told them about the cash-stuffed holdalls he’d spotted in Penrose’s office.
In fact, Penrose had over 2.3 million euros hidden in the villa, cash that he’d been siphoning off from the very start of his operation under the broad heading of expenses — the fewer questions had been asked, the more he’d clawed back for himself. The contents of the garbage bag were just what he’d had left over when the holdalls were already crammed so full he could barely zip them up.
But there was no way Penrose was going to let all that loot fall into Cutter’s hands. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he protested. ‘And I object to being spoken to this way by my employee.’
Cutter grabbed him by the collar and shook him violently. ‘I don’t work for you any more, you little shit. Where’s the fucking money?’
‘I don’t have anything more to give you!’ Penrose yelled.
‘Give him a slap, Steve,’ Grinnall said.
Cutter slapped Penrose across the face, hard. The impact sent him crashing into the wall. He slid down to the floor, his face turning white. He touched his fingers to his burning cheek and stared at them, as if expecting to see blood. ‘Traitors!’ he screamed up from the floor. ‘After all I’ve done for you! This is how you treat me?’
‘We’re not leaving here until we get paid off,’ Cutter said.
A wild light came into Penrose’s eyes. ‘Money! That’s all your kind care about, isn’t? Good old hard cash! Well I’ll tell you. There’s millions! Millions, all mine, all hidden away right here in the villa. And guess what, Cutter? You’ll
