The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 40

A big hand shoved Ben into the tiny room. The door slammed, shutting out all light. He heard the clunk of a strong lock closing him in, and knew that there would be little point in trying to force his way out. The guards whose presence he could sense on the other side of the door would just shoot him through the wood.

The holding cell was little more than cupboard-sized, small enough to touch all four walls without moving his feet. No light switch. He sat in the chair and closed his eyes, letting his body relax, his mind drift and his breathing slow. Conserving energy. He would need it soon enough.

Ben could wait like that for hours, days, barely stirring, shutting out his thoughts, only vaguely aware of the passage of time. But fewer than ten minutes went by before he heard movement outside the door, voices, the scrape of the key. The door opened. He didn’t blink at the sudden bright light.

The same massive guards stood outside the doorway, now boosted to half a dozen in number and armed with automatic weapons that were dwarfed in their bear-size paws. All identical Skorpions. Ben wondered whether Zarko Kožul favoured the weapon for its light weight, extreme portability and high cyclic rate of fire, or whether the name just gave him fond memories of his days with the paramilitary Serb Scorpions.

Along with the guards were two smaller men. One was a slender, dark and medium-tall man in his thirties, casually but smartly dressed in jeans and a white shirt, whom Ben had never seen before. One of the better-looking gangsters Ben had come across in his time. Nicely groomed and smelling of some kind of expensive, refined aftershave.

The other man was Osmanović’s guy, Duša, the scraggy gaunt bald one. Duša just smelled of rank body odour, as always. He was standing with them as though he was totally at ease and belonged to their group. Which, as Ben now realised, he did.

It seemed that Husein had contacts a little deeper inside Zarko Kožul’s organisation than Husein had thought, too.

Duša pointed. ‘That’s him. This bastard arrived in town just today. His name’s Hope. He’s working with Osmanović.’

‘Thanks, Duša,’ Ben said. ‘You know, these guys hate a snitch even more than they hate their enemies. You should bear that in mind.’

The dark-haired man in the white shirt nodded, not taking his eyes off Ben. ‘Zarko will be pleased with you, Duša. I’ll let him know the tip-off was good and give him the all-clear to come back. Just as soon as we dispose of Osmanović and the other one. Where are they?’

Duša replied, ‘Somewhere on the bottom floor. The plan was to split up and wait for the signal. We were meant to be backup. This one was gonna rub out Zarko and then go looking for Dragan Vuković. Got some beef with him, apparently, but don’t ask me what. All I know is, he came over from England or someplace to find the guy.’

The dark one gazed dispassionately at Ben. The others all had the dead eyes of dull-witted footsoldiers who just did what they were told. This one had the spark in his eyes that indicated something substantially more was going on upstairs, to compensate for his lack of bulk. Ben made him for a higher-echelon member of Kožul’s forces, a second- or third-in-command. It was a principle he’d noticed in the past. When it came to hardcore gang crime, rank tended to run in inverse proportion to physical size, on a scale with the big stupid ones at the bottom and the small vicious ones at the top. By that reckoning, Zarko Kožul himself was probably a midget.

‘How interesting,’ said the man in the white shirt. ‘It seems Dragan must have made a greater impression in England than we thought. So you are this Ben Hope I’ve been hearing about.’ He considered for a moment, then motioned to the big men behind him without looking round. ‘Get everybody together. Find the other two and bring them to me, dead or alive, doesn’t matter. Duša, you go with them.’

Forest-beard and two of the other large men instantly obeyed, clutching their weapons like toys in their beefy fists as they hurried off. Duša, the snitch, hustled away after them. Ben was left alone with the man in the white shirt and the remaining three hulks. A six-foot-six monster with a faded blue swastika tattoo in the centre of his forehead motioned towards Ben with his gun barrel and asked the one in the shirt, ‘Hey, Alek, what do we do about this guy here?’

‘Same thing we always do, you dimwit. Take him to the junkyard, shoot him and put him in the crusher.’

‘So you’re Alek,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll make a note of that.’

Alek paused and looked at Ben with a faint smile. ‘On second thoughts, let’s not shoot him. Let me call Dragan, see if he’s finished the little job Zarko gave him to do last night. I’m sure he’d love to help feed our cocky British friend here into the crusher alive and video him dying in indescribable agony as his guts pop out of his mouth and his eyeballs burst from their sockets like champagne corks. Zarko will be amused to watch that afterwards.’

Ben said, ‘You people must be really stuck for entertainment around here.’

Alek’s mouth downturned at the corners. ‘Take this piece of trash out of my sight.’

Large hands grabbed Ben by the arms and he was hauled out of the tiny room. Fighting back wasn’t much of an option, with three guns pointed at him and surprise not exactly on his side.

‘Nice meeting you, Mr Hope,’ Alek said. ‘At our next encounter, you’ll be as flat as a piece of roadkill.’

‘I’ll be seeing you again,’ Ben said.

Alek chuckled and walked away, shaking his head in disbelief at this guy’s attitude and taking out his phone to dial a number. Ben heard him say, ‘Hey, Dragan. You still over at the yard? Don’t go anywhere. I have a surprise for you.’ Then he disappeared around a corner and was gone.

Now it was just Ben and the three hulks. The one with the swastika motioned back in the direction of the paternoster and grunted, ‘That way. Keep your hands where I can see ’em. You so much as fart at me, I’ll splatter your brains all over the wall.’ He shoved Ben round to face the way he was pointing, and jabbed his gun into Ben’s back. Ben put up his hands like a model prisoner and started walking slowly.

‘I say we should just waste him now,’ said one.

‘You heard what Alek said.’

‘I know what he said, I just don’t like it, is all. This guy is bad news. I can smell it on’m like shit.’

‘That’s your own ass crack you can smell, Vladislav,’ the other replied, and laughed like a hyena.

‘Shut your holes,’ said the one with the swastika. He pressed his gun muzzle harder into Ben’s back, steering him towards the right-hand paternoster shaft entrance, the side for down.

Ben could never understand why these thug types always seemed to like jamming their barrels into you. Maybe it was some Freudian thing. Or maybe they were just such terrible shots that they couldn’t hit the target unless the weapon was physically in contact with it. Either way, it wasn’t a good idea to get that close to your opponent.

That was a lesson of wisdom Ben had never needed to be taught. And it was one that someone was about to learn, the hard way.