Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) Read online

  “Ronnie is into the lot,” said Jo. “Drugs, protection and toms. Nothing moves in Southmead but he and his boys know it.”

  “What’s toms?” Darrell asked.

  “Prostitutes.”

  “Not much left then for our Patrice?”

  “Not in Southmead, no. But he had a go in Knowle West at the beginning of ’76. After a month he was rumbled by the West Coast Chapter of the Hells Angels, who run an HQ deep in nearby Knowle, a couple of houses knocked together by sledgehammer. They did that one day to fit in an extra-long billiard table. They hold cannabis and speed parties, immune to surprise drug raids thanks to steel doors and a video surveillance setup. A couple of Angels live in but thirty more arrive within minutes when summoned. They soon saw Symins off.”

  “You’re making me sympathetic to the poor bloke,” Mason said.

  “Well, he is certainly a trier … Clifton was next, all middle-class students and rich folk. Plenty of takers, but too many police. Symins especially liked Clifton as he’s a snob and Cliftonians reckon they’re the cream of Bristol.”

  So Symins had settled for Stoke Bishop, among the grassy heights of Bristol’s more affluent suburbs, which contain a mixture of well-heeled nouveaux riches and struggling middle-class families. The inhabitants mix very little, which assured Symins of privacy without suspicion.

  Three years previously the government had removed the right of general practitioners to prescribe heroin or cocaine except for patients with proven terminal illnesses. Until then any junkie could obtain a controlled amount of his chosen drug legally. With this cushy arrangement ended, the street price of drugs escalated overnight, and from his eyrie in Stoke Bishop, Symins masterminded a rash of break-ins to chemists all over the Southwest. In Bristol itself he controlled these activities except in Keynsham, Knowle West, and Montpelier, where other teams were active under minityros such as Joe Lembo (subsequently caught and given five years in prison).

  “What about his pushing system?” Darrell asked Jo.

  “He has an expanding network of student pushers controlled by black colleagues, mostly friends of his mistress, and kept in line by half a dozen thugs who also protect his person. They are efficient, but”—Jo preened himself—“there is a loophole.” With the aid of Mason’s silver Parker pen and a beer mat, Jo demonstrated how he would help the two Locals.

  They left the pub and walked to the southern end of Pennywell Road. Jo led the way into a deserted yard and over a chain-link fence. This joined a high wall, the main purpose of which was to conceal an evil-smelling waterway, a dank canal that was all that remained of the once scenic River Frome. They followed the wall for a hundred yards, then scaled it using a hook and knotted line that Jo produced from an overcoat pocket. “Natty, eh?” He looked at both men. He was in his element and needed surprisingly little help beyond a tug to the top.

  From the wall they dropped into a scrapyard, or rather a garden used as a rubbish dump, and Mason knelt to unzip his Dunlop bag. He took out a ten-inch-long tubular instrument on loan from Spike, and left the bag hidden by brambles at the foot of the wall. Moving with care among the rubbish, Jo made for the rear of a low building with double doors. As the three watched, gaps in the doors were faintly illuminated by some low light source within.

  Jo said nothing but pointed to one of the gaps. Mason nodded and screwed a telescopic monopod into his eavesdropping device. A prototype of a device later developed as the Wolf’s Ear 1411 and obtainable through the Surveillance Technology Group in Port Chester, New York, it was a “minishotgun,” bidirectional system capable of collecting sound from up to five hundred feet away. Powered by a built-in 1.5 volt battery, it weighed only two and a half ounces and could be used in conjunction with earplugs, binoculars and tape recorder. Mason positioned the Wolf’s Ear and gave Hallett one of the earplugs. The two men listened to the action, while Hongozo watched their backs.

  Four men, all smoking cigarettes, stood around as Symins stressed the heinous nature of Jason’s betrayal. He ended, appearing to expect an acknowledgment from the accused. There was none because someone had liberally applied sticking plaster to Jason’s mouth in readiness for the coming punishment.

  “He’ll be difficult to hold once we get started,” one of the heavies warned.

  “That’s what the toolbox is for, ya twit,” said another. “Boss said to nail him down.”

  “The floor’s concrete.”

  “Use your common sense, Spitty. What’s wrong with the back doors? Bring the lamp.”

  The three men in the backyard could now see nothing and the Wolf’s Ear was redundant since they were inches from Symins and his men.

  Sounds of a violent struggle ended with the noise of hammering. There were no screams, merely muted laughter. One by one the points of four eight-inch nails appeared through the door frame.

  Hallett’s hamlike fists clenched and the veins swelled in his neck. “Bastards,” he hissed. “They’re crucifying him.”

  Mason laid a restraining hand on his back. “Calm yourself, Darrell. There’s worse to come. We don’t want you bursting in there like a raging bull. They will have guns. We do not.”

  They heard the unmistakable hum of a portable generator and, just distinguishable, the whine of a Bosch power drill. Although they could neither see nor hear what followed, each man felt nausea at the inhumanity of Symins and his thugs.

  Mason had spent twelve months in Northern Ireland some years earlier and had, for a month, been a frequent visitor to the Vascular Unit of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. One of his friends was being treated there for a spinal bullet injury, and David had often chatted to the RAMC surgeons. Over a twelve-year period the surgeons at the hospital had become specialists in treating the hideous damage caused by kneecapping. Bullets often missed the patella altogether but still caused severe vascular trauma. Many victims were men in the prime of life whose futures were marred through osteoporosis or, where gas gangrene set in, amputation. At least, Mason thought, the poor devil in the lockup was to be knee-capped with an electric drill, about the ultimate in low-velocity weapons. When flesh and bone is penetrated by foreign matter, the higher the velocity of the projectile the greater the damage done. Nevertheless, the long-term benefits of a masonry drill over a bullet would not at that moment mean very much to the tormented Jason. Mason felt pressure on his shoulder. Jo was tapping his watch. They left by the way they had come.

  Symins addressed Jason’s lolling head, uncertain whether or not he was conscious. “We will phone the fire service in twelve hours, matey. Then us taxpayers will pay for your recovery.” He flashed his very white teeth at the others, who responded with guffaws. “In the meanwhile you’d better talk yourself into being a good boy. When you come out of the Krankenhaus, we’ll see if you’re still on the payroll.”

  Symins drove off in his Jaguar Mark Ten and the others followed in a stretch Ford Granada. In convoy they headed northwest for the Downs, over the open grasslands and along Lady’s Mile to a prominent water tower. Here they forked left to Julian Road, home of the police forensic headquarters. An open field known as the Plateau fell away to the south, ending abruptly at the cliff-top of the Avon Gorge. The heart of Stoke Bishop, Mariners Drive is a place of secluded houses set back from the road and screened by the shrubbery of their well-tended gardens. Only the Anglican church stands out, and not far past this landmark of piety, the Jaguar turned into Symins’s drive. When the electronic gates snapped shut behind the boss, the heavies in the Granada swung away, their work done for the day.

  Symins had sunk a good deal of his drug profits into this house and its comprehensive security arrangements. Apart from his driver and domestic staff there was a live-in gardener who doubled as in-house heavy.

  Symins enjoyed a double brandy in front of a log fire while Diana, naked to the waist, massaged his shoulders and neck. Looking into the flames he again felt a surge of adrenaline as he remembered Jason’s bulging eyeballs. The drill had slowly pe
netrated skin and bone, and the man’s limbs, though nailed to the door, had jerked out in ginglymus rhythm. A weird smell had emanated from the drill bit which, making heavy weather of the patella itself, had heated up inside the wound. Yes, he had been right to punish Jason. Even if the man was innocent of squealing, it did no harm to show the others that Patrice Symins was not a man to cross. Word of Jason’s drilling was bound to get about the city and that could only help Symins’s reputation as a hard man. He felt pleasantly tired.

  As he made to move, Diana slipped a caressing hand lightly over his crotch. “Not tonight, Josephine,” he laughed. “I’m knackered, love.” His philosophy was simple with Diana where bed was concerned: sleep with her only when horny, otherwise there was no point. Familiarity would dull the edge of his reactions to her sensuality.

  Symins kept no gun at hand in his house. He trusted his security systems and staff enough to feel totally at ease. There were alarm buttons in those rooms he frequented but at home he liked to drop his antennae and relax. Tonight he lazed in the jacuzzi and then, as usual, took the day’s Financial Times to bed with him, for he handled his own considerable investment portfolio without advisers.

  Soundlessly Hallett and Mason moved out from behind the heavy brocade curtains and across the soft carpet. Not until the blade of Hallett’s penknife was pressed into the side of his Adam’s apple did Symins even sense his visitors’ presence. His first thought was for the alarm button beside his bed. Hallett read his mind. “The systems in your suite are both cut, so forget the heavies. The slightest move of your head and you will undergo the fastest cricothyroidectomy since the Korean War.”

  Mason pulled the duvet off the bed, placed plastic handcuffs over Symins’s wrists and then lashed his feet together. Only then did Darrell withdraw his knife. On evenings such as this both Locals had often regretted Spike’s dictum that they should never carry firearms when in Britain.

  A pretentious chandelier of crystal baubles dangled in the middle of the ceiling. Mason applied his weight to its centerpiece. “Solid,” he exclaimed and, locking Symins’s hands behind his back, he joined the cuffs to the chandelier with a loop of parachute cord. He then pulled steadily until Symins’s arms were taut and the drug baron was standing on tiptoe to counter the sharp pain in his shoulders.

  “This is known in Tehran’s Evin Prison as the Savaki Meat Hook,” David explained, “but we must ensure silence before the next step is taken.”

  “How much money do you want?” Symins mouthed. “Name your price and I’ll give you cash here and now.”

  “He comes straight to the point, doesn’t he?” said Darrell, forcing his thumb into the side of Symins’s mouth with the same action he used for training gun dogs. He forced Symins’s socks into his mouth, then tied the cord of his dressing gown firmly around his neck and open mouth like a horse’s bit. “Soundproof,” he muttered. Together they hauled at the parachute cord until Symins could reach the floor with his toes, but only with great difficulty.

  Mason sat on the end of the bed, lit up a Montecristo Number 5 and leafed through the Financial Times. This was Darrell’s pigeon. Jo had remained in the rhododendrons below, safe from Symins’s Rhodesian ridgebacks due to the bags of aniseed powder he had sprinkled liberally between where the others had crossed the wall and the drainpipe leading to Symins’s bedroom window.

  “Who are we?” Darrell asked Symins, and getting no reply, jabbed him in the stomach, so that he swung back and forth gently until the tips of his toes were again able to take some weight and alleviate the excruciating pain in his arms. “We are two of many men who have been asked to watch you. Wherever you go in this country, we will not be far away. Ten years from now we will be keeping tabs. What you do with your own people, boyo, is not our concern. If they put up with your sadism, so be it. But”—Darrell gave Symins another shove on behalf of Jason—“your drug activities will cease completely as from tonight. To help you never to forget this evening, we will stay with you for an hour or so. If, in the future, you look back and remember this little dalliance in hell, please know that it is but a mild introduction to next time.”

  He hauled hard on the cord with one hand while hoisting upward with his other hand crooked in Symins’s crotch. He did not want the chandelier fixture to break. Symins now swung free. He was not in pain—he was in agony. Most of us go through life without experiencing more than a few seconds of such anguish.

  Darrell concluded his monologue. “Make no mistake, perhaps in five years’ time, in thinking there will not be a next time. If you touch the drug world again we will visit you in earnest.” He glanced at his watch, then making himself comfortable in an easy chair, he pulled out a paperback of George Borrow’s 1862 travel classic, Wild Wales. At home Darrell had a collection of hardback travel and adventure stories, many of them signed by the authors. Often, when he had a spare hour or two, he would phone around publishers and old bookshops to chase up titles long out of print, to fill gaps in his collection.

  After thirty minutes they lowered Symins to the carpet for ten minutes. Then they raised him on tiptoe for fifteen, and finally at dangle height for a further half hour. When they departed they left him still suspended but with his feet on the ground.

  Hallett silently hoped Symins would be non compos mentis by the time his breakfast was brought up in the morning. It would depend largely on his pain threshold.

  Mason did not bother to reset the alarm circuit on their way out. Spike could hardly make a fuss over a couple of lost circuit-breaker sets. They followed Hongozo over the wall and he drove them back to their cars in the city.

  “An honor to meet you, mister.” The Hungarian shook Mason’s hand. They did not know each other’s names. He hugged Darrell in his East European way. “Don’t make it too long until next time, my friend.”

  The two Locals parted. Hallett was subdued. It would be days before he lost the vision of the eight-inch nails appearing through the lockup doors. Mason was unaffected. The proceedings had gone off as Spike would have wanted. The result might well be as hoped. He stopped at a telephone booth and called Spike’s answering machine. “Everything is fine,” he said. He gave neither the time nor his name. Spike would be in his flat listening to the machine and would recognize David’s voice. If anything had gone wrong, he would have done what he could as an individual, but without committee involvement. That was their way.

  6

  The Seine, the music of an unseen accordion and the Gallic bustle of the Marché Vernaison flea market drifted by the Gypsy café, lulling its diners, mostly tourists, into a nostalgic haze. The waiters were Gypsies clad in black berets and aprons, and there was an air of slick disdain about their trim moustaches. The head waiter, who fancied himself a bit of a Maigret, decided that the three gentlemen at table seven were international businessmen. Their lack of raincoats suggested that they had come from the only hotel close by, the George V. He deduced they had already spent a couple of nights at the hotel since its in-house restaurant, Les Princes, served exquisite food enhanced by a famous cellar. He nudged the sous-chef. “Sanch will do well at number seven. Those three are from the George. If they can afford nine hundred a night they will add twenty percent service, no problem.”

  De Villiers and Davies were clearly middle-aged executives but Meier looked out of place. His heavy tweed suit was crumpled—his trousers, although a couple of sizes too large, failed to conceal a battered pair of clogs—and the lenses of his steel-rimmed spectacles needed cleaning.

  “This steak tastes too sweet to be cow,” Davies muttered.

  “Probably horse,” de Villiers said. “Never mind. The fries look good.”

  “Chips,” said Davies. “You mean chips.”

  De Villiers shrugged. A waiter brought him the lobster he had selected from the tank where the poor creatures waited to be boiled alive. He sat with his back to the steaming lobster vat. That way he could see the café entrance but not the tortured sea creatures. Their silent screams occu
rred at precisely the same time as those of Patrice Symins, by now in a state of solitary suspension. The lobsters, by contrast, had done nothing to deserve their torment.

  Over coffee and cognac the three members of the Clinic discussed business, their conversation drowned between the babble at the bar and the bargaining sessions at the brocanteurs’ stores opposite the café. Meier, unlike the others, spoke French. He reported on the media’s treatment of the murder, or rather the conspicuous absence of such treatment.

  This did not please de Villiers.

  “Why the silence? This is just the sort of smut they adore to headline. All the right ingredients.” He shrugged. “Too bad; she has paid up regardless.”

  Meier, who had been ferreting, had partial answers.

  “The judge was involved with international rights in Mururoa Atoll five years ago. The French had burned their fingers with their nuclear tests. They maybe have some reason for a hush-up now.”

  Davies was more lively than de Villiers had seen him in years. The Paris job had suited his temperament, and de Villiers, having received the client’s full payment that morning, had already given both men their checks. Fifteen percent of the total payment of $450,000 would go to Tadnams, the agents, thirty-five percent to de Villiers, and the balance was split down the middle between the other two. The ten percent differential between his slice and theirs helped to reinforce his position as leader. He maintained these percentages for any job completed by the Clinic even when only two members were involved in the action.

  Meier, a naturally uncommunicative sort, came alive only when able to indulge his passion for technical innovation. He would, de Villiers knew, spend all his Paris money on advanced radio-controlled model aircraft kits and on whoring somewhere exotic.

  Davies would rush back to his pretty little wife in Cardiff laden with gifts and a fat check made payable to her interior-decorating business. Mrs. Davies, de Villiers suspected, was unfaithful to her husband during his long absences on sales tours, but realizing she might never find another man as blindly doting or as generous, she strung him along and depended on his paychecks to fill the voracious purse of her business. She had been born devoid of taste and stayed that way despite expensive courses at London’s Inchbold School of Design. Each decorating job that she obtained—and many came about through liberal application of her body to middle-aged bachelors who did not really want their penthouses redecorated—became a new glaring testament to her reputation for appalling judgment.