Headhunter Read online

  The other three guests stumbled out, pulling on their night attire, muttering their annoyance at first, the interruption of their night of pleasure, until they were silenced by the sight of Barkin hanging there like a specimen marlin.

  Viktor stood to one side of Barkin’s body, leaning on the pickaxe handle like a golfer waiting on the first tee. His guests naturally fanned out around the deck, exchanging glances but not like lovers in the night, more like people terrified for their own lives, let alone the fate of the person dangling in front of them.

  Viktor Bashkim’s temper historically was petrifying, but over the last few years it was rumoured that age had mellowed him.

  He waited for the guests to settle.

  Barkin gagged for breath as the blood from his nose clogged the back of his throat.

  ‘There are several things at play here tonight, gentlemen and lady,’ Viktor began, addressing his guests. His voice was controlled in spite of the fury boiling within him. ‘And this is only one of them.’

  He jabbed the thick end of the handle into Barkin’s gut, making him jerk as if he had been electronically cow-prodded.

  ‘No, no,’ Barkin spluttered through his blood and spittle.

  Viktor continued. ‘Together, us – we – have established one of the most profitable and diverse organizations in Europe, have we not?’ His blazing eyes roved across the small audience. They all nodded in agreement. ‘And we are all wealthy because of it, are we not?’

  Once more the eyes; the urgent nods.

  ‘So there is no need to take what is not yours, is there?’ he demanded.

  The nods turned to shaking heads.

  He prodded Barkin again, who began to struggle violently against his bindings once more and failing. Niko was good at securing people. He had done it many times.

  ‘So if someone steals from me, I feel it here.’ He placed a bunched fist over his chest. ‘In my broken heart.’

  He sighed and then bounced the thick, heavy stick in one hand, slapping it into the palm of the other.

  ‘And because of the loss of my son, Aleksander, and my two grandsons, I also feel that possibly people, you, maybe’ – he pointed the wood at the three standing partners, who all cowered slightly – ‘believe I am weak and old … but this is not so. I am not one to be taken advantage of or to be usurped. Not yet, anyway. Do you all understand that?’

  They nodded in unison.

  ‘And as for you …’ Viktor squatted down on his haunches. His knees popped hollowly. He peered into Barkin’s face and tapped it with the tip of the handle. ‘You stole from me.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Barkin gasped. ‘Never … I wouldn’t … we’ve been partners.’

  ‘And familiarity and contempt go hand in hand,’ Viktor said. ‘You have made me look a fool.’

  ‘I didn’t, Viktor,’ Barkin insisted. His eyes jerked one way then the other, searching for help, sympathy, a means of escape.

  ‘This will be brutal,’ Viktor said quietly, rising up again and spinning the pickaxe handle between his hand, finding a firm grip with his bony fingers.

  There was one last deep breath, one last roll of the shoulders, one more glance at the stars, a look towards the twinkling lights of Zante, then he braced himself like a batsman and drew back the heavy shaft of wood.

  It was a long time since he had beaten a man to death, but he still had the skill and technique and, more importantly, the strength and energy to complete the task. He worked downwards from Barkin’s ankles, which broke like crushed walnuts, slowly down his legs, knees, stomach, all the while piling on the agony, stroke by stroke, just enough to keep the victim conscious and howling for mercy or death.

  Finally he asked Niko to winch the wire up about a metre so that Barkin’s head was shoulder height for Viktor’s best swing. Then he went to work on the jaw, teeth, skull, before, exhausted and flecked with blood, Viktor lobbed the handle overboard and shouldered his way between his three remaining, dumbstruck guests without a further word.

  The shower was long, hot and revitalizing, washing away all of Barkin’s blood splatter from Viktor’s lined face. It also served to dissolve more of his anger and calm him down a little. He emerged more relaxed in his cabin with a large bath sheet wrapped around his midriff, rubbing his close-cropped hair with a hand towel.

  Niko was sitting in a chair by the writing desk, nursing a large whisky.

  ‘The body?’ Viktor asked. He walked stiffly over to a drinks tray on top of a chest of drawers and poured himself a large shot of Sauvelle French vodka from the sleek black bottle, to which he added two chunks of ice, then rolled it around the glass.

  ‘Fish food,’ Niko said. He and Mikel, the head waiter, had rolled Barkin’s corpse into the polythene sheet he had been hung above, wrapped it tight with coil and tape, weighted it down with barbells and flipped it over the side of the boat.

  Viktor nodded and perched on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Family is all I have left, Niko. All this’ – he gestured at the plush cabin and the boat – ‘is meaningless without family. Something you should remember. Get a real woman, not a whore. Get a son – two sons, a daughter – to bring you joy.’

  ‘Yes, Grandad,’ Niko said with no intention of doing so.

  Viktor tossed the hand towel on the floor. ‘Where are we now?’

  ‘Two things,’ Niko said. He had the old man’s iPad on his lap. He tapped the screen then rose and came across to Viktor, tapped the screen again and a grainy, hurriedly taken photograph came up on the Twitter feed. ‘A witness took this then posted it on social media.’

  Frowning, Viktor leaned sideways and squinted at the images on the screen: an upturned police van and a man staring ferociously into the lens, his shoulders hunched over, his right leg soaked in blood.

  Steve Flynn.

  ‘He ran away but the cops arrested him a short time later.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In hospital under armed guard. Once he’s discharged he’ll be taken to a police station for questioning.’

  ‘So we know exactly where he is at this moment in time?’

  Niko nodded. ‘Gjon walked past his room in Blackpool’s Victoria Hospital. Saw him through the door, cops either side.’

  Viktor absorbed this. ‘You said two things.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Jackson have arrived. Their private jet touched down an hour ago. Mikel picked them up from the airport. They’re getting some sleep.’

  ‘Have they brought the prize?’

  ‘Yes, yes, they have.’

  FOUR

  It was one of the easiest executions that Mr and Mrs Jackson had ever carried out.

  To be fair, most killings were easy, the hard part being the actual self-will to end someone else’s life, either close up and brutal or from a clinical distance. It was that aspect that put real assassins apart from a crowd of wannabes. No matter how sure you were that you could prepare for, then commit murder, and then escape with no conscience to haunt you, many people could not find that last degree of courage to do the deed. It was not something that could be learned; it had to be in you from an early age – the ability to take life and enjoy it.

  The majority of killings committed by the Jacksons were close-up and personal – often because they were contracted to make them that way – and were often preceded by a period during which the target (read: victim) was held captive in a state of terror before the final event that was the brutal death.

  The relationship between the Jacksons had begun, accidentally, many years before when they had been neighbours, kids together at school, just good buddies.

  Neither bore the name Jackson at that time.

  Matthew Ainsworth and Elizabeth Barnes. Two northern kids, normal kids – Matt and Lizzie.

  Their close connection came about when they were at junior school, through a meeting of minds and just one shared look into each other’s eyes when, aged only eight, they realized they were on the same wavelength.

&nbs
p; Lizzie had spotted Matt in one corner of the school playground, studying something intently in the grass. Up to that point in their short lives, they had not really spoken to each other, but Lizzie, intrigued by the object of Matt’s infatuation, had stopped her furious skipping and wandered over with the rope in her hands.

  ‘What you doing?’

  Matt was startled. He flipped guiltily on to his bottom, clamping the palms of his hands together to hide something. ‘Nowt.’ He squinted up at her pretty face.

  ‘You are, I can see you are,’ she teased him. ‘It’s in your hands. What is it?’

  Matt glanced furtively around. No one seemed to be taking any notice of them.

  Carefully, he revealed his treasure.

  The long, slim body of a daddy-long-legs, minus its legs but with its wings still intact and quivering weakly.

  It was alive, and Matt imagined he could hear it screaming.

  Lizzie gasped. ‘You’re torturing it!’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He looked into her eyes. They sparkled with glee and in that moment he knew she was just as into it as he was.

  He proffered the suffering insect to her in the palm of his left hand. ‘Here, pull its wings off.’

  She dropped the skipping rope, and with her forefinger and thumb she gently took hold of the fluttering, gossamer wings to stop them flapping.

  Then tore them off.

  Matt’s smile was jerky yet genuine. He had a new friend.

  ‘He screamed, you know?’ Matt said.

  ‘I know. I could hear him within me.’

  Matt curled his hand tightly around the limbless, wingless, helpless tube that was the body of the unfortunate insect and crushed it, relishing the sensation of ultimate power – to take life.

  They were twelve years old when they killed their first human being.

  Four years of unexplained animal deaths in their neighbourhood culminated in the horrific murder of a forty-five-year-old man.

  But, they often argued between themselves for years after, he actually deserved to die. Clearly, they knew that the killing of another person would happen at some stage in their lives, but it was circumstance that propelled them to commit their first murder.

  For once, they had been playing fairly innocently on a marshy patch of ground close to the housing estate on which they lived. It was during an idyllic, baking-hot summer and they were both in shorts and T-shirts wading into the water, catching sticklebacks with fishing nets and plopping them into water-filled jam jars; later they intended to perform autopsies on the fish after first having killed them by a variety of methods from simple suffocation to beheading. Matt had even smuggled two sharp knives out of his mum’s kitchen and into his father’s shed, which would act as the mortuary.

  The marshy pond, known locally as The Swanee – for reasons no one could explain – had two footpaths running either side of it, and as the two kids played in the reeds they noticed a man walking along the path on the opposite side from where they were but paid him little heed – until he appeared a few minutes later on the banking just above where they were splashing around.

  They stopped, shaded their eyes from the sun and looked at him.

  Matt thought he was dressed like a workman. He had baggy jeans streaked with white paint and a bulky zip-up jacket over a blue denim shirt. He had thick, greasy black hair and was unshaven.

  ‘Hi, kids, what’re you up to?’ he called affably, but even then Matt sensed the man was not quite right, a danger.

  Lizzie also frowned at him. ‘Just fishing,’ she answered and turned away.

  Matt continued to watch him through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Caught anything?’ The man’s voice was raspy.

  ‘A few sticklebacks.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  The two jam jars were balanced on a rock jutting out of the water. The little fish swam around in circles.

  ‘They’re here,’ Matt said.

  ‘Bring ’em here.’

  Matt shook his head and saw a strange look come over the man’s face.

  ‘Bring them here,’ he said again. ‘And both of you, come here and sit down.’ He pointed. ‘Next to me.’

  Matt swallowed and exchanged a worried look with Lizzie, who was standing tensely now. She picked up the jars by the string handles she had fashioned around the necks and waded slowly through the water to the sandy bank. Matt was behind her.

  ‘Put them down here,’ the man said, ‘and you sit either side of me.’ He lowered himself to the ground and patted it. The children cautiously sat either side of him.

  ‘I think we need to go,’ Matt said. His voice was thin and afraid.

  ‘No, no, I don’t think so,’ the man said.

  Matt’s mouth moved slightly, no words coming out. The man regarded him threateningly.

  ‘Have you ever had the belt?’ he asked Lizzie.

  ‘What do you mean?’ She swallowed.

  ‘Have you been leathered? With a belt, is what I mean.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then had salt put on the wound?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So that it’s excruciatingly painful?’ The man smiled and touched the inside of Lizzie’s left thigh. She recoiled as if electrocuted, but he grabbed her flesh in his hand and dragged her towards him. ‘Well, it’s going to happen.’

  Matt shot back up to his feet. He had spotted a woman walking along the path on the other side of the marsh. ‘That’s my mum,’ he said convincingly.

  ‘Where?’ Suddenly the man was worried.

  ‘There!’ Matt said and shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. ‘Mum, mum!’ It was too far for even his amplified voice to carry but he continued with his pretence. ‘We’re going to meet her at the Spar on Thwaites Road.’

  He acted then, swooped down past the man and grabbed Lizzie’s spindly arm, hauled her to her feet and dragged her along the path, leaving the man scrambling up the sand bank. They thought he would chase them, but when Matt looked around after about fifty metres of running he was nowhere to be seen, having scurried away in the opposite direction.

  Gagging for breath, both kids stood doubled over with their hands on their knees, looking at each other, both thinking the same thing.

  It was Lizzie who voiced their thoughts.

  ‘We should kill him.’

  They easily tracked him down, then took their time.

  He lived alone in a grotty terraced house, seemed to have no friends and they had little problem in learning about him. Watching his comings and goings. Seeing him lurking around entrances to infant schools, the town swimming pool and around children’s play areas.

  They even saw him snatch a young child who managed to wriggle free from his clutches. He scuttled away before the kid’s mother saw him.

  His name was David Carson and he was going to die, strangled by his own belt, covered in salt.

  Matt and Lizzie planned it carefully, neither swaying from their course of action and, when the time came, one night when they watched Carson stumble home drunk, they broke into his house to find him face down, asleep on his disgusting bed. Lizzie knelt on his back; Matt ripped the leather belt off Carson’s trousers, slid it round his neck and throttled him. They poured a packet of salt over his head.

  He was not missed, being discovered four months later, his body having almost rotted away to nothing. A half-hearted police investigation concluded that local paedophile David Carson had been murdered by a vigilante and no one in uniform came knocking on Matt or Lizzie’s front door.

  By that time they had killed a second time and were on a roll.

  A dozen years later, their undoubted skills were on offer and used by the highest bidders until their progression put them in touch with the Bashkim family, to whom they were exclusively contracted and their latest killing had been simple and great fun.

  The target had been easy to apprehend and then murder by hacking off her head in front of the cameras, because as Viktor Bashkim had s
aid, ‘This is very personal to me.’

  Matt and Lizzie had been pretty exhausted by the time they landed in Zante and were glad to be met and whisked away from the airport by a waiting car and on to Viktor’s luxurious motor yacht where they could start to relax and chill out in their own time before having to appear in front of the old man.

  When eventually they wandered on to deck they were dressed elegantly, Matt in loose-fitting linen trousers and a shirt, espadrilles on his feet, Lizzie in a fine chiffon dress through which the slim but curvaceous lines of her body could be seen, much to Matt’s delight.

  A table was set for them on the lower rear deck – the location, unbeknownst to them but which would have given them a thrill, where a man had been beaten to death only hours earlier – and a servant brought them champagne, oysters and lobster which they devoured voraciously, slurping and giggling as they consumed the delicious food.

  After eating, they took their drinks to the back of the boat and lounged sophisticatedly against the rail, looking at the pretty port and clinking their fine champagne flutes.

  Viktor chose this time to appear.

  Nothing was said as Matt lifted a large picnic cool box made of polypropylene on to the dining table, flipped the locking mechanism and raised the lid.

  Viktor looked in at Maria Santiago’s severed head nestling on a bed of crushed ice, her face staring upwards at him, distorted and bloody, one eye open, the other half closed diagonally, her once-gorgeous mouth twisted and her tongue protruding through her lips.

  Viktor looked at the killers.

  ‘Depending on how this goes,’ he told them, ‘you might have to bring me another head.’

  Steve Flynn looked at his face in the mirror affixed to the wall above the washbasin, not really recognizing the battered reflection, nor liking it.

  ‘Get on with it,’ a voice behind him said.

  Flynn’s eyes flickered and focused on the figure of the armed officer who had taken over the watch from Molly Cartwright, who, as Flynn had instinctively predicted, he would not become great friends with.

  After Molly’s departure, Flynn had slept for a long time thanks to a further input of drugs. A dark sleep, no dreams this time, and he had woken feeling more refreshed than before. Still in pain, still stressed, but physically a touch improved, though still emotionally unstable.