Frewin Scorpian Rising

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-84243-628-8
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

Sidney Blattner is probably the most successful organised crime figure in London, but things are coming unstuck. Who would dare to execute his innocent brother down in Margate, and why? When Blattner attends the funeral, his chauffeur disappears, forcing Sid and his two minders to flee the seaside resort ignominiously in a Transit van... Sidney calls in as many favours as he can to find out what is going on down in Margate but without success. Two of his aides, sent down to investigate, turn up murdered. There are plenty of questions, but no answers. Will Vince, the sharpest member of Sid's firm, have any better luck when he arrives in the fading seaside town, or are he and Sidney about to meet their nemesis?

Anthony Frewin was born in London and lives in Hertfordshire. He was assistant film director to Stanley Kubrick for over 20 years. He has written three novels published by No Exit Press, London Blues, Sixty-Three Closure and Scorpian Rising.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Frewin, Anthony

Leseproben

1: Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid

THE LARGE MERCEDES saloon with smoked glass windows pulled out of the racecourse and headed back to London. It was a good Thursday because Sidney Blattner who was sitting in the back, flanked by his two aides, Vince and young Leo, had cleaned up on the horses and was now some £60,000 better off than when he awoke this morning in the arms of Barbara, one of his mistresses, down in St George’s Square, behind Victoria Station. A good Thursday all right, but it wouldn’t be for long. Today things would, in a phrase much favoured by Sid but usually applied to others, start to come unstuck.

Not just unstuck.

But, to use the medial emphatic also favoured by Sid, un-fucking-stuck.

Sid Blattner was sixty-two years of age and a very successful London criminal. For some years now he had been going into legitimate ventures with the cash that had cascaded in from protection rackets, drugs, girls, gambling and all the rest of the bent ventures gallimaufry. He knew where he was going and he thought he knew how he was going to get there. He was always like that – organised, methodical, wily. And he considered himself untouchable because he had linked himself with so many figures in public life that to bring him down you would have to bring them down too.

The whole house of cards in other words.

And nobody was going to risk that.

Good insurance.

Luck, however, had played a larger part in Sid’s life than most people realised, least of all Sid himself who, like most successful men, refused to acknowledge its existence in any way as a contributing factor.

Today, that luck was running out and Sid’s life was to begin unravelling, but as the Merc crossed Chelsea Bridge he was as unaware of this turn in his fortune as he was of the fate of the horse that won him the £60,000 – it died of a heart attack immediately after the race, having been injected with a little too much of the old go-fast syrup.

Yeah, £60,000 better off. Not bad, not bad at all, Sid thought to himself. Well pleased.

‘Nothing like a good gamble!’ says Sid, voicing his inner thoughts.

‘Hardly a gamble…when you know what the result’s gonna be,’ noted Vince.

‘That don’t reduce the sporting element. Anything could go wrong. It’s still a gamble no matter what anyone says,’ Sid replied.

‘Yeah, it’s still a gamble,’ echoed Leo and then, as an afterthought, in deep philosophical mode, ‘but then life’s a gamble itself, ain’t it?’

‘You, Leo, my old son, have never spoken a truer word,’ replied Sid.

Leo smiled and said, ‘You’ve got to say it as it is.’

Vince gazed out at the Thames and thought to himself, these two sound like characters out of a daytime TV soap opera, they really do. Then Vince’s eye returned to the Thames and he thought that the flowing waters here could take him down to the estuary and the sea and the sea could take him up the east coast to Wells…Wells-next-the-Sea, to give it its full name. The water here is connected with the water there. Just one boat trip and he’d be there. One day he would do it, quit London for good, and sooner rather than later, he hoped.

He had promised himself he would do it before his fortieth birthday. And that only left him eighteen months. Not long at all.

Sid knocked back the glass of champagne and fanned some of the cash. He loved the feel of it. Truly he did. There was something about the physical texture of it that made him excited – generally excited to begin with, then sexually excited. It got him going and it did right now. He’d pop over and see Barbara again, give her one. Yeah. Give her a right seeing to. Right now.

Yeah, he could do with a bit of her.

Her eyes burned like 1000-watt bulbs whenever he turned up with a fistful of Jack Dash. She’s a turbo-driven slut when there’s cash about. I’ll have some of her, thought Sid, right now.

Sid told Harry the Chauffeur to make for St George’s Square.

Leo asked, ‘You going to see your Barbara?’

‘Yeah,’ nodded Sid. ‘I can drop you two off at the underground or you can sit it out in the car…suit yourselves on this one.’

‘We’re not going there, guv,’ said Vince softly.

‘Why’s that, then, son?’ demanded Sid.

Vince replied, ‘Because there’s a problem.’

‘A problem? You know I try and run this organisation without problems? You know that.’

‘Right, guv. But we got one this time. And he’s called Brian Spinks.’

‘Oh, yeah…that toe-rag!’

‘Yeah.’

‘Vince, it should be like a symphony, shouldn’t it?’

‘A symphony, Sid. Yes.’

‘We all do our little bit as instructed in harmony and on time and we make music. But when we don’t, there’s discord and no music.’

‘Couldn’t express it better myself,’ said Vince as he yawned and thought to himself, how many times have I heard that little bit of phraseology from Sid? I’d be a rich man if I had a couple of pennies for every time I’ve heard that fly out of his mouth.

After a pause Sid banged his fist into the open palm of his other hand and hissed, ‘I knew that Brian Spinks was a wrong un.

I told you so, thought Vince to himself. I told you so, but you never bothered to listen.

And a symphony, indeed!

Vince had been working for Sid for some fifteen years now, ever since he came out of the army. Too long to stay in one job, particularly one like this, thought Vince. He was getting stale and he knew it. The glamour had worn pretty thin. Working for Sid had cost him his marriage and he didn’t want it to cost him anything else.

He’d accepted Sid’s original offer and had intended only staying a few months until he got on his feet. But he was still here all these years later and going nowhere fast or, as his girlfriend put it, going nowhere slow.

The job back then had been a big step up for a working-class kid from Drury Lane, but where had it got him?

Brian Spinks’ common law wife was pushed in the stomach as she opened the door of the basement flat in Kentish Town, then she was punched in the face as the lad himself, Brian, was bundled out and up the steps and into the back of a grimy van that sped off up Leighton Road.

By the time the van reached York Way Brian was trussed up, thin hemp rope cutting into his wrists and ankles. And the blindfold wasn’t contributing to his well-being either.

This was not the way Brian had envisaged spending the rest of his thirtieth birthday. No, he and June were going out to get a couple of videos and some Chinese take-away and have a quiet evening in. He didn’t expect this.

‘What’s it all about?’ cried Brian who had recognised his abductors. ‘What’ve I done then?’

Phil the Enforcer stubbed out his cigarette on Brian’s neck and said, ‘You’ve upset Symphony Sid, you have. That’s enough…ain’t it?’

Brian’s screams were buried beneath the siren of a passing police car sent to investigate an attempted hold-up in an Indian corner shop somewhere on the Caledonian Road.

The Merc headed east along the Embankment.

‘There’s always some little toe-rag like Spinks who just ain’t satisfied. There always is, isn’t there?’ declared Sid.

Leo murmured agreement.

‘Shit for brains,’ added Vince, still thinking of Wells and the sea.

The van drove through the gates of the scrap-metal yard that somewhat grandiosely declared itself to passers-by in Dalston Junction as being ALBION NON-FERROUS METALS [1947] LTD. Once inside the vehicle pulled up by the docking bay and Phil and his two helpers, Kenny the Driver and Slim, picked up Spinks, manhandled him on to a sack-barrow and wheeled him over to the lift and up to the first floor.

‘I ain’t done nothing,’ shouted Brian prior to Kenny the Driver kicking him in the ribs.

‘You’re a transgressor, mate,’ said Phil. ‘Know that? A fuckin’ transgressor.’

The Merc pulled into the scrap-yard and Vince got out first, looked around and then signalled to Sid and Leo that it was OK for them to get out too. They then hurried across to the docking bay and into the lift.

Sid opened the door of what used to be the chairman’s office and nodded to the three droogs who silently greeted him.

‘Well done, lads,’ said Sid as he went over to Spinks who was now naked and spread-eagled with his face against the wall, his arms and wrists tied severely to Harlan No. 3 wall-anchors.

Spinks looks over his shoulder and says, ‘Hello, Mr B. They’ve got it wrong, they have.’

‘We’ve got nothing wrong,’ spits Sid. ‘You’ve not only been doing a bit of freelance work without a licence from me, you’ve also been skimming the two clubs!’

‘What me? Not me, Mr B!’

‘Yes, you. And Vince here reckons we’re down about ten grand because of your unprincipled greed…so you’re going to have to be chastised. Understand? Phil here is going to dish out a bit of medicine.’

Phil cracks a bull-whip in the air. The crack echoes throughout the room and down the passage that now echoes also with the footfalls of Harry the Chauffeur as he runs to the end office, his face red and flustered.

‘What is it?’ says Sid, turning to Harry and irritated by the interruption.

Harry...