Читать книгу The Rebel: The new crime thriller that will have you gripped in 2018 - Jaime Raven, Jaime Raven - Страница 17

So the die was cast, and Roy Slack wondered how long it would be before the cops came knocking on his door.

He was sure to be their prime suspect, but since there was no hard evidence linking him to the message all he had to do was deny knowing anything about it.

Before sending the text, Danny had asked him if he was sure it was the road he wanted to go down.

‘I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life,’ he’d told him. ‘The bastards have got this coming. And it won’t be enough to kill a couple of detectives. I want to put the Met itself on the spot. I want the world to see what a useless bunch of tossers they really are. And this is the only way I can think of doing that in the time I have left.’

That conversation had taken place an hour ago. Now Slack and his eight top lieutenants were sat around the long table in the conference room above the pub in Rotherhithe. These were the men who effectively ran his businesses. They carried out his orders and were paid handsomely for their loyalty. There was a hierarchy of sorts and even an organisational chart.

Danny Carver was second-in-command and had a roving remit. The others oversaw different parts of the operation. Frank Piper took care of the drugs. Billy Lightfoot was in charge of the clubs and restaurants. Adam Clarke ran the brothels and protection rackets. Clive Miller looked after the warehouses – and so on.

Below them was a small army of enforcers, bean counters, lawyers, bent coppers and a bevy of corrupt local authority officials.

Slack kicked off the meeting by telling them what they already knew – that they were now in the Old Bill’s line of fire.

Frank Piper voiced the concerns of all of them when he said, ‘After what’s happened to Fuller and the others we’re all worried, boss. The bastards are really gonna put the squeeze on us.’

Slack leaned forward, elbows on the table, and a spark of irritation flashed in his eyes.

‘There’s no need to get your bollocks in a twist, Frank,’ he said. ‘We’ve known for a while that this was coming and we’ve already put some measures in place to protect ourselves. You guys just have to keep your nerve and avoid making any stupid mistakes.’

He wasn’t going to tell Piper and the others what he planned to do and why. It’d serve no useful purpose. Unlike Danny they wouldn’t understand and they couldn’t be trusted not to turn against him when the killings began and the pressure really stacked up.

He didn’t care if they refused to believe that he wasn’t responsible. All he cared about now was using this opportunity to go out with a bang, and to punish the Old Bill for what they had done to him.

It was why he was willing to shell out three million dollars to a Mexican drugs baron in order to get the job done.

Throughout his life he’d been in conflict with the police. He blamed them for what happened to his Julie and the last straw came when they killed Terry Malone.

It was the reason he hated them with every fibre of his being. And why he wanted to settle the score before it was too late.

Slack did not like having to lie to his crew, but he felt he had to. If he told them the truth then they’d go into panic mode and start deserting the firm like it was a sinking ship.

In time that wouldn’t matter, but he didn’t want to give the Old Bill the satisfaction of seeing his empire fall apart too early in the game.

Danny Carver played his part in reassuring the others that the firm would be able to weather the storm that was coming. He put on an act that was worthy of an Oscar, inspired in part by the £500k that had been transferred earlier into his offshore bank account, and the promise that another £500k would be sent in a week’s time.

Danny was a realist, after all. He could see that events had conspired to bring about the end of an era.

Slack had filled him in on the conversation he’d had last night with Carlos Cruz and the information he had subsequently gleaned through Google about the Mexican contract killer nicknamed ‘The Slayer’.

‘Seems like she’s the stuff of legend, Danny,’ he’d said. ‘The media are not even sure she really exists.’

Slack had spent an hour on his laptop and had learned that The Slayer was one of a number of notorious female assassins who were working or had worked for the Mexican cartels.

And from the sound of it they were a right bunch of bloodthirsty crazies. Dubbed Las Flacas (The Skinny Ones), they were now commonplace in the major cartels. They were considered ideal sicarias (hired killers) because they were young, beautiful, reckless, and attracted less attention than their male counterparts.

One glamorous hit-woman known as Juana made headlines in 2016 when, after being arrested, she confessed to having sex with the beheaded corpses of her victims and to drinking their blood.

Others included La Güera Loca, or ‘The Crazy Blonde’ who had appeared in a video posted online in which she’d beheaded a man with a machete. She was currently one of the most wanted women in Mexico.

And then there was the infamous Maria Lopez, or La Tosca – ‘The Tough One’ – who was caught in 2011 and went on to own up to twenty murders.

‘Our girl has more than twice that number of kills to her credit,’ Slack had told Danny. ‘She calls herself Rosa Lopez, but Cruz says it’s not her real name. He says she’s the best in the business but he wouldn’t tell me anything else about her.’

‘I don’t think there’s anything more you need to know, boss,’ Danny had said. ‘For the job you want her to do she sounds fucking perfect.’