Pinions Of Gold

Chapter 4

FOUR

The Mercedes parked in a lay-by outside the market town of Louth. The man with the designer glasses pressed a button and the tinted panel separating him from his driver slid down.

“Victor, you are the most confounded i***t. What do you keep in that overripe pumpkin that passes for a head? Whatever it is, it isn’t a brain.”

Resentful eyes fought to mask a glower with an effort at subservience. The chauffeur assessed his employer’s mood. Victor Dogaru owed much to David Briggs QC, a suave, London divorce barrister. Briggs had taken him, an illegal immigrant, from the streets of the English capital, sorted his papers and given him a well-paid job. Of course, he hadn’t given Victor the idea that he was legal, preferring to let him think that his residence in England was done by favours. In that way, he ensured the Romanian’s insecurity, gratitude and servile obedience: considerable assets in an ex-Olympic wrestler who prided himself on intimidating strength.

The caustic tone continued, “Didn’t it occur to what passes for a brain under that cap that you can’t use firearms in a Lincolnshire village? My God, man, I have a reputation based on years of hard work. One moment of idiocy could leave it in tatters. Thank heavens it was only one shot and not a very good one at that.”

Victor was sweating under his peaked cap, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off his employer’s face. He studied the eyes in his mirror; they were as cold as adjacent ice floes. There was a hint of something submerged, something dangerous, something the Romanian didn’t want to surface. Victor’s mean mouth, with hard, cruel sensuous lips compressed even more. Briggs was a generous boss, but not given to supporting fools. Victor sought a means of appeasement.

“Sorry, boss, but he had a white box in his hand and he hid it as soon as he saw me. It must have been important. I only wanted to stop him, not to kill him.” Gratified, Victor watched Briggs’s expression change. Now he had his complete attention.

“A white box?”

Victor described the hole in the wall and how the box had been hidden there, the crumbs of plaster fresh on the stair carpet and the surprising agility of the intruder.

“I want that box,” Briggs murmured more to himself.

“If we find that Land Rover…”

“We, Victor, we…don’t you think you’ve done enough damage for one day? You can’t even catch a bicycle, let alone a Land Rover, not even with a 6.2 litre V8 Mercedes. No,” he said, “I’ll set a professional on the woman driver’s case. Your job is to get me back to London without any further unpleasantness if that’s not beyond you.”

The partition slid up before Victor could reply. David Briggs opened the fridge door and poured himself a good measure of thirty-year-old Lagavulin, ironically, Jake Conley’s favourite tipple, added ice, then with a sigh sank back in his seat.

All’s well that ends well. And despite appearances things had gone better than expected. The mysterious white box would never have come to light without the unexpected intruder. Tracing the Land Rover shouldn’t be too difficult for a professional. No, all told, a satisfactory day. As for a gunshot, Victor wasn’t to know that in Lincolnshire gunshots were the order of the day. Briggs smirked; small detail, the targets were wood pigeons or crows, not young men. He’d have to sort out the trigger-happy Romanian though. Briggs swirled his whisky around the tinkling ice cubes and murmured: “I want that box, whatever the cost.”