A mass of bodies had just swarmed through the airport, having alighted a plane from Liverpool. They had been noisy, badly behaved Brits, all displaying the stereotypical lager-lout mentality — or so it seemed to Lopez — though in reality it was probably only a small minority who were chanting football songs.
The plane he was waiting for, from Rotterdam, had just landed. The passengers were due through shortly.
Lopez found himself thinking about Mendoza, his boss, and the predicament he was in at the moment.
Many people wrongly believe that top criminals are rolling in money. Sometimes it was true, but like other businesses in the legitimate arena, even crime has its ups and downs. Sometimes there was solvency, sometimes not. Sometimes there was loads of cash, other times it was tight. Sometimes you could loan, sometimes you needed to borrow. Sometimes business was good and sometimes it was muy mal. Feast or famine.
And just at that moment for Carlos Mendoza, life was looking rather grim. He had lent money — other people’s money — and failed to get it back. Case in point was the second-rate gangster from the north of England who had borrowed money from Mendoza to initiate criminal activity. The guy had been a loser, a no-hoper — the money never came back and Mendoza had resorted to having him wasted and had transferred the debt to his more successful brother. . who now languished in prison, unable to pay a bean, even if he had wanted to. The problem would have been manageable had Mendoza not compounded it by then borrowing a huge amount of money himself to purchase cocaine from a Colombian cartel for a deal he had set up in England. That massive consignment had now been stolen and Mendoza found himself in hock in excess of two million pounds sterling without any conceivable way of paying it off, because the majority of his wealth was tied up in building sites and half-built properties around the Costa.
It wasn’t as though the debt was with a respectable clearing bank, either. Not the Bank of Santander, not Telebanco.
But the Cosa Nostra. They were his financiers.
Lopez knew that interest payments were already overdue and no one, not even someone of Mendoza’s stature, would be allowed to welch.
Mendoza had already received a polite phone call from a ‘business partner’ in Sicily, enquiring as to how the deal was progressing and looking forward to the first instalment.
It was a call that Mendoza had reacted to with horror, making him recognize that, as big as he was in the world of organized crime, he was nowhere near the players who lounged around in the sun in Palermo. All he was, was another fairly minor cog in their engine and they had the power to change gear whenever they wanted.
The illegal-immigration side of Mendoza’s business was going well, but even the profits from that were not as great as the media claimed. So many people were involved in the chain of events who needed paying, that by the time Mendoza received his cut, whilst considerable, it was not as great as people imagined and nowhere near enough to clear his debts to the Mafia.
In short, Mendoza was in a critical condition and if he wanted to save himself, he needed to act swiftly, decisively and ruthlessly.
Which was why Lopez was at the airport.
He chuckled to himself as he stood there
The passengers from the Rotterdam flight filtered peacefully through the airport until there was just a dribble left.
Lopez grinned as the man he was waiting for appeared. They glanced at each other, nodded almost imperceptibly. Lopez turned and walked out ahead of him, stepping into the oppressive heat of the day, crossing the road and making for the multi-storey car park where he had parked the car he had arrived in, an unspectacular-looking Seat. A driver sat in it, waiting patiently. Lopez paused at the car and waited to greet the man who had discreetly followed him.
His face broke into a wide smile as they shook hands, embraced, and indulged in a lot of hearty back-patting. ‘Ramon, my friend, it is good to see you. Very good.’
‘And you, and you,’ Ramon responded ebulliently. ‘Como esta?’
‘Muy bien. . come, we need to get out of this heat. . you sit in the front next to Miguel. .’ He opened the door for Ramon, the guy who headed Mendoza’s operations at Zeebrugge. The chill from the air-conditioning system whipped up.
Ramon hesitated, almost stepped backwards. His smile dropped and he eyed Lopez suspiciously. ‘What is this?’
Lopez laughed, sensing quickly what Ramon was worried about. ‘Ahh, the front seat,’ he said knowingly. ‘The death seat. . the bullet in the back of the head seat. . do not worry, my friend. . it is nothing like that.’
Ramon was not convinced. He knew of too many people who had been foolish enough to be suckered into climbing into front passenger seats of cars for innocent journeys, only to have their brains blown out or their throats slit, or to be strangled with piano wire.
‘Are you sure?’
Lopez smiled, but was irritated. ‘Of course. We have urgent business. . but I have a laptop in the back seat, and papers which I need to work on. Come, my friend, have you heard of anyone being beaten to death by a laptop computer? No, I think not. . please. .’
Spinks was the name of the big man operating on the Rochdale side of Manchester. He owned pubs and clubs, controlled all the town-centre drugs trade via his bouncers on the doors. Control the doors, control the drugs. That was the saying. He lived a flash lifestyle with good cars, clothes and good-looking women. He was brazen and open and did not mind who knew just how wealthy he was, which was partly his downfall. The other ‘partly’ was that he had once called Rufus Sweetman a ‘no-good shit’ and threatened that one day he would ‘take everything he owned away from him’.
In those terms, Spinks was a good starting point for Sweetman.
Teddy Bear Jackman and Tony Cromer did not take long to latch on to Spinks. They cruised the streets of Rochdale for a while, wondering where best to find him, racking their brains for inspiration, when suddenly Jackman blurted, ‘Vic and Tom’s!’
Cromer smiled wickedly. ‘You’re bloody right.’ He was driving and executed a wild u-turn without warning or signals and accelerated in the direction of the town centre. He abandoned the car on double yellows outside the high-class hair salon known as ‘Vic and Tom’s’ on a crowded side street close to the location of the world’s first ever Co-op.
Side by side they muscled into the busy salon, a place frequented by the area’s richest and swankiest women, the side of the business run by Victoria. All eyes swivelled and watched the progress of the two heavies across the shop floor and out the other side through Wild-West-type saloon swing doors into Tom’s. This was a gent’s hair stylist designed to resemble a Victorian barber’s shop, all tiles and leather chairs. It was busy in here, too, a customer on every chair, several waiting, reading magazines.
Cromer and Jackman continued their relentless march towards the office at the far end of the salon, until one of the braver members of staff, tiny scissors in hand, stepped in front of them.
‘Can I help you gents? It’s appointment only, you know?’ he challenged nervously, eyes taking in the sheer bulk and animalism of the two men. . and rather liking what he saw.
‘We’ve come to see Tom,’ Cromer said.
The hairdresser shook his head. ‘Not in. Sorry. Can I take a message?’
‘Fuck off!’ Jackman growled.
The scissors wavered in the air. All eyes were now focused on the incident.
‘I’m sorry, he’s not in, honestly.’ His voice sounded weedy.
‘I’ll just check that out, if you don’t mind,’ Cromer said, leaning towards the young man, ‘by going in there’ — he pointed to the office — ‘and having a look.’