Stratton walked back down the stairs feeling sure that he would achieve nothing unless he could fund some massive legal representation privately. He stepped out into the bright sunlight and headed away from the court buildings.
As he tried to think of other peaceful ways of resolving the situation he found himself leaning more and more towards walking away from the whole thing. But as soon as he contemplated the possibility voices in his head hounded him, accusing him of deserting his friends. He fought back by telling himself that he was not yet abandoning them. Stratton felt he was going mad as his mind was dragged first one way then the other, loyalty pitted against common sense, duty towards friends against self-preservation.
As he crossed the road he knew that he was on the verge of turning his back on Jack and Sally. He was unaware of the black Mercedes stretch limousine with dark-tinted windows that drove slowly out of the police department parking lot and pulled onto the main road behind him.
Stratton cut down Second Street, passing a McDonald’s on his left. Feeling hungry, he decided that right then junk food seemed okay to him. The famous fast-food establishment was quiet inside and after ordering a hamburger, some fries and a soda he considered eating the meal in the restaurant. But after a quick scan of the other customers, namely two overweight families and their children on one side scarfing down a feast that would sustain a small village in the Sudan for several days and a filthy bum eating like a pig on the other, he elected to eat while he walked. A stroll along the front might help to clear his head, he thought, and he headed for the entrance.
As Stratton walked outside two large men in Hawaiian shirts stepped from either side of the door and followed him. He glanced over his shoulder and slowed to face them, recognising them as two of Skender’s bodyguards from the courthouse. He prepared himself for an attack.
But instead of moving in on him they stopped at a safe distance, eyeing him warily. They had seen the ease with which he had taken down their friend and although they felt confident in their ability to crush him they were cautious.
‘The boss vants to speak to you,’ one of them grunted in a heavy accent, jutting his chin past Stratton.
Stratton looked over his shoulder at the black stretch limousine, the only vehicle on the far side of the large car park. His mind raced as he considered various evasive-action options. This was obviously to do with the bodyguard he had felled since Skender and his men could not possibly know of his interest in Sally’s killers.
‘What does he want?’ Stratton asked.
‘You should ask him,’ the thug said, taking a step forward.
‘Maybe some other time,’ Stratton said as he stepped back and headed off across the car park. Another thug appeared in front of him and he stopped to look around. Another goon was behind him and a fifth, a fat one, climbed out of the limousine and put his hand inside his jacket as if he had a weapon concealed there. Stratton reviewed his options which were limited to making a run for it.
The original pair closed in and halted a yard away from him. ‘You can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ the first thug said, pulling back his jacket to reveal a semi-automatic pistol in his belt. ‘Don’t matter to me. Boss didn’t say you had to walk to the car yourself.’
Stratton wondered if these people were genuinely fearless of using guns in public but he was not curious enough to find out.
‘You can eat your lunch in the car,’ the thug said.
Stratton accepted that the situation was out of his hands, for the time being at least. He faced the limousine and walked towards it.
He reached the vehicle where the fat thug standing outside it looked him up and down before beckoning him closer. Stratton took another step forward.
‘Raise your arms,’ the man ordered.
Stratton obeyed, holding his meal in one hand and the drink in the other while the man frisked the length of his body, including his ankles. When he stood up he held out his hand. ‘I’ll take the meal.’
‘That’s what this is all about? You want my lunch?’
The man smiled thinly. ‘The meal,’ he said.
Stratton handed it to him.
‘Get in the car,’ the fat man said as he shuffled aside.
Stratton glanced around at the others who had closed in. He leaned down and stepped inside the limousine.
The fat thug holding his food tossed it to an even fatter one who looked inside the paper bag while following the others towards a white sedan parked on the street.
The limo interior was spacious, with seats on three sides and a drinks cabinet by the door. Stratton chose the back seat where he faced Cano who sat leaning forward, his fingers clasped together, looking at him solemnly. A glass partition behind Cano separated the passenger cabin from the driver’s compartment where a man sat in the passenger seat beside the driver. The fat thug who had greeted Stratton outside climbed in, closed the door behind him, and sat on the long seat between the two other men. Stratton had for some reason expected to find Skender inside but with his absence and the demonic Cano in his place the situation seemed even darker.
‘This is very nice,’ Stratton said, looking around. ‘My first limousine.’
‘You search him well, Klodi?’ Cano asked his ape.
‘Yeah, I did, Mr Vleshek.’
Cano turned around to tap on the glass partition. A few seconds later the vehicle pulled smoothly out of the car park and headed south in the direction of Venice Beach.
‘You look like a confident guy,’ Cano said in precise English though the Slav accent was strong. His voice was slow and calculating as if Cano was trying to sound as articulate as possible.
Stratton studied the man who, despite the expensive suit and finely trimmed black hair and goatee, was typical of the Albanian KLA types he had known in Kosovo. Stratton had spent several months, on and off, in various parts of the province, mainly in Pristina, its capital, and in the town of Podujevo in the northeast on the main route out of Kosovo for the retreating Serbian army and refugees. Like most of the other operatives with whom he had served in Kosovo, he had initially considered the Albanians borderline okay, understanding their hatred for the Serbs. During the early days it had seemed that all they wanted was to be rid of a people who had tried to wipe them off the face of the Earth, although throughout history it had been a two-way, see-saw fight, one side as bad as the other.
As the war progressed and the Serbian army left Kosovo, forced out by NATO, the dark heart of the Albanian psyche showed itself. Pockets of Serb civilians such as farmers remained, some of whom stubbornly maintained their right to stay while others were unable to escape because they didn’t have transport or were too old, too young or too feeble to make the long journey to Serbia and then reestablish themselves there. The Albanian hatred for them was totally relentless. What had begun as an amicable partnership between NATO and the KLA to oust the Serbian army from Kosovo turned into an internal security situation where the UN and NATO-led K-For were the police and the KLA became the delinquents. On more than one occasion Stratton had crossed swords with them and blood had been spilled but always the KLA – they were not sufficiently well trained or equipped to take on the British military and were certainly not skilled enough to take on special forces.
Stratton had seen the results of Serbian and Albanian atrocities and he reckoned that there was not much to choose between the two as far as brutality was concerned. But due to the area he operated in it had been the ruthlessness and savagery of the Albanians, the KLA, that he had witnessed more often. Looking at Cano reminded him of so many KLA members he had seen: that same brooding, sometimes vacant but usually hate-filled look.
‘What am I doing here?’ Stratton asked, glancing at Klodi who was staring ahead between them and breathing heavily in the way that overweight people sometimes do.