Scott Mariani 2-book Collection: Star of Africa, The Devil’s Kingdom

And so, with some regret, Ben had come to Paris to do the necessary.

And that was when the trouble had started.

Chapter 2 (#u995bc063-7ed8-573e-9c8d-d5632776326d)

The first thing Ben had noticed on his return was how rundown the whole neighbourhood looked. Shop fronts that had been scrubbed and spotless last time he’d seen them were now covered in graffiti. A striking number of windows were boarded up where they’d been broken and never repaired, as if the local business community had fallen into some kind of collective apathy. The secondhand bookstore he’d often spent hours browsing in, just up the street from the apartment, was closed down. So was the great little patisserie where he’d always bought his morning croissants. Once bustling with life, the streets seemed weirdly empty. The few people Ben did pass looked furtive and anxious.

The area had never been the most prime location in Paris, by any stretch of the imagination – it wasn’t Avenue Montaigne or the Champs Élysées. But something was different. Not just visibly, but tangibly. Like something in the air, a chill or a shadow, the dropping of a barometer needle signalling a change in pressure and things set to turn stormy. He could sense it like a bad smell. It was the oddest thing, but he put it out of his mind as he made his way from the underground car parking space and up the steps to the familiar old apartment entrance.

Ben had been away from the safehouse long enough to find everything inside covered in a fine layer of dust. Still, it felt like part of him, like a comfortable old shoe, and he hated thinking he’d soon have to part with it. He fired up the heating to get some warmth into the place. Rooting in the kitchen cupboard he found an unopened pack of ground espresso not too far past its sell-by date, brewed up a mug of coffee, strong and black, the way he liked it, and then said to himself, ‘Right. Let’s get to work.’

He’d spent the rest of that first day cleaning up and surveying each room in turn with a critical eye, trying to see it from the perspective of a potential buyer, and making mental lists of what needed doing to bring the place up to scratch. It was fairly spartan and he’d never done much to try to furnish it beyond the absolute basics, but it wasn’t in terrible shape. The most obvious first step was a general freshening-up of the decor, so the morning after his arrival, Ben had gone out to pick up the necessary supplies.

After paying a visit to the local hardware store for some decorating sundries, he’d headed for Abdel’s grocery shop just around the corner from the safehouse to buy in some food provisions for the few days he expected to be around. Ben had known Abdel for years, and liked him a lot. They’d long ago got into the habit of conversing in the Algerian’s native Arabic, which Ben spoke almost as well as he did French. Abdel was a good-natured guy, invariably cheerful, grinning a mile wide and ever ready with a funny anecdote.

Not today. The moment Ben had walked into the shop, he’d sensed the same change he’d been sensing everywhere.

And when he’d quizzed Abdel about what was wrong, it soon began to make sense. At first nervous and reluctant to talk, Abdel told Ben about the Romanian criminal gang who had steadily been taking over the neighbourhood during the last year.

‘I have nothing against immigrants,’ Abdel said. ‘Why should I? My parents came here in ’65. But these people are like animals. They have come here only to take and destroy. They are greedy for anything they can get. Stealing from tourists isn’t enough for them any more.’ He explained how the Romanians’ enterprise had swelled and their confidence grown at such an alarming rate that within a matter of months they’d started leaning on local businesses and extorting protection money out of them, using the threat of vandalism as their incentive. Now Ben understood why he’d been seeing so many broken windows everywhere. The nearby hardware store he’d visited that morning had been no exception. An assistant had been sweeping glass off the floor as Ben had walked in.

Abdel explained how the Romanians had now started stepping up the pressure, bringing in their heavies to enforce the extortion racket with threats of broken legs, beatings and arson. Meanwhile, they were flooding the neighbourhood with cheap drugs and getting deeper into allied rackets like car theft, burglary and prostitution.

‘Everyone is terrified of them. We are hardworking, decent people. We don’t deserve this. Look what’s happening out there. The streets are empty. People are afraid to go out. Hardly anyone comes into my shop any more, because they’re scared of what might happen if the Romanians turned up.’

‘What about the police?’ Ben asked.

Abdel shrugged. ‘What about them? Some of us got together and made an official complaint. We even told them the address where the gang are all living together like a bunch of bandits, making disgusting films and selling women and drugs. We told them the name of the leader, too.’

‘Which is what?’ Ben asked.

‘He calls himself Dracul.’

Dracul. Ben shook his head. How trite. ‘It means “devil” in Romanian,’ he said.

‘Why would he call himself by such a name?’ Abdel asked, frowning.

‘Probably because he thinks it sounds scary,’ Ben said.

‘He is scary. A big, big man, with long black hair and a scar on his face. He’s easy to recognise. We gave the description to the police. They made us fill out a form and said they would be in touch. Nothing happened. Nobody gives a damn about us little guys.’

Ben sighed. You turned your back for a year, and this was the result of it. The neighbourhood falling into the control of a violent criminal gang wasn’t going to do his chances of selling the apartment any favours, either.

There was more. Abdel told Ben that the Romanians wanted two thousand euros from him, a new monthly payment demand Dracul called ‘respect tax’. They’d given Abdel a number to phone to say he was agreeing to cough up the money. If he didn’t call by three o’clock that afternoon, they’d told him they were going to come and break one arm and one leg. That was so he could still work. Generous. He’d still have to pay, of course. Then if the following month’s payment was late, it would be the other arm and the other leg. The next time after that, they’d promised, Dracul was personally going to have his fun with Abdel’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Faridah, before handing her over to the boys to be gang-raped and beaten to a pulp. Or maybe they’d drug her up and make her the starlet in one of the hardcore movie productions they were selling on the side.

Ben was very unhappy to hear that. It made his fists tighten.

‘What am I going to do?’ Abdel said desperately. ‘I have no money to pay them. I can’t protect my own family from these people.’

‘Do nothing,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t call them. Wait for them to come to you.’

‘But I told you what they’ll do.’

‘Everything will be fine,’ Ben assured him.

After which Ben had gone back to the apartment, started stripping wallpaper, smoked some cigarettes and drunk some coffee, eaten a tin of cassoulet for lunch and bided his time until the afternoon.

Just before three, he’d left the apartment again and walked to his car, taking with him a few hardware store items he’d tossed inside his bag. He’d made the short drive and parked across the street from Abdel’s shop to wait for the Romanians to turn up.

And now here they were, bang on schedule.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_0f24f252-1d64-5ded-a07a-d4714ad39838)

As Ben stepped inside the shop, the two big guys were already standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the counter, glaring at Abdel. There wasn’t a customer in the place. The Algerian looked pale. He became even paler when Ben walked in.

At the sound of the tinkling door chime, the Romanians turned in unison to give Ben the dead-eyed warning look that said, ‘Stay out of this if you know what’s good for you.’

And for a second the pair must have thought it had done the trick, because Ben turned around and walked straight back to the door. Except he didn’t walk out of it. Instead, he popped the latch closed and flipped the sign around to say FERMÉ.

Then he turned back around to face them. He smiled. They were giving him their full attention now, arms folded and brows creased with impatience. Ben said in Arabic to Abdel, ‘These two won’t trouble you any more.’

‘Who the fuck are you?’ said the Slavic-looking one.

‘My name’s Ben,’ Ben replied, switching to French. ‘What’s yours?’

‘This is your last chance to get the fuck out of here, fuckhead.’ Cheap gangsters didn’t generally require a very wide vocabulary.

‘You should be careful how you talk to me,’ Ben said.

The Romanians exchanged glances. The darker one was grinning and shaking his head in amused disbelief at the impudence of this guy. The Slavic one didn’t seem quite so confident. Evidently the smarter of the two. ‘Yeah? Why’s that?’ he asked.

‘Because I have a gun,’ Ben said. He unslung his bag from his shoulder and took out the staple gun he’d bought that morning. A pressed-steel box with a spring-loaded squeeze mechanism. Handy for all kinds of jobs around the home. And outside it.

The Romanians stared at him. Ben aimed the stapler at the Slavic one, squeezed the handle with a clack, and the tiny steel staple went pinging through the air to bounce off his big chest.

That was all the provocation the Romanians needed. They both went for him at once.

Four seconds later, both were stretched out side by side on the floor. The dark one was still conscious, but Ben fixed that with a tap to the head with the toecap of his boot.

‘Ya ilahi,’ Abdel gasped, staring down at the inert bodies and wringing his hands. ‘Look what you did.’

Next, Ben took out the big roll of tape, then the scissors, followed by a thick black marker pen. He cut off lengths of tape and used them to bind the Romanians’ wrists, ankles and knees together. When they were securely trussed up and gagged with more tape over their mouths, he asked Abdel for a sheet of paper.

Abdel tore a blank page from a cash book. Ben scissored it into two halves. Using the marker pen he wrote on one half of the paper the greeting SALUT, in big blocky capital letters. On the other he wrote the Romanian gang leader’s name.

Hello, Dracul. A clear enough message, sufficiently simple for even the lowliest kind of thug to comprehend, and opening the way to the next phase of Ben’s plan. The bodies had to be correctly arranged left to right for it to read properly, but that wouldn’t be a problem.

Then Ben used the staple gun to tack each half of the paper in turn to each of the men’s foreheads. The hardened steel staples punched out with enough force to drive into wood or plaster, and had no problem biting into bone. They’d need to be prised out with a screwdriver.