Chapter 5 (3779)
It was still early for the Cowgate, barely past ten in the evening. A dark and drizzly October night, it would be an hour or two yet before the students and other weekend drinkers drifted down from the streets above to the grotty night clubs and basement bars that lined this narrow tall-sided street. The Cowgate ran from the Grassmarket, a cobbled square in the imposing shadow of the Castle, down the hill towards the park, ending when it turned into Holyrood Road. It ran below all the surrounding streets, giving it a subterranean feel, especially at night, the rain closing it in still further still. The medieval stone buildings almost seem to lean in on either side, like tottering drunks, weeping into the gutters.
Kelly was escorted into one of the clubs, through a claustrophobic cloakroom area, where people would get ink marks stamped onto their skin before entering, and ushered across an empty, but brightly lit dancefloor towards a door at the far end. She was scared and tempted to make a break for it here and now, but the same curiosity that had urged her to get in the car with the four heavies still compelled her onwards. The car had been big, an old Jaguar with cracked egg-shell blue leather upholstery. The interior had smelled of tobacco smoke and men’s bodies. The four men had talked a little, and one of them had cracked a joke, all been carried out in a language she assumed to be Romanian. Despite the fact she had been breaking into houses for the last four years, she had never met other criminals before, unless you counted Treacle. They all looked cold and dead-eyed to her, but that could just have been the fear creeping over her. None of them looked like fighters, just like men that would go to any lengths if they had to and not lose a wink of sleep over whatever dark deeds their path in life lead them too. Killers, but not fighters, she consoled herself with that.
At the other side of the dancefloor they led he behind a bar and along a service corridor full of beer barrels to a restaurant area that had all the chairs up on the tables except for one at the back. As they walked further into the room, skirting around the island bar in the middle, Salsa music began to play behind them in the nightclub, a jolly Rumba beat that seemed ill-fitting to the sinister situation Kelly had found herself in. Two men were sat at the far table, but on her arrival one of them got up and left in a hurry, smiling and nodding deferentially to her stony-faced escorts. The other, a tall long-legged man with dark curly hair called her over with a beckoning gesture of his hand, like he was summoning a waiter. She walked across and sat opposite from him, as far away as she could be, while the other four men took the chairs off a table nearby and in unison all got their phones out. It takes a lot of Romanians to bag one small cat-burglar she thought to herself, and that’s certainly who they were. The Hamiltons were originally from Dundee and had been in Edinburgh for a generation. Kelly had never met any of them, but from what she gathered they were little better than a tribe of gypsies, who worked their way up from the lower echelons of petty crime to become one of the most successful drug gangs in the city. Thanks to the leadership and bloodthirstiness of family heads like Mack the Knife, or so Treacle had told her.
The man looked her over. ‘How old are you child? Ten?’ he said in heavily accented English.
Deciding to keep the pretence of being a young boy up she answered back, ‘fuck off, I’m twelve.’
‘Iisus Hristos,’ muttered the man. He rubbed his chin then continued. ‘My name is Trajan. Have you heard of me?’
‘No,’ she answered truthfully. She was keeping her head down, but risked a glance up at his face. He was not a handsome man, his ears stuck out and he had a small narrow-lipped mouth. What hair he lacked on his head he more than made up for in eye-brows.
‘So. I have heard that you were there night Mack the Knife killed. Correct?’
‘I didn’t do nuffin,’ muttered Kelly, keeping her eyes on the table.
‘Don’t lie to me child,’ said Trajan evenly. ‘So far I am talking nicely to you. But I can also talk not be nice. I hear that you are there. Tell me what you see, ok? And perhaps we let you walk out of here tonight.’
Kelly pondered for a moment or two the consequences of telling him what she saw that night at Wraithston, but keeping her secrets to herself was so deeply ingrained it would take more than some threatening language from a Romanian gangster to drag it out of her. And if she did tell him, then what? He’d just ask more questions, he’d want to know everything about her. Better to defy him now and see what happened, than give him anything at all and eventually end up defying him anyway when he got onto the subject of who she actually was.
‘I was just at Treacle’s selling stolen mobiles. Dunno what he told you.’
Trajan stood up, walked slowly around the table and sat down again beside her. He slowly draped his right arm over her shoulders, then in a menacing low voice said, ‘I will ask this just once more, little boy. You get into house of Mack the Knife. You are good thief. But I see all you steal from Mack, Treacle show me. I can see you know what you are doing. You must think you are very clever, little Gavin, but listen very carefully. You are not clever. You are stupid. You are now playing with the men. So here is my question one more time and you must think carefully before answer, yes? Are you ready?’
Kelly was starting to think that Trajan had watched too many crime series on Netflix, his threatening banter was so familiar sounding he could have been channelling Tony Soprano or a character from Breaking Bad. Still, even though his patter might be a bit second-hand, it didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of any amount of evil. Just because his efforts to put the frighteners on her she considered a bit cliqued, didn’t mean that they were not working. In the end she nodded slowly.
‘Good. I tell you. I don’t think you killed Big Mack. But I think maybe you know something. Someone put vampire marks on neck. That is our mark. But it not us. Hamilton’s think us. Police think it us. This has caused us much trouble. I am from Transylvania, I start this as joke. Something to scare the Scottish with. First man I ever kill, I stick screwdriver in neck.’
Here Trajan paused to mimic two sharp stabbing motions with his left hand, then went on with a shrug.
‘And now, we have also this Detective Lavius after us. He is a terrible man. Terrible. He never stops, like dog with bone. Last year, he chased one of our guys three miles on foot through forest. This after jump out of first floor window. So, you understand? You see my position, yes? So now. Tell me. What did you see that night at Mack the Knife’s house?’
Her mind and pulse racing, her skin prickling with sweat, she knew, just knew, from his body language and the tightening of his grip on her shoulder that whatever she said, he was planning to slam her head into the table and then probably menace her some more as the blood poured out of whatever was left of her face. Instead of speaking, she moved, and much too quickly for Trajan to react. As she got out from under his arm, he snatched at her, but he was left holding her hoodie as she ran for the door.
Kelly trained to be fast. She was small, and not strong, but she was like lightning. One of the goons was quicker than the others getting off his feet and moved to intercept her. He thought he was just reaching out to catch a child though, so was completely unprepared when Kelly used all her forward momentum to ram the heel of her palm into the middle of his face. He staggered to the side, clutching his now heavily bleeding and very broken nose. She got to the door, but found it locked. The three others came running for her, and ducking under their arms she tried to run for the kitchens. She dodged and weaved, one of them swung a punch at her, but it was signalled so early that she easily avoided it. She was free of them and running, but she could see Trajan was on his feet now, and effectively blocking all the doors down at the other end of the room.
‘Get him, for fuck’s sake!’ he yelled at his men.
She turned and leapt onto the circular bar that was in the middle of the restaurant. Turning she kicked a bottle off the counter towards the men. She’s seen it done in a Jackie Chan film once, but had never done it before. The bottle flew through the air, missed all three of them and shattered against a table. It made them duck though, which gave her enough time to jump up at the ceiling. There were not many handholds up here, just a few AC units, fire alarms, sprinklers and hanging lamps. She leapt at a lamp and used it for footing to grab onto an AC outlet. She was light and had a grip like iron, using all her upper body strength to hold her legs up out of reach of the men, keeping her feet on the ceiling with whatever footholds she could find.
From the AC outlet she grabbed onto the corner of a loose tile, breaking a nail but getting a solid grip. She was heading for a part of the room that was intersected by three white beams that had blue light fitting inserted between them and would give her much better handholds. She glanced down. All of them, even Trajan, was looking up at her like she had just been possessed by the devil. To them they were seeing a boy literally crawl across the ceiling.
‘Iisus Hristos,’ said one of them as he crossed himself.
She made it to the beams and lodged herself between them. This was a nice solid hold, and she could stay in this position for hours if she wanted, but she doubted they would give her that long.
One of them pulled a knife from his pocket and threw it at her. He’d obviously never done it before, so she easily caught it and threw it back. Kelly, unlike the original owner of the blade, was well practiced in knife throwing. He ducked and cursed as the top half of his left ear was cut clean off.
‘Dracu-ma!’ he yelped and ran for the entrance door. He knocked and yelled and the door was opened by one of the staff. He left a big bloody hand print on the door as he went. Seeing her chance, she scuttled along the beams after him and dropped down as close as she could to the entrance. The two other men that were still in the fight came for her. They were big and strong, but to Kelly it was like they were moving underwater. She ducked, weaved and occasionally hit them somewhere tender and painful. She got one in the throat and another between the legs.
‘For fuck’s sake get him!’ yelled Trajan, edging closer. ‘It’s just a child!’
‘He’s fucking Bruce Lee!’ cried one of the men.
Kelly had fought big men before. When it came to the sparing sessions in all of her various martial arts classes, she was almost always paired up with someone bigger than her. In competitions, she’d fought men with black belts twice the size of her and held her own. Fighting these men was like fighting heavily sedated cows. Even so, if one of them managed to grab her, it would be all over. She knew she would not have the strength to break free before they piled on top of her, and that would be the end of it. They were just too slow though, and none of them were coming close to laying a hand on her.
She leapt from table to table, lashing out kicks and punches. The larger of the two threw a wild punch and left himself wide open. She leapt from the table and delivered a round house kick straight to his chin. He went down like a felled tree, landing face first on a table, tipping over, sending chairs everywhere, and surprising the other one enough to allow Kelly a free hit. She kicked him in the chest, then swept his feet out from under him as he tripped over a fallen chair.
Trajan had been advancing on her holding a kitchen knife, but paused, taking in the carnage. To his utter astonishment, three of his men were down and one had fled.
‘Jesus…’ he whispered. ‘What are you, child?’
She turned and ran for the door, then along the corridor to the dancefloor. The music was still playing, and still an upbeat and cheerful Rumba rhythm. Two men were coming at her from the cloakroom. One was young, with ginger hair and a facial tattoo, the other was older and shorter, but looked the stronger of the pair. Both were dressed in black like nightclub bouncers.
‘Is this the one that cut off Constantin’s ear?’ laughed the young man, pointing at her derisively. He made the same mistake as the first man in the restaurant and reached for her collar. She almost felt sorry for him as she broke his nose. Fighting inexperience youths like him was like fighting toddlers. He went down like an axed tree.
‘Jesus! You wee shite!’ cried the other man as he launched a series of punches at her head. She blocked them all and returned a few punches that he blocked in return. This guy, she could tell, was a boxer or an MMA fighter or something and the first man to give her any kind of challenge.
‘Bloody Hell!’ gasped the man as the punches and kicks flew and Kelly either dodged or blocked everything he threw at her. In a competition she would let fighters like this wear themselves out, but she didn’t have the luxury of time and edged the fight round so she could retreat to the fire exit. Two more men had arrived, but they looked like regular bar staff and simply stood watching the fight in amazement. The song changed, a Latin drumbeat started, then a guitar. The man could see he was being outclassed in the fight and changed his tactics. He tried to grab at her, realising that if he could get a decent hold, he could wrestle her to the ground. She easily dodged his lunges, but she wanted to end this now, before Trajan got his act together. She countered a grab, pulled her right arm back, and punched air with her left, offering it as a tempting target. With a look of satisfaction, he grabbed her wrist, but in the process had left himself open. Kelly kicked him in the throat and he staggered back, choking. She turned for the fire exit, noticing that Trajan at the door to the restaurant. He made no move to stop her.
She barged the door open and ran up the fire escape stairs, heading as far up as they’d take her, reasoning that somebody would be guarding the fire exit. She could see from the window she was about six storeys up, looking down on an alleyway, or what the people of Edinburgh called a close, that lead down to the main thoroughfare of the Cowgate. At the top of the fire escape, through the fire door, was a painted brick corridor lined with doors. She tried the nearest one and found it open. It led into a small office that had obviously not been used in years in any formal capacity. It was full of junk and discarded fast food wrappers, and stunk of bins. There was only one window in this room and there was no way of opening it, but there was a door at the opposite end, so he headed for that. This next room was no larger than the last and was full of long abandoned decorating equipment, colour splattered aluminium ladders and tins of paint.
‘Oh dear,’ she panted as she realised there was only one window in this room too and it was painted shut. She peered down into the street to check if there was anyone down there then picked up the biggest and heaviest paint pot she could find.
Just as she was about to hurl it at the window a hand caught her by the wrist. She turned and looked up at the red face of the boxer she’d recently kicked in the throat. He looked pretty and angry and wrenched her offer her feet as he twisted her arm round. She struggled, but he was much stronger than her and forced her head under his left armpit with his right hand. He then clamped his left arm around her neck. Kelly gasped, no longer able to breath in his vice-like grip.
‘Hold still, boy,’ he said as he applied the choke hold. She struggled against his arm for a second, and climbed the wall with her legs to try and wriggle loose. He was too strong though; she couldn’t get free and she could feel herself blacking out. As spots started to gather in front of her eyes, she remembered she had one more trick up her sleeve, or rather down her trousers.
She always put a smoke bomb down the front of her pants, as a way of making sure that everything looked right down there. That she looked like a boy. As she wriggled and squirmed, she reached into her trousers and pulled out the bomb. She then twisted the cap and shoved it down the crack of the man’s backside as far as it would go. The effort used up everything she had left and she blacked out, but only to wake up again a moment later lying on the floor. She looked up at the boxer who was yelling and turning in circles like a dog chasing its own tail. Frantically he pulled his jeans down and the smoke bomb clattered to the floor. By now, three of the other goons appeared at the door, but the small confined room was filling with red smoke making them pause in indecision.
‘Fucking get him!’ yelled Trajan from somewhere behind them and they all ran in. It was utter chaos, none of them could see and they kept barging into each other. Kelly picked up a long steel spirit level from the floor beside her and started lashing out, using it like a katana, cutting at their heads and necks. Out of the smoke a hand grabbed her and wrenched her off her feet. She bit the hand and it let her go. She rolled and bumped into someone’s legs and ducked between them. The smoke was thinning, she didn’t have much time left, so with one last desperate flying roundhouse kick she felled the largest of the men, sending him flying head-first into the window. The window smashed and the bloody-faced man collapsed over the frame. Without stopping to think she leapt onto the man’s back, then jumped out into the close.
She was aiming for the plaster model of the back end of a cow that stuck out of the wall on the other side. Arms flailing, she grabbed onto it by the tail. As it gave way under her weight, she swung over to a drain pipe and was down into the alley in seconds.
She looked up. The body of the man that hung limply out of the window was hauled inside and dumped somewhere inside the room. Trajan looked out at her, red smoke streaming out on either side of his body. She held his gaze for a second, then ran round the corner onto the main street, limping on her right leg. She didn’t even know how it had got hurt, either in the room or in the jump, but jolts of pain shot all the way from her knee. Broken glass had cut her in the back too, but the top she was wear was black and the blood didn’t show.
Kelly got to the Grassmarket and ran up Victoria Street as fast as she could. She thought about ducking into a shop or a pub, but was too nervous of getting cornered again. She turned towards the Castle. There were soldiers there, she knew, an army garrison or something? Men standing around with guns, even in those silly hat’s they wore would make those goons think twice of trying to snatch her off the street.
It was slow going now though, her leg was in agony. It didn’t feel broken, but something bad had really happened to it. The Royal Mile was busy with tourists, even on a dark drizzly night like this there were always people from all over the world walking around, looking up at the lit-up Castle and other medieval buildings. She turned and saw that three of Trajan’s men were pushing through the crowds on the pavement at a fast jog. She wouldn’t make it, she realised, she was still too far away from the Castle for it to offer any protection. Without a better plan, she ran on and reaching a crossroads turned left up the hill, but by now the men were much closer. Just as she was thinking about ducking into a nearby café, a black BMW rolled up to the curb beside her. The men stopped in their tracks, almost as if they recognised the vehicle. The window rolled down and Detective Lavius leaned over the passenger seat to look up at her.
‘You’d better get in kid,’ he said.
Unable to think of any other better options, she did as she was told.
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