On the Hunt Read online

  Farzin had been with the family since birth. He and Vadik had grown up together, played together, lost their virginity to the same whore. Farzin would give his life for the family—and Vadik would let him do that very thing.

  Loyalty to the family was expected of everyone.

  Lajos, Bence, and Milán had failed to report in, and they had failed to respond to his calls. Certainly, they might even now be in the process of completing their fun and ending Mrs Prentiss’ life, but Vadik was the true son. The family had not become a massive regional power in Hungary by being stupid or careless.

  So far, the English project, the project conceived by Vadik himself, had gone perfectly.

  When Robert Prentiss made his initial and naïve approach to the family’s representative, Vadik recognised the opportunity immediately and initiated the long-term plan. Apart from the fuckup when Nemeth had gone too far in his beating of the Prentiss woman, things were going smoothly. By agreeing to her hospital treatment, Vadik had dealt with the one and only glitch to the process, and they were almost done. Now, after killing Prentiss, they were right on target and precisely on time.

  The only thing left to do was tidy up the loose ends and the first stage of the project would be over.

  Although the plan had cost nearly four million euros so far—a mere drop in the piss pot—they now had fully legitimate access into the fifth richest country on earth. They also had unrestricted access to all the other countries along the main trading routes. In terms of its infrastructure, the family was now far more powerful than before, and it had good prospects of much more to come. They now had a bridgehead and would build upon it.

  However, if Lajos had really fucked things up, he would pay. Not even Papa would be able to save him.

  Vadik relaxed into his comfortable seat for another five minutes before trying again. He dialled Lajos’ number first. It rang and rang. Vadik was about to give up and ring Bence when the call connected.

  About fucking time.

  “Lajos, hol a faszban voltál?” he shouted, but the dwarf kept mute.

  He waited a couple of seconds, letting the ominous silence drag out before speaking again.

  “Lajos, te vagy?”

  “Hello. To whom am I speaking?”

  A man’s voice, English. Young, softly spoken. A pansy. Definitely not Lajos.

  Shit.

  Vadik ground his teeth. Something really had gone wrong. He fucking knew it. Damn the useless fucking dwarf.

  Wait, no. Maybe Lajos had simply dropped his portable somewhere? It would not stretch the bounds of possibility for the idiot to lose his phone. This English pansy might have just picked it up.

  “Hello?” the pansy spoke again. “I don’t suppose that’s Vadik Pataki by any chance?”

  Fuck.

  This was not a man who had found a portable phone, and for Lajos to give up his portable voluntarily was unthinkable. This softly spoken Englishman had taken it. By force. More than likely, he’d killed the useless fucker in the process.

  Shit!

  Not a major loss perhaps, but if anyone was going to kill Lajos it would be Vadik, not some pansy-voiced English queer. No one laid a finger on a family member and lived to laugh about it with their friends.

  “Who are you?” Vadik growled, speaking in his best English.

  “Does that matter? We don’t know each other, you and me.”

  Pansy spoke lightly, as though he was about to burst out laughing. A madman without fear for his life?

  We shall see!

  Farzin glanced in the rear-view mirror, sensing trouble. Vadik nodded and rolled his free hand at him. Farzin returned his eyes to the road and coaxed even more speed out of their vehicle.

  “Where is Lajos? Where is my brother?”

  “Ah, so I am speaking with Vadik Pata—”

  “Is he dead? Did you kill Lajos?”

  “Of course not. Lajos Pataki is still very much alive. For the moment.”

  Vadik crushed the portable against his ear so hard it creaked in his fist. “Let me speak to him. I want to speak to my half-brother.”

  “I’m sorry, Lajos can’t come to the phone right now. You might say he’s a little indisposed.”

  “‘Indisposed’? What is ‘indisposed’?”

  “He’s on the toilet,” Pansy answered, laughing.

  He laughed long and hard, braying, goading.

  The fucker was treating this like it was some sort of a big joke. A fucking joke! Vadik would teach the pansy-assed English queer not to joke with him and the family.

  Vadik pulled the portable away from his ear and hit mute. He turned to the man at his side. Wilfred—the family’s pet geek—sat, white-faced and travel sick, sliding his fingers over his computer tablet.

  “Wilfred,” he whispered, not fully trusting the mute button, “this English freak had taken the portable phone from Lajos. Can you give me its location?”

  The seventeen-year-old with the perfect face of a choirboy, turned his head and grimaced weakly at Vadik. He looked as though he was about to vomit over his precious computer.

  “It is at the Prentiss house, főnök,” he answered, turning the grimace into a meek smile.

  Wilfred had clearly heard Vadik’s side of the phone conversation and had anticipated the request.

  Good boy. At least one of the men was worth his pay.

  Vadik released the mute.

  “If you have hurt Lajos—”

  “Of course we’ve hurt him, Vadik, old man,” Pansy said, still gloating.

  We? There was more than one. That was good to know. Information, after all, was power.

  “How else would we have his mobile? And don’t bother trying to call the other three idiots again, either. None of them will answer their phones ever again. Oh dear, such a waste of life. If we were sorry for killing them, we would apologise, but we’re not, so we won’t. After what they were planning to do to Mrs Prentiss, they don’t deserve anyone’s sympathy.”

  “So you did kill Lajos?”

  “No, no. Not so. Only Csaba Nemeth and the other two clowns. Your little brother is still alive. At least for the moment. We thought we might need a bargaining chip.”

  Nemeth did not matter, he had already been marked for death, but Bence and Milán, dead? No! Vadik crushed the portable again. Pansy and anyone working with him would die. They would die horribly and slowly. Vadik would make it last days, weeks. He would transport them home and do the work in Győr. He always did his best work in Hungary.

  “I make no bargains with you, tündér. Do as you please.”

  “That’s disappointing. I thought you’d see reason. Thought maybe we could come to some sort of an arrangement.”

  “That will never happen.”

  “After all, we’ve scuppered your plans,” Pansy continued, ignoring him.

  Ignore Vadik Pataki?

  How dare he!

  “My plans? What do you know of my plans, Englishman?”

  “We know everything Vadik, old chap. You will never own Prentiss Haulage Limited. Not legitimately.”

  The fucking English queer knows. He really does know. Fuck.

  “We have a visual recording of you murdering Robert Prentiss. His death was no suicide. There’s no way your little scheme is going to work.”

  Vadik closed his eyes. Everything he had planned was gone. All that time. All that money. Gone. Up in smoke. All that money wasted. But Vadik had invested so much more in the scheme than money. He had invested his reputation.

  “Would you like to hear my proposal, Vadik?” Pansy asked, in his weaselly little voice.

  Vadik paused.

  A proposal?

  Did Pansy want a cut of the profit? The queer did say something about using Lajos as a bargaining chip. Yes, he would listen to a proposal from the Pansy, the dead man talking.

  Vadik smiled to himself.

  Never let anyone say Vadik Pataki ever closed his ears to a business proposal. Perhaps there was still a
way to come out of this mess with the business plan intact. There would be plenty of opportunity to dispose of Pansy and his people at some time in the future.

  “Continue,” Vadik said, with caution.

  Yes, Vadik could agree to any proposal Pansy might suggest—and turn him and his friends into steak haché later. Preferably, when handing over the ransom money.

  “Really? You’re prepared to listen?”

  “I will listen,” Vadik growled the answer, could not help himself.

  Wilfred held up his tablet, turning it to face Vadik. Four flashing dots on the screen, three close together and moving, the fourth static, showed their position relative to Prentiss House. Wilfred held up eight fingers. Eight minutes to go before Vadik would meet Pansy and his people face to face.

  His pulse quickened in the way it always did before battle. Vadik really could not wait to see Pansy and deliver his own particular brand of justice.

  He smiled in anticipation.

  “Okay, here goes,” Pansy said, still chuckling. “I’ll hold off sending the video to the police for six hours.”

  “Six hours? Why so long?”

  “Six hours will give you enough time to reach an airport and head for home before the police can put an All Ports Warning on your arses.”

  “You expect me to run away?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “What will you do then?”

  “Nothing. Our only goal is to protect Mrs Prentiss.”

  “And Lajos? What of him?”

  “We’ll leave him for the police and they will make sure he receives proper medical treatment. The alternative is more bloodshed, and no one wants that.”

  “Medical attention. Lajos is injured?”

  “Haven’t you been listening, old man? Yes, Lajos is injured. Seriously so. Now, do we have a deal?”

  “I accept your terms,” Vadik said without hesitation.

  He did not need to think about things. He had already made up his mind.

  “No you don’t. You answered too quickly. I don’t believe you.”

  “Fuck you, asshole. The Prentiss house will run with blood!”

  “Tut, tut, Vadik. It already does.”

  Another laugh rattled across the airwaves. Pansy seemed to be enjoying himself as much as Vadik would be doing when he reached Prentiss House.

  “Your blood, fool! I am coming to kill you!”

  “Are you, indeed? Better come prepared, Vadik Pataki. See you soon.”

  “Rohadék! Bastard! You will die!” he screamed, but the Englishman had already ended the call.

  Vadik rammed the phone into his jacket pocket. It was time to kill. Quietly, while the SUV bounced him around and the seatbelt held him firmly into his seat, Vadik Pataki seethed and worked through his options.

  If the first plan failed, a second must take its place. Vadik always had an alternative option ready. “Wilfred, where is it?”

  The young man worked his tablet and showed him the screen once more.

  “Good. Very good.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Wednesday 3rd May – Vadik Pataki

  Amber Valley, Derbyshire, UK

  “Are you ready, Wilfred?” Vadik demanded.

  Wilfred’s weak smile and nod did not exactly fill Vadik with confidence, but the family geek had never let him down before and today would not be the first time. At least it would not be, if Wilfred wanted to live long enough to see the sun rise in the morning.

  “Igen főnök. Készen állok!”

  “English, Wilfred. We are in England. It is good to practice our English here. We will need to visit many times now we have an operation in this country. It is ripe for plunder.”

  The baby-faced genius swallowed hard, his prominent Adam’s apple bouncing twice before he could answer. “Sorry … boss. Yes, I am ready.”

  “Where is the substation?”

  Another deep swallow. Wilfred’s weak stomach was troubling him more than usual, and the wallowing of the car as Farzin negotiated the narrow country lanes did nothing to help the legendary motion sickness of the poor fellow.

  For a third time, Wilfred raised his tablet to show Vadik the screen. “It is just up ahead. On this side of the road. Two kilometres from the farmhouse, főnök.”

  “Farzin, we are close,” Vadik called. “It is on the left up ahead.”

  Farzin eased his foot from the accelerator and the SUV’s forward momentum slowed immediately. The black hired man in the front passenger seat released his hold on the grab strap and stretched his wide shoulders, preparing for action.

  Good.

  Months earlier, during the planning phase, Papa had questioned his insistence on hiring so many men on the first day of the takeover, but Vadik had made the case. And he made it perfectly.

  Prentiss Haulage Limited employed thirty-three drivers, all of whom would have to give way to men loyal to the Pataki family. Vadik argued that issuing thirty-three drivers with their marching orders on the same day could prove challenging unless they had the support of an impressive-looking security team. At the time, the family only had a few people in the UK. Men employed by Cousin Ido and busy doing other things. There would not be enough numbers to ensure the family position. They could, of course, have shipped in many more men from Hungary, but such a mass family exodus from the homeland was certain to have aroused the interest of Europol and that would not do at all.

  Including the dead Nemeth, Bence, and Milán, Vadik would have had but seven men at his disposal. He did not include Lajos in the number—he refused to see his idiot half-brother as anything but a liability. Vadik argued that such a force would not be sufficient to quell a riot, if one were to occur. As a result, Vadik, with the reluctant agreement of Papa, instructed Cousin Ido to hire extra men for a total of three days. Mercenaries charged less for multiple days.

  As things turned out, the black guy and his men would be earning their exorbitant fees after all.

  Vadik ran through the probabilities in his head. He was good at probabilities. In fact, he was good at most things.

  How likely was it for the English Pansy to have the proof he claimed?

  No. Highly unlikely.

  The odds were high that Pansy was talking pure bullshit. Vadik doubted there even was a film of him whacking Robert Prentiss. Wilfred designed the system they used to monitor the online money transfer. And Wilfred knew what he was doing. He had even swept the Prentiss laptop computer for spyware, or whatever the fuck it was called. And Prentiss had not been away from Vadik for one moment after they left the house that morning. Not even to use the toilet. On top of that, at no stage during the money transfer did the little green light appear on the computer to show that the internal camera had been activated.

  No, Pansy was talking bullshit. There was no film of the murder. There could not be.

  Vadik nodded to himself. Maybe the day was not lost, after all. Maybe he could salvage the situation. Thanks to his brilliant foresight, he had plenty of men at his disposal. A small army.

  Vadik allowed his smile to stretch wider.

  There was a real chance that the overwhelming force of their presence would enable Vadik to save the day. If so, Vadik and his superior planning skills would prove to be the saving of the family fortunes once again. He would be the hero who snatched victory from the very jaws of disaster, as he had so many times before.

  “There!” Wilfred shouted, pointing at the hedge on Vadik’s side of the road.

  Farzin stamped on the brakes and the BMW stopped alongside a gated fence that spread across a five-metre gap in the hedgerow. The fence encircled a small rectangle of land set back from the road. Vadik wound down his window and peered out through the opening. Inside the fenced-off electricity substation, four grey metal boxes the size of office filing cabinets hummed away with a threatening power. The words on a yellow warning sign attached to the fence said, “Danger of Death”. Above the words, a black triangle and a jagged bolt of lightning striking a prone
body made the warning clear enough. Even without a good grasp of the words, he did not actually need to read English to understand the meaning of the sign.

  Vadik glanced at Wilfred.

  “Which one?” he asked.

  “That one,” Wilfred answered, sticking out a trembling finger.

  He still looked pale from the travel sickness.

  Bassza meg! Why am I surrounded by weaklings?

  Vadik returned his gaze to the substation, lifted the walkie-talkie, and pressed the button on its side. “The one on the far right,” he said, and released the button.

  He twisted in his seat to study the BMW behind them, the first of two followers. A door opened and the muzzy-haired Eliasz appeared, carrying a giant pair of bolt cutters and a small backpack. He scurried towards the fence and paused long enough to snap the hoop on the padlock, before stepping through the unlocked gate. He carefully placed the backpack on the leaf-strewn gravel at the base of the target cabinet.

  Eliasz scanned the immediate area before dropping to one knee in front of the backpack. After fiddling with something, he leaned away and slowly climbed to his feet. He backed away a few paces then turned and raced back through the open gate to his car, shouting, “Thirty seconds,” as he passed Vadik.

  Eliasz was not one to stop for pleasantries.

  Vadik checked his Tag Hauer.

  Farzin needed no instructions. He stamped on the accelerator and their BMW lurched forwards, all four wheels squealing. Vadik twisted in his seat once again, arm raised to read the dial on his watch.

  Twenty-three seconds.

  Again, his heartrate leapt. He loved the tension of the countdown to a fireworks display.

  On the road behind, both black BMWs took off in pursuit.

  Nineteen … eighteen … seventeen.

  Farzin took them some two hundred metres before hitting the brakes, but Obasi in the middle car reacted late and nearly ran into the back of them. Fucking idiot could not drive for shit. Vadik bared his teeth at the second-rate wheelman and gave him the finger, but at least Obasi had shunted his car into the middle of the road. He knew better than to obscure the view Vadik would have of the upcoming pyrotechnics. The rear car pulled up tight behind Obasi. Its driver, one of the hired men, yawned and scratched his beard. How could anyone be bored by fireworks?