Ivory Nation, Andy Maslen [e manga reader .txt] 📗

said quietly, maintaining the smile. ‘Fail, and we’ll come back here with a couple of RPGs and blow you, your customers, your house band and the Oasis Lounge into tiny, little,’ a brief pause, ‘fucking pieces.’

Mafombe patted his breast pocket, over the money. Nodded once, then turned on his heel and worked his way back through the crowd.

Gabriel waited until Mafombe had disappeared.

‘We should go. Now. You beat him down on the arrangement fee, but my guess is, a man like that isn’t used to having his pride kicked so hard. There’ll be trouble unless we’re quick.’

‘I agree,’ Eli said. ‘Let’s go. Nice and easy, but nice and fast, too.’

Gabriel and Eli formed a wedge and pushed their way gently but firmly through the drinkers and the dancers until they reached the doors and stepped out into the warm night air.

25

‘Stay alert,’ Gabriel said, as they began walking away from the Oasis Lounge, down the street and back towards the spot where they’d left the car.

After five minutes, when they hadn’t seen anyone, Gabriel permitted himself to relax a little. The absence of streetlights meant visibility was poor, but the moon was bright, giving them enough light to see.

‘How far to the hotel?’ Stella asked.

‘Half a mile? A bit less?’ Eli said. ‘Those kids better have done a good job of watching it.’

‘No reason why they shouldn’t, is there? It’s a pretty standard way of earning a little pocket money. Plus Gabriel asked them,’ Stella replied. ‘Even in London, there are places where the local villains-in-waiting do it. There’s a code of honour.’

‘It’s a mini-protection racket.’

‘Exactly! “Bad area, this, Miss”,’ Stella said, roughening and lightening her voice into a Cockney squawk. ‘“You pay us some cash and we’ll stop your nice shiny motor getting its paintwork keyed or your rims nicked”.’

‘They’d actually steal your wheels?’ Eli asked with a grin.

‘When I’d just qualified as a DC, one of the lads left his patrol car parked in a very dodgy estate in East London while he went to attend a domestic. He came back and the local pond life had stolen the rear wheels. Put the poor sod’s Mondeo up on bricks!’

‘Aren’t they locked on, though?’ Eli persisted, laughing now.

‘Of course! But these little gangs, they build up a set of locking wheel nuts for all the popular makes.’

Gabriel laughed, too, though his eyes were still roving the street ahead, watching for side roads, darker patches of shade, anywhere potential trouble could be lurking.

He inhaled deeply as they passed a creeper that enveloped a single-storey whitewashed house. A wrought-iron ornamental lamppost lit the scene with pale-yellow light.

The overwhelming smell of oranges and honey swirled up into his brain and made him smile. Yellow trumpets with maroon centres hung from pale stems and he watched as a fat-bodied moth resembling a hummingbird hovered just beneath one, poking its rapier-like proboscis deep into the centre of the flower.

‘Smell that,’ he said.

The two women craned their necks upwards and sniffed at the exotic blossoms.

‘Wow!’ Eli said. ‘It reminds me of a flower that grows in Israel. I don’t know its scientific name, but in Hebrew, we call it Lotus Sweetjuice.’

Stella took another sniff. She nodded.

‘I know what you mean. I think it’s a—’

A deep male voice interrupted.

‘What is this? Two beautiful ladies out for a stroll, is it?’

Gabriel cursed himself for not being more alert. Should have heard him coming up on us. From the corner of his eye he registered Eli and Stella adopting non-threatening postures. Non-threatening, but with their weight balanced between their feet. Hands loose by their sides.

Five men faced them, in a loose group. Their dress suggested some sort of gang affiliation. Baggy black basketball vests, each bearing the number 9 crowned with a Nike swoosh. Spotted bandannas tied around their foreheads. Suspicious bulges at the waist beneath the vests. All wore squishy-soled running shoes. Gabriel couldn’t remember if he’d seen the men in the Oasis Lounge.

The man at the centre of the group grinned. Taller than Gabriel by a head, impressively muscled arms folded across his chest, he jerked his chin at the flowering plant.

‘Who is he?’ the man asked Eli, pointing at Gabriel. ‘Your hairdresser?’

The other four men chuckled. Unable to keep still, they shifted from foot to foot, stroking their close-cropped heads and exchanging sidelong glances.

Was it worth reasoning with them? Gabriel dismissed it as a waste of effort. He knew what they could see. Three dumb Western tourists who should have known better than to walk G-City’s streets after dark. Probably loaded with dollars, fancy watches, iPhones, credit cards, the works.

‘If you think you’re going to mug us, you’re going to come off worst.’ He pointed to Stella. ‘Metropolitan Police.’ To Eli. ‘Mossad.’ Finally, he jabbed a thumb into his own chest. ‘British Army.’

The gang leader followed Gabriel’s pointing finger on its three-stop trip round the incomers’ forces. Then he threw his head back and guffawed.

‘Man, you tell a funny story. I give you that,’ he said. ‘Now, hand over all your shit and we’ll let you go back to smelling the sweet flowers of Botswana.’ He looked at Stella’s briefcase. ‘You a sales lady? Got some nice aftershave in there? Face cream for my girlfriend?’

Another chorus of cackles from his subordinates.

Eli took a sharp step forward, causing the closest of the five men to take a step back. She smiled.

‘What are you carrying under the vests, boys?’

With a grin, the leader lifted the hem of his garment. Gabriel saw a gun butt. From the look of it, a small-calibre revolver. The others revealed knife hilts protruding from their waistbands. No match for the Glock or the SIG, but he really didn’t want to start a firefight that would lead to the muggers’ deaths.

‘That enough for you, my lady?’ the leader asked, resting his right hand on the gun butt and grabbing his crotch with his other hand. ‘I’ve got something much bigger down there. Maybe I show you what it can do to a