Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 Read online

  But Lesley-Jane’s remonstrations were ignored. Her boyfriend’s mind was now focused on only one thing: proving his seriousness as an actor to Charlie Fenton.

  And to do that he had to infiltrate a London gang. Which actually turned out to be surprisingly easy. He didn’t have to hang around Shepherd’s Bush Green for long before he was approached by someone with a heavy Russian accent and asked if he wanted to buy drugs. After a couple of weeks of making regular purchases of heroin (which he didn’t use but stockpiled in his bathroom cabinet), he only had to default on payments twice to be hustled into a car with tinted windows, blindfolded, and taken off to meet the organisation’s frighteners.

  They didn’t have to hurt him to get their money. Kenny Mountford had the cash ready with him and handed it over as soon as his blindfold was removed. He found himself seated on a chair in a windowless cellar, loomed over by the two heavies who’d snatched him and facing a thin-faced man in an expensive suit. From their conversation in the car, he’d deduced that his abductors were called Vasili and Vladimir. They addressed the thin-faced man as Fyodor. All three spoke English with a heavy accent from somewhere in the former Soviet Union.

  “So if you had the money all the time, why didn’t you pay up?” asked the man in the suit, whose effortless authority identified him as the gang’s leader.

  “Maybe he enjoys being beaten to a pulp,” suggested the heavy who Kenny was pretty sure was called Vasili.

  “Maybe,” said Kenny Mountford with a cool that he’d spent three years at drama school perfecting, “but that’s not actually the reason. I just thought this was a good way of getting to meet you, Fyodor.”

  “Do you know who I am?” the man asked, intrigued.

  “I only know your name, but it doesn’t take much intelligence to work out that you’re higher up this organisation than the two goons who brought me here.”

  Kenny felt the men on either side of him stiffen and was aware of their fists bunching, but he remembered his concentration exercises and didn’t flinch.

  Fyodor raised a hand to pacify his enforcers. “You are right. I control the organisation.”

  “And am I allowed to know what it’s called?”

  He smiled a crooked smile. “The Simferopol Boys. From where we started our operations. Do you know where Simferopol is?” Kenny shook his head. “It is in the Crimea. Southern Ukraine. Near to Yalta. I assume you have not been there?” Another shake of the head. “Well, we did what we could over there, but the pickings were small, and there were a lot of . . . entrenched interests. Turf wars, dangerous. In London our life is easier.”

  “And how many are there in the Simferopol Boys?”

  “Twenty, maybe thirty, it depends. Sometimes people become untrustworthy and have to be eliminated.”

  Kenny was aware of a reaction from Vasili and Vladimir. Clearly elimination was the part of the job they enjoyed.

  “And do you just deal in drugs?”

  Fyodor spread his hands wide in an encompassing gesture. “Drugs . . . prostitution . . . protection rackets . . . loan-sharking . . . The Simferopol Boys are a multifunction organisation.” Then came the question that Kenny knew couldn’t be delayed much longer. “But why do you want to know this? Curiosity?”

  “More than just curiosity.”

  “Good. If it was just curiosity, I think Vasili and Vladimir would have to eliminate you straightaway.” The gang boss smiled a thin smile. “They may well have to eliminate you straightaway, whatever the reason for your enquiries. You could be a cop, for all we know.”

  “I can assure you I am not a cop.”

  “But that’s exactly what you would say if you were a cop.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “Mr. Mountford, I am not here to chop logic with you. I am a busy man.” He looked at his watch. “I have a meeting shortly with a senior civil servant in the Home Office. He is helping me with some visa applications for members of my extended family in Simferopol. Now please, will you tell me why you are here? And why I shouldn’t just hand you straight over to Vasili and Vladimir for elimination?”

  Kenny Mountford took a deep breath. There was no doubt that he had put himself in very real danger. But, as he had that daunting thought, he couldn’t help also feeling a warm glow. Charlie Fenton would be so impressed by the lengths he had gone in his quest for authenticity.

  “I’m here because I want to join your gang.”

  “Join the Simferopol Boys?” asked Fyodor in astonishment. Vasili and Vladimir let out deep threatening chuckles at the very idea.

  “Yes.”

  “But why should I let you join us? As I said, you could be a cop. You could be a journalist. You could be a spy from the Odessa Reds.” The reactions from Vasili and Vladimir left Kenny in no doubt as to what Fyodor was talking about. They might sound like a breed of chicken, but the Odessa Reds were clearly a rival gang.

  “How can I prove to you that I’m none of those things? What are the qualifications for most of the people who join your gang?”

  “Most of them have family connections with me in Simferopol which go back many generations. At the very least, most of them are Ukrainian.”

  “I can sound Ukrainian,” said Kenny, demonstrating the point. (He had made quite a study of accents at drama school.)

  His impression didn’t go down well with Vasili and Vladimir. They clearly thought he was sending them up. Two giant hands slammed down on his shoulders, while two giant fists were once again bunched.

  But again a gesture from their boss froze them before the blows made contact.

  “Anyone who wants to join the Simferopol Boys,” said Fyodor quietly, “has to pass certain tests.”

  “A lot of tests?” asked Kenny Mountford, maintaining his nonchalance with increasing difficulty.

  The gang boss nodded. “The big one’s at the end. Not many people get that far. But if you want to have a go at one of the starting tests . . .”

  Kenny nodded. Fyodor leant forward and told him what the first test was.

  Like most actors, Kenny Mountford always felt a huge surge of excitement when he got a new part. However trivial the piece, hours would be spent poring over the script, making decisions about the character’s accent and body language. The part that Fyodor had given him prompted exactly the same adrenaline rush, though in this case he had no text to work from. Kenny started reading everything he could find about the Crimean region, and Simferopol in particular. He also tracked down recordings of Ukrainians speaking English and trained himself to imitate them.

  The new direction his career was taking still failed to raise much enthusiasm in Lesley-Jane. From an early age, her main aim in life had been to be the centre of attention, so she didn’t respond well to being totally ignored by the man she was living with. But Kenny was too preoccupied with his new role to notice her disquiet.

  The first test he had been given by Fyodor was relatively easy. All he had to do was to sell drugs in Shepherd’s Bush, just like the dealer who had served as his initial introduction to the Simferopol Boys. Apart from the work he was doing on his accent, Kenny also spent a considerable time sourcing clothes for the role, and was satisfied that the hoodie, jeans, and trainers he ended up with had achieved exactly the requisite degree of shabbiness. He found it a welcome relief to be selecting his own clothes for a part, rather than having to follow the whims of some queeny costume designer as he would in television.

  He needn’t have bothered, though. The kind of lowlife he was peddling the drugs to didn’t even notice what he looked like. The only thing they thought about was their next fix. But for Kenny Mountford as an artist—and a potential participant in a Charlie Fenton production—it was very important that he should get every minutest detail right.

  After his first successful foray as a drug dealer, he got home early evening to find a very impatient Lesley-Jane Walden, dressed up to the nines and in a foul temper. “Where the hell have you been?” she shrieked, almost before h
e’d come through the door. “You know we’re meant to be at this Tom Cruise premiere in half an hour.”

  “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  “Well, for God’s sake get changed into something respectable and I’ll call for a cab.”

  “I don’t want to get changed.” Kenny Mountford hadn’t really formalised the idea before, but he suddenly knew that he wasn’t going to change his clothes until Charlie Fenton agreed to give him the part in his next production. He was going to immerse himself in the role of a Simferopol Boy until that wonderful moment. “And don’t try to change my mind,” he added in his best Ukrainian accent.

  “What the hell are you talking about—and why the hell are you using that stupid voice?” demanded Lesley-Jane. “If we don’t leave in the next five minutes, we’ll have missed all the paparazzi. And if you think I’m going to be seen at a Tom Cruise premiere with someone dressed like you are, Kenny, then you’ve got another think coming!” Her face was so contorted with fury that she no longer looked even mildly pretty.

  “Listen,” Kenny continued in his Ukrainian voice, “I’ve got more important things to do than to—”

  He was interrupted by the phone ringing. Lesley-Jane turned away from him in disgust. He picked up the receiver. A seductive “Hello” came from the other end of the line. The man’s voice was vaguely familiar, but Kenny could not immediately identify it.

  “Hello,” he replied, still Ukrainian.

  The voice changed from seduction to suspicion. “Who is this?”

  Then Kenny knew. “Charlie,” he enthused, reverting to his normal voice, “how good to hear you.”

  At the other end of the phone Charlie Fenton sounded slightly thrown. “Is that Kenny?”

  “Yes. What can I do for you?”

  The director still didn’t sound his usual confident self as he stuttered out a reply. “Oh, I just . . . I was . . . um . . .” Then, sounding more assured, he said, “I just wanted to check how you were getting on with your infiltration process.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to be in touch for three months.”

  “No, I, er, um . . . I changed my mind.”

  “Well, in answer to your question, Charlie, my infiltration is going very well. I’m already working for a gang.”

  “That’s good.”

  “They’re Ukrainian,” he went on, reassuming the accent to illustrate his point. “And, actually, it’s good you’ve rung, because there’s something I wanted to ask you. . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “How deep do you think I should go into this character I’m playing?”

  “As deep as possible, Kenny.” With something of his old pomposity, the director went on. “My style of theatre involves the participants in total immersion in their characters.”

  “I’m glad you said that, because I’ve been wondering whether I should actually be living in my house while I’m doing this preparation work. A Ukrainian gangster wouldn’t live in a Notting Hill house like mine, would he?”

  “No, he certainly wouldn’t.”

  “So what I want to ask you is: Do you think I should move out of my house?”

  “No question. You certainly should,” replied Charlie Fenton.

  He took a grubby room in a basement near Goldhawk Road and, as he got deeper into his part, Kenny Mountford realised that he could no longer be Kenny Mountford. He needed a new identity to go with his new persona. He consulted Vasili and Vladimir on Ukrainian names and, following their advice, retitled himself Anatoli Semyonov. He also cut himself off from the English media. He stopped watching television, and the only radio he listened to on very crackly shortwave was a station from Kiev. He bought Ukrainian newspapers in which at first he couldn’t even understand the alphabet.

  Meanwhile, the tests set by Fyodor got tougher. On top of the dealing, Kenny was now delegated to join Vasili, Vladimir, and other of the Simferopol Boys in some enforcement work. Drug customers dragging their feet on payments, prostitutes or pimps trying to keep more of the take than they were meant to . . . to bring these to a proper sense of priorities called for a certain amount of threatening behaviour, and frequently violence. In such situations, as with the drug dealing, Kenny—or rather Anatoli Semyonov—did what was required of him.

  The thought never came into his mind that what he was doing might be immoral, that if he were caught he could be facing a long stretch in prison. Kenny Mountford was acting, he was researching the role of Anatoli Semyonov with the long-term view of appearing in a show created by the legendary Charlie Fenton. When such a conflict of priorities arose, morality was for the petty-minded; art was far more important.

  As he got deeper and deeper under his Simferopol Boys cover, Kenny saw less and less of Lesley-Jane Walden. He didn’t feel the deprivation. He was so focused on what he saw as his work that his mind had little room for other thoughts.

  At the end of an evening with Vasili, Vladimir, and some baseball bats, which had left a club owner who was behind on his protection payments needing three weeks’ hospitalisation, the three Simferopol Boys—or rather the two Simferopol Boys and the one prospective Simferopol Boy—reported back to Fyodor.

  The gang leader was very pleased with them. “This is good work. I think we are achieving more since Anatoli has been with us.” Vasili and Vladimir looked a little sour, but Kenny Mountford glowed with pride. He had reached the point where commendation from Fyodor was almost as important to him as commendation from Charlie Fenton. “And I think it is time that Anatoli Semyonov should be given his final test . . .”

  Kenny could hardly contain his excitement. In his heavily Ukrainian voice, he asked, “You mean the one that will actually make me a fully qualified member of the Simferopol Boys?”

  Fyodor nodded. “Yes, that is exactly what I mean.” He gave a curt nod of his head. Vasili and Vladimir, knowing the signal well, left the room. A long silence filled the space between the two men who remained.

  It was broken by Fyodor. “Yes, Anatoli, I think you have proved you understand fully the role that is required of you.”

  Kenny Mountford could hardly contain himself. It was the best review he’d had since The Stage had described his Prospero as “luminescently compelling.”

  “So what do I have to do? Don’t worry, whatever it is, I’ll do it. I won’t let you down.”

  “You have to kill someone,” said Fyodor.

  At first Kenny had had difficulty with the amount of vodka drinking that being an aspirant Simferopol Boy involved, but now he could match Vasili and Vladimir shot for shot—and even, on occasion, outdrink them. They tended to meet during the small hours (after a good night’s threatening) in a basement club off Westbourne Grove. It was a dark place, heavy with the fug of cigarettes. Down there in the murk no one observed the smoking ban. And, having seen the size of the barmen, Kenny didn’t envy any Department of Health inspector delegated to enforce it.

  He was always the only non-Russian speaker there, though his grasp of the language was improving, thanks to an online course he’d enrolled in. Kenny had a private ambition that, when the three months were up, he would return to Charlie Fenton not only looking like a Ukrainian gangster, but also speaking like one.

  That evening they were well into the second bottle of vodka before either Vasili or Vladimir mentioned the task they knew Fyodor had set Kenny. “So,” asked Vladimir, always the more sceptical of the two, “do you reckon you can do it? Or are you going to chicken out?”

  “Don’t worry, tovarich, I can do it.” He sounded as confident as ever, but couldn’t deny to himself that the demand made by Fyodor had been a shock. Playing for time, he went on, “The only thing I can’t decide about it is who I should kill. Just someone random I happen to see in the street? Would that be the right thing to do?”

  “It would be all right,” replied Vasili, “but it would be rather a waste of a hit.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, if you’re going to kill someo
ne, at least make sure it’s someone you already want out of your way.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand you.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Anatoli,” said Vladimir impatiently, “kill one of your enemies!”

  “Ah.” Kenny Mountford tried to think whether he actually had any enemies. There were people who’d got up his nose over the years—directors who hadn’t recognised his talent, casting directors who had resolutely refused to cast him, actors who’d stolen his laughs—but none of these transgressions did he really think of as killing matters.

  His confusion must have communicated itself to Vladimir, because he said, “You must have a sibling who’s infuriated you at some point, someone who’s cheated you of money, a man who’s stolen one of your girlfriends . . .”

  “Yes, I must have, mustn’t I?” Though, for the life of him, Kenny Mountford still couldn’t think of anyone who was a suitable candidate for murder. He also couldn’t completely suppress the unworthy feeling—which he knew would threaten his integrity as an actor in the eyes of someone like Charlie Fenton—that killing people was wrong.

  The conversation became becalmed. After a few more shots of vodka, Vladimir announced he was off to get a freebie from one of the Bayswater working girls controlled by the Simferopol Boys. “Got to be some perks in this job,” he said.

  But Vasili lingered. He seemed to have sensed Kenny’s unease. “You are worried about the killing?”

  “Well . . .”

  “It is common. The first one. Many people find that. After two or three, though . . .” Vasili downed another shot of vodka. “. . . it seems a natural thing to do.”