Free The Facebook Killer by M. L. Stewart Page A

they had left behind. Everything apart from their
contacts that is.
    Kalif had begun to realise that Russians, or
Ukrainians, judge time not in hours but in vodkas. By the time
Serge returned to the bar Kalif was a little woozy again. He
greeted Kalif with a firm slap to his back, deceptively forceful
for his size.
    “My friend. I see Igor is keeping you from
looking suspicious,” he laughed.
    “Is everything going alright dude?” Kalif
asked.
    “Slow down, slow down. Where I come from we
have a saying, “your first vodka you talk about friends, your
second you talk about family, your third you talk business.”
    “Then your forth you talk about drinking more
vodka, I suppose?”
    “No,” Serge replied not understanding the
sarcasm, “then we eat.”
    “Vodka stew,” Igor chipped in with a big
concrete smile.
    And so they drunk some more until eventually
Serge felt relaxed enough to discuss business.
    “So this is the news my friend,” he began,
pulling the shopping list from his pocket, “ pass me a pen please
cousin. We have the storage facility for you. Everything that we
could get so far is in there. We go soon. I show you. The freezers
will be delivered there in two days. We got them for very good
price by the way, but I will come to money soon.”
    And so Serge reeled off everything that he
had managed to obtain so far. More than half of the order. He
guaranteed everything else to arrive in a maximum of twelve days.
As Igor lined up the next round of vodkas Serge looked at Kalif in
a more serious manner.
    “You know people are asking questions about
your boss? They are asking why he needs some of these things. Don’t
worry, I told them he is a mercenary and that it is all going
oversees to Somalia. Some people are getting a little nervous.”
Serge warned.
    “Serge, my man,” Kalif slapped him on the
back, “don’t worry your pretty Ukrainian head about it. None of
this will ever come back to you or your boys. Believe me. My boss
is too clever for that,” he reassured them.
    “I hope not my friend. I have called upon
some very big favours to get my hands on some things you asked
for.”
    “And you will be rewarded handsomely”
    “A dead man cannot spend his rewards,” Serge
said menacingly.
    Kalif laughed. Serge frowned. Igor poured
more drinks.
    “Serge, Serge, please! Do not worry about a
thing. As long as the shopping is untraceable nobody will ever know
where it came from. If you can trust your contacts then you have
nothing to worry about.”
    He seemed a little more reassured especially
when Kalif handed over another seventy grand as a further
“deposit”.
    Kalif didn’t make it back to the hotel until
ten o’clock the next morning. What do they say? If you want a job
done properly, do it yourself. He had been taken to the factory
unit where everything was to be stored. He was happy with the
security. When he explained to me what had been bought already I
began to feel less angry with him. He’d spent the rest of the night
drinking with Serge and the concrete block. He was young after all;
a good blowout now and again didn’t hurt anyone.
     

Chapter 13
     
    It’s six o’clock at night and I’ve just woken
up, thanks to Kalif’s little party. I missed my final deadline for
the remaining fifteen apples to reply to my poll. Luckily none of
them joined Hamid’s little army, they all “unfriended” him. At
least that was one loose end tied up, a loose end that had been
bothering me but now we had the final statistics.
    OK so now put yourself in
our shoes. Seven apples have been picked; we still have a vast
amount of money in our safe, which has to be spent, and
twenty-seven apples to go. Five of which are growing in Pakistan.
Just to recap we have one suicide, one road crash, one food
poising, a double murder and the two culprits for the latter are
locked up. Let us just assume for one moment that the police don’t
have a clue what’s going on, which I personally believe is