Free Dead Pretty by Roger Granelli Page A

dropped his voice even lower.
    â€˜Now we are coming to it. I think you’d better tell me about they.’
    He hit Tony on the other knee. He felt the need. Again the man tried to spring up, but Mark pushed the gun into his throat and Tony sank back down. There didn’t seem to be any hope left in his eyes now. This was good.
    â€˜You’re involved with people who’ve killed your sister. What does this make you, Tony?’
    â€˜She’s not my fucking sister, man. She’s no one’s sister.’
    There was a silence for a while. Tony dropped his cigarette on the sofa, and it started to make a brown hole. Let it burn, Mark thought, let the whole place burn.
    â€˜Tell me, Tony.’
    Tony started to rock slightly, holding his knees with his hands. Fear was fighting fear. Mark hadn’t expected him to hold out so long, but understood it. Whoever killed Lena that way could not be sane. Tony was muttering fuck it repeatedly to himself, like a desperate mantra, trying to lock out Mark and take himself into ostrich mode. Mark brought him back by picking up the cigarette and pressing it against the side of his neck again. The squeal turned into a scream.
    â€˜Lena was a courier,’ Tony shouted, ‘a mule, she’d worked for us for a couple of years.’
    â€˜Carrying what?’
    The fuck it s started up again.
    â€˜Carrying what? Come on, Tony, we’re almost there.’
    Mark moved to face Tony now, pressing the gun into his face. The man was starting to smell bad.
    â€˜Come on, Tony.’
    â€˜Diamonds. Whenever she went over to Amsterdam. We used her modelling work as cover. She got well paid, there was no need for any of this to happen. No need for this problem, man.’
    â€˜I’d call getting her stomach sliced open more than a problem.’
    â€˜I didn’t have no part in that, Mark, I swear to you I didn’t. I told them Stellachi was crazy, that there’d be problems with you, but they don’t care, man, they don’t care nothing about stuff like that. They just wanted their goods. Lena got greedy, and tried to cross them.’
    Mark slapped him with the gun again. It was instinctive, and it kept him from pulling the trigger. Tony’s face was becoming messy. His eyes glassy.
    â€˜For fucksake don’t kill me. I’m only the message boy, sometimes I fix up the odd thing. I should never have been anywhere near the flat. They wanted me around because I was the go-between for Lena.’
    â€˜Don’t even think of moving,’ Mark said.
    He went to the window. The street was empty, the faint edge of dawn challenging the orange lights, the loneliest part of the day. There was no way of knowing if Tony was telling it straight, but his fear was not phoney. There’d always been plenty of money in the last few years, modelling pays, Lena said. Though he’d never seen her in any of the major magazines she read, he’d just accepted it. Now Mark wondered if any of it was true. He wondered if he’d been a convenient pick up, to be also used as cover. He turned back to Tony, who was now lying face down on the sofa, blood from his head wounds seeping out steadily.
    â€˜Don’t go to sleep on me, Tony. Where are you from? Don’t tell me fucking Coventry.’
    â€˜I’m a British citizen.’
    â€˜Where?’
    Mark was shouting. Psycho Eyes was coming back. Explosive teenage rages that he’d thought had drained from his system long ago were taking on adult form.
    â€˜Albania,’ Tony muttered.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Albania. I got out fifteen years ago. I was what they call an asylum seeker now. Flutura came later.’
    â€˜Who?’
    Flutura   Lena. She’s Flutura Proli. She changed it to Lena Stolitz over here, when they got her a British passport. Same as me, Tony Stolitz.’ Tony sighed, and seemed to calm down a little. ‘Flutura,’ he said quietly, ‘it