About the Author

Born in Bexley, Kent, just before Christmas 1961, Richard found the newly emerging punk rock scene, in 1976/77, to be the perfect outlet for teenage angst. Education at an all-boys secondary modern school in Dartford ultimately led to him attaining a modest five O levels. After playing guitar in several bands, he shelved his personal dreams of attaining rock and roll stardom and put his life on hold to provide for, and raise, a family.

In the latter years, Richard turned his creative focus to photography and writing, having been inspired by his visits to Eastern European countries. Following a 32-year absence from live musical performances, Richard made a comeback as a guitarist with the East End Badoes in 2016 and has since played and recorded with Medway rock band, The Burntwick Smugglers, formed by four friends during the coronavirus lockdown.

Now living with his wife and muse, Liane, in Preston, Lancashire, he continues to write and play the music he loves. Following the cult status of his first novel, Room 13: Between Hell and Redemption, published in 2017, this is his second novel and the sequel which has been six years in the making.

Dedication

Dedicated to the memory of

Simon Garcha

24 March 1963–8 May 2019

Copyright Information ©

Richard Cruttwell 2024

The right of Richard Cruttwell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035853359 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035853366 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781035853373 (ePub e-book)

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First Published 2024

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Prologue

Murder. No matter how I try to make the word roll off my tongue, it still sounds profoundly ugly. Murder. I mulled it over once more as I rolled the wrapped and weighted torso over the side of the boat, under the cover of darkness. Shrouded in razor wire, it hit the water with a splash, creating a wave which unbalanced the small rowing boat, causing it to rock, almost tipping me into the icy water which surrounded me. Why razor wire, you might ask? Because, as the body bloats in the water, the razor wire will shred it, making light work for the fish to feed on before it floats back to the surface. Do you think I learned nothing in prison?

I shuddered at the prospect of falling into the water and dying. In such surroundings and such a situation, there was no one who would come to my assistance if such a mishap occurred. Hypothermia would set in within minutes, and even if I were able to haul myself back into the boat, I dare say that there was a good chance that I would have frozen to death long before daybreak. Perhaps that might be considered poetic justice in some circles, but not in any circle that I moved in, that was for certain.

I began to row back to the shore of Liptovska Mara, a large lake in Northern Slovakia, close to the Tatra Mountains and, even though it was October, the night was unseasonably cold. The biting air made me tense as I struggled with the oars, making me wonder if I would even reach the shore before daybreak. Each rotation of the oar blades was unsynchronised, laboured and heavy.

Murder. A simple word comprised of two syllables, yet a word which invokes feelings dark, unpleasant, foreboding and callous. It invokes images of shadowy figures disposing of bodies in the middle of the fucking night, in the middle of a huge fucking lake, in the middle of fucking nowhere. Once more I shuddered, not just because of the freezing northerly wind which blew down from the snow covered mountains, but at the thought of what I had done. I began to row with greater resolve and purpose, in an attempt to distance myself from the point where the last mortal remains of someone who I once convinced myself that I cared about, were now sinking to the murky depths of the lake. That point was now almost obscured by the darkness, and only the reflection of the moonlight dancing on the ripples compelled my conscience to look beyond that darkness.

If truth be told, perhaps the one thing I desperately tried to distance myself from was myself. Regardless of how I had fought to rebuild and reinvent, I once again found myself walking a well-trodden path, following in my own footsteps. Can a leopard ever change its spots? No matter how hard I reasoned that such dappled markings were not naturally mine but had been painted on by past history, situation and circumstance, I was aware that even in the vast expanse of Liptovska Mara, there was insufficient water to cleanse my soul. The shimmering reflection of the moonlight accompanied me, dancing on the surface of the water, almost mocking my inability to come to terms with my own being.

It was almost as if the moon had become my ally, my confidante and co-conspirator, for it was the same moon which illuminated Peter Fankham as he danced on the end of his rope, and the same moon which watched from above as the Spaceman departed to the four corners of the earth. Murder? No, I had grown to consider it an art form. I had merely assisted in the untimely demise of a few people, all of whom deserved to have their miserable lives cut short. I had convinced myself that I never acted in cold blood. In fact, each act had seemed to grow organically, almost as if it had a life of its own. The moon and I had merely been bystanders as justice, nature and death combined to follow their natural course.

I finally reached the shore, pulled the small boat out of the water and collapsed on the bank exhausted. The last remaining part of the body had finally been concealed forty-five metres below the surface of the icy lake; the other parts, secreted across a distance so unfathomable that no one could ever piece that human jigsaw puzzle together. It was a shame that it had come to this, as not so long ago she and I were quite close, but she had become a liability. Jealousy is such an irrational emotion which can self-perpetuate, even to the point of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Left unchallenged, it grows from a tiny seed to become something unmanageable, like weeds taking over a garden until you can never see what was or is good. She had let her jealousy manifest to a point where she made decisions that affected us all. Sadly, but ultimately, she had orchestrated her own demise.

The responsibility of some deaths could be laid at my door, but hers was not of my doing. I had merely assisted in the concealment to protect another. I reached into my pocket, took out the spare mobile phone which I had carried for the last few days, and called Natasha. It’s done, I said in a hushed tone before hanging up and hurling the phone into the lake as far as I could. I got to my feet, walked the short distance to the car and climbed inside, relishing the relative comfort of finally being out of the cold night air.

It would be a long drive back to Prague, but I knew that Natasha would be waiting for me upon my return. Natasha Jackson, or Natasha Eckhart, as she was known back in Germany. Now, that’s where it started getting complicated, for here was a woman as mysterious as she was beautiful. A woman with a spark, and if she was the spark then I was the gasoline. I remember telling her how I liked my life uncomplicated. What had happened to change all that, I wondered.

Preface

Trapped. Think about it. Surely everyone has felt trapped at some time or another, by someone, something or some difficult situation. I am certainly no stranger to feeling that. While I am being backed against one wall, the others are slowly closing in on me. At times, such a sensation has a simple way out; it is just a question of making a decision, however uncomfortable that decision might have been at the time.

Sometimes, ‘uncomfortable’ might be an understatement and perhaps ‘despicable’ could be more apt. Like the time I ended the perfectly good relationship with my girlfriend, or should I say fiancée, Lisa Wright. Still in my early twenties, while Lisa was picking out her dress and deciding who should be invited to our wedding, I had begun to feel trapped and overwhelmed by the enormity of the whole situation. As those metaphorical walls closed in on me, a blonde escape window of opportunity opened up and I decamped to the arms of the woman who would ultimately ruin my life. Out of the frying pan, into the fire? No. That term of phrase would be doing Lisa Wright a huge injustice. As my good friend, Dave Bradshaw said, Lisa was a nice girl; certainly too good for me.

Many times I have berated myself for the despicable way I handled that situation and questioned my decision because, ultimately, it was probably my worst decision ever, and I have made some fucking bad decisions, I can tell you. Why did I not just tell Lisa how I was feeling at the time? In hindsight, she could have made the choice, based on honesty. We might have been able to put plans on hold for a year or so, take a step back, relieve the pressure and move on together. But no, when my back was to the wall, I took what I saw as the easiest escape route. Ultimately, that ‘escape route’ led me to a web of narcissism and set me on a fast track to some serious jail time.

Naively, I never saw what was coming back then, though. I was far too busy living my perceived reality; the ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ lifestyle. Blinkered, blind, and often too stoned to see past the end of my own nose, I considered myself to be the brightest candle on the birthday cake. But, as the old cliché goes, a candle burns brightest before it goes out. There were certainly no candles and no fucking cake in that Polish prison, I can assure you. In there, the walls are no longer metaphorical; they are real and stood firm and strong as a reminder that, whether I was guilty or innocent, I was going nowhere. Now, that’s trapped.

Long before that, I had felt trapped by school and the entire education system throughout my childhood. Perhaps I lacked the self-discipline to hand in homework on time, something which would often bring me into unnecessary conflict with my teachers, but I also detested the bullying behaviour of those same teachers and their belittlement of us as pupils. On my first day at secondary school, I found myself in an after school detention. What was my crime? I just fucking stood up, that’s all. Alright, so let me add a little context here. At the end of class, the teacher told us to stay in our seats and put our books away in our bags. My loving parents had bought me a briefcase so that I would look the part, and all I did was to stand up so that I could put my books neatly inside. On my part, it was not an act of defiance or insubordination, I was merely putting my school books away. But, by the letter of the law, I had not remained in my seat as instructed, and had stood up, thus committing a heinous crime which warranted an after school detention; half an hour spent silently in the company of older boys who, to me at the time, all looked not dissimilar to mass murderers.

While still in primary school, there had been stories of lads like me being abducted by such older boys, tied to trees overnight, forced to smoke cigarettes and have our heads pushed down toilets in secondary school. Not only were these tales absolute bollocks, but I soon grew to trust those boys more than the teachers. Since then, I have come to learn that there are loads of judges and politicians who enjoy being tied up and smoking cigarettes is not the end of the world, even if my lungs might disagree, and I’ve never met anyone who has had their head flushed down a toilet, so I can’t really comment on that. After that first day’s detention, Jack Letchworth, an imposing lad, four years older than me, who had been made to stay after school for fighting, laughed, gave me a hearty pat on the back and called me a ‘legend’ for getting into trouble on my first day.

On another similarly bogus occasion, which had warranted an after school detention, I had gone into the toilet for a piss on the way between lessons. The ‘crime’ was decreed as ‘breaking out of line without permission’. Line? What fucking line? The bastards seemed to make up the rules as they went along. Back in those days, the ultimate deterrent was the threat of being caned, either across the hands or the arse. My first experience of three strokes of the cane across my hands was for getting a question wrong about a US president during a history lesson. The red, angry welts were raised on my sore palms for hours after, but I never forgot that Woodrow Wilson was the 28th US president, not Abraham Lincoln.

I look back with some degree of consolation that I was never caned by our geography teacher, Mr Summer. Far from being the ray of sunshine, which his name suggests, that bastard must have been deprived of love as a child. He was a man who would take the art of caning to a whole new level. His intended ‘victims’ were ordered to descend the ten or so stairs at the end of the hallway, bend down and touch their toes. With cane raised in hand, Summer would run the length of the hallway, leap down the stairs and cane his ‘victim’ in mid-air. I shit you not.

A well-aimed assault might hit the intended target with a level of precision which only comes with practice, but a slight deviation in Summer’s aerial descent would result in a thrashing across the back of the legs or, even worse, the neck. Who the hell would derive such pleasure in inflicting pain and torture on a young boy, other than a pervert? Is it any wonder that I hated my school days and learned to dislike figures of authority? Kids today don’t know how lucky they are.

I could not wait to break off the shackles of education as soon as possible, and I dare say that the teachers all breathed sighs of relief on learning that I had not elected to stay on for another two years. So, at sixteen years old, as soon as the door opened, I bolted for the freedom of the outside world. Leaving school with little or no formal qualifications to my name, employment opportunities were few and far between, but at least stacking supermarket shelves at night, or working in some warehouse or another, paid me a meagre wage and put money in my pocket so that I could go to the pub, or take the train up to London to see some of the bands I loved at the time. I was even able to save up enough money to buy my first electric guitar from a shop in Charing Cross Road, and I talked my mother into letting me get an amplifier from her mail order catalogue and pay her the monthly instalments.

After learning three basic chords, I was ready to start a band of my own with a few friends. Much to the chagrin of the neighbours, myself and my misfit mates would create an ear-splitting discordant cacophony in the garage. We weren’t any good, but it was fun, and the fact that our rudimentary musical masterpieces got up the noses of the locals made us feel like we were a proper rock band, even if we did not even have a name. Within a short space of time jobs, lifestyles and girlfriends got in the way and the band split up. However, the experience had sown a seed; a seed which I intended to nurture. I wanted to be rock star more than anything. Sensing that I had outgrown my first guitar, I worked whatever overtime hours I could, sold amphetamine sulphate to friends and their friends, and saved as much money as I could.

I will never forget the excitement of walking out of a second hand guitar shop in Denmark Street with my own white Gibson Les Paul Custom, my dream instrument. Even if I might never be destined to play it as well as some of my guitar heroes, I had an instrument as good as any of them and it was my pride and joy.

I now look back on those halcyon, carefree days with warmth and affection and I wish they could have continued forever, but they can’t. Life has a tendency to grow ever more complicated as the years go by. Well, it seems like my life has, anyway. On reflection, perhaps I should have knuckled down, worked hard, got a good education, a good job, married Lisa Wright, had kids, played it safe, but I didn’t. I am my own worst enemy. Other people appear to prefer to take the safe route through life, if they have the choice. A steady job to keep the wolves and the bailiffs from the door, and a roof over their heads where they can feel safe, raise a family and weather out the storms that life can throw our way. No matter, I’ll wager that the rat race and its hurdles will eventually grind down all but the most fortunate ones; those in elevated positions, high enough to look down at the rest of mankind below. I never wanted to be ground down and thought I would take a route which suited me best, but it seems as though all roads eventually converge at the same destination.

I can remember, as a child, having fun with friends in the local playground. The swings, slide and climbing frame were my favourites. The mini roundabout was always something to be wary of, in my opinion. Once onboard, there would always be that one friend who would spin it faster and faster. It became a balance of judgement; would I decide to jump off before it spun too fast, or would I try to hold on until it gyrated out of control? Now, with hindsight, I can look back on such childhood memories and consider that, perhaps, they taught me more than I realised. In more recent times, I sensed that my world was spinning out of control, just like that mini roundabout.

Trapped, once again, by a vortex, rotating rapidly, dragging me down into a place where I really do not want to go. Whether I have felt that I’m on a downward spiral or whether it’s more like walls closing in, matters nothing to anyone but me. At times, I just feel like I could light a stick of dynamite and blow the whole fucking lot sky high. So why do I feel like this, my friend?

OK then, I will tell you.

Chapter 1

Welcome to the Farm

How come some people get to earn themselves nicknames, while most, like myself, never find themselves with a cool moniker attached to the official title with which they were bestowed at birth? Yes, I agree that it’s something more commonly attributed to professional boxers; ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson, ‘Marvellous’ Marvin Hagler, etc, but nicknames are less widely spread throughout the rest of society. Usually, it’s an added title given to an individual which describes some element of their character. I refer in particular to Wolfgang ‘The Wolf’ Eckhart and Zivko ‘The Beast of The Balkans’ Bulic. Let me not forget Leon ‘Rocky’ Garcia and Thurstan too. Even Thurstan Reeve had earned himself the nickname ‘Animal’ after his drumming prowess was likened to that of the character in The Muppets, even though his day job was that of being a lawyer.

I dare say that Wolfgang, Zivko, Leon nor Thurstan are likely to be written into the annuls of history in the same way as Marvin Hagler or Mike Tyson, but they are all part of my history. So, where do I start in formally introducing them. Perhaps, I have just given Thurstan a decent introduction already. I will get to Leon in due course, because he became such a good friend who taught me some new and very important life skills. Zivko, being a worthless piece of shit, can fucking wait until I’m ready. I guess that just leaves Wolfgang. Now, Wolfgang inadvertently plays a bigger part in this story than might initially seem apparent. So, I’ll start with that nasty bastard. However, before I do, I feel that there is a little background information which I have to divulge, in order to put everything and everyone concerned into context. As such, I guess that I will need to start with the farm and the club.

It seems like not so long ago, we were celebrating the opening of our music club in Prague, Heaven & Hell, and Pam, my partner, Elise and Gracie, my daughter and granddaughter, and I were looking forward to our first Christmas together in my apartment, a little way outside of the city. Skazaniec, our punk rock band, had made our live debut that night too, and as the snow fell and the festivities drew ever closer, my twenty-five year prison sentence felt like a distant memory and life seemed as near to perfect as one could ever wish. In the early months of the following year, with Thurstan and I in partnership as owners of the club, and, my former cell mate and friend, Alex, and I having the responsibility of its day to day running, Heaven & Hell, with live bands playing at least four times a week, became a popular venue in a very short space of time.

Neither Thurstan nor I had thought that we would see any return on our investment for at least a year but, by March, we were already recording profits. Perhaps we had been a little naïve in imagining that we would be left to our own devices, especially considering that Alex had already explained how the multifaceted politics of the Prague criminal underworld worked. Within no time at all, we were paying unofficial ‘taxes’ to the ethnic Albanian and Romanian gangs who operated in the city, as well as those who represented a Russian syndicate too. Rather naively, these were not financial outgoings which Thurstan and I had initially factored into our long term business plan.

One evening, we hosted a German death metal band, ‘The Dark Lords of Salem’. While sound checking, I was surprised that the whole band sounded like they were classically trained. The guitarist shredded through scales like a demonic Steve Vai, while the singer showed off an octave range which was not dissimilar to that of an opera singer, to my untrained ear at least. Individually, they were amazing. However, every song they played together sounded like the singer was roaring over a cacophonous barrage of noise all played in the same key, kept loosely in time by a frantic double pedal drum beat which hardly altered throughout their set. Despite my reservations, The Dark Lords of Salem drew in an enthusiastic crowd who all seemed to enjoy it.

After the show, I had a long and interesting discussion with Dieter Schmitt, the band’s very eloquent front man. After politely thanking us for inviting them to play at Heaven & Hell and remarking on what a great job we had done in getting the place up and running, he informed me over a beer that he owned a similar rock music club in his hometown of Grunwald, just outside of Munich. After I had told him about the issues that we were having with our local ‘taxes’, he told me about a man he knew who ensured that Dieter’s club did not have a similar issue. Wolfgang Eckhart, by all accounts was a successful businessman, who had built a sizeable property portfolio which included hotels, restaurants, apartments and clubs, not only in Germany but in many other European countries too.

Dieter, after a drink or two, began to speak more freely about the more nefarious aspects of Wolfgang’s operation. There is more profit to be made through narcotics than beer, my friend, suggested Dieter, noting my scepticism. Just look around your club, he continued, I have seen the dealers operating in here tonight. Our security staff had often ejected such people from the premises, so I was well aware of what was going on under our noses, I told him. Exactly. But, the thing is, you have no idea what they are selling and what the quality is like. How would it reflect on you or your club if someone took something in here and then became very sick, or worse? I had to concede that Dieter did have a good point. And what do you get out of those dealers operating in here? I mean, you know, financially?

Again, Dieter did make sense. It had not even been something which I had thought about prior to our conversation. In Dieter’s club, he allowed Wolfgang’s associates to have exclusive rights in relation to narcotic supplies, who also guaranteed that only the highest quality products were distributed to those punters who sought their effects. Dieter further explained how the arrangement was beneficial to him, in so far as not only was he was given a small percentage cut, as a reward for exclusivity, but Wolfgang’s associates had a reputation which ensured that he had no problems such as having to pay ‘unofficial taxes’ to all and sundry. He also suggested that he could arrange a meeting with Mr Eckhart, if I so desired. But, he warned, "never disrespect him or try