Cold Killers by Lee Weeks Read Free Book Online

outside the grand entrance to Villa Cassandra. Set in an acre and a half, it had been built in the
style of an executive home in Essex but with the add-ons of a wraparound veranda on each of its three floors, which gave it the look of a ski-resort hotel. It could sleep fifty. It had three guest
houses and a staff house, positioned around a central fountain, three pools and a beach house. The villa was accessed via a private lane, which made it easy to police and to secure.
    As Della got out of the car and headed up the steps to the main house she looked up to see Debbie watching her approach from the veranda on the top floor. Marco left her. She walked between the
alabaster columns and onto the mosaic floor in the hallway.
    Tony was facing her as she walked into the trophy room. He was sitting side on to the views of the mountains and the sea. She knew why: he didn’t want to look outside. He had grown sick of
admiring nature. It had been ten years since he’d ventured into the town itself. Now he was a prisoner in his own Shangri-La. There were armed guards and there was razor wire on his fences.
His dogs were trained to kill. Tony was scared of them.
    Della walked towards him. The table in front of him was dusted in white, there were rings of wet from drinks spillage. He was turning a credit card around his fingers.
    ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ he said, and pushed a line of coke her way.
    She declined, repulsed, and sat down on the adjacent sofa.
    He leaned in to vacuum up a fat line. She studied him. His shaven head had silver stubble. His face was stretched over prominent cheekbones. His lips were burned by the whisky. Cheeks flushed.
He looked like an angry drag queen without her wig.
    ‘Thought you might feel like letting go a bit – must have been difficult for you yesterday,’ he said, sitting back and snorting loudly as he tilted his head back and his
Adam’s apple moved up and down as he swallowed.
    He waited to see if she would speak. When she didn’t, he sat up, took a few swigs of whisky and slammed the glass onto the table. He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees as his
head hung down. Della watched him. She listened to the hum and hiss of the water sprinklers outside the open doors and windows. A lizard had waddled in and was climbing the wall in bursts of
activity. Somewhere in the house she heard movement. She knew Debbie would be hovering close by.
    After a few minutes, Tony sat back on the sofa, with his arms outstretched on the sofa’s spine. He looked up at the photo of Ronnie and Reggie Kray on the wall. He picked up his Scotch.
‘The Krays, Eddie, all the good ones are gone. Hey? Aren’t they, princess? Hey, you agree? You talking to me?’
    ‘What do you want me to say?’
    ‘They left his body dumped like it was rubbish,’ Tony said as he shook his head mournfully. ‘They left him mutilated, like he was a joke. Like he was a fucking joke! And, I
can’t even go to his funeral. I can’t even go to my little brother’s funeral.’ He glared at her for a few seconds before finishing his whisky just as Sheena, the maid, came
in with a small tray and a glass of wine for Della. She placed it on a mat on the glass table. Della thanked her.
    ‘Sheena?’ Tony waved his glass in the air. ‘Drinky?’ He rattled the ice. ‘Fresh drinky? Remember – your fucking job, Chinky . . .’ He laughed and Sheena
smiled back nervously. They heard the sound of Debbie talking to one of the servants in the hallway and then her feet shuffling their way.
    ‘Debbie? Get the fuck in here,’ he called out.
    ‘Yeah, babes?’ She arrived, and stood before him in a pair of lime-green towelling shorts, framing stick-thin, mahagony-coloured legs. He pushed a line of coke her way. She shook her
head.
    ‘Not now.’
    ‘What the fuck? What is the matter with everyone?’ Tony sat back annoyed and then looked at her with drunken, doleful eyes. Wet on his lips. His eyes flicked