Capital Punishment (40 page)

‘No need to get the hump,’ said Skin. ‘Have a toke of this mate and ... chill.’

Skin picked open the ball of paper, smoothed it out on his chest and stretched it out over their heads.

‘Gareth Wheeler?’ he said. ‘What’s the Dan shit all about?’

‘One of the old lifers I was treating inside said I looked like Dan Dare and it stuck. And I hate being called Garry.’

‘Who’s Dan Dare?’ asked Alyshia.

‘Before your time,’ said Skin. ‘Before mine ’n’ all.’

‘Why are you still wearing your hood?’ asked Alyshia. ‘Now that we all know you’re really Dan Dare.’

‘Sounds like Cockney rhyming slang,’ said Skin. ‘I’m feeling a bit Dan Dare.’

‘Let’s talk,’ said Dan, tearing off his hood.

Skin hopped over Alyshia. They went into the other room.

‘You’ve been gone for fucking hours,’ said Skin. ‘And I can tell you’ve had a few. So what’s the game? My turn to step up, yet?’

‘The family know we’re in trouble,’ said Dan. ‘They know Pike’s gang and the cabbie’s lot are looking for us.
And
the police. We made it on to Channel Four. So ... we’re fucked.’

‘You’re telling me you’ve been out all this time and you haven’t even come back with an offer?’

‘Oh no, I’ve had an offer.’

‘Is it more than the fiver I said I’d take?’

‘It’s a hundred grand.’

‘Fuck me,’ said Skin, hitting him on the shoulder. ‘That’s fifty grand. That’s fifty grand more than I had this morning. What you looking so sick for? Get back there and accept it. We can’t move with her, and we’ve got to get out of here, so we take what they’re offering and leg it. You didn’t seriously think we were going to get a million each, did you?’

‘You’re high.’

‘Not so high that I don’t know the difference between fifty grand and fuck all,’ said Skin. ‘Where are we going to get them to do the drop?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Dan. ‘You don’t want to be seen on the street, looking like you do, so you stick to the canal.’

‘Small problem,’ said Skin. ‘No boat.’

‘You want to go down there on a boat you might get to Limehouse Basin by the weekend. There’s about ten locks to get through,’ said Dan. ‘You’re going to walk it.’

‘How far?’

‘About three and a half, four miles.’

‘That’s an hour.’

‘You got anything else to do, apart from your duties as page boy to the court of Princess Alyshia?’

‘I’m just saying, it’ll take me an hour. We need to build that into our timings.’

‘All right, sorry. I’m just a bit stressed, with London on red alert for our arses.’

‘Take a hit,’ said Skin, handing him the last dark inch of spliff. ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’

Dan took a huge toke, held it in until he squeaked and his eyes filled and streamed. The drug slipped into his blood and suddenly he didn’t feel hounded anymore.

‘The worst that can happen,’ said Dan cheerfully, ‘is that we die horribly long, tortuous deaths in the hands of one London gang or another.’

‘I’ll shoot you before it comes to that,’ said Skin. ‘Promise.’

‘That’s a very fine thing for you to say, Skin,’ said Dan. ‘You’re a true friend.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Skin. ‘Tell us about the drop.’

‘Limehouse Basin is like a marina surrounded by blocks of fancy flats, full of people who work in Canary Wharf and take home more in their bonuses than we’re going to get for putting our lives on the line for this fucking kidnap.’

‘Let’s get to the detail, Garry.’

‘Don’t fucking Garry me, Mister Skates.’

He showed Skin the route down to the Limehouse Basin on the A-Z guide, talked him through the details.

‘How do you know all this shit?’

‘I go walking. I’ve been up and down this canal a hundred times.’

‘You’re a sad fucking case, you know that?’

‘But now, finally, my sadness pays off,’ said Dan. ‘I’ll get Alyshia’s mother to drive her car down to the Basin and leave it under the arches of the DLR with the money in the boot. You should be able to see it from the tunnel under Commercial Road, which means you’ll be able to see her leave the car and walk away. I’ll get her to go back up the slip road and wait by the DLR station. You pick up the money and, either go back up the canal, onto Commercial Road, or around the blocks of flats, down to Narrow Street. From there you can walk along the Thames towards Shadwell, or the other way to Canary Wharf. You could get the DLR back to Bank from there, catch the tube to Angel and back here down the canal.’

‘Why the fuck would I want to come back here?’

Silence.

‘Kiss the princess goodbye?’

‘You’re drunk and stoned,’ said Skin. ‘As soon as I’ve got the money and checked it, I’ll call you. You call the mother, tell her the address, release her and get out.’

‘Where shall we meet?’

More silence.

‘That’s good,’ said Skin. ‘We’ve got nowhere to go.’

‘Out of London.’

‘What time are we going to do the drop?’

‘Midnight?’ said Dan. ‘There won’t be any DLR or tube, so we’ll be on night buses.’

‘Fucking ridiculous,’ said Skin. ‘We’re not making our getaway with fifty grand a piece on the fucking night buses. No fucking way. I’ll steal a car.’

‘You can steal cars?’

‘I was brought up on twocking and ram-raiding.’

‘Twocking?’

‘And finally, I’ve found something you don’t fucking know,’ said Skin. ‘Taking Without Consent. Joyriding, to you.’

‘When did you last do that?’

‘It’s a kid’s crime. Twenty years ago.’

‘Things have moved on in the car alarm business since then.’

‘So you don’t want me to nick a transit, it’s got to be a Porsche fucking Cayenne now, has it?’

7.20 P.M., TUESDAY 13TH MARCH 2012

Regent's Park, London

‘I’m sorry about the death of your friend,’ said Chhota Tambe, sitting at the vast desk in his house overlooking Regent’s Park, smoking a Wills Insignia cigarette and indicating a chair to the American, who was dressed in black jeans and a fleece-lined flying jacket.

‘Quiddhy knew the risks of the business we were in,’ said Dowd, who’d been drawn here by the promise of money, his eyes not leaving the cash in neat blocks in front of the Indian.

‘And you’ve found a satisfactory way of dealing with the bodies?’ said Tambe, brushing ash from his blue pin-stripe bespoke suit, which he believed made him look at least two inches taller than his four foot ten.

‘McManus had some Irish contact from way back. He’s taken care of them for us,’ said Dowd, who showed him a photograph he’d taken of the two dead men on his mobile phone. Chhota Tambe grimaced.

There was calculation in showing Tambe the bodies. Dowd wanted him to know he deserved his money. He refused an offered cigarette and smirked at Tambe’s tie with its bands of orange, lime green, gold lamé and pink, which diminished him, if not in stature, then in the eyes of his tailor.

‘And where’s McManus now?’ asked Tambe, sitting back in his gilt-edged velour chair, finger and thumb plastering his pencil moustache over and again, out to the corners of his mouth.

‘He left town,’ said Dowd.

‘And where will you go now?’ asked Tambe blandly, glancing over Dowd’s head at the wall beyond, inwardly seething with a torrential rage.

‘I thought I’d lose myself for a few months before heading back to Dubai.’

On the wall behind Dowd, in a huge gilt-frame, was a portrait painted from a photograph of Tambe’s elder brother Bada Tambe—Big Tambe. There was no family likeness. Big Tambe had been everything his younger brother wasn’t: tall, good-looking and charismatic. It was this portrait of his elder brother, which was replicated in Chhota Tambe’s houses in Dubai and Mumbai, that had been his mind’s focus for nearly twenty years. He’d loved his big brother and he could still feel the stab of grief as fresh as the day when he was told that Bada Tambe had died back in 1993.

However, there was one other person who had occupied Chhota Tambe’s thoughts besides his elder brother over the same period of time: Frank D’Cruz. With the same passion that Tambe had loved his brother, he hated Frank D’Cruz. It was one of the great balancing factors in his life.

‘The girl?’ said Tambe. ‘You said the glass panel was shot out. But you’re sure she survived.’

‘There was no blood in the room where she was being kept.’

‘The police are on their tails, you know: the ones who shot your friends,’ said Tambe, straightening the cigarette packet, aligning it with the money, as he was a man of great order. ‘It was on Sky news.’

‘I’d better get going then,’ said Dowd, standing.

‘This is for you,’ said Tambe, easing the block of money across the desk.

Dowd accepted it with a nod, put it in his holdall.

‘My men will take you to wherever you want to go,’ said Tambe, coming round the desk, no bigger standing than he was sitting. ‘Can I suggest the Eurostar to Paris? It’s the quickest way out of the country.’

Dowd shook the small, soft hand. The two heavyweights who’d been standing by the door took him down to the garage.

‘You mind me asking a question?’ said Dowd, as they stood crammed into the small lift. ‘How long’s this been going on between your boss and Frank D’Cruz?’

The two heavies looked at each other, grinned, couldn’t resist it.

‘Depends who you’re asking,’ said one.

‘I’m asking you,’ said Dowd.

‘We’d tell you it was on the day Sharmila left Chhota Tambe and went to work for Frank D’Cruz.’

‘And what if,’ said Dowd, thinking about it, ‘I was to ask the man himself?’

‘Then you’d get a very different story,’ said the heavy.

They both laughed as the lift door opened. There were three cars in the garage. They went to a Range Rover, opened the back door for Dowd, who got in. The two heavyweights got in either side of him. No driver. He didn’t know what it was at first, this strange pain in both sides that seemed to take his breath away. He looked from one man to the other. They were leaning in on his shoulders, pushing into his rib cage and he had the odd sensation of life draining away inside him.

Dan felt safer in the dark. He didn’t need to travel so far afield now. He went down the canal as far as Broadway Market and walked the few hundred yards to London Fields, where he disappeared into the central darkness, sat on a bench and made his call.

‘Hello, Dan,’ said Isabel Marks, as if he’d made no threat to amputate her daughter’s finger, nor that any protracted interlude at a vital moment of the negotiations had occurred. He was stunned by the strength in her voice, cowed by it.

‘Good evening, Mrs Marks,’ he said.

‘I haven’t been able to raise any more money,’ she said. ‘If you want more, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’

‘We’re prepared to accept one hundred thousand pounds in cash, but it has to be tonight.’

He could hear the emotion clutch at her throat. It sounded as if she was about to say ‘thank you’ but couldn’t get it out, or maybe she’d thought
fuck you
and had stopped herself from saying it just in time.

‘I’m going to hand you over to a family friend,’ she said. ‘His name is Charles. He will deliver the ransom to you. You should work out the exact details with him.’

‘No, no, no, no, no,’ said Dan.
‘You
will deliver the money.’

‘I don’t think I can do that on my own,’ said Isabel. ‘I might not sound it but I’m exhausted.’

‘I’m not doing business with someone different at this stage,’ said Dan. ‘I trust you.’

‘I can’t do it on my own. I need help.’

‘You have to be present in the car,’ said Dan, and after some thought, ‘I will accept one other person with you.’

‘I would rather you sorted out the details with Charles. I don’t want to get anything wrong,’ said Isabel. ‘He’s a trusted friend of the family.’

‘All right. Good night, Mrs Marks,’ said Dan, suddenly feeling immensely sorry for what he’d put this woman through. ‘Your daughter is very well and sends you her love. She has not been harmed by us in any way ... unlike the last lot.’

‘Thank you, Dan. Here’s Charles.’

‘Hello, Dan,’ said Boxer. ‘We haven’t had any proof of life from you since you first took Alyshia. We’re going to need that before we hand over the money.’

‘Five minutes before you make the drop we’ll let Alyshia call her mother. She will confirm her physical well-being and then we’ll proceed with the drop.’

‘What time?’

‘Midnight.’

‘Why not before?’

‘We need time.’

‘Where do you want us to make the drop?’

‘Give us your mobile phone number and make sure that you’re parked outside the Rich Mix Cinema on Bethnal Green Road. Be there at eleven and I’ll give you the directions to the drop site.’

‘Where do you want me to keep the money in the car?’

‘In the boot,’ said Dan. ‘And I’ll want to know the make, model, colour and registration of the car you’re going to use.’

‘I don’t have that.’

‘Get it,’ said Dan, and hung up.

He jogged around the bench for five minutes, trying to keep warm. He switched mobiles and called back.

‘I’ll be driving a silver VW Golf GTI, registration LF59 XPB,’ said Boxer, who also gave the mobile number he would be using. ‘Tell me how we’re going to get Alyshia back safely.’

‘I will stay with her. My partner will pick up the money. As soon as he’s verified that you’ve given us the correct amount, he’ll call me. I’ll call you and give you the address where she’s being held. I’ll release Alyshia and leave her with a mobile, just in case.’

‘Will you be asking us to leave the car somewhere with the money in the boot?’

‘Yes. When I call you back with the address, you can reclaim your car. I will tell you where to wait in the meantime,’ said Dan. ‘I want you to wear white overalls too, so you can easily be seen. Both of you.’

‘Can we have a phone number in case we need to contact you?’

‘No,’ said Dan, paranoid about the damn things, which he saw as nothing less than tracking devices. ‘The money should be packed in ten bundles of £10,000 each. The bundles should be in a zip-up sports bag, soft, no hard casing. If any tracking device is found or any of that explosive dye shit, then Alyshia will not survive the night and you will never hear from us again.’