Gun Street Girl

It all starts when Nick Sharman's eye is caught by a woman in a fashionable West End store. She is young beautiful and classy. And she is shoplifting. In a moment of gallantry, Sharman saves her from the indignity of being caught. The next thing he knows Elizabeth Pike is his client. One evening a few weeks before, her father, multimillionaire Sir Robert Pike, took his old service revolver and blew a hole in his head. Now the battle is on for control of his massive media empire. And someone is out to get his illegitimate daughter Catherine, a lovely young Australian with a chequered past. So Sharman has two women to protect. But from whom?

As Sharman swaps the grimy streets of south London for the glamour and glitz of Mayfair, it soon becomes apparent that what lurks beneath the surface is as slimy and sleazy as anything he's encountered in Brixton. And twice as dangerous…

Mark Timlin
has written some thirty novels under many different names, including best selling books as Lee Martin, innumerable short stories, an anthology and numerous articles for various newspapers and magazines. His serial hero, Nick Sharman, who features in
Gun Street Girl
, has starred in a Carlton TV series, played by Clive Owen, before he went on to become a Hollywood superstar. Mark lives in Newport, Wales.

‘The king of the British hard-boiled thriller'
–
Times

‘Grips like a pair of regulation handcuffs'
–
Guardian

‘Reverberates like a gunshot'
–
Irish Times

‘Definitely one of the best'
–
Time Out

‘The mean streets of South London need their heroes tough. Private eye Nick Sharman fits the bill'
–
Telegraph

‘Full of cars, girls, guns, strung out along the high sierras of Brixton and Battersea, the Elephant and the North Peckham Estate, all those jewels in the crown they call Sarf London'
–
Arena

Also by Mark Timlin

A Good Year for the Roses
1988

Romeo's Girl
1990

Gun Street Girl
1990

Take the A-Train
1991

The Turnaround
1991

Hearts of Stone
1992

Zip Gun Boogie
1992

Falls the Shadow
1993

Ashes by Now
1993

Pretend We're Dead
1994

Paint It Black
1995

Find My Way Home
1996

Sharman and Other Filth
(short stories) 1996

A Street That Rhymed with 3 AM
1997

Dead Flowers
1998

Quick Before They Catch Us
1999

All the Empty Places
2000

Stay Another Day
2010

OTHERS

I Spied a Pale Horse
1999

Answers from the Grave
2004

as TONY WILLIAMS

Valin's Raiders
1994

Blue on Blue
1999

as JIM BALLANTYNE

The Torturer
1995

as MARTIN MILK

That Saturday
1996

as LEE MARTIN

Gangsters Wives
2007

The Lipstick Killers
2009

4JP

It's funny how things start isn't it? I wanted a new necktie – no ordinary tie, mind. I fancied a real silk job that looked like it came from a minor public school or an offshoot from the Tory Party. Something impressive that would turn heads.

I was up in front of a jury, see. Nothing serious as it turned out. Nothing that a good brief and a lot of dough couldn't sort out. In fact, the morning I went out to buy the tie, I heard that the prosecution was shedding charges like cat's hair in the springtime. It was all boiling down to illegal helicopter parking and trespassing on international flying space. The Civil Aviation Authority wouldn't budge on that one.

So I went shopping for a tie in Bond Street and that's when I first saw her. I didn't know her name then, but I knew her game right off. She was doing a bit of up-market hoisting down South Molton Street. Now, I don't mind hoisters, never have, they don't do much harm – the losses go on the prices at the till. But most nicking from shops is done by the staff and that's a fact, and as a rule most hoisters don't get fisty when they're captured. They recognise it as part of the game and go quietly if they can't get away. Cut and run is their motto, or stand still for the nick. Not that there aren't one or two with a Stanley knife up their sleeves, but then crossing the road is dangerous, or so they tell me. In fact some of my best friends do a bit, and I don't mind admitting I've had the odd Blazer suit from a geezer in my local in my time.

I clocked her style after a couple of minutes. She was good, but not that good and I saw her stuffing a cashmere sweater into her tote bag in Brown's. I just saw the sleeve doing a David Nixon before she flipped the top shut. It's always strange to see someone on the hoist; it gave me a funny feeling, just like in the old days. You think: Gotcha! But you've got to pretend not to notice. That's how it was, anyway; now I don't care.

But old habits die hard and when she left Brown's I sauntered out after her, just to see if any of the staff had seen what I'd seen and were going to do the old ‘Excuse me, madam, would you accompany me to the manager's office' bit. But she was off free and clear with no shop assistant following. She went across the street and into D-Mob. Not a good idea. They had security cameras fitted in there. I knew that for a fact; she obviously didn't.

I followed her into the shop and started going through a rack of jackets. She swanned around the floor, ran her hand along a shelf and palmed a pair of cufflinks and slid them into her coat pocket. Then she went over to the leathers and I had a chance to study her closely. She was about twenty-five or -six and darkly beautiful with thick auburn hair and perfectly made-up white skin. She was wearing sunglasses and a long red coat with huge sleeves and big pockets, and carried a giant leather bag. All the better to stash the loot, Granma. She stood about five nine in her heels and looked as if she was worth a packet. It's funny, but my mother always warned me about girls like that. West End girls she called them, and this one was about as West End as you could get. It was good camouflage but she was about to come unstuck. So I walked over to her and said, ‘I'd put them back if I were you, love.'

‘I'm not you, or your love, and I don't know what you're talking about,' she said.

‘The two hundred nicker links in your pocket.'

‘If you don't leave me alone I'll get the manager to call a policeman,' she said.

‘Go ahead. The jumper in your bag isn't paid for either.'

‘Are you the store detective?'

‘No, but there's a spy in the sky here.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Don't look now, but above the changing room door there's a little black circle. It's a camera lens.'

She couldn't resist and looked up, and frowned.

‘Smile,' I said. ‘You're on candid camera.'

‘And who are you?'

‘Well, right now whoever is looking at the screen figures I'm either your accomplice or I'm trying to chat you up.'

She was very cool, I'll give her that. ‘And are you?' she asked. ‘Trying to chat me up?'

I smiled. ‘No, I don't think so. Maybe another time. But I am a detective, private.' I reached into my pocket, gave her my card. ‘I don't care what you do but I used to be on the force and I do know that the people who own this shop always prosecute. From the look of you, you don't want that sort of publicity, so I'd put the cufflinks back or pay for them, okay?' She didn't say anything in reply so I simply added, ‘Have a nice day.' And I left her and walked out of the shop.

In the street a big, handsome gorilla in chauffeur's livery loaded down with parcels and plastic bags clocked me straight off. He caught my eye and held it. I nodded and brushed past. No one came after me so they must have thought I was only chatting her up after all. Perhaps I was. I never got the tie but I did get off at the Bailey a week later and went back to work.

Two months went past before I spoke to her again. It was the third morning of what was to become the hottest summer since records began. Business was not good and I was sitting on a ticky tacky swivel chair behind a scarred desk in a steamy room in a town that was slowly dissolving like a grease spot on a hot stove. I sat and massaged my bad foot with my bad hand and listened out for trouble with my good ear.

I was alone in my office except for a little black and white neutered tom cat called Cat in memory of his mother. He was fast asleep with his head nearly in a saucer of water I'd put down for him less than an hour previously and which was already coated with a film of dust and contained the remains of a suicidal blue bottle.

I sighed, got up, changed the water, disturbed the cat, who meowed then went back to sleep again. I fell back into my seat and lit a Silk Cut king size and I saw the car draw up outside. It was a black Rolls-Royce limousine, 1989 model, stretched, but not indecently so. You couldn't have fitted a swimming pool into the back but there was probably room for a reasonable-sized jacuzzi. I watched it glide past my office window and I thought it was going to go on for ever. The black mirrored windows were closed tightly and I imagined the interior cool and dark from the air-conditioning. I levered myself up from the comfort of my chair and went and checked it out. The first thing that struck me about the car was that it was so clean. On that dusty morning the cellulose shone like a new razor blade. The second thing that struck me was the number plate. RP2, it read, which led me to believe that whoever owned the machine had a better one at home. It was an interesting thought.

The arrival of the limo even brought the local lads out of the pub on the corner for a squint and when they saw who disembarked they stayed for another and another.

The driver's door swung open smartly and a chauffeur in full black livery, including peaked cap and gaiters, hopped out and ran round to the passenger side. He was big and young and too handsome for his own good or my liking, with dark curls fighting to escape the restriction of his hat. His face was familiar, but I couldn't place it right away. I could remember the days when I had his energy, when I could hop because I wanted to rather than because I had to, and I kicked my bad foot against the door frame just to let it know I hadn't forgotten.

He gave the chaps gathered by the pub door a disdainful glance and flung the rear door open. He stood to attention, then extended his right hand to help his passenger alight. Out of the back of the vast, shining car stepped the hoister from South Molton Street and I suddenly remembered where I'd seen the chauffeur before.

That day she was dressed in black from head to toe, and her hair was bound tightly in a severe bunch at the back of her neck, pulled so tight that she almost seemed to be punishing the skin on her face. And the face itself, beautiful, but different under the same pair of shades she'd worn before. She stood for one moment with her hand on the driver's arm and whispered something to him. Then she made straight for my door.