The Crime Trade (38 page)

Only one cloud had threatened the success of the operation from Stegs's viewpoint, and that had been Yokes Vokerman. As the weeks had gone by, his colleague had started doing a bit of an Obi Wan Kenobi and had taken to lecturing Stegs about the temptations and dangers of the dark side (a bit late for that, Vokesy old son), and Stegs had become convinced that he knew something about what was going on. Which, unfortunately, meant that he'd now become a dangerous liability.
Stegs had always liked old Yokes, same as he'd always liked Jeff Benson, but he was also aware that sometimes you've got to make sacrifices - even major ones - in pursuit of the greater good, i.e. the enrichment of Stegs Jenner. Plus he was getting something of a taste for skulduggery. So he'd set up Yokes by making sure he was the one left behind in the hotel room when the deal went down, and, just to make sure he actually got dealt with, he'd got Slim Robbie to phone through to the hotel room and tell whoever answered the blower that they were being set up. Slim Robbie's instructions had been simple: Stegs would send him a pre-written text message on a pay-as-you-go mobile he was carrying with him, which would act as the signal to make the call. Robbie had been told to stay away from home while he phoned the hotel room in case technology traced it back to his property,
and to get rid of the mobile afterwards. He'd done everything bar the last bit, which might have presented a problem to lesser men, but, since Stegs had already got rid of the mobile he'd used to contact Slim Robbie, nothing was ever traced back to him.
Stegs had always been a lucky sod, particularly where survival was concerned, but that wasn't the whole story. He was also a planner, organizing for every eventuality. Which was why he'd decided to try to incriminate Yokes as well - a particularly naughty thing to do, when you think about it, killing him and then besmirching his Christian memory - but nevertheless something that acted as another useful layer of protection.
Having found out that Yokes and his colleagues from Acton CID were going to raid a local gun dealer, he'd asked Tyndall for help, and had got him to persuade, through threat of serious violence, a small-time pimp who owed him a lot of money to fire the gun that was going to be used in the Slim Robbie hit. The pimp would be let off the money he owed, but should the police ever come calling he was to tell them that he'd rented the gun from the Acton dealer and had given it back before the raid. It might cost him a couple of years inside but, as Tyndall himself had pointed out, the alternative didn't bear thinking about.
And, aside from the odd complication such as the use of Trevor Murk for the Slim Robbie hit, plus Tino's fatal bout of foolishness, the whole thing had worked like a dream. Stegs had made plenty of money and, thanks to his unique ability to double-cross pretty much everyone he dealt with, had completely fucked things up for Vamen, and that bastard Flanagan as well, by phoning Malik to warn him of the impending assassination attempt on Merriweather.
Stegs couldn't deny it; he'd always been a bit of a bad lot. at school, he'd even managed to get Barry Growler expelled setting fire to the chemistry block one night and leaving
Growler's scarf (which he'd stolen that day) at the scene, before phoning the police anonymously and posing, surprisingly successfully, as a householder to report the sighting of a youth matching the Growlster's description running away from the fire.
Treacherous to the last, that was old Stegs. But he was still the one left standing when the rest of them had fallen by the wayside.
To his left, the sea shimmered invitingly; above him, the sky was a deep, unbroken azure; attractive, scantily clad women strolled this way and that. You would have had to say, whatever your views on the world, that it was a good day to be alive.
Yokes, in one of his more crusading moments while posing as Obi Wan, had told Stegs that those with good in their hearts always win through in the end. And that those who harbour evil thoughts and commit evil deeds will always pay the price for their
sins.
But then Yokes Vokerman had always been full of shit. It's nothing to do with good or evil, never has been.
When you work the crime trade, it all boils down to how well you play the game.
Acknowledgements
This book would never have been written without the help of a large number of people within the crime business, the majority of whom would like to remain anonymous for various reasons. However, you know who you are, and I'm very grateful. Thanks too to my agents at Sheil Land and everyone at Transworld. And last, and most definitely not least, my wife, Sally.