The Damage (David Blake 2) (18 page)

‘Yes.’

‘You’re the second person this week who’s asked me to leave the country. The Police told me to go too, and I will. I’ll fly out very publicly in a couple of days. I’ll have a few days back in Hua Hin with Sarah, then I’ll come back again. But this time it’ll be under their radar. No one will even know I’m here. Not at first, not if we play it right.’

‘I think you should stay out there for a while.’

I shook my head, ‘And how are you going to find out who’s trying to kill me if I am stuck in a compound five thousand miles away, not daring to show my face by my own swimming pool?’

‘I’ll find a way,’ he assured me, but he was a little slower than usual in answering me.

‘I don’t see how. We all know there’s a long list of people who would benefit from my death and none of them can make a move against me if I’m out of the country.’

‘Which is why it makes sense for you to leave on the next flight,’ he interjected.

‘You don’t get it,’ I told him, ‘I would like nothing better than to leave here, disappear and stay out of the line of fire but, if I do that, the problem will never go away. The only chance we have of getting to the bottom of this is if I stay here with you and Joe and Danny and we find out who is behind it. Someone in this city must know something and that’s the only way we’ll ever discover who’s behind this. Then you can put them down before they put me down.’

‘You realise how risky that is,’ he was looking at me like I was a mad man, ‘you want to flush out a hit man so we can find out who put the contract on you. But what if the next hit man is too quick? What if I can’t get to him first?’

‘You’ll be out of a job,’ I assured him ‘and I’ll be six feet under. Any more daft questions?’

He snorted, ‘No.’

‘Look, I’m good at this. I’ve known this city all of my life and I’ve done it before.’ This time it wasn’t missing money I was looking for, but a contract killer so we could find the man behind the hit. It wasn’t going to end because Palmer had gunned down two assassins in the Quayside. This would go on until either the man who hired them was dead, or I was. There was no third option. I had to see this through.

‘I used to do this for Bobby, remember?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ he admitted, ‘I remember.’

I was glad he resisted the temptation to remind me how that turned out.

.......................

I
told myself I went down to the sports injury clinic that afternoon to try and get a lead on the whereabouts of Billy Warren from Maggot, but that wasn’t strictly true. It was a dead end, as I suspected it might be, but when I left Maggot’s office and went down into the lounge, Simone was sitting there.

‘I’m glad I bumped into you,’ I said, not sounding as calm as I would have liked, ‘I wanted a word.’

She made a show of glancing at her watch, ‘I haven’t got long.’

‘I don’t need long,’ I told her, ‘have dinner with me. How’s that for getting to the point?’

She laughed, ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you own this place.’

‘But I don’t own you.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I’m talking about a meal here, maybe some conversation, nothing more.’

She raised her eyebrows and I laughed, ‘Well, to begin with. Don’t rush me woman,’ and at least that got a smile. It was progress of sorts.

‘Look, say “yes” to dinner. I would like to talk to you, and I can’t do that here, can I?’ She hesitated, so I added, ‘but I will not let you sleep with me, you hear,’ she actually laughed then. ‘I mean it,’ I said, acting stern, ‘it’s just not going to happen. Can you cope with that?’

‘I’ll try,’ she was still eyeing me suspiciously, ‘so when then? I’m working every night for a week.’

I didn’t want to think about that so I said quickly, ‘the next time we’re both free.’

Billy Warren had disappeared – or so they told me, but I didn’t believe that for one minute. He just hadn’t been seen round his usual haunts, half a dozen places he hung out in when he was between deals; pubs that sensible people avoided or clubs that let in the guys who’d been barred from everywhere else in the city. I doubted Billy had taken flight though. I reckoned he had never left Newcastle in his life, not even for a holiday. He probably didn’t have a passport, so I knew he’d turn up soon enough once the word was out. I had people everywhere ready to pick up the phone to us. It was only a matter of time. Trouble was, I needed answers quickly.

‘Come on,’ I told Kinane, ‘it’s time we went for a chat with Golden Boots.’

The party was at its height when we arrived. Golden Boots’ house was full of footballers, hangers-on and wannabe WAGs, but you could tell it was still early because they hadn’t paired up yet. Most footballers are lazy. As soon as they get bored of the music or the atmosphere they grab the nearest girl that takes their fancy. It’s easy, since the girls attend these parties for one of two reasons; so they can tell their mates they shagged a Premier League player or, the holy grail for them, they are actually going out with a man who is paid sixty grand a week to swear at referees, blaze shots several metres over the crossbar and kiss his badge minutes before demanding a transfer. Why the world continued to worship these vacuous tossers was beyond me. They’d sign five-year contracts worth millions and, if their clubs were lucky, they’d get two good seasons out of them before they lost their hunger and slid into obscurity.

Golden Boots’ parties were very popular. He liked to get people together. He saw himself as a middle man between the players, the women and the Charlie, as he liked to call the coke we sold him, which was heavily cut with baking soda.

The house had cost him two million, which was small change to Golden Boots. It had a massive glass frontage, which shone light down onto the usual assortment of black leather sofas and armchairs, and there was a huge plasma TV in every room, including the kitchen. He didn’t seem to be able to cope with silence or being on his own. I reckoned he had ADHD.

Golden Boots face dropped when he saw us, but he quickly transformed it into the cheesy smile of a man greeting two old friends.

‘David Blake,’ he said, pumping my arm, ‘and Joe Kinane…my main man!’ He pretended to shadow box my enforcer. Kinane looked at Golden Boots like he was someone he couldn’t even be bothered to hit. There was a reason for all of this faux camaraderie. Technically we were in business together, because Billy Warren sold coke to Golden Boots that he then sold on to his Premier League mates and their entourages, which in turn made us a lot of money and gave Golden Boots the gangsta cred he craved. However, the main reason for his obsequiousness went back to the first day we met Golden Boots at Billy’s flat. I had Finney with me and he almost finished the gobby bastard’s career because Golden Boots thought he was harder than we were. It was fun watching the Premiership’s finest crawling on the floor begging Finney not to break both his legs, then thanking him for teaching him some manners afterwards. We’d moved on since then, and now Golden Boots acted like it had never happened, but you could tell he was shitting himself every time we showed up.

‘Drink, guys?’ he offered, ‘Mandy!’ His latest pneumatic blonde almost jumped out of her skin when he shouted her name, ‘get them a drink, you lazy bitch,’ he nodded at us and she broke away from her mates sharpish. They all looked at the walls and the floor while she legged it to the kitchen, looking flushed and humiliated. No one said anything.

‘That wasn’t very nice,’ I told him, ‘you forgot your manners.’

‘What?’ he genuinely didn’t know what I meant. ‘Sorry lads, did you want something else?’

‘That your girlfriend is it?’ I asked him.

‘Yeah,’ and he grinned, ‘well, sort of.’

‘Shouldn’t speak to her like that then, should you?’

‘Eh? Oh,’ and he looked like a little boy who was being told off by the headmaster, ‘S’pose. I’m a bit stressed, you know, business and that.’ He was playing the gangster again, blaming his piddling coke deals for his appalling behaviour.

‘No excuse,’ Kinane told him, ‘you’d better apologise.’

‘Of course,’ answered Golden Boots and he turned to me, ‘I’m really sorry you had to see that.’

‘Not to us, you twat,’ I said, sighing. ‘To her.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he was nodding, ‘I was just about to.’

At that point the blonde returned and handed beers to Kinane and myself. We both made a point of thanking her and I looked at Golden Boots, who was already having trouble remembering his promise. The girl was walking away when he called, ‘Babe,’ and she reluctantly turned and walked back. ‘I’m really sorry, babe’, he said and he pulled her to him in an embrace, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m stressing about everything. I’m really, really sorry babe, love ya.’

She looked like she couldn’t believe it. I doubt he had apologised to anyone since the day Finney threatened to smash his legs in, least of all to one of his girls. She beamed, ‘That’s okay babes.’ When she’d gone, Kinane said, ‘That’s better. Now we need a word with you.’

Golden Boots looked worried. ‘We’re looking for Billy,’ I told him, ‘you’re having a party and Billy always comes to your parties. So where is he? Where’s Billy Warren?’

‘He does usually, yeah, but I’ve not seen him tonight,’ and he looked put out by this, ‘he was supposed to sort out a couple of my mates, if you know what I mean.’

Of course I knew what he meant. ‘You might have missed him,’ I said, ‘in a place this size. You don’t mind if Kinane has a look?’

Most people would mind if Kinane was clomping round their house during a party but he was in no position to argue with us, ‘Course not,’ he said, ‘
mi casa su casa
,’ he added self-consciously. We left him to it. Kinane took the upstairs and I wandered outside towards the pool. There were lots of pretty boy footballers and glamour models out here, showing off and preening in their designer clothes.

‘You’re not a footballer,’ said a voice accusingly. It was a skinny brunette in her mid-twenties with a stack of eye make-up on. She was lying on a lounger in a bikini top and shorts. ‘So what are you then?’ she waved her glass of champagne at me and narrowed her eyes, as if I might be a spy sent from a tabloid.

‘I’m an agent,’ I told her.

‘A football agent?’ she asked and she literally sat up at that point like she was paying attention to me now. I nodded, ‘Looking after this lot?’ her eyes were wide and hopeful.

I surveyed the young trash in front of me, ‘some of them,’ I told her. It was partially true. We had invested some start-up cash in a guy who had made some inroads in the agent world. He wasn’t that much brighter than Golden Boots but he had a way with words and his baseless threats that one of his young players was about to be spirited away by Spurs, Chelsea or Manchester United usually had chairmen scurrying to increase their wages to a new level of obscenity. It was the easiest, most legal cash we took, though, in some ways, it was grubbier than the drug money.

‘You must be minted then?’ She was clearly wondering whether it was worth cutting her losses on the players who were goofing about by the pool with younger girls.

‘I get by,’ I told her.

She climbed to her feet and put the glass down on the table, ‘we should have a talk,’ she said and she put her arm through mine like we were about to go for a walk along the beach together.

‘Now?’ I asked her.

‘No time like the present, honey,’ she laughed a stoner’s laugh, but it reminded me of the girls we employed as lap dancers down at Privado. They were trained to fleece guys, twenty quid a time, though she wanted it all and wasn’t as patient as they were.

‘Where?’

She shrugged, ‘where would you like to go?’

‘For our talk?’ I asked. She nodded. ‘How about the bedroom?’

She giggled, ‘okay.’

Kinane appeared. He shook his head to indicate there was no sign of Billy. He didn’t react to the presence of the girl, who was hanging on me like a barnacle. ‘He can come too, right?’ I asked her and she looked up to see the bigger, older man with the pock-marked face.

‘I don’t know about that.’ She sounded unsure.

‘He always does,’ I assured her, ‘whenever I talk to a girl, you know, about money and the like.’

‘Right,’ she wrinkled her nose up as she contemplated this. She obviously didn’t want Kinane anywhere near her, ‘if you’re sure.’

‘Why not?’ I asked her all innocently. ‘We could all three of us go up to one of the bedrooms for our chat, then I could let him beat you up and we’ll both roast you. One of us at each end. How does that sound?’

‘You what?’ she let go of my arm, ‘what you fucking going on about? I ain’t doing that.’

‘Then how about we start again while I remind you that you don’t know either of us or what we do for a living. You were this close to going up to a bedroom with us and we could have done anything we liked to you and no one would have heard you scream because of the music. The next day you’d have cried rape but you wouldn’t know who you were accusing because you didn’t get my name. I’m not a football agent love, I’m a postman and he’s a serial killer. Have you got it now?’