The Unquiet Heart (14 page)

He left me, then I heard cranking of chains and I was gently lowered to the ground. As Midge untied me, I looked up to see Cyril and little Stan poised with the crowbars above the groaning and
thoroughly pissed-off gangsters. Gambatti, wisely, had his hands in the air and was chomping away at the cigar in his mouth. His minions struggled to sit up, trying to get their battered brains
round this turn of events and what to do next. Midge helped them out. In his left hand he held the Beretta I’d confiscated at the casino. In his right was the crowbar.

“One move and you get another one!” He swung the heavy rod. “Hands on your heads.”

Stan moved towards the thugs and deftly patted them down. He relieved Gog and Magog of a brace of flick-knives, then searched their jackets and confiscated two more Berettas and a fine- looking
Luger. It had the six-inch barrel preferred by the German Navy. The Wehrmacht made do with four inches. Gambatti didn’t seem to be carrying.

I crawled on to all fours then got slowly to my feet, head reeling. I found my trousers and dragged them on, then my shoes, and began to feel less like a human sacrifice. I walked over to Cyril
and Stan and clapped each of them on the shoulder.

“Bloody heroes. Thanks, pals.” I swear Stan blushed.

“What do we do with this lot?” asked Midge.

“There’s enough chain. And it’s a wide river,” suggested Cyril with real enthusiasm.

“We could hang the bastards up one at a time like they did Danny and use those jemmies on them,” offered Stan.

I walked over to the four of them. I was hurting and nauseous and generally disinclined to be magnanimous. It must have shown; I could see real fear in the hard men’s eyes. I landed a good
kick on two of them – not the cripple; I have standards. That made me feel better.

Gambatti looked sullen and nervous, and kept chewing on his cigar. I reached out. He flinched. I removed the stogie from his mouth and crushed it on the floor.

“Get your trousers off. Right now! All of you.”

They danced and shuffled and finally stood in their shirts and socks. It’s amazing how diminished a man looks without his trousers. “Down on the floor. Sitting. Back to back.”
I ordered.

They grunted and groaned, but got down into a clumsy huddle with their legs pointing out and their backs to each other. I picked up the rope they’d tied me with and made a loop in one end,
slipped it over Gambatti’s neck and pulled it nice and tight. Then I looped it round the others’ necks and gave it a couple of turns round the body, pinioning their arms.

Gambatti was looking as though he’d self-combust with anger. When one thug moved, the other two choked. Perfect. I took the Luger from Stan and ran my hands over it. It was a fine piece,
better to look at than to shoot. Better than the Beretta because of its longer barrel, though even then its accuracy goes to pot over about fifteen yards. But with the muzzle against his head,
Gambatti knew I couldn’t miss. Sweat dripped from his brow. And I noticed the black in his hair was beginning to run in rivulets down his neck and sideburns.

“OK, Danny, you’ve had your little joke,” he said. “A hundred quid to let us go. No hard feelings. We wasn’t really gonna do you in.” He tried a smile,
sounding more Italian by the minute.

I squatted in front of him with the gun on his chest. “We’ll never know, will we, Pauli? The question is, should I be as charitable?”

“Let us go and call it quits, eh? Two hundred quid is yours.” His eyes went narrow. “What about you come work for me, Danny, eh? A handy boy like you? And your men here. I need
a new team. How much you earn? I give you hundred a week guaranteed. And always bonus. All my guys make bonus. Two hundred a week!”

“Worth thinking about, Danny!” called Cyril.

For a long second I was amazed to find myself seriously considering the idea. I shook my head. “This isn’t about money. Tell me again, what happened to Eve Copeland?”

The rivers of black were melting down his face. “Nothing! On my momma’s life! I never touched her.”

I was inclined to believe anyone with a gun up his nose. “What do you know? You must have heard something on the street?”

He shook his head, looking desperate. “Look, I tell you what I do. Let me go and I find out. OK? I put the feelers out. I listen. Then I tell you.”

I held his gaze. Was it worth the risk? Knowing Gambatti’s type he’d as soon set me up as give me free information. Maybe the world would be a better place if we did drop this lovely
quartet in the Thames wearing some heavy jewellery. I got to my feet. The lads were waiting. Say the word and they’d make these pigs disappear. I looked down at Gambatti. He looked pitiful
with his hair dye dribbling and his thin knees knocking.

“You’ve got three days. If I don’t hear from you, with worthwhile information about Eve Copeland, I’ll come looking for you. Got that?”

He was all eagerness now. “Absolutely, Danny. Don’t worry. Pauli Gambatti is a man of honour.”

“Yeah, right. Let’s go, lads. Here…” I dug out Gambatti’s well-filled wallet and rifled through it. “Two hundred, you offered? Not enough here, Pauli.
This’ll have to do.” I plucked out a dozen big white fivers. “Travel expenses.” I gave each of the boys twenty quid and threw the empty wallet on the floor. I kept the
knives and the Luger.

“Let’s go. How did you boys get here?”

“Cab,” said Stan. “This’ll cover it.” He waved his fivers with glee.

I turned back to Gambatti. “We’re borrowing your car. You can pick it up at the George, Camberwell Green. Keys behind the bar. And no torching the pub, unless you want a
war.”

We turned and walked out, leaving Gambatti cursing his hatchet-men for strangling him. But he didn’t seem to hold a grudge. Two days later I got a phone call.

TWELVE

That was the call that led me to the Angel pub by the river that night. I met my contact and watched him go to the bar. Then, from the filthy floor with a man on my back, I
watched them slaughter him like a sacrificial goat. Like the other cowardly clientele I fled into the night to avoid explaining my presence to the boys in blue. I got home at midnight, exhausted
and deflated. My one chance of finding Eve, or even learning if she was alive or dead, was gone. All I’d gleaned was that my contact had an Irish accent and one of his killers had a foreign
one. It was a set-up. It told me that an organised gang was involved in her abduction. And that someone had tipped them off about my rendezvous. Gambatti, to get me out of the way?

I took my only suit to the cleaners again, the second time in a week. I sat and I fretted, walked round and round my office till even the cat got dizzy. I hung a sign on my office door telling
the world – if it ever chose to beat a path to it – that Finders Keepers was on holiday, and took to walking by the Serpentine, feeding the ducks and feeling sorry for myself. I hate
inaction. I’d rather be doing something meaningless than nothing at all. Even a visit from the Flying Squad to grill me over Eve’s disappearance would have been welcome. I was well
enough known to her office mates, not to mention Hutcheson and her landlady. Surely they weren’t that incompetent? Why the silence? There was nothing in the papers about the murder. A man
dies in a pub brawl and doesn’t even get a mention. Life is cheap in the East End, but not worthless. Had the coppers been bought off?

I needed a plan. I thought about finding Gambatti and beating his head in. But however satisfying that might be I doubted it would lead to Eve. If it had been his gang that had taken her, why go
to all the trouble of setting me up? It would have been easier to bump me off than my mystery contact. And if Gambatti had put the word out about the meeting, he sure as hell wasn’t going to
admit it to me, far less tell me who he’d spoken to.

It got so bad inside my head that I began to think seriously about Gambatti’s offer. My life was shit. I barely made a living. I was going nowhere. The whole world seemed bent and I was
the only straight man left. What was the point? Principles, or just habit? Most of the time I worked in the gutter, and often enough it was hard to know who the bad guys were. Take my old sparring
partner Detective Inspector Wilson: just as much of a thug as Gog and Magog. Worse maybe; at least those gangsters made no pretence about which side they were on. Why did I want to stay on the
losing side?

But just when you think you’ll go daft with inactivity, life kicks your door in. I came back from the park and found a parcel waiting for me. It hadn’t been left by the postman. It
just had my name on it. It was hatbox-sized, about a foot long on each side. Brown paper, tied with string and sealed with red wax. I touched it gingerly with my foot. It moved easily. It
didn’t look like a booby trap. But then – as any good SOE instructor tells you – that’s the whole idea. I took the risk and lifted it. It was light. Maybe there
was
a
hat inside.

I walked in to my office and put it on my desk. I sniffed it. Nothing. I shook it gently. Something moved inside but it didn’t clunk or thud. I took out my scissors and sliced through the
string and sealing wax. I opened the lid and for a moment my world dropped away. It was full of hair. Like the rich, russet mass surging from a black beret, or floating beside me on the pillow.

I lifted it out, in no doubt it was hers. I laid it tenderly on my desk and stroked it like it was alive.

There was a folded paper on the bottom of the box. I opened it up. A few words were scrawled in capitals:

NEXT TIME IT WILL BE HER HEAD. FORGET HER!!!

I checked the box outside and in. Nothing else. I walked round to my chair and sat down and touched her hair, clinging to the notion that she was still alive. Why else would have they sent the
warning? Did it mean I was getting close? I picked up her curls in both hands and buried my face in it, inhaling her perfume and the faint tang of tobacco.

What the hell did I do now?

THIRTEEN

It was ten o’clock and the pubs were closing. Drinkers poured out of the bars, joshing and singing: displays of bravado before facing the wife with a schoolboy excuse for
the dent in the pay-packet. I’d had a couple of pints at the King’s Head down at the Elephant, and found myself wandering down towards the river. My empty flat didn’t appeal. The
pantry was bare and I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. I knew a good chippy, a van on a bomb site near London Bridge.

They had one cod left. It had my name on it, in a cone of newspaper with a mountain of chips all doused in salt and vinegar. Only a woman’s nape smells better. I walked over to the
railings by the river and gazed out over the water, thinking it was time to go the police. I wolfed down the sodden batter and salt-encrusted chips, chucked the paper in the river and watched it
float off downstream. I licked my fingers and began to walk back towards Borough High Street through one of the many alleyways that ran round Southwark Cathedral. My shadow ran in front of me as I
dipped between rare pools of light.

That’s when I heard the steps. At first I wasn’t sure. A drunk passing, the faint echo of high heels running for the last bus, a dog on his night prowl. I slowed and listened. The
streets were quiet. I stopped, listened again. Nothing. I started again, this time walking faster. I suddenly did an about turn and walked smartly back the way I’d come. No one. I turned down
a side street I hadn’t intended taking, slid into a door well and waited. If he was following me he was good. I gave it five long minutes. Still nothing. I glanced down the side street and
saw it led nowhere. I pulled my hat down over my face and tiptoed to the corner feeling daft. I peered round.

He was standing with his back against the wall, hands in his pockets, waiting. I didn’t recognise him at first. He was big, but his coat hung loose on his frame like he’d borrowed it
from a bigger brother. I walked up to him, slowly. I still didn’t recognise him. Then he grinned, and bile choked my throat. He was the last person I wanted to meet down a dark alley, away
from witnesses.

“You’ve lost weight,” I said.

“Thanks to you.”

“Any time. Why are you following me, Wilson? Revenge?”

He shook his head. “Why didn’t you leave me to die?”

The last time I’d seen Detective Inspector Herbert Wilson, he was lying on the bare floor of one of Mama Mary’s flats. I’d lured him into a confrontation with the lovely but
spoiled Kate Graveney. Wilson was groaning. Hardly surprising. He was bleeding his life out from a wound in his stomach, clawing at the splintered leg of the chair on which he’d impaled
himself. It seemed a fitting but unintended revenge for his bestial plundering of nameless Soho girls including Kate herself. Not to mention the pasting he’d given me in the nick. I’ve
known bent coppers in my time, but Wilson’s brand of bullying sadism made them look like wide-eyed cherubs.

“It wasn’t for your sake, believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you, McRae. I believe you.”

“Is that all you wanted to know? You could have phoned me. Or ambushed me in my office like everybody else does.”

“I can do you a favour.”

I laughed. “In return for what?”

“Helping us.”

I took out my cigarettes. I didn’t offer him one. Bad for his health. I lit up and watched my smoke drift through the street lamp.

“Us? Who’s us, these days, Wilson? Thought they’d pensioned you off.”

His grin widened. Even in the poor light his teeth looked brown. “
Us
is the Yard. Scotland Yard. CID.”

“God help us all,” I said with feeling. “Why would the Yard want to help me?”

“Eve Copeland. She’s not who you think she is.”

Her name in his mouth was like a blasphemy. I flicked my fag away. It spiralled into the dark and kicked up sparks when it hit the pavement.

“Oh? And who might she be?”

He put his head to one side and looked at me for my reaction. “A German spy.”

Can your whole body flinch? I laughed. “You’re daft, Wilson. Off your trolley. They let you out of hospital too soon.”

His face lost the steady smile. “As I recall, you’re the one with the hole in your head, McRae. Are you going to listen?”