To Die For (16 page)

He made it sound like we’d gone for a picnic. Me and Kenny, old pals.

‘Uh-huh.’

I was tired of him already. I gulped down the rest of my beer and signalled Matheson to bring me another.

‘Your boss seems to think highly of you,’ Marriot was saying, ‘I hear nobody gets out of hand when you’re around. That’s good.’

There wasn’t much I could say to that. I didn’t believe him, anyway. Yates never had a good word to say about anybody.

‘Kenny told me you had a reputation as a hard man,’ Marriot said. ‘Used to be a boxer, didn’t you?’

‘Some.’

‘Paras too, I hear. Falklands, right?’

My skin prickled when he said that. I’d kept quiet about my time in the army. Technically, I was a deserter, even if it had been a long time ago. How the fuck had Marriot found out?

‘And now you work for Dave Kendall. Only you’re here, earning, what, hundred quid a night? Two hundred? So Kendall can’t be doing too much for you.’

‘What do you want?’

He spread his hands wide.

‘Thought you might like a job. I could always use someone like you. Sometimes we get a spot of bother in our business that needs sorting out. I mean, I run a decent firm, Joe, don’t get me wrong. I avoid trouble best I can. None of my girls are into drugs or anything like that; I make sure of it. But, like I say, there’s always a use for someone like you.’

‘Not interested.’

I turned back to my drink.

‘Some of the johns, for example,’ he was saying. ‘They can get a bit rough; someone like you just needs to have a word with them.’

I watched him in the mirror, back of the bar. He took another sip of his drink and put it down and turned to me and smiled.

‘And then there’s the girls themselves. They’re all right, most of them. Bit stupid, bit flighty, but basically they stay in line. But every now and then they get mixed up with some dumb cunt, get to thinking they might settle down, have kids, all that. Get to thinking they’re safe from me if they do. Know what I mean?’

‘Uh-huh.’

He took his glasses off and wiped them

‘I’m not too keen on my girls having regular blokes. Fact, it’s a bit of a rule of mine.’

‘Yeah?’

He popped his glasses back on to look at me.

‘See, a bloke might get a bit jealous or something. Sort of thing can cause problems.’

‘And what if one of the girls wants to leave your employment?’

‘It’s not a harem. They leave all the time. But while they work for me, they do as I say.’ He downed the rest of his rum and Coke and stood up. Even while I sat, he had to look up at me. ‘Anyway, give it some thought, all right?’

He slapped me on the shoulder and wandered off.

The cafe was on the Euston Road. It was gone eleven and the place was empty save for an old man in a frayed tweed jacket at one table and a middle-aged woman behind the counter. The strip lighting gave everything a green cast. The old man was asleep. The woman looked bored.

I’d left without seeing Browne and I was thinking now that had been a mistake. My shoulder was splitting again with pain and I felt clammy, hot and cold at the same time. But I had things to do and I needed a clear head.

The man on the other side of the table was called Eddie Lane. He was dressed in a Savile Row pinstripe suit and a Jermyn Street shirt. He was a good-looking bloke, thirty-six, tall and wide at the shoulders but with a torso that tapered to a slim waist, not like my block of granite. He had bright eyes and he always looked like he was amused by something – the rest of us, I suppose. He was one of the best light-heavies I’d ever seen, could’ve gone far. But he’d given up the ring a few years ago. Now he worked for Vic Dunham. Now he just killed people.

Dunham was the sort of man that people spoke about by connection. ‘I once knew a bloke who did a job for Vic Dunham.’ He was like that. And Eddie was his shadow. It was a sort of father-son thing, only Dunham was white.

Dunham was organized crime. I didn’t like organized crime. For one thing, they weren’t that well organized. There were many loose cannons, too many would-be bosses. They were also too hot-headed, too easily insulted or threatened or dishonoured or whatever bollocks it was that got them riled. They often ruled by reputation and that meant they had to maintain face. At least, as they saw it. Mostly, it was macho rubbish. And they kept going to war with each other for one thing or another. That was just stupid; there was plenty of money for everybody. Plus, with organized crime there was the law. They had Serious Crimes and Flying Squad and now even MI5 crawling over them all the time – electronic surveillance, tags, supergrasses and all that. It was too loose. It wasn’t professional. No, I didn’t like it. But I respected it. I had to, really, just as I respected the law. I was on nodding terms with a few men from some of the local Yardie and East End and Turkish firms, but mostly I left them alone and they left me alone. I had my own thing going on. I wasn’t big enough to bother them and, so long as it didn’t cross into their turf, there was an understanding.

But Dunham – even I had to admit his organization was solid. And one of the reasons for that was now opposite me.

Eddie was sitting back in his seat, watching me. He had that amused look on his face that made him resemble a forties film star.

‘Don’t look too good, Joe,’ he said.

‘I’m okay.’

‘Well, you’re lots of things, but you’re not okay. Not from what I hear.’

‘No.’

‘It’s a mess.’

‘Yeah.’

He shifted in his seat. I caught the bulge beneath his jacket. He was a cautious man. I’d been right to come empty-handed; I didn’t need grief from Eddie or Dunham to add to my problems. I wasn’t in much of a state to use a gun anyway.

‘Wanna tell me what’s going on?’ he said.

‘That’s what I want you to tell me.’

‘You go first. You look like death. I’m eager to know what kind of monster managed to get the drop on you. I remember you in the ring. You were unstoppable. What was it they called you?’

I told him I couldn’t remember.

‘You’re lying, man. What was it?’

He concentrated on it for a few seconds. You would have thought it was important.

‘I forget,’ he said. ‘What the hell was it?’

‘What does it matter?’

‘Doesn’t matter, I guess. Now why don’t you tell me what this is all about?’

I told him how the casino job had gone down and what had happened afterwards. I told him about the two men planting money in my flat, and how I’d been set up by Beckett and Kendall to make it look like I’d double-crossed them and taken all the money. I told him about finding Beckett, Walsh and Jenson dead in Dalston, and how the money was gone, taken, I guessed, by whoever had done the killing. I told him how I’d been shot. When I’d finished telling him all that, I waited for him to speak. His eyes smiled. He looked like he was having fun.

‘Girl, huh? That’s sort of funny, a girl decking you.’ I didn’t find it funny. ‘Was she young?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Very young? Like, a child?’

‘Yeah. So?’

‘Beckett’s taste. He likes them young. Didn’t you know that?’

‘No.’

‘Yeah. He will not be sorely missed.’

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. He scratched his head. We each had a cup of coffee in front of us. The coffees were cold, untouched.

‘Kendall?’ he said.

‘Dead.’

‘Uh-huh. Seems like everywhere you go lately, you’re leaving dead people.’

‘They’re leaving themselves. They keep getting in my way.’

‘Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame you for killing idiots. It’s sort of an unwritten rule with me.’

‘Right.’

‘I like things unwritten. Know what I mean?’

‘Sure,’ I said, not knowing what he was talking about, and not caring.

‘You’re a man of action, Joe. Few words. I don’t like words much myself. People lie with words.’

He was talking around the subject. He had a habit of doing that. I never understood it, but he seemed to find amusement in it, so I let him babble. I nodded vaguely. ‘Sure.’

‘I have a thing about full stops,’ he was saying. ‘They end words. I got a whole load of full stops on me right now. The nine-millimetre type.’

Now I got it. He was being subtle.

‘You mean, if you go out for me on this and I’ve lied about having the money, you may have to kill me.’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

‘Fine. Now we got all that sorted out, you want to tell me what you know?’

He looked at his coffee for a moment, preparing to say something important. I could tell these things. People often look down when they’re going to do that. It’s an unconscious thing.

‘About five months ago, we were approached by some Albanians. Nice blokes these Albanians, got all the connections. They smuggle anything.’

I’d heard of a couple of Albanian gangs. They were into heroin and slavery, bringing drugs through from the Middle East and Eastern Europe, bringing women and children through from wherever they could, taking away their passports, beating them to make sure they stayed in line, giving them drugs to make them dependent and easily controlled, farming them out to pimps and pornographers.

‘This time, they’d brought in a shipment of heroin,’ Eddie was saying, ‘but their buyer was banged up before they could deliver. Remember Rockley?’

Rockley was doing life for murder and several counts of conspiracy to commit. He was one of the geniuses who turned me off the whole organized-crime thing. Couldn’t organize his own fucking family. His brother had grassed him up.

‘I remember.’

‘So, these Albanians had the stuff but no one to sell it to. They asked us if we were interested. We said no. I heard they went to Cole. I heard he said yes.’

‘Why did you turn them down?’

‘Lots of reasons. One, we’re going legit. Two, they’re scum. There are other reasons, but those’ll do.’

‘How much heroin?’

‘How much did you nick from Cole’s casino?’

‘About a mill.’

‘Then, I’d say it was about a mill’s worth of smack.’

I was getting it now.

‘Cole didn’t have the money,’ I said, still getting it.

‘What I hear, he had a brainwave. Bright man, Cole. He puts two and two together and comes up with a million in cash for the Albanians which he can then claim back from the insurance company. How many people knew the codes and could change a pick-up schedule with the security company?’

‘Beckett said only the manager and this Warren bloke.’

‘Right. So Cole hands Beckett inside information, but can’t implicate the manager because he’s too close to Cole. So he uses this man Warren as a decoy for the sake of the police, throw them off the scent that it was an inside job. Plus, he can make sure that the money they take from the casino that night is clean, untraceable. One million cold hard cash for the heroin.’

It was neat, as far as it went.

‘A million’s not much for someone like Cole.’

‘You’d think.’

I stirred my cold coffee.

‘Why would Cole buy drugs with money he couldn’t afford?’ I said.

‘You’d have to ask him that, but I hear he’s being squeezed by the new firms. It’s a tough business these days. If I had to guess, I’d say he was using this deal to try and get back on top.’

‘No wonder he’s desperate,’ I said.

‘Yeah. He’ll want that money, Joe. Any ideas where it is? Did Kendall grab it and hide it somewhere?’

‘No. I think someone took it from Beckett. Kendall was dead before then, so that’s him out. I didn’t take it. Could Cole have it back?’

‘No. He hasn’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know.’

‘Right.’

I didn’t need to push Eddie on that. I thought that Dunham must have someone inside Cole’s mob. Eddie wouldn’t tell me if that was the case. The fact that he wasn’t telling me told me I was right.

‘Then there must be someone else out there,’ I said.

‘That was my thought.’

‘But Cole would still think I’ve got it.’

‘That was another of my thoughts. Great minds think alike, eh?’

A third party. That made things tough.

‘Now, Cole looks bad,’ Eddie said, ‘and he’s getting pressure from the Albanians to pay up. They may not be super-smart, these Albanians, but they make up for it by being super-ruthless. They’re expanding, and that means they’re getting trigger-happy. Cole’s getting anxious. Desperate, as you say. You say Paget’s after you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hmmm,’ Eddie said. ‘Not good.’

The woman came over to us. She had a pad in her hand.

‘Can I get you something?’ she said, making a point of staring at our cups of coffee.

‘We’re fine, sweetheart,’ Eddie said, smiling at her.

She waddled off, muttering something.

‘What happened with Paget?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t he get nicked when Marriot went down?’

‘He’s cunning. Among other things. He jumped ship before Marriot got nicked, offered his services to Cole.’

‘And Marriot?’

‘Still inside, for all I know. Anyway, I heard he’s a wreck now, after – well, after what happened.’

I wondered how much of Paget’s desire to get me was for Cole’s benefit and how much was personal. It didn’t matter. Whatever the reason, he’d try and get me. I said, ‘How do I stand with Dunham?’

‘I spoke to him. He’s willing to take you on, has a high regard for you. That’s rare from him. Thing is, what I hear, it won’t help.’

‘No?’

‘No, Joe. Cole’s gonna want blood for this. He’ll need to recover prestige. Vic’s protection isn’t going to be worth much – they’re not friends, you know.’

‘You think Cole will try take me out anyway?’

‘I think he’ll have to.’

I’d had to take a cab out to meet Eddie. My arm was still useless, the pain surging through me, but I hadn’t taken any of the pills Browne gave me. I’d wanted a clear head. Now, riding in the cab, I could feel the cold sweat soaking me and I kept slipping into unconsciousness. The cabbie must’ve thought I was drunk, but he didn’t make a fuss. This was a good fare for him.

The window where I sat was misted up and I leaned my head against it and gazed out. I felt the coldness on my forehead, watched a dark London blur by.