To Die For (7 page)

‘Fuck should I know? Ask Kendall.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

There was another pause.

‘Fuck. You’re really in it, know that?’

‘Just tell me where I can find this Martin.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Tell me someone who might. Your name’ll be out of it.’

He sighed and muttered something. Finally he said, ‘Know Jim Bowker?’

Bowker. I knew him. ‘Remember Paget?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ King said slowly.

‘I saw him tonight. At Kendall’s.’

‘So?’

‘He work for Marriot still?’

‘Not any more. Got a better offer. Works for Cole. Didn’t you know?’

‘No. Since when?’

‘Since Marriot got banged up. Paget switched then. Go to ground, Joe. If Paget’s after you, you’re in trouble.’

Bowker was one of the old sort who’d worked in London in the seventies when the law was as bent as the thieves and you only had to fall out of your car with a sawn-off to net fifty grand. He’d done a couple of long stretches in Wandsworth and the Scrubs, and when they’d finally kicked him out he found that his time had gone, his profession had changed and nobody gave a fuck what he’d done twenty years ago. I hadn’t seen him for years, but I remembered him.

I found him in the Connaught Arms club, a snooker place on the Holloway Road. It was an old haunt of mine. I’d last been there about six years before, when I’d worked nearby.

It was members only and I had a bit of trouble getting in, until I fed the bloke on the counter a fifty. He was happy then. Giving him money meant I wasn’t law. That was all he cared about. That and the fifty notes.

Upstairs was a large open room, dim and dusty, with a long bar down one side, a handful of tables with mixed chairs and stools, and a dozen or so shabby snooker tables filling the middle of the floor. It was late, but this place had never shut as far as I knew. They served alcohol until the early hours and, because of the bloke downstairs in reception, they had a heads-up on any law, so they let their punters smoke if they wanted to. Smoking wasn’t all that went on there. At one of the tables a group of young black men were smoking spliffs, chatting and texting on their mobiles. Yardie-connected, probably. Small-time, though. During the days, the club ran a book. They had a few TVs behind the bar and punters would sit and drink and blow their money on long shots at Goodwood or Haydock Park or wherever, and always it was the gambling, not the winning or the chance to win, but the gambling itself that they sucked up and fed on, because that told them they were still alive.

Bowker was a gambler, which was how I happened to know him. It was his gambling that got him in stir. He’d become desperate a few times too many. He was one of those people who always won small and lost big. That’s why King had suggested him, I suppose. He’d spill anything for anyone if you dangled a score in front of his face. Everyone knew he was a grass but for some reason nobody cared, though they made damned sure they didn’t talk business around him.

I saw him in the far corner, leaning over a table, cue in one hand, fag in the other. I walked towards him. He was a small man and his three-piece suit was a couple of sizes too big. He seemed to have shrunk since I’d last seen him. Something was killing him: the fags, the booze, the constant losing. He still tried to keep the Teddy-boy quiff he’d had as a young man, but his hair was too thin, and the black sheen it had was too black and just made his face look older and paler.

He lined up the blue with a corner pocket. He put the fag in his mouth, leaned over, cued up and smacked the cue ball. The blue missed the pocket by half a foot and bounced into the reds, scattering them everywhere. He dragged on the fag, coughed a lung up and walked around to line up another shot. He didn’t seem to mind that he’d missed.

He didn’t see me until I was at the table. When he did see me he didn’t react, and I thought that was strange. I should’ve realized.

‘Joe,’ he said. ‘Been a while.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Game?’

‘No.’

He bent over as far as he could and hit the cue ball into a pack of reds. One of the reds went in the centre pocket.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said, moving around the table and aiming along the cue at a long black. ‘People are looking for you.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

I watched the cue. It was shaking. I remembered when I’d played poker with him. He would have been good, if it hadn’t been for the shakes he got. He missed the black and stood up. He drew on his cigarette and let the smoke out in a sigh. He took a gulp from a glass of Guinness he had on the small table. Sweat stuck to his upper lip and he was taking a while doing things and I knew he was terrified.

‘Really, I’m serious, people could be here pronto.’

‘Nobody knows me here, not any more. Except you.’

‘Sure about that?’

‘I’ll assume it.’

He looked at me fully for the first time. His face had a yellowish colour that I hadn’t noticed in the dimness. His eyes were watery, and the skin around them sagged so that you could see the blood vessels below the eyeballs. His skin was like his suit, two sizes too big.

He said, ‘Don’t worry about me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m too old to make enemies. What can I do? You know I can’t hardly leave the flat now. My wife, her legs are all swelled up so she don’t go out. So I stay in, keep her company. Don’t even get to the bookies any more. Can’t afford it.’ He bent over the table again, lining up another failed shot. ‘Coming here is all I can do to get away,’ he said. ‘It’s cheap.’

When he’d finished his sob story, I took a couple of hundred from my pocket and laid the notes on the green baize, right in front of his nose. He gathered the money without straightening up.

‘Ray Martin,’ I said.

‘Martin? What for?’

‘I need to speak to him.’

He jerked the cue forward and the white went bouncing around. I didn’t know which ball Bowker was aiming at. I don’t think he knew. Anyway, he missed. He stood up and slid the cue on to the table surface.

‘You mean speak to? Or question?’

‘Speak to.’

‘Because he’s an old mate and I couldn’t land him in it.’

‘You haven’t got any old mates.’

‘Nevertheless.’

‘I’m not looking for aggro with him.’

He nodded and looked at his feet for a moment, pretending to weigh up whether to say anything, like he was caught in a moral dilemma. I let him pretend. We both knew he was going to tell me.

‘Okay. You say he won’t get in no trouble over this. I’ll take your word for it. I know him. Well, I knew him. Haven’t seen him for years. Fifteen at least. He did a stretch, then went straight.’

‘Tell me about him.’

‘He was a tough old bird. Long time ago, though. Like I say, he’s straight as these days.’

‘What was his work?’

‘Banks, armoured cars.’

‘You know Dave Kendall?’

‘Kendall? Yeah, sure.’

‘Know of any connection between the two?’

‘What, Kendall and Martin?’ He thought about that while he had another gulp of Guinness. The Guinness left a creamy line on his top lip. ‘Can’t think of anything,’ he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

‘Where’s he live?’

‘I can find out.’

‘Do that.’

He picked up the cue and looked along it. I reached for some more notes, peeled off a hundred and fed them to him.

‘Might take a while.’

He shuffled off towards the bar. I watched him take a seat next to a wall-mounted telephone. One of the young black men was sitting on a stool next to him watching football replays. I watched Bowker for ten minutes or so. The smoke in the place was starting to make my eyes sting. It was grimy and hot in the club, and it made my hands sticky. I felt tired. My neck ached; my back ached.

I went into what the club had for a bathroom and splashed water on my face. I picked up the soap, washed my hands and dried them on a roll-cloth towel that didn’t roll and probably made my hands as dirty as they’d been before I’d washed them. One of the young black lads came in to use the bog. His clothes smelled of the sickly-sweet ganja he’d been smoking. He gave me a narrow look. I walked past him.

‘You know him?’ he said.

I stopped and turned.

‘What?’

‘Geezer on the phone. Bowker.’

‘What about him?’

‘Fucker’s dirty, you know. I see you talk to him. Just telling you upright, case you might want to get out of here.’

‘Go on.’

‘All I know is he’s a grass and he sounded like he was grassing someone up, you know. Telling someone that someone was here. You might be one of the someones, and the police might be another. All I know.’

When I went back into the snooker hall, Bowker had disappeared. I didn’t think he’d have the bottle. It had been about ten minutes since he’d first used the phone. I made for the exit, taking the stairs two at a time. When I hit the cold air, I scanned the street and couldn’t see him. I was a dozen yards from my car when I heard the high-low pitch of a powerful car changing gear and gunning towards me. I looked up. The black Merc screeched around the Highbury Corner and fishtailed as it straightened. I wasn’t armed.

My car was parked facing the oncoming car. I got in and keyed the ignition. The Merc came abreast of me and slewed across the middle of the road as it braked. I saw Paget in the front passenger seat. His eyes were on the pavement. He hadn’t seen me. The two rear doors opened. I waited while the two men in the back of the Merc were halfway out, then I locked the wheel over left and slammed the accelerator down. The road was slick and my car made a 180-degree spin, tyres squealing and smoking with the burning rubber. They’d noticed me now. Paget swung round to see what the fuss was about. When he saw me his eyes became slits, like thumbnail marks. He yelled something to the men at the back, but I’d timed it right and they were caught. I touched the brakes, straightened up and stamped on the pedal again. The man on the far side jumped back into the car and the one on the nearside dithered, started back for the car and changed his mind, diving into the middle of the road. I missed him by inches and smashed my car into the side of the Merc, mangling the open door and sending the car ten feet down the road. I backed up a few yards. I could see the driver frantically trying to get the car going. I took the Makarov out of the glove compartment, got out of the car and walked towards the Merc and put a few rounds in the front tyre. It blew with a puff and the car sank, lopsided. Paget was getting out of his car as I was getting back into mine. He had a gun in his hand. I didn’t think he’d use it; Cole would want me alive and singing.

The windscreen shattered as his rounds hit. I ducked and put the car in reverse, locked the wheel over and spun the car round. I heard a couple more rounds hammer into the bodywork. I got out of there, leaving them a crumpled mess.

I threw the car round a few turnings, bypassing Paget, and came back on to the Holloway Road, further up. I cruised for a while, scanning the scene. I had an idea where Bowker would go. I saw him in the distance, scurrying away, his shoulders hunched, his hands in his trouser pockets, smoke billowing from the fag in his mouth. I pulled up beside him. He looked over at me, looked at the mashed front of my car. He didn’t try to run. I got out. He pulled the fag from his lips.

‘I had to do it,’ he said. ‘You know I did. Paget would’ve torn my face off if I’d seen you and not told him.’

He was probably right. I didn’t care. He backed up against the front of a kebab place. A couple of teenagers in there were seated at a table, looking at us over their kebabs, vacant expressions on their faces. Bowker reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.

‘Ray Martin,’ he said.

On the paper was an address.

‘Let me go, eh?’

‘So you can grass me up again? Did you tell Paget what I wanted?’

‘No. Straight up. I knew he wanted you. He told me to keep me eyes open. Last thing I expected was you to come to me. Christ, I shit myself. I mean, what was I supposed to do? I grass you up and you kill me. I don’t and Paget kills me.’

‘What do you know about the casino job?’

‘Only that you ripped Cole off. You and Beckett, I hear. Beckett’s disappeared. That’s all.’

I shoved him towards the car. He turned.

‘Don’t do it. Please. For old times, Joe. Remember?’

‘No.’

‘That bird of yours.’ He lifted his chin. ‘There. The Sportsman.’

I turned. Across the road from us was a tall and wide Edwardian building, the brick orange-brown, the gabled windows spilling their yellow light on to the pavement. The name had changed. It called itself a club now.

‘I always liked her,’ Bowker was saying. ‘She liked me.’

From the outside, it looked solid, respectable. Perhaps it was now. I hadn’t realized we were so close to the place, though I’d known it was probably where Bowker was going. He was a rat who scampered home whenever he was threatened. The Sportsman was his home, or used to be. Bowker said something else, but I missed it.

It was the first time I’d been back. I didn’t know if there was anything in that, or if it was just because I’d never had a reason to go there. The door bounced open and a young couple came out of the place, their breath smoking the moment they hit the coldness. They strolled down the stairs. He said something and she laughed and put her arm through his and snuggled into him to keep warm. They wandered off up the road, leaning into each other. I watched them go.

When I looked round, Bowker had gone. I hadn’t known that he’d known Brenda. I felt like I was falling back into it all, into that mess. Paget, Bowker, and now here.

The first time I saw her was in the Sportsman. I’d been working there as security for a few weeks, adding to the stuff that Kendall was feeding me. They let me play whatever I wanted on my own time. I played poker. I was okay at it. People couldn’t read me. I had no expression.

My shift was over and I was at a table with £175 in front of me. I’d been there maybe four hours and all I had to show for that was a loss of £68 and an empty stomach. We were playing Texas Hold ’Em and I was in a three-way with a fat Indian bloke and an old woman who had orange hair and orange skin and red fingernails. The Indian had a stack of chips up to his chin and he would’ve wiped me out if he’d gone all in, but he didn’t, so I thought he probably had nothing. The woman kept fiddling with her thick gold bracelets and I hadn’t worked out if this was a tell or not. There were two others who’d both folded early on, a man called Roger from Manchester and a bald bloke. The reason I knew Roger was from Manchester was because he’d told me so when I sat down. Nobody said much of anything except Roger, who said way too much for his own good. When he stopped talking everyone folded. He was losing a lot, but he had a lot to lose and seemed happy to see it go. He was on some free business trip, I guessed, probably the only time he ever got to slip the leash.