by Owen Mullen
‘You think I’m worrying about nothing?’
‘Absolutely.’
She relaxed in my arms and was quiet. After a while she said, ‘I’d like you two to be friends. It would mean a lot to me. Are you all right with that?’
I smiled down at the fading yellow around her eye. ‘If she’s half as nice as her mum, I’d love to.’
Later, I dropped Mandy at her place. Before she got out of the car, she kissed me.
‘Thanks, Luke.’
‘For what?’
‘If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.’
I wasn’t in a hurry and drove slowly, turning over what I’d agreed to in my head. The last child in my life had been Rebecca, Cheryl’s daughter. From nowhere, sadness washed through me. I gripped the steering wheel until it passed.
As soon as I opened the door, I sensed something wasn’t right. The lounge was like a picture puzzle where tiny things had changed and the challenge was to spot the differences. In the first twenty seconds I scanned the lounge and saw nothing. In the next twenty, I noticed four: the cushions on the couch had been rearranged – not much, just straightened a bit; the Clapton CD cover had gone from the floor to beside the television; the empty wine bottle was in the bin under the sink and the glasses had been rinsed and were on the draining board. Just small things Mandy might have done, but I didn’t think she had.
The next change wasn’t open to doubt. My passport was on the mantelpiece above the fire. I was certain I hadn’t put it there.
Someone had been here, rummaged through my personal stuff and left it where I was certain to see it.
some people have long memories
The ‘some people’ in this case was Rollie Anderson. Had to be. He’d survived and was hiding, regrouping and waiting for a chance to strike back.
I checked the rest of the flat. The message wasn’t subtle. He was showing me he could come into my life at any time and there was nothing I could do about it. From behind the curtain I watched the street and across to the windows at the other side. They’d made their move when I’d left to run Mandy home. It was possible they were still there. But not likely.
The point had been made.
I put the Clapton CD on again, poured a much-needed glass of whisky and stuck the gun my brother had insisted on giving me down the side of the couch. The phone went off like a cannon in the quiet. I let it ring, enjoying a feeling of control doomed not to last.
I held it to my ear.
No disguised voice threatening terrible things this time. Only steady breathing like before and a silence that went on forever. Every fibre of me wanted to shout meaningless threats and demand answers I wasn’t going to get. Instead, I fought back with psychology of my own and kept quiet. My hands were clammy, my heart beating fast in my chest. After a while, the mystery caller rang off.
I drank the whisky without tasting it, recharged the glass and forced myself to sip.
I turned the lights out and sat in the dark, with the glass, the bottle and the Beretta next to me. After a while the alcohol worked its magic and I was able to think. Anderson was toying with me. Fucking with my head: Danny had been right – some people had long memories. I’d been right, too. It was happening. I wasn’t suffering from jailhouse paranoia after all. Not the consolation it might have been.
They wouldn’t be content with phone calls and uninvited visits for long.
51
The Spaniards Inn, ‘perched on the edge of Hampstead Heath and oozing history’ according to its website, was famous, although I’d never been there. The city north of Marylebone Road, and Hampstead especially, didn’t attract me. Too many posh accents and posers. In the early days, Danny had taken me up West to remind us how the other half lived – the paid-up members of the Lucky Bastards Club he was so fond of pouring scorn on. If it had been anyone other than Oliver Stanford I wouldn’t have come. But the tone in his voice had been miles away from the superior attitude and the smug look I’d disliked immediately above the King Pot.
On the phone, the detective chief inspector’s words were as dry as fallen leaves. Not unusual for him; he couldn’t help himself. Being the boss, barking out orders his minions weren’t in a position to question, was the role he was born to play. His idea of a team game would be everybody doing what he told them. In another life, him and Danny might’ve been mates.
Arseholes in arms.
‘We need to talk.’
No introductions. No small talk. Assuming what was important to him was important to everybody else. Vintage self-important bastard. I was wrong; he hadn’t changed.
‘Do we?’
His tongue clicked against his teeth and he let the sarcasm pass him by.
‘Listen, Glass. I don’t like making this call any more than you like getting it. But we really need to talk.’
I borrowed Danny’s approach and treated him like a precocious child who deserved a good slap and was going to get one.
‘Heard you the first time.’
‘Then you agree?’
‘Agree with what?’
‘You’re not blind, you see what’s going on.’
‘Why would I discuss any of it with you?’
He swept my obdurate response aside. ‘I’m serious. We’ve both got a stake in this. Seven o’clock, The Spaniards Inn. Will you be there?’
Asking not telling. I wondered how it made him feel.
‘No, I won’t.’
He tried and failed to keep his disappointment out of his voice and stay in control.
‘Why not? Why not, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Because you work for us, not the other way around. Or have I got that wrong, Oliver?’
Straight out of the Danny Glass instruction manual on how to deal with jumped-up coppers. Stanford exhaled deeply into the phone. I was trying his patience and enjoying it, and, for some reason, he was putting up with it. ‘You’re spending too much time with your brother. You’re starting to sound like him.’
‘If that’s supposed to be a compliment, try again.’
He returned to his point. ‘Will you be there or not? It’s important.’
‘Yeah, you said. Tell me more.’
The detective allowed his frustration to show.
‘Not making it easy for me, are you?’
‘Was I supposed to? Sorry, Oliver. Give me more or fuck off out of it, how’s that?’
Stanford remembered he was a senior officer in the Metropolitan Police and asserted himself. ‘Not until we’re face to face. Seven o’clock in the beer garden.’
The line died in my hand.
I’d left Mandy sprawled on the floor with a pen in her hand and her red curls tucked behind her ears, surrounded by leaflets with London Tourist Board on them, agonising over an itinerary for Amy.
‘Madame Tussauds would be good, wouldn’t it?’
I didn’t answer. She didn’t notice. Her preoccupation was easy to understand – her daughter was the most precious thing in the world. Twice recently, I’d found Mandy by the window in the small hours, hugging herself, staring into the night. At first, I’d assumed it was the experience with the thug from the pub. That wasn’t it. Giving up her little girl had been a life-altering moment she’d do anything to change.
While Mandy struggled to shoehorn the Planetarium or a Harry Potter tour into her plans, I looked up the pub up on the Internet. At one time, The Spaniards was the go-to boozer for robbers and highwayman: I’d fit right in.
Instead of driving across the city I took the Northern Line to Hampstead and walked the rest of the way. I was early and killed time on Parliament Hill. An end-of-day golden haze had settled over the city skyline. Behind the jagged silhouettes of the Shard and the Gherkin, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Palace of Westminster, the horizon was on fire.
Spectacular. But Stanford hadn’t dragged me up here for the view.
The beer garden was busy. In the shade, a crowd gathered round a TV showing the tennis. Stanford was sitti
ng by himself under a red umbrella with Pimm’s No 1 on the canopy, holding what looked like a whisky and ice in his manicured fingers. At the next table, a group of five young men with Australian accents laughed loudly at something one of them said and Stanford glanced brief disapproval in their direction before bringing his attention to me. His expression didn’t alter apart from an almost imperceptible upturn at the corners of his mouth – his inner-smug-fucker staging a comeback.
He raised his hand in the air, sipped his drink, made a stab at being pleased to see me and failed. But the anxiety I’d heard on the phone was missing; Stanford made me wait. Finally, he said, ‘Your brother has become a problem. I expect you’ve noticed.’
‘Told you in the King Pot, I don’t have a brother.’
On the TV, the fourth set was going into a tiebreak; the people watching leaned forward, playing every shot with their favourite. The Aussies spoiled it by picking that moment to leave. Still noisy. Still laughing. Big-boned suntanned guys who’d never done anything quietly and couldn’t if their lives depended on it. Stanford waited until they’d gone.
‘Then, I was right. We have something to discuss.’
‘What do you want?’
The policeman took another sip of the whisky, his brilliant-blue eyes unblinking, more than likely a technique he used to frighten his subordinates. It wouldn’t work on me.
‘To find a way forward. Common ground.’
‘Common ground? You and me? You’re talking to the wrong Glass. It’s Danny you should speak to.’
Mentioning his name brought a reaction: the edges of his mouth turned down as if somebody had swapped the Scotch for pond water. ‘That wouldn’t be…’ he searched for the appropriate word ‘… productive.’
His mannered approach irked me. ‘Say what you’ve got to say or I’m off. You don’t like Danny Glass. Not exactly an exclusive club.’
He corrected me. ‘You misunderstand. The relationship I have – had – with your brother was never dependent on approving of what he did. Liking him never came into it. It’s simply a question of being able to do business. And I can’t. Not any more. I’d assumed you’d have reached the same conclusion.’
My response was as uncooperative as I could make it.
‘So, don’t.’
Stanford smiled a small patient smile, realised how the conversation was going to go and launched into a history lesson for my benefit. ‘In life we don’t always get to choose our bedfellows. In the beginning, working with Danny made sense. Thanks to you, Albert Anderson was off the board and south of the river was up for grabs. It could’ve been one gang war after another with people trying to make a claim. Chaos, in other words. No winners and a lot of losers, on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Danny stepped into the breach. Actively enabling him was in the public interest. I’d probably do it again.’
A waitress arrived at our table and he stopped talking. When I’d ordered, he went on.
‘That was my first mistake.’
Said almost wistfully.
‘Anderson’s organisation had lost its leader and was in disarray. I’d expected a short sharp exchange. The outcome should never have been in doubt. For reasons I still can’t fathom, your brother—’
‘Told you before. I don’t have a brother.’
‘Quite… decided not to move then. And that’s why we find ourselves where we are.’
‘I’d be lying if I said this was interesting. Get to the fucking point, if there is one.’
52
Applause broke out from the people watching the TV. Shouts of ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Well done!’ Stanford held onto his temper. More important issues were at stake.
‘The “fucking point”, as you so inelegantly put it, is this: the fire put Danny over the line. Not because it was an atrocity – although it was certainly that – but because it proved he’s lost it. Sooner or later he’s going down. But the end of Danny Glass won’t mean the end. Business will go on. It always does. The question is: who’ll be running it?’
Whatever he expected from his mini speech, he didn’t get.
My voice was a monotone. ‘I stopped listening five minutes ago. You carry on, since you’re enjoying yourself so much.’
The detective didn’t rise to it. ‘The brother you claim not to have has had his day. He’s reckless and unstable and won’t last. The deeper consequence of the Picasso Club is I can’t cover for him. Neither can anybody else. It isn’t possible. There has to be a level of trust. Do you understand?’
I understood only too well – he was pitching.
To me.
Time to put him straight.
‘I see where you’re going. You’re imagining I’ll take over and we can have a nice civilised relationship, where you keep getting paid without the risk you’re running now.’
His reply was frank. ‘Something like that, yes.’
‘Sorry to burst your bubble but I’ve no ambitions to step into Danny’s shoes. I want out and have done for years. He talked me into staying after Anderson hit the King Pot. Otherwise, I’d have been on a beach pouring a bottle of San Miguel down my neck. You’re both welcome to it.’
Stanford took the news better than I thought he would.
‘Perhaps I misunderstood. I saw the mark on Danny’s face—’
‘And thought I’d kill him and set up shop with you? No chance. Told you already. I’m out and I’m staying out.’
He wasn’t convinced. ‘It’s easy to say that now. Until the opportunity’s in front of you, you can’t be sure how you’ll react. Believe it or not, you’re more like him than you think. No offence.’
‘None taken.’
‘We’d make a great team.’
This copper didn’t know my views on ‘teams’ or he’d have rephrased the statement. I said, ‘Unless Anderson’s dead, you’re getting ahead of yourself. Has he been identified?’
‘Not yet.’
‘There you go.’
Down in SW19 the umpire called, ‘Forty fifteen.’
The tortured patience thing was back on Stanford’s face. ‘Obviously, you weren’t there or you’d appreciate we’ll be lucky to identify half the bodies that came out.’
‘Then he could still be alive?’
Stanford didn’t hurry to answer. I looked for the girl who’d taken my order: no sign. The question Danny had asked in the pub on the Broadway jumped into my head.
who do I have to fuck to get a drink around here?
The DCI finished his whisky and set the empty glass on the table.
‘Anderson alive? I very much doubt it. I wouldn’t be here if I thought he was.’
No, he’d be making a deal with him instead.
‘Nobody in his crew’s been seen.’
‘Yeah, that means nothing. George Ritchie’s a smart guy. He’d persuade his boss to keep a low profile. They could come back and blow what you’re suggesting to hell.’
The possibility made him uncomfortable, his tanned brow furrowed and he looked away. A roar went up: if the light lasted, the match on the centre court was heading to five sets. Stanford regained his composure and sniffed. ‘Naturally, this chat needs to stay between ourselves.’
He was a bit late thinking about that.
My pint arrived. I was tempted to ask the waitress where she’d been. Instead, I drank a third of it down in one go, enjoying the coldness of the lager and the copper’s new edginess.
‘Goes without saying. Besides, who would I tell?’
The policeman stood. ‘Oh, one more thing, which may or may not be of interest to you. Eugene Vale. Name mean anything?’
I was about to say no when I remembered he was Nina’s guy and my brother’s accountant.
‘Not much. I know who he is.’
‘Yes, I thought you would.’ Stanford shoehorned suspicion into his response. ‘Seems his secretary drowned in her bath.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing, it’s just that when people die arou
nd Danny Glass, my antenna goes up. It’s the copper in me. I’m told Vale’s having a fling with Nina.’
Now how did he know that?
‘One of his employees shagging his sister – don’t imagine Danny’s too pleased.’
He was fishing. I shrugged and looked towards the excited crowd in front of the TV.
‘Sorry, Detective Chief Inspector, never met them.’
Stanford sniffed again. He was expecting Danny to fall and he wanted me to fill the void. But if this was his idea of persuading me, he was going the wrong way about it.
The ghost of a smile appeared on his lips, then vanished. ‘Can’t have too many friends, Luke. A fact of life, and the sooner you accept it, the better.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind. Meantime, there’s something you can do for me.’ I handed him the piece of paper with the numbers of my mystery callers scribbled on it.
‘Find out who these are.’
It sounded like an order. The realisation that a new arrangement with a Glass would be an awful lot like his last arrangement with my family registered in his eyes. He glanced at the writing without reading it, put it in his pocket and made a final attempt to woo me.
‘The world’s changing, even as we speak. You’re the kind of man I could do business with.’
I turned my attention to Wimbledon and ignored him.
53
The building was old. Originally, it had been stables, then a laundry in one era, a fireworks factory in another. For a while it was a brewery, the malt kept in bins as large as a three-storey house, while a standing army of cats kept the rats in check. Under its roof, children as young as eight had dipped matches into a dangerous chemical called phosphorous and contracted ‘phossy jaw’. Sickened and deformed and unable to work, they were turned away to die in the street, their place taken immediately by a motherless waif from the many orphanages in the city of London. Danny Glass had owned it for years and had no interest in its bleak history. For him, it was an investment – one day it would be demolished and the land sold for a shedload of money. Until that happened, he had another use for it.