‘It’s because of me, isn’t it?’
Fleet’s shoulders went down a notch. ‘It’ll be fine. Don’t give it another thought.’
‘You should tell them it’s over. We’ll go back to keeping it secret.’ Lydia tried a smile. ‘It’ll be like old times. All that sexy sneaking around.’
‘Don’t try to distract me, I’m interrogating you.’
‘Are you indeed?’ Lydia put her hands on her hips. ‘How’s that going?’
Fleet sighed. ‘About as well as usual.’ He paused. ‘Is there anything I should know?’
Lydia widened her eyes. ‘About Mark Kendal? I don’t know anything about it. I just heard about it from Aiden.’
‘Fascinating,’ Fleet said, definitely trying not to smile, now. ‘And how did Aiden know?’
‘It’s his job to keep me informed on the local news. I don’t ask about his methods.’ Lydia said primly. ‘Do you want to speak to him?’
Fleet looked at her for another beat before, thankfully, shaking his head. ‘Did he tell you how Mr Kendal died?’
‘No,’ Lydia said, working hard to keep her expression neutral. ‘I assumed burglary gone wrong.’
‘He was bludgeoned with a heavy object. His skull was entirely compressed on the right side,’
‘Oh,’ Lydia’s mouth went dry. At once she could smell the blood, see the brain matter exposed and tangling with his matted hair.
‘Nothing was taken. And the scene looked clean, SOCO is still there, though. If anything was left, we’ll find it.’
Fleet was eyeballing her in a meaningful way. He left a space and Lydia knew he was waiting for her to fill it. ‘Of course you will,’ she said reassuringly. She had always been so comfortable withholding details from Fleet, from everybody, really, it was as natural as breathing. This time felt different. Her stomach was cramping with guilt, but she pushed down the urge to tell him the truth. ‘Shall we eat?’
* * *
Lydia woke up to the sound of Fleet yelling, his voice hoarse as if he had been shouting for hours, not seconds. The light was filtering around the edges of his thick blackout curtains and she realised it was morning. Almost time for the alarm to go off. He was having a nightmare, that was clear, but Lydia hesitated. There was something more than inarticulate fear pouring from his rigid body. Light. Or something her brain was interpreting as light. The strange gleam that she had sensed from Fleet the first time she had met him, the gleam which said that somebody, maybe way back in his ancestry, had some power, but one she couldn’t identify, had ignited from a gleam to a glow. No, she had seen it sparked into a glow before. This had intensified from a glow to a radiance.
Lydia didn’t know what to do. Sweat was pouring down Fleet’s face and his body was contorted, tendons standing out in his neck as he strained against some invisible force. She called his name, shook him by the shoulder and, in desperation, pinched his ear. Hard. When none of that woke him and he was still hoarsely shouting, the garbled sound forming into a single word ‘no’, she grabbed the half-full glass of water from her side of the bed and dumped it over his head.
It wasn’t instant, but over the next few seconds, Fleet’s yells quietened and he became conscious. His eyes focused on her face and he swallowed hard, rubbing his face with both hands and then looking at them. ‘I’m wet.’
‘My fault,’ Lydia said. ‘Sorry. Are you all right?’
‘Just a bad dream.’ Fleet didn’t smile much but, when he did, it was like the sun coming out. The one he managed, now, was small and insincere. It was meant to reassure Lydia but all it did was give her a stomach ache.
‘That wasn’t a nightmare,’ Lydia said.
Fleet was already getting out of bed. ‘I’m going to shower.’
‘What happened?’ She was speaking to his back. ‘That’s not the first time, is it?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Fleet didn’t turn around, just headed into the en-suite and closed the door.
Lydia got dressed and considered stripping the bed. Then she decided that she had no desire to set a precedent for housework so she went and messed with Fleet’s expensive coffee machine until it gave up the good stuff.
Fleet took his time and Lydia was wondering whether she ought to break down the door and check on him, when she heard the water shut off. She sat on the sofa and sipped her coffee, giving him space. She didn’t want to admit it, but part of her was afraid. Fleet was usually unshakeable.
He emerged from the bedroom fully-dressed in a suit and tie. ‘Gotta get going,’ he said, kissing the top of her head and picking up the coffee for a quick sip.
‘We should talk,’ Lydia said.
‘It’s fine,’ Fleet replied, pulling on his coat and patting the pockets for his keys.
Lydia had an indication of how annoying it was being in a relationship with her. Being avoidant and saying ‘I’m fine’ when things were clearly far from it was not helpful. She stood and walked over to Fleet, put her hand on his chest and reached out with her Crow senses. All the practice was paying off and she got a string of impressions.
‘Don’t,’ Fleet took a step back.
‘You can feel it,’ Lydia said. ‘Something is changing. You know I seem to power people up? People like me. I think…’
‘Don’t,’ Fleet said, again, his face stony. ‘I’ve got to go.’
* * *
As Lydia had thought many times before, nowhere did pubs like London. She had several favourites. None of them pretentious, although one was edging that way and was saved only by its incredible twice-fried skin-on chips and comfortable seats. This pub, however, was as far from the places Lydia preferred as it was possible to get without it being an entirely different species.
Linoleum covered the floor, scratched and burned and with so much ground-in dirt the original colour was impossible to discern, and the bar was plywood, recently remodelled after the latest brawl. Figures sat alone, drinking with the grim determination of the terminally alcoholic, while a small group of old men sucked their teeth over a game of dominoes. One table was covered in glasses half-filled with beer and whisky, but nobody was sitting down. A cigarette burned in an ashtray, abandoned. This wasn’t a place that cared about the indoor smoking rules.
The woman behind the bar was very thin and very tanned and had a halo of platinum curls that looked like it had been bought in a fancy-dress store. She took a last drag of her own cigarette and put the end into a mug which said ‘World’s Best Grandma’ which had clearly been used for the purpose many times before. ‘You’re not welcome in here, Crow.’
‘Don’t be rude,’ Lydia said, producing her coin and making it spin in the air. ‘I’m looking for Jimmy.’
‘He’s not here,’ the woman said, her eyes crossing as she stared at the coin as it turned lazily inches from her face.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘This morn-,’ she broke off. ‘Dunno.’
‘Is there a back room?’
‘Yeah. Wait… What?’ The woman’s eyes were glassy.
Lydia heard the scrape of a chair and knew that at least one of the drinkers was thinking about getting involved. She spoke without looking around, just raising her voice a little. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you.’
She plucked her coin from the air and gave the woman a wide smile. ‘Thanks for your help. Is it this way?’ Lydia kept moving toward the door she had spotted and ignored the movement to her right. She knew nobody would be stupid enough to take a swing at the head of the Crow Family in this shit-show little dive bar. And if she believed that wholeheartedly, she would make it true. You had to commit. If she had learned one thing, it was that.
Lydia made it to the backroom without incident and discovered another space which both time and hope had forgotten. Nicotine-stained walls, mismatched furniture and a television on one wall playing sport. The room was dominated by a pool table and three men with shaved heads and tattoos. Two of the men were in the middle of a game and the third was si
tting in the corner, his feet up on a chair.
One of the pool-players gave Lydia a full up-and-down look with a leer that suggested his thought processes went on somewhere far south of his brain. ‘You lost, girl?’
Lydia ignored him, fixing her attention on the man in the corner. He raised his gaze to meet hers and she felt a jolt. Not of Family power, there was no Pearl, Silver, Crow or Fox in the room, but power nonetheless. The power which came from being the biggest badass on the street and everybody knowing it. The power of being the smartest person in the room and the one with the vision. The man everybody looked to for direction, for a plan, for the big score and the smart play. In his own piss-poor small-time way, this man was a leader and Lydia could feel it. She smiled her shark smile. ‘I’ve got a proposition for you, Jimmy.’
Jimmy Brodie, also known as The Hammer, tipped his head back a fraction, as if wanting to get a better view. He had prison tattoos on his neck and hands, faded green with age, and a thickset body which suggested bulky muscle which wasn’t used quite as much as it used to be. ‘Just a business deal,’ Lydia said. ‘Cash in exchange for an introduction.’
She knew the leering pool player had moved behind her and wasn’t surprised when he spoke. ‘You walk in here carrying cash? You’re asking to lose it.’
‘I’m not losing anything,’ Lydia said, holding the boss man’s gaze. ‘Just looking for a certain service and happy to pay the fee.’ She was working on the principle that if someone had paid a professional to take out Mr Kendal, it had to be somebody unconnected to any of the Families or, at least, someone who didn’t care about the politics of the Families. Her second thought was that it was likely a local who had paid for the hit, which meant they would have sourced it locally, too. People tended to ask for recommendations for this kind of thing. It wasn’t the kind of service you Googled, which meant they had probably started in the sketchiest non-Family pub in the area. Lydia reasoned that if she followed their footsteps, she ought to find the same contractor. ‘So, if a girl was in the market for a reliable contractor to carry out a bit of work, who should she see?’
Jimmy’s eyes had started out small and mean-looking, they had narrowed further giving the impression that he was peering through smoke. Lydia knew it was supposed to make him look even-more intimidating, but it had the opposite effect. She gave him a friendly smile and pushed a little bit of Crow into her voice. ‘Quick as you like.’
‘Renovation or removals?’ Jimmy looked surprised after the words spilled out, as if he hadn’t intended to speak.
‘Removals,’ Lydia said. ‘And I’m crunched for time, so they need to be available to start immediately.’ Whoever had killed Mr Kendal had been in the area very recently and Lydia was hoping that would further narrow down the pool of local professionals.
Jimmy nodded slowly, his eyes very slightly glazed. Lydia could hear the men behind her shifting and could feel the atmosphere in the room tighten. They were waiting for the signal from Jimmy and didn’t understand why he hadn’t given it yet. Lydia wondered if they had enough self-control to carry on waiting. ‘Happy days,’ Jimmy said, after another beat. ‘He’s right here. Felix, don’t be shy.’
Lydia didn’t look away from Jimmy and one of the men who had been playing pool moved into her field of vision. It wasn’t the leering man, but his companion. A man Lydia had categorised as the least dangerous in the room, which just went to show that you could always learn something new. He had a short, neatly-trimmed beard which was just one step up from stubble, dark hair and eyes. If he didn’t take plenty of holidays in the sun, he had Mediterranean heritage somewhere in his gene pool, and he had a slim-build which, now that Lydia was paying attention, could suggest martial arts. Or a reliance on long-range weapons.
‘I can help you,’ Felix said. ‘But I must warn you, my rates are high.’
‘They really are,’ Jimmy said, seeming to not want to lose control of the conversation.
The leering man was sitting on the edge of the pool table, now, tapping a cigarette from a packet. The sense that she was about to be beaten up, or worse, had dissipated and Lydia wondered what secret signal she had missed. ‘Can we speak in private?’
Felix looked instinctively toward Jimmy and then shrugged. ‘Sure.’
He led the way down a short corridor which led not, as Lydia had been hoping, to a back yard with the good clean air of Camberwell, but to the toilet. Walking into a confined space with a hitman wasn’t the most reckless thing Lydia had ever done, but it might make the top ten. She kept herself close to the door and squeezed her coin in her palm for strength.
Felix glanced at the filthy urinal, wrinkling his nose against the pungent smell, before facing Lydia. ‘I know who you are.’
‘Good.’
‘I’m happy to do contract work, but I’m not looking for a permanent position.’
Lydia was momentarily surprised. ‘That something you’ve been offered before?’
‘Your predecessor. He liked the idea of full control over my schedule.’
That sounded like Charlie. Lydia felt cold as the full implication dawned. Charlie had been dropping enough bodies to warrant a hitman on retainer.
She pushed the thought away and straightened her spine. ‘I’m after something else. A name.’
Felix’s expression closed down. ‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘I’ll give you one, first,’ Lydia said. ‘Mark Kendal.’
Felix’s face didn’t so much as flicker.
‘I need to know who ordered the job.’
‘I don’t know this name,’ Felix said. ‘I can’t help.’
Lydia flipped her coin high into the air, making it spin slowly. Felix watched it, seemingly against his will. ‘You left evidence at the scene. If you don’t tell me who commissioned the job, I will make sure that evidence reaches the police.’
Felix dragged his gaze from the coin to find Lydia’s face. ‘I don’t leave anything.’ His lip was curled in disgust, his eyes alight with pride.
Lydia pushed more Crow behind her words. ‘Who hired you to kill Mark Kendal?’
Felix didn’t want to speak, but she was dragging the words out one at a time. ‘Not. Me.’
There was something there. Something in the spaces between the words that were unwillingly passing his lips. He was grimacing, now, like he was in pain, and Lydia knew that the second she relaxed her hold, he was going to lunge for her, wrap his hands around her throat and squeeze.
‘Who, then? Is there another operator in town?’
Felix laughed then. ‘How the fuck should I know? We’re not a bloody club.’
He was lying. Not about the club aspect, but about not knowing. Lydia had other concerns, though, she could feel her hold slipping.
A sudden electronic beeping sounded. Felix pulled a phone from his pocket and frowned at the screen.
Lydia was already moving for the door, taking the moment of distraction to get out. She flew down the short corridor and shoved the bar on the fire exit at the end, praying for a back street and not a dead-end. With a rush of relief, she felt the door yield and she slammed it shut behind her. She was in a backyard with old beer barrels, wheelie bins, sodden cardboard and a collection of pint glasses on the ground overflowing with cigarette butts. It was contained by a wall with no gate, but the back windows were mercifully blind, bricked in or covered with plywood. Lydia didn’t hesitate, scrambling onto a metal keg and grabbing the top of the wall to pull herself up, feet scrabbling on the brickwork. Her arms screamed in protest, but the adrenalin gave her strength and she managed to get up and over the top. She heard the fire door slam open and a furious male voice, but she was dropping down on the other side and flying far away, fast.
Chapter Fourteen
Back at the flat, Lydia was sitting at her desk. She had also been eyeing up the almost-full whisky bottle on top of her filing cabinet which had been making ‘come hither’ eyes at her for the last hour. It had been that kind of a day.
Her phone buzzed. Aiden. ‘People are asking for a meeting.’
‘When you say people…’
‘John, mostly. But some others.’
Lydia got up and moved to the kitchen. She filled the kettle while Aiden spoke, realising as she did so that she wasn’t thirsty for anything except alcohol. She got a beer instead and popped the cap. ‘They aren’t happy about…’
‘Not on the phone,’ Lydia warned.
‘I know. I’m on my way.’
Lydia’s motion sensor went off a second later and she heard Aiden’s heavy footsteps in the hall. She opened the door before he could knock and led the way to the roof terrace.
With the radio playing she indicated for Aiden to speak by gesturing with her beer.
‘It doesn’t look good.’
‘I’m aware.’
‘The community knows that we were friendly with Mark. And now he’s dead. That makes us look weak.’ Aiden winced, as if expecting Lydia to throw something at him. ‘Sorry.’
‘What does John want me to do about it?’
‘He wants a meeting…’
‘Don’t give me that. He already knows what he wants me to do and he’ll have been shooting his mouth off to anyone who will listen.’
Aiden looked at the floor. ‘He wants a proportionate response.’
‘An eye for an eye?’ Lydia sighed. That sounded right. John was nothing if not traditional. Especially since he never had to get his hands dirty. He and aunt Daisy lived in their comfortable house and enjoyed the reputation and financial safety net of the Crows without getting into the messy details. An eye for an eye sounded pretty good when you didn’t have to gouge it out yourself. ‘So, it’s just face-saving? Not personal?’
‘How do you mean?’
The Copper Heart Page 11