Marius

by Laurence Todd

  Tomorrow I was going to find Chappy Watts and make him talk. I was certain he knew the people in the pictures.

  *

  Channel 4 News was just finishing when I arrived at the flat. As a journo Taylor always watched the news and current affairs shows on TV, particularly now that the paper had her covering more substantive political topics, rather than compiling stories about which celebrities had been seen stumbling drunkenly down the steps of which West End nightclubs, or which member of a boy band had been seen out with which cute blonde page three model despite being engaged to someone else. She smiled when she saw me, and I could see that, like everyone else, she’d immediately noticed the bruise under my partly closed right eye, which was still very vivid. Stevie Wonder would have spotted it.

  We held each other very tightly for a few moments. The memory of what had passed between us last evening was still fresh in both our minds and, just holding her, any lingering thoughts of the likes of Gary White and Chappy Watts were instantly expunged.

  “So, who decorated your face?” she calmly asked.

  She wasn’t upset or panicked. Earlier in our relationship we’d discussed our respective jobs and she knew mine came with the very occasional risk of physical injury. She’d said, once in a while, someone would feel aggrieved enough to throw a punch at a journalist on the Standard.

  “Your other girlfriend do that, did she?” She laughed.

  “Yeah.” I grinned. “Just after I told her what I’d said to you last night.”

  The term other girlfriend was a reference to police work; it was a standing joke between us. When I was called back on duty, like I had been Monday, the force became another woman leading me astray.

  She was wearing an expensive off-white silk blouse and a dark skirt as, earlier today, she’d interviewed some prominent City figure who’d recently made a disparaging comment about the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s management of the economy, which had caused a considerable degree of political controversy. She was also wearing the same sensuous perfume as the other evening, and she smelt divine. I’d not realised until recently that perfume could be an aphrodisiac, but Taylor could wear coal dust and it’d still be stunning. She kissed my bruise lightly.

  Afterwards we went into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of wine and flipped the cap off a beer for me, smiling her radiant smile and looking me in the eyes. We touched rims and toasted each other.

  She then pressed herself close to me as I leant back against the kitchen counter, and rested her head against my shoulder, sipping her wine and sighing contentedly. I put my arm around her shoulder and we stood like this for several minutes, saying nothing, just enjoying the sensation of being in each other’s company.

  We’d always been comfortable with silence. It’d never been an issue for us. In my previous relationship we’d stopped talking, quite likely because we no longer had anything to say to each other, but Taylor and I never felt we had to talk. If there was nothing to say, that’s what we said, and it felt good. One time we’d driven down to Canterbury on an impromptu day trip and, in her car there and back, I doubt we’d said twenty words. We’d just occasionally looked at each other and smiled, touching hands. It’d felt like we were inside our own little bubble of intimacy with neither of us wanting to burst it, and it all seemed so perfectly natural. Simply standing and holding Taylor like this, saying nothing, felt as natural as breathing.

  She put her glass down and slid her arms around me. Her hair smelt enchanting, like a field of strawberries.

  “I really enjoyed talking to you last night,” she said softly, looking up at me.

  I kissed her forehead lightly and looked her directly in the eyes. She had deep bluey-green eyes, and wearing glasses made them look like pools of glowing liquid. She buried her head in my chest. I could feel her body trembling slightly.

  “Oh, God, McGraw,” she sighed. She looked up at me again, smiling through slightly moist eyes. I gently wiped away a small tear.

  We stood like this for another thirty seconds, and then she got a wicked glint in her eyes.

  “You’re not likely to get another call-out tonight, are you?” She smiled mischievously. “I mean, I’ve something in mind for us before dinner, and I think you’ll like it.”

  “Oh yeah?” I gave her my best evil grin. “You’re quite sure about that?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  She kept the wicked grin and, whilst biting my left ear, told me in graphic detail what she had in mind. My eyes opened wide in surprise. Whoa.

  “Can I, huh, pretty please?” she asked excitedly, still nibbling my ear and touching me in a place where she knew I was very sensitive. And you’d have to know me intimately to know where that place is. She most certainly knew.

  I immediately put my police radio on the side. “If Smitherman calls, answer it, tell him I died in the line of duty earlier today.”

  She was right. I really did like what she’d had in mind. And we didn’t get around to having dinner either.

  S E V E N

  Thursday

  THE FIRST THING I noticed was a report on my desk stating Gary White had been found dead last evening. He’d died as a result of receiving multiple stab wounds in what had been described as a sustained and frenzied attack. I asked Smitherman what he’d heard.

  “About eight thirty, White tells his parents he’s going to his girlfriend’s place. He goes outside, where someone’s obviously waiting for him and jumps him when he gets to his car. At present it’s not known if more than one person’s involved. It wasn’t a clean kill, either. This wasn’t an arm round the neck and one thrust straight up into the kidneys; he was slashed at and stabbed quite a number of times. Whoever did it probably used something like a machete or a large carving knife, and a really sharp one as well, because he had some very deep cuts across his whole body. Looks like he tried defending himself quite vigorously because there were several deep slash marks down across both his forearms, and also across the palms of his hands. None of the wounds appeared fatal, so the thinking is he quite likely bled to death, but we won’t know till the body’s examined. One of the medics who arrived said it looked like he’d been kicked in the face as well because he had a deep bruise on his cheek” – Smitherman touched his right cheek – “and his jaw was broken. At present we don’t know if the assailant or assailants suffered any injuries.”

  “Who found him?”

  “His body was found about quarter to eleven, behind the skip round the back, by a couple parking their car. They recognised White, saw him lying in a pool of blood, called the police. They said there was blood everywhere. It wasn’t a pretty sight, I’m told.”

  I could imagine. I’d seen victims of multiple stab wounds before. “Anyone see or hear anything?”

  “No. CCTV picked him up coming out into the courtyard and walking round the corner to get his car, but there’s nothing after that because the camera behind the building’s been vandalised. Couple who found him gave a statement, but they’d not seen anyone.”

  I thought about this for several seconds.

  “This wasn’t a random attack,” I stated confidently. “This’s connected with that car theft the other night, the one him and his pal did on their own. Matey’s already dead. He’s the one who got White to steal the cars in the first place. Has this been put up on the wire yet?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “Time to spread the good word, then, isn’t it?”

  *

  I was heading along the Embankment back to the O2. If Chappy wasn’t there, I was gonna put out a call for him to be arrested if seen.

  Whilst driving, I thought about Gary White. His death had been ignominious and, I’d no doubt, agonisingly painful, and he’d not deserved this. His stepfather, Jimmy McGlinchey, was an old-school, low-level London villain, a burglar and petty thief who at least was imbued with the honour and moral code of his generation of tea leaves, but Gary White was simply an entry-level hanger-on, a wannabe, and not
a particularly intelligent one either. He was someone who aspired to the Life, someone who’d thought he had whatever it took to play in the same playground as the big kids. But this had proven to be his undoing. He’d had a flirtation with Red Heaven, almost landing his stepfather with a lengthy jail sentence, and now he’d pushed his luck with the Chackarti family, and had lost out. I was absolutely certain his death was connected to the stealing of the police officer’s car on Monday evening and taking it to a lock-up known to be used as a chop shop by the Chackartis, which had caused the family needless aggravation.

  I thought about how he’d died, and the panic he must have been feeling during the attack, not to mention the pain. If whoever attacked him had been using a sharp machete, the pain would have been extremely intense. Mates had taken two bullets in the chest, probably died instantly and felt nothing before his lights were turned out. Gary White hadn’t been quite so fortunate.

  I sighed. It was a depressingly stark contrast to realise that last evening, somewhere around the time Sally Taylor had been raising my diastolic blood pressure and heart rate, not to mention my body temperature, up to almost life-threatening levels just by taking off her clothes, Gary White’s existence was being brutally terminated and, from the nature and the severity of the wounds he’d had inflicted on his body, terminated by someone who’d clearly wanted him to suffer before he’d died. Even the kick in the face was a symbolic act, an old-time mafia trick after a summary execution, because facial damage meant the victim’s family wouldn’t be able to have an open coffin at any wake held. I’d little doubt his death was connected to the Chackarti family in some way, directly or indirectly.

  Yesterday I’d told White he’d now be considered expendable by the Chackartis, and it was no consolation whatsoever to have been proven right. White was undeniably just another wannabe loser, but he hadn’t deserved to die in such a horrific manner. Few, if any, did.

  Whilst knife crime wasn’t exactly unknown in this part of London, I was also struck by the fact White had died just after being charged with offences related to taking and driving away. I doubted this was a random one-off knifing. My belief was White had been targeted. The Chackartis were known to have police officers from all ranks in their pocket, and I was prepared to wager the family had been tipped off about White by someone on the force. Whoever had been tipped off couldn’t take the chance White might mention Matey as a connection between the family and the bombings. I strongly suspected this was why White had been given police bail. He was an easier target on the outside.

  Don’t ever let anyone tell you knife wounds don’t hurt. They do. I’ve attended to several stabbing victims and they’re usually in some very considerable pain. Any piercing of the dermis hurts, and having a sharp blade thrust into you from close range by a strong assailant can be agonising, especially if a vital organ is hit. Once, whilst I was in uniform, some drug-fuelled maniac came at me swinging a knife dangerously close to my eyes, and I’d had to squirt him with pepper spray to stop him. I’d followed it up by putting him on the floor and accidentally stamping on his hand, breaking two of his fingers.

  White had been stabbed and slashed many times, and it was quite likely he’d not died straight off. I speculated his assailant had probably just flailed wildly at his target, and was almost certainly not trained in how to use a knife properly. White’s last few minutes of life had probably been agonising, unless he’d been lucky and died quickly.

  As I parked up and got out the car, what saddened me most was not White dying as he had; it was the realisation that, for the second time in four days, another mother would now be crying bitter tears for a son who’d been caught up in something far beyond anything she could comprehend, and had paid the ultimate price. Again, I hoped the pictures of the dead son were kept away from his mother. No mother deserved to see how Seamus Drew and Gary White had died.

  *

  At the tea counter, I saw Chappy and Tyler. The stall was busy, so I waited for a moment when they weren’t serving. Tyler had the facial expression of someone who’d won first prize in the £10,000 raffle but had lost the ticket. He wasn’t moving or talking to customers with anything like his usual swagger and cockney bonhomie.

  As I approached the counter I noticed Chappy’s face was cut and badly bruised in several places, his lips were swollen, his left eye was half-closed and his right eye was extremely bloodshot. He looked as though he’d been in a car crash. From the lump just above his nose, I suspected he’d also been headbutted. And I thought my face looked bruised. It appeared Wednesday night hadn’t been particularly good for him either. I felt mildly guilty for a brief moment as I’d been having a great time last night while Chappy had been on the receiving end of quite a kicking, and Gary White was being butchered. Such is life.

  “Should I see the other guy?” I laughed.

  “You want something?” Chappy snapped at me, avoiding my eyes. I didn’t like his attitude, or the fact he’d lied about not recognising anyone in the picture I’d shown him.

  “Chappy, get your arse out here, now,” I ordered.

  Tyler looked at him and nodded. “Go on, son.”

  He walked stiffly and in obvious physical discomfort, breathing erratically, as though every step he took was hurting. He’d taken a severe beating, no question. From his stilted jerky movements I’d little doubt, if I asked him to remove his shirt, I’d see heavy bruising around his lower abdomen and ribcage.

  We walked about thirty yards away to a nearby bench. He sat down gingerly, like an old man lowering himself down after rising out of a wheelchair. Chappy was looking and feeling very sorry for himself. I sat next to him.

  “So, who rearranged your body for you?”

  He didn’t reply. He stared down at the ground whilst trying to adjust his body into a position when the discomfort would be more bearable. I waited ten seconds.

  “Chappy, come on, talk to me. Who did this?” I adopted a serious tone.

  “Couple of blokes jumped me last night,” he said quietly, not looking at me as he spoke. “Just got home and they was waiting for me, weren’t they? One guy smiles, then nuts me one and they start punching and kicking me.”

  “You see who it was?”

  “No, it was dark.”

  I didn’t believe him. I’d no doubt he knew exactly who’d worked him over, but he wasn’t going to risk another beating, or worse, by naming names. I needed more than staccato responses from him, so it was time to shake him up.

  “Was this before or after they killed Gary White?”

  That got his attention.

  “What, Gary?” He sounded very surprised. “He’s dead?” “Yeah. Last night.”

  He sniffed loudly and his eyes began to well up with tears. “How’d he die?”

  “Stabbed outside where he lived in Stepney. They found him lying next to a skip.” I didn’t go into detail about the full extent of his injuries.

  “Oh God.” He rubbed his eyes.

  I gave him several seconds to sob quietly. He wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve.

  “When I came here Tuesday, your dad said you’d been out the night before with your girlfriend, but you hadn’t been, had you? You two cretins had stolen a policeman’s car.”

  “Yeah,” he said very quietly. “How’d you find out about that?”

  I ignored his question. “And you took it to one of the family chop shops and dropped them in the crapper by doing that, didn’t you?”

  He nodded but didn’t reply.

  “That’s why you were used as a punchbag. You caused the family a lot of grief, and you involved Matey.”

  He still didn’t reply. He knew what I’d said was true.

  “Look, I know you and White lifted a couple of other cars last week, and I think what’s happened to him and you is connected to that. Did you know those cars you took were used for those two car bombings last week?”

  He looked surprised. “What?”

  “They were. White was on police ba
il for this, so, as I know you’re involved, I’m taking you in as well. But what charges you’ll get depends on you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I produced Jacqueline Chandler’s pictures yet again, and fixed him with a hard glare. “You do know these two, don’t you?”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yeah. Well, him, anyway.” He pointed to the picture of the younger of the two, the son. “Don’t think I know the other bloke.”

  “Now, that was easy, wasn’t it? Where d’you know this one from?”

  “He rents my dad’s lock-up garage, doesn’t he?”

  “Huh? White said he rented the lock-up from your dad.” “He does, we sublet it to this bloke.” He nodded at the picture.

  I thought about it. It’d make sense. You’re lying low planning a bombing campaign, the last thing you want is a nosy neighbour somehow finding out what you’re doing inside your house. So a non-descript lock-up garage in a place like Bethnal Green is almost perfect. It’s anonymous, out of the way, and you can assemble your bombs away from prying eyes.

  “Your dad know about this arrangement?” I looked over at Tyler, who was serving tea but looking in our direction the whole time.

  “God, no.” He sounded horrified, looking away from the tea stall. “No, he doesn’t. He’ll go fucking spare if he ever finds out.”

  “What does this guy keep there?”

  “Don’t know. I didn’t ask any questions. He just said he wanted a lock-up.”

  “So, who is this guy?” I pointed to the picture. “What’s his name?”

  “I dunno.”

  “You don’t know,” I said disbelievingly.

  “No, honest, I don’t. I don’t know his name.”

  “So, how did Mr No-Name here become your tenant, pray tell?” I asked sardonically.