Layer Cake

by J. J. Connolly

  The Clever Part

  Outside the arch the ‘old bill’ are having a screaming match, the major stewards with one another, accusing each other of bottling it again. There’s a lot of the old hold-me-back I’II-swing-for-the-fuckin-cunt business. Some conversations are meant to be overheard. All the mechanics and sprayers are outside ear-wigging and watching old bill fighting amongst themselves.

  ‘Get on to the local nick, get a description over the air. Neither of them fitted the description of the chap we’re after anyway.’

  What we’re praying for now is one of two things, that one of these mechanics in the neighbouring arches is a pal of the Yahoos and will slip away, ring Big Frankie or one of the others and mark their card that the slaughter, the hideaway, is crawling with filth, worst kind, CID, heavy mob, it’s on top, I’ll-see-ya-when-I-see-ya. The other is that JD, Gary or Sidney will find a phone-box and tip the others the wink. The crime-scene tape will be going up now. Cody’s little team will be all over the Merc sports with latex gloves, smudging it up. They’ll have their radios turned up so the scanner will be getting re-broadcast, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, old-bill radio traffic going out on the airwaves again, lending a nice air of authenticity. Sitting on my back seat I can hear conversations. Tiptoes rings me on yet another phone.

  ‘It’s bolted up here, mate. It was scary for a minute, thought they were going to put their hands up, but the big fella freaked right out.’

  ‘Any shooters in there?’ I ask.

  ‘A bored-out Mach-10, serious tool. It’s in an evidence bag.’

  ‘Did he go for it?’

  ‘Luckily they were caught off-guard. It got slapstick in there, bittova chase round the boxes. We’ve got a mobile as well. What shall I do if it rings?’

  ‘Turn it off. Are those grease-monkeys being nosy?’

  ‘Yeah. Really nosy. Moodying they ain’t.’

  ‘Good.’

  I can see a few wandering out onto the street, taking an early day. Half this lot’ll be signing so they don’t really need the old bill asking loads of questions, taking names. That’s what Cody’s posse are doing right now, clipboards out, asking questions of all the geezers in the surrounding arches, meeting resistance. They need to stay in place just in case the other three do turn up, and that takes bottle.

  ‘Do you know the occupants of this arch, the end one?’

  ‘Do you know who owns this Mercedes sports? Is it here for repair, for spraying, perhaps, Sir?’

  ‘Have you seen the occupants come and go?’

  ‘Did you know the three who absconded earlier? When we catch them I hope they don’t say they know you, Sir, because that would be most unfortunate, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Am I Drugs Squad? That’s very interesting. Who said anything about drugs? I certainly didn’t. I’m actually from the South East Regional Crime Squad on detachment, looking to serve an extradition warrant.’

  ‘Do you know a character by the name of Darren Anthony, AKA Duke, AKA the Duke, been naughty over in Holland, he has, been naughty over here as well but they’ve got first go at him. Bollocks, ain’t it, that’s the EC for ya.’

  ‘Take my card, ring me if they come back, Sir. You’d only throw it in the bin, well, well, well. That’s not very polite, didn’t your mother teach you any manners?’

  ‘You don’t need a lawyer, you ain’t under arrest, been watching too much telly. I’m conducting an inquiry and you’re helping me.’

  ‘You can have a kick up the arse, you want one, you ‘orrible cunt? I’ve nicked criminal household names so don’t be givin it the big’un, yer greasy little arse-wipe. Okay? Go on, fuck off, get back to yer carburettors, yer greasy cunt. You wanna have it? Don’t worry about me being old bill, son. I’ll come back later if yer want, we’ll have the straightener right here.’

  ‘Hope all these wrecks got the proper papers. I’m gonna send some locals to check ’em out, then you’ll need a lawyer.’

  Cody Garret is floating about, masquerading as a high-ranking Dutch detective, wire glasses and big bag of paperwork, telling the English detectives, in a perfect Dutch accent, that they have only an arrest warrant, not a search warrant, this could prejudice any trial in Holland if correct procedures are not fully carried out.

  ‘This is England, mate, you’re a guest here, remember.’

  Cody and Tiptoes start having an argument about European Extradition Treaties, giving each other the pointy finger. It’s all being taken in by the observing crowd.

  ‘But the geezer you want isn’t here. His vehicle is but he isn’t. He’s gone.’

  ‘What is a “geezer”?’ asks Cody.

  ‘Fuckin hell,’ sighs Tiptoes.

  Tiptoes is earning the twenty grand he’s gonna get for the work, ten now and ten in two days’ time. He’s now riddled out who’s the top honcho in the next-door arch. Off he goes, clipboard in hand, to ask a few questions. He’s been waiting for the right moment.

  ‘I don’t know nuffin,’ the top man says before Tiptoes opens his mouth.

  ‘I haven’t asked you anything yet.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know anything.’

  ‘I don’t believe it’s possible for someone to know nothing, it’s impossible,’ says Tiptoes provocatively.

  ‘I don’t need some smart cunt givin me grief.’

  ‘Listen, pal, don’t call me a cunt. I’ll tell you what I told your oil-rag boyfriend. I can come back here later and me and you’ll have it, man to man.’

  The exact timing is essential. Cody was stressing it over and over last night, again this morning. It goes to plan. One of the pretend old bill walks quickly into the garage and grabs Tiptoes and tells him to come next door, straight away, quick-sharp.

  ‘Can’t you see I’m talkin to Al Capone,’ says Tiptoes.

  ‘Fuck him,’ says the other cozzer furtively, all itchy, flicking his head. ‘Come and have a look at this.’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he says, all Arnie and pointy finger.

  But when he emerges from the garage he’s alight, electric, charged. He trots straight over to Cody, Dutch Super-Sleuth, begins to tell him there’s nothing left to find here, maybe they should be going. Cody is perplexed, baffled, asking if he’s finished questioning witnesses. Tiptoes is almost dragging him along.

  ‘But what about this motorcar. It is evidence, is it not?’ asks the Dutch detective.

  ‘I’ll have it impounded, Sir. I’ll have forensic go over it here before I have it moved.’

  ‘I’ll wait and have it done properly.’

  ‘Please, Sir, I’ll get someone to drive you back to headquarters, you can advise Amsterdam on developments.’

  Tiptoes must have spotted the garage owner ear-wigging, making notes for the Yahoos when they debrief him later.

  ‘Ain’t you got any fuckin work to be gettin on with?’ he shouts at him.

  ‘But I thought you wanted to talk to me,’ he replies.

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘That’s no way to talk to a citizen, Sergeant, no way at all,’ says Cody the appalled Dutchman. ‘Now, I know you put in a lot of very good detective work, finding the car, you’re disappointed, but there is no reason to be rude.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sir. I am disappointed but I’ll tidy up here.’

  Tiptoes sneaks off and rings me up.

  ‘This mechanic is definitely mexxed up with the other lot. He’s plotted up on a car bonnet, drinkin tea, looking over here. No sign of the other three?’

  Fuck. Speak of the devil. I catch a glimpse outta the corner of my eye. The Merc’s turning into the street.

  ‘Tiptoes. They’re on their way back. Let the others know,’ I shout down the phone.

  ‘It’ll fuck it up this end. I’ll be there in a second.’

  The Merc goes past. I pick up my binoculars. Tiptoes must have run the distance between the arch and the street. Just as the slowing Merc’s about to turn up the slip, Tiptoes comes wandering down and into the road, POLICE chequer
ed hat, clipboard, POLICE yellow vest, stab-jacket, but preoccupied like he’s dreaming. The Merc breaks hard and wakes Tiptoes outta his dream. He raises his hands apologetically, shaking his head. The backs of their heads seem close enough to reach out and slap. They’re all rubber-necking up the turning. Tiptoes goes to the window of the Merc, briefly talks to them, like he’s saying sorry, then walks towards me a few paces. Then he stops, swivels on the ball of his foot, starts talking into his radio but trying to disguise it. They get on it quick-sharp. He’s pretending to do a vehicle-check on the plate number. They speed up, ignoring the entrance, trying to remain inconspicuous, like an elephant in a football kit. They turn the corner Morty’s end. Morty comes on the phone.

  ‘Listen, brov, you gotta be payin fuckin attention down that end. That came as a big surprise.’

  ‘Sorry. I was talkin to Tiptoes. What they doing?’ I ask.

  ‘About seventy,’ he replies.

  Life Ain’t Fair

  Cody doesn’t wanna leave, he’s having too much fun. Tiptoes is getting genuinely pissed off. Eventually he manages to get him off the plot accompanied by another ‘officer’. At last he gets into a hired motor round the corner that has sixty grand in the boot to pay the others. About ten minutes after ‘the Dutch cunt’ has gone, after two hours of keeping the ‘clog dancer away from those fuckin boxes’, the ‘old bill’ load them up into the van and off they go. They drive the van over to the car-park of a DIY superstore on the North Circular Road, where we are waiting to meet them. In the back, Gene has been sedately reading the newspapers all morning. Someone suggested that Metal Mickey had a colouring book to stop him misbehaving. The ‘old bill’ take Morty’s car.

  Ten minutes later a recovery truck reverses up the narrow alley backwards, hooks up the Merc sports and tows it away. Someone has written ‘Do Not Touch. Awaiting Fingerprint and Forensic Examination’ on it with yellow crayon. The beautiful run-around is taken to a crushing plant that specialises in insurance jobs and turned into a cubic yard of metal. Inside the arch they leave dust that looks frighteningly like fingerprinting powder on the shiny surfaces, a scattering of heavy cable-ties, used for holding prisoners’ hands together, and a scattering of POLICELINE tape.

  Who wants approximately two million Class A pills dropped on their toes, hanging round the house? Nobody. That’s why they were holed-up in a lock-up in Edmonton and then a dank railway arch in Finsbury Park. Morty and Clarkie take them over to Loveland. I’ve got a feeling that these are gonna have to be delivered out to Heathrow. It’s conveniently on the way. Gene tells me to drive along the North Circular. After five minutes he tells me to pull over into a lay-by.

  ‘Get me this number on your phone.’

  He hands me a matchbook with Big Frankie’s number on it.

  ‘Frankie. It’s Gene. I’ve been ringing JD all morning but getting no joy. Is he with you? . . . Let him explain what? . . . Get him on the fuckin phone. Where is he, down the gym or what? . . . I’ve got people here ready to rock ‘n’ roll . . . I thought you lot wanted to get going . . . Explain what? Listen, take this number and get him to fuckin ring me straight away.’ Gene gives him the number and he hands me back the phone.

  Last night I had a conversation with Cody and Morty. Mort was treating us to an instalment of his ol’ jailhouse wisdom. An old lag used to tell him that for a story to be truly convincing it must contain inconsistencies.

  ‘So what was he doin in the boob?’ I asked.

  ‘Fourteen years, but his point was a good one.’

  That’s why Cody’s team went looking for a dead man. Something like that’s gonna jam your radar. You try and riddle out the big picture. Maybe someone’s had us over but you keep jumping back to why old bill come crashing in looking for someone who’s dead as Elvis.

  We sit in silence watching the traffic going by. Gene and Mickey smoke a couple of fags each then the phone rings on my lap. I press the green button and hand it to Geno.

  ‘Hello, JD. What’s the story . . . What you fuckin mean, gone? . . . Sold? . . . What the fuck you lot fuckin playing at? . . . Where are you now? I’ll find that, will I? . . . I’m fuckin coming straight over. Don’t fuckin move.’

  He hands me the phone.

  ‘Walthamstow, head for the ‘stow dogtrack.’

  We find the drinking club where the Banditos are holed up. It’s a scruffy doorway between a newsagent’s and a chemist’s. Gene leads me and Mickey out of the sunshine and down into the semi-dark of the tatty club. Frankie’s sitting up at the bar with Sammy Fisher and Paul the Bouncer. One look says spirits are at an all-time low. The seductive lighting can’t disguise the fact it’s a khazi.

  ‘You all right, Gene?’ says Frank.

  ‘I dunno, I’ll tell ya in a minute, Frank,’ says Gene without missing a beat. He’s spotted JD sitting with Gary down the far end of the narrow basement.

  ‘All right, Gene?’ says JD.

  ‘Everyone’s so concerned about my welfare,’ says Gene.

  ‘What’s he doin here?’ says JD, nodding at me.

  ‘Him? He’s here cos I want him here. Does that answer your fuckin question? And because he’s spent the last week getting a very good deal done on some goods you reckon ain’t around anymore. Mickey, take Gary here up the bar and get him a shandy.’

  Mickey and Gary go and join the others. There’s only three others in the gaff, a trio of career lagging boats.

  ‘Now,’ says Gene, sitting down opposite JD. ‘What’s this you was saying on the phone?’

  ‘The pills, they’re gone,’ says JD.

  ‘Gone fuckin where, Jay?’

  ‘The old bill. We got a spin.’

  ‘Now listen,’ says Gene, looking straight into JD’s eyes. ‘Jimmy’s gone, I’d like to get hold of the cunt that killed him, everyone’s a suspect till I say different, he had a share in those fuckers, maybe not the half he wanted, but that comes down to me, you understand? I fuckin hope you ain’t been clumsy with my inheritance.’

  ‘We got raided and the stuff got captured.’

  ‘So how come you lot ain’t all in fuckin custody?’

  ‘We managed to fight our way out.’

  ‘That’s very convenient, mate. You just walked out?’

  ‘Me, Gary over there, and a geezer called Sidney were guarding them when it’s come on top.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘A garage in Finsbury Park, this mornin, about ten. The law flopped on us but we got out.’

  ‘I ain’t convinced. It ain’t in the papers? On the telly? Old bill would scream about it, they’d go garrotty.’

  ‘They came to nick Duke, Regional Crime Squad, but Duke’s dead. They wanted to hand him over to this Dutch old bill who was gonna extradite him back to Holland for murder, over that business, the geezer gettin shot, the Belgian geezer. Does he know about that?’ says JD, nodding in my direction.

  ‘I had to tell him after Jimmy got . . . you know . . .’ says Gene. ‘How did they find you?’

  ‘The car,’ says JD.

  ‘What fuckin car?’

  ‘Duke’s misses had a Merc sports and we was using it.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ says Gene, ‘have you got no sense at all?’

  ‘We didn’t think the law wanted the Duke in Holland.’

  ‘Don’t fuckin believe it, not a word of it,’ says Gene, shaking his head. ‘The law musta fuckin known yer man’s already dead. Do you think I’m some thick-as-pig-shit Paddy? They’ve got computers that’ll tell them anything they need to know, tell ’em ya shoe size. And how the fuck do you know all this if you didn’t hang around? Go on, answer me that, you cunt.’ Gene’s shouting now.

  ‘It could happen, Gene,’ I say with raised eyebrows. ‘Old bill ain’t all that organised. Sometimes right hand don’t know what the left one’s do–’

  ‘You,’ interrupts Gene, giving me the pointy finger to the nose, ‘shut the fuck up. Who are you? His fuckin lawyer?’

  The group at
the other end of the bar are looking concerned. Gene’s got a Browning handgun in a holster under his shirt. JD’s got on it.

  ‘Well? Do I get a fuckin answer or what?’ says Gene in full flow.

  ‘We managed to get away, the three of us, the others were away getting ready to move the goods. We thought they were on their way after you called. The law interviewed all the people in the other arches. The guy who sorted us out the arch was there, heard them talking, they interviewed everyone. He’s coming here in a minute. He’s rung me, told me the griff. I ain’t moodying, Gene.’

  ‘And the police just told him all their fuckin business, did they? Maybe he was asking the fuckin questions? That’s why he knows so much?’ says Gene, getting twitchy.

  ‘Here’s Minty now.’

  JD calls him straight down to our end of the bar, gets him a drink and sits him down. If this geezer was on a fortnight’s holiday in Malaga you’d still know he was a mechanic cos they never get rid of the grease on their hands, under their nails. He’s forty-five, dressed lampish, and is totally blown away but is trying to appear unaffected. He offers us a mint from a crumpled, greasy bag of Mint Imperials. He’s embarrassed when we refuse.

  ‘Tell these geezers what happened today, Minty,’ says JD.

  Minty starts to go though a detailed account of the morning’s events. Geno questions him relentlessly, buys him a large Scotch and feeds him Rothman’s.

  ‘So this old bill’s talkin to me and this other old bill comes runnin out and says for him to come and have a look at somethin next door. His mate, the other old bill, was trying to keep it dark, and when this old bill comes out again he’s like lost it, gone all fuckin didgy. He’s tryin to get rid of the Dutch old bill but the Dutch geezer won’t fuckin go. They had him nobbled, wouldn’t let him near the inside of the arch, like they were workin in a team to get rid of him, makin little sly signals, thought I didn’t clock ‘em but I fuckin did.’