by Ian Rankin
‘I’ve some gin,’ Greene said. ‘Or a few cans of lager.’
‘It’s your party, Des,’ Hoffer said with a grin.
So Broome and Hoffer had a can of lager each, and Greene sat with a gin and tonic. He loosened up a little after that. The lager was fine, even though a couple of months past its sell by.
‘Okay,’ said Broome, ‘so mail gets sent here and Wesley phones up and you tell him what’s arrived?’
Greene nodded, stirring his drink with a finger and then sucking the tip.
‘Does he ever get you to open mail and read it to him?’
Greene smacked his lips. ‘Never.’
‘And he’s never received anything other than bills?’
Hoffer interrupted. ‘No fat brown envelopes full of banknotes? No large flat packages with photos and details of his next hit?’
Greene quivered the length of his body.
‘Can you give us a description of him?’ Broome asked, ignoring Hoffer. The description Greene gave was that of the man Gerry Flitch had given his card to.
‘Well, that’s about all for now, Mr Greene,’ said Broome. He placed his empty can on the carpet.
‘But there’s one other thing,’ said Greene.
‘What’s that?’
‘Aren’t you going to ask if there’s any mail waiting for him?’
‘Well, is there?’
Greene broke into a huge wrinkle-faced grin. ‘Yes!’ he squealed. ‘There is!’
But having got both men excited, he now seemed to want to stall. It was a crime, after all, to open someone else’s mail without their express permission. So Broome had to write a note to the effect that he was taking away the letter, and that he was authorised to do so. Greene read it through.
‘Can you write that I’m exonerated from all guilt or possible legal action?’
Broome scribbled some words to that effect, then signed and dated the note. Greene studied it again. Hoffer was close behind him, breathing hard.
‘Fine,’ said Greene, folding the note but leaving it on the breakfast bar. He went off to fetch the letter. When he was out of the room, Hoffer tore a fresh sheet of paper from the writing pad, folded it, and put it down on the breakfast bar, then lifted Broome’s note and scrunched it into a ball before dropping it into his pocket. He winked at Broome. Greene came back into the room. He was waving a single, slim envelope.
‘Looks like a bank statement,’ he said.
It was a bank statement.
The bank was closed when they got to it, but the staff were still on the premises, balancing the day’s books. The manager, Mr Arthur, ushered them into his utilitarian office. ‘I can’t do anything tonight,’ he said. ‘It’s too late to get anyone at head office. You realise that there are channels that must be gone through, authorisations, and even then a really thorough check could take some considerable time.’
‘I appreciate all of that, sir,’ said Bob Broome, ‘but the sooner we can get the ball rolling, the sooner we’ll be near the goal. This man has murdered over half a dozen individuals, two of them in this country.’
‘Yes, I do understand, and tomorrow morning we’ll do everything we can, as quickly as we can, it just can’t be done tonight.’
They were in the Piccadilly branch of one of the clearing banks. It was, naturally, a busy branch, perfect for someone like the Demolition Man, who needed to be anonymous.
‘If we could just talk about his account for a few minutes, sir,’ Broome said. The manager glanced at his wall clock and sighed.
‘Very well then,’ he said.
Broome produced the bank statement. There wasn’t much to it. It referred to the previous month, and showed a balance of £1,500 on the 1st, with cheque and cashpoint withdrawals through the month totalling £900, leaving a closing credit balance of £600. Arthur typed in the account number on his computer.
‘Mm,’ he said, studying the screen, ‘since that statement was drawn up, he’s withdrawn another £500.’
‘In other words,’ said Hoffer, ‘he’s all but emptied the account?’
‘Yes, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. He withdrew money on each day.’
Hoffer turned to Broome. ‘He’s shedding Mark Wesley.’ He turned to the bank manager. ‘Mr Arthur, I think you’ll find that account stays dormant from now on.’
‘Can we find out where he took the cash from?’ Broome asked.
Arthur studied the screen again. ‘Central London,’ he said.
‘What about old cheques?’ Hoffer asked. ‘Do you hold on to them?’
‘Yes, for a while at least.’
‘So we could look at his returned cheques?’
Arthur nodded. ‘After I’ve had authorisation.’
Broome looked at Hoffer. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘He has to pay people, Bob. Maybe he doesn’t always have the cash on him.’
‘You think he pays for his guns and explosives by cheque?’
Hoffer held his hands up, palms towards Broome. ‘Hey, maybe not, but we need to check. Could be there’s something he’s paid for, or someone he’s paid for, that can lead us right to him. He’ll be underground now, busy making himself a new identity. All we have to go on is the old one. I say we dig as far as we can.’ He turned to Arthur, who was looking dazzled by this exchange. ‘We need old cheques, old statements, and we need to know the site of every auto-teller he’s used. There could be a pattern that’ll tell us where he’s based.’
‘Auto-teller?’ said Arthur.
‘Cash machine,’ explained Broome.
8
I sat in my hotel room, counting out my money. I had $4,500 in cash, money I’d been keeping safe at Max’s farm. I had another $5,000 in cash in a safe deposit box in Knightsbridge, and $25,000 cash in another safe deposit box at the same location. I reckoned I’d be all right for a while. I’d all but emptied the Mark Wesley bank account, and had disposed of his credit cards. I still had my Michael Weston account and credit cards, and no matter how far the police probed into ‘Mark Wesley’, I couldn’t see them getting close to Michael Weston.
The hotel I was in had asked for a credit card as guarantee, but I’d paid upfront instead. I put some of the money back in my holdall, and put some in my pocket, leaving a couple of thousand still on the bed. I had more money in New York, and some in Zurich, but I definitely wouldn’t need to touch that.
I rolled up the final two thou and stuck it in the toe of one of my spare shoes, then put the shoes back in the closet. I’d had to take everything out of the holdall. The stiff cardboard base was loose, and I’d slipped the money under it. There was a soft knock at the door. I unlocked it and let in Bel.
‘How’s your room?’ I asked.
‘All right.’ She’d taken a shower. Her hair was damp, her face buffed. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. We were in a new hotel, the Rimmington. It wasn’t central, but I didn’t mind. I knew returning to London so soon was dangerous. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the Craigmead or the Allington. So we were in a much smaller hotel just off Marylebone Road, handy, as the receptionist said, for Madame Tussaud’s, the Planetarium, and Regent’s Park. We were supposed to be on holiday from Nottingham, so we looked interested as she told us this. Actually, Bel had more than looked interested.
‘There won’t be much time for sightseeing,’ I warned her now.
‘Don’t worry,’ she snapped back, ‘I’m here to work. What’s that?’ She was pointing to my ‘works’. They were lying on the bed, syringes and all. I started loading them back into the holdall.
‘Are you on drugs?’
‘No, I just ... sometimes I need an injection. I’m a haemophiliac.’
‘That means you bleed a lot?’
‘It means when I bleed, sometimes it won’t stop without help.’
‘An injection?’ I nodded. ‘But you’re all right?’
I smiled at her. ‘I’m fine.’ She decided she’d take my word for it.
‘So where
are you taking me for dinner?’
‘How about a burger?’
‘We had burgers for lunch.’
This was true. We’d stopped at a motorway service area, where the burgers had looked the most appetising display. Bel deserved better, especially on her first night in London. That makes her sound naive, a country bumpkin, which she wasn’t. But she hadn’t been to London in five years, hadn’t been out of Yorkshire for the best part of a year. I wondered if I’d been right to bring her. How much of a liability might she become? I still didn’t think there’d be any real danger, except of arrest.
‘Well, you decide: Italian? Indian? Chinese? French? Thai? London can accommodate most tastes.’
She flopped down on my bed and assumed a thoughtful pose.
‘So long as it’s between here and Tottenham,’ I added, ‘but then you can find most things between here and Tottenham.’
I was all for taking a cab to Tottenham, but Bel wanted to ride on the tube. We’d dropped the XR3i back at its shop, and I’d settled for it in cash. There was no point hanging on to it; I thought we’d be in London for a few days. One thing about Bel, she surely did look like a tourist, wide-eyed and unafraid and ready to meet a stranger’s eyes, even to smile and start a conversation. Yes, you could tell she was new in town. I couldn’t help but be a bit more worldly, even though I was a tourist too. We got off the tube at Seven Sisters and ate at a Caribbean restaurant, where Bel had to have a second helping of the planter’s punch and was nearly sick as a result. She didn’t eat much though, apart from the dirty rice and johnny cakes. The fish was too salty for her, the meat too rich.
There was an evening paper in the restaurant, and I flicked through it until I found the latest on the Ricks assassination. The diplomat from the Craigmead was causing a stink, talking about lax security and an MI5 plot against him. According to his version, MI5 and some country neighbouring his own were in cahoots.
‘Keep muddying the water, pal,’ I told his grainy photograph. There was a more interesting snippet further down the page, added almost as an afterthought. It talked about a ‘mystery call’ to the Craigmead Hotel, a summons Eleanor Ricks had ignored. It intrigued me. Had my paymaster got cold feet and tried to warn her? And being unable to reach her, had he then phoned the police instead? I’d heard stories about employers changing their minds. I wouldn’t mind if they did, so long as they weren’t looking for a refund. If they wanted their money back, well, that was a different proposition entirely.
We walked up the long High Road, looking into a few of the less salubrious pubs. I’d already explained to Bel who I was looking for, and she seemed glad of the fresh air and exercise. The traffic was blocked all the way up the High Road to Monument Way, and all the way down Monument Way too. We stopped in at the Volley, but there was no one there I knew. I always had to be careful in Tottenham. There were people I might meet here who might assume I was either after something or being nosy. For example, sometimes I bought plastic explosives and detonators from a couple of Irishmen who lived here. They weren’t really supposed to sell the stuff on, and they were always nervous.
Then there was Harry Capaldi, alias Harry Carry, alias Andy Capp, alias Harry the Cap. It was true he sometimes wore a cap. It was true, too, that he was always nervous. And if Harry got the fright and went into hiding, I wouldn’t be very happy. So I was being careful not to ask for him in any of the bars. I didn’t want word getting to him before I did. Somewhere in the middle of the Dowsett Estate, Bel started complaining about her feet.
‘We’ll take a rest soon,’ I said. I led her back to the High Road and the first pub we went into, she sat down at a table. So I asked what she was drinking.
‘Coke.’ I nodded and went to the bar.
‘A coke, please, and a half of bitter.’ While the barmaid poured our drinks, I examined the row of optics. I’d been close to ordering a brandy. Close, but not that close. Harry the Cap wasn’t in the bar. Maybe he stayed home on a Monday night. I didn’t want to go calling on him. I knew he owned a couple of guns, and the people in the flat upstairs from him were dealers. It would only take one shot, and the whole building might turn into Apocalypse Now. I took the drinks back to our table. Bel had taken off her shoes and was rubbing her feet. The men at the bar were so starved of novelty that they were watching her like she wasn’t about to stop at the shoes. When she took her jacket off I thought one of them was about to fall off his stool.
‘New shoes,’ Bel said. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have brought them.’
‘And they say townies are soft.’
She glared, then smiled. ‘Cheers,’ she said, lifting her glass. She crunched on a piece of ice and looked around the bar. ‘So this is the big bad city? How do we find your friend?’
‘We keep looking. You’d be surprised how many pubs there are between here and White Hart Lane.’
‘And we go into every one of them?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Couldn’t you just phone him instead?’
‘He’s not on the phone.’
‘Then I suppose we keep walking.’ She took another drink.
‘Speaking of phoning, have you called Max?’
‘Give me a break, I only left him this morning.’
‘He’ll be worried.’
‘No, he won’t. He’ll be watching reruns of Dad’s Army and laughing his head off.’
I tried to visualise this, but failed.
‘Look, Michael, do you mind me saying something?’
‘What?’
‘Well, we’re supposed to be together, right? As in a couple. Look at you, you look more like my minder.’
I looked down at myself.
‘I mean,’ Bel went on, ‘you’re sitting too far away from me for a start. It’s like you’re afraid I’ll bite. And the way you’re sitting, you’re not comfortable, you’re not enjoying yourself. You’re like a flick knife about to open.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. I slid closer to her on the bench-seat.
‘Better, but still not great,’ she said. ‘Relax your shoulders and your legs.’
‘You seem to know a bit about acting.’
‘I watch a lot of daytime TV. There, that’s better.’ We were now touching shoulders and thighs. I finished my drink.
‘Right, we better get going.’
‘What?’
‘Like I say, Bel, a lot of pubs still to go.’
She sighed and slipped her shoes back on. The men at the bar turned their attention to the television. Someone by a riverbank was gutting a fish.
We were in a pub on Scotland Green, the one people use after they’ve signed on at the dole office across the road. It was always busy, and was all angles and nooks. It might be small, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t hide in it. Harry the Cap was hiding round the corner beside the fruit machines. He was seated on a high stool, wearing a paisley-patterned shirt intended for someone three decades younger, jeans ditto, and his cap. It struck me I should have brought him the one I’d bought; he’d have appreciated it more than Bel. He wasn’t playing the machines, and in fact was staring at the cigarette dispenser.
‘Hello there, Harry,’ I said. He stared at me without recognition, then laughed himself into a coughing fit. Three gold chains jangled around his neck as he coughed. There were more gold bands on his wrists and fingers, plus a gold Rolex on his right wrist.
‘Dear God,’ he said at last, ‘that nearly killed me.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘Did you beat him up afterwards?’
‘Who?’
‘The blind fella who gave you that haircut. It’s diabolical. I won’t even tell you what I think of the colour.’
‘Why not take out an ad?’
‘Sorry, son.’ He lowered his voice and cleared his throat. ‘Do I need an invite or are you going to introduce me?’
‘Sorry, Harry, this is Belinda. Belinda, Harry.’
‘What’re you drinking, girl?’
She looked to me first and I nodded. �
��Coke, please.’
‘Needs your permission, does she? And you’ll be wanting a double brandy, I take it?’
‘Not tonight, Harry. A half of bitter’s fine.’
He shook his head. ‘My hearing must be going.’
‘Let me get these,’ I said. ‘Are you still TJ?’
‘That I am.’ Bel looked puzzled, so he spelt it out. ‘Tomato juice. I can’t drink any more, it makes my hands shake.’
She nodded, understanding everything. I got the drinks in while Harry tried his usual chat-up lines. I needn’t have worried; Harry was okay. He was stone cold sober and he wasn’t dodging police or warrant-servers or his ex-wife’s solicitors. He was fine.
When I got back, Bel was playing one of the bandits.
‘She’s had four quid out of it already,’ Harry said.
‘And how much has she put back?’
Harry nodded sagely. ‘They always put it back.’
Bel didn’t even look at us. ‘Who’s “they”?’ she said. ‘Women in general, or the women you know in general? I mean, there’s bound to be a difference.’
Harry wrinkled his nose. ‘You see,’ he said in a stage whisper, ‘things haven’t been the same since women’s lib. When my Carlotta burnt her bra, I knew that was the end. Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’ I sipped my beer and managed to catch Bel’s eye. She gave me a wink. ‘Harry,’ I said, ‘we need something.’
‘We?’
‘Bel and me.’
‘What do you need? A wedding licence?’
‘No, something that’ll get us through a few doors, something with authority stamped on it.’
‘Such as?’
‘I was hoping you’d have a few ideas.’
He rubbed his unshaved jaw. ‘Yes, I could maybe do you something. When would you need it?’
‘Tonight.’
His eyes widened. ‘Jesus, Mark, you’ve given me tough ones before, but this ...’
‘Could you do it though?’
‘I wasn’t expecting to work tonight ...’ From which I knew two things: one, that he could do it; and two, that he was wondering how much he could charge.