by Ian Rankin
‘It would be cash?’ he said. I nodded. ‘It’s cash I like, you know that.’
‘I know that.’
‘Jesus, tonight. I don’t know ...’
‘How much, Harry?’
He took off his cap and scratched his head, forgetting for a moment his psoriasis. Huge flakes of skin floated on to his shoulders. ‘Well now, Mark, you know my prices are never unreasonable.’
‘The difference is, Harry, this time I’m not getting paid.’
‘Well, that may make a difference to you, Mark, it doesn’t make a difference to me. I charge what’s fair.’
‘So tell me what’s fair.’
‘Five hundred.’
‘What do I get for five hundred?’
‘Two identity cards.’
‘That’s not much to show.’
He shrugged. ‘At short notice, it’s the best I can offer.’
‘How long would it take?’
‘A couple of hours.’
‘All right.’
‘You’ve the money on you?’ I nodded, and he shook his head. ‘Running around Tottenham with five hundred on him, and I bet he’s not even carrying a knife.’
Behind us, the bandit began coughing up another win for Bel.
‘This is definitely your lucky night,’ said Harry the Cap.
‘Make yourselves at home.’ It wasn’t easy in Harry the Cap’s first-floor flat. For one thing, what chairs there were were piled high with old newspapers and magazines. For another, half the already cramped living room was taken up with a rough approximation of a photographer’s studio. A white bedsheet had been pinned to the wall to provide a backdrop, and there was a solitary bruised flash-lamp hanging from a tripod. Harry gave the back of the lamp a thump.
‘Hope the bulb’s not gone, bleeding things cost a packet.’ The bulb flashed once, then came on and stayed on. ‘Lovely,’ said Harry. There was a plain wooden dining-chair which seemed to be the tomcat’s regular perch, but Harry tipped the reluctant beast on to the floor and placed the chair in front of the bedsheet, angling the lamp so that it hit an imaginary spot just above the back of the chair. ‘Lovely,’ he said again.
Then he started tinkering with his pride and joy. It was a special camera which in the one unit could take a photo (slightly smaller than passport size), develop it on to an ID card, and then laminate the card. Harry patted the machine. ‘Bought it from a firm that went bust. They used to do identity cards for students.’
Bel was standing in front of a mirror, combing her hair into place. The mirror was large and old and hexagonal, and in its centre was a posed photograph of a bride and groom with their best man and bridesmaid.
‘Your parents?’ Bel asked.
‘Nah, picked it up down Brick Lane. A lot of people make your mistake. Sometimes I don’t own up.’
‘Where’s that music coming from?’
‘Upstairs, some black kids.’
The constant bass was like a queasy heartbeat. It seemed to envelop the flat.
‘Can’t you complain?’ said Bel. Harry laughed and shook his head.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ll just get the cards typed up.’
He had an old manual typewriter, the sort they’d thrown from offices on to the street in the 70s. It was solidly built, but the keys needed realigning. Or maybe they just needed a clean.
‘You’ll never notice once the machine’s reduced it.’
This, I knew from previous experience, was true. Once the card had been filled in, it was placed inside the unit, a suitcase-sized object attached to the camera, and a reduced-size copy was made, only now with photograph in place. Normally, I didn’t bother too much. People seldom really scrutinised an ID card of any make or variety. If they saw that the photo was you, they were satisfied. But this time was different.
‘Remember, Harry, some of the people I’ll be dealing with might just give my ID more than a cursory glance. Don’t go making any typing errors.’
‘Do me a favour, I did a secretarial course at night school. Seventy words a minute.’
‘I didn’t know there were seventy two-letter words.’
I left him to get on with it. Bel flicked a final hair into place and turned to me. She offered me the comb, but I shook my head. I looked in the mirror and saw a hard-looking bloke staring back. He had cropped black hair and a professional scowl. He looked just like a policeman.
‘Which area do you want?’ Harry asked from the typewriter.
‘Better make it Central.’
‘Central,’ he acknowledged. ‘Good, I know how to spell that.’
A good forger’s art, of course, does not lie in making up the fake ID. Anyone can fake an ID. The forger’s art lies in having to hand authentic or authentic-looking blank ID forms. Harry would never tell anyone where his blanks came from, or even if they were the genuine article. I reckoned he’d got his hands on a real ID form a while back, and had a friendly printer run up a few hundred. There were other things he could do, like put an official stamp on something. Those he made himself, and they were beautiful. He’d done a US visa for me once that was incredibly lifelike. Only, without me knowing, he’d made it a student visa. The questions at Immigration had almost given me away. Next time I’d seen Harry, I’d been able to get a fake passport at a reduced rate.
‘I’ll need both your signatures,’ he said. He’d switched on an anglepoise lamp and put on a pair of John Lennon-style NHS glasses, the kind you hate to have to wear as a kid, but often crave as an adult. I’d never needed glasses. People said it was a sign of having lived a pure life.
I was using the name Michael West on my ID, while Bel was Bel Harris. She said she’d rather stick with her own Christian name. They say that the best lies have a nugget of truth in them, and these names were just different enough from our real names that they wouldn’t help the police. I’d sometimes called myself Michael West in the USA, but never before in England. Bel was having enough trouble as it was remembering my name was now Michael and not Mark. She didn’t need another name to confuse her.
‘Right, sweetheart,’ said Harry, ‘if you’ll sit on that chair ...’
Bel turned to me. ‘Is he talking to you?’
‘I think he means you.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Harry, ‘I forgot for a moment there. Women’s lib, eh? Don’t mind me, love, just sit down anyway.’
Bel eventually sat down, and Harry stuck the ID form he’d just typed into the suitcase-machine.
‘Don’t smile or frown,’ he told Bel, ‘just look natural. That’s about as natural as a performing seal. Better, better.’ There was a flash, and Harry stood up straight. ‘Lovely. Takes about half a minute. Sit yourself down, Mark.’
We changed places.
‘By the way, Harry, you’d better take a few extra shots of me. I want you to set up a whole new identity.’
‘That takes time, Mark.’
‘I know. What shall we say, four days?’
‘Make it five. What do you need: passport, driving licence, National Insurance number?’
‘They’ll do for a start.’
‘We’re talking serious money.’
‘I know. I’ll give you two hundred on account.’
‘Now, just think bland thoughts. Mushy peas, liquor, the Spurs midfield. Look at him, he’s a natural.’
There was a flash, then Harry switched to his everyday SLR camera and plugged it into the flash-lamp. He fired off a few more shots, asking me questions while he did.
‘What name?’
‘How about Michael Whitney?’
‘Date of birth?’
‘Same as mine. No, make it a month earlier. Place of birth: London. You can make the rest of it up as you like.’
‘I will then.’
When he peeled the paper from my card and handed it to me, the clear plastic laminate was still warm. Behind the plastic, I wore that same policeman’s scowl. Bel wasn’t happy with her card. She reckoned she looked like a frightened
animal. I studied her card but had to disagree.
‘Look on the bright side, Bel. At least it’ll give them a laugh when they arrest us. Harry, have you got any of those — ’
But he was already coming back into the room, waving two small black leather wallets.
‘Put them in here,’ he said. ‘You can fill the spare pockets with anything you like.’ He crumpled one in his hand. ‘Give them a bit of a seeing to first though, otherwise they look like they’ve just come from the sweatshop. He smiled at me. 'No extra charge.’
Which was my cue to hand over the cash.
We took a mini-cab from the office at the corner of Harry the Cap’s road. Our driver didn’t even know where Marylebone was, and mention of Baker Street and Regent’s Park didn’t ring any of his rusted bells. So I gave him some directions, and kept giving them all the way back to the hotel. He radioed his office to see how much he should charge. ‘Depends whether they look loaded or not,’ said the crackly voice. The driver looked at me in his rearview, and I shook my head at him. I gave him the money, but no tip, seeing how I’d have been better driving myself and letting him sit in the back.
I’d got him to drop us a couple of streets from the hotel. If anyone got to Harry the Cap, they might ask questions at the cab office, and the cab office wouldn’t forget a fare from Tottenham to Marylebone Road. I didn’t want anyone coming any closer to me than that. And yes, I did have someone specific in mind.
‘Hang on,’ said Bel, ‘I want a pizza.’ So we went to a takeaway and stood with the delivery riders while Bel’s deep-pan medium seafood was constructed. Then it was back to the hotel. I took her to her room. She lifted the pizza box to my nose.
‘You want to help me with this?’
Which was, however innocent its intention, an invitation to her bedroom, where we’d have to sit on the bed to eat.
‘Not hungry, thanks,’ I said. But I’d paused too long.
‘I won’t tell my dad.’ She was smiling. ‘Shouldn’t we talk anyway? Go through the plan for tomorrow?’
She had a point. ‘Over breakfast,’ I said.
‘Cold pizza maybe?’
‘Don’t be disgusting.’
I went to my room and called Max. He’d been sitting right by the phone.
‘Everything’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you the number here, you can call Bel any time you like.’
‘Thanks,’ he said grudgingly. He then found a pen and some paper. I gave him the hotel number and Bel’s room number. ‘She’ll probably be calling you herself,’ I said.
‘If she hasn’t already forgotten me.’
‘Don’t be daft, Max, she talks about you all the time.’ This was a lie; she hadn’t mentioned her father all day until I’d brought up the subject in the pub. I won’t tell my dad. “Night, Max.’ I put down the phone.
I’d known Bel for a few years now, and naturally sex had never ... well, it wasn’t that I didn’t like her. It wasn’t that we didn’t flirt. It wasn’t even that I was scared Max would bury me in one of his walled fields. It was mostly that I didn’t, as the Americans say, ‘do’ sex any more. It didn’t exactly go with the lifestyle. The women I met in my life I met infrequently and for necessarily short periods. If I wanted to get to know any of them, I had to construct a set of lies and half-truths. You didn’t get too many ads in the lonely hearts columns from women looking to meet ‘tall okay-looking assassin, 30-35, interested in ballistics, cuisine, international travel’. So I’d given up on women. I didn’t even use hotel whores often, though I liked to buy them drinks and listen to their own constructed stories.
Speaking of which, I knew I had one more call to make. It had taken me a while to get round to it. I picked up the receiver and pressed the digits from memory. I have a good memory for numbers. The call was answered.
‘Allington Hotel, can I help you?’
‘Yes, I’d like to speak to a Mr Leo Hoffer, please.’
‘Hoffer? One moment, please.’ A clack of computer keys. ‘I’m sorry, sir, we don’t appear to have a guest with that name.’
‘I’m sure he’s staying there,’ I persisted. ‘He was there today, or maybe he’s booking in tomorrow?’
‘Hold on, please.’ She muffled the phone with her hand and asked a colleague. The colleague took the receiver from her.
‘Hello, sir? I think there must be a misunderstanding. Mr Hoffer did visit the hotel earlier today, but he isn’t a guest here.’
‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I must have got a crossed line. You don’t happen to know where he’s staying, do you?’
‘I’m sorry, sir. At least you know Mr Hoffer’s in town.’
‘Yes, that’s true. At least I know that. You’ve been very helpful.’ I put down the phone. After a minute or two, I allowed myself a small smile. It was good to know Leo was here. Where he was, the circus would surely follow, by which I mean the media circus he seemed always to attract ... and to covet. I always knew when Leo was on my trail, no matter how far behind.
I only had to pick up a paper and let the interviewer tell me about it.
I’d seen Leo on TV in the States. Frankly, I wasn’t flattered. They say it’s nice to feel wanted, but Leo looked like the one who should be in the slammer.
There was a soft knock at my door. Two short, one long: our agreed signal. I sighed, got off the bed, and unlocked the door.
‘Got anything for indigestion?’ Bel said.
‘Okay,’ I said, letting her in, ‘let’s go through tomorrow.’
And we did. I had us stand in front of the mirror and showed Bel how to act like a police officer, how to stand, how to speak, what to say. She smiled too much at first, so we got rid of that. And she had a natural slouch, the result, so she said, of always being taller than her girl friends and trying to bring herself down to their level.
After an hour, she got bored and started making mistakes again.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘We’ll get one or two shots at this. After that it’d be too risky. The police are bound to find out there are impostors going around. So we’ve got to make the most of it, understood?’ I waited till she nodded. ‘Remember, these IDs weren’t cheap. Now, look at yourself in the mirror, you’re slouching again.’
She straightened up.
‘Better.’ I was standing close behind her. ‘Now do one last thing for me.’ She turned to me.
‘What?’
‘Go phone your father.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Yes, boss,’ she said.
I locked the door after her.
9
The hardest work Hoffer had done so far in London was find a dealer who didn’t think he was an undercover cop or the vigilante father of some teenage addict. There was crack around, but not much actual cocaine. The stuff he’d ended up buying was far from premium grade, probably five parts lidocaine and three parts baking soda, but there was no way he was going to start doing crack or free-basing, he’d seen too much hurt result from those particular by-ways. He’d been a New York street cop when crack first hit town. In a matter of months the drug had swamped the housing schemes. Earlier in the 80s he’d been friends with another cop who’d started free-basing. That cop had gone downhill like a well-oiled skateboard, careering all the way.
Hoffer had got into drugs the same way. He spent his days busting pushers and users, living so close to drugs that it was like the fucking things were whispering to him, even in his sleep. One day he’d confiscated some bottles of rock cocaine, only he’d handed them in one short. He soon found that there was an underclass of police officer that used a lot of drugs. Some of them just took drugs off one pusher and resold to another, keeping a little back along the way. Others had deep habits and pinhole eyes, real smack heads. You were in a privileged position, being a cop. You didn’t have to look far or try hard to score a haggle of white shit, and you so seldom had to pay. But free-basing, that was a nightmare. Someone had tried to introduce him to it, recycling their smoke into a balloon and offerin
g him the used smoke. Hoffer had never enjoyed the more social aspects of drug use, and drew the damned line at breathing somebody else’s high.
So here he was in London, doing what he did.
He added a couple of hundred milligrams of speed to his purchase, and to offset the speed asked about quaaludes or ‘bennies’, but ended up with Librium and a bit more boo.
‘Packing heat,’ he said to himself afterwards. Soho had still failed to provide a night’s fun, so he’d prowled the West End, sitting in a fag bar for quarter of an hour before realising his mistake, and finally locating a hooker who wouldn’t accompany him to his hotel, but could provide relief in her own quarters. Hoffer couldn’t agree to this; he’d gone to a hooker’s greasy bedroom before, only to have her pimp try to roll him. So they made do with a back-alley blow job, for which she charged a twenty. That put her on £240 an hour, which was decent money. It was even more than Robert Walkins was paying.
In the morning he had a shower, the bath being too narrow for anything like a soak, put on a sober blue suit, and went to see his bank manager.
Mr Arthur looked like he was the one begging a loan for his daughter’s life-saving surgery.
‘Events will take their course, Mr Hopper.’
‘That’s Hoffer.’
‘Of course, Hoffer.’ Arthur gave a smile like a toad at mating time. ‘But it’s a bit early yet to expect any results, as I say.’
‘Say whatever you like, shithead, but listen to this.’ Hoffer leaned forward in his cramped chair. ‘I don’t have to play by any rules, so if you want to be able to leave your office every lunchtime and evening without having to check both ways for baseball bats, I suggest you give events a kick along the course they’re taking.’
‘Now look here — ’
‘I am looking, and all I see is something I try not to tread in on the sidewalk. And I don’t mean manholes. Now get hassling head office for all you’re worth, and meantime let me see what you’ve got here behind the scenes.’
Arthur’s top lip was glistening with sudden perspiration. He looked like he’d lost about twenty pounds in stature.