White Knight/Black Swan

by David Gemmell

  ‘You’d better wait here, son,’ he said. ‘They’ll have the wheels off if it’s left unattended.’

  ‘There’s nobody out in this weather, Sarge.’

  ‘There will be if there’s a profit in it.’

  He opened the door and heaved his large body up and out into the storm. His hernia still troubled him – despite the operation – and he didn’t run to the doorway. Fifty-four next birthday and almost thirty years of police work, and here he was facing retirement and nothing had changed for the better. The villains still owned the streets, and their reputations were sometimes better than his own officers’. Sometimes he wondered if it was all worth it.

  Is the world a better place, he wondered? Is it hell! It all went wrong back in the sixties when policemen stopped chasing villains and started rescuing bloody cats from bloody trees. That and a legal system that instructed judges and magistrates to restrict custodial sentences because nobody wanted to build more prisons. Cutbacks, political double talk, and an emasculated force. Be glad to get out of it, he lied to himself. He’d watched an old Sweeney episode last week where a villain confessed because he knew he’d get ten years for the robbery if he didn’t. Nowadays it would be three. Or maybe two – if he’d killed somebody. Like that kid last month. Stabbed a boy to death, and got two years’ youth custody. Twenty-four stinking months. Then he’d be out and some other poor mother’s son would die.

  Sure as eggs weren’t pigging snowballs.

  Dodds moved into the hallway and removed his cap. He was bald now, despite the strands of hair that swept from ear to ear, barely covering the cranium. He rapped at the door of flat four. It swung open almost immediately. Dodds replaced his cap and looked up. At six-foot-one he wasn’t used to feeling like a dwarf, but Bimbo had that effect on people.

  ‘It’s like Piccadilly Circus ’ere today,’ said Bimbo. ‘You’ll want tea, I suppose?’

  Dodds walked in and stared round the room. ‘You ought to get some pictures in here, Bimbo. It’s like a cell.’

  ‘Yeah. Texas Chainsaw Massacre posters.’

  ‘You mentioned tea. White, no sugar.’

  ‘I hear you bin ill,’ said Bimbo from the kitchen.

  ‘Gall bladder op, that’s all. Stones. Sodding painful.’

  Bimbo returned with a mug of tea. ‘You get that hernia done?’

  ‘Yes. Good as new.’ Dodds smiled. The last time they had arrested Bimbo he had laid out four officers and Dodds had stopped the violence by walking forward and saying, ‘Leave it out, son, I’ve got a bloody hernia and I’m not going to make it worse by wrestling with you. Get in the car and behave yourself.’ Amazingly the big man had obeyed instantly.

  ‘So whaddya want?’ asked Bimbo.

  ‘Just a chat. I been doing some research on you.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You know what an enigma is?’

  ‘Some kind of West Indian?’

  Dodds chuckled, then shook his head. ‘It’s a mystery, Bimbo. You are a mystery. Father unknown. Mother committed suicide in 1960. Barnado boy. In care at fourteen. Borstal at sixteen. First spell in the Scrubs at eighteen. Eight counts of GBH.’

  ‘Michael Aspel gonna come in, is he? Bimbo Jardine, This Is Your Life.’

  ‘Which brings us to Esther Jones. Registered drug addict at the age of seventeen. Attempted suicide two years ago. Slashed her wrists in the hallway. You got her to hospital. You visited her for a month. She lived with you for three months. Now she’s clean and a nurse.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘And Mrs Jerome. Nice work. But why the verbal to the officer?’

  ‘So that’s what this is about?’

  ‘Partly. Tell me something, why didn’t you lay into me when we took you in?’

  ‘You said you had a hernia.’

  ‘That’s what I mean by a mystery, son. Why the hell should that have mattered?’

  ‘I dunno. Where’s all this leadin’?’

  ‘Buggered if I know,’ admitted Dodds. ‘Except that I retire this year, and I don’t want to put you away again.’

  Bimbo didn’t know what to say. He finished his tea and took the mug to the kitchen, swilling it out under the tap. Dodds joined him, leaving his mug on the draining board. Bimbo washed it.

  ‘Why don’t you ditch that scumbag Reardon?’

  Bimbo shrugged. ‘He’s bin all right to me.’

  ‘He aint worth a light, son. He’s a toe-rag.’

  ‘You want another tea?’

  ‘No thanks. Stay out of trouble, son.’

  ‘I’ll do me best.’

  Dodds turned to leave, then swung back. ‘I take it Adrian Owen was the man with you at the hospital?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?’

  Jeremiah Andrews was eleven years old, and he didn’t lack pluck. But when five older white boys set after him, good sense dictated that he race home to the sanctuary of the estate, cutting through alleyways and across playgrounds, desperate to make the safety of Ironside Towers, where no white thug would dare to go. Jem was a fast runner, but, in his panic, he had not thought through his route.

  His enemies had. Two of them had sprinted across the waste ground and over the wall. Jem ran straight into them. He sent the first boy flying with a right to the chin, but the second youth hammered a fist into Jem’s stomach, doubling him over. Then the other three arrived and Jem found himself at the centre of a whirling torrent of fists and feet. He went down, but gamely grabbed someone’s leg and hauled himself up, only to be smashed from his feet by a blow to the chest.

  A voice bellowed and the whites scattered. Jem tried to rise, but fell forward on his face. Strangely the concrete seemed soft as a pillow. A hand touched his back. He tried to roll, and the hand helped him. His vision swam, then cleared enough to see a huge white man in a faded blue track suit kneeling over him.

  ‘Just lie there, son. Get your breath.’ The largest hand Jem had ever seen descended to his face, gently probing the bruises. ‘Take a deep, slow breath.’ Jem did so. ‘Any pain at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘l don’t think you’ve broken no bones. You wanna sit up?’

  ‘l feel a bit dizzy,’ said Jem, struggling to sit.

  ‘That’s only natural. You bin knocked about a bit, aintcha? You got a good right hand son. Like an ’ammer. Terrific shot that first one. He went down like he was poleaxed.’

  Jem was feeling better, and the pain seemed to fade. ‘Caught him good, huh?’

  ‘A regular Ali. He’d a liked to have seen that one. You do any boxing?’

  ‘Nah. No clubs round here.’

  ‘There’s one the other side of the green. You oughta try it.’

  ‘You a fighter?’

  ‘Nah. But I done a bit of ringwork years ago.’

  ‘I know you,’ said Jem. ‘You’re the runner, aintcha?’

  ‘I like to stay fit.’

  ‘Whass gowan on ’ere?’

  Jem looked up to see Silver and four of his henchmen. The boy stood.

  ‘I was in a fight. He helped me, man.’

  ‘We doan need no help. You get on home, boy.’ Jem moved back, but stayed within earshot. Silver was a tall man, wide shouldered and darkly handsome. He moved alongside the giant. But before Silver could speak Jem saw one of the other men, a newcomer called Ronald, step in.

  ‘We doan like you runnin’ across our turf. Find somewheres else,’ Ronald told the white man.

  The giant laughed, the sound full of contempt. His eyes raked the group. All were big men, their faces hard and cold.

  ‘Your turf, you piggin’ jungle bunny? Your turf’s in piggin’ Jamaica. Now get outta my face!’ The men moved forward but Silver waved them back. The big man hawked and spat then continued his run across the estate.

>   ‘Why you let him get away with that, Silver?’ asked Ronald.

  ‘I didn’t wanna see you get hurt, man. Anyways I kinda like him.’

  ‘He’s a bastard racist. An’ he work for that Reardon,’ said another man.

  ‘Doan let yourself get taken in by all that media crap, Thomas. We’re all bastard racists. You understand that? But that there Bimbo, he doan give a shit what colour you are. You step in his way and he’ll stomp you like a bug.’

  ‘You let him call me a jungle bunny,’ said Ronald.

  ‘It’s just a coupla words, man. That was just his way a sayin’ he doan give a good god damn.’

  ‘You gonna let him get away with it?’

  Silver laughed. ‘He done got away with it already. That’s why he’s off enjoying hisself and we’re standin’ around jawin’. You gotta understand somethin’, Ronald. Some men you can stop with a word. Some with a fist in the face. But him … you’d have to kill Bimbo, and killin’ aint my line. Keep away from him, he’s trouble. Big T. Trouble.’

  ‘He work for Reardon,’ said Thomas. ‘What happens when Reardon says to him to come after you?’

  Silver’s face lost its smile. ‘Then I kill him, man. But not before.’

  ‘l coulda taken him. No sweat,’ said Ronald.

  ‘Sure thing, man,’ said Silver, who glanced at Jem and winked.

  Stepney flipped the sign to ‘Closed’ and switched off the light. It had been a busy day and he’d taken over eight hundred pounds. An American woman had bought a Regency carriage clock, and a Dutchman had taken the Colt cap-and-ball pistol. Stepney slowly climbed the stairs to his flat and locked the money in the old iron safe hidden below the sink unit.

  Outside he could hear the happy sound of children playing near the rail tracks, high pitched giggling and enthusiastic squealing. Their laughter, normally so uplifting, struck him like a blow, reversing the alchemist’s dream, gold becoming lead. His shoulders sagged. Moving to the antique bureau he poured himself a stiff drink, single malt Irish whiskey, the best in the world, from the Bushmill’s distillery.

  ‘You are a long way from home, Heinrich,’ he told himself, remembering the days of his youth. Bavaria. Where the children would greet their elders with, ‘Gruss Gott, mein herr!’ God’s greetings. Where the winter on the mountains brought a smile to the face of God.

  And where the marchers in black had assembled in their scores of thousands to greet the new Messiah, who promised them glory and an unending Reich that would rule the world.

  That day would long live in the memory of Heinrich Stolz, the man now known as Stepney. He and Anna had walked upon the mountainside, hand in hand beneath an untroubled sky. Her beauty had surpassed the magic of the mountains, for her loveliness was fragile and transient, like a flower, doomed to shine then fail. And he had loved her.

  And he had failed her in the most terrible way.

  ‘You should have had the courage to die,’ he told himself, draining the tumbler, and refilling it.

  Looking up he saw his reflection in the antique oval mirror. There was no sign of Heinrich Stolz in the time ravaged features that stared back at him; the wispy white hair, and the wrinkled, sallow skin mocked his memories. ‘You have lived too long,’ he told the man in the mirror.

  Sipping his malt, Stepney returned to his chair and sat staring at the chessboard. Bimbo would never learn the game, for there was no subtlety in the man. How did the Americans say it? What you see is what you get. Yet still he enjoyed Bimbo’s company. Such an innocent! Stepney sighed. ‘The world needs more innocent men,’ he whispered. His thoughts drifted back to Bavaria, to the snow and the pines, and a magical Christmas in 1938. He and Anna had ski’d on Christmas day, and then made love in a cabin, with a bright fire burning.

  ‘Will you still love me when I am old and wrinkled?’ she had asked him.

  ‘As much as ever,’ he had promised her. He drank another malt, then leaned back in his chair.

  Such painful memories – only matched by the agony of the cancer that was killing him.

  3

  Adrian was close to tears. His hand hurt and itched beneath the plaster-soaked bandages. Everything seemed to be going so wrong. He had genuinely loved Alvin. It didn’t matter that the boy was lazy, and filled with the crazy belief that his art was touched by genius. For the first time Adrian had found someone with whom he wished to share his life.

  But, as usual, the fickle Fates had lifted him, only to dash him down again.

  Like the day his mother had died. No one had told the thirteen-year-old boy how ill she was. He carried her food tray up to her, and watched her grow thinner and thinner. Until one day his father had stopped him outside the door.

  ‘She’s gone, son.’

  ‘Gone? She can’t walk.’ And then his father had cried. Two months later his father too had gone. Hanging from a rope on the banister rail.

  Somehow Adrian knew it was all his fault. He was to blame for his mother being sick. She had always had to shout at him, and he had never been ‘a good boy’ who’d done as he was told. And what a disappointment to his father he’d been. He hated football. Wouldn’t box. Was useless at cricket. Then one day he was discovered behind the hut with Tony Bradshaw. That was the final straw for Dad. His son was a ‘bleedin’ fairy’.

  Within months both his parents were dead.

  Adrian had gone off the rails then. In care, and then caught as a runaway living with a man he had met at Leicester Square underground. At eighteen he and a boyfriend were found guilty of stealing a cheque and trying to cash it. Six months in the Scrubs. He would have gone mad there had it not been for Stan Jarvis and Bimbo.

  Now he had money, possessions, and a future seemingly untroubled by material wants.

  And without Alvin it didn’t mean a damn.

  Worst of all, he had found out at the club that Alvin was now living with a hairdresser in Acton, and that the affair had been going on for months. He was desolated. And that had made him stupid.

  Ever since the Body Spa had opened Adrian had been waiting for the local protection gang to make an appearance. He knew how the world operated and had already put aside an amount to pay. But the day the men called had been the day he heard about Alvin. There had been two men, both large and exceedingly butch. They had explained about their security operation and how it protected small businesses from vandals and undesirables. Eighty pounds a week. It was less than Adrian had put aside.

  ‘I don’t need any protection,’ he had told them.

  ‘You’d be surprised how much protection you need, squire. Bad customers beating up the girls, petrol bombs through the window. It’s not a nice area. Then there’s yourself. A faggot. Lots of people don’t like faggots. Harry here, for example. You don’t like faggots, do you Harry?’

  ‘Hate ’em,’ said Harry.

  ‘I think you had better leave,’ said Adrian.

  ‘Well, no hard feelings, Mr Owen,’ said the man, offering his hand. Adrian accepted the handshake. The man grabbed his fingers and pulled him across the desk. Then Harry rammed a brass paperweight down on the back of his hand, and Adrian heard the bones break.

  ‘Think it over, Mr Owen. We’ll be back tomorrow.’

  Melanie had come in as soon as they had gone. She closed the shop and took him to hospital. Then she rang the Stag and left a message for Bimbo. He had arrived early the following morning and was waiting outside the Body Spa when she stepped out of the taxi.

  The front reception area was cold and Melanie switched on the central heating. ‘You want a coffee, Bim?’

  ‘Ta.’

  ‘The girls won’t be in till around eleven-thirty. Not much of a morning trade.’

  ‘What ’appened, Mel?’

  ‘Adrian’ll tell you. I expect he’s out back already.’

  ‘I’m askin’ you, darlin’,�
� he said, softly.

  ‘Let’s wait for the coffee to heat up,’ she answered, and they sat in silence, waiting for the red light to blink on the mahogany-fronted machine. Some three minutes later the three-pint jug slowly began to fill. Melanie busied herself opening the post and stacking the letters into separate piles – bills, accounts, settlements and personal. Finally Bimbo cleared his throat. She looked up. ‘Sorry, Bim. I’ll get the coffee.’

  She handed him a mug and pulled up a chair beside him.

  ‘Two men come in to see Ade yesterday. You could see they were trouble. Hard bastards. I left the intercom on and I heard them ask for £80 a week. I know Ade had £100 a week set aside. Anyway he told them he wouldn’t pay and they broke his hand. He’s not himself, Bim. Alvin aint coming back. He’s living with some hairdresser. It’s tearing Ade apart. He says he still won’t pay. I mean that’s not sensible, is it? Everybody pays. I think he wants them to hurt him. And they will. Really bad.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Bimbo.

  ‘I can’t explain it no better, Bim. It’s like he’s got nothing left, you know? Last night he went for a drink at the Barley. I got a call at ten from a mate. She told me he was trying to pick up a biker, for God’s sake!’

  ‘He was lucky they didn’t kill him.’

  ‘That’s what I mean! He wants to get turned over. Maybe he thinks Alvin’ll come back if he gets hurt. I don’t know. I tell you what, though, he’s better off without that spongeing little queen. I didn’t like him at all. But Ade is a nice bloke. And God knows there aint many of them about.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘Get him to pay. He won’t even notice eighty quid.’

  ‘Yeah. You know who they are?’

  ‘No. There’s a big one. Harry. Near as big as you. It was him broke the hand. Then there’s another one. Got a beard and a gold ear-ring.’

  ‘When they coming back?’

  ‘Today sometime.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk him into payin’.’

  The intercom buzzed. ‘Any coffee out there, Mel?’ came Adrian’s voice.