by Jeff Gulvin
Young Young looked at him, looked away again and chewed his lip. He rolled the cigarette around the edge of the ashtray. ‘There’s a small hotel in Neasden. Hill Lane by the park. Stepper’s got the owner in his pocket. Crack gets washed there.’
‘Who by?’
Young Young pursed his lips. ‘White guy,’ he said slowly. ‘Hangs out in the National on Saturdays. Ginger Bill. Got red hair he has.’
They took him back to the custody suite and the sergeant accompanied by two other uniforms escorted him back to his cell. At the door Young Young paused and looked at Jimmy. He raised a fist, broadside. ‘No-one ever hit me like that. Respect, man. Respect.’ Jimmy nodded once.
Eilish sat in the passenger seat of Stepper-Nap’s car. They were parked on the wasteground off Oakwood Lane. Stepper was staring out of the window and frowning. ‘Young Young got nicked this morning.’
‘I heard it on the news.’ She looked at him. ‘Was bound to happen.’
Stepper made a face. ‘Wanted the Irish to take him. Cleaner that way.’
‘Young Young won’t yap.’
He looked sideways at her. ‘You don’t reckon? Never could figure that fucker. Law unto himself.’
She shook her head. ‘He hates Old Bill worse than he hates you, baby. He isn’t going to talk.’
Stepper looked at her then, arm across the back of the seat. ‘So how come they took so much?’
She shrugged.
‘We promised Carter five.’
She nodded. ‘That was before he got shot. They figured you owed them, Stepper.’ She smiled then. ‘If they figure you owe — you pay — you know what I mean?’
Stepper wrinkled his mouth into a line. ‘Nobody stiffs me, Eilish.’
Eilish laid a hand on his arm. ‘Tell you what, lover. Why don’t you fly over and argue?’
Stepper started the engine and they drove back toward Harlesden. ‘Old Bill came to my house,’ she said. ‘When I was away. Apparently they found Young Young’s car by the park.’
‘He come to see you?’
She shook her head. ‘They talked to James, though — Murder Squad.’
‘What did the little shit tell them?’
‘He’s my brother, Step.’
‘What did he tell them?’
‘Only that I was in Ireland visiting my sick mother. It’s no bother. They’ve got him now haven’t they. I won’t see them again.’
Stepper chewed his fingernails, looking at her as he drove through the lights. ‘You were fucking him weren’t you.’
Eilish looked out the window.
‘Weren’t you.’
Still she did not answer him.
‘Why d’you do that, baby? Why you do that to me?’
She looked round at him then. ‘His dick was bigger than yours.’
She got him to drop her half a mile from her house and she walked the rest of the way, crossing the park by herself. The house was empty, another hour until the children got home. James was out somewhere, the job centre or someplace. Eilish plugged the kettle in and then went up to her bathroom. From under her bed she pulled out the travel bag and opened it. From inside she took a heavy paper bundle and unwrapped it. She counted fifteen thousand pounds that Cahal Barron had given her, onto the bed. Poor Stepper-Nap, she thought. He was such a fool.
From the kitchen she took a roll of clingfilm and went back upstairs. In her drawer beside the bed she kept a small screwdriver which she took with the money through to the bathroom. She closed the door and locked it, then squatted down on the floor and piled the money into two bundles. These she wrapped in clingfilm, round and round and round. She pasted the edges flat then held each bundle under the cold tap and watched the water roll off in globules. Towelling each one of them dry she set them down and began to unscrew the side of the bath. When this was done she manoeuvred the panel away and placed the cash in the space by the plumbing. Then she replaced the panel, re-set the screws and went back downstairs. The children came home at four.
Late afternoon and Vanner and Jimmy Crack drove the length of Hill Lane until they came to the hotel. ‘There,’ Jimmy said without pointing.
‘Seen it.’ Vanner looked over his right shoulder as he drove. A small block of flats rose in two storeys directly opposite. It was built on four concrete stilts with space for car parking beneath.
Jimmy was busy with a pad and pencil, writing down the number of the VW car parked outside the hotel. Vanner drove the length of the road and then turned. ‘What about the flats opposite for a plot?’ he said.
‘Go and ask shall we?’
They parked underneath and could see the front door of the hotel opposite. It was no more than two semi-detached houses, built in the thirties and knocked into one. It advertised bed and breakfast. Vanner got out of the car and they went inside the flats. A dirty chequer-board floor led to concrete steps with a metal banister.
‘Which one?’ Jimmy asked.
Vanner shrugged. He could smell the remnants of somebody’s curry as he started up the first flight. Two doors at either end of the landing. They went up the second flight and found two further doors. Jimmy looked left and right, moved his shoulders and knocked on the right hand door. Nobody answered.
They waited then Vanner moved to the other door and knocked again. No answer. They were about to go back down when they heard a crash then a man’s voice cursing from inside. The next moment the door was answered and Vanner looked at a man in his forties, tanned face, thinning hair and gold on his wrist. He was wearing a tight-fitting white bathrobe.
‘Yes?’
Vanner smiled at him. ‘Police,’ he said. ‘Could we have a word?’
The man looked at him then grinned broadly and rubbed a palm across his jaw. ‘Ye might as well—’ Irish voice—‘I was all done anyway.’
Jimmy squinted at Vanner and they followed him inside.
In the hallway they came across a fallen bicycle and the man showed them into a spacious lounge with wooden floors and a white rug in the middle of it. Glass-topped table by the window with two fading couches in white leather. A sound lifted from another room then a plump-looking, middle-aged woman came through in her dressing gown.
‘Iris,’ the man said. ‘My wife.’
‘Look,’ Vanner said. ‘I’m really sorry. We had … ’
‘Forget about it. We were finished.’ The man grinned broadly. ‘Tommy Mac,’ he said, offering a hand. ‘What can we do for you?’
Vanner showed him his warrant card and then explained what they wanted. For a moment the man was silent, chewing at the back of his hand. He glanced at his wife then his face cracked in a smile.
‘Surveillance is it—what cameras and everything?’
‘One camera. Video.’ Jimmy pointed. ‘In the window there. They won’t see anything.’
Tommy went to the window and half-lifted the net curtain. He squinted at the road and looked back at them. ‘You know you’re lucky you knocked on this door,’ he said. ‘I own this flat. The rest of them are leased.’ He jerked a thumb across the road. ‘Your hotel man. He owns them all.’
The Irish couple agreed to have a video camera set up in their window. Jimmy told them that he would set it up himself rather than have the Technical Support Unit stomping all over the place. ‘It’ll be nothing,’ he said. ‘Brown boxes. Look like I’m delivering a TV or something.’
‘Fine.’ Iris’s eyes were shining. ‘Just like Cagney and Lacey.’
Ellie sat in Vanner’s house in the darkness. She could not get Anne’s face, Anne’s words out of her mind. Everything had been so simple before she spoke to Anne. Why did it make such a difference?
Vanner. She remembered the first time she had seen him. Valesca, her friend, had told her about him on their break. This tall, black-haired policeman with thirty-odd stitches in his back. He had woken up and called a woman’s name. Ellie had had a glance at him while he was unconscious. Valesca pointed him out. His face had been grey and lined, black ha
ir, whitening a fraction at the temples. Delirious for a time, calling out and then silence. She had not seen him again till that night in the pub when he came in with Sid Ryan.
Again she thought of Anne, a strange, lost sort of woman. They talked so much these days and yet a few weeks before she had never set eyes on her. Why did it make such a difference?
Vanner never talked. Tonight he would drive up to Norfolk. She had to work, wanted to work and yet wanted to go with him. And in the same breath she did not. What if his father died? What would that do to him? Could she be there for him? All at once she felt very young.
Vanner came in at seven. Ellie got up from the couch and met him in the hall. ‘Where’ve you been? I thought you were going to see your father.’
Vanner rubbed his eyes. He had had no sleep since Wednesday. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘I’ll get a coffee and go.’
‘You can’t, Aden. You’re exhausted. Go in the morning.’
He thought about it then. ‘Today went on and on,’ he said. ‘Got a result this morning. Young Young, the one who killed Jimmy Carter. He gave us the wash house. We’re setting up surveillance.’
Ellie took his jacket. ‘Go in the morning. I’ll get you up very early.’
She lay alongside him, her hand on the flat of his stomach, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing. He lay still as death, eyes closed and sunk back in his head. She stroked his face and watched him. It was hard to believe he had killed somebody once. And then she rolled onto her side. She was twenty-five years old. Somehow it mattered. What would there be between them? He never talked of futures or families or anything. He just was. And yet a few weeks ago none of it would have mattered.
Fifteen
VANNER WENT TO NORFOLK in the morning. They woke early, made love and he left. The roads were empty and he drove north quickly, up through Stoke Newington and Tottenham and Walthamstow to the base of the M11 and then two lanes and no cars, he pressed his foot to the floor.
Time on his hands as he drove, too much time to think and look back and perhaps to wonder what might have been. He could smell Ellie on his skin. This morning had been soft and warm and full of the gentle loving that he had grown used to of late. But then he wondered at her questions — why now all of a sudden? And yet she was twenty-five, nearly fifteen years between them. What was she thinking — what sort of a future they might have together? And if she was — perhaps she was wondering what sort of a past there had been.
He shook the thoughts away however as the road unfurled into the flat lands around Mildenhall and beyond. Field and forest spilling away from the tarmac on either side, early-morning lorries thundering south on the other carriageway. He thought of yesterday and Young Young and the result with the wash house and none of it seemed to matter.
It was not yet nine when he hit Norwich so he ploughed through the centre of the city instead of skirting the ring road. As he passed the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital thoughts of his father’s condition lifted inside him once more. A doctor stood by the gates, white coat flapping about his knees, stethoscope draped from his neck, smoking a cigarette.
Vanner drove quickly down Grapes Hill and right and left up Aylsham Road and then out of the city towards the coast. He smoked a cigarette, drank briefly from a bottle of water and drove on.
At nine thirty-five he pulled off the road and parked the car on the gravel drive behind his father’s Metro. The air was clear and crisp and he could smell the sea in it. Sky blue, flat to the horizon, the wind took his hair as he stepped out of the car. He stood a moment and looked at the house, the sycamore tree beyond it and the squared spire of the church.
Anne met him as he got to the door and he kissed her. To think once he had avoided her eye. She took his bag and led the way into the echoing, wooden floored hall, with the banister rising sharply.
‘How is he?’ Vanner asked.
Her face was thin and grey and the lines showed against the skin for the first time since he had known her. Vanner laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Hard on you,’ he said.
She smiled and touched his hand with hers. ‘I’m all right, Aden. Come through, I’ll make you some tea.’
Vanner followed her into the flagstoned kitchen where already she had a fire burning. She looked round at him as he warmed his hands. ‘Central heating’s so inadequate,’ she said. ‘Big house like this.’
Vanner nodded. ‘How is he, Anne?’
She frowned. ‘So so.’
‘Worse than when I phoned?’
‘About the same.’
‘What does the doctor say?’
‘He’s old and his heart is weak.’
Vanner looked away from her.
She poured tea and passed him a cup which he held between both his palms, steam rising into his face as he sipped. Outside the wind chased itself through the branches of trees and he was reminded of the past, his youth and the cottage by the cliff he had not visited for a year.
‘Is he asleep?’ he asked her.
‘Why don’t you go and see.’
He took his tea with him and went down the hall to his father’s study where the bed was made up. The old man’s favourite room, with his weathered teak desk and ancient leather chair which had occupied many a tent in the desert. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, theology, mythology, philosophy. Novels: Greene, Hemingway, the plays of Arthur Miller. Vanner recalled reading Death of a Salesman in his teens and wondering if that might be his worst nightmare. His father lay on his back, hands by his sides under the blankets that were pressed and creased around him as if he had not moved so much as a muscle during the night. His face was white dust and his hair was very thin now, tousled on the pillow in wisps rather than waves. His eyes were closed and for one awful moment Vanner thought he was dead. He drew closer and as he bent he could make out the scant rasp of his breathing.
He sat on the arm of the chair and looked down at his father, long and thin in the bed. His face was leathery still although the flesh was weaker now and the ever-present tan of his days in the tropics was replaced by a wan and wasted look accentuated by age. Vanner sipped tea and watched him.
He did not wake up, seemed to be sleeping peacefully. For an hour Vanner sat and then a noise at the door made him look up. Anne gripped the handle in one hand and smiled at him.
‘Still sleeping,’ Vanner said.
She nodded. ‘He does a lot of that.’
‘I hope he goes like that, quietly, peacefully.’ He looked at her. ‘He deserves it.’
They went back to the kitchen and she dished him up a plate of bacon and eggs. He ate it although he was not hungry. When he was finished she poured more tea and he sat by the fire and lit a cigarette, exhaling stiffly into flames that curled about the logs in long lips of red.
‘How’s Ellie?’
He looked up at her. ‘She’s very young, Anne. I’m not sure we want the same things.’
‘No?’
He shook his head. ‘Having said that I wouldn’t know what she does want.’ He grinned. ‘Never asked her.’
‘What d’you think she wants?’
‘I don’t know. Husband, home, children.’
‘And you?’
He sat forward and flicked ash into the fire. He looked at the end of the cigarette. ‘Shouldn’t be smoking in here.’ He threw the cigarette into the flames and sat back. ‘I’ve got the job. It’s always been everything.’
‘You don’t think about Jane any more?’
He looked at her and smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t. Finally left her behind. Took me long enough.’
‘That’s good.’ She patted his hand. ‘Maybe you could start again. Somebody young and fresh like Ellie. Get it right this time.’
‘I’ve thought about it.’
‘But?’
‘I don’t know.’ He rubbed his eye. ‘Just lately she’s been different—or maybe she hasn’t and it’s just me being paranoid.’ He glanced at her. ‘Feels different though’
&n
bsp; ‘Has she said anything?’
‘Wants to know about the past. She talked about guns. Don’t know why. I don’t think she was aware that policemen carried guns.’
‘I didn’t know myself.’
‘Some do. Not all of the time.’
‘You did.’
‘Once upon a time. I’m still licensed.’ He took his wallet out of his pocket and showed her his pink ticket. ‘Glock,’ he said. ‘9mm. Used to be a Browning. Don’t know why I kept it up really. I just sort of did.’
‘All those years in the army.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose.’
‘Why’s she so interested in guns?’
Vanner shook his head. ‘I haven’t got a clue.’
His father woke at noon and Vanner sat with him for an hour or so. They talked sporadically but he was weak and his voice was thin and Vanner was filled with the terrible sense that he was fading. And with him a great chunk of his own life faded and for a moment or two he was terrified of where it might leave him. As the afternoon waned his father slept and Vanner just sat there watching him. In the evening he drove to the cottage.
He could hear the sea crashing against the groins on the beach as he left the car in the lane. He walked, as he had often done, the short distance to the drive and the chalet-styled cottage which was black against the horizon. Clouds had drifted in with the evening, rolling into smoky barrels under the stars which still glinted here and there where the cumulus was weakest. Gas-rig lights mottled the horizon. He stood at the end of the lawn and looked out. Somebody walked on the beach, he could make them out by the light of a torch. A dog barked and barked again. Vanner looked back at the cottage.
Inside it was very cold and the wood by the hearth was damp. He would not light a fire. He would not stay. Just to be here once more. He moved to the small room, which in times past had been his bedroom when they holidayed here, just the two of them. Cabin-style bed, hewn out of rough wood by his father and fitted into the alcove like a bunk from some ancient sailing ship. Many nights he had lain here, listening to the wind and rain pressing against the glass as if calling to him from some far and distant future. Here he stood now looking back down the shadow of the past and he was not sure of anything.