by Chris Ryan
"Puerto Banus," said Alex.
"Very nice. Come over on the 1615?"
Alex nodded, helped Dawn on to a bar stool and with due consideration for his lacerated thigh, sat down himself "Exploring the area, then?"
The features were pufFy with alcohol, but the eyes were shrewd. And beneath the gross brick-red body, Alex saw, were the remains of a disciplined physique.
On the broad forearms were the marks of tattooes removed by laser.
"We wanted to get away from things for a few days." Alex winked at Dawn and allowed his hand to stray to the dressing on his cheek.
"And as you can see, I've had a bit of a bang-up in the motor. We reckoned we were due some quality time."
"Well, you've come to the right place for that." The fat man's eyes flickered over the knife wounds.
"What game you in, then?"
"Den, love, leave the poor man alone," said the woman, clattering over to the optics in her high-heeled mules.
"He hasn't set foot in here more'n two minutes and already you're.
"No, it's OK," said Alex.
"I'm a physical training instructor. And Dawn, well, Dawn's one of my best customers, aren't you, pet."
She giggled.
"I hope so."
This was the explanation that they had agreed on. If pressed, the suggestion was to be that Dawn was mar ned to someone else.
The fat man nodded and returned to the football, shaking his head at intervals to mark his disapproval of Arsenal's failure to wrest control of the game from Sturm Graz. As the final whistle blew he swung round on his bar stool and extended a large hand to Alex.
"I'm Den. Big Den, Dirty Den, Fat Bastard, whatever." He moved behind the bar and slapped the woman s tight, white-denimed rump.
"And this is Marie. Pull us a bevvy, love.
"Leave off! And for Gawd's sakes put on a bleedin' shirt." The woman reached for a lager glass and winked at Dawn.
"He wouldn't stand for it if I went about with my chest hanging out - I don't see why I should when he does!"
"When you've got a body like mine," said Den, 'you should share it with the world."
He emptied a half-glass of Special Brew in a single swallow, slapped his vast belly, reached for his cigarettes and leant confidentially towards Dawn.
"You know, I'm known locally as something of a fitness guru," he murmured.
Dawn giggled again.
"Well, I approve of your gym," she said, looking around her at the football pennants and the signed Eas tEnders posters.
Other customers began to arrive. Alex and Dawn nursed their drinks at the bar and listened to the amiable banter around them. Everyone else, it was clear, was a regular. Equally clear was that this unremarkable beach bar was a meeting place for expatriate criminal aristocracy. For the most part they were expensively if a little garishly dressed. The women looked a lot more like Marie than Dawn, favouring bleached-blonde feather cuts and uncompromising displays of orange cleavage. The men went for Ross Kemp buzz cuts pastel leisure wear and extensive facial scarring.
Den acted as host, drinking steadily and determinedly himself and ensuring that others' glasses were full. To Alex there seemed to be no clear line between paid for and complimentary drinks. No money was demanded of him and he assumed that he and Dawn were running up a tab.
At nine o'clock on the dot the Dunbars appeared, nodded courteously to Dawn and Alex, shook hands all round, drank a whisky and soda and a gin and tonic respectively, and left.
"The old boy flew Spitfires over the Western Desert," Den told Alex afterwards.
"Ten confirmed kills. Now he's living on twenty-five quid a week. I let him run up a tab and then cancel it when Remembrance Sunday comes round. Least I can do."
Alex nodded.
"I get him talking sometimes," Den continued, lighting a cigarette.
"Dogfight techniques. Aerial combat. And I tell you, get him on to all that stuff and you see the old hunter-killer light come back into those eyes. Know what I mean?"
Alex nodded again. He could feel the ephedrine now, racing through his system. Beside him Den ashed his cigarette and took a deep draught of Special Brew. The big man was sweating. Behind them the wives shrieked, Dawn among them.
Alex excused himself He needed a piss.
Edging through the crowd he made his way outside into the neon twilight and peered around. By the palm trees would do. Behind him he heard feet crunching on the shingle some other bloke on the same errand, he guessed.
Then something determined in the tread some grim regularity told him that it wasn't. As he half turned, glimpsing a heavy-set silhouette topped with the shine of a shaven head, a massive forearm locked chokingly round his throat.
"Forget the fitness bollocks, chum, who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want?"
The voice was low almost a whisper. Alex struggled desperately to break free and lashed back with heels and elbows. The blows landed on flesh and bone but without result. The arm at Alex's throat was as solid as teak and tightening.
Pinpoints of light appeared before his eyes and there was a rushing at his ears. His attacker clearly didn't expect an immediate answer.
It was probably the ephedrine that gave Alex the extra couple of seconds of consciousness in which his scrabbling fingers found the other man's crotch.
Grabbing a sweaty handful of trouser, he clamped his left fist tight over the other man s scrotum and squeezed with all the force he could muster.
A high-pitched gasp of pain sounded in his ear and the arm at his throat loosened a fraction. Enough for Alex to whirl around, still clutching and twisting the other man's groin in his left hand, and hammer two rock-hard punches into his lower ribs with his right.
Evading a furious, windmilling series of counter-punches Alex staggered back, gagging for breath. He could see the man clearly now, a muscle-bound enforcer with a spider's-web tattoo inked across his thick neck. Alex had vaguely registered him in the bar earlier. The tattoos were certainly prison work.
His face distorted with pain, the gorilla advanced on Alex, who backed away fast. This wasn't about interrogation any more, it was about revenge. At that moment a slender figure rose from the shadows beside the entrance and a jet of spray cut the air.
The enforcer roared with the unaccustomed shock, pain and anger. His hands clamped themselves to his eyes, and Alex took advantage of the moment to kick him as hard as he could in the balls. With an agonised sigh, the man crumpled to the shingle.
"Can't leave you alone for a moment, can I," said Dawn, stepping into the light from the neon sign and returning the Mace to her bag with a self-satisfied smile.
"I guess not," said Alex, his heart pounding with adrenalin. He looked down at the groaning figure at his feet.
"Did you follow me out?"
"Put it like this I thought all that traditional East End hospitality was a bit too good to last."
"Well... Thank you!"
"What the bloody 'ell's goin' on 'ere, then?"
Framed in the bar's entrance was Connolly, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. From the surprised look on his face the scenario was not at all the one he expected. I was supposed to be the one on the ground, thought Alex. Begging for mercy and admitting to being a police officer, presumably.
Connolly's look of surprise was quickly suppressed and he gave the fallen man a brisk kick in the guts.
"Get up, yer big fuckin' nelly!"
The enforcer writhed and Connolly turned concernedly to Alex.
"Sorry, chum, was Key here being impertinent?"
"He asked me a question and then tried to strangle me before I had a chance to answer.
Connolly shook his head, marched into the bar and returned with a jug of water, which he emptied over Key's head.
"You just can't get decent help for love nor money these days..."
Slowly and unsteadily Key dragged himself to his feet, clutching his groin. His T-shirt was sodden and a dark orange stai
n covered the left side of his face, where the Mace pepper spray had struck him. He managed a rueful grin, his eyes still streaming, and extended a shaky hand to Alex.
"Sorry, mate, overreacted a bit there!"
"No problem," said Alex, amazed that the man was able to stand at all. Now that the adrenalin from the fight was ebbing away the stitches on his own face were beginning to throb.
"All friends again?" asked Connolly with a dazzling smile.
"Marvellous. Key, take the lady inside, open a bottle of champagne the Moat, not that dago muck and make her comfortable. And wipe yer boat race while you're about it!"
The gorilla nodded meekly and signed that Dawn precede him through the swing doors.
"I'm sorry about that, mate," said Connolly, turning back to Alex.
"But you'll understand I've got to keep an eye on the security side of things."
Alex nodded.
"You're not Old Bill, I know that much. But you're something. That's no sunlamp tan on your hands and neck, any more than those are car crash injuries on your face and arm. And I didn't see the rumble just then, but..."
"Stevo sent me," said Alex quietly.
"I didn't want to alarm Marie."
Connolly emptied his glass.
"Stevo? I don't know any Stevo."
"Jim Stephenson from "B" Squadron in Hereford. That Stevo. I'm Regiment, Den."
"Go on."
"I'm in "D" Squadron. Seconded to RWW, like you were.
"So when did you join?"
For five minutes Connolly subjected him to a series of questions about Regiment personalities, extracting details that only an insider would have known.
He slipped in a trick
VI
question, asking if that idle short-arse Tosh McClaren was still around and Alex confirmed that yes, Tosh McClaren was still around, and he was still 6 foot 2 tall.
After a time, Connolly appeared satisfied that Alex was who he said he was.
Sensing this, Alex looked him in the eye.
"Listen, Den, I'm not trouble, OK? I just want to talk."
Connolly stared at him in silence. He looked tired, pufFy-faced and a little sad.
And strangely vulnerable, thought Alex, for a man who had once been known as the SAS's toughest
NCO.
"You're not a talker, son, you're a shooter. It's written all over your face."
"I'm looking for someone, Den, that's all. Help me and you can rest easy about the Park Royal job. No more cover stories, no more looking over your shoulder for the cops."
"What the fuck's the Park Royal job?"
"Den, I'm family. Trust me.
"Oh, yeah? So who's the girl? Well handy with the Mace, it looked like."
"She's just a girl. Nothing to do with anything."
Den stared at his empty glass in silence, flipped his cigarette into the gathering darkness and nodded. For a moment, behind the flushed features, Alex saw the taut wariness of the Special Forces soldier. Then the dazzling smile returned and a large hand was placed on Alex's shoulder.
"Come on, son, we re wasting good drinking time. Tonight's on the house, yeah?"
He steered Alex back inside and moments later Marie was sliding Alex a glass of champagne and a shot-glass of Irish whiskey. Someone, to applause and laughter, began to sing "My Yiddisher Momma'.
Some time later Dawn reappeared beside him. Her cheeks were flushed and she seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself Under the circumstances it seemed natural for Alex to slip his arm round her waist, and for her in response to incline herself against him. For a moment he felt the soft pressure of her breast against his side.
"Thank you," he said again.
"That could have turned nasty, one way or another. How are you getting on with the gangster wives?"
She placed her champagne thoughtfully on the bar.
"They're good fun. I like them. Any progress?"
"I've dropped a name or two. Told him who I really am. Not who you are, though. Far as he's concerned, you're just my girl."
"Mm. Lucky me."
"The main problem is that he thinks I'm some sort of hit man. Possibly even come over here to whack him. He's very jumpy. I think the best thing I can do is to tell him the real reason I'm here and hope that calms things down."
"I agree. And this is looking like a rather serious conversation if I'm supposed to be some no-brain blonde bimbo." She pouted.
"Which I clearly am!"
He ran a finger down her cheek.
"It's just that you play the part so well."
"Now why am I suspicious of a compliment like that, I wonder?" she asked.
There was another burst of singing from the floor of the room. Someone had sat themselves at a piano and was banging out old Cockney songs.
"Are we within earshot of Bow Bells here, do you think?" mused Dawn, throwing back the remains of her drink.
"Basildon, maybe," said Alex.
"Not that I've got any quarrel with that, as an Essex man myself' Den Connolly suddenly appeared beside them, sweating and massive.
"Before I'm too pissed to understand a word you're saying," he asked Alex, 'who exactly was it you was after?"
Alex dismissed Dawn with a nod of his head and a pat on her dove-grey behind.
"Joseph Meehan. Code-named Watchman. You finished him for Box."
Connolly nodded.
"I ain't officially here," he said eventually, his words slurring.
"I ain't officially anywhere. But you know that."
Alex nodded.
"I know the score from Stevo. No one hears your name. Ever.
And if you can give me what I need you can rest easy about that other business."
"You gimme your word on that?" Connolly glanced meaningfully down at the assembled company.
"My friends'd be very pissed off if... They're my family now, y'understand -forget fuckin' Hereford, RWW, all that old bollocks."
Alex looked him in the eye.
"I give you my word."
Connolly pursed his lips and nodded slowly and vaguely to himself "Tomorrow. Lunchtime.
Bring your..." He gestured vaguely towards Dawn, who was whispering confidences to Marie.
"Meanwhiles, order anything you want. Open bar, like I said."
They left around 2 a.m. Not because Alex thought that Connolly might relent and talk to him that night, but because he felt that he needed to prove his credentials to the ex-NCO. He had to show proper respect. Leaving early would have been regarded as very graceless. So he had stuck around, downing drink after drink, and looking suitably impressed by the tales of blags, slags, grass-ups, fit-ups, bent coppers, unnumbered shooters and all the rest of the hard-man mythology.
Dawn meanwhile rested wide-eyed at his side, with her arm draped lightly round his waist. They looked, in short, like any impressionable young couple who happened to have stumbled into a bar full of criminals.
When the last goodbyes had been said and they'd finally reached the car, Dawn blinked hard several times and reached in her bag for the key.
"You OK to drive?" asked Alex blearily.
"I've actually drunk comparatively little," said Dawn.
"I always get rum and a Coke in that situation that way you can just keep your glass filled with Coke and no-one's the wiser.
Well, ephedrine or no, I'm well and truly bladdered, I'm afraid," Alex slurred.
"But mission accomplished, sort of' "Get in," said Dawn.
At the hotel they stood together for a moment in front of the open window. The port and the yachts were lit up now, and the sea was an inky black below them. A tide of drunken benevolence washed over Alex.
"You were great," he said feelingly, placing a hand on her warm shoulder.
"Especially Maceing that bonehead of Connolly's."
She smiled and inclined her cheek to his hand.
"You've already thanked me for that. I enjoyed myself What d'you think tomorrow holds?"
"Dunno. A
ll that lunch invitation stuff was just to buy himself time. The more of his hospitality he can persuade us to soak up, the less bad he's going to feel about us leaving empty-handed. At the moment he accepts that I'm kosher and you're just the sweet thing I happen to be travelling with, but he's worried about who comes after me. Where it's all going to end."
"What's he got to hide, Alex?" she asked gently.
"Enough."
"So what promises did you make him?"
Careful, Alex told himself woozily. She doesn't know about the Park Royal job.
"Oh, I strung him along..."
"You think he'll talk to you tomorrow?" Dawn asked sharply.
"Because tomorrow's all we've got. In thirty hours Angela gets back from Washington and any time after that..."
Alex nodded. She didn't need to spell out the danger that Meehan posed. Privately, he was far from convinced that Connolly would talk to him, but he couldn't see how else the situation could have been handled. The alcohol was pounding at his temples now and the knife cuts were beginning to pulse in unison.
"Why don't I get those dressings off?" she asked him.
"Let a bit of fresh air at your poor face.
Lie down on the bed?"
He could quite easily have removed the dressings himself, but lay there breathing in her jasmine scent and her smoky hair, and the faint smell of rum on her breath. She was OK, was Dawn, he decided. A bit of a bitch at times and the most irritating bloody driver he'd ever met, but what the hell? She had a tough job. He could live with her downsides.
And she really was quite seriously pretty with those cool grey eyes and that soft, secretive mouth. Without especially meaning to, and with a vague stab at discretion, he glanced down the grey linen front of her dress as she inched the dressing from his cheek.
She didn't seem to be wearing any sort of bra and he recalled with a rush of pleasure the feel of her breasts against him in the bar.
"That's not fair," she said reproachfully.
"What's not fair?"
"Here I am, doing my big Florence Nightingale number and all you can do is stare down my front, panting like a dog. You're supposed to be an officer and a gentleman."
"No one ever said anything about being a gentleman," said Alex.
"And I'm not panting, I'm breathing."
"Well, stop it. And shut your eyes, or I'll rip your ear in half again and you wouldn't like that, now would you?"