by Tony Parsons
‘Yes. But now we need to catch his bosses. The people who paid him to drive that lorry. So, for us – for the British police – it’s not over. But he is dead now. And I thought that you would want to know.’
He nodded.
I could see that he had believed the death of the man who drove the lorry in which his sister died would bring him some peace.
But it didn’t seem to be working.
He stared at the lights coming on in the meat market, not seeing them. I looked at my phone.
DEJAN JOVANOVIC – SERBIAN EMBASSY, it said.
My thumb hovered over the call button but I did not press it. My plan had been to turn the kid in and let his embassy ship him back to Belgrade. But I found that I didn’t have the energy. I slipped my phone into my jacket.
‘I’ve got to pick up my daughter,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to walk my dog. And before I do any of that I have to go to the gym because if I don’t go to the gym then I will not sleep tonight.’
He shook his head.
He didn’t understand what I was saying.
‘Go,’ I said, sounding like the foreman in charge of that two-million-pound hole in the East End.
‘Go where?’ he said, as we got out of the BMW.
‘I don’t know, do I? Go somewhere better than the back seat of a car with no wheels.’
Smithfield was the perfect place for an insomniac. This was, more than anywhere in the city, the neighbourhood that never slept. Young women and men were queuing outside the clubs on Charterhouse Street. The white lorries were arriving for the night shift at the meat market. It was a good place to find whatever you needed. But when we got out of the car, Nesha Novak followed me all the way to Smithfield ABC, keeping one hundred metres behind.
Fred was waiting.
‘You’re so lucky to be training,’ Fred grinned, as I headed towards the lockers. He nodded in greeting at Nesha, who had sat down on a bench.
Then we went to work.
One of Fred’s legendary circuits, guaranteed to possibly help you live forever and definitely get a good night’s sleep. Twelve rounds. Three minutes three times each on the heavy bag, the speedball, the upper-cut bag and the super-heavyweight bag. Ten burpies and ten press-ups during the minute break between rounds. No stopping, no rest.
‘Recover while you work,’ Fred said.
James Brown on the sound system. Fred punching the bags by my side, his old black gloves whipping against the Lonsdale leather with blinding speed as we were watched from the wall by Joe Frazier and Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammad Ali and Jack Dempsey and Jake LaMotta. Fred’s hall of fame.
The sweat pouring, the blood pumping, the exhaustion that you pass through to the reserve energy supply that you did not know was inside you, and then beyond that secret fuel tank to the real exhaustion where the sickness is in your stomach and your muscles are twitching with the build-up of lactic acid and your eyes sting with sweat, the place where you are not aware of the music, not aware of time passing, not aware of anyone watching. The red leather of my heavy eighteen-ounce Lonsdale gloves shining with sweat.
The buzzer sounded.
‘Time,’ Fred said. ‘Good. You’ll sleep well tonight.’
I grinned at my trainer. It was true.
Everyone else had gone home now.
But Nesha was busy picking up towels.
‘Is he thieving?’ Fred said.
‘I think he might be clearing up,’ I said.
Fred nodded, impressed.
‘What’s his story?’
I told him. All of it. The whole tragic mess. From saying goodbye to his sister in Belgrade to living in a dead car in the East End.
Nesha Novak had his arms full of sweaty towels.
He stared at us.
‘He’s not afraid of hard work, is he?’ Fred said.
21
The uniforms were doing something wrong.
They had been touring the language schools with the photographs of Rabia Demir in the company of the man who called himself Zlatko Draganov, but they were coming back with nothing.
So we tried it my way.
‘There are hundreds of English language schools in this city,’ I told Billy Greene as we weaved our way through the early morning crowds on Oxford Street. ‘Some of them are fully accredited places of education. And some of them are fronts for visa scams.’
‘You really think she’ll show up at a language school?’ Billy said.
I shrugged.
‘If not for her language skills, then maybe for her visa. If she is registered with a language school, it’s easier for her to get a student visa. Let’s try this place.’
There was an open doorway between an old denim store and a new coffee shop. A young man – early twenties, Somalian or that neighbourhood – was leaning against the wall next to it, a stack of glossy leaflets in his hand, half-heartedly offering them to the indifferent crowds. I held out my hand and he stirred, sort of sliding up the wall, and warily gave me a leaflet.
Oxbridge International Language School
Learn English with the elite.
Low low prices!
Help with accommodation, work permits and visas.
Excellence guaranteed!
The border of the leaflet was adorned with the flags of twenty nations. I nodded to Billy and we went up the stairs.
The Oxbridge International Language School had an unmanned reception desk and, beyond it, a tiny classroom with half a dozen desks. It was empty apart from an overweight man in his forties, vaping furiously, and a couple of exhausted-looking Asian women in their twenties. When they are not conjugating verbs, most of these language students are out working long hours for low pay.
‘You speak English?’ I asked the man, showing him my warrant card.
‘That’s a bloody strange question,’ he said.
‘How many registered students do you have on your books?’ I said.
‘I would need to check online.’
‘Ballpark figure.’
I watched him hesitate.
I indicated Billy.
‘PC Greene here would be happy to check your records, if you find your mind’s gone blank.’
The man licked his lips.
‘One thousand, nine hundred and twenty-seven,’ he said.
I looked at Billy and then back at the man.
‘So the Oxbridge International Language School has nearly two thousand students on its books?’
He nodded, studying the floor.
‘Look at me,’ I said.
He looked at me. I gestured at the handful of desks and chairs.
‘What happens if they all show up at once?’ I said.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘It gets rather crowded.’
‘I bet they all have a student visa, right?’
He looked hurt. ‘Of course!’
I took out my phone.
‘Look at this woman,’ I said.
I showed him the photographs of Rabia Demir and Zlatko Draganov. While he was studying them, I glanced at Billy and I saw that he got it.
This was the way our people had to play it with these language schools. Show them that their cosy little student visa scams would abruptly end unless we got some help with our enquiries.
‘Beauty and the beast,’ the man said, attempting a smile. Trying to bond with me.
‘Just concentrate on the woman,’ I said. ‘Forget the man. The man’s dead. Have you seen her?’
He studied the face in the seven photographs. I gave him the phone and he scrolled through the images himself, more slowly this time, trying to recall.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Rabia Demir,’ I said.
‘Turkish,’ he said. He handed me back the phone and shook his head. ‘We have some Turks but they’re mostly men. And she’s not one of the women.’ He smiled weakly. ‘I think I would remember Rabia.’
I gave him my card.
‘If she shows up, you call me. And if I don’t
hear from you, my colleague here will come back to work out how you manage to squeeze two thousand students into a classroom the size of a telephone box.’
He took my card and nodded obediently, but I saw the doubtful light in his eye and I knew exactly what he was thinking.
There are ten million people in this city.
And I was looking for just one woman.
Keith Li called me as we were going down the stairs.
‘There’s a lorry,’ he said. ‘It’s been abandoned in Colindale. The place that was Oriental City. Do you know it?’
On either side of the millennium, Oriental City had been a massive Asian shopping centre located at the suburban end of the Edgware Road. Some people had called it the real Chinatown.
‘I know it,’ I said. ‘But I thought they tore that place down.’
‘The lorry is on the top floor of the old car park.’
‘Why are you telling me, Mr Li?’
‘It is the same vehicle that was recently parked outside the back of West End Central.’
Lee Hill’s lorry.
‘Who told you it was in Oriental City?’
‘Some friends.’ I could hear the impatience in his voice. ‘I am doing you a favour, Detective.’
But I didn’t feel like being grateful.
‘Why the hell did they call you instead of the police?’
Now I could feel him smiling at the other end of the phone.
‘They wished to speak to someone they can trust,’ he said.
Nobody could mistake what had once been Oriental City for the real Chinatown any more. It looked like the world’s forgotten shopping centre, a vast sprawl of empty parking spaces, abandoned shops and a food court where nobody had eaten in years.
‘What was this place?’ Billy Greene said.
‘It was an Asian shopping mall. Japanese-owned and then Malaysian. There was a supermarket. Some great restaurants.’
In a dreary corner of North London, it had once been an outpost of East Asia. My mouth watered at the memory of all the Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean and Japanese food that I had eaten here.
Keith Li leaned forward from the back seat. I had insisted on his presence and he hadn’t resisted.
‘Top of the car park,’ he said.
We drove to the top floor of the two-storey car park. Skateboarding kids scattered when they saw us coming. The lorry stood all alone in the far corner.
‘That’s Lee Hill’s ride all right,’ Billy said.
I looked at Keith Li in the rear-view mirror.
‘You’re never far away when a lorry gets dumped,’ I said.
‘Lucky for you,’ he said.
Billy Greene got out of the BMW and we watched him as he walked towards the lorry.
‘This has nothing to do with Chinese people,’ Keith Li said. ‘Whoever does these things, they don’t look like me.’ He nodded at my face as I glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. ‘They look like you.’
‘Maybe they don’t look like either of us,’ I said.
Billy Greene stepped up to peer into the cab.
He got back down again and shook his head at me.
Nothing.
I took out my phone and called Lee Hill’s mobile.
‘There was a spoof on the Internet,’ Keith Li said, savouring the word spoof as if it was one of his all-time favourites. ‘A picture of road signs supposedly in the north of England in both English and Arabic.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘Oh, people were very angry! I like this expression – make the blood boil. Wonderfully descriptive! All that cold English blood boiling hot! The signs said, “Five miles – Rotherham”, in English and Arabic. “Ten miles – Leeds”, in English and Arabic. And so on.’ When he relished a phrase in English, he would pause to enjoy it. And so on. He liked that one, too. ‘Many people were very upset to see English signs also in Arabic.’
I got out of the car. He got out, too. I smiled at him.
‘But it wasn’t real,’ I said. ‘The signs in Arabic and English were all fake, right? Yorkshire does not have road signs that are in English and Arabic.’
He nodded.
‘Very good, Detective. It wasn’t real. None of it was real. It was all Photoshopped. This spoof. To cause mischief, shall we say? But in Chinatown – in the heart of London, not Colindale or somewhere similar, not out here in the sticks – street signs have been written in English and Chinese for fifty years!’
I stared at my phone as it called Lee Hill but I was remembering the street signs on Gerrard Street, Newport Place, and Lisle Street – those few short streets that made up London’s Chinatown. Keith Li was right. They were all in both English and Chinese.
‘The bilingual street signs in Chinatown are not Photoshopped,’ he said. ‘But nobody cares! And why not, Detective?’
Lee Hill’s number began to ring. I began walking towards the lorry. Billy Greene was trying the back door.
‘Because no Chinese ever put a bomb on the London underground,’ Keith Li said, keeping pace with me. ‘Because the Chinese mind our own business. Because we take care of our own. And that’s why they call me instead of you.’
Billy Greene was staring at the back of the lorry.
And from inside the vehicle, a phone was ringing in answer to my call.
‘Bust it open!’ I said.
Billy stood there helplessly for a moment and then picked up a half-brick and threw it, quickly jumping backwards when the brick bounced off the lock.
I cursed and ran back to the BMW, removing a pair of forge steel bolt cutters from the boot. An unmarked squad car pulled into the car park just as I was snapping the big metal lock on the back of the lorry.
Edie Wren was driving. Whitestone was in the passenger seat.
They were getting out of the car as the lock snapped open and Billy threw back the doors.
Lee Hill was suspended from the roof at the far end, hanging from a meat hook that was buried in the underside of his jaw. He had been a large man, and the metal roof sagged and creaked with the weight of his body.
I felt the bile rise up in me and even after I fought it under control, I could taste it in my mouth. It was more than shock. It was the bitter tang of guilt.
We all stared at the body of Lee Hill.
My boss broke the silence.
‘We’re going to need another driver,’ DCI Whitestone said.
22
‘Slip and rip,’ Fred said, his face between the pads he held on his hands in a high guard.
I threw a jab against his left pad, moved my head out of the path of his right cross, threw a right upper cut against his right pad, slipped his big right. We repeated the drill endlessly, until the only thing in my head was Fred’s mantra – slip and rip, slip and rip – until your body knew exactly what to do even before it received the order from your brain, embedding the knowledge in blood and bone and muscle.
Then I banged the bags.
Three minutes on the speed bag followed by ten burpies and ten press-ups in the minute break and then straight on to the heavy bag.
‘Good,’ said Fred, nodding with approval.
I worked until the air was gone from me and I pushed through that invisible barrier to find the air that was on the other side, the air that the body stores for emergencies. And I worked until my eyes stung, blinded by sweat, and muscles in my legs and arms twitched with involuntary spasms and the sickness came, the feeling that you get on the edge of genuine exhaustion.
But I could still see him.
I could still see Lee Hill.
He was still there hanging on the end of that meat hook, the metal roof moaning and sagging in protest.
A buzzer sounded.
‘Time,’ said Fred. ‘Have a drink and then do your stretching.’
Nesha Novak walked past carrying a load of white towels for the washing machine.
After that first night, he had taken to living at the gym, his sleeping bag unfurled on top of a couple of yoga mats, paying his way du
ring the day by doing whatever was needed to keep Smithfield ABC running smoothly.
He nodded at me as I was stretching my abductors, one leg flat on a bench and the other on the floor, feeling the hamstring lengthen and relax.
‘There’s a man to see you, Max,’ Nesha told me.
Barry Warboys was standing by the ring, watching two young pros spar, an unlit cigar in his fist. The boxers in the ring only had a handful of fights between them. One of them, the tall rangy black kid, already had a loss on his record. The other one, a white kid who was smaller but wider and stronger, was having trouble with his hands. Their careers, in the hardest of professions, were under threat before they had really begun.
So they sparred furiously, loading up with heavy punches, trying to knock the other guy’s head off, both of them aware that they would know very soon if they were going to make a living at boxing, or if they were going to have to put the dream away forever.
I went over to Warboys, noticing his driver – Doherty – standing by the entrance to Smithfield ABC, still impeccably suited and gloved, magnificently out of place in a boxing gym.
Barry Warboys was watching the sparring with a horrible fascination. I stood by his side, remembering the photograph I had seen at the Black Museum, that black-and-white photograph of Paul Warboys in all his grinning pomp, posing in a boxing ring with a small boy wearing box-fresh shorts, vest and a pair of boxing gloves that were larger than his head.
I remembered the way the man and the boy both had their fists raised as if they were about to start fighting. I remembered Paul Warboys’ leering amusement. But most of all I remembered the terror on the face of his son, Barry.
‘This is the last place I expected to see you,’ I said.
Barry tore his eyes away from the sparring fighters.
‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t want to come into your place of work. I trust that’s not a problem?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘You asked me about my father’s finances. And I couldn’t give you an answer because I didn’t know. But now I do.’ He looked back at the ring. ‘My father’s money has gone, Detective. He may have made a fortune with his brother, but it’s long gone.’
‘How do you know?’