I knew where I was going to start. Prendergast had told me.
The Weaver’s Arms was fifteen minutes’ walk from our house, a little mock-Tudor building that had once been a neighbourhood pub among London terraces crowded back to back. When the back to backs were demolished and replaced by high-rise flats the pub had been left, sitting alone in its little scruffy concrete beer garden in a rolling sea of landscaped council lawn dotted with litter and dog shit. At this time of night it looked warm and welcoming from the outside, the yellow glow through its frosted windows making it look like a cosy English pub. All it needed was a few feet of snow to cover up the cracked stained pavement out front, and it would have looked like a Christmas card.
I pushed the door open and was immediately hit by a stink of sweat and stale spilt beer, and the racket of voices raised over a jukebox pounding out thirty-year-old music. The place was doing good business for a Tuesday night—half a dozen blokes my dad’s age were leaning on the bar, snorting and barking at each other, cackling at each other’s gags. Dotted around were knots of drinkers murmuring over halves of lager, and an enormously tall and skinny bloke in the corner was feeding coins continuously into a slot machine—the sort that would silently eat a tenner in change, but make an enormous noisy fuss when it paid out fifty pence.
Nobody looked at me twice as I approached the bar. I was underage, but with my height and build I could easily pass for eighteen. The problem was, I didn’t know the form. I rarely went into pubs—training was cheaper than drinking—and now I was here I didn’t know where to start. Which of these guys had been drinking with Dad a few nights ago? I cursed myself—I hadn’t even brought his photo with me. I had one on my mobile phone, but it was ancient, and the screen on my phone was crap.
“You’re Finn, aren’t you? Noel’s boy. I’m very sorry for your trouble.” The guy talking to me was Indian or Pakistani, a head shorter than me, incongruously dressed in a blue nylon quilted coat and fingerless gloves. I recognized him; he ran a newsagent’s on the Griffin Estate. He was clutching a pint glass half-full of lager and he was swaying slightly. That’s why all these old blokes were leaning on the bar—by this time of night they could barely stand up.
“Thanks,” I said. “Can I get you another?”
“No, let me,” said the newsagent. “A pint? Maureen, a pint of best for Noel’s son, here.”
Two old blokes nearest my end of the bar looked up, and I noticed their faces registered not just curiosity, but pleasure, like I had turned up to stand in for my dad.
“You’re Finn? The boxer? Your dad told us all about you,” said one, extending a bony hand. He was about sixty, I guessed, smartly dressed in a crisp shirt and freshly pressed trousers, like he’d just come off a golf course. The man beside him was ten years older, dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, looking like a student who’d been seriously overdoing the fags and booze.
“Very sorry about your dad. He was a good lad,” said Scruffy.
“It was awful, what happened,” said Smart Shirt. They each shook my hand in turn, and there was genuine compassion on their faces. “I’m Jack,” said the smartly-dressed one. “This is Phil”—pointing to the scruffy bloke—“and you’ve met Sunil.”
Sunil the newsagent passed me a pint. “Here—to your dad. A good friend, a great talker, and an amazing drinker.”
“Cheers,” I said.
We drank.
I was glad I’d eaten that pasta. As far as drinking was concerned I was a lightweight, and after my second pint I could feel my concentration wandering, and I cursed myself inwardly. I’d meant to drink slowly, nursing a half of lager and asking lots of questions, but Dad’s old drinking buddies kept buying me beer as if getting shitfaced was some form of therapy, which I suppose it is. They were falling over themselves to tell me what a great geezer my dad was, as if I’d never met him.
But in a way, I never really did know the Dad who went drinking. Right now, Sunil was telling some story I’d guessed he often told before, of how Dad had once hidden under a pub table from some huge bloke with Maori tattoos who claimed Dad had been knocking off his wife. While he told the story the other two butted in with what they thought were hilarious details. I’d been trying to be subtle, but I thought if I didn’t get to the point soon I’d end up with my arms round these guys singing along to Frank Sinatra on the jukebox, like those ancient old girls in the far corner, screeching like foxes fighting over bin bags.
“Wasn’t my dad here a few nights ago?”
“Which night was that?” They frowned at each other and scratched their heads as if I was asking them to recall their earliest memory. “Friday?” said Jack. “I wasn’t here, the wife was coming out of hospital—”
“The night before last,” I said. “Sunday.”
“That German bloke,” said Phil. “You were there, Jack, he bought you that cigar.”
“Oh right—Hans,” said Jack, brightening.
“Hans?” I asked.
“A journalist,” said Sunil. “From Suddeutsche Zeitung.”
“Why was a German journalist talking to Dad?”
“He was doing a story on the Guvnor. Noel said he was too, and they were sort of comparing notes,” said Phil.
“What did this guy Hans look like? What age was he?”
“Forties?” shrugged Phil.
“Bit under your height, pretty fit as far as I could tell,” said Jack.
“Generous,” said Phil. “He bought drinks all night.”
“Blond hair,” said Jack. “Great English.”
“And he could hold his drink,” said Sunil. “He must have had, what, twelve vodka and oranges? You’d never have known.”
That rang a bell. Oh yeah, Delroy, who ran the boxing club. He didn’t like booze that much, but if he had to fit in and look like he was getting pissed, he would let everyone think he was drinking vodka and orange. But it was just orange juice. Unless you taste it, you can’t tell there’s no vodka in it.
“Did you tell the police about this guy Hans? When they came asking about Dad?”
“They didn’t seem to think it had much to do with anything,” shrugged Jack. “Here, finish that pint and we’ll have another.”
“What about the Guvnor? What did Dad tell Hans about the Guvnor?”
There was a tiny hiccup in the flow of conversation. Phil pulled his nose. Sunil sipped his pint.
“He told him not to ask questions,” said Jack at last.
“Why not?” I said.
“Because you never know who’s listening,” said Sunil.
“You don’t mess with the Guvnor, that’s all,” said Jack. “We told your dad that, he didn’t care.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know who’s listening?”
“McGovern owns businesses all over West London,” said Sunil. “Strip joints, casinos, restaurants, even dry cleaners. For all we know, he might even own this place.”
“And the less said about it the better,” said Jack firmly. He pointed at my glass. “What’s that, bitter?”
“My dad was writing something about McGovern,” I said. “I was wondering if that was why he was killed.”
Jack sighed, looked away. Phil leaned forward. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and his stubble glinted grey.
“Finn,” said Phil, “If your dad pissed off the Guvnor, and he sent someone to sort your dad out, no one will ever be able to prove it. Doesn’t matter in the end if he did or he didn’t. You go around telling people the Guvnor had your dad killed …” He plonked down his glass, as if he’d gone off beer suddenly, and rose unsteadily to his feet. “I’m starving. I’m off to find a kebab.”
“Missus will be expecting me, and all,” said Jack. He gulped down the last of his pint.
“I have to be up at six,” said Sunil. “It was good to meet you, Finn. Take care, yeah?”
“Yeah, take care,” said Phil, as he pulled on a greasy Army greatcoat.
“See you around,” said Jack, slipping int
o a smart blazer. He clapped my shoulder, waved to the barmaid and headed for the door. The other two did the same.
I let them go.
When I shut my front door the sound echoed through the house like I’d slammed it. It was colder inside than out; we had central heating, but Dad hated switching it on. “Put a bloody jumper on, if you’re cold,” he’d grunt. Actually he felt the cold worse than me, and would sometimes sit watching the telly in a greasy old sleeping bag with a woolly hat on his head, like a dosser in his own living room. I certainly couldn’t switch the heating on now; I’d never even opened a utility bill, I didn’t know how much we used to pay, or how we paid it. I pulled out my wallet. One twenty-quid note left. How long would that last? I knew Dad’s wallet was in that box of effects Prendergast had brought back, and I knew the PIN for his bank card, but I had no idea how much money was in Dad’s account—not much more than a hundred quid, I guessed. And wouldn’t his account be frozen, now that he was dead? Or would the bank even know he was dead, unless I told them? I didn’t think they’d do me for fraud for spending my dad’s money. But most of that money was Government benefits. If nobody told the DSS Dad was dead they’d keep paying out, but as soon as they learned the truth, they’d ask for their money back. And unless they were feeling generous, or they lost track of the paperwork, they’d quite likely demand interest or prosecute me. Or both.
I had about a hundred and fifty quid saved up from my job, stashed away in a Post Office account Dad had opened for me years ago. When he was alive, that had seemed like a lot, but now … I’d call that social worker, Kendrick, in the morning, I decided. At the very least she’d be able to tell me what I should be doing next, as far as finances were concerned—every day there seemed to be more things to worry about. I thought I’d been the practical one, looking after my dad. I’d never been aware of all the boring grown-up shit he’d handled, and never discussed.
I put the kettle on. It was too late for tea and coffee but there was some just-add-hot-water powdered soup in the cupboard that Dad used to buy because it was cheap. I’d turned my nose up at it whenever he’d offered to make me some, but now I thought it would warm me up, at least.
I wrapped my hands round the hot steaming cup while my laptop wheezed into life, its little hard drive rattling away like a matchbox full of ants. Eventually the desktop appeared with a tinny fanfare. I’d never bothered with a password, because I’d never had anything I was that desperate to hide, and anyway I found it a huge pain in the arse to enter one. All that appeared on the screen was a row of dots, and I could never tell which character I’d gotten wrong or how I’d screwed up.
Now I opened a browser and carefully typed “McGovern, organized crime” into the search engine box. My finger hovered briefly above the Enter key. I found myself thinking, what if the Guvnor sees me Googling him? Then I felt stupid, as paranoid as those old pissheads in the Weaver’s Arms. As if McGovern didn’t have better things to do than watching all of the Internet to see if his name came up. I stabbed the Enter key.
Lots of hits, pages and pages. The ones at the top were newspaper articles. I sighed; this was going to take me for ever. But I started clicking.
It was weird. McGovern’s name, and his nickname, seemed to crop up in loads of newspaper stories, with lots of waffle about his underworld connections and his property empire, but it was hard to find any clear details. Once McGovern had even been summoned to appear in court, charged with tax evasion, but all the charges had been dropped when paperwork had mysteriously gone missing. If McGovern had nobbled the case somehow, nobody dared to suggest it. Maybe the newspapers were scared of being sued for libel, or maybe the Guvnor had other ways of handling unfavourable publicity.
I’d only managed to read three articles and my eyes were hurting with the effort. I thought I’d try one more click, and landed on a blog calling itself The Inside Duff, claiming it had all the “gen” on the London underworld. According to this blogger, McGovern was involved in every major crime from the Great Train Robbery to 9/11, and anyone that had ever crossed him had ended up buried under major architectural landmarks in London, because McGovern owned most of them.
The blogger tried to sound outraged and disgusted, but even I could tell he secretly admired McGovern. Born to working-class Irish parents in Northolt, the Guvnor was a diamond geezer and family man who—according to this blog—never hurt anyone but other criminals, gave shitloads to charity and never boasted about it, and was too smart and too ruthless to ever get caught. There was even a blurry picture of his house in north-west London—a huge tacky palace that made the average Premiership footballer’s mansion look like a garden shed.
The story my dad had been writing didn’t flatter McGovern this way. In his script The Boss was a thug who had risen to the top of the shit heap by being more vicious than any of his rivals. The script wandered around the point, yeah, but Dad’s version of McGovern seemed a lot more convincing than anything I had read on the Net.
I realized I hadn’t closed the curtains. When I came in I’d turned on the lamp in the corner, but apart from that the only light in the room came from the screen of my laptop. When I looked out the darkened window my reflection was brighter than anything outside; my bulk hunched over my laptop, squinting at the words. I blushed, wondering if any passers-by had noticed my lips moving as I read. Or whether anyone was watching me from the inky shadows outside. I got up and tugged the curtains shut, then headed for the front door and locked it too. The back door I had locked and bolted before I left for the pub. Of course, I realized, my dad’s keys were still missing. OK, no one could come in while I was here, but I couldn’t bolt the front door—there was a big bolt fitted to it, but the door itself had warped so the bolt didn’t line up with the doorframe any more.
In fact, I realized, there could be someone in the house right now, someone who’d come in while I had been down the pub. Someone who could have crept up behind me while I sat at the table reading. I stood still and listened. Not just listened; I tried to feel if there was anyone else present. But I didn’t hear anyone, and I didn’t sense anything. The house was empty apart from me, and I was alone. I suddenly felt a twinge of self-pity, and just as quickly stifled it, mentally screwing it into the carpet with my heel like a cockroach. None of that shit—not now, not ever.
I climbed the stairs, cleaned my teeth without looking at my reflection, left my clothes in a heap on my bedroom chair and crawled under the covers.
four
“Social Services.”
“Hi there … um … I’m looking for someone—Elsa Kendrick?”
“What’s this regarding?”
“My father died recently, and I’m seventeen.” I winced. I wasn’t making any sense—I sounded like a five-year-old who had dialled 999. “Um—I need some advice on managing money and that sort of thing, and she said I should call her, if I—”
“Hold, please.”
Thirty seconds of electronic tinkling followed. I glugged the last of my instant coffee. It had a sour tang—that milk was definitely on its way out. I’d have to go shopping. I hated shopping.
“Social Services.” A different voice, another woman—this one in her twenties, I guessed. It was only 9:20 in the morning but already she sounded harassed and tense.
“Hi, I wanted to speak to Elsa Kendrick?” I didn’t want to have to start explaining myself all over again.
“Elsa’s on leave at the moment, can I help?”
“Oh, right …” Bollocks, I thought. Here we go again on that bloody merry-go-round, a different face every day.
“Um … any idea when she’ll be back?”
“I’m afraid not. She’s away indefinitely.” What the hell happened to her? I thought.
“Sorry, when did she go on leave? I spoke to her yesterday. I thought—”
“Yesterday? Elsa was sus— I mean, she went on sick leave two months ago.”
“Wait, did you say she was suspended?”
�
�I’m sorry, was there something you wanted? Maybe I can help.”
“Red hair, mid-thirties, right?”
“Sorry, who am I talking to?”
“Where does she live, do you know?”
“I can’t give out that sort of information. Look, if there’s something you need, tell me what it is and I’ll see if I can help. Otherwise I’m sorry, we’re very busy.”
“It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”
“Can I take a name and number? Someone will call you back.”
“No. Forget about it. Thanks.”
I hung up. They wouldn’t have called back anyway, they never did. I stared at my mobile as if it might flash up an icon telling me my call had got me nowhere. If Elsa Kendrick was on sick leave, why did she come round here with a bunch of Social Services leaflets? Asking questions about Dad, and about where my mother was? Maybe she was in the phone book …? Unlikely. A social worker wouldn’t let her home number be listed, or she’d be pestered all day and night by cranks and drunks and weirdoes and the plain desperate. If I wanted to find Elsa Kendrick I’d have to think of some other way.
When the phone rang in my hand I nearly dropped it. The word WORK flashed up on the screen as the handset vibrated. Shit—Andy.
“Andy, hey.”
“Finn, good morning, how are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks, all things considered.”
“That’s good, that’s good. We heard about what happened. That’s really terrible, we’re really sorry.”
I was impressed. He sounded almost human. Damn it, I thought, I should have called him about taking some time off, let him know …
“Andy, I’m sorry I haven’t been in to work, everything’s kind of screwed up, I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”
“That’s OK, that’s OK, that’s why we’re ringing up—we wanted you to know you shouldn’t worry about it.”
Why did he keep saying we, I wondered? Were there two of him or something?
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