The Fire Man

by Iain Adams

  ‘When’s it due?’

  ‘Next Tuesday or Wednesday with any luck.’ O’Connell turned to Smythson. ‘Any issues your end or are we ready to rock and roll?’

  If Smythson privately thought that the expression “rock and roll” didn’t suit his decidedly down to earth colleague, he certainly didn’t show it.

  ‘More or less,’ he replied laconically.

  ‘More or fucking less? What the fuck does that mean, Derek? Are we correctly covered or not? Have we got enough? Any nasty little ‘small-print’ issues that we need to worry about?’ He glared threateningly in Smythson’s direction.

  Smythson displayed no obvious sign of discomfort, although a seasoned observer like Alex Kanelos couldn’t help but notice the small slick of sweat on the man’s upper lip. Nonetheless, his voice was steady and under control as he responded to the Irishman’s provocation.

  ‘I’ve told you before, Mike: setting up the cover and making sure we aren’t exposed to any potential issues is, uh, never as straightforward as you always assume. But...’ he pressed on hastily before he received another blast from O’Connell, ‘the cover is all in place. The surveys were okay; I’ve managed to dodge a potentially difficult sprinkler problem and the increased sum insured on stock has been confirmed. The only problem I’ve got is having to do everything at arm’s length through those useless brokers. You’ve no bloody idea how tricky that is sometimes. Anyway, the short answer to your question is that we could be ready to go in a few weeks.’

  ‘How many weeks is “a few”?’

  ‘Three to four,’ replied Smythson, ‘but you do know we’re pushing it, don’t you? Every time we push the button early, we’re asking for extra scrutiny. If we can, I’d prefer to leave things for at least another three months.’

  ‘So, let’s say four weeks then,’ said O’Connell, ignoring Smythson’s clear concern. ‘You’ll sort it for us, Derek, as you always do.’ He flashed a grim, ironic smile in the direction of the standing man.

  ‘You know, Derek does have a point, Mike,’ said Kanelos. ‘What is the urgency? Maybe it would be better to take a little longer?’ He was conscious that his interjection would irritate O’Connell, but he was surprised by the mildness of the man’s eventual response.

  ‘I think we all know why the matter is urgent, Alex.’ He paused, almost theatrically. ‘Our friend, the amateur Sherlock himself: Mr fucking McRae.’

  George Gallo, the only one of the quartet who, it appeared, was outside the loop on this issue, looked at O’Connell quizzically.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘McRae, the fucking loss adjuster who tried to screw things up in Walsall, don’t you remember?’

  ‘Yeah, but...’

  Deciding to spare them all the agony of a lengthy question and answer session, Mike quickly brought Gallo up to speed. He looked suitably stunned.

  ‘So, are you telling me that after all this bloody time, he’s been creeping around Malinka?’ he asked.

  ‘He certainly has,’ said O’Connell, ‘and Alex isn’t totally certain, but he thinks he might have seen the guy hanging around at our last pub meeting. Now that really would be worrying!’

  ‘How the fuck would he know we were there?’ cried Gallo. ‘What’s his game?’

  ‘Let’s not get too hung up on the pub thing,’ said Kanelos smoothly. ‘I’m really not certain about that. I got the chap’s car number and Mike is getting it checked out, so we should know pretty soon whether it was him or not. In the meantime, we’ve sent him a little message to back off.’

  ‘What kind of message?’ asked Gallo.

  ‘Nothing much,’ replied Mike. ‘I just had the boy turn his flat over, but you don’t need to worry yourself about that. So, the answer to Derek’s original question is that we need to get on with things in case this idiot knows more than we think. I don’t see how he could possibly be aware of this project, but the sooner it is put to bed the better. Agreed?’ He glared intently at the others and one by one they gestured their agreement.

  Smythson felt distinctly uneasy. George Gallo might be satisfied with Mike’s dismissive answer but he wasn’t. The news of McRae’s interest in their affairs had disturbed him greatly. He was amazed that the adjuster was still pursuing his obsession. What depressed him still further was this latest reminder of just how wrong he had been to select McRae to be the fall guy in the first place. It was as well he had got the other selections right.

  For his part, Kanelos was also extremely concerned. He didn’t think a man who had been pursuing a crazy vendetta for over four years was likely to be deterred by a bit of mild vandalism. They might need to take drastic action and he didn’t welcome it. Mike was a ruthless operator; he would not hesitate to take whatever action was necessary. The thought of what the man was capable of disturbed Alex greatly.

  * * *

  Once their meeting was over, Kanelos –, keen though he was to get off to Marylebone for his lunch with the delicious but absurdly young Tara – hung back for a quick chat with Mike.

  ‘You’ve already got them, haven’t you? The results?’

  ‘Yup, how did you know?’

  ‘Just a wild guess. It was him at the pub, wasn’t it?’ He stared intently at O’Connell who was gazing blankly out of the window.

  ‘Yes, it was his car alright. Looks like he’s going to need dealing with. If we’d known he was at the pub in Oxford, I think something a little more meaningful than “redesigning” his flat might have been called for. Still, we can soon remedy that.’

  ‘Can’t we just buy him off, Mike?’

  ‘Maybe, but if not, we will have to do something else, won’t we?’ The question hung ominously in the air.

  * * *

  For the first time in years, Alex didn’t enjoy his lunch at L’Autre Pied. The food was as excellent, as usual, while Tara was in a flirtatious mood, and virtually falling out of an outrageous dress, but he, the ace seducer, was not at his personal, sparkling best. Not by any means.

  Abruptly telling Tara that “something had come up”, Kanelos terminated the lunch as soon as he decently could. He kissed her on the cheek, almost chastely, apologised once again, promised to call her soon and hailed a taxi, leaving the bemused girl on the Charlotte Street pavement. It was beginning to spit with rain and the wind was scattering litter before it.

  As the cab wound its way towards the City, Kanelos rehearsed in his mind the argument he anticipated having with Mike. The Irishman was not an easy man to handle – never had been, not even when they had both been students. Quite why they had ever become friends was a mystery to many. They had practically nothing in common. Mike was a working-class, chip-on-the-shoulder Republican, with a square body, odd features and a prematurely bald head; while Alex was an urbane, elegant, ex-public schoolboy with a confident drawl. It was, he could only suppose, the fact that neither of them was what he appeared to be that had drawn them together.

  O’Connell, for his part, was a die-hard supporter of the Republican cause and hated the British with a passion, but he also had a poor boy’s respect for money. He wanted desperately to be wealthy – possibly, Alex surmised, even more than he wanted a united Ireland.

  Kanelos, whose style, education and family connections made him the very image of the quintessential Tory, shared one vital ingredient with the Irishman: he, too, despised the British – more specifically, the English.

  It was the name, of course: Kanelos. Somehow, no matter how wealthy, good-looking and athletic he had been at school, he had always been made aware that somehow he wasn’t quite a true Englishman. He had deeply resented the childish nicknames thrust upon him.

  His brother, the chosen successor to his father’s business, had settled quickly into Athenian life, where, ironically, his own English public-school upbringing seemed to have added cachet. Alex, on the other hand, had stayed in London, joined all the right clubs, bedded the right women and cultivated the most influential friends, but he knew at some visceral level that h
e would, somehow, never be one of the inner circle. He resented it, still.

  After Trinity, Alex and Mike had gone their separate ways, as indeed had their other mutual friend, Derek. Quite what either of them had ever seen in Smythson was probably an even deeper riddle. The only thing he had had in common with either of them was his membership of the University Chess Club. Tall, bony, utterly middle-class and, regrettably, irredeemably English, he had been, in many ways, the oddest member of the trio. It had been years before Alex had realised that Derek was gay – not that he cared. It was rather more curious to Alex that he should have ended up in insurance, of all things. If he hadn’t, no doubt life, for all of them, would have turned out very differently.

  The McRae thing had shaken Alex. He was by nature a risk-taker, virtually a professional gambler, but after the three jobs they had pulled off successfully so far, he had been reluctant to push their luck with this latest project. Strangely, both Mike and Derek had been quite relaxed. Mike was getting greedy, he supposed, and Derek, it seemed, needed the money. He, however, no longer had the same requirement. His brother was doing a decent job running the family ferry business and Alex’s own dividends from that direction had increased of late.

  Of course, having to stump up for Geraldine and the kids every month was a permanent drain, but the kids’ school fees would soon come to an end. He was also gambling less these days, so all-in-all the financial picture was looking rosy. This was why the East End business was, in his opinion, potentially a bridge too far. With McRae, who had so nearly upset the apple cart four years ago, messing around in the background, as a gambler his nose told him their luck could be running out. The insurance man had to be squared away, somehow.

  * * *

  He finally found O’Connell in the yard at the back of the factory. He was staring at the boundary wall between the yard and the pub.

  ‘It’s in shit condition,’ he said, startling O’Connell, who seemed lost in thought.

  ‘What? Not going to matter soon, is it?’ he eventually replied. ‘Anyway, what are you doing back again? Didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow.’

  ‘No, but I’ve been thinking about McRae. More specifically, what are we going to do about him? I’m worried, to tell the truth.’

  They wandered back into the factory and climbed up the stairs to the office. O’Connell was clearly unwilling to utter a single word until he was confident they could not be overheard. Once inside, they sank into the shabby armchairs and O’Connell lit up. He took a short fierce drag on his cigarette before exhaling a slow considered breath of smoke, which hung in the still air.

  ‘Before I say what I think, tell me what you reckon.’

  ‘I think we should have a word with him, sooner rather than later. Unless, of course, he has taken the hint already?’ He looked expectantly, almost hopefully, into the Irishman’s dark eyes, but saw no reason for optimism in his unchanging expression.

  Finally, O’Connell replied, ‘Look, I’m working on it. We need a bit more information on that little shite; find out more about what he does or doesn’t know. Why don’t you leave all that to me, Alex?’

  Because I know you, thought Kanelos, before replying cautiously, ‘I just don’t want us to do something that we might all regret.’

  O’Connell leaned forward. ‘The only thing I’d regret would be getting nicked. If you think I’m going to do twelve years in some shitty English prison because of some interfering wanker, you can think again.’

  He stared moodily down at the overflowing ashtray, before adding, ‘The situation is fucking simple. He may not realise it yet but McRae has two choices: stay schtum or get hurt. There is no in-between.’

  Kanelos looked up towards the cracked and yellowing ceiling and took a few seconds before replying. ‘Look, I do agree with you, Mike, but I don’t think smashing his flat up is necessarily the way to keep him quiet.’

  O’Connell sighed. ‘That was just a tiny, insignificant little warning, Alex. Next time, it’ll be a damn sight more painful. If that doesn’t work then...’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Yeah, I realise that, but I’m just trying to be realistic. This guy has been carrying a sort of torch, a feeling, a sense of injustice for years and I wonder whether it wouldn’t be smarter to simply buy him off?’

  ‘And how would you imagine that would work? If, as you say, this is some sort of fucking crusade, the guy is hardly likely to be motivated by money, is he?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not, but all I have in mind is a bit of carrot as well as the stick. We don’t know how much he knows. All we do know is that he was asking a few nosy questions in Liverpool and hanging around at the pub. What if he knows about this project? What if he knows about the other jobs?’

  Even as he spoke the words, Kanelos could feel a chill deep in his bones. Never mind twelve, it could be twenty years. And if Mike dealt with the problem his way, they might never see daylight again.

  ‘I said it before, I’ll say it again: leave everything to us, alright?’

  Why the fuck did he say ‘us’? thought Kanelos, although, with a sinking feeling, he acknowledged that he knew only too well.

  It had begun to get noticeably gloomier in the shabby room as the two men continued to debate the issue. What little light there had been in the sky was fading rapidly. O’Connell eased himself out of his chair and switched on a table lamp, which did little to improve the visibility. He opened a sliding cupboard to his side, extracting a bottle of his preferred tipple, Bushmills, and a pair of glasses. Kanelos nodded his agreement and the Irishman poured out two hefty measures. For a few moments, silence filled the room.

  Kanelos was a chancer by nature, a free spirit with a taste for thrills, but even for him the stakes were too high. He had never, not for a single moment, contemplated cold-blooded murder and yet the prospect of spending the remaining years of his life amongst the tattooed hordes in Belmarsh, Brixton or some other hell hole horrified him beyond belief. He agreed with O’Connell; McRae had to be stopped if there was the slightest danger he could expose them, but he didn’t want anything to do with murder. Well, at least not personally.

  The considerations were, he knew, different for the Irishman. They had never spoken of the missing years following university, when Kanelos had been flitting around London and O’Connell had been pursuing his “political interests” in Northern Ireland. However, he knew enough to guess that Mike was a lot more pragmatic where mayhem was concerned. While it had never been discussed, Kanelos had long ago guessed that the “seed corn” capital for their various projects had interesting origins. Come to that, Derek and he had often speculated as to exactly how much of Mike’s half share he was allowed to retain by his faceless friends.

  The clue was in the terms of their partnership shares. Mike O’Connell sourced all the funds for each project and took 50% of the profits. Kanelos, Smythson and, to a much lesser degree, George Gallo shared the balance.

  The arrangement had worked well – fantastically well, thought Kanelos. Gallo ran the “businesses” on a day-to-day basis, while Kanelos’ family connections supplied the goods. Derek Smythson made absolutely certain that the claims got paid. But now, Kanelos felt that they had done well enough. They were, he believed, pushing their luck – a view that was undoubtedly shared by Derek.

  Unfortunately, O’Connell saw no reason to pull the emergency cord on the gravy train. Certainly, Alex concluded, Mike was made of much harder stuff than he was, but, nonetheless, it was his arse on the line as much as everybody else and he wanted his say. He continued to argue his case, despite the Irishman’s clearly growing irritation.

  By the time the gloomy sky had turned ebony, it was decided. They had an agreed strategy.

  36

  London, August 2011

  McRae wasn’t quite young enough to be a geek. He reckoned, though, that had he been born another five years later, he would have been a techno-whizz like Suzanne and John. As it was, he consoled himself that he knew enoug
h to cope with the modern world without being a slave to gadgets. It was why he didn’t bother getting rid of his faithful pocket notebook, why he didn’t use his phone’s diary function or alarm, and why, consequently, he persistently failed to remember birthdays and wedding anniversaries. This, in turn, was why he found himself, not for the first time, phoning his mother in Crete to apologise for his latest omission.

  Their inconsequential chat lasted around five minutes and she was relieved to hear that all was well. He promised to call her again soon and, better still, suggested that he might visit her again before the year was out.

  The office was very quiet; the others had finished for the day and having taken care of his own familial duties, he was thinking about making his own way home. Before leaving, however, he decided to check his personal email.

  Since his personal computer had been so savagely dismembered, he hadn’t had the opportunity to check his private mail for some time. He could access the server remotely, but it had been nearly six months since he had last been forced to do so, and, annoyingly, the password had changed twice in that period for a variety of reasons. He was consequently struggling. He had tried three different variations on his usual password, to no avail. He was becoming frustrated. The only option left was to spend an hour on the phone to his internet supplier’s call centre in Bangalore, or wherever it was this year, and get them to sort out the problem. So far, he had managed to convince himself that life was too short for such an exercise.

  He couldn’t honestly say that he was missing the daily flood of helpful offers from Groupon, Amazon, Expedia and God-only-knew how many other outfits, but he did tend to use his personal email address for his family and long-term friends.

  The harsh truth was that McRae had a severely limited, or as he preferred to regard it, ‘select’ circle of true friends.

  What he really wanted to see, of course, was whether Tina Forsyth had been in touch yet. He had been expecting – more accurately, hoping – for something by now. He decided he would have to get Suzanne or someone to sort the email out for him. He had definitely had enough for today; it was time for a beer.