Take the A-Train

by Mark Timlin

  Jump Seat pursed his lips but said nothing. Eventually he put the stick on the floor.

  The car pulled into traffic and the black glass partition between us and the chauffeur’s compartment whirred down. Once again I was looking into the dark eyes of the man sitting beside the driver. ‘Hello again,’ I said.

  He nodded.

  ‘Mens,’ the driver said.

  I looked through the one-way glass of the back window and saw a squad car behind us. Light Mac looked at me and put his finger to his lips.

  ‘Relax,’ said Lupus. ‘Everything is cool.’

  And it was. The squad car accelerated and pulled past us and got lost somewhere around Lambeth Palace.

  The Lincoln sizzled through the rainy streets across Lambeth Bridge, up through Pimlico and Victoria, across Hyde Park into the Bayswater Road, right at Notting Hill tube and through a maze of grey side streets until the Westway loomed overhead.

  The rain got worse as we drove and the loudest sound was the windscreen wipers beating double time to clear the driver’s vision. Inside the car, all was quiet and serious. No one spoke or smoked or snapped gum or pulled funny faces. Everyone looked anywhere except at each other.

  The driver stopped outside a set of high wooden gates in a high wooden fence. He waited until the street was empty of pedestrians and moving traffic, then leaving the engine running, got out of the car and ran through the rain. He pushed the gates open, ran back, manoeuvred the car through the gates, stopped again and ran back and closed the gates behind us.

  I watched through the side window and saw that inside the fence was a landscape as barren and colourless as the surface of the moon. The area was empty except for three sets of huge concrete pillars holding up the motorway and two other parked cars. One was an empty, navy blue three series BMW; the other a black Mercedes saloon with windows as dark as the Lincoln’s. Our driver headed slowly towards the two parked cars that sat as still and malevolent as a pair of cockroaches waiting for a crumb of cheese. We slid to a halt beside the Merc.

  Light Mac opened the door and stepped out. He leaned back into the car and said to me, ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  I didn’t argue. ‘Stick,’ I said. Jump Seat passed it to me. I climbed awkwardly out of the car and leant hard down on the stick as I followed Light Mac across a crust of packed grey dirt, crisscrossed with tyre tracks that broke under my shoes like old concrete.

  It was dark and cold under the motorway, and noisy from the rumble of wheels and engines above us. Long, filthy grey stalactites hung down from underneath the road and dripped brackish water on to the ground. Light Mac walked to the Mercedes and opened one of the back doors. He bent at the waist and looked inside. He said something I couldn’t hear, straightened up and beckoned for me to come closer.

  I limped over and he stepped away from the car. I saw a familiar huge figure sitting in the middle of the back seat.

  ‘Join me, Nick,’ said an equally familiar voice.

  I ducked down and climbed into the car and sat next to Emerald on the leather-upholstered seat. I checked him out. By the looks of the threads he had finally laid his Motown period to rest. The material that covered his ample person was pure Savile Row. It was about as understated as a grand could buy, and just as beautifully cut. His shirt was as soft and white as a dove’s feather and you could shave by the shine on his shoes. On his pinky finger was the stone that gave him his nickname – huge and green and set in enough gold to fill a football team’s teeth.

  ‘Nicky,’ he said.

  ‘Emerald,’ I said back. ‘Or should it be Mr Watkins these days? You seem to have come up in the world. A personal assistant even. It’s all very smart.’

  ‘I had some luck with an investment a while back. I’ve expanded since we last met.’

  ‘So I see. The firm’s getting bigger, if not more pleasant to deal with. A real black success story.’

  Emerald’s crew were well known round south London. I’d first bumped into them when I was on the force. Emerald had run drinking and gambling clubs and prostitutes for years. He’d always been good to me and mine, and at the time I’d turned a blind eye to his larkins. We’d cleared all outstanding debts about eighteen months before. I hadn’t seen him since, but I still considered that we were friends.

  ‘I wish I’d stayed as I was. I had fewer enemies.’

  ‘You didn’t do too bad, as far as I remember.’

  ‘Plenty of friends too, including you.’

  ‘If I’m a friend, why send your boys to kidnap me? A telephone call would have done. You knew I’d come.’

  ‘There was no time.’

  ‘So what’s the deal, man? What business brings you to this Godforsaken place?’

  ‘The end of my business.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, how come?’

  ‘There’s a warrant out for my arrest.’

  ‘Not the first.’

  ‘No, but this is heavy.’

  ‘Have you been watering the scotch down the club?’

  ‘No, Nick. Possession of controlled drugs with intent to supply.’

  There’s not much you can say to that. ‘Oh yeah?’ was the best I could come up with.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What kind of drugs?’

  ‘Cocaine.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Half a million quid’s worth.’

  I looked at him to see if he was serious, and he appeared to be. ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘For real?’

  ‘For real.’

  ‘You naughty boy, you should be ashamed.’

  He sucked sharply through his teeth with an angry sound. ‘I’ve been done up.’

  ‘You would say that.’

  ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘Are you telling me?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked at me as if it really mattered what I thought.

  ‘Then I believe you,’ I said, and I did. That’s what friends are for. ‘It doesn’t seem to have upset the visuals any. That’s a nice suit, and the cars and all.’

  ‘If I’m going down, I’m not going down scruffy,’ he said.

  ‘That sounds like you. But where exactly do I fit in?’

  ‘I need help.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Get a good brief.’

  He sighed. ‘Not that kind of help. I need someone in your line of work.’

  ‘I have no line,’ I replied. ‘I’m convalescing.’ I tapped my leg with my stick.

  He looked angrily at me. ‘Don’t fuck around, Nick. I need your help.’

  ‘You want to hire me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘I did the right thing by you not long ago, now do the right thing by me.’

  And there it was. As inevitably as night followed day. The catch. The sting. One hand washing the other. But he was right. Emerald had supplied me with a couple of guns when I needed them and had nowhere else to turn. Like I said, I thought all debts had been cleared but obviously I was wrong.

  ‘A favour for a favour?’ I asked.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I’m half crippled, Em,’ I said. ‘As your boy in the raincoat keeps reminding me, and he’s right.’

  ‘There’s no one better.’

  I laughed. ‘Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Em,’ I said. ‘We don’t need to go through my references, we’re mates. I’ll do what I can, you know that. But why me?’

  ‘Because if I want something out of a chicken coop, I don’t send in a fox, I send in another chicken.’

  ‘Your analogy is charming, if a little abstruse. Why don’t you send it by me one more time, in words of one syllable?’

  ‘All my guys are black,’ he explained. ‘You’re white. You can go where they can’t.’

  ‘I’ll make sure I add that to my CV,’ I said. ‘All right, Em, you got me.’

  ‘I knew I could
count on you.’

  ‘Tell me the whole sad story,’ I said. ‘And can you get some heat in here? I’m freezing my arse off.’

  Emerald tapped on the glass dividing us from the driver and it rolled down. He told the guy behind the wheel to turn on the heater. The driver started the engine and soon warm air began to seep through the vents in the side of the car and the glass rolled smoothly up again. I cracked the window next to me for ventilation and lit a cigarette as Emerald told me what had happened.

  ‘I still got a few friends in CID,’ he said. ‘Not so many as before. Things have changed. The Met’s trying to clean up its act again. But there’s a few favours outstanding. I got a call last night, was told that there were warrants out for all my premises and my home.’

  ‘All your premises?’ I interrupted.

  ‘The old club in Clapham, three pubs, a restaurant, and a few other odds and ends.’

  ‘Christ, things have changed. Are you sure you’re not pushing coke?’

  His dark face grew even darker and he gave me a long, vicious look.

  ‘Joke, Em,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘Fair enough. But one day you must tell me where the money came from.’

  ‘It’s no secret, and legal too. Now can I get on? I don’t have all day.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I sent some of the boys round to check my places. All’s serene. Everything safe. I took my wife to her sister’s last night and I stayed there too. The sister’s straight. Her and her husband mind their business and go to church Sundays. I mind mine and don’t, but family is family. They took us in, no questions. I left Teddy at my place to mind the store.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My nephew, the boy in the raincoat.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a nephew.’

  ‘My brother’s boy. They live in Southampton. He came to work for me last year.’

  ‘He doesn’t have your manners,’ I remarked.

  ‘He’s feeling stress, but you’re right, it’s no excuse. I’ll see him. Anyway, I’ve got this lock up. Down Wandsworth Road, under the arches. By the station, you know.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Had it for years. Teddy checked it out last night around ten. It was clean. The filth busted into it sometime later and found it full of drugs. Like I said, half a million quid’s worth. Now you know that’s ridiculous, Nick. Anyone who knows me knows that. A little draw in the old days, but beak, no. It’s not my game. The law beat down the door of my house at six this morning. They took Teddy down the station but had nothing on him and let him go. He came straight to me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That he checked the place.’

  ‘Sure I’m sure.’

  ‘Could he have something to do with the drugs? A little private enterprise maybe?’

  ‘Behave, Nick. He’s family.’

  ‘So was Hamlet, and look what happened to his mum and dad.’

  Emerald looked disgusted. ‘Nice try, Nick, but it doesn’t add up. Teddy knew where I was last night, and if he wanted to cross me he could have sent Old Bill round anytime. And for that matter he knows where I am now. If he wanted me out of it, he could have sent them instead of bringing you.’

  I shrugged. ‘Just a thought, Em. They can’t all be winners. I was thinking aloud. So who’s in the frame?’

  He shrugged back at me.

  ‘Don’t fuck about, Em. Someone is stitching you up good and proper, to the tune of half a mill. Even at the sort of street value the Old Bill throw around to make themselves look good, that’s a lot of blow to throw away just to put your black backside in a sling.’

  He grinned for the first time. ‘You put it well, Nick, and you’re right.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘There’s a lot of people would like to see me banged up and the key thrown away.’

  ‘I’m sure. Anyone in particular?’

  ‘Bim,’ said Emerald.

  ‘Oh shit, no, not him,’ I said, and thought about the name that Emerald had dropped into my lap like a bad moussaka. Bim. Bim the Greek. Bimpson Lupino. AKA ‘The Uncrowned King Of South London Fruit and Veg’. Don’t laugh. He earned the name the hard way.

  Bim and his little firm, which he runs from his HQ, an acre or so of warehouse space at Nine Elms Market, have a monopoly on soft fruit, salad produce and every other sort of veggie you can name from Putney to the Blackwall Tunnel, and south to Croydon and beyond. Along with the wholesale vegetables, he owns half a dozen pubs and a couple of restaurants.

  It’s the old rags to riches story. Bim arrived from Greece straight after the war, owning just the clothes he stood up in. Only he didn’t get a paper round or collect pop bottles for the deposits. Instead he met a recently demobbed soldier at Waterloo Station with a US Army issue Colt .45 to sell. As soon as the squaddie turned his back, Bim hit him on the head with a brick, stole the gun and used it to rob fourteen post offices in eight days. Bim did his first and last hard time then. Six years with a third off for good behaviour.

  He was out of Wandsworth just as the fifties dragged themselves into view. By the time the sixties arrived, so had Bim. On the way, some people died. That’s life. They would have to have died sooner or later, I suppose. Since then Bim’s married twice and fathered six children, all girls. He has made a fortune or two in his time, and woe betide anyone who gets in his way. Now it seemed he was feuding with Emerald and that didn’t bode well for anyone who interfered. And Em was asking me to get involved. I mean I’d heard about people who interfered with Bim’s plans. There was an old joke about the meat pies served in the boozers he owned. They were made on the premises and I had an acquaintance who swore blind he’d found a human ear in one once, complete with a diamond stud that had paid for a new carburettor for his Cortina. All I know is, I stick to name brands for my steak and kidney these days. Talk about the devil and the deep blue sea.

  ‘So what’s he after?’ I asked.

  ‘My business. My places are good places, the best, that’s why he wants them. A lot of cash comes through the doors every day. He’s been after me to sell for a year. I want you to roust that bastard.’

  ‘Just like that. You never mentioned Bim. He’s fucking serious, man. Roust him – I should be so lucky! He kills people and I’m not at all well. I don’t know about all this.’

  ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘Course I am.’

  ‘You disappoint me.’

  ‘It’s the story of my life.’

  ‘If you’re not going to help, get the fuck out.’

  ‘Come on, Em, don’t be like that.’

  ‘How else should I be?’

  I fidgeted in my seat. I wasn’t ready for any aggro. I was scared. I’d been hurt once too often to want to be hurt again. I’d promised myself a quiet life with lots of sex, and what was I getting?

  ‘What about you, Em?’ I asked. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to give myself up.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘I’ve got no place else to go. I’m a respectable citizen, a businessman of some standing in the community. Besides, I thought you’d be looking out for me. I’m innocent, Nick, and I was counting on you to prove it.’

  ‘I was serious about the brief.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I spoke to mine this morning.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He thinks I should turn myself in too. It looks good. I just don’t want to do it local. As well as friends, I’ve got a lot of enemies on the force.’

  ‘All right,’ I said reluctantly. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m your man. I just hope I don’t live to regret it. Or die to regret it, for that matter.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘And you’re determined to give yourself up?’

  Emerald nodded.

  ‘How about Danny Fox?’ I said. ‘Remember him?’

  ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘He
’s back in uniform down in Surrey, Farnham. He’s a Superintendent now. Give yourself up to him. He won’t pass you back to the Met without a fight. No one gets a prisoner off Danny Fox if he doesn’t want to give him up.’

  ‘It’s an idea.’

  ‘If you’re determined to go through with it, it’s the only idea. I don’t want to see you getting beaten up in some holding cell, and then getting assaulting a police officer put on your sheet along with everything else. You’re too old and ugly to take it these days.’

  ‘Not so much of the old. I’ll talk to Lupus and Teddy. Put them in the picture. You talk to Teddy too, Nick. He’s not a bad boy, just trying to prove himself a man. He’ll fill you in on any details. I’ll get him to drive you home.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘It’s not getting any drier out there.’ I looked through the window again and could see the rain pouring down beyond the shelter of the motorway parapet. It beat down as if it wanted to wash West London off the map. Perhaps the rain had the right idea.

  I heard a klaxon in the distance. Emerald tilted his head until it faded away. I don’t know why he bothered. We both knew that if the police came for him, there would be no sirens advertising the fact. He tapped on the dividing glass again. It rolled down and the driver stuck his face through the gap.

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘Get Lupus and Teddy,’ Emerald ordered.

  The driver left the partition down and scrambled out of the car. He opened the back door of the Lincoln, held a short conversation and trotted back. The guy in the light mac and Lupus left the car and followed him over to where Emerald and I were waiting. I lit another cigarette.

  Lupus yanked the back door of the Mercedes open and climbed in between Emerald and me. Teddy stayed outside. I blew smoke into his face.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

  ‘Up?’ asked Emerald back. ‘What’s up is that Mr Sharman is an old friend who is going to help us and you dissed him when you should have shown respect, that’s what’s up.’

  Teddy looked away and sucked his teeth like he couldn’t give a shit.

  ‘Teddy,’ said Em, ‘you may be a big boy but if I get out of this car I’m going to slap you ‘til you cry. Now apologise to Mr Sharman.’

  Teddy’s face suffused with blood.

  ‘Leave it, Em,’ I said.