Take the A-Train

by Mark Timlin

  Next to the TV was a drinks trolley groaning with booze. On top of the polished table were two portable telephones lying so close together they could have been mating. Watching over them like a voyeur was a regular telephone plugged into the wall. A blond cat was sitting crosslegged in front of the table making lines from a pile of coke on an antique mirror two feet square. He was using a pearl-handled cut throat razor. A fifteen-foot high Christmas tree stood in one corner. It was bare except for one silver ball about twelve inches in diameter that hung and spun from one spikey green branch.

  The blond cat stood up as Amanda, Malteser and I entered. He hit a button on the stereo remote and downed the volume to bearable.

  I could hear the soundtrack to the movie then, if you could call sub Pink Floyd played in-store muzak style and some fucker having his cock sucked with much smacking of lips, a soundtrack.

  ‘Malteser,’ the blond cat said, ‘long time no see. It must be all of two days. That naughty nose will be the death of you yet.’ He had a lovely voice too, perfect diction, just like Amanda. I was sure the pair of them would have been better off in Knights-bridge, rather than Brixton.

  ‘Alistair,’ said Malteser, ‘can we talk?’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘Privately,’ I said.

  Alistair looked at me and made the best value judgement so far. ‘I think not,’ he said.

  ‘I need some coke,’ said Malteser nervously.

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Malteser. ‘No.’ He looked over at me in desperation. ‘It’s difficult you see.’

  ‘Same as always,’ said Alistair. ‘You give me money, I give you drugs. Simple. We’ve done it dozens of times before.’

  ‘This time it’s not going to be like before,’ I said. Everyone in the room looked at me. All of a sudden I felt about as welcome as Joe Stalin at a Tory ladies’ finger buffet.

  ‘Who the fuck is this?’ asked Alistair, and he looked at his two buddies on the sofa and grinned the sort of grin that said, ‘Stick around, boys, we’re going to have some fun here.’ It was going to be a pleasure to rain all over his parade.

  ‘He’s pissed,’ said Amanda. ‘Why did you bring him here, Malteser?’

  To huff and to puff and to blow your house down, I thought.

  ‘He made me,’ said Malteser, and his voice quivered.

  ‘However did he do that?’ asked Alistair, and I think his grin slipped just a fraction.

  ‘Force of personality,’ I said. ‘Don’t knock it.’

  ‘So tell me – I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name …’ I didn’t enlighten him. ‘Well, never mind,’ he went on. ‘How, pray, is it going to be different this time.’ And he flicked the blade of the razor in and out of the handle and let it catch the light from the chandelier.

  ‘This time we don’t want some coke, we want all the coke,’ I said.

  ‘You jest,’ he said, and that did it. I mean – ‘You jest’. What did he think I was? A jumped up little wanker like him? I flicked back the skirt of my coat and brought the Winchester into the game.

  ‘No,’ I said, pointing it at his chest, ‘I’m deadly serious. Now drop the razor and show me the volume merchandise.’

  No one in the room so much as breathed and Alistair’s grin vanished completely. He just stood and stared at the gun.

  ‘The razor,’ I said. He dropped it. ‘Kick it over here.’ He did as he was told. I stooped and picked it up, and tossed it on the empty sofa where it slipped between two cushions. I kept the scatter gun pointed straight at him all the while. ‘The volume merchandise,’ I reminded him.

  ‘This is it,’ said Alistair, pointing at the little pile on the mirror. His voice trembled.

  ‘Bollocks!’ I said. ‘Pull the other one. It’s holiday time and you’re holding. I want to see it, and I’m not going until I have.’

  ‘No,’ said Amanda.

  I moved the Winchester’s barrel around the room, looking for a target. It passed across the Picasso and Alistair flinched. Christ, I thought, it is real. I moved the barrel back and worked the action.

  ‘No!’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said back. ‘Unless you cough the dope.’

  ‘No,’ said Amanda again. She was a cool one, but good sense prevailed.

  ‘OK,’ said Alistair, ‘you win.’ He went over to the Picasso. It was hinged on one side. He pulled the picture away from the wall to reveal a small combination safe. He put his hand up to the dial.

  ‘Hold it,’ I said. ‘Does Amanda know the combination.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bad mistake number four.

  ‘Let her open it. And no silly games, Amanda.’

  She went over and fiddled the dial back and forth and pulled a handle. The safe opened. She looked over at me and her eyes flashed green like a cat’s. I pushed her aside. Inside, on the bottom shelf were three quarter-kilo bags of white powder. I pulled them out and examined them. Bingo, I thought, and careless. One still had the remains of an HM Customs confiscation sticker on its side.

  Amanda had taken the right hump. ‘I’ll get you for this, you black bastard!’ she said to Malteser.

  ‘Nice language,’ I said. ‘And from such a pretty mouth too.’

  She spat at me and missed. I laughed in her face.

  ‘Where did you get this stuff?’ I asked.

  ‘From a guy,’ said Alistair.

  ‘What guy?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Yes, you can. You can tell me hard or easy, but believe me, in the end, you can.’

  ‘I can’t, they’ll kill me.’

  I laughed mirthlessly. ‘And I suppose I can’t?’

  ‘Look, this is crazy. Can’t we come to some kind of an arrangement?’ pleaded Alistair.

  ‘We are,’ I said. ‘You’re going to tell me who your supplier is, and I’m going to leave you in peace to enjoy the festivities.’

  ‘I can’t do that. Look, there’s money in the safe, lots, cash. Take that and the coke and go. I promise I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Alistair,’ I said, ‘you don’t seem to be grasping exactly what I’m getting at here. Amazing as it may seem to you, I don’t want your drugs or your money. I want to talk to whoever supplied you with this particular consignment.’ I tapped the bag with the sticker. ‘And nothing you can say or do will make me leave until I have. It’s a nightmare come true, I admit, but there we are.’

  ‘You can have anything I own except that,’ he said desperately, and his eyes darted around the room. ‘The picture,’ he said. ‘It’s genuine, it’s worth a fortune.’

  I was getting tired, and I must admit, a trifle tetchy. I walked across the wooden floor and stuck the Winchester into Alistair’s throat. I lifted the barrel under his chin until he came up on tiptoe. ‘If I wanted the picture, or the money, or the drugs, I’d take them, but I don’t. There’s only one thing I do want. Now give it to me before I lose my temper.’

  He tried one last desperate gambit. He looked over at Amanda. ‘Take her,’ he said, his voice a croak. ‘She’s good, she’ll do anything you want.’

  About then I started getting really pissed off at him. ‘You’re a piece of work, you know that, Alistair? You’re in the wrong line. You should be a pimp. I’m sorry. No offence to your girlfriend, but I don’t want her either.’

  By this time the guy was trembling and sweating so much I thought he might have a seizure. ‘Alistair,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you what. Give him a call. Tell him there’s a guy here giving you a hard time. He’ll come, I’ll guarantee.’

  Alistair thought about it.

  ‘What about me?’ asked Malteser.

  I threw him one of the packets of coke, one without the sticker. ‘You’re not going to be too popular round here for a bit, Malt,’ I said. ‘You’d better take this and split. And, Malt—’

  ‘Yeah?’

  I put my finger to my lips but said nothing. He understood. He took the dope, turned
and ran down the stairs. I heard the front door slam.

  ‘Well, Alistair?’ I said. And I pushed the barrel of the Winchester into his Adam’s apple again.

  He caved in then and said in a strangulated voice, ‘All right, I’ll do it. His name’s Christian, that’s all I know.’

  ‘Call him,’ I said gently, and pulled the barrel of the gun back. In a much softer tone I said, ‘He’ll understand.’

  That seemed to calm Alistair down a bit. He picked up the telephone receiver and punched out a number. It was an 0836 number, so we were calling a portable. I guessed Alistair was past playing tricks, but I made him hold the telephone so that I could hear the ringing tone.

  It was answered after two or three rings. ‘Yes,’ someone said tinnily.

  I gestured for Alistair to answer. ‘Christian,’ he said, ‘Alistair – I’ve got a problem.’

  He paused.

  ‘A nutter with a gun. He wants to see you.’

  He listened.

  ‘He says he wants to see our supplier.’

  He listened again.

  ‘Christ, I don’t know! Why don’t you speak to him yourself?’

  I took the phone. ‘Christian,’ I said.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Another strange voice.

  ‘Nick Sharman. Get over here, pal. You and me gotta talk.’

  Christian hung up.

  25

  Christian must have been out a-roving, because it was no more than ten minutes by my watch before the telephone rang. Whilst we’d been waiting I’d been attempting to keep everyone’s spirits up. Alistair and Amanda weren’t taking it too badly. The die had been cast, and being the fatalists they obviously were, they were prepared to let it fall as it would.

  The guys on the sofa were a different matter. There they were, a pair of innocents with too much disposable income, who had just popped in for their Christmas supply of A-1 blow to impress the secretaries at the office Christmas party, or whatever. As a bonus they thought they might see some scruffy git get his face striped by their drug dealer, which would make an amusing story down at the local wine bar, and here they were embroiled in a world of violence and being held hostage at the point of a snub-nosed shotgun by a madman.

  I made a few light-hearted comments about the weather and the price of fish but they didn’t seem to go down too well, so I just watched them shifting about nervously in front of me, and smoked a couple of cigarettes. When the phone fluted, Alistair jumped and almost dropped the receiver as he picked it up. ‘Careful,’ I warned. ‘Let’s not say anything that could be misconstrued.’

  He gulped and said, ‘Yes?’ into the phone. He listened for a few moments, then held the receiver away from his face and said to me, ‘He wants you to give me your gun, and then I’m to search you.’

  ‘I’m not handing over a loaded gun,’ I said. ‘I think Amanda might use it on me. I’m not going to shoot him. He knows what I want.’

  Alistair passed on the message, listened again and came back to me. ‘He won’t come up until he sees me at the window holding it.’

  ‘And the rest of Stockwell too,’ I said, and grimaced and worked the action. I pumped all five cartridges through the Winchester. They rattled on to the carpet. I picked them up and lined them up on the table in front of me like a row of red-coated soldiers again. I unhooked the scatter gun from its harness and tossed it to Alistair. He fumbled the catch and put it on the table. ‘Now I’ve got to search you.’

  I stood up and took off the dirty trench coat and threw it on the sofa. I raised my arms. ‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘But, remember, I’m ticklish.’

  I stood there in leather jacket and jeans and Alistair searched me thoroughly. Then he picked up the coat and patted it down.

  ‘Satisfied?’ I asked when he was finished. He nodded and went back to the phone. ‘He’s clean,’ he said, then put down the receiver and picked up the Winchester and went to the window, holding the gun up in front of him.

  Alistair came back from the window. He put the gun back on the table, picked up the telephone, listened for a second, nodded, but said nothing and replaced it on the hook. ‘He’s on his way up.’

  A few seconds later the entry-phone buzzer sounded and Alistair answered. He pressed the button to open the front door and we all waited. I heard footsteps on the stairs, and then a voice.

  ‘Sharman, show yourself at the door, arms above your head.’ I did as I was told. The staircase itself was dark, but I stood in the light coming from the room. ‘Turn around,’ the voice ordered. Once again I did as I was told. I heard the sound of the bolt of an automatic weapon being thrown and footsteps again and felt cold metal on my neck. ‘Cocked and ready, son,’ whispered the voice. ‘Walk into the room, and no messing.’ Again I obeyed. ‘OK, turn around.’ I did, and saw a good-looking black guy in a tweed overcoat open over a dark jacket and grey trousers, a white button down shirt, neat tie and black shoes. He looked like a schoolteacher except for the S&W 9mm semi-automatic he held comfortably in his right hand.

  ‘Nice touch, the gun,’ I said. ‘It takes all the formality out of the rest of the outfit.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said the black man wearily.

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us, Alistair?’ I said. ‘I’m Nick Sharman. You must be Christian.’ I put out my hand.

  Christian just stood there. ‘Don’t screw around,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’ So we went.

  He wrapped the shotgun in my mac and tucked it under his arm and put the shells into the side pocket of his coat which spoiled the line somewhat, but I said not a word. He allowed the folds of the mac to cover his gun hand too. ‘Just walk to the car,’ he said. ‘No tricks.’

  ‘No tricks,’ I said. It wasn’t him I wanted to see anyway.

  When we got to the street I couldn’t see the Sierra. I didn’t look too hard, I didn’t want Christian getting suspicious. But I thought that it would be just my luck if Fiona had suddenly been taken short and was right then racing round looking for a ladies’ loo.

  Christian gestured at a gun-metal grey Audi parked a few car lengths down the road. A tiny red light behind the windscreen showed that it was alarmed up. ‘That’s us,’ he said.

  He took a remote control from his coat pocket with his left hand and pressed a button. The red light winked out. I walked in front of him to the car. ‘Doors are open,’ he said. I got in the passenger side, he got behind the wheel and shoved the shotgun on to the back seat. ‘I don’t really need this, do I?’ he said, referring to the pistol.

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  ‘You couldn’t take it off me anyway,’ he said. ‘I’d beat your shit in.’ And the gun disappeared under his coat.

  Thus warned, I put on my seat belt and waited for the magical mystery tour.

  Before he switched on the engine, he picked up the phone, punched out a number and said: ‘Got him.’

  He drove the car out of Stockwell, through Clapham to Battersea. I didn’t look back once, but I wanted to.

  I wondered if we were going to the lock-up, but we went past, down Silverthorne Road, into some back doubles and out in Queenstown Road opposite a block of nouveau desirable shops and restaurants. He pointed at one restaurant in particular, with a frontage twice as long as any of the others and a sign that read LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL in dead neon over the front. Outside was parked a familiar looking BMW with a large figure in the driver’s seat. ‘That’s it,’ he said.

  ‘Smart place,’ I said. ‘Em did do well. Smart name too.’

  ‘But I don’t think they’re going to roll for you,’ said Christian.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ I replied. ‘I can be the life and soul of any party.’

  ‘Not this one,’ he said dryly, spotted a gap in the traffic and pulled into the side road at the end of the block, then into an alley at the back where he stopped behind Teddy’s Suzuki.

  A full set, I thought.

  ‘Out you get.’

  I did as I was told, and he fetched the
Winchester and propelled me through a door set in a high fence, across a yard and through another door into the kitchen of the restaurant. The kitchen was empty and cold, and haunted with the spicy ghosts of old cooking.

  ‘Let the staff off early?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re closed.’

  ‘And at the busiest time of the year too. Emerald won’t be pleased.’

  ‘He’s in no position to do anything about it.’

  But he will, pal, eventually, I thought.

  Christian closed and locked the kitchen door behind us, left the key in the lock, and walked me through the large dining room which was dim and shadowy but looked comfortable and expensive, with a huge bar along one wall, well stocked with spirits and mixers and all the paraphernalia of the cocktail barman’s trade. At the back of the bar was a mirror, fully twenty foot long, and I saw my reflection, which was none too clever.

  He showed me another door in the side wall of the room, marked ‘Staff Only’, which opened on to a flight of bare stairs leading upwards. I walked up in front of him, through another door, and down a corridor. He stopped me outside a door about half way down, marked ‘Private’. He rapped on the frame with his fist.

  ‘Come in,’ said a voice I half recognised, and Christian gestured for me to open the door, which I did.

  26

  It was a tiny office, with just one barred window that allowed a little of the afternoon light to creep in over the sill before it was suffocated by the pall of cigarette and cigar smoke that floated across the room at shoulder height. The real illumination came from three low wattage fixtures set into the polystyrene ceiling. They gave off a custard yellow light that seemed to add to the gloom rather than dispel it. The room looked as if it had been furnished from the remnants of a garage sale, with a scarred wooden desk, clear except for a telephone and a huge ashtray overflowing with butts and ash, three chairs and a two-seater sofa that had seen better days. The walls were nicotine-coloured and the carpet was a dirty green that had been worn scabby in front of the desk and at the door.