A Brush With Death

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘That won’t do you much good,’ Skinner told him. ‘From what I’ve learned about this man’s history, he’ll have dumped it very quickly. My guess will be that it’s within a mile of where we’re sat now, either picking up tickets on a meter or in a car park, where it’ll be less easy to find. It’ll be somewhere near the Central station, and he’ll have caught a train last night.’

  ‘Magic,’ Lottie Mann sighed. ‘And we can’t even say which name he’s using.’

  ‘You should assume he’s travelling as Mechikov. He doesn’t know his second identity has been uncovered. He thinks you’re looking for Billy Swords, or rather the man who used to be Billy Swords. That name’s no more than a National Insurance number now, as far as he’s concerned.’

  ‘Won’t he be using bank cards?’ the DI suggested, glancing at Skinner then at Provan.

  ‘And leavin’ a trail?’ the DS countered. ‘If you want me to guess, whatever cards he has as Swords, he’ll have pulled as much cash as he can with them as soon as he could, and that’s what he’ll be travelling on. How much could that be, Bob? You’re the rich man in the room.’

  ‘It depends how many credit cards he has and what their cash limits are; potentially thousands. He won’t be bothered about maxing out, since he’ll have no intention of repaying anyone. If your guess is right, Dan, and I’m sure it is, Billy Swords has disappeared, until he chooses to resurface as Mechikov.’

  ‘If,’ Mann said mournfully. ‘For all we know, he has a third passport.’

  ‘He can have as many passports as he likes,’ Skinner said, ‘but he only has one face, and by now that’s on site at every point of departure from this country. The Security Service has made sure of that, and pretty soon it’ll have accessed his phone records. Meantime, let’s have a look at this memory stick. That’s what we’re all here for. Sandra said Leo and Moscardinetto had a project going. Hopefully this will tell us what it was.’

  ‘Sandra said?’ Provan exclaimed, glaring at the DI. ‘You were right, Lottie.’

  She smiled. ‘I usually am, but let it lie.’

  She slid the stick into an empty slot on her computer, then waited as its contents were displayed on screen. One file was labelled ‘Rough Cut’, the other was untitled. ‘What are those?’ she asked.

  ‘The Rough Cut one’s a movie file,’ Skinner told her. ‘The other’s a Word document. Unless the software’s been changed since my day, you should be able to open them both. Here, let me.’ He reached for her mouse and clicked on the nameless file.

  It had no heading, it was single spaced and it had been created in a font so small and dense that it was almost unreadable. ‘Bugger that,’ he murmured, selecting the entire document and changing it to Times New Roman, fourteen point, double spaced, big enough for him to make out without resorting to his hated spectacles. ‘There you go,’ he murmured, and began to read, silently, as did his companions.

  ‘Here you are, my friend, a rough edit of our documentary. As we agreed, none of the people you will see have any idea that you are involved. They think I am interviewing for a new drama series of Netflix; I have used this deception before and I find that with that encouragement people want to please me. It is the fascinating story that you promised it would be. I am suspecting that some of it will be unknown even to you. We have two ways of going forward as I vision it. It can be the documentary that we set out to produce. We do it this way, my target is to enter it in the Panorama series in the Berlin Festival, with the hope also that your name will attract a BAFTA nomination, where I have won before, and if we are brave maybe an Oscar too, where I have not but I have the ambition. But there is another way. I have a friend, an American lady who is a screenwriter, a genius. She is of the left wing, which means that she is popular with her colleagues, but not with the people who control the money in cinema. What I like to do is show it, what we have, to her and invite her to extend her creativity to produce a script for a feature film, a drama. We maybe change names, make it appear to be a work of complete fiction, a drama not based on boxing, for there have been too many of them, but on what happens behind boxing as we began to talk about, a fight film with no fight scenes. We do this, it has more impact, especially if we have a star who is committed to play the part that is you under another name. I already spoke, with no detail, no secrecy broken, with Joey Morocco. He told me after we work together before that he wants to do it again, and this would be his chance. He would be executive producer, which is no more than a title; you would be producer, I would be director and producer. We would not need to spend big money on this. The budget could be a maximum of five million euros, if Joey agrees to cut his pay and take points of the gross instead. I can find two million, if you can find three, and maybe Joey will kick in a million of his own if we ask him nice. He do that, he can be a producer too instead of just executive. Anyway, you watch what I have shot already, and if you say we go ahead as we said at first, I agree. But as you watch, try to think of actors speaking the words, and a screenplay that shows what happens rather than tells. If my vision can be your vision, then we are heading for Cannes, not Berlin.’

  Skinner leaned back in his chair, finished before either of the two detectives. ‘I’m righteously angry already,’ he said when they had caught up with him. ‘I’d have liked to see that movie made, and now I never will.’

  ‘Let’s see how far he got,’ Mann murmured as she clicked on ‘Rough Cut’.

  The monitor darkened for a few seconds, then flashed brightly, until the setting stabilised and an image came into focus. It was Leo Speight, bright eyed, smiling, clean shaven, his dark hair lustrous, his skin tone a shade or two darker than it had been in death. The contrast to their last sight of him was dramatic. Skinner thought he had never seen a man look so full of vitality; he leaned across the DI once more and paused the image.

  ‘Where is that?’ Provan wondered aloud. The location was outdoors, a busy square, bathed in watery sunshine. Speight, who was seated at what appeared to be a café table, was wearing a high-collared white shirt and the same biker jacket that lay on a chair in the corner of Mann’s office, or its twin. In the background, the people, frozen in mid stride, were dressed for winter.

  Skinner leaned forward and peered at the screen, then reached out a pointing finger. ‘See that fella there, that big white statue? His name’s David; he’s a copy of the original by Michelangelo. The building behind him is the Palazzo Vecchio, and the square’s called the Piazza della Signoria. He’s in Florence. I took my daughter there on holiday when she was fourteen. Bored out of her skull, she was.’

  He restarted the video, just as Speight settled back in his chair, laid down his glass and switched his gaze to the camera from the person behind it.

  ‘So here we are,’ he began. ‘School is out. It’s all over. I am now officially an ex-champion, having relinquished all my belts yesterday, and now the story can be told. Why? Because I was smart enough and good enough to be a winner all the way, but I was lucky too, or I might have become a victim. Now the time has come for me to share my experiences, so that no one else gets taken.’

  His voice was quiet, but deep enough to transcend the background noise. There were very few traces left of a Paisley accent.

  ‘I was naïve when it all began,’ he continued. ‘I should have known better. My father warned me often enough. “They will offer you the world,” he told me, “but they’ll never actually hand it over. You’ve got to take it for yourself, son.” My dad never could, because he was never on the inside. When he was Peter Jackson, he knocked out two British champions and a former champion of France in his first twelve fights, but the London establishment froze him out because he wouldn’t leave Benny Stoddart and sign up with them. So he went to Vegas, late seventies it was, a couple of years before I was born, and took a fight there on the undercard of a heavyweight championship fight, against the big American hope, a young guy called Kid Soledad
, a Latino.

  ‘He battered him all over the ring in the first round, then went back to his corner and took a swig from a water bottle that had been doctored. Fuck knows what they put in it, but when he went out for round two, he was a target, and the Kid did not miss. The bandages under his gloves must have been loaded too, for he hit my old man upside the head and caused a slight bleed on the brain. He survived, with only a wee bit of long-term damage, but his career was over, and all the money he ever earned, and a good chunk of Benny Stoddart’s too, went on medical care.’

  The recording paused for an instant; when it restarted, Speight was holding his glass. ‘How do you load gloves? Easy, you put the bandages on, then once the witness from the other side has gone, you soak them in plaster of Paris and let it dry. Turns your fists into fucking boulders.’ He smiled gently. ‘I got them back, though. The first time I fought in the States, Kid Soledad was still around, making a comeback. He was the age I am now, and I was the age he was, twenty-two, when he hurt my dad. That was another undercard fight, in Atlantic City, but they let me pick my opponent, and I chose him.’

  There was another minuscule break in the video; Skinner realised that Moscardinetto had edited out his questions. ‘His gloves were probably loaded that night too,’ Speight chuckled, ‘but they did him no good, because I never let him hit me. I spent five rounds making him look bad, but not so bad that the ref would stop the fight. Then in the sixth, I got him in a clinch and whispered in his ear, “What happens next is for my dad.” I set him up with a feinted jab, then threw a big uppercut. It wasn’t a punch I usually threw, because it was too showy, and left you open to a counter if you missed, but I wanted the crowd to see it and to remember. It was a showreel punch; it lifted him up on his toes, and then he fell forward. There’s an old saying in boxing: “When they fall face down, you can go and collect your winnings.” It’s true; the ref knew it as well, for he never bothered to count.’

  The screen froze on him. When movement restarted, the watchers could see that some time had elapsed by a sudden shift in the shadows, and by the plate that blinked into being on the table, with knife and fork together besides the relics of a meal.

  ‘After the Olympics, Yevgeny Brezinski and me always had to happen. I won that final, but he got the decision. A video review showed that I outscored him by three to one; I knocked him down in the last round but the ref called it a slip. That’s how bent the officials were. He had my gold medal, so I was having his world championship belt, to hang alongside mine. The only question was where it would happen. He had his own promotion company, Zirka. I was with the Stoddarts – Benny was still around at the time, but beginning to show the signs I’d seen in my mother – but I made my own decisions. I told Bryce to propose Las Vegas as the venue, because that’s where the biggest bucks are always, but they turned it down flat. We proposed the Emirates Stadium, sixty thousand capacity, they said no.’ The champion laughed. ‘We even suggested the Stade de France in Paris, but no, Yevgeny would only get in the ring with me in Russia.

  ‘He and I spoke once during the negotiations. “I want it to be like Rocky Four,” he said. I told him he should remember how that one finished, but he said, “This time be different.” It was all ritual dancing, really. He was never going to fight anywhere else; the simple fact was he didn’t want any part of me, only the money I brought with me. For I did; Brezinski against anyone else always made peanuts, but against me, Spotlight, the US cable network, got involved, along with the British pay-per-view market as well. So we did the deal; it was complicated but we managed it, even though I had to give him fifty per cent of the TV money, which he’d never have earned on his own.’

  He reached for his glass, which had been refilled with something that looked like bitter lemon, and took a long drink. ‘Then he offered me some of it back. Bryce had a message, directly from Yevgeny, he said, guaranteeing me ten million euros in cash, Swiss bank account, the lot, if I canned the fight. I could do it any way I liked, quit on my stool between rounds with a fake injury, take a dive, up to me.’

  The picture blinked once again, resuming with Speight staring not at the camera but above it. ‘I agreed, of course. What else was I going to do; it was the only way I’d ever have got the fucker inside the ring. If I hadn’t, he’d have injured himself training and the fight would never have happened. I couldn’t allow that. He owed me for the Olympics, just as Kid Soledad owed my father, and I always collect what’s due me.

  ‘When we went into the ring that night, Brezinski thought he was going to win, his trainer thought he was going to win, Bryce Stoddart thought he was going to win, and so did a few punters, because there was a late rush of betting on him. It took poor old Yevgeny five or six rounds before he began to realise what was going to happen. I was never better than that night. Everything he was, I was double that. I hurt a different bit of him every round. I was never a sadistic fighter, usually. I didn’t inflict unnecessary pain, not even on Kid Soledad, but I did serious damage to Brezinski. I broke a couple of his ribs in the fourth, I hit him on the right shoulder in the seventh, dislocated it a wee bit, but he carried on, hoping against hope that I’d go down or pretend I’d broken my hand. I carried him a round for each of those ten million euros, which had never gone near any Swiss bank, by the way, and then I tucked him in for the night and went home with his belt. After that, the boxing game was mine. I owned it and anyone who wanted to play did it by my rules.’

  The screen went dark again, save for a clock icon, ticking down ten seconds to zero. When it had run its course, the scene was different, as was the person before the camera. A young man with a facial resemblance to Leo Speight but a shorter neck and a more serious expression. His skin tone seemed lighter, but the gloomy surroundings might have contributed to that.

  Provan hit the pause icon. ‘I know who that is, and where. How about you, big fella?’

  ‘It’s Regina’s,’ Skinner replied. ‘I’m guessing that’s Gordon Pollock, although I’ve never met him.’

  ‘That’s right. Let’s hear what he’s got to say.’ He set the screen in motion.

  ‘. . . love my dad,’ the youth began. ‘I do everything he says and I know he only wants what’s best for me, but he’s a fucking control freak. Also he’s got it totally wrong about boxing. He says to me that no way am I going anywhere near a boxing gym, yet he sent me to a school that plays rugby, where you can get hurt far worse.’

  ‘Glasgow High,’ Provan mouthed to Skinner as the video ran on.

  ‘I only met my Grandpa Speight the once. I wasn’t supposed to, just like I wasn’t supposed to see my dad, but my mum sneaked me round to his house one day, when I was three, or maybe just four. I have a vague memory of this big jolly black man, with a shaved head and an old scar alongside it. He told me all sort of stories that I was too young to understand at the time. My mother told me later, though; they were about fighting, about it being the poor man’s way out of being poor, and how my dad was on the way to taking the whole family out of poverty with his fists. I told my dad that story when he kicked up a fuss about me wanting to box. He told me that if Grandpa Speight had been treated right he’d have made millions, and he’d never have had to step inside a ring himself. He said I’d no idea what went on in professional boxing and that I was never going to find out.

  ‘My Grandpa Pollock found out, though, about me seeing Grandpa Speight. I mentioned it in the house one night and he went berserk, as usual. He battered my mother, he battered me, and he even hit my granny when she tried to stop him. I said to him, “You wouldn’t do that if Grandpa Speight was here, or my dad,” and he hit me again. I was going to run and get Grandpa Speight, but he locked me in the stair cupboard, the bastard, and didn’t let me out for a whole day, then belted me again for peeing in there. I wish I had gone for Grandpa Speight, for a few weeks later he died, in some sort of accident at work.’

  There was a flicker, another question exci
sed.

  ‘Grandpa Pollock died himself, thank Christ, not long after that. Years afterwards they told me he had a heart attack and fell in the Cart, but I found out later that nobody in Paisley believed that. I was told he had so many enemies in the town, there was a queue to toss him in there. The same people believed that he paid somebody to kill Grandpa Speight in the railway yard. Years afterwards I asked my dad what he thought. He looked at me, more seriously than I ever saw him, and he said, “If he did, then things went full circle, didn’t they. Never mention that man’s name to me again, please, Gordon.” I never did, not because I was afraid of my father, I never was that, but because I feared that if I did, I might find out how the old bastard really went in the water.’

  Unlike that of his father, Gordon Pollock’s monologue was delivered without him once looking at the camera.

  ‘Not that any of us cared,’ he continued. ‘My mum was glad he was dead, and she and my granny didn’t even go to his funeral. Nobody did, apart from my dad and me. Later on, when I was older, my dad said that he only went to watch the crematorium curtains close. He said he’d have had him buried, because it was cheaper, but he didn’t want to poison the worms.’ He laughed. ‘The world thinks my dad’s a gent, and he is, but that’s the side of him they’ll never see: how he is when somebody crosses him.’

  He looked above the camera as Moscardinetto asked a question that was inaudible on the soundtrack. ‘Me, no, I’d never cross him. I disagree with him one hundred per cent about him not letting me box, even though I know he’s right. If I did, I’d have a big sign round my neck, saying “Leo Speight’s son: knock him cross eyed and boast about it to your mates.” But it wouldn’t stop me giving it my best shot. I said to him, “Maybe I’d surprise you if you let me try.” He said no, that I wouldn’t, because I’m too nice a lad. I said to him, “But you’re a nice lad.” He gave me that serious look again and he said, “No I’m fucking not. Ask anyone I fought.” Anyway, I’ve stopped arguing with him about it. He says he’s developing a chain of hotels and that he wants me to get my degree in hospitality management so that I can be ready to run them. He’s given me a place of my own to live as well, at the Blacksmith; so my mother can get a life, he says. Fact is, she’s happy with the one she’s got. I wish he would let me box, though, just to find out.’