Charisma

by Jo Bannister

  Since the handrail went almost nobody crossed in daylight. Once he caught some boys daring one another and put the fear of God into them. He didn’t consider this hypocrisy: he knew he could cross safely, was fairly sure they could not. He hadn’t done it in the dark before. At least it was dry: the black timbers went as slick as oil in the rain.

  It occurred to him – belatedly, Shapiro would have said – that a squad car in Brick Lane could intercept anyone leaving. He had a mobile phone; now something was definitely happening he would have asked for back-up if he could have made the call without giving himself away. But it was a still night, even soft voices would carry. He thought he’d be out of earshot once he reached the bridge.

  He crossed the lock like a wire-walker, head up, arms lightly spread, feeling with his toes for the stumps of the handrail waiting to trip him. When he was safe on the other side he allowed himself a little half-smile and wondered why he’d thought it would be difficult.

  There was some low scrub along the bank. He hugged it, bent double, until he’d passed the look-out, then he began to run. There wasn’t a proper path on this side but there was a track and the ground was level. He loped swift and easily as a wolf until he reached the hump-backed bridge where the tow-path switched banks.

  Squatting behind the parapet he had the mobile in his hand when he heard the car. There were no lights and he couldn’t tell if it was arriving or getting ready to leave, but the men from the mission were on foot so this was the buyer. They’d hardly complete the deal at this meeting. A smart supplier wouldn’t deliver till he was ready to leave town: the last thing he wanted was a greedy dealer putting the stuff round while he was still in the area. They were here to show samples of the merchandise and to agree a price.

  Donovan was afraid that he was too late: that he’d taken too long crossing the lock and the buyer was leaving. However quickly Shapiro acted he couldn’t stop the car leaving Cornmarket, and once it joined the traffic it would disappear. The only chance of an identification was if Donovan got close enough to see. If the driver would switch on his lights he could get the number, maybe the backwash of the instruments would show him a face. He shoved the mobile back in his pocket and made for the sound.

  He hadn’t missed as much as he’d feared. Reaching the rendezvous first the car had waited in darkness and silence for the men from the mission to arrive. At the sound of footsteps the driver started his engine, announcing his presence and preparing for a swift departure if at any point that seemed a good idea. But he still didn’t turn his lights on.

  A door opened and a man got out on the passenger side. The brief flare of the interior light showed a muscular figure of medium height with straight long hair slicked back in a pony-tail. Then the door closed and the light went out. It was the merest glimpse, he was still fifty metres away and the man’s back was towards him, but Donovan recognized him.

  It was no surprise. Jimmy Scoutari had been one of the prime contenders to replace Carney since word got round that the Castlemere Godfather wouldn’t be home for Christmas. He was a younger man – though too old for a pony-tail – and lacked Carney’s style. Scoutari saw no point in posing as a legitimate businessman with offices and a Filofax and standing orders to some of the town’s more prominent charities. He was interested only in those things that made him money or made him feared. Carney was a gentleman thug: Scoutari was a player.

  He wasn’t as clever as Carney so he wasn’t as dangerous, and probably he wouldn’t last as long, but as a nasty piece of work he bore comparison with the all-time greats. Donovan’s last reservation about this vanished. The men from the mission might conceivably have fancied a walk, the car might have lost its way in Brick Lane, but Jimmy Scoutari was here to buy drugs.

  Then Donovan made a fundamental miscalculation of the kind that had dogged his career. No one doubted his courage, his commitment or his integrity, but Liz was not the first senior officer to mistrust his judgement. The sensible thing to do at this point was creep back to the bridge and use his mobile to tell Shapiro what was happening. There was nothing more he could do. He couldn’t arrest a minimum of five men, some of them undoubtedly armed and all of them dangerous, single-handed.

  Besides which, he didn’t have to. Nothing vital was going to happen now. They weren’t going to swap vast quantities of drugs for vast sums of money and vanish from the face of the earth. Donovan’s wire-walking had achieved all he should have wished for: he’d witnessed a secret meeting between men from Davey’s mission and a known criminal. With that information Shapiro could go to work on both parties and would find evidence enough for convictions. There wasn’t even any hurry. There would be a final meeting between Kelso and Scoutari before the mission left town when they could be taken with the goods in their possession.

  But Donovan wanted more. Always he wanted more. Instead of retreating he crawled forward, hoping to overhear what was being said. The inevitable consequence of that, that he couldn’t then use the mobile without himself being overheard, didn’t occur to him until it was too late.

  Though the cinder surface of the yard grew a thriving flora of weeds there wasn’t cover enough for a grown man. But a row of wagons was rotting away at the end of the line five metres from the car: if he could reach them undetected he could crawl between the great rusting wheels until he was almost as close to the action as the players. He’d get a better view of their boots than of their faces but he should hear their conversation while the inky shadow under the bogies would keep him safe.

  The meeting hadn’t yet got down to business. The two sides were still jockeying for advantage. Picking his way across the open ground, Donovan was acutely aware that if Scoutari decided it was time to view the merchandise and the car lights came on he was a dead man. When the bulk of the last wagon came between him and them he melted against it in weak-kneed relief.

  He could hear clearly. Kelso addressed Scoutari with stolid politeness as ‘Mr Scoutari’; Scoutari addressed Kelso as ‘You’. They talked numbers. Donovan was startled by the range of drugs on offer, as if the mission were a travelling emporium: heroin, cocaine, cannabis, Ecstasy, LSD. Scoutari was interested in them all. They haggled over quantities and price.

  They reached a provisional agreement, then Scoutari wanted to test samples. Kelso produced a fat envelope from his pocket, Scoutari produced a torch. They used the bonnet of the car as a table. For some minutes Scoutari wielded tiny implements that glinted in the torchlight and sniffed or tasted the results. Each time he grunted a grudging satisfaction.

  Donovan kept wishing someone would shine the torch around, catch a few faces. He knew who he was watching, with the possible exception of the man he only thought was Brady, but he’d have liked to be able to say he’d seen faces. But the beam remained resolutely on hands: Kelso’s dealing out the samples, Scoutari’s picking through them. He set the torch on the bonnet and worked within its beam. Once, adjusting the angle, he let it slip and the vibration of the ticking engine rolled it on to the ground. Someone picked it up and put it back.

  Finally they reached the bit Donovan was keenest to hear: details of how money and merchandise would be exchanged. Kelso wanted a delay, Scoutari wanted his hands on the goods. They compromised: a week hence, with the proviso that Scoutari wouldn’t put it on the streets until the mission left town.

  The meeting broke up. Scoutari put his torch in his pocket and got back in his car. Without farewells, still without turning his lights on, the driver moved off immediately and the sound of the engine faded towards Brick Lane.

  That left the massive figure of Kelso standing apparently lost in thought amid the half-bricks and ankle-high weeds. Donovan couldn’t think what he was waiting for, why he didn’t leave too. After a moment he realized uneasily that he’d lost track of the man with him. Maybe he was taking a leak. It was too late to search the place now; even so …

  He wasn’t kept wondering for long. He was lying belly-down under the wagon and something tapped th
e sole of his foot. It could have been any lump of metal of approximately the right size and weight but the message raced along his nerves that it was a gun. He exhaled raggedly and his insides clenched.

  Brady’s voice said amiably, ‘Come on out, the show’s over.’

  Options skittered through Donovan’s mind. It didn’t take long: there were almost none. He could come out quietly and see what they intended. He could come out fighting and hope to get away in the confusion. He could come out backwards and face Brady or forwards and face Kelso.

  He chose, by a narrow margin, the devil he knew, squirming round under the wagon to come out by Brady’s legs. He’d been right about one thing: it was a gun. He saw it now, unmistakable even in the dark, before Brady turned him quite gently and pushed him against the wagon. In a sardonic imitation of an American drawl he said, ‘Assoom da position.’

  Donovan spread his arms slowly at shoulder level, spread his hands against the rotten timber. The muscles of his back knotted in fear. No one could see but his eyes were shut tight.

  Even trying to be discreet Kelso’s bull voice boomed, a kind of roaring whisper. ‘Have you got the bastard?’

  ‘I have.’ Brady’s hand rested nonchalantly on Donovan’s shoulder, its purpose not to restrain him but to detect the changes in muscular tension that would give him an instant’s warning if Donovan decided to fight.

  The heavy man’s footsteps crunched on the broken surface as he hurried round the wagon. Before he appeared Brady said softly in Donovan’s ear, ‘You may not believe this, boy, but I’m going to try and save your life.’ Then he hit him, once, hard, with the gun across the back of his head.

  3

  ‘Cal? Are you there?’

  Brady had been sitting beside the long still form on the floor of the wagon for something over an hour before he heard a change in the rhythm of Donovan’s breathing that suggested he was on his way back from the abyss. But there was no reply and his torch revealed no movement in the bloodless face. His eyes were imperfectly shut, like carelessly drawn blinds, so that a white line showed under each. Brady let the light rest on Donovan’s face and after a moment, slowly, his eyes closed.

  Brady sighed. ‘Ach well, sleep while you may. It’s going to be a long day.’

  He’d been worried he’d hit Donovan too hard. It’s not easy to judge: too light a tap only makes your adversary angry, too keen a swipe and you have a corpse on your hands. Nor had he had much time to work it out. He’d been afraid that Kelso would come raging round the wagon like a wild bull and kill the detective before he could weigh the consequences. He thought he’d be safer out cold. Not many people have the stomach to murder an unconscious man.

  When Kelso got there to find him already on the ground he goggled. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He tried to run,’ Brady said. ‘I stopped him.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be.’

  Kelso bent to look closer. ‘Hellfire,’ he exclaimed, startled, ‘it’s that copper!’ Like Brady he’d seen that there was someone under the wagon when the torch fell, but there’d been neither time nor light enough to see who. ‘God Almighty, what do we do now?’

  ‘One thing we don’t do,’ Brady suggested, ‘is panic. There may be no need. If he was on official business he wouldn’t have been alone – the place’d be crawling by now. He must have seen us leave the caravan and followed on spec.’

  ‘How much do you suppose he saw? What did he hear?’

  ‘Most of it, I guess. I’ll ask him when he wakes up.’

  ‘How did he get past Danny?’

  ‘How should I know? He lives here, he knows his way round. We were unlucky, that’s all.’

  ‘Unlucky?’ Kelso’s voice soared for a moment before he remembered he should be whispering. ‘Bailie, he’s a copper. We’re not going to buy him off and we’re not going to scare him off. If he leaves here we all go down.’

  ‘So what do you want to do – kill him?’ Brady’s manner was casual, untroubled.

  ‘I think we have to.’ Then he looked at the still face, moon-white against the dark clothing, and balked. ‘I don’t know. Maybe Scoutari’d take care of it.’

  Brady was scathing. ‘The Malteaser.’ The fact that earlier Scoutaris came from Malta did not in fact make him a Malteaser but Kelso knew who he meant. ‘Oh, he’d do it all right. He’d enjoy doing it. But you’d pay through the nose, and if he doesn’t make it watertight we’ll all end up talking to policemen. You kill a cop and they pull out all the stops, you know? They’ve already shown an interest in us; he lives within spitting distance of where we’re camped; they’re not stupid, they’ve got to suspect us.’

  ‘I’m damned if I’ll drop everything and run!’

  ‘If we run they’ll know they’re right. We wouldn’t reach Dover. I don’t want to do life either, OK?’

  ‘Then what?’ Kelso was prodding the inert body with his foot. Brady thought that if Donovan stirred he’d probably kick him unconscious again.

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ he said. ‘Carefully, and at the right time, and it’ll look like an accident. To get past Danny he must have crossed that lock. Tricky job, that. A man could fall, knock himself out, drown in two feet of water.’

  Kelso nodded energetically, obviously relieved. He reached for Donovan’s feet. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

  ‘Not now,’ exclaimed Brady. ‘Look, so far we’re looking at – what? – ten years, out in seven. He dies and you can double that. I’ll do it when I’m sure we can get away with it.’

  ‘We could be here a fortnight. They’ll start looking for him tomorrow.’

  ‘They won’t know he’s missing,’ said Brady. He gave an impish smile. ‘I’ll call in sick for him. We’re from the same part of the world, nobody’ll even wonder if it’s him. I’ll say that hand of his – mine – is playing me up and I’ve gone down the hospital. Before anybody thinks to check he’ll have turned up in the bottom of the lock.’

  ‘With us still here?’

  ‘Why not? We’ve no reason to run. Accidental death: the guy took one chance too many. His mates must know he does things like that, they won’t suspect a thing. They’ll probably wonder how he got away with it till now.

  ‘All the same,’ he went on thoughtfully, ‘it might be as well to finish our business before the body turns up. There’s bound to be some activity down here before they rule out foul play. Call Scoutari and bring the deal forward to tomorrow night. As soon as it’s done Donovan has his accident. Then the cops can poke around as much as they like: we can sit on our hands till we leave town.’

  ‘What if they search the gear?’

  ‘Why should they? And even if they do they won’t find what Customs missed. Be cool, there’s no problem.’

  ‘What do we do with him till then?’

  Brady glanced at the wagon. ‘I’ll keep him here. Nothing’ll happen tomorrow, and if the cops come to the camp after he’s found they won’t ask about tonight. Sure, weren’t they talking to him after this?’

  Kelso regarded him with a new respect. ‘How did you get so good at this?’

  Brady laughed out loud. ‘The same way the hare gets good at running: dodging the hounds in the bloody heather. I played this game in Ireland when even the traffic cops carried guns. By those rules, either you get good or you end up in Milltown Cemetery.’

  ‘Talking of guns.’ Kelso held out his hand and Brady passed him their weapon. ‘Don’t want him getting his hands on it.’

  ‘No chance,’ said Brady.

  Kelso helped him put Donovan in the wagon, then he collected the Breton and left. Brady settled himself on the floor to wait. Donovan was still unconscious but that didn’t stop Brady holding a quiet one-sided conversation.

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit, have you, Cal? You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? You couldn’t just wait a few days and see what was going to happen.’

  He didn’t expect a reply and there was none. To al
l practical purposes alone, Liam Brady sat in the dark in a damp wagon smelling of rot and old grain, with his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms clasped round them, and thought as if his life depended on it.

  By midnight he knew what to do. He had to make some calls. Donovan’s mobile meant he didn’t have to risk being seen. It’s an ill wind, he thought grimly.

  Around midnight, too, Donovan began to surface. He’d been drifting for some time, his senses washing in and out like a slack tide. When the ache in his head was insistent enough to reach him through the fog his hands moved, loose and uncoordinated, towards the source of his discomfort. His breathing came quicker, turning to a groan.

  Brady bent over him. ‘Cal? Can you hear me?’

  Donovan’s head rolled at the sound, starting a surge of pain that made him whine. ‘Wha—? Who—?’ His voice was a frail ghost. He’d been out too long to pick up where they’d left off when Brady hit him.

  ‘Listen, Cal, you and me’s got to talk. I know you’re not feeling great but try to concentrate, this is important. It’s a bad situation but maybe not as bad as you’re thinking. I had to hit you, for both our sakes. Now I have to keep you here. Make it easy, hey? I don’t want to hurt you any more. I can get you out of this if you’ll trust me.’

  There was no response. Brady peered at Donovan’s face and couldn’t tell if he was listening or if his senses had slid away again. ‘I’m trying to save your neck here, Donovan,’ he said, exasperated, ‘the least you could do is stay awake.’

  He waited a moment then tried again. ‘Cal, listen to me. You don’t know what’s going on here. Will you just do as I ask? – go along with me while I get it sorted? Twenty hours is all I need. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Kelso’s happy to leave you to me. Twenty hours, then I’ll tell you what it was all about and you’ll be out of here.