SuperJack

by Adam Baron

  You could see the print from way across the room.

  ‘Bingo!’ boomed Deputy Commissioner Landridge. ‘Bloody bingo.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I snuck out of there while Landridge was on the phone to Scotland Yard. I got to the corner but stopped when I heard my name. I turned as DS Coombes hurried towards me, her face pale, and I waited until she’d stopped in front of me.

  ‘Thanks,’ Coombes said.

  I shrugged. ‘Nothing. Don’t worry.’

  ‘It could have been my job. I can’t believe I let you up there.’

  ‘I won’t tell.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it.’ She looked back towards the building. I stepped round the corner and she followed me. ‘Good job you were there, though. That piece of glass could have got lost on the stretcher, anywhere.’

  ‘Someone would have seen it.’

  ‘Well, whatever. That should settle it, though, don’t you think?’

  I nodded. ‘Can’t see any way round it. If the print’s Draper’s.’

  ‘If?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If!’

  Coombes nodded and folded her arms. ‘If it is, what’ll you do, give up on it?’

  ‘I’m working for Draper’s wife,’ I said. ‘I’ll still try to find him.’

  ‘And you think you stand a better chance than the combined police services of England, Scotland and Wales?’

  ‘You haven’t found him so far.’

  ‘True,’ Coombes admitted. ‘True.’ She’d rushed out without a coat and she shivered, running both hands up and down her arms. ‘If you ask me we’ll also need the combined police forces of Argentina, Bolivia and Peru if we don’t hurry up. That’s where I’d be if I was him.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘If he has the money.’ I had a strange, nebulous feeling. I nudged it aside. ‘If the print turns out to be his.’

  Coombes smiled and shook her head. ‘Want a bet on it?’

  ‘No,’ I said, after a second or two, letting a smile break my lips. ‘No, I don’t want a bet on it.’

  * * *

  The traffic was light on the Euston Road and I cruised along without any problems until I hit roadworks outside Madame Tussaud’s, where a long line of tourists was huddled together in the cold. I remembered going there with my mum and dad when I was ten or so. Parents from all over the world must do it but I could still remember the humiliation when the policeman my dad had told me to ask the time from had turned out to be wax. My dad thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen, often using it as an example of my stupidity in later years. I wondered how many of the children lined up there now would go through the same thing. I sat watching them for ten minutes. I made it to the underpass eventually, though, and it wasn’t long before I pulled off onto Pancras Way, behind King’s Cross Station.

  Looking at McKenna’s body hadn’t affected me the way finding Alison Everly’s had, but it was depressing. I’d become convinced that it wasn’t Draper who’d killed her and I was actually going to do exactly what Coombes had asked – try to get him to come in. If he knew what McKenna had been up to I thought he might just agree. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe Draper really was playing me for a sucker as everyone seemed to think. I hadn’t wanted to get myself into this in the first place. I had another image of Alison, what had happened to her, and it made me nearly physically sick to think I might be trying to help the man who’d killed her. I saw Jack again, in Fred’s, how cocky he’d been, how arrogant without knowing it. I knew that if he ever went to court for this, that would be exactly how he’d behave. And afterwards too, guilty or innocent, it wouldn’t affect the way he carried himself. For some reason I saw him with Shulpa, her hanging off his arm. I had a sudden flash of his wife, naked, moving on top of me. I wondered if that would do anything to him and felt small as soon as I wondered it.

  I pushed Draper out of my mind and pulled into the small car park behind the George. Twenty-five minutes later I was standing at a payphone in front of the station with a black postman’s bag over my shoulder. It was a fairly heavy bag, but I didn’t leave it on the floor beside me as I made my call, and it wasn’t because the floor was soaking. It was because the bag contained a large number of used twenty-pound notes, adding up to the sum of exactly forty-five thousand English pounds. My shoulder would just have to cope.

  I dug my hand in my pocket, pumped two pound coins in the slot and called Nicky. He was on his own. We spoke for five minutes, during which time I told him to do something he didn’t want to do, but which I managed to convince him about the importance of. We set a time to meet. Then I told him that I had his mother’s birthday present. I took a crumpled Post-it from my wallet and dialled another number.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s me. Don’t say my name.’

  There was silence for a long while. I drilled my ears into it. Then he spoke again.

  ‘Okay. Okay. Thanks for calling.’

  ‘That’s all right. How are you?’

  ‘Good question. I don’t know. Fucked off. Bored. I don’t get out much.’

  ‘Keep it that way. Where are you?’

  There was another silence. ‘I don’t think I should tell you,’ he said. ‘They might be listening.’

  ‘True,’ I said. ‘But that’s not why you’re not telling me. Have it your way.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you…’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I told him. I kept listening for background noise but I couldn’t hear any. Jack wasn’t whispering, he must have felt pretty safe where he was. I thought I heard voices. ‘Now, I’ve read your biog, and I’ve seen your wife. Give me your best guess. Out of all the people you could name, who is doing this to you?’

  ‘So you believe it wasn’t me? Thank God. Christ, it’s all I can think about. The worst to come out of it would be Dave Harvey, my old manager. We used to be mates, but we fell out. He knows I’ve got stuff on him that’ll mean he’ll never work again. He’s doing well now.’

  ‘But he’s not the only one. Those businessmen you named, in the gambling syndicate. They don’t sound like they’d mess around.’

  ‘Fuck no.’

  ‘But the only thing I can’t see is what good setting you up would do to anyone you were thinking of naming. The threats yes, but not killing Alison.’

  ‘It’s obvious. Come on! If it comes from a murderer then what credibility will it have? It’ll sound like I’m desperate.’

  I nodded. ‘And it was you who gave it to the Standard?’

  ‘Of course. I’m being stitched up, and I need people to know it. It’s working. The Mirror’s already calling me the Fugitive…’

  ‘It isn’t the media you have to worry about. It’s the police.’

  I hesitated a second. ‘So, you think it might be Harvey?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. Listen. I’ve had another idea. I’ve been wracking my brains and I suddenly thought to call a friend, a friend of Alison’s. I just spoke to her, on her mobile. A girl called Cheryl, she worked with Alison. Listen, okay? I knew she was dodgy, from when she shagged Dave Burton and was in the Sun. So I asked her if Alison had set me up, on purpose, before we’d even got it together. She didn’t want to, but eventually she told me about Alison and that cunt McKenna.’

  ‘McKenna?’

  ‘My agent. My former fucking agent?’

  ‘Former?’

  ‘I’m not using him after what he’s done. He stitched me up with the tabloids. He set me up with Alison, can you believe that? Maybe he killed her. Or at least let people know about my book. Billy?’

  ‘I’m still here.’

  ‘Maybe he did it to shut her up, stop her from spilling the beans about what he was doing. Try talking to the greasy twat.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘Another thing. Tell me about Korai, the chairman.’

  ‘What’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Your contract is up, isn’t it?’

  ‘True, but why
put me out of action? They need me.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Fine. I’m just trying to think of everyone. Keep in touch – just don’t say your name. Don’t leave messages.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And Jack?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you spoken to McKenna?’

  There was a pause. ‘I called him yesterday, the arsehole…’

  ‘On your new mobile?’

  ‘No, a callbox.’

  ‘Good. But don’t phone him again.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just don’t call him,’ I said.

  ‘What…?’

  I hung up.

  * * *

  I called Cheryl at my office, and when she didn’t answer and the machine came on I was suddenly and very violently worried for her, though I didn’t have any idea what might have happened to the girl. It was just an intense feeling. I was in full sprint to my car when I remembered I’d told her not to answer the phone. I slowed down, walked the rest of the way, then drove up to Highbury. The yellow Escort was still there, as was Cheryl when I put my key in the lock and told her not to panic. She was lying in my bed, her clothes piled on my chair. She hadn’t slept, she said, as she sat up, giving me a little hint as to why two healthy young men had got themselves in the Sundays because of her. She was too scared. I stepped into the cafe while she dressed, taking the postman’s bag with me. When I came back I told her why she didn’t need to be scared any more.

  The room was almost tropical and I opened the window. Cheryl’s eyes opened like two Venus flytraps. Once I’d convinced her I was telling her the truth a flood of relief washed out of her.

  ‘Who was it? Was it Jack?’ She sounded like a schoolboy with a new Playstation. ‘He called me just now, I told him, did he go off and—’

  ‘It happened last night.’

  ‘Right right. Christ.’ Cheryl nodded to herself, trying to take it all in, immediately calming down again. ‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am. Oh shit. I could fall asleep right here. Someone killed that vicious little cunt. I still think… Well, never mind.’ Cheryl’s eyes changed focus again, just as suddenly, and in an instant she looked like she was in a hurry. ‘Do you mind if I use your phone? My batteries are nearly out.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ I said, ‘please.’

  Cheryl told me she was calling someone she knew at the Mirror. When she got through she informed her contact that she had a good story on football agent Jeff McKenna. She listened for a second.

  ‘You know he’s dead, right?’ I watched her say. ‘Yeah, he is. They found him just now. He’s been stabbed. And he’s been ripping his clients off. I know how. Interested?’

  Whoever she was talking to was interested and Cheryl got herself together enough to arrange to meet him, bickering over which restaurant he was going to take her to lunch at. When she’d hung up she had a quick go at her make-up. She wanted to get moving but I prevailed on her to stay in the room long enough to give me the address of Alison Everly’s parents. She looked excited as she hurried out: a woman on her way to a good payday.

  I set lunch on my desk and refolded the sofabed for the second time that day before sitting down to eat. I wasn’t in the least bit hungry. It felt good to just sit at my desk, though, drinking coffee, running thoughts through my head. I stopped for a second as I heard a high-pitched squealing from somewhere, like a chair that needs oiling. I didn’t know what it was. I stared at my brother’s face, peering out at me from the picture frame. I hadn’t been in to see him for a week. I’d go soon, tell him about Nicky. If there was a Nicky left to tell him about. I suddenly had an image of Luke, miraculously waking from his eight-year sleep. I wondered if he’d retain any of the information I’d been feeding him over the years, whether he’d have any knowledge of the lives of the people I knew, most of whom he’d never met. Ally, Mike, Nicky, Shulpa. If he did it would be amazing, it would mean that I really had been communicating with him all these years. If he didn’t it would mean that he’d know nothing about me, we’d practically be strangers to each other. I’d lost him once, how strange to get him back only to realize that my life meant nothing to him.

  The tax return took my attention but I didn’t even come close to picking it up. Unlike last time I had other things on my mind. I now had two bodies to worry about. Now there was twice as much heat on the man I was supposed to be helping. I tried to picture Draper, out there somewhere, his life turned upside down. It was easy enough to see that Draper had a motive for both killings, for McKenna as well as, or independent of, Alison. If he’d killed Alison out of anger at what she’d done then he’d feel the same if not worse towards his former agent and friend. But if McKenna had killed Alison, Draper would still have the same reason to kill him, maybe more. I don’t know what he felt for Alison. Maybe he loved her. Maybe he killed McKenna out of revenge. I remembered the feelings I’d had when I’d first met him, how the success that he had oozed from every pore had set me against him. I thought of his voice on the phone that morning, how difficult he was to read. Was he shitting me? Was he? There was no way I could know. Not without finding him. And that didn’t seem very likely. If Draper had fooled the police he’d fooled me too. I didn’t have a clue where he was, and this was a shame. A big shame. Because I was beginning to think that there might be another, and far more important reason why I should know where Jack Draper was.

  The postman’s bag on the floor brought Nicky’s face into focus. The face he used to have that is. I had two corpses to think about and I didn’t want three. I stood up and lifted the bag onto my shoulder and it wasn’t that heavy really, far too light seeming to be able to buy three weeks’ worth of my friend’s life. I carried it over to the door, conscious of what it contained, what it meant, and pulled open the door. The squealing I’d heard earlier pierced the air again. It was coming from outside the window.

  The shrike, as I now knew to call it, was almost exactly at eye level with me, three yards out, the closest it had been. Maybe it really was nesting. I turned to go but stopped. There was something else. The shrike had what looked like a small mouse in its talons. It was held beneath the bird’s feet and the wet bark of the branch it was perched upon. The bird was still, except for the odd twitch of its head, while the mouse kicked its legs madly and twisted its body to get free from the claws gripping it to the branch. The desperate, reproachful sound cut through the cold air. It felt like the mouse was pleading with me. Terror bolted its eyes open as it looked around madly for a way to escape. I stood still and watched. The bird looked calm, disinterested, scarcely recognizing the fact that the mouse was there, struggling for its life. I saw a hand around Shulpa’s neck and a huge, impassive face, turned to me. I rested my fingers on the window latch but didn’t open it.

  The shrike continued to ignore the mouse as it kept up its fevered kicking. It was never going to make it. It was caught, and it probably knew it, but what else could it do? Suddenly it stopped and lay still, and I thought it had had it, but then it put on another spurt, wilder than the last. It finally got the bird’s attention. The shrike turned down to it, almost as if it had seen it for the first time. With two short bobbed movements it had reached down and pecked the mouse’s eyes out. I expected the bird to start eating the mouse, but it didn’t. Instead it started to look around again, as if it was studying the tree. Its short beak was covered in blood, a drop of which detached itself and fell, disappearing through the branches to the floor below.

  I didn’t stay and watch the rest. There was only one way it could go. The mouse still didn’t give up, weakly scrambling its front legs forward on the branch. It continued to scream until I’d closed the door and walked out into the hall. After that I couldn’t hear it any more.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The man who led me through to the vault of a small but discreet security company in Mayfair was a reserved gentleman in his sixties wearing pince-nez style glasses down towards the tip of his nose. He called me sir and
helped me courteously even though he probably thought the contents of my bag had come from a building society somewhere, and that I hadn’t taken them out of the cashpoint. I was left alone in the room and I loaded the cash into the box, all but the fifteen grand I’d left in my office. The money was old and crinkled but it didn’t take up that much room. After I loaded it up my hands felt dirty and I stood, looking at it, before pushing the drawer. In the bag it hadn’t seemed that much to get fussed over but now it seemed even less. It was a petty and shabby bundle, an insignificant-looking thing for my friend to get killed over. So I’d better make sure he didn’t. Once I’d settled my account I left the place and drove to Westbourne Park.

  Sal had told me that that was where the Maltese community tends to be grouped in London these days as well as giving me a rundown on how the outfit Nicky was involved in operated. Westbourne Park is mostly a Portuguese area and you wouldn’t know that some of the shops are run by Maltese, as well as a few of the cafes. I sat in one, reading about famines in the Guardian. Sal had given me a list of names, some of the people I was interested in, and I went through that too. I thought about some of the other things she’d told me, the way the Maltese operated. I asked her what she knew about a little guy with a harelip and she’d said he was the former favourite nephew, that most people had assumed that even though he was young he’d have taken over. He hadn’t and people had been even more surprised when he’d seemed to accept this. Now it wasn’t certain he ever would step up. He was wild, unpredictable, they weren’t quite sure what to do with him. And he, in turn, was beginning to get impatient.

  I sat, watching what was going on. Nothing much was. I wrote down the names of the shops and spoke to a few people. I kept my eyes open but I didn’t see either of the two men I was looking for. Just to see what kind of reaction I’d get I asked the cafe owner, a friendly and loquacious old man with a neat moustache, if he knew either of them. I described them pretty accurately and he wasn’t so friendly after that. He told me no and disappeared in the back, not coming out until after I’d left.