A Good Day To Die

by Simon Kernick

  One night in October 1985, when I was still a probationer in uniform, I’d been sent to a similar estate in Tottenham, along with hundreds of other Metropolitan Police officers, to deal with a bloody riot, during the course of which we were petrol-bombed, shot at, and bombarded with paving slabs by a mob who were able to defend their territory with terrifying effectiveness, thanks to its design. The estate was Broadwater Farm, a byword for infamy in the Met, and by the end of that night more than two hundred of my colleagues were injured, and one, PC Keith Blakelock, was dead, having suffered multiple stab wounds at the hands of machete-wielding rioters. I swear that if the site had been more open-plan we would have brought the riot under control a lot quicker than we did, and with far fewer casualties.

  At this time in the morning, the place was quiet: a couple of young mothers were pushing prams; a frail pensioner still in his dressing-gown was standing about on one of the balconies that ran round each block. Not much else.

  I found Block D, and climbed the steps that led up the side of it until I came to the fourth floor. Delly lived at number 42 and the balcony that ran its entire length was empty. When I got to his door, I could hear the radio playing from inside and I knocked hard. There was no answer. The curtains were pulled and I couldn’t hear anything above the radio. I knocked again, harder this time.

  I’d come a long way this morning and was loath to go back to the hotel without seeing Jamie, so since there didn’t appear to be anyone else around, I decided to resort to more radical measures than I would usually have considered. Taking a step backwards, I kicked the door as hard as I could just below the handle. It wobbled but held, so I kicked it again, and this time it flew inwards with a loud crack.

  I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. The place smelled terrible. Fat; unwashed sweat; domestic rubbish; smoke. The only way I could have spent a night in there was if I’d been wearing a gas mask.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  The voice belonged to a well-built, square-jawed white guy of about thirty, dressed in a black leather jacket and holding a foot-long cosh in his right hand. He was standing in a doorway on the other side of the room, and without waiting for an answer, he raised the cosh menacingly and advanced across the mess-strewn living room.

  ‘I’m the man with the gun,’ I answered, pulling the .45 out of the waistband of my jeans and pointing it directly at his chest. ‘Drop that fucking thing. Now.’

  He stopped dead, held his ground for a couple of seconds while he assessed the situation, then reluctantly dropped the cosh as I walked towards him, cocked the gun and pushed it against his chest.

  ‘I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with here, mate,’ he snarled.

  ‘Well, why don’t you enlighten me? Because you sure as hell aren’t Jamie Delly, and that’s who I’m here to see.’

  He looked down at the gun, then at me, and could see that I wasn’t messing about. When he spoke again, it was with another menacing growl. ‘I’d advise you very strongly to turn round and walk away. Because I am here on behalf of someone who has a lot of clout round this neck of the woods, and who does not like people doing things that fuck up the smooth running of his business. You know what I mean?’

  I took a step back, and raised the gun so it was a millimetre from the bridge of his nose. ‘Where’s Delly?’

  Through the doorway came another voice, above the music. ‘What’s going on, Jer? Who you talking to out there?’

  ‘Don’t answer him,’ I said, keeping the gun where it was. ‘Go back in there.’

  He started to tell me again that I was making a mistake, so I let him know that I’d count to three and if he hadn’t moved by then, he wouldn’t be moving anywhere again. He glared at me through slit-thin eyes until I made it to two, then slowly did as he’d been instructed.

  I gave him a nudge and followed him through the door and into the flat’s small interior hallway. The voice called out again, asking what Jer thought he was doing. It was coming from the first room on our right. The door was half open and I shoved Jer inside. At the same time, I used my foot to push it as far open as it would go, and was immediately confronted with a sight that I could have done without at that time in the morning.

  A skinny, unkempt teenager who I recognized as Jamie Delly was hanging by one arm from the shower hook above the bathtub. He was wearing nothing but a pair of threadbare boxer shorts that had probably been white once but were now a murky grey, and he was staring at me, his eyes wide with fear and pain. Blood ran in rivulets from his nostrils down to his chest, but it wasn’t this that caught my eye. It was the fact that the top third of his left ear was missing where it had been freshly sliced away. The bottom two-thirds and the area of the neck beneath it were just a red mess. In front of Jamie, and slightly to one side, stood another white man with a shiny bald head, a dark goatee beard and a smile like a gash. He was holding a pair of bloodied secateurs, the blades of which were now pressed against the little finger of Jamie’s free hand, ready, by the looks of things, to lop it off.

  When the guy with the secateurs saw me, the smile disappeared, to be replaced with a glare of annoyance much like the one Jer had just given me.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, pointing the gun in his general direction. ‘Am I interrupting something?’

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he demanded.

  ‘What is it with you two? Didn’t anyone ever teach you manners? I’m this boy’s guardian angel and I’m here to tell you both to get going while you’re still in a position to do so.’

  ‘I think he means it, Tom,’ said Jer, staring at the gun.

  ‘The fuck he does,’ snarled Tom. He turned to me. ‘You ain’t gonna do nothing in here. Not with that fucking thing.’

  I laughed. ‘I think you could be in for a shock, but don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. Just make a mess of your kneecap.’ I changed the angle of my gun arm to make my point. ‘Now, I’m going to count to three. After that, if you’re still standing here they’re going to be calling you Pegleg until the day you die.’

  ‘You don’t know who you’re messing with.’

  ‘That’s what Jer said. I wasn’t interested then, I’m not interested now. One ...’

  They exchanged glances, then Tom slowly eased the secateurs away from Jamie’s finger, cutting the skin as he did so. Jamie gasped, but said nothing.

  I stood out of the way as they exited the bathroom and turned in the direction of the door, Tom leading.

  ‘You’ll regret this,’ Tom told me as I followed them into the living room.

  ‘Life’s too short for regrets.’

  ‘Yours is gonna be. You’re a dead man, mate.’

  ‘Can the threats and keep moving, baldie,’ I said, realizing that I was beginning to enjoy myself. Detective work was infinitely more rewarding when you didn’t have to play by any rules.

  He glared at me, but opened the door and did as he was told. Jer also managed a glare, but his lacked conviction. I watched them as they walked along the balcony towards the steps, Tom already talking on his mobile phone, doubtless calling up reinforcements with guns.

  I didn’t have much time.

  25

  I shut the door again and put the chain across, then replaced the gun, before returning to the bathroom, where Delly was trying without much success to free his hand from the rope that bound it to the shower hook. The blood from his ear was running down onto his left shoulder. It was a messy injury.

  He swivelled round as I came in, no sign of recognition in his eyes. ‘Can you get me down from here?’ he whined in a high-pitched voice that hadn’t changed a great deal since he was thirteen years old. ‘Please.’

  ‘I need to ask you some questions. You answer me quickly and truthfully, I’ll cut you down.’

  ‘Come on, man, you can’t—’

  ‘What did those two want?’

  He gave me a pleading look, but it didn’t work. I stared him down and repeated the question.

>   ‘I dunno,’ he answered. He pronounced it Adanoo, using the same harsh, ghetto-style pronunciations that seemed to be all the rage amongst the kids round here these days. ‘There was this knock on the door. I opened it and one of them smacks me with an ’ammer. Doosh! Just like that. Then the bastards dragged me in here and strung me up like this. I tried asking them what the fuck they wanted, but they didn’t say nothing. Not a word. And then the one with the goatee pulled out that chopper thing and sliced me ear with it. You seen it anywhere? The bit he took off?’ He began scanning the filthy linoleum floor for his missing body part.

  ‘We’ll find it in a minute,’ I snapped, keen not to waste time. ‘And what did they do after that? Did they ask you anything, or were they just cutting you up for the fun of it?’

  ‘They wanted to know about me brother.’

  At last, we were getting somewhere. ‘Your brother Jason? The one who was murdered.’

  He nodded rapidly. ‘That’s right. They wanted to know why he was meeting with that copper on the night he got killed.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ he shouted, beginning to lose patience. ‘I hadn’t seen me bro for weeks before he got wasted. That’s what I told ’em, but the bastards never believed me. They was gonna start on my fingers. Then you turned up.’

  I was confused. ‘You don’t know who these men were? They told me when I came in here that they worked for someone big, someone not to be fucked around with. Who do you think that might be? Who do you think those two were working for?’

  He rubbed his free hand – the one I’d saved – against the wounded ear, watching me at the same time through screwed-up features. It made him look like a rat. It struck me then that he’d always looked like a rat. Cunning and vicious. I had no doubt that he deserved to lose a few fingers.

  ‘Look, man, just cut me down from here, OK?’

  ‘No. Answer the question.’

  ‘Why the fuck should I?’ he demanded, not in the least bit appreciative that my intervention had saved him from further injury.

  I pointed the gun at his groin. ‘Because if you don’t, I’ll blow your fucking balls off. That’s why.’

  He exhaled theatrically, and I think he knew that I had no desire to shoot him. I noticed that a rivulet of blood from his ear had now reached his ribcage. ‘You heard of Nicholas Tyndall?’ he asked, swivelling round slightly on the hook.

  I told him I kept hearing of Nicholas Tyndall.

  ‘Me brother used to do some work for him, dealing gear. A while back. I saw him with one of them geezers before, so I reckon Tyndall’s the one who sent them here.’

  Which meant that Tyndall hadn’t known what Malik’s meeting with Jason Khan had been about. So he couldn’t have set it up. Not for the first time in the last few days, I felt myself being pushed towards a dead end.

  I looked at my watch. I’d been in here about three minutes, and didn’t want to hang around much longer. It was no way to conduct an interview. Jamie started trying to free himself again, turning his back on me.

  ‘Who do you think wanted your brother dead?’

  ‘I don’t know, man. Like I say, I never saw him much, y’know. He lived with his woman over near Caledonian Road.’

  ‘And now she’s dead too.’

  ‘Cut me down, man. Please. Me ear’s doing me in.’

  ‘Give me a name.’

  ‘Wassat?’

  ‘A name. Someone who knew your brother and his girlfriend. Someone I can talk to. Then I’ll cut you down.’

  ‘I told you, man. I didn’t see him much. I dunno who his mates was.’

  ‘A name.’

  He jerked his right arm back hard, trying either to break free of his bonds or pull the shower rail from the wall, whichever came first. Except neither did. He cursed with frustration while I waited and watched, counting the seconds, knowing Tyndall’s men would be back soon. And knowing too that if he couldn’t provide me with at least something, I would have wasted my time here.

  ‘I used to sell a bit of weed to one of Annie’s mates. Y’know, Annie who was Jason’s woman. The mate’s name was Andrea or something. Last name began with B.’

  ‘I need to know how to find her.’

  ‘How the fuck am I meant to know how to find her? I ain’t seen her in months.’

  Four minutes, and I was losing patience. I came forward fast, grabbed him by the hair and shoved his head back against the mildew-stained wall, pushing the barrel of the gun into his bloodied cheek. ‘If I were you, I’d start racking your brains,’ I hissed. ‘Real fucking quickly. Else a misshapen ear’ll be the least of your problems. Understand?’

  He finally got the message. ‘All right, all right, cool it, man,’ he begged, the words spilling out fast. ‘I got an old address book in a drawer in the lounge. Beneath the telly. It’ll be in there. That’s where I keep all me contacts.’

  I released the pressure on the gun and left him hanging there while I strode back through to the lounge, conscious of the ticking clock. I pulled open the drawer beneath the TV and rummaged round until I found a crumpled pocket-sized address book under a pile of DVDs and a huge bag of grass. I flicked through the pages until I got to ‘B’ and was pleased to find that Islington’s schools had at least taught Delly something. There was an Andrea Bloom in there, along with an address in Hackney and a mobile phone number, scrawled in barely legible childlike handwriting. Since she was the only Andrea in the ‘B’ section, I felt it safe to assume it was her. I pocketed the address book and went back into the bathroom.

  Jamie had given up struggling. He hung there limply, his head bowed, looking a terrible mess. I almost felt sorry for him.

  He looked up as I came back in, and I thought I saw a flicker of recognition in the cunning rat eyes. It was time to go.

  Trying to avoid his gaze, I used the Swiss Army knife to cut through his bonds, wrinkling my nose at the sour smell coming off him. While I was slicing away at the ropes they’d used, I asked him how well his brother had known Asif Malik.

  Not surprisingly, he hadn’t known. ‘But when Jason was gonna become a Muslim an’ that, I know he talked to Malik about it,’ he said. ‘He wanted some advice.’ The last strand of the rope came free, and Jamie collapsed in a heap in the filthy bathtub. He touched his ruined ear tenderly, then looked up at me. ‘Who the fuck are you, man?’ he asked, and I knew then that he still had no idea of my true identity.

  ‘The person who made sure you stayed in possession of all your fingers and toes,’ I told him. ‘Remember that.’

  I switched on the shower, thinking he needed one, and walked away, ignoring the yelp of shock he let out as the cold water soaked him.

  When I was back on the balcony, I looked at my watch. Six minutes since I’d kicked out Tom and Jer, the irony of their names only now sinking in. I didn’t think it’d be long before they were back with numbers, and I didn’t want to be here when they were.

  I was confident they wouldn’t do any more harm to Jamie. It should have been obvious to them that he didn’t know much about his brother’s death and was therefore going to be of no great use. Most serious criminals only inflict injuries when they need to and I suspected that Tyndall would be no different. However, I was fairly sure that Jamie would tell them what he’d told me and that they too might want to track down Andrea Bloom. It was important that I got to her first. She might only have represented a very slim lead, but there wasn’t a lot else vying for my attention right at that moment.

  As I turned to go, I spotted a man and a woman, both smartly dressed, emerging from the tunnel into the estate proper. Even from this distance, I could tell that the woman was young and pretty, late twenties tops, with brown hair cut into a neat bob; while the guy was about my age and height but carrying more than a few extra pounds, mainly round the belly. Straightaway I knew they were cops and, as if I needed confirmation, they both looked up towards Block D. It didn’t take a genius to know they were coming h
ere.

  I started along the balcony towards the far end of the block, walking fast, then breaking into a run as I hit the stairwell. I didn’t look back.

  I was still running when I came out of the back of the estate, onto a litter-strewn pathway that ran alongside a particularly unattractive stretch of Regent’s Canal. Decrepit, long-deserted warehouses with rows of broken windows loomed up on each side of the coal-black water, reminders of a time when there was still some real industry round here. I kept going until I found a bench that hadn’t been uprooted and chucked into the canal, and sat down, giving myself two minutes to recover. When my breathing was back to normal, I pulled out the address book and found Andrea Bloom’s entry. But when I called the mobile number, it was out of order.

  I recognized the road she lived on. It was about a mile from where I was sitting. And once again time didn’t feel like it was on my side.

  So I got to my feet and started walking.

  26

  According to the address book, Andrea Bloom lived just off the Kingsland Road in Hackney. It might have only been a few hundred yards as the crow flies from the bistros and restaurants of south Islington, but the Kingsland Road was a world away from them. It’s the sort of place you end up in when you’ve taken a wrong turn – a long, straight, desolate road lined with council estates and heavily fortified shops selling cheap goods – where gangs of kids in hooded tops hang round on their mountain bikes waiting for something to happen, or someone to mug. It hadn’t changed much since I’d been away and still didn’t feel that safe, even at eleven o’clock in the morning, but I walked most of its length south to north, unchallenged and unscathed, which either meant I looked too hard to take on or, more likely, it was still too early for the local street robbers.