You Can't Make Old Friends

by Tom Trott

  ‘In this “notebook”.’

  ‘That’s right. Enough to put you all away.’ I looked specifically at him now, ‘Even you.’

  He still didn’t react. Either he didn’t believe me about the notebook, or he didn’t believe that it could put him away.

  ‘I can make sure that doesn’t happen,’ I said.

  He leant back in his chair, and briefly inspected his nails. I was sure he had them manicured.

  ‘I see,’ he replied. ‘You are a businessman, that is your reputation. How much do you want?’

  ‘I’m afraid money doesn’t interest me.’

  He laughed so suddenly that I was insulted. That laugh wasn’t an act, it wasn’t under his control. ‘Oh, really?’ he bellowed. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘That notebook could cause you and your associates a lot of trouble: there’s some pretty big names in there.’

  ‘There’s no names, Mr Grabarz. Just initials.’

  ‘And how much surveillance do you think it would take to work them out?’ I raised my eyebrows, then I dropped my bomb. ‘I don’t suppose Max will be very pleased about that.’

  His face dropped. But where I thought there would be fear, where I had expected to see panic, I saw only disappointment.

  Regardless, I continued, ‘Tell me who he is and that notebook will never make it to the police.’ Sure, maybe I was betraying Rory, but he would understand. He wanted it to stop. If he wanted I could cut the head off this snake, or I could set fire to the whole slithering bunch.

  If there is a man behind everything, if there is a puppeteer pulling every string, if there is a devil in my city, his name is Max. The problem being, that’s about all I know.

  ‘That’s your deal?’ Coward asked quietly.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’ He readjusted. ‘I was hoping to keep this suit clean.’

  Thunder rumbled, I could feel it through the chair. And he casually pulled the notebook from his inside pocket.

  I went spinning. Like those times when you stand up too quickly. I was worried I might fall off the chair.

  Then he articulated everything I was thinking, better than I ever could.

  ‘Never trust a policeman, Mr Grabarz. Especially not in this town.’

  Then he took the saucepan off the hob and placed the notebook there instead. It began to burn and smoke.

  George. The same George who told me ABC Construction was clean. George, who took my money freely, so of course he took it from others too. George, who lived in an enormous house in Patcham that he could never afford. Rory had been given a flat, what had George done to earn himself a house? The smoking notebook began to fill my nostrils.

  His tongue darted out of the corner of his mouth, wetting his lips. ‘You know, I was actually expecting to pay you tonight, for a job well done.’

  What the fuck was he talking about?

  ‘Who do you think ordered George to text you about the body? I knew you were a friend of Rory’s, in fact I was ecstatic to find out. I used to enjoy reading about you, Mr Grabarz. You cheer me up. “The police’s dirty habit.”’

  What the fuck was he talking about!?

  ‘When it became clear that we weren’t going to find the notebook, I decided you would be the best man for the job. Do you really think I’d let a body wash up on the beach? Do you think that little of me? I thought you would be the best man for the job, and you were.’

  He paused, giving another disappointed sigh.

  ‘But tonight you’ve said one word that means you can never leave this place. And I mean never. Where did you hear it?’

  I didn’t answer, I was watching the notebook burn. The one thing Rory had done with his life to make it all worthwhile.

  ‘You can tell me now, or you can tell me later. But you will tell me.’

  His driver wheeled over a restaurant trolley. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw him pick up an implement.

  ‘I will start by pulling out your teeth.’ They were pliers. A flash of white told me he was smiling. ‘I got five out of Rory before I realised that wasn’t going to be enough.’

  He put them down, and picked up something else. My instincts told me they were secateurs. I was busy seeing my best chance to ever stop this evaporating in front of me.

  ‘I chopped off just this little piggy,’ he was holding up his right little finger, ‘but Rory had been snorting coke for ten years. Along with the drinking. His heart was too weak. The shock killed him,’ there came that white again, ‘I missed the sweet spot. See.’ He licked his lips again.

  He wanted a reaction, an acknowledgement of how clever he was. I didn’t give him one.

  ‘The fact that he was weak saved him a lot of pain. We didn’t even move on to the acid.’ He replaced the secateurs. ‘How is your heart, Mr Grabarz?’

  Did he want me to be scared? I was too busy watching the best thing my friend had ever done go up in smoke. Because of me.

  ‘My friend died to protect that notebook.’ Through torture, and death.

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘and you can see now how pointless that decision was. Don’t repeat it.’

  I could feel the three stooges approaching me from behind. I suddenly became aware again how sharp, and heavy, and hot everything in the room was. They should have tied me down.

  ‘Before we do this,’ I raised my hands, ‘just tell me, where did you dump Rory’s body?’

  He looked to the others.

  ‘The marina,’ Alan grunted.

  I nodded. ‘That’s all I really wanted to know.’

  He nodded his head angrily at them. They marched on me. Just as they made it within reach a blinding flash of lightning stabbed into our eyes from every steel surface. It was just what I needed.

  I ducked backwards, throwing my chair across the room. I was behind them now. I grabbed the back of Toby’s head and slammed his face down on the counter top. He screamed and fell to the floor, his nose bleeding everywhere.

  Dan swung. I dodged. And I kicked him right in the testicles. He hollered and dropped to his knees. I grabbed the discarded saucepan from the hob, spilling the soup everywhere, and smashed it into his face, burning him in the process. He writhed around on the floor.

  Alan approached, but he slipped on the soup and fell down. I kicked him as hard as I could. There was a crack, and he clutched his jaw.

  Coward turned around in fear to his driver, ‘Lou!’ but he had fled. Leaving just a pile of Coward’s hilarious clothes in the dirty doorway, which was now open. The door banged against the wall in the storm.

  I stepped over the writhing bodies towards him, slipping my phone into my pocket and slipping my knuckleduster onto my fist in the process. I slapped him.

  ‘Don’t leave that chair.’

  Then I dragged the three idiots into the walk-in freezer and shut the door, knowing there was no handle on the inside.

  When I returned Coward was gone. That son of a bitch had lived up to his name. I was by the open door, he couldn’t have got out that way, which meant he was still inside. I flicked the light switch. Nothing happened. Storm Joseph had given me the lightning with one hand, and taken away the power with the other.

  I headed outside, maybe his car would have something. It was a customized Rolls Royce, my perfect car. Still running, no doubt his driver had been keeping it warm for him. There was a pathetic little torch in the glove compartment. It would have to do.

  I ran back into the kitchen, the feeble yellow glow reflecting off the steel. The only thing I could hear was the hiss of the gas burner. I turned it off. The notebook had collapsed into a pile of ash, some of which was floating through the air.

  I checked the main restaurant. Crisp, stylish décor. It was empty. The door was locked.

  There was an office off the kitchen, all chipped paint and dust. A battered computer. But no Robert Coward.

  Air brushed up my trouser legs, caught in a draft. It was heading for the open door, but co
ming from below me through the floorboards.

  Cellars. The cellars under Kemptown. The same cellars everyone, including little Harry and Bobby, used to retreat to during the Brighton Blitz. Where was the trap door? It had to be in the kitchen.

  Less than a minute searching and I found it. It took some strength to open, I wondered how the eighty-odd Coward had managed it. Adrenaline, I guessed.

  I stepped down into the darkness, down rickety wooden steps. The first thing I saw was dusty wine bottles racked up. Then more as I moved into the small cellar, seemingly made of cobblestones. There were lights drilled into the ceiling, I tried them but they didn’t work either. I didn’t expect them to.

  The whole room was full of wine, probably what had been in the cellar for a hundred years. Lost to time. I felt lost to time myself. Down here I couldn’t hear a thing. No storm, no footsteps.

  It was damp and mouldy, the air thicker and heavier than the storm above the surface. Musty, like opening a shut-up house filled with skeletons and cobwebs. And underneath this smell, the smell of something else. Meat, maybe. I needed to hold it together.

  There was a stone tunnel connecting off the cellar, I moved into that. My feet smacking on a film of muddy water that ran across the ground. Just occasionally I heard the wind slamming the door upstairs.

  Off the tunnel were alcoves, once secured with iron barred doors, giving the impression of some medieval jail. Just my imagination, I was sure.

  Inside the cells were stacks and stacks of starz, amongst some other sacks of god-knows-what. This was the distribution point. Shipped into the marina in the concrete trucks, then shipped here in catering trucks. Then split up and sent off. I wondered if the restaurant did deliveries, it would explain the final step.

  After three cells on each side, one of which was open, the corridor opened on to another cellar. This one was empty. The ground was soft. Uncomfortably soft. There was no stone, just soil. And the soil looked wet. I could smell something. Something chemical. Did they cut the drugs here?

  I heard a hurried breathing. Panicked. I looked to my left. Leaning in the corner, sweating, pale, and manic was Robert Coward, with a gun in my face. It was a small revolver.

  ‘Don’t take another step,’ he said between breaths.

  One of those cells must have contained an arsenal, just in case.

  ‘This is where we make people disappear,’ he whispered.

  It was lye I could smell. They would dig a shallow grave down here and then pour lye all around to speed up the decomposition. I wondered how many bodies were underneath my feet. What was seeping into my shoes?

  ‘I’m not going to kill you,’ he said, ‘but I suggest you get out of here before I change my mind.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, ‘I’m nothing special.’

  ‘I’ll give you ten seconds.’ He cocked the gun.

  ‘Bobby,’ I said with a sigh, ‘the gun’s not loaded.’

  ‘Are you willing to bet your life on that?’

  ‘Yes, I am. You have absolutely no problem with killing me, upstairs you were about to torture me to death. If the gun was loaded, I’d be dead already.’

  I moved toward him, he kept it pointed at me but it never went off. I ripped it from his hands and threw it away. Then I dragged him by the collar back through the cellars, and back up to the restaurant.

  I threw him down into the metal chair and pulled mine closer to it. He looked at me with real fear this time. Thunder rumbled, everything shook.

  The area around the cooker was black with soot, I ran my finger through it.

  ‘My friend died for that notebook. Burning it is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made.’

  I punched him with my brass knuckles, opening up a cut above his eye.

  ‘He wanted me to take you to the police. Now you just get me. How’s your heart, Bobby?’

  I picked up the pliers. Clamped them over one of his front teeth. He eyes stayed fixed on mine, I couldn’t tell what they were trying to say.

  ‘There’s only one thing that’s going to save you,’ I bellowed as I squeezed those pliers as hard as I could, not trying to pull the tooth, but crush that old thing where it was.

  ‘Whatever you do to me,’ he managed to say through the pliers, ‘he’ll do worse.’

  I squeezed the pliers harder than I could, shaking with anger. ‘Tell me who he is!’

  ‘I can’t!’

  In that moment, I saw everything in his eyes. He wasn’t afraid of me. He wasn’t angry at me. He wasn’t defiant or stubborn. Those open whites. Those big pupils and arched eyebrows. He was sorry for me. He pitied me! He couldn’t tell me, even if part of him wanted to. He had been here before me, tried for his own sake and failed, he understood what I was trying to do and he knew that it was pointless.

  I dropped the pliers and dropped to the floor. I was done.

  ‘Don’t be disappointed,’ he whispered. ‘There’s just no one like Max.’

  Don’t say that name! I launched up and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him toward the door.

  Outside, red lights in my face, I bundled him through the condensing exhaust fumes into the boot of his Rolls Royce. And slammed it shut.

  last chapter

  Kiss and Tell

  the next morning when I arrived at the office there was someone waiting for me. I was only halfway up the stairs when I could already see a silhouette through the rippled glass, sitting at the unused desk, of all places.

  The door was unlocked. I could see that from the light making a clean frame around the door. No one else had a key. So it was with some nerves, and one hand in my pocket, that I pushed it open. It swung all the way without resistance, freely on its hinges like it had been oiled. I didn’t recognise this door, and I didn’t recognise the office in front of me.

  The inside had been tidied, varnished, and everything looked clean. No dust to draw pictures in anymore. There was a new pot plant to keep the old one company, and to give it something to strive for. There was an antique hat and coat stand for clients to hang their antique hats and coats on. And against the walls there were button-back leather sofas for them to park their arses on.

  Art adorned the walls. Classy art, a print of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks taking centre stage. This was an office I would be proud of, I wished it was mine, but it couldn’t be. Not with my luck.

  The receptionist’s desk was uncovered, clean, with a working telephone, a notepad, and a laptop. Sitting at the desk, wearing an enormous smile, looking at me over a pair of stylish, but I knew unnecessary, spectacles was a beautiful young woman in a professional, but not too professional, black dress. It was Thalia.

  ‘Morning,’ she chirped.

  I didn’t know how, but I had to admit she had done an incredible job. By which I mean I had to admit it to myself.

  ‘I can’t pay you without clients,’ I said.

  She held up the notepad. ‘That’s ok, you’ve got appointments all afternoon.’

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘I didn’t know what time you’d be in,’ she continued, ‘I wanted to surprise you.’

  ‘You succeeded.’

  She must have pinched my key and copied it. Maybe she would be a good detective herself.

  I felt embarrassed just thinking that, as though she might read my mind and find out I was complimenting her. Some women can do that. A lot of them in my experience.

  ‘I had to kick out four homeless guys when I got in, they were sleeping on the steps.’

  Bloody hell, Lenny. It was like feeding a stray cat, the next day they brought all their friends. Soon I would end up with my own troop of Baker Street Irregulars. Until today that wouldn’t have ruined my image, but now I looked respectable.

  ‘Any messages?’ I asked as I headed into my office.

  ‘Price keeps calling.’

  ‘Tell her I’m not in,’ I yelled to her as I sat down.

  She had even tidied in here. The blinds had been duste
d and my drawers organised. She had even wiped the dust off the bottle in the third one down. I swear my chair didn’t squeak anymore.

  She had also put the morning edition on my desk. The headline was “LOCAL DRUG RING CRUSHED” and it was apparently a fourteen-page special. Below the fold was “carnage from storm joseph” along with the front page picture: a tree smashed into a car, crushing it like a cricket bat would a tissue box. More pictures were on pages two to five, apparently.

  I wasn’t interested in that, so I settled in to read what had happened in Brighton over the last few days, according to Jordan Murrows.

  Apparently it had all started earlier in the week when that “gruesomely disfigured” body had washed up on the beach. It repeated the details of the disfigurement, much to the joy of the editors I’m sure. Just as the story started to tell you something you didn’t already know the front page ran out and you had to buy the damn rag. Continued on page five. This meant I had to flick through three and half pages of people with inside-out umbrellas and pebbles half burying the benches on the seafront. More trees ripped out at the roots, and roofs missing some of their slates. Then the story I wanted to read continued.

  Thanks to the work of former Metropolitan Police officer and new Brighton Detective Chief Inspector Penny Price, the body had been identified as Rory Sweet, a local man and known drug dealer. The murder was believed to be connected to organised crime. The article then took its time reminding everyone of the Pistol Penny story.

  When it got back on topic it was under the sub-heading “cache of drugs found at construction site”. It detailed a police raid on the construction site in the marina, where a large amount of prescription drugs had been seized due to incorrect and potentially fraudulent import and customs licences. These drugs were believed to be the same “so-called legal highs” responsible for twenty-three deaths over the last few months. Jordan was a little hazy on the connection between Rory’s death and these drugs. The article also stated that there were possible grounds to arrest dealers due to European Union regulations on prescription drugs, but that the police would not comment at this time.