‘Somebody wants me dead,’ I said. ‘And I think the person who wants me dead is in that building, waiting for me to come back.’
‘That sounds suspiciously like your problem,’ Errol said, getting cockier by the second.
‘Yeah, well, I think he killed Liptrott, too. And if we get him, then that’s a new puffa jacket and steel toecaps for Doorman Number One, don’t you think? See it as a career move. And anyway, I’ve got a piece. How bad could it go?’
He thought about it, his face taking on the intensity of a mathematical theorist grizzling over a four-pencil problem. ‘We nail him,’ he replied, ‘I take him.’
‘I get to talk to him first,’ I said.
‘Deal,’ said the bouncer, the dumb, trusting A-wipe.
We got out of the car and hurried over to the front door. I said, ‘Go upstairs and knock on my door in five minutes. If he gives you any grief, tell him you’re a bailiff coming to secure chattels or something. Just stand in the doorway. You’ll know what to do as soon as I open it.’
He looked at his watch as I nipped over to the communal door of the next terraced house, which formed part of the same block of flats. I rang every doorbell in turn, and a couple of seconds later a woman answered.
‘Cockroach man,’ I said.
‘Not for me,’ she said.
I said, ‘They will be. They’re coming up through the basement, big as mice.’
She buzzed me in. I ran up the stairs two at a time and thanked God the layout was exactly the same as my own gaff, only mirrored. I unbolted the attic hatch at the top landing and lumbered my way up through there, wishing I had a torch instead of a gun. I resolved to start smoking immediately, if only because it would mean I’d have matches in my pocket all the time. I shuffled to my right in the gloom, trying not to make any noise to alert the flats directly beneath me. My neighbours wouldn’t have heard me anyway; they were arguing with each other over an unpaid phone bill that contained ‘abaht firty facking pahndswuff of facking chat lines, you cant!’ The hole that the burglar had kicked in, in order to get down into my flat, was faintly visible just up ahead. Empty storage boxes barred my way, but it was a relief to find that was all there was, and that there was no dividing attic wall.
I hung over the lip of the hole and the mess inside my flat gradually emerged from the darkness. I swung a leg over and dropped to the floor as quietly as I could, which wasn’t very. Then I tiptoed grittily over to the door where it slouched on its hinges and peeked out through the crack between it and the jamb. Errol was coming up the stairs, and I could see the shadow of the guy on the landing jittering around as if he was made of candle flames. Then Errol’s head rose into view and the other guy was jabbering questions at him, warning him, but in an uncertain way, as you do when about seventeen stones of meat joins you in a confined space.
Errol now blocked out all the light. I saw the edge of his coat, and a drawn look on his face, which was probably not wholly the result of climbing three flights of stairs. He knocked three times on the door.
I heard the nervy guy: ‘It’s padlocked from the outside. The outside. Fuck’s sake, what are you? Dense or something?’
I teased the muzzle of the gun through the gap and against the padlock. I squeezed the trigger. The lock spun off and hit Errol in the hand. He spun away with a grunt and tottered backwards on his heels, as I swung the door open. The guy was shrieking and he kept ducking in and out of view, keeping Errol between me and him while he wrestled to pull something from his pocket. He looked as comfortable as a hedgehog born with ingrowing prickles. Sweat lashed off him and turned his bad haircut into something intolerable. His tiny eyes flashed unhealthily like the gleam you see on blobs of tar. On his throat was a black tattoo: a cobra’s head, all fanned out ready to strike.
I kicked Errol in the chest to hurry him up and he went over on to his back, cracking the balustrade with one foot and putting a dent into the plaster of the wall with the other. He piled into the little wanker, who folded over on top of him. He continued scrabbling in his pocket, even when I pressed the hot mouth of the gun against his cheek. My hands were shaking and the sweat was dripping off my face.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded, my voice trembling, but emerging harsh as hell. I didn’t know which way this was going to go. Errol was trying to get up; he was moaning about his hand and the fact that I had kicked him down the stairs. All the while, I kept my eye on the little wanker’s pocket, and repeated the question, my voice sounding a little more unhinged. I could barely hear myself above the throb of blood in my head. I was now roaring in every possible way. Doors were opening, and then rapidly closing again.
Under the probing muzzle of the gun, I could see how his skin was in poor condition. It wrinkled away from the metal, but didn’t snap back with the kind of elasticity you’d expect from someone who appeared to be in his late twenties. It also seemed his teeth were doing all they could to say cheerio to his gums: there were a lot of black joins in his mouth. I reckoned, if I pulled back his sleeve, there would be a lot of black marks up his arms too.
He pulled out a long-bladed knife. And that seemed fine. I expected that from a low-life grunt like this. He brandished it and, yes, that was what people with knives often did. I wasn’t so happy about his apparent disregard for my gun, however, and I was even more appalled when he drew the knife across his own throat, painting the walls, Errol and myself in what seemed like an endless hot tide of his own blood.
9
You ever try going for a nice, chatty pizza when that kind of shit has gone down?
Give me credit, I had a go. But first I spent a lovely part of the evening down at Marylebone Police Station, giving statements and being mercilessly grilled. They were at least nice enough to get me a fresh change of clothes so I could walk the streets of London without resembling a vampire with a drinking problem. All I could think about – as the burly BO magnets at the nick were leaning over me and playing bad cop, badder cop – was how controlled, how graceful the little wanker’s suicide cut had been, when prior to that he had been moving like the jags on an oscilloscope.
When they finally let me go I phoned Melanie to tell her I’d be a little late, but she was okay about it, told me she was reading a medical journal over a G&T at the restaurant. She asked me if I was all right, and I said sure, even though I knew the tightness in my voice must be giving me away. I liked that she was waiting for me, trusted that I was going to show up, but a part of me wished that she had thrown a strop and gone home, vowing never to grant me a second of her non-professional time again. Things were going very bad, very fast and I was scared that I was bringing too much naughty into her life. I was glad of Mawker’s new tail, who was even more cack-handed than the previous one, so I went out of my way to make sure he didn’t let me give him the slip on the way back to W9.
* * *
At the restaurant I immediately told Melanie what had happened, and that I couldn’t stay at her place any more if I was to feel secure in the knowledge that she would be safe. She was a little shell-shocked by my news, which I had expected, but I wasn’t expecting her to say that it was all right, she’d be all right, it was okay for me to stay.
‘I can’t… I won’t have what happened at my flat happening at your place,’ I said.
‘How can it?’ she said. ‘It’s Maida Vale. Where newspapers are ironed and underwear changed twice a day. People go out for weekend breakfasts in a suit.’
I told her I had to leave London anyway for a few days, that it would be for the best if I took a little heat away from her front door. Until everything was sorted out.
‘By that you mean until you’re dead?’
‘Anything but that would mean sorted out, in my book,’ I said.
‘But it’s a possibility.’
‘It was damned near a fact earlier today,’ I said, knocking back half a glass of chilled Chardonnay and wishing I’d ordered something stronger.
‘Where are you going?’ she as
ked. The question was intoned neutrally, but there was the slightest tilting of her eyebrows. Our relationship had shifted. There was a degree of concern trying to melt away the ice at her edges, and it touched me. Except I wish it had happened at any other point but now. I’d never been brilliant when it came to…
‘Where will you stay in Liverpool?’
…timing.
‘That part of the world, the north-west, it’s my old stamping ground,’ I said. ‘I’ve got plenty of contacts up there I can depend on.’
‘Old girlfriends, you mean?’
‘Not necessarily. There are some, but they’d sooner fry my arse off with a bit of garlic than give me a sofa for the night.’
‘Popular with the ladies, were you?’
‘Notorious, more like,’ I said, and tried to divert the evening in other directions because faces were trying to push through. There’d be time enough for memories once I stepped off the train, but not now. Not with this woman.
We finished our drinks and pushed our empty plates away. I paid the bill, and felt guilty when I wished that she’d offered to deal with it. I needed to get hold of some cash from somewhere soon – my stash at Keepsies wasn’t going to last for ever – or I was going to find myself visited by some real hard men, bailiffs bigger than Errol, with sledgehammer fists and back-brain sensitivities.
It was unseasonably mild as we walked the pleasant streets back to her flat. At the corner to her road, I stopped her and said goodbye.
‘Come inside,’ she said. ‘Just for a little while.’ The backs of her fingers pressed against my stomach, slid a millimetre down behind the waistband of my jeans. ‘Just so I can say goodbye.’
I kissed her on the forehead and stepped out of reach. ‘It isn’t safe,’ I said. ‘Look after Mengele for me. I’ll call you. And if you feel lonely or scared or anything, give Keith Bellian a ring.’ I spelled out his surname for her. ‘He’s in the book. Tell him I told you to call him, and he’ll come and get you.’
‘Keith Bellian,’ she repeated. I nodded and walked away.
I turned back once I heard her footsteps making their way to the front gate, and I watched until she was safely behind the closed door. Still I remained, watching the street, looking for any signs that there was someone wise to her involvement, but the street was quiet and, like me, sleepy.
I headed back to the tube but paused to tie a bootlace in a drive on Chalcot Crescent. ‘Evening, PC Subtle,’ I said, addressing the shadows.
‘Bastard,’ came a voice from the azaleas.
‘The girl I was with, you’d be better off keeping watch over her,’ I said. ‘She’s worth more than a dozen of me.’ And then I was away.
Wire pocketed the money from her purse – a matter of twenty pounds and a handful of shrapnel – and with it he bought himself dinner: pasta, lean chicken, steamed vegetables, a bottle of mineral water. No wine. No dessert. Keep control. Know your body. Your limits and levels.
She had a little label tucked into the side of the purse: If lost, please return to… a reward will be given.
He caught a tube to Tufnell Park. The woman had lived in an attractive Georgian house on Dartmouth Park Road. Leafy. He liked streets with trees on them. He liked trees. He had no compunction about giving trees a hug.
He watched the house for hours. He did this safe in the knowledge that neighbourhood awareness was not as honed locally as it was back home in Liverpool. There was much more of a serve-yourself attitude here. He knew about London. He wasn’t stupid.
Once it was apparent that there was nobody at home, he slipped in through the front gate and kicked in the basement window. He slid through it into a room with a sofa and a desk with a computer on it. The room was very white. Even the computer was white. The only things that weren’t white included a potted plant and a bowl of Granny Smith apples. A white guitar, a Les Paul, hung on the wall, and it was the only thing that did. He moved up the steps to the ground floor, where a piano stood in the hall. Pages of sheet music, basic children’s stuff – ‘If I Had a Hammer’, ‘Little Boxes’ – rested on the music stand. An empty Ski yogurt pot had been left on the stairs, a screwed-up tissue and a clog of hair stuffed inside. In the kitchen, a casserole sat in the centre of the table, with a pink, heart-shaped Post-it note tacked to its lid: H. Lamb stew… middle shelf @ 180, soon as you get in. Love you, Lx
Messy, bright pictures – unrecognisable daubs of paint that might have been dinosaurs or flowers, or pictures of Mum and Dad – were fixed to the fridge with magnets.
He climbed the stairs. First floor: two bedrooms obviously belonging to children. Toys all over the floor. Characters from Thomas the Tank Engine, Toy Story, Ben 10 on the walls. Second floor: bathroom, Mum and Dad’s bedroom. She was an untidy woman, in private: jumpers and jeans and cargo trousers lay around like deflated bodies. He went through her stuff in a desultory fashion, and he did not flinch when he heard the front door creak open, and noise instantly filled the house.
He went up to the third floor even as he heard the trampling of footsteps and the shriek of laughter, as the children ascended. Further away, he heard car keys drop on the kitchen table, then music – Radiohead, he thought it was – and the clink of cutlery as dinner places were set.
The third floor was a work area: two studies, a small bathroom with compact shower, toilet and sink. Her study faced the same road that he had just been watching from. No computer in here, just a desk with a large notebook on it, a simple wooden chair with a blanket over the back, a bookcase that held lots of gardening and cookery volumes. At the back of a drawer in the desk he found a large tin which yielded a Jim Crace paperback, a carton of Colgate dental gum, two tampons, two plastic wallets containing handwritten notes, phone numbers and contact names, an old diary, a tube of Smarties and a Siemens mobile phone with a cracked screen.
He flipped through the diary and found photographs of Linda looking much younger. Most of them were of her and some guy called Si, to whom she had written little messages of love on the rear. In one of the photos she was baring her breasts and blowing a kiss. In another, she was sucking the thumb of the person taking the picture in a lascivious fashion, her eyes half closed. Apart from three ten-pound notes hidden inside the paperback, he found nothing else of interest. He put everything back in the desk. Then he lifted his holdall on to the desk and shoved his knife into a side pocket. He didn’t need to wipe it clean, because it was so sharp that it cleaned itself on the way out of whatever it had been stuck in.
From the bottom of the holdall, under an oil-stained towel, he pulled out a plastic carrier bag. He unwrapped the gun as if removing some kind of binding from an item of religious treasure. Show respect. Show dangerous things respect, and they won’t bite back. The butt was wrapped with masking tape, and the registration number had been filed off. He stared at the silver plating and curled his finger around the trigger. A .38 snub-nosed Smith & Wesson with the cylinder loaded and ready to do what it did best. It was a revolver, so the shell casings were retained within the gun, which meant that there was less evidence for forensics to work on should he ever be obliged to use it. He had bought it in the Old Swan for two hundred pounds from a guy called Ryan. He never even asked if it had been used to kill anybody, since he was too together for that kind of paranoid chat. That kind of chat could get around, and he didn’t want to become known as someone whose lips were always on the flap. Someone who was borderline shitting it.
A young voice calling down the stairs: ‘Dad, can we watch Flapjack?’ Not yet, according to Dad, who then turned up the music a notch to drown out any more requests.
Wire tucked the gun back into its hiding place and stepped over to the window. He jabbed his fingers at the numbers on the dead woman’s phone. Wherever you may be in London, he had heard, you are less than eight feet away from a rat. Maybe the same could be said of weapons, too. Everyone seemed to be carrying these days. On the Wire’s own patch in Liverpool, he didn’t know anyone who didn’t carry a chi
v or a cosh or a gun. One guy never went out without a pair of Bowie knives hidden down his trousers. It was even worse in London, from what he’d heard. But he didn’t like guns, considered them too much of a liability. Knives were the craftsman’s tool. But, then, this was the Smoke and you had to have a gun to get ahead. No time for craftsmen down here. Well, maybe he’d show them how to think differently.
Now he heard ‘Who?’ The voice was flat, disinterested. It sounded too cultured for the number he had dialled. This number was supposed to be his in, his friend in the big, bad, bloody city. Maybe he had misdialled.
‘This is Wire,’ he said, his voice soft, like a child’s voice still. ‘This is the Four-Year-Old. How are you? It’s been a while. Did you…?’
The voice was back again, cutting through him – naughty, naughty, but let it go. ‘There’s a phone booth corner of Seven Sisters Road and Woodberry Grove. Be there in an hour.’
The Wire wanted to ask questions, but instead he pressed the ‘call end’ button, knowing that the voice had done just the same. He had learned quickly that patience meant everything in this business. The lack of it undid you, put you inside. Wire checked his A-Z and figured, yes, he could be in Manor House in half an hour. But first, but first…
On one wall the dead woman had hung a cork board. Photographs, theatre tickets and letters from friends were pinned to it. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic box filled with self-adhesive gold stars. In each picture of her, he concealed her face with them. While he worked, he found himself thinking about his mother, something he did more and more these days. The redness of her lips. The way her clothes hung on her. The blonde hair.
He was still thinking of her as he slipped down the stairs, with his holdall over his shoulder, not checking to see if the children had spotted him, because of course they hadn’t; not checking to see if the father was likely to walk into the hall, because why would he? He was the Wire. He was invisible. He was out in the street once more, and turning his face to the sky, fighting the tears, and he always won. He always beat the tears back, but there was only one person who ever threatened to draw them out of him. And she was nowhere now. Like him. Like him.
Dust and Desire Page 9