To Die For

by Phillip Hunter

  With Marriot and the others it had been different. I’d killed them because I’d had to. Marriot wanted revenge on me for what Brenda had done to him – grassing him up to the law – and I’d had to hit him before he hit me. Then, too, there was the money. He’d used me to get Cole’s robbery takings and I’d had to get it back because I’d been on the job and I had my reputation to keep clean. Yes, had to keep that reputation clean. It was all I had.

  With Paget, it was something else. Paget was on the run and Cole was after him. I’d got Cole’s money back, but Paget still had a million quid’s worth of his heroin. I didn’t need to go looking for him; I could let Cole do that. But I wanted him, and I knew when I had him I’d tear him slowly apart. I’d murder him by inches, and murder it would be. I couldn’t lie to myself about that.

  Eddie came round on the Monday. I was sitting watching some old film on TV, and Browne came back from answering the door and said,

  “Eddie’s here. He’s got some other men with him.”

  Right then I knew we were all back to business as normal.

  “I told him he couldn’t bring them in,” Browne was saying.

  He was thinking the same thing as me. He was fussing again, probably thought I couldn’t handle them. He was probably right. I was still weak.

  Eddie came in and smiled. He sat down on the sofa next to me. Browne waited and watched us for a moment, unsure now where we all stood. That was how quickly it all changed.

  “How about a cuppa?” Eddie said to him.

  Browne glanced at me.

  “Fine,” I said.

  Browne trotted off to the kitchen. Me and Eddie watched the film for a while. It was an old war film. The Nazis were the bad guys now. Browne came back with a couple of mugs of tea. He lingered for a moment then shuffled off.

  It was early afternoon, and getting dark. Sunlight hit the thin sky over London and spread out and carried on weakly through Browne’s net curtains and after all that, died a few inches from our feet. Eddie and I watched John Mills kill some more Nazis and we sipped our tea and it was all very cosy and I wondered what Eddie’s game was.

  “How you feeling?” he said, watching the film.

  “Fine.”

  “You look half dead.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any ideas what you’re going to do?”

  “No.”

  He tapped his fingers on the mug, watched the film.

  “Cole’s having trouble finding Paget,” he said finally.

  “Uh-huh.”

  We were both so fucking casual.

  “Vic wants Cole to help sort out the Albanians. Thing is, Cole’s got an itch about Paget, won’t do anything until he’s got that sorted.”

  He waited for me to say something to that. When he got tired of waiting, he said,

  “You got any ideas?”

  “No.”

  We sat there for a bit longer, watching the film, watching the day get darker. Finally he gave up with the tea and crumpet act and slid the mug onto the coffee table.

  “Alright, Joe, I know you want Paget. I know you’re going to try for him.”

  I wondered why he cared so much.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Vengeance.”

  “That’s a mug’s game.”

  He looked at me and smiled.

  “Right. So you’re not going to try and find him?”

  “I’ll leave it to Cole.”

  “Bollocks.”

  I shrugged. What was he going to do? If I’d known where Paget was, I’d have been out killing him. Eddie knew that.

  “Well, if you happen to suddenly get any ideas where he is, let me know, alright?”

  “Yeah.”

  After he’d gone, Browne reappeared and sat down. He had a glass of Scotch.

  “Is he going to be trouble?” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  3

  Bowker wasn’t at the snooker club, and he wasn’t at the pub they suggested. I went to his flat. After I’d banged on the door for a few minutes, a small fat lady opened up and stood unsteadily on swollen legs, her breathing raspy. It must’ve been an effort to get off her sofa and walk five yards to the door. She was all lumps and sags, and she smelled of stale cigarette smoke. When she saw me, she closed her dressing gown, as if she thought I might be tempted to rape her.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m looking for Jim Bowker.”

  “Yeah? What for?”

  “I want him. That’s all.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  She started to close the door. I put my hand on it and pushed it back.

  “Where is he?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. I never do.”

  “Guess.”

  She looked at me for a few seconds, pretending to herself that she had a choice.

  I found him at a bookies’ in Hackney. I waited further up the street in the car that Cole had let me have. I didn’t want to go inside the bookies’ because these days they all had CCTVs. After half an hour, Bowker came out, lit up a cigarette and started walking slowly in my direction. I got out of the car and crossed the road.

  When he saw me, he didn’t try to run or call for help. He must’ve heard what had happened to Marriot. He must’ve known I’d come for him. Maybe he thought my fight with Marriot was only to do with the Cole thing. But Bowker had set Paget onto me and Paget had tried to kill me and he damned well knew I knew that.

  Maybe he just knew that running was pointless. He dropped the cigarette and crushed it out and stared at it. Then he looked up and watched as I walked towards him.

  In the daylight, his yellow skin looked paler, his eyes darker, more sunken. He still had his thirty-year-old quiff, but it was too thin to be that black. He was wearing that shabby three-piece suit. He must’ve had it for twenty years. He was clinging on to some idea of past success, some memory of a decent score when he’d got himself down to Saville Row and blew a load on clobber. The suit was too big for him these days. It looked like his body was shrivelling up beneath it.

  I took him by the arm and steered him along the road, between people who moved aside to avoid us. When we got to a pub, I pushed him through to the car park at the back. I had a look around. There was a brick wall along two parts of the car park, but the upper stories of a few buildings overlooked it. At the side, it had access to a residential street, but little traffic went past. It was okay, I wasn’t going to do anything serious. All this time, Bowker hadn’t said anything, hadn’t struggled.

  I let him go and crowded him a bit and he pulled away from me and flattened himself against the pub wall. He tried to smile and said,

  “I lost.”

  I didn’t know if he was talking about his betting. I didn’t think so.

  “You know why I’m here?”

  “Paget.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Had no choice, Joe. You know that. Paget was after you and if he knew I’d seen you and not told him, he’d’ve sliced me up. I had to call him.”

  So, there it was. He thought I wanted him because he’d grassed me up to Paget. He thought he could sob his way out of that. He didn’t know I knew about Brenda. If he’d known that, he would’ve run like a bastard.

  “I want him,” I said.

  “Can’t help you. I don’t know where he’s gone, do I?”

  “You can contact him.”

  “How?”

  “You called him up when you set him onto me.”

  “I called him at Marriot’s place.”

  “You must have had another number.”

  He took too long to answer me, and he knew it.

  “I got a mobile number.”

  “Call it. Tell him I want to meet you tonight, 2.00am, in the car park, back of the cinema, Lee Valley leisure centre.”

  “What?”

  “Do it. Tell him I’m looking for him. Tell him I’m meeting you because I think you might know where he is.”

&nbs
p; “But...”

  “Do it.”

  “He’ll come for you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Fuck.”

  He was in a spot. If he set up Paget, he was dead. If he set up me, he was dead.

  “Fuck,” he said again. “I can’t do that. Cross Paget? Fuck that.”

  “You crossed me.”

  “I had to.”

  “Right. And now you have to cross him.”

  “Christ, Joe. He’ll skin me.”

  “He won’t live long enough.”

  “You think he’ll come alone? He’ll come with a fucking army.”

  “Do it.”

  “I ain’t got a phone.”

  I took a mobile from my jacket pocket and gave it to him. He looked at the phone like he’d never seen one before. Then he looked left and right, trying to find a way out of the jam he was in. He pulled another cigarette from his pack and lit it with shaking hands. He puffed on the fag for a moment, trying to think his way out. He had no chance of that. After he’d done his thinking, he fished a small black book from his jacket pocket and flicked through it. He found the number he wanted and dialled. I leaned in close so I could hear what was said. A voice came over the line. A man answered and Bowker asked for Paget. There was a pause and finally I heard Paget’s voice. Bowker told Paget what I’d told him to say. Paget said,

  “Really? That’s very interesting.”

  The line went dead. I took the phone from Bowker. Paget’s mobile number was now in the memory. I put a hand on Bowker’s chest.

  “Now,” I said, “tell me about Brenda.”

  He stopped breathing for an instant. He said,

  “Who?”

  I put a fist in his diaphragm. It was only a poke, really. I wanted him to be able to talk. He doubled-up and threw up, his vomit splashing by my feet. He crumpled to the ground. I let him stay there until he could breathe again. Then I prodded him with my foot and told him to get up. He climbed back to his feet. His greasy quiff had fallen over his eyes.

  A man came out of the pub. He looked us over.

  “What’s going on?”

  A few people were peering at us through the window. I told the man to fuck off.

  “This is my fucking pub, mate.”

  I told him to fuck off again. He went back inside.

  Bowker was shaking, rubbing his gut. Yellow spittle hung down from his lip and he wiped it off with a trembling hand. He couldn’t look at me.

  “You remember Brenda,” I said. “Tall lady, black, worked for Marriot. She smiled a lot. They found her in an alley, carved up.”

  “Please,” he said to the ground.

  “Tell me.”

  “I didn’t know what he was going to do, Joe. Honest.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I owed a lot to Jimmy Richardson. I mean, Christ, I owed a lot, twelve grand. Richardson wanted my bollocks in a sling. Paget told me he’d straighten it out if I did a small job. I had to do it. What could I do? And Paget said he just wanted a word with her.”

  “You believed him?”

  “No. No, I didn’t. But I thought he was just going to put the frighteners on her. Maybe rough her up a bit. That’s all.”

  “You knew I was seeing her?”

  “Course. Everyone knew. But I never thought you were a grass.”

  “So you knew she was grassing Marriot up to the law, and you thought Paget was just going to rough her up?”

  He looked up at me, then, and I could see that he knew he was edging closer to his own murder. He held my jacket loosely in his hands. I knocked them off.

  “I don’t believe you, Bowker. I think you knew what was going to happen to her.”

  The pub’s owner came out again, this time with a couple of other men, one carrying a snooker cue. I told them all to fuck off. They looked at me and then at Bowker. The owner dithered and said something to the others. He turned to me and said,

  “I don’t want no trouble.”

  They turned slowly and went back inside. I didn’t think they’d call the law.

  Bowker was sweating now, and his hands kept coming up and holding onto my jacket and tugging it. He was looking up at me and what he saw made him hold on tighter.

  I was tired of his hands on me. They were dirty and sweating and gnarled and they’d touched Brenda up. They clung to me and tugged weakly and I didn’t want those hands to ever touch me again. I swiped them away and he staggered and I straightened him up.

  “You killed Brenda.”

  “You can’t hurt me, Joe, there are witnesses. They’ve seen you. You’re not that stupid.”

  My hand was around his throat before I knew it. He gasped and struggled, but there was nothing in him, no leverage, no strength. I raised him off the ground and pushed my face into his so that I could watch his eyes as he tried to hang onto life. His face was red, his eyes bulging, his mouth twisted. His hands scrambled against my arm. There was a crackling sound coming from him. I wanted to crush his throat. I wanted to destroy him.

  I didn’t kill him. I should have done, but he was right, there’d been too many witnesses. And I had other things to do. I could kill Bowker later. Maybe it was a greater punishment to let him live, to let him go back to his prison flat, and to a fat wife with swollen legs who didn’t care if some thug was out to get her husband, and to his lifelong losing streak.

  “You grass me up to Paget about tonight and I’ll know, and I’ll come back for you.”

  I dropped him and left him on the ground, his face in his own vomit.

  I’d thought about holding onto him, using him as bait for when Paget showed up, but it was too long to wait and I didn’t want him jamming up the works or delaying me. I wasn’t thinking straight, I suppose. My head hurt, as it did all the time these days, a throbbing in the back of my skull that stretched through to my forehead and into the backs of my eyes.

  I drove back to Browne’s. When he saw me, he said,

  “Your head again?”

  “Yeah.”

  He went to the kitchen and came back with a couple of pills. I wouldn’t have bothered, but I had to be alert that night. I knocked them back and they wiped me out and I had to go lie down for a while.

  I woke once. At least, I thought I’d woken. The girl was standing by my bed, her arms by her side and her hair hanging down in plaits. She didn’t move, but stared with those large eyes. I reached out for her and touched Brenda.

  4

  One time, about three weeks before she was killed, Brenda said,

  “Have you got any ambition, Joe?”

  We’d been in her flat, sitting at that small formica table she had, eating Chinese. It was late and she’d finished work. There was some kind of soft classical music on. It wasn’t my thing, but I think she thought it added to the atmosphere, so I let it go.

  “To do what?”

  “I don’t know. Anything.”

  “Anything else, you mean.”

  She smiled and her eyes sparked to life and her face lit up. She looked a hundred years younger.

  “You got me,” she said. “Well, have you?”

  “No.”

  She nodded and carried on eating for a while.

  “I have,” she said. “Did I tell you? I’m saving up.”

  She had told me, but she’d forgotten. I knew she wanted me to ask her about it, so I did.

  “I want to be a beautician. I want to own me own place. A beauty parlour. They call them parlours. I wonder why. Isn’t that what they called a lounge in posh places?”

  I shrugged.

  “I like the sound of that,” she was saying. “What should I call it? I was thinking Brenda’s Parlour, but that’s got no ring, you know? I can’t think of anything that rhymes with Brenda. Or parlour.”

  “Big spender,” I said.

  She laughed, but she was forcing it. Something was bothering her. She was trying too hard to be bright and happy.

  “If you want money,” I said, “I c
an let you have some.”

  She touched my arm.

  “No, Joe. No. I don’t want any money.”

  “I’ve got plenty. You might as well do something with it.”

  She leaned over and kissed my cheek.

  “That’s sweet,” she said.

  It wasn’t sweet. My money wasn’t doing anything. I just saved it up for the sake of it. I’d never known what to do with it. I’d never wanted a fast car or an expensive watch or any of that shit.

  “It’s not much to ask, is it?” she said. “To be a beautician? That’s not much.”

  She wasn’t telling me, she was telling herself. Or trying to. I don’t think she was getting through.

  “You wanted to be a carpenter, didn’t you?” she said. “I remember you told me.”

  That was true, as far as it went. It was something I’d once enjoyed, when I was young, when I still thought there was a choice. Then, I’d thought I could use my hands to make something. Turned out I could use them better to pull things apart.

  “Sometimes I don’t think I’m going to make it,” she was saying. “You know? I mean, I think ‘Who are you kidding? Who do you think you are?’ I mean, look at me, Joe. Just some over the hill black tart. Who the bloody hell would want me to make them beautiful?”

  I said,

  “You’re not so bad.”

  When I looked at her, she was resting her fork on her plate and looking off into some middle-ground. She hadn’t heard me. She had that look, the one Kid had had sometimes. It made Brenda look like a child, lost, scared, trying not to show it. Kid had been a child, she had been lost and scared and hammered by the world. I suppose Brenda was a child too, in a way. She still had the sort of stupid dreams that children had, like wanting to be a beautician.

  I finished eating and went to make a cup of tea. When I came back, she’d given up with the meal and had gone to sit on the sofa. She had the window open, the curtains pulled back. A weak cold breeze wafted into the place and carried a far-off smell of wet air and diesel, and the sound of droning traffic. She was smoking and gazing at the darkness outside. In her hand was a glass of gin. It was a big glass and it was mostly full. I saw the bottle on the floor. I didn’t see any tonic.

  There was a glaze to her eyes, and I thought she’d been crying. I put the mugs of tea down on the table. She kept her eyes on the window. In a low, distant voice, she said,