Theo didn’t see Easy come in, but turned fast when he heard the voice at his shoulder.
‘You want something else, T? A latte or some rubbish? Maybe a croissant or whatever, to go with your morning reading.’
‘I’m OK,’ Theo said.
Easy went to fetch himself tea and when he came back he grabbed a folded Daily Star from an adjacent table. He dropped it in front of Theo and jabbed at the bikini-clad model taking up most of the front page. ‘That’s the way to start your day, man. Some of that good stuff get you up and at the punters out there, you get me?’
Theo started to gather up his papers.
Easy nodded and leaned forward. Lowered his voice, nice and serious. ‘I know what’s happening here, T, but you got no reason to be fretting about all this, I swear. You got a solid crew round you, man. Hundred per cent.’
‘The police are fired up, though.’
Easy shook his head, not interested.
‘Seriously, you should read this stuff.’
‘Fuck the police.’ Easy looked round, like he was searching for somewhere to spit. ‘They don’t even know where to start looking. The Five-O are nothing. For real, T.’
Theo nodded and laid the pile of papers to one side. Easy leaned back and grinned the grin.
Subject closed.
‘Now, we still on for tonight?’
‘On for what?’
‘I still need that innocent face.’
‘Shit.’ The job Easy had been talking about a couple of days before. Theo had forgotten all about it. ‘I’ve hardly seen Javine and the baby in days, man,’ he said. ‘I’m working my bollocks off, you know?’
He was working longer hours, that much was true. Spending as much time apart from the family as he could get away with. Carefully avoiding anyone who cared.
Easy wasn’t having any of it. ‘You got to be doing this stuff, man. Last thing you need right now is to sit about and let all this mess with you, you get me? Besides, kind of job we’re doing tonight, that’s the reason you shot into that bitch’s car in the first place, isn’t it?’
The reason . . .
It was money, Theo supposed. Or respect, like the bigger newspapers said. Although, thinking back to the moment he pulled the trigger, it felt like he’d done it mainly because Easy and the others had been shouting and taking the piss. He told Easy that it was a stupid question, because he didn’t know what they were going to be doing.
‘It’ll be a laugh,’ Easy said. ‘I swear.’ He stood up, taking the Star with him and promising to call Theo later with the details.
Theo finished his sandwich, then went outside to smoke. He took a paper with him and stood on the pavement, looking down at the picture of Paul Hopwood. The thirty-four-year-old. The expectant father. Kept looking until the soft worm of ash fell onto the paper and he had to shake it away.
More shit, slopping about.
The entire sequence of ideas and impulses took no more than a few seconds, but Helen enjoyed watching the different expressions pass across Ray Jackson’s face, trying to interpret them, as he eased the taxi off his front drive and turned onto the road.
The confusion at seeing a woman trying to flag him down outside his own front door. The momentary dilemma when he saw her shape. The ‘sorry, love, nothing I can do’ shrug as he made his decision and put his foot down, wanting to get a full English inside him before picking up any fares, least of all mad women.
The anger, then the resignation, when he saw the warrant card being waved. As he slammed on the anchors and pulled over.
Helen walked up to the window, waited until it was wound down. ‘Turn the engine off please, Ray, and hop in the back. We can have a natter in there.’
It was a neat little side street in North Acton. Mid-twenties terracing; trees in blossom outside every other house, lined up as nicely as the satellite dishes. Jackson did as he was told and held the door open as Helen climbed into the cab. She thanked him and he said it was all right, but could they get a fucking shift on, because he had a living to make. She said that she’d try not to hold him up.
‘You had a passenger in the back of your cab, a police officer, on Friday, the eighteenth of last month. And on the Friday before that.’
‘Which one?’ Jackson asked.
‘Sorry?’
Jackson took a couple of seconds. ‘Which Friday?’
‘You’re not listening, Ray. Both. An afternoon and then an evening.’
‘You got any idea how many passengers I carry every week?’
‘You picked him up outside the NCP on Brewer Street.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘You don’t have to. We’ve got both pick-ups on CCTV.’
‘So? Did I break the speed limit somewhere?’
‘I’d like to know where you took him,’ Helen said. ‘I’d like to know who the other passenger was. The man who was already in the cab when you made the pick-up on Brewer Street.’
Jackson was fifty-something and solid. If Helen did not already know that he was someone comfortable with a certain degree of violence, it would have been clear enough when he turned to look at her.
‘I don’t have to talk to you. I’ve done nothing. So, you can get out of my cab now.’
‘I’m not finished,’ Helen said.
‘Sorry, love, that’s me done.’ He turned to look out of the window. ‘Shouldn’t you be at home knitting bootees, anyway?’
Helen swallowed. ‘The police officer I’m talking about was killed a week ago.’ She let that sink in. ‘So, you do have to talk to me, or at least you do if you don’t want us all over you like shit on a blanket for the foreseeable future. Everybody’s done something, Ray, and you more than most. So, it’s probably easier if we get this over with now, wouldn’t you say?’
It was all nonsense, of course. There was no reason why even those officers who were investigating Paul’s death would be interested in a taxi ride he’d taken a fortnight earlier. Helen gambled on Jackson not knowing that, and she was right.
He swore for a while, gathering himself or editing information in his head before he began to spit it out. He told Helen about one particular client he drove sometimes; a respectable businessman for whom he worked on an exclusive basis, alongside his regular fares.
‘Sounds like a decent whack,’ Helen said. ‘Cash in hand?’ She smiled at the reaction. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not the taxman.’
Jackson nodded. ‘A lot of the cabbies are doing the same thing these days,’ he said. ‘There’s a demand. We’re cheaper than a limo service and we don’t get lost.’
‘This businessman knows who’s driving his cab, does he?’ Helen waited, but Jackson wasn’t coming up with an answer. ‘See, if he knows all about Parkhurst and Belmarsh and the reasons why you were in there, and he’s still happy for you to chauffeur him about, I’ve got to ask myself just how “respectable” he is. Can’t see Alan Sugar taking you on, can you, Ray?’
‘It was all a good while ago.’
‘Where did you take them? Your boss and the police officer?’ Jackson said that he couldn’t remember where he’d driven to on the Friday afternoon Helen was asking about, or whether the two passengers had left the cab together. The evening job was to a restaurant in Shoreditch; Italian place. He couldn’t remember the name.
‘Any idea what they talked about?’
‘I wasn’t invited.’
‘What about in the cab?’
‘I never listen.’
Helen doubted that very much, but she could see that she wasn’t going to get a fat lot more. As she slipped her notebook back into her bag, she noticed the faded stain on the carpet at her feet.
‘What’s that, Ray?’ Her tone made it clear enough that she knew the answer already.
Jackson smiled. ‘I don’t think this copper died in the back of my cab.’
Helen said nothing; thinking about the state of her sheets, the two hours she’d spent at the hospital in the middle of t
he night. She reached down to scratch at the stain with a fingernail.
‘Some twat had a nosebleed,’ Jackson said. ‘Fair enough?’
‘They can be nasty . . .’
He opened the door and stepped out, waited for Helen to do the same.
‘My car’s parked at the end of the road,’ she said.
Jackson opened the door wider. ‘Shouldn’t take too long to walk there then.’
Ollie and Gospel had been working a corner near the Lee Bridge end of the shopping centre since lunchtime. Now, it was just starting to get dark and Ollie reckoned they’d done about two hundred pounds’ worth of business in the last eight hours. Two hundred and thirty, as soon as Gospel got back with the three rocks their latest customer was waiting for.
Wave would have to be seriously happy with those sorts of figures.
Ollie looked across the road at the short white man in the doorway opposite. He was a bit older than the usual punter, and a bit less jittery. He was staring straight back at Ollie, like he was asking the question. Ollie held one hand up, fingers spread.
Give it five minutes . . .
It had been ten, maybe more, since Gospel had left for the stash house with the punter’s money. She was one of the quickest, too; didn’t waste time gassing while she was handing over the cash. Ollie was starting to wonder if there might be a problem when his mobile rang.
He recognised Gospel’s number on the display. ‘Where the fuck are you?’
The man’s voice was very deep and very calm. ‘Your girlfriend’s a bit busy, you hear me? Now shut your hole and listen.’
Ollie listened as he was given instructions: told where to go, to get there as quickly as he could and to talk to nobody on his way. He was already moving, but in no particular direction, weaving up and down the same few feet of pavement, his mind racing, the sweat starting to prickle all over his body.
‘This is a big mistake, man.’ He almost dropped the phone when he heard Gospel scream.
‘Don’t make me do that again,’ the man said.
Ollie looked across the road and saw that his punter had gone. When he stepped back from the kerb, the man was at his shoulder. Leaning in good and close, so that Ollie could feel what he had in his pocket.
‘I think you should do as you’re told.’
From Acton, Helen drove down to the Uxbridge Road, pulled into a side street, and picked up a bus into the centre of town. She did not want to spend an hour trying to park and enjoyed watching the world go by from the top deck, but she started to regret making the trip at all from the moment she arrived. It was a hot day and the streets were crowded. It took her fifteen minutes to walk from Marble Arch to John Lewis, and when she got there the smell in the perfume department made her feel as though she might throw up at any moment.
Once she started to feel a bit better, she pottered very slowly around the maternity departments of Lewis’s and a few other big stores. She remembered that the cot they had bought six months before was still boxed up in the small bedroom, waiting to be assembled. That there was still painting to be done. She bought packs of baby-grows even though she already had more than enough, and a plastic plate, mug and cutlery set that would not be needed for at least six months.
She trudged from shop to shop, sweating until she could smell herself.
Helen was not the happiest of shoppers at the best of times, had always been a ‘get in, buy it and get out’ woman. Jenny had laughed about it, said it was unnatural that any woman did not enjoy browsing. That somehow the shopping genes had not been divvied up equally between them.
Today, she browsed for hours, stroking the clothes and picking up the tiny pairs of shoes. She just needed to think about the baby for a while. About herself and the baby.
By five o’clock, when she got back to Tulse Hill, she felt like she’d run a marathon. There was the usual slew of messages on the machine: her dad and Jennie; Roger Deering again; Paul’s mum saying that she knew there had been no decision made about a date yet, but that she really wanted to talk about music for the service. Two other callers had not bothered to leave messages.
Helen lay down on the sofa, wondering who to call back first. When she woke up three hours later, the room was dark. She opened her eyes and her first thought was of Paul, going somewhere he shouldn’t in the back of Ray Jackson’s cab. She thought about blood on a carpet and blood on a pavement.
And she felt ashamed of herself.
It was a week, less than a week, and already he was starting to disappear; the Paul she thought she knew, at any rate. And this was not about memory playing tricks or perception being warped by grief. This was her own stupid fault. She’d become too curious for her own good.
For anyone’s good.
Would it not be better if she stopped now, forgot everything she’d found out, everything she’d begun to suspect? After all, whatever she thought Paul might have been up to, she didn’t know, not for sure. Did any of it matter anyway, now that he was dead?
It was not a difficult question. That was another way in which Helen differed from her sister. She could never bury her head in the sand.
She turned on the lights and drew the curtains; made herself a cup of tea and sat down to write a list.• Cot assembly. Ask Dad. Painting?
• Music. Hymns? Something modern. REM, maybe.
• Talk to Frank Linnell and Kevin Shepherd?
She jumped at the buzzer. It took her half a minute to get to the intercom, by which time whoever had been downstairs at the front door had already gone.
Ollie had walked fast along Loampit Vale, with the man who had posed as a customer walking twenty feet behind him all the way. He had turned off where he’d been told, to find the Mercedes waiting near the entrance to Tesco’s.
Gospel was sitting in the passenger seat with her knees drawn up to her chest. A large black man sat next to her, squeezed behind the wheel. Ollie was ushered into the back by the older man, and they pulled away, with Gospel screaming abuse as the car went round the block then eased into traffic on the main road.
They drove north for ten minutes or so.
Ollie had got to know his companions well enough by the time the Mercedes turned onto side streets just shy of the river. They parked behind a smart development of executive apartments at Deptford Creek and talked some more. The light on top of Canary Wharf winked at them from across the water, and the tip of the Gherkin poked through the smog away to their left. Through the car window, Ollie could see the derelict wooden pier crumbling into the water, and a drifting necklace of long-abandoned motorised torpedo boats that had been home to a series of squatters for many years. The dirty-green water was deep here; deeper than anywhere else in the river. The only stretch in which the big aircraft-carriers could turn - he’d seen that on television some time - and probably the safest if you wanted things to sink and stay hidden.
By now, the man in the back with Ollie had a gun laid across his knee, but the big man up front with Gospel was clearly the one running things.
‘It’s not complicated,’ he said. ‘We just need confirmation, really.’
Gospel spat into the big man’s chest, then whipped her head around to Ollie. ‘Don’t say shit.’ When she turned around again, the big man punched her hard in the face, then stared down at the spit on his shirt.
There was a second or two before the girl began to moan and splutter; before she cupped her hands to try and collect the blood.
‘This won’t take a minute,’ the big man said to Ollie. ‘But that’s enough time to decide whether you’re going to be stupid or not.’ He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, then demanded one from his colleague on the back seat. The older man passed his own forward. The big man handed one handkerchief to Gospel, and used the other to dab first at his shirt, then at the gobbets of blood that had dripped onto the seat.
He looked at Gospel and sighed. ‘How old are you?’
‘She’s fourteen,’ Ollie said. ‘Please . . .’
<
br /> ‘Fucking shut up,’ Gospel shouted, moving her hands away from her face just long enough to get the words out.
‘You should be at school,’ the man said. ‘The pair of you.’ He leaned across as though he might stroke her hair, but instead grabbed a handful of it and smashed her head back into the side window.
Ollie shouted out in shock and banged his fists against the passenger seat. He felt the gun being jabbed into his side and when he leaned back again, still shouting, he realised that he was crying. ‘Jesus . . .’
In the front, Gospel’s eyes were wide. Her breathing was heavy and wet.
The big man turned round to look at Ollie. Said, ‘She’s fine.’
‘Say nothing,’ Gospel spluttered.
The man rolled his eyes then turned them on Ollie. ‘If you weren’t actually involved in the incident we’re talking about, you’ve got nothing to worry about. That’s a promise. We just need to know that we’re on the right lines.’
Ollie was rocking back and forth, tearing at his dreads. It was hard to think straight when he was focusing so hard on not shitting himself, right there in the car.
‘Was it your crew?’
It felt like the gun was going to break through his skin at any moment. Push right through the ribs.
The big man shifted around in his seat, grunting with the effort and draping one arm across the headrest. ‘Don’t make me swap seats with my friend back there,’ he said. ‘He’s not as gentle with young girls as I am.’
The old man laughed and blew Gospel a kiss.
There was a little more blood after that, but not too much, and when all the information that was required had been given, Ollie and Gospel were told to get out of the car. To take the soiled handkerchiefs with them.
As Ollie reached for the door, the older man dragged him back. Said, ‘You’re white, for crying out loud, and you’ve got black man’s hair. What’s all that about then, you silly cunt?’
The older man moved into the front. As they drove away, he fastened his seat belt and took a last look at the two teenagers in the rear-view. He saw the boy sink to the floor; watched the girl start lashing out at him with fists and feet.
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