‘How’s she doin’?’
‘She’s doin’,’ Buster said. ‘Complains about the weather. Says T and T must have got hotter while she was away.’
‘More like she got used to the cold over here,’ Seminole Billy said.
‘Right?’ Buster said. ‘Told her she’s got thick blood now, but she says naw, it’s that global warming.’
‘I miss that lady,’ Seminole Billy said. ‘Next time you talk tell her life ain’t the same without her yellow chilli sauce.’
‘Oh, I tell her,’ Buster said. ‘I do. When we’re done with this job, I’ll take you over to the roti place. The food’s not bad.’
‘Nah, thanks,’ Billy shook his head. ‘But if you know a good fried chicken . . .’
Buster laughed. ‘Man, what is it with you and fried chicken? I never met someone so obsessed.’
‘Y’all don’t get it,’ Billy said. ‘You’ve never had the real thing in this country. Correction – you think KFC is the real thing. Or worse, Nando’s. There’s only one decent fried chicken in London, and it’s the one I make at home.’
Buster laughed. ‘Yeah, OK.’ He looked at the garden, the faux classical pillars on either side of the front door. ‘Where in fuck are we anyway?’
‘Who gives a shit. You want to buy a house or something?’ Seminole Billy said.
Buster did a low whistle. ‘Not likely. You’d have to be a millionaire to afford a place like this.’
‘They are millionaires, dumbass,’ Billy said. ‘Or will be for another . . .’ he looked at his watch ‘half hour at most. Anyway, the house is only worth eight-nine-five according to the Land Reg calculator.’
‘Not as if folks’d be welcoming a brother into the neighbourhood with open arms,’ Buster said and smoothed his dreadlocks.
‘Especially not one with a warrant out,’ Billy added. It was Buster’s own fault he had to travel in the boot since that failed bomb job at the Thatcher funeral. As usual, he had no idea who was behind the job. As long as he got paid he didn’t ask too many questions. In this business, questions had a way of being hazardous to your health.
Seminole Billy had been handed plans to hit Aldwych tube station. It was supposed to be so simple. It was on the cortege route and the bomb had to go off the moment the hearse went by. It should have been a no brainer to work out.
What Seminole Billy had not counted on was his accomplice’s ignorance of the London public transport network and a certain – it had to be admitted – inattention to detail. In other words Buster had gone and fucked it all up. So when Seminole Billy texted a message to the phone controller that was meant to trigger the explosion at Aldwych, the fuse tripped exactly as planned – at Archway. Miles north of the target. Not only had he got the station wrong, Buster hadn’t even managed to plant the bomb in Zone 1. Instead of blowing Maggie’s bones to smithereens on international television the only casualties were an empty café and the windows of a halal butcher over the road.
Even with most public services diverted to the funeral, the boys in blue were on the scene in next to no time. Cameras had got Buster at every conceivable angle and there were alerts out across the city by sundown. It was going to be tough to disguise an almost seven-foot tall black man with dreadlocks and a scar running down the side of one eye.
In any other scenario Billy would have let an accomplice take the heat for the mistake, but he wasn’t about to desert his partner. He knew Buster. They had been cellmates. And Buster, it had to be said, did not have the mindset for going back to the pen. Some people could get their heads right for the long haul – all told, Billy had done nine years inside, here and there, and it wasn’t a thing. But Buster was not wired like that. Another serious spell in pokey would be the end of him. Loath as Billy was to admit it, he liked having the kid around.
After the Archway bomb there was no way to guarantee a speed camera or security guard wouldn’t recognise Buster. ‘Boot from now on or nothing,’ Seminole Billy insisted. Buster knew well enough that the ‘or nothing’ didn’t constitute shaking hands and amicably dissolving their business relationship. So he grumbled a bit, but the boot it was.
Buster patted down his pockets and checked his shoulder holster. ‘Let’s get this party started.’
Seminole Billy clocked the flick of the front curtains as a man’s face disappeared behind the glass. Someone was home. More to the point, someone didn’t want anyone to know they were home. Billy strolled over to the door and knocked.
He heard the chain being done up on the other side. The door opened a crack. Billy put his face right up to the opening. The man behind the door flinched. ‘I’m sorry, we’re not doing any more interviews,’ he said. ‘Lottery company advised no more publicity until we get things settled with the investment advisers.’
‘You Rab Macdonald? About those investments,’ Seminole Billy started, ‘wanted to talk to you about those.’
Rab nodded. ‘You’re from America, aren’t you? You know, we spoke to US press already. You should contact the lottery company first if you want to arrange an interview,’ he said. He fumbled in his pocket for a business card and passed it through the gap.
Seminole Billy accepted the card. Looked legit. Office address in raised letterpress print, heavy stock. He had to hand it to them, this outfit knew how to make a scam look good. Not that he had met the people who were running it. Nor was he likely to – his involvement came cloaked in plenty of layers of late-night meetings in empty caffs and conversations on pay-as-you-go phones. He doubted the address and phone number on the card led to anything more than an answerphone in an empty room in Jersey.
Rab gulped. ‘I have to go . . .’ He started to close the door.
‘Buster, explain for the nice man, please?’ Seminole Billy said.
‘We’re not here about a story.’ Buster thrust his trunk of a leg through the doorway gap and kicked his ankle to one side, breaking the chain off. He kicked it the other way and the door swung fully open. Rab yelped and jumped back.
Billy smiled, a thin, bloodless sneer. ‘We’re here about the other thing. The investment advisers you’re expecting?’ Rab nodded nervously. Billy pointed to his chest. ‘That would be us.’
‘Is this your – your colleague?’ Rab said, looking up at Buster.
‘No, it’s my fucking twin brother,’ Seminole Billy said. ‘Now let us in before we have to make a scene, yeah?’ He stepped inside and moved into a room off the hall that was sprinkled with the junk that middle-class people liked to scatter around a place. French candles, a ball made of sticks. That kind of shit. ‘Nice joint you got here.’
It was the kind of place most people would be grateful to have. Gratitude, however, was not a default setting on humans. If life had taught Seminole Billy one thing, it was that people had an infinite capacity for greed. That much was a given. But if it had taught him anything else, it was that greed brought its own kind of craziness.
He called it the money blinders. Once the money blinders were on, you wouldn’t believe what people could talk themselves into. Like this guy. No doubt once the cash landed in his bank account, he forgot all about the consequences of the deal he had made. Maybe thought he could pack up and bail out. Skip town with the millions, and no one would be the wiser.
Money blinders made you believe the hype. Everything in the world was set up to convince you that money was power. That once you had money, you could buy your way out of anything, talk your way out of anything. That a luxury yacht in the Med was out of reach of everything that had put it there.
Seminole Billy knew better. Money wasn’t power. He had seen too many millionaires die in a pool of their own blood to believe that. Like they used to say at the rodeo, you got to dance with the one who brung you. No, real power was freedom from needing money. Not the same thing.
He looked Rab over carefully. Yet again Billy had to give credit to who
ever was running the lottery scam. The guy was a good choice for a public patsy. Good-looking enough. Average plus. Forgettable. They had done their job well. In a year no one would remember who this loser even was.
Much less miss him, if it came to that.
Billy stepped forward, pointing his finger. It came to rest in the middle of Rab’s chest. He gave a little push and the frightened man fell backwards into the sofa. ‘Have a seat.’
‘Sure, sure . . .’ Rab clutched at the upholstery. Seminole Billy saw him assessing the situation then deciding not to push it further for now. Good. It made life a lot simpler when people could weigh up their choices and choose not to do anything stupid.
That was one reason he had retired from knocking over small-time drug dealers for their stash and cash: fewer occupational hazards. Civilians were so much easier to manage. In general they perceived going to prison as an actual threat rather than a potential career move. Give or take the odd have-a-go-hero he hardly ever had to kerb anyone any more. These days he ended up torturing only three, maybe four people a year, max.
‘Do you want something to drink?’ Rab asked. ‘A tea or coffee?’
Billy looked over at Buster, eyebrows raised in amusement. ‘Do we want a hot drink?’ Buster shrugged. ‘Why not. Get us a drink.’
‘Erykah, can you put on the kettle?’ Rab yelled through to the kitchen. ‘We have visitors.’
And then the woman walked into the room.
For Billy it was as though a moment in time had slowed down. The light through the windows caught her curls in a glowing corona. She plucked a pair of reading glasses off her nose and hooked them in the front of her jumper. The glasses pulled the neck down to reveal a hint of cleavage. This chick may have been a vintage model, and Seminole Billy was not easily impressed, but she was a grade-A, prime cut, head turner.
There was something else about the woman. Her body said fuck me and her eyes said screw you. He knew that look well. It was the look of someone who was done putting up with shit. He had seen that look in the eyes of men doing hard time. The anticipation of a big cat waiting for its minder to get sloppy one day and leave the lock off the cage. A little wary, sure, but ready to leap.
The look of a woman whose compliance with the scheme, unlike her husband’s, was not to be taken for granted.
Seminole Billy had a feeling this job was about to get a lot more interesting.
: 11 :
Erykah had been at the kitchen table looking out the French doors to the back garden. A potted hothouse plant left behind by the photographers in an attempt to cheer the scene was giving up its last shrivelled petals to the cold. Was it too early for whisky? Rab was knocking around in the front, talking to someone at the door. More reporters? At this hour? No, it wasn’t too early for a drink.
She flipped through the pages of the book her mum had given her for her birthday all those years ago. Magic And Wonder! the cover promised, 99 real tricks, brain teasers, and mysteries of the Ancient World. The black-and-white photos illustrating the book were dated even back then. The magic tricks featured men with beards and women with winged and frosted hair, in shiny lamé costumes evoking Egyptian dress, eyes outlined in thick kohl. With fixed smiles they demonstrated the steps for making a penny disappear, picking a simple lock, a card trick that relied on memorising a grid of numbers. It reminded Erykah of a saying her old professor Leonie Mandelkern was fond of: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Leonie’s speciality was code breaking. A discipline based on simple principles, with intensely complicated iterations. It looked like magic to many but was in fact a rigorous process of testing weaknesses in a code. All it took was time, patience, and the right tools. If someone is able to do something most others can’t, they are viewed with a mix of wonder and suspicion.
When Erykah was small her mum would march her in front of guests to spell words and do sums. Such a charming, clever daughter. Rainbow became less and less interested in Erykah as she got older and the sums turned into computer code and other feats not easily explained. She wasn’t a dog doing tricks any more. She was a teenager splicing outside phone lines so she could get dial-up Internet access when their landline was disconnected for non-payment, online typing messages to people about who knew what all day. She was a problem.
It doesn’t take much to tip from wonder into horror. Make a rabbit disappear and you’re a hero; bring a ghost into the room and you’re a monster.
Erykah watched the branches overhanging the garden shifting in the breeze and rubbed at her wrists where Rab had grabbed her. As she suspected they had come up with bruises, but the long sleeves of her clinging cashmere jumper covered the marks.
Rab’s voice, pitched high, cut through her thoughts. ‘Erykah? We have guests,’ he called from the front room.
‘I thought you said no more reporters?’ Erykah called back. ‘And we’re out of tea.’ She popped her head out to see who was there. Her hackles went up immediately: two men, one black and one white, neither of whom looked like they had working familiarity with interview notebooks or shorthand.
There was something about the incongruity of the pair that made her instantly suspicious. The black man was standing by the door and blocked the exit. He had a scar across his face, the kind one might acquire in prison, or from being bottled in a club. From the height and heft of him she had no doubt that whoever had done it had got off worse.
But it was the other man who was far more menacing. His old jeans had a razor-sharp crease, the kind that might have been ironed in over a decade or longer. His eyes had the flat, impenetrable sheen of someone who was not simply tough, but who genuinely did not care about his or anyone else’s safety. It was an expression that was burned on her nervous system and made the hair of her neck stand on end. Her old self Rikki Barnes nodded in recognition. She knew these men were here to commit a crime, plain and simple.
‘S’all right, Buster here is more of a coffee man.’ The white guy stood up and pulled his face into a grotesque smile. ‘I’m Seminole Billy. And you are . . . ?’
Erykah looked at the hand he extended in her direction. Seminole? He didn’t much look it. ‘I am Mrs Macdonald.’
‘I see,’ Seminole Billy said. ‘And what is it you do? Apart from brighten up the place considerably.’
‘What do I do?’ Erykah said. ‘I manage the household.’
‘Like a housewife?’ Buster asked.
She squinted at Buster. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place the face. Old neighbourhood? No, he was too young. ‘Don’t be silly. Housewives hoover. I’m more . . . semi-retired.’
Seminole Billy nodded. ‘You look well on it,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ His accent stretched the words in some places and chopped them up in others, so the sentence sounded more to her like Whaa down choo sit dawn.
Erykah sat next to her husband, careful to leave space between them. She tucked her wrists between her knees without thinking about it. Billy planted his skinny arse in an oversized chair across from them. Buster remained standing by the door.
‘You’re American, aren’t you,’ she said.
‘You’re observant.’
He had some sort of mark on his hand, maybe a tattoo. Erykah’s eyes caught the glinting charms on his jewellery. ‘Is that bracelet Indian?’
‘Sure is. Seminole. Florida, not Oklahoma.’
‘Like Burt Reynolds.’
‘Burt’s family were Cherokee,’ Billy said. ‘Not that anyone’s keeping track.’
‘You don’t look Indian,’ Rab said.
‘What are you, the tribal police?’ Billy said.
Buster rolled his eyes and blew out his bottom lip. ‘Anyway, thing is, we was coming by to congratulate you on your lottery win,’ Buster said. Seminole Billy nodded in agreement. ‘And to discuss how your payment will be distributed.’
; Erykah narrowed her eyes. ‘Is this some kind of robbery?’
‘No-o-o-o,’ Seminole Billy said. When he crossed his legs at the knee she noticed the cowboy boots: black snakeskin, with shiny tips. She had the sudden mental image of the tips of those boots covered in blood. ‘Robbery implies we’re taking something off you without your permission,’ he said. ‘What we got is more of a . . . gentleman’s agreement, if you will. We’re here for the cut your husband promised to hand over.’
‘What cut?’ Erykah said.
‘He didn’t tell you?’ Seminole Billy sucked in air in feigned surprise. ‘You see, what your husband may not have let on is the amazing windfall you won wasn’t as much a matter of pure luck as it may have seemed. You see, Mrs Macdonald – mind if I call you Erykah?’ She nodded. ‘Erykah, your husband agreed to win this so-called lottery in exchange for a generous donation to some very motivated investors who need to make sure the cash looks like a gift from the goodness of your hearts.’
‘It’s a fix,’ Buster added, in case Erykah was unclear as to the nature of the Big Billions Lottery.
Erykah closed her eyes and sighed, rubbing her forehead with her long fingers. She felt her face flushing with anger. ‘Of course it is,’ she said to no one in particular. Now things made sense. ‘You need to launder some money, and we’re the fronts.’
‘Smart girl,’ Seminole Billy said.
Erykah pursed her lips. ‘I turned forty years old last month,’ she said. ‘You can call me a smart woman.’
‘Fair enough,’ Billy said. ‘Woman. Me and Buster, we’re here to remind your husband of the contract he agreed and to make sure our mutual friends are able to collect.’
‘I should have known,’ she said. She turned to Rab. ‘And no bloody wonder you begged me to stay. If I had got that solicitor, you would be screwed in more ways than one.’ The sleeves of her jumper pulled back as she talked, revealing the fresh bruises around her wrists.
Rab avoided his wife’s glare. Instead he fixed his eyes on a blank part of the wall over Buster’s shoulder and tried to change the subject. ‘He’s the muscle, I take it?’ he asked.
The Turning Tide Page 12