‘I think it is.’
‘Then come and see me,’ I told him, ‘you know the Cauldron?’
And the breathy rasp turned into a choked chuckle. ‘I don’t think so. I’ll not see you behind closed doors, no offence, but I’ll meet you out in the open.’
‘Where then?’
‘On the Blinky Eye Bridge.’
‘When?’ I asked, worried it might be a set up.
‘Tomorrow lunchtime. Twelve o’clock.’
I hesitated, but only for a second. I didn’t think anybody would be daft enough to try to shoot me there on a lunchtime, and this fella sounded old and tubercular.
‘Alright,’ I said, ‘I assume you know what I look like. How will I know you?’
‘I know you alright,’ he wheezed, ‘and you’ll know me when I come up and start talking to you.’
‘Okay, but I hope you’re not a time waster.’
‘Oh no, divvent worry about that. What I’ve got to tell you is gold.’
20
The Blinky Eye Bridge stretches across the River Tyne, linking Newcastle’s Quayside to Gateshead’s posh end; the bit with the Baltic contemporary arts centre and the seventy-million-pound Sage building. The Blinky Eye is designed for pedestrians and its official name is the Millennium Bridge. The kid in me still thinks it looks like the jaw bone of a giant whale with one bit sticking up and the other half resting on the ground. It gets its nickname because the top half can fall back and the lower bit flip up, so that both parts are out of the way when ships want to pass through it. Then it drops neatly back down again to let the common folk walk over it once more. Since it weighs more than eight hundred tonnes, that is no mean feat of engineering.
Because the bridge is more than a hundred metres, from one side of the river to the other, the mystery man couldn’t have picked a more out-in-the-open location to meet me than this one. He was late though, and I spent my time scanning passers-by to see if I could clock him. Palmer watched over me from the Newcastle side of the bridge, just in case.
From his wheezy voice and the fact that he was likely to be a contemporary of Jinky’s, I was expecting an older man and that’s exactly what I got. I spotted him a mile off and immediately relaxed. His progress across the bridge was spectacularly slow, each step measured, like a child pacing out a treasure map. He straightened when he finally reached me and I let him catch his breath. I was no doctor but I reckoned he had a year, at best.
‘Fags,’ he said and, for a second, that looked like all the explanation I was going to get, ‘fucked me lungs up,’ he added. ‘I’m only bloody sixty.’ He looked like he was having trouble dealing with what he knew was inevitably coming his way.
‘If they don’t get you, the booze and the birds will,’ I said and he let out a grim laugh at that.
‘True enough.’
‘You’ve got some information for me,’ I reminded him, ‘we can start with your name, if you want paying that is?’
‘Alreet,’ I could tell he was reluctant to concede even that, ‘it’s Paul Armstrong.’
‘Sit yourself down man,’ I told him and he sank gratefully into one of the metal bench seats on the bridge.
‘So, what do you know?’
‘I worked for your old mate, Mickey Hunter, when he had the garage, the one he peddled his used motors out of.’ Every few words he took a breath and I could tell each one hurt him, so he was economical with them.
I nodded, not because I knew the place but I was aware of Hunter’s dealership. The cars were so hot they virtually drove themselves out of there. He had it for years and it was a classic front for all of his other business, but it was gone by the time I really knew the lads in the firm, replaced by the old body shop he kept underneath the railway arches that knocked dents out of cars and acted as a front for his real role as quartermaster to our firm. After Hunter was killed we never left the job of supplying our weaponry to just one man any more. It was another area of security we had tightened up. I couldn’t run the risk of one guy knowing everything we’d been up to.
‘So you were with the firm?’ I asked.
‘Not really,’ he admitted, ‘I mean we all were a bit, you had to be, but I was on the outside looking in. I did some stuff for Bobby now and then but nowt that would really get me into bother with the law. I remember your dad though. I remember him well.’ And, just when I thought all I was going to get was some pointless reminiscences he added, ‘And I saw him the day before he disappeared. I reckon I must have been one of the last to see him in fact and it was all very strange like.’
He had to stop for breath again — the delay was frustrating.
‘What was so strange about it?’
‘Your dad bought a car from Hunter. He went from being broke one day to minted the next but there was nothing unusual about that, if he was in on one of Bobby’s jobs.’
‘My father never actually worked for Bobby,’ I told him, because that’s what everybody had always told me.
‘He was never a full member of the crew, but he did jobs.’
‘You reckon?’ I wasn’t so sure about this, but he was.
‘I’m telling you man. He did stuff for Bobby, on and off like, that’s how he started people out, to see how they got on. You didn’t just sign up overnight. You had to prove yourself before you got the big wedge.’
‘How do you know all this, if you weren’t a full member of the crew?’
‘Because Hunter was my gaffer for years and I saw them all come and go.’ It was a reasonable enough explanation but I had still never heard anything about my dad working for the firm before.
‘So what did he do for Bobby then?’
‘Whatever needed doing. You ought to know what that means.’ I did and didn’t need it spelling out. ‘Anyway, your dad bought the car from Hunter but when he headed south the next day, he left it behind.’
‘Eh?’
‘It was a Cortina Mark 2, only a couple of years old. Nice motor for the time. He paid cash. I was there and I watched Hunter count it out, then they shook hands on the deal.’
All of a sudden he seemed to be finding his breath. It was as if the excitement of telling his story had overridden his condition for a while.
‘Alan said he would come back and collect it later, because he had some business to sort out in town first, but he never came back for the car. It stayed on the forecourt. Later on, everybody was saying that Alan Blake had left the city and gone down south for a job in London. Didn’t even stop long enough to collect his wife and bairn he was in that much of a hurry.’
‘If he’d done something for Bobby, summat worth the cost of a car, the law could have been sniffing round,’ I offered, ‘maybe that’s why he left so quickly.’
That would explain why my dad skipped town and left ma and Danny behind and why he might have had to stay away for a couple of years, if it was something serious.
‘But here’s the bit that doesn’t ring true. They said he went on the train. Now, if he was planning a new life, with or without his wife and bairn, would he really buy a Ford Cortina one day and a train ticket the next, no matter how flush he was?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘he wouldn’t. What happened to the car?’
‘It stayed on the forecourt for weeks, then Hunter sold it.’
‘You mean he sold it again?’
‘Aye that’s exactly what I mean.’
‘And there’s no way my da could have returned later and got his money back?’ I knew Hunter well enough to know that last bit was unlikely.
‘Hunter? No chance, he was tight as arseholes,’ he shook his head. ‘I worked there all day and he never came back. I thought it was odd when he didn’t collect his new car because the next day was a Sunday and we weren’t even open on a Sunday. You weren’t allowed to be, back then.’
‘And you never said anything at the time,’ I asked, ‘to Hunter, I mean, or anybody else who was spreading this story about my dad leaving on a train?’
‘I did ask Hunter about it, yeah, stupidly.’
‘Why? What did he do?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied, ‘but then that nutter Jerry Lemon came up to us the next Saturday neet when I was having a few pints in town, he telt me I had a big mouth. He said “Careless talk costs lives”, you knaa, like that old poster in the war. He telt me to remember that, if I wanted to keep my teeth.’
Jerry would often go around threatening people on Bobby’s behalf, so this fella asking questions about my dad’s car must have meant something. Maybe that was why he had to leave Newcastle. Had he upset Jerry Lemon or did he somehow manage to tread on Bobby’s toes? Whatever happened it can’t have been too serious but it was big enough for him to quit town in a hurry, and for him to stay away for a good while.
‘So you stopped asking?’
‘God yes,’ he said, ‘it was none of my business.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I suppose it wasn’t, but Jerry Lemon’s long dead.’
‘Aye, well, if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you now, would I?’
‘Fair enough,’ I told him. ‘Is there anything else you want to tell me?’
‘Well, it’s obvious isn’t it,’ he said, then added, ‘they must have killed him.’
‘That’s one way of interpreting it,’ I admitted, but I knew what he didn’t. My dad had fled the city right enough and now I was closer to understanding the reasons why, but he had still been in contact with my ma for years after. I wasn’t even born when my dad jumped on that train and headed south, but the old timer wasn’t to know that.
‘Can you think of any reason why he might have fallen out with Jerry?’
He opened his mouth to speak, but his breath caught in his throat again and the coughing started up once more. I waited and tried to be patient but I wasn’t expecting much from him if I was honest. The business with the car was intriguing enough but the old git didn’t have the full story, so I doubted he would shed any further light on the mystery.
When he finally finished coughing he told me, ‘Aye, I knaa all right,’ and he seemed puzzled that I didn’t.
‘Well,’ I told him, ‘out with it then.’
‘It was ‘cos of the job they did together. The one that went wrong.’
‘The one that went wrong?’ I repeated dumbly, trying to get my head round it, ‘what job was that then?’
‘The robbery of the Stuart amp; Brown payroll,’ he said, ‘haddaway man, you must have heard of that one? You know, the engineering company?’
I shook my head. ‘So you’re saying my dad was in on a wages snatch?’ He nodded. ‘And it went pear-shaped?’ He nodded again.
‘Well, you could say that.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It was ‘cos of your dad,’ he told me.
‘Why what did he do?’
‘He buggered off, didn’t he?’ the old bloke told me, ‘and he took all of the money with him.’
21
I just about managed to get the words out. I managed to say, ‘Thanks, that’s useful.’
‘Useful enough?’ he asked me, his eyes pleading.
‘You’ll want paying for it,’ I said. ‘I don’t have it on me but you’ll get some bunce. If you think of anything else to tell me then you’ve got my number.’
‘Champion,’ he said.
I kept the presence of mind to tell him who to see for his money. He seemed satisfied with that and shuffled away. I gave Palmer the nod so he knew it was all okay and I walked off too, crossing the bridge until I was on the Gateshead side. Palmer would follow me at a discreet distance, but he knew when to leave me alone.
I walked slowly up to the Baltic Mill. Normally, I like this lovingly-restored building, but today I barely glanced at it. I bought a ticket and walked inside, mooching around in there for a while, pretending to look at the paintings while I thought this through.
If it was news to me that my father might have done a job for Bobby Mahoney, it was an even bigger shock to hear he had taken all of the cash. If that was true, it was no wonder he had to leave the city in a hurry, but why hadn’t Bobby tracked him down if he stole from him? Why would he keep employing my mother afterwards, unless he thought my dad might come home for her one day and he would be waiting, keeping her close to him like that, so he could spring a trap? Shit, why would he ever trust me? Didn’t it worry him that I could be a chip off the old block? It didn’t make any sense.
I knew my father had left Newcastle on a train two years before I was born and now I knew why. I also knew he had managed to keep the contact with my mother going for more than four years before disappearing forever. I’d always thought he was a low-life who didn’t give a shit about my brother and me, but maybe his final disappearance was more sinister than I had realised. Did Bobby trick an address out of my ma, or did my father put his head above the parapet by stupidly coming home and Bobby finally reckoned with him. This wasn’t what I was expecting to find when I first started digging into my father’s life. That old guy had given me a hell of a lot to think about.
‘Have you considered my offer?’ asked Henry Baxter, as if his proposition was a perfectly reasonable one. We were back in the visiting area for another private audience, while the prison guard watched me nervously. Baxter’s nose was bruised and swollen where I’d punched him.
‘Yes.’ I felt sick inside having to eat humble pie in front of this twisted man.
‘And?’
‘I’ll do my best to get you out,’ I told him, ‘but only to get my money back. Just so we understand each other.’
He pondered this for a moment.
‘No apology, I note,’ he told me sniffily, as if he really thought I was going to say sorry for bloodying his nose, ‘but there is one final thing. It’s quite important actually.’
‘What is it?’
‘You don’t think I’m just going to walk out of court and go off with you and Kinane so you can torture me into giving you the passwords and account numbers you need, then kill me, do you? That’s not the way it’s going to work. You are going to let me go and when I have left the country, only then will I send you the information you need to access the …’
‘Not a chance. There’s no way I’m letting you leave the country, or even this city, without giving me access to the money. I want to see proof that we’ve retrieved it before I let you go. Then you can disappear forever for all I care.’
‘Then we have a problem, because I obviously don’t trust you to let me go. I suspect that once you have your money, you will allow Kinane to kill me.’
‘That’s a risk you’ll just have to learn to live with, if you want my help.’
‘No.’
‘Then you’ll stay here and rot.’
‘And you’ll lose five million pounds. How long will you be able to continue to pay your suppliers, or the men who work for you, with a hole that size in your accounts?’
‘Then we both have a problem.’
He went quiet for a moment, as if he was thinking it all through, then he said, ‘Are you a superstitious man, Blake?’
‘Not especially.’
‘But you’re a father and you care deeply about your daughter? I mean you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. Don’t look at me like that. I’m merely stating the obvious. If you wish me to leave the courtroom with you when this is over, to give you the information you require, then I need you to swear an oath.’
‘What kind of oath?’
‘I want you to swear that neither you, nor any of your men, will attempt to kill me or harm me in any way, that you will release me once you have the information you need and leave me to my own devices.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘And I want you to swear this on the life of your infant daughter Blake. If you are prepared to do that then we might just have a deal.’
I walked out of that nick feeling like I needed to take a long, hot shower. Is this what it’s like when you make a pact with the devil,
I wondered?
There was one more thing that was troubling me.
I had absolutely no idea how to get Baxter off his murder charge.
None whatsoever.
22
We were sitting in Susan Fitch’s smart, Grey Street office, surrounded by leather-bound law books, the musty smell of them filling the room, when she asked me, ‘You want my firm to represent Mr Baxter?’
‘No, Mrs Fitch,’ I answered, ‘I do not want your firm to represent Baxter.’
I was surprised when she exhaled in relief at that.
‘Thank heaven for small mercies,’ she said, ‘right now that man’s name is poison. But, if you don’t want us to represent him, then what do you want?’
‘I want you to get me someone who will. This must be at arm’s length,’ I explained.
My solicitor sat back in her chair and thought for a while. I could tell Susan Fitch spent money on her clothes and hair but she was starting to look a little weathered these days. Her face was lined and pale from a life spent too much indoors, poring over the books that imprisoned her. ‘Tall order,’ she admitted, ‘but I could probably find someone somewhere who’s desperate enough.’
‘Not just someone. Baxter has to be acquitted.’
‘Tall orders I can do, but miracles are not my forte, Mr Blake.’
‘Why is it so hard to get him off?’
‘A number of reasons,’ and she began to count them off on her fingers. ‘Your employee knew the girl and the police can prove that; he lived near her at the time of her murder and gave piano lessons to a number of other young girls in the area. The police have established that, as well as a roster of regular clients, he had unofficial sessions with a number of young girls, including some of the victim’s friends and they think that Leanne Bell may have been one of them. Now that he is under arrest, they will be interviewing every girl he has ever spent a moment with and something will come up, be under no illusions about that. If Baxter gave them sweeties or booze in return for the tiniest glimpse of their training bras then he is irredeemably and deservedly fucked. If they were promised money or weed, if he so much as looked at a girl in a funny way or set his hand gently down upon her knee, to show his approval at a nicely-rendered bit of Debussy, then he is doomed.’
The Dead db-3 Page 11