‘I wasn’t planning on getting that close. Rod seems to be the one in danger of doing that.’
‘Rod Miller takes things too bloody personally. We all have reasons to hold grudges against Mike Martin. But there’s no point unless you’re willing to go to war.’
‘What’s your grudge?’
‘Listen, the book’s written now. I don’t have to answer any more of your nosy fucking questions.’
‘Just making a little bit of conversation over a nice lunch, Len,’ Joe said as the waiter laid their starters in front of them.
Len didn’t reply and started eating his quails’ eggs, spearing each one angrily and appearing to swallow them whole. He didn’t speak until the last one had gone, followed by the bed of lettuce they had been nesting on.
‘I had a son with my first wife,’ he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin.
‘Oh shit,’ Joe dropped his spoon into his soup in a gesture of despair. ‘And I suppose he grew up to be Tom Cruise but you didn’t think it was worth putting in the book.’
‘Shut up, Joe,’ Len snarled and several heads turned at neighbouring tables. ‘And listen.’
Joe could see that he was serious and waited while Len gathered his thoughts. The waiter removed their plates, assuming they had both finished. Joe didn’t protest. He wanted to know what Len was going to say.
‘His name was Frank. He was a good boy. I planned to bring him into the business. I imagined he would take over from me. I didn’t imagine I would still be working at this age.’ Len paused for a moment. ‘When you look at your boy’s face, do you see yourself looking back?’
Joe didn’t have to think about that one. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘That’s how it was with Frank. He was me, just twenty-five years younger. He made me feel immortal. But when I met Rita, and Frank’s mother and I had our bit of trouble, he took it badly. He lost his way. Lost a bit of his respect for me. He started messing around with drugs. I’m as broad-minded as the next man, Joe, you know that. I don’t mind people messing about with drugs. It passes the time as well as whisky or watching television or reading the crap they put in the papers each day.
‘But he couldn’t work for me in the business and mess his brain up. The two things don’t go together and I told him. But Frank wanted to give me a hard time, wanted to show the world what a bad father I was. He started hanging around with Mike Martin.
‘Martin was nothing like he is today, but you could still see he was someone who was going to get somewhere. Frank knew I didn’t like Martin and so he let everyone know he was Martin’s right-hand man. He was getting out of control, becoming a liability.
‘I might not have liked the man, but I knew Martin had kids and I thought I would be able to appeal to him as one father to another. Know what I mean? We set up a meeting. I was willing to go onto his territory – some poxy club in south London somewhere. He told me I wasn’t to bring anyone. I was happy to comply. This was just a chat about my problems with my boy, right? When I got there…’
‘One plain Dover Sole,’ the waiter appeared beside them with plates of steaming food.
‘Here,’ Len indicated the table in front of him without looking up.
‘And one seafood special.’ The waiter placed the plates down with a flourish. Both men sat as if someone had pressed a pause button until the waiter had disappeared, then Len resumed his story as if the food wasn’t there.
‘When I got there I was taken to this room underneath the club. Like a soundproofed cellar. I was being stupid. I should have left then, but I wanted my boy back.’
Joe nodded, not wanting to interrupt the old man’s flow.
‘They kept me waiting a few minutes and then Martin came in, followed by Frank. Martin looked the business as usual, so discreet he could have been an adviser to the bloody queen. No flashy little pinkie rings or chunky identity bracelets for him.’ Len rattled his own jewellery to make his point. ‘Just the immaculate Savile Row suit, the white shirt, the club tie, everything sober, understated. Nothing to attract attention. Everyone’s idea of the trusted merchant banker. Know what I mean?’
‘I get the picture,’ Joe said.
‘I could see that Frank was out of his head. He was grinning like a fucking idiot and his eyes were darting all over the place. “Frank,” I said, “get the fuck out of here. I want to talk to Mr Martin.” “Don’t talk to my boy, like that, Len,” Martin says. “Your boy?” I says. “Yes,” he says. “He’s not your boy,” I says, “and don’t ever think he is.” “Show him who’s boy, you are, Frankie,” Martin says and I see Frank pulling out this shooter. He was never a great shot when he was stone-cold sober, that day he couldn’t have hit a house if he was standing next to it.
‘The bullets went all over the place, but nothing hit me. He was strong and the drugs made him wild. I fought him for the gun and there must have been one shot left because it went off and hit him square in the head, blowing his face to pieces. That face that had been like looking back in a mirror.
‘He was that far away from me, Joe,’ Len held his hands a foot apart. ‘I was so covered in his blood and mess that it looked as if I’d been the one who’d taken the bullet.’
Len stopped and took a drink of water. Joe said nothing, hardly daring to move for fear of disturbing Len’s train of thought.
‘I knew he was dead,’ Len went on. ‘So there was no point hanging around. Martin was nowhere to be seen. He must have bolted when the bullets started flying. I ran upstairs and no one tried to stop me. I must have looked a pretty scary sight. Martin can’t have told anyone up there what was going on downstairs and no one would have heard anything from that cellar, not with the music they had going and all the rest.
‘I guess Martin didn’t want to have to do any explaining he didn’t have to at that stage in his career. So Frank’s body disappeared. Martin knew I wasn’t about to go reporting him missing or anything.’
‘What about Frank’s mother?’ Joe asked, surprised to find his voice was cracking.
‘She took it badly. Frank was her pride and joy, and suddenly he didn’t come to see her any more. I made up a story to make her feel better. Told her Frank had got into a bit of trouble with Martin and had to go abroad while it was sorted out. She’d seen The Godfather. She understood. I married Rita and we had Cordelia.’
‘So, no one ever knew anything about it?’
‘There were people working for Martin who saw me there that night. Someone would have had to do the cleaning up. There must have been whispers. Rod was a young copper then and he was one of the people who came to talk to me, to ask me about Frank. I said I’d heard he’d had to go abroad, but Rod’s a bright copper. He worked out what happened, but he kept it to himself. He’s a good man.
‘So, you see, Joe, one day Martin’s going to get what he deserves. But when you’re dealing with the devil you don’t go rushing in with nothing but a toasting fork in your hand. These days Martin is better connected than the National Grid.’
Len picked up his knife and neatly divided up his Dover sole before forking it into his mouth, his eyes averted from Joe’s.
‘That story would certainly have put up the serial rights,’ Joe said eventually.
‘Don’t ever joke about it, Joe,’ Len growled. ‘Because I still don’t find it funny. Even after all these years.’
‘No, right, sorry. Couldn’t think of a suitable response.’
‘Don’t say anything. Just eat your food.’
Joe did as he was told for a while, although he was barely conscious of even what he was eating let alone how it tasted. Eventually, he said. ‘You didn’t invite me here to tell me this story, right?’
‘You’re right.’ Len finished his fish with a sigh of satisfaction and sat back in his chair with his glass of wine as the empty plate was removed from in front of him. Joe continued to pick at his shellfish in a half-hearted fashion for a while.
‘I’ve been thinking about my pension scheme. Money doe
sn’t buy what it used to, Joe, and I find I need a lot more than I ever thought I would just to maintain the lifestyle I’ve grown accustomed to. I still have to support Frank’s mother, and Rita, and neither of them come cheap. I’m too old to earn a living ducking and diving now. Let others of this world have all the headaches. I’ve enjoyed becoming an author, and the pay hasn’t been bad, considering the amount of effort.’
Joe was about to point out that most of the effort had been his, but thought better of it.
‘I’ve always been a bit of reader of crime novels. I love ’em, but sometimes the plots are not that brilliant. Know what I mean?’
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Joe laughed.
‘I’ve got a million of them,’ Len said.
‘A million what?’
‘Plots. I could tell you stories and you could turn them into books and we could share out the money. That’d put a smile on your bank manager’s face. Wouldn’t it?’
‘I guess it would.’
‘Okay, then. So, how do we start?’
Joe had just got back to the flat from the restaurant when his phone rang.
‘I’ve got some information you might find interesting,’ Rod said.
‘What’s that then?’
‘Not over the phone. You want to meet for a drink?’
‘Sure.’
‘Same place?’
‘If you like.’
Two hours later he was back in the West End, sitting in Poland Street with a drink, waiting for Rod to arrive, lost in thought.
‘Sorry I’m late, mate.’ He landed beside Joe, making him jump.
‘No problem. What do you want to drink?’
A few minutes later they were sitting over their pints and Rod pulled out a black and white photograph. ‘Thought this might interest you.’
Joe stared at it for a moment, trying to make it out. ‘What is it?’
‘Contents of a skip in Liverpool. Some poor geezer doing a bit of DIY, wheeled his barrow out to the skip and found that.’
Joe stared at the picture again until the shapes began to make sense. It reminded him of the first time he had seen a scan of Hugo before he was born. The nurse and Fliss had seemed to be able to see the shape for what it was. He had had to stare for ages just to make out a leg or an arm, and even then he wasn’t sure he had really seen anything more than a passing intestine.
In the picture, amongst the rubble in the skip, and the twisted remains of an old bicycle, he realised he was looking at an upper torso. Once it came into focus it was glaringly obvious.
‘See it now?’ Rod asked.
‘Yes.’
‘That clearer?’ Rod handed him another picture. This one was a close-up, leaving nothing to the imagination.
‘Yes,’ Joe said.
‘My contact tells me it’s the torso of a young woman of Asian origin, probably Chinese or something like that. It was cut with a chainsaw. Arms off, head off, across the middle at the waist. Must have been the most incredible fucking mess.’
Joe sat, silently staring at the picture. Trying to imagine how anyone could ever do such a thing.
‘Some sadistic bastard he must have been,’ Rod said, tracing a line on the picture with his finger. ‘He sliced her bloody tits off before killing her. But then sewed them up again. See the stitch marks? Is that sick or what?’
‘That may have happened earlier.’
‘What do you mean?’ Rod wanted to know.
‘She might have had a double mastectomy a few weeks or months before she was killed.’
‘A double mastectomy? A girl in her teens or early twenties?’
‘It may have been plastic surgery that went wrong, set up an infection or something, and had to be cut away.’
Rod took the picture back and stared at it harder. ‘You mean to tell me a trained doctor did that stitching?’
‘I think so.’
‘I can sew better than that. He’d have done better using Sellotape.’
‘I guess he was in a hurry. She probably didn’t have anything to pay him with.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Rod fell silent for a moment. ‘So what do you base that theory on, then?’
‘If it is the girl I was looking for, she wrote and told me someone had stolen her “new breasts”. I then met another Filipino who was having the same operation in a clinic off Harley Street. I met a doctor there who would be quite capable of doing work of that standard.’
‘Christ Almighty,’ Rod said. ‘I knew a lot of these oriental birds had silicone jobs, but I didn’t realise that could happen. I’ve never understood why they do it, anyway. It always feels like they’ve stuck polystyrene tennis balls inside themselves. Hardly the sexiest thing.’
‘It’s a cheap method,’ Joe said, remembering listening to Fliss and her friends talking at dinner parties about their various experiences under the knives of surgeons – doctors just like the man he’d seen at the Wimpole Clinic. ‘When the customer has money to spend, no one would ever know they weren’t real.’
Rod nodded thoughtfully. ‘That figures,’ he said. ‘I’ve met a few of these girls in the Thai massage houses around London. None of them look like anyone has invested much money in them.’
‘Are they the sort of places Maisie Martin might be involved with?’
‘Yeah, she might be supplying them with girls, I guess. They call them “Thai” but the girls could come from anywhere east of India. None of the punters would have the faintest idea if they were Chinese, Thai, Filipino or anything else. They just want to know that the girls look oriental and take their clothes off to order. Want to go visit one?’
An image of his time travelling around the Far East flitted temptingly across Joe’s memory. ‘You can’t afford to be caught in a place like that, can you?’
‘Absolutely nothing to lose any more,’ Rod laughed. ‘No job and no marriage. Free as a bird.’
‘Isn’t there a danger of running into the Martins?’
‘About as likely as finding Bill Gates serving in your local computer shop. Have you any idea how big time Mike Martin is these days?’
‘I’ve heard.’
‘He’s hardly likely to be taking tickets at the door of a brothel then, is he?’
‘Okay. Let’s do it.’
Rod had parked his car, a twenty-year-old BMW, on a pavement round the corner, apparently unconcerned that anyone would complain. No one had.
‘I guess I should tell the police what I know about this,’ Joe said as they drove out towards the East End, the highly tuned, powerful old engine roaring like an aircraft ready for take-off.
‘Waste a lot of your time if you do,’ Rod grunted.
‘It might help them find the killer.’
‘They’d need more than that. Never underestimate the incompetence of any police force. They’re underfunded, undermanaged and undermanned. They all take short-cuts and mess up whatever they take on.’
‘Jesus. Why would they ever have wanted to get rid of someone as keen on the force as you?’
Rod laughed. ‘I never made any secret of my views. The average policeman is no genius, but he’s nearly always more competent than his boss. There’s no officer class in the force, you see, just plods who’ve been promoted until they haven’t got a fucking clue what’s going on around them. The result is chaos. Good at catching speeding drivers and stopping young drunks from beating up old ladies; out of their depth when they come up against people like the Martins.’
‘The information I have shouldn’t go to waste.’
‘It won’t,’ he grinned. ‘Because we’ve got it.’
Joe decided not to ask any more questions.
Rod parked a few streets away from their destination and led him to a small house in a modest residential road. All the curtains were drawn. Rod rang the bell and the door was opened by a young Italian man.
‘Got anyone free to give us a massage?’ Rod asked.
‘Sure.’ The man spread his hands and sm
iled, like a waiter welcoming them to a restaurant. ‘Come and choose your masseuse. All the girls very, very good. Very, very beautiful.’
He led them through into a front room where four young oriental girls sat watching television, three huddled together on a sofa and the fourth curled up in an armchair. They all had on short skirts to show off slim, girlish legs, and clinging tops which were cut low to display identical, proudly raised cleavages.
As Rod and Joe walked in, the girls leapt to their feet and ran chattering towards them, laughing and pawing at them like children. They tugged their jackets off and pulled them down onto the sofa. One brought them drinks and they all talked at once.
‘You want massage?’
‘You want very good time?’
‘Which of us you like best?’
‘You like my breasts?’
‘You want all of us?’
‘We give hand massage, Thai massage, any massage you want.’
‘You want to see my tits? They so beautiful.’
Joe felt a little hand rummaging in his lap and more fingers working on the tensions which he suddenly realised he had in the back of his neck. Rod seemed completely relaxed, treating the girls like the children they had so recently been, unembarrassed and unashamed of his own obvious enjoyment.
Upstairs in a bedroom that had been converted to double as a bathroom, Joe lay in the warm, soapy bathwater. One of the girls was turning down the sheets on the bed, another had removed her clothes and was climbing into the bath on top of him to rub her naked body against his in the manner sold around the world as a ‘Thai massage’. Water surged over the sides and flowed onto the floor, but she didn’t seem bothered. The bath was standing in a sealed, tiled area, the excess water being channelled into a drain.
Her breasts stood out as firmly from her delicate rib cage as they had when encased in a bra. Joe cupped them in his hands. Rod was exactly right – polystyrene tennis balls.
CHAPTER NINE
‘Is this your new car, Dad?’ Hugo asked as they came out into the school car park. ‘Cool. Hey!’ He shouted at a passing group of boys. ‘This is my Dad’s new car. It’s a Fiat. It’s red.’
Pretty Little Packages Page 10