by James Craig
‘Why’s it called Coronation chicken?’ Laurie, nine, had asked in that inquisitive way that all kids had.
For several moments, Marvin stared vacantly at the packet. ‘Dunno,’ he said finally.
‘There must be a reason,’ Laurie persisted.
‘Dunno,’ Marvin repeated. ‘It’s just chicken.’
‘But—’
‘Hey, what do you call a crazy chicken?’
Laurie made a face. ‘Dad . . .’
‘A cuckoo cluck,’ Taylor chuckled. ‘Get it?’
Recalling the conversation made him smile all over again. By now, Laurie would be wrapped up in bed, fast asleep hopefully, while her mum had her feet up watching Grand Designs, or something similar, on the telly, a glass of chilled white wine in her hand. He, on the other hand, was sitting here staring at an empty street in one of the richest neighbourhoods in the world. Marvin was cool with working nights but he didn’t like Chelsea much. Not because he was a Spurs fan, although that didn’t help, more because hanging out with wealthy people always left him feeling uncomfortable and discontented, just like most of his clients seemed to be.
In Marvin’s experience, both as a cop and as a private sector businessman, very wealthy people were uniquely unable to distinguish between perception and reality. Invariably, this meant that they made shit clients. Even so, the most important part of his business by a long way involved babysitting the paranoid rich of SW3, SW7, W8 and neighbouring postcodes.
After leaving the Met, Marvin had started Taylor Security Services – TSS – as an all-round security firm: installing alarms, protecting buildings, providing bouncers to nightclubs and so on. However, he quickly realized that the only area where there was any real money to be made was in close protection for SHNWIs. Super High Net Worth Individuals were now something approaching 90 per cent of TSS’s business. Over the last few years, he had seen it all: the actor’s daughter who wanted protection from her abusive, A-list father; the politician who paid a retainer of two grand a week so that a TSS operative would take his latest mistress shopping at Westfield on demand; the footballer who thought having a bodyguard would help him pull in West End nightclubs.
They were as nothing, however, compared to his latest clients. This trio was easily amongst the weirdest customers he’d ever had. Two foreigners and a Brit under self-imposed house arrest for almost a week now; too scared to come out of their building, only answering their front door for regular takeaways and deliveries from the local off-licence. What precisely they were scared of, he didn’t know. The dynamics of their relationship Marvin couldn’t quite fathom either. The woman was clearly in charge – she was the one paying the bills – but the English bloke? Was he her boyfriend, or just some lackey? And where did the boy – presumably her son – fit in?
Not that the details really mattered. Marvin had gotten the gig through an old Met contact and he was genuinely grateful for it. Stuffing the food packaging into a small plastic bag, he glanced at his watch. A long, boring night stretched ahead of him. Normally, he would delegate night-shift duties but when there was a no-show, like this evening, he had to fill the gap. All too often, guys just wouldn’t turn up for their shift. The people-management side of things routinely drove him mad. The young guys he worked with seemed to have no sense of responsibility. ‘Maybe I should have stayed on the Force,’ he muttered to himself, as he reached over for a battered copy of World Football magazine from the back seat and began flicking through it.
Engrossed in a feature about Liam Brady’s time at Juventus in the 1980s, he scowled when the walkie-talkie radio sitting on the dashboard cackled into life.
‘All clear.’
Letting the magazine fall into his lap, Marvin picked up the radio and hit the call button. ‘Another tough night on the front line, huh?’
‘Yeah. Christ, this is sooo fucking boring.’
‘Think of the money, McGilroy,’ Marvin told him.
‘Yeah, but still.’ James McGilroy was a thickset Irishman who had done two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan with the British Army. By comparison, the mean streets of Knightsbridge could be rather tedious. The only civilian he’d seen in the last hour was a woman in a burqa who had politely crossed the street to ignore him as she headed home, a Harrods plastic bag in each hand. ‘This is a strange gig, boss.’
Marvin liked it when the boys called him ‘boss’; it made him feel that he knew what he was doing, that he was the brains of the operation. ‘They’re all strange,’ he observed. ‘At least this one pays well.’
McGilroy grunted.
‘Where’s Kelvin?’ Kelvin Douglas, McGilroy’s buddy, was another ex-squaddie.
‘Taking a piss.’
‘OK.’ Marvin signed off. ‘Keep ’em peeled.’ Tossing the radio on to the passenger seat, he returned to his magazine.
‘How’s Taylor?’ Looking vaguely pleased with himself, Kelvin Douglas appeared from round the back of a dumpster, zipping up his flies.
‘He’s OK,’ McGilroy mumbled. ‘Not all that happy at having to be out with us tonight, no doubt, but he’ll live.’
‘Well, Chris said he had a hot date tonight with Annie, what do you expect?’
‘I suppose.’ Chris Goddard, the third member of their team, had been seeing his nursery teacher girlfriend for almost a year. ‘But you would have thought the novelty would have worn off by now.’
‘Apparently not.’ Reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket, Douglas retrieved an outsized roll-up. ‘Fancy a toke?’ he asked, gesturing towards the low wall that ran along the back of the flats.
McGilroy frowned. ‘Not on duty.’
‘Come on,’ Douglas grinned, ‘it’s not like we’re in Nahr-e Saraj, is it?’
‘No,’ McGilroy agreed. ‘I suppose not.’
‘God. That seems like a lifetime ago, now.’
‘I needed a smoke in bloody Helmand,’ McGilroy reflected. ‘But what I really fancy right now is a nice beer.’
‘Good shout.’ Douglas gestured towards the end of the alley with his thumb, as if he was trying to hitchhike, searching out an imaginary ride. ‘There’s an offie just down the road.’
‘Regardless of the circumstances, that really would be taking the mickey.’ McGilroy ran his hand over the grip of his Glock. The MP5s were safely locked up in TSS’s offices, but even the handgun made him nervous. He understood that they were only to reassure the clients – Marvin liked to call it his USP for the high-end market – and the woman in the flat above them was clearly paying through the nose for armed protection. But it still felt wrong. Their handguns were unloaded but it was still totally illegal to be carrying a concealed weapon on a London street; possession of a firearm and ammunition was in clear breach of the standing orders familiar to every British soldier and fundamentally was contrary to the law of the land.
In his head, McGilroy ran through the list of crimes he could be charged with: possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life; possession of ammunition with intent to endanger life; possession of a prohibited firearm; possession of ammunition for a Section 1 Firearm without a certificate. If they got caught, jail was inevitable. He remembered the case of a guy in Cardiff – a regular family guy – who had brought back a pistol from his tour in Afghanistan and kept it in his sock drawer as a souvenir. A judge had given him two years in jail. McGilroy seemed to remember that the sentence had been overturned on appeal, but only after a right palaver. If it came to it, he and Kelvin wouldn’t be so lucky.
Marvin Taylor liked to imply that he had it all covered; if necessary, he could call in a few favours from old colleagues to make any charges go away. But that was highly doubtful. McGilroy liked Marvin, but he knew a bullshit story when he heard it. ‘Ah, well,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘you’ve made your bed. You signed up for this gig. No point in blaming the boss if it goes tits up.’ He watched Douglas amble over to the wall, sit down and light up his spliff. Inhaling deeply, he began coughing.
‘Go
od stuff?’ McGilroy asked.
‘Not bad.’ Kelvin extended his arm, offering up the spliff.
McGilroy hesitated.
‘Don’t worry,’ Kelvin continued, taking another quick puff, ‘it’s going to be another quiet night. You know it and I know it. The clients are safe and sound upstairs. Marv is probably having a kip in the van. Anyway, we’re entitled to a five-minute break, aren’t we?’
* * *
The dope – a none too shabby Moroccan black – was pleasant enough but had little effect when it came to making McGilroy feel relaxed. Sitting on the wall felt like slacking off, and slacking off had always made him nervous, even when he was a young kid. On the other hand, the thought of walking aimlessly round the block for the next six-and-a-half hours did not appeal much either. The night before, McGilroy calculated that he had made 279 circuits of the building, moving at the slowest walking pace he could manage. It felt like being a rat in a lab experiment.
In the alley, shielded from prying eyes on the street, the two men finished the joint and fell into a rambling conversation that exhausted the usual topics – girls, guns and booze – before getting on to the subject of darts. Kelvin was opining on the relative merits of Phil Taylor and someone called Barney, when McGilroy sensed a movement off to his left. Slowly turning his head, he felt something cold brush against his cheek. At the edge of his vision, he could just make out the silhouette of a silencer. Oh, shit, he thought, stifling a nervous giggle, Marv is not going to be pleased.
‘Jesus.’ Jumping up from the wall, Kelvin Douglas reflexively reached for his empty weapon. There was a gentle pop and he went sprawling face down into the gutter.
Marv’s not going to be pleased at all. Staring into the middle distance, McGilroy let his eyes lose their focus. Keeping his breathing under control, he concentrated on turning his body to stone.
‘Boss? Boss, are you there?’ The words finally began to penetrate Marvin Taylor’s brain and he jolted himself awake, sending the half-read magazine sliding out of his lap and under the van’s steering column. Hell. How long had he been dozing? What would happen if the bloody clients had seen? Fumbling with the radio, he hit the Call button.
‘Yes?’ he said tersely, trying to hide the grogginess in his voice. ‘What is it?’
James McGilroy’s response was equally terse. ‘We’ve got company.’
‘What?’
‘Contact.’
What? The fog from Marvin’s brain refused to clear. It was dark now. The street in front of him was deserted. ‘Repeat,’ he demanded. But McGilroy did not respond. Instead there was a burst of static from the radio, followed by the soft click of the van’s passenger door opening. Someone slipped into the seat beside him and Marvin felt something going round his neck. Dropping his head to his chest, he gulped as a thin strand of wire tightened against his skin. His brain was screaming at him to fight but his arms would not move. Marvin’s eyes teared up as the wire gently cut into his flesh. How far would they go? Would his head come right off? Gritting his teeth, he willed his last thoughts to be of his daughter, asleep in her bed.
What do you call a crazy chicken?
Closing his eyes, he brought up an image of her earlier in the day, in the supermarket, laughing at his crap joke. Was this dying happy? he wondered. It was as close as he was going to get.
THREE
‘For God’s sake, will you stop coughing? Are you not taking something for that?’
Scratching at his stubble, Alexander Carlyle looked at his son apologetically before launching into another machine-gun bark. It was a relentless, rasping cough that sounded like he was going to deliver his lungs up onto the table at any second. The couple at the next table looked at the old man nervously before turning away.
Lifting his shot glass, Inspector John Carlyle sincerely wished he was still at work. Criminals could be a pain in the arse, but at least he could park them in cells and go home. And they were nowhere near as emotionally draining as his father.
After his mother had died, Carlyle had hoped he would have a more ‘normal’, less stressful relationship with his old man. Instead, he felt more and more like Harry H. Corbett in Steptoe and Son, the frustrated offspring of a hopeless parent. Finishing his whiskey, he gestured towards the half-full pint of Guinness in his father’s hand. ‘Get the rest of that down you,’ he ordered, ‘and I’ll get another round in.’
Alexander placed his free hand over the top of his glass. ‘I’m fine,’ he croaked, before embarking on another extended bout of coughing.
Carlyle scowled as he got to his feet, convinced that at least half of the drinkers in the Princess Louise were now staring at them. ‘Are you sure?’ he enquired, once his father finally got his latest round of barking under control. ‘I’m having one.’ Or maybe two.
‘To be honest, son, I’ve kind of lost the taste for it.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Fumbling in his pocket for some change, Carlyle limped towards the bar. Two days earlier, during one of his increasingly rare visits to the gym, he had sprained his ankle, leaving him hardly able to walk. The sudden, embarrassing incapacity had done nothing to improve his mood.
‘You should get that seen to,’ his father called after him, drawing on all the wisdom of his many years on the planet, ‘before you do yourself some permanent damage.’
You don’t say. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Carlyle hobbled faster. While waiting to catch the barmaid’s eye, he watched the TV at the end of the bar. On the small screen, he could make out the rolling news ticker. A young reporter – they all looked young these days – was broadcasting live from outside a block of flats less than a mile away. Down an alley, behind the oh-so-familiar police tape, there had been some kind of fatal altercation. Details about what had happened were still sketchy, but it seemed to revolve around a dispute between local residents who, as the TV man put it, ‘were not thought to be UK nationals’.
‘Bloody foreigners,’ Carlyle muttered, only half-joking, ‘forcing up property prices and bringing mayhem to the streets.’
Returning to the table with a double Jameson’s – and a half of the black stuff for the old man, just in case – he was dismayed to see his father still struggling to control his cough. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, belatedly trying to show a bit of compassion. ‘Is it the flu?’
‘Don’t know, son,’ Alexander replied, taking a quick sip from his previous pint during a brief lull in the coughing. ‘Had it a while. Been feeling a bit under the weather since the turn of the year.’
‘But that’s been months.’
‘Aye.’
Carlyle looked his father up and down. He was getting on, no question about it, but his health had always been good. And, after Carlyle’s mother had divorced him, he had taken to the single life with a surprising gusto. Still, it was clear that he was now nearing his sell-by date.
Looks like he’s lost a bit of weight; maybe a bit pale. Definitely tired.
How big was their age difference? Carlyle did the calculation. Twenty-three, twenty-four years? Something like that. It wasn’t such a lot when you thought about it. Carlyle realized that he was looking at a picture of himself in the not too distant future and the thought weighed down on him like a concrete slab sitting on his chest.
‘Been to see the GP?’
‘Nah. I’ll be fine.’
‘Dad.’
‘You know what it’s like,’ his father protested. ‘They’ll give you a few tests and tell you to stop smoking.’
Carlyle frowned. ‘But you don’t smoke.’
‘Exactly. The doctor’s a nice lad – quite a bit younger than you – but I don’t like going to the surgery. It’s depressing.’
I know what you mean. ‘You should go, just to be on the safe side.’
Alexander gestured under the table with his glass. ‘Anyway, have you been to see the GP?’
‘Me?’
‘About your foot?’
‘No, but—’
‘Exactly.’
The argument was ended by another bout of coughing. Sitting in sullen silence, Carlyle retreated into his drink. His father could be a stubborn sod – in a passive-aggressive kind of way – and he had never bought into the idea that he could take advice from his son.
Letting a mouthful of Jameson’s linger on his tongue, Carlyle decided that he would need to consult Helen on this one. His wife had always had Alexander’s measure, striking the right balance of daughter-in-law deference and no-nonsense female authority. Finishing his whiskey, he contemplated ordering another. Across the table, his father nibbled ineffectively at the remains of his pint, the fresh half still sitting untouched on the table. It was time to change the subject. ‘I was wondering if you might fancy coming to the Cottage next weekend?’ Father and son had been going to see Fulham together since Carlyle was six. They had given up their season tickets a few years ago but still went to see three or four games a season.
Alexander didn’t look up from his pint. ‘Who’s playing?’
‘Villa.’
‘Ach. They’re rubbish.’
‘That’s why they’ve still got seats on sale. I can get a couple of tickets in the Home end.’ At fifty-five quid each. Plus a booking fee.
Alexander finally looked up, distinctly unimpressed. ‘I don’t know.’
Come on, show a bit of enthusiasm. ‘OK, let me know.’ Getting to his feet, Carlyle stretched. ‘I need to get going. I’ll see you soon.’
Standing by the window, Sergeant Alison Roche wearily shifted her weight on to her left foot, in order to prevent her SIG Pro pistol from digging into her side. Roche’s shift was coming to an end and she felt knackered. Standing around doing nothing was one of the most exhausting parts of the job, always had been. And she was no spring chicken these days either. Looking down the road, she wondered just how much life this particular crime scene had left in it. They had been here for hours now, and all of the standard protocols had been executed. Just beyond the police tape, she could see the bright lights of the last remaining TV crew broadcasting from the middle of the road. The journalists’ barely concealed delight at being able to report on the mayhem and misfortune suffered by others annoyed the hell out of her. She thought of them as vampires. Surely they had bled this story dry by now? Even the BBC had packed up and taken their toys off to Buckingham Palace, in toadying anticipation of the next royal sprog popping out.