by PJ Adams
The shit might not be hitting any fans right now, but the warning signs were there and so I sat and calmly thought everything through.
In my line of work you need a poker face, and you need a poker mind, too. Life is always a percentage game and you need to be able to work out the odds.
I took my cellphone out of the inner pocket of my waxed coat and stared at the screen, weighing up the options.
Then I pressed Ronnie’s number, still selected in the Contacts list from when I’d found it for Maggie two days before.
“Hey, Ronnie, my man. How’s it hanging?”
“Owen. Long time, man. What’s up?”
“Listen, Ronnie. I know it’s been a while, but I need a favor. There’s a girl. I gave her your number, told her you might be able to help her find someone. She call you? She’s East European, but she’s straight up, you can trust her. Anything?”
“Maggie, or Maddie, or something? Yeah, she called. Yesterday morning, I think it was. Told her I didn’t know nothing. Didn’t realize it was you put her onto me, Owen, or I’d have been more helpful. She in trouble?”
“No, no. Well, I don’t really know. Just trying to track her down and make sure she got what she wanted. You any idea where she might be? Did you give her anything?”
“Nah, mate. Like I say. I’m not a blabber. Didn’t know who she was so I didn’t want to say anything, know what I mean?”
“Yeah. Yeah, Ron, I know what you mean. Listen: you pick anything up, you get straight on the phone to me, okay? On this number. I just want to be sure she’s okay.”
I rang off, and sat a few minutes more, drumming my fingers and rolling that exchange over in my head. Everything Ronnie said rang true. I’d trust him almost as much as I’d trust Reuben or Fearless or my brothers.
And yet...
Something wasn’t quite right.
He’d sounded normal. Same old Ronnie. But...
He hadn’t been surprised. That’s what was nagging away at the back of my mind.
I’d called him from a number he wouldn’t have in his contacts, so he’d have had no indication on the screen of who was calling. What you’d expect was, he’d hear my voice, take a second or two to recognize me, a second or two more for his mind to race through the permutations of was it really me, and why would I suddenly be calling him out of the blue like this?
But there had been none of that. He’d answered, he’d recognized my voice, and hadn’t faltered. Almost as if a call from me might not be the last thing he was expecting right then.
But... Ronnie?
We’d grown up together. Done so many jobs together.
We were family.
Maybe I was just being paranoid.
Ronnie wouldn’t do anything stupid, would he?
Not Ronnie.
§
Next call I made was hands-free, as I did 65 down the A140 towards Norwich.
I still wasn’t rushing into things. I’d taken my time to work out the best course of action, time to gather myself.
I’d driven back to the house, gone up to the attic room and sat down at the Blüthner. Not to play, but to think.
I’d gone to the bathroom and stood before the mirror, examining my features. I looked older these days, although still only in my mid-thirties. More lines around the eyes, more flecks of gray in the beard and at the temples.
I found foam, a brush, and lathered up, working it into my beard. The first cut dragged. I should have trimmed down to short stubble before applying the foam, but I was not versed in the ways of beard grooming or removal. I had always been clean-shaven until this year.
I persisted, re-lathering and taking a second pass, a third, until finally I was smooth, albeit with skin raw and inflamed.
Now, when I straightened from sluicing water over my face, the man I saw in the mirror was much closer to the old me again, and I realized I’d missed it. I’d missed me.
Back in my bedroom, I opened one of the wardrobes, the one with the suits. Dark blue, fine-brushed Italian wool. Matching tie over an Oxford weave white shirt.
I found my old Oliver Sweeney black Derby shoes to take out to the car and put on later, once I was clear of the Norfolk mud.
Took my steel and white gold Rolex Datejust from the dresser and slipped it onto my left wrist for the first time in months.
Reached into a drawer, and came out with my Glock 19. Gave it a quick check over, and then slipped it into the shoulder holster under my jacket.
It had taken every ounce of self-control I had not to leap straight into the car and head down to London and kick Ronnie’s skinny ass.
It was hard. That discipline had been a natural thing for me since I was a kid – had to be, or I’d never have survived this long – but I’d let things lapse. I’d only make the situation worse by being impulsive, though. I understood that.
But once I hit the open road, my foot went down. I had to force myself to ease off again. Speed cameras, traffic patrols... or just taking a bend too fast on one of these snaking country roads. I couldn’t afford to screw up.
I still believed it most likely she had just done a runner, and it was my paranoia reading things into a perfectly normal response from Ronnie, but my poker brain knew the odds were shifting.
Percentages.
I had to be sure she was safe.
It wasn’t because it was her. It wasn’t because I might or might not be falling in love or anything like that.
It was that code. The honor. We Baileys, we did things properly. We stood by people. We didn’t let them down unless they deserved it.
It was nothing to do with what had passed two nights before.
I called my old friend as I drove. “Reuben. It’s me.”
“Hey, Owen. What’s up?”
“Listen. Remember you called the other day, asked when I was coming back to London? Well, things have changed. I’m heading down there now. You going to be around?”
“Maybe.” Cagey. Just like Reuben: put him on the spot and now – he had a poker mind, just like me – he was weighing up the odds, the risks.
“I need a favor.”
Much as I loved Reuben, I knew him well enough to know he changed with the wind. He had to, in his line of business. A copper with fingers in so many pies and connections to crooks like me... He had to stay on his toes.
But one thing I was sure of was that the fact we went way back together mattered to him. Reuben Glover was old East End through and through, and he was as good as being another of the Bailey Boys. Reuben was one of us, and he always would be.
“What kind of favor?” he asked now.
“There’s a girl. Miglë Petrauskė.” She might think her name difficult to say and remember, but it wasn’t to me. “Goes by ‘Maggie’. Lithuanian. I think she might be on your manor. I put her in touch with Ronnie a couple of days ago and I think he might be hedging his bets. You know how he can be when he doesn’t have anyone to keep him in line. You heard anything?”
“Nah. Haven’t spoken to Ronnie in weeks, Owen. You want me to give him a call?”
“No, no thanks, Reuben.” Then I paused. “Actually, yeah. Do that. Set up a meet. And would you put some feelers out? I don’t want her caught up in any nasty shit. Will you keep an eye out for her?”
“’Course I will, Owen. I’ll do that. And I’ll let you know when I’ve fixed something up with Ronnie. Anything else?”
“No, no, Reuben. Just... look out for her, will you?”
15
Straight away, she didn’t like Ronnie.
He met her at Liverpool Street station by the steps up to McDonald’s, just as he’d promised. The arrangements had been no more specific than that, and as the train crawled the last few hundred yards into the station she worried that she might miss him. She had his number at least, so she could call.
As it happened, that wasn’t necessary. Although the place was busy, he was the only person standing there, obviously waiting. He was a tall, thin figu
re with flat black hair and a big hooked nose. His eyes swept the crowd and then lighted on Maggie as she approached and tentatively held out a hand for him to shake.
“Ronnie? Thank you so much for meeting me here. Do you have any news of my brother?”
He shrugged, said something noncommittal, then put a hand on her arm and led her up the stairs. “Come with me. I’ll give you a lift, darling.”
His touch hurt, fingers like claws gripping just a little too tight.
He’d parked on double yellow lines in a side street not far from the station. A silver BMW. He drove with his body half turned in the seat so he could face her, steering one-handed.
“So you going to tell me how you got my number? You said it was a friend gave it you.”
His gaze crawled over her. She wished he would watch the road. Anything but...
She nodded. “I am just looking for my brother.”
She should have listened to Owen. To his warnings about the kind of people she would encounter down here. But this Ronnie, he was supposed to be one of the good ones...
“Owen said you would help me,” she said. She noted Ronnie’s reaction to the mention of that name: the slight raise of the eyebrows, the marginal turn of the head, the twitch at the corner of his mouth.
It wasn’t a slip of the tongue, a casual betrayal of who had given her Ronnie’s number. It was a calculated thing. A deliberate choice. She knew Owen had influence. Weight. If there was anything that would serve as leverage right now then she would use it, if it might help her find her brother.
“’Course I will,” he said.
They drove in silence for a while, stopping and starting through heavy London traffic. She had not been to this city before, and in her head she had expected palaces and castles and parks, not the crowded, dirty streets through which they slowly passed. She knew it was a big city, and the London of her anticipation might easily exist elsewhere, but this London... it matched her mood, at least.
As they drove, anticipation turned to growing disappointment and not a little anxiety.
She realized she was pressing back against the door, unconsciously putting as much space as possible between herself and Ronnie as he half-faced her.
“So how d’you know Owen, then? I haven’t seen him for a while. We used to be close.”
“I work for him. He help me.”
Ronnie nodded. “Where you come in from today? Cambridge? Norwich? Southend?”
“I... How is it you say? Tired. Just look for my brother.” That was one thing she’d learned. Make your accent thicker, talk in more broken sentences, and you could get away with ignoring any question. You didn’t even have to say you didn’t understand. “Where we go?”
“Place I know. Nearly there.”
She was starting to get scared now, that initial anxiety turning to something darker.
She had to force herself to remember that this was the man Owen had picked out to help her. If Owen trusted him, then she should too.
“Where?”
The car swung off the road into some kind of industrial unit. Tall red-brick walls rose to either side of the narrow opening, and what looked like the metal wall of a warehouse lay directly ahead, an old white van parked before it.
“Here. Nearly here.”
§
When she had first seen Ronnie, she didn’t like him. And when she climbed into his car she liked him even less.
But she had been wrong.
She should have trusted Owen’s judgment. Ronnie was one of the good guys and right now she could easily kiss him.
The industrial unit turned out to be the back of a row of commercial buildings, probably the rear of one of those rows of shop-fronts they had been passing. She saw delivery bays, big wheelie bins overflowing with waste, stacks of plastic crates.
And there, in an open doorway at the top of a flight of metal steps was her brother.
He stood casually, leaning forward with his hands on a metal safety rail. He looked well. Fit and healthy. His blond hair was cropped close, his shoulders broad – he’d always had the inverted triangle physique of a swimmer.
And he had a smile that stole over those otherwise hard features, transforming him into the little boy she’d grown up with – ‘little’ because he was a year younger, even though he’d always been physically larger for as long as she could recall.
She went up the stairs to him, stopping a couple short, emphasizing the difference in their heights.
He knew about their father. She could see in his eyes.
“You bastard,” she said, switching naturally to Lithuanian. “Not a word, even when Papa died.”
There was a flash of anger in those gray eyes. His fiery temperament clearly hadn’t changed. Then he spread his arms, stepped towards her, and she had no choice but to complete those last two steps and slip into his arms.
“Little big sister,” he said, his chin dipping down to rest on the crown of her head. It was the first time she had heard that old pet name in nearly two years. “I should have called, I know. When I heard... when Uncle Rokas called, I was angry.”
Maggie pulled away, peered up at him. “Angry?”
“At myself. That I had not been there and that our last words had been angry, over nothing at all. That you were there all alone.”
“And so you did nothing.”
“I did nothing. I do not pretend to be a good brother or son. I never did.”
Nobody but a kid brother could so easily admit to being so selfish and careless and get away with it. Nobody.
Maggie dipped her head again, her cheek against his chest. “I missed you, you big bastard.”
Hard to believe it was almost two years since he’d gone. A single roof had never been enough to contain Alfredas and their father – two hotheads in one home was never going to work, once Alfredas had reached a certain age. They’d argued, they’d squared up, then one day their father had taken a swing.
Alfredas took it square on the jaw.
He could have turned away, he could have swayed back out of reach, but he did not. He was a boxer! He knew how to dodge blows, and how to ride and deflect them. But instead he had stood square, taken the full force of the punch on his jaw, and... still stood square, gazing steadily back at his father.
Maggie had watched it all. Seen that moment drag out. Understood the strength it had taken for her kid brother not to buckle under such a blow, and understood just how much more strength it took him not to respond.
It felt as if several seconds passed, and then finally their father turned away, grumbling something under his breath and she knew he was struggling not to hold his bruised fist to his chest, not to check it for damage. Later she had seen the black and blue stain across that hand, the knuckles swollen like dumplings.
And then, without a word, Alfredas had turned away, too. Seconds later she heard his feet, soft on the stairs, and a few minutes after that the same sound again, followed by the slam of a door, and he was gone.
Now, she held onto him, as she wished she had that night in Vilnius.
“He loved you, I think,” she told him, and she was grateful her brother chose not to answer.
§
Alfredas led her back into the building.
They were in some kind of club. A bar, plush red velvet seating arranged in booths, a small stage.
Even though the club appeared to be open for business and a dancer was half-heartedly going through her routine on the stage, the place was deserted. It felt like a movie set or a ghost-town saloon.
They sat at a table, Alfredas’s big hands enclosing Maggie’s. “So, little big sister,” he said, “how did you come all this way and find me? I am surprised. Touched.”
Maggie tipped her head from side to side. “What else is there left, but family?” she said, by way of reply. “And what else is left of my family but you, big little brother?”
“Ronnie called me,” he told her. “He said you were coming. He said he thought you
must have found him through one of the Bailey brothers, is that right?”
She nodded, squeezing his hands back. “Owen Bailey. He told me he always liked you.”
“You like him, too?”
That noncommittal wobble of the head again.
Those eyes, fixed on her. Alfredas always knew.
“He is a kind man,” she said.
“He is a ruthless bastard.”
“He told me he saw something of himself about you.”
“Like I say...”
He was teasing her. “I missed you, Alfredas.”
“You said that already.”
“Did you miss anything of home?”
He looked away.
Sometimes it is best not to ask. Sometimes best not to even go looking. Because sometimes...
That was when she heard the voices, men talking in Russian.
Alfredas was still looking down at the table, his jaw clenched tight. She knew that look. The mixture of stubbornness and... guilt.
“Alfredas?”
Those gray eyes flashed up and met hers. “What did you expect?” he said. “I have to work. It is the only work I know how to do and they are the only people in town worth working for now your friend has gone into hiding.”
Two men stood by the table. A tall guy in a black t-shirt, his hair shaved into an uneven mohawk, and a shorter, older man in a dark gray suit, studying her closely.
Maggie returned her stare to Alfredas, and he at least had the decency to look away.
“You work for the Russians?” she demanded.
At first it was the shock that Alfredas had done this that swamped her senses. Then she realized that there was more to it than that: her brother hadn’t just changed allegiances, he was working for the gang who must have fought the Bailey Boys before Owen went into hiding, the gang who had been lured into the hands of the police, the gang of whom at least one senior member had died at the hands of Owen Bailey.
That was when she started to understand just how much trouble she was in.
16
From the moment I saw Reuben I knew we were fucked.
It was in his eyes, always a giveaway – not that he avoided my look, but that he met it and his eyes were flat, lifeless.