by Mick Herron
And Bettany himself, what did he know now that he hadn’t known before?
That Coe had been telling the truth.
Or at least, believed he’d been telling the truth …
Because the other possibility was that Tearney was pointing him at Vincent Driscoll.
Time to get off, so he rang the bell, went downstairs, stepped onto another dark pavement. London swam into focus, familiar but strange at once. A video panel on a nearby litter bin streamed a live news channel, while over the road a Victorian lamp post’s curves were ornate as a hatstand’s. It was as if portals into the past, or the future, kept opening.
He wasn’t being followed. No alarms had been rung. He spared a brief spasm of pity for JK Coe, and slipped off the thoroughfare and its limelight.
The other possibility was that Tearney was pointing him at Vincent Driscoll—why warn him off otherwise? A computer game designer didn’t sound like a player, but computers got you places drugs never would. Maybe the games were a cover, and Driscoll was designing spyware.
In which case the picture flipped once more—now Driscoll was an asset, and Tearney really did want Bettany to keep his distance.
It was like holding a puzzle cube. He hadn’t got it right yet. No answer left all sides the same colour.
He should sleep on it, but there was no chance of that. Forward momentum was needed. Into the dark streets he went.
3.5
It was a small shop and didn’t look popular. Stationer’s, it claimed. In the dusty window were colour-tinted plastic folders and a few reams of A4.
PHOTCOPIER NOT WORKING said a sign taped to the glass.
“Photcopier.”
Bettany tried the door, which wouldn’t open. But there was a light on, so he knocked. Waiting, he surveyed the street.
Hardly a street. An alley off a lane off a road off Cheapside. The shop’s nearest neighbour was a pharmacist’s offering three-for-two on sun-protection products, either eight months late or madly ahead of the curve.
He’d walked across the Millennium Bridge, halting on the gradient up to St. Paul’s to look back at the dark water lapping its constant course. Maybe there, he thought—maybe, when this was over, he’d scatter Liam’s ashes on the water. Every Londoner loved the river. Wasn’t that right?
Every Londoner loved the river.
So maybe that was where he’d scatter Liam.
He banged the door again.
A shaggy-haired adolescent appeared, displaying his watch-face through the glass with a scowl.
Bettany pointed at the door handle.
With an elaborate sigh, the boy opened the door a crack.
“It’s nearly seven, we’re—”
“Dancer in?”
He thought for a moment he was too late. Wrong shop, wrong city, wrong year. But the boy pulled the door open and stood aside.
Bettany walked past him, past the weary stock of envelopes and adhesive notes, past the out-of-action “photocopier,” to another door, this marked STAFF ONLY.
He didn’t knock.
No windows, just a naked overhead bulb. It lit a cramped grubby office, mostly occupied by a desk, behind which sat a man, his face mostly occupied by spectacles.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Hello, Dancer.”
“You are kidding me.”
Bettany sat on the visitor’s chair.
“Martin Boyd. As I live and breathe.”
He waited.
“Though living and breathing,” said Dancer, adjusting his glasses, “that is most definitely a temporary situation.”
Dancer Blaine.
Dancer wasn’t one of those names—Lofty, Brains—hilariously awarded in ill-fitting tribute. Dancer did in fact dance. An egg-cup-sized trophy, proudly displayed on his desk, attested to this fact. What he looked like doing it, or how he persuaded anyone to do it with him, remained profound mysteries. His grey-streaked hair was folded into a rope that hung down his back like a bellpull, and the eyes behind his thick round lenses were squirrely, hard and brown. It struck Bettany he was wearing the same clothes he’d worn last time he’d seen him, easily eight years ago.
Back when Bettany was Martin Boyd.
“I know people who’ll be amazed you’re still upright,” Dancer went on. “Not been seen in years, you’ve not.”
“Been away,” Bettany said.
No trouble at all, he found his voice slipping into long dormant patterns. Like pulling a cover back over himself in the cold waste of the night.
A cover long blown, of course. They could stick it in the window next to those plastic folders, offer it for sale at a knockdown price. Buy one used identity, get a second one free.
Identities being among those things Dancer Blaine traded in.
Reams of A4, not so much.
“Not for as long as some of our mutual friends, you haven’t. Fifteen to twenty, without so much as a goodbye. What with you giving your evidence behind a screen.”
“I’ve always been a mite shy.”
Dancer smiled with greasy teeth.
“Special Branch was it? SO11, or one of them?”
“One of them,” Bettany agreed.
“And now the Brothers McGarry are pining for the open spaces.”
“Sure they are,” said Bettany.
He’d never laid eyes on the Brothers McGarry anywhere that didn’t have a ceiling, a bar or a pole dancer in easy reach.
“Not to mention their old mates. Often ask about you, they do. You know, your whereabouts. That kind of thing.”
“Hard as it is to fathom, I’m not here to chat about old times.”
“Customer, is it? We’ve a deal on staplers this week.”
“I’m fine for staplers.”
“So what makes you think I’ll help you?”
“You’d sell your family for twenty quid, Dancer. I’m pretty sure you’ll help.”
Dancer ran a hand across his scalp, looked at his palm, then wiped it on his trousers.
“Anything I might provide, don’t you get that at work?”
“I’ve gone freelance.”
“Gone rogue, more like. You’ve got the look. That’s interesting.”
“I’m glad you’re entertained.”
“Makes you more, what would be the word?”
“Here.”
“I was thinking … vulnerable.”
“You reckon?”
“Lacking back-up.”
Bettany said, “Present company, Dancer, I need back-up like you need an emergency condom. You going to keep dreaming, or shall we get down to business?”
“What you after?”
“Handgun.”
“Can’t be done.”
“Maybe I should have been clearer. I’ve just spent half an hour remodelling a colleague with a carving knife. It’s taken it out of me, and I could do with a breather. So this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to cut out the sales chat and get down to business. Save me getting worked up again.”
Dancer Blaine sneered, but not convincingly. He checked out Bettany’s hands, his cuffs. Looking for stains.
“I clean up nice.”
“What kind of handgun?”
“Any that works, that’s here within the hour, suits me fine.”
“Money.”
“Two hundred.”
“Ha!”
Bettany said nothing.
“Two hundred? You are joking me. You are positively, absolutely, pulling the chain.”
Still nothing.
“For two hundred, I can maybe find you a potato gun. Not one that shoots potatoes, get me? One carved out of a potato but looks realistic. That do you?”
“You’re forgetting your bonus.”
“Oh, there’s a bonus. That’s good. Because I really appreciate a bonus, what with being so desperate for custom and all.”
Bettany leaned forward.
“We both know you’ll be on that phone, minute I’m out of here. Sellin
g Martin Boyd to the highest bidder. To the Brothers McGarry, or their face on the streets. No shortage of candidates, is there? Price on my head, and all. You’ll stand to pick up a nice slice of that, won’t you?”
Dancer curled a lip.
“Picking up a slice of that whether I sell you a gun or not, old chum. Can’t work that out, I’m not surprised you’ve had to go freelance.”
“Well, that depends on you still being alive when I walk out of here, doesn’t it? Old chum.”
Dancer started to speak, then stopped. Ran a hand across his head again. Behind his bottle-glasses, squirrel eyes blinked three times in quick succession.
Bettany clasped his hands, and rested them on the desk in front of him.
He said, “Your boy through there’s your runner, right?”
Dancer nodded, as Bettany had expected. No way would an old hand like Dancer Blaine keep merchandise on the premises.
“Well then.”
He reached inside his coat pocket, and Dancer flinched.
“Two hundred,” Bettany said.
The notes he put on the table were most of the rest of Liam’s hoard.
Dancer looked at the money, then back at Bettany. There was calculation in his eyes, as well as fear and a splash of venom.
“Suppose it happens. Suppose you get your handgun. What’s to stop you …”
“I have business elsewhere, Dancer. Make life difficult for me, and I’ll get cross. Do what I want and I’ll fade away.”
His voice grew quieter.
“And once I’ve done that, you can start ringing round your mates. Can’t you?”
Dancer studied the money again, licking it with his eyes.
Without shifting his gaze, he called out, “Get in here, Mose.”
As if he’d been waiting behind the door, the shaggy-haired adolescent appeared.
3.6
An hour and forty minutes later, Bettany stood in a well-recessed shop doorway near Embankment, rain cracking off the arcade roof overhead. In his hand a carrier bag, and in the bag a shoebox.
It weighed more than his son. This thought wouldn’t leave. It echoed to the patter of the raindrops.
There were bars along this stretch of road, and taxis cruising past. Not by any means a deserted part of the capital.
Dancer had given Mose whispered instructions, and sent him off to whatever lock-up, safe house or hole in the ground Dancer stashed his stock in. The shoebox he’d come back with held a Makarov, a Belgian model. Bettany had dry-fired it, there in Dancer’s office. It didn’t feel like it would blow his hand off when loaded.
He hadn’t thought he’d ever hold a gun again. Had thought that part of his life was over.
A woman walked past, gave him a quick look, and hurried on.
What would Liam have said if he’d seen him tonight? Stark naked, wielding a carving knife? Threatening to lop parts off a man who’d never been more than a messenger?
It didn’t matter. It wasn’t relevant.
Liam was in an urn, a mess of grit and clinker.
Liam weighed less than a loaded gun.
More footsteps.
Bettany placed the bag at his feet.
He’d paid Dancer and walked riverwards, taking the back lanes, passing rows of restaurants and empty offices. Mose, trailing in his wake, was easy to spot. The kid was an unfinished article. That, or Dancer was too cheap to pay for quality.
The footsteps wavered slightly, but didn’t stop.
He’d made no attempt to lose the boy until he’d reached Embankment station, slipping straight through from the riverside to the street beyond after a brief feint in the direction of the barriers. An amateur move, designed to make another amateur happy he’d not fallen for it. But Bettany had then immediately lost himself in a mid-evening jostle, leaving Mose at the station entrance, clueless.
Could have left it at that, thought Bettany. He could have faded away as promised. Mose wasn’t going to find him. Dancer could tell anyone he liked that Martin Boyd was in town, but they’d need serious luck to track him down before he left. So there was no real call to do what he did next.
Which was step aside from the crowd, allowing Mose to see him.
Mose did. Mose would have had to be blind, drunk or both not to.
Next moment Bettany was back inside the crowd, and the moment after was in this quiet shop doorway, still wondering whether he’d have hurt Coe, if circumstances had demanded.
It didn’t matter. Wasn’t worth asking. Scaring him had been enough.
When Mose drew level Bettany pulled him in with one quick yank on his arm, clamped his mouth shut with his free hand, and planted his knee firmly in the kid’s crotch. He mapped the course of the boy’s pain in the wide-open plains of his eyes, and waited until it reached its zenith before lowering him, quite gently, to the ground.
Then Bettany picked up his bag and walked on.
3.7
The shower passed, which made no difference to Dancer Blaine. Ensconced in his office, he hadn’t known it was raining to start with. He’d simply sat until he was sure Martin Boyd had left, and Mose was on his tail, and then had stood, wrapped his arms around an imaginary friend, and glided round on the spot, imagination building a ballroom out of half a metre of carpet.
Glitterballs bloomed, an orchestra swelled, and bouquets were thrown by adoring crowds.
When Dancer was done he bowed low, doffed his glasses, and allowed his plait to graze the floor.
Then he sat back down and waited for the phone to ring.
There were a lot of ways of describing Dancer’s principal line of business, but he liked to see it as making people up. Creating identities. He did other things too—the least of which was selling stationery, the worst handling guns—but making people up was what he did best. It wasn’t far removed from what writers did, the difference being when you closed a book, the people stopped existing.
The people Dancer made up could thrive for the rest of their naturals, if they didn’t do anything stupid.
The chief stupidity was and always had been drawing attention to yourself.
When the phone rang at last it was Mose, to say he’d lost Boyd, or Boyd had lost him. Dancer wasn’t surprised. Whatever else he was Boyd was a professional, while Mose was basically Work Experience.
He hung up then dialled a number he knew by heart.
“It’s Dancer,” he said. “The man in?”
He waited, listened, lit a cigarette.
“Yeah, this number,” he said. “I’ll wait.”
He cradled the phone and coughed out smoke.
The shelving opposite blurred, wobbled, then resumed its previous position.
Mose had lost Martin Boyd around the Embankment, which meant the Embankment was nowhere near Boyd’s hidey hole. But that was okay. Where Boyd’s hidey hole was was somebody else’s problem. The fact that he had one was all Dancer was currently selling.
Someone like Martin Boyd, you didn’t expect a second crack at. He was Security, or from one of those police squads sounded like a postcode or a junk-food additive. S06, EC11, whatever. They came in undercover and did their job, and your window for wreaking personal justice upon them was brief, because after your arrest you couldn’t mess with them. For a start they’d generally vanished off the face of the earth. But even if they hadn’t, targeting them was an act of war. Might as well dig your own hole, plant a headstone, and wait. Because undercover types didn’t play by their own rules, they played by yours. And you didn’t want a level playing field when the opposition were trained in use of weapons, rather than just in possession of a hooky firearm.
What was interesting about Boyd, though, was a hooky firearm was exactly what he’d been after.
Dancer spat noisily into, very nearly, his wastepaper basket.
Not that Martin Boyd was his real name.
The possibility was, of course, that Boyd was just bread on the water, deliberately giving the impression he was out of the game. The
re were some sharp buggers out there, and Dancer wouldn’t put it past them to use an old hand as bait, see who came to the surface. If that was what was happening things were likely to get noisy, and it might be sound politics to take an early break, Portugal or somewhere, until the dust settled.
Boyd hadn’t smelled like Job, though.
On the other hand, if he’d smelled like Job last time round, the Brothers McGarry wouldn’t be out of the picture.
Dancer killed his cigarette.
Bottom line was, what Boyd had done to the Brothers McGarry would have happened sooner or later anyway—it, or something like. They’d have been picked up for a dodgy tail light in a van match-ready for D-Day, or hosed out of their cars by a rival on the fringes of Epping Forest. Six of one and the same of the other, far as Dancer was concerned. Because if it wasn’t the Brothers McGarry it would be someone else, and here was your proof—the brothers were banged up, and guess what? Gun crime hadn’t gone anywhere. Gun crime was still edging up the charts, gaining on Possession With Intent, and muttering dark nothings about Grievous Bodily Harm.
So no, Dancer didn’t care what Boyd had done, and wasn’t even especially aggrieved that the man had threatened him, here in his own office. Threats, actual pummellings even, went with the territory. You simply made a mental note, and waited for the wheel to turn. It wasn’t personal. It was just the way business was done.
In this particular instance, the wheel was turning faster than usual, of course.
The phone rang, and Dancer uncradled the receiver.
Sometimes you made people up. Sometimes you sold them.
Either way, the wheel kept turning.
He said, “You’ll never guess who I just had in the shop.”
3.8
The man Dancer Blaine had called The Man otherwise went by Bishop. He too had known Martin Boyd in a previous life, and even if he hadn’t would have been keen to hear of his reappearance, the way any local businessman might rub his hands on hearing word of a tourist.
Tourists were there to be fleeced.
When this happened to tourists, it was often a metaphor.