Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “Didn’t know Rikeman from Adam either,” Donnelly mused.

  “That’s right,” Malloy agreed, “how’d he put it? Oh yeah – just helping out like the Good Samaritan and doing his public duty assisting the police, that’s what he said.”

  Donnelly’s smile widened. “Nice touch,” he said, and, to himself, the chess-master murmured checkmate.

  When Malloy had gone, Alex Donnelly called in two of his biggest and ugliest yard hands and dispatched them to Bodkin’s Deptford garage with an invitation the man couldn’t refuse, unless he fancied a length of lead pipe bent over his cranium. They returned with a pasty-faced man who seemed to be having some trouble with his breathing.

  “Hello Odds,” Donnelly greeted him affably. “Long time no see.” He rose, smoothing down the jacket of his pinstripe suit, and nodded to the minders to release their grip on the man’s arms. “Good of you to come at such short notice.”

  Bodkin gasped for air like a stranded fish, breath wheezing from his lungs. His voice was a nasal whine: “I thought you and me were mates, Alex. You didn’t have to send these gorillas to work me over. Busted half my ribs.”

  “Tried to leg it out the window, boss,” explained the larger of the two messengers. “Got so excited we had to give him a slap to settle him down.”

  “All right, lads,” Donnelly told the pair, “just wait outside a minute while I talk to Mr Bodkin here. I’m sure there’s no hard feelings.”

  When they were alone, Donnelly poured his guest a drink. “What I want you to understand, Odds,” he said apologetically as he handed over a generous tumbler of whisky, “is there’s nothing personal in this whatsoever, it’s pure business.”

  “What’s going on, Alex, what’d I do?” Bodkin yelped, gulping at the Scotch in an endeavour to fortify himself.

  “It’s a long story,” Donnelly told him in his quiet courteous manner, “but let’s put it this way, you’re a good careful villain, Odds, I’ve got to give you that, nice thriving little firm ringing bent motors and shipping ’em out without the law getting so much as a sniff. Nice sensible living with plenty of prospects, just the kind of entrepreneurial spirit the government’s always banging on about.” Donnelly’s voice grew cold. “So why, oh why, did you have to go and spoil it by getting mixed up with this toe-rag Ricky Rikeman, eh?”

  Bodkin’s eyes widened, but he still tried to brazen it out. “I don’t know what you mean, Alex.”

  “What I mean,” Donnelly explained patiently, “is you fitted this scum up with an alibi stuffed full of porkies.”

  “Hey, Alex,” Bodkin cried, “what d’you mean, porkies? What would I do a thing like that for?”

  “And the trouble is,” Donnelly went on, ignoring the protestation, “owing to certain adverse circumstances affecting me and my associates, although it does go against the grain, I’m going to have to get you to throw this scumbag Rikeman to the wolves.”

  “For God’s sake, Alex,” Bodkin blurted, his face ashen, “it wasn’t my idea, I just went along with it. He was a loser, owed us big time and promised to ante up if we pulled him clear of the Old Bill. Jesus, if I’d known it was going to cause you grief, Alex, I’d’ve told ’em to shove it, straight up, on my baby’s eyes I would.”

  A faintly regretful smile touched Donnelly’s lips. “No sense in getting all worked up, Odds,” he said. “As I explained, this is purely business. We’ve always got on well in the past, you stick to your side of the street and I stick to mine, but you see it finally comes down to a question of priorities.”

  “What do you want me to do, Alex?” Bodkin asked desperately. “Anything you want, just name it.”

  Donnelly examined his fingernails: “Like I said, I want you to dump Rikeman, make a new statement to the police; say you were confused, mistaken. An honest mistake, eh? Must have been someone else. I’ll take care of the arrangements.”

  “Anything you say, Alex,” Bodkin gabbled. “You’re the boss, anything you say.”

  “You’re still missing the point,” Donnelly spoke quietly, polishing his nails and inspecting the shine. “I’m going to have to make an example of you, Odds, so that all those one-eyed-jack cronies of yours get the message and follow suit. But I want you to believe me when I tell you there’s absolutely nothing personal in this at all. You’ve got to look on it as a business transaction, a little sacrifice in the name of goodwill.”

  Bodkin yelped in fright as Donnelly recalled his henchmen and they dragged the man out to his car, a midnight-blue Bentley Continental GT, and deposited him behind the wheel. “Nice jam-jar,” Donnelly admired the soft cream hide interior and sleek lines of the luxury limo, sitting there contented in sharp contrast to the dirty yellow HyMac yard crane which loomed over it, its four great rusty claws poised over the roof.

  “I’d belt up if I was you, clunk click,” Donnelly advised as he stepped back and nodded to the crane operator. The talons swooped down and seized the car, rocked it on its suspension then swung it effortlessly into the air, glass and paint flakes showering down as the hydraulic grab bit into the roof. Roaring and belching smoke from its exhaust stack, the HyMac jiggled the car in midair then crashed it to the ground. A wheel spun off and went bouncing into the scrap pile. Bodkin was screaming in terror as the crane heaved the car into the air again, shaking it like a terrier worrying a bone. The bonnet flapped and the boot lid lurched open on impact as the crane let go and the Bentley crashed back to the ground.

  At Donnelly’s signal the process was repeated several times until, bent and buckled, the no longer sleek Continental looked very sorry for itself and from inside the wrecked car Bodkin could be heard wailing hysterically. After a while Donnelly gave the order for the claws to relax their grip, setting the car down for the last time with a shriek of tortured metal. Odds Bodkin had screamed himself hoarse as, battered and misshapen, the once epitome of luxury automotive design had been effortlessly reduced to scrap. He was gibbering like an idiot when they hauled him out of the wreck and deposited him at Donnelly’s feet. Spittle drooled from his lips and his eyes swivelled in his head as he scrabbled about in the dirt and ended up clinging to Donnelly’s leg.

  “Like I said, no hard feelings, Odds,” Donnelly told him solicitously as he plucked a bejewelled Day-Date Rolex from Bodkin’s limp wrist. “Oh, and I hope this fancy motor of yours is still under warranty, otherwise I think you just lost your no-claims bonus.”

  Tom “The Cat” Parker caught up with his old sparring partner in the steam room of the Elephant Turkish Bath and Sauna on the Walworth Road.

  “My God,” he exclaimed, towel wrapped around his waist toga-like, “this place hasn’t changed a bit.” He cast an eye over the veined white tiling and bleached-out benches. “I used to come here with Michael Caine, before he was Michael Caine.”

  Bobby Jones, looking distinctly the worse for wear, blinked uncomprehendingly. “Before he was Michael Caine?”

  “Mm, he was Maurice Micklewhite in those days and the Elephant and Castle was his stamping ground. We used to have a laugh. If I’d kept in touch I might have got a part in The Italian Job. I was a bit of a thespian myself in those days.” He peered at the naked form through the mist of steam. “You don’t look so good, old son.”

  “Sweating neat alcohol,” Jones said. “Last night was a marathon, like none other. I’ve got jack hammers going flat out inside my skull.” He winced, recalling the scene. The Commissioner had sent over a case of champagne and a limitless bar tab, so the party had spiralled out of control in time-honoured fashion. He had awful memories of DCs throwing up in the alley adjoining the pub; another, attempting to drunkenly seduce a barmaid, fell down the cellar steps and broke his leg; a usually staid DS danced a jig on a table wearing only his underpants and then led the assembly in community hymn singing before collapsing into a paralytic stupor. Jones shuddered at the memory.

  “Well, you cleared the burka bandit job, Bobby. Feather in your cap all right. The Old Man was cock-a-hoop. Holl
ingsworth gave him a pat on the head and maximum brownie points, so his K looks safe again. Of course he says he only wants it for his old woman so she can swank around as Her Ladyship to compensate for all the time he was away keeping this fair city safe for honest folk.”

  “Now where have I heard that before?” Jones muttered as the Cat perched on the bench beside him.

  “You know what, Bob,” he remarked brightly, still strolling down memory lane, “This reminds me of when we were up at Orgreave, knocking miners’ heads together and using the old coking works bath house for a scrub-up. Seems like only yesterday, eh, when we were young and keen as mustard?”

  Jones groaned. “Not so loud, Tom, my head can’t stand it.”

  “Well, you’d better fill me in on this burka-bandit job. Good bit of work by your lads, commendations all round. So what happened, some sharp D get lucky?”

  The groan faded into a sigh. “Damnedest thing,” Jones said. “Rikeman’s cast-iron alibi blew up in his face, just evaporated.”

  “Get away.”

  “He had all those witnesses in his pocket, backing him up at that all-day poker game.”

  “So who pulled the rug out from under?”

  Jones winced as the pain stabbed behind his eyes: “Local crime intel, would you believe? That old warhorse Mike Malloy . . .”

  “Metal Mike as I recall.” The Cat had a good memory for nicknames in the job.

  “The very same. Been out to grass in crime intel longer than I can remember, then bang, he’s got this one sewn up and covered himself in glory.”

  “Luck of the draw, probably,” the Cat said. “What did Metal Mike do, rub his lamp three times and get himself a genie?”

  “Something like that,” Jones agreed. “Turns out he’s got a bloody good informant, some guy he’s been cultivating for years suddenly came good, got a nice citizen’s commendation coming from the Commissioner for his public-spirited action. We gave Rikeman a pull on the strength, and when we put it to him he didn’t have a prayer, he folded his hand and coughed it. Not even the CPS is going to balk at a confession. Oh, and we’re putting the poker school up for conspiracy to pervert. They’ll probably go down for longer than burka man.”

  “That’s the spirit,” the Cat said, “that’ll get the old sphincters twitching.” He turned to face Bobby Jones: “This informant of Malloy’s, wouldn’t be some superstar called Alex Donnelly would it?”

  “How’d you know that, Tom?”

  The Cat scratched his ear. “That explains it,” he said. “I got a steer from the Old Man on him. We’d got him marked down as a Zatopec target.”

  “What?”

  “Just one of those things,” the Deputy Assistant Commissioner shrugged.

  “What’d you do?”

  “Oh, we dropped him like a hot potato. How’d you like to explain away a Flying Squad target who’s just cleared a major high-profile crime with a Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s commendation in his pocket to prove it?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Who for good measure personally returned the presentation timepiece to our friend at the Pakistani embassy, earning himself the grateful thanks of the representative of a friendly nation to boot.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Oh yes, quite the man of the moment, our Mr Donnelly. So to answer your question, I had his stuff yanked out of the system and the file erased back to the Stone Age so fast you wouldn’t have known he ever existed.”

  “Self-preservation,” Jones nodded.

  “Name of the game,” the Cat grinned. He looked around again at the wraith-like figures materializing through the mist of the steam room and got to his feet, pulling his towel tighter around his waist. “Well, they’re open, Detective Chief Inspector Jones, so how about a jar, hair of the dog?”

  Bobby Jones lowered his head into his hands. “Go away, guv’nor,” he pleaded, steadying his brow and waiting for the spasm of nausea to pass.

  Funeral for a Friend

  Simon Kernick

  There’s always the low murmur of whispered conversation at a funeral. The men, unsmiling, acknowledge each other with terse nods and stiff handshakes; the women kiss and hold one another in tight embraces, as if somehow the strength of their emotion will protect them from a similar fate. It won’t. The end, I can tell you from experience, is lurking round every corner.

  I’m pleased with the turnout today, though. I didn’t think that I was that popular. I am, or was, a pretty brutal man. But I was powerful, too, and power tends to attract followers, I suppose.

  I’m looking for one man in particular, but so far he’s conspicuous by his absence. Most of the people have already taken their seats, and we’re only five minutes away from the 2.30 p.m. start time. The door to the church opens, but it’s not him. It’s Arnold Vachs, my former accountant, here with his wife. Creeping unsteadily down the aisle, like the bride at an arranged marriage to King Kong, he’s small and potbellied with the furtive air of a crook, which is very apt, since that’s exactly what he is. His wife – who’s a good six inches taller and supposedly an ex-model – definitely never married him for his looks. But Arnold Vachs earns big money, and that makes him one hell of a lot more attractive.

  Finally, with one minute to go, the man I’m waiting for steps inside. Tall, lean and tanned, with a fine head of silver hair, he looks like an ageing surfer who’s suddenly discovered how to dress smart. It’s my old blood brother, Danny O’Neill, looking a lot younger than his sixty years, and as soon as I see him, I’m transported back four decades, right to the very beginning.

  The year was 1967, and I’d just come back from a twelve-month stint in Nam. I was still a kid, barely twenty, with the remnants of an unfinished high-school education, and no job or prospects. The difference between me and every other Joe was that I was a killer. A few months earlier, our unit had been caught in an ambush in a jungle near the border with Laos, at a place called Khe Sanh. We were forced to pull back to a nearby hill and make a stand while we waited for the copters to come and pull us out. Nine hours we were on that hill, twenty-nine men against more than 300. But we stood our ground, took seven casualties – two dead, five wounded – and cut down more than forty Gooks. So, when I came back home, I’d lost any innocence I might have had, and pretty much all my fear, too. I was a new man. I was ready to embark on my destiny.

  I teamed up with another vet called Tommy “Blue” Marlin, and Tommy’s friend, Danny, who’d also served in Nam, in the 51st Airborne. The three of us went into business together. And our profession? I’d call us Financial Advisors. The cops, though, they preferred the more derogatory term of bank robbers.

  We liked to hit smalltown outlets. The money wasn’t as good as the big-city branches, but the security was minimal to the point of non-existent, and the staff tended to be too shocked to resist. We’d walk in, stockings over our heads, and I’d put a few rounds from my M16 into the ceiling, so everyone could tell we were serious, before pointing the smoking barrel at the employees. They always got the message, and filled up the bags we provided like they were OD’ing on amphetamines.

  Sometimes we’d hit the same bank twice; sometimes we’d hit two places on the same day. But you know what? Nobody ever got hurt. In nineteen raids we never had a single casualty. It was an enviable success rate. Problem was, it all changed when the cops decided to poke their noses in.

  The target was a branch of the Western Union in some nowheresville town in north Texas. We’d been scoping it on and off for a couple of weeks and knew that the security truck came to pick up the takings every second Wednesday, just before close of business. That meant hitting the place early Wednesday afternoon for the best return. Everything went like it always did. Blue waited outside in the Lincoln we were using as a getaway car, while Danny and me rushed inside, put the bullets in the ceiling, and started loading up with greenbacks. But while we’re doing all this, a cop car pulls up behind the Lincoln because it’s illegally parked. The cop comes to th
e window and tells Blue to move the car, but just as Blue – being a good, dutiful citizen – pulls away, the cop hears the gunshots, draws his own weapon and goes to radio for back-up. He’s still got the radio to his ear when Blue reverses the Lincoln straight into him, knocking him down. The cop’s hurt but still moving, so Blue jumps out of the Lincoln and puts three rounds in his back while he’s crawling along the tarmac towards his radio. Problem is, this is the middle of the day and there must be a dozen witnesses, all of whom get a good look at our man.

  Two minutes later and we’re out of the bank with more than twenty grand in cash, only to see the corpse of a cop on the ground and no sign of the getaway car. Blue’s lost his nerve and left us there. Lesser men would have panicked, but Danny and me weren’t lesser men. We run down the street to the nearest intersection and hijack a truck that’s sitting at a red light. The driver – a big, ugly redneck – gets argumentative, but a round in his kneecap changes all that, and we turf him out and start driving.

  We’re out of town and out of danger long before the cavalry arrive, but the heat’s on us now. A dead cop is a liability to any criminal. His buddies are going to stop at nothing to bring the perps to justice, but me and Danny figure if we give them the shooter then maybe we’ll be less of a target.

  Two days later, we track down Blue to a motel on the New Mexico/Texas border. He’s in the shower when we kick down the door and, as I pull back the curtain, he begs for mercy. Just before I blow his head off, I repeat a phrase one of the officers in Nam used to say: To dishonour your comrades is to deserve their bullets. He deserves mine, and there are no regrets.

  Danny and I both realize that, with Blue’s death, the armed robbery game’s probably not one for the long term. We’ve made a lot of money out of it, getting on for half a million dollars, most of which we’ve still got. So, we do what all good capitalists do: we invest, and what better market to invest in than dope? This was the tail end of the sixties, the permissive decade. The kids wanted drugs, and there weren’t many criminals supplying it, so Danny and I made some contacts over the border in Mexico, and started buying up serious quantities of marijuana which we sold on to one of our buddies from Nam – Rootie McGraw – who cut the stuff up into dealersized quantities and wholesaled it right across LA and southern California. One hell of a lot of kids had us to thank for the fact they were getting high as kites for only a couple of bucks a time. It was a perfect set-up, and as more and more people turned on, tuned in and dropped the fuck out, so the money kept coming in. And Rootie had a lot of muscle. He was heavily involved in one of the street gangs out of Compton, so no one fucked with our shipments.